The Ghost Camp

On the following day he had arranged to leave for Hobart, as he expected to deal with propositions lately submitted for the amalgamation of the original prospecting claim with those adjoining, thus to include a larger area upon which to float a company to be placed upon the London market, with an increased number of shares.

This had been done at the suggestion of Mr. Tregonwell, whose energetic temperament was constantly urging him to cast about for improved conditions of management, and a more profitable handling of the great property which kind fortune had thrown into their hands.

“What is the sense,” he had asked in his last letter from the mine, “of going on in the slow, old-fashioned way, just turning out a few thousand ounces of silver monthly, and earning nothing more than a decent income, this fabulously rich ore body lying idle, so to speak, for want of organisation and enterprise? The specimens already sent home have prepared the British investors for the flotation of a company, of which a large proportion of the shares will be offered to the public. I propose to call a meeting of the shareholders in Number One and Two, North, and South, and submit a plan for their consideration at once.

“With our property thrown in we can increase the shares to five hundred thousand one pound shares, resuming a hundred thousand paid up original shares from the prospectors. You and I, Herbert and Clarke, pool the lot and put them before the public, allotting so many to all applicants before a certain day – after which the share allotment list will be closed. With the increased capital, we can then carry out and complete such improvements as are absolutely necessary for the working of the mine on the most productive scale, ensuring a return of almost incredible profits within a comparatively short period. In a series of years, the price of silver may fall – the money market, in the event of European wars, become restricted, and in fact the future, that unknown friend or enemy to all mundane affairs, may blight the hopes and expectations which now appear so promising.

“Everything is favourable now, the mine, the output, the market – money easy, machinery available on fair terms. But we don’t know how soon a cloud may gather, a storm – financial or political – may burst upon us. The directors in the great Comstock Mine in America looked at things in that light – doubled their capital, quadrupled their plant, built a railway, and within five years banked dollars enough to enable the four original prospectors (I knew Flood and Mackay well – worked with them in fact – when we were all poor men) to become and remain millionaires to the end of their lives. Meanwhile giving entertainments, and building palaces, which astonished all Europe, and America as well – a more difficult matter by far.

“Now, what do we want, you will ask, for all this development, this Arabian Night’s treasure house? I say – and I am talking strict business – that we must have, presuming that the ‘Great Tasmanian Proprietary Comstock and Associated Silver Mines Company, Limited,’ comes off, and the shares will be over-applied for twice over – what do we want, I repeat? A battery with the newest inventions and improvements – a hundred stamps to begin with. It may be, of course, increased; we shall provide for such a contingency.

“Secondly, we must have a railway – from the mine to the port – to carry our men – materials, supplies generally. We can’t go back to this Peruvian mode of transit-carrying – on men’s backs, at a frightful waste of time and money. We can’t afford the time– it’s not a question so much of money as of time, which is wasting money at compound interest. We want a wharf at Strahan and a steamer of our own to take the ore to Callao. She’ll pay for herself within the year. Is that all? I hear you asking with your cynical drawl, which you affect, I know you, when you’re most interested.

“No, sir! as we all learnt to say in the States – the best comes last. We want a first-class American mining manager – a real boss – chock full of scientific training from Freiberg, practical knowledge gathered from joining the first crowd at Sutter’s Mill – and more important than all, the knack of keeping a couple of thousand miners, of different creeds, countries and colours, all pulling one way, and him keeping a cool head in strikes and other devilries that’s bound to happen in every big mine in the world, specially when she’s doin’ a heap better than common – see! His price is £5,000 a year, not a cent less – if you want the finished article!” Here, Mr. Tregonwell’s fiery eloquence, albeit confined to cold pen and ink, led him into the mining American dialect, so easy to acquire, so difficult to dislodge – which he had picked up in his early experiences. In the class with which he had chiefly associated in earlier years, and to which he belonged in right of birth, he could be as punctiliously accurate in manner and speech, as if he had never quitted it. With a certain reluctance, as of one committing himself to a voyage upon an unknown sea, his more prudent, but less practical partner gave a guarded consent to these daring propositions, premising, however, that the company must be complete in legal formation and the shares duly allotted, before a cheque was signed by Frampton Tregonwell and Company, in aid of operations of such colossal magnificence.

Mr. Blount excused himself from accepting a pressing invitation to remain another week at this very pleasant reproduction of English country house life, on the plea of urgent private affairs, but he acceded to Mr. Dereker’s suggestion that he should stay a night with him at Holmby, on the way to Hobart, where he would undertake to land him an hour or two before the coach could arrive. This was a happy conjunction of business and pleasure, against which there was no valid argument. So, with many regrets by guest and entertainers, and promises on the part of the former to return at the earliest possible opportunity, he after breakfast started in Mr. Dereker’s dog-cart from the hospitable precincts of Hollywood Hall.

Holmby, the well-known headquarters of the sporting magnates of the island, was reached just “within the light,” though, as the road was exceptionally good – metalled, bridged, and accurately graded all through – the hour of arrival was not of great consequence.

Mr. Dereker was a bachelor, and had mentioned something about bachelor’s fare and pot luck generally, to which Mr. Blount, feeling equal to either fortune, had made suitable reply. Rather to his surprise, however, as his host had driven round to the stables they saw grooms and helpers busy in taking out the team of a four-in-hand drag.

The equipage and appointments arrested his attention, and caused him to utter an exclamation. They constituted indeed an uncommon turn-out. An English-built coach – such as the Four-in-hand and the coaching clubs produce on the first day of the season, for the annual procession, so anxiously awaited, so enthusiastically watched, – complete with every London adjunct, from hamper to horn, etc. The horses had just been detached, and were, at Mr. Dereker’s order, detained for inspection. Four flea-bitten greys, wonderfully matched, and sufficiently large and powerful to warrant their easy action in front of so heavy a drag, as the one in which they had been driven over. Their blood-like heads, and striking forehands, not less than their rounded back ribs, and powerful quarters, denoted the fortunate admixture of the two noblest equine families – the Arab and the English thoroughbred: of size and strength they had sufficient for all or any harness work, while their beauty and faultless matching would have graced any show-ground in England.

“This team was bred by a relative of mine, who is a great amateur in the coaching line, and is thought to be the best team in Australasia! His place, Queenhoo Hall, is only fifteen miles off. He is a connection by marriage: therefore we don’t stand on ceremony. I suspect he is giving his team an airing before driving them to the Elwick Races next month, where he always turns out in great style. You will not have a dull evening, for his wife and a niece or two are sure to have accompanied him.”

In passing through the outer hall, such an amount of mirthful conversation reached the ear, as led to the belief in Mr. Blount’s mind, that either the number of the Squire’s nieces had been under-stated, or that, according to the custom of the country, the coach had been reinforced on the way. So it proved to be – the hall was apparently half full of men and maidens, unto whom had been added a few married people, as well as a couple of subalterns from a regiment then quartered in Hobart. The chaperons were not noticeably older than their unmarried charges, so that the expectation of a dance was fully justified.

Mr. Blount was introduced to the “Squire,” as he was universally called, as also to his nieces, two attractive-looking girls; and of course, to all the other people, civil and military. He felt as he once did in the west of Ireland, where he accepted so many invitations to spend a month, that the number of months would have had to be increased if he had not more than a year in which to keep holiday. He complimented the Squire, with obvious sincerity, on his wonderful team, and promised, strictly reserving compliance until after the flotation of the great mining company, to visit him at Queenhoo Hall in the summer time now approaching. The dinner and the dance were replicas of those he had enjoyed at Hollywood. Here he had another opportunity of admiring the lovely complexions, graceful figures, and perfect grace and fleetness of the daughters of the land in the waltz or galop, and when he started for Hobart soon after sunrise, the drive through the fresh morning air dispelled all feelings of weariness, which, under the circumstances, he might have felt, after hearing the cock crow two mornings running before going to bed.

“Heaven knows how long this sort of thing might have lasted, if that letter of Tregonwell’s had not turned up last night,” he told himself. “There is a time for all things – and if I do not mistake, it is high time now, as our pastors and masters used to say, to make a stern division between work and play – ‘poculatum est, condemnatum est,’ so ‘nunc est agendum’ in good earnest.”

Hobart, reached two hours before the coach could have drawn up before the post-office, reassured him as to Mr. Dereker’s guarantee holding good. A cab from the nearest stand bore him and his luggage to the Tasmanian Club, where, freed from the distractions of country houses, he was able to collect his thoughts before attacking the great array of letters and papers, which met his eye when he entered his room.

A copy of the morning paper reposing on the dressing-table disclosed the fact in an aggressive headline that the Proprietary Tasmanian Comstock and Associated Silver Mines Company (Limited) was already launched upon the Australian mining world, and indeed upon that of Europe, and the Universe generally.

“The Directors of this magnificent silver property, which includes the original Comstock Claim – amalgamated with the Associated Silver Mines Company we understand” – wrote the fluent pen of the Editor of the Tasmanian Times– “have at length succumbed to outside pressure, and in the interest of the British and Colonial Public, consented to form these mines of unparalleled richness into a company. The Directors are Messrs. Valentine Blount, Frampton Tregonwell, and Charles Herbert and John Westerfield Clarke, names which will assure the shareholders of honourable and straightforward dealing at the hands of those to whom their pecuniary interests are committed. These names are well and favourably known in England, in Mexico, in the United States of America, and the Dominion of Canada. Comment is superfluous – they speak for themselves.

“Wherever gold or silver mining is carried on the names of Clarke and Tregonwell are familiar as ‘household words’ and always associated with skilled treatment and successful operations. That this enterprise will have a beneficial effect not only upon the mining, but on the commercial, and all other industries of Tasmania, lifting her, with her fertile soil, her equable climate, her adaptability for all agricultural and pastoral products to her proper place in the front rank of Australian colonies no sane man can henceforth doubt. A line of steamers from Strahan to Hobart, a short though expensive railway, and a metalled coach road, are among the indispensable enterprises which Mr. Tregonwell assured our representative would be commenced without delay. Advance, Tasmania!”

Looking hastily through the pile of unopened letters, but keeping private-and-confidential-appearing correspondence strictly apart, and relegating those in Mr. Tregonwell’s bold, rapid handwriting, to a more convenient season, he started, and trembled, as his eye fell upon a letter in Mrs. Bruce’s handwriting which bore the Marondah postmark. His heart almost stopped beating, when an enclosed note fell out, still more likely to affect his inmost soul. Yes! it was in the handwriting, so closely scanned, so dearly treasured in the past, of Imogen Carrisforth. For the moment, a spasm of regret, even remorse affected him painfully. He stood self-convicted by his conscience of having lingered in frivolous, social enjoyment, while uncertain of the welfare and feelings of one who had aroused the deepest emotions of his being, nor had he (with shame he reflected) taken all possible means to discover to what circumstance it was that his letters had been apparently treated with indifference or contempt.

Mrs. Bruce’s letter gave an explanation which, though not fully comprehensive, cleared up a part of the mystery, as far as Imogen was concerned. It ran as follows: —

“Dear Mr. Blount, – I am afraid you must have thought us a very ill-mannered set of people, as it seems by your letter of – that you have not received any answer to your letters written the night before you left Bunjil for Melbourne. Yet, it was scarcely our fault. That poor lad who was drowned in the flood, which rose on the very day you left, carried answers from me and Imogen; these, I think, you would have considered friendly, and even in a sense apologetic for my husband’s attitude in condemning you unheard. We both scolded him soundly for deciding your case so hastily, in disregard of the laws of evidence. He particularly, who is looked upon as the best magistrate on the Marondah bench. We got him to hear reason at last, and to write expressing regret that he had made no allowance for your ignorance of our bush population, and their ways with stock. This letter was in the bags of the mail coach to Waroonga, and it also was lost when two horses were drowned at Garlung: the bridge being six feet under water. None of the passengers were injured, but the coach was swept down the stream with the mail bags, which have not been recovered. It certainly was a most unlucky occurrence, for all concerned.

“When your letter from Melbourne arrived, poor Imogen was laid up with a bad attack of influenza, from the effects of which she was confined to bed for several weeks, her lungs having been attacked and pneumonia supervening; so that what with nursing her, and Mr. Bruce having left on a three months’ trip to Queensland, all correspondence was suspended for a while. She was very nearly dying, and in fact was given up by two out of three of the doctors who attended her!

“Her good constitution pulled her through, and she has regained her former health, though not her spirits, poor girl!

“Then, after she was up, all these accounts of your wonderful success in Tasmania, and large fortune derived from the Tasmanian Silver Mine (I can’t recollect its name) were circulated in the district. On account of this she did not write, as I wanted her to do, fearing (very foolishly, as I told her) lest you might think her influenced by your altered fortunes. She is not that sort of girl, I can safely assert. The man who touched her heart would remain there installed, for richer, for poorer, till death’s parting hour.

“Whether you have said more to her than she has told me – she is very reserved about herself – I cannot say. I have written fully, perhaps too much so, as to which I trust to your honour, but my sole intention has been to clear up all doubts on your part, as to the feeling which actuates us as a family, about the past misunderstanding. I enclose a scrap which she gave me reluctantly.

“Yours sincerely,“Hildegarde Bruce.”

Mr. Blount picked up the half sheet of notepaper, which having kissed reverently, and indeed twice repeated the action, he read as follows. Very faint and irregular were the characters: —

“What a chapter of accidents since you left! Poor Johnny Doyle drowned! my letter and Hilda’s lost. Your reply also never came.

“My illness, in which I was ‘like to die’ following closely.

“We thought you had left without troubling to answer our letters – at least, they did. My sister has written you sheets, so I need not enlarge upon matters. Edward is still in Queensland. The weather is lovely now, after the cold winter. If you can tear yourself away from Hobart, you might see what Marondah looks like in early summer.

“Yours truly,“Imogen.”

Mr. Blount’s reply, by telegram, was sent with no unnecessary loss of time: —

“Leaving for Melbourne and Marondah by to-morrow’s steamer.”

Other letters, papers, circulars, requests, invitations in shoals lay ready for inspection. All the tentative appeals, complimentary and otherwise, which track the successful individual in war or peace, law, letters, or commerce. A large proportion of these were transmitted to the waste-paper basket – a piece of furniture now rendered necessary by the volume of Mr. Blount’s correspondence.

He felt inclined to burn the whole lot, excepting those relative to the development of the Tasmanian Comstock and Associated Silver Mines Company (Limited), now stamped on a score of large and portentous envelopes.

Making a final search, a letter was detached from a superincumbent mass, the superscription of which had the Tumut and Bunjil postmarks. This was sufficient to arrest his attention. The handwriting, too, was that of Sheila Maguire, whose interest in his welfare did not seem to have declined.

“Dear Mr. Blount, – I little thought, when I used to get up at all hours to make you comfortable in our back block shanty, that this humble individual was ministering (that’s a good word, isn’t it? I’ve been reading up at odd times) to the wants of a Director of the Great Comstock Silver Mines Company. What a lark it seems, doesn’t it? And you, that didn’t know the difference between quartz and alluvial then!

“Shows what a fine country Australia is, when a gentleman may be nearly run in for ‘duffing’ one month, and the next have all the world bowing and scraping to him as a millionaire! That’s not my line, though, is it? The money, if you had ten times as much, wouldn’t make Sheila Maguire more your friend – your real friend– than she is now. The other way on, if anything. And there’s a young lady down the river – not that I even myself with her, only she’s a ‘cornstalk’ – one of the same brand, as the saying is. She don’t mind the dirty money – any fool can come by that, or any man that’s contented to live like a black-fellow, and save farthings till they mount up. He can’t help it. But who’d take him, with his muck-rake?

“Great book, Pilgrim’s Progress, isn’t it? Just fell across it.

“‘What the devil’s the girl driving at?’ I hear you say. That’s not much of a swear for Bunjil, is it? Well, you’ll see about it in the postscript, by and by.

“First and foremost, I want a hundred shares in the Great Comstock Associated. On the ground floor. Original, like the Broken Hill Proprietary.

“An uncle of mine, old Barney Maguire, of Black Dog Creek, died a month ago, and left us boys and girls five thousand apiece. He couldn’t read and write, but he had ten thousand acres of good freehold land, river flats, too, and a tidy herd of cattle – every one knows the ‘B. M.’ brand. Some good horses, too. Comes of saving and screwing. He lived by the creek bank in an old bark hut with two rooms, never married, and never gave one of us boys and girls the value of a neck-ribbon or a saddle-strap while he was alive. I’m sending a cheque for the scrip, so make your secretary post them at once. As you’re a director, you’ll have to sign your real name, so I’ll know what it is. I never was sure of the other. You’re born lucky, and I’m going to back you right out. Perhaps I am, too, and might rise in life; who knows? I’m going to work up my education on the chance. What I learned at She-oak Flat’ll stick to me. So we’ll see. And now for the postscript. I looked it out – derived from post scriptum (written after). Never thought what ‘P.S.’ meant before. Easy enough when you know, isn’t it?

“Well, ‘let me see!’ says the blind man – oh! I forgot; that’s vulgar – no more of that for Miss Sheila Maguire – one of the Maguires of Tumut. ‘Fine gal, aw. Hear she’s got money, don’t yer know?’ Ha! ha! they won’t catch me that way. ‘I’ve travelled,’ though it’s only on a bush track. False start; come back to the post, all of you! The straight tip is this – ‘a dead cert.’ I had it from my cousin, Joe Macintyre, her that was maid to Mrs. Bruce. Miss Imogen hadn’t influenza– only a bit of a cold; but she was real bad and low, all the same, after a certain gentleman went away. No word, and no letters came back. She’d sit and cry for hours. No interest in anything; not a smile out of her for days. Then she got ill, and no mistake; lower and lower – close up died. Doctors gave her up. Had to go to Sydney for change. I saw her in the train at Wagga. My word! I hardly knew her. She was that dog-poor and miserable, pale as a ghost, I nearly cried. Now she’s home again, and looks better, Joe says.

“But if some one doesn’t turn up before the summer’s well on, I shall know what to think him who was a man and a gentleman, but that no one about here will call either the one or the other again, least of all,

“His friend and well-wisher,“Sheila Maguire.

“P.S. No. 2. – Strikes me this isn’t very different to the Church Service, which begins with ‘Dearly beloved,’ and ends with ‘amazement.’ What do you think?”

Mr. Blount couldn’t help smiling at certain sentences in this frank and characteristic epistle. But he looked grave enough at the concluding one. This was the light then in which his conduct would appear to the rural inhabitants of the township and district of Bunjil.

Simple and chiefly unlettered they might be, but shrewd and accurate to a wonderful degree in their discernment of character.

It was evident that the false cavalier who “loved, and who rode away,” would have small consideration shown him on the day when he might fall in with half a dozen Upper Sturt men at annual show or race meeting. There was a veiled threat in Sheila’s closing sentence, and though, in his or any other defaulter’s case, retributive justice might be stayed or wholly miscarry, yet it was not a pleasant thought that any act of his should bear the interpretation of bad faith; or that sentence of excommunication would, so to speak, be pronounced against him from one end of the river and the great Upper Sturt district to the other. By gentle and simple alike there would be unanimous agreement on that score. From the “mountain men” of the Bogongs and Talbingo, to the sun-burned plain-riders of the Darling, the vigorous English of the Waste would be searched for epithets of scorn and execration.

In the old Saxon days of the first Christian King, the epithet of “niddering” (worthless), which men committed suicide rather than endure, would have been decreed. Even the rude miners of the West would feel injured. From club to hotel, from the cool green, sunless forests of the Alpine chain, where the snow-fed rills tinkled and gurgled the long, bright summer through, to the burning, gold-strewn deserts of West Australia, he would be a marked man, pointed at as the coward who won a girl’s heart and “cleared out,” because he happened to “strike it rich” in another colony.

Luckily for his state of mind and the condition of his business prospects, Mr. Tregonwell happened to turn up a day earlier than he was expected, so that by sitting far into the night in council with that experienced though fervid operator, things were put into train; so that he and the resident directors would, with the help of a power of attorney, arrange all the advertising and scrip printing without further aid from Valentine Blount.