future duty. No, Howard, we must not falter or draw back. You can trust, I know, in Mr. Sternworth’s practical wisdom, for you have a hundred times told me how far-seeing, shrewd, and yet kindly he was. In his plan there is the certainty of independence; together we can cheer each other when the day’s work is done. As for living in England, trusting to the assistance of friends, and the lingering uncertainty of a provision from the Government, I have seen too many families pitiably drifting towards a lower level. There is no middle course. No! Our path has been chosen for us. Let us go where a merciful Providence would seem to lead us.’
The fateful conference was ended. A council, not much bruited about, but fraught with momentous results to those yet unborn, in the Effingham family, and it may be to other races and sections of humanity. Who may limit the effects produced in the coming time, by the transplantation of but one rarely endowed family of our upward-striving race?
Nothing remained but to communicate the decision of the high contracting parties of the little state to the remaining members. The heir was absent. To him would have been accorded, as a right, a place in the parliament. But he was in Ireland visiting a college chum, for whom he had formed one of the ardent friendships characteristic of early manhood. Wilfred Effingham was an enthusiast – sanguine and impulsive – whose impulses, chiefly, took a good direction. His heart was warm, his principles fixed. Still, so sensitive was he to the impressions of the hour, that only by the sternest consciousness of responsibility could he remain faithful to the call of duty.
Devoted primarily to art and literature; sport, travel, and social intercourse likewise put in claims to his attention and mingled in his nature the impulses of a refined Greek with the energy and self-denial of his northern race.
It must be confessed that these latter qualities were chiefly in the embryonic stage. So latent and undeveloped were they, indeed, that no one but his fond mother had fully credited his possession of them.
But as the rounded limbs of the Antinous conceal the muscles which after-years develop and harden, so in the graceful physique and sensitive mind of Wilfred Effingham lay hidden powers, which, could he have foreseen their future exercise, would have astonished no one more than himself. Such was the youth recalled from his joyous revel in the Green Isle, where he had been shooting and fishing to his heart’s content.
A letter from his mother first told that his destiny had been changed. In a moment he was transformed. No longer was he to be an enjoyer of the hoarded wealth of art, letters, science, sitting on high and choosing what he would, as one of the gods of Olympus. His lot, henceforth, would be that of a toiler for the necessaries of life! It was a shrewd blow. Small wonder had he reeled before it! It met him without warning, unsoftened, save by the tender pity and loving counsel so long associated with his mother’s handwriting. The well-remembered characters, so fair in delicate regularity, which since earliest schooldays had cheered and comforted him. Never had they failed him; steadfast ever as a mother’s faith, unfailing as a mother’s love!
Grown to manhood, still, as of old, he looked, almost at weekly intervals, for the missive, ever the harbinger of home love, the herald of joy, the bearer of wise counsel – never once of sharp rebuke or untempered anger.
And now – to the spoiled child of affection, of endowment – had come this message fraught with woe.
A meaner mind, so softly nurtured, might have shrunk from the ordeal. To the chivalrous soul of Wilfred Effingham the vision was but the summons to the fray, which bids the knight quit the tourney and the banquet for the stern joys of battle.
His nature, one of those complex organisms having the dreamy poetic side much developed, yet held room for physical demonstration. Preferring for the most part contemplation to action, he had ever passed, apparently without effort, from unchecked reverie and study to tireless bodily toil in the quest of sport, travel, or adventure. Possessed of a constitution originally vigorous, and unworn by dissipation, from which a sensitive nature joined with deference to a lofty ideal had hitherto preserved him, Wilfred Effingham approached that rare combination which has ere now resulted, under pressure of circumstance, in the hero, the poet, the warrior, or the statesman.
He braced himself to withstand the shock. It was a shrewd buffet. Yet, after realising its force, he was conscious, much to his surprise, of a distinct feeling of exaltation.
‘I shall suffer for it afterwards,’ he told his friend Gerald O’More, half unconsciously, as they sat together over a turf fire which glowed in the enormous chimney of a rude but comfortable shooting lodge; ‘but, for the soul of me, I can’t help feeling agreeably acted upon.’
‘Acted upon by what?’ said his companion and college chum, with whom he had sworn eternal friendship. ‘Is it the whisky hot? It’s equal to John Jameson, and yet it never bothered an exciseman! Sure that same is amaylioratin’ my lot to a degree I should have never believed possible. Take another glass. Defy Fate and tell me all about it. Has your father, honest man, discovered another Roman tile or Julius Cæsar’s tobacco-pouch? [the elder Effingham was an antiquarian of great perseverance], or have ministers gone out, to the ruin of the country, and the triumph of those villains the radicals? ’Tis little that ever happens in that stagnant existence that you Saxons call country life, barring a trifle of make-believe hunting and shooting. Sure, didn’t me uncle Phelim blaze away into a farmer’s poultry-yard in Kent for half-an-hour, and swear (it was after lunch) that he never saw pheasants so hard to rise before.’
Thus the light-hearted Irishman rattled on, well divining, for all his apparent mirth, that something more than common had come in the letter, that had the power to drive the blood from Wilfred’s cheek and set Care’s seal upon his brow. That impress remained indelible, even when he smiled, and affected to resume his ordinary cheerfulness.
At length he spoke: ‘Gerald, old fellow! there is news from home which most people would call bad. It is distinct of its kind. We have lost everything; are ruined utterly. Not a chance of recovery, it seems. My dear mother bids me understand that most clearly; warns me to have no hope of anything otherwise. The governor has been hard hit, it seems, in foreign bonds; Central African Railways, or Kamschatka telegraph lines, – some of the infernal traps for English capital at any rate. The Chase is mortgaged and will have to go. The family must emigrate. Australia is to be the future home of the Effinghams. This appears to be settled. That’s a good deal to be hid in two sheets of note-paper, isn’t it?’ And he tossed up the carefully directed letter, caught it as it fell, and placed it in his pocket.
‘My breath is taken away; reach me the whisky, if you wish to save my life, or else it will be – ’ (prompt measures were taken to relieve the unfortunate gentleman, but without success). ‘Wilfred, me dear fellow, do you tell me that you’re serious? What will ye do at all, at all?’
‘Do? What better men have had to do before now. Face the old foe of mortals, Anagkaia, and see what she can do when a man stands up to her. I don’t like the idea any the worse for having to cross the sea to a new world, to find a lost fortune. After all, one was getting tired of this sing-song, nineteenth century life of fashionable learning, fashionable play, fashionable work – everything, in fact, regulated by dame Fashion. I shall be glad to stretch my limbs in a hunter’s hammock, and bid adieu to the whole unreal pageant.’
‘Bedad! I don’t know. I’d say the reality was nearer where we are, with all the disadvantages of good dinners, good sport, good books, and good company. But you’re right, me dear fellow, to put a bold face on it; and if you have to take the shilling in the divil’s regiment, sure ye’ll die a hero, or rise to Commander-in-Chief, if I know ye. But your mother, and poor Miss Effingham, and the Captain – without his turnips and his justice-room and his pointers and his poachers, his fibulæ and amphoræ – whatever will he do among blackfellows and kangaroos? My heart aches for ye all, Wilfred. Sure ye know it does. If ye won’t take any more potheen, let us sleep on it; and we’ll have a great day among
