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“Hope told a flattering tale.” |
THUS endorsed, Jack began to consider himself to be as fine a fellow as the rest of the world was bent upon making him out to be. He held up his head as in the old days, when debt and he were strangers, and gave his opinion with imposing decision upon all matters, pastoral, social, and political. He was glad now that he had followed M‘Nab’s advice, and shorn the fat sheep. Their wool told up noticeably in the clip, and he trusted that in the coming autumn he should be able to top the market with the first draft of fat sheep from the glorious salt-bush plains which skirted the lonely Bimbalong.
He received a certain amount of satisfaction from observing how reduced was the list of stores and necessaries with which he had been entrusted by M‘Nab. “Why, it’s next to nothing,” said he, as he looked over it; “one would think we were providing for a cattle station except for next year’s shearing requirements. If we have only another decent year or two, the debt will be wiped off, and hey for Europe!” Then, from that vision of the sea, arose the form—as of a Venus Anadyomene—of Maud Stangrove. Would she share his pilgrimage? How enchanting the thought! How divine the companionship! Together would they wander through the cities of the old world, as through the dream-palaces of his boyish days. Paris, with her mingled splendours and luxuries. Rome, calm and majestic, even amid her ruins, as befitted the Mother of Nations. Venice, with mysterious gondolas still floating adown her sea, which is “her broad, her narrow streets,” which still, as in old days of regal pride, and power, and love, is “her black-marble stair.” Switzerland, with her pure, white-robed, heaven-gazing Alps, receiving their crimson dawn-blush ere beholding the fresh day-birth of a world. Last of all, but how far from least, “Merrie England,” the great land of their fathers—every legendary and historical feature of which had been graven in his mind from earliest childhood. Bound on such a pilgrimage as this, “with one fair spirit for his minister,” how cheerfully would he abandon, for a season, the dull labours and prosaic thoughts with which his later years had been bedimmed! He thought of Maud’s cultured and receptive mind; her keen spirit of observation; her unfailing cheerfulness; and the deep, unselfish tenderness which he had remarked in her home intercourse. Could he but win this peerless creature to himself; could he but provide for this diamond of purest ray serene the costly setting which alone harmonized with its rank among “earth’s precious things,” he told himself that the sayings of cynics about the ills of humanity would be meaningless falsehoods.
This, perhaps, slightly exalted conception of the probabilities of matrimony, combined with the absence of the central figure, around which such roseate clouds softly circled, tended to abridge Mr. Redgrave’s metropolitan sojourn. He made the novel discovery that ordinary modern society was worldly and frivolous—that club viveurs were selfish and dissipated—that his acquaintances, generally, were destitute of ennobling aims; and that it behoved any man, whose soul cherished a lofty purpose, to follow out a sustained plan unswervingly. To this end he determined, rather ungratefully, considering how powerful a tonic his visit had proved, to abandon the vain city, and betake himself incontinently to the majestic desert and to—Maud Stangrove.
He made an abrupt departure, somewhat to the surprise of that very small section of society which troubled itself with his weal or woe, and appeared suddenly before M‘Nab, who, in his turn, was surprised also.
Mr. M‘Nab was not only astonished at his employer’s short stay in Melbourne, but also at his cheerful and animated demeanour.
“The trip has done you a world of good, sir,” he said. “I thought when you went away that it would take you longer to forget our losses.”
“Well, there’s nothing like change of air, and the knowledge of what other people are doing, when you are low. If people spent more money in trains and coaches they would spend less on doctors, I believe. A man who is shut up with his misery broods over it till, like a shepherd, he goes mad some day. When I got to town, I found others had suffered even more heavily, and, of course, that comforted me.”
“And the wool?” inquired M‘Nab.
“Nothing but compliments,” answered Jack. “Never expected to see wool got up like it on the Warroo, and so on. Mr. Shrood prophesied all kinds of triumphs and fancy prices next year. I might have had ten thousand sovereigns to take away in my hat, if I had asked for them. This flood seems to have done a world of damage, and such a trifle as the loss of two or three thousand sheep was voted not worth talking about.”
“It was an awful sacrifice—just a throwing to the fishes of two thousand golden guineas, any way ye look at it,” said, slowly and impressively, the downright M‘Nab. He could never be led to gloss over any shortcomings, losses, or failures, holding them as points in the game of life to be carefully scored, which no player worthy of the name would omit. “You’re welcome to knock half of it off my wages,” he continued, “as I shall always believe that I was to blame for want of care. But I hope we’ll have profits yet that will clear off the score of this and other losses.”
“I am fully confident that we shall, M‘Nab,” said Jack, hopefully; “and I have no notion of making my deficit good out of your screw, though it is manly of you to offer it. You work as hard and do as much as one man can. Whether things go right or wrong, I shall never blame you, be assured. I am free to admit that in your place I should not do half as well. And now, do you want any help for a week or two, for I think I shall ride down to Juandah?”
“I did not expect you back for a month more,” said M‘Nab, smiling to himself; “so I had arranged to do without you, you see. I can get on grandly till we begin to draft the fat sheep for market.”
Thus absolved and conscience-clear, Mr. Redgrave immediately betook himself to Juandah, where he was received with frank and kindly welcome by everybody. It was fortunate that he had gone to Melbourne after the flood-disaster, as he was now able to treat that damaging blow in a much more light and philosophical fashion than would have been possible to him without the aid of his metropolitan experiences.
“It was rather a facer,” he admitted to Stangrove, who had delicately described their grief at seeing the drowned weaners floating past their windows in scores and hundreds, “but when a fellow has a large operation in hand he must look at the progress of the whole enterprise, and not fix his mind upon minor drawbacks. A single vessel doesn’t matter out of the whole convoy of East Indiamen. The loss of the Royal George had no perceptible influence on the rest of the British navy. I shall shear over sixty thousand sheep next year, with luck, and when I sell shall think no more of those poor devils of weaners than you do of the blacks—probably mythical—that Red Rob slew during your minority.”
“With luck—with luck—as you say,” said Stangrove, rather absently. “But, as we agreed before, luck seems necessary to the working out of your plan, which I admit, at present prices, looks feasible enough. But suppose we don’t get our fair share of luck this year, what then? However, we needn’t anticipate evil. Let’s come in and see the ladies.”
“‘So behold you of return,’ as dear old Madame Florac says,” commenced Maud, looking up from The Newcomes. “How truly fortunate you men are, Mr. Redgrave, that you can get away to some decent abode of mankind every now and then under the pretence of business! Now we poor, oppressed women have to give reasons that will bear the most searching investigation before we are allowed to go anywhere. Men only say vaguely ‘must go—important business,’ and take themselves off.”
“Really, Miss Stangrove, I don’t see but that you, in this nice cool room, with nothing to do but to read about Ethel and Barnes, that grand old cat Lady Kew, and the dear old Colonel, are about as well off as any one I have seen in my travels.”
“That’s all nonsense. We endure life here, of course, but look at the delightful change of scene, air, life, people, trees, bread and butter, everything new and fresh that you have had lately. Uniformity is death to some natures. That is why some unhappy individuals of my sex make dismal endings and horrid examples of themselves. Some girl marries the butler, or the stockman, or the music master periodically. Depend upon it, it is nothing but Nature’s protest against the murderous monotony of their daily lives.”
“Maud, Maud,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove, “how can you say such dreadful things? Quite improper, I think. I declare Mr. Redgrave will be shocked and alarmed if you go on so. Really, my dear!”
Jack mildly combated these extreme and unconventional opinions, declaring that some of the most discontented, useless, and life-weary people he had ever seen had enjoyed no end of variety—passed their lives in sight-seeing—been everywhere—and yet were more utterly ennuyés than even Miss Stangrove on the banks of the Warroo.
“Well,” said that young lady, “you see they had only been working out the vanity and vexation of spirit theory, and how dreary a result it was for the Wise King to come to! But I should like ‘to see the folly of it too.’ I think manufacturing one’s own vanity and vexation is more satisfactory than acquiring it second-hand.”
“I wonder if our black friends ever feel bored,” said Jack; “before we came and gave them iron tomahawks it must have taken a fellow a week to chop out a ’possum; so I suppose constant employment conduced to cheerfulness. Still, of late years, food being plentiful, wars traditionary, and travel impossible, game perhaps a trifle scarcer, a sense of impatience of the ‘slow, strong hours’ may have crossed their unused intelligences.”
“It may be, for all we know,” said Mark, who had re-entered and thrown himself upon a sofa, “at the root of the frantic love for ardent spirits which all the younger natives have. The men of a generation or two back, like ‘old man Jack,’ don’t drink. But all the middle-aged and younger ones, more particularly those, by comparison, educated, drink fearfully hard whenever they get the chance.”
“So do all savages,” said Jack; “likewise smoke furiously. Alcohol and tobacco seem particularly attractive to their organizations; and they have no power of moderation. ‘Too much of anything is not good,’ said the Red Indian, ‘but too much rum is just enough.’ That’s their idea—all over the world.”
“I suggest that we have exhausted the subject,” mildly interposed Mrs. Stangrove, “and as it is getting cool we might all go for a drive in the break with Mark and the young horses. Can you take us, my dear?”
This was voted a first-rate suggestion. The evening, comparatively cool only, was approaching. So the ladies apparelled themselves suitably, and as Mark let the half-broken team out, without fear of stone or stump, along the glorious, level, sandy out-station track, the rushing air refreshed their senses, jaded by the long, breezeless midsummer day. It was twilight deepening into night as they returned, a very cheerful and animated party. Maud, with the changeful mood of her sex, declared herself again reconciled to existence, and even conscious of pleasurable anticipation as regarded tea.
Jack was catechised after that refection upon the balls, archery-parties, picnics, races, &c., to which he had been on his late visit to town. Maud sang a new song or two which she had managed to get up, buried alive as she assumed herself to be, and John Redgrave was more deeply enthralled than ever.
Stangrove asked him to stay a fortnight or so with them, if he could spare the time; and Jack declared it would be most uncomplimentary to M‘Nab’s management, and the fencing system generally, to suppose that a proprietor was pinned to his homestead like a mere shepherding squatter. So he gratefully accepted the invitation and the opportunity. In spite of the weather—and even the presence of the beloved object cannot render the month of January a pleasant one in Lower Riverina—the days passed in a dreamily luxurious tropical fashion. Jack had an early enjoyable swim in the capacious Warroo, now rippling over sand-bars and pebbles, as if it had never risen with death upon its angry tide. Then the breakfast in the cool darkened room, before the great and resistless glare of the day commenced, was very pleasant. After that period, and until the sun was down, I am free to confess that all the dramatis personæ might as well have been in Madras or Bombay. Outside the heat was awful, and the first effect on leaving the shelter of the cottage after ten o’clock a.m., was as if one had suddenly encountered the outer current of a blast furnace. Mark was out on the run, as a matter of course, pretty nearly all day and every day. There were never-ending duties among the sheep, cattle, and horses which did not permit him to make any philosophical reflections upon the heat of the weather. He simply put it out of the question, as he had done from boyhood. Consequently he did not feel it half as much as those who tried by every means to evade it.
Jack did not feel himself called upon to offer to join his host in these daily expeditions. He occasionally, of course, volunteered when his assistance was likely to be useful. But generally he lounged about the house, and made himself generally useful by reading aloud to the ladies, irrigating Mrs. Stangrove’s flower-garden, practising duets with Maud, and generally raising Miss Stangrove from that desolate and vacuous condition into which she had been in danger of falling before his opportune arrival. The riding and the driving parties were of course not abandoned. There was always some period arbitrarily defined as the cool of the evening, when such exercise, even walking by the Warroo under the sighing river-oaks, was suitable and satisfactory. He and Mark had long arguments about all kinds of subjects, in which the ladies now and then took part. Nothing could have been more generally agreeable than the whole thing. But the days wore on, and Jack felt that he had no decent excuse for staying longer; he therefore prepared to depart. He had not seen his way either, much as he longed for an opportunity, to put that very tremendous and momentous question to Maud, to which he had sworn to himself that he would receive a definitive answer before quitting Juandah. Truth to tell, their intimacy had not advanced so quickly as he had hoped. He saw, or thought he saw, that Maud liked his society. But she was so frank and unembarrassed that he mistrusted the existence of any deeper sentiment. He was not altogether without knowledge of the ways of womenkind; and he knew that this frank recognition of the pleasantness of his society was by no means a good sign. He did not feel inclined to ask any girl, obviously non-sympathetic, to marry him, trusting to the unlikeliness of her seeing any decenter sort of fellow in these wilds, and to her acknowledged distaste for life on the Warroo. “No, hang it,” he said to himself, “that would be hardly generous. I’ll wait till she shows some sign that she really cares for me—loves me, I mean. If she doesn’t, John Redgrave is not the man to ask her. If she does, she can’t hide it, nor can any woman that ever lived. I know so much of the alphabet.”
Thus hardening his heart temporarily and strategically, Mr. Jack finished copying the last galop, put a finishing touch to the grand arterial system of irrigation borrowed from Ah Sing, which he had engineered for the benefit of Mr. Redgrave’s roses and japonicas, gave Mark Stangrove a real good day’s work at the branding-yard, showed him a new dodge for leg-roping which elicited the admiration of the stockmen, and went on his way, accompanied for a mile or two by his host.