Neuchampstead, 6th March 18—.
Dear Ernest—I cannot acknowledge surprise at the contents of your last letter, having always looked for some such ending to your colonial adventure. The day of success for such enterprises has gone by—if indeed any one ever was really successful at any time in such wanderings and Quixotisms. You quote the greater examples. Yet a little temporary notoriety, chiefly ending in imprisonment or the block, was the guerdon of Columbus and one Raleigh, instances which occur to me. As I have said before, I have no doubt that our family would have substantially benefited by remaining on their paternal fiords and leaving Normandy and England to the robbers and hangers-on who followed the popular pirate of the day. Being in England, I suppose we shall have to stay, though the climate daily recommends itself less to any one whose epidermis does not resemble a suit of armour. The crops have been bad this year. The tenants are slow and deficient. No one seems to have any money except certain Liverpool or Manchester persons, born with an aptitude for swindling in ‘gray shirtings,’ cotton twist, racehorses, or other equally plausible instrument for gambling. I spend little and risk nothing. So I may hope to survive in my insignificance, unless the grand Radical earthquake, which will surely swallow England’s aristocracy of birth and culture in a coming day, be antedated. All men of family who dabble in agriculture, commerce, or colonisation, are earthen pots which must inevitably be shattered by the aggressive flotilla of brazen vessels which encumbers every tide nowadays. You will admit I had no expectation of other result than your ruin when you embarked. In announcing that fact spare me the details. You will find your old rooms ready at Neuchampstead, and refurnished. I have been extravagant in some curious antique furniture.
I enclose a draft for three thousand pounds. Such a sum is of no use to a gentleman in England. Fling it after the rest. It may console you, years hence, when you are adding Australian pollen masses to the famous collection of orchids for which alone Neuchampstead is celebrated, that your experiment had full justice. It is only the bourgeois who leaves the table before his ‘system’ is fairly tried.—Good-bye, my dear brother. Yours sincerely,
Courtenay Neuchamp.
P.S.—I forgot to add that I gave Augusta your message. How could you be so incautious? I would have suppressed it, but had, of course, no option. She starts for Sydney by the mail steamer. Are the women in Australia so obstinate? But they are much the same everywhere, I apprehend.—C. N.
The first emotion which Mr. Neuchamp experienced after reading this characteristic letter was one of unqualified delight. The sight of the draft for the three thousand pounds, so slightingly alluded to by Courtenay, was as the vision of the palm-trees at the well to the fainting desert pilgrim, of the distant sail to the gaunt, perishing seaman on the drifting raft—the symbol of blessed hope, of assured deliverance. The capital sum, or the trifling annual income derivable from it, in gold-flooded England, might be of little utility there, as Courtenay had averred with the humorous indifferentism which he professed. But here, in this rich unwatered level, metaphorically and otherwise, it was like the river-born trickling tunnels with which, since forgotten Pharaoh days, the toiling fellaheen saturate the black gaping Nile gardens, sure precursor of profound vegetation and the hundred-fold increase.
No use to a gentleman in England! A company of guardian angels must surely have wafted to him the precious, delicate document across the seas, across the desert here. What use would it not be to him, Ernest? It would pay in full for the Circle Dot store cattle, also for those purchased from Freeman Brothers, leaving a balance to the credit of his account with those treasure-guarding griffins, Oldstile and Crampton. Besides, the bills due to Levison for the store cattle were not due for several months yet. In the meantime rain or other wonders might happen. The young horses, too, children of Omar, fleet son of the desert, with delicately-formed aristocratic heads, deerlike limbs, which had been dear to him almost as their ancestors had been to some lonely subdivision of the wandering Shammar or Aneezah!—they were saved from ruin and disgrace—saved from the indignity of passing for the merest trifle into the possession of unheeding vulgar purchasers, who would probably stigmatise them as weeds, wanting in bone, or by any other cheap form of ignorant depreciation.
Saved! saved! saved! All was saved. Once more secure. Once more his own. Once more the land and the grazing herd, the humble abode, the garden, the paddock, even the long-neglected but not despaired-of canal, all the acted resolves and outcome of a sincere but perhaps over-sanguine mind, dearer than ever were they to him, their author and projector. They were his own again. How like Courtenay, too! Ever better than his word; incredulous as to improved benefits and successes; deprecating haste, risk, imprudence; doubtful of all but the garnered grain, the assayed gold, the concrete and the absolute in life,—but, in the hour of need, sparing of that counsel which is but another name for reproach, stanch in aid, generous alike in the mode and measure of his gift.
Having recovered from this natural exaltation and relief at the unexpected succour, Mr. Neuchamp turned to the consideration of the very important postscript of his brother’s letter with apprehension.
Had his cousin, Miss Augusta Neuchamp, really sailed and arrived in Sydney, as would appear? If so, where was she to go? What was he to do? She could hardly come to Rainbar to take up her abode in this small cottage, which, though possessing several rooms, was, like many dwellings in the bush proper, practically undivided as to sound; the conversation of any one, in any given room, being equally beneficial and entertaining to the occupant of any other. Then there was not a woman upon the whole establishment. The wives and daughters of the Freemans, even if the latter were eligible for ladies’ maids, were little less than hostile.
A residence in Sydney seemed the only possible plan; but he knew his cousin too well to think that there would be no drawback to that arrangement. Energetic, well-intentioned, possessing a clear available intelligence, and considerable mental force, when exercised within certain well-defined, but it must be confessed narrow limits, Augusta Neuchamp was a benevolent despot in her own way. She ardently desired to arrange the destinies of the classes or individuals who came within the sphere of her action in accordance with what she considered to be the plain intentions of Providence with regard to them. Of the tremendous issues involved in such a translation, she had no conception. Plain to bluntness in her speech, she rarely evaded the awkwardness of expressing disappointment. Unquestionably refined by habit and education, she possessed little imagination and less tact. Thus she rarely failed to provide herself, in any locality which she honoured with her presence, with a large and increasing supply of opponents, if not of enemies. A moderate private income enabled her to indulge her tastes for improving herself or others. Possessing no very near relatives, she was uncontrolled as to her movements and mode of life. She had reached the age of twenty-five, though by no means unprepossessing in appearance, without finding any suitor sufficiently valorous to adopt or oppose, in the character of a husband, her very clearly expressed views of life. Had she consented to reserve a modification in these important respects, her friends averred that she might have been ‘settled’ ere now. But such palterings with principle were alien and abhorrent to the nature of Augusta Neuchamp. And Augusta Neuchamp she had accordingly remained.
The appearance of Miss Neuchamp was generally described as commanding, although she was slightly, if at all, over the medium height of woman. But there was an expression about her high-bridged aquiline nose and compressed lips which left no one in doubt as to the fact that, in controversy or contending action, the first to yield would not be the possessor of those features. Her clear blue eyes would have been handsome had there been a shade of doubt or softness at any time visible. Such a moment of feminine weakness never came. They looked at you and through you and over you, but never fell in maiden doubt or fear beneath your gaze. Two courses were open to the individual of the conflicting sex in her presence—unconditional surrender or flight.
It was hard, Ernest thought, that just as he was relieved from one anxiety he should be provided by unkind Fate with another. He revolved the imminent question of the disposition of Miss Augusta Neuchamp in his mind until prevented by mutual apprehension from pursuing the terribly perplexing subject. Of all people in the wide world, he thought his cousin was the most impracticable, the most unyielding to argument, the most certain to expose herself to dislike and ridicule in Australia. She knew everything. She believed nothing, unless indeed it related to herself or proceeded directly from that source. Everything which differed from her stereotyped system was wrong, ruinous, degenerate, or provincial. How she would criticise the place, the people, the climate, the railways, the houses, the fences, the workmen, the men and the women, the grass, and the gum-trees!
If he could only persuade her to take lodgings in Sydney, until he could go down and argue the point with her, much might be gained. Antonia Frankston would visit her, and harder than adamant must she be if that gentle voice and natural manner did not convert her to a favourable opinion of Australian life.