‘I wish it was not so far and so dangerous, my child, as I am sure it must be,’ said Mrs. Effingham, stroking the boy’s fair brow, as she looked sadly at the eager face, bright with the unquestioning hopes of youth. ‘You will enjoy the travel and adventure and even the risk, but think how anxious your poor mother and sisters will be!’
‘Oh, I’ll write by every chance,’ said Guy, anxious as a page who sees the knights buckle on armour for the first skirmish, not to be deprived of his share of the fray. ‘There will be lots of opportunities by people coming back.’
‘What! from a place just discovered?’ said his mother, with a gentle incredulity.
‘Ah, but Dick says if it’s half as fine as Hubert Warleigh calls it—not that he’s a man to say a word more than it deserves—that it will be rushed like all new settlements with hundreds of people, and there will be a town and a post-office and all kinds of humbug in no time. People move faster in Australia than in that slow old Surrey.’
‘You mustn’t say a word against our dear old home, my boy,’ said his mother, playfully threatening him, ‘or I shall fear your being turned into a backwoodsman, or at any rate something different from an English gentleman, and that would break my heart. But I hope plenty of tradespeople and farmers, and persons of all kinds, will come to your Eldorado. It will make it all the safer, and more comfortable for you all.’
‘Farmers, mother!’ said the boy indignantly. ‘What are you thinking of? We don’t want any poking farmers there, taking up the best of the flats and the waterholes after we have found the country and fought the blacks for them. We can keep it well enough with our rifles. All I want is a good large run, and not to see a soul near it except my own stock-riders for years to come.’
‘You are going to be quite a mediæval baron, Guy,’ said Annabel, who had stolen up and taken his hand in hers, the three hearts beating closely in unison. ‘I suppose you will set up a dungeon for refractory vassals.’
‘I am sure he will be a good boy, and remember his mother’s teachings when she is far away,’ said the fond parent, as the tears filled her eyes, looking at the fair, bright-eyed face which she might never see more after the last wave of her hand—the last fond, lingering farewell, which was so soon to be.
Well it is for the young and strong, who go laughing and shouting into the battle of life, as if there were no ambuscades, defeats, weary retreats, or hopeless resistance. Well for the sailor boy, who leaps on to the deck as if there were no wreck or tempest, fatal mermaid or dead men’s bones, beneath the smiling, inconstant wave! They have at least their hour of hot-blooded fight and stubborn resistance to relentless Destiny. But, ah me! how fares it with those who are left behind, condemned to dreary watchings, for tidings that come not—to sickening fears, that all too soon resolve themselves into the reality of doom? These are the earth’s true martyrs—the fond mother—the devoted wife—the loving sisters—the saddened father. Theirs the torture and the stake, sacrificed to which they are in some form or other, while life lasts.