He found, after a day or two, that he had small reason to fear of isolation. A gentlemanlike stranger needs but the evidence of this quality to procure friendly acquaintances, if not intimates, at any club.
He was soon known as ‘a young fellow who had been sent out to old Frankston, and was going to buy a station. A decent sort of fellow belonging to swell people, and so on. Going to do wonders, and make important changes. That will wear off—we’ve all passed through that mill. He’ll settle down and take to wool and tallow kindly, like all the rest of us, in good time.’
Mr. Neuchamp made the discovery that, if he had been less obstinately bent upon separating himself from the presumably prejudiced society of the new land, in the fervour of his philanthropy, he might possibly have met with other colonists, who, like Paul Frankston, would have shielded him from harm, and proffered him good and true advice. In his new home he made the acquaintance of more than one silver-haired pioneer, who, while gently parrying the thrusts of his eager and somewhat communistic theories, quietly put forward the dictates of long experience and successful practice. Every one was disposed to be tolerant, agreeable, even friendly, to the frank youngster, who was, in spite of his crotchets, evidently ‘good form.’ And Ernest realised fully, and rather unexpectedly, that even in a colony it is possible for a stranger to fall among friends, and that colonists are not invariably all stamped out of one pattern, whatever anticipations may be compounded in the fancy of the emigrating critic.
In another respect Ernest found that his club privileges were valuable as well as luxurious. Among the squatters, who composed the larger proportion of the members, he had the advantage of hearing the question of pastoral property discussed with fullest clearness and explanation, in all its bearings. No one evaded giving a decided opinion upon the chances of investment, though, according to temperament, and other causes, the answers were various. All agreed, however, in one respect, namely, that stock had touched a point of depression, below which it seemed wellnigh impossible to fall. The great question, of course, was whether such properties would ever rise, or whether such profits or losses, as the case might be, must be accepted as permanently fixed.
‘I believe that cattle and sheep never will rise a penny higher during our lifetime, particularly cattle,’ said a slight, elegant, cynical squatter, with whom Ernest had made acquaintance. ‘It’s of course nothing but what any one ought to have expected in this infernal country. What is there to keep stock up, I ask? As for wool, South America will grow three bales to our one directly; and cattle and horses will be slaughtered for their hides, as they are there.’
‘What a grumbler you are, Croker!’ said a stout cheery-looking youngster, with a long fair moustache and a smooth face; ‘you run down the country like a rival agent-general. Why do you stay in it, if it’s so bad?’
‘I’d leave to-morrow if I could get any one fool enough to buy my runs; take my passage by the mail and never be heard of here again.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t make a bad immigration agent, if the Government wanted to appoint a prepossessing advertiser for Europe.’
‘Agent! why, what do you see in me to make you think I should accept any such office?’
‘Only, this strikes me, that if you went on talking there in your dissatisfied strain, the acute common people would be certain that you had some reason of your own for dissuading them from embarking, and, so thinking, would pour in by crowds.’