‘Why, Mr. Smith, of course, the gentleman who has just ridden away,’ said Ernest, rather tartly. ‘He is a most economical but estimable and intelligent person, and I feel convinced that he will get on, and have a station of his own before many years.’
‘Mr. Smith! a station of his own!’ said the landlord in faint tones, as of one preparing to swoon. ‘Do you know who you’re a-talkin’ of, sir? why, that’s Habstinens Levison, Hesquire, the richest man in Australia. Station of his own! Good lor—(‘scuse me, sir, you ain’t long from ’ome, sir?); why, he’s got thirty stations, sir, with more than a hundred thousand head of cattle, and half a million of sheep! So I’ve heard tell, leastwise.’
Mr. Neuchamp thought it would not be inappropriate if he fainted after this astounding revelation. He had heard Mr. Frankston tell a story or two of the wealthy and eccentric Abstinens Levison, and here he had met him in the flesh, and had been rather proud of his penetration in summing him up as an overseer on his promotion, who had saved a few hundred pounds and would be a squatter before he died.
‘Mr. Levison was here one day, sir,’ continued the landlord, ‘callin’ hisself Smith, or Jones, or something; he don’t want to be worrited by charity-agents and such; when the clergyman spotted him and asks him for something towards the Church of Hengland there—‘andsome building, ain’t it, sir?—what I call respectable and substantial—he writes him out a cheque very quiet and crumples it up and gives it ’im; when he looks at it outside, blest if it warn’t for five hundred pounds!’
‘I suppose the reverend gentleman was contented with that,’ said Ernest, thinking of the stranger’s non-committal remarks as they passed the same building.
‘Not he—parsons ain’t never contented, ’specially those as has a turn for begging for a good object—they say. Next time he passes through, our reverend thought he’d touch him a bit more. “Mr. Levison,” says he, “this here beauteous structure as you’ve so magnificently contributed to, ain’t got no lightning-conductor, and it’s a pity such a pooty building should be hinjured by the hangry helements,” says he. “Look here,” says Levison, “I’ve helped you to build the church, and given my share; if God Almighty chooses to knock it down again, He can do so, it’s no business of mine any further,” he says.’
Ernest thought this very like one of Levison’s reflective, unprejudiced speeches, and could imagine his saying it without any feeling of irreverence. Five hundred pounds without a word, unobtrusively, hardly caring to use his own well-known name for fear of the drawbacks and disabilities of proverbial wealth. ’A most extraordinary man truly,’ thought Ernest—‘simple, strong, manifestly of the true hunter type; a man given to lone journeyings through the wilderness; fond of preserving his incognito, and of the small, wellnigh incredible economies which speak to him of his earlier life.’ Now, Mr. Neuchamp saw the secret of the ultra-respectful bearing of the servants and landlord of the inn to the owner of a couple of millions of acres, leasehold, and of more sheep than Esterhazy, and more cattle than a score of Mexican rancheros. ‘He certainly is a man of unpretentious demeanour,’ thought Ernest. ’Whoever would have guessed that he was so tremendous a proprietor! “Don’t you go for to waste your money.” Was that the way he had made the nucleus of this colossal fortune? and did the occasional saving of a meal, and the utilising of the edible plants of the plain and forest dell, go to swell the rills which joined their streams of profit into the great river of his prosperity?‘ Ernest Neuchamp all but resolved to give up speculating upon the character and professions of these provokingly unintelligible colonists, to believe what he saw—even that, with deduction and reason—and to ’learn and labour truly to get his own living,’ without constant reference to the motives and practice of others engaged in the same necessary pursuit. All this he for the time fully believed that he would in the future carry out. But his nature, with its passionate proclivities for intellectual research, continued to whisper of regions of territory and character yet unexplored, and to beckon the ardent champion of light and truth forward even yet, though clouds of distrust and disappointment clustered round his path.
Mr. Neuchamp decided to stay where he was that evening, and to take a strictly impartial and prosaic survey of the town and environs.