A sweet girlish voice suddenly awoke him from his reverie, as one of the casement windows opened, and a slight, youthful figure stood at his shoulder.
“No wonder you are ashamed, you mean old daddy! Here have mother and I been exerting ourselves this hot afternoon to provide you with a superior entertainment, quite a club dinner in its way; attired ourselves, too, in the most attractive manner – look at me, for instance – and what is our reward? Why, instead of going to dress sensibly, you sit mooning here, and everything will be spoiled.”
“My darling! I am ready for my bath, I promise you; but I am tired, and perhaps a little discouraged. I have had a long day, and seen nothing to cheer me either.”
“Poor old father! So have we all; so has mother, so has Hubert, so have I and Linda. But it’s no use giving in, is it? Now walk off, there’s a dear! You’re not so very tired, unless your constitution has broken down all of a sudden. It takes a good day to knock you up, that I know. But we must all put a good face on it – mustn’t we? – till we’re quite sure that the battle’s lost. The Prussians may come up yet, you know!”
He drew the girl’s face over to his own, and kissed her fondly. Laura Stamford was indeed a daughter that a father might proudly look upon, that her mother might trust to be her best aid and comfort, loving in prosperity, lightsome of heart as the bird that sings at dawn, brave in adversity, and strong to suffer for those she loved.
All innocent she of the world’s hard ways, its lurid lights, its dread shadows. Proud, pure, unselfish in every thought and feeling, all the strength of her nature went out in fondness for those darlings of her heart, the inmates of that cherished home, wherein they had never as yet known sorrow. The fateful passion which makes or mars all womanhood was for her as yet in the future. What prayers had ascended to Heaven that her choice might be blessed, her happiness assured!
“This is the time for action, no more contemplation,” she said, with a mock heroic air; “the shower bath is filled; your evening clothes are ready in the dressing-room; mother is putting the last touch to her cap, Andiamo!”
When the family met at the tea-table – a comprehensive meal which, though not claiming the rank of dinner, furnished most of its requisites – Mr. Stamford owned that life wore a brighter prospect.
His wife and daughters in tasteful, though not ostentatious, evening attire would have graced a more brilliant entertainment. The boys, cool and fresh after their swim in the river, were happy and cheerful. Hubert, correctly attired, and much benefited by his bath and toilette, had done justice to his manifest good looks.
The well-cooked, neatly served meal, with the aid of a few glasses of sound Australian Reisling, was highly restorative. All these permissible palliatives tended to recreate tone and allay nervous depression. “The banker’s letter notwithstanding, things might not be so very bad,” the squatter thought. He would go to town. He might make other arrangements. It might even rain. If the worst came to the worst, he might be able to change his account. If things altered for the better, there was no use desponding. If, again, all were lost, it were better to confront fate boldly.
“Shall I pull through, after all?” said Mr. Stamford to himself, for the fiftieth time, as he looked over the morning papers at Batty’s Hotel, about a week after the occurrences lately referred to. In a mechanical way, his eyes and a subsection of his brain provided him with the information that, in spite of his misfortunes, the progress of Australian civilisation went on pretty much as usual. Floods in one colony, fires in another. The Messageries steamer Caledonien just in. The Carthage (P. and O.) just sailed with an aristocratic passenger list. Burglars cleverly captured. Larrikins difficult of extinction. The wheat crop fair, maize only so-so. These important items were registered in the brooding man’s duplex-acting brain after a fashion. But in one corner of that mysterious store-house, printing machine, signal-station, whatnot, one thought was steadily repeating itself with bell-like regularity. “What if the bank’s ultimatum is, no further advance, no further advance, no further ad – ”
After breakfast, sadly resolved, he wended his way to the palace of finance, with the potentate of which he was to undergo so momentous an interview.
Heart-sick and apprehensive as he was, he could not avoid noting with quick appreciation the sights and sounds of civilisation which pressed themselves on his senses as he walked in a leisurely manner towards the Bank of New Guinea. “What wonders and miracles daily pass before one’s eyes in a city,” he said to himself, “when one has been as long away from town as I have! What a gallery of studies to a man, after a quiet bush life, is comprised in the everyday life of a large city! What processions of humanity – what light and colour! What models of art, strength, industry! What endless romances in the faces of the very men and women that pass and repass so ceaselessly! Strange and how wonderful is all this! Glorious, too, the ocean breath that fans the pale faces of the city dwellers! What would I not give for a month’s leisure and a quiet heart in which to enjoy it all!”
The solemn chime of a turret clock struck ten. It aroused Stamford to a sense of the beginning of the commercial day, and his urgent necessity to face the enemy, whose outposts were so dangerously near his fortress.
The ponderously ornate outer door of the Bank of New Guinea had but just swung open as he passed in, preceding but by a second a portly, silk-coated personage, apparently equally anxious for an early interview. He looked disappointed as he saw Stamford make his way to the manager’s room.
For one moment he hesitated, then said: “If your business is not important, sir, perhaps you won’t mind my going in first?”
“I’m sorry to say it is important,” he replied, with his customary frankness; “but I will promise you not to take up a minute more of Mr. Merton’s valuable time than I can help.”
The capitalist bowed gravely as Harold Stamford passed into the fateful reception-room, of which the very air seemed to him to be full of impalpable tragedies.
The manager’s manner was pleasant and gentlemanlike. The weather, the state of the country, and the political situation were glanced at conversationally. There was no appearance of haste to approach the purely financial topic which lay so near the thoughts of both. Then the visitor took the initiative.
“I had your letter last week about my account, Mr. Merton. What is the bank going to do in my case? I came down on purpose to see you.”
The banker’s face became grave. It was the crossing of swords, en garde as it were. And the financial duel began.
“I trust, Mr. Stamford, that we shall be able to make satisfactory arrangements. You are an old constituent, and one in whom the bank has reposed the fullest confidence; but,” here the banker pushed up his hair, and his face assumed an altered expression, “the directors have drawn my attention to the state of your account, and I feel called upon to speak decidedly. It must be reduced.”
“But how am I to reduce it? You hold all my securities. It is idle to talk thus; pardon me if I am a little brusque, but I must sell Windāhgil – sell the old place, and clear out without a penny if I do not get time – a few months of time – from the bank! You know as well as I do that it is impossible to dispose of stations now at a reasonable price. Why, you can hardly get the value of the sheep! Look at Wharton’s Bundah Creek how it was given away the other day. Fifteen thousand good sheep, run all fenced, good brick house, frontage to a navigable river. What did it bring? Six and threepence a head. Six and threepence! With everything given in, even to his furniture, poor devil! Why, the ewe cost him twelve shillings, five years before. Sale! It was a murder, a mockery! And is Windāhgil to go like that, after all my hard work? Am I and my children to be turned out penniless because the bank refuses me another year’s grace? The seasons are just as sure to change as we are to have a new moon next month. I have always paid up the interest and part of the principal regularly, have I not? I have lived upon so little too! My poor wife and children for these last long years have been so patient! Is there no mercy, not even ordinary consideration to be shown me?”
“My dear Mr. Stamford,” said the manager kindly, “do not permit yourself to