The only difficulty in his path would be Paul’s uncompromising desire to benefit him after his own fashion. For mysterious reasons he had apparently decided that he, Ernest, was not fit to run alone, in a pastoral sense, for another year at least. Mr. Neuchamp steeled himself to attack his provisional guardian on this point on the very next opportunity. He would enlist Antonia upon his side. He would recapitulate the reasons which caused him to consider himself the equal in experience of some pastoralists who had been all their lives in the country. Surely a man did not come ten thousand miles across the sea to a new, not to say unexplored country, to spend his life in looking on! He would press Paul hard. He would convert him, and then, hey for Eldorado, for Arcadia, for Utopia, with laws and ordinances framed by Dictator Ernest Neuchamp.
While at the club, an institution which became more pleasant in his eyes daily, and where he steadily enlarged the number of his acquaintances, he kept his ears open as to opportunities for buying station property advantageously. He had at one time been fixed in the idea of purchasing the cattle station of Mr. Jermyn Croker, about which that sceptical philosopher and Mr. Frankston had interchanged various pleasantries more or less acidulated. But it so chanced that among the honorary members who made their appearance from time to time at the club, and enlivened or impressed its ordinary society, came a squatter from another colony named Parklands.
With this young gentleman Ernest was much taken, and they soon struck up a strong intimacy. Mr. Parklands was Australian-born, but not on that account to be credited with any deficiency of energy; on the contrary, he possessed so much vigour of body and of mind that if he had degenerated in any way (as is a received theory with certain writers), his progenitors must have been perfect steam-engines. He was well known to have explored a very large proportion of the Australian continent, to have formed, managed, bought, or sold at least a score of cattle and sheep stations. His transactions comprised incidentally thousands of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep. He had recently returned from another colony where he had acquired an immense area of newly-discovered country. He was on that account, he stated, ready to sell the remnant of his property in New South Wales on favourable terms.
Lal. Parklands was popular. A good-looking, pleasant fellow, went in for everything—billiards, loo, racquets, dinners, theatres, and balls, with the same zest, energy, and enjoyment which he threw into all his business operations. He strongly advised Ernest to ‘tackle old Frankston,’ as he expressed it, upon the subject of his independence, and to go in for a station on his own hook without delay.
‘It isn’t because I’m selling out myself that I say it,’ he added, ‘but the fact is, cattle are as low as they can possibly be, and the next change must be a rise. What do you say, Croker?’ he asked of that gentleman, who now lounged up. ‘You have had something to do with lowering the people’s spirits about their stock. If you’ll come to Queensland with me next time I want to buy there, I’ll pay your expenses.’
‘It is apparent,’ replied that gentleman, ‘that somebody is sure to swindle Neuchamp, and you may as well do it as any one else. I thought I was to have the honour, from what old Frankston said, but I suppose you have made highly-coloured representations after the manner of cornstalks.’
‘You are fatally wrong, as usual, Jermyn. I’ve made a pot of money out of Rainbar, and if Neuchamp buys it and does as well, he’ll be able to go back to Europe as a successful colonist in no time.’
‘If he takes Mr. Parklands as his model in speculation, management, and conversation, he must succeed in everything he undertakes,’ said Mr. Croker with ironical approbation.
‘Come and have some sherry, old Bitters,’ said Mr. Parklands cheerfully, ‘and then I’ll thrash you at billiards. Never saw an Englishman I couldn’t give points to yet. Can’t lick us.’
Roused by this national reflection, Mr. Croker offered to play for anything he chose to name, and Ernest betook himself to Morahmee. He had determined to open the parallels without delay.