Nothing could now be done. Persuasion, intimidation, deception, had all been tried previously in vain. The recipe of paterfamilias, as to horse management, was to sit perfectly still with the reins firmly held but moveless, buttoning his gloves with an elaborate pretence of never minding. All known expedients have come to nought long ago. Pushing the wheels, even down hill, is regarded with contempt; leading (except by a lady) scornfully refused. The whip is out of the question. 'Patience is a virtue'—indeed the virtue, the only one which will serve our turn. Meanwhile, when people are fairly on the warpath, this dead refusal to budge an inch is a little, just a little, exasperating. Paterfamilias computes, however, that ten minutes' delay can be made up with such steppers. He smiles benignantly as he pulls out a newspaper and asks his wife if she has brought her book. Two minutes, four, five, or is it half an hour? The time seems long. 'Trois cent milles diables!' the natural man feels inclined to ejaculate. He knows that he is sinking fast in the estimation of newly-arrived station hands and chance spectators. Eight minutes—Railway makes no sign; years might roll on before he would start with an unwilling mate. Nine minutes—Steamer, whose impatient soul abhors inaction, begins to paw. The student is absorbed in his leading article. Ten minutes!—Steamer opens his mouth and carries the whole equipage off with one rush. Railway is up and away; half a second later the proprietor folds up his journal and takes them firmly in hand. The children begin to laugh and chatter; the lady to converse; and the journey, long or short, wet or dry, may be considered, as far as horseflesh is concerned, to be un fait accompli.
At the end of four years of unclouded happiness (as novelists write of wedded life), this state of literal conjugal bliss was doomed to end. An epidemic of lung disease, such as at intervals sweeps over the land, occurred in Victoria. Railway fell a victim, being found dead in his paddock. Up to this time he had never been 'sick or sorry,' lame, tired, or unfit to go. His iron legs, with feet to match, showed no sign of work. In single harness he was miraculous, going mile after mile with the regularity of a steam-engine, apparently incapable of fatigue. I was lucky enough to have a fast, clever grandson of Cornborough to put in his place. He lasted ten years. A half-brother three years more. The old horse was using up his fourth running mate, and entering upon his twentieth year in my service, when King Death put on the brake.
Not the least noticeable among Steamer's many good qualities was his kindly, generous temper. His was the Arab's docile gentleness with children. The large mild eye, 'on which you could hang your hat,' as the stable idiom goes, was a true indication of character. I was a bachelor when I first became his master. As time passed on, Mrs. Boldrewood and the elder girls used to drive him to the country town in New South Wales, near which we afterwards dwelt. The boys rode him as soon as they could straddle a horse. They hung by his tail, walked between his legs, and did all kinds of confidential circus performances for the benefit of their young friends. He was never known to bite, kick, or in any way offer harm; and, speedy to the last, with age he never lost pace or courage. 'All spirit and no vice' was a compendium of his character. By flood and field, in summer's heat or winter's cold, he failed us never; was credited, besides, with having saved the lives of two of the children by his docility and intelligence. He was twice loose with the buggy at his heels at night—once without winkers, which he had rubbed off. On the last occasion, after walking down to the gate of the paddock, and finding it shut—nearly a mile—he turned round without locking the wheels, and came galloping up to the door of the house (it was a ball night, and he had got tired of waiting). When I ran out, pale with apprehension, I discovered the headstall hanging below his chest. His extreme docility with children I attribute to his being for many years strictly a family horse, exclusively fed, harnessed, and driven by ourselves. It is needless to say he was petted a good deal: indeed he thought nothing of walking through the kitchen, a brick-floored edifice, when he thought corn should be forthcoming. Horses are generally peaceable with children but not invariably, as I have known of limbs broken and more than one lamentable death occasioned by kicks, when the poor things went too near unwittingly. But the old horse couldn't kick. 'I reckon he didn't know how.' And when he died, gloom and grief fell upon the whole family, who mourned as for the death of a dear friend.
HOW I BEGAN TO WRITE
For publication I mean. Having the pen of a ready writer by inheritance, I had dashed off occasional onslaughts in the journals of the day, chiefly in defence of the divine rights of kings (pastoral ones). I had assailed incoherent democrats, who perversely denied that Australia was created chiefly for the sustenance of sheep and cattle and the aggrandisement of those heroic individuals who first explored and then exploited the 'Waste Lands of the Crown.' The school of political belief to which I then belonged derided agriculture, and was subsequently committed to a scheme for the formation of the Riverina into a separate pastoral kingdom or colony. A petition embodying a statement to this effect, wholly unfitted as it was for the sustenance of a population dependent upon agriculture, was forwarded to the Secretary for the Colonies, who very properly disregarded it. The petitioners could not then foresee the stacking of 20,000 bags of wheat, holding four bushels each, awaiting railway transport at one of the farming centres of this barren region in the year 1897. Allied facts caused me to reconsider my very pronounced opinions, and, perhaps, led others to question the accuracy of theirs. My deliverances in the journals of the period occurred in the forties and fifties of the century, and gradually subsided.
I was battling with the season of 1865 on a station on the Murrumbidgee River, at no great distance from the flourishing town of Narandera, then consisting of two hotels, a small store, and a large graveyard, when an uncertain-tempered young horse kicked me just above the ankle with such force and accuracy that I thought the bone was broken. I was to have ridden at daylight to count a flock of sheep, and could scarcely crawl back to the huts from the stock-yard without assistance, so great was the agony. I sat down on the frosted ground and pulled off my boot, knowing that the leg would swell. Cold as it was, the thirst of the wounded soldier immediately attacked me. My room in the slab hut, preceding the brick cottage, then in course of erection, was, to use Mr. Swiveller's description, 'an airy and well-ventilated apartment.' It contained, in addition to joint stools, a solid table, upon which my simple meals of chops, damper, and tea were displayed three times a day by a shepherd's wife, an elderly personage of varied and sensational experiences.
I may mention that the great Riverina region was as yet in its unfenced, more or less Arcadian stage, the flocks being 'shepherded' (expressive Australian verb, since enlarged as to meaning) and duly folded or camped at night. Something of Mrs. Regan's advanced tone of thought may be gathered from the following dialogue, which I overheard:—
Shady township individual—'Your man shot my dorg t'other night. What d'yer do that fer?'
Mrs. Regan—''Cause we caught him among the sheep; and we'd 'a shot you, if you'd bin in the same place.'
Township individual—'You seem rather hot coffee, missus! I've 'arf a mind to pull your boss next Court day for the valley of the dorg.'