A Colonial Reformer, Vol. 3 (of 3)

In the strange exceptional condition of nervous tension up to which that marvellous instrument, the human ‘harp of a thousand strings,’ is capable of being wound, under the pressure of dread and perplexity, there is a type of visitor whose face is always hailed with pleasure. This is a fact as unquestionable as the converse proposition. For the bien-venu under such delicate and peculiar circumstances, helpfulness, sympathy, and decision are indispensable. Of no avail are weakly condolences or mild assenting pity. The power to dispense substantial aid may or may not be wanting. But the friend in need must have the moral power and clearness of mental vision which render decisiveness possible and just. His fiat, favourable or unfavourable, lets in the light, separates real danger from undefined terror, offers security for well-grounded hope, or persuades to the calmness of resignation.

A man so endowed, in a very unusual degree, was Mr. Levison. Deriving his leading characteristics from Nature’s gift—very scantily supplemented by education—he yet possessed the rare qualities of apprehensive acuteness, intrepidity, and discrimination in such measure and proportion as a hundred prize-takers at competitive examinations might have vainly hoped to emulate. Like that Australian judge, of whom the American citizen, in an inland assize town, is reported to have said, ‘Wal, Judge Shortcharge may be right, or he may be wrong, but he decides. I go for the judge myself.’

Abstinens Levison much resembled that brief but weighty legal luminary, in that, after due consideration of any case concerning which he was minded to give judgment, his verdict was clear and irrevocable.

For this reason the soul of Ernest Neuchamp was glad within him at the prospect of hearing from the lips of the grave, undemonstrative, unwavering pastoralist words of comfort or of rebuke, which would be to him as the Oracles of the Gods.

‘Jump off and come in,’ he said. ‘Delighted to see you—horse knocked up as usual? We’ll take the saddle off here, and let him pick at those reeds; they’re better than nothing. I was having a go-in at the garden here, just to take it out of myself a little, and forget my annoyances. But we must have some breakfast, though we are all going to be ruined, as you say—and it looks very like it.’

As Mr. Neuchamp in his revulsion of feeling rattled off these greetings, partly in welcome and partly in explanation, his guest removed the saddle and several folds of blanket from the very prominent vertebræ of his gaunt courser, watching him roll and then attack the scantily furnished reed-bed, with much satisfaction.

‘Where did you come from this morning?’ inquired Ernest of his guest, as, after a prolonged visit to the bathroom, they sat down to breakfast; ‘you must have made a very early start if you came from Mildool.’

‘I camped on the river,’ said Mr. Levison, attacking the corned beef in a deliberate but determined manner; ‘in the bend, just below those free-selecting friends of yours; you don’t seem to have been getting on well with ’em lately, from what they say.’

‘We are not on good terms, I must admit,’ replied Mr. Neuchamp, with a slight air of embarrassment, recollecting Levison’s prophecy of evil, which had been verified to the letter; ‘but it is entirely their own fault. I was much deceived in them.’

‘Very like,’ answered that gentleman, with as near an approach to a smile as his grave features ever permitted. ‘It takes a smart man to be up to chaps of their sort.’

‘Did you stay there?’ asked Ernest, anxious to lead the conversation into a less unsatisfactory channel; ‘they have not made themselves a very convenient dwelling.’

‘No!’ replied Mr. Levison, preferring a request for another instalment of the cold round of beef. ‘I never stay at a place if I’m going to make a deal. It makes a difference in the bargain, I always think; and I wanted to make a little deal with those chaps, from what I heard as I came up the river.’

‘A deal?’ said Ernest, with some surprise; ‘and how did you get on? I shouldn’t have thought they had much to sell.’

‘Well, they’ve got a middling lot of quiet cattle for one thing; they’re regular crawlers, but none the worse for that if grass ever grows again. Then they’ve got, what with their selections and pre-emptives, a tidy slice, and of not the worst part, of Rainbar run. And as there was a friend of mine that a small place like that would suit, and the cattle and the few sheep, at a price—at a price,’ he continued, with slow earnestness—‘why—I’ll ask for another cup of tea—I had an hour’s mighty hard dealing, and bought the whole jimbang right out.’

‘Indeed!’ said Ernest, gratified in one sense, but slightly alarmed at the idea of a second pastoral proprietor being introduced into the sacred demesne of Rainbar; ‘but they have to fulfil their residence condition, haven’t they, according to the Land Act?’

‘Of course I made that all right,’ affirmed the senior colonist. ‘They’re bound down to reside till their time is up, and they don’t get the balance of their money till they can convey, all square and legal. They didn’t know me, as luck would have it, and I dropped to their being very eager to sell out. These kind of chaps never look ahead beyond their noses, whereby I had ’em pretty well at my own price, for cash—cash, you know. A fine thing is cash, when you take care of it, and bring it out like an ace. It takes all before it.’

‘What did you give for the cattle?’ asked Ernest, with melancholy interest.

‘Well, these small holders always believe the end of the world’s come when they find themselves landed in a real crusher of a dry season. They think the weather is bound to keep set fair for a lifetime. I showed ’em how their cattle was falling off, and at last they offered the lot all round at eight and sixpence—no calves given in, except regular staggering Bobs. And so my friend has the run, and the stock, and the pre-empts all in his own hands. He’ll do well out of ’em, or I’m much mistaken.’

‘And does your friend propose to come and live here?’

‘Well, he might, and he might not. I think I’ll take another egg—fine things eggs in a dry season. I expect your fowls live on grasshoppers pretty much. You see, if he could get two or three fellows as he could depend on to take up some more of the best bits of the bends, leaving a slice here and a slice there—so as it’s not worth any one else’s while to come in, because they’d have no pre-emptive worth talking of—he’d be able to keep all that angle pretty well to himself, and I believe it will keep well on it a thousand head of cattle some day.’

‘I’m afraid it will spoil the sale of the run,’ said Ernest, with some diffidence; ‘not that it will matter to me much, as I shall have to sell out whether or no, and at present prices there will be little if anything left. You will have to take your cattle back if they’re not paid for.’

‘Well, I don’t say but what it might spoil the sale of the run, especially if my friend was to be wide awake and take up his fresh selections with judgment. And don’t you think, now,’ Mr. Levison interrogated, fixing his clear gray eyes full upon Ernest’s countenance, ‘as it was a blind trick of yours to go and bring these chaps here, like a lot of catarrhed sheep, all among your own stock, just to make it hot for yourself and crab the sale of the run, supposing you wanted to sell?’

Mr. Neuchamp had in his hours of remorse and repentance sufficiently gone over the ground of his errors and miscalculations, so as to be very fully convinced of the folly of this his most indefensible proceeding. He had been thirsting for the words of the oracle. Now that the hollow sounds came from Dodona’s oak, he liked not their purport. The spirit of his ancestors, temporarily oppressed by misfortune, awoke in his breast, and he thus made answer: ‘My dear sir, I am most willing to own that I have in this matter acted unwisely. And the more I see of this great but perplexing country, the more ready I am to admit that extreme caution is necessary in many transactions where such need does not appear on the surface. But I have acted in this, and in all other stages of my Australian career, upon the principle of attempting to do good to my fellow-creatures, and of raising the standard of human happiness and culture. Such motives I hold to be the true foundation of every instructed, christianised, and, therefore, permanent community. Want of success may have attended my efforts to carry out these ideas; but of such efforts and endeavours, whatever may be the result, I trust I shall never feel ashamed!’

As Mr. Neuchamp uttered the concluding words of this vindication of his faith with a kindling eye and slightly raised tone, he held his head erect and looked with a fixed and rather stern regard at Mr. Levison, as if defying all the Paynim hosts of selfishness and monopoly.

Mr. Levison met his gaze with a moment’s searching glance, and then, with a relapse into his ordinary expression of judicial calculation, thus answered—

‘I ain’t going to say that you are acting altogether wrong in trying to right things in a general way in life. There’s more than you has noticed a lot of wrong turns and breakdowns for want of a finger-post or two. And I like to see a man back his opinion right through, whether it’s right or wrong. But if you lose your team, and break your pole, and spoil your loading when you’re on a long overland trip, how are you to help your mates or any other chap that’s bogged when they want you to double-bank? That’s what I look at. You’ve got to stand and look on, just like a broke loafer or a coach passenger. What I say, and what I stick to, is that a man should make sure, and double sure, of his own footing, and then he can wire in and haul out any man, woman, or child as he takes a fancy to put on firm ground. But, if you go too fast, and your agent drops you, and you want to help a fellow, why, you’re bust, and he’s bust, and what can either of ye do but sit on your stern fixings and look at each other?’

Mr. Levison’s illustrations were homely, but they had a force and application which Ernest fully recognised.

‘You have the truth on your side,’ he said, after a pause. ‘I see it now—very plainly, too. I wonder why I could not see it before.’

‘There’s a deal of studying required, it seems to me,’ propounded his eccentric mentor, ‘and a deal of experience, and knocking about, and loss of time and money, too, before a man comes to see the right thing at the right time. That’s where the hardship all lies. If the thing’s right and the time’s wrong, that’s no good. And the right time and the wrong thing is worse again. What you’ve been a-doin’ of ain’t so much wrong in itself—only the time’s wrong, that’s where your mistake is,—except things take a great start soon; and I don’t say they won’t, mind you.‘

Here Mr. Levison looked at Ernest with an expression half humorous, half prophetic, so extremely unusual that the latter began to wonder whether there was any case on record of half a dozen cups of tea having produced temporary insanity. But the unaccustomed gleam departed suddenly from the dark, steadfast gray eyes, and the countenance resumed its wonted cast of calm investigation and unalterable decision.