Another occasion of congratulation awaited Mr. Neuchamp, the pleasure and pride accompanying which were perhaps only second in degree to the feelings inspired by the engineering triumph of Lake Antonia. His stud of Austral-Arabian horses had shared in the general advance and development of the property; they were now a perfect marvel of successful rearing.
He had them brought in daily from the sandhills near the plain where they ordinarily grazed, and passed hours in reviewing the colts and fillies, the yearlings, the mares and the foals. Every grade and stage, from the equine baby which gambolled and frisked by the side of its dam, to the well-furnished three-year-old filly—‘Velut in latis equa trima campis ludit exsultim, metuitque tangi,’—all were satin-coated, sleek and round, fuller-fleshed, stronger, swifter; more riotously healthy could they not have been had they been fed with golden oats in an emperor’s stable. Daintily now they picked the half-ripened tops from the fields of wild oats or barley which spread for leagues around. They drank of the pure clear waters of every pool and brooklet. They lay at night in the thickly-carpeted sandy knolls, and snuffed up the free desert breeze, fresh wafted from inmost sands or farthest seas. Partaking on one side of their parentage of the stately height and generous scope of their southern dams, culled from the noble race of island steeds which bear up the large frames of the modern Anglo-Saxon, they inherited a strong, perhaps overpowering infusion of the priceless blood of the courser of the desert. Their delicate heads, their wide nostrils, their adamantine legs, their perfect symmetry, all told of the ancient lineage of Omar the Keheilan, whose dam was Najima Sabeh or the Morning Star, of the strain Seglawee Dzedran, which, as every camel-driver of the Anezeh knows, dates back to El Kamsch, that glorious equine constellation, the five mares of Mahomet!
Here, again, was another instance of what Ernest could not but acknowledge gratefully as the generosity of Fate. Had but the season continued obdurate, his utter irrevocable ruin could not have been stayed. As a consequence, this stud, so precious, so profitable, so distinguished as it was apparently destined to be (for Mr. Banks told him that numbers of offers had already been received for all available surplus stock, while the agent of a large dealer had implored him to put a price upon the whole stud), would doubtless have passed under the hammer as most unconsidered trifles, to be sneered at, scattered, for ever wasted and lost, as had been many a good fellow’s pet stud ere now.
At length the day arrived when, having witnessed the satisfactory conclusion of every conceivable business duty and task which could be transacted at Rainbar or Mildool, Mr. Neuchamp took his place in the mail for Sydney, which city he had calculated to reach within a week of the dread ceremonial which was to seal his destiny. The coach did not break down or capsize, fracturing Mr. Neuchamp’s leg in two places. The train fulfilled its appointed task, and the stern steam-giant did not select that opportunity for running off the rails or equalising angles. Something of the sort might have been reasonably expected to happen to a hero so near the rapturous denouement of the third volume, in which, indeed, every hero of average respectability is killed, mysteriously imprisoned, or married.
Mr. Neuchamp had undergone trials and troubles, risks and anxieties, losses and crosses; but the season of tribulation was for ever past for him. He had henceforth but to submit to the compulsory laurel crown, to the caresses of Fortune’s favourite delegates, to listen to the plaudits of the crowd, to withstand the whispers and glances of beauty. He was now wise, beautiful, strong, and brave, a conqueror, an Adonis—in a word, he was rich!
He stood successful, and the world’s praises, grudgingly bestowed upon struggling fortitude, were showered upon the obviously victorious speculator. All kinds of rumours went forth about him. His possessions were multiplied, so that Rainbar and Mildool stood sponsors for a tract of country about as large as from Kashgar to Khiva.
The canal was magnified into the dimensions of its namesake of Suez, and a trade was prophesied which would overshadow Melbourne and revolutionise Adelaide. He had contracted for the remount service for the whole Madras Presidency, such a matter being quite within the scope of his immense and high-bred studs. His herds of cattle were to supply Ballarat and Sandhurst with fat stock, and Melbourne buyers were on their way to secure everything he could deliver for the next two years! Ernest Neuchamp of Rainbar was the man of the day; the popular idol. Squatter though he might be, some of Jack Windsor’s grateful utterances had been circulated, and a democratic but strongly appreciative and generous populace adored him. Portraits of Mr. Neuchamp and his faithful retainer, Jack Windsor, contending victoriously with a swarthy piratical crowd, led on by the Count with a cutlass and a belt full of revolvers, appeared in the windows of the print-shops. Heroism and unselfish generosity, like murder, ‘will out.’
Whether accidentally or otherwise, the Morahmee conflict had transpired. I make no reflections upon the well-known inviolable secrecy which shrouds all postnuptial communications. I content myself with stating a fact. Mr. Windsor was now a married man.
Ernest was at first annoyed, then surprised, lastly, unaffectedly amused, when a highly popular dramatic version of the incident appeared at the Victoria Theatre, wherein he was represented as defying the Count, and assuring him that ‘berlood should flow from Morahmee Jetty to the South Head Lighthouse ere he relinquished the two maidens to his lawless grasp,’ while Jack Windsor’s representative, with a cabbage-tree hat and a hanging velvet band broad enough to make a sash for Carry, placed himself in an exaggerated, pugilistic attitude, and implored the foreign seamen to ‘come on and confront on his own ground, by the shore of that harbour which was his country’s pride, a true-born Sydney native!’ This brought down the house, and occasioned Mr. Neuchamp such anguish of mind that he began to think Jermyn Croker not such a bad fellow after all, and to feel unkindly towards the great land and the warm-hearted people of his adoption.
Incapable of being stimulated by flattery into a false estimate of himself, these exaggerated symptoms of appreciation but pained him acutely; they disturbed his philosophical mind, ever craving for the performance of justice and intolerant of all lower standards of right.