V

William, being the only person who ever attempted to keep jovial, extravagant Clent together, sat late that night over his accounts. Very neatly and accurately his quill pen travelled the large blue sheets of paper, but its accuracy only made matters worse. Madam's expenses. The Captain's simply mad expenses. Advances to Oliver. Mab's allowances—for which he never dreamed of doing anything. Two new racehorses. A new lining of stamped maroon velvet for the barouche …

"Dear me," said William, who had stopped swearing when he became a lay reader, and thereby started Mab doing it. "Something must be done."

Once life had been so simple. Convicts laboured endlessly, while over the old mahogany gentlemen threw mains, drank old Burgundy, and generally conducted themselves like gentlemen. Then, by a cantrip of Lord Stanley whom nobody loved, the men were withdrawn in their thousands for public works and a great search went out by the disturbed gentlemen for free labour, which came high at a pound a week and "kept." "Especially kept," William was wont to say. "With sheep worth their weight in gold and labourers refusing kangaroo-steamer, even with onions." Better times had followed with the foundation of the new colony across Bass Strait. William could and did give you full statistics of prices when dealers swept the country for stock and goods to ship down the Tamar, and Clent had made four thousand pounds on potatoes alone in one year. But now the boot was on the other foot, with Port Phillip grown self-supporting, and Clent too large to be worked except at a loss.

And the country! Good—I mean, dear me! The country—God help her! Convicts from all the British Empire pouring in by the thousand in one damnable hotchpotch which under this more damnable Probation System bracketed the worst Newgate criminal with the starved boy who stole a hen's egg. What brain in Downing Street had conceived the notion of putting them all through page 27the same mill? First labour in the degrading road-gangs; then labour for contractors on a payment basis arranged with the Government; and then the third-class ticket which freed them to work where they chose. In elder days you could ride into town, pick an honest face straight from the ship, and ride back with the fellow. Now all were beaten into the same mask, and how then did you know what you got? Some ruffian, possibly, who would murder your children if they strayed for an hour in the bush.

Prisons at Oatlands, Jerusalem, and a dozen other places were simply bulging with convicts. William had seen 'em. Males and females armed with passes, tickets of leave, and conditional pardons to the tune of some ten thousand were set adrift on the road because there was nowhere to keep them. They were turning bush-ranger and driving the settlers' cattle; they were stealing when they couldn't get work, lusting, marrying … 'pon William's soul it was a scandal to see the Gazette crammed every week with "His Excellency is pleased to allow …" And where would we be when that lewd spawn grew up to choke our own children of the dragon's blood?

Many of the settlers were asking that now. But when two thousand specially brutalized convicts from Norfolk Island were recently shipped them, His Excellency had met the deputation of protests with shrugs.

"My dear sirs, what am I but England's servant?" he said.

So the bush and the barren hills and the dusty roads swarmed with the starving wretches, who begged and stole and sickened, and, when pursued by guns and threats, took to the bush and murdered. Emigrant free labour crossed the strait in a body to young and clean Port Phillip on Australia's mainland, for there they found no jailbird competition, no danger of being knocked on the head for taking the bread of labour from ravening mouths. So there was no more emigration. There were no more land sales, and this was the country's chief source of revenue. And the Home Government chose this moment to withdraw its parent grant toward the upkeep of the convict system, throwing the burden on the settlers, who, in spite of the heavy taxes, were already learning the meaning of a national debt.

Gentle women prayed over the family Bibles at this time, "God page 28forgive them, for they know not what they do." But their husbands, thinking England was meant, said, "Then we'll show them," and wrote off many fiery letters for the Downing Street clerks to pigeonhole.

Eleven sounded from the cuckoo-clock which the Captain had picked up in Bonn and Madam had banished as a gaucherie. William liked it. Firmly and without false modesty it did its duty, as he did. William really hoped that he could say "as he did." With precise movements and pursed lips he put up his books, his shadow high-shouldered and thin-legged on the wall. And then the old house came about him as it often would at this hour, reminding him of the mortgage. Many fine estates cleared with such eager hopes were mortgaged now, and Councillor Sorley held a mortgage on Clent, although William had almost gone on his knees to dissuade the Captain.

"Borrow from the banks. From the Jews. From any but a friend," said William. And the Captain, shocked almost beyond speech by this profession of faith, cried:

"Damme, sir! I'll go to old Jim to-morrow and be damned to you. Upstart puppy!"

He apologized later, being of those men who light-heartedly say through half their days what they retract during the other half. But old Jim took up the mortgage as he was taking up so many things now.

"He'll get on," thought William, starting down the dark passage with his tall silver candlestick. "He has the knack of it. But we …"