The Squatter's Dream

“I wonder what he wanted to see me for?” asked Jack of his inner consciousness; “very civil, friendly little fellow he is. I suspect my over-draft is pretty heavy just now. But the fencing is all done, that’s a blessing. And forty thousand sheep and a first-class run are good security for more money than I’m ever likely to owe.”

So Mr. Redgrave hied away to the grand freestone portals which guarded the palace of gold and silver, and the magic paper which gladdeneth the heart of man, who reflecteth not that it is but a fiction – a “baseless fabric” – an unsubstantial presentment of the potentiality of boundless wealth.

Mr. Shrood was examining papers when he was ushered into the sacred parlour, and looked rather more like the dragon in charge of the treasure than the careless, openhanded financier of Jack’s previous experience, whose sole business in life seemed to be to provide cheque-books ad infinitum with graceful indifference. As he ran his eye down column after column of figures, his brow became corrugated, his jaw became set, and his face gradually assumed an expression of hardness and obstinacy.

Throwing down the last of the papers, and clearing his brow with sudden completeness, he shook hands affectionately with Jack, and gently anathematized the papers for their tediousness and stupidity.

“Awfully wearing work, Mr. Redgrave, this looking over the accounts of a large estate. I feel as fatigued as if I had been at it all night. How are you, and when do you leave?”

“I think the day after to-morrow,” said Jack. “I’m really tired of town, and wish to get home again.”

“Tired of the town, and of all its various pleasures,” asked Mr. Shrood, “at your age? Well, of course you are anxious to be at work again – very creditable feeling. By the way, by the way, now I think of it – you haven’t encumbered your place by mortgage or in any other way during the last year, have you?”

“Sir,” replied Jack, with dignity, “I regard my property as pledged in honour to your bank, by which I have been treated hitherto with liberality and confidence. I trust that our relations may continue unaltered.”

“Certainly, my dear sir, certainly,” replied Mr. Mildmay Shrood, with an air of touching generosity. “Precisely my own view. I trust you will have no cause to regret your connection with our establishment. But I have not concealed from you my opinion that, financially, there exists a certain anxiety – premature in my view of events – but still distinct, as to the relations between stock and capital. I have been requested by my directors, to whose advice I am constrained to defer, to raise the point of security in those instances where advances, I may say considerable advances, have been made by us. You see my position, I feel sure.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Jack; “of course,” not seeing exactly what he was driving at.

“You will not, therefore, feel that it amounts to any want of confidence on the part of the bank,” continued Mr. Shrood, with reassuring explanation in every tone, “if I name to you the formal execution of a mortgage over your station, as a mere matter in the ordinary routine of business, for the support of our advances to you past and future?”

“Oh, no,” replied Jack, with a slight gulp, misliking the sound of the strictly legal and closely comprehensive instrument, which he had always associated with ruined men and falling fortunes hitherto. “I suppose it’s a necessary precaution when the mercantile barometer is low. I shall be able to draw for necessary expenses as usual, and all that?”

Mr. Shrood smiled, as if anything to the contrary was altogether too chimerical and beyond human imagination to be considered seriously for one moment.

“My dear sir,” he proceeded, “I hope you have never had reason to doubt our readiness to follow your suggestions hitherto. We have unbounded confidence in your management and discretion. As we have reached this point, however, would you mind executing the deed which has been prepared in anticipation of your consent, and concluding this, I confess, slightly unpleasing section of our arrangements while we are agreed on the subject, to which I hope not to be compelled again to recur.”

“Not at all,” replied Jack, “not at all,” feeling like the man at the dentist’s, as if the tooth might as well be pulled out now as hereafter.

“Thank you; these things are best carried through at one sitting. Pray excuse me for one moment. Mr. Smith!” Here a junior appeared. “Will you bring in that – a – legal document, for Mr. Redgrave’s signature, and a – attend to witness his signature? Your present liability to the bank, Mr. Redgrave,” he explained, as the young gentleman disappeared, “amounts to, I think, fifteen thousand pounds in round numbers – that is, fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven pounds fourteen and ninepence. I think you mentioned forty thousand sheep as the stock, was it not, at present depasturing on the station?”

“Forty-two – some odd hundreds,” answered Jack, “but that is near enough.”

Here Mr. Smith reappeared, with an imposing-looking piece of parchment, commencing “Know all men by these presents,” which was handed to Jack for his entertainment and perusal. Jack glanced at it. Nobody, save a North Briton or a very misanthropical person, ever does read a deed through, that I know of. But Jack knew enough of such matters to pick out heedfully the principal clauses which concerned him. It was like most other compilations of a like nature, and contained, apart from unmeaning repetitions and exasperating surplusage, certain lucid sentences, which Jack understood to mean that he was to pay up the said few thousands at his convenience, or in default to yield up Gondaree, with stock thereto attached, to the paternal but irresponsible “money-mill,” under the wildly improbable circumstance of his being unable to clear off such advances in years to come – with principal and interest.

“Forty-two thousand sheep, and station, at a pound,” said Jack to himself, “leave a considerable margin; so I needn’t bother myself. Here goes. It will never be acted upon – that is one comfort.”

So the name of John Redgrave was duly appended, and Mr. Smith wrote his name as witness without the least embarrassment. He regarded squatters who required accommodation as patients subject to mild attacks of epidemic disease, which usually gave way to proper medical, that is to say financial, treatment. Occasionally the patient succumbed. That however was not his affair. Let them all find it out for themselves.

He had many a time and oft envied the bronzed squatter lounging in on a bright morning, throwing down a cheque and stuffing the five-pound notes carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket. But, young as he was, he had more than once seen a careworn, grizzled man waiting outside the bank parlour, with ill-concealed anxiety for the interview which was to tell him whether or not he went forth a ruined and hopelessly broken man. Nothing could have been more soothing than the manner in which the whole operation of the mortgage had been performed. Still it was an operation, and Jack felt a sensation difficult to describe, but tending towards the conviction that he was not quite the same man as he had been previously. He was not in his usual spirits at dinner that evening, though of his two sharers of that well-cooked, yet not extravagant repast, Hautley had ordered it, and Jerningham was by odds the neatest talker then in town. The wine somehow wasn’t like last week’s. Must have opened a new batch. He had no luck at billiards. He sat moodily in an arm-chair in the smoking-room, and heard not some of the best (and least charitable) things going. He mooned off to bed, out of harmony with existing society.

“What the dickens is up with Redgrave?” asked little Prowler of old Snubham, of the Indian Irregular Force. “He looks as black as thunder, and hasn’t a word to say for himself.”

“A very fine trait in a man’s character,” growled Snubham; “half the people one meets jabber everlastingly, Heaven knows. What would be the matter with him? Proposed to some girl, and is afraid she’ll accept him. A touch of liver, perhaps. Nothing else can happen to a man at the present day, sir.”

“Must be a woman, I think; he was awful spoony on Dolly Drosera. He’s too rich to want money,” said Prowler, with a reverential awe of the squatter proper.

“Humph! don’t know – wool’s down, I believe. He pays up at loo. Beyond that I have no curiosity. Very ungentlemanlike thing, curiosity. Mornin’, Prowler.”

CHAPTER IX

“A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort and command.” —Wordsworth.

Jack’s doubts and misgivings were written upon his open brow for twenty-four hours, but after that period they disappeared like morning mists. He awoke to a healthier tone of feeling, and determined to combat difficulty with renewed vigour and unshaken firmness.

“After all, I have not borrowed more than one good clip, and a little cutting down of the stock will set all right,” said he to himself. “Where would Brass, Marsailly, and all these other great guns have been if they had boggled at a few thousands at the beginning? Next year’s clip will be something like; and I never heard of any one but old Exmore that had two wool-sheds burned running. He put up a stone and iron edifice then, and told them to see what they could make of that. There was no grass-seed in his country though. Well, there is nothing like a start from town for clearing out the blues. I wonder how fellows ever manage to live there all the year round.”

These encouraging reflections occurred to the ingenuous mind of Mr. Redgrave as he was speeding over the first hundred miles of rail which expedite the traveller pleasantly on the road to the Great Desert. Facilis descensus Averni– which means that it is very easy to “settle one’s self” in life – the “downtrain” being furnished with “palace-cars” of Pullman’s patent, and gradients on the most seductive system of sliding scale.

Again the long gray plains. Again the night – one disjointed nightmare, where excessive jolts dislocated the most evil witch-wanderings, multiplying them, like the lower forms of life, by the severance. Then the long, scorching day, the intolerable flies, and lo! Steamboat Point. Gondaree, in all its arid, unrelieved glare and grandeur once more – Mr. M‘Nab weighing sheepskins to a carrier, with as much earnestness as if he expected half-a-crown a pound for them. Everything much as usual. Ah Sing in the garden, watering cauliflowers. When Redgrave caught the last glimpse of him as he left for town he was watering cabbages. Everything very dry. No relief, no shade. The cottage looked very small: the surroundings stiff and bare. “My eyes are out of focus just now,” said Jack to himself. “I must keep quiet till the vision accommodates itself to the landscape; otherwise I shall hurt M‘Nab’s feelings.”

“Well, how are you?” said Jack, heartily, as that person, having despatched his carrier, walked towards him. “You look very thriving, only dry; rather dry, don’t you think?”

“Well, we have hardly had a drop of rain since you started. Might be just a shower. But everything is doing capitally. We are rather short-handed; I sent away every soul but the cook, the Chinaman, and four boundary-riders directly you left, and we are now, thanks to the fencing, quite independent of labour till shearing-time.”

“How in the world do you get on?” inquired Jack, quite charmed, yet half afraid of M‘Nab’s sudden eviction.

“Nothing can be simpler. The dogs were well poisoned before the fences were finished. There’s no road through the back of the run, thank goodness. We haven’t any bother about wells because of Bimbalong. I count every paddock once a month, and that’s about all there is to do.”

“And who looks after the store?” inquired Jack.

“I do, of course,” said M‘Nab; “there is very little to give out, you’ll mind. Two of the boundary-riders live at home here, and the other two at a hut at Bimbalong. Now you’ve come there will be hardly enough work to keep us going.”

“Four men to forty thousand sheep,” moralized Jack. “What would some of the old hands think of that? Oh! the weaners,” cried he; “I had forgotten them. How did you manage them, M‘Nab?”

“Well, we had a great day’s drafting, and put them back in the river paddock. They are all as contented as possible, and as steady as old ewes – thirteen thousand of them.”

“There’s a trifle of bother saved by that arrangement. What a burden life used to be for the first three months after the weaning flocks were portioned out!”

Jack’s spirits were many degrees lighter after this conversation. Certainly there was a heavyish debt – and this millstone of a mortgage hung round “his neck alway” like the albatross in the Ancient Mariner; but the compensating economy of the fencing was beginning to work a cure. If one could only tide over the shearing with the present reduced Civil List, what a hole would the clip and the fat sheep make in the confounded “balance debtor!” There is the wool-shed over again, to be sure. What a murder that one should have all those hundredweights of nails, and tons of battens, and acres of flooring, and forests of posts and wall-plates to get all over again! It was very bitter work in Jack’s newly-born tendency to economy to have all this outlay added on to the inevitable expenditure of the season.

“As I said before,” concluded Jack, rounding off his soliloquy, “I never knew any fellow but Exmoor undergo the ordeal by fire two seasons running, so it’s a kind of insurance against the chapter of accidents this year.”

Jack insensibly returned to his ordinary provincial repose of mind and body. He rode about in the early mornings and cooler evenings, and took his turn to convoy travelling sheep, to officiate at the store, and to relieve the ever-toiling M‘Nab in any way that presented itself. He kept up this kind of thing for a couple of months, and then – the unbroken monotony of the whole round of existence striking him rather suddenly one day – he made up his mind to a slight change. There was a station about fifty miles away, down the river, with the owner of which he had a casual acquaintance; so, faute d’autre, he thought he would go and see him.

“You can get on quite as well without me, M‘Nab,” he said. “I think a small cruise would do me good. I’ll go and see Mr. Stangrove. One often gets an idea by going away from home.”

“That’s true enough,” assented M‘Nab, “but I doubt yon’s the wrong shop for new ones. Mr. Stangrove is a good sort of man, I hear every one say; but he hails from the old red-sandstone period (M‘Nab knew Hugh Miller by heart), and has no more idea of a swing-gate than a shearing-machine.”

“Well, one will get a notion of how the Australian Pilgrim Fathers managed to get a livelihood, and subdue the salt-bush for their descendants. There must be a flavour of antiquity about it. I will start to-morrow.”

After a daylight breakfast, Mr. Redgrave departed, riding old Hassan, and, like a wise man, leading another hackney, with a second saddle, upon which was strapped his valise. “If you want to go anywhere,” he was wont to assert, “you want a few spare articles of raiment.” Sitting in boots and breeches all the evening is unpleasant to the visitor and disrespectful to his entertainers, whether he be what the old-fashioned writers called “travel-stained” in wet weather, or uncomfortably warm in the dry season. If you carry the articles alluded to you need a valise. A valise is much pleasanter on a spare horse than in front of your own person; and all horses go more cheerily in company, particularly as you can divide the day’s journey by alternate patronage of either steed. I think life in a general way passes as pleasantly during a journey à cheval as over any other “road of life.” Then why make toil of a pleasure? Always take a brace of hacks, O reader, and then —

“Over the downs mayst thou scour, nor mindWhether Horace’s mistress be cruel or kind.”

The sun was no great distance above the far unbroken sky-line; the air was pleasantly cool as Jack rode quietly along the level track which led to his outer gate, and down the river. The horses played with their bits, stepping along lightly with elastic footfall. “What a different life,” thought he, “from my old one at Marshmead! How full of interest and occupation was every day as it rose! Neighbours at easy distances; poor old Tunstall to go and poke up whenever John Redgrave failed to suffice for his own entertainment and instruction. Jolly little Hampden, with its picnics and parties, and bench-work, and boat-sailing, and racing, and public meetings, and ‘all sorts o’ games,’ as Mr. Weller said. The bracing climate, the wholesome moral and physical atmosphere, the utter absence of any imp or demon distantly related to the traitor Ennui; and here, such is the melancholy monotony of my daily life that I find myself setting forth with a distinctly pleasurable feeling to visit a man whom I do not know, and very probably shall not like when our acquaintance expands. Auri sacri fames, – shall I quote that hackneyed tag? I may as well – the day is long – there is plenty of time and to spare on the Warroo, as Hawkesbury said. Fancy a fellow living this life for a dozen years and making no money after all. The picture is too painful. I shall weep over it myself directly – like that arch-humbug Sterne.”

About half way to his destination was an inn – hostelry of the period; an ugly slab building covered, as to its roof and verandah, with corrugated iron. There was no trace or hint of garden. It stood as if dropped on the edge of the bare, desolate, sandy plain. It faced the dusty track which did duty as high road; at the back of the slovenly yard was the river – chiefly used as a convenient receptacle for rubbish and broken bottles. A half-score of gaunt, savage-looking pigs lay in the verandah, or stirred the dust and bones in the immediate vicinity of the front entrance. A stout man, in Crimean shirt and tweed trousers, stood in the verandah, smoking, and, far from betraying any “provincial eagerness” at the sight of a stranger, went on smoking coolly until Jack spoke.

“How far is Mr. Stangrove’s place?” inquired he.

“What, Juandah?” said the host, in a tone conveying the idea that in ordinary social circles it was on a par, for notoriety, with London or Liverpool. “Well, say thirty mile.”

“Do you take the back road, or the one nearest to the river?” further inquired Jack.

“Oh, stick to the river bank,” answered the man; “at this time of year it is nearest.”

“What in the name of wonder,” inquired Jack of himself, as he rode away, “can a man do who lives at such a fragment of Hades but drink? He must be a Christian hero, or a philosopher, if he refrain under the utterly maddening conditions of life. Were he one or the other, he probably would not keep the grog-shop which he dignifies with the title of the Mailman’s Arms.” Of course he drinks – it is written in his dull eye and sodden face – his wife drinks, the barman drinks – the loafer who plays at being groom in the hayless, strawless, cornless stable drinks. The shepherd hands his cheque across the bar – and till every shilling, purchased by a year’s work, abstinence, and solitude, disappears, drinks – madly drinks. The miserable, debased aboriginal – camping there for weeks with his squalid wives – drinks, and, perchance, when his wild blood is stirred by vile liquor, murders ere his fit be over. From that den, as from a foul octopus, stretch forth tentacula which fasten only upon human beings. Question them, and hear vain remorse, bitter wrath, agonized despair, sullen apathy – the name of one resistless, unsparing curse —drink, drink, drink!

The midday sun was hot. The stage was a fair one; but Jack pushed on, after receiving his information, for half-a-dozen miles further. Then, discovering a green bend, he unsaddled, and, taking the precaution to hobble his nags, lighted his pipe. They rolled and cropped the fresh herbage, while he enjoyed a more satisfactory noontide lounge than the horsehair sofa of Mr. Hoker’s best parlour would have afforded, after a doubtful, or perhaps deleterious, repast.

The day was gone when Jack was made aware, by certain signs and hieroglyphics, known to all bushmen, that he was approaching a station. The pasture was closely cropped and bare. Converging tracks of horses, sheep, and cattle obviously trended in one direction. At some distance upon the open plain he could see a shepherd with his flock, slowly moving towards a point of timber more than a mile in advance of his present position. “I shall come upon the paddock fence just inside that timber,” he remarked to himself, “and the house will probably be within sight of the slip-rails. It will not be a very large paddock, I will undertake to say.”

This turned out to be a correct calculation. He saw the sheep-yard, towards which the flock was heading, as he reached the timber. He descried the paddock fence and the slip-rail in the road; and within sight – as he put up the rails and mustered a couple of temporary pegs, for fear of accidents – was a roomy wooden building surrounded by a garden.

Riding up to the garden gate, he was announced as “Mr. Stranger” by about twenty dogs, who gave the fullest exercise to their lungs, and would doubtless have gone even further had Jack been on foot. A tall, sun-burned man, in an old shooting-coat, appeared upon the verandah, and, making straight through the excited pack, greeted Redgrave warmly.

“Won’t you get off and come in? I’ll take your horses. [Hold your row, you barking fools!] Oh! it is you, Mr. Redgrave; from Gondaree, I think – met you at Barrabri – very glad to see you; of course you have come to stay? Allow me to take the led horse.”

“I think I promised to look you up some day,” said Jack. “I took advantage of a lull in station-work and – here I am.”

“Very glad indeed you have made your visit out, though I don’t know that I have much to show you. But, as we are neighbours, we ought to become acquainted.”

The horses were led over to a small but tolerably snug stable, where they were regaled with hay previous to being turned out in the paddock, and then Jack was ushered into the house. Mr. Stangrove was a married man; so much was evident from the first; many traces of the “pug-wuggies, or little people,” were apparent; and a girl crossing the yard with a baby in her arms supplied any evidence that might be missing.

“Will you have a glass of grog after your ride?” inquired the host, “or would you like to go to your room?”

Jack preferred the latter, being one of those persons who decline to eat or drink until they are in a comfortable and becoming state of mind and body; holding it to be neither epicurean nor economical to “muddle away appetite” under circumstances which preclude all proper and befitting appreciation.

So Redgrave performed his ablutions, and, having arrayed himself in luxuriously-easy garments and evening shoes, made his way to the sitting-room. He had just concluded “a long, cool drink” when two ladies entered.

“My dear, allow me to introduce Mr. Redgrave – Mrs. Stangrove, Miss Stangrove.”

A lady advanced upon the first mention of names and shook hands with the visitor, in a kindly, unaffected manner. She was young, but a certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood. Her face bore silent witness to the toils of housekeeping, with indifferent servants or none at all; to want of average female society; to a little loneliness, and a great deal of monotony. Such, with few exceptions, is the life of an Australian lady, whose husband lives in the far interior, in the real bush. Her companion, who contented herself with a searching look and a formal bow, was “in virgin prime and May of womanhood” – and a most fair prime and sweet May it was. Her features were regular, her mouth delicate and refined, with a certain firmness about the chin, and the mutine expression about the upper lip, which savoured of declaration of war upon just pretext. She had that air and expression which at once suggest the idea of interest in unravelling the character. Jack shook hands with himself when he thought of how he had persevered after the traitorous idea had entered his head that after all it was no use going, Mr. Stangrove wouldn’t be glad to see him, or care a rush about the matter.