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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Race of Life," Guy Boothby masterfully intertwines themes of ambition, obsession, and the psychological toll of competition within the vivid world of early 20th-century society. The narrative unfolds through the gripping story of a man whose relentless pursuit of success leads him to confront the dark corners of human nature. Boothby's prose is notable for its rich detail and evocative imagery, capturing the frenetic energy of life as a race, juxtaposed against the quiet desperation of individual lives caught in its wake. Set against a backdrop of societal expectations and personal aspirations, this novel highlights the struggles inherent in the quest for fulfillment and the often perilous consequences of succumbing to the demands of ambition. Guy Boothby, an Australian author and adventurer, drew on his own experiences of both success and failure to inform his writing. His nuanced understanding of human behavior and the various social landscapes in which his characters operate reflects his extensive travels and connections in the literary world. Boothby was known for his ability to portray complexity in character motivations, a trait he honed over years of engaging with diverse cultures and experiences. This compelling novel is a must-read for those interested in the intricacies of the human psyche and the societal pressures of the era. Boothby's deft storytelling and profound insights make "The Race of Life" not just a tale of competition, but a poignant examination of what it means to live fully. Readers will find themselves captivated by the characters' journeys, making it a valuable addition to any literary collection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Race of Life
Table of Contents
Introduction
Ambition presses forward while conscience keeps pace, and in the urgent momentum that propels existence itself, The Race of Life traces how desire, risk, and responsibility collide, how luck tests preparation, how social currents buffet private hopes, and how the finish line appears to move just as swiftly as those who chase it, inviting readers to consider whether victory lies in speed, endurance, or clarity of purpose, and whether the truest contest is against rivals, against circumstance, or against the restless selves that demand more from the world even as the world demands more from them.
Guy Boothby, an Australian-born novelist who became a popular figure in late Victorian and early Edwardian fiction, wrote The Race of Life during the turn-of-the-twentieth-century boom in fast-paced popular novels. Known for energetic storytelling and a flair for sensation, Boothby reached a broad readership across Britain and beyond. While precise first-publication particulars for this title can be placed in the early twentieth century, it clearly belongs to the era’s appetite for accessible, swiftly moving narratives. Readers approaching the book today can expect a work that sits alongside Boothby’s celebrated adventures in tone and momentum, even as it pursues its own distinct concerns.
Without disclosing developments best discovered on the page, the novel’s premise presents striving figures navigating opportunity and peril within a world attuned to success, reputation, and sudden reversals. The opening movements establish the stakes quickly, posing practical and ethical challenges that set the pace for what follows. Rather than dwelling on long preambles, Boothby ushers readers directly into situations where choices must be made in real time. The experience promised is one of forward motion and mounting consequence, a story that keeps its eye on outcomes while leaving just enough uncertainty to sustain tension and to invite reflection about the costs of getting ahead.
Stylistically, the book exemplifies Boothby’s accessible prose and narrative propulsion: crisp scenes, clean transitions, and an emphasis on incident over introspection, yet with enough interior shading to illuminate motive and doubt. The voice is confident and unfussy, favoring clarity and rhythm that help the chapters move at speed. Readers will notice a balance between atmosphere and action, with settings sketched efficiently so that plot remains in the foreground. The mood alternates between urgency and reprieve, using cliff-edge moments to punctuate calmer passages, an approach that suits a title concerned with pace and pursuit and that rewards steady, attentive reading.
Thematically, The Race of Life engages questions that remain perennial: What does it mean to succeed, and on whose terms is success measured? How far should one go in pursuit of advancement, and what happens when good fortune outpaces good judgment? The story’s framework highlights the interplay of merit and accident, intention and consequence, inviting readers to weigh character against circumstance. Issues of class mobility, reputation, and personal responsibility surface as living pressures rather than abstract ideas. For contemporary audiences, the book’s concerns resonate with debates about work, risk, and the ethics of ambition in an era that still prizes speed and visibility.
Placed within its historical moment, the novel reflects a publishing landscape shaped by circulating libraries, bookstalls, and serial fiction, where brisk narratives traveled quickly and widely. Boothby’s career flourished in that environment, and this work bears the imprint of a culture attuned to spectacle, moral testing, and swift reversals of fortune. Its turn-of-the-century context lends it a particular texture: confidence in progress tempered by unease about its costs. Reading it now offers a vantage point on how popular fiction of the period framed personal striving against broader social change, mapping private desire onto a public world that never entirely stands still.
Approached as both an entertainment and a reflection on striving, The Race of Life offers the satisfactions of narrative momentum alongside the subtler pleasures of moral inquiry. It invites readers to inhabit dilemmas rather than to solve them in advance, rewarding attention to motive, method, and consequence as much as to outcome. Without revealing the turns ahead, one can say that the journey tests endurance as surely as speed, and that its appeal lies in how plausibly it renders the pressures of a world on the move. For anyone curious about Boothby’s enduring popularity, this is a vivid, persuasive entry point.
Synopsis
The Race of Life opens with a young protagonist at a turning point, poised between modest beginnings and a world of larger possibilities. An early stroke of fortune and a chance encounter introduce wider ambitions, setting the tone for a story driven by opportunity and risk. The narrative quickly establishes the social contrasts that will shape the journey ahead: the pull of status and wealth against the anchor of loyalty and plain dealing. With measured pace, the book sketches relationships and obligations that promise both support and complication, positioning the hero for choices that will define the course of events.
An inciting event propels the protagonist into a new sphere, where respectability masks vigorous competition and hidden agendas. A promising prospect—part inheritance, part enterprise—looks attainable, but only with decisive action. Networks of influence and patronage emerge, along with the subtle pressures they exert. The groundwork of rivalry is laid, as an ambitious adversary notices the same prize. Early chapters emphasize the practical challenges of advancement: gathering capital, securing allies, and learning the rules of a game that rewards boldness. These developments sharpen the central question of how far one can go without compromising core principles.
As opportunity grows, so do entanglements. A potential partner offers access to resources and connections, while a sympathetic confidant provides honest counsel. A personal attachment forms, complicating priorities with emotional stakes that intersect with financial and social ambitions. The prose highlights atmosphere and movement: meetings in discreet rooms, letters that carry implicit threats, and social gatherings where a word out of place might shift fortunes. The protagonist earns early successes through energy and quick thinking, yet the story hints that these gains rest on unstable ground. Competing claims and incomplete information begin to narrow the margin for error.
The antagonist—polished, calculating, and relentless—advances a parallel scheme that tests the hero’s resilience. Rather than blunt confrontation, pressure arrives in the form of contracts, obligations, and half-truths designed to bind. The stakes expand beyond money, touching reputation and trust. Side characters illustrate the broader field: pragmatic operators who switch loyalties easily, and stalwart friends whose help carries its own costs. The narrative balances intrigue with momentum, showing how success attracts scrutiny. A moment of public recognition offers validation, yet it also invites a countermove meant to undermine the hero’s position and expose vulnerabilities.
Midway, the story widens its scope, shifting settings to underline the breadth of the struggle. Travel serves both practical and symbolic purposes: to pursue evidence, to court new backers, and to escape a tightening net. The change of scene introduces fresh actors—some helpful, others opaque—who alter the balance. Information long buried begins to surface, challenging the accepted version of past events and illuminating motives previously concealed. The protagonist gathers fragments of proof while weighing the reliability of witnesses. Momentum builds as timelines compress, and the narrative signals that past choices will return with consequences.
A major reversal arrives, forcing a reassessment of means and ends. What seemed a straightforward climb now appears contingent on compromises that threaten integrity and personal loyalties. The tension pivots on a moral calculus: whether to adopt the adversary’s tactics or to accept slower progress with uncertain outcomes. Allies debate prudence versus honor, and the personal attachment intensifies, raising concerns about shared futures. The protagonist’s resolve is tested by an offer that solves one problem at the cost of another. The sequence underscores how public victories can hide private costs, framing the decisive struggle ahead.
Investigation and counterplay dominate the next phase. Careful planning replaces improvisation as the hero works to untangle legal and financial knots laid by the rival. A quiet ally produces a key lead, and routine discrepancies reveal a pattern. Yet the narrative resists neat disclosure, presenting partial revelations that sharpen suspense without laying everything bare. A near-miss underscores the danger of missteps. The adversary, sensing a shift, escalates pressure with a tactic aimed at breaking morale. The protagonist responds by consolidating support and preparing a measured response that relies on patience, documentation, and timing.
As the endgame approaches, the conflict centers on control of a pivotal asset and the authority it confers. Reputation, once a backdrop, becomes the battleground, with whispers and announcements carrying strategic weight. The protagonist faces a final set of choices that will determine both personal happiness and public standing. An important meeting, arranged under formal pretenses, gathers the major players and sets the scene for resolution. Even here, the story preserves uncertainty, signaling that outcome depends not only on evidence but on character. The climactic movement stresses earned credibility over spectacle.
The conclusion resolves the principal contest while acknowledging the cost of the journey. Without detailing final turns, the book closes on a balanced note, granting the protagonist a measure of success consistent with the values chosen along the way. Loose threads tie back to earlier moments, emphasizing how integrity, endurance, and prudent audacity shape lasting results. The overarching message is clear: in the race of life, speed matters, but direction matters more. Ambition proves most durable when guided by conscience, and the rewards that endure are those built on trust, responsibility, and the steady work of keeping faith.
Historical Context
The Race of Life is set in the late Victorian to early Edwardian world, roughly the 1890s through the first years of the twentieth century, with scenes and social milieus characteristic of London and the wider British Empire. The period is marked by steamship travel, telegraphy, and rapid urban growth, which compress distances and quicken the tempo of business and personal ambition. London’s West End affluence juxtaposed with East End poverty provides a striking social geography, while ports from South Africa to Australia sit within a global circuit of trade and migration. The ambience of speculative finance, imperial mobility, and rigid class hierarchies frames the novel’s contests for wealth, status, and survival.
The zenith of the British Empire under Queen Victoria and, after 1901, Edward VII formed the dominant background. By the 1890s, Britain controlled strategic corridors such as the Suez Canal (opened 1869), enabling fast maritime routes between Europe and Asia. Companies like P and O and the Orient Line connected London with Bombay, Cape Town, and Sydney, while submarine cables integrated the Empire’s information networks. This imperial infrastructure normalized long-distance risk taking and fortune hunting. The Race of Life mirrors this world of mobility and opportunity by placing characters against an expansive map in which speed, communication, and access to far markets determine winners and losers in life’s competitive struggle.
Late nineteenth century finance experienced spectacular booms and shocks that reshaped London’s City and the fortunes of ordinary investors. The Baring Crisis of 1890, triggered by overexposure to Argentine debt, led to a Bank of England organized rescue syndicate led by N M Rothschild and others to prevent systemic collapse. In 1892 the Liberator Building Society scandal involving Jabez Balfour ruined thousands of small savers. Across the Empire, the Australian banking crisis of 1893 saw multiple bank suspensions in Melbourne and Sydney after land speculation soured, while promoter Ernest Terah Hooley’s flotations collapsed in the late 1890s. The novel’s preoccupation with hazard, windfall, and ruin reflects this financialized culture, depicting ambition and moral compromise amid credit-fueled ascent and abrupt reversal.
South African mineral booms and the Second Boer War (1899 to 1902) cast long shadows. Diamonds discovered near Kimberley in 1867 and gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 transformed the Transvaal, creating Johannesburg almost overnight and attracting capital from London. Tensions between the British Empire and the Boer republics culminated in war, marked by sieges at Ladysmith, Mafeking, and Kimberley, and battles such as Spion Kop in January 1900. Commanders Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener oversaw campaigns that included scorched earth tactics and civilian internment camps. The Race of Life echoes the ethos of extraction, frontier risk, and imperial rivalry, using fortunes made in mines and wartime disruptions as engines for character mobility and ethical testing.
As an Australian born writer, Boothby’s frame of reference included Australasian transformations in the 1890s and early 1900s. The depression of the early 1890s, bank failures in 1893, and severe unemployment spurred migration and sharpened class tensions. The 1891 to 1894 shearers’ strikes in Queensland and New South Wales catalyzed the formation of the Australian Labor Party in 1891. Federation in 1901 created the Commonwealth of Australia under Prime Minister Edmund Barton, soon followed by Alfred Deakin, and enacted the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. The novel’s stress on self invention, colonial opportunity, and the precariousness of status resonates with these developments, projecting an ethos of striving shaped by economic volatility and new national identities.
Urban poverty and social investigation in London provided a stark counterpoint to imperial wealth. Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London (volumes issued 1889 to 1903) mapped the metropolis, classifying streets from comfortable to vicious poverty and quantifying deprivation. Events like the 1888 Match Girls’ Strike at Bryant and May highlighted sweated labor and industrial hazards. The East End’s notoriety after the 1888 Whitechapel murders further exposed policing limits and social neglect, prompting settlement efforts such as Toynbee Hall (founded 1884). The Race of Life draws on this stratified metropolis, staging contests for advancement against a backdrop where a wrong turn leads to destitution, and where philanthropy, policing, and public opinion shape reputations and fates.
The era’s gender politics were in flux. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies formed in 1897, while the Women’s Social and Political Union began militant campaigning in 1903 under Emmeline Pankhurst. Earlier reforms like the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 enabled women to own property, and clerical and retail jobs expanded female employment, yet legal and social constraints persisted. Debates over the New Woman and public morality permeated newspapers and clubs. The Race of Life reflects these tensions through its depiction of courtship, inheritance, and respectability, where women’s choices are circumscribed by convention and law, and male reputations can be made or broken by alliances across drawing rooms and offices.
As social and political critique, the book casts the period’s celebrated progress as a contest stacked by capital, empire, and gendered privilege. Its episodes of speculation, migration, and urban striving expose how credit systems, imperial wars, and patronage distribute opportunity unevenly, rewarding audacity while punishing the unconnected. By juxtaposing plush clubs with precarious lodgings, and colonial windfalls with metropolitan ruin, it interrogates the morality of wealth won through extraction and financial engineering. The constraints placed on women and the working poor highlight the limits of meritocratic rhetoric. In dramatizing ambition’s costs, the novel questions the justice of a society that prizes speed and accumulation over solidarity and responsibility.
The Race of Life
I. — "A BOY'S WILL IS THE WIND'S WILL."
IF any man had told me a year ago that I should start out to write a book, I give you my word I should not have believed him. It would have been the very last job I should have thought of undertaking. Somehow I've never been much of a fist with the pen. The branding iron and stockwhip have always been more in my line, and the saddle a much more familiar seat than the author's chair. However, fate is always at hand to arrange matters for us, whether we like it or not, and so it comes about that I find myself at this present moment seated at my table—pen in hand, with a small mountain of virgin foolscap in front of me, waiting to be covered with my sprawling penmanship. What the story will be like when I have finished it, and whether those who do me the honour of reading it will find it worthy of their consideration, is more than I can say. I have made up my mind to tell it, however, and that being so, we'll "chance it," as we say in the Bush[2]. Should it not turn out to be to your taste, well, my advice to you is to put it down at once and turn your attention to the work of somebody else who has had greater experience in this line of business than your humble servant. Give me a three-year old as green as grass, and I'll sit him until the cows come home; let me have a long day's shearing, even when the wool is damp or there's grass seed in the fleece; a hut to be built, or a tank to be sunk, and it's all the same to me; but to sit down in cold blood and try to describe your past life, with all its good deeds (not very many of them in my case) and bad, successes and failures, hopes and fears, requires more cleverness, I'm afraid, than I possess. However, I'll imitate the old single-stick players in the West of England, and toss my hat on the stage as a sign that, no matter whether I'm successful or not, I intend doing my best, and I can't say more than that. Here goes then.
To begin with, I must tell you who I am, and whence I hail. First and foremost, my name is George Tregaskis—my father was also a George Tregaskis, as, I believe, was his father before him. The old dad used to say that we came of good Cornish stock, and I'm not quite sure that I did not once hear him tell somebody that there was a title in the family. But that did not interest me; for the reason, I suppose, that I was too young to understand the meaning of such things. My father was born in England, but my mother was Colonial, Ballarat[1] being her native place. As for me, their only child, I first saw the light of day at a small station on the Murray River, which my father managed for a gentleman who lived in Melbourne, and whom I regarded as the greatest man in all the world, not even my own paternal parent excepted. Fortunately he did not trouble us much with visits, but when he did I trembled before him like a gum leaf in a storm. Even the fact that on one occasion he gave me half-a-crown on his departure could not altogether convince me that he was a creature of flesh and blood like my own father or the hands upon the run. I can see him now, tall, burly, and the possessor of an enormous beard that reached almost to his waist. His face was broad and red and his voice deep and sonorous as a bell. When he laughed he seemed to shake all over like a jelly; taken all round, he was a jovial, good-natured man, and proved a good friend to my mother and myself when my poor father was thrown from his horse and killed while out mustering in our back country. How well I remember that day! It seems to me as if I can even smell the hot earth, and hear the chirrup of the cicadas in the gum trees by the river bank. Then came the arrival of Dick Bennet[3], the overseer, with a grave face, and as nervous as a plain turkey when you're after him on foot. His horse was all in a lather and so played out that I doubt if he could have travelled another couple of miles.
"Georgie, boy," Dick began, as he got out of his saddle and threw his reins on the ground, "where's your mother? Hurry up and tell me, for I've got something to say to her."
"She's in the house," I answered, and asked him to put me up in the saddle. He paid no attention to me, however, but was making for the house door when my mother made her appearance on the verandah. Little chap though I was, I can well recall the look on her face as her eyes fell upon him. She became deadly pale, and for a moment neither of them spoke, but stood looking at each other for all the world as if they were struck dumb. My mother was the first to speak.
"What has happened?" she asked, and her voice seemed to come from deep down in her throat, while her hands were holding tight on to the rail before her as if to prevent herself from falling. "I can see there is something wrong, Mr. Bennet."
Dick turned half round and looked at me. I suppose he did not want me to overhear what he had to say. My mother bade him come inside, and they went into the house together. It was nearly ten minutes before he came out again, and, though I had to look more than once to make sure of it, there were big tears rolling down his cheeks. I could scarcely believe the evidence of my eyes, for Dick was not a man given to the display of emotion, and I had always been told that it was unworthy of a man to cry. I admired Dick from the bottom of my heart, and this unexpected weakness on his part came to me as somewhat of a shock. He left the verandah and came over to where I was standing by poor old Bronzewing, whose wide-spread nostrils and heaving flanks were good evidence as to the pace at which he had lately been compelled to travel.
"Georgie, my poor little laddie," he said, laying his hand upon my shoulder in a kindly way as he spoke, "run along into the house and find your mother. She'll be wanting you badly, if I'm not mistaken, poor soul. Try and cheer her up, there's a good boy, but don't talk about your father unless she begins it." And then, more to himself I fancy than to me, he added, "Poor little man, I wonder what will happen to you now that he's gone? You'll have to hoe your row for yourself, and that's a fact."
Having seen me depart, he slipped his rein over his arm and went off in the direction of his own quarters, Bronzewing trailing after him looking more like a worn-out working bullock than the smart animal that had left the station for the mustering camp three days before. I found my mother in her room, sitting beside her bed and looking straight before her as if she were turned to stone. Her eyes, in which there was no sign of a tear, were fixed upon a large photograph of my father hanging on the wall beside the window, and though I did not enter the room, I fear, any too quietly, she seemed quite unconscious of my presence.
"Mother," I began, "Dick said you wanted me." And then I added anxiously, "You don't feel ill, do you, mother?"
"No, my boy, I'm not ill," she answered. "No! not ill. Though, were it not for you, I could wish that I might die. Oh, God, why could You not have taken my life instead of his?" Then drawing me to her, she pressed me to her heart and kissed me again and again. Later she found relief in tears, and between her sobs I learnt all there was to know. My father was dead; his horse that morning had put his foot in a hole and had thrown his rider— breaking his neck and killing him upon the spot. Dick had immediately set off to acquaint my mother with the terrible tidings, with the result I have already described. The men who had accompanied him to the muster were now bringing the body into the head station, and it was necessary that preparations should be made to receive it. Never, if I live to be a hundred, shall I forget the dreariness, the utter and entire hopelessness of that day. Little boy though I was, and though I scarcely realised what my loss meant to me, I was deeply affected by the prevailing gloom. As for my mother, she entered upon her preparations and went about her housework like one in a dream. She and my father had been a devoted couple, and her loss was a wound that only that great healer Time could cure. Indeed, it has always been my firm belief that she never did really recover from the shock—at any rate, she was never again the same cheery, merry woman that she had once been. Poor mother, looking back on all I have gone through myself since then, I can sympathise with you from the bottom of my heart.
It was nearly nightfall when that melancholy little party made their appearance at the head station. Dick, with great foresight, had sent the ration cart out some miles to meet them, so that my mother was spared the pain of seeing the body of her husband brought in upon his horse. Rough and rude as he was, Dick was a thoughtful fellow, and I firmly believe he would have gone through fire and water to serve my mother, for whom he had a boundless admiration. Poor fellow, he died of thirst many years after when looking for new country out on the far western border of Queensland. God rest him, for he was a good fellow, and did his duty as far as he could see it, which is more than most of us do, though, to be sure, we make a very fair pretence of it. However, I haven't taken up my pen to moralise, so I'll get along with my story and leave my reader to draw his or her own conclusions from what I have to set down, good, bad, or indifferent as the case may be.
As I have said, it was towards evening when my father's body reached the homestead. My mother met it at the gate of the horse paddock and walked beside it up to the house, as she had so often done when what was now but poor, cold clay was vigorous, active flesh and blood. It had been her custom to meet him there on his return from inspecting the run, when he would dismount, and placing his arm around her waist, stroll back with her to the house, myself as often as not occupying his place in the saddle. On reaching his old home he was carried reverently to his own room and placed upon the bed there. Then, for the first time, my mother looked upon her dead husband's face. I stole in behind her and slipped my hand into hers. Together we stood and gazed at the pale, yet placid face of the man we had both loved so well. It was the first time I had met that grim sovereign, Death, and as yet I was unable to realise how great his power was. I could not understand that my father, the big, strong man, so fearless, so masterful, was gone from us beyond recall—that I should never hear his kindly voice again, or sit upon his knee while he told me tales of Bunyips and mysterious long-maned brumbies, who galloped across the moonlit plains, and of exploration journeys he had undertaken as a young man in the wilder and less known regions of the North and West. Even then I could not realise my loss. I asked my mother if he were asleep.
"Yes, dear," she answered, very softly, "he is asleep—asleep with God!" Then she led me from the room and put me to bed as quietly and composedly as she had always done. Her grief was too deep, too thorough, to find vent in the omission of even the most trivial details. I learnt afterwards that when she left me, after kissing me and bidding me "good- night," she returned to the death chamber and spent the night there, kneeling and praying beside the bed on which lay the body of the man she loved, and to whom she had always been so good and true a wife.
Realising how overwrought she was, Dick Bennet made all the necessary arrangements for the funeral, which took place two days later on a little knoll that over-looked the river, some two miles below the station house. There he was quietly laid to rest by the hands, who one and all mourned the loss they had sustained in him. Dick it was who read the service over him, and he, poor fellow, broke down in the middle of it. Then, after one final glance into the open grave, we, my mother and myself, took our places in the cart beside him and returned to the house that was destined to be our home for only a short time longer. As a matter of fact, a month later we had bade the old place "good-bye," and were installed in a small house in the neighbourhood of Melbourne, where I was immediately put to school. My father had all his life been a saving, thrifty man, so that, with what he left her, my mother was able not only to live in a fairly comfortable way, but to give me an education by which, I can see now, I should have profited a great deal more than I did. I am afraid, however, that I had not the gift of application, as the schoolmasters express it. I could play cricket and football; in fact, I was fond of all outdoor sports—but book-learning, Euclid, Algebra, Latin, and Greek, interested me not at all. Among my many other faults I unfortunately possessed that of an exceedingly hot temper, but from whom I inherited it I am quite unable to say. At the least provocation I was wont to fly into fits of ungovernable rage, during which I would listen to no reason, and be pacified by nothing short of obtaining my own way. It was in vain that my mother argued with me and strove to make me conquer myself; I would promise to try, but the next time I was upset I was as bad as ever. To punish me was useless, it only strengthened my determination not to give in. I have often thought since, on looking back on it all, that it must have been a sad and anxious period of my poor mother's life, for, after all, I was all she had left in the world to think of and to love. What would I not give now to be able to tell her that I was sorry for the many heartaches I must have caused her by my wilfulness and folly?
It was not until something like nine years after my father's death, and when I was a tall, lanky youth of close upon eighteen, that I was called upon to make up my mind as to what profession I should adopt. My mother would have preferred me to enter the Government service, but a Civil Service clerkship was far from being to my taste. The promotion was slow and the life monotonous to the last degree. My own fancy was divided between the bush and the sea, both of which choices my mother opposed with all the strength and firmness of which she was capable. In either case she knew that she would lose me, and the thought cut her to the heart. Eventually it was decided that for the time being, at least, I should enter the office of an excellent firm of stock and station agents to whom my father had been well—known. Should I later on determine to go into the Bush, the training I should have received there would prove of real value to me. This compromise I accepted, and accordingly the next two years found me gracing a stool in the firm's office in Collins Street, growing taller every day, and laying the flattering unction to my soul that since I could play a moderate game of billiards and had developed a taste for tobacco, I was every day becoming more and more a man of the world. All this time my mother looked on and waited to see what the end would be How many mothers have done the same! Alas, poor mothers, how little we understand you!
As I have said, I endured the agent's office for two years, and during that time learnt more than I was really conscious of. There was but small chance of advancement, however, and in addition to that I was heartily sick and tired of the monotony. Bills of lading, the rise and decline in the price of wool and fat stock, the cost of wire netting and of station stores, interested me only in so far as they suggested, and formed part and parcel of, the life of the Bush. For me there was a curious fascination in the very names of the stations for which my employers transacted business. The names of the districts and the rivers rang in my ears like so much music—Murrumbidgee, Deniliquin, Riverina, Warrego, Snowy River, Gundagai, and half a hundred others, all spoke of that mysterious land, the Bush, which was as unlike the Metropolis of the South as chalk is unlike cheese. At last, so great did my craving become, I could wait no longer. Being perfectly well aware that my mother would endeavour to dissuade me from adopting such a course, I resolved to act on my own initiative. Accordingly, I took the bull by the horns and sent in my letter of resignation, which, needless to say, was accepted. Almost wondering at my own audacity, I left the office that evening and went home to break the news to my mother. On that score I am prepared to admit that I felt a little nervous. I knew her well enough to feel sure that in the end she would surrender, but I dreaded the arguments and attempts at persuasion that would lead up to it. I found her in our little garden at the back of the house, sitting in her cane chair, darning a pair of my socks. Nearly fifty though she was, it struck me that she scarcely looked more than forty. Her hair, it was true, was streaked with grey, but this was more the handiwork of sorrow than of time. On hearing my step upon the path, she looked up and greeted me with a smile of welcome.
"Come and sit down, dear boy," she said, pushing a chair forward for me as she spoke. "You look tired and hot after your walk."
I took a chair beside her and sat down. For some time we talked on commonplace subjects, while I stroked our old cat and tried to make up my mind to broach the matter that was uppermost in my mind. How to do it I did not quite know. She seemed so happy that it looked almost like a cowardly action to tell her what I knew only too well would cause her the keenest pain she had known since my father died. And yet there was nothing to be gained by beating about the bush or by putting off the evil moment. The news had to be told sooner or later, and I knew that it would be better in every way that she should hear it from my lips rather than from those of a stranger. That would only have the effect of increasing her pain.
"Mother," I blurted out at last, "I've got something to say to you which I am very much afraid you will not be pleased to hear. I have been thinking it over for a long time, and have at last made up my mind. Can you guess what I mean?"
The happy light at once died out of her eyes, as I knew only too well it would do.
"Yes, dear," she replied very slowly and deliberately, as if she were trying to force herself to be calm. "I think I can guess what you are going to say to me. I have seen it coming for some time past, though you may not have noticed it. George, dear. You are tired of your present employment and you want to go into the Bush. Is that not so?"
"It is," I said. "Mother, I can stand this drudgery no longer. It is worse than what I should imagine prison life must be. The same sort of work day after day without any change, the same dreary old ledgers and books, the never-ending acknowledgment of the 'receipt of your esteemed favour of such and such a date'—it is enough to drive any man mad who has a love for the open air, for the sunshine and the doing of man's work. Why, any girl could carry out my duties at the office, and probably better than I do. And what do I get for it? A paltry salary of thirty shillings a week, upon which I have to live and dress like a gentleman and fritter the best years of my life away on the top of a high stool with next to nothing to look forward to. No, mother, I have been convinced in my own mind for a long time that it cannot go on. I must go into the Bush, as my father did before me. Like him, I must work my way up the ladder, and you may be sure, if only for your sake, I shall do my best to succeed."
I paused, not knowing what else to say. For the moment I had forgotten to explain the important fact that I had sent in my resignation to the firm, and that they had accepted it. My mother shook her head sadly. She had seen so many start out filled with ambition and the desire to carry off the prize in the Race of Life—only to succumb before the contest was completed under the crushing weight of competition, which in the Bush is perhaps keener than anywhere else.
"Ah, my dear boy," she said, laying her hand upon my arm, "you are young, and, like most young folk, you imagine you have only to go forth armed with the strength of youth and ambition to carry all before you. Do you think you realise that if your life in this wonderful city is monotonous, it will be doubly so in the solitude of the Bush? Who knows that better than I, who have spent so many years of my life there? You see it through the rosy spectacles of romance. I am afraid, however, you will find it very different in reality. It is both a rough and a hard calling, and, unhappily, it as often as not unfits a man for any other, so that when he tires of it, he is apt to discover, as so many have done before him, that he must continue in his servitude, for the simple and sufficient reason that there is nothing else that he can do. At the best it is a wearing, soul-tiring profession, and even if a man is lucky the profit can only be a small one in these days."
"You are not very encouraging, mother," I remarked, with what was, I fear, but a forced laugh. "After all is said and done, it is a life fit for a man, and as such must surely be better than that of a miserable, ink-slinging, quill-driver, such as I have been for too long."
"Think it carefully over," was her reply; "do not act too hastily. Look at it from every point of view. Remember the old saying, 'A bird in hand is worth two in the bush[1q].' "
"Yes," I answered, "that is so. At the same time, in my opinion, twenty clerks in town are not worth five good men in the Bush—which is another side of the question. No, dear, my mind is made up, and—" here I hesitated, and I noticed that she looked at me in a startled way. "Well, the long and the short of it is, my resignation has gone in."
"Oh, George, George," she said, "I am afraid you have been very ill-advised to take such a step. I only pray you may not live to regret it. Oh, my boy, you must not be angry with me, your mother, for you don't know what you are to me. I have only you to look to, only you to think of. When you leave me I shall be quite alone."
"But only for a time, mother," I answered. "I will work hard to make a home for you so that we may be together again. That will make me anxious to get on, if nothing else does. Who knows but that some day I may get the management of the old station where I was born and where you were so happy. Think of that!"
But she only shook her head; she was not to be comforted merely by speculation as to what the future might or might not bring forth. While I was dreaming my day—dreams, she was standing face to face with the reality.
"Then in a month's time you will be wanting to go off," she said after a long pause. "Have you any idea where you are going? The Bush is a big place, and since you have set your heart on going, I should like you to start well. My experience has taught me that so much depends on that. Could not the firm advise you on the matter? They know that you have served them well, and, doubtless, they would be willing to lend you a helping hand. Try them, dear lad."
But, as I have already said, I was an obstinate young beggar, and to use a strong expression, I was anxious to start my new life off my own bat. Besides, the managing partner had rather taken me to task on the matter of my resignation, and had prophesied that it would not be long before I should find reason to regret my "hasty and ill-considered determination," as he was pleased in his wisdom to term it. For this reason alone I did not feel disposed to solicit a favour at his hands, however trivial it might be. I argued that before very long I would be in a position to prove to them that the change I had made in my life was not for the worse, but for the better. Who knew but that the time might come when I should be enrolled upon their list of clients—a client before whom they would bow and scrape, as I had so often seen them do during the time I had been with them? That, I flattered myself, would be a triumph big enough to compensate one for any amount of privation and hard work. How sanguine I was of success you will be able to estimate for yourself. After all this time, I can look back on it with a smile of compassion for the poor deluded youth, who not only thought his own wisdom infinitely superior to that of anyone else, but was foolish enough to act upon it. How he fared you will be able to see for yourself, if you can find sufficient patience to read on.
After that memorable conversation on the lawn, when I had told her of my resolution, and of the action I had taken, my mother raised no further objection. Probably she realised that it would have been of no use if she did.
During the month's grace that was allowed me, I did not permit the grass to grow under my feet. I made enquiries in all directions, and brought to bear every influence I could think of. But like every new player of the game, I was too much inclined to be fastidious. I made the mistake of settling in my mind the sort of station I wanted, without pausing to reflect that it was within the bounds of possibility that that station might not want me. For this reason I threw aside more than one fair offer, which later on I should have been glad to jump at. But one has to learn by experience in the Bush as well as elsewhere, and I was only doing what many another deluded youngster had done before me.
Slowly the month wore on, and each day found me nearer the end of my clerkly service and closer to the new life which I had assured myself was to bring me both wealth and happiness. So far I had not succeeded in hearing of anything I liked, and was, in consequence, beginning to fear that to avoid being laughed at it would eventually be necessary for me to end by taking whatever I could get. The position was humiliating, but the moral was obvious.
At last the day arrived on which I was to bid farewell to the firm and my old associates. I am not going to pretend that I felt any great sorrow at severing my connection with them; it was unlikely under the circumstances that I should. Nevertheless it is scarcely possible to discard a life to which one has been long accustomed without some small feeling of regret. The grey-haired chief clerk hoped, but not too confidently, that I might be successful; the junior partner wished me good luck in his best society manner; while the senior, before whom we were all supposed to tremble, sincerely trusted I might never have occasion to reproach myself for the course of action I had thought fit to pursue. It did not strike any of them to ask me whither I was going. Had they done so, I should have found it difficult to tell them.
