The New Holland Club, of which Mr. Banneret had for many years been a member, again opened its arms to receive the absent member, whom they thought never again to behold. Reports had reached them that he was dead—not expected to survive, what not? It is not a wholly unpleasant [125] ]sensation to personally contradict the report of one’s decease,—that report, ‘upon the best authority,’ quoted from the morning papers, that one has been cut off in the flower of one’s youth, or the zenith of one’s fame, as the case may be. Even there the candid friend is not wholly at a disadvantage. ‘No idea that I was such a fine fellow,’ says Horatio, returning, let us say, from Philippi, where he was reported slain. ‘Really,’ drawls the inevitable ‘friend,’ ‘but, you know, dear boy, people exaggerate so fearfully on such occasions!’
It is good to be rich, for some, for many reasons. It is good even to be thought rich, if one is not thereby tempted to spend extravagantly. As mankind are constituted, whether the money is inherited, gained by accident, by the hardly reputable means of gambling, so long as it is known to be there, a certain kind of respect and deference goes along with its possession. Perhaps in Arnold Banneret’s case, whose exploration of an inhospitable desert where men’s lives were but as counters in the game, and had been expended as recklessly, it disposed the critics of the clubs and swagger hotels to regard him as having achieved true distinction. Younger sons and others, who had gone out with hazy ideas of digging a fortune out of the dreary wastes, of which they had heard, and had returned to the city without one, comprehended the preliminary hardships which he must have undergone. They enlarged upon these, in all good faith, until the readers of newspapers and the public generally were disposed to look upon him as [126] ]a general of Division and a scientific millionaire combined.
‘Heard of him before,’ men would say in the smoking room. ‘Been at the front all his life. Squatter in old days—took up outside country—rows with blacks—bushrangers, that sort of man. Dropped his money when stock went down. Took to the Civil Service later on. Wife and children—so on. Makes up his mind to be Goldfields Warden—tired of that—believed in another cast of the dice—goes to W.A.—and before he’s been there a month, hits on the discovery of the age—the biggest of the century—regular Mount Morgan, y’know.’
‘Mayn’t be quite as big a quarry as that,’ interposes another man—a pastoralist, whose grizzled beard and bronzed countenance has ‘Waste Lands of the Crown’ writ large thereon—‘but told by men, been there and seen, half a dozen fortunes in it,’ and so on, and so on. Thus the hero-worship progressed.
Rich—beyond any of his dreams of avarice—so far, he saw himself so high on the ladder of prosperity that he began to consider how he might benefit those friends and relations (perhaps) whom he had so often pitied, lamenting at the same time his inability to aid them. It was one of the anomalies of life, he had reflected, that people in possession of superfluous means seldom showed much disposition to use them in this way; while those who, like himself, would have taken pleasure in dispensing timely aid seldom had the wherewithal to gratify benevolent intentions. However, [127] ]if the future yields of the ‘Last Chance’ kept up its present rate, there would be enough, and to spare, for years to come. He could enact the Uncle from India—they are always rich (or used to be)—for the benefit of deserving relations who would be touchingly grateful to the end of their lives. How he could assist all benevolent institutions—repay those who had been kind to him in the early struggles of his life! He had a good memory for such positions and people. Then, after a few years, which he could spend comfortably, not to say luxuriously, in Sydney—he would take the family to England. The boys would be of an age to benefit by public-school training, preparatory to being entered at Oxford or Cambridge. He would buy an estate—not too large, but sufficiently so, to give them the pleasures of English country life, without the drawbacks of having to attend to the responsibilities and details of a large estate. He might even go into parliament—that was to be managed more easily in the old country than in the new one, where the low suffrage, combined with the intense jealousy which wealth and a cultured intellect aroused in the lower-class voters, made it difficult, if not impossible, for their possessor to enter parliament. However, these hopes and enterprises were for the future to justify and develop in action. For the present here was he, Arnold Banneret, back again in Sydney—safe and sound, fully recovered from the fever scourge of outside habitations—wife and children well—heartily enjoying his recovered freedom from anxiety, the society of his friends, and [128] ]in a moderate way the prestige which had accrued to him as a favourite of fortune, and a successful, energetic, worthy recipient of her gifts.
Of the good things now so lavishly bestowed upon them his wife had her full share. Always ready to indulge her with such pleasures as he could afford, and knowing well that in the matter of expenditure she was far more prudent, as well as practical, than himself—he had relinquished to her willingly in his official days the power to draw on a separate bank account, into which his pay as it came in was deposited. From this she was expected to provide for household expenses—dress—schooling—all things needful for their station in life. He contracted to discharge his private personal expenses,—having subsidiary grants, such as coroners’ and other fees, travelling allowances for the long rides and drives he was obliged to take in connection with mining matters, the settlement of disputes about claims, or reports on the sale of auriferous lands: in fact, upon the thousand and one matters only to be settled satisfactorily by the presence and judicial action of the resident magistrate.
Now, of course, Mrs. Banneret’s bank account was increased—enlarged upon a scale commensurate with the imposing amounts which regularly arrived from the goldfield of Balgowrie in the district of Sturt, in the colony of West Australia. Like most married women, the spending of money gratified her, more especially when she had no doubt of the solvency of the bank account, and the propriety of the manner in which it was [129] ]disbursed. That the children should be well and handsomely dressed, as became their station in life, was to her a matter not only of right and justice, but of keen enjoyment. That they were enabled to join in such entertainments as were suited to their age, and station in life, was also a part of her satisfaction. They had often, in former days, been denied these innocent pleasures—to her secret mortification. Now and henceforth this disability was abrogated for all future time.
How very delightful it all was! What a glorious thing was life! (Of course there were drawbacks—but they must be expected.) Here Arnold Banneret’s mind reverted to that little hospital at Pilot Mount, to the delirious patient in one bed—suspected in lucid intervals to be himself—to Nurse Lilburne’s grave, compassionate face—to the dead miner but two beds away—to the empty couch, which had been occupied last night!
Thinking of such things, a wave of deep and earnest gratitude to the Lord and Giver of Life for a while took possession of all his faculties, to the exclusion of all merely pleasurable sensations. While sitting in the broad, flower-wreathed verandah, as the evening shadows deepened into those of night, and looking over the waveless water-plain of the harbour, lit up from time to time by the lights of passing steamers—the silence broken but by their warning bells—the deep blue heavens, star fretted, and but faintly luminous in the southern midnight—the hands of the husband and wife stole together; for they were lovers still, [130] ]though so long wedded. ‘Oh, Arnold!’ said the wife, ‘is not this a fragment of Paradise, after what we have gone through, and do you think it will—it can last? I feel almost too happy. God has indeed answered our prayers—in many an eventide it has been light, but this is the crown—the glory of all our life!’
‘That we have fought our fight fairly—through good and evil hap—I think we are entitled to say, though humbly; and thankfully do I acknowledge God’s mercy and goodness in the troubled times of our married life. But it really looks now as if peace was declared, and the war was over. Let us trust so, and hope that in time to come, as in the past, a hand may be stretched out to save in time of need. May our children who have their lives before them, with all their trials and dangers, be not less happy, less fortunate than we have been!’