After dinner the friends sat and smoked in the broad verandah, and looked out over the undulating grassy downs, timbered like a park, and at the blue starry night.
“I really was in earnest,” said Jack, “when I talked about being tired of the sort of life you and I, and all the fellows in this district, are leading just now.”
“Were you though?” asked his friend; “what’s amiss with it?”
“Well, we are wasting our time, I consider, with these small cattle stations. No one has room for more than two or three thousand head of cattle. And what are they?”
“Only a pleasant livelihood,” answered his friend, “including books, quiet, fresh air, exercise, variety, a dignified occupation, and perfect independence, plus one or two thousand a year income. It’s not much, I grant you; but I’m a moderate man, and I feel almost contented.”
“What’s a couple of thousand a year in a country like this?” broke in Jack, impetuously, “while those sheep-holding fellows in Riverina are making their five or ten upon country only half or a quarter stocked. They have only to breed up, and there they are, with fifty or a hundred thousand sheep. Sheep, with the run given in, will always be worth a pound ahead, whatever way the country goes.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Tunstall; “though I have never been across the Murray, and don’t intend to go, as far as I know. As for sheep, I hate them, and I hate shepherds, lazy crawling wretches! they and the sheep are just fit to torment one another. Besides, how do you know these great profits are made? You’re not much of an accountant, Jack, excuse me.”
“I didn’t think you were so prejudiced,” quoth Jack, with dignity. “I can cipher fast enough when it’s worth while. Besides, better heads than mine are in the spec. You know Foreland, Marsalay, the Milmans, and Hugh Brass, all longheaded men! They are buying up unstocked country or cattle runs, and putting on ewes by the ten thousand.”
“Better heads than yours may lie as low, my dear Jack; though I don’t mean to say you have a bad head by any means. And as to the account-keeping you can do that very reasonably, like most other things—when you try, when you try, old man. But you don’t often try, you careless, easygoing beggar that you are, except when you are excited—as you are now—by something in the way of natural history—a mare’s nest, so to speak.”
“This mare’s nest will have golden eggs in it then. Theodorus Sharpe told me that he made as much in one year from the station he bought out there as he had done in half-a-dozen while he was wasting his life (that was his expression) down here.”
“Has the benevolent Theodorus any unstocked back country to dispose of?” asked Tunstall, quietly.
“Well, he has one place to sell—a regular bargain,” said Jack, rather hesitatingly, “but we didn’t make any special agreement about it. I am to go out and see the country for myself.”
“And suppose you do like it, and believe a good deal more of what Theodorus Sharpe tells you than I should like to do, what then?”
“Why then I shall sell Marshmead, buy a large block of country, and put on breeding sheep.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t be considered perfectly Eastern hospitality to call a man a perfect fool in one’s own house. But, Jack, if you do this thing I shall think so. You may quarrel with me if you like.”
“I should never quarrel with you, dear old boy, whatever you said or thought. Be sure of that,” said Jack, feelingly. “We have been too long friends and brothers for that. But I reserve my right to think you an unambitious, unprogressive what’s-your-name. You will be eaten out by cockatoos in another five years, when I am selling out and starting for my European tour.”
“I will take the chance of that,” said Tunstall; “but, joking apart, I would do anything to persuade you not to go. Besides, you have a duty to perform to this district, where you have lived so long, and, on the whole, done so well. I thought you were rather strong on the point, though I confess I am not, of duty to one’s country socially, politically, and what not.”
“Well, I grant you I had notions of that kind once,” admitted Jack, “but then you see all these small towns have become so confoundedly democratic lately, that I think we squatters owe them nothing, and must look after our own interests.”
“Which means making as much money as ever we can, and by whatever means. Jack! Jack! the demon of vulgar ambition, mere material advancement, has seized upon you, and I can see it is of no use talking. My good old warm-hearted Jack has vanished, and in his place I see a mere money-making speculator, gambling with land and stock instead of cards and dice. If you make the money you dream of, it will do you no good, and if not——”
“Well, if not? Suppose I don’t win?”
“Then you will lose your life, or all that makes life worth having. I have never seen a ruined man who had not lost much beside his years and his money. I can’t say another word. Good-night!”
Next morning the subject was not resumed. The friends wrung each other’s hands silently at parting, and Jack rode home to Marshmead.
When he got to the outer gate of the paddock he opened it meditatively, and as he swung it to without dismounting his heart smote him for the deed he was about to commit, as a species of treason against all his foregone life and associations.
CHAPTER II.
“Who calleth thee, heart? World’s strife,
With a golden heft to his knife.”—E.B. Browning
The sun was setting over the broad, open creek flat, which was dotted with groups of cattle, the prevailing white and roan colouring of which testified to their short-horn extraction. It was the autumnal season, but the early rains, which never failed in that favoured district, had promoted the growth of a thick and green if rather short sward, grateful to the eye after the somewhat hot day. A couple of favourite mares and half-a dozen blood yearlings came galloping up, neighing, and causing Hassan, his favourite old hack, to put up his head and sidle about. Everything looked prosperous and peaceful, and, withal, wore that indescribable air of half solitude which characterizes the Australian bush.
Jack’s heart swelled as he saw the place which he had first chosen out of the waste, which he had made and built up, stick by stick, hut by hut, into its present comfortable completeness, and he said to himself—“I have half a mind to stick to old Hampden after all!” Here was the place where, a mere boy, he had ridden a tired horse one night, neither of them having eaten since early morn, into the thick of a camp of hostile blacks! How he had called upon the old horse with sudden spur, and how gallantly the good nag, so dead beat but a moment before, had answered, and carried him safely away from the half-childish, half-ferocious beings who would have knocked him on the head with as little remorse then as an opossum! Yonder was where the old sod but stood, put up by him and the faithful Geordie, and in which he had considered himself luxuriously lodged, as a contrast to living under a dray.
Over there was where he had sowed his first vegetable seeds, cutting down and carrying the saplings with which it was fenced. It was, certainly, so small that the blacks believed he had buried some one there, whom he had done to death secretly, and would never be convinced to the contrary, disbelieving both his vows and his vegetables. There was the stockyard which he and Geordie had put up, carrying much of the material on their shoulders, when the bullocks, as was their custom, “quite frequent,” were lost for a week.
He gazed at the old slab hut, the first real expensive regular station-building which the property had boasted. How proud he had been of it too! Slabs averaging over a foot wide! Upper and lower wall-plates all complete. Loop holes, necessities of the period, on either side of the chimney. Never was