Rolf Boldrewood

“ Frankston, also cheered up.
‘Never had the slightest thought of it, poor fellow,’ said Antonia, radiant with appreciation of the antipathetic Augusta. ‘How I could have been such a goose as to believe that wicked Hardy Baldacre, I can’t think. And, papa dear, I might have found myself pledged to marry him, doomed to endless misery, in my folly and madness. I shall never condemn other foolish girls again, whatever they may do.’
‘All’s well that ends well, darling,’ said the old man, with a grateful ring in his voice; ‘Paul Frankston and his own pet daughter are one in heart again. ”

“ Miss Neuchamp, in spite of her much travelling, was always a martyr during the first week of a voyage, if the weather chanced to be bad. Now it certainly was bad, very bad; and in consequence Miss Augusta lay, under the charge of a stewardess, in a stern cabin, well-nigh sick unto death, heedless of life and its chequered presentments, and as oblivious, not to say indifferent, to the fate of Jermyn Croker as if she had yesterday sworn to love and obey the chief officer of the Nubia. ”

“ This was the cutting the connecting channel between the Back Lake and the ‘Outer Lake.’ Long had the ‘master’s207 ditch’ been as useless as a fish-pond in the bosom of the Sahara, as a rose-garden in a glacier, as an oyster-bed in a steppe. Cattle had walked over it; grass had grown in it; stockmen and thoughtless souls had jeered at it, and at the English stranger who had thrown away upon its construction the money of which he possessed a quantity so greatly in excess of his apparent intelligence. ”

“ Neuchamp, raising his voice so as to drown a peculiar crackling noise in the shrubbery which his ear had caught. ‘Do you go in peace, Von Schätterheims? Wrong not further the kind hearts that have trusted you; betray not hospitality free and open as ever man received. I will return with both, or not at all.’
‘Then die, fool!’ hissed the Count, as he raised his weapon and fired full at the head of Ernest Neuchamp, who at the same moment rushed in and closed, while his blood flowed freely from a wound in the forehead, and ensanguined his adversary as they grappled in deadly conflict. ”

“ She wants, like some one else, to go out into the world again, a real world, and not a sham one like the one in which rich people live in England. She is living, not life. Perhaps I am “un peu Zingara”—who knows? It’s a mercy I’m not very dark, like some other Australians I have seen. But it is now the time to say, my dear Courtenay, that Ernest and I have grown tired of play, and want to go back to that end of the world where work grows.‘
‘Please don’t smother me with wisdom and virtue,’ pleaded Courtenay, with a look of pathetic entreaty. ”

“ What with the reading, the sewing, the teaching of Tottie, the daily cousinly walks and talks, the hitherto uncompromising Augusta became partially converted to station life, and finally admitted in conversation with Ernest that, other things being equal, she could imagine a woman enduring such privation for a few years, always assuming that she had the companionship of the one man to whom alone she could freely devote every waking thought, every pulsation of the heart. ”

“ And as all men save one—for even in that hour of her wrath and misery she could not find it in her heart to include her father among the reprobate or despicable of his sex—were alike unworthy of a maiden’s trust, a maiden’s prayers, why not confide herself and her blighted heart to the custody of this one, who, at least, was frank and unhesitating in proffering his love and demanding her own?
Mr Hardy Baldacre had not thought it expedient to delay bringing matters to a climax, fearing that highly inconvenient truth, with respect to the fair Augusta, might arrive at any moment. ”

“ A gospel of hard-eyed economy, grudging gain, unrelieved toil, for the poor; for the sordid aspirant, by endless thrift and striving, ‘property, property, property;’ for the rich, a message of selfish enjoyment, grasping monopoly, ungenial ease.
‘Such would the world be were the human mind divested of the sublime attributes of Faith and Imagination!’ exclaimed Ernest, borne away from his present cares. ‘There may be perils for the glad mariner on the sun-bright, flashing wave; but he has the possible glory of descrying purple isles, undiscovered continents. Dying, he falls as a hero ”

“ It has been more than once remarked by those of our species who rely for their intellectual recreation less upon action than observation, that great events are apt to be produced by inconsiderable causes. The sighing summer breeze sets free the mountain avalanche. The spark creates the red ruin of a conflagration. The rat in Holland perforates a dam and floods a province.
Mr. Neuchamp sat in his apartment at Rainbar contrasting, doubtfully, his regret at the departure of his cousin with his recovered sense of freedom and independence. ”

“ People may stay away too long sometimes.’ Here she gazed at Ernest with a long, searching, humbled gaze, which suddenly brightened as when the summer cloud catches the partially obscured sun-ray. ‘But here is Augusta, coming to ask you if Rainbar won’t be swallowed up in a second deluge now that the drought has broken up, as she is credibly informed is always the case in Australia!’ A mischievous twinkle in her mirthful eye informed Ernest that his cousin’s peculiarities had been accurately measured by the prepossessing reviewer before him. ”

“ A regular Victorian thinks all Sydney men are old-fashioned, slow prigs who wouldn’t spend a guinea to save five pounds. The truth is pretty near the middle. Don’t you stick at home all your life, like a mallee scrubber, that has only one dart, on the plain and back to his scrub, and then you won’t run away with the notion that because a man is born on one side of a river and not on the other, he ain’t as clever, or as sensible, or as good a hand at making money or saving it, as you are. It’s only country-bred, country-reared folks that think that way. ”

“ The great city expanding beautifies the terraced slopes and gardened promontories of the glorious haven. Old Paul Frankston lies buried in no crowded cemetery, but in a rock-hewn family vault under giant araucarias, within sound of the wave he loved so well. Yet is Morahmee still celebrated for that unselfish, unrestricted hospitality to the stranger-guest which made Paul Frankston’s name a synonym for general sympathy and readiest aid.
Assuredly Ernest Neuchamp, now one of the largest proprietors in Australia, both of pastoral and urban property, has not suffered the reputation to decline. ”

“ But society never recognises its real wonders—its absolute and imperious miracles. Therefore for a little space that earthly maid glorified the dwelling and precincts of the untrammelled, rejoicing, successful proprietor. She sat by Mr. Neuchamp at the daintily prepared refections of the club, and gave an added flavour to his moderate but intense enjoyment of viand and vintage, so wondrous in variety, so miraculous of aroma, after his long endurance of the unpalatable monotony of the Rainbar cuisine. ”

“ Thus ever with ‘youth at the prow and pleasure at the helm’ do we lightly measure the future, recking neither of stormy sky nor of the ravening deep.
After Mr. Neuchamp had sufficiently admired the grassy wilderness, thoughts arose respecting dinner, and also a feeling of wonder where everybody was. The station appeared to be minding itself. The cook was absent, though recent indications of his presence were visible in the kitchen. Charley Banks was away and Jack Windsor, probably at Mildool; also Piambook, whose open countenance and dazzling teeth would have been better than nothing. ”

“ One successful well or dam, therefore, converted a block of country hitherto useless for nine months out of the twelve into a run capable of carrying ten thousand sheep all the year round. Of course, any portion of the Crown estate the conditional purchaser might ‘take up,’ or, without notice, occupy. But where was he to procure his water from? He had not often five hundred pounds, or if so, did not ‘believe’ in such solemn disbursement for ‘mere improvements.’ Therefore he still haunted, cormorant-like, the rivers and creeks—the ‘permanent water’ of the colonist. ”

“ Oh, for an hour again in the Morahmee verandah, with your father smoking, the stars, the sea, the soft tones of the music, of a voice always musical in my ear! Ah me! it will not bear thinking of. It is midnight now, yet I can see a cloud of dust rising, as my men bring an outlying lot of cattle to the yard. [‘Poor fellow! poor, poor Ernest!’ sighed the voice referred to.]
I know you will be kind and forbearing with Augusta. She will not remain long in Australia. I think you will appreciate the unquestionably strong points in her character. Of these she has many—too many, in fact. ”

“ I should think not,’ growled Paul, with a leonine accent, as scenting danger. ‘I heard from him, let me see, a month or two back. I don’t believe a word of it. Who to?’
‘Well, I saw the young lady,’ persisted Baldacre, wholly unabashed, while he noted Antonia’s pale and unmoved features. ‘I went up in the coach with her, half way to Rainbar. She’s a cousin of his own; same name. Just out from England, and ever so rich.’
‘How the deuce should she go alone up to Rainbar?’ said Paul, full of doubt and dread. ”

“ But Augusta, defective in imagination, never believed in anything she did not see. Therefore a reed-bed appeared to her mental vision till the day of her death always as a species of abnormal dismal swamp, lacking the traditional element of moisture.
Other explorations were made in the cool hours of the evening, but gradually Miss Neuchamp tired of the monotonous aspect of matters. The dusty tracts were not pleasant to her feet. The mosquitoes assailed her with savage virulence, whether she walked at sunrise, mid-day, or darkening eve. ”

“ The active maiden swung herself sideways on the saddle and dropped to the ground as lightly as the ‘hounding beauty of Bessarabia,’ or any ordinary circus sawdust-treading celebrity. Lifting her habit, she advanced to the verandah with a curious mixture of shyness and self-possession. She successfully accomplished the traditional courtesy to Miss Neuchamp, and then shook hands cordially with Ernest, as she had been in the habit of doing. Miss Augusta put up her eyeglass at this, and regarded the ‘young person’ with a fixed and critical gaze. ”

“ Sticker and Pugsley were steady-going, precise men of business of the old school. As stock and station agents they had always steadily set their faces against all outlay except for the merest necessaries of life. Bred to their business in the old times when stock were plentiful, labour cheap, and cash extremely hard to lay hold of in any shape or form, they struggled desperately against these new-fangled notions of ‘throwing away money uselessly,’ as they termed the comparatively large outlay which they occasionally heard of upon dams, wells, fencing, woolsheds, and washpens. ”

“ Of course, as soon as she left Rainbar (we were on very short commons of politeness by that time) I resolved to write and ask you to take her in at Morahmee, and show her Sydney and our monde, in the existence of which she disbelieves. You must be prepared for her abusing everything and everybody. But I know no one who can more gently and effectually refute her prejudices than yourself, my dear Antonia. You even subjugated Jermyn Croker, I remember. By the bye, have him out to meet Augusta. She admires his file-firing style of attack. ”

“ A madman might neglect such an opportunity for the sake of a few thousand roughs scrambling for gold at California, or Ballarat, but not Jermyn Croker, if I know him.’
‘And suppose stock rise higher still?’ queried Mr. Frankston, smiling at the magnificent dogmatism of his unsentimental friend.
‘My dear Frankston, how a man of your age and experience can so blind himself to the real state of affairs is a marvel to me. Cattle can’t rise. Five pounds all round for young and old on the station is a price never before reached in Australia. ”