Part 4

But Mrs. Dunks began to talk to him, and her apron was at her eyes nearly all the time. He learned that Dunks was the best of men, and only weak. If once they could get from this neighbourhood and his bad companions to Forbes, where her own people were, he would surely reform. He learned that Mrs. Dunks had nine children, all under fourteen; that she was in a consumption, and only the air of Forbes could cure her. It seemed to him that he could not turn round to this fragile, heavily burdened creature, look into her fever-bright, anxious eyes, and tell her he would not give her this chance to end her days among her own people.

So he looked at all the young life again, and the sheer sun, bursting out of the wattles, and was glad to be persuaded that a little paint and a bit of timber would make the house quite new again.

'Do you think,' he said, and turned round to the woman, 'that you could give me possession of the place in a month?'

And the woman burst into thankful tears, and told him they would be gone to-morrow.

'I've packed up for going eighteen times this year,' she said through her tears. 'I've got my hand well in.'

Dunks was away in the township, the youngest baby was lying in her arms looking up at her with pure eyes, and the pale wraith death, whom she ever felt beside her, had kept her conscience tender.

'Did--did you say the agent told you two hundred and fifty?' she faltered.

Cameron thought of his children and braced himself up.

'He did,' he said firmly, 'and I cannot possibly give you a penny-piece more. I consider it is a very fair price.'

'But--but----' the woman began again.

'It is no use, I can go no further,' Cameron said, 'so please do not waste your breath'--and he unhobbled his horse and prepared for the journey home, his face set away from her, lest he should be softened.

How could he dream she wanted to tell him that a hundred and fifty was all they had asked, and more than the place was worth, so ill in repair was everything? Then the thought of this man's famous child came to her--Challis, with fingers of gold. What were a hundred pounds to the father of such a child?

She looked away from the eyes of her babe, she forgot that she and death were met, and replied:

'Very well, we will take two hundred and fifty, Mr. Cameron.'

Going homewards in the jolting buggy the talk was of the happiest.

'Miss Browne and I will look after the fowls, daddie,' Hermie said.

'An' me,' said Floss.

'You and I must get the crops in,' Bart and his father told each other.

But how this would be done, and what the crops should be, they had but the remotest notion; still, it was a phrase heard often in Wilgandra, and sounded well.

'Will it take you long to learn to shear the sheep?' asked Miss Browne timidly.

Cameron looked a trifle disturbed. Sheep seemed very right and proper things to own when one was 'going on the land,' but it had not yet occurred to him to think to what use he was going to put them.

Bart's observation of his neighbours had been a little keener than this, however.

'We sha'n't get any wool to mention from that handful,' he said. 'I suppose they are for killing. Mrs. Dunks says they use a sheep a week. Her husband kills one every Saturday.'

'Who--who--oh, surely you will not have to kill them, Mr. Cameron!' said Miss Browne, shuddering with horror. 'Surely you will not be expected to kill them for yourself.'

The thought of it turned Cameron sick; it seemed to him he had never quite got over chopping off a fowl's head once for his wife, though it was nine years ago.

Roly gloated over the thought.

'I'll shoot them with my bow and arrow,' he said.

Cameron wiped his brow.

'I suppose one could use a gun to them, eh, Bart?' he said.

But Bart looked doubtful.

Nearing home Cameron gave the reins to Bartie, and leaped out and walked the last mile or two, wrestling with the problem how he might turn himself from a dreamer of dreams into a practicable, hard-working man of business. It had to be done, some way, somehow, or what to do with these children, and how to face his wife?

Then suddenly he found his thoughts had wandered to the sunset fire that blazed before him in the sky; he was putting it in a picture, massing up the purple banks, touching the edges with a streak of scarlet.

When he convicted himself of the wandering he groaned aloud.

'There is only one way,' he said, and walked into his house with lifted head.

The children were stretching their limbs after their cramping drive, Roly and Bart panting on the floor, a cup of water beside them so warm and flat and tasteless that even thirst would not bring them to it. Bart was talking of Nansen, picturing stupendous icebergs, revelling in the exquisite frigidity of the water in which Nansen had washed luxuriously every day. The exercise actually cooled the little party down one degree. Then in to them came their father.

'I want a bonfire made in the yard,' he said; 'a very big one, I have something to burn.'

The boys were upright in a moment and on their way; even Floss tossed down the newspaper with which she was fanning herself (the _Wilgandra Times_, with which was incorporated the _Moondi Mercury_), and rushed to partake of the fun, and Hermie and Miss Browne found themselves impelled to go and see what was happening.

Such a blaze! Bart raked up a lot of garden rubbish and added tree branches. Roly, feeling quite authorised since the bonfire had been commanded by his father and was no illicit one of his own, made journeys to and from the wood-heap and piled on the better part of a quarter of a ton of wood just paid for.

Then down came the father, his blue eyes a little wild, his mouth not quite under his own control. He had his mustard-box under his arm.

'Oh, daddie!' Hermie cried and sprang at him. 'Oh no, no, no!'

But he pushed her aside.

'Don't speak to me--none of you speak one word,' he said, and he stooped and dropped the box where the flames leapt.

'No, no, no!' Hermie screamed, and rushed at it, and put a hand right through the flame and touched the box, then drew back, helpless, crying.

'Get away!' Bart said, and pushed her back from danger and took the work himself, a rake for aid.

He dragged the charred box out, Miss Browne fluttered round him and caught at the lid and burnt her hands, and fell over the rake and singed her hair and eyebrows. Roly and Floss, carried off their feet by the excitement, rushed to help, and the box lay safely on the grass again, two minutes from the time it had been in the flames.

'Let it alone, no one dare to touch it!' commanded the father, and the voice was one the children had never heard before.

He picked the box up, hot and blackened as it was, and flung it on the fire again; the lid fell off, there came a rain of tubes and paint-brushes, a splutter or two from the turpentine, the smell of burnt paint, then the fire burnt steadily again, and there was silence that only Hermie's bitter crying broke.

The father had gone back to the house; he came down to them once again and this time The Ship was in his arms.

Surely an ill-starred ship! There had been no money to send it to Sydney for the artists there to appraise; Cameron, absolutely frightened when he found how the debts were growing, exhibited it in Wilgandra and a neighbouring town or two, and marked it ten pounds.

But who in the back-blocks was going to give that sum for a picture without a frame? The coloured supplements, with elaborate plush surrounds, satisfied the artistic yearnings of most of the community, and The Ship came back to sad anchorage in the Cameron dining-room.

But to burn it!

Hermie gave a fresh despairing cry. Floss, Bart, and Roly stood absolutely still, the instinct of obedience strong at such a crisis.

Cameron's arm was again raised, but Miss Browne flung herself right upon him and clung to the canvas, her weak hands suddenly filled with strength and tenacity.

'Not this, not this!' she cried. 'Anything but this! Give it to me--I will keep it from your sight--I will hide it away--it shall never meet your eyes. My ship, my ship, you shall not burn it.'

She held it in her arms, actually torn from his grasp.

Cameron glanced around--the leaping flames, the startled children, Hermie's hysterical sobbing, Miss Browne's wild attitude of daring and defiance--he told himself he had taken a theatrical vengeance on himself.

'Oh, do as you like,' he said irritably, and turned back to the house. 'Bart, put a bucket of water on that fire.'

One month from the night of the sacrifice the Camerons were in possession of the selection, and Mrs. Dunks was lying in peace among those of her own people who rested from the sun's heat in the Forbes graveyard.

*CHAPTER VI*

*Thirty Thousand a Year*

'Ah, for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be.'

'I should think we might get the bag of corn now, eh, Bart?' Cameron wiped his brow, and stopped to survey the patch of ground that looked so smooth.

Bart looked at it critically.

'I think we'd better give it another turn, dad,' he said, and hitched the string-mended harness a little more securely to the jaded horse. 'It's such a lunatic plough, it misses twice for every time it hits.'

Cameron looked at the wide space of ground to be gone over yet again.

'I'm very anxious to get the corn in,' he said. 'You see, we're a month late as it is, and it will be a big saving in feed when we have it to cut.'

'Yes; but it is no good unless the ground is ready,' Bart said. 'We have no manure or anything like the _Journal_ says. We'd better give it an extra turn.'

'You're quite right, quite right, my boy,' Cameron said, and led his horse on again, up and down, up and down the furrows.

'I don't like such a lot of stumps being left in,' Bart said, the seventh time in an hour that the plough had gnashed on one. 'In the _Journal_ there's a picture of a stump eradicator--a grand little machine. We'll have to save up and get it, dad.'

'Ay, ay,' said the father; 'still, I don't think the stumps will interfere very much. The corn can easily come up between them.'

'It would be easier ploughing,' sighed Bart, following the horse about in a waved line.

'You're tired out, lad; knock off for a spell,' Cameron said. 'I keep forgetting how young you are. We have been working here since eight--five hours.'

But Bart would work till he dropped rather than leave off a minute before his father. He took a long drink at the oatmeal water Miss Browne had made, and went on stooping, picking out the stones, digging spots the unfaithful plough had left untouched, following the horse while his father dug.

Cameron was thin as a rail. Ever since they had come here he had worked like a man possessed, for the spectacle that came to haunt his nights was of his children in actual need of bread. He had left debts behind him in the township--a hundred pounds' worth of them; there was a hundred and fifty yet to pay on the selection; and the patching-up of the house, rough as it had been, had taken money. There was seed to buy, there were tools to mend or replace, interest to pay on the money he had borrowed on the place--a thousand other things.

And not one word of all the changes did the letters carry across the secret seas.

'There is no need to worry mamma unnecessarily,' Cameron said to the children. 'When we have made a great success of the place and paid everything off, then we will tell her.'

Across the acres came the insistent sound of the dinner-bell.

'I don't think I'll stop,' Cameron said, 'I'm not hungry. Off you go, Bart, and don't come back for an hour.'

But Bart was learning the art of managing his father.

'The poor old nag wants a rest,' he said. 'We must take her up and give her a drink and some oats. And I'd come in to dinner, dad, if I were you. Hermie will be disappointed if you don't.'

So they went up to the little patchwork house together.

It was not to a very tempting repast the bell had summoned them. Hermie, no longer able to order macaroons and whitebait and tinned oysters to make delicacies with, had, childlike, lost interest in the culinary department of the house. And Miss Browne was no artist; to her a leg of mutton represented nothing but a leg of mutton, and fricassees and such tempting departures seemed but tales in the cookery book never to be put to practical use.

To-day there were chops--fried. Years back, when Lizzie came fresh from the State to Mrs. Cameron's tutelage, she had been instantly instructed in the fine art of grilling. But now that there was no one to insist upon these delicate distinctions, and the frying-pan was so much easier labour, Cameron was slowly forgetting the taste of grilled meat.

There were potatoes too; the family took it for granted that these were necessarily nasty things, either watery or burnt.

Bread and jam--no longer silver-pan conserve, but cheap raspberry, in which the chief element was tomato--finishing the pleasing repast.

Miss Browne sat at the head of the table, exhausted and dishevelled, for she had swept the room, had sewn on four buttons, and dressed Floss, and set the table.

Cameron, before removing to the selection, had dismissed her again, gently enough; he knew it would be impossible to continue to pay her ten shillings a week for being a nuisance to them.

And again she had wept and wrung her hands and entreated to remain. The tears streaming down her cheeks, she told him the time she had been in his family was the happiest in her life. She would not dream of taking money now, she said; but she implored him to let her work for her home. So here she was, still at the head of the table, faithfully apportioning the dish of chops and keeping the smallest and worst-cooked one quietly for herself, and pouring out tea, which all the family drank with each and every meal, so slowly and confusedly that her own was always cold before she touched it.

'Not a chop?' she said to Cameron. 'Oh, but you really must. Think of the severe physical labour you are continually doing. Just a small one! You touched no meat yesterday, nor the day before.' She looked on the verge of tears.

'Don't trouble, I don't care for any,' Cameron said. 'I'll have some--some,'--his eyes wandered round the table in search of something nicer than the potatoes--'some bread and butter.'

But Lizzie's prentice hand at bread! And store butter three weeks old! He reached himself _Pendennis_, and, helped by the pleasant gossiping of the mayor, managed to swallow a few mouthfuls.

All through the meal Miss Browne lamented over his appetite, but he heeded her voice just as much as he did the flies that buzzed round his tea-cup--both were integral parts of life, and to be endured.

'May I put you a chop aside, and warm it up for your tea?' she persisted anxiously.

He put his finger on the place in the book and looked up for one second.

'I am going to try vegetarianism,' he said. 'I have come to the conclusion that meat does not agree with me.'

And it did not. Every second Saturday now with his own hands he was obliged to kill a sheep for the sake of his family; he found a man would charge ten shillings each time to come the distance. The physical nausea for the task was such that from the time he first took the knife into his shuddering hand to the day they buried him, no morsel of animal food passed his lips.

The children were still--a month after they had come--full of magnificent enthusiasms. Hermie and Miss Browne were going to restore the fallen fortunes of the family by raising poultry. Hermie worked intoxicating sums on paper, and even Miss Browne, distrustful of the child's arithmetic, on checking the figures could find so little wrong that she began to be a-tremble with delight at the prospect herself. Bart himself, the only one of the family touched with caution, found they had left sufficient margin for losses, and assented that a fortune might assuredly be made.

For who could dispute the fact that the grocer charged from one to two shillings a dozen for his eggs, according to season? Let them reckon on the basis of one shilling. And Small, the butcher, charged three and sixpence to four and sixpence a pair for table fowls. Let them be very safe, and say two and sixpence.

They were starting with the twelve fowls the Dunks had left on the estate. Now if one hen in one year brought up three clutches of chickens, how many would that make? Hermie, with shining eyes, cried thirty-nine; but Bart, who had seen mortality among chickens, refused to put down more than twenty.

'Very well,' said Hermie, 'count twenty, if you like, only I know it will be thirty-nine, I shall be so careful of them. Twelve hens with twenty chickens each--that will be--that will be--what are twelve twenties, Miss Browne?'

'Two hundred and forty,' replied the lady, amazed herself that it could be so much, 'two hundred and forty! Why, I have never seen so many together in my life.'

Bart wrote down the figures two hundred and forty.

'Fowls grow up in six months,' Hermie said. 'Lizzie says so, and her mother used to keep fowls. The _Journal_ says--I read it this morning--that fowls generally lay two hundred eggs a year.'

'Say one hundred and fifty,' Bart said.

'Very well,' said Hermie. 'Please, Miss Browne, what are two hundred and forty times one hundred and fifty?'

'My dear,' gasped Miss Browne, 'I--I really need a pencil for that.'

Bart offered his stump, and Miss Browne was five minutes working the sum, so sure was she she must have made an astounding mistake somewhere.

'It--it certainly comes to thirty-six thousand,' she said at last.

'Would you please multiply it by a shilling a dozen, and say what it comes to,' was Hermie's further request.

Miss Browne again took a surprising time to do the simple sum.

'A hundred and fifty pounds,' she said.

'That is for the first year,' Hermie said; 'but now would you please work it out on this big piece of paper, and see what we should get the second year. Two hundred and forty fowls----'

'And the twelve you began with, too,' said Roly.

Hermie was quite willing to be cautious.

'We won't count them, we'll allow for them dying, too,' she said. 'Two hundred and forty fowls with, say, twenty chickens each in the year. What's that?'

Miss Browne's pencil worked.

'Four thousand eight hundred,' she said.

'And they lay one hundred and fifty eggs a year.'

Miss Browne looked quite shaken at the result her arithmetic produced--seven hundred and twenty thousand eggs! Three thousand pounds!

The excitement made her work out the results of the third year, and she was weeping when the sun came out--sixty thousand pounds. She was weeping for her grey spoiled life. Exquisite dresses, travel, health, even marriage, and little children of her own, would have been all possible, had she worked these sums years and years ago, and set to work with twelve fowls.

Bart still had misgivings.

'More might die than that,' he said.

Hermie was quite pale with excitement.

'We have counted that half that come out die,' she said, 'and Lizzie says her mother always reared ten out of every thirteen. We have only counted six. But count three, if you like; still, that is thirty thousand pounds. And we have not counted selling any.'

Even Bart saw the moderation that only counted three chickens to each hatching, and his doubts died away.

Visions of all this wealth intoxicated the children; they tore their father from his book; Hermie told him, with eyes ashine with tears and little heaving breast, that he was never to do any more of that dreadful ploughing, that in three years they would be making thirty thousand a year, at least, by no harder work than just feeding the fowls and packing up eggs.

He smiled at them very gently; he could not bear to damp their ardour. In very truth he could not exactly find out why these figures should not be as they seemed.

'Of course you would have a huge feed-bill and want a big run of land,' he said.

Bart gave a comprehensive sweep of his young arm towards the scrubby bush-land that lay around them.

'As much as we like for a shilling an acre a year,' he said.

'But the feed-bill?'

'Five thousand a year would buy enough at all events, and still we'd have twenty-five thousand left,' Hermie said jubilantly. 'You will give up the ploughing, won't you, daddie?'

Cameron temporised, and said he would just do a little while the chickens grew.

That night a violent wind came up with drenching rain. Cameron lay listening to it, wondering what skies were over the head of his beloved whom the seas held from him.

Then he heard doors opening and shutting, whispered words, and finally a series of very angry cackles. He threw on some clothes, and went to find out the meaning. In the living-room an oil lamp was flaring in the draught, a Plymouth rock was roosting on the piano top, a white Leghorn was regarding the sofa suspiciously. On the floor sat Hermie, rubbing a wrathful fowl dry with a Turkish bath-towel, and presently in staggered Bartie and Miss Browne, the former with five fowls by the legs, the latter nervously holding one at arm's length.

Cameron fell into a convulsion of silent laughter, so earnest were the children, so absorbed. And Miss Browne, poor Miss Browne, how ludicrous she looked with her scanty hair flying ragged round her shoulders, her figure clad in an ancient mackintosh, her mouth frightened, her eyes heroic with the endeavour not to let go the fowl, which twisted itself madly to peck at her trembling hand!

'I don't know what you are laughing for, papa,' Hermie said, a trifle offended. 'The fowl-house leaks dreadfully.'

'But it has rained half a dozen nights since we came; you never brought the things in here before, my child,' he urged.

Hermie received Miss Browne's contribution on her knee, and fell to drying its dejected feathers.

'We didn't know before that each of them was worth two thousand five hundred pounds,' she said. 'Please, papa, will you hold Bartie's fowls, so that he can light the fire. We are going to give them something hot to drink.'

*CHAPTER VII*

*Come Home! Come Home*

.

'Oh, that 'twere possible, After long grief and pain, To find the arms of my true love Around me once again!'

Five years dragged on. Sometimes word came that the travellers were at last coming home, and Cameron's heart grew warm, only to grow cold again, as he realised he dare not let them come to this. Then, while the agony of dread still was crushing him, the next mail would bring the bitter relief that the time was not yet--the agent or the music masters or some one else had found another year was necessary, or the great career would be spoiled. Not one word all this time of the selection, else had the 'career' been in instant danger of the ruin predicted, the mother would have journeyed at the greatest possible number of knots an hour back to them. Her dreamer of dreams depending on a selection, her children depending on her dreamer, become his own master!

Yet surely the man had had his lesson, and toiled now marvellously, piteously.

Five years, and not one idle day.

Five years of bewildered struggling with unknown enemies--drought, hurricanes of wind, bush fires, devastating rains, a soil that the farmer born and bred could hardly have made pay. Never a complaining word. Hermie, growing to womanhood, broke her heart over his life at times.

There was even a day when she fell down on her knees at a chair, and covered paper wildly with a pen that commanded her mother to come home.