The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

(Enter Vivian.) His frame has grown more athletic; his eye, more steadfast and less restless, looks you full in the face. His smile is more open, but there is a melancholy in his expression almost approaching to gloom. His dress is the same as that of Pisistratus and Guy,—white vest and trousers; loose neckcloth, rather gay in color; broad cabbage-leaf hat; his mustache and beard are trimmed with more care than ours. He has a large whip in his hand, and a gun slung across his shoulders. Greetings are exchanged; mutual inquiries as to cattle and sheep, and the last horses despatched to the Indian market. Guy shows the “Lives of the Poets,” Vivian asks if it is possible to get the Life of Clive, or Napoleon, or a copy of Plutarch. Guy shakes his head; says if a Robinson Crusoe will do as well, he has seen one in a very tattered state, but in too great request to be had a bargain.

The party turn into the hut. Miserable animals are bachelors in all countries, but most miserable in Bushland. A man does not know what a helpmate of the soft sex is in the Old World, where women seem a matter of course. But in the Bush a wife is literally bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh,—your better half, your ministering angel, your Eve of the Eden; in short, all that poets have sung, or young orators say at public dinners when called upon to give the toast of “The Ladies.” Alas! we are three bachelors, but we are better off than bachelors often are in the Bush; for the wife of the shepherd I took from Cumberland does me and Bolding the honor to live in our hut and make things tidy and comfortable. She has had a couple of children since we have been in the Bush; a wing has been added to the hut for that increase of family. The children, I dare say, one might have thought a sad nuisance in England; but I declare that, surrounded as one is by great bearded men from sunrise to sunset, there is something humanizing, musical, and Christian-like in the very squall of the baby. There it goes, bless it! As for my other companions from Cumberland, Miles Square, the most aspiring of all, has long left me, and is superintendent to a great sheep-owner some two hundred miles off. The Will-o’-the-Wisp is consigned to the cattle station, where he is Vivian’s head man, finding time now and then to indulge his old poaching propensities at the expense of parrots, black cockatoos, pigeons, and kangaroos. The shepherd remains with us, and does not seem, honest fellow, to care to better himself; he has a feeling of clanship which keeps down the ambition common in Australia. And his wife—such a treasure! I assure you, the sight of her smooth, smiling woman’s face when we return home at nightfall, and the very flow of her gown as she turns the “dampers”[14 - A damper is a cake of flour baked without yeast, in the ashes] in the ashes and fills the teapot, have in them something holy and angelical. How lucky our Cumberland swain is not jealous! Not that there is any cause, enviable dog though he be; but where Desdemonas are so scarce, if you could but guess how green-eyed their Othellos generally are! Excellent husbands, it is true,—none better; but you had better think twice before you attempt to play the Cassio in Bushland! There, however, she is, dear creature!—rattling among knives and forks, smoothing the table-cloth, setting on the salt beef, and that rare luxury of pickles (the last pot in our store), and the produce of our garden and poultry-yard, which few Bushmen can boast of, and the dampers, and a pot of tea to each banqueter,—no wine, beer, nor spirits; those are only for shearing-time. We have just said grace (a fashion retained from the holy mother-country), when, bless my soul! what a clatter without, what a tramping of feet, what a barking of dogs! Some guests have arrived. They are always welcome in Bushland! Perhaps a cattle-buyer in search of Vivian; perhaps that cursed squatter whose sheep are always migrating to ours. Never mind,—a hearty welcome to all, friend or foe. The door opens; one, two, three strangers. More plates and knives; draw your stools: just in time. First eat, then—what news?

Just as the strangers sit down a voice is heard at the door,—

“You will take particular care of this horse, young man walk him about a little; wash his back with salt and water. Just unbuckle the saddle-bags; give them to me. Oh! safe enough, I dare say, but papers of consequence. The prosperity of the colony depends on these papers. What would become of you all if any accident happened to them, I shudder to think.”

And here, attired in a twill shooting-jacket budding with gilt buttons impressed with a well-remembered device; a cabbage-leaf hat shading a face rarely seen in the Bush; a face smooth as razor could make it; neat, trim, respectable-looking as ever; his arm full of saddle-bags, and his nostrils gently distended, inhaling the steam of the banquet,—walks in—Uncle Jack.

Pisistratus (leaping up).—“Is it possible? You in Australia!—you in the Bush!”

Uncle Jack, not recognizing Pisistratus in the tall bearded man who is making a plunge at him, recedes in alarm, exclaiming: “Who are you? Never saw you before, sir! I suppose you’ll say next that I owe you something!”

Pisistratus.—“Uncle Jack!”

Uncle Jack. (dropping his saddle-bags).—“Nephew! Heaven be praised! Come to my arms!”

They embrace; mutual introductions to the company,—Mr. Vivian, Mr. Bolding, on the one side; Major MacBlarney, Mr. Bullion, Mr. Emanuel Speck, on the other. Major MacBlarney is a fine, portly man, with a slight Dublin brogue, who squeezes your hand as he would a sponge. Mr. Bullion, reserved and haughty, wears green spectacles, and gives you a forefinger. Mr. Emanuel Speck—unusually smart for the Bush, with a blue-satin stock and one of those blouses common in Germany, with elaborate hems and pockets enough for Briareus to have put all hands into at once; is, thin, civil, and stoops—bows, smiles, and sits down to dinner again, with the air of a man accustomed to attend to the main chance.

Uncle Jack (his mouth full of beef).—“Famous beef!—breed it yourself, eh? Slow work that cattle-feeding! [Empties the rest of the pickle-jar into his plate.] Must learn to go ahead in the New World,—railway times these! We can put him up to a thing or to, eh, Bullion? [Whispering me] Great capitalist that Bullion! Look At Him!”

Mr. Bullion (gravely).—“A thing or two! If he has capital,—you have said it, Mr. Tibbets.” (Looks round for the pickles; the green spectacles remain fixed upon Uncle Jack’s plate.)

Uncle Jack.—“All that this colony wants is a few men like us, with capital and spirit. Instead of paying paupers to emigrate, they should pay rich men to come, eh, Speck?”

While Uncle Jack turns to Mr. Speck, Mr. Bullion fixes his fork in a pickled onion in Jack’s plate and transfers it to his own, observing, not as incidentally to the onion, but to truth in general: “A man, gentlemen, in this country, has only to keep his eyes on the look-out and seize on the first advantage! Resources are incalculable!”

Uncle Jack, returning to the plate, and missing the onion, forestalls Mr. Speck in seizing the last potato; observing also, and in the same philosophical and generalizing spirit as Mr. Bullion: “The great thing in this country is to be always beforehand. Discovery and invention, promptitude and decision,—that’s your go! ‘Pon my life, one picks up sad vulgar sayings among the natives here! ‘That’s your go!’—shocking! What would your poor father say? How is he,—good Austin? Well? That’s right; and my dear sister? Ah, that damnable Peck! Still harping on the ‘Anti-Capitalist,’ eh? But I’ll make it up to you all now. Gentlemen, charge your glasses,—a bumper-toast.”

Mr. Speck (in an affected tone).—“I respond to the sentiment in a flowing cup. Glasses are not forthcoming.”

Uncle Jack.—“A bumper-toast to the health of the future millionnaire whom I present to you in my nephew and sole heir,—Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. Yes, gentlemen, I here publicly announce to you that this gentleman will be the inheritor of all my wealth,—freehold, leasehold, agricultural, and mineral; and when I am in the cold grave [takes out his pocket-handkerchief], and nothing remains of poor John Tibbets, look upon that gentleman and say, ‘John Tibbets lives again!’”

Mr. Speck (chantingly),—

“‘Let the bumper-toast go round.’”

Guy Bolding.—“Hip, hip, hurrah!—three times three! What fun!”

Order is restored; dinner-things are cleared; each gentleman lights his pipe.

Vivian.—“What news from England?”

Mr. Bullion.—“As to the Funds, sir?”

Mr. Speck.—“I suppose you mean rather as to the railways. Great fortunes will be made there, sir; but still I think that our speculations here will—”

Vivian.—“I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir, but I thought, in the last papers, that there seemed something hostile in the temper of the French. No chance of a war?”

Major MacBlarney.—“Is it the wars you’d be after, young gentleman? If me interest at the Horse Guards can avail you, bedad! you’d make a proud man of Major MacBlarney.”

Mr. Bullion (authoritatively).—“No, sir, we won’t have a war; the capitalists of Europe and Australia won’t have it. The Rothschilds and a few others that shall be nameless have only got to do this, sir [Mr. Bullion buttons up his pockets],—and we’ll do it, too; and then what becomes of your war, Sir?” (Mr. Bullion snaps his pipe in the vehemence with which he brings his hand on the table, turns round the green spectacles, and takes up Mr. Speck’s pipe, which that gentleman had laid aside in an unguarded moment.)

Vivian.—“But the campaign in India?”

Major MacBlarney.—“Oh! and if it’s the Ingees you’d—”

Mr. Bullion (refilling Speck’s pipe from Guy Bolding’s exclusive tobacco-pouch, and interrupting the Major).—“India,—that’s another matter; I don’t object to that. War there,—rather good for the money market than otherwise.”

Vivian.—“What news there, then?”

Mr. Bullion.—“Don’t know; have n’t got India stock.”

Mr. Speck.—“Nor I either. The day for India is over, this is our India now.” (Misses his tobacco-pipe; sees it in Bullion’s mouth, and stares aghast. N. B. The pipe is not a clay dudeen, but a small meerschaum.—irreplaceable in Bushland.)

Pisistratus.—“Well, uncle, but I am at a loss to understand what new scheme you have in hand. Something benevolent, I am sure; something for your fellow-creatures,—for philanthropy and mankind?”

Mr. Bullion (starting).—“Why, young man, are you as green as all that?”

Pisistratus.—“I, sir? No; Heaven forbid! But my—” (Uncle Jack holds up his forefinger imploringly, and spills his tea over the pantaloons of his nephew!)

Pisistratus, wroth at the effect of the tea, and therefore obdurate to the sign of the forefinger, continues rapidly, “But my uncle is! Some Grand National-Imperial-Colonial-Anti-Monopoly—”

Uncle Jack.—“Pooh! pooh! What a droll boy it is!”

Mr. Bullion (solemnly).—“With these notions, which not even in jest should be fathered on my respectable and intelligent friend here [Uncle Jack bows], I am afraid you will never get on in the world, Mr. Caxton. I don’t think our speculations will suit you! It is growing late, gentlemen; we must push on.”

Uncle Jack (jumping up).—“And I have so much to say to the dear boy. Excuse us,—you know the feelings of an uncle.” (Takes my arm and leads me out of the hut.)

Uncle Jack (as soon as we are in the air).—“You’ll ruin us—you, me, and your father and mother. Yes! What do you think I work and slave myself for but for you and yours? Ruin us all. I say, if you talk in that way before Bullion! His heart is as hard as the Bank of England’s,—and quite right he is too. Fellow-creatures,—stuff! I have renounced that delusion,—the generous follies of my youth! I begin at last to live for myself,—that is, for self and relatives. I shall succeed this time, you’ll see!”

Pisistratus.—“Indeed, uncle, I hope so sincerely; and, to do you justice, there is always something very clever in your ideas, only they don’t—”

Uncle Jack (interrupting me with a groan). “The fortunes that other men have gained by my ideas,—shocking to think of! What! and shall I be reproached if I live no longer for such a set of thieving, greedy, ungrateful knaves? No, no! Number One shall be my maxim; and I’ll make you a Croesus, my boy, I will.”

Pisistratus, after grateful acknowledgments for all prospective benefits, inquires how long Jack has been in Australia; what brought him into the colony; and what are his present views. Learns, to his astonishment, that Uncle Jack has been four years in the colony; that he sailed the year after Pisistratus,—induced, he says, by that illustrious example and by some mysterious agency or commission, which he will not explain, emanating either from the Colonial Office or an Emigration Company. Uncle Jack has been thriving wonderfully since he abandoned his fellow-creatures. His first speculation, on arriving at the colony, was in buying some houses in Sydney, which (by those fluctuations in prices common to the extremes of the colonial mind, which is one while skipping up the rainbow with Hope, and at another plunging into Acherontian abysses with Despair) he bought excessively cheap, and sold excessively dear. But his grand experiment has been in connection with the infant settlement of Adelaide, of which he considers himself one of the first founders; and as, in the rush of emigration which poured to that favored establishment in the earlier years of its existence,—rolling on its tide all manner of credulous and inexperienced adventurers, vast sums were lost, so of those sums certain fragments and pickings were easily gripped and gathered up by a man of Uncle Jack’s readiness and dexterity. Uncle Jack had contrived to procure excellent letters of introduction to the colonial grandees; he got into close connection with some of the principal parties seeking to establish a monopoly of land (which has since been in great measure effected, by raising the price, and excluding the small fry of petty capitalists); and effectually imposed on them as a man with a vast knowledge of public business, in the confidence of great men at home, considerable influence with the English press, etc. And no discredit to their discernment; for Jack, when he pleased, had a way with him that was almost irresistible. In this manner he contrived to associate himself and his earnings with men really of large capital and long practical experience in the best mode by which that capital might be employed. He was thus admitted into partnership (so far as his means went) with Mr. Bullion, who was one of the largest sheep-owners and land-holders in the colony,—though, having many other nests to feather, that gentleman resided in state at Sydney, and left his runs and stations to the care of overseers and superintendents. But land-jobbing was Jack’s special delight; and an ingenious German having lately declared that the neighborhood of Adelaide betrayed the existence of those mineral treasures which have since been brought to day, Mr. Tibbets had persuaded Bullion and the other gentlemen now accompanying him to undertake the land journey from Sydney to Adelaide, privily and quietly, to ascertain the truth of the German’s report, which was at present very little believed. If the ground failed of mines, Uncle Jack’s account convinced his associates that mines quite as profitable might be found in the pockets of the raw adventurers who were ready to buy one year at the dearest market, and driven to sell the next at the cheapest.

“But,” concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and giving me a poke in the ribs, “I’ve had to do with mines before now, and know what they are. I’ll let nobody but you into my pet scheme; you shall go shares if you like. The scheme is as plain as a problem in Euclid: if the German is right, and there are mines, why, the mines will be worked. Then miners must be employed; but miners must eat, drink, and spend their money. The thing is to get that money. Do you take?”

Pisistratus.—“Not at all!”

Uncle Jack (majestically).—“A Great Grog and Store Depot! The miners want grog and stores; come to your depot; you take their money; Q. E. D.! Shares,—eh, you dog? Cribs, as we said at school. Put in a paltry thousand or two, and you shall go halves.”

Pisistratus (vehemently).—“Not for all the mines of Potosi.”

Uncle Jack (good-humoredly).—“Well, it sha’n’t be the worse for you. I sha’n’t alter my will, in spite of your want of confidence. Your young friend,—that Mr. Vivian, I think you call him: intelligent-looking fellow; sharper than the other, I guess,—would he like a share?”

Pisistratus.—“In the grog depot? You had better ask him!”