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Updated: June 24, 2025
I was once talking with a Western money-lender, a very good sort of fellow, frank and open as the day; I asked him whether the farmers generally paid off their mortgages, and he answered me that if the mortgage was to the value of a fourth of the land, the farmer might pay it off, but if it were to a half, or a third even, he never paid it, but slaved on and died in his debts.
There were men there who had slaved for twenty, thirty, forty years; worked as farmers have to work in few other lands first to clear the stubborn bush from the barren soil, then to fence the ground, and manure it, and force crops from it and for what? There was Cox, the farmer, starved off his selection after thirty years and going out back with his drays to work at tank-sinking for a squatter.
"I care for that boy, but I care for my life's work more. Day in, day out, night in, night out, I've slaved for it, prayed for it, believed in it, and tried to make my wife and my boys feel as I do about it, and none of them cares as I care. Look at Fabian over with the enemy, fighting his own father; look at Carnac, out in the open, taking his own way." He paused.
Three years he had slaved for the sweater, stinted and starved himself, before he had saved enough to send for his wife and children, awaiting his summons in the city by the Black Sea. Since they came they had slaved and starved together; for wages had become steadily less, work more grinding, and hours longer and later. Still, of that he thought little.
"So she loves you?" said Benjamin dully. "Yes," said Braithwaite softly. Benjamin turned on him with sudden passion. "I hate you and I am the most miserable wretch alive, but if she is happy, it is no matter about me. You've won easily what I've slaved and toiled all my life for. You won't value it as I'd have done but if you make her happy, nothing else matters.
I've hated everybody, but I've done my duty, as far as I know. I've scrubbed and slaved and taken care of you and your father, and done the best I could. "When I put that letter into his pocket, I intended for him to know that Constance was in love with another man. I'd have read it to him long ago if I'd had any idea he'd believe me.
It would be some fight if I did." His father was interested at once. "It was what I wanted when I was young politics clean politics, with a chance at statesmanship. Yes, I wanted it. But your mother wanted money." "Money hasn't any meaning to me now, dad. If I slaved until I dropped I couldn't make fifteen hundred a week." "Does your wife make that now?" "Yes.
"'Off you go! said my editor, one fine morning, after I had slaved away for him for nearly two years 'We don't want any canting truth-tellers here! Now mind that stone! You nearly slipped. Hold my arm tighter!" Helmsley did as he was told, quite meekly, looking up with a good deal of curiosity at this tall athletic creature, with the handsome head and masterful manner.
Let there be no mistake about it; it was a miracle and one performed only by the most complete abnegation of self. Men who doubtless would have groused at home had they been asked to work for a couple of hours overtime at bank or office or works, here slaved for twenty-four hours at a stretch without bite or sup, and then after a short rest went on for another twenty-four.
Mr Vane growled again, and, what was worse, sighed into the bargain, a sigh of real heartache and disappointment. "I have looked forward for twenty years to the time when my son should be old enough to help me! I have slaved all my life to keep a place for him, and now he despises me for my pains!
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