Part 4

_French._ With much pleasure, sir, [_Presents his box._ Any news from France?

_Volt._ France, sir, is growing young; Thro’ me, and d’Alembert, and Diderot, And that mad envious watchmaker, who did Good in his own despite. Before the earth Shall have swung a dozen times about the sun, Our dragon’s seed will rise and show some fruit.

_French._ We are glad to see you here, sir.

_Volt._ Without doubt, sir. A strange place this. Our French geographers Had doubts if such a region were. Nay, some Proved to the satisfaction of their friends, That ’twas impossible.

_Eng._ So most things seem, Until they are discovered.

_Volt._ That’s well said; Sir, I salute you.

_French._ You’ll find some excellent company, Monsieur.

_Volt._ You have some famous men here,—doubtless, sir. A priest or two?

_French._ A few.

_Volt._ I thought so, sir. A king perhaps?

_French._ Oh, plenty. Let me see— One, two, three.

_Volt._ Sir, spare your arithmetic. I am not curious. Yet, among these last, There’s surely one who dwelt in Prussia once? He made bad verses, which I mended. Eh? One Frederick?

_French._ Called the Great—

_Volt._ By little men. The same: Is he always in the saddle now?

_French._ We have no horses here.

_Volt._ Is ’t so? _N’importe_. A sedan will do for me. Now that I think of it, Where are your ladies? Any of them from France?

_Eng._ Shoals, shoals, sir. We’ve larger, lighter batches from that land, Than all the rest o’ the globe.

_Volt._ I shall be glad To renew friendship with some few of them. Madame du Châtelet—

_French._ She was a friend of yours?

_Volt._ I had some strong delusion of that sort. ’Twas when she flattered me. But, tell me, sir, What time do you dine in this agreeable land? I feel no appetite.

_Eng._ We do not dine.

_Volt._ Not dine! when do you eat?

_Eng._ We do not eat.

_Volt._ Umph! that is odd. When do you sleep then?

_Eng._ Sir, We do not sleep.

_Volt._ I’ faith, this jest begins To grow a little serious. I thought I knew Somewhat of most things; but this puzzles me. Lest I should err again, pray what _do_ you here, In this most quiet kingdom—all day long? Nay, day and night? What pastime?—

_Eng._ We repose! Sometimes we dream; of times and people gone,— Sometimes of our own country; we retrace Our course in earthly life; our deeds—

_Volt._ I have done Some deeds myself. Perhaps, Monsieur, you have seen A dictionary of mine, which made some noise? A fable or two, which told some bitter truths? A famous poem?—mark me.—

_Eng._ Your great work, I have read, and much admired.

_Volt._ The _Henriade?_ Sir, you have taste.

_Eng._ Not so:—a work less large In bulk; yet greater. ’Twas indeed no more Than a small memorial; touch’d wi’ the light of Truth, The strength of Right. Fine Sense and Pity joined, Begat it. It came forth, midst tears, and scorn, And burning anger. These inspired your pen To the argument, when murdered Calas died.

_Volt._ You bring me light, sir,—comfort,—almost faith. The dark thoughts that at times have haunted me,— The small ambition to be thought a wit,— The wish to sting my many enemies,— Seem disappearing. Sir, my thanks! I feel A warmth about my bosom, and begin To think that joys dwell not alone on earth, But some survive even in Purgatory.

AN AUSTRALIAN PLOUGHMAN’S STORY.

In red hot haste to get out of a Colonial town—where the life was too much like what I had sailed eighteen thousand miles to avoid,—I agreed to my Mr. Gumscrew’s terms without debate. Board and lodging for self and horse, undertaking to do the light work of the farm for twelve months without wages. On these conditions I took up my abode in a wooden hut thatched with bark, on which any well-bred short-horn would have looked with contempt. The sun and moon shone clearly through the chinks between the weather boards; my bedstead was a bullock’s hide stretched over four posts driven into the ground, a slip of green hide hanging from wall to wall, formed at once my clothes-horse and chest of drawers.

To the great contempt of my companion and fellow lodger, the overseer, I did put up a shelf for a few of my books, and drive in a nail for a small shaving glass, although not then able to boast a beard. The floor was of clay, variegated with large holes where the morning broom had swept too hard. The fire-place, built of unhewn stone, formed a recess half the size of our apartment. The kitchen was detached, and although small, rather better constructed than our chief hut, for the cook built it himself, and being an ‘old hand’ took pains with his special domain.

If I had been ordered into such a dog-kennel in England how I should have grumbled, and devoured my heart, in vain complainings; but now—it was my own choice, I had _hope before me_,—the glorious climate, the elastic atmosphere made chinks and cracks in walls of no consequence; and when inclined to grumble, I thought of the dark den-like lawyer’s office in which I had wearied away the last six months of my European life.

After a few days spent in cantering round the neighbourhood, I was ready to commence my light ‘duties.’

Returning home one evening I stopped my horse to look at our ploughman breaking up a fine piece of alluvial flat, which had recently been cleared and fenced in. He had ten pair of oxen and a heavy swing plough at work. There was a man to help him to drive, but his voice was as good as his hands, and it was a pleasure to see him, as he turned up a broad furrow of virgin soil, and halted his team, and lifted the big plough over the roots of the stumps that dotted the paddock, as if it had been a feather weight. Our ploughman, Jem Carden—Big Jem he was commonly called—was a specimen of English peasantry such as we don’t often see in Australia, tall, though a round shouldered stoop took off something from his height, large limbed but active, with a curly fair-haired bullet head, light-blue good-natured eyes, and hooked nose, large mouth full of good teeth, a solid chin, a colour which hard work and Australian sun could not extract, and an expression of respectful melancholy good nature that at once prepossessed me in his favour. He was then in the prime of life, a perfect master of every kind of rural work, ploughing, sowing, reaping, mowing, thatching, breaking-in, and driving bullocks and horses, and not less an adept in all Colonial pursuits, for he could do as much with a saw, an auger, an axe, and an adze as a European workman with a complete chest of tools. He was a very good fellow, too, always ready to help any one at a pinch; when the stockman broke his leg he walked twenty miles through the rain, a tropical rain in bucketfuls, although they had fought the day before about a dog of Jem’s, the stockman had been ill using; and yet Big Jem was a convict, or speaking colonially, ‘a prisoner.’

About a year after my arrival at the Station, Mr. Gumscrew having purchased a large herd of cattle a bargain from a person living some 200 miles from us, in the Mochi district, where all the grass was burned up, determined on sending me for them, as there was little doing at Springhill, and left me to choose any one I pleased to accompany me. I chose Carden.

We got our horses into the paddock close to the hut overnight; the next morning, at sunrise, buckled a blanket, a couple of shirts, a bag of tea and sugar, a quart pot, and a pair of hobbles to my saddle, and started in high spirits.

Now, living in the Bush, and especially while travelling, there is not the same distance between a master and well-behaved man, although a prisoner, as in towns. From the first I was interested in the ploughman, so I took the opportunity of this expedition to learn more about him.

We travelled all day from sunrise to sundown, seldom going off a walk, at which our horses could do nearly five miles an hour: toward evening we tried to strike some station or shepherd’s hut, the whereabouts of which Jem generally knew by the mixture of experience and instinct that constitute a perfect Bushman; if we could not light upon a hut we camped down near a waterhole, lighted a fire on some hollow fallen gum-tree, hobbled out our horses on the pasture near, put the quart pots to boil, the damper (flour cake) in the ashes to bake, and smoked our pipes until all was ready; then rolling up each in his blanket, slept soundly on the bare ground.

I think it was on the third day that we came upon a long stretch of open undulating country, where the grass scarcely gave back a sound to our horses’ feet. I dropped the reins on my little mare’s neck, and began to fill my pipe; but seeing Carden’s pipe still stuck in his straw hat, I knew he must be bankrupt in a Bushman’s greatest luxury, so handed him my pouch, and said, ‘Come, ride along side me, and tell me how you came here; for I cannot imagine how so honest a fellow ever got into trouble.’

‘Master,’ he answered, ‘I’ll tell you all the truth; but give me a little time, for my heart’s full, and it will take us a good three hours to get across these plains.’ So we paced on in silence for the space of one pipe, when he spoke again, and said, ‘Master, excuse me, but I’m not much of a scholar, and if you would read me a chapter from this book, it would do me a power o’ good. I try sometimes myself to spell it out, but somehow I can’t see the letters “plain.”’ His eyes were full of tears as he timidly handed a black clasped copy of the Bible.

There was something painful in the emotion and humbleness of a strong man before me a stripling alone with him in a desert.

I took the book from him; on the flyleaf was written, ‘Lucy Carden on her Marriage from her friend and pastor the Rev. Charles Calton,’ and turning it over it opened at the 51st Psalm: instinctively, I began to read aloud, until I came to the 17th verse, ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.’ At these words my companion wept aloud, and murmured, ‘Oh, my poor wife’—and I, too, I knew not why, also wept.

Then we rode on in silence for some time; from a confused reverie I was awakened by my companion saying in a hoarse voice, ‘Master, I am ready—I can tell you my story now.

‘I was born in a village in Hampshire, the youngest of a large family—the son of labouring people. As soon as I had strength and voice enough, I was sent into the fields to scare the birds from the corn, and at eight years old, I began to drive plough for my father, so I got very little schooling but what I picked up in the winter evenings at a school kept by an old pensioned soldier. To tell the truth, I never liked my books when I was young, for which now I have often need to be sorry. But I was a strong hearty lad, and no out-door work came amiss to me. As soon as I could stand to them, I took hold of the stilts of the plough, and by the time I was sixteen, I could do a man’s day’s work.

‘When I was seventeen I won a great ploughing-match. Among the young gentlemen that came to see it was our young ’Squire, that owned nearly all the parish. He had just left College, and come into his fortune, for his father had been dead a many years. He was so much pleased with what he saw at the ploughing-match, that he determined to take the Home Farm into his own hands, and nothing would serve him but that I must be his head ploughman; indeed, I believe if I had understood writing and cyphering, he would have made me his bailiff,—for he was a young gentleman that nothing could stop when he took a fancy into his head. I mind well when he sent me off at twelve o’clock at night to London in his own carriage to buy a team of Suffolk Punches, he had heard of from a gentleman that was dining with him. Well, this made a man of me at once. I was as tall as I am now, and I’m afraid I grew spoiled with so much good. I was courting my Lucy at the time. She was the only daughter of the blacksmith in the next village, and if ever there was an angel she was one. The parson and his daughters noticed her a good deal, because she was clever at her book and sang so sweetly at church. Her father was a drunken old chap; her mother had been dead many years. I used to look out for him when he came down to our village, as he often did to drink and play at bowls, and see him safe over the stiles when he was ill able to walk straight. Many and many a day, after ploughing all day, and supping up my horses, have I walked five miles, half leading, half carrying, old Johnny Dunn, for the sake of five minutes’ talk to dear Lucy. Well, one night, in a wet autumn, I was up at the Hall to take the ’Squire’s instructions; for he loved, when he had strangers from London, to have me in after dinner, to give me a glass o’ wine and make believe of talking farming; old Dunn tried to get home after an evening’s bouse by a short cut over a ford I had often led him, missed his footing, and was found by some lads that went next morning to take up their night lines, stone dead—drowned.

‘There was poor Lucy left all alone in the world, for her father, who had been a dragoon farrier, and married one of Parson Calton’s maid-servants, had no relations in that part of the country.

‘I was getting good wages: there was a cottage and garden, belonging to the ploughman of the Home Farm, that I had never taken up, because I had lived with my father. The ’Squire made me many presents, and I had saved a little money, made by working at different things in winter evenings, being always handy with tools. Well, to make a long story short, Lucy found her father had left nothing behind him but a quarter’s pension he had not had time to drink, a few pounds due for work, and the furniture of his cottage. She had nobody to take care of her, so we moved the furniture to my cottage, and were married before I was nineteen, and on the day Parson Calton gave her that Bible, that never has left me since I left her. Many people blamed us, and wanted us to wait. I don’t think good Mr. Calton quite liked it, but his daughters were well pleased, and gave Lucy her wedding dress. Oh, God, sir, when I think upon those days, on two years that followed, and think of what I am, I wonder how I live and keep my senses. There was not a happier couple or prettier cottage in the county. My working days were not hard, for I had Lucy to welcome me home; and then on Sundays, to see her dressed in her best and walk across the fields to church, and hear her sing! Why, there was not a lady in the county could compare with her, and I have heard many great gentlemen say so.

‘I had a child, too, a darling little Lucy. * * * But this was too much happiness to last; we had been married just two years. The ’Squire stopped at our cottage, as he was riding by on his way to London, to settle about a ploughing-match that he had determined to make up for the next week, and talked over a plan for breaking up a lot of old pasture. A fortnight afterwards the bailiff came down with a letter in his hand, and said with a grave face, “Carden, I have some bad news for you; the ’Squire has determined to give up farming, and is going to foreign parts. I am to discharge all the hinds as soon as I can get a tenant for the farm. You are to be paid up to Christmas, and you may keep the cottage until the farm’s let, but I rather think Farmer Bullivant will take it.”

‘Here was a blow; we had thought ourselves provided for for life, and now we had a home and a living to seek. Farmer Bullivant would not keep me on, I knew well; he had his own ploughman, a relation. Well, we were put to sore straits; but at last I got another place, although at lower wages, some distance from my native village. Hard times came on; wages were lowered again and again; and at the same time a cry rose up round the country against the threshing-machines that were being very much used, and were throwing a good many poor people out of work. The people in England, sir, are not as we are here, sir, a very few words, and one or two desperate fellows can always lead them; they are so ignorant, they are ready for anything when they are badly off.

‘I went up one night to get my wages, and behold, when I got me to the farmer’s house, the bailiffs were in, and he going to be sold up, and the winter coming on. I walked toward home half mad; passing by a public-house, who should be at the door but the ’Squire’s gamekeeper—he kept him on—and he being sorry to see me so downcast, for he was a good kind fellow, though a gamekeeper, would make me take a glass with him; I think I had not been in a public-house since I had been married. The drink and the grief flew up into my head; before I got home, I fell in with a crowd of friends and fellow-labourers holloing and shouting. They had been breaking Farmer Bullivant’s threshing-machine, and swore they would not leave one in the county. I began to try to persuade them to go away quietly, but they ended by persuading me; we met a machine, as ill-luck would have it, on the road just turning into Farmer Grinder’s stack-yard. We smashed it to pieces; in the middle of the row the soldiers came up. I was taken in the act, with about twenty others; they lodged us in Winchester gaol the same night. The assizes were sitting; they tried us in batches, and found us guilty almost as soon as we came into court. I never saw my poor wife until the moment when the judge sentenced me to transportation for life. I hear her scream often now; I wake with it in the middle of the night. We had no time to get any one to speak to character for us; we had no lawyer or counsellor. Such poor people as we were had no friends of any use. The farmers who knew us were too angry and too frightened—although some of them were the first to speak against the threshing-machines. Good Parson Calton had been away, ill and dying, or I do not think it would have happened. For where are we poor countrymen to look for a friend wiser than ourselves if the Parson or the ’Squire does not stand by us?

‘My wife came to see me in prison, and wept so we could not talk much; for it was so quick, so sudden—it seemed like a horrid dream; for me to be a felon—for me, that could not strike a blow against any man, except in fair fight—that never wronged a living soul out of a farthing—to be the same as robbers and murderers! Well, I advised her to get quit of all bits of furniture, and try to get to service, through the Miss Caltons. I knew they were not rich, and could not help except by giving her a good name—by giving a character to the convict’s wife! We were to have met again the next day; the poor soul had walked twenty miles to Winchester, and a fruit-woman that was in court took pity on her when she fainted, and gave her half her bed. But the same night I was waked up from the first sound sleep I had had since I was taken, and put into a coach with a lot of others, with a guard of soldiers, and sent off to the hulks; and in three days we sailed for Botany Bay, as they called it in England. Oh, sir, that time was terrible. There were many on board that thought the punishment a pleasure voyage. They had no wives, no children to love. They had no good name to lose; they had not lived in one parish to know and love every stick and stone in it. They boasted of their villany, and joked at the disgraceful dress; they only found fault with the food, and the labour of helping to stow the ship; I did not care for the food or the work. They made me a constable on the voyage, and I landed with a good character from the surgeon in charge. I was assigned straight away to Major Z——. You must have heard, sir, what a terrible man he was. A rich man that had forgotten he had once been poor. He had more cattle and stock of all kinds than he could count; he starved us, he cursed us, and very few Mondays passed that he didn’t take up five or six for a flogging. But he was very glad to get me and three or four of the same lot, for it was not often such regular first-rate husbandmen came into the colony, so we were better treated than many. For in those times, if masters could be hard where they took a spite, still prisoners had a good chance of getting on. Well, my spirits rose and I began to have some hope when I found that, with good luck, I might have my “ticket,” that would give liberty in the colony, in seven years, and when I saw so many who had been prisoners riding about in their carriages, or driving teams of their own, as good as the ’Squire’s. Indeed, those that had good masters got on very well, but it was commonly thought that Major Z—— never parted with a good man if he could help it. He was sure to make up some charge and get him flogged, so as to put off the time for his getting a _ticket of leave_.

‘I had driven oxen at home and soon got into the ways of the colony, when, one day, the master came down to see a new piece of land I had been breaking up near a house he was building, and was so pleased that he began to talk quite kindly, although every second word was an oath, and asked me all about myself. Well, I told him, and made bold to say that, as he was going to build a large dairy, if he would send for my wife and child we would serve him for any wages he choose, all the days of our lives. He turned on me like a tiger, he cursed me, he told me he wanted no women or brats on his estate, no canting saints, no parsons, all he wanted was men that could work, and work they should. “If, you fool,” he said, “you had asked for a gallon of rum among the gang you might have had it, and drowned all your troubles, but I’ll have no women here, wives or no wives.”

‘I think at that moment Satan took possession of me. I was ready to do anything for my liberty, or to be free from my tyrant, and there were tempters enough all round me. A few days afterwards one of my fellow servants, an old hand, who had heard the last part of my master’s speech, came to me in the evening, and, after telling me that he supposed I had found out that nothing was to be got by fair means, that my master was a rogue, in fact that every one was a rogue who was not a fool, he began to hint that he could tell me a way to get my wife out and my liberty too. I swallowed the bait, I listened; then he went on to show how with money anything could be done in the colony, told me instances of tickets and conditional pardons, besides escapes managed by bribing, and then, when I was thoroughly poisoned, he swore me to secrecy and explained how, out of a thousand bullocks, a few pair would never be missed; so that all I had to do when I took a bullock team to Sydney was to yoke an extra pair of young bullocks, making ten or twelve pair, instead of eight or ten—a butcher, near where the drays generally stood, was all ready prepared to take and pay for, as many pair of bullocks as I chose to drive in. They were worth from 10_l._ to 12_l._ each, and I was to have 6_l._ for every pair.