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Midnight Come Again

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.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Plain Living: A
Bush Idyll
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Title: Plain Living: A Bush Idyll

Author: Rolf Boldrewood

Release date: March 8, 2016 [eBook #51404]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PLAIN LIVING: A

BUSH IDYLL ***
 Transcriber’s Note:

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been

corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of
this text for details regarding the handling of any textual
issues encountered during its preparation.
PLAIN LIVING
A BUSH IDYLL
 PLAIN LIVING
A BUSH IDYLL

BY

ROLF BOLDREWOOD

AUTHOR OF “ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,” “THE MINER’S RIGHT,” ETC.

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1898

The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.

Richard Clay and Sons, Limited,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.
PLAIN LIVING
A BUSH IDYLL
 CHAPTER I

Mr. Stamford was riding slowly, wearily homeward in the late

autumnal twilight along the dusty track which led to the Windāhgil
station. The life of a pastoral tenant of the Crown in Australia is, for
the most part, free, pleasant, and devoid of the cares which assail so
mordantly the heart of modern man in cities.
But striking exceptions to this rule are furnished periodically. “A dry
season,” in the bush vernacular, supervenes. In the drear months
which follow, “the flower fadeth, the grass withereth” as in the olden
Pharaoh days. The waters are “forgotten of the footstep”; the flocks
and herds which, in the years of plenty, afford so liberal an income,
so untrammelled an existence to their proprietor, are apt to perish if
not removed. Prudence and energy may serve to modify such a
calamity. No human foresight can avert it.
In such years, a revengeful person could desire his worst enemy to
be an Australian squatter. For he would then behold him hardly tried,
sorely tormented, a man doomed to watch his most cherished
possessions daily fading before his eyes; nightly to lay his head on
his pillow with the conviction that he was so much poorer since
sunrise. He would mark him day by day, compelled to await the
slow-advancing march of ruin—hopeless, irrevocable—which he was
alike powerless to hasten or evade.
If he were a husband and a father, his anxieties would be
ingeniously heightened and complicated. The privations of poverty,
the social indignities which his loved ones might be fated to
undergo, would be forever in his thoughts, before his eyes,
darkening his melancholy days, disturbing his too scanty rest.
Such was the present position, such were the prospects, of Harold
Stamford of Windāhgil. As he rode slowly along on a favourite
hackney—blood-like, but palpably low in condition—with bent head
and corrugated brow, it needed but little penetration to note that the
“iron had entered into his soul.”
Truth to tell, he had that morning received an important letter from
his banker in Sydney. Not wholly unexpected; still it had destroyed
the remnant of his last hope. Before its arrival he had been manfully
struggling against fate. He had hoped against hope. The season
might change. How magical an alteration would forty-eight hours of
steady rain produce! He might be able to tide over till next shearing.
The station was being worked with the strictest economy. How he
grudged, indeed, the payment of their wages to the men who
performed the unthankful task of cutting down the Casuarina and
Acacia pendula, upon which the starving flocks were now in a great
measure kept alive!
But for that abnormal expenditure, he and his boy Hubert, gallant,
high-hearted fellow that he was, might make shift to do the station
work themselves until next shearing. How they had worked, too, all
of them! Had not the girls turned themselves into cooks and
laundresses for weeks at a time! Had not his wife (delicate, refined
Linda Carisforth—who would have thought to see a broom in those
hands?) worn herself well-nigh to death, supplementing the details
of household work, when servants were inefficient, or, indeed, not to
be procured! And was this to be the end of all? Of the years of
patient labour, of ungrudging self-denial, of so much care and
forethought, the fruit of which he had seen in the distance, a modest
competence, an assured position? A well-improved freehold estate
comprising the old homestead, and a portion of the fertile lands of
Windāhgil, once the crack station of the district, which Hubert should
inherit after him.
It was hard--very hard! As he came near the comfortable, roomy
cottage, and marked the orchard trees, the tiny vineyard green with
trailing streamers in despite of the weary, sickening, cruel drought,
his heart swelled nigh to bursting as he thought how soon this ark of
their fortunes might be reft from them.
Surely there must be some means of escape! Providence would
never be so hard! God’s mercy was above all. In it he would trust
until the actual moment of doom. And yet, as he marked the
desolate, dusty waste across which the melancholy flocks feebly
paced; as he saw on every side the carcases of animals that had
succumbed to long remorseless famine; as he watched the red sun
sinking below the hard, unclouded sky, a sense of despair fell like
lead upon his heart, and he groaned aloud.
“Hallo, governor!” cried out a cheery voice from a clump of timber
which he had approached without observing, “you and old Sindbad
look pretty well told out! I thought you were going to ride over me
and the team, in your very brown study. But joking apart, dear old
dad, you look awfully down on it. Times are bad, and it’s never
going to rain again, is it? But we can’t afford to have you throwing
up the sponge. Fortuna favet fortibus, that’s our heraldic motto.
Why, there are lots of chances, and any amount of fortunes, going
begging yet.”
“Would you point out one or two of them, Master Hubert?” said his
father, relaxing his features as he looked with an air of pride on the
well-built youngster, who stood with bare throat and sun-bronzed,
sinewy arms beside a dray upon which was a high-piled load of
firewood.
“Well, let us see! if the worst comes to the worst, you and I must
clear out, governor, and take up this new Kimberley country. I’ve got
ten years’ work in me right off the reel.” Here the boy raised his
head, and stretched his wide, yet graceful shoulders; “and so have
you, dad, if you wouldn’t fret so over what can’t be helped. You’d
better get home, though, mother’s been expecting you this hour. I’ll
be in as soon as I’ve put on this last log. This load ought to keep
them in firewood for a month.”
“You’re a good boy, Hubert. I’ll ride on; don’t knock any more skin
off your hands than is absolutely necessary, though,” pointing to a
bleeding patch about half an inch square, from which the cuticle had
been recently removed. “A gentleman should consider his hands,
even when he is obliged to work. Besides, in this weather there is a
little danger of inflammation.”
“Oh, that!” said the youngster with the fine carelessness of early
manhood. “Scratches don’t count in the bush. I wish my clothes
would heal of themselves when they get torn. It would save poor
mother’s everlasting stitch, stitch, a little, and her eyes too, poor
dear! Now, you go on, dad, and have your bath, and make yourself
comfortable before I come in. A new magazine came by post to-day,
and the last Australasian. Laura’s got such a song too. We’re going
to have no end of an evening, if you’ll only pull yourself together a
bit. Now you won’t fret about this miserable season, will you? It’s
bad enough, of course, but it’s no use lying down to it—now, is it?”
“Right, my boy; we must all do our best, and trust in God’s mercy.
He has helped us hitherto. It is cowardly to despair. I thank Him that
I have children whom I can be proud of, whether good or ill fortune
betide.”
Mr. Stamford put spurs to his horse. The leg-weary brute threw up
his head gamely, and, true to his blood, made shift to cover the
remaining distance from the homestead at a brisk pace. As he rode
into the stable yard, a figure clad in a jersey, a pair of trousers, and
a bathing towel, which turned out to be an eager lad of twelve, ran
up to him.
“Give me Sindbad, father; I’m just going down to the river for a
swim, and I’ll give him one too. It will freshen him up. I’ll scrape him
up a bit of lucerne, just a taste; his chaff and corn are in the manger
all ready.”
“Take him, Dick; but don’t stay in too long. It’s getting dark, and tea
will soon be ready.”
The boy sprang into the saddle, and, touching the old horse with his
bare heels, started off on a canter over the river meadow, now
comparatively cool in the growing twilight, towards a gravelly ford in
which the mountain water still ran strong and clear.
With a sigh of relief, his father walked slowly forward through the
garden gate and into the broad verandah of the cottage. Dropping
listlessly into a great Cingalese cane chair, he looked round with an
air of exhaustion and despondency. Below him was a well-grown
orchard, with rows of fruit trees, the size and spreading foliage of
which showed as well great age as the fertility of the soil. The
murmuring sound of the river over the rocky shallows was plainly
audible. Dark-shadowed eucalypti marked its winding course. As the
wearied man lay motionless on the couch, the night air from the
meadow played freshly cool against his temples. Stars arose of
wondrous southern brilliancy. Dark blue and cloudless, the sky was
undimmed. Strange cries came from the woods. A solemn hush fell
over all things. It was an hour unspeakably calm and solemn—restful
to the spirit after the long, burdensome, heated day.
“Ah, me!” sighed he; “how many an evening I have enjoyed from
this very spot, at this self-same hour! Is it possible that we are to be
driven out even from this loved retreat?”
A sweet girlish voice suddenly awoke him from his reverie, as one of
the casement windows opened, and a slight, youthful figure stood at
his shoulder.
“No wonder you are ashamed, you mean old daddy! Here have
mother and I been exerting ourselves this hot afternoon to provide
you with a superior entertainment, quite a club dinner in its way;
attired ourselves, too, in the most attractive manner—look at me, for
instance—and what is our reward? Why, instead of going to dress
sensibly, you sit mooning here, and everything will be spoiled.”
“My darling! I am ready for my bath, I promise you; but I am tired,
and perhaps a little discouraged. I have had a long day, and seen
nothing to cheer me either.”
“Poor old father! So have we all; so has mother, so has Hubert, so
have I and Linda. But it’s no use giving in, is it? Now walk off, there’s
a dear! You’re not so very tired, unless your constitution has broken
down all of a sudden. It takes a good day to knock you up, that I
know. But we must all put a good face on it—mustn’t we?—till we’re
quite sure that the battle’s lost. The Prussians may come up yet, you
know!”
He drew the girl’s face over to his own, and kissed her fondly. Laura
Stamford was indeed a daughter that a father might proudly look
upon, that her mother might trust to be her best aid and comfort,
loving in prosperity, lightsome of heart as the bird that sings at
dawn, brave in adversity, and strong to suffer for those she loved.
All innocent she of the world’s hard ways, its lurid lights, its dread
shadows. Proud, pure, unselfish in every thought and feeling, all the
strength of her nature went out in fondness for those darlings of her
heart, the inmates of that cherished home, wherein they had never
as yet known sorrow. The fateful passion which makes or mars all
womanhood was for her as yet in the future. What prayers had
ascended to Heaven that her choice might be blessed, her happiness
assured!
“This is the time for action, no more contemplation,” she said, with a
mock heroic air; “the shower bath is filled; your evening clothes are
ready in the dressing-room; mother is putting the last touch to her
cap, Andiamo!”
When the family met at the tea-table—a comprehensive meal which,
though not claiming the rank of dinner, furnished most of its
requisites—Mr. Stamford owned that life wore a brighter prospect.
His wife and daughters in tasteful, though not ostentatious, evening
attire would have graced a more brilliant entertainment. The boys,
cool and fresh after their swim in the river, were happy and cheerful.
Hubert, correctly attired, and much benefited by his bath and
toilette, had done justice to his manifest good looks.
The well-cooked, neatly served meal, with the aid of a few glasses of
sound Australian Reisling, was highly restorative. All these
permissible palliatives tended to recreate tone and allay nervous
depression. “The banker’s letter notwithstanding, things might not
be so very bad,” the squatter thought. He would go to town. He
might make other arrangements. It might even rain. If the worst
came to the worst, he might be able to change his account. If things
altered for the better, there was no use desponding. If, again, all
were lost, it were better to confront fate boldly.

“Shall I pull through, after all?” said Mr. Stamford to himself, for the
fiftieth time, as he looked over the morning papers at Batty’s Hotel,
about a week after the occurrences lately referred to. In a
mechanical way, his eyes and a subsection of his brain provided him
with the information that, in spite of his misfortunes, the progress of
Australian civilisation went on pretty much as usual. Floods in one
colony, fires in another. The Messageries steamer Caledonien just in.
The Carthage (P. and O.) just sailed with an aristocratic passenger
list. Burglars cleverly captured. Larrikins difficult of extinction. The
wheat crop fair, maize only so-so. These important items were
registered in the brooding man’s duplex-acting brain after a fashion.
But in one corner of that mysterious store-house, printing machine,
signal-station, whatnot, one thought was steadily repeating itself
with bell-like regularity. “What if the bank’s ultimatum is, no further
advance, no further advance, no further ad—--”
After breakfast, sadly resolved, he wended his way to the palace of
finance, with the potentate of which he was to undergo so
momentous an interview.
Heart-sick and apprehensive as he was, he could not avoid noting
with quick appreciation the sights and sounds of civilisation which
pressed themselves on his senses as he walked in a leisurely manner
towards the Bank of New Guinea. “What wonders and miracles daily
pass before one’s eyes in a city,” he said to himself, “when one has
been as long away from town as I have! What a gallery of studies to
a man, after a quiet bush life, is comprised in the everyday life of a
large city! What processions of humanity—what light and colour!
What models of art, strength, industry! What endless romances in
the faces of the very men and women that pass and repass so
ceaselessly! Strange and how wonderful is all this! Glorious, too, the
ocean breath that fans the pale faces of the city dwellers! What
would I not give for a month’s leisure and a quiet heart in which to
enjoy it all!”
The solemn chime of a turret clock struck ten. It aroused Stamford
to a sense of the beginning of the commercial day, and his urgent
necessity to face the enemy, whose outposts were so dangerously
near his fortress.
The ponderously ornate outer door of the Bank of New Guinea had
but just swung open as he passed in, preceding but by a second a
portly, silk-coated personage, apparently equally anxious for an early
interview. He looked disappointed as he saw Stamford make his way
to the manager’s room.
For one moment he hesitated, then said: “If your business is not
important, sir, perhaps you won’t mind my going in first?”
“I’m sorry to say it is important,” he replied, with his customary
frankness; “but I will promise you not to take up a minute more of
Mr. Merton’s valuable time than I can help.”
The capitalist bowed gravely as Harold Stamford passed into the
fateful reception-room, of which the very air seemed to him to be
full of impalpable tragedies.
The manager’s manner was pleasant and gentlemanlike. The
weather, the state of the country, and the political situation were
glanced at conversationally. There was no appearance of haste to
approach the purely financial topic which lay so near the thoughts of
both. Then the visitor took the initiative.
“I had your letter last week about my account, Mr. Merton. What is
the bank going to do in my case? I came down on purpose to see
you.”
The banker’s face became grave. It was the crossing of swords, en
garde as it were. And the financial duel began.
“I trust, Mr. Stamford, that we shall be able to make satisfactory
arrangements. You are an old constituent, and one in whom the
bank has reposed the fullest confidence; but,” here the banker
pushed up his hair, and his face assumed an altered expression, “the
directors have drawn my attention to the state of your account, and
I feel called upon to speak decidedly. It must be reduced.”
“But how am I to reduce it? You hold all my securities. It is idle to
talk thus; pardon me if I am a little brusque, but I must sell
Windāhgil—sell the old place, and clear out without a penny if I do
not get time—a few months of time—from the bank! You know as
well as I do that it is impossible to dispose of stations now at a
reasonable price. Why, you can hardly get the value of the sheep!
Look at Wharton’s Bundah Creek how it was given away the other
day. Fifteen thousand good sheep, run all fenced, good brick house,
frontage to a navigable river. What did it bring? Six and threepence a
head. Six and threepence! With everything given in, even to his
furniture, poor devil! Why, the ewe cost him twelve shillings, five
years before. Sale! It was a murder, a mockery! And is Windāhgil to
go like that, after all my hard work? Am I and my children to be
turned out penniless because the bank refuses me another year’s
grace? The seasons are just as sure to change as we are to have a
new moon next month. I have always paid up the interest and part
of the principal regularly, have I not? I have lived upon so little too!
My poor wife and children for these last long years have been so
patient! Is there no mercy, not even ordinary consideration to be
shown me?”
“My dear Mr. Stamford,” said the manager kindly, “do not permit
yourself to be excited prematurely. Whatever happens you have my
fullest sympathy. If any one receives consideration from the bank,
you will do so. You have done everything that an energetic,
honourable man could have done. I wish I could say the same of all
our constituents. But the seasons have been against you, and you
must understand that, although personally I would run any fair
mercantile risk for your sake, even to the extent of straining my
relations with the directors, I have not the power; I must obey
orders, and these are precise. If a certain policy is decided upon by
those who guide the affairs of this company, I must simply carry out
instructions. Yours is a hard case, a very hard case; but you are not
alone, I can tell you in confidence.”
“Is there nothing I can do?” pleaded the ruined man, instinctively
beholding the last plank slipping from beneath his feet.
“Don’t give in yet,” said Merton kindly. “Get one of these newly-
started Mortgage and Agency Companies to take up your account.
They have been organised chiefly, I am informed, with a view to get
a share of the pastoral loan business, which is now assuming such
gigantic proportions. They are enabled to make easier terms than
we can afford to do; though, after all, this station pawn business is
not legitimate banking. If you have any friend who would join in the
security it would, perhaps, smooth the way.”
“I will try,” said Stamford, a ray of hope, slender but still definite,
illumining the darkness of his soul. “There may be a chance, and I
thank you, Mr. Merton, for the suggestion, and your wish to aid me.
Good morning!” He took his hat and passed through the waiting-
room, somewhat sternly regarded by the capitalist, who promptly
arose as the inner door opened. But Harold Stamford heeded him
not, and threading the thronged atrium, re-entered once more the
city pageant, novel and attractive to him in spite of his misery. To-
day he mechanically took the seaward direction, walking far and fast
until he found himself among the smaller shops and unmistakable
“waterside characters” of Lower George Street. Here he remembered
that there were stone stairs at which, in his boyhood’s days, he had
so often watched the boats return or depart on their tiny voyages. A
low stone wall defended the street on that side, while permitting a
view of the buildings and operations of a wharf. Beyond lay the
harbour alive with sail and steam. In his face blew freshly the salt
odours of the deep, the murmuring voice of the sea wave was in his
ears, the magic of the ocean stole once more into his being.
In his youth he had delighted in boating, and many a day of
careless, unclouded joy could he recall, passed amid the very scenes
and sounds that now lay around him. Long, happy days spent in
fishing when the fair wind carried the boy sailors far away through
the outer bays or even through the grand portals where the
sandstone pillars have borne the fret of the South Pacific deep for
uncounted centuries. The long beat back against the wind, the
joyous return, the pleasant evening, the dreamless slumber. He
remembered it all. What a heaven of bliss, had he but known it; and
what an inferno of debt, ruin, and despair seemed yawning before
him now!
He leaned over the old stone wall and watched mechanically the
shadow of a passing squall deepen the colour of the blue waters of
the bay. After a while, his spirits rose insensibly. He even took
comfort from the fact that after the sudden tempest had brooded
ominously over the darkening water, the clouds suddenly opened—
the blue sky spread itself like an azure mantle over the rejoicing
firmament—the golden sun reappeared, and Nature assumed the
smile that is rarely far from her brow in the bright lands of the
South.
“I may have another chance yet,” Stamford said to himself. “Why
should I despair? Many a man now overladen with wealth has
passed into a bank on such an errand as mine, uncertain whether he
should return (financially) alive. Are not there Hobson, Walters,
Adamson—ever so many others—who have gone through that fiery
trial? I must fight the battle to the end. My Waterloo is not yet lost.
‘The Prussians may come up,’ as darling Laura said.”
Although receiving the advice of Mr. Merton, whom he personally
knew and respected, mainly in good faith, he was sufficiently
experienced in the ways of the world to mingle distrust with his
expectations. It was not such an unknown thing with bankers to
“shunt” a doubtful or unprofitable constituent upon a less wary
student of finance. Might it not be so in this case? Or would not the
manager of the agency company indicated regard him in that light?
How hard it was to decide! However, he would try his fortune. He
could do himself no more harm.
So he turned wearily from the dancing waters and the breezy bay,
and retracing his steps through the crowded thoroughfare, sought
the imposing freestone mansion in which were located the offices of
the Austral Agency Company.
“How these money-changing establishments house themselves!” he
said. “And we borrowers pay for it with our heart’s blood,” he added,
bitterly. “Here goes, however!”
He was not doomed on this occasion to any lingering preparatory
torture, for in that light he had come to regard all ante-chamber
detentions. He accepted it as a good omen that he was informed on
sending in his card, that Mr. Barrington Hope was disengaged, and
would be found in his private room.
 CHAPTER II

Mr. Stamford was at once strongly prepossessed in favour of the

man before whom he had come prepared to make a full statement
of his affairs, and to request—to all but implore—temporary
accommodation. Bah! how bald a sound it had! How unpleasant the
formula! And yet Harold Stamford knew that the security was sound,
the interest and principal nearly as certain to be paid in full as
anything can be in this uncertain world of ours. Still, such was the
condition of the money market that he could not help feeling like a
beggar. His pride rebelled against the attitude which he felt forced to
take. Nevertheless, for the sake of the sweet, careworn face at
home, the tender flowerets he loved so well, he braced himself for
the ordeal.
Mr. Barrington Hope’s appearance, not less than his manner, was
reassuring. A tall, commanding figure of the true Anglo-Saxon type,
his was a countenance in which opposing qualities seemed
struggling for the mastery.
In the glint of the grey eyes, in the sympathetic smile, in the deep,
soft voice there was a wealth of generosity, while the firm mouth
and strongly set jaw betokened a sternness of purpose which boded
ill for the adversary in any of the modern forms of the duello—
personal or otherwise.
“Mr. Stamford,” he said, “I have heard your name mentioned by
friends. What can I do for you? But if it be not a waste of time in
your case—though you squatters are not so hard-worked in town as
we slaves of the desk—we might as well lunch first, if you will give
me the pleasure of your company at the Excelsior. What do you
say?”
Mr. Stamford, in his misery, had taken scant heed of the hours. He
was astonished to find that the morning had fled. He felt minded to
decline, but in the kindly face of his possible entertainer he saw the
marks of continuous mental exertion, mingled with the easily-
recognised imprints of anxious responsibility. A feeling of sadness
came over him, as he looked again—of pity for the ceaseless toil to
which it seemed hard that a man in the flower of his prime should
be doomed—that unending mental grind, of which he, in common
with most men who have lived away from cities, had so cordial an
abhorrence. “Poor fellow!” he said to himself, “he is not more than
ten years older than Hubert, and yet what an eternity of thought
seems engraven in his face. I should be sorry to see them change
places, poor as we are, and may be.” He thought this in the moment
which he passed in fixing his eyes on the countenance of Barrington
Hope. What he said, was: “I shall have much pleasure; I really did
not know it was so late. My time in town, however, is scarcely so
valuable as yours. So we may as well devote half an hour to the
repairing of the tissue.”
Mr. Stamford’s wanderings in Lower George Street and the unfamiliar
surroundings of the metropolis had so far overcome the poignancy
of his woe as to provide him with a reasonable appetite. The cuisine
of the Excelsior, and the flavour of a bottle of extremely sound
Dalwood claret, did not appeal to his senses in vain. The well-
cooked, well-served repast concluded, he felt like another man; and
though distrusting his present sensations as being artificially rose-
coloured, he yet regarded the possibility of life more hopefully.
“It has done me good,” he said in his heart; “and it can’t have done
him any harm. I feel better able to stand up to hard Fate and her
shrewd blows than before.”
They chatted pleasantly till the return to the office, when Mr. Hope
hung up his hat, and apparently removed a portion of his amiability
of expression at the same time. He motioned his visitor to a chair,
produced a box of cigars, which, with a grotesque mediæval
matchbox, he pushed towards him. Lighting one for himself, he
leaned back in his chair and said “Now then for business!”
The squatter offered a tabulated statement, originally prepared for
the bank, setting forth the exact number of the livestock on
Windāhgil, their sexes and ages, the position and area of the run,
the number of acres bought, controlled or secured; the amount of
debt for which the bank held mortgage, the probable value of the
whole property at current rates. Of all of which particulars Mr. Hope
took heed closely and carefully. Mr. Stamford became suddenly
silent, and indeed broke down at one stage of the affair, in which he
was describing the value of the improvements, and mentioning a
comfortable cottage, standing amid a well-grown orchard on the
bank of a river, with out-buildings of a superior nature grouped
around.
Then Mr. Hope interposed. “You propose to me to take up your
account, which you will remove from the Bank of New Guinea. You
are aware that there is considerable risk.”
(“Hang it!” Mr. Stamford told himself; “I have heard that surely
before. I know what you are going to say now. But why do you all,
you financiers, like to keep an unlucky devil so on the tenter-
hooks?”)
Mr. Hope went on quietly and rather sonorously. “Yes! there has
been a large amount of forced realisation going on of late. Banks are
tightening fast. The rainfall of the interior has been exceptionally
bad. I think it probable that the Bank of New Guinea has none too
good an opinion of your account. But I always back my own theory
in finance. I have great reason to believe, Mr. Stamford, that heavy
rain will fall within the next month or two. I have watched the
weather signs carefully of late years. I am taking—during this
season, at any rate—a strong lead in wool and stock, which I expect
to rise. Everything is extremely low at present—ruinously so, the
season disastrously dry. But from these very dry seasons I foretell a
change which must be for the better. I have much pleasure in stating
that the Austral Agency Company will take up your account, Mr.
Stamford, and carry you on for two years at the same rate of
interest you have been paying.”
Mr. Stamford made a commencement of thanking him, or at least of
expressing his entire satisfaction with the new arrangement; but,
curious to relate, he could not speak. The mental strain had been
too great. The uncertain footing to which he had so long been
clinging between ruin and comparative safety had rendered his brain
dizzy.
He had been afraid to picture the next scene of the tragedy, when
the fatal fiat of the Bank Autocrat should have gone forth,—the
wrench of parting from the dear old place they had all loved so well.
The unpretending, but still commodious dwelling to which he had
brought his fond, true wife, while yet a young mother. The garden in
which they had planted so many a tree, so many a flower together.
The unchecked freedom of station life, with its general tone of
abundance and liberality. All these surroundings and comforts were
to be exchanged—if things were not arranged—for what? For a small
house in town, for a lower—how much lower!—standard of life and
society, perhaps even for poverty and privation, which it would cut
him to the heart to see shared by those patient exiles from their
pastoral Eden.
When Mr. Stamford had sufficiently recovered himself he thanked Mr.
Hope with somewhat unaccustomed fervour, for he was an
undemonstrative man, reserved as to his deeper feelings. But the
manager of the Austral Agency Company would not accept thanks.
“It may wear the appearance of a kindness, but it is not so in
reality,” he said. “Do not mistake me. It is a hard thing to say, but if
it seemed such to me, it would be my duty not to do it. It is the
merest matter of calculation. I am glad, of course, if it falls in with
your convenience.”
Here he looked kindly at his client—for such he had become—as if
he fain would have convinced him of his stern utilitarian
temperament. But, as he had remarked before, Mr. Hope’s eyes and
his sentiments contradicted one another.
“You have saved my home, the valued outcome of many a year’s
hard work—it may be my life also. That is all. And I’m not to thank
you? Do not talk in so cold-blooded a manner; I cannot bear it.”
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Hope, with calm, half-pitying expression, “I am
afraid you are not a particularly good man of business. It is as unfair
to praise me now for ‘carrying you on’ for another year or two, as it
will be to blame me for selling you up some fine day, if I am
compelled to do so.”
“Anyhow, it is a reprieve from execution. When shall I call again?”
“To-morrow morning, before twelve, let us say. I shall want you to
sign a mortgage—a necessary evil; and if you bring me an exact
amount of your indebtedness to the Bank of New Guinea, I will give
you a cheque for it.”
“A cheque for it!” How magnificent was the sound. Mr. Stamford had
drawn some tolerably large cheques in his time, which had been
duly honoured, but of late years the cheque-drawing method had
fallen much into abeyance.
Nevertheless, he felt like Aladdin, suddenly gifted with the wonderful
lamp. The sense of security and the guarantee of funds, for even
their moderate and necessary expenses, appeared to open to him
vistas of wealth and power verging on Oriental luxury.
He lost no time; indeed he just managed to gain his bank before its
enormous embossed outer door was closed, when he marched into
the manager’s room with so radiant a countenance that the
experienced centurion of finance saw plainly what had happened.
“Don’t trouble yourself to speak,” he said. “It’s all written on your
forehead. We bankers can decipher hieroglyphs invisible to other
men. ‘Want my account made up—securities ready to be delivered—
release—cheque for amount in full.’ Who is the reckless
entrepreneur?”
“The Austral Agency Company,” he replied, feeling rather cooled
down by this very accurate mind-reading; “but you seem to know so
much, you ought to know that too.”
“My dear fellow, I congratulate you!” Mr. Merton said, getting up and
shaking him warmly by the hand. “I beg your pardon; but really, any
child could see that you had been successful; and I began to think
that it must have been one of Barrington Hope’s long shots. A very
fine fellow, young but talented; in finance operates boldly. I don’t
say he’s wrong, mind you, but rather bold. Everything will be ready
for you to-morrow morning. Look in just before ten—by the private
door.”
Mr. Stamford did look in. How many times had he walked to those
same bank doors with an aching heart, in which the dull throb of
conscious care was rarely stilled! Many times had he quitted that
building with a sense of temporary relief; many times with a more
acutely heightened sense of misery, and a conviction that Fate had
done her worst. But never, perhaps, before had he passed those
fateful portals with so marked a sense of independence and freedom
as on the present occasion.
He had cast away the burden of care, at any rate for two years—two
whole years! It was an eternity in his present state of overwrought
feeling. He felt like a man who in old days had been bound on the
rack—had counted the dread contrivances for tearing muscles and
straining sinews—who had endured the first preliminary wrench, and
then, at a word, was suddenly loosed.
Such was now his joyous relief from inward agony, from the internal
throbs which rend the heart and strain to bursting the wondrous
tissue which connects soul and sense. The man who had decreed all
this was to him a king—nay, as a god. And in his prayer that night,
after he had entreated humbly for the welfare of wife and children in
his absence, and for his own safe return to their love and
tenderness, Barrington Hope came after those beloved names,
included in a petition for mercy at the hands of the All-wise.
It was not a long business that clearing of scores with the Bank of
New Guinea under these exceptional circumstances. Such and such
was the debit balance, a sufficiently grave one in a season when it
had not rained, “to signify,” for about three years, when stock was
unsalable, when money was unprecedentedly tight, but not, perhaps
amounting to more than one-third of the real value of the property.
Here were the mortgages. One secured upon the freehold, the other
upon stock and station, furniture and effects.
“Yes!” admitted Mr. Stamford, looking over it. “It is a comprehensive
document; it includes everything on the place—the house and all
that therein is, every hoof of stock, hacks and harness horses,
saddles and bridles—only excepting the clothes on our backs. Good
God! if we had lost all! And who knows whether we may not have to
give them up yet.”
“My dear Stamford,” said the banker, “you’re almost too sentimental
to be a squatter, though I grant you it requires a man of no ordinary
power of imagination to look forward from your dusty pastures and
dying sheep (as I am informed) to a season of waving grass and fat
stock. Why only this morning, I see that on Modlah, North
Queensland, they have lost eighty thousand sheep already!”
“That means they’ll have a flood in three months,” answered
Stamford, forcing a laugh. “We must have rain. This awfully sultry
weather is sure to bring it on sooner or later.”
“Ah! but when?” said Mr. Merton, corrugating his brow, as he
mentally ran over the list of heavily-weighted station accounts to
which this simple natural phenomenon would make so stupendous a
difference. “If you or I could tell whether it would fall in torrents this
year or next, it would be like—--”
“Like spotting the winner of the Melbourne Cup before the odds
began to shorten—eh, Merton? Good Heavens! to think I feel in a
mood to jest with my banker. That dread functionary! What is it
Lever says—that quarrelling with your wife is like boxing with your
doctor, who knows where to plant the blow that would, maybe, be
the death of you? Such is your banker’s fatal strength.”
“I envy you your recovered spirits, my dear fellow,” said the over-
worked man of figures, with a weary smile, glancing towards a pile
of papers on his table. “Perhaps things will turn out well for you and
all of us after all. You are not the only one, believe me, whose fate
has been trembling in the balance. You don’t think it’s too pleasant
for us either, do you? Well, I’ll send young Backwater down to
Barrington Hope with these documents. You can go with him, and he
will give a receipt for the cheque. For the rest, my congratulations
and best wishes.” He pressed an electric knob, the door opened, a
clerk looked in. “Tell Mr. Overdue I am at liberty now. Good bye,
Stamford, and God bless you!”
On the previous day Mr. Stamford had betaken himself to his hotel
immediately after quitting Mr. Barrington Hope’s office, and poured
out his soul with fullest unreserve in a long letter to his wife, in
which he had informed her of the great and glorious news, and with
his usual sanguine disposition to improve on each temporary ray of
sunshine, had predicted wonders in the future.
“What my present feelings are, even you, my darling Linda—sharer
that you have ever been in every thought of my heart—can hardly
realise. I know that you will say that only the present pressure is
removed. The misfortune we have all so long, so sadly dreaded,
which involves the loss of our dear old home, the poverty of our
children, and woe unutterable for ourselves, may yet be slowly
advancing on us. You hope I will be prudent, and take nothing for
granted until it shall have been proved. I am not to relax even the
smallest endeavour to right ourselves, or suffer myself to be led into
any fresh expense, no matter how bright, or rather (pastoral joke of
the period) how cloudy, the present outlook, till rain comes—until
rains comes; even then to remember that there is lost ground to
recover, much headway to make up.
“My dearest, I am as sure that you have got all these warning voices
ready to put into your letter as if you phonographed them, and I
recognised the low, sweet tones which have ever been for me so
instinct with love and wisdom. But I feel that, on this present
occasion—(I hear you interpose, ‘My dearest Harold, how often have
you said so before!’)—there is no need for any extraordinary
prudence. I am confident that the season will change, or that
something advantageous will happen long before this new advance
is likely to be called in. Mr. Hope assures me that no sudden demand
will at any time be made, that all reasonable time will be given; that
if the interest be but regularly paid, the Company is in a position,
from their control of English capital, to give better terms than any
colonial institution of the same nature. I see you shake your wise,
distrustful head. My dearest, you women, who are said to be gifted
with so much imagination in many ways, possess but little in matters
of business. I have often told you so. This time I hope to convince
you of the superior forecast of our sex.
“And now give my love to our darlings. Tell them I shall give practical
expression to my fondness for them for this once, only this once;
really, I must be a little extravagant. I shall probably stay down here
for another week or ten days.
“Now that I am in town I may just as well enjoy myself a little, and
get up a reserve fund of health and strength for future emergencies.
I don’t complain, as you know, but I think I shall be all the better for
another week’s sea air. I met my cousin, Bob Grandison, in the street
to-day. Kind as usual, though he studiously avoided all allusion to
business; wanted me to stay at Chatsworth House for a few days. I
wouldn’t do that. I don’t care for Mrs. Grandison sufficiently; but I
am going to a swell dinner there on Friday. And now, dearest, yours
ever and always, fondly, lovingly, Harold Stamford.”
Having sent off this characteristic epistle, Mr. Stamford felt as easy in
his mind as if he had provided his family with everything they could
possibly want for a year. He was partially endowed with that
Sheridanesque temperament which dismissed renewed acceptances
as liabilities discharged, and viewed all debentures as debts of the