John Caldigate Part 14

'It was he who paid off the mortgage.'

'You have told me that he sent you part of the money;--but that's between you and him. I am very glad, Caldigate, that your son has done so well;--and the more so perhaps because the early promise was not good. But it may be doubted whether a successful gold-digger will settle down quietly as an English country gentleman.'

There can be no doubt that old Mr. Bolton was a little jealous, and, perhaps, in some degree incredulous, as to the success of John Caldigate.

His sons had worked hard from the very beginning of their lives. With them there had been no period of Newmarket, Davis, and disreputation. On the basis of capital, combined with conduct, they had gradually risen to high success. But here was a young man, who, having by his self-indulgence thrown away all the prospects of his youth, had rehabilitated himself by the luck of finding gold in a gully. To Mr.

Bolton it was no better than had he found a box of treasure at the bottom of a well. Mr. Bolton had himself been a seeker of money all his life, but he had his prejudices as to the way in which money was to be sought. It should be done in a gradual, industrious manner, and in accordance with recognised forms. A digger who might by chance find a lump of gold as big as his head, or might work for three months without finding any, was to him only one degree better than Davis, and therefore he did not receive his old friend's statements as to the young man's success with all the encouragement which his old friend would have liked.

But his father was very enthusiastic in his return letter to the miner.

The matter as to the estate had been arranged. The nephew, who, after all, had not shown himself to be very praiseworthy, had already been--compensated. His own will had already been made,--of course in his son's favour. As there had been so much success,--and as continued success must always be doubtful,--would it not be well that he should come back as soon as possible? There would be enough now for them all.

Then he expressed an opinion that such a place as n.o.bble could not be very nice for a permanent residence.

n.o.bble was not very nice. Over and beside his professional success, there was not much in his present life which endeared itself to John Caldigate. But the acquisition of gold is a difficult thing to leave.

There is a curse about it, or a blessing,--it is hard to decide which,--that makes it almost impossible for a man to tear himself away from its pursuit when it is coming in freely. And the absolute gold,--not the money, not the balance at one's banker's, not the plentiful so much per annum,--but the absolute metal clinging about the palm of one's hands like small gravel, or welded together in a lump too heavy to be lifted, has a peculiar charm of its own. I have heard of a man who, having his pocket full of diamonds, declared, as he let them run through his fingers, that human bliss could not go beyond that sensation. John Caldigate did not shoe his horse with gold; but he liked to feel that he had enough gold by him to shoe a whole team. He could not return home quite as yet. His affairs were too complicated to be left quite at a moment's notice. If, as he hoped, he should find himself able to leave the colony within four years of the day on which he had begun work, and could then do so with an adequate fortune, he believed that he should have done better than any other Englishman who had set himself to the task of gold-finding. In none of his letters did he say anything special about Hester Bolton; but his inquiries about the family generally were so frequent as to make his father wonder why such questions should be asked. The squire himself, who was living hardly a dozen miles from Mr. Bolton's house, did not see the old banker above once a quarter perhaps and the ladies of the family certainly not oftener than once a year. Very little was said in answer to any of John's inquiries. 'Mr. and Mrs. and Miss Bolton are, I believe, quite well.' So much was declared in one of the old squire's letters; and even that little served to make known that at any rate, so far, no tidings as to marriage on the part of Hester had reached the ear of her father's old friend. Perhaps this was all that John Caldigate wanted to learn.

At last there came word that John intended to come home with the next month's mail. This letter arrived about midsummer, when the miner had been absent three years and a half. He had not settled all his affairs so completely but that it might be necessary that he should return; but he thought that he would be able to remain at least twelve months in England. And in England he intended to make his home. Gold, he said, was certainly very attractive; but he did not like New South Wales as a country in which to live. He had now contracted his ventures to the one enterprise of the Polyeuka mine, from which he was receiving large monthly dividends. If that went on prosperously, perhaps he need not return to the colony at all. 'Poor d.i.c.k Shand!' he said. 'He is a shepherd far away in the west, hardly earning better wages than an English ploughman, and I am coming home with a pocket full of money! A few gla.s.ses of whisky have made all the difference!'

The squire when he received this felt more of exultation than he had ever known in his life. It seemed as though something of those throbbings of delight which are common to most of us when we are young, had come to him for the first time in his old age. He could not bring himself to care in the least for d.i.c.k Shand. At last,--at last,--he was going to have near him a companion that he could love.

'Well, yes; I suppose he has put together a little money,' he said to Farmer Holt, when that worthy tenant asked enthusiastically as to the truth of the rumours which were spread about as to the young squire's success. 'I rather think he'll settle down and live in the old place after all.'

'That's what he ought to do, squoire--that's what he ought to do,' said Mr. Holt, almost choked by the energy of his own utterances.

Chapter XIV

Again at Home

On his arrival in England John Caldigate went instantly down to Folking.

He had come back quite fortified in his resolution of making Hester Bolton his wife, if he should find Hester Bolton willing and if she should have grown at all into that form and manner, into those ways of look, of speech, and of gait, which he had pictured to himself when thinking of her. Away at n.o.bble the females by whom he had been surrounded had not been attractive to him. In all our colonies the women are beautiful and in the large towns a society is soon created, of which the fastidious traveller has very little ground to complain; but in the small distant bush-towns, as they are called, the rougher elements must predominate Our hero, though he had worn moleskin trousers and jersey shirts, and had worked down a pit twelve hours a-day with a pickaxe, had never reconciled himself to female roughnesses. He had condescended to do so occasionally,--telling himself that it was his destiny to pa.s.s his life among such surroundings; but his imagination had ever been at work with him, and he possessed a certain apt.i.tude for romance which told him continually that Hester Bolton was the dream of his life, and ought to become, if possible, the reality; and now he came back resolved to attempt the reality,--unless he should find that the Hester Bolton of Chesterton was altogether different from the Hester Bolton of his dreams.

The fatted calf was killed for him in a very simple but full-hearted way. There was no other guest to witness the meeting. 'And here you are,' said the father.

'Yes, sir, here I am;--all that's left of me.'

'There is quite plenty,' said the father, looking at the large proportions of his son. 'It seems but a day or two since you went;--and yet they have been long days. I hardly expected to see you again, John,--certainly not so soon as this; certainly not in such circ.u.mstances. If ever a man was welcome to a house, you are welcome to this. And now,--what do you mean to do with yourself?'

'By nine o'clock to-morrow morning you will probably find a pit opened on the lawn, and I shall be down to the middle, looking for gold. Ah, sir, I wish you could have known poor Mick Maggott.'

'If he would have made holes in my lawn I am glad he did not come home with you.' This was the first conversation, but both the father and son felt that there was a tone about it which had never before been heard between them.

John Caldigate at this time was so altered in appearance, that they who had not known him well might possibly have mistaken him. He was now nearly thirty, but looked older than his age. The squareness of his brow was squarer, and here and there through his dark brown hair there was to be seen an early tinge of coming grey; and about his mouth was all the decision of purpose which comes to a man when he is called upon to act quickly on his own judgment in matters of importance; and there was that look of self-confidence which success gives. He had thriven in all that he had undertaken. In that gold-finding business of his he had made no mistakes. Men who had been at it when a boy had tried to cheat him, but had failed. He had seen into such mysteries as the business possessed with quick glances, and had soon learned to know his way. And he had neither gambled nor drank,--which are the two rocks on which gold-miners are apt to wreck their vessels. All this gave him an air of power and self-a.s.sertion which might, perhaps, have been distasteful to an indifferent acquaintance, but which at this first meeting was very pleasing to the father. His son was somebody,--had done something, that son of whom he had been so thoroughly ashamed when the dealings with Davis had first been brought to light. He had kept up his reading too; had strong opinions of his own respecting politics; regarded the colonies generally from a politico-economical point of view; had ideas on social, religious, and literary subjects sufficiently alike to his father's not to be made disagreeable by the obstinacy with which he maintained them. He had become much darker in colour, having been, as it seemed, bronzed through and through by colonial suns and colonial labour. Altogether he was a son of whom any father might be proud, as long as the father managed not to quarrel with him. Mr. Caldigate, who during the last four years had thought very much on the subject, was determined not to quarrel with his son.

'You asked, sir, the other day what I meant to do?'

'What are we to find to amuse you?'

'As for amus.e.m.e.nt, I could kill rats as I used to do; or slaughter a hecatomb of pheasants at Babington,'--here the old man winced, though the word hecatomb reconciled him a little to the disagreeable allusion.

'But it has come to me now that I want so much more than amus.e.m.e.nt. What do you say to a farm?'

'On the estate?'--and the landlord at once began to think whether there was any tenant who could be induced to go without injustice.

'About three times as big as the estate if I could find it. A man can farm five thousand acres as well as fifty, I take it, if he have the capital. I should like to cut a broad sward, or, better still, to roam among many herds. I suppose a man should have ten pounds an acre to begin with. The difficulty would be in getting the land.' But all this was said half in joke; for he was still of opinion that he would, after his year's holiday, be forced to return for a time to New South Wales.

He had fixed a price for which, up to a certain date, he would sell his interest in the Polyeuka mine. But the price was high, and he doubted whether he would get it; and, if not, then he must return.

He had not been long at Folking,--not as yet long enough to have made his way into the house at Chesterton,--before annoyance arose. Mrs.

Shand was most anxious that he should go to Pollington and 'tell them anything about poor d.i.c.k.' They did, in truth, know everything about poor d.i.c.k; that poor d.i.c.k's money was all gone, and that poor d.i.c.k was earning his bread, or rather his damper, mutton, and tea, wretchedly, in the wilderness of a sheep-run in Queensland. The mother's letter was not very piteous, did not contain much of complaint,--alluded to poor d.i.c.k as one whose poverty was almost natural, but still it was very pressing.

The girls were so anxious to hear all the details,--particularly Maria!

The details of the life of a drunken sot are not pleasant tidings to be poured into a mother's ear, or a sister's. And then, as they two had gone away equal, and as he, John Caldigate, had returned rich, whereas poor d.i.c.k was a wretched menial creature, he felt that his very presence in England would carry with it some reproach against himself. He had in truth been both loyal and generous to d.i.c.k; but still,--there was the truth. He had come back as a rich man to his own country, while d.i.c.k was a miserable Queensland shepherd. It was very well for him to tell his father that a few gla.s.ses of whisky had made the difference; but it would be difficult to explain this to the large circle at Pollington, and very disagreeable even to him to allude to it. And he did not feel disposed to discuss the subject with Maria, with that closer confidence of which full sympathy is capable. And yet he did not know how to refuse to pay the visit. He wrote a line to say that as soon as he was at liberty he would run up to Pollington, but that at present business incidental to his return made such a journey impossible.

But the letter, or letters, which he received from Babington were more difficult to answer even than the Shand despatch. There were three of them,--from his uncle, from Aunt Polly, and from--not Julia--but Julia's second sister; whereby it was signified that Julia's heart was much too heavily laden to allow her to write a simple, cousinly note. The Babington girls were still Babington girls,--would still romp, row boats, and play cricket; but their condition was becoming a care to their parents. Here was this cousin come back, unmarried, with gold at command,--not only once again his father's heir, but with means at command which were not at all diminished by the Babington imagination.

After all that had pa.s.sed in the linen-closet, what escape would there be for him? That he should come to Babington would be a matter of course. The real kindness which had been shown to him there as a child would make it impossible that he should refuse.

Caldigate did feel it to be impossible to refuse. Though Aunt Polly had on that last occasion been somewhat hard upon him, had laid snares for him, and endeavoured to catch him as a fowler catches a bird, still there had been the fact that she had been as a mother to him when he had no other mother. His uncle, too, had supplied him with hunting and shooting and fishing, when hunting and shooting and fishing were the great joys of his life. It was inc.u.mbent on him to go to Babington,--- probably would be inc.u.mbent on him to pay a prolonged visit there. But he certainly would not marry Julia. As to that his mind was so fixed that even though he should have to declare his purpose with some rudeness, still he would declare it. 'My aunt wants me to go over to Babington,' he said to his father.

'Of course she does.'

'And I must go?'

'You know best what your own feelings are as to that. After you went, they made all manner of absurd accusations against me. But I don't wish to force a quarrel upon you on that account.'

'I should be sorry to quarrel with them, because they were kind to me when I was a boy. They are not very wise.'

'I don't think I ever knew such a houseful of fools.' There was no relationship by blood between the Squire of Folking and the Squire of Babington; but they had married two sisters, and therefore Mrs.

Babington was Aunt Polly to John Caldigate.

'But fools may be very worthy, sir. I should say that a great many people are fools to you.'

'Not to me especially,' said the squire, almost angrily.

'People who read no books are always fools to those who do read.'

'I deny it. Our neighbour over the water'--the middle wash was always called the water at Folking--'never looks at a book, as far as I know, and he is not a fool. He thoroughly understands his own business But your uncle Babington doesn't know how to manage his own property,--and yet he knows nothing else. That's what I call being a fool.'

'Now, I'm going to tell you a secret, sir.'

'A secret!'

'You must promise to keep it.'

'Of course I will keep it, if it ought to be kept.'

'They want me to marry Julia.'

'What!'