The Squatter's Dream

Returning to one’s own particular abode and domicile is not always an unmixed joy, however much imaginative writers have insisted upon the aspect. “The watchdog’s honest bay” occasionally displays a want of recognition calculated to irritate the sensitive mind. Evidence is sometimes forced upon the unwilling revenant of the proverbial and unwarrantable playing of mice in the absence of the lord of the castle, who is thereby unpleasantly reminded that he occupies substantially the position of the cat. Possibly he is greeted with the unwelcome announcement that an important business interview has lapsed by reason of his absence. It may be that he finds his household absent at an entertainment, thus causing him to moralize upon desolate hearthstones and shattered statuettes, while he is gloomily performing for himself the minor offices so promptly bestowed on more fortunate arrivals. Or fate, being in one of her dark moods – a subtle prescience of evil, only too true – meets him on the threshold, and he enters his home as chief mourner. “Happy whom none of these befall;” and in such cheer did our hero find himself when, after hurried inquiry, it transpired that “nothing had happened,” that everything was going on as well as could be, and that Mr. M‘Nab was out at the woolshed (No. 3), and had left word that he would be in at sundown.

“So everything has gone on well in my absence,” said Jack to his lieutenant, as they sat placidly smoking after the evening meal. “I began to be a little nervous as I got near home, though why it should be I can’t say.”

“So well,” answered M‘Nab, “that if it were not for the woolshed there would be too little to do. Once a month is often enough to muster the paddocks, and the percentage of loss has been very trifling. The sheep are in tip-top condition. The clip will be good and very clean. I hope we are past our troubles.”

“I hope so too,” echoed Jack. “How many sheep are there in the river paddock?”

“Nine thousand odd. You never saw anything like them for condition.”

“Isn’t there a risk in having them there at this time of year? The river might come down; and Stangrove told me the greater part of that paddock is under water in a big flood.”

“Plenty of time to get them out. If the worst came we could soon rig a temporary bridge over the anabranch creek.”

“People about here say,” objected Jack, “that when a real flood comes down all sorts of places are filled which you wouldn’t expect; and sheep are the stupidest things – except pigs – that ever were tried in water and a hurry.”

“You needn’t be uneasy; I’ll have them out of that hours before there is any danger,” said M‘Nab, confidently. “Meanwhile, if they don’t use the feed the travelling stock will only have the benefit of it. What did you think of Mr. Stangrove’s place, sir?”

“I was agreeably surprised,” said Jack, with an air of much gravity. “The whole affair is old-fashioned, of course; but the stock are very good, in fine order, and everything about the place very neat and nice. Mr. Stangrove and his family are exceedingly nice people.”

“So I’ve heard,” said M‘Nab. “So I believe (as if that was a point so unimportant as to merit the merest assent); but the Run! – the run is one of the best and largest on the river, and to think of its being thrown away upon less than twenty thousand sheep, a thousand head of cattle, and a few mobs of rubbishy horses!”

“Dreadful, isn’t it?” said Jack, smiling at M‘Nab’s righteous indignation; “but Stangrove is one of those men who thinks he has a right to do what he wills with his own. And really he has something to say for himself.”

“I can’t think it, sir; I can’t think it,” asserted the stern utilitarian. “The State ought to step in and interfere when a man is clearly wasting and misusing the public lands. I’d give all the shepherding, non-fencing men five years’ warning; if at the end of that time they had not contrived to fence and dig wells the country should be resumed and let by tender to men who would work the Crown lands decently and profitably.”

“You’re rather too advanced a land-reformer,” said his employer. “You might have the tables turned upon you by the farmers. However, you can argue the point of eviction with Mr. Stangrove, who will be here with the ladies, I hope, before shearing. But he has fought for his land once, and I feel sure would do so again if need were. Still I think he will be rather astonished at our four boundary riders.”

The first necessity was an inspection of the new wool-shed, which was raising its unpretending form, like a species of degenerate phœnix, from the ashes of its glorious predecessor. It was strong and substantial, full of necessary conveniences – good enough – but not the model edifice – the exemplar of a district, the pride of Lower Riverina.

Now befell a halcyon time of a couple of months of Jack’s existence, during which the millennium, as far as Gondaree was concerned, seemed to have arrived.

The weather was perfect; there was just enough rain, not more than was needed to “freshen up” the pasture from time to time. There were ten thousand fat sheep; the lambing had commenced, and prospects were splendid.

Better than all, the reactionary reign of economy directly proceeding from M‘Nab’s well-calculated outlay had set in. With forty-two thousand “countable” sheep and twenty thousand lambing ewes, “in full blast,” there were but the four boundary riders, M‘Nab, the cook, and Ah Sing, plus the shed workmen. “This was something like,” Jack said to himself. “Fancy the small army I should have billeted upon me if I were like Stangrove, and had the same proportion of hands to employ. The very thought of it is madness, or insolvency – which comes to the same thing.”

“I really believe we could do with even fewer hands upon a pinch,” said M‘Nab. “Ah Sing is of course a luxury, though a justifiable one. The boundary-riders come in for their own rations, so a ration-carrier is unnecessary. The two that live at the homestead cook for themselves. There is next to no work in the store till shearing; you or I can give out anything that is wanted. The cook chops his own wood, and fetches it in once a week; water is at the door. If it were not for having to convoy travelling sheep, one man could watch and the rest go to sleep till shearing. There are no dingoes, and we have no township near us to breed tame dogs. Next year we must have thirty thousand lambing-sheep by hook or by crook, and then you may put Gondaree into the market with sixty thousand sheep as soon after as you please.”

“What about these ten thousand fat sheep?” said Jack. “Isn’t it time we were thinking of drafting and sending them on the road?”

“If I were you, Mr. Redgrave, I would not sell them, unless you were obliged, till after shearing. They are worth from twelve to fourteen shillings all round in Melbourne, let us say. Well, the wethers will cut six shillings’ worth of wool, and the ewes five. It would pay you to shear them and sell them as store sheep.”

“That’s all very well; but if you don’t sell at the proper time I always notice that it ends in keeping them for another year; by which you lose interest, and risk a fall in the market.”

“Not much chance of sheep falling below ten shillings,” rejoined M‘Nab. “We can send them in very prime about March. We may just as soon make one expense of the shearing.”

“Well,” yielded Jack, “I dare say it won’t make much difference. We shall have it – the clip – and if they only fetch ten shillings there will be a profit of five and twenty per cent. They don’t cost anything for shepherding, that’s one comfort.”

So matters wore on till July. To complete the astonishing success and enjoyment of the situation, Jack received a letter from Stangrove, to say that he was going to drive over, and would bring the ladies for a day’s visit to Gondaree.

Jack’s cup well-nigh overflowed. To think of having her actually in the cottage, under his very roof – to have the happiness of beholding her walking about the garden and homestead, criticising everything, as she would be sure to do. Perhaps even appreciating, with that clear intellect of hers, the scope and breadth of the system of management, of his life pleasures even. Could she be won to take an interest, then what delirious, immeasurable joy!

Preparations were made. A feminine supernumerary was secured from the woolshed camp. Fortunately the cook was undeniable, and he needed but a word to “impress himself” and execute marvels. The cottage was entirely given up to the ladies, and the bachelors’ quarters made ready for occupation by Stangrove, M‘Nab, and himself. So might they retire, and smoke and talk sheep ad libitum. The small flower-garden round the cottage, or rather at the side, as its verandah almost overhung the river, was made neat. Even M‘Nab, though grumbling somewhat at a feminine invasion “just before shearing,” looked out his best suit of clothes, and prepared to abide the onset. Had there ever been a lady at Gondaree before? Jack began to consider. It was exceedingly doubtful.

At the appointed day, just before sundown, Stangrove’s buggy rattled up behind, as usual, a very fast pair of horses. He was a great man for pace, and, having lots of horses to pick out of, generally had something only slightly inferior to public performers. Indeed, his friends used to complain that he never could be got to stay a night with any one on the road – being always bent upon some impossible distance in the day, and insisting upon going twenty or thirty miles farther, in order to accomplish it. However that might be, no man drove better horses.

“Here we are at last, Redgrave,” said he, as Jack rushed out to satisfy himself that Maud was actually in the flesh at his gates. “We should have been here before, but the ladies, of course, kept me waiting. However, I think we’ve done it under seven hours – that’s not so bad.”

“Bad! I should think not – splendid going!” said Jack. “I must get you to sell me a pair of buggy horses; mine are slow enough for a poison cart. Mrs. Stangrove, how good of you to cheer up a lonely bachelor! Miss Stangrove, I throw myself and household on your mercy. Will you, ladies, deign to walk in? you will find an attendant, and take possession of my house and all that is in it. Stangrove, we must take out the nags ourselves; no spare hands on a fenced-in run, you perceive.”

“All right, Redgrave, that’s the style I like. Mind you keep it up.”

The stable was well found, though the groom was absent. Abundance of hay had been supplied, and the buggy was placed under cover. The friends were soon sauntering down by the river, and of course talking sheep, in the interval before dinner.

“Saw a lot of your weaners as we came along,” said Stangrove. “How well they look. Much larger than mine, and the wool very clean. It certainly makes a man think. How many are there in that paddock?”

“Nine thousand,” answered Jack, carelessly. “They have been there since they were weaned.”

“And how often are they counted?”

“Once a month, regularly.”

“What percentage of loss?”

“Next to none at all; the fact is we have no dogs, and the season has been so far, glorious.”

“Well, I have five shepherds for the same number,” said Stangrove; “have had one or two ‘smashes,’ endless riding, bother, and trouble. It seems very nice to turn them loose and never have any work or expense with them – the most troublesome of one’s whole flock – till shearing. However, as I said before, my mind is made up for the next couple of years – after that, I won’t say – ”

“I think I hear the dinner-bell,” said Jack; “the ladies will be wondering what has become of us.”

M‘Nab having arrived about this time, looking highly presentable, the masculine contingent entered the cottage, and dinner was announced.

“Your housekeeping does not need to fear criticism,” said Mrs. Stangrove, as she tasted the clear soup. This was a spécialité of Monsieur Jean Dubois, an artist who, but for having contracted the colonial preference for cognac, our vin ordinaire, would have graced still a metropolitan establishment.

“We women are always complimented upon our domestic efficiency, home comforts, and so on,” said Maud. “It appears to me that bachelors always live more comfortably than the married people of our acquaintance.”

“I don’t think that is always the case,” pleaded Mrs. Stangrove. “But in many instances I have noted that you gentlemen, who are living by yourselves, always seem to get the best servants.”

“‘Kinder they than Missises are,’ Thackeray says, you know; but it must be quite an accidental circumstance. In by far the greater number of instances a lone bachelor is oppressed, neglected, and perhaps robbed.”

“I am not so sure of that,” persisted Maud. “You exaggerate your chances of misfortune. I know when I am travelling with Mark we generally find ourselves much better put up, as he calls it, at a bachelor residence than at a regular family establishment. Don’t we, Mark?”

“Well, I can’t altogether deny it,” deposed Stangrove, thus adjured. “It may not last, and the bachelor may be living on his capital of comfort. But I must say that, unless I know a man’s wife is one of the right sort, I prefer the unmarried host. You fling yourself into the best chair in the room as soon as you have made yourself decent. You are safe to be asked to take a glass of grog without any unnecessary waste of time. And you are absolutely certain that no possible cloud can cast a shade over the evening’s abandon. Whereas, in the case of the ‘double event,’ the odds are greater that it won’t come off so successfully.”

“What are you saying about married people, Mark? You’re surely in a wicked sarcastic humour. Don’t believe him Mr. Redgrave.”

“My dear! you are the exceptional helpmate, as I am always ready to testify. But there may be cases, you know, when the husband has just stated that he’ll be hanged if he will have his mother-in-law for another six months, just yet; or the cook, not being able to ‘hit it’ with the mistress’s slightly explosive temper, has left at a moment’s notice, and there is nothing but half-cold mutton and quite hot soda-bread to be procured; the grog, too, has run out, which is never the case in a bachelor’s establishment – and so – and so. Unless the lady of the house is partial to strangers (like you, my dear), give me Tom, or Dick, and Liberty Hall.”

“So I say too,” added Maud. “Of course being a single young person, I feel flattered by the respectful admiration I meet with at such houses. It’s not proper, I suppose. I ought to feel more pleased to be under the wing of a staid, overworked, slightly soured mother of a family, who keeps me waiting for tea till all the children are put to bed, and gives me something to stitch at during the evening; but I don’t – and so there’s no use saying I do.”

“I’m afraid your tastes border on the Bohemian, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack. “I’m rather a Philistine myself, I own, in the matter of young ladies.”

“Thinking, no doubt, as is the manner of men, that stupidity contains a great element of safety for women. I could prove to you that you are utterly wrong; but you might think me more a person of independent ideas – that is, more unladylike than ever. So I abstain. How nicely your verandah looks over the river. It is quite a balcony. Isn’t it very unpleasantly near in flood-time?”

“The oldest inhabitant has never seen water cover this point,” said Jack. “I ascertained that very carefully before I built here. If you look over to those low green marshy flats on the other side, you will see that miles of water must spread out for every additional inch the river rises.”

“Yes, Steamboat Point is all right,” said Mark. “I’ve heard the blacks admit that. I’ve seen a big flood or two here too; but the water runs back into the creeks and anabranches in a wonderful way. Gets behind you and cuts you off before you can help yourself, sometimes, in the night. If I were you I would have every weaner out of those river paddocks before spring.”

“We could have them out soon enough if there was any danger,” here interposed M‘Nab.

“You would find it hard, take my word for it,” said Stangrove, “if the river came down a banker.”

“I could whip a bridge over any back creek here in half an hour,” said M‘Nab, decisively, “that would cross every sheep we have there in two hours.”

“There’s a Napoleonic ring about that, Mr. M‘Nab,” said Maud; “but the Duke would have had all his forces – I mean his sheep – withdrawn from the position of danger in good time. One or two of Buonaparte’s bridges broke down with him, you remember.”

“It doesn’t look much like a flood at present,” said Jack; “though this is no warranty in Australia, which is a land specially dedicated to the unforeseen. Let us hope that there will be nothing so sensational at or before shearing this year.”

“Not even bushrangers,” said Maud. “What does this mean?” handing over to her brother the Warroo Watch-tower and Down-river Advertiser, in which figured the following paragraph: “We regret sincerely to be compelled to state that the rumours as to a party of desperadoes having taken to the bush are not without foundation. Last week two drays were robbed near Mud Springs by a party of five men, well armed and mounted. The day before yesterday the mailman and several travellers on the Oxley road were stopped and robbed by the same gang. They are said to be led by the notorious Redcap, and to have stated that they were coming into the Warroo frontage to give the squatters a turn.”

Mrs. Stangrove turned pale, Maud laughed, while Mark devoted himself very properly to calm the apprehensions of his wife.

“Maud,” he said, “this is no laughing matter. It is the beginning of a period, whether long or short, of great trouble and anxiety, it may be danger, I am not an alarmist; but I wish we were well out of this matter.”

“It seems very ridiculous,” said Jack; “every man’s hand will be against them, and they must be run or shot down, ultimately.”

“Nothing more certain,” admitted Stangrove; “but these fellows generally ‘turn out’ from the merest folly or recklessness, and become gradually hardened to bloodshed. They are like raw troops, mere rustics at first. But they soon learn the part of ‘first robber,’ and generally lose some of their own blood, or spill that of better men, before they get taken.”

“We have a dray just loading up from town. There is time – yes, just time,” said M‘Nab, consulting his pocket-book, “to write by mail. We can order revolvers, and a repeating rifle or two, and have them up in five weeks. Can we get anything for you?”

“Certainly, and much obliged,” said Stangrove; “if they know that we are well armed, they will be all the more chary of coming to close quarters. You may order for me a brace of repeating rifles and three revolvers.”

“With some of the neighbours we might turn out a respectable force, and hunt the fellows down,” said Jack, who felt ready for anything in the immediate proximity of Maud, and only wished the gang would attack Gondaree then and there.

There was no such luck, however. The ordinary station life was unruffled. The ladies rode and drove about with cheerful energy. Maud admired the paddocks and the unshepherded sheep immensely, and vainly tried to extort her brother’s consent to begin the reformed system as soon as they returned to Juandah.

Mark had said that he would defer the enterprise for two years, and he was a man who, slow in forming resolves, always adhered to them.

CHAPTER XII

“So farre, so fast the eygre drave,The heart had hardly time to beat,Before a shallow seething waveSobbed in the grasses at our feet;The feet had hardly time to fleeBefore it brake against the knee,And all the world was in the sea.” —Jean Ingelow.

The days passed pleasantly in excursions to Bimbalong, to the back paddocks, and in rides and drives along the perfect natural roads peculiar to the locality. In the long excursions, the twilight was upon them more than once before they reached home. Jack did not altogether neglect his opportunities. When he rode close to Maud’s bridle-rein, as they flitted along in the mild half-light between the shadowy pines, or the avenues of oak and myall, words would become gradually lower in tone, more accented with feeling, than the ordinary daylight converse.

“And so you think,” said Jack, on one of these pleasant twilight confidentials – Stangrove, who was driving, being rather anxious to get home before the light got any worse – “that I am not playing too hazardous a game in spending freely now, with the expectation of being so largely recouped within a year or two.”

“It is exactly what I should do if I were a man,” said the girl, frankly. “How men can consent to bury themselves alive in this wearisome, never-ending, bush sepulchre I cannot think. I should perish if I were compelled to lead such a life without possibility of change. When we think of the glorious old world, the dreamland of one’s spirit, the theatre of art, luxury, war, antiquity, which leisure would enable one to visit – how can one be contented?”

“I never thought I should feel contented on the Warroo,” said her companion; “yet now, really, I don’t find it so awfully dull, you know.”

“Not just at present,” answered Maud, archly. “Well, I am candid enough to own that, our families having joined forces since your visit, things are a shade more bearable. But fancy growing gray in this life and these surroundings. Twenty years after! Fancy us all at that date, here!”

“I can’t fancy it. What should we be like, Miss Stangrove?”

“I can tell you,” pursued the excited girl. “Mark much the same, gray and more silent – strongly of opinion that the Government of the day were in league with free selectors, and generally robbers and murderers. His opinions are pretty strong now. Then, of course, they would have ripened into prejudices. My sister-in-law, frail, worn out by servants and household cares; just a little querulous, and more indisposed to read.”

“And yourself?” asked Jack.

“Oh! I should have been quietly buried under a couba tree before that impossible period. Or, if I unhappily survived, would have become eccentric. I should be spoken of generally as a ‘little strong-minded,’ slight dash of temper, and so on; very fond of riding, and, they say, can count sheep and act as boundary-rider when her brother is short of hands. How do you like the picture?”

“You have not paid me the compliment of including me on the canvas.”

“I don’t possibly imagine you within thousands of miles of Gondaree or Juandah at such a time. You will be dreaming among the ‘Stones of Venice,’ lounging away the winter in Rome, or settled in a hunting neighbourhood in a pleasant English county, making up your mind, very gradually, to return to Australia, and to devote the rest of your days to model farming and national regeneration.”

“There is only one thing absolutely necessary to render my existence happy under the conditions which you have so accurately sketched,” – here he leaned forward, and placing his hand upon her horse’s mane, saw a softened gleam in her marvellous eyes – as of the heart’s farewell to unacknowledged hope – “and that is – ”

“We are really riding shamefully slow,” said she suddenly, as she drew her rein, and the free horse tossed his head and went off at speed. “Mark must have nearly reached home, and Jane, as usual, will be fancying all kinds of impossible accidents – that dear old Mameluke has tumbled down, positively tumbled down and broken my arm in three places. I tell her she’ll suspect me of taking a ‘bait’ next. How still the plain looks, and how exactly the same – north and south, east and west! But even in this light you can distinguish the heavy, dark, winding line of the river timber.”

In due time the guests departed, and Mr. Redgrave was left to the consideration of the loneliness of his condition, a view of life which had not presented itself strongly before his introduction to Miss Stangrove. He had been contented to enjoy the society of wife, widow, and maid in the most artless, instinctive fashion, without any fixed plan of personal advantage. Not that this unsatisfactory general approbation had escaped criticism by those who felt themselves to be sufficiently interested to speak. He had been called selfish, conceited, fastidious, fast, uninteresting, and mysterious. Many adjectives had in private been hurled at his devoted head. But he “had a light heart, and so bore up.” Besides, he had a reserve of popularity to fall back upon. There were many people who would not suffer Jack Redgrave to be run down unreasonably. So up to this time he had eluded appropriation and defied disapproval.