The Squatter's Dream

CHAPTER XV

“A little cloud as big as a man’s hand.”

It is not half a bad thing to “be laid up,” as it is called, for a reasonable and moderate fraction of one’s life – more especially if a “bright particular star” is impelled to beam softly and brilliantly upon one in consequence. Jack, after the inflammation, which gave him “fits” the first day or two, had subsided, began to enjoy himself after a subdued fashion. Though food was restricted by the despotic doctor, and liquor, other than tea, altogether interdicted, there was no embargo laid upon tobacco. Mr. Redgrave, therefore, used to get over the window which “gave” into the garden, and have many a soothing and delightful pipe in the afternoons and the long, clear, bright nights.

He was, I firmly believe, perfectly well able to read; but he pretended that it made his head ache, so Maud fell into the trap and volunteered to read Macaulay’s Essays, the Saturday Review, Macmillan’s Magazine, Market Harborough, and even some choice bits from Tennyson and Browning. What pleasant mornings these were! Stangrove was out; Mrs. Jane deep in housekeeping and nursery details; so these two people were able for a brief season to taste uninterruptedly the charm of pure intellectual enjoyment, unalloyed by the jar of small duties or the regretful sense of unperformed work. Convalescence, that regal state and condition, evades all ordinary responsibilities. It is above duty, blame, arithmetic and grammar – the scourges and penances of this toiling pilgrimage we call life. It was joy unspeakable to lie back with half-closed eyes and hear Maud’s fresh, clear young voice ringing out in accents of love, or laughter, or denunciation, or sounding strangely unnatural in the bitterness of the Saturday’s sarcasms.

There was much reviewing of reviewers too, poetizing upon poets; philosophizing upon philosophers. Arguments and comments were plentifully superinduced by the variety of texts. A week on board ship is equal to a year on land – a day’s tending of an invalid involves a feeling of dominancy and ownership, which renders the experience equal in completeness to a week on shipboard. According to this scale of reckoning, Maud Stangrove and John Redgrave had protracted opportunities of knowing each other’s characters, amounting in all to such duration of time as fully justified them in contracting that morally indissoluble betrothal called an “engagement.” This unlimited liability they actually had the temerity to enter into, and in the usual solemn manner sign, seal, and ratify, before John Redgrave left Juandah, perfectly recovered and unutterably happy.

He, of course, immediately acquainted Stangrove with the stupendous and miraculous fact, which that unimaginative personage received with his usual coolness.

“Maud is of age,” he remarked, “and is fully entitled to choose for herself. She could not have chosen a better fellow; but I wish that confounded mortgage of yours was sold for sewing guards, or whatever the women buy obsolete deeds for. I was quite startled by seeing ‘Know all men by these presents’ glaring at me on Jane’s work-table the other day. I hate the look even of one; it’s like the skin of a dead serpent.”

“Pooh! pooh!” said Jack, “you don’t think the trifle of debt I owe upon 60,000 sheep – which they will be and more by lambing time – worth thinking seriously about. Why, Mildmay Shrood told me when I was down – ”

“Just what he wished you to believe, I dare say. He’s a good fellow, as men of money go, I grant you; but he would put his thumb or his foot on you if the money market fell with as little compunction as I feel for this fellow here.” And Mark trod savagely upon a large brown flat insect, which was making its way in a blundering, purblind fashion from a decayed log to the wood-pile.

“I’m sorry that I can’t show as clear a sheet as I could have done once upon a time, old fellow,” said Jack. “But, on the other hand, nothing venture nothing have. If things turn out as I expect, please God, Maud shall have everything in the wide world that she can frame a wish for.”

“And if not – you must pardon me for looking on the dark side of things – I have so much more often seen that colour come up – ”

“If not,” said Jack, “if not – I will never ask her or any woman to share my poverty. Our engagement must remain as it is till I can tell with some show of accuracy how things are likely to go. You may trust me not to hurry her.”

“I trust you in that and in far more important matters,” returned Mark, as he wrung his hand. “Henceforth you are our brother, save in name – let things go as they will – but I must do my best for Maud.”

“Do you think I shall place a single obstacle in your way? If I thought I could not add some colour and richness to her life, which – pardon me – it lacks here, I would turn away now and never see her face more.”

When Jack returned to his home and his duties he displayed an amount of interest in the statistics and general progress of the station which amazed and delighted Mr. M‘Nab. That energetic personage had been toiling away by himself since the news, much exaggerated, of Mr. Redgrave’s adventure with his ordinary conscientious regularity. Everything was in apple-pie order. The minimization of labour had been carried out almost to a fault, as Jack thought, when he had to unsaddle and feed his own horse, and, Mr. M‘Nab being absent, and Monsieur Dubois gone for a load of wood, the place looked desolate enough after the home-like, old-fashioned Juandah. However, Jack comforted himself with thinking that this was the straight road to clearing off the mortgage – to a triumphant sale of a fully stocked run, and to the final possession of a “kingdom by the sea,” or beyond sea, in which Maud Stangrove should reign, when “the happy princess followed him.”

Day after day he accompanied M‘Nab in long rides from one end of the run to the other. With him he counted the sheep wherever such counting might be necessary. He took his turn at weighing of rations, and in every way worked with hand and head as hard (so M‘Nab, with grim humour, asserted) as if he had been his own overseer.

In the rare intervals of leisure, when that embodiment of concentrativeness permitted his thoughts to dwell upon any subject other than sheep, he could not avoid the inference that the proprietor of Gondaree was a changed man. Up to this turning-point of his life John Redgrave had been content to work fairly, sometimes fiercely, with head or hand; but, in any case, to accept success or failure with undisturbed serenity. Now it was otherwise. He examined searchingly the whole working of the establishment, and satisfied himself, much to M‘Nab’s gratification, of the condition and well-being of each division of the stock, of the plant, and machinery of the place. He went carefully through the account-books, and verified the debits and credits, with an accuracy which his lieutenant had not believed to be in him, as he afterwards said. He compiled a statement of the financial position of Gondaree, which, after various testings and corrections, was agreed between them to be arithmetically, mathematically, indisputably exact. He had fully decided to sell. The sheep were in fine condition, severely culled, and originally well chosen. The run was of the best possible quality, in full working order, and capable of yet greater development. He could not imagine its fetching less than the highest market price. At that time such a run, so stocked, so improved, was held to be good value for twenty-five shillings per head. It was not impossible or even unlikely that two competing buyers might run it up to twenty-seven and sixpence. The lesser price would pay off the mortgage – he had no other debts in the world – and leave him, say, forty or fifty thousand pounds.

This was the account current he had ciphered out many and many a time. It was written upon sheets of paper, large and small, upon blotting-pads, upon stray leaves of journals, and pretty well engraven upon a less perishable, more retentive, material – the heart of John Redgrave.

Something in this wise were the figures: —

As far as any one could make out, judging from the present prices, Gondaree was as safe to sell at this estimate as Mr. Stangrove’s fast, handsome buggy horses – young, sound, and a dead match – were to bring fifty pounds in any sale-yard in the colonies. Here was a magnificent surplus. Say, forty thousand pounds. That was enough, surely. A large proportion would of course remain on mortgage, and, as he would receive one-third or one-half cash, it could not be better placed, receiving, as he would, eight per cent. interest, the ordinary tariff between squatter and squatter. Should he not sell before shearing, and realize this Aladdin’s Palace, into which the Princess was ready to step, at once and without delay?

He could not exactly afford the train of slaves, with diamonds as big as pigeons’ eggs, and rubies and emeralds to match; but on three or four thousand a year a decent approximation to rational luxury might be reached. Should he decide at once, and, as with poor, dear, old, despised little Marshmead, scribble off the fatal advertisement and abide the issue?

He took up his pen. But why do so few people sell out mining shares, railway debentures, seductive scrip of all sorts, at exactly the maximum of profit? He wavered. Then he concluded to reap the profit of the last, really the last shearing; wait till the 20,000 lambs were fit to count, and thus make sure – of course it was a moral certainty – of an additional twenty thousand pounds. Prices would keep up at least another couple of years – that would be long enough for him.

So he decided to see his shearing over, and to have everything fit to deliver, at a week’s notice, by the time the coming crop of lambs should be weanable and countable. While this great resolve was maturing, the fiercely bright summer days, each about sixteen hours long, were gliding by. The stars burned nightly in the unclouded heavens, in which so pure was the atmosphere, so free from the slightest hint of mist or storm, that the most distant denizen of the thought-untravelled stellar waste shone golden-clear. Even in the sultry monotony of that changeless sea-like desert summer is not endless. Autumn, with an earlier twilight, a keener breath of early morn, a shorter, scarce less burning day, advanced, followed with slow but firm step the fading summer-time.

“So the fat sheep are drafted, tar-branded, and fairly on the road at last,” said Mr. Redgrave, after a week’s tolerably sharp work. “They look very prime. I hope they will meet as good a market as they deserve.”

“Never a better lot left the Warroo,” said M‘Nab; “the wethers are very even, and extraordinary weights. Better sheep I never handled. The drover is a good steady fellow; and I’ll catch them up before they get near the train.”

“The season has been dry the last month or two,” remarked Jack; “after those unlucky floods one felt as if it never would be too dry again; but it looks like it now for all that.”

“The feed is not so good as it might be on the road, they say,” agreed M‘Nab; “but six weeks’ steady driving will take them to the train; and they will lose very little condition in that time. If we don’t top the market we ought to do.”

Within a few weeks after this conversation Jack found himself sole denizen of Gondaree, M‘Nab having taken himself off by the mail, allowing just sufficient time for him to catch the sheep and organize the order in which they should be “trained” for the Melbourne market. With the first mail after his departure, Jack discovered to his great vexation that a sudden and serious fall had taken place in fat stock. The season had, without any great demonstration of dryness, been consistently free from rain. It was cool and breezy – a hopeful condition, Jack thought. It was a very bad sign with the older residents.

It has been remarked, by persons of lengthened Australian experience, that the sudden fluctuations in price which have occurred with a curious periodicity since there has been stock enough in the colonies to found theories upon, have usually as little warning as the alarm of fire in a theatre. One person, scenting the coming danger, rises and steals quietly out, a few more follow with ill-concealed haste, then with sudden terror starts up every creature in the building, and the resistless agony of the panic is in full operation.

So, apparently, is it with those mighty and disastrous changes in the value of live stock, which have ever, in the history of Australia, pulled men’s houses about their ears, like those of cards. They have whelmed alike the grizzled pioneer after a life of toil, the youthful capitalist in the first year of his first purchase, the hoary merchant, and the gambling speculator in one tidal wave of ruin. Before such an under-current sets in the apparent dearth of stock, in a land full of sheep and cattle, from Cooktown to the county of Cumberland, is curiously noticeable. Nobody will sell their oldest ewes, their most decrepit cows; it pays so much better to hold on. Bills, when times and credit are good, are renewed (with, of course, interest added), and every financial accommodation is resorted to rather than that the sanguine stockholder should be compelled to slay the goose which (in his opinion) is so prolific of the golden eggs, in the guise of wool and increase.

So the game goes on, until some fine day the money-market tightens, after its deadly, unforeseen, boa-constrictor fashion. The ominous cry of fire, or its financial synonym, is raised. A few wary or fortunate operators “get out;” but for the rank and file, who have been trusting to continuous good luck, high prices, and a “change in the climate for the better,” the stampede of the panic is their only portion. In all lost battles of life, more than once has it chanced that “the brave in that trampling multitude had a fearful death to die.”

Similar storm-signals now smote upon Jack’s unaccustomed ear.

“We are sorry to note that all our correspondents speak of continued absence of rain in their particular localities. A drought is beginning to arouse the fears of stockholders, and prices of fat and store stock have fallen rapidly.” Such was the utterance of the Warroo Watchman.

This was the letter from his town agents, to whom he had entrusted the sale of the much-considered fat sheep: —

“Dear Sir, – If you haven’t started your fat sheep, keep them back till you hear again from us.

“Market glutted – all stock down.

“Yours faithfully,

“Drawe & Backwell.”

This looked bad. What a nuisance it was! For the last two years he couldn’t have gone wrong, at whatever time he had despatched them; a fair average price had been always obtainable; and now, just when everything was marked out, the whole arrangements incapable of failure in any way – here the confounded demand breaks down, and upsets all a man’s calculations!

Something after this fashion ran Jack’s thoughts. What should he do? Bringing the sheep back again was expensive, undignified, and would by no means aid in decreasing the debt, which had lately become rather a bête noir in his daily imaginings. The Warroo was not sufficiently advanced for the telegraph, or he might have held converse with the ready-witted M‘Nab, who would have been certain to strike out the most favourable line of action. He had nothing for it but to write to Drawe and Backwell, to say that he had sent forward the sheep; that they must communicate with M‘Nab, in charge, and do the best they could under the circumstances.

Up to this period of the enterprise John Redgrave, in despite of the episodes of the wool-shed and the flood, had suffered from no anxiety as to the ultimate success of the great venture. The prices of wool and sheep, store, fat, ewes and lambs, culls – everything that could be counted and could run out of a yard – had been firm and adamantine, as the bullion in the vaults of the Bank of England. Every sort, kind, and condition of sheep was worth half-a-sovereign, two to a pound, minimum; one pound a head with station; without, ten shillings.