get home, though, mother’s been expecting you this hour. I’ll be in as soon as I’ve put on this last log. This load ought to keep them in firewood for a month.”
“You’re a good boy, Hubert. I’ll ride on; don’t knock any more skin off your hands than is absolutely necessary, though,” pointing to a bleeding patch about half an inch square, from which the cuticle had been recently removed. “A gentleman should consider his hands, even when he is obliged to work. Besides, in this weather there is a little danger of inflammation.”
“Oh, that!” said the youngster with the fine carelessness of early manhood. “Scratches don’t count in the bush. I wish my clothes would heal of themselves when they get torn. It would save poor mother’s everlasting stitch, stitch, a little, and her eyes too, poor dear! Now, you go on, dad, and have your bath, and make yourself comfortable before I come in. A new magazine came by post to-day, and the last Australasian. Laura’s got such a song too. We’re going to have no end of an evening, if you’ll only pull yourself together a bit. Now you won’t fret about this miserable season, will you? It’s bad enough, of course, but it’s no use lying down to it—now, is it?”
“Right, my boy; we must all do our best, and trust in God’s mercy. He has helped us hitherto. It is cowardly to despair. I thank Him that I have children whom I can be proud of, whether good or ill fortune betide.”
Mr. Stamford put spurs to his horse. The leg-weary brute threw up his head gamely, and, true to his blood, made shift to cover the remaining distance from the homestead at a brisk pace. As he rode into the stable yard, a figure clad in a jersey, a pair of trousers, and a bathing towel, which turned out to be an eager lad of twelve, ran up to him.
“Give me Sindbad, father; I’m just going down to the river for a swim, and I’ll give him one too. It will freshen him up. I’ll scrape him up a bit of lucerne, just a taste; his chaff and corn are in the manger all ready.”
“Take him, Dick; but don’t stay in too long. It’s getting dark, and tea will soon be ready.”
The boy sprang into the saddle, and, touching the old horse with his bare heels, started off on a canter over the river meadow, now comparatively cool in the growing twilight, towards a gravelly ford in which the mountain water still ran strong and clear.
With a sigh of relief, his father walked slowly forward through the garden gate and into the broad verandah of the cottage. Dropping listlessly into a great Cingalese cane chair, he looked round with an air of exhaustion and despondency. Below him was a well-grown orchard, with rows of fruit trees, the size and spreading foliage of which showed as well great age as the fertility of the soil. The murmuring sound of the river over the rocky shallows was plainly audible. Dark-shadowed eucalypti marked its winding course. As the wearied man lay motionless on the couch, the night air from the meadow played freshly cool against his temples. Stars arose of wondrous southern brilliancy. Dark blue and cloudless, the sky was undimmed. Strange cries came from the woods. A solemn hush fell over all things. It was an hour unspeakably calm and solemn—restful to the spirit after the long, burdensome, heated day.
“Ah, me!” sighed he; “how many an evening I have enjoyed from this very spot, at this self-same hour! Is it possible that we are to be driven out even from this loved retreat?”
A sweet girlish voice suddenly awoke him from his reverie, as one of the casement windows opened, and a slight, youthful figure stood at his shoulder.
“No wonder you are ashamed, you mean old daddy! Here have mother and I been exerting ourselves this hot afternoon to provide you with a superior entertainment, quite a club dinner in its way; attired ourselves, too, in the most attractive manner—look at me, for instance—and what is our reward? Why, instead of going to dress sensibly, you sit mooning here, and everything will be spoiled.”
“My darling! I am ready for my bath, I promise you; but I am tired, and perhaps a little discouraged. I have had a long day, and seen nothing to cheer me either.”
“Poor old father! So have we all; so has mother, so has Hubert, so have I and Linda. But it’s no use giving in, is it? Now walk off, there’s a dear! You’re not so very tired, unless your constitution has broken down all of a sudden. It takes a good day to knock you up, that I know. But we must all put a good face on it—mustn’t we?—till we’re quite sure that the battle’s lost. The Prussians may come up yet, you know!”
He drew the girl’s face over to his own, and kissed her fondly. Laura Stamford was indeed a daughter that a father might proudly look upon, that her mother might trust to be her best aid and comfort, loving in prosperity, lightsome of heart as the bird that sings at dawn, brave in adversity, and strong to suffer for those she loved.
All innocent she of the world’s hard ways, its lurid lights, its dread shadows. Proud, pure, unselfish in every thought and feeling, all the strength of her nature went out in fondness for those darlings of her heart, the inmates of that cherished home, wherein they had never as yet known sorrow. The fateful passion which makes or mars all womanhood was for her as yet in the future. What prayers had ascended to Heaven that her choice might be blessed, her happiness assured!
“This is the time for action, no more contemplation,” she said, with a mock heroic air; “the shower bath is filled; your evening clothes are ready in the dressing-room; mother is putting the last touch to her cap, Andiamo!”
When the family met at the tea-table—a comprehensive meal which, though not claiming the rank of dinner, furnished most of its requisites—Mr. Stamford owned that life wore a brighter prospect.
His wife and daughters in tasteful, though not ostentatious, evening attire would have graced a more brilliant entertainment. The boys, cool and fresh after their swim in the river, were happy and cheerful. Hubert, correctly attired, and much benefited by his bath and toilette, had done justice to his manifest good looks.
The well-cooked, neatly served meal, with the aid of a few glasses of sound Australian Reisling, was highly restorative. All these permissible palliatives tended to recreate tone and allay nervous depression. “The banker’s letter notwithstanding, things might not be so very bad,” the squatter thought. He would go to town. He might make other arrangements. It might even rain. If the worst came to the worst, he might be able to change his account. If things altered for the better, there was no use desponding. If, again, all were lost, it were better to confront fate boldly.
“Shall I pull through, after all?” said Mr. Stamford to himself, for the fiftieth time, as he looked over the morning papers at Batty’s Hotel, about a week after the occurrences lately referred to. In a mechanical way, his eyes and a subsection of his brain provided him with the information that, in spite of his misfortunes, the progress of Australian civilisation went on pretty much as usual. Floods in one colony, fires in another. The Messageries steamer Caledonien just in. The Carthage (P. and O.) just sailed with an aristocratic passenger list. Burglars cleverly captured. Larrikins difficult of extinction. The wheat crop fair, maize only so-so. These important items were registered in the brooding man’s duplex-acting brain after a fashion. But in one corner of that mysterious store-house, printing machine, signal-station, whatnot, one thought was steadily repeating itself with bell-like regularity. “What if the bank’s ultimatum is, no further advance, no further advance, no further ad—--”
After breakfast, sadly resolved, he wended his way to the palace of finance, with the potentate of which he was to undergo so momentous an interview.
Heart-sick and apprehensive as he was, he could not avoid noting with quick appreciation the sights and sounds of civilisation which pressed themselves on his senses as he walked in a leisurely manner towards the Bank of New Guinea. “What wonders and miracles daily pass before one’s eyes in a city,” he said to himself, “when one has been as long away from town as I have! What a gallery of studies to a man, after a quiet bush life, is comprised in the everyday life of a large city! What processions of humanity—what light and colour! What models of art, strength, industry! What endless romances in the faces of the very men and women that pass and repass so ceaselessly! Strange and how wonderful is all this! Glorious, too, the ocean breath that fans