Читать книгу Gathered In - Catherine Helen Spence - Страница 13

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It is not easy to describe Mrs. Oswald's appearance, except as to her bulk and her clothes; her face was so characterless, and was more remarkable for its want of expression than for anything else; her hair was of a neutral tint; her complexion of a uniform greyish paleness; her eyes small, pale and slow to apprehend even striking objects; her height less remarkable than her breadth. In speech she had a drawl, and her h's were, though not absent, very uncertain. Kenneth had his experience with Mrs. Honey to fall back upon, but she had been kept up better to the mark by her daughters, who had snubbed their mother's florid taste in dress, and would reconstruct her furniture remorselessly, so that in both these points she had been snubbed into better ways. But the general vapidness was similar in the two ladies. Perhaps on the whole Mrs. Oswald's natural nonentity was the more complete, and it was well that she should be distinguished by her clothes, which were changed with changing fashion and doubtful taste, forming a striking contrast to the fat lymphathic colourless countenance which retained in all circumstances its expression of uninterested acquiescence with things as they were. She could not make a joke to save her life. She could not even see one--although when she saw other people laughing around her she would insist on having the whole story minutely explained to her to the utter loss of its point, and her calm, "Oh, yes; I see it now!" without relaxation of the mouth or intelligent glance of the eye, had the effect of making the interpreter of the wit, or the humour, or the grotesque exaggeration, feel he must have performed his task very badly. Unfortunately she was not a Scotchwoman, to whom some national affinities might have appealed, and she could not understand the racy Doric of her husband and his friends. She was an Englishwoman by extraction, but had been born in New South Wales, and had found her way to Melbourne, and had by some inexplicable fascination induced George Oswald to marry her. She certainly at that time was a good cook and not a bad listener. She never differed from any one, and had no opinions of her own, and that to a somewhat overbearing man like George Oswald might have its charm.

This temper, as well as his love of strong liquors, had stood in the way of Kenneth's uncle in his beginning of life. In his first overseership he had been so hard on the men under him, exacting so much and granting so little, that his master thought he had lost more by that than he gained by his undoubted vigilance and practical knowledge. However, when he undertook the management for the brothers Dirom, Oswald had learned by experience, and steered his course much more wisely. At the outbreak of the diggings he did wonders under the greatest difficulties, doing the work of half-a-dozen men himself, and liberal enough to get hands when others were destitute. The Diroms were young men of good family, who had started with what in old days would have been called a considerable capital, and at first they had intended to work themselves. But Oswald managed so well that they took to Melbourne life, and enjoyed it, and they were paralysed by the aspect of things which only aroused their overseer's energy and called out all his resources and ingenuity.

Melbourne as a residence had become enormously expensive, and the society unendurable, when, as the old colonists expressed it, the sweepings of the world were attracted to it. The brothers offered their manager a half--interest in the station, which he accepted, and carried on the station on those terms for several years, but chafed a little at the position, at the time he was grappling with countless difficulties, and he thought that he would conquer better if the gains were all for himself. He therefore offered to buy them out altogether by long-dated bills, which the Diroms took with fear and trembling, and which George Oswald himself lay awake many nights thinking of. But it was a good bargain at the first for the overseer, and as things turned out it was a splendid investment. Castlehurst market was at hand, the value of all stock doubled and trebled, wool kept up its price, and indeed rose in value steadily, owing to the general rise in prices consequent on the gold discoveries. George Oswald added flock to flock, and run to run, whereas with the enhanced prices of everything in England and on the Continent, his old masters found themselves every year growing poorer.

The marvellous advance of the colony of Victoria in wealth and population raised the value of all his property, especially of his land; and though in matters of detail George Oswald was what was called a "nipper", he had some excellent ideas about the judicious application of capital, and did not starve his stations for want of hands or use them shabbily.

The better class of squatters thought he had driven a hard bargain with the Diroms by taking advantage of their panic and disgust, and Mrs. Oswald was more objectionable to their wives than he himself was to them, and the only son Jim had got such a rooted taste for low company that he neither desired the society of his betters nor tried to fit himself for it, so that with all this outward prosperity there was a bitter drop in the cup at Tingalpa.

Mr. Oswald was always ashamed of not assisting his parents substantially and regularly before he did, but he had bitterly resented the disgrace which Isabel had brought on the family, which though very briefly and imperfectly revealed in his mother's letters, had struck him in the tenderest point. He recollected her as a lovely girl of thirteen, and her mother wrote of her growing beauty, her cleverness at her books and with her needle, and his first present of five pounds had gone to teach her dressmaking.

He had just made up his mind to write home for her to share his prosperity and keep his house. If she had objected to leave her parents, it might have been managed that they should come out too. He had thought Isabel's society might do more to wean him from his besetting sin than anything else, and when the humiliating news reached him he gave way to it more than before. Shortly after that he married, and had one son, on whom his hopes were centred; and though he wrote, not unkindly, to his parents, he never again addressed a letter to his sister.

On hearing of her death and some particulars hitherto unknown, he softened a little and sent more money, but on concluding his bargain with the Diroms by paying off the last of his bills, he thought, as a sort of thank--offering for such prosperity, he might act a father's part by Isabel's worse than orphan boy, and then the idea of making a gentleman of him charmed his imagination.

The boy's letters were well written, and expressed good feeling; the photographs that were sent from time to time showed a very promising young fellow who would hold his own with the stuck-up neighbours. As years advanced, and as his over-indulged, self-willed boy refused to learn from tutor or schoolmaster, Mr. Oswald's thoughts turned constantly to the clever nephew, who would come out fresh from college, well-dressed, good-looking, and chock-full of the needful knowledge. Everything that was wrong Kenneth would put right; he would be only too glad to do service to the uncle who had taken him up and made a gentleman and a scholar of him, and Jim could not slip out of his hands as he had out of those of the shabby tutors who had been engaged before. And thus through his kindness and liberty to his nephew his own son would have a chance to be made a gentleman and a scholar of too.

Mrs. Oswald's ordinary mood of acquiescence had been slightly ruffled by these plans of her husband; for the idea of the subordination of her boy to his cousin had been so actively resented by the former that her maternal sympathies, which were the strongest feelings in her nature, were aroused in opposition. But she took refuge in the thought that Jim had never submitted to any one in his life; and that though of course he would learn a great deal from this cousin--for that was only reasonable--still, as he was the son of the house, he would always be the master and take the lead everywhere. Nobody could suppose that the heir of such a property was to be tied down to hours and tasks like a poor child at a common school. And Jim, though he was younger than his cousin and not so book-learned, knew the world as well or better, and would not go in leading-strings.

As Mrs. Oswald presided over the well-spread tea-table, and pressed her nephew with languid hospitality to do justice to such a meal as she felt sure he had never seen in Scotland, which she looked on as a land of starvation, for all her husband's memories of his native land had been of hard work and poor living, and he often shocked her notions of gentility and propriety by bringing up these subjects, she felt a shade of disappointment at his silence and abstraction. No doubt, he was rather awed by the handsomeness of everything about him, from the silverplate and massive dining-room furniture to her own rich silk, costly lace, and overpowering cap, freshly donned while he made his own toilet, and that was certainly gratifying; but if he could not talk and hold his own in society he would be of little use in helping them up the social ladder, which was their one desideratum; and if he was really grumpy and sulky, Jim would hate him outright and learn nothing from him.

However, in the course of the meal, a subject was started that was more successful than Kenneth's preoccupied anxious mind could have supposed possible under the circumstances--the fellow-passengers per Melbourne clipper ship 'Kent'. To Mrs. Oswald's delight she found that her nephew had spent seventy days in the society of a tip-top Melbourne merchant and his family. She knew the Dunnes and the Honeys to be large squatters, though unfortunately in a distant district. There were many ladies on board, fresh from Continental and English sight-seeing. How they looked, how they talked, and, above all, how they dressed, gave Mrs. Oswald abundant cause for questioning, and the account of the various costumes improvised for some private theatricals on board was of much more thrilling interest than the sketch of the piece adapted from the French by Kenneth, La Maitresse au Logis, which to himself was much more interesting. How he could have got so quickly out of one suit of clothes into another, so as to represent two quite different characters, was a greater stroke of cleverness than changing his voice, air, and manner completely to carry out the illusion. And the different dresses of the young widow for reception and for her wedding attire were also gone into minutely, and Kenneth's interest in the actress, who was Miss Emily Dunne, made him recollect very creditably what she had on.