Rolf Boldrewood

“ No, Bertram Devereux, it is not in you. You have deceived yourself as well as her. You would have cheated me, but the attempt has failed. You know in your heart, or rather in your inmost consciousness, that you are incapable of love, pure, unsullied, constant—such as the poets sing of; such as this young girl, doubtless, has brought to you. In the maelstrom of London life, under the spell of old associations, you would have fallen as you have fallen before, and dragged others with you. In that hour I am the only one who has power over you. ”

“ Massinger, in later years, always asserted that never in his whole life had he been so much impressed by the personality of any living man as by the remarkable individual who now stood before him. Tall beyond the ordinary stature of manhood, but of matchless symmetry, and moulded not less for activity than strength, there was a compelling air of command in his eye which every motion confirmed. His expression was grave and stern, but as he approached Erena, who ran to meet him, a wave of tenderness crossed his features like the ripple on a slumbering sea. ”

“ When I got on to the tableland above Rocky Flat I took a good look at the whole place. Everything was as quiet and peaceful as if nothing had ever happened within miles of it—as if I hadn't had Goring's handcuffs on me—as if Jim hadn't had the bullets whistling round him, and risked his life on an unbridled horse—as if the four dead men had not lain staring up to the sky in the gully up yonder for days before they were found and buried. ”

“ Tessie Lawless, when called upon, moved towards the witness-box with a much less assumed step than her cousin. She also turned her head towards the dock. Those who watched her saw her face soften and change like that of a woman who suddenly beholds a suffering child. As she scanned the pallid and drawn features of Lance Trevanion, upon which anger and despair, consuming anxiety and darkling doubt had written their characters indelibly, it seemed as though she must force her way to him and weep out her heart in bitter grief that he should be in such ignoble toils. ”

“ The sad-toned, far-stretching shore—the angry storm-voices of the terrible deep—the little band of horsemen—the lowing, half-wild drove—the red-litten cloud prison, wherein the sun lay dying!
Pleasant exceedingly, in contrast, when the cattle were yarded and rails securely pegged, to unsaddle and walk into the house, where lights and glowing fires, with a well-appointed table, awaited us, presided over by a Châtelaine whose soft voice and ever-varied converse, mirthful or mournful, serious or satirical, practical or poetic, never failed to soothe and interest. ”

“ The day was done, the stars were out, as we moved across from the courthouse to the lock-up. The air was fresh and cool. The sun had gone down; so had the sun of our lives, never to rise again.
Morning came. Why did it ever come again? I thought. What did we want but night?—black as our hearts—dark as our fate—dismal as the death which likely would come quick as a living tomb, and the sooner the better. ”

“ What wonders and miracles stay-at-home people miss! What human limpets they are; and how narrow are their paths to enjoyment! "I feel as if I were in Paradise, in Paradise,"' she warbled. 'Oh, what a change from our dear old monotonous Corindah!'
'Home is very sweet after all,' said the elder woman, 'though I enjoy this lovely sea-view. But, my darling, you frighten me by these expressions of wild delight. It cannot be good for any one to revel in pleasure, the mere luxurious sensation of change of scene, so intensely, so passionately as you do. Such feelings are unsafe for women. ”

“ The clouds have dispensed their priceless moisture, albeit not all too generously. The level sun-rays shine clear over leagues of bright-hued turf and greenwood free. The pale, dawn-streaked azure was cloudless; the morning air keenly crisp. All nature is now jubilant. The voice of Spring, faint in tone but wildly sweet, is audible to the lover of nature. The cry of birds, the rustling leaves in the tall trees that shade the winding river, and the green waste of dew-besprinkled herbage, awaken thoughts of long-dead years—of the season of youth—of the lost Aïdenn of the heart's freshness. ”

“ Such, day by day, was the free untroubled life of Ernest Neuchamp at that stage of his fortunes when, untroubled by care or consuming anxiety, with gay hope in the future, tranquil enjoyment of the present, youth told itself a hundred times each day that the present was fairer than the fairest mortal mistress; while age and care stood dimly gazing afar off, nor ventured to enter the paradise which is rarely sacred from their intrusion when the downward slope of the days of the years of our pilgrimage begins to be travelled. ”

“ But the rudest stock-rider never alluded to the ease with which they now followed the well-fed herd, without a curse (in the nature of an epitaph) upon those who had robbed them of a comrade and a commander.
‘A magnificent country,’ said Argyll, as on the third day they camped the foremost drove on the bank of a broad river in the marshy meadows, on which the cattle spread out, luxuriating in the wild abundance of pasture; ‘and how picturesque those snow-peaks; the groves of timber, sending their promontories into the plains; the fantastic rocks! It is a pastoral paradise. ”

“ A rock kangaroo, cleared the streamlet with a bound and fled up the hillside like a mountain hare. A cloud of cockatoos flitted ghost-like across the tree-tops, betraying by an occasional harsh cry the fact that a sense of harmony had been omitted, when their delicately white robes were apportioned to them. As the sun gained power and brilliancy, Mr. Blount found the path easy to follow and his spirits began to rise. ”

“ Neuchamp was but mortal. The best of us, under certain conditions, are weak. As Antonia shut down the piano and ran to get her straw hat with girlish freedom of manner, he felt his justifiable wrath evaporating. Long before they had finished that pleasant ramble in the cool twilight, with the stars one by one appearing, the surge voices whispering low and solemnly kind, the cool briny savour of the ocean—a sea of enchantment to Ernest, but of yesterday from the inner deserts—long before the somewhat emphasised dinner-bell rang, Ernest repented of his pettishness. ”

“ From the oppressed band of Puritans, content to face the rock-bound coast, the storm-tossed ocean, the crafty, ruthless savage, if only they might enjoy religious freedom—from the men and women of their own creed and colour, crowded in unwholesome vessels—sold, yes, sold into slavery on arrival—from every kind of absconder and Adullamite, a newer, greater Britain confronts the world: in arms, a fearless rival; in peace or war, the strongest, the best educated, the most successful nation, this day, beneath the sun. ”

“ As she stood in the uncertain light which struggled through the forest glades, her eyes bright with triumph and her form transfigured with the momentary gleam of the sun-rays, he could have imagined her a naiad of old Arcadian days, prompt to warn the hero of the approach of danger. Such must have been her mother in the springtime of her beauty, in the year when her father, a youthful Ulysses, appeared as a god newly arisen from the sea before the Nausicaa of the tribe. It was not given to man to resist the o'ermastering spell of such a maiden's love. ”

“ I am not mad, though I am shut up in a cell. No. Better for me if I was. But it's all up now; there's no get away this time; and I, Dick Marston, as strong as a bullock, as active as a rock-wallaby, chock-full of life and spirits and health, have been tried for bush-ranging—robbery under arms they call it—and though the blood runs through my veins like the water in the mountain creeks, and every bit of bone and sinew is as sound as the day I was born, I must die on the gallows this day month.
Die—die—yes, die; be strung up like a dog, as they say. ”

“ If I decided to marry Miranda, or any other island maiden, I should be put in possession of a landed estate of fifty acres, where I might dream away life in a round of labour that was half recreation, wandering amid the island groves, reclining under giant ferns or lofty pines, bathing in crystal founts or clear-hued seas at dawn or under the yellow moon. Passing contentedly from youth to middle age, from that half-way stage to a later span of life, which in this enchanted land implied little or no diminution of natural powers. ”

“ YAMBUK
Once upon a time, in a "kingdom by the sea," known to men as Port Fairy, "Yambuk" was a choice and precious exemplar of the old-fashioned cattle station. What a haven of peace—what a restful elysium, would it be in these degenerate days of hurry and pressure and progress, and all that—could one but fall upon it! If one could only gallop up now to that garden gate, receive the old cordial welcome, and turn his horse into the paddock, what a fontaine de jouvence would bubble up! Should one ride forth and essay the deed? It could hardly be managed. We should not be able to find our way. ”

“ A free man—not a prisoner! Did he ever imagine that he would attach such a meaning to the word freedom? It mattered not. Let him but once set foot outside this dismal gaol wall. Again he saw himself on the back of a good horse, or at the claim with good old Jack Polwarth and his wife and Tottie—poor dear Tottie! But here he could no longer follow out the chain of probabilities. His eyes filled with tears, and the once-proud Lance Trevanion, lowered in spirit and strength by confinement and meagre diet, threw himself upon his miserable pallet and sobbed like a child. ”

“ Then out of the endless waste of waters rises the lovely shape of the fairy isle. 'Mountain, and valley, and wood-land'—a paradisal climate; a friendly, graceful, simple race, reverencing the stranger whites, with their big canoe and loud reverberating fire-weapons; or, on the other hand, sullen and ferocious cannibals, sending flights of poisoned arrows from their thickets, or surrounding the ship with a swarm of canoes, full of hostile savages, eager to climb her deck to slay and plunder unchecked. ”

“ Remorse and regret, passion and despair, survive. And even as we return from the land of pleasure along paths of duty, the refrain sounds sadly in our ears that all earth's joys are fleeting; that the ocean of eternity must be the end of life's bark; that its tideless waves may ever be heard, deeply dirgeful, in the intervals of vanity and madness.
So, when the first Australian winter month—that of May—found the travellers again en route for Corindah, where everything bade fair to be as quiet and peaceful as on the day they left, Pollie's first feeling was one of indefinable regret. ”

“ A boding gloom seemed to fall suddenly like a pall from the branches of the sighing, whispering, sad-voiced water-oaks, as they followed the winding track which led along the bank of the tiny streamlet to the small alluvial flat, upon which lay two―pah, what shall I say?―two figures covered with rugs, which may or may not have exhibited the human outline. ‘They lay as dead men only lie.’ A swarm of flies arose at the lifting of the coverings, and a terrible and intolerable odour diffused itself around. ”

“ Christabel Rockley spoke not nor moved, but she cast her eyes down, till in the clear light the long dark lashes could be seen fringing her cheek. Her bosom heaved—she made no sign.
‘Christabel,’ he murmured, ‘darling Christabel, I have long loved you, fondly, passionately. One word will make me the happiest of living men. Bow but your head in token that you grant my prayer, and I will take it as a sign from Heaven. Stay with my mother till she embraces you as a loved daughter. ”

“ And what a season it was! ‘Oh to be in England, now that April’s here!’ For the nonce it was a fine, warm, even dry summer, which enhanced the green glory of the century-old oaks, the ‘immemorial elms,’ and the various flowers of the great parks and also of the natural woodland. What joy it was to these young people to wander with their brothers along the ‘leafy lanes, where the trees met overhead, when the merry brooks ran clear and gay’! To note, lying underneath the aged oaks, the skylark rising from the field, and pealing his matin song of gladness. ”

“ It was early dawn when they floated through the Rangitoto channel between the island so called—the three-coned peak of which, with scoria-shattered flanks, denoted volcanic origin—and the North Head. Passing this guardian headland, "a most living landscape," the more entrancing from contrast to the endless ocean plain which for so many a day had limited his vision, was spread out before the voyager's eager and delighted gaze. Land and water, hill and dale, bold headlands and undulating verdurous slopes, combined to form a panorama of enchanting variety. ”

“ Well, we took it very easily along that pastoral Eden, the garden of Australia, where dwelt pastoral man before the Fall, ere he was driven forth into far sun-scorched drought-accursed wilds to earn his bread by the sweat of his brain, and to bear the heart-sickness that comes of hope long deferred—the deadly despair that is born of long years of waiting for slow remorseless ruin. ”

“ Aileen had jumped off her horse and gone in to the old man the moment we came up and she heard his voice.
All that long night we could hear him talking to himself, groaning, cursing, shouting, arguing. It was wonderful how a man who talked so little as father could have had so many thoughts in his mind. But then they all are boxed up together in every man's heart. At a time like this they come racing and tumbling out like a flock of sheep out of a yard when the hurdle's down. What a dashed queer thing human nature is when you come to think of it. ”

“ With all the capriciousness of Australian seasons the springtime of this year has shown a disposition to linger—waving back with grateful showers and dew-cooled nights and mornings the too impatient summer. Still is the grass brightly green of hue, the flower unfaded. The plague of dust has been stayed again and again by the welcome rainfall. There has never been more than one day when the winds have risen to a wintry bleakness. ”

“ The indescribable charm of the unworn day rested upon the rural landscape, where farmhouses, maize fields, orangeries, and orchards alternated with primeval woodlands and wide-stretching pastures. The houses were often old, the farming indifferent, the fences decayed; but with all faults it was the country—the blessed country—and the heart of Ernest Neuchamp, a born and bred land worshipper, went out to the dew-bespangled champaign. ”

“ Lastly, the harbour lights disappear as I sit in my cane lounge in the verandah of Edenhall, and in place of the wooded heights and distant city I see the breakers upon the reef of Ocean Island, and discern a solitary figure in the stern of a small boat sailing out into the illimitable gloom; I fall a musing upon the mysterious problems of Fate—of man's life and the strange procession of circumstance—until the hour strikes and I retire. ”

“ A chamois in a sheepfold, a leopardess in a drawing-room, a red deer in a trim and close-paled enclosure, could not have been more hopelessly at war with surroundings, more incongruously provided with food and shelter. Day after day a growing discontent, a hopeless despair of life, seemed to weigh her down, to take the savour from existence, to restrain the instinctive sportiveness of youth, to hush the spirit-song of praise with which, like the awakening bird, she should have welcomed each dawning morn. ”

“ The brothers, natives of Tasmania, were splendid men physically, and as sailors no bolder or better hands ever trod plank or handled oar.
Years afterwards I made one of a crowd assembled on the Port Fairy beach to watch a vessel encountering at her anchors the fury of a south-easterly gale. A wild morning, I trow; the sky red-gloomy with storm-clouds; the fierce tempest beating down the crests of the leaping eager billows; the air full of a concentrated wrath which prevented all sounds save its own from being audible. ”