Chapter Three.
A Startler.
Constant dropping will wear a stone, says the old proverb; and if you doubt it, go and look at some step where the rain has dripped from gutter or eave, and see what a nice little hollow is worn. The constant dropping of unsavoury words wears the mind too; and these remarks and banterings about Australia and its convict life in the early days of the century began to have their effect upon Nic Braydon.
He was a good deal younger when his father, an eminent physician in London, awoke to the fact that he had been curing other people at his own expense, that he had worked and studied and been anxious over patients in his dingy house in Finsbury till he was completely broken in health; and he knew enough of his own nature to be aware that, if he kept on as he was, he would in a year or two be a confirmed invalid, if he were still living. In other words, he had worn the steel spring of life till it had grown thin in some places, and rusted and eaten away in others for want of use.
Then he said to himself like a wise man, “I advise others and neglect myself. I must be my own physician now.”
He knew perfectly what he ought to do—take to some open-air life in a healthy country, where his avocations would give him plenty of outdoor exercise; and just at that time he met the newly appointed, governor of the penal colony of Australia at dinner. He heard a good deal about the place, went home and read, and inquired more; then, striking while the lion was hot, he sold his practice, house, and furniture, provided all that he could think of as necessaries, communicated with the government, and, after placing his son Dominic, then aged ten, at the Friary with Dr Dunham, he sailed with his wife and two daughters for the far-off land.
Now, Nic’s notions about all this had grown a little hazy, while the teasings of his companions grew keener and sharper day by day, and mastered the facts; so that at last he had often found himself wondering whether there was any truth in his schoolfellows’ words, and his father had, after all, done something which necessitated his leaving the country.
That seed did not take root; but it swelled, and shot, and gave him a great deal of pain, making him grow morbid, old, and thoughtful beyond his years. He became more sensitive; and when at last the doctor seemed to side against him, and treated him as he thought harshly, Nic began to find out thoroughly that it is not good for a boy to lose the loving help and companionship of father, mother, and sisters, and he grew day by day more gloomy, and ill-used as he believed, till at last, after the sharp reproof from the doctor about his quarrelsome disposition and ill-treatment of his schoolfellow Green, he began to feel it was time he set off to seek his fortune, never once pausing to think that the doctor had only judged by appearances. He had seen Nic attacking Green quite savagely, and not having been present earlier, and, truth to tell, not having sufficiently studied the inner life of his boys, he had looked upon Nic as an ill-conditioned, tyrannical fellow, who deserved the severest reproof.
So Nic thought it was time to seek his fortune.
Who was the miserable ass who first put that wretched idea into boys’ heads, and gave them a mental complaint which has embittered many a lad’s life, when, after making some foolish plunge, he has gone on slowly finding out that castles in the air, built up by his young imagination, are glorious at a distance, but when approached the colours fade? They are erected with no foundation, no roof; no walls, windows, doors, or furniture—in fact, they are, as Shakespeare says, “the baseless fabric of a vision.”