The Wonder-Child: An Australian Story Read online

  *CHAPTER VI*

  *Thirty Thousand a Year*

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

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

  Bart looked at it critically.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  But Bart would work till he dropped rather than leave off a minutebefore his father. He took a long drink at the oatmeal water MissBrowne had made, and went on stooping, picking out the stones, diggingspots the unfaithful plough had left untouched, following the horsewhile his father dug.

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

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

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

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

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

  But Bart was learning the art of managing his father.

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

  So they went up to the little patchwork house together.

  It was not to a very tempting repast the bell had summoned them.Hermie, no longer able to order macaroons and whitebait and tinnedoysters to make delicacies with, had, childlike, lost interest in theculinary department of the house. And Miss Browne was no artist; to hera leg of mutton represented nothing but a leg of mutton, and fricasseesand such tempting departures seemed but tales in the cookery book neverto be put to practical use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  And it did not. Every second Saturday now with his own hands he wasobliged to kill a sheep for the sake of his family; he found a man wouldcharge ten shillings each time to come the distance. The physicalnausea for the task was such that from the time he first took the knifeinto his shuddering hand to the day they buried him, no morsel of animalfood passed his lips.

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

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

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

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

  'Two hundred and forty,' replied the lady, amazed herself that it couldbe so much, 'two hundred and forty! Why, I have never seen so manytogeth
er in my life.'

  Bart wrote down the figures two hundred and forty.

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

  'Say one hundred and fifty,' Bart said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  'A hundred and fifty pounds,' she said.

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

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

  Hermie was quite willing to be cautious.

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

  Miss Browne's pencil worked.

  'Four thousand eight hundred,' she said.

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

  Miss Browne looked quite shaken at the result her arithmeticproduced--seven hundred and twenty thousand eggs! Three thousandpounds!

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

  Bart still had misgivings.

  'More might die than that,' he said.

  Hermie was quite pale with excitement.

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

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

  Visions of all this wealth intoxicated the children; they tore theirfather from his book; Hermie told him, with eyes ashine with tears andlittle heaving breast, that he was never to do any more of that dreadfulploughing, that in three years they would be making thirty thousand ayear, at least, by no harder work than just feeding the fowls andpacking up eggs.

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

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

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

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

  'But the feed-bill?'

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

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

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

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

  Cameron fell into a convulsion of silent laughter, so earnest were thechildren, so absorbed. And Miss Browne, poor Miss Browne, how ludicrousshe looked with her scanty hair flying ragged round her shoulders, herfigure clad in an ancient mackintosh, her mouth frightened, her eyesheroic with the endeavour not to let go the fowl, which twisted itselfmadly to peck at her trembling hand!

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

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

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

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