The Squatter's Dream

The banker walked over to him, and looked full in the face of the man who was going forth, as he believed, to utter, inevitable ruin. He knew that only by a miracle could any one obtain assistance in the present state of finance. All the other banks, all the great mercantile squatting houses, bankers themselves in all but name, had been throwing over dead weight, dropping small, doubtful, or not vitally necessary accounts, for months past.

John Redgrave’s quest would be that of a drowning man who solicits the inmates of dangerously laden boats, in the worst possible weather, out of sight of land, to have pity upon him and to risk their lives, manifestly for his sake. He might not encounter the precipitate phraseology of the British tar, but a crack with an oar-blade would, metaphorically, represent his reception.

Mr. Shrood was not, of course, any more than the officer of any other service, likely to divulge the inner workings of official action; but he wrung Jack’s hand with an emphasis not all conventional, as he wished him success, and bade him a genuine farewell.

“It is precious hard upon that young fellow, I must say,” said he, half aloud. “I really did not think I could be so unbusinesslike as to flurry myself about a single account, with the half-yearly balance coming on too. It must be near lunch-time.”

Mr. Mildmay Shrood opened an inner baize-embellished door, and disappeared into a long passage, which led to his private suite of apartments. He then and there threw himself into a game of romps with his daughters, aged six and eight years respectively, and informed his wife that there would be a flower-show on the following Saturday, to which, if nothing materially affecting his health, or the weather, took place in the interval, he intended to have the honour of escorting her.

Mrs. Shrood expressed her high approval of this announcement, and at the same time stated her opinion that he looked rather fagged, asked if the affairs of the bank were going on well, and if he would like a glass of sherry.

“What bank, my dear? Yes, thank you; the brown sherry, if you please. What bank do you allude to?”

“Nonsense, Mildmay! Why, our bank, of course.”

“Madam,” replied the husband gravely, draining the glass of sherry with zest and approbation, “I have before had the honour to remark to you that, once inside that door, I know of the existence of no bank, either in New Holland or New Caledonia. And further, O partner of my cares and shares – I was about to say – but suppose we say Paris bonnets, àpropos of one that’s just come in, unless, madam, you wish to come and see me periodically at Gladesville, you will not mingle my private life, in any way or form, with my existence in that – other place.”

Here Mr. Shrood, who had in his earlier days been a staunch theatre-goer, waved his wine glass, and, putting himself in the attitude of “first robber,” scowled furiously at his wife.

That sensible matron first threw her arms round his neck, and told him. not to be a goose, and then, after arranging her ruff, rang the bell for lunch, to which Mr. Shrood, having by this time, like a wise man, got Jack’s stony face and gloomy eyes out of his thoughts, did reasonable justice.

Mr. Redgrave, with his customary hopefulness, recovered from the first misery of his position sufficiently to go about to all likely places, and to test the money-market most exhaustively, as to the accommodation needed for a squatter with an undeniable property and a heavy mortgage. His agents, Drawe and Backwell, were first applied to. They had nothing to learn, as his relations with them had always been of a confidential nature, since the old, the good old days of Marshmead. They had always given him good advice, which he did not always want, and money, which he always did. They had always helped him to the limit of safety, and would have done anything in reason for him now; but, like many others, they were not able. Their capital and reserve fund were strained to the fullest extent. Times and the seasons were so bad that no one without the resources of the Count of Monte Christo, combined with the business talents of a Rothschild, could have done the pastoral community much good in that year. They had a smoke over it in the back office; but nothing, in the shape of relief, was found to be practicable.

“You see, old fellow,” said Backwell, who, as old squatter himself, understood every move in the game, “we could find four or five thousand pounds for you, but what good would that be? You would have to sell twenty thousand of your best sheep to meet the acceptances, and, of course, the bank won’t stand your reducing the stock much. Then – though that would have been a good payment to account a year or two back – they won’t thank you for it now. They want the whole of their advances to you, and less won’t do. There are plenty more in the same boat. People say they are shaky themselves. They have some fearfully heavy accounts – old Blockstrop and others – we all know. They can’t afford to show any mercy, and they won’t. What stock will come to, unless the drought breaks up, no man can say. We are not what I should call a very solvent firm at present; and so I tell you. They must have some fellows to sell stock, you know, or we should have a note to settle our little account in quick sticks. Let me drive you out to St. Ninian’s to-night, and we’ll have a taste of the sea-breeze, and look at Drawe’s dahlias; they’re all he has to live for now, he says.”

CHAPTER XVII

“But dreary though the moments fleet,O let me think we yet shall meet.” —Burns.

Jack came back next morning rather “picked-up” after Mrs. Backwell’s kindly talk, and Drawe’s dahlias, and a stroll by the “loud-sounding sea,” which looked to him as if it belonged in its glory and freshness to another world which he should soon quit and never revisit. He was sufficiently invigorated to try all the banks – the Denominational, the London Bartered, the Polynesian, the Irish, Welsh, and Cornish, the Occidental, the Alexandra, the United, and so on. It was of no avail. At the majority he was informed that the bank was not prepared to take up fresh squatting accounts at present. At some he was requested to call after the next Board day; but the answer, varied and euphemized, was “No,” in all cases. Then he tried the mercantile firms, the old-standing English or Australian houses, which, in spite of the assumed supposed American domination in all things in the colony of Victoria, had held the lead, and kept their pride of place since the pre-auriferous days. With them, and the great wool-dealing firms, the same answer only could be obtained. They would advance anything in reason upon the coming clip, or on any given number of sheep, at market rates; but, as to “taking-up” a fresh account of that magnitude, they were “not prepared.”

Tired out, disappointed, and disheartened, Jack left town, after writing a brief note to Mr. Shrood, intimating that the bank might sell Gondaree as soon as that remorseless corporation pleased. He recommended Messrs. Drawe and Backwell as auctioneers; they knew the property well, and would probably get as much for it as any other firm.

Then was the wearisome return journey commenced. In former days there had always been some glimmer of hope or expectation wherewith to gild the excessive neutral tints of the landscape. Now there was no hope, and the expectation was evil. He would have likened himself to an Indian chief going back to deliver himself up to the torture. At Gondaree was the stake to which he would have to be attached on arrival. The fire would be lighted, and the roasting would begin and continue till he should receive the coup de grâce, by being tacitly directed to leave his own station, and go forth into the wilderness – a beggar and a broken man.

M‘Nab did not ask many questions; it was not his wont except when he wished to lower the spirits of an owner of store sheep, with a view to a slight concession in price. But he gathered from Jack’s visage and listless air that no success of any kind had attended his efforts.

“Gondaree is to be sold,” said he, with the recklessness of despair, “some time next month. You will soon see an advertisement headed ‘Magnificent salt-bush property on the Warroo,’ and so on.”

“And ye were unable to get any assistance from the bank?”

“No more than brandy and soda out of an iceberg,” responded Jack, helping himself to the first-named restorative. “Whether they want money, and have to recoup themselves out of us poor devils, I don’t know. But you would think that other than cash payments had been unknown since Magna Charta. Shall have to carry our coin in leather bags soon.”

“Ay, that’s bad, very bad! I didn’t realize things would be just that bad. Surely the banks might have just a trifle of discrimination; if Gondaree is sold now, they’re just making some one a present of thirty thousand pounds out of your pocket.”

“I am much of your way of thinking, M‘Nab; I am just as sure as that we shall see the sun to-morrow that I am going to be sold off at the edge of a rising market. It’s hard – too hard; but a man’s life, more or less, can’t matter.”

“Could you not have sold half, and held on with the rest?” suggested M‘Nab, still restlessly cogitating every conceivable scheme. “The place could divide first-rate opposite the Point. If you had sent me down, I’ll warrant I would have knocked up a deal, or a put-off, in some fashion.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if you had,” assented Jack. “I ought to have sent you down with a power of attorney – only that one has a mistaken preference for mismanaging one’s own affairs. Well, it can’t be helped now. Cursed be the stock and station. Cursed be the whole concern.”

Jack was fully a week at home before he could nerve himself for the inevitable last visit to Juandah – his farewell to Maud Stangrove. It was a cruel word; it would be a bitter parting; but he must tell her in his own speech that his fate had but suffered him to win her heart, had but lured him to the contemplation of the unutterable happiness that should have been theirs, to drop the veil for ever, to shatter the goblet in which the draught had foamed and sparkled with unearthly brilliancy.

He had thought once that perhaps, pledged as they were to each other, a mutual understanding to await the events of the next few years might have still existed between them. But he cast out the tempting idea, with even added bitterness, as he thought of the lots of other men and other women whom he had often pitied and despised.

What, he told himself, could compensate her for the long weary years of waiting and watching, the gradual extinction of youth in form, in mind, in soul, to be repaid, after youth had passed by, with a sombre union, which poverty should divest of all grace, joy, and romance. No – they must part – and for ever! Maud, with her youth and beauty, would soon find a mate more worthy than he of the treasure of her love. He, with all his faults, was not the man to drag those light footsteps into the mire of poverty and obscurity. As for him, he would carve out fame and another fortune for himself – or fill a nameless grave.

Juandah was suffering, like all the rest of the country from the withering drought, which still denied water to the dusty fissures, verdure to the earth, and had apparently closed up the windows of heaven. Still there was a look of homely comfort about the place, which showed the garrison to be trusty and bold – fierce though the siege had been, and close the blockade.

“Come in, old fellow, and we’ll see if we can find you something to eat,” called out Mark Stangrove, who, with a very old shooting-coat on, had just ridden in on a very lean steed, and with a general air of having finished a hard day’s work. “I’m not very sure of it. Maud and the missus have been very hard set of late – no eggs, no butter, little milk, no vegetables, indifferent meat, and a great flavour of rice in all the dishes. I’ve been pulling weak sheep out of a water-hole all day. Pleasant work and inspiriting.”

Jack walked in, and it was fully explained to him by the unspoken kindness of the ladies of the house that they knew pretty well the measure of his misfortune. Somehow, one is not always sufficiently grateful for the delicate and generous consideration that one meets with in time of trouble. It is like the deference accorded when people are too sick, or too old, or too generally incompetent to enter into active competition with the talents of the world militant. It is kindly meant, but there is a savour of accusation of weakness. So John Redgrave felt partly grateful, and partly savage with himself, at being in a condition to be morally “poor-deared” by Maud and her sister. All his life, up to this time, he had been from earliest boyhood as one in authority. He had said, since he could recollect, “to this man, go here,” and so on. Now was it to be that he should have to descend from his pride of place, to suffer pity, to endure subordination, to live as the lowly in spirit and in fortune? With the suddenness of the levin-bolt it would sometimes flash across him that such might be his doom. And with the thought would come a passionate resolve to end his fast-falling, narrowing existence, ere it were swept away amid the melancholy and ignoble circumstances which had terminated other men’s lives.

It may have been gathered from these and other faithful impressions of the inner workings of John Redgrave’s mind, that, though a careless, kindly, easy-going species of personage, he was naturally and unconsciously proud. To his pride was just now added the demon of sullen obstinacy.

He was unable, however, after a few moments, to withstand the influence of the unaffected kindness and sympathy of his friends. When he looked at the two women, and remarked that they looked pale and careworn, as having had privations of their own to bear in this most miserable season, he hated himself for having entertained any selfish feeling.

“You have come back from your travels,” said Maud; “it seems to me that you are always going and returning. I always have envied you your wanderings.”

“I am afraid I have come to the stage when I shall go – but, in the words of the Highland Lament, ‘return nae mair,’” answered he, sadly.

“You mustn’t talk like that,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “People who, like us, have lived so long in this country, know all about the ups and downs of squatting. Why shouldn’t you begin again, like others, and do better with a second venture than the first? Look at Mr. Upham, Mr. Feenix, and Cheerboys Brothers; they have all been ruined, at least once, and how thriving they are now.”

“I hope to show my friends, and the world too, my dear Mrs. Stangrove,” said Jack, standing up and squaring his broad shoulders, “that one fall has not taken all the fight out of me. But it is an uphill game, and I may, like many a better man, find the odds too heavy. But, whatever happens, you may believe that I shall not forget my friends at Juandah, who have proved themselves such in my hour of need.”

“I have heard,” at length Maud said, in low faltering tones, “that people in – in their dark hours – and we all have them at some time of our lives – should walk by the counsel of their friends if they know them to be good and true. We are too apt to be led by our own wayward spirits, and sorrow warps our better judgment. I know Mark will be glad to give you his best advice. And oh! do – do talk matters over with him. He is cool, and sure judging, and is seldom mistaken in his course.”

Mrs. Stangrove had slipped out “on household work intent.”

“Maud,” he said, “dearest, loveliest, best-beloved, why has fortune, so kind though unsought for many a year, deserted me now, when for the first time in my life I had prized her with a miser’s joy for your dear sake, and for yours alone? My heart will break – is broken – at the thought of leaving you. But – ”

“Why should you leave us – me, if you will have it so?” interrupted she passionately; “stay with us for a time till your wound be healed, as in the first dear time when I nursed you, and knew the joy of lightening your weary hours and soothing all your pain. Do you think mine a fair-weather love, given in assurance of ease, and pleasure, and fairy summer-time – or did I yield my heart to be yours in weal or woe? You dishonour me by an implied mistrust – and yourself by such faint-hearted fears of the future.”

She had risen, and laid her hand on his shoulder as she spoke with all the aroused magnetic energy of tender, yet impetuous womanhood, ere yet experience has quenched the open trust of youth, or sorrow smirched the faint delicate hues of beauty.

“Promise me that you will talk your plans over with Mark. And oh! if you would but follow his advice.”

Jack groaned aloud, but his face was set unyieldingly, as he took her hand in both of his, and looked pityingly and mournfully in the sweet pale face, and loving, tear-brightened eyes.

“My darling, my darling,” he said, hoarsely, “it cannot be. I must tread my path alone. For good or for evil, I will confront my fate sole and unfriended, and either make a name and another fortune, or add mine to the corses on life’s battle-field. If I live and prosper I will return to my love. But here I release her from the pain and the lowliness of a life linked to so ill-starred a destiny as that of John Redgrave.”

The evening was not dreary. Mark and his wife exerted themselves to dispel the gloom that threatened to enshroud the little party. Maud was again outwardly calm and self-possessed, as women often are, in the supreme hours of life. Jack exhibited the recklessness of despair, and appeared to have dismissed from his mind the misery of his position. Stangrove recounted the many shifts and contrivances rendered necessary by the exigencies of the season.

“Did you ever taste milk, old fellow,” he said, “distilled chiefly from water-lilies? I assure you our two melancholy milkers have consumed no other food for weeks. There is not, of course, a particle of grass, or so much as an unstripped salt-bush or cotton-bush for miles. Well, the big lagoon (quite a lake it looks in winter) has not dried up yet. You may see the cows standing up to their backs in it all day long. Even the lilies are not on the surface. An occasional flower is all that they get there, but from time to time you may notice one of the amphibious creatures put her head deeply under water like a diving duck, and raise it after a longish interval, filled with a great trailing bunch of roots and esculent filaments. Great idea, isn’t it? I wonder how long they would take to Darwinize into webbed feet and a beaverly breadth of tail.”

“They manage to live, and give us milk besides, on this blanc-mange, or whatever it is,” said Mrs. Stangrove. “I don’t know what the poor children would have done but for these submarine plantations.”

“My dear old Mameluke has copied their idea, then,” joined in Maud, with a brave attempt at light converse, which ended in a flickering, piteous smile; “for I saw him in the cows’ water party yesterday, with very little but his head visible. He has lost all the hair from his knees down, either from the leeches or the water.”

“We are living in strange times,” remarked Jack; “it is a pity we can’t get a few hints from the blacks, who must have seen all the dry seasons since Captain Cook. What have you done with all your sheep, Mark?”

“We are eating the few that are left,” said Mark.

“And very bad they are,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove. “We are all so tired of mutton, that I shall never like it again as long as I live.”

“The beef would be worse, if we had any,” resumed Mark. “The sheep are just eatable, though I agree as to the indifferent quality. All the flocks are in the mountains in charge of my working overseer, old Hardbake, as well as the cattle. Here is the last letter: ‘The sheep is all well, and the wool will be right if so be as you get rain by the time the snow falls here. We must cut and run then for fear of haccidence. The cattle is pore but lively. Send some more baccy. Yours, to command, Gregory Hardbake.’ Curious scrawl, isn’t it?”

The ladies having retired, Mark Stangrove and his guest adjourned to the veranda for the customary tabaks parlement, and for some time smoked silently under the influence of the glorious southern night. All was still save the faint but clearly-heard ripple of the stream, and the low, sighing, rhythmical murmur of the river oaks. Cloudless was the sky; the broad silver moon hung in mid firmament, with splendour undimmed, save by a wide translucent halo – in happier times suggestive of rain. In this hopeless season, the denizens of the Warroo had learned by sad experience to distrust this and all other ordinary phenomena.

“Glorious night,” said Mark at length, breaking the long silence, “but how infinitely we should prefer the wildest weather that ever frightened a man to his prayers! Strange, how comparative is even one’s pleasure in the beauty of nature, and how dependent upon its squaring with our humble daily needs. When I read such a passage as – ‘the storm beat mercilessly in the faces of the wayfarers, with heavy driving showers,’ &c. – when the author has exhausted himself in this endeavour to elicit your sympathy for the unlucky hero and heroine – I feel madly envious, which I take it is not the feeling intended to be produced. So you are going to clear out, old fellow, for good and all? You know, I am sure, how sorry we all are. Will you pardon me if I ask what your plans are for the future?”

“I have no plans,” answered Jack. “I shall make a fresh start as soon as I am sold up. I must do as other shipwrecked men, I suppose – go before the mast, or take a third-mate’s berth, and work up to a fresh command – if it’s in me.”

“That’s all very well in its way. I admire pluck and independence; but without capital it’s a long, weary business.”

“How have the other men fared?” demanded Jack. “I am not the first who has been left without a shilling, but with health, strength, and – well – some part of one’s youth remaining, it is a disgrace to such a man, in this country above all others, to lie down or whine for assistance at the first defeat.”

“Granted, my dear fellow; though I confess I take your proposition to apply more strictly to the labourer proper than to him who starts weighted with the name and habits of a gentleman. There is no track open to him that he could not travel with tenfold greater speed with the aid of capital to clear the way.”

“That I cannot have without laying myself under obligations to friends or relatives, and nothing would induce me to ask or accept such help,” quoth Jack, with unwonted sternness. “I have lost a fortune and the best years of my life – as I believe by no fault of my own. I will regain it, as I have lost it, without help from living man; or the destiny which has robbed me of all that makes life worth having may take a worthless life also.”

“It strikes me that you are hardly just, not to say generous,” rejoined Mark, “to speak of your life as entirely worthless; but I am not going to preach, old fellow, to a man in your hurt and wounded state. I have been near enough to it myself to understand your chief bitternesses. Now listen to me, like a good fellow, as if I were your elder brother or somebody in the paternal line. You know I am a heap of years older, besides having the advantage of being a spectator, and a very friendly one, of your game.”

Jack nodded an affirmative, while Stangrove, refilling his pipe, sent forth a contemplative cloud and recommenced:

“When a man is ruined – and I have seen a whole district cleared out in one year before now – one thing, almost the chief thing, he has to guard against is, a wild desire springing mainly from mortification, wounded pride, and a kind of reactionary despair, to get away from the scene of his disaster and from his previous occupation, whatever it may be. Now this feeling is perfectly natural. All the same it should not be indulged. When a man has done nothing worse than the unsuccessful, he should calmly review his position, and above all take the advice of his friends. If he have plenty of them – as you have – he may rest assured that their verdict as to his plans and prospects is far more likely to be correct than his own. When he disagrees with the whole jury of them, he generally is in the position of the proverbial person who found eleven most obstinate jurymen entirely opposed to his way of thinking.”