Читать книгу Gathered In - Catherine Helen Spence - Страница 12

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The old-accustomed passengers by railway to Castlehurst were a little amused at Kenneth's active curiosity as to the country he was travelling through; at his interest in the great gum trees and the various wattles with their different flowers; the townships they stopped at for passengers; the lay of the country; and the character of the buildings. Castlehurst, though not so busy a place as it used to be, was a much larger town than he could have supposed could exist out of Melbourne. In the town itself, there was little sign of digging, but out of it in all directions there were holds and quartz-crushing establishments, and in the town a Stock Exchange of a character peculiar to California or Australia, where claims and reefs and Quartz Companies occupied the foreground, and anything in the way of Bank stock, or Railway shares, or Joint-stock Companies of miscellaneous kinds was modestly kept in the background. As he heard the talk and the jabber, and noted the eager faces of buyers and sellers, he thought surely his fellow-passengers were mistaken about the pre-eminent importance of wool.

Kenneth felt somewhat disappointed that there had been no one sent to meet him, and leaving a message at the station that he had gone on the Exchange with a Castlehurst railway passenger, Kenneth took the opportunity of looking about a little.

This gentleman, Mr. Dean, knew his uncle, and said he was sure to be sent for in the course of the day. As they walked together to and fro Kenneth felt just a little anxious about his welcome; but when he was accosted cordially by a smart Irish groom as "Mr. Kenneth sure, by his photograph in the master's album," with profuse apologies for his being late, "for he could not be well spared before, and there was no one that the master could trust wid the pair of bays saving himself," his uneasiness gave way.

"An' savin' your presence, Mr. Kenneth, but I must request ye to make all the haste ye can, for the mistress wants you, an' the master wants me."

"The old story, Mick?" said Mr. Dean.

"Just a taste o' that same," said Mick O'Hearn. "The horses are having a bite ov chaffed hay, and will clear the ground once we've started. I've got your baggage, leastways all that's at the station, in the buggy, except the big box--that will go wid the dray. So you must say good-bye to Mr. Dean, and be off."

"The master scarce expected you so soon, Mr. Kenneth," said the groom, when they were fairly started on the road. "The 'Kent' has come double quick this trip. He'd have been after mating you himself in Melbourne, if you'd not been so mighty quick. Thim old ships knows the short cuts nowadays."

"I hoped he would have met me here," said Kenneth.

"It happens he's not just able to come on this day."

"Too busy, I suppose, with the shearing."

"The shearing is over this week back and more, and as for his being busy, its myself would like a small partnership in that business, and all the better for him poor gentleman; but he's the whole firm there, Co and all."

"And Mr. James, my cousin, I hear he is a good driver."

"None so safe, though bould as brass. Mr. Jim has been at Castlehurst nigh a week--he likes to git out o' the way, and the missis has no hould on him to keep him at home."

"Perhaps it is inconvenient my coming here. I might have stayed in Melbourne till it suited my uncle better."

"Not the least in life inconvenient, saving that I want to get back to the master, for he must have a burster now and then, and nobody manages him like your humble servant. He thought it ud be all over by the 'Kent' arrived, and then he'd have met you sure enough, and shown you the Milburn sights too its like, but ye've stole a march on him this wanst, and caught him napping."

Kenneth now formed some notion of what was the matter, but he did not care to ask any further information from Mick O'Hearn. He felt depressed, however, and the kind-hearted Irishman saw it.

"It's no account raly, Mr. Kenneth. Sure the master can afford a bit of a jollification now and again that hurts nobody but himself, and he's as straight as the Bank between times. He's swore off it, but it's mighty aisy that same swaring, but the divil and all to hould by it. And when the fit comes on powerful he caves in handsomely."

There was no mistake about the extent and the value of George Oswald's property. The vast shearing shed which Mick pointed out with pride, with yards for sheep round it, the bought land penned off into convenient paddocks through which they passed, the wells that were sunk, the tanks which were constructed, the thousands of sheep and hundreds of cattle and horses of which the groom spoke, showed substantial and increasing wealth. When they drove up a poorly grown avenue of bluegums to a large substantial stone house with a verandah all round, and a flower garden indifferently laid out in front, Mick called to a stable boy to put up the horses without delay, for he wanted to see the master, and Kenneth alighted at the hospitably open door.

In a hall ornamented with some stuffed birds, snakes, and native marsupials, and one immense ram's head incrusted with salt from one of the inland lagoons, stood a very stout, very showily dressed, middle-aged lady, who introduced herself as his aunt Oswald, and eyed him from head to foot with satisfaction. She then led the way into a good-sized drawing--room, crowded with useless and incongruous furniture, tasteless nick--nacks, and the wildest of fancy work, where the most ordinary engravings and the most worthless chromo-lithographs hung on the walls alongside of one or two tolerable paintings.

"My dear nephew," said this lady, after she thought he had had sufficient time to get over his astonishment at the general elegance and grandeur of her best rooms, "you are very welcome to Tingalpa. Your uncle ain't very well at the present, and not just fit to talk to you for a day or two, so in the meantime you must put up with me."

"I am very sorry indeed that my uncle is ill, but you are very kind to supply his place," said Kenneth.

"No kindness at all--at least I mean its nothing to do for my own nephew, or Mr. Oswald's, which is all the same--but its really a great disappointment to us all, for he was set on going to Melbourne to meet you, and I had my plans for going too, for I wanted summer things, and there's no getting people to execute orders properly if you only write. It is never so satisfactory as when you see and handle the things yourself. And there's such new styles coming out. What do you think of the Melbourne fashions? Do they dress as well as they do in London?"

"I was never in London in my life, I am sorry to say."

"Oh I always forget, you were brought up in that town in Scotland where of course you could see nothing of the kind," said the lady.

"Edinburgh, do you mean? Have they no pretension to fashion there, Mrs. Oswald?"

"Oh! of course, that is a poor place compared to Melbourne; but call me Aunt, it seems more homely."

"Well, Aunt, the Edinburgh people would not like being treated so contemptuously. It is a larger city than Melbourne."

"Is it really?"

"More ancient, of course."

"Why, perhaps it may be that."

"And full of traditions and historical associations that every Scotchman ought to cherish," said the young Scotchman.

"Yes, it may be all that, but I was speaking of fashions--do the ladies there dress as well as the Melbourne ladies?"

"That depends on what is considered good dressing, and, besides, I spent seven years in Edinburgh, and only seven hours in Melbourne, so I cannot be a judge."

"I mean as to expense, and that sort of thing?"

"Well, I fancy that ladies everywhere dress as expensively as they can afford to do, and perhaps a little beyond that, and I dare say there are wealthier people in Melbourne than in Edinburgh--the richest people are attracted to London."

"Then I'm right in my view of the case," said Mrs. Oswald, complacently.

"I fear you will be much disappointed in me, for I seldom notice what ladies wear."

"Don't you? that is a pity, for I thought I could get some ideas from you. All new comers should help to keep us up to the mark in that way."

"I am sorry my cousin James is not at home," said Kenneth.

"So am I, but to tell you the truth, James made himself scarce when his father took to his smoking-room. It's what Mr. Oswald is used to, and Mick manages him nicely, so there's no call to be uneasy, but he don't want either me or Jim hanging about him; and so Jim set off for Castlehurst the first day, and I suppose he is at the Crown and Sceptre at the billiard table. He is passionately fond of billiards. I hope you can play or he will think very small beer of you, Kenneth; is not that your name?"

"I can play a little, but unfortunately my uncle's letters were short, and he neither recommended me to practise billiards nor to study the fashions. If you or my cousin had been so good as to write, I might have turned out more satisfactory."

"I dare say you are not too old to learn," said Mrs Oswald patronizingly. "You do not look more than twenty. Jim is seventeen. It's a pity though that there is only me to keep you company."

"Oh! don't speak of that, Mrs. Oswald, and as you say my uncle can spare you, I need not feel I am taking up too much of your attention."

"He cannot bear the sight of me till he has had his bout out, and then he's as kind a husband as there is in all Castlehurst district. I think it should be over in two or three days--but Mick says there is no slackening yet."

She spoke with so much unconcern that Kenneth was amazed. Could she really be as indifferent as she appeared?

"I thought my uncle had given it up altogether," he suggested timidly.

"So he had between times, only he must have his fling now and then, or I think he'd go melancholy mad. I see it coming on, and then I hand him over to Mick, and let him have his own way. He shuts himself up in his smoking-room, orders pen, ink and papers to be kept out of sight, for fear he should do anything foolish in his drink, and then goes in heavy. But at other times he takes nothing stronger than tea, with cocoa for a change, and it is well for him and all belonging to him. He'll come out as fresh as paint in a few days, and he ain't any the poorer for it, except the price of the brandy. I'm glad you like the place."

Now Kenneth had not said that he liked the place, but Mrs. Oswald had glanced at her own brilliant attire and tasteless drawing-room with that complete satisfaction which includes that of all other people. "I do so like to see pretty things about me, and Mr. Oswald has been most liberal to me."

"He has been most liberal to me. I am sure I cannot be sufficiently grateful for his kindness."

This was a point on which Mrs. Oswald had long desired information. Her husband had not sufficient confidence in her judgment to tell her of his business affairs, and he had thought that Kenneth would be more appreciated if he was silent to his wife and son about his remittances for his behoof.

"So I always thought, though he would deny it," said Mrs. Oswald. "I felt sure that the price of some of his bales of wool went to the making of you. Not that I begrudge it, I am sure; but Jim may take it ill."

"I am sorry if my uncle's generosity should make my cousin feel that I have done him any harm," said Kenneth, a little hurt.

"Oh! of course it's no fault of yours, but what I mean is that Jim would not learn here from any tutor we could get, and we went to great expense in that way; and at the Scotch College in Melbourne they were too hard on him, and he ran away, and would never go back for all his father could say, and his father threatened that he would put him under you, and you were to make a scholar of him, as you had been at the University and all that--and he'll think that you've both been planning and plotting this against him for years, and it's likely to set Jim's back up. He's quick enough and clever enough, but he won't settle to his books. His father gets into a passion with him, and is downright unreasonable, so I cannot but take Jim's part. He ain't to say backward but not just so forward as his father would wish."

"Then, he has no taste for books at all?"

"Not the least. He'll not even read the papers that Mr. Oswald is so fond of. You see there's the Argus unopened for this week back and more. Only the Australasian he's took the envelope off to read the racing news, and the odds, and the matches. As for me, the magazines are enough for me. I have not patience for politics, and markets, and all that Mr. Oswald cares about. His sight ain't so good as it was, and I dare say he'll be glad of your young eyes to read the bulk of the papers out to him; that's what he reckons on your doing for him, Kenneth. I suppose you are a great reader."

"It has been my principal work for so many years. I have necessarily got through a great many books."

"We are going to have the breakfast parlour fitted up as a library, and Mr. Oswald hoped your books would help to fill it."

"One can read a good deal without possessing many books," said Kenneth.

"Oh! yes, circulating library books, of course, but we are out of the way of that, and I find no time for reading, except, as I say, the magazines; but I'd like it if you could coax Jim to take to books a little. But dear me! I forgot, I must show you your room. Mick would set Biddy to put your portmanteau and things into it. And, by the time you have had a wash and a brush tea will be ready in the dining-room, to the right hand of this room."

Kenneth was glad to have an opportunity of washing off the dust of his long journey, and a quiet half-hour to face the situation before him. For what an atmosphere of material prosperity and of intellectual poverty had his careful education been the preparation? His uncle shut up with the spirit decanters; his young cousin playing billiards for a week together with the habitués of a Castlehurst hotel, and his aunt complacently enjoying her possessions, and apparently indifferent as to what should become of either of them. And he, Kenneth, expected to fit into every one's humour and tastes, and bound to do it by honour and gratitude. How true Harry Stalker's prophecy as to his difficulties appeared, and how probable his presage of utter failure in his attempts to fill his square hole satisfactorily. Not that he wished to know less, or to ignore the many real advantages which his course of study had won for him, but it seemed all but hopeless for him with such equipment to go into the mêlée with the least chance of victory.