A few lustra have rolled over, marked by fast whitening or receding locks, and lo! we have attained to exact conclusions concerning many things. No further fees are necessary. Cautious are we now who once were so heedless. Regular and methodical in business, erst unpunctual and dilatory, we preserve our acquittances. We are industrious without spasmodic energy, cool with the discretion, not the madness, of valour! But one bright-haired goddess has departed with our golden youth. Hope lends no gladness to the summer breeze, gilds not the glowing eve, smiles not on the flowers, beckons not from the cool shadows of the murmurous glade.
Mr. Neuchamp was far on the hither side of these autumnal effects, so it chanced that on one fine day— there had been no rain for about two months—he found himself mounted on Osmund with his face turned towards the Sydney road, and with an unwonted feeling of exultation in or about the cardiac region. He was accompanied by Jack Windsor, who had invested a portion of his shearing cheque in the purchase of Ben Bolt, on favourable terms, as that interesting animal had thrown every other one who had ever ridden him, causing Mr. Jedwood to be honestly glad to be rid of him.
Mr. Windsor had completed what he called a very fair spell of work, for him, and having secured a prominent cheque and a high character at the settlement, after shearing, was in charity with all men, even the police, and much minded to have a pleasure trip ‘down the country,’ as he phrased the transmontane towns. Hence, when Ernest invited him to accompany him to Sydney, having extracted a confession that he had never seen that ‘kingdom by the sea,’ or indeed had been a stroller by the ‘poluphloisboio thalasses’ at any time, he readily and gratefully accepted the offer.
‘Seems queer, sir, doesn’t it, that I’ve never seen our main city or the big waterhole, as the blacks call it. Somehow I’ve always had the luck to miss it. Not that I had any powerful great longing to go. I’ve always had some pleasant place nigh home to spend my Christmas in, after I’d made a bit of money; and somehow, when I was once comfortable I didn’t care about stirring.’
‘But I wonder that an active, intelligent fellow like you, Jack, never made up your mind to go all the way to Sydney, out of curiosity.’
‘Well, it is a wonder, sir; only, somehow I’ve had no eddication, as I told you before, and chaps like me, as don’t know much except about bush things, haven’t as much curiosity, I think, as other people. Sydney’s only a bigger town than Campbelltown, or Yass, or Goulburn, and what’s there to see in them if fifty of ’em was rolled up together? That’s the way I used to talk.’
‘But the sea, Jack, the sea! you haven’t the sea in Yass or Goulburn.’
‘Oh! I know that, sir. Bless you, now I am quite different, since you took the trouble to learn me to read and write a bit.’ (Mr. Neuchamp had so utilised the evenings at the cattle station and other quiet places.) ‘I’m always thinking what a stupid beggar I’ve been to have been contented with the life I used to lead. Just like an old working bullock in a lucerne field, grubbing away and never raisin’ his head till it was time to lay down. You’ve made a man of me, sir, that’s what you have. I hope I’ll be able to make you think some day—“Well, he wasn’t a bad fellow after all.”’
‘I think so now, Jack; I always have thought so from the first time I saw you.’
Mr. Windsor here groaned out a curse upon some one of Eve’s daughters unknown to this chronicler.