Mr. Barrington Hope, on the other hand, betook himself by rail to the metropolis, to plunge once more, with the eagerness of a strong swimmer, into the great ocean of speculative finance, which there “heaves and seethes alway.” But before he departed he had transacted a rather important interview, in which Laura Stamford was the person chiefly interested; had, indeed, promised to revisit Windāhgil before the winter ended.
CHAPTER XVII
Local critics were not lacking around Mooramah, as in other places. They failed not to make unfavourable comments upon Hubert’s decided course of action. They were pleased to say “that young man was going too fast”—was leading his father into hazardous speculations; all this new country that such a fuss was made about was too far off to pay interest upon the capital for years and years to come; the Austral Agency Company had better mind what they were about, or they would drop something serious if they went on backing every boy that wanted to take up outside country, instead of making the most of what his family had and helping his parents at home. As for young Dacre, he would most likely get his sheep eaten by the blacks and himself speared, as he knew nothing about the bush, and hardly could tell the difference between a broken-mouthed ewe and a weaner. Besides, the season might “turn round” after all—there was plenty of time for rain yet. Most likely it would come in February, as it had often done before. Travelling sheep was a most expensive game, and you were never done putting your hand in your pocket.”
Thus argued the unambitious, stay-at-home, easy-going section of society which obtains in rural Australia in almost the same proportion and degree that it does in English counties. In the older-settled portions of the land one may discern the same tendency to over-crowding the given area with unnecessary adults, procuring but a bare subsistence, narrowing with each generation as in Britain, where sons of proprietors are too often contented to sink somewhat in the social scale rather than forego the so-called “comforts” of civilised life. The poorly-paid curate, the Irish squireen, “Jock, the Laird’s brother,” and the French hobereau, so cordially hated by the peasantry before the Revolution, are examples of this class.
And, in the older-settled portions of Australia are to be found far too many men of birth and breeding who are contented to abide in the enjoyment of the small amenities of country town life, to sink down to the positions of yeomen, farmers, and tenants, rather than turn their faces to the broad desert as their fathers did before them, and carve out for themselves, even at the cost of peril and privation, a heritage worthy of a race of sea kings and conquerors.
Hubert Stamford did not belong, by any means, to the contented mediocrities. Willoughby Dacre was a kindred spirit. So the two young men fared cheerfully forth across the dusty, thirsty zone, beyond which lay the Promised Land. Hard work and wearisome it was, in a sense, but held nothing to daunt strong men in the full vigour of early manhood. The days were hot, and Willoughby’s English skin peeled off in patches for the first week or two from the exposed portions of his person. But cooler airs came before midnight, and the appetites of both after long days in the saddle were surprising. The sheep, being in good condition at starting, bore the forced marches, which were necessary, fairly well. Donald Greenhaugh seemed to know every creek, water-course, and spring in the whole country. And on one fine day Willoughby pulled up his horse, and in a tone of extreme surprise exclaimed, “Why, there’s grass!” pointing to a fine green tuft of the succulent Bromus Mitchelli. It was even so. They had struck the “rain line,” marked as with a measuring tape. Henceforth all was peace and plenty with the rejoicing flocks, which grew strong and even fat as they fed onward through a land of succulent herbage and full-fed streams.
“Well, Willoughby, old man; what do you think of this?” asked Hubert one evening, as they sat on a log before their tent and watched the converging flocks feeding into camp; marked also the fantastic summits of isolated volcanic peaks which stood like watch-towers amid a grass ocean waving billowy in the breeze. “Do you think we did well to cut the painter? How do you suppose all these sheep would have looked at Windāhgil and Wantabalree?”
“They’ve had no rain yet,” said Willoughby. “In that letter I got at the last township we passed, the governor said there hadn’t been a shower since I left. It’s nearly three months now, and we should hardly have had a sheep to our name by this time.”
“There’ll be some awful losses in the district,” said Hubert. “Men will put off clearing out till too late. My own idea is that this will be a worse drought all down the Warroo than the last one. Our people will make shift to feed the few sheep we have left, thank goodness! And we have enough here to stock more than one run or two either. Windāhgil Downs will carry a hundred thousand sheep if it will ten. All we have to do now is to breed up. That’s plain sailing.”
“I wish we had some Wantabalree Downs ready to take up,” said Willoughby, regretfully. “If we hadn’t those beastly bills yet to pay, we might have done something in that way too.”