‘That was fortunate. Everything looks flourishing now. Oh, here are the children, all come out to meet Dad, who is a man from a far country. Pull up, Reggie! and I’ll get out. Steady, Hector!’
Hector, the impatient, didn’t see the use of stopping so near home: indeed, gave two or three tugs and rushes before Mr. Banneret got clear of the buggy. Then there was great kissing and hugging, to be sure, from the half-dozen children, who hung round Daddy’s neck and kissed impartially, taking any part of him that came handy. There were four girls and three boys of differing ages and sizes, from Reggie, aged fourteen, and Eric, ten, to Jack and Jill, aged five, and a rose-faced pet of three, who demanded to be taken [79] ]into the buggy forthwith. So did the entire troop. But a compromise was effected by the girls getting in, and the boys electing to walk home. The load made no appreciable difference—eleven, including five adults and six children, had been carted eight miles on their first introduction to the district, in the same trap, the redoubtable Hector being quite as hard to hold then as now.
. . . . . . . . .
Such a paradise as home (blessed place and blessed word) appeared to the far-travelled father and husband! We pass over the mutual greetings of wife and husband—matters too sacred for descriptive analysis—‘with whose joy the stranger intermeddleth not.’ That they ‘kissed again with tears,’ on one side at any rate, may be conceded. All had gone well during the house-father’s absence. Hector had been lame for a week—which had led to anxiety. No cause could be assigned; but the shoeing smith was suspected of a tap with his hammer, as a hint to stand still. He declined to confess, but relieved his mind by abusing Hector as the most impatient, troublesome old wretch whose leg he had ever lifted. Anyhow, he was quite well again, and ‘flasher than ever’—this was the second son’s contribution to the case.
Next morning, in the pre-breakfast stroll, the springing crops—the wide alluvial flats—the lucerne fields—the dairy herd—the stud of well-bred horses—all appealed to the wanderer’s tastes and early associations; the delightful country attributes of a long-held fertile [80] ]estate—inherited by the present proprietor. The Commissioner was indeed but a tenant, dwelling in the ‘barton,’ so to speak, in old English term—the manor was the Squire’s by inheritance and occupation since he had come of age. A new house had been built soon after the auspicious occasion of his marriage; while, on the Commissioner’s arrival in the district, the roomy, old-fashioned cottage, with large rambling garden and aged orchard, had been gladly rented by him. For a man in his position, no more suitable place could have been found. The families became fast friends, and, what is more to the purpose, remained so for the whole decade during which the Commissioner’s official duties attached him to the district. The green fields and pastures were as much his as their owner’s, in the sense that a woodland scene belongs to him who can appreciate the lovely, verdant landscape. In earliest spring—in the bracing, but never severe winter of the South land—amid evergreen forests and running streams, even in the torrid summer, when the fresh, dry air has no enervating tendency—in the still dreamy autumn, ere yet the first hint of frost has shown itself in the yellowing oaks and elms—children they of the far north home-land—how good was the outlook! The Commissioner loved these demarcations of the changing year. In the river, which divided the great meadows from the estate of a neighbouring potentate, his boys learned to swim, and, both in the early summer morn and lingering eve, were eager to plunge into its cool depths, or unwilling [81] ]to return in time for the evening meal, to race and splash over the pebbly shallows. There were well-grassed paddocks for their ponies as well as for Hector and Paris, and their father’s hackney. They established also, it may be easily surmised, trial races and contests with the sons of the house, and by degrees developed the equine association, which helped them notably in the aftertime of polo, hunting, and four-in-hand driving—when such pastimes and practice became suitable to their age and position.
It was a happy time then, with occasional exceptions, for the years of early youth that the children spent at Carjagong; for the parents also, though work was constant, and the just soul of Proconsul Paterfamilias was often vexed by malign editors and Radical demagogues, who stirred up strife in his kingdom, but he was supported by the more thoughtful of the mining population, as well as by the gentry of the district, with whom the family were always on good terms. A yearly or biennial visit to the cities of the coast gave all hands a taste of social life, and, with a breath of the sea breezes, a sight of the ocean wave and the world-famed harbour. So the family grew up: the girls into vigorous, independent maidens, riding and driving, reading and dancing alternately—with equal enthusiasm, as is the wont of the country-reared damsel, whether in Britain or Australia, Galway or Goulburn. There is, it must be allowed, in both hemispheres a note of freshness, vigour, and vitality observable in the country cousins, to which the town denizens, blasées with [82] ]unnumbered dissipations, rarely attain. Added to the ordinary accomplishments, in which they were fairly proficient, they had from time to time personal experience of the household duties, which the dearth of female domestics—then as now a grave matter of concern on the part of matrons—rendered necessary. Thus it must be allowed that for the position of chatelaine, to which, in due course of time, they might reasonably aspire, they were fairly equipped.
And the sons of the house, destined in days to come to work in distant States, or ‘outside’ regions, calling for leaders in the various industries of a great, almost boundless continent, would be found not unequal in brain or muscle to the duties imposed on them. Sons and grandsons of pioneers, they inherited the thirst for adventure which had brought the founder of the family, sea-borne in his own galley, like a Viking of old, so far across the restless main, to the new world under the Southern Cross. And now the abiding-place of the Bannerets was again to be changed. Leaving on former occasions their established residences in or near the principal cities of the coast, where flower-gardens bloomed, and orchards bore their annual store of tropical or British fruits, they had voyaged, or journeyed, to new, unpeopled regions. The same experience had been repeated—the building, the planting, the rearing of stock, the turning of waste land into fields and gardens, vineyards and olive-yards—sometimes for the benefit of the exiled family, more often for the use and reward of others when the route was given once again.
[83]
]There had been sadness and heartburnings on all these occasions of uprooting ties and friendships which more than once had struck deep into a kindly soil; but the inherited pioneer instinct had triumphed over all regrets. Sometimes the exodus had been from a country life to that of cities; then the regret was softened by the anticipation of metropolitan privileges—the meeting with friends and relatives, the enchantments of novelty and romance. Still, again, the departure from these new delights to a distant, untried region, a strange environment, an unknown society, was proportionately distasteful.
But the Bannerets were an adaptable race: they soon familiarised themselves with new surroundings. Hot or cold, plain or forest, ‘out back’ or near town, it seemed alike to them. They discovered kindred spirits in the strangers amongst whom, for the first time, they were thrown. They were sociable to the point of tolerating those whom they could not admire; being civil and friendly to all sorts and conditions of men, ready to do a kindness whenever such opportunity came in their way, while preserving, as far as in them lay, that standard of conduct and manners which had been habitual from childhood. Small wonder, then, that they never left one of the country towns, to which the exigencies of official or pastoral life guided their steps, without public regrets being expressed. A presentation in every case accompanied the address, which, in the shape of coin of the realm, was not unwelcome. Their residence in this, a fertile as well as [84] ]gold-bearing district, had exceeded the usual term, and the manifestations of public sympathy were therefore more general and pronounced.
To be sure, on the following morning after the Commissioner’s arrival, when it was announced that he had decided to ask for three months’ leave of absence, and to retire at the end of that time from the Government service, there was a certain excitement, almost a commotion.