The Caxtons, Part 18

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PART XVIII.

CHAPTER I.

Adieu, thou beautiful land, Canaan of the exiles, and Ararat to many a
shattered ark! Fair cradle of a race for whom the unbounded heritage of
a future that no sage can conjecture, no prophet divine, lies afar in the
golden promise--light of Time!--destined, perchance, from the sins and
sorrows of a civilization struggling with its own elements of decay, to
renew the youth of the world, and transmit the great soul of England
through the cycles of Infinite Change. All climates that can best ripen
the products of earth or form into various character and temper the
different families of man is "rain influences" from the heaven that
smiles so benignly on those who had once shrunk, ragged, from the wind,
or scowled on the thankless sun. Here, the hard air of the chill Mother
Isle,--there, the mild warmth of Italian autumns or the breathless glow
of the tropics. And with the beams of every climate, glides subtle Hope.
Of her there, it may be said, as of Light itself, in those exquisite
lines of a neglected poet,--

"Through the soft ways of heaven and air and sea,
Which open all their pores to thee,
Like a clear river thou dost glide.
All the world's bravery that delights our eyes
Is but thy several liveries;
Thou the rich dye on them bestowest;
Thy nimble pencil paints the landscape as thou goest." (1)

Adieu, my kind nurse and sweet foster-mother,--a long and a last adieu!
Never had I left thee but for that louder voice of Nature which calls the
child to the parent, and wooes us from the labors we love the best by the
chime in the sabbath-bells of Home.

No one can tell how dear the memory of that wild Bush life becomes to him
who has tried it with a fitting spirit. How often it haunts him in the
commonplace of more civilized scenes! Its dangers, its risks, its sense
of animal health, its bursts of adventure, its intervals of careless
repose,--the fierce gallop through a very sea of wide, rolling plains;
the still saunter, at night, through woods never changing their leaves,
with the moon, clear as sunshine, stealing slant through their clusters
of flowers. With what an effort we reconcile ourselves to the trite
cares and vexed pleasures, "the quotidian ague of frigid impertinences,"
to which we return! How strong and black stands my pencil-mark in this
passage of the poet from whom I have just quoted before!--

"We are here among the vast and noble scenes of Nature,--we are there
among the pitiful shifts of policy; we walk here in the light and open
ways of the Divine Bounty,--we grope there in the dark and confused
labyrinth of human malice." (2)

But I weary you, reader. The New World vanishes,--now a line, now a
speck; let us turn away, with the face to the Old. Amongst my fellow-
passengers how many there are returning home disgusted, disappointed,
impoverished, ruined, throwing themselves again on those unsuspecting
poor friends who thought they had done with the luckless good-for-noughts
forever. For don't let me deceive thee, reader, into supposing that
every adventurer to Australia has the luck of Pisistratus. Indeed,
though the poor laborer, and especially the poor operative from London
and the great trading towns (who has generally more of the quick knack of
learning,--the adaptable faculty,--required in a new colony, than the
simple agricultural laborer), are pretty sure to succeed, the class to
which I belong is one in which failures are numerous and success the
exception,--I mean young men with scholastic education and the habits of
gentlemen; with small capital and sanguine hopes. But this, in ninety-
nine times out of a hundred, is not the fault of the colony, but of the
emigrants. It requires not so much intellect as a peculiar turn of
intellect, and a fortunate combination of physical qualities, easy
temper, and quick mother-wit, to make a small capitalist a prosperous
Bushman. (3) And if you could see the sharks that swim round a man just
dropped at Adelaide or Sydney, with one or two thousand pounds in his
pocket! Hurry out of the towns as fast as you can, my young emigrant;
turn a deaf ear, for the present at least, to all jobbers and
speculators; make friends with some practised old Bushman; spend several
months at his station before you hazard your capital; take with you a
temper to bear everything and sigh for nothing; put your whole heart in
what you are about; never call upon Hercules when your cart sticks in the
rut,--and whether you feed sheep or breed cattle, your success is but a
question of time.

But whatever I owed to Nature, I owed also something to Fortune. I
bought my sheep at little more than 7s. each. When I left, none were
worth less than 15s., and the fat sheep were worth L1. (4) I had an
excellent shepherd, and my whole care, night and day, was the improvement
of the flock. I was fortunate, too, in entering Australia before the
system miscalled "The Wakefield" (5) had diminished the supply of labor
and raised the price of land. When the change came (like most of those
with large allotments and surplus capital), it greatly increased the
value of my own property, though at the cost of a terrible blow on the
general interests of the colony. I was lucky, too, in the additional
venture of a cattle-station, and in the breed of horses and herds, which,
in the five years devoted to that branch establishment, trebled the sum
invested therein, exclusive of the advantageous sale of the station. (6)
I was lucky, also, as I have stated, in the purchase and resale of lands,
at Uncle Jack's recommendation. And, lastly, I left in time, and escaped
a very disastrous crisis in colonial affairs, which I take the liberty of
attributing entirely to the mischievous crotchets of theorists at home
who want to set all clocks by Greenwich time, forgetting that it is
morning in one part of the world at the time they are tolling the curfew
in the other.

(1) Cowley: Ode to Light.

(2) Cowley on Town and Country. (Discourse on Agriculture.)

(3) How true are the following remarks:--

Action is the first great requisite of a colonist (that is, a pastoral or
agricultural settler). With a young man, the tone of his mind is more
important than his previous pursuits. I have known men of an active,
energetic, contented disposition, with a good flow of animal spirits, who
had been bred in luxury and refinement, succeed better than men bred as
farmers who were always hankering after bread and beer, and market
ordinaries of Old England... To be dreaming when you should be looking
after your cattle is a terrible drawback... There are certain persons
who, too lazy and too extravagant to succeed in Europe, sail for
Australia under the idea that fortunes are to be made there by a sort of
legerdemain, spend or lose their capital in a very short space of time,
and return to England to abuse the place, the people, and everything
connected with colonization.--Sydney. Australian Handbook (admirable for
its wisdom and compactness).

(4) Lest this seem an exaggeration, I venture to annex an extract from a
manuscript letter to the author from Mr. George Blakeston Wilkinson,
author of "South Australia"--

"I will instance the case of one person who had been a farmer in England,
and emigrated with about L2,000 about seven years since. On his arrival
he found that the prices of sheep had fallen from about 30s. to 5s. or
6s. per head, and he bought some well-bred flocks at these prices. He
was fortunate in obtaining a good and extensive run, and he devoted the
whole of his time to improving his flocks, and encouraged his shepherds
by rewards; so that in about four years his original number of sheep had
increased from twenty-five hundred (which cost him L700) to seven
thousand; and the breed and wool were also so much improved that he could
obtain L1 per head for two thousand fat sheep, and 15s. per head for the
other five thousand,--and this at a time when the general price of sheep
was from 10s. to 16s. This alone increased his original capital,
invested in sheep, from L700 to L5,700. The profits from the wool paid
the whole of his expenses and wages for his men."

(5) I felt sure from the first that the system called "The Wakefield"
could never fairly represent the ideas of Mr. Wakefield himself, whose
singular breadth of understanding and various knowledge of mankind belied
the notion that fathered on him the clumsy execution of a theory wholly
inapplicable to a social state like Australia. I am glad to see that he
has vindicated himself from the discreditable paternity. But I grieve to
find that he still clings to one cardinal error of the system, in the
discouragement of small holdings, and that he evades, more ingeniously
than ingenuously, the important question: "What should be the minimum
price of land?"

(6) The profits of cattle-farming are smaller than those of the sheep-
owner (if the latter have good luck; for much depends upon that), but
cattle-farming is much more safe as a speculation, and less care,
knowledge, and management are required. L2,000 laid out on seven hundred
head of cattle, if good runs be procured, might increase the capital in
five years from L2,000 to L6,000, besides enabling the owner to maintain
himself, pay wages, etc.--Manuscript letter from G. B. Wilkinson.

Chapter II.

London once more! How strange, lone, and savage I feel in the streets!
I am ashamed to have so much health and strength when I look at those
slim forms, stooping backs, and pale faces. I pick my way through the
crowd with the merciful timidity of a good-natured giant. I am afraid of
jostling against a man, for fear the collision should kill him. I get
out of the way of a thread-paper clerk, and 't is a wonder I am not run
over by the omnibuses,--I feel as if I could run over them! I perceive,
too, that there is something outlandish, peregrinate, and lawless about
me. Beau Brummel would certainly have denied me all pretension to the
simple air of a gentleman, for every third passenger turns back to look
at me. I retreat to my hotel; send for boot-maker, hatter, tailor, and
hair-cutter. I humanize myself from head to foot. Even Ulysses is
obliged to have recourse to the arts of Minerva, and, to speak
unmetaphorically, "smarten himself up," before the faithful Penelope
condescends to acknowledge him.

The artificers promise all despatch. Meanwhile I hasten to re-make
acquaintance with my mother-country over files of the "Times," "Post,"
"Chronicle," and "Herald." Nothing comes amiss to me but articles on
Australia; from those I turn aside with the true pshaw supercilious of
your practical man.

No more are leaders filled with praise and blame of Trevanion. "Percy's
spur is cold." Lord Ulverstone figures only in the "Court Circular," or
"Fashionable Movements." Lord Ulverstone entertains a royal duke at
dinner, or dines in turn with a royal duke, or has come to town, or gone
out of it. At most (faint Platonic reminiscence of the former life),
Lord Ulverstone says in the House of Lords a few words on some question,
not a party one, and on which (though affecting perhaps the interests of
some few thousands, or millions, as the case may be) men speak without
"hears," and are inaudible in the gallery; or Lord Ulverstone takes the
chair at an agricultural meeting, or returns thanks when his health is
drunk at a dinner at Guildhall. But the daughter rises as the father
sets, though over a very different kind of world.

"First ball of the season at Castleton House,"--long description of the
rooms and the company; above all, of the hostess. Lines on the
Marchioness of Castleton's picture in the "Book of Beauty," by the Hon.
Fitzroy Fiddledum, beginning with "Art thou an angel from," etc.: a
paragraph that pleased me more, on "Lady Castleton's Infant School at
Raby Park;" then again, "Lady Castleton, the new patroness at Almack's;"
a criticism, more rapturous than ever gladdened living poet, on Lady
Castleton's superb diamond stomacher, just reset by Storr & Mortimer;
Westmacott's bust of Lady Castleton; Landseer's picture of Lady Castleton
and her children in the costume of the olden time. Not a month in that
long file of the "Morning Post" but what Lady Castleton shone forth from
the rest of womankind,--

"Velut inter ignes Luna minores."

The blood mounted to my cheek. Was it to this splendid constellation in
the patrician heaven that my obscure, portionless youth had dared to lift
its presumptuous eyes? But what is this? "Indian Intelligence: Skilful
retreat of the Sepoys under Captain de Caxton"! A captain already! What
is the date of the newspaper!--three months ago. The leading article
quotes the name with high praise. Is there no leaven of envy amidst the
joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career,--how laurelless my poor
battle with adverse fortune! Fie, Pisistratus! I am ashamed of thee.
Has this accursed Old World, with its feverish rivalries, diseased thee
already? Get thee home, quick, to the arms of thy mother, the embrace of
thy father; hear Roland's low blessing that thou hast helped to minister
to the very fame of that son. If thou wilt have ambition, take it,--not
soiled and foul with the mire of London. Let it spring fresh and hardy
in the calm air of wisdom, and fed, as with dews, by the loving charities
of Home.

CHAPTER III.

It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined court-yard, having left
my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came to seek
knew that I had arrived in England, they did not, from my letter, expect
me till the next day. I had stolen a march upon them; and now, in spite
of all the impatience which had urged me thither, I was afraid to enter,
--afraid to see the change more than ten years had made in those forms for
which, in my memory, Time had stood still. And Roland had, even when we
parted, grown old before his time. Then my father was in the meridian of
life, now he had approached to the decline. And my mother, whom I
remembered so fair, as if the freshness of her own heart bad preserved
the soft bloom to the cheek,--I could not bear to think that she was no
longer young. Blanche, too, whom I had left a child,--Blanche, my
constant correspondent during those long years of exile, in letters
crossed and recrossed, with all the small details that make the eloquence
of letter-writing, so that in those epistles I had seen her mind
gradually grow up in harmony with the very characters, at first vague and
infantine, then somewhat stiff with the first graces of running-hand,
then dashing off free and facile; and for the last year before I left, so
formed yet so airy, so regular yet so unconscious of effort, though in
truth, as the calligraphy had become thus matured, I had been half vexed
and half pleased to perceive a certain reserve creeping over the style,--
wishes for my return less expressed from herself than as messages from
others, words of the old child-like familiarity repressed, and "Dearest
Sisty" abandoned for the cold form of "Dear Cousin." Those letters,
coming to me in a spot where maiden and love had been as myths of the
bygone, phantasms and eidola only vouchsafed to the visions of fancy, had
by little and little crept into secret corners of my heart; and out of
the wrecks of a former romance, solitude and revery had gone far to build
up the fairy domes of a romance yet to come. My mother's letters had
never omitted to make mention of Blanche,--of her forethought and tender
activity, of her warm heart and sweet temper,--and in many a little home
picture presented her image where I would fain have placed it, not
"crystal seeing," but joining my mother in charitable visits to the
village, instructing the young and tending on the old, or teaching
herself to illuminate, from an old missal in my father's collection, that
she might surprise my uncle with a new genealogical table, with all
shields and quarterings, blazoned or, sable, and argent; or flitting
round my father where he sat, and watching when he looked round for some
book he was too lazy to rise for. Blanche had made a new catalogue and
got it by heart, and knew at once from what corner of the Heraclea to
summon the ghost. On all these little traits had my mother been
eulogistically minute; but somehow or other she had never said, at least
for the last two years, whether Blanche was pretty or plain. That was a
sad omission. I had longed just to ask that simple question, or to imply
it delicately and diplomatically; but, I know not why, I never dared,--
for Blanche would have been sure to have read the letter; and what
business was it of mine? And if she was ugly, what question more awkward
both to put and to answer? Now, in childhood Blanche had just one of
those faces that might become very lovely in youth, and would yet quite
justify the suspicion that it might become gryphonesque, witch-like, and
grim. Yes, Blanche, it is perfectly true! If those large, serious black
eyes took a fierce light instead of a tender; if that nose, which seemed
then undecided whether to be straight or to be aquiline, arched off in
the latter direction, and assumed the martial, Roman, and imperative
character of Roland's manly proboscis; if that face, in childhood too
thin, left the blushes of youth to take refuge on two salient peaks by
the temples (Cumberland air, too, is famous for the growth of the
cheekbone!),--if all that should happen, and it very well might, then, O
Blanche, I wish thou hadst never written me those letters; and I might
have done wiser things than steel my heart so obdurately to pretty Ellen
Bolding's blue eyes and silk shoes. Now, combining together all these
doubts and apprehensions, wonder not, O reader, why I stole so stealthily
through the ruined court-yard, crept round to the other side of the
tower, gazed wistfully on the sun setting slant, on the high casements of
the hall (too high, alas! to look within), and shrank yet to enter,--
doing battle, as it were, with my heart.

Steps--one's sense of hearing grows so quick in the Bushland!--steps,
though as light as ever brushed the dew from the harebell! I crept under
the shadow of the huge buttress mantled with ivy. A form comes from the
little door at an angle in the ruins,--a woman's form. Is it my mother?
It is too tall, and the step is more bounding. It winds round the
building, it turns to look back, and a sweet voice--a voice strange, yet
familiar--calls, tender but chiding, to a truant that lags behind. Poor
Juba! he is trailing his long ears on the ground; he is evidently much
disturbed in his mind: now he stands still, his nose in the air. Poor
Juba! I left thee so slim and so nimble,--

"Thy form, that was fashioned as light as a fay's,
Has assumed a proportion more round;"

years have sobered thee strangely, and made thee obese and Primmins-like.
They have taken too good care of thy creature-comforts, O sensual
Mauritanian! Still, in that mystic intelligence we call instinct thou
art chasing something that years have not swept from thy memory. Thou
art deaf to thy lady's voice, however tender and chiding. That's right!
Come near,--nearer,--my cousin Blanche; let me have a fair look at thee.
Plague take the dog! he flies off from her; he has found the scent; he is
making up to the buttress! Now--pounce--he is caught, whining ungallant
discontent! Shall I not yet see the face? It is buried in Juba's black
curls! Kisses too! Wicked Blanche, to waste on a dumb animal what, I
heartily hope, many a good Christian would be exceedingly glad of! Juba
struggles in vain, and is borne off! I don't think that those eyes can
have taken the fierce turn, and Roland's eagle nose can never go with
that voice, which has the coo of the dove.

I leave my hiding-place and steal after the Voice and its owner. Where
can she be going? Not far. She springs up the hill whereon the lords of
the castle once administered justice,--that hill which commands the land
far and wide, and from which can be last caught the glimpse of the
westering sun. How gracefully still is that attitude of wistful repose!
Into what delicate curves do form and drapery harmoniously flow! How
softly distinct stands the lithe image against the purple hues of the
sky! Then again comes the sweet voice, gay and carolling as a bird's,--
now in snatches of song, now in playful appeals to that dull four-footed
friend. She is telling him something that must make the black ears stand
on end, for I just catch the words, "He is coming," and "home."

I cannot see the sun set where I lurk in my ambush amidst the brake and
the ruins, but I feel that the orb has passed from the landscape, in the
fresher air of the twilight, in the deeper silence of eve. Lo! Hesper
comes forth; at his signal, star after star, come the hosts,--

"Ch' eran con lui, quando l' amor divino,
Mosse da prima quelle cose belle!"

And the sweet voice is hushed.

Then slowly the watcher descends the hill on the opposite side; the form
escapes from my view. What charm has gone from the twilight? See,
again, where the step steals through the ruins and along the desolate
court. Ah! deep and true heart, do I divine the remembrance that leads
thee? I pass through the wicket, down the dell, skirt the laurels, and
behold the face looking up to the stars,--the face which had nestled to
my breast in the sorrow of parting years, long years ago; on the grave
where we had sat,--I the boy, thou the infant,--there, O Blanche, is thy
fair face, fairer than the fondest dream that had gladdened my exile,
vouchsafed to my gaze!

"Blanche, my cousin! again, again,--soul with soul, amidst the dead!
Look up, Blanche; it is I."

CHAPTER IV.

"Go in first and prepare them, dear Blanche; I will wait by the door.
Leave it ajar, that I may see them."

Roland is leaning against the wall, old armor suspended over the gray
head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I give to the dark cheek
and high brow: no change there for the worse,--no new sign of decay.
Rather, if anything, Roland seems younger than when I left. Calm is the
brow,--no shame on it now, Roland; and the lips, once so compressed,
smile with ease,--no struggle now, Roland, "not to complain." A glance
shows me all this.

"Papoe!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read a
line. He is coming to-morrow,--to-morrow! If we lived to the age of
Methuselah, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is,
if the poor man's to be plagued with a good, affectionate son!"

And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father, one
minute more, and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with
thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of
the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad,
for the locks are more scanty and thin, but still not a furrow. Whence
comes that short sigh?

"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret-clock?
Well, just go and look again."

"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is thrice
within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and Roland's
great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before
you, and they all concur in the same tale,--to-day is not to-morrow."

"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and
they've never gone right since he left." Now out comes a letter, for I
hear the rustle, and then a step glides towards the lamp, and the dear,
gentle, womanly face--fair still, fair ever for me, fair as when it bent
over my pillow in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers at
each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering; and
now the flutter, the start, the cry,--"It is true! it is true! Your
arms, mother. Close, close round my necks as in the old time. Father!
Roland too! Oh, joy! joy! joy! home again,--home till death!"

CHAPTER V.

From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,(1) and the war-whoop of
the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine that
Blanche herself has had trained round the window; old school-books neatly
ranged round the wall; fishing-rods, cricket-bats, foils, and the old-
fashioned gun; and my mother seated by the bed-side; and Juba whining and
scratching to get up. Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my mother, for
the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's low whine for the howl of the
dingoes?

Then what days of calm, exquisite delight,--the interchange of heart with
heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame, now our
pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those walks round by
the village, that some favorite gossips might stop and ask, "What news of
his brave young honor?"

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