“You have not paid me the compliment of including me on the canvas.”
“I don’t possibly imagine you within thousands of miles of Gondaree or Juandah at such a time. You will be dreaming among the ‘Stones of Venice,’ lounging away the winter in Rome, or settled in a hunting neighbourhood in a pleasant English county, making up your mind, very gradually, to return to Australia, and to devote the rest of your days to model farming and national regeneration.”
“There is only one thing absolutely necessary to render my existence happy under the conditions which you have so accurately sketched,”—here he leaned forward, and placing his hand upon her horse’s mane, saw a softened gleam in her marvellous eyes—as of the heart’s farewell to unacknowledged hope—“and that is——”
“We are really riding shamefully slow,” said she suddenly, as she drew her rein, and the free horse tossed his head and went off at speed. “Mark must have nearly reached home, and Jane, as usual, will be fancying all kinds of impossible accidents—that dear old Mameluke has tumbled down, positively tumbled down and broken my arm in three places. I tell her she’ll suspect me of taking a ‘bait’ next. How still the plain looks, and how exactly the same—north and south, east and west! But even in this light you can distinguish the heavy, dark, winding line of the river timber.”
In due time the guests departed, and Mr. Redgrave was left to the consideration of the loneliness of his condition, a view of life which had not presented itself strongly before his introduction to Miss Stangrove. He had been contented to enjoy the society of wife, widow, and maid in the most artless, instinctive fashion, without any fixed plan of personal advantage. Not that this unsatisfactory general approbation had escaped criticism by those who felt themselves to be sufficiently interested to speak. He had been called selfish, conceited, fastidious, fast, uninteresting, and mysterious. Many adjectives had in private been hurled at his devoted head. But he “had a light heart, and so bore up.” Besides, he had a reserve of popularity to fall back upon. There were many people who would not suffer Jack Redgrave to be run down unreasonably. So up to this time he had eluded appropriation and defied disapproval.
Now matters were changed. The slow, resistless Nemesis was upon him. In his ears sounded the prelude to that melody—heard but once in this mortal life—in tones at first low and soft, then rich and dread with melody from the immortal lyre. At that summons all men arise and follow. Follow, be it angel or fiend. Follow, be the path over vernal meads, through forest gloom, or the drear shades of the nether hell.
No woman, Jack soliloquised, had ever before commended herself to his tastes, his senses, his reason, and his fancy. She was in his eyes lovely in form and face; original, cultured, tender, and true. He would make her his wife if his utmost efforts might compass such triumph, such wild exaggeration of happiness. She might not care particularly about him. She might merely have whiled away a dull week. Now, many a time had he done likewise, with apparent interest and inward tedium. Were it so, he felt as if he could bestow a legend on Steamboat Point by casting himself into the rapid but not particularly deep waters which flowed beneath. At any rate he would try. He would make the great hazard. He would know his fate after shearing. Meanwhile, there was nearly enough to do until that solemn Hegira to put the thought of Maud Stangrove out of his head.
Having made up his mind, Mr. Redgrave dismissed the fair Maud with philosophical completeness. Master Jack was extremely averse to holding his judgment in suspense, that process involving abrasion of his peculiarly delicate mental cuticle. He was prone, therefore, to a speedy settlement of all cases of conscience. Judgment being delivered, he bore or performed sentence unflinchingly. Yet his friends asserted that during any stay of proceedings he could amuse himself as unreservedly, as free from boding gloom, or “the sad companion, ghastly pale, and darksome as a widow’s veil,” as any sportive lambkin on his way to mint sauce and deglutition. Thus, having settled that the subjugation of Miss Stangrove could not be undertaken until after shearing, he went heart and soul into the arrangements for that annual agony, to the total exclusion of all less material considerations.
To a healthy man, in the full possession of all mental and bodily faculties, perhaps a state of perfect employment is the one most nearly approaching to that of perfect happiness. It is rarely conceded at the time; but more often than we wot of do men recall, when in the lap of ease, that season of comparative toil and strife, with a sigh for the “grand old days of pleasure and pain.” Each nerve and muscle is at stretch. The struggle is close and hard; but there is the glorious sensation of “the strong man rejoicing in his strength.” The very fatigue is natural and wholesome. The recovery is sure and complete; and, if only a reasonable meed of success crown those unsparing efforts, the heart swells with the proud joy of him round whose brow is twined the envied crown in the arena. Let who will choose the dulled sensation with which, in after life, the successful merchant notes his dividends, or the politician accepts the long-promised leadership.
Mr. Redgrave, then, having girded himself for the fight, in company with M‘Nab, drank delight of battle with his peers, that is, with the shearers, washers, and knockabout men, who struck repeatedly, and gave as much trouble as their ingenuity could manage to supply during the first week of shearing.