‘You will find Dick Evans an original character,’ said the parson, ‘but I do not know any man in the district so well suited for this particular service. He has been twenty years in Australia, and knows everything, both good and evil, that can be known of the country and people. He is an old soldier, and in the 50th Regiment saw plenty of service. He has his faults, but they don’t appear on the surface, and I know him well enough to guarantee that you will be wholly ignorant of them. His manners – with a dash of soldier servant – are not to be surpassed.’
At an hour next morning so soon after dawn that Andrew Cargill, the most incorruptible of early birds, was nearly caught napping, Mr. Dick Evans arrived with two horses and his waggon. The rest of the team, not being wanted, he had left in their paddock at Homebush. He immediately placed the waggon in the most convenient position for general reference, took out his horses, which he accommodated with nose-bags, and with an air of almost suspicious deference inquired of Andrew what he could commence to do in the way of packing.
The two men, as if foreseeing that possible encounters might henceforth take place between them, looked keenly at each other. Richard Evans had the erect bearing of which the recipient of early drill can rarely divest himself. His wiry figure but slightly above the middle height, his clean-shaved, ruddy cheek, his keen grey eye, hardly denoted the fifty years and more which he carried so lightly.
A faultless constitution, an open-air occupation with habits of great bodily activity, had borne him scatheless through a life of hardship and risk.
This personage commenced with a request to be shown the whole of the articles intended to be taken, gently but firmly withstanding any opinion of Andrew’s to the contrary, and replying to his protests with the mild superiority of the attendant in a lunatic asylum. After the whole of the light luggage had been displayed, he addressed himself to the task of loading and securing it with so much economy of space and advantage of position, that Andrew readily yielded to him the right to such leadership in future.
‘Nae doot,’ he said, ‘the auld graceless sworder that he is, has had muckle experience in guiding his team through thae pathless wildernesses, and it behoves a wise man to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” But wae’s me, it’s dwelling i’ the tents o’ Kedar!’
Dick Evans, who was a man of few words and strong in the heat of argument, was by no means given to mixing up discussion with work. He therefore kept on steadily with his packing until evening, only requiring from Andrew such help and information as were indispensable.
‘There,’ said he, as he removed the low-crowned straw hat from his heated brow, and prepared to fill his pipe, ‘I think that will about do. The ladies can sit there in the middle, where I’ve put the tent loose, and use it as a sofy, if they’ve a mind to. I can pitch it in five minutes at night, and they can sleep in it as snug as if they had a cottage with them. You and your wife can have the body of the waggon to yourselves at night, and I’ll sleep under the shafts. The captain and the young gentlemen can have all the room between the wheels, and nobody can want more than that. I suppose your missis can do what cooking’s wanted?’
‘Nae doot,’ Andrew replied with dignity, ‘Mistress Cargill wad provide a few bits o’ plain victual. A wheen parritch, a thocht brose, wad serve a’ hands better than flesh meat, and tea or coffee, or siccan trash.’
‘Porridge won’t do for me,’ said the veteran firmly, ‘not if I know it. Oatmeal’s right enough for you Scotchmen, and not bad stuff either, in your own country, but beef and mutton’s our tack in Australia.’
‘And will ye find a flesher in this “bush,” as they ca’ it, that we’ve to push through?’ demanded Andrew. ‘Wad it no be mair wiselike to keep to victual that we can carry in our sacks?’
‘Get plenty of beef and mutton and everything else on the road,’ said Mr. Evans, lighting his pipe and declining further argument. ‘Don’t you forget to bring a frying-pan. I’ll take the horses back to the paddock now and be here by daylight, so as we can make a good start.’
It had been arranged by Mr. Sternworth that the boys, as he called them, should set forth in the morning with Evans and the waggon, as also Andrew and Jeanie, taking with them the cow, the dogs, and the smaller matters which the family had brought. No necessity for Captain Effingham and the ladies to leave Sydney until the second day. He would drive them in a hired carriage as far as the first camp, which Evans had described to him.
They would thus avoid the two days’ travel, and commence their journey after the expedition had performed its trial trip, so to speak.
‘What should we have done without your kind care of us?’ said Mrs. Effingham. ‘Everything up to this time has been a pleasure trip. When is the hard life that we heard so much of to begin?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Rosamond, ‘Mr. Sternworth is going to be like the brigand in the romances, who used to lure persons from their homes. I have no doubt but that there are “hard times” awaiting us somewhere or somehow.’
‘My dear young lady, let me compliment you on your good sense in taking that view of the future. It will save you from disappointment, and fill your mind with a wholesome strength to resist adversity. You may need all your philosophy, and I counsel you to keep it, like armour, well burnished. I do not know of any evil likely to befall you, but that you will have trouble and toil may be taken as certain. Only, after a time, I predict that you will overcome your difficulties, and find yourselves permanently benefited.’
The old gentleman, whose arrangements were as successfully carried out as if he had been the commissary instead of the chaplain of his former regiment, made his appearance on the following day in a neat barouche drawn by a pair of good-looking bay horses, and driven by a highly presentable coachman.
‘Why, it might pass muster for a private carriage,’ said Annabel. ‘And I can see a crest on the panels. I suppose we shall never own a carriage again as long as we live.’
‘This is a private carriage, or rather was, once upon a time,’ said Mr. Sternworth; ‘the horses and the coachman belonged to it. Many carriages were put down last year, owing to a scarcity of money, and my old friend Watkins here, having saved his wages, like a prudent man, bought his master’s carriage and horses, and commenced as cab proprietor. He has a large connection among his former master’s friends, and is much in demand at balls and other festivities.’
The ex-coachman drove them at a lively pace, but steadily, along a macadamised turnpike road, not so very different from a country lane in Surrey, though wider, and not confined by hedges. The day was fine. On either side, after the town was left behind, were large enclosures, wherein grazed sheep, cattle, and horses. Sometimes they passed an orangery, and the girls were charmed with the rows of dark green trees, upon which the golden fruit was ripe. Then an old-fashioned house, in an orchard, surrounded by a wall – wall and house coloured red, and rusty with the stains of age – much like a farmhouse in Hertfordshire. One town they passed was so manifestly old-fashioned, having even ruins, to their delight and astonishment, that they could hardly believe they were in a new country.
‘Some one has been playing Rip Van Winkle tricks upon us,’ said Rosamond. ‘We have been asleep a hundred years, and are come back finding all things grown old and in decay.’
‘You must not forget that the colony has been established nearly fifty years,’ said Mr. Sternworth, ‘and that these are some of the earliest settlements. They were not always placed in the most judicious sites; wherefore, as newer towns have passed them in the race for trade, these have submitted to become, as you see them, “grey with the rime of years,” and simulating decay as well as circumstances will permit.’
‘Well, I think much more highly of Australia, now that I have seen a real ruin or two,’ said Annabel decisively. ‘I always pictured the country full of hideous houses of boards, painted white, with spinach green doors and windows.’
The afternoon was well advanced as the inmates of the carriage descried the encampment which Mr. Evans had ordered, with