Rolf Boldrewood - Plain Living

In the drawing-room matters were in a general way more satisfactory. A lady with a voice apparently borrowed from the angelic choir was singing when they entered, and Mr. Stamford, passionately fond of music, moved near the grand piano to listen. The guests disposed themselves au plaisir .

Master Carlo, singling out Mrs. Loreleigh, devoted himself to her for the rest of the evening, with perfect indifference to the claims of the other lady guests.

“What a lovely voice Mrs. Thrushton has!” said his hostess to Stamford, as soon as the notes of enchantment came to an end.

“Lovely indeed!” echoed he; “it is long since I have heard such a song, if ever – though my daughter Laura has a voice worth listening to. But will not Miss Grandison sing?” he said after a decent interval.

“Josie has been well taught, and few girls sing better when she likes,” said her mother with a half sigh; “but she is so capricious that I can’t always get her to perform for us. She has got into an argument with Count Zamoreski, that handsome young Pole you see across the room, and she says she’s not coming away to amuse a lot of stupid people. Josie is quite a character, I assure you, and really the girls are so dreadfully self-willed nowadays, that there is no doing anything with them. But you must miss society so much in the bush! Don’t you? There are very few nice men to be found there, I have heard.”

“We are not so badly off as you suppose, Mrs. Grandison. People even there keep themselves informed of the world’s doings, and value art and literature. I often think the young people devote more time to mental culture than they do in town.”

“Indeed! I should hardly have supposed so. They can get masters so easily in town, and then again the young folks have such chances of meeting the best strangers – people of rank, for instance, and so on – that they never can dream of even seeing , away from town. Mr. Grandison wanted me to go into the bush when the children were young; and indeed one of his stations, Banyule, was a charming place, but I never would hear of it.”

“A town life fulfilled all your expectations, I conclude.”

“Yes, really, I think so; very nearly, that is to say. Josie has such ease of manner and is so thoroughly at home with people in every rank of life that I feel certain she will make her mark some day.”

“And your son Carlo?”

“Well, I don’t mind telling you, as an old friend, Mr. Stamford, that Mr. Grandison is uneasy about him sometimes, says he won’t settle down to anything, and is – well not really dissipated, you know, but inclined to be fast. But I tell him that will wear off as he gets older. Boys will be boys. Besides, see what an advantage it is to him to be in the society of men like Captain Maelstrom, Sir Harry Falconer, and people of that stamp.”

“I am not so sure of that, but I trust all will come right, my dear Mrs. Grandison. It is a great responsibility that we parents undertake. There is nothing in life but care and trouble, it seems to me, in one form or another. And now, as I hear the carriages coming up, I will say good night.”

Mr. Stamford went home to his hotel, much musing on the events of the evening, nor was he able to sleep, indeed, during the early portion of the night, in consequence of the uneasiness which the unsatisfactory condition of his friend’s family caused him.

“Poor Grandison!” he said to himself. “More than once have I envied him his easy circumstances. I suppose it is impossible for a man laden with debt and crushed with poverty to avoid that sort of thing. But I shall never do so again. With all my troubles, if I thought Hubert and Laura were likely to become like those two young people as a natural consequence, I would not change places with him to-morrow. The boy, so early blasé , with evil knowledge of the world, tainted with the incurable vice of gambling, too fond of wine already, what has he to look forward to? What will he be in middle age? And the girl, selfish and frivolous, a woman of the world, when hardly out of her teens, scorning her mother’s wishes, owning no law but her own pleasure, looking forward but to a marriage of wealth or rank, if her own undisciplined feelings stand not in the way! Money is good, at any rate, as far as it softens the hard places of life; but if I thought that wealth would bring such a blight upon my household, would so wither the tender blossoms of hope and faith, would undermine manly endeavour and girlish graces, I would spurn it from me to-morrow. I would – ”

With which noble and sincere resolve Mr. Stamford fell asleep.

Upon awaking next morning, he was almost disposed to think that the strength of his disapproval as to the younger members of the Grandison family might only have been enthusiasm, artificially heightened by his host’s extremely good wine. “That were indeed a breach of hospitality,” he said to himself. “And after all, it is not, strictly speaking, my affair. I am grown rusty and precise, it may be, from living so monotonous a life in the bush, so far removed from the higher fashionable existence. Doubtless these things, which appear to me so dangerous and alarming, are only the everyday phenomena of a more artificial society. Let us hope for the best – that Carlo Grandison may tone down after a few years, and that Miss Josie’s frivolity may subside into mere fashionable matronhood.”

Mr. Stamford finished his breakfast with an appetite which proved either his moderation in the use of the good familiar creature over-night, or a singularly happy state of the biliary secretions. He then proceeded in a leisurely way to open his letters. Glancing at the postmark “Mooramah,” the little country town near home, and recognising Hubert’s bold, firm handwriting, he opened it, and read as follows: —

“My dear old Dad, – I have no doubt you are enjoying yourself quietly, but thoroughly, now that you have cleared off the Bank of New Guinea and got in with the Austral Agency Company. Mother says you are to give yourself all reasonable treats, and renew your youth if possible, but not to think you have the Bank of England to draw upon just yet.

“I told her you were to be trusted, and I have a piece of good news for you, which will bear a little extravagance on its back. I am very glad we were able to pay off that bank.

“They had no right to push you as they did. However, I suppose they can’t always help it. Now for the news, if some beastly telegram has not anticipated it. We have had RAIN!

“Yes, rain in large letters! What do you think of that? Forty-eight hours of steady rain! Five inches sixty points! Didn’t it come down! – cats and dogs, floods and waterspouts!

“The drought has broken up. The river is tearing down a banker. You can see the grass grow already. All bother about feed and water put safely away for a year at least. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

“I have sent most of the sheep out back. Dams all full, but none carried away, thank goodness!

“I got the hill paddock fence finished and the weaners all into it yesterday. Didn’t get home till midnight.

“The run like a batter pudding, soaked right down to the bed rock. We shall have more grass than we can use. Old Saville (Save-all, I call him!) would sell five thousand young sheep, mixed sexes. He wants to realise. If Mr. Barrington Hope, or whatever his name is, will stand it, they would pay to buy. Wire me if I can close, but of course I don’t expect it.

“I think I may safely treat myself to John Richard Green’s Making of England and Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic , so please post them. Everything looking first-rate. Laura is writing too.

“Your loving son,

Hubert Stamford.”

Next came a letter in a neat, characteristic, legible hand, not angular-feminine, which he well knew: —