“It was rather a facer,” he admitted to Stangrove, who had delicately described their grief at seeing the drowned weaners floating past their windows in scores and hundreds, “but when a fellow has a large operation in hand he must look at the progress of the whole enterprise, and not fix his mind upon minor drawbacks. A single vessel doesn’t matter out of the whole convoy of East Indiamen. The loss of the Royal George had no perceptible influence on the rest of the British navy. I shall shear over sixty thousand sheep next year, with luck, and when I sell shall think no more of those poor devils of weaners than you do of the blacks—probably mythical—that Red Rob slew during your minority.”
“With luck—with luck—as you say,” said Stangrove, rather absently. “But, as we agreed before, luck seems necessary to the working out of your plan, which I admit, at present prices, looks feasible enough. But suppose we don’t get our fair share of luck this year, what then? However, we needn’t anticipate evil. Let’s come in and see the ladies.”
“‘So behold you of return,’ as dear old Madame Florac says,” commenced Maud, looking up from The Newcomes. “How truly fortunate you men are, Mr. Redgrave, that you can get away to some decent abode of mankind every now and then under the pretence of business! Now we poor, oppressed women have to give reasons that will bear the most searching investigation before we are allowed to go anywhere. Men only say vaguely ‘must go—important business,’ and take themselves off.”
“Really, Miss Stangrove, I don’t see but that you, in this nice cool room, with nothing to do but to read about Ethel and Barnes, that grand old cat Lady Kew, and the dear old Colonel, are about as well off as any one I have seen in my travels.”
“That’s all nonsense. We endure life here, of course, but look at the delightful change of scene, air, life, people, trees, bread and butter, everything new and fresh that you have had lately. Uniformity is death to some natures. That is why some unhappy individuals of my sex make dismal endings and horrid examples of themselves. Some girl marries the butler, or the stockman, or the music master periodically. Depend upon it, it is nothing but Nature’s protest against the murderous monotony of their daily lives.”
“Maud, Maud,” interposed Mrs. Stangrove, “how can you say such dreadful things? Quite improper, I think. I declare Mr. Redgrave will be shocked and alarmed if you go on so. Really, my dear!”
Jack mildly combated these extreme and unconventional opinions, declaring that some of the most discontented, useless, and life-weary people he had ever seen had enjoyed no end of variety—passed their lives in sight-seeing—been everywhere—and yet were more utterly ennuyés than even Miss Stangrove on the banks of the Warroo.
“Well,” said that young lady, “you see they had only been working out the vanity and vexation of spirit theory, and how dreary a result it was for the Wise King to come to! But I should like ‘to see the folly of it too.’ I think manufacturing one’s own vanity and vexation is more satisfactory than acquiring it second-hand.”
“I wonder if our black friends ever feel bored,” said Jack; “before we came and gave them iron tomahawks it must have taken a fellow a week to chop out a ’possum; so I suppose constant employment conduced to cheerfulness. Still, of late years, food being plentiful, wars traditionary, and travel impossible, game perhaps a trifle scarcer, a sense of impatience of the ‘slow, strong hours’ may have crossed their unused intelligences.”
“It may be, for all we know,” said Mark, who had re-entered and thrown himself upon a sofa, “at the root of the frantic love for ardent spirits which all the younger natives have. The men of a generation or two back, like ‘old man Jack,’ don’t drink. But all the middle-aged and younger ones, more particularly those, by comparison, educated, drink fearfully hard whenever they get the chance.”