Rolf Boldrewood

“ Neuchamp began to think he would not be so unreasonably delighted to get to Garrandilla. Each day, soon after sunrise, they moved from camp at a pace extremely suitable to the thick coming fancies which filled the mind of Ernest Neuchamp during the first hours of the untarnished day. There was the glorious undisturbed sun, with autumnal tempered beams. On such endless plains Chaldean and Israelitish shepherds, in the world’s youth, had travelled or held vigil. No vast awe-striking ruins lay on these great solitudes. No temple eloquent of the elder races of the earth. ”

“ From a pyramid of chops, replenished from an immense frying-pan, with a handle like a marlin-spike, each man abstracted whatever he chose. Wedges of damper (or bread baked in hot ashes) were cut from time to time from great circular flat loaves of that palatable and wholesome but somewhat compressed-looking bread, while gallons of hot tea were procurable from buckets full of the universal bush beverage.
The overseer and some of the horse drivers were absent, as the hacks and cart-horses had wandered during the night rather farther than usual. ”

“ Ernest Neuchamp looked at the clear eyes and healthy bronzed skin of the man as he spoke, noble in all the marvellous grace and strength of godlike youth, and thought how deep the pity that such a spirit, such a frame, should sink into the drunkard’s nerveless, hopeless, shapeless life in death. ”

“ He who embarks upon an enterprise or commences a course of life involving absolute departure from every early habit and association will invariably be assailed at some stage or period by distrust, even by despondency. It is not in man to complete all the multifarious acts and volitions pertaining to any momentous change without experiencing the strongest reactionary impulses to halt, to doubt, to waver, to retreat.
That Ernest Neuchamp possessed these, among other weaknesses of our nature, we are by no means prepared to deny. ”

“ As Mr. Neuchamp regained his suspended senses in a hot and mosquito-raided upper chamber in the Royal, the idea of becoming at a plunge the proprietor of Gammon Downs showed less alluring than over the joyous claret-illumined board of yester eve. What if the name (given by the rude pioneers, it had been explained to him from some nonsensical circumstance) should be only too correct a designation for a delusive investment? What if Mr. Selmore were a little too obliging, confidential, and considerate for a true and generous vendor? ”

“ Neuchamp, who had risen early and made all his arrangements, fully prepared for the momentous plunge into real life. He had attired himself in an old tourist’s suit of rough serviceable tweed, and donned a pair of thick-soled lace-up boots fitted for climbing mountain sides, and the roughest pedestrian work that might occur. He had filled his knapsack with the requisites that a gentleman cannot dispense with, even in the lightest marching order, and had adopted a brown wide-awake hat, which he trusted would relieve him henceforward from any injurious sobriquet. ”

“ Hasbene,’ said Ernest. ’The characteristics of “the gentle life,” in my estimation, are occasional strenuous, useful, and dignified exertion, seconded by unquestioned leisure, more or less embellished by letters with the aid of the arts and sciences. All this keenness to amass money, land, flocks, and herds, is merely the trading instinct pushed to excess, whether the owner lives in a street, in a city, or a hut on a plain. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ernest Neuchamp, younger, of Neuchampstead, Bucks, quitted the ancient roof-tree of his race, for a deliberate conflict with fortune, in a far land, he carried with him a purpose which went far to neutralise doubt and depression.
A crusader rather than a colonist, his lofty aims embraced far more than the ordinary sordid struggle with unkind nature, with reluctant success. Such might be befitting aspirations for eager and rude adventurers, half speculators, half buccaneers. ”

“ I came away from England to lead a quiet life in the wilderness, to have a little leisure and time to think, and not to be hurried from one engagement to another like a Liverpool cotton broker or a stock exchange speculator.’
‘I don’t say there isn’t money made by sheep,’ remarked Mr. Hasbene, ’but cattle, to my mind, have always been the most gentlemanly stock. A man does his work; it’s sharp sometimes; but then he has it over. He knows what he’s about, and hasn’t to be always “hurried up” like a Yankee dry goods clerk. I wouldn’t change lives with Jedwood for all the world. ”

“ But I’ve noticed that a working man as likes reading, and is always looking out for a new book, or thinks he knows something as will alter the pull of money over labour—he’s a very unlikely card to drink much. If he gets a paper with a long letter in it, or a working man’s yarn in a book, he goes home as happy as a king, and reads away to his wife, or sits up half the night spelling it out. He don’t drink. Even if he spouts a bit at the public, he talks a deal more than he swipes.’
‘I am quite of your opinion, Jack; the more a man knows, the more he wants to know. ”

“ You see, sir, sheep’s very fond of keeping all together. It’s their nature. If they get any way close they begin to run, the front to the back and the back to the front, and all the men and dogs in the world wouldn’t keep ’em apart.’
‘And what harm would that be?’
‘Well, we should have four thousand sheep to manage instead of two, and they wouldn’t drive so well or feed so well, and as these sheep are as poor as crows already, that wouldn’t suit.’
‘I see,’ replied Ernest. ‘I think I understand the principle of the thing.’
‘All right, sir,’ assented Jack. ”

“ Neuchamp was not a man addicted to falling violently and promiscuously in love. In point of fact, he had a stupendously high ideal, which, not expecting to realise it in everyday life, seemed to keep the subject a good deal out of his mind. Then he thought a man should do some work under the sun first, and set about a quest for the ‘sangreal’ afterwards. He regarded Antonia Frankston with a deep feeling of interest, as a dear and highly sympathetic friend. ”

“ What a mob of houses, people, cabs, teams, men, women, and children! What in the name of fortune do they all do, and where do they all go at night? Well, I never thought the town was as big as this. Confound the horse’ (this to Ben Bolt, who lashed out at a passing hansom) , ‘he’ll kill some one yet before he’s safe in the stable.’
Perhaps a city is never seen to such advantage as after a considerable sojourn in the provinces, at sea, or in any such other distant or isolated abode, where the dweller is necessarily debarred from the required licenses of civilisation. ”

“ Neuchamp did not smoke. He held it to be a waste of time, of money, of brain-power; leading likewise to a false content with circumstances, with which the true man should wage ceaseless warfare. So he brought his chair near to that of Miss Frankston, and as the old gentleman lighted his cigar and leaned back in much comfort at some distance, he felt fully disposed for a little æsthetic talk. ”

“ All the young ladies of Sydney are wild about him. He is enormously rich, and gives such parties on board his yacht!’
‘And is Miss Frankston one of the young ladies whom this broken-Englished invincible has conquered?’ asked Ernest. ‘May I be permitted to congratulate her?’
‘You must judge for yourself,’ said the girl, with so merry a look and such a genuinely amused expression that Mr. Neuchamp’s slight experience of the ways of womankind assured him that no great damage to his pupil’s heart had as yet taken place. ”

“ By his side, burning with100 rage and mortification, walked Ernest, feeling very like a galley slave, and wondering whether there was any possibility, in this strange land, of being sentenced mistakenly to a term of imprisonment. Thus feeling for the first time a keen sensation of distrust for his own obstinate predilections, coupled with an awakening respect for the opinion of others, the time passed in varieties of mental torture, till they arrived at the lock-up, a strong wooden building, into a small room of which they were unceremoniously bundled, while a heavy bolt closed behind them. ”

“ He was sufficiently learned in the lore of the dwellers in this ’land of freedom and solitude’ to know that the chief duty of man when once placed in possession of stock, sheep above all, is to ‘stick by them’—to stick by them, as the captain lingers by the last plank of the breaking-up deck, in spite of danger and death, hunger, thirst, weariness, or despair. These last experiences were more likely to be the portion of Ernest Neuchamp than the former. ”

“ All these chaps are not fools, much less lazy; it’s the hardest workers and best hands among us working chaps that’s the worst drinkers, by odds. As to the waking up, as you say, it’s bad enough, but a strong man gets over it in a day or two, and tackles his bread and meat, and his work, pretty much as usual till the time of the next spree comes round.’
‘But what a fool a man must think himself,’ said Ernest, ‘at the end of a week, when he finds that he has spent all the fruit of a year’s labour, and is obliged to begin another solitary weary year.’
‘It is bad, as you say, sir. ”

“ The food was coarse and not well cooked, but hunger and partial fatigue are unrivalled condiments. Bread, meat, and the wherewithal to quench thirst are amply sufficient for the real toiler, not overborne, like the luxurious children of civilisation, by multifarious half-digested meals. Mr. Neuchamp, therefore, on the following morning, having slept magnificently and eaten a truly respectable breakfast, surveyed the endless plain from the back of the ravine with undiminished courage. ”

“ Nothing, he admitted, could be more praiseworthy and admirable than the energy, the concentrativeness, the unwearied labour which Jedwood had bestowed upon the formation of his position in early life. And now the summit had been scaled, the goal attained, the reward grasped, of what commensurate value or benefit was it, now fully realised, to himself or to others? The contracted field of labour had become a necessity of life. ”

“ Charley Banks had any intellectual proclivities, they had not as yet passed a rudimentary limit. He smoked a good deal, read hardly at all except the sporting compartments of the newspapers, took more interest in the horses of the establishment than in the cattle or sheep, and was always glad of an excuse to get down to the public-house, or to gossip unprofitably in the men’s huts.
As for Mr. David Doubletides, he had long since abandoned the idea that reading and writing had any other connection of importance to humanity than the accurate setting down and adding up of station accounts. ”

“ Neuchamp saw the secret of the ultra-respectful bearing of the servants and landlord of the inn to the owner of a couple of millions of acres, leasehold, and of more sheep than Esterhazy, and more cattle than a score of Mexican rancheros. ‘He certainly is a man of unpretentious demeanour,’ thought Ernest. ”

“ Neuchamp. ‘How awfully hot it must be there now. I daresay old Doubletides is just coming in, half melted after his day’s work, looking for lost sheep—counting one flock, and ordering another to come in to-morrow.’
‘Surely it must be a terrible life,’ said Antonia apprehensively. ‘Is that why people in the bush go mad sometimes?’
‘It’s hard to say. I really don’t think he or Jedwood are even dull or distrait, or unduly impressed with the nothingness of existence. I think very energetic people have certain advantages. ”

“ Doubletides, he’s always away before daylight, and home at all hours of the night. There’s some blessed flock for ever away or having to be counted, or drafted, or shifted, or tar-branded, or sold, or delivered; and it’s the same story all the year round. There’s no rest and no easy time with sheep, work as hard as you will. Of course the wool’s a fine thing, but give me a mob of a couple or three hundred head of fat cattle on the road for market with a good horse under ye and a fourteen-foot whip in your hand. ”

“ You threw it at a fellow’s head, as it were. It was partly your own fault.’
‘My own fault,’ echoed Ernest, in astonishment, ‘and why, may I ask?’
‘When people are very very imprudent, they, as the Methodists phrase it, “put temptation in the way” of other folks, not afflicted, let us say, with severe morals. Now why don’t you ride a decent horse when you’re travelling, like a gentleman?’
‘But surely a man may walk in a new country, if he likes?’ pleaded Ernest, half amused at his arguing the question so seriously with a swindler and convicted felon. ”

“ No man need fast in this country if he knows anything about the herbage and the plants he’s always riding and trampling over.’
‘You amaze me!’ said Ernest; ‘I always thought people ate nothing but meat in this country.’
‘When you’ve been longer in Australia’ (Ernest groaned) ‘you’ll find out, by degrees, that there’s a deal of difference in people here, much as, I suppose, there is in other countries. See here,’ he continued, taking up and cropping with great relish a succulent-looking bunch of greens, ‘here’s a real good wholesome cabbage—warrigal cabbage, the shepherds call it. ”

“ If a man doesn’t make money, I heard him say once, he shows all the world that there is some quality lacking in him, and any little that he can say or do will not have its just weight; he is regarded only as an unpractical, unsuccessful enthusiast.’
‘I hate the word enthusiast,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, ‘or rather the sense of disparagement in which it is generally used. ”

“ I prefer them, even in this confounded weather. They make a fellow look like a gentleman if it’s in him, and not like a man going to a dog-fight, like that white abomination you have on.’
The trio laughed more heartily and continuously at this rejoinder than Ernest thought the wit justified, to the enjoyment of which Mr. Selmore abandoned them without ceremony, merely remarking to Ernest, though good fellows, they were awfully dissipated, and he could not recommend them as friends. ”

“ Frankston, with a twinkle of his fun-loving gray eyes, ‘though it is more a bush expression than a town one, and rather slangy. A “black hat” in Australian parlance means a new arrival. And as people without colonial experience, like yourself, for instance, cannot be expected to understand the relative value of stock and stations, such a purchaser falls an easy prey to a talented but unscrupulous man like your friend Selmore.’
A light suddenly illumined the understanding of Mr. Neuchamp, whose faculties, like those of enthusiasts generally, were keen, if occasionally misdirected. ”

“ I must see and pick you up a horse.’
37
‘Do you know,’ said Mr. Neuchamp, with an air of slight diffidence, ‘that I much prefer to walk; I shall see more of the country and be less hampered, I imagine, on foot.’
‘Walk! walk!’ repeated Mr. Frankston, rather taken aback; ‘don’t think of it.’
‘Why not, may I ask?’
‘Because in this country no one walks. It is too hot for that sort of thing, and it is not exactly the thing for a gentleman.’
‘But,’ pleaded Ernest, ‘I am a tolerable pedestrian; many a pleasant walking tour I have had in England, and indeed on the Continent. ”