‘We haven’t done much in the building way here,’ he remarked apologetically, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. ‘I daresay we’ll put up a cottage next year. But the old man never would spend a penny on the run here. He was snug enough at the old farm down the country, and somehow I’ve got used to the life, and it does me as well as any other. Hardy isn’t often at home; he’s half his time in Sydney. So he manages to hang it out here when he comes to help muster and so on. I reckon he thinks it saves money, and as he hasn’t to live here he don’t care.’
Ernest felt remorseful after this explanation, very simply delivered, at his feelings of disgust and disapproval. ‘Suppose,’ he asked himself, ‘I had been set down here, a raw schoolboy, transplanted from half-learned tasks to the daily labour, the rude association, the unbroken loneliness of a distant station, debarred by a penurious old father from the smallest outlay not immediately connected with the herd, without books, change, society, or recreation, would it have been all-impossible that I should have grown into the mould in which my host is enclosed, or settled down into the resigned, sad-visaged man of five-and-thirty whom I see before me?’ It would have been impossible in his case, he thought. Still he could enter sufficiently into the probabilities of the situation to comprehend the injustice to which the mental development of the elder brother had been exposed.
‘Good heavens!’ he thought to himself, ‘what short-sighted idiots are parents who shut up their sons’ lives in a moral dungeon like this! The abiding in the wilderness is nothing; nay, it has positively beneficial and ennobling tendencies. But this sordid imprisonment of the mind! No books, no companions, no ideas; for how can there be a circulation of ideas if reading, conversation, reflection be wanting?—the whole mind bent and fettered to the level of the branding pen and the cattle market—the smallest outlay affording a glimpse of the heaven of Art and Literature churlishly denied, lest a few broad pieces escape the all-gathering muck-rake. And when the game is played out, the long harvest-day over, and the crop garnered, what is the grand result for which a soul has been starved—a man’s all-wondrous brain-marvel, miracle of miracles, enchantment before which all magic palls—stunted, and shrivelled from lack of nutriment and exercise, like a baby-farmed infant’s body? A few hundreds or thousands, more or less; a sufficiency of clothes and food; a surety against poverty; and the possibly fully-developed son of the immortal, “a little lower than the angels,” remains hopeless, contracted, with the mind of an untaught child plus an experience of the more obvious forms of dissipation!’
The rude meal concluded, and the pannikins refilled, Ernest, as usual, felt sufficiently refreshed in spirit to examine his immediate materials. Mr. Baldacre smoked and talked unreservedly for a couple of hours; explained the presence of the sheepskins—they had been butchering for the diggers lately; described some of their pioneer life, including an adventure with a bushranger, the famous Captain Belville; and, finally, thought Ernest might like to ‘turn in.’
Mr. Neuchamp looked distrustfully at the rude wooden frame, upon which sheepskins did duty for a mattress, and a pair of highly uninteresting blankets represented all other description of bedclothes. He protected himself against all nocturnal dangers by retaining the larger proportion of his habiliments, and desperately committed himself to the uncertainty. At earliest dawn he might have been seen leading Osmund towards the hut, after which he saddled up with unusual energy and care. He then betook himself to a grand deep water-hole at no great distance in the creek, where he swam and disported himself for half an hour at least, after which he indulged temperately in the pleasures of the table, as represented by a breakfast which was the facsimile of supper, and immediately thereafter bade his host good-bye, thanking him for his entertainment, and bidding farewell to the abode of Baldacre Brothers for ever.
Mr. Neuchamp smiled to himself when fairly on his way, thinking of the days of his inexperience, when he believed that all squatters, and indeed all colonists, lived in precisely the same fashion, and were characterised by identically the same habitudes and modes of life.
He certainly had been ‘had,’ as Mr. Banks would have said, in the matter of trusting himself to the primitive establishment of the Baldacres, who were well known to every one in the district to live ‘like blackfellows,’ as the phrase ran. But neither he nor Osmund had suffered anything more than slight temporary inconvenience. Mr. Neuchamp was specially good at recovering, and in half an hour he was whistling and humming along the road as blithely as ever.
On this particular day he expected to reach, at an early hour, the abode of another club acquaintance, who had been unaffectedly hearty in impressing upon him the desirability of making his place his headquarters if he ever came to their district. At this house he expected to meet the Indian Officer who had so kindly taken care of his Arab steed for him and attended to his comforts on board the P. and O. This distinguished militaire had seen a good deal of service, but thirty-five years’ exposure to the sun of Hindostan had not quenched his ardour for sport, spoiled his seat on horseback, or cooled his devotion to the fair sex. He had been commissioned by the Indian Government to make large purchases of horses in Australia for remount service, particularly for artillery and heavy cavalry. He was now on a tour of inspection through the chief breeding districts, to the end that the couple of thousand troop horses he was empowered to purchase and ship might do credit to his judgment. Combining, as he did, a frank yet polished address with the prestige of military rank, important services during the Mutiny, consummate knowledge of horseflesh, with a potentiality of unlimited purchase, Colonel Branksome was at that time, perhaps, the most popular man in Australia.
It was on the right side of lunch-time when Mr. Neuchamp found himself opening a neat white gate, at the end of a well-kept drive, which further conducted him to the front door of a stately mansion, with easy circumstances and good taste written in every yard of the well-mown lawn, on every clump of the crowded shrubbery, on the long range of stabling at no inconvenient distance, even in the neat dress and respectful manner of the groom who came to take his horse almost as soon as he had dismounted.
The hall door opened in a spontaneously hospitable manner, and the host, accompanied by a middle-aged man very carefully attired in unmistakable mufti, left no doubt on any one’s mind as to his pleasure in receiving him.