The old man looked so thoroughly convinced of the truth of his convictions as he spoke, with the kindling eye and elevated visage of one resolved upon a hazardous but honourable enterprise, that Ernest Neuchamp, always prone to be influenced by contagious exaltation of sentiment, caught fire from his ardent mien and tone.
‘Well, so be it,’ he said; ‘I am content to sink or swim in the same boat with you and yours. We have Ab. Levison for a pilot, and he knows all the rocks and soundings of the pastoral deep sea from Penrith to Carpentaria, I should say. As you say there’s a time for all things, I think this is the time to back one’s opinion in reason and moderation. I will go and confront the agents for Mildool.’
Messrs. Sticker and Pugsley were steady-going, precise men of business of the old school. As stock and station agents they had always steadily set their faces against all outlay except for the merest necessaries of life. Bred to their business in the old times when stock were plentiful, labour cheap, and cash extremely hard to lay hold of in any shape or form, they struggled desperately against these new-fangled notions of ‘throwing away money uselessly,’ as they termed the comparatively large outlay which they occasionally heard of upon dams, wells, fencing, woolsheds, and washpens. Large profits had been made in the good old times, when such speculations would have gone nigh to have furnished a warrant de lunatico inquirendo. They did not see how it was all to be repaid. They doubted the management which comprehended such sinful extravagance; and they proposed to continue their time-honoured system, which made it imperative upon all stockholders who were unlucky enough to be in debt to them, to spend nothing, to live upon shepherds‘wages, and not to think of coming to town until times improved.
One wonders if it ever occurred to these snug-comfort loving cits, as daily they drove home to pleasant villas and luxurious surroundings—did it ever occur to them, after the second glass of old port, to what a life of wretchedness, solitude, and sordid surroundings their griping parsimony was condemning the unlucky exile from civilisation, who was hopelessly chained to their ledger? For him no beeswing port, no claret of Bordeaux. He drank his ‘Jack the Painter’ tea milkless, most probably, and flavoured with blackest sugar, occasionally stimulating his ideality with ration rum or villainous dark brandy. Though his the brain that planned, the hand that carried out long desert wayfarings of exploration—long, toilsome drudgeries of stock travelling to lone untrodden wilds; his the frame that withered, the eye that dimmed, the health that failed, the blood that flowed, ere the process of colonising, progression, and commercial extension was complete. Thus land was occupied, villages sprang up, inter-communication was established, and the wilderness subdued. All the magnificent results of civilisation were brought about over territories of incredible area by the intelligence, enterprise, and energy of one individual. And he, too often, when the battle was won, the standard hoisted, and the multitude pouring over the breach, found himself a beggared and a broken man.
Mr. Neuchamp, after due preliminaries, entered the office of Messrs. Sticker and Pugsley, with whom he had an interview by no means of a disagreeable character. The senior partner, an elderly, gray-haired personage, showed much of the formal politeness which is commonly thought to distinguish the gentleman of ‘the old school.’ He received Ernest courteously, begged that he would take a chair, alluded to the weather, deplored the arrival of the mosquitoes, to which the rain and the spring in conjunction had been jointly favourable, requested to know whom he had the honour of receiving, and finally desired information as to the particular mode in which he could be of service to him.
‘I have been informed,’ said Ernest, ‘that your firm are agents for the Mildool station, and that it is in the market. I have come to request that you will put it under offer to me, as I have some intention of purchasing a property of that sort.’
‘We have not as yet advertised it,’ replied Mr. Sticker; ‘still, you have been rightly informed that the station and stock are for sale. But we do not think of offering it upon the usual terms; our own opinion is, I do not disguise it from you, that present prices will not last. I have been many years in the colony, and such is my belief. Mr. Pugsley, whose opinion of the permanence of present high rates is better than mine, also believes that, with the properties entrusted to us, it is as well to be safe, and to take advantage of an opportunity that may never occur again. Our terms for Mildool are briefly these: We offer four thousand head of mixed cattle, above six months old, with, of course, the
brand, at five pounds per head, everything given in. I am informed that the improvements are scanty and in bad repair; there are twenty stock horses, and a team of bullocks and dray, two huts, and a stockyard. But, perhaps, you know the property, and the appearance of the buildings.’
‘The huts are old and bad,’ said Ernest, smiling; ‘and as for the stockyard, the Mildool stockmen have for the last few years brought their cattle to our yard for safety, as you could kick down the Mildool yard anywhere. But what is your idea of terms?’