Not until several days after that event did Mr. Neuchamp realise that he was clothed with real and undisputed sovereignty.
Then with sudden afflatus arose in his brooding mind the thought of the elevated duties and deep responsibility of his position. It was the hour of the evening meal. This frugal meal—damper, hard corned beef, and very black astringent tea—the same served in a very black quart pot—Ernest had enjoyed in solitude. Humble as was the fare, it was amply sufficient for a man in the pride of vigorous youth. The indifferent Bohea had power to stimulate delicately, yet positively, the nerves of Mr. Neuchamp’s, perhaps, hypersensitive brain.
The night was calm and clear. The starry heavens held no cloud. The long lagoon lay darkly metallic, or broke into phosphoric ripples. The mysterious sounds of the desert were rare and as yet unfamiliar to the listener. All things afforded a startling contrast to his English name and surroundings, even to his later metropolitan habitudes. Yet as he sat there by the light of the stars, amid the tremendous solitude of the wilderness, his heart swelled with the thought that he was the virtual ruler of a territory larger than his ancestral country—larger than any member of the house of Neuchamp had owned since the first baronial fiefs in their blood-bought Normandy.
‘What are the chief and foremost needs of this waste empire of mine—this desert city?’ soliloquised he. ‘Here I have land enough to satisfy the earth hunger of the most ravenous aspirant of la terre. Water in reasonable though perhaps insufficient quantity. What is the great absent factor? Population, a yeoman class, a race of Vavasours, who could use these great levels for the growth of certain semi-tropical crops, who might rear upon them a limited number of stock, who would secure homes for themselves and food for their working oxen; who would remain loyal to me, their powerful yet philosophic ally; who would work for me at reasonable rates at ordinary station work, or any reproductive improvements which I might suggest, and who would thus entirely sweep away the present undesirable relations which have hitherto subsisted between Australian country labourers and their employers. It would not be expensive to provide a school and a teacher for their children, to be paid by results. I should be enabled, by a steady supply of labour, to cultivate a reasonable area. Gardens and experimental industries would of course spring up. The carrying capabilities of Rainbar might be enormously increased by cutting a narrow canal, as Parklands suggested, between the waters of the river and the chain of deep, yet dry lakes at the back of the run. The advantages of labour on one side, of wages on the other, would be mutual. Simultaneously an improvement in the character and quality of the herd would take place. Scientific experiments might be regularly made and recorded as to rainfall and other important matters. The culture of the vine, the orange, even the silkworm, might be introduced; and finally, after a few years, the semi-co-operative community at Rainbar, self-contained, happy, and prosperous, might be pointed out as at least one instance where enlightened theory and successful practice had accomplished an advance in civilisation, had solved the problem of the harmonious interchange of labour and capital, and had interpolated at least one Arcadian chapter in the sad history of mankind.’
As these and other fair and fascinating trains of ideas passed through the mind of Ernest Neuchamp—while outside of his lonely and humble dwelling the silent stars burned in the still wondrous firmament, and nought but the monotonous and half-boding sound of the night-bird broke the profound primeval silence—he passed instinctively from the stage of triumphant justification of his plans to a half-felt distrust as to their practicability; and with the thought of failure came a vision of the calm questioning gaze of Antonia Frankston, before which his ardent scheme and aspirations for the perfectibility of the race had more than once appeared dreamy and Quixotic. The fancied questioning of old Paul, cool as kindly, yet keen as a cross-examiner, seemed adverse to the Utopian infant. But Ernest’s strong enthusiasm of humanity, his generally sanguine temperament, carried him for that night over all obstacles, and he retired to a very lowly couch, fully determined that the Rainbar community should enjoy every advantage which co-operative life and labour had ever yielded to intelligent guidance.
With regard to the ordinary working of the station, he felt at a disadvantage in the absence of Jack Windsor. He had been so much in the habit of relying upon that ready-witted and helpful personage in the executive department, that he felt comparatively helpless when solely responsible. He considered also that his life would be now almost unendurably solitary without the companionship of some one nearly approaching his own grade, who would be at once an assistant and a companion.
In this extremity, he bethought himself of his late associates at Garrandilla. None of these young gentlemen was absolutely necessary at that ovine university. They had taken their degrees, so to speak. Their places were perhaps waiting to be filled by other alumni, some of whom paid a fair sum for the privilege of fulfilling, very literally, the position of the subordinates of Jairus, to that rather exacting centurion Mr. Doubletides.
This point being settled, he essayed to make choice of a probable companion. Grahame was obviously devoted to sheep. The merino had ‘marked him for his own,’ and it would have been wrong to have withdrawn so promising a woolsorter from the establishment. Moreover, he was not interesting or sympathetic as a companion.
Fitzgerald Barrington was interesting and amusing, if not sympathetic. Mr. Neuchamp was much minded to invite him to Rainbar. But in his way he was as unlikely as Grahame to take himself to any scheme for the improvement of the common people. With all the bonhomie of his country, he despised and disbelieved in the people, and would not have put forth his hand to save them from a fate quite commensurate with their deserts.
The remaining cadet then was Charley Banks. In this youngster Ernest had always recognised a manly and self-reliant nature, by no means beneficially indebted to early training, and having come off indifferently in the matter of book-learning. Still he thought him improvable from certain indications which led him to think him not wholly unsuitable as a companion. He had often expressed his dislike to sheep and his anxiety to live on a cattle station. Mr. Neuchamp, finally coming to the conclusion that he might do the boy a service, and at the same time provide himself with a companion in his solitude, wrote a letter to Mr. Jedwood, in which he described his purchase and gave a short sketch of the capabilities of the run, winding up with a fair offer of employment for Mr. Banks if he had no objection to his leaving Garrandilla, and if the youngster himself cared to come.