Rolf Boldrewood

“ 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. ”

“ What a glorious thing was life! (Of course there were drawbacks—but they must be expected.) Here Arnold Banneret’s mind reverted to that little hospital at Pilot Mount, to the delirious patient in one bed—suspected in lucid intervals to be himself—to Nurse Lilburne’s grave, compassionate face—to the dead miner but two beds away—to the empty couch, which had been occupied last night! ”

“ A yearly or biennial visit to the cities of the coast gave all hands a taste of social life, and, with a breath of the sea breezes, a sight of the ocean wave and the world-famed harbour. So the family grew up: the girls into vigorous, independent maidens, riding and driving, reading and dancing alternately—with equal enthusiasm, as is the wont of the country-reared damsel, whether in Britain or Australia, Galway or Goulburn. ”

“ Of his comrades, one of the boldest explorers, one of the most capable pioneers of the Great West Australian desert, survived but to fall a victim in later years to the arrow of a Nigerian savage; another not less dauntless, and, in time of need, patient of hunger, thirst, and all but the direst extremity of famine, a master of woodcraft—ever tireless, cheerful, and inventive, lay beneath South African sands. But why dwell on failure or disaster—on history as old as humanity? ”

“ When one reckons up the toil and thought which the subduing of the wilderness has cost, the labour and the treasure expended in building up these fair cities—these grand provinces, this population of British blood and nurture, not inferior to any people in the world; to believe that the fruit of heroic colonisation, for which noble lives have been spent, noble blood shed, should have been all for nought—for worse than nothing—for ruin and desolation—the degradation of a nation, as in the old-world chronicles, about which we read, and take no heed ”

“ Dangers thicken at every step in the battle of life, but better they a hundredfold than the cankers, the ‘moth and rust’ of inglorious peace. ‘However,’ thought Banneret, as he roused himself from this introspective reverie, ‘here is a state of [90] so-called prosperity, for which I have been longing, consciously or otherwise, all my life; and now that it has come, why am I indulging in useless regrets and imaginary, unreal drawbacks? Surely, as I have fought against trouble and discouragement in the past, I ought not to waver at the ideal fairyland in the future.’
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“ There was a considerable amount of laudatory remark when the reading of the ‘Abbotsford Hunt’ was concluded.
‘What a charming, delightful creature Sir Walter must have been!’ said Hermione. ‘What a pity he should ever have been hampered by debt and business worries. Such a model country gentleman, and, oh! as a companion, what an honour to have known him; to have watched his eye brighten and glow as some deed of valour or generous action came before him! Then his tenderness to children. Think of “Pet Marjorie”! Vanda and I cried our eyes out at her [428] death. ”

“ All reasonable indulgence in the pleasures of youth for the young people, with the calm satisfactions of middle age for the seniors, seemed assured. Not only for the present, but for years in advance, their position was unassailable by fate. Mrs. Banneret, to be sure, could not help suggesting from time to time, in a mild, tentative way, that they were too happy, the sky was too bright, the outlook too fair to last—something adverse must happen—it was unnatural that this fairyland, lotos-eating state of matters should remain unchanged! ”

“ Youth is the time for enjoyment, and being all of the right age, healthy, happy, and hopeful, they enjoyed the pleasures suitable to the season, to their age and position, with all the ardour of early youth. They went everywhere and did everything,—hunting, polo, balls, garden parties. It did not pass without notice that the young people of the new and the old Hexham families were constantly together, and that at all social gatherings and entertainments Reggie Banneret was never very far from the Honourable Corisande’s vicinity. ”

“ Every night Hermione and Vanda retired, after a day filled with novel and delicious sensations, to dream of a new kind of felicity on the morrow; a forecast the reality of which rarely disappointed them. Their parents occasionally uttered a note of warning as to the too eager pursuit of pleasure, and the need of moderation even, on the score of health. But there was small reason for caution on that score: the young people had exceptionally strong constitutions—sound, unworn, and elastic, with all the marvellous recuperative power of early youth. ”

“ So they parted on the last day of the Bannerets’ sojourn on the great ‘Last Chance’ goldfield, as it was now called,—famed throughout all Australia as the wonderland of that Far South land which had given so many wonders and surprises to the old world, and to the country which had founded it; which a hundred years from its birth, in peril from starvation, from conquest, from criminal surroundings and ignorant misrepresentation, had established an export trade of many millions, and borne sons who fought shoulder to shoulder with Britain’s best troops in defence of the Empire. ”

“ Now the veteran who had toiled in so many lands, in so varied a range of climate, from the snows of Hokitiki to the torrid wastes of the Golden Belt, where camels and turbaned Afghan drivers now stood around his grave, had found his rest. Uneducated, untaught, unversed in the lore of civilisation, ancient or modern, his simple creed had been to ‘go straight,’ as he would have expressed it, to stand by a ‘mate’ to the death, to owe no man a shilling when his mining ventures paid, and to work for more when they failed. ”

“ But, after all, it’s a ten-to-one chance we never meet again. Think of me as one who might have been a better man with better luck. Adios, señora. Adios, Don Carlos Alvarez. Adios, señoritas.’ Here he shook hands once more with the men, and bowing low to the girls and Mrs. Banneret, strode away to a swift hansom which awaited him, and disappeared from their eyes. ”

“ How many instances had she witnessed among the early workers of the goldfields! Some were unsuccessful at the first onset. Fortune eluded them. Hope deserted the unstable worker—the impoverished wife: the next stage was a pallet in the crowded hospital, all too soon to be followed by the requiem dirge and the funeral train. The environment was depressing, but, encircled by sickness, oft-times alone with death at the midnight hour, no terrors ever caused Elinor Lilburne to swerve for one moment from the undoubting faith of her youth, or to shake her trust in God. ”

“ Yes, Mrs. Banneret! and it was a good day for you and the children, and the Commissioner here, as I did. If poor old Jack had dropped, in that fifty-mile dry stage—I won’t say where—it mightn’t have mattered much to him. It was all in the day’s work—one more fool of a digger rubbed out. But to you, ma’am, that has always had a kind word and a bit of help for every one, and your boys and girls that’s been brought up to do the same—it will matter to the last day of your lives. ”

“ Yes! it stands there, clear, neutral-tinted—nude—frowning, as doubtless it has done for centuries, æons, if you will—since the central fires lifted it from the womb of Dame Hertha. The day is older, but the unclouded sky and the atmosphere are of such clearness that distant objects can be discerned with almost perfect certainty; he is awake and alert now, if ever—his senses have not played him false—there is a tent, at no very great distance, and sitting by it, on a box, is a man smoking, while another appears to be putting together articles of camp furniture. ”

“ From the far ocean-surrounded islands of the south land, where still linger the traces of the moa, and the apteryx perplexes the tourist, to the torrid levels of the West Australian fields, where the miner’s harvest is weighed and reckoned in ounces of fine gold, the love of athletic sports, which the British emigrants carried with them, has caused their representative champions to be respected from India to the Pole. ”

“ Among the miscellaneous crowd of adventurers and tourists who had dared the privations of desert travel, was a contingent of lady nurses. These meritorious women, not less daring than the reckless miners who had faced death in so many shapes, in so many lands, had joined the army of hope at the earliest stage that transit could be guaranteed. They knew, none better, how soon the fever scourge of crowded camps, civil or military, would ‘take up a claim,’ ever widening and expansive, sheltered by the dark wing of Azrael. ”

“ Arnold Banneret shuddered when he thought of the scores of desirable places, old and half-ruinous, ill-drained, decayed, damp, smothered in ivy, shaded by vast growths of world-old groves that it would be sacrilege to cut down, and death by slow and gradual process to leave unaltered. ”

“ Certainly they were good specimens of the Anglo-Saxon youth of the day, whether reared in Great or Greater Britain. Tall, well proportioned, athletic, well dressed, and showing ‘good form,’ which means so many indefinable qualities and habitudes, it may be imagined with what pride and joy their parents gazed on them, and how, from very joy and thankfulness, their mother’s eyes overflowed as her loving arms embraced her first-born and his brother. Their father’s short but fervent greeting was not effusive, after the manner of Englishmen, but none the less heartfelt and secretly joyful. ”

“ Then the delicious awakening in the fair, sweet dawn of the early summer, with the certainty that there was now no need for doubt or anxiety touching the family fortunes. A competence, nay, more than a sufficiency for all their needs, was assured. Their luck had turned. No more was it necessary to go stolidly on with the daily work which gained the daily bread. There was not, could not be again, the necessity for calculation as to what liability required to be arranged for—what pressing account to be paid in full, or if not, compromised by payment on account. ”

“ In much the same sense as the West of Ireland member of ‘The Blazers’ rode, the colonial champions in the Cambridge boat may each have vowed, as they stretched each manly thew and sinew, to do a man’s best for the good land for which their fathers had toiled and striven and fought in the long-past years; with droughts and fires, blacks, bushrangers, and other foes of the pioneer—resulting, alas! not seldom, in total wreck and financial ruin after the work of a life’s best years. ”

“ But there’s the calm dignity of command, a birthright never to be acquired. You feel that such a man must be obeyed; that no one would dare to resist for one moment. No doubt he has shed blood—which is dreadful to think of—but he has saved life also, and done many merciful and charitable actions—if we only knew.’
‘Oh, yes! scores, hundreds,’ said Vanda: ‘carried starving crowds of natives away from their islands when the crops had failed; picked up canoes at sea when they were beginning to cast lots for one to die to save the rest; and——’
‘Don’t tell me any more,’ pleaded Hermione. ”

“ It is good even to be thought rich, if one is not thereby tempted to spend extravagantly. As mankind are constituted, whether the money is inherited, gained by accident, by the hardly reputable means of gambling, so long as it is known to be there, a certain kind of respect and deference goes along with its possession. Perhaps in Arnold Banneret’s case, whose exploration of an inhospitable desert where men’s lives were but as counters in the game, and had been expended as recklessly, it disposed the critics of the clubs and swagger hotels to regard him as having achieved true distinction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Everything was so fresh and new, even to her who had been so many years a resident on goldfields. The people were, many of them, lately from Britain, America, or the Continent of Europe: all sorts of young men unattached, who had never seen Australia before, many of them of good, even aristocratic families, not occupied in any profession, eager and anxious to have their share of the treasure which Dame Nature was distributing with lavish hand; men from old colonial families, who brought their wives with them, or sent for them after they had secured an investment likely to be permanent. ”