Part 38 (2/2)

Now, during all the time above mentioned, I, Geoffry Hamlyn, have happened to lead a most uninteresting, and with few exceptions prosperous existence. I was but little concerned, save as a hearer, in the catalogue of exciting accidents and offences which I chronicle. I have looked on with the deepest interest at the lovemaking, and ended a bachelor; I have witnessed the fighting afar off, only joining the battle when I could not help it, yet I am a steady old fogey, with a mortal horror of a disturbance of any sort. I have sat drinking with the wine-bibbers, and yet at sixty my hand is as steady as a rock.

Money has come to me by mere acc.u.mulation; I have taken more pains to spend it than to make it; in short, all through my life's drama, I have been a spectator, and not an actor, and so in this story I shall keep myself as much as possible in the background, only appearing personally when I cannot help it.

Acting on this resolve I must now make my CONGE, and bid you farewell for a few years, and go back to those few sheep which James Stockbridge and I own in the wilderness, and continue the history of those who are more important than myself. I must push on too, for there is a long period of dull stupid prosperity coming to our friends at Baroona and Toonarbin, which we must get over as quickly as is decent. Little Sam Buckley also, though at present a most delightful child, will soon be a mere uninteresting boy. We must teach him to read and write, and ride, and what not, as soon as possible, and see if we can't find a young lady--well, I won't antic.i.p.ate, but go on. Go on, did I say?--jump on, rather--two whole years at once.

See Baroona now. Would you know it? I think not. That hut where we spent the pleasant Christmas-day you know of is degraded into the kitchen, and seems moved backward, although it stands in the same place, for a new house is built nearer the river, quite overwhelming the old slab hut in its grandeur--a long low wooden house, with deep cool verandahs all round, already festooned with pa.s.sion-flowers, and young grapevines, and fronted by a flower garden, all a-blaze with petunias and geraniums.

It was a summer evening, and all the French windows reaching to the ground were open to admit the cool south wind, which had just come up, deliciously icily cold after a scorching day. In the verandah sat the Major and the Doctor over their claret (for the Major had taken to dining late again now, to his great comfort), and in the garden were Mrs. Buckley and Sam watering the flowers, attended by a man who drew water from a new-made reservoir near the house.

”I think, Doctor,” said the Major, ”that the habit of dining in the middle of the day is a gross abuse of the gifts of Providence, and I'll prove it to you. What does a man dine for?--answer me that.”

”To satisfy his hunger, I should say,” answered the Doctor.

”Pooh! pooh! stuff and nonsense, my good friend,” said the Major; ”you are speaking at random. I suppose you will say, then, that a black fellow is capable of dining?”

”Highly capable, as far as I can judge from what I have seen,” replied the Doctor. ”A full-grown fighting black would be ashamed if he couldn't eat a leg of mutton at a sitting.”

”And you call that DINING?” said the Major. ”I call it gorging. Why, those fellows are more uncomfortable after food than before. I have seen them sitting close before the fire and rubbing their stomachs with mutton fat to reduce the swelling. Ha! ha! ha!--dining, eh? Oh, Lord!”

”Then if you don't dine to satisfy your hunger, what the deuce do you eat dinners for at all?” asked the Doctor.

”Why,” said the Major, spreading his legs out before him with a benign smile, and leaning back in his chair, ”I eat my dinner, not so much for the sake of the dinner itself, as for the after-dinnerish feeling which follows: a feeling that you have nothing to do, and that if you had you'd be shot if you'd do it. That, to return to where I started from, is why I won't dine in in the middle of the day.”

”If that is the way you feel after dinner, I certainly wouldn't.”

”All the most amiable feelings in the human breast,” continued the Major, ”are brought out in their full perfection by dinner. If a fellow were to come to me now and ask me to lend him ten pounds, I'd do it, provided, you know, that he would fetch out the cheque-book and pen and ink.”

”Laziness is nothing,” said the Doctor, ”unless well carried out. I only contradicted you, however, to draw you out; I agree entirely. Do you know, my friend, I am getting marvellously fond of this climate.”

”So am I. But then you know, Doctor, that we are sheltered from the north wind here by the snow-ranges. The summer in Sydney, now, is perfectly infernal. The dust is so thick you can't see your hand before you.”

”So I believe,” said the Doctor. ”By the bye, I got a new b.u.t.terfly to-day; rather an event, mind you, here, where there are so few.”

”What is he?”

”An Hipparchia,” said the Doctor, ”Sam saw him first and gave chase.”

”You seem to be making quite a naturalist of my boy, Doctor. I am sincerely obliged to you. If we can make him take to that sort of thing it may keep him out of much mischief.”

”He will never get into much,” said the Doctor, ”unless I am mistaken; he is the most docile child I ever came across. It is a pleasure to be with him. What are you going to do with him?”

”He must go to school, I am afraid,” said the Major with a sigh, ”I can't bring my heart to part with him; but his mother has taught him all she knows, so I suppose he must go to school and fight, and get flogged, and come home with a pipe in his mouth, and an oath on his lips, with his education completed. I don't fancy his staying here among these convict servants, when he is old enough to learn mischief.”

”He'll learn as much mischief at a colonial school, I expect,” said the Doctor, ”and more too. All the evil he hears from these fellows will be like the water on a duck's back; whereas, if you send him to school in a town, he'll learn a dozen vices he'll never hear of here. Get him a tutor.”

”That is easier said than done, Doctor. It is very hard to get a respectable tutor in the colony.”

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