The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 63

Bullion, reserved and haughty, wears green spectacles, and gives you a forefinger. Mr. Emanuel Speck--unusually smart for the Bush, with a blue-satin stock and one of those blouses common in Germany, with elaborate hems and pockets enough for Briareus to have put all hands into at once; is, thin, civil, and stoops--bows, smiles, and sits down to dinner again, with the air of a man accustomed to attend to the main chance.

Uncle Jack (his mouth full of beef).--"Famous beef!--breed it yourself, eh? Slow work that cattle-feeding! [Empties the rest of the pickle-jar into his plate.] Must learn to go ahead in the New World,--railway times these! We can put him up to a thing or to, eh, Bullion? [Whispering me]

Great capitalist that Bullion! Look At Him!"

Mr. Bullion (gravely).--"A thing or two! If he has capital,--you have said it, Mr. Tibbets." (Looks round for the pickles; the green spectacles remain fixed upon Uncle Jack's plate.)

Uncle Jack.--"All that this colony wants is a few men like us, with capital and spirit. Instead of paying paupers to emigrate, they should pay rich men to come, eh, Speck?"

While Uncle Jack turns to Mr. Speck, Mr. Bullion fixes his fork in a pickled onion in Jack's plate and transfers it to his own, observing, not as incidentally to the onion, but to truth in general: "A man, gentlemen, in this country, has only to keep his eyes on the look-out and seize on the first advantage! Resources are incalculable!"

Uncle Jack, returning to the plate, and missing the onion, forestalls Mr. Speck in seizing the last potato; observing also, and in the same philosophical and generalizing spirit as Mr. Bullion: "The great thing in this country is to be always beforehand. Discovery and invention, prompt.i.tude and decision,--that's your go! 'Pon my life, one picks up sad vulgar sayings among the natives here! 'That's your go!'--shocking!

What would your poor father say? How is he,--good Austin? Well? That's right; and my dear sister? Ah, that d.a.m.nable Peck! Still harping on the 'Anti-Capitalist,' eh? But I'll make it up to you all now. Gentlemen, charge your gla.s.ses,--a b.u.mper-toast."

Mr. Speck (in an affected tone).--"I respond to the sentiment in a flowing cup. Gla.s.ses are not forthcoming."

Uncle Jack.--"A b.u.mper-toast to the health of the future millionnaire whom I present to you in my nephew and sole heir,--Pisistratus Caxton, Esq. Yes, gentlemen, I here publicly announce to you that this gentleman will be the inheritor of all my wealth,--freehold, leasehold, agricultural, and mineral; and when I am in the cold grave [takes out his pocket-handkerchief], and nothing remains of poor John Tibbets, look upon that gentleman and say, 'John Tibbets lives again!'"

Mr. Speck (chantingly),--

"'Let the b.u.mper-toast go round.'"

Guy Bolding.--"Hip, hip, hurrah!--three times three! What fun!"

Order is restored; dinner-things are cleared; each gentleman lights his pipe.

Vivian.--"What news from England?"

Mr. Bullion.--"As to the Funds, sir?"

Mr. Speck.--"I suppose you mean rather as to the railways. Great fortunes will be made there, sir; but still I think that our speculations here will--"

Vivian.--"I beg pardon for interrupting you, sir, but I thought, in the last papers, that there seemed something hostile in the temper of the French. No chance of a war?"

Major MacBlarney.--"Is it the wars you'd be after, young gentleman? If me interest at the Horse Guards can avail you, bedad! you'd make a proud man of Major MacBlarney."

Mr. Bullion (authoritatively).--"No, sir, we won't have a war; the capitalists of Europe and Australia won't have it. The Rothschilds and a few others that shall be nameless have only got to do this, sir [Mr.

Bullion b.u.t.tons up his pockets],--and we'll do it, too; and then what becomes of your war, Sir?" (Mr. Bullion snaps his pipe in the vehemence with which he brings his hand on the table, turns round the green spectacles, and takes up Mr. Speck's pipe, which that gentleman had laid aside in an unguarded moment.)

Vivian.--"But the campaign in India?"

Major MacBlarney.--"Oh! and if it's the Ingees you'd--"

Mr. Bullion (refilling Speck's pipe from Guy Bolding's exclusive tobacco-pouch, and interrupting the Major).--"India,--that's another matter; I don't object to that. War there,--rather good for the money market than otherwise."

Vivian.--"What news there, then?"

Mr. Bullion.--"Don't know; have n't got India stock."

Mr. Speck.--"Nor I either. The day for India is over, this is our India now." (Misses his tobacco-pipe; sees it in Bullion's mouth, and stares aghast. N. B. The pipe is not a clay dudeen, but a small meerschaum.--irreplaceable in Bushland.)

Pisistratus.--"Well, uncle, but I am at a loss to understand what new scheme you have in hand. Something benevolent, I am sure; something for your fellow-creatures,--for philanthropy and mankind?"

Mr. Bullion (starting).--"Why, young man, are you as green as all that?"

Pisistratus.--"I, sir? No; Heaven forbid! But my--" (Uncle Jack holds up his forefinger imploringly, and spills his tea over the pantaloons of his nephew!)

Pisistratus, wroth at the effect of the tea, and therefore obdurate to the sign of the forefinger, continues rapidly, "But my uncle is! Some Grand National-Imperial-Colonial-Anti-Monopoly--"

Uncle Jack.--"Pooh! pooh! What a droll boy it is!"

Mr. Bullion (solemnly).--"With these notions, which not even in jest should be fathered on my respectable and intelligent friend here [Uncle Jack bows], I am afraid you will never get on in the world, Mr. Caxton.

I don't think our speculations will suit you! It is growing late, gentlemen; we must push on."

Uncle Jack (jumping up).--"And I have so much to say to the dear boy.

Excuse us,--you know the feelings of an uncle." (Takes my arm and leads me out of the hut.)

Uncle Jack (as soon as we are in the air).--"You'll ruin us--you, me, and your father and mother. Yes! What do you think I work and slave myself for but for you and yours? Ruin us all. I say, if you talk in that way before Bullion! His heart is as hard as the Bank of England's,--and quite right he is too. Fellow-creatures,--stuff! I have renounced that delusion,--the generous follies of my youth! I begin at last to live for myself,--that is, for self and relatives. I shall succeed this time, you'll see!"

Pisistratus.--"Indeed, uncle, I hope so sincerely; and, to do you justice, there is always something very clever in your ideas, only they don't--"

Uncle Jack (interrupting me with a groan).--"The fortunes that other men have gained by my ideas,--shocking to think of! What! and shall I be reproached if I live no longer for such a set of thieving, greedy, ungrateful knaves? No, no! Number One shall be my maxim; and I'll make you a Croesus, my boy, I will."

Pisistratus, after grateful acknowledgments for all prospective benefits, inquires how long Jack has been in Australia; what brought him into the colony; and what are his present views. Learns, to his astonishment, that Uncle Jack has been four years in the colony; that he sailed the year after Pisistratus,--induced, he says, by that ill.u.s.trious example and by some mysterious agency or commission, which he will not explain, emanating either from the Colonial Office or an Emigration Company. Uncle Jack has been thriving wonderfully since he abandoned his fellow-creatures. His first speculation, on arriving at the colony, was in buying some houses in Sydney, which (by those fluctuations in prices common to the extremes of the colonial mind, which is one while skipping up the rainbow with Hope, and at another plunging into Acherontian abysses with Despair) he bought excessively cheap, and sold excessively dear. But his grand experiment has been in connection with the infant settlement of Adelaide, of which he considers himself one of the first founders; and as, in the rush of emigration which poured to that favored establishment in the earlier years of its existence,--rolling on its tide all manner of credulous and inexperienced adventurers, vast sums were lost, so of those sums certain fragments and pickings were easily gripped and gathered up by a man of Uncle Jack's readiness and dexterity. Uncle Jack had contrived to procure excellent letters of introduction to the colonial grandees; he got into close connection with some of the princ.i.p.al parties seeking to establish a monopoly of land (which has since been in great measure effected, by raising the price, and excluding the small fry of petty capitalists); and effectually imposed on them as a man with a vast knowledge of public business, in the confidence of great men at home, considerable influence with the English press, etc. And no discredit to their discernment; for Jack, when he pleased, had a way with him that was almost irresistible. In this manner he contrived to a.s.sociate himself and his earnings with men really of large capital and long practical experience in the best mode by which that capital might be employed. He was thus admitted into partners.h.i.+p (so far as his means went) with Mr. Bullion, who was one of the largest sheep-owners and land-holders in the colony,--though, having many other nests to feather, that gentleman resided in state at Sydney, and left his runs and stations to the care of overseers and superintendents. But land-jobbing was Jack's special delight; and an ingenious German having lately declared that the neighborhood of Adelaide betrayed the existence of those mineral treasures which have since been brought to day, Mr.

Tibbets had persuaded Bullion and the other gentlemen now accompanying him to undertake the land journey from Sydney to Adelaide, privily and quietly, to ascertain the truth of the German's report, which was at present very little believed. If the ground failed of mines, Uncle Jack's account convinced his a.s.sociates that mines quite as profitable might be found in the pockets of the raw adventurers who were ready to buy one year at the dearest market, and driven to sell the next at the cheapest.

"But," concluded Uncle Jack, with a sly look, and giving me a poke in the ribs, "I've had to do with mines before now, and know what they are.

I'll let n.o.body but you into my pet scheme; you shall go shares if you like. The scheme is as plain as a problem in Euclid: if the German is right, and there are mines, why, the mines will be worked. Then miners must be employed; but miners must eat, drink, and spend their money. The thing is to get that money. Do you take?"

Pisistratus.--"Not at all!"

Uncle Jack (majestically).--"A Great Grog and Store Depot! The miners want grog and stores; come to your depot; you take their money; Q. E.

D.! Shares,--eh, you dog? Cribs, as we said at school. Put in a paltry thousand or two, and you shall go halves."

Pisistratus (vehemently).--"Not for all the mines of Potosi."

Uncle Jack (good-humoredly).--"Well, it sha'n't be the worse for you. I sha'n't alter my will, in spite of your want of confidence. Your young friend,--that Mr. Vivian, I think you call him: intelligent-looking fellow; sharper than the other, I guess,--would he like a share?"

Pisistratus.--"In the grog depot? You had better ask him!"

Uncle Jack.--"What! you pretend to be aristocratic in the Bush? Too good. Ha, ha--they're calling to me; we must be off."

Pisistratus.--"I will ride with you a few miles. What say you, Vivian?

and you, Guy?" (As the whole party now joined us.)

Guy prefers basking in the sun and reading the "Lives of the Poets."

Vivian a.s.sents; we accompany the party till sunset. Major MacBlarney prodigalizes his offers of service in every conceivable department of life, and winds up with an a.s.surance that if we want anything in those departments connected with engineering,--such as mining, mapping, surveying, etc.,--he will serve us, bedad, for nothing, or next to it.

We suspect Major MacBlarney to be a civil engineer suffering under the innocent hallucination that he has been in the army.

Mr. Speck lets out to me, in a confidential whisper, that Mr. Bullion is monstrous rich, and has made his fortune from small beginnings, by never letting a good thing go. I think of Uncle Jack's pickled onion and Mr.