THE Ettl ARCADIA AN AUSTRALIAN STORY THE NEW ARCADIA THE NEW ARCARIA AN AUSTRALIAN STORY BY The old order changeth, yielding place to new . Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1894 RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY. CONTENTS. CHAP. 1'ACIE I. STILLING THE TEMPEST ... ... ... I II. FIVE POUNDS FOR FLESH AND BLOOD ... 7 III. DICK SHOWN THE BACK-DOOR ... ... 12 IV. A TRIANGULAR DUEL 19 V. ARCADIA ... ... ... ... ... 26 VI. THE DYING SQUATTER'S DREAM 32 VII. KEEPING UP APPEARANCES ... ... 41 VIII. THE SCREEN OF DEATH ... ... ... 52 IX. THE GUEST THAT HAD NOT ON A WEDDING GARMENT ... ... ... ... 56 X. PEOPLING THE WILDERNESS ... ... 64 XI. TRANSFORMATION SCENE ... ... ... 71 XII. WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS ... ... .. 79 XIII. DROWNING THEM LIKE RATS ... ... 87 xiv. ALEC'S WHISKY STOPPED ... ... ... 101 XV. ' IT'S LOVE THAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND' ... ... ... ... ... in XVI. HYGEIA ... ... ... ... ... 119 XVII. CUTTING-OUT EXPEDITION AT THE GROTTO 129 XVIII. THE MILKMAID ALL FORLORN 135 vi CONTENTS. CHAP. 1'AGE XIX. TOM LORD BECOMES SOPHISTICATED ... 140 XX. MALDUKE SETS HIS TRAP ... ... 146 XXI. WOUNDED BUT NOT CAUGHT ... ... 151 XXII. HOW TOM WON A RACE ... ... 159 XXIII. AN OASIS IN THE DESERT ... ... I 71 XXIV. HELPING LAME DOGS OVER STILES ... 1 78 XXV. CHANGES AND CHANCES ... ... ... 185 XXVI. GREEK MEETS GREEK ... *9 2 xxvii. THE DOCTOR'S DEPARTURE ... ... 201 XXVIII. BROKEN TRAPS AND BREAKING HEARTS 206 XXIX. BETWEEN DEVIL AND DEEP SEA ... ... 215. XXX. FIGHTING THE FLAMES ... 228 XXXI. THE FLAG HALF-MAST HIGH ... 242 XXXII. AMAZONA THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS 251 XXXIII. THE WHITE MAN OF THE WOODS ... 266 XXXIV. THE LIVING DEAD 279 XXXV. THE LILY-MAID OF ASTOLAT ... 2 94 XXXVI. THE FAIRY ISLAND .. 35 THE NEW ARCADIA. CHAPTER I. STILLING THE TEMPEST. " We sit on a cloud and sing . . . And say the world runs smooth while right below, Welters the black fermenting heap of life, On which our State is built." The Sainfs Tragedy. " Some Lancashire lads I know would have made short and cursory work of waiting for Government. ' Hang the Government ! Why wait for them ? Let us co-op, and do the work our- selves ! ' " CRAIG. " PULL him down ! " " Knock him off the seat ! " " An aristocrat riding us down like dogs ! " A smart fusillade of such epithets, portending hand-to-hand conflict, broke from the foremost of a straggling band of workmen ; some reckless and uncanny in appearance, others listless and half-interested, but animated, for the moment, as dullest street crowds are, by occurrence of " an accident." The dog-cart, apparently of 'a professional man, had run over a city waif hanging on the outskirts of a detach- ment of " the unemployed " on their course to the noon- tide rendezvous. The leaders, welcoming a victim, were venting curses on the head of the luckless Jehu. 1780-M2 2 THE NEW ARCADIA. " A bright specimen of his class ! " cried one. "Slowed if it ain't Dr. Courtney of St. Clair. He'd ought to know better," chimed in another. Curbing with difficulty his plunging steed, the indi- vidual referred to flung reins to his groom and leaped into the surging sea of scowling countenances about him. He made for the curb-stone, where, supported by a policeman and closed around by a gaping crowd effectually excluding the air the little sufferer lay. As usual, it occurred to no one to render assistance, only to ask questions and pass comments. With a strong arm thrusting the loiterers aside to right and left, the un- witting cause of the disturbance bent anxiously over the little unfortunate. Passing a skilful hand about body and limbs, he said to himself, " A broken leg," and to the lad, "All right, my boy, we'll soon set you right again." Not far off, of course, was a cabby, eager to bear away the child, glad to secure a " fare," though suffering or death placed it in his hands. " They're all the same," remarked one in the crowd. "'It's an ill wind blows no one any good.' Doctor, parson, cabby, undertaker. Death of one's godsend t'otbers. All living one on another." " What's the sense of standing and prating there, you big fool ! " exclaimed the doctor. Raising the child in his arms, he hustled the men with his elbow and made with his charge towards the cab. Laying the manly urchin, who had uttered no cry, and was contracting his face to restrain the tears, on the floor of the vehicle, " To the hospital," he cried, " as gently as you like," and was stepping in himself. "You'll just stay here and answer to us," hissed a coarse voice in his ear as the cab moved forward. The STILLING THE TEMPEST. 3 doctor was dragged backward and fell on his knees. The crowd closed round. Cabby, ignorant that he was minus his full load, drove on. In a second the doctor was on his feet again the blood mantling his cheeks. "Who dare lay hand on me?" he demanded, defiantly, glaring round on the excited throng. " Make way, or I'll find it. I'm in no mood to be trifled with." This to a well-bred, shabby-genteel leader who confronted him. " Curses on you ! " the man exclaimed, thrusting him- self forward. "What do you mean by running over the little chap? You did it on purpose. You know you did." The speaker delivered no further harangue that day. Incensed at the indignity to which he was sub- jected, the doctor struck his man a blow that lifted him from his feet and hurled him into the arms of his comrades. " None of that," a dozen voices cried. " Two can play at that game, you know." " Move on," suggested a valiant constable in the back- ground. The men were hustled and urged towards a vacant piece of ground beside a half-finished edifice. Their stricken leader had disappeared. They were impressed by the bearing of the doctor. His was a powerful face, a high intellectual brow, an eye that flashed as his fist clenched. Sorrow and anger con- tended in his breast ; resentment on account of the treatment to which he was being subjected, coupled with evident sympathy for the men against whom he found himself by accident arrayed. If not actually in want, they were, he knew, anxious concerning a livelihood. Misguided on one hand, maligned on the other. 4 THE NEW ARCADIA. Finding a footing on some piles of lumber, he shook off the hand that was laid on his shoulder swept his eye round the grizzled, not" unkindly, faces about him, and said "Look here, my men, I am going to see that lad whom, unfortunately, I ran over. It was no fault of mine, as you know. The horse shied at that banner of yours the fellow was carrying, who is not here to speak for himself." A smile rippled across the sea of good-natured faces. " He's got a headache," suggested one. " The little fellow," continued the doctor, " ran in front of the trap. I will see to him. Now as to you. That, I am more anxious about. Do not be fools. Do not be led astray by men who put a false construction on everything some of us may do, and who try to make you believe that every fellow who wears a black coat has a black heart. I'll take my jacket off to-morrow to work beside any honest man, as I have done before, if I can serve society better so, or to try to thrash the man who persists that I deliberately ran that youngster down, or want to over-ride any. Is that clear ? Now, before I go, let me ask, why are you all hanging about the city, imploring Government and every one else to help you ? Why not, for instance, seek the country, where a fair field and means of livelihood awaits you? " " How can a man go and squat, what's got no tin ? " growls one. " My children's had nothing to eat this blessed day." The speaker, who did not himself appeal- starved, was, like many of his companions, puffing clouds of smoke from an oft-replenished pipe. " For my part," was the reply, " if my children were hungering I should deny myself a pipe. I'd like to see less incense and more sacrifice: ' STILLING THE TEMPEST. 5 " All very well for you to say, governor. Why should a poor beggar lose the one comfort he's got ? " " Right, my man," was the reply, " in this country, you should command luxuries as well as necessaries. But you will not find them in town. Here you have swarmed to manufacture for a population that does not exist. Go on to the lands and become producers, masters of your own destiny. With a prosperous people settled on the deserted plains and half-ringed forests, your workshops might furnish occupation ; your warehouses cease to be clogged with unsalable goods, while folk are shivering. Your railways, extended by compliant politicians into every hungry corner of the land, might groan with freight, and the cry be for more labourers to harvest the golden store." " All very well, old man, but how are we to get on the land ? " asked one. " We haven't the price of an axe atween us." " You want money, you rightly think. What, however, is capital, but pound placed beside pound, one day's labour upon another? Can't you prut that together? Instead of this senseless parading about overgrown cities, might you not ascertain by practical experiment, whether a mode of settlement that has in other countries success- fully identified millions with the soil might not be adopted ? The occupation of our lands has been so far of a tem- porary nature. The squatter is the sojourner merely, that his name implies. God intended other use to be made of our richest lands than to be pastures for count- less sheep. The selector, after destroying valuable timber, building a hut in an inaccessible corner of a ring-barked allotment, scratching a hundred acres of wheat into the sour soil and silting down the rest of the year to see it grow, the selector, I say, is not a permanent settler. 6 THE NEW ARCADIA. From the Murray to the sea you may purchase the lands the Government virtually gave away. Is it not possible, in a social, national sort of way, to establish thousands of you on our virtually vacant lands ? I think it is, and I know how. You'll have to learn another trade most of you. Exchange plane for plough, house-decorating for vine-dressing. You'll have to work hard not praying heaven in the morning not to send the job you seek all day ; not flinging down your tools at five o'clock. You must be associated together too. Small holdings all you can get as yet are unprofitable without co-operation. That is the direction in which relief is coming to these countries, I believe. Now put that into your pipe and smoke it." So saying the speaker disappeared midst ringing cheers from the motley assemblage. CHAPTER II. FIVE POUNDS FOR FLESH AND BLOOD. "A most acute juvenal, voluble, and free of grace." Love's Labour s Lost. " So justice while she winks at crimes, Stumbles on innocence sometimes." HUDIBRAS. ' ' There is now in England a mass, an ever-increasing mass, of unemployed labour, supplying victims for unprincipled and short-sighted capitalists, or filling our gaols and workhouses ; try whether association will not gradually assimilate this mass, and render it the strength and not the poison, the blessing and not the curse of our country." Letter of CHARLES KINGSLEY. " IT weren't none on your fault, master," the little man was saying. Dr. Courtenay was expressing regret for the mishap. " I'm mighty glad to be here, I can tell you," the child ran on. " It's so clean and quiet, and them young ladies," pointing to a group of nurses, "is so kind. Don't let them take me away again." " Why do you not want to go home ? " inquired the doctor. " Home ? " the child exclaimed. " It's what they call hell at the Mission House. Mother she drinks, and grannie drinks, and they beat me if I doesn't bring enough home at night. I often sleeps out under the railway near the wharfs for fear of them. Then they whacks me more when I gets home for stopping away." 8 THE NEW ARCADIA. " And where's your father, my little man ? " inquired the doctor. " Ah, that's it ! " the child replied with animation. " Why does not he look after you ? " " He went away, long time ago, last year. He couldn't get no work, and used to come home to find mother and grannie drunk when mother had had a bit of washing to do. One day I corned home, and father was sitting over the fire-place with no fire in it, and his head in his hands. ' Dad,' says I, ' what's up now ? ' and he turns his head away, but draws me to him and nigh squeezed me up, and I seed he was crying. I don't often blubber ; I didn't to-day, sir, did I ? But I howled when I seed father cry. I'll never forget him shakin' and rockin' hisself. Then he knocks away the tears as if he hated them and bit his lip hard. Did you ever see a man cry, sir? Children does, and women, but it's terrible, I thinks, to see a man blub." "Was your father ill?" interjected the medical man. "Tough as a tram-cable, sir, and brave as a bulldog. I seed him punch Fitzroy Tom's head when he'd made game of mother for being drunk. All the people in the lane said he was a brick and ought to set up a boxin' saloon." " What did he cry for then ? " "'Cause of mother" here the little one broke down and sobbed. " She used to be so good onst and 'cause of no work. He used to say he wouldn't care what he done, if he could get a job. Then he kisses me and squeezes me up, like a crowd at the theatre door, and goes away. " ' Never you mind, sonny,' he calls out, ' I'll come back some day and make a man of you.' FIVE POUNDS FOR FLESH AND BLOOD. 9 "We never heard on him since, and mother's been *worse nor ever. One day Tim Smith told me father was making a railway. I thought I'd go too. Perhaps I could sell papers to the chaps there. I saved up seven brownies and went to Spencer Street. I told the cove bobbing inside the window, like a jail-bird, to give me a ticket to where the railway was doing. He said they was making railways everywhere, and I might soon have one to the moon, if they got a member 'lected for there, or got the blind side of the commissioners. " ' None of your cheek,' says I, coz I knew he couldn't get through the window at me. 'Give us a ticket, a "holiday excursion" workman's ticket as far as your train will take me for them ' clapping down the brownies. He laughed and gave me one to Donnybrook. When I got there I could see no trains a-making. I just walked and walked. There was fine trees and birds singing in them, and flowers in the grass. But I could not see father. I asked a lot of chaps and they only said, ' Who 're you ? What are you a'ter here ? ' I'd never seen the country before. I didn't wonder father ran away there, only I thought he might'er taken me. " ' I'll stop here always,' says I, ' till I finds dad.' " But I only found the bobby. He's everywhere ! I hanged out in a stable, and a fat man corned in the morning and says I'd been stealing. I'd like to have punched his head. Then he got a bobby, with tights and boots on, looking mighty mashery as though he done no work, and he asked and asked like everybody else. When I told him about my father and mother, he said, ' You're a little runaway, you beggar. I'll send you back to town.' Then he shook me till I seed double. ' We want none of you larrikins here,' he calls out, very brave-like. 10 THE NEW ARCADIA. " ' Surely there's room for me and mother and all in our lane out here, 'stead of starvin' in town.' " ' Don't you be cheeky, young man,' he says, and hits me on the head. ' We don't want no town varmin out here.' " ' But there's plenty o' room,' says I, ' and I does like the birds and the flowers so, and I could help the fat man dig.' " ' Dig ! you little fool,' says he ; ' he grows sheep, and has miles of this 'ere country, and two or three on 'em has all the rest of it.' " ' And isn't there no corner for me ? ' I puts in, and begins to cry when I thinks of the dirty streets and men with nothing to do but fight." "What was the end of it?" suggested the doctor, looking at his watch. " He sends me back next day with a bobby who were takin' a cove to town who'd been copped, and they fetched me to mother and grannie, and didn't I get it." At that moment there was a disturbance at the entrance to the ward ; a shrill voice was declaiming to a nurse who stopped the way. " Let me go to my darling ; I heard he was run over. He's the only joy of my heart." " Don't let her come, she'll take me away," cried the child, covering his head with the bedclothes. The doctor went to the woman. For half-an-hour he talked to her. " Then you'll give me five pounds for him, my little cherrub?" "Yes, if you sign this document giving him over entirely to my charge. I'll do the best I can for him. From your own showing and his, you have cared little for him. I shall pay the money to the clergyman whose FIVE POUNDS FOR FLESH AND BLOOD. II name you mention, and get him to give you five shillings a week for your rent for three months." "So I'm to sell my own flesh and blood for a five- pound note ? " the woman replied. " Not unless you like. Come to my house this evening. I will get the clergyman to be there, and we'll settle it up at nine o'clock." That night a woman emerged from the doctor's dispensary exclaiming, as she hurried along " Five pounds for my own flesh and blood ! That's what Melbourne and drink's brought me to ! And we was happy enough before we came to town." 12 CHAPTER III. DICK SHOWN THE BACK-DOOR. " But far more numerous was the herd of such Who think too little and who talk too much." DRYDEN. " Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools." POPE. " So you have another scheme for reforming the world, father? What a pity you are not the Premier, or rather President of the Trades' Hall ! We could all live without working then." "You're just like your mother, Gvvyneth. Never appreciating me and my plans, and you're too plain spoke too ! I'll not be treated like this no longer ! " laying down his knife and fork. " Dear father, do not become excited," rejoined the girl, slipping from her seat and imprinting a soft kiss on the knitted brows. " Now tell me all about it. There ! I'll sit and sew, and say nothing." The speaker was a tall girl, with bright hazel eyes and wavy brown hair, straight Grecian nose, firm mouth and chin one of Nature's queens of common sense and good looks. Her father, a widower, whose only child she was, had been a soldier in his time, and now lived on the shilling DICK SHOWN THE BACK-DOOR. 13 a day his country allowed him plus another shilling or two his daughter's deft needle won. "Too clever by half." "Talks more nor he thinks." " Showy, but won't wash ! " were the epithets with which his comrades summed up valiant John Elms. He knew something of everything building, farming, and schem- ing was a "bush lawyer," spoke much of "Political Economy," and the " Rights of Man." The anarchists he denounced, and claimed himself to be a Christian Socialist. A son of Erin, he could talk by the hour, like most of his countrymen, with that facility that comes of iteration of the same truths, with varied thumpings of table or tub to drive each platitude home. The little house in Richmond, thanks to Gwyneth's skill and care, was a model poor man's home. The Sergeant, as Elms liked to be called, was apt at domestic carpentery, as his daughter was with respect to plain upholstery. The parlour, where the Sergeant's meal was laid he came in at all hours from " meetings " boasted a small cabinet-organ, a sewing-machine, and a faded drawing-room suite, rendered ever fresh and clean by immaculate Holland coverings with red pipings. Rural and military pictures, from the illustrated papers, framed in wood or leather work by father and daughter, decked the walls. " If there was a prize for the cosiest little home," Dick Malduke, Gwyneth's secret admirer, used to say, " you'd get it, and 'honorary' mention into the bargain." " I'm full of a new scheme," remarked the father as he drank his tea. " That's nothing wonderful," responded the undemon* strative daughter, "since you propound (isn't that what you call it ?) a fresh theory every day." " Oh, but I have some one behind me, I feel, now. 14 THE NEW ARCADIA. Some one I can work upon, to put some of my glorious principles into practice." " And who may be your latest tool, father?" inquired the girl. "No tool, by Jove!" was the rejoinder. "A reg'lar big-wig of pluck and spirit, I can tell you. You should have seen him send your Dick sprawling," he added, chuckling. " He's more to you than to me," replied the girl with emphasis on the pronouns. " I admire him as I do the rest of the talkers who don't work ! But what hap- pened to your friend, father? This is really quite interesting." "It was this way," the Sergeant continued ; " we were going with about two hundred of the poor fellows, for whom my heart bleeds, to our place of meeting. Dick was carrying the colours, when a smartish trap came dashing up. The horse shied at the red flag, and ran over a little boy that was following. We surrounded the dog-cart, and the chaps began to hoot at the gent, though it was no fault of his. He didn't care a straw. Just went and looked after the little man and put him into a cab. As he was getting up, Dick and some of the others pulled him down, and the cab went on. My man he's a real game 'un glared at them like a lion with his tail trod on. Dick who's always too much to say and must be first, excuse my remarking it "You can say anything, dear father," interjected his daughter, with an arch smile, " to show what a set of simpletons your followers are, and that Dick's the greatest." "Dick," continued the Sergeant, with a smile, "told the gentleman he ran over the child on purpose. He said nothing more. The doctor clean lifted him from DICK SHOWN THE BACK-DOOR. 15 his feet with one from the shoulder. And we saw no more of Mr. Malduke." " Valiant Dick ! " exclaimed the maiden. At that moment there was a knock at the door that opened directly on the street. "Good-evening, Miss Elms," said a round, thick-set young man as he entered. " Why, it's Dick himself," exclaimed the girl. " We were just speaking of you, Mr. Malduke. Talk of the angels and you see their wings." The visitor seemed in no mood for badinage. "What have you that bandage across your eye for?" asked the girl, not very sympathetically. " You've been fighting, I do declare." "Slowed if I have," replied the man moodily; "it's only a cowardly blow that I'll be avenged for yet." " Why didn't you up and give it him back then and there?" suggested the Sergeant, with a laugh. "Never mind, old boy, he was too big for you. ' He that fights and runs away' you know the rest. You have to fight another day, you know. Come and have some supper any way, now." Midst light banter, that the young man only half appreciated, another plate was set, and the events of the day discussed. " I walked with the doctor towards the hospital," said the elder man, "and he told me seeing, I suppose, that I knew a thing or two that he and his friends had a scheme for mending matters. Strange we should have set upon him ! He's had a practice up country, and seems to know all about the life, and a lot about the social question, too, though of course I could teach him a lot." The daughter looked up amused, but said nothing. l6 THE NEW ARCADIA. " I'm to see him again, and promised to co-operate with him, much to his delight." " It's all rubbish ! " commented Dick, tilting back his chair, " this jabber of co-operation and profit-sharing and their ' new systems.' All a device of the capitalist to make men slaves under another name. I see a lot o f ' s\veatin' ' in it, Mr. Elms. Of course he'il own the land and get all the profit in the end. You see ! " '' There you're wrong," replied the Sergeant, " as you raving anarchists always are. You know your game would be up if capital and labour joined hands." " Don't hit him too hard, father," interjected the maiden, who was stitching on, amused. " He has been punished once already." Dick looked daggers at the girl, whose head was bent over her work, then he continued " I don't believe in half-measures. You'll do no good till every blessed thing's burst up and the State takes control, and all's divided fair." "Every Saturday night?" naively suggested the girl; " it'll be necessary I fear." " Now look here, Dick," said the Sergeant, " don't be a fool; we have the brains. Let us use these fellows. You just fall into line with us. We'll soon get the concern, if it's started, into our own hands and twist things round as we like." To much sentiment of this character expression was given. At length the girl, who had kept silence for some time, rose from her seat, and with mingled shame and scorn drawing herself to her full height, her dark eyes flashing, said " I'm not going to sit here and listen to such unmanly utterances. God knows, I sorrow for those who are hungry and homeless, but they, for the most part, are DICK SHOWN THE BACK-DOOR. \J honest. They will not lend themselves to stinging the hand that would help them. You throughout are think- ing of yourselves, not of them." So saying, she swept with dignity into the little kitchen adjoining, shutting the door with something very like a bang. Dick looked abashed. The father, with a thump on the table, and a somewhat proud though subdued expres- sion on his face, exclaimed " Just her mother all over. $he was a lady, you know. Ran away with me. 1 was good-looking in those days, and could always make an impression. " What -Gwyneth thinks, she must say. And she will always think for herself, as no woman should, to my thinking. I used to try to tame her. Now I give her head, for her mother's sake, and a bit for my own." "She's a thund'rin' fine girl all the same," added Dick. " Didn't her eyes flash ! I'm sorry we vexed her. I'll go and apologize," and the rash youth entered the kitchen and closed the door. " Always too much talk, Master Dick," soliloquized the father ; " you are putting your head into the lioness's mouth. You'll get more than you bargained for, I'm thinking, and you'll never win my daughter." Gwyneth, her dress tucked about her, was vigorously " washing up " the supper things. She did not raise her head as the young man entered. "Miss Elms," he began, "I'm really sorry I vexed you, but you know I must be thorough-going." " In your own interest, " she remarked quietly. " What do you care about the poor you talk so much about ? I hate shams." " I am devoted, you must admit, Miss Elms, to the cause of Labour." 1 8 THE NEW ARCADIA. " Then why do you not undertake more of it ? " she remarked shortly. " I work with my brains, Miss Elms, with tongue and heart, for the Great Cause of the People," " All with capital letters," she sneered. " Why do you not sometimes go and do an honest day's work instead of indulging in tall talk ? " she added with contempt. "I would for you, Miss Elms. I'd break stones if only you would encourage me. Gwyneth," the young man proceeded, laying his hand on the dish-cloth, which she relinquished to him, " why do you always spurn me? Do you not know that I adore the ground you walk on ? " " You should not do that," was the quick reply, " the kitchen's not been scrubbed this week. Now, Dick, don't talk rubbish," the girl continued in her quiet, matter-of-fact manner. "Go home like a good man and take care of your eye. And remember this, if you want to come here any more, don't you dare urge my father, who means well, to play the hypocrite and sneak. Now, good-night. I can let you out at this door. Oh, I'll bid farewell to father for you, you need not go back for that." And the dignified maiden bowed the abashed Agitator out at the back entrance into the narrow right-of-way. CHAPTER IV. A TRIANGULAR DUEL. " For why? Because the good old rule Sufficeth them, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can." WORDSWORTH. ' ' To knit in loving knowledge rich and poor. " The Saint's Tragedy. ' ' A huge aggregate of little systems, each of which again is a small anarchy, the members of which do not work together, but scramble against each other." THOS. CARLYLE. "The simplest and clearest definition of economy, whether public or private, means the wise management of labour ; and it means this mainly in three senses : first, in applying your labour rationally; secondly, in preserving its produce carefully; lastly, in distributing its produce seasonably." RUSKIN. " EXCUSE me, old fellow, but with all your socialistic tendencies you manage to make yourself deuced com- fortable. This is the jolliest den of a smoking-room I know." The speaker was a bright, plump little man, satisfied, to judge by the smile that always lurked about his mouth, with himself and his condition ; one who, in a good- natured sort of way, took life easy, and supposed that all others might do the same if they would. Why should he bother ? He possessed ample means to live upon ; not enough to cause him anxiety. He was influenced by no desire to add to his belongings or to enlarge his life. 20 THE NF.W ARCADIA. The world was made for him to walk about in, with his hands in his pockets, and he liked his part well ! A school-fellow of Dr. Courtenay, he, to escape the English winter, had come on a few months' visit to his friend. " I see no objection to a man enjoying the due reward of his toil," replied the doctor. " I've earned all I have, and most I possess is contained within the walls of this abode." It certainly was a room to add relish to a good cigar. The dado was of leather-work, the walls above covered with a fine Indian matting. Upon the ledge that ran round the walls stood photographs, articles of vertu, and bric-a-brac, that told of European and Eastern travel. On the walls, between dark oak cabinets and brackets, were hung whips, pipes, fencing-sticks, with a few good studies in oils. The doctor was stretched at length in a lounge that having done duty on shipboard was now lined with red cushions. His companion was coiled up " like a happy little dog," as the doctor termed it, on another lounge, pulling at a cherry-wood pipe almost as long as himself. Seated opposite these, straddle-legs on a chair, with elbows resting on the back, his dark eyes watching the pair in an amused, half-attentive manner, was a young cleric in short undress coat. His high forehead was surmounted by thick black hair, the close-shaven face revealing a decided mouth, and the set, solid features of a Manning. Frank Brown was vicar of the suburban parish. In his time he had rowed in " the 'Varsity " boat, played in the College Eleven, and been one of the men who were listened to at " The Union." By birth and earlier pre- dilections a Conservative, he had, under the influence of A TRIANGULAR DUEL. 21 parochial experience in the East of London, and now in his new but poor parish, developed into what he termed an " Eclectic " or a " Philosophical Radical." " No one objects to your being comfortable, doctor," he interjected. " You do not try to eat two dinners at the same time, and to waste three men's shares of the good things of this life ; but why may not all be better off? Why must these poor fellows of mine experience such a struggle just to live? Surely God has made this world capable of supporting millions more than now cumber it." " Partly of their own fault," began the doctor. "Entirely, say I," put in the little man. "Divide your pipes and tobacco of all kinds to-morrow and you'll need another distribution next week." " We have heard that before, Tom," continued the doctor. "It is partly men's own fault that the wolf is always at some doors, that you can never drive him far from certain portals, but it is chiefly the result of our social system." " We've heard that before," suggested the little man. "The principle of competition, that dominates our commercial and social life, involves that the weaker go to the wall. The labourers are the weaker. The strongest among them compete with each other until they drag each other down to a common condition of helplessness." " But their Labour Unions and Standards of Wages," suggested Tom, " are supposed to keep up prices and check the effects of competition." "And you know full well that those are not only extreme measures, disastrous in their consequences, but that they are artificial devices opposed to the nature of things." 22 THE NEW ARCADIA. "Just what I say," retorted Tom; "you cannot check the free and healthful play of competition." " Yes, you can," replied the doctor; "give men a share in the results of their labour, and their work will be doubly effective, whilst the reward of all parties will be augmented. ' Is it not better,' said the founder of the ' Maison La Claire,' ' to make 500 francs a day and give 300 to the workmen, than to earn 200 francs and keep it all yourself?' ' " But the trouble is," persisted the little man, " your workmen say, ' Share the profits with us, bear the losses yourself ! ' " " Not necessarily. Labour will take its fair risk if you put it in a position to do so. Pay the men in cash a quarter of what you give them now. Let the remainder of their interest be invested in the concern." "But how can they live on a quarter of what they starve on now ? You'll be called a sweater, and have the agitators down on you again." " Men can exist comfortably, if accepted principles of co-operation and economy be adopted, on the fourth of what is now expended. For instance, a man now earns 2 a week. Most of it is expended in the cost of living ; nothing remains at the end of the year." " Owing to your Protection run mad," remarked Tom. " No doubt the cost of living is ruinous to the work- ing-man, but unavoidably so under existing circumstances. Everything now tends to draw men to the city. Lead back some of them to the country. Let them, through their managers, be their own provisioners and salesmen, and they can live on a fourth of that they now spend." " The squatter can feed a family well on ten shillings a week," suggested the clergyman. A TRIANGULAR DUEL. 23 " But what are you going to do with them in the country? The squatter and farmer don't want them." "I'd bind them together, maintaining them for the cost of their house-rent in town. Then put them in the way of cultivating the soil and supporting themselves otherwise." " But these men, who are ' on strike ' wherever they get a chance, are not going to work for their ' tucker,' " objected Tom. " Yes, they will," observed Frank Brown, " if they see a prospect of ultimately winning by their industry a home and independence for themselves and their children." " What do they care for that ? " growled the little man. "Everything," continued the clergyman. "Scratch the Englishman, wherever he lives, and you find the farmer beneath the surface, and the earth-hunger in his breast." "And a lot of good it does him ! " " It makes him the colonizing creature of the world. Leads him to cross seas, subdue wildernesses, make gardens of howling deserts, and ports for the commerce of England on every shore," said the cleric. " But you have not stuff to deal with like that. The race is degenerate. Your men are loafers." " You should have seen them at the doctor's meeting the other day. You should have noted the eager, intelligent manner in which they received his sugges- tions," continued the clergyman, warmly. " Where were the idlers I see gathering on waste lands beside your streets and lounging in your parks?" asked Tom. "Not there," replied Frank. "Our scheme has no attraction for them. They like relief works, so much a 24 THE NEW ARCADIA. week, and soup-kitchens, and all the means adopted for pauperizing them. Our better fellows would starve rather than avail themselves of such methods." " Was our friend the agitator with the broken nose present?" inquired the little man, poking the doctor playfully with the end of his pipe. " I did not think, Courtenay, that you were coming to that, when I knew and respected you in the old country ! " " He was there, sure enough, looking blacker than ever," replied Frank, " but kept in check by an older man who talked like a book, and brandished his arms." " My right-hand man," added the doctor, " a fellow named Elms, who knows something of everything." "A dangerous kind of character,'' remarked Tom. "But what's coming of all this talk? we've heard the like before, you know." "Yes, and you are going to see something of it put into practice at length." " But where's your money ? You must have capital, abuse it as you may." " I do not underrate it, I assure you," said the doctor ; "but I want labour to rely more on itself, to learn its true strength, the vast fund of resource it has in reserve, if it will combine for production rather than for destruction." " But where's your money to begin with?" persisted the little man. " You know I'm a man of business." " Excuse me, old fellow, I never knew that before ! " said the doctor, slapping the thigh of his neighbour. ' ' I observe that if ever there is a thick-skulled, narrow- minded, short-sighted machine of a dotard knocking around, he claims to be a business man above everything. None of your schemes for him ! " A TRIANGULAR DUEL. 25 " Because the present order suits him well enough," suggested Tom. " While he does not see that it is shaken to its very foundations that he and all he has may be swept away by some tidal wave of social devastation unless a better way be found." " But what of the money?" persisted Tom. " That is the difficulty so far, I admit. I have nothing to invest. A few hundreds have been promised by some friends, but what are they ? " " Never mind," said the clergyman ; " it will come, I am sure. You will be able to work out your schemes by some means yet." The doctor lay back on his lounge looking doubtful and troubled. " It's faith you are depending upon then, Rev. Sir," said Tom. " What'll faith do for you, if you have not the cash ? " " Faith ! " exclaimed the young man, jumping up "faith with power that comes of enthusiasm and high aim, of sympathy for sorrow and suffering, with impatience of wrongs; faith such as animates our good friend incentive rare enough in these cold, calculating days will overcome everything. Mark my words, the doctor will do it ! " " On the strength of capital, not of faith," persisted the incorrigible Tom. 26 CHAPTER V. ARCADIA. ' O gaily sings the bird ! and the wattle-boughs are stirred, And rustled by the scented breath of spring. Oh the weary, wistful longing ! Oh the faces that are thronging ! Oh the voices that are vaguely whispering. " A. L. GORDON . " There's a strange something, which without a brain Fools feel, and which e'en wise men can't explain, Planted in man, to bind him to that earth, In dearest ties, from whence he drew his birth." CHURCHILL, The Farewell, " IF ever there was an earthly paradise, it is here, my child." "You're very fond of the place, father," remarked a girl whose sixteen summers had dyed her rounded cheeks olive and red; her large eyes were hazel, hair golden- brown ; a picture of beautiful youth she looked, as she sat at the old man's feet plying her needle. The cottage stood on a slight eminence. Far away to the right stretched a smiling valley, on either side of it sloped pine-dotted hills, with here and there a huge granite boulder indicating rich soil beneath. A sinuous line of wattle, golden with blossom, marked the winding of the creek, seeming to convert the plain into a series of gigantic primrose-beds. Two miles away, the streak of gold lost itself in a sheet of silver and red, as the creek flowed into a lake, some three miles below. The rays of the setting sun were illuminating its glittering surface. ARCADIA. 27 The hills, that there rose sharper from the lake than further up the valley, presented a dark line of smooth sward broken by boulders, pines, and oaks, against the glowing sunset sky. " That valley," cried the old man, stretching his clay pipe towards it, " might sustain its thousands. Look at the depth of the soil, fourteen feet there on that bank of the creek." " It's very sticky after rain, I know," objected the maiden. " I'd rather drive Peter over a dozen miles of the clean iron-stone in the ranges, than two miles on the plain. Yesterday after that sudden shower it stuck to the wheels of the old buggy till it creaked again. I had to stop at length and try to poke the black soil off with a stick. In a hundred yards it was as bad as ever again. I often wish your black soil further, dad." " You should not say that, my girl ; God is good to give us a country like this." " But what's the use of it? just to fatten so many more sheep for old Mr. Leicester." Thirty years before, Mr. Leicester, the adjoining squatter, had camped beside the creek with the few sheep he had brought out into the wilderness. He had climbed to the top of this very knoll and claimed, as he told his black shepherd, "all he could see between the hills." It was a fairly " large order " some thirty thousand acres but in a few months, in consideration of some imaginary services rendered to] the Government, a land grant made it his. A reserve along the stream had been retained by the State. Ten years before the date of this story, this had been put up to auction. Mr. Bowling was the purchaser. Leicester was absent in England. Dick Bowling was one of an ill-fated party of English gentlefolk who " migrated " to Adelaide in its c 28 THE NEW ARCADIA. earliest days. Their patrimony they invested in frame- houses, outfit of an elaborate nature, land and stock purchased in the colony. Bowling was a lawyer; his wife was connected with some of the best county families. Their eldest daughter, the belle of Fenshire, was delicate as she was beautiful. The move broke Grace Bowling's heart. She pined for the conditions and companionship of earlier days, and could see no beauties in eucalyptus and mimosa. A tree beside the first homestead marks the spot where Grace was laid to rest at last. The grief-stricken parents with their remaining daughter moved on, with sadly shrunken means, to the neighbouring colony. Bowling arrived in Melbourne just in time to purchase the reserve, to which a friend at the club had directed his attention. The frame-house was again set up, the hundred and twenty acres fenced, some stock procured ; then the unfortunate lawyer's last penny was expended. None knew how the trio existed. Bid he never regret relinquishing the little country practice, as he ploughed his own lands, laid out his garden, killed his sheep, took his produce in the spring- cart to Gumford railway-station ? Bid he not repent his folly, as his daughter swept the dust from ornaments and furniture that had known better days, from portraits of ancestors who seemed to be ever wondering how they came amongst their present surroundings, from the old clock that had stood centuries " on the stairs " at home and seemed never quite reconciled to the house that was all ground-floor ? As the old man saw his daughter milking, even driving the reaping-machine, while he sat and rattled his bones over the clods ; as he saw his beautiful old wife making up the butter with her snowy, tapering fingers, trimming ARCADIA. 29 the lamps, and bearing the week's produce into Gum ford in the rattling American wagon, did he not repent his folly ? No, he never regretted it. He revelled in the life of the country. "Health we have, if not wealth," he used to say. " Peace, if not prosperity. We live our own life, and like it." Mrs. Dowling was happy in her husband's satisfaction. It seemed to her strange that such as he, refined, intellectual, admired, should have voluntarily exiled him- self for a struggle for existence such as this. "What would the old country and its influence be, good wife," he used to say, " if her sons had not been possessed, so often, of a desire to seek a fuller life abroad, to escape from the deadly conventionalities of an effete society, and to extend all that is best in the national life beyond every sea ? What would England be save for her soldiers and sailors and settlers, who could not rest and rust at home ? "I know I have failed," he would sometimes admit, with momentary bitterness. "The greater fortune I dreamed of has never come. The little one I brought has vanished. But cheer up, wife, we'll never give in. None shall call us poor. Have I not my books and a little sphere in which, as Carlyle says, ' to create and to rule and be free ' ? You are happy, my darling. Perhaps we are of more use here in this uncouth, uncultivated land, where we may leave some fragrance of English fields and tastes behind us, than in dear, but dreamy, Fenshire." The old man, in his shirt-sleeves, with slouched hat and rough buckskin gaiters, looked still as much the true gentleman as when with shining velveteen he followed the hounds at home, or received the Queen when her Majesty visited the provincial town to open the park presented by his elder brother. 3O THE NEW ARCADIA. " She's as much a lady as ever," he would muse with pride as the good wife with skirts tucked around, her husband's brown cabbage-tree hat on her comely, well- set head, goloshes on her dainty feet, went the round of her fowl-yard, fed the butting calf and leggy lamb, and appeared shortly in the parlour as neat and trim as ever. "Why should life's plainest, simplest duties be con- sidered menial," he would say, " and the best of its work be delegated to menials ? " "You had better come in," said Mrs. Dowling, appear- ing at the open French window. "You cannot see any more of your beloved valley to-night, Richard." "But I can scent its fragrance. Isn't the perfume of the wattle and acacia, borne on the moist airs of night, sweet ? And I can hear the music of the vale. Hark to that wailing crescendo of the curlew ! The one thing here that evidently has a history and a pathetic one too. Or does it mourn that the land should lie desolate ? Now that 'More Pork,' or cuckoo as we ought to call him, is lonely too, but he is jolly as a sand-boy about it." "The laughing jackass is my favourite," suggested Eva. " The last one has just giggled itself to sleep. Always so delighted with himself and the day's doings, as it chuckles over the thought of how vainly the six-foot snake tried to bite as he whisked it hundreds of feet in the air, and how green the centipede got in the face when he ferreted it out from our fire-wood stack and gobbled it, and so he croons himself to sleep to dream of children not bitten owing to its protecting care." " The magpie I claim," said the mother ; " all day long as we work it whistles so gleefully, as if to cheer us on our way, while the locust tribe keep up the running accompaniment." " And the frogs in the lagoon " began Eva. ARCADIA. 3 1 " Now that will do, corns in at once," insisted Mrs. Dowling; " sit down and sing to us, my child." Ere long the old settler, oblivious of the labours of the day, was absorbed in Lyell's Geology ; the maiden was singing sweet ballads of England ; the old lady sitting erect, with spotless cap on her silvery hair, was busy with her patch-work quilt, thinking of the by-gone scenes associated with each remnant of " better days." " I hope I am not superstitious," she remarked, as her husband laid down his book to fill his pipe, " but do you know, Richard, as I arrange these patches I collected before we came out, I often see my sisters who wore the dresses, and the old housekeeperwho assorted the remnants you remember her the rooms in which the curtains were hung, and the couches from which the covers were cut. I could describe the old house not from memory, but actually as it is now. My patches, when I am weary, not only reanimate the past, but reveal the present." " Perhaps you are clairvoyant, Mary," suggested her husband with a laugh. " You have heard of the principles of 'trace.'" "No; what is that?" " It is claimed that an impress left on certain articles by former associations enables some persons to trace back the history of the object, and, far away, to view their present surroundings." " Very fanciful ; but I really do believe there are times when these bits of remnants make me dream until I see the present condition of those who wore them. I do not like the idea. Of course it is a silly one. I shall do no more to-night." At this juncture a loud knocking was heard at the back-door. A shrill female voice was calling, " For heaven's sake let me in ; he's dying ! " CHAPTER VI. THE DYING SQUATTER'S DREAM. "You tell me you have improved the land, but what have yon done with the labourers?" SISMONDI. " You have nothing else to do But make others work for you.; And you never need to know How the workers' children grow ; You need only shut your eyes And be selfish, cold, and wise." HOLYOAKE. BETWEEN the Bowlings on their little reserve, and the proprietor of the estates extending in all directions around them, a deadly feud existed. The latter owned more than he could ride round in a day, yet he coveted the little farm the decayed gentleman had set by the roadside. The atmosphere of content that surrounded it contrasted with his own feelings of unrest and dissatisfaction. Leicester impounded the poor man's cattle if they strayed, was suspected of setting his dogs on the daughter's " one ewe lamb" when it wandered, summoned the "genteel Cockey," as he termed him, to the Court at Gumford on the charge of " creating a nuisance," when the experiment- ing lawyer-farmer excavated a silo near the great man's fence. Leicester took his seat on the bench on that occasion and adjudicated on the case ; the township Boniface and storekeeper deeming it politic to consent to the order for removal of the nuisance. Poor Dowling's cows yielded no milk that winter. THE DYING SQUATTER'S DREAM. 33 Leicester, with all his wealth, was the poorest man in' all the country-side. The few hands he engaged hated him, and, when they could, neglected his interests. Neighbours' dogs were ever scattering his sheep, selectors persisted in travelling over his huge paddocks, though he had fenced the road across with six-rail wall of wood. Bulls would break his fences, his paddocks be burnt oftener than any one's else, and none have the grace to come to his assistance. At nightfall the lonely man would return to the huge mansion he had built, no one knew for what purpose, The great drawing-room was filled with furniture evidently purchased to one large order, the library stocked with books procured from England by the ton. In the chiffonier of the long dining-room was his solace. Again and again through the evening the recluse rose from his pile of " weeklies " to refresh his spirit with whisky. He would doze, then rise and pace the dismal corridors and empty rooms like one possessed. " Is life worth the living ? " he would muse as he toyed with the revolver that ever reposed in the chiffonier drawer. " Had he not given employment to hundreds ? " He would proceed to reckon up the scores of miles of fencing, and thousands of yards of excavation for tanks, the building and clearing he had effected the thousands of pounds' worth of wool and stock, of which the Messrs. Goldbags and Co. had had the selling for him. Had he not been a benefactor to his race ? And lo ! the world cared not a straw for him, despised him, would not heed if he died, alone, to-morrow. Alas for the ingratitude of man ! Now, he was actually compelled by the shire to open some of his closed roads ! The price of wool had fallen more than a penny which involved a loss to him of 34 THE NEW ARCADIA. thousands of pounds a year ! He must certainly stop all his donations of a guinea a year to churches and hospitals ! Added to all his troubles, the married couple, who had supplied his personal wants for ten years past, could tolerate his vagaries no longer, and were leaving him. Alone in the world the millionaire stood in his ghostly mansion, under his far-reaching hills and valleys of richest pasture deserted, despised ! He would stand it no longer ! One evening when the whisky was firing his brain, he had roved from room to room ! . . . . There was a sudden explosion that no one heard ! A heavy fall ! Then a silence as of death reigned in the great house. "I can't find the master nowheres, Jim," said the housekeeper, after taking in the last " hot toddy " before retiring. "I'm afeared for him. He looked so wild again this evening. Come and have a look ; hold the dip." In the vast, dim drawing-room the faithful couple almost stumbled over the form of the unfortunate million- aire. The woman screamed and started back with horror. Her husband knelt and sought the pulse of the unhappy man. " Not dead," he reported ; " quick, get some water and some whisky." Weeping, chattering like two children, the simple pair bathed the wound above the temple from which blood was oozing, poured the whisky that had caused the deed down the throat of the dying man. He was heavy ; they hesitated to try to carry him. " Jane, old girl, run and call some one," said the man hoarsely. " There's no one to fetch." " Go and ask Mr. Dowling to run across. He'll know what to do." THE DYING SQUATTER'S DREAM. 35 " He won't come, Jim ; he can't. He's never set foot in the house all these years, and the poor master did hate him so." The woman was supporting the dying man's head and looking with tenderness into the face that had never smiled on her once. Why is it that the dog loves most the hand that commands and never caresses; that the devotion of woman is most signally displayed for the husband who acts the brute ; that honest Jim and his wife felt as if all the world was darkening for them as they bent, in the great dim room, over the man who had never given them ought but wages, food, and curses ? On their first and last visit in Mr. Leicester's time to the great White House, Mrs. Dowling insisted upon accompanying her husband. The moon bathed the avenue and orange grove, now neglected, with a ghostly light. The unused lounges set around the spacious high verandah seemed as seats for the dead. The great front- door creaked dolefully as, for the first time for many a month, Jane threw it open. In the wide hall were hung brass breastplates inscribed with the names of " Kings " " Billy " and " Bob," and other chieftains of a vanished race, whose spears, " waddys," and "nullahs" were dis- posed around a Walhalla from which all the heroes and the glory had departed ! As Jane, with trembling hand, flung open the drawing- room door a weird scene presented itself. The dim light of the rude "dip" which Jim had placed on the grand piano, that never sounded, threw a gruesome light on the long mirrors and curtains, high cornices and stencilled walls, the oleographs with gilt frames of immense pro- portions a dim light before an unused shrine ! Beside it a grizzled man lay dying, and another, with soiled 36 TITE NEW ARCADIA. Crimean shirt and moleskin trousers, knelt before the crimson settee in the midst of the velvet-pile carpet. ' Poverty in the midst of riches," whispered Dowling to his wife. " Yes, that boundary rider is richer than he, poor man !" "And always has been," the husband replied. The worthy "couples placed the wounded man on a mattress and bore him to his bedroom. All night long the Bowlings sat and watched, while Jane stood at the foot of the bed gazing wistfully at the troubled sleeper, or wandered about the empty rooms of the lonely house, bewailing her impending loss. Her husband had ridden to Gumford for the Doctor. Towards morning the sick man's breathing became more regular. He opened his eyes and looked long at the two watchers. He averted his gaze, then scanned the anxious faces as the sick are wont to do. The sufferer tried to extend his hand towards the watchers. " You are better now," said Dowling, taking the hot, moist hand in both of his, while his wife smoothed the pillow and tenderly moistened with a damp cloth the fevered brow. " Why do you come ? " the sick man with difficulty whispered. " Why not, like everybody else, leave me to my fate ? " Quietly they assured him that the world was much what people made it. That sometimes God left men alone that they might discover how empty it was without the love of their kind and of Him. "And you forgive me?" he said, stretching out his hand again, and looking into the face of the man he had wronged. " As God forgives. I have angered you unintention- ally, and perhaps given you cause for resentment," THE DYING SQUATTER'S DREAM. 37 " No, you have not," was the reply. "You. shall not say that. Is there a Bible about ? " he asked, after a pause. " You will find one at the top of the book-case. I used it for the men to take their oaths and declarations upon." Mrs. Bowling brought the volume. " Now read to me, slowly, Nathan's parable to King David. You'll find it, you know, about the end of the second book of Samuel. I knew the old Book once," the penitent murmured, half to himself; "my mother taught it me." A tear, that he vainly tried to brush away, rolled down the old man's face. " It was the lust for land and gold," he continued, "that ruined me. I thought the whole country-side was mine, and not the Lord's and His people's. Of what good has it been to me? Ah! you cannot know the remorse I have experienced of late," he continued ; " the terrible conflict that has raged in my breast between love and hatred, strength and weakness. I have prayed and cursed with the same breath. I could not unbend. I could not change in my demeanour. I could not confess. Yet I knew that I was wrong. In a mad moment I sought to end all. I am dying, but I have not ended all ! Now read." " Let me select something else," Bowling persisted. " No, I will not. I am going to hear that from you." As the memorable parable sounded again in the ears of the sinking man, Mrs. Bowling bowed her head and wept, but the dying squatter listened with set countenance as though hearing his doom. " Read it all," he insisted, as Bowling hesitated. " I know that last verse. Bo not shirk it. ' Give it tongue,' as we used to say to the old collie dog. Poor old 38 THE NEW ARCADIA. Laddie ! I wonder will he miss me ! Round up the tale, ' Thou art the man ! ' God gave me miles, or I took it, and I coveted your few feet of land." " Stay ! " interjected the lady " there is yet another verse you should hear : ' And David said, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said, The Lord hath put away thy sin.' " Thereupon the woman's gentle voice, with tender tact, poured into the closing ear oil of comfort for the broken heart. " I hate death-bed repentances," the sufferer declared, with a spark of the vehemence that had marked him ; " but I do repent I do. ... I can't do more. I must leave the rest. Stay, quick, yes I can. I can exercise restitution. Fetch me pen and paper. I will bestow all my goods as best I can. I had resolved to leave all for the State to divide. Another shall perhaps do what I failed to attempt. A Solomon shall apply the hoard of a sorry David to a noble end." Mr. Dowling was able, in a few words, to pen the preamble to the Will. " ' To my faithful servants, whom I spurned in life ' put that in word for word ' I bequeath the manager's house, garden, and the three paddocks adjoining. To the objects of my mad and bitter animosity, Richard Dowling and his wife Mary ' put down those very words, mind. No trimming the fleece ! This is my dying will and confession, remember ' I bequeath the one thousand acres adjoining their homestead ' : " We cannot accept it," interposed Mrs. Dowling, her native sense of independence and pride gaining the ascendant over feelings of pity and sympathy. " Will you not let me offer restitution, madam ? " said the dying man, with a spice of his old imperiousness, THE DYING SQUATTER'S DREAM. 39 "May I not unburden my soul? I will do to the last what I will with my own ! " Then, after a painful pause, more softly, " Let me leave it to your daughter. It is not much, but you'll think less harshly of me when, in your industrious fashion, you turn up that black soil, Dowling." The sick man tried to smile. " You have slogged away like a brick. I admire your pluck ! Give me your hand again. It is harder than once it was. You commend the gentleman to the world. I and such as I defame that ' grand old name.' ' All else of which I die possessed I leave to my nephew 'you know the name ' in the hope that he will make a worthy use of the lands I greedily held for myself.' Tell him," he added, " I repent my treatment of him. To come so far," he wandered on, almost to himself, "and then to be driven away. He was proud and wrong-headed. Ah, but my sister's son, with a big heart of his own, that angered because it condemned me." With difficulty the Will was signed and witnessed. Two men who had come for "killing sheep" were dragged into the room in the early morning to write their names and vanish. " I wish the sun would rise," Leicester faintly whis- pered. "Push aside the curtains; right back, please. Often I've lain here and waited for old Sol to appear over the ridge just behind that pine, this time of year. Even now I can see the links of gold, the wattles beside the creek. Jupiter is the morning star just now ; there he shines, ' like a diamond in the sky.' Poor old mother. Venus is the evening star, I shall never see it more. Not here at least. Ah, there it is. God's blessed sun ! " And, as they helped him, with a last effort the dying man raised himself, stretched forth his arm towards the distant hills, an'd cried 40 THE NEW ARCADIA. "See! They are coming. Pouring over the hills! Troops of happy people." And his eyes shone with a novel lustre. "Women and children. All across the lovely valley, where the sheep feed alone." With trem- bling hand he shaded his eyes as if to observe more clearly, and continued, " Vines and fig-trees, and pome- granates around their dwellings. Pure rivers of water flowing between. Hark !- hark ! to the children calling. And to the music at their feast." A pause ... a long breath ..." A new day has dawned ! " he whis- pered slowly, word by word. Then a last gasp. Sinking back gently, the millionaire left his fields be- hind. A smile settled on the set face. The eyes fixed for ever. Closing them, the three weeping, kneeled in the silent room into which the first beams of the rising sun were shining. CHAPTER VII. KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. " And even while Fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy? " GOLDSMITH. " Rapine, avarice, expense, This is idolatry ; and these we adore : Plain living and high thinking are no more : The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence And pure religion, breaking household laws." WORDSWORTH. "KEEPING up appearances" when the substance is wanting, to be prompted by a generous disposition with- out the power of giving effect to it, moving in a plane of life above the pecuniary standard of those who occupy it, is one of the most painful experiences the professional man or any can know. Such was now Dr. Courtenay's position. His wife, a clever, stylish woman, was ambitious for the girls' sake, as she said. Their elder daughter, Hilda, was a dashing, thoughtless girl, intent upon pleasure and admiration. Well-dressed and duly appointed, as, like her mother," she always managed to be, she was capable of making a decided impression in any drawing-room to which she was announced. Art and effect may have contributed more than nature and grace, vivacity of manner more than native power, yet so it was that Miss Courtenay 42 THE NEW ARCADIA. more than held her own in the world of taste and fashion. Her sister, fair and retiring, with the gentlest of trust- ing blue eyes, rather large mouth, straight soft hair, regular but not striking features, impressed only those who knew her. She thought herself plain and stupid neither of which she was. Her sister did not contribute to undeceive her : neither did her mother. Thanks to the latter's tact and devotion to desirable personages, the Courtenays were asked and appeared everywhere at tennis parties, afternoon teas, dances, and At Homes. Mornings were spent in recovering from the effects of the previous evening's engagements with a little soitpcon of watering and arranging of flowers, to give a sense of having been "quite busy this morning." Afternoons were devoted to ceremonial visitings when no engagements to salons, matinees, and other fashionable fixtures intervened. The evening seemed blank and tiresome if no festivity or out-going marked it. A miser- able failure the entire round of feverish existence actually was. No time or opportunity was afforded for forming real friendships, for rational converse, for the joys of intellectual or domestic life. There are some things that cannot go on. Dr. Courtenay found himself sinking deeper and deeper into debt. " Calls " were made by financial institutions that hitherto had paid him handsome dividends. The lia- bilities his generous nature had led him to incur in the interest of distressed friends or poor patients were accumulating. Something must be done. The carriage and coachman were "put down." The house, not a pretentious one, must be kept up, or the practice would suffer. " If we do not go out people will cease to ask us," KEEPING T T P APPEARANCES. 43 pleaded the wife, when her attention was directed to long outstanding accounts at Buckland & Joshua's and Senior the jewellers. Wearied with a long day's round of professional visit- ing, and attendance at meetings, the long-suffering doctor must needs dress and take his wife and daughters to some cloying scene of festivity, with a suppressed yawn thanking his gracious hostess for "a most enjoyable evening," when at length Hilda and her mother had been induced to depart. " The whole thing is so false and hollow," he would say. " I despise myself for uttering these conventional lies, and for participating in this make-believe existence. You do not enjoy it," he would protest, " you are always tired. And what is there to show for all your labours? If it were natural, were we in a position to entertain, if you went out as, and where, you really wished to go, I could understand it. But your fashion- able life as now lived is, in my opinion, artificial, unin- tellectual, and a sham throughout." " I fear, Charles, you lost at whist to-night," his spouse suggested. " No, I did not. No such relief to monotony. I only played to pass the time." "It is your absurd dabbling in every form of charity and in all sorts of social schemes that is dragging us down," the good lady urged, as the conversation was continued at a later hour. " What about those men you have sent away? Who, but you, is responsible for their maintenance?" " I'm not," the husband replied ; " I shall do my best. If others will not help, they must return and starve here in town." The doctor and some friends had indeed despatched D 44 THE NEW ARCADIA. Elms and a few of his people to a "Selection" that Courtenay had " taken up " years before, when practising near a squatter uncle's in the country. The venture was only an experiment, which for lack of funds and scope did not promise much success. The doctor had prevailed upon his wife to accompany him to his study. He had been looking into accounts. The good lady protested that " no good came of brood- ing over what could not be altered." " Times will change soon," she remarked, toying with an invitation that had just come to Lady Woolenough's 'At Home." " They will change for the worse," was the man's reply. " We are getting deeper and deeper into the mire, all to keep up these false appearances, and to main- tain a position amongst people who possess thousands for our hundreds." " But you must have regard to your practice and to the girls' prospects." " What would become of both if anything happened to me ? " he replied bitterly. " My very policies are en- cumbered. If I died to-morrow, you would be beggars. And people would say, truly, that I had lived a lie." "But every one else is in the same position ! What squatter or merchant but is in the hands of his bank ? Who are there pay cash for what they eat and use and wear? You might ticket every coat, or dress, or house you see as belonging, if all had their own, to some wretched tradesman." " The fact that others are dishonest, or are content to live in a 'fool's paradise,' is no consolation to me." At this juncture Hilda with evident excitement entered the room, followed by her sister, looking guilty but resolute. KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. 45 "Maud says she will not accept Lady Woolenough's invitation. She is not going out any more," explained the elder, flinging herself on the settee with a tennis- racquet in her lap. "She wants to play the heroine." Poor Maud, looking very guilty, stood beside her parents. " We have not dresses to go in, and I do not want a new one." " Why not, pray ? " asked the mother. "Because we cannot afford it." " For that very reason we cannot afford to drop out of everything," remarked Hilda. " What makes you think that we are not in a position to go out, Maud ? " inquired her mother. "I am very stupid, I dare say," replied the girl, "but I know that father is worn with care and anxiety. I am not going to add to his embarrassment." " My dear," remarked her mother, severely, " this is really not your business. This is too bad ! It appears to me that even the girls are becoming mercenary in these days. When I was young we never talked of ' ways and means.' Do you not think that your father and I can manage our own financial affairs ? " "She says she is going as a governess," interposed Hilda. " I pity the poor children. An awful lot Maud will teach them ! " " Perhaps so," was the reply. " We girls really learn nothing, now-a-days. All that we have known is forgotten twelve months after we ' come out.' At any rate I shall try to improve matters for myself." " Very likely we shall let you leave home in that way ! " said her father, kindly, drawing the accused towards him. " It would break my heart to think of girls brought up as you have been, becoming drudges of a modern house- 4 r > THE NEW ARCADIA. hold, owing, too, to our insane attempt to maintain a false appearance." "A governess, of all things ! " interposed her mother, warmly. " I had rather you were a housemaid or cook. Then at least you would receive good wages, and command employment and fair treatment. The desire of so many, when they want to earn their own living, to be governesses and clerks, is prompted by the very same false pride you think you discern elsewhere in society." ."So I believe," admitted the girl, " but you see I could not well be a cook while my father practised as a fashionable doctor. I do not know. why, however. It would be more honest than our present mode of living and that of many of our friends. Still I recognize that we must ' keep up appearances ' to a certain extent though I do loathe it all." " My dear," remarked her father, taking the girl's hand in his, '' you shall not go as a cook just yet. Things are not as bad as that ; but," he added, " there is no doubt that we must economize, and, moreover, we might, I think, compensate ourselves for less excitement by a little more rational home life and some social occupa- tions." " Practising on the piano, reading dry books, and carrying soup round to poor people," suggested Hilda, with a toss of the head. " We can try to be happy and useful," replied the father, "without making fools of ourselves." "Or nuisances either," suggested Mrs. Courtenay, naively. " I consider your ordinary 'charitably-disposed persons ' the greatest bores you ever meet. Such dowdies as they are ! And there is just as much fuss and sham about them, only of another sort, as with those who do move in decent society. They all hate and envy one KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. 47 another. They will pillory you yet. You should hear what Miss Loveless says already." " I suppose we must expect to meet with human nature everywhere," remarked the doctor. " We can avoid eccentricities and extremes in each direction." "Then you side with Maud," said the mother, with an air of scorn. "We are to refuse this invitation, sell our dresses to those charming persons who advertise, ' Don't throw away your spoons and old clothes,' and sit and work a sewing-machine all day long." The doctor was roused. "You might do worse than that," he remarked. "Be plain, be honest, that's all I ask." And he sat and smoked his cigar in silence. Poor man ! he had struggled hard to make his practice and position. Visions had been his of honourable, unconventional usefulness. Lately, however, he had drifted into a false position. His daughter standing there, more like culprit than victim, had already dragooned herself into the thought of becoming some scorned, uncared-for drudge of society. He knew that that might come ! He had stretched out his hand to help those that were falling his own anxieties making him solicitous for those of others. Now his arm was paralyzed by lack of money. " How I hate it ! " he thought. " Those who have, misuse it, those have it not who might put it to good account." At this moment Elms was announced. He had written stating that he needed a few hundred pounds for the undertaking in which he was engaged. " You need not go," said the doctor, as the ladies moved to depart. While the two conversed, Mrs. Courtenay said, speaking in a low tone, to her daughters 48 THE NEW ARCADIA. " I do not know how it is, but I no more trust that man than I would a burglar. He has designs on your father. Well, there is not much to get out of him, that's one comfort ! Women may be fools, but they read facts and hearts better than do these poor men." " There's no help for it, Elms," the doctor was saying. " The thing must be given up. I have no means myself, and can procure none from those who have." " It is a great shame, sir," replied the man with evident feeling ; " the poor fellows are doing well. They'll be mad if I tell them they'll have to go. They'll blame you, sir." " Perhaps they will. Let them ! Who will be the greater sufferer ? I, who have laid out the little money I had, who have spent my time and drawn obloquy upon myself for their sakes, to be denounced by them and jeered at by my friends or they who have had every- thing to gain and nothing to lose ? " And the strong man, from whom all upon which he had set his heart seemed slipping, groaned within himself, though his face was set as if he were undergoing an operation. As he was ! Slowly his life's hopes were being torn from him, but he would not wince. " Only why," he was thinking, " so strongly as we desire to live honestly and to some purpose, do we find the means wanting?" Tom Lord and Frank Brown appearing at the door were about to withdraw. "Do not go," said the doctor ; "you are in at the death." " What death ? " "Only that of my little pet scheme. It has collapsed for want of funds." " Indeed, I'm sorry," remarked Tom, not looking KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. 49 particularly grieved either ; adding aside to the young clergyman "What about your faith, Brown that was to pull you through ? " The latter did not respond. "You'll join our party to the theatre to-night?" continued Tom. " ' The way the world goes round ' is a grand take-off, they say, of fashionable society of to-day. Very clever, I believe. Mrs. Courtenay is taking us all." That lady looked guilty. Maud remarked " I am sorry I cannot go, Mr. Lord, thank you." "No more shall I," said Hilda, with the air of a martyr. " But you will not give up the theatre because that set of derelicts has to return to town ? " said Lord. " Where's your faith?" to Brown. The doctor seemed to be in no mood for pleasantries. A heavy weight lay on his heart a dark path stretched before him. Maud was looking out of the window, far away into the future wondering whether filling the minds or the mouths of children were preferable. Hilda was pulling a rose viciously to pieces as it lay on her lap. Brown talked eagerly to Elms, upon whose face a dark, ominous shadow lay. Mrs. Courtenay was reading and re-reading her invitation wondering what life would be worth without the excitement of balls to be prepared for, and daughters to be danced out. A knock was heard at the door. The maid delivered a telegram to the doctor, who sei/ed it as a welcome diversion from troubled thought. All eyes turned to- wards him as he tore open the envelope. A telegram is a talisman. It turns darkness to light, converts rejoicing into mourning, casts a lightning flash upon distant worlds, revealing achievement won or THE NEW ARCADIA. calamity befallen upon the anxious, waiting heart. It descends as a thunderclap, or instils comfort like the dew. Whose pulse does not throb one beat quicker per minute, when, at critical moments, the red-winged Mercury of modern days appears in the midst ! The doctor read, and leaped from his lounge ; thrusting his fingers through his hair, he read again. The wife looked over his shoulder, saying, "May I see ? " The daughters peered over the other and timidly asked, " May we look ? " The men stood by inquiringly. "Wondering what the deuce it all meant," as Tom explained afterwards. Like cloud-shadows and sunshine across an April landscape, variations of expression swept over the faces of the readers. Visions of sorrow and of joy, of wonder- ment and anticipation were cast upon each eager countenance. All this in a second. " I never expected that" cried the doctor at length. " Poor old fellow ! Right at last ! Not as bad as we thought him. Who is ? " The women were looking one to another, then out of the window to weep and to smile, seeing through a thin veil of tears a long vista of promise and of opportunity ; peopled by each with the objects nearest their hearts. Under the trees of her vision, Maud saw children playing, strong men working as they smiled, women spinning as they sang. Beneath their leafy shades mother and elder daughter beheld processions and pageants, as of cloth-of-gold, fairy trains, the Festival of all the Fashions, themselves set at the vista end, receiving the adulations of gorgeous throngs ! " May we see ? " asked little Tom, recognizing that the telegram was of general interest. KEEPING UP APPEARANCES. 51 He read aloud " Gumford. Railway Station. "Your uncle died last night, bequeathing his estates to you. Peaceful end. " RICHARD BOWLING." " Very wealthy, was he not ? " remarked the little man. " AVorth about ^200,000," was his friend's reply. " Courtenay, I congratulate you. You are worthy of this." " Not too fast, old fellow, there may be some mistake. ' There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.' " " No fear of that. I always thought you'd come out right." " No, you did not, excuse me," remarked the clergy- man, wringing the doctor's hand; " you said faith would not do it and it has." " Then the work can go on, sir ? " inquired Elms. " Yes, I hope so, on a somewhat larger scale, perhaps. I can see daylight now, I think," said the doctor, " though I am somewhat dazed. ' ; CHAPTER VIII. THE SCREEN OF DEATH. " Cheer the weak ones who are bending 'Neath this weary burden now ; Lift the pallid faces upward, Smooth the careworn troubled brow ; Send a bright and hopeful message To each tried and tempted heart, That the thick and gloomy shadows At that sunshine may depart." ADA CAMBRIDGE. FOR a moment the doctor stood on the threshold of the ward surveying the rows of white beds ranging on the polished floors. A few patients were sitting about talking quietly or reading, some lay in the beds asleep or suffering in silence seeming to read their destinies on the high, white-washed ceiling. The neatest of nurses moved with softest tread as about a sanctuary conse- crated by sorrow and death to resurrection and recovery. "A good large cheque," the doctor mused, "drawn by the rich on account of their heavy indebtedness to the poor. Amongst the fairest fruits of our faith and civilization. What, in the place of temples such as these, would a wild commune set up ? How would the poor and suffering fare if leaders of the mob were ministers of charity ? " He shuddered at the thought. "Well, Willie, and how's the leg?" inquired the THE SCREEN OF DEATH. 53 doctor, approaching the bed on which the street-arab had lain many weeks. " I'm all right now, sir, thank ye. The blooming splinter-boards is off now, and my leg's gettin' strong as a cab-horse's. They say I may leave next week. God knows where I'm a-going." " Would you like to come with me," said the doctor, " if I never run over you again ? " "If I never get under your horse's feet again, sir. But may I go with you, sir ? The only thing is " He paused. " Well, what's the difficulty? " "I would like to go into the country. The flowers they brought me here I never seed such a lot before makes me think of them I picked that one day I was there. They've been readin' to me about gardens and horses and cows and the green grass and the' sweet hay. I'm allus thinking of them." "But there's rain and cold, hard work and dry seasons in the country, lad. Life there is not all flower-picking and rollicking in hay-fields." '' I know that, sir, and I could work. They allus said I slaved like a brick in town ; sure there I could, and I might " " Might what ? " The little man whispered, while he brushed away a tear "I might find father. He's somewhere there." The doctor was moved. ."You shall go into the conntry next week," he pro- mised. " But I should like to be with you, sir. You've been so good to me all the times you've been here these two months." 54 THE NEW ARCADIA. " You shall have both your desires. You shall go with me, and live in the country too." The lad could not speak, but burst into tears. " Poor little man, he's weak still," said the doctor. "May I ask one thing more?" said Willie, after a time. " They've read to me 'bout Abr'tim. He asked and asked, and God wern't angry ; and you're almost as good as he were." " Don't say that, boy, we are none of us much to talk about." " Well, sir, could you take she with we ? " nodding his head towards the -end of the ward. "The young lady over there, Nurse Maggie, what's reading to the old man that's dying there, with the screen round his bed. The, screen's the last thing they sees here. They'd oughter put jolly fine pictures on 't ! I allus thinks how small the world's got for he when I sees the screen put round a poor cove's bed. But they sees into another world, a mighty big and good 'un, all flowers in a blessed country, so th' old parson with the long grey beard says." " Why do you want Nurse Maggie to go? To take care of you ? " "I can look after myself, never fear. She's got a cough ; I heard th' doctor say she'd ought get into the country. T'other nurse said she couldn't "ford." "I fear we cannot take the nurses and the hospitals with us." "Leastways will you think on it, sir? You can do what you has a mind for, I believes." Next day Dr. Courtenay returned and said " Willie, you can have your third wish too. I did think of what you said, and have arranged that Nurse Maggie and ten of the patients who are getting better " THE SCREEN OE DEATH. 55 " Conv'lesccnts, they calls 'em." "Yes, that ten convalescents shall stop for a while where we are going, and do a little gardening and looking after the fowls, and so on." " Oh, my, that will be fine ! You can't take the old man, sir, 'cos God's took'd him. The screen's gone round 'nother chap now. But there's many says they don't know where they'll go when they gets better, and it will be fun to have 'em in the flowers and the hay." CHAPTER IX. THE GUEST THAT HAD NOT ON A WEDDING GARMENT. " I live for those who love me, For those who know me true ; For the heaven that shines above me, And waits my spirit too ; For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, For the good that I can do ! " THE Town-hall was converted for the time being into an enormous bower suggestive of the leafy glades in which our forefathers held their earliest Witenagemots, or chieftains their marriage festivals. High above the balcony, at either side, rose tree-ferns, and boughs of pine, native cherry and apple tree, eucalypts of wondrous leaf, and heather of every variety. On the enlarged stage an Arcadian scene had been depicted by some who were exchanging paint-brush for axe and spade. On the vast floor were set tables spread with the best of plain fare, and decked with fern and wild- flowers from distant plains and ranges. About the building were scattered a thousand smiling, expectant guests, clad in white and red. Men with Crimean shirts and brand-new moleskin trousers each with a shining tomahawk stuck in his belt, a blue badge on the arm, embroidered with a spade and axe cross-wise, THE GUEST WITHOUT A WEDDING GARMENT. 57 a device of hand clasped in hand above. The men wore a red sash across the shoulder, a harvester's Panama hat on head, with band and streamers of " turkey-red." Each woman and child was clad in white, with red sash and -blue badge. " Home sweet Home " resounding from the great organ was signal for all to take their places at the feast. They sat by families, children in order of size, father and mother in centre boys and girls together on either hand. All stood as the first verse of the " Old Hundredth " was sung to the accompaniment of the organ. Then they sat and looked bashfully at the viands arranged before them. Ladies and gentlemen bustled round and bade the guests eat. They needed little persuasion. Often had they been hungry of late, but one who had himself known care, had resolved they should " hunger no more," if they would work. This was the Inaugural Festival. They started for new scenes to-morrow. The doctor had decided to put his uncle's lands, which he had inherited, to better use than they had formerly served. His intentions he had communicated by cir- cular to every clergyman and mayor in the metropolis, requesting nominations of suitable persons. Hundreds had been laboriously interviewed, their credentials ex- amined, medical reports procured, and some two hundred and fifty families a thousand souls ultimately selected. The rules and agreements had been signed, a suit of uniform given to each person, and provision made for transfer of families and furniture to Gumford Railway Station. In the course of his opening remarks the host intro- duced his son, Travers Courtenay, returned the week before from a prolonged absence in the old country. 58 THE NEW ARCADIA. He had taken a fair degree at Cambridge, spent two or three years studying engineering in Germany, another twelve months in a leisurely tour through the United States, returning in time to take part in the contemplated social movement. The young man regarded the undertaking with interest, mingled with misgivings. He was not free from the somewhat indolent, supercilious spirit with which young men of means are prone to regard social questions. He had no great admiration for the working-classes, deemed them dissatisfied without cause, given to intrigue and agitation not over fond of work. He did not con- sider that, though existing social conditions suited him, they might be nevertheless imposing intolerable burdens on others less favoured ; that the class to which he belonged was not, by nature, any more in love with labour, for its own sake, than the so-called "labouring classes." They, he thought, should be content to toil twelve hours a day, and be thankful for the privilege of doing so. Travers' disposition was, at the same time, generous as his father's, and the thought of the " desolate and oppressed " ever touched avibrating chord in his heart. In the course of the repast, the doctor, with pardon- able pride, escorted his intelligent-looking if not actually handsome son, from table to table, and introduced him to some of the company. "I must take you to an interesting group," said he. " The man talking and eating so energetically at the head of that table is my right-hand man an important personage in his own estimation, but useful to me. On the right is his daughter." " I thought her one of the ladies," remarked the son. "Not a bad-looking girl. Observe the grace with which she is addressing that greasy-looking personage." THE GUEST WITHOUT A WEDDING GARMENT. 59 " That's the fellow I had to thrash. Beside them is Willie, the lad I unfortunately ran over. Come, you must make their acquaintance." The party rose as the doctor approached. After a few words of introduction, Gwyneth asked, with the ease of a daughter of the best-born " May I offer you a cup of tea, sir? " " Thanks, Miss Elms, I must move amongst our friends." " Perhaps you will stay and have a cup of tea with us ? " suggested Elms to the younger man. " Thanks, very much." Gwyneth made room for the young man at the end of her form. " I fear you'll find it rather dull in the country," re- marked Travers, with a patronizing air. " No theatres, football-matches, or assembly dances, eh ? " " I dare say we can manage to exist, sir, without such dissipation," answered Gwyneth, quietly pouring out the tea. " I fear you imagine we think of nothing save our ' day out.' " " I am sure you are a cut above that, Miss Elms; but what will you do with yourself in your spare hours ? " " I suppose we can take our books with us, and that my sewing-machine may go ; even my piano, I hope, may not be too bulky for transit." " You play then ? " asked Travers. "You should hear her sing too, sir," suggested the proud father between his munchings of a big bun. " Some thinks we don't know nothing," growled Dick Malduke, applying with both hands the drum-stick of a chicken to his mouth. Travers looked at the shock- haired young man as though he would not mind shaking him as his father had done. " Dick calls himself a ' root and branch ' man," ex- E 60 THE NEW ARCADIA. plained Elms apologetically ; " but he's not as ferocious as he talks." " Nor as he looks," interjected the daughter, eyeing the mangled chicken with a smile. "And what do you read?" inquired the young man, turning to Gwyneth with growing interest. " Oh, I suppose penny-dreadfuls, Scraps and Answers" she replied with a laugh, not caring to parade her literary tastes. " Nothing of the kind, sir," interjected her father. " She's been all through my books on Political Economy. She's great on history, and is now reading aloud to us of evenings the Greater Britain. Her mother was a great reader before her." " Then you'll be interested in the agricultural com- munities of America 'Riverside,' ' Oneida,' 'Utah,' and the others. I have been visiting them lately." The young man proceeded to describe phases of social life, as he had observed them in America. " If you do as well as those settlers, you'll be all bloated capitalists in a few years." " Won't it be fun to see Dick living on the interest of his interest ! " said the girl, mischievously. "Not if I knows it," said Dick, savagely; "I'll be a Knight of Labour to the end of the chapter." " You'd be the most overbearing and selfish capital- ist ever demagogue denounced," continued Gwyneth. " You know you would, Dick, if you ever possessed the opportunity. It is bourgeois bloomed into millionaire that makes the hardest-shelled capitalist. We'll see Dick in the Upper House yet, with a knighthood." The young man looked as if he could devour the girl, with love or hate, as he replied, with feeling " At least, I'll not make slaves of the people, to be TIIK GUEST WITHOUT A WEDDING GARMENT, 6 1 robbed, or, at best, fed like paupers in soup-kitchens and town-halls just to show off." This with a savage glance at Travers, for whom the agreeable young man seemed already to cherish no special love. "Society will be no better," he added, " till you sweep it away, root and branch, lock, stock, and barrel," and wildly waving his hands as though on the stump, he inad- vertently tilted the epergne opposite him into little Will's face, and the cup of coffee into his own lap. Gwyneth so far forgot herself as to hide her face in her handkerchief to smother her laughter. The elder Elms, roused and vexed, bid his friend "not make a fool of himself," while Travers thought that it took " many people to make a world." He wondered that his father tolerated this destructive young man among his guests. " Coffee usen't make father drunk," remarked Willie laconically, as he picked up the flowers. "You shut up," said the angered youth, " or I'll make it hot for you outside." " Did I not say that democracy is ever tyrannical," remarked Gwyneth, " when it gets the chance ? " " I've spoilt my best trousers any way," said Dick, beginning to recognize the absurdity of the position. " I beg your pardon, Miss Elms, that righteous indig- nation should get the better of me." "I've no patience with you," rejoined the girl. ' You're not fit to be here. You're always acting, and the fool is your role." " Why did you not wear the uniform ? " demanded the old soldier. "Then you wouldn't have spoiled your own clothes, at least. Moles will wash, which slops won't." "I never wore moles in my life, and I'm not going to begin now," was the reply. 62 THE NEW ARCADIA. " Well, I don't like a fellow as is ashamed of his comrades and his colours," said the Sergeant, decisively. " I'll wear none of their uniform, if I stop in town for it," swaggered Dick. Just then his host passed. Hearing the remark he replied " Then you can stay in town, Malduke " adding to Elms "I won't have your friend at any price, Sergeant." " Then I'm off," returned the agitator ; " I'll wear no capitalist's bloomin' colours, blowed if I does." "I'd better show the way out," remarked Travers, significantly; "we should make short work of such as you at Cambridge, my fine fellow." "Oh, I'll denounce you," was the fierce reply. "I'll write to the Leveller, and expose your money-making, sweating scheme. I know your little ways." And to the astonishment of the company, the " guest that had not on the wedding garment" swaggered out of the hall. When well outside, Dick paused a moment, then banging one fist into the palm of the other hand, declared with an oath " See if I don't go. And smash it all up too sure's my name's Dick Malduke." No one, unless it were Elms, quite understood, later, how it was that, despite his unmanliness and some demur on the doctor's part, Dick was permitted to accompany the emigrants. The repast ended and tables cleared away, the doctor appeared on the embowered platform, and explained the nature of the undertaking. He was greeted with rounds of applause. Picturesque harvest hats waved in the air, women holding up their children to gesticulate, in THE GUEST WITHOUT A WEDDING GARMENT. 63 imitation of their fathers. A thousand faces beamed their thanks on their benefactor. "And to-morrow they'd howl him down," remarked Tom Lord, cynically. " Don't you believe it," replied Frank Brown, also on the platform. " These people are of the right sort. They'll be treated well and behave well, I'll guarantee." " They ! They have no generous feelings. The mob never yet had." " As true hearts beat under flannel shirts, believe me, as beneath the whitest starched fronts. The characters of the wearers of both are much mixed. You'll find good and bad everywhere." " And a mighty lot more of bad than good in some quarters, I am thinking," persisted Tom, But we shall see. CHAPTER X. PEOPLING THE WILDERNESS. " Clod the first garden made, and the first city, Cain." " Without attempting to predict the exact phases through which co-operation will pass, it can scarcely be doubted that the principle is so well adapted to agriculture, that it is certain some day to be applied to that particular branch of industry with the most beneficial results. . . . The progress towards co-operative agriculture will no doubt be slow and gradual." HENRY FAWCETT. "THE old place, I fear, is spoiled for me," Mr. Bowling was saying to his daughter. " My solitude is about to be invaded. All my life I have fled from the town, and now, in my old age, the city is spreading out its arms to- wards me. Its surplus population is to be spread over the plains I have loved." "I believe the new-comers are a very respectable sort of people, father," the daughter replied. " They have been carefully selected. Dr. Courtenay is hopeful they will make good neighbours." " But I don't want neighbours, my child ; I desire to be left alone. Courtenay is a good fellow, and deserves to succeed in this wild venture of his. But I wish he had chosen some other field on which to launch his experiment." " Is not that the very crime poor Mr. Leicester com- mitted, father? He wanted to keep all the country-side to himself. Is not that the sin of half the landowners to- day?" PEOPLING THE WILDERNESS. 65 " True, my girl ; we are all a selfish Lot, We, on the one hand, seek to hold the lands ; the working- classes, for their part, will not permit needy cousins in the old country to share with them the bounties of this, If a man possess a trade or profession, he will keep all he can of it. 'Protection,' 'monopolies,' 'favoured classes,' ' locked-up ' lands, and streams, and forests, all are 1 barbarisms un-English, un-Christian. In theory I am in favour of freedom, and fairer divisions of the good .things of this life, but in practice well, I'd like to be left alone." " I'm so eager to see the people, father. Won't they be delighted with this charming valley, and the. neat- looking tents, with everything prepared for them ? " " They ought to be," observed Mr. Dowling, doubtfully, " The pangs of hunger they have felt, and been oppressed by loads of care ; they have had no interest in the country they have assisted to develop, nor in the undertakings in which they have been employed. Now they will have but to work ; I hope they'll do it. Poor Courtenay ! His work's cut out for him." " Come and see the tents, father, before the settlers arrive. There are the Courtenays, and Jim and his wife, putting the finishing touch on everything." The wide expanse of valley that spread beneath Heatherside the Dowlings' abode was strangely altered in appearance. The wattles and pine-ridges still dotted its undulating surface with clumps of trees midst sweeps of verdure ; the creek, its waters still unpolluted, chat- tered in its willow-shaded channel. Magpies hopped and piped from the gaunt ringed timber ; the grass was knee- deep, since the dead squatter's sheep had been sold or removed to the outer paddocks. Orchids and buttercups reared their heads above the meadow-like pastures, as if wondering how much higher their slender stalks must 66 THE NEW ARCADIA. rise to surmount the unwonted growth. In the distance the lake, a mirror of silver, reflected the day's declining rays. All was silent, expectant an earthly paradise awaiting the new race of Seth. Across the valley from side to side stretched a chain of tents, in squares and crescents. Each little tabernacle, labelled with the name of the intended occupant, stood open in a plot of five acres, duly pegged off. The belongings of each family, sent forward the day before, had been neatly bestowed in the allotted tent. The night previous, the balloting had taken place at the White House ; Jim and Elms drawing, one the number of the allotment, the other the name of the future settler, from the doctor's hat on the one hand, from Mrs. Courtenay's reticule on the other. The good lady had protested. " I want you to have a hand in it, my dear," the doctor had urged. "I suppose because I do not approve." " Oh, yes, you do ; you are deeply interested already." " Only for your sake." " No wonder the lady demurs," remarked the in- corrigible Tom, who had come to have a peep at the place. " Naturally she objects to have one man's hand in her reticule and another's in her husband's pocket. Typical and significant." " Well, they'll soon be empty again," remarked the good lady. " My husband has not calculated what it will cost to feed a thousand mouths for two or three years, and to run all his factories." " The labourers will feed themselves, my dear, if I give them the chance." "But will they?" "That is just the problem we are going to solve." Now the doctor and his followers were putting the last rickety chair on its faulty legs in one tent, propping up PEOPLING THE WILDERNESS. 6/ a derelict chest of drawers in another, tidying articles of vertu in a third. " Well, what do you think of the camp ? " asked the doctor of Dowling as he approached. " My back's broken with stooping about in these cramped little cribs all day," and the strong man threw back his shoulders and expanded his great chest as though to get his form into shape again. "Your men are fortunate fellows," replied Dowling. "The valley* is picturesque indeed, with its lines of white amongst the green and gold. You could not have selected a better site. The land will grow anything, if it's only scratched." "We will do more than that," said the doctor. " We shall deepen the lagoons and have a splendid natural reservoir. We can shape the creek into a canal ; get our craft from the centre of the settlement on to the lake, into the Silverbourne, to the Murray, and the world." " Have you fully considered the cost of all these works ? " " Every penny. We shall accomplish all with our own labour, which we shall merely have to feed. After six months, provisioning will cost next to nothing." " But men will not work for their food only." " They will for homes and lands and share in the profits." "You have launched upon an enormous undertaking." "Not at all. In the ordinary course I must have invested scores of thousands of pounds in the enterprise. As it is, the settlers share the risk." " How so ? " " They advance their labour. I put my land at their disposal. If the worst comes to the worst, I have drawn no profit from land, which at the same time has been improved ; they, on the other hand, have toiled to little 68 THE NEW ARCADIA. purpose. But they have lived in comfort meanwhile, and are better off than when they started. I have no fear, however, of failure, if they only rise to the occasion, and work like free men." "That's the rub," said Bowling; "can you ever teach them to do that ? " " If making them interested principals partners, in fact will not do it, nothing will." " How can you compel those to work who do not like it? You will have some such." " No doubt; all, however, have entered into a con- tract. If any will not work, neither shall they eat; they can go." " Which a mighty lot will do." " Not after the first few months. They will have given 'hostages to fortune.' Every month's labour will forge a chain of vested interest about them. Men will think twice before they abandon, in a tiff, their embryo farms and homes." "But these people have always been of a roving disposition." " Because you have never tried to interest them in their undertakings. Eacli week you give them a wage that virtually pays them off, buys out that healthful interest that should, by every means, be fostered. If these men worked for my uncle, or a contractor, they could depart any Saturday and leave him in the lurch, taking all their belongings with them. In this case they would have to abandon two-thirds of the result of their labour." " Then you have the idea of dragooning and coercing them?" " Certainly not, save for their own good. I desire to make labour more effective, more directly interested, and so more content. It is to the men's own interest that c- TIIK WILDERNESS. 69 they should postpone receipt of the fullest revenue of their toil, not grab what they can every Saturday night. We can feed them for half what it cost them to cater for themselves. That they have to the good. Undertakings that yield no profit under the wages system you will find we can prosecute to advantage, accepting lowest prices, reaping fullest profits." " Well, we shall see." " What is that music sounding over the hill ? " asked Eva Bowling, running towards the speakers. "You ought to know the sighing of the wind in the she-oaks on the hills," replied her father. "Listen!" insisted the girl. "It is music, martial music ' The Campbells are coming.' " " By Jove, it is some band. I can hear it, Courtenay. What does it mean ? " "My army, coming in peace and joy," replied the doctor, "to win its victories. Here they are ! " he shouted to his wife further down the hill. " Why have they a band ? " inquired Dowling. " To cheer them, of course, as music ever does," answered the doctor. " Why should not our regiment be enlivened through all its hard campaign by inspiriting strains ? Why may not life here be brightened by the healthful accessories that render the city so attractive ? We are going to set up 'counter attractions' on these plains, I assure you." " Barmaids and dice,'"' suggested Tom, coming up with the others. " I thought yours was to be a temperance settlement, Courtenay ? " " Not of your milk-and-water sort. A vigorous, manly life our people shall lead here. All that can properly delight eye and ear, and improve heart and mind, shall they know, if I can secure it." 7