The Port Phillip investments paid so well that, upon the sale of Benmohr by Argyll and Hamilton, he purchased that ever-memorable historic station. Mrs. Teviot and Wullie remained in possession almost as long as they lived, but never could be brought to regard Mr. Effingham in any other light than that of a neighbour and a visitor of ‘their gentlemen.’ He was often reminded of the muddy winter evening when he first arrived.
Dean Sternworth—thus promoted—lives on, growing still more wonderful roses, and experiencing an access of purest pleasure when a Marie Van Houte or Souvenir de Malmaison excites the envy of the district.
Marrying, christening, and, indeed, burying the inhabitants of Yass—for death also is in Arcadia—his unobtrusive path is daily trodden, ‘and, sure the Eternal Master found, his single talent well employed.’
Among his chief and enduring pleasures are his monthly visits to Lake William to perform service in the freestone church, which has been erected by the Effingham family and their neighbours on a spot easy of general access. On such occasions Dr. Fane is generally found at The Chase, where the friends argue by the hour together. Such a period of continuous mutual entertainment must it have been that, on one occasion, was familiarly referred to by Master Hubert Warleigh Effingham as lasting ‘till all was blue.’
Howard Effingham has once more been placed by circumstances in the enviable position of a man who has nothing in this world to attend to but his favourite hobby, to which he is sufficiently attached to devote every moment of his spare time to it. That fortunate ex-militaire has now few other foes to consider than the native cat (dasyura), the black cormorant, and the dingo.
It must be confessed that they give him more trouble than ever—in his youth—did the Queen’s enemies. The cormorants eat his young fish, and when the captain extracted from the dead body of one of them no less than six infantine trout, the tears (so his grandson averred) came into his eyes. The partridges, even the gold and silver pheasants were not sacred from the native cat. An occasional dingo makes his appearance, wandering from Black Mountain (the doctor was always an indifferent ‘poisoner,’ says the parson), and a brace of gazelle fawns have never been sufficiently accounted for. But the exhibition of strychnine crystals provides a solution, and the land has peace.
On the whole, progress has been made. The furred, feathered, or finned emigrants are steadily increasing; fair shooting can soon be allowed, and extermination will be impossible.
Between ourselves, a leash of foxes were turned loose in the gibba-gunyahs, near which the first dingo was killed, by the Lake William hounds, and Jack Barker swore (only he ‘stretches’ so) that he saw the vixen feeding five cubs—one with a white tag to his brush (Jack is always circumstantial), with the biggest buck ’possum he ever saw.
The Lake William hounds have long been back in their kennels. John Hampden makes a point of attending the first meet, and O’Desmond (whose heart was not broken, or was at least successfully repaired by his subsequent marriage) is a steady supporter, as of yore.
But somehow the whole affair doesn’t feel so jolly as when Argyll and Hamilton, Ardmillan and Forbes, Fred Churbett and Neil, Malahyde and Edward Belfield—all the ‘Benmohr mob’ in fact—were safe for every meet.