‘When shall I see you in Sydney, Ernest?’ she said, as a last inquiry. ‘I daresay they will wish to know at Morahmee.’
‘When the rain comes,’ said Ernest resolutely. ‘Good-bye, Middleton; take great care of her. Remember me to the ladies.’ And they were off.
It has been more than once remarked by those of our species who rely for their intellectual recreation less upon action than observation, that great events are apt to be produced by inconsiderable causes. The sighing summer breeze sets free the mountain avalanche. The spark creates the red ruin of a conflagration. The rat in Holland perforates a dam and floods a province.
Mr. Neuchamp sat in his apartment at Rainbar contrasting, doubtfully, his regret at the departure of his cousin with his recovered sense of freedom and independence. True, she was the sole link which in Australia connected him with the thousand spells of home.
But, ever angular in mind, she had proved herself to be so incapable of accommodation to the necessarily altered conditions of a new land, that he had despaired of her acclimatisation. She had even failed to comprehend them.
‘This is the result,’ he would assert to himself, ‘of her deficiency in the faculty of imagination. It may be there are other reasons, but I trace her special failure in camaraderie to this neglect of her fairy godmother.’
A person with deficient ideality is necessarily imprisoned by the present. Unable to portray for themselves a presentment of unaccustomed conditions on the mental canvas, such as is traced by Fancy, coloured by Hope, yet corrected by Prudence, they are wholly precluded from the prevision, even in part, of the living wonders, the breathing enchantments, of the future. To them no city of rest, glorious and beautiful, arises from the dull vulgarities of life and endeavour; all with them is of the earth, earthy. A gospel of hard-eyed economy, grudging gain, unrelieved toil, for the poor; for the sordid aspirant, by endless thrift and striving, ‘property, property, property;’ for the rich, a message of selfish enjoyment, grasping monopoly, ungenial ease.
‘Such would the world be were the human mind divested of the sublime attributes of Faith and Imagination!’ exclaimed Ernest, borne away from his present cares. ‘There may be perils for the glad mariner on the sun-bright, flashing wave; but he has the possible glory of descrying purple isles, undiscovered continents. Dying, he falls as a hero; living, he may survive to be hailed as the world’s benefactor.’
Much comforted by these bright-hued imaginings and illuminings of the path in which he knew himself to be an ardent traveller, Mr. Neuchamp awaited his mail-bag with more than usual serenity.