XXV
Jim, by all accounts, had a great afternoon’s shooting, and was as pleased and contented as if there was nothing ahead that we need trouble about in the world. A little pleasure went a long way with poor old Jim. He was like mother in that way, when I recollect her before she found out all about father’s cross work, and what might come of it.
In the regular old days of all she was always as happy as could be, working and singing away all day long, and thinking about nothing but her housework and her children, and hardly ever sitting down from morning to night. Even when father was away it seems she was that simple she never dropped down to his being at any kind of dishonest work that would bring him within the law. She knew he’d done it once in his life and suffered for it; but she believed all that was over and paid for. She never dreamt he’d taken to it again, worse than ever: and meant to stick to it to the end of his days.
I wasn’t very big when I knew she’d found it all out, and I was sharp enough to see then what a deal of difference it made in her ways. She’d often break off in the middle of her singing, and stop still and study and think till the tears would roll down her cheeks. Then she’d pick up Aileen, that was a little thing in those days, and kiss her and make much of her, as if she couldn’t leave off. Then she’d sit down and tell over her beads, and we’d hear her saying words we didn’t understand. I don’t hold with the Catholics myself, and I’m not likely to now; but if every man and woman followed up their religion like mother and Aileen did we shouldn’t want many police in this country, and they might let gaols out for lodging-houses.
If mother had any sins to answer for, and I never saw nor heard tell of any, she paid for them in sorrow and fear, and misery ten times over. If any people in the world could take the sin of others on their own souls, mother and Aileen did on theirs, and it ought to be put to their account when all these sort of things are settled up in another world, and everyone gets their cheque.
It seems Jim had shot two brace of black duck, a lowan, a wallaby (he brought home the tail), and half-a-dozen wonga-wonga pigeons. So he was pretty well loaded. We broiled a couple of pigeons for supper and picked a pair of ducks to last us tomorrow. The rest we could bring home. Starlight was awful fond of black duck and always had them cooked with every care. “You might just as well have good cooking and reasonable comfort as the other thing,” he used to say. “Circumstances may have prevented us from being honest that’s no reason why we should be slovenly and barbarous in our habits as well.”
So we had everything snug enough and orderly at the cave. There was plenty of room; every man had his cabin and sleeping place to himself, partitioned off with slabs neatly enough. Dad was always a neat, tidy kind of man, so everything was kept shipshape and man-of-war fashion. Our hut-keeping and cooking were a deal better than many a squatter had to put up with then.
Next morning at sunrise we turned to at the line I’d marked out, put in a trench outside, and worked in towards the old fig-tree. We’d done a good two hours’ work, when all of a sudden the ground got easy to dig, and we knew that it must have been moved before.
“Here we are, Dick,” says Jim, after a bit driving away with the pick, like a good ’un, scooping out the soil. “There’s something hard here and no mistake.” The pick sounded again and again. What should it be but a big, rough-made, wooden box, most like a sailor’s, put together by a man who never served his time as a carpenter.
We were a good while before we could hoist it out. It wasn’t like the other, full of papers, we could see. There were strong hide handles at each end, mouldy, but sound enough for us to lift its weight with. It was padlocked, but before I could make a try at opening the lock Jim smashed the staple with the axe and lifted the lid.
First there was a double fold of tarred canvas so as to keep away all moisture, and the places between the boards plugged with oakum, and tarred too. When we pulled up this, we saw a number of canvas bags, very strongly stitched, and on each of them was marked 5 lb. We opened the first bag, all carefully tied up it was too, and sure enough it was all gold; some coarse, some fine, some with quartz, some with black sand, but all pure gold. The real thing and no mistake. Gold!
We had seen too much of it at the diggings to be mistaken, and we felt we knew enough in a general way to go digging on our own hook. All the bags were one weight, and filled in the same way. There were just ten of them. In one corner we found a brassbound, very neat-worked writing desk; on the outside the letters D D W. There was a small gold watch and chain, a lock of brown hair, and a few women’s rings—one of them looked good—and a few other nicknacks.
Besides the gold there were a whole lot of other bags with bits of rough metal and things like that in them. That was what made the box so heavy: all labelled and marked very careful, but when we saw they weren’t gold we didn’t bother much about them. There wasn’t anything else that looked likely except the desk; it was light, but full of letters and papers, so we made up to bring it in to Starlight, or let him come out to see it, whichever suited best. We should find out by it the old man’s real name, his reasons for living and dying in this lonely place, so far from everything and everybody in the world—in his world—and all his other secrets, if he had any. Some of them might be useful to us; some of them mightn’t. Anyhow, we’d like to know all about him, and as he’d left us the gold, or as good, we felt as if we’d do anything for him that he might have left word about in his last days. But the gold; it wasn’t a thing exactly to be left knocking about, even in the Hollow; so we took a bag each with us to show dad and the others, and covered up the big box again.
Of course we found ways and means to get the bags and afterwards the box and desk with the papers safe into the cave, when Starlight took a regular two or three days to overhaul them, and pick out those that he thought we’d care most to know about.
First of all he found out that his name was Dominick Devereux Wharton, the Honourable Mr. Wharton too, a younger son of Lord Wharncombe’s, of Wharncombe Abbey. He had married, seemingly, against the wishes of his family, and being very fond of travelling and botany and geology (that’s what he had down in the paper, Starlight said) he made up his mind to come out to the unknown land of Australia, where he could hunt up new plants and strange birds and animals, and live away (he said) from people that despised his tastes as much as he despised their opinions. Starlight used to read all this out to us; some of it we caught the sense of, and part, of course, we didn’t, being too learned and high-flown for the like of us. But we caught the hang of it in a general way, and thought what a flat he was if he liked moving about after rocks and plants better than taking it easy in his own country, and that country England. However, we knew other men, Jim said, that had been fools, and why not him? Besides, he had a wife that had followed him that he cared more for than anything under the sun ten times over. And he was fond of her, if ever a man was of a woman. Time after time, Starlight read out bits where he talked about her as if there wasn’t any other woman in the world, least ways not for him. I suppose there’s men that feel that way now and then. Women, I know, do; but it’s mighty seldom a man’s that wrapped up in his wife or any other woman. Not that I’ve known about, and I have seen a good many, one way and another.
The Honourable Dominick Wharton wasn’t much like other people, for he seemed to have been as happy as the day was long then, when they lived in Sydney in a bit of a cottage by Double Bay, and when they went into the bush and travelled about together, making sketches, collecting specimens, hunting about for minerals, and stones, and rubbish of that kind, and she drying the plants and flowers, and putting labels on his bags, and never sparing herself in anything, only if she could please him. “The angels cannot be happier in heaven,” is what he wrote down at the end of one of his days’ work.
One thing he seemed particularly keen to find out was the gold and silver, of all things. He’d travelled in Mexico when he was a boy and seen what he called “placer” mining, same as our shallow sinking, I expect. He watched how they washed it out of the alluvial in cradles. So, besides his plants and stones and bones, and wanting to know how old the world was, which he needn’t have troubled his head about, he was always hunting and digging and washing about the creek and riverbeds, expecting to find gold, because he said the country was just like places where they always found gold and silver and other metals too.
But how did he come to the Hollow, and why did he live there so long and die there? That was what we wanted to know.
Then Starlight pulled out another parcel of paper, tied round with a black silk string, and begins to read. He looked different himself, and stopped chaffing and laughing, as we’d all been doing a bit, partly for nonsense, and partly not to seem too solemn-like.
“My wife is dead! dead! my adored, my only love, my true life, my soul! Why should I ever put pen to paper again? Why ever commit my vain thoughts and worthless words to a lasting record, when she who inspired every thought of my heart, every motion of my mind, every act of my being, lies dead! dead! pulseless, motionless for evermore! This wilderness—with her companionship, a Paradise replete with treasures of knowledge—seems now an Inferno, in which every tree sighs her death-note to the breeze—every plant, every flower, recalls her name. Estelle! lost Estelle, when shall I rejoin thee?
“She died in my arms. God was merciful, else might I have been afar. Despite the deadly reptile poison, her senses were retained to the closing breath, until her last wishes found full expression. She gently reproved my despair, my wrath against fate, my defiance of Heaven. Was I, the philosopher, the instructed student, the votary of science, to yield to blind, unreasoning despair—to blasphemous rage against that Providence which had granted us long years of happiness, ages of blissful companionship? No. I must not rave, nor weep, nor despair, if I wished my own Estelle to die happily and in peace. For her sake would I promise to carry out steadfastly, to complete, our original plan of scientific research? She adjured me by our lost love and hope—by this fast-fading sunset of all our hope and joy—by that dread day in which we should meet again. With such an object life would be endurable, and death not unwelcome. Would I swear?
“They smiled, how faintly sweet, those softest lips, those dying love-lit eyes, as I knelt by the rude couch and vowed to the Eternal Ruler of the Universe—to the Heaven on the threshold of which she lay—by our immortal love—by that after life which spirits parted, but not divided, in time must share.
“Her stainless soul winged its flight from earth ere I rose well-nigh from a death-swoon, but pledged to carry out her dying wishes to the letter.”
“Poor old chap,” says Jim, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “that’s enough to show why he took it into his head to turn batter and live all by himself in the Hollow, which I expect never had an honest man camped upon it before or since. It’s curious how things turn up. Did you ever see him, father?”
“No, not I. He was dead the year before Donohoe showed me the trick of getting in and out of this place. His mates both died a bit after. One got the horrors after drinking for a month straight on end, and pitched himself down that limestone place where the waterfall is. How the gin (Warrigal’s mother) died, Donohoe wouldn’t say. The other man was shot by the mounted police. One day they had been sticking up one of old Bradley’s drays. He got home pretty right, but died of it. Donohoe was getting old and done himself, and had to get a mate of some sort. He knew I was middlin’ game, and could hold my tongue, even when I was drunk, so he took me. It’s a long story how the captain came among us; but he saved Warrigal’s life when Donohoe had tied him up to a tree and was going to shoot him. That’s why he takes to him more than anyone in the world. He’s true to you, Captain, if he is to anyone, I believe.”
Starlight didn’t read any more to us just then. We looked over all the papers, and read and sorted ’em out next day. All the specimens, and plants and letters, and private papers he put away in the iron box, and fastened them up and locked them quite careful. “These we’ll send home to the poor old chap’s relatives when we can get a chance, boys,” he said. “I know something of the family. They lived in the same—well, near enough for me to know all about them. I remember hearing that one of the sons of old Lord Wharncombe had sailed away to Australia with his wife when I was a boy, and never been heard of since. I never thought I should hear anything about him again.”
The end of it all was that Starlight told us that he had learnt out of the letters and papers that Mr. Wharton and his wife, she being a clever, high-taught woman, had been very fond of the same kind of science work and all that as he was. More than that, she thought nothing a hardship, as other women would, as long as they were both together carrying out their learned ways and gathering in what they expected to make them both famous and run after when they got back to the old country.
Don’t you make any mistake, not for that, not for the blessed honour and glory rot, but to show that he was right—right in marrying her to be a comfort and help to him—right in going after learning and discovering things in a new country that was a hundred times better than trying to make money for himself—right in everything he did—and at long last proved to be one of the tiptop men of his day.
That was what she wanted—for him, not no ways for herself. That was what they were both trying for with might and main when she was stung by the infernal black snake and died. What a murder it seems when you think of the number of useless wretches that tread over snakes every week of the summer, and no harm comes to them, nor wouldn’t if they was to eat out of the same dish with ’em. It’e one of the things I can’t make out, and never shall, I expect.
We were all a bit thrown back not to find more gold in the big box. More of that, and fewer specimens, stones, and plants in the collection, as he called it, we should have fancied. But after all, we were not to order how such a man as this should spend his life. He had done what God and his dead wife called on him to do, and had close up finished his work when his end came.
Here’s another bit of his journal: “I have now dried, numbered, and scientifically named the most important collection of plants ever made in this wonderful South Land. Besides this, I believe the gold specimens and metallic ores to be unique. Had I but been spared another year I should have accompanied them to Europe, and completed the life task which I promised my sainted darling Estelle almost in her death’s agony to perform. But I feel my end approaching. It is hard to die, amid these rude solitudes, peaceful as they are: but I bow to the fiat of the Great Creator. I have been averse to committing these priceless scientific treasures to the rude and careless hands of the present occupants of this retreat. I have, therefore, buried them at a spot indicated by the letters of my name and the years of my hapless life. Trusting that some day the clue may be followed by persons of intelligence, and their disposal according to my last solemn wishes may be carefully carried out.”
The direction given to a well-known scientific swell—(Starlight said he was)—in England was plain enough. The gold, the plants, and the specimens were to be sent there. The other letters and things were to go to his old family home, so they’d know at last what became of Dominick Wharton and his wife.
“Well,” says Starlight, after smoking for ever so long; “I think we’re bound to carry out this dead man’s wishes. The gold there isn’t worth bothering with. I wouldn’t have a dead man’s curse with double as much. We’re not likely to go short of a few hundreds the way things look now. As for the plants and specimens, no one wants to collar them. What do ye say, boys? Let’s put it to the vote. Shall we pack up the whole lot and send it straight off by the first ship to his own people, the way he said? We’ll put it to the vote.”
Father didn’t hold up his hand for a bit; but even he did, last of all. So it was carried. I think we slept better after it.
So after her death it seems that he gave himself up altogether to roaming about the bush and following on with the same sort of things as they had worked together at while she was alive. He still kept on collecting plants and specimens and so on. At times he seemed to be only half in his senses, so he said himself; but the only relief he got was in travelling about through the wildest parts of the bush, and whenever he found a fresh plant or discovered another mineral he could fancy her looking down upon him and smiling with pleasure as she used to do when she was alive.
In particular, they had both agreed, it seems, about this gold-racket, and there being for certain a lot of it to be found in Australia just as there was in America, and Russia, and other countries as he’d travelled in. So he wanted to be able to prove this, for her sake and his before he died.
It was hunting after this gold that made him drop down upon the Hollow one day. He was wandering along, it appears, somewhere about the tableland of Nulla Mountain when he saw a man with a gun, not a great way off, fire at a kangaroo. When he shot it, he took off the hind quarters and went away. Wharton kept him in sight; he wanted to ask him about the way the creeks ran. He never minded who he spoke to as long as they could tell him something, when all of a sudden the man dropped over the side of the mountain and disappeared. Mr. Wharton (so he wrote it down), rubbed his eyes and looked and began to think he was dreaming. He used to see strange things sometimes, but he went back to where the kangaroo was and saw the carcase. That woke him up. Then he went to the place where he saw the man last, and after poking about, and having pretty sharp eyes for small things he fell upon Donohoe’s track, he was the man, and followed right down the gully into the Hollow.
He was stunned when he saw what a place it was, and not satisfied till he ferreted out every nook and corner of it. Donohoe and the others were going to kill him at first, but seeing he was harmless and not likely to go back again, for he told them he intended to live here all the rest of his days if they would let him. They made him swear never to tell or show anyone the secret path, and didn’t trouble themselves any more about him.
The end of it was that he built the hut and made the garden we saw. He filled up his time plant-hunting and searching for gold, some of which he gave the men from time to time. He doctored one or two of them when they were hurt, and in other ways came to be respected as a kind of well-meaning old chop that was a shingle short. When he had finished his collection he was for England, but death came it too quick on him, so he was buried under the peach tree in this blind gully. Life’s a rum thing, my word! We were pretty hard set to fill up our time, or else I daresay we should none of us have had patience to listen to all this, or cared much about it if we had heard it. If we’d been in full work, any old man might have wasted his life picking up weeds and bush flowers, when he could have lived different in the old country, and we’d have thought him fit for Tarban Creek. The gold was another matter altogether. The man that foraged out the gold and found ways and means to wash it, years and years before anyone had been sharp enough to do it at the Turon hadn’t a common sort of headpiece by any manner of means.
Then we saw from what he said (Starlight read this bit very careful to himself) that he had found a fairish lot of gold in the bars of the two creeks that ran through The Hollow, and had made up his mind that somewhere about, where they joined and ran into the limestone hole, there would be found a rich deep lead of gold, enough to find employment for thousands of men. What he had got had taken him years and years to collect in small quantities, but he was certain that in future years, from indications he had observed, enormous yields would be taken from the matrix, as well as the alluvial, and Australia become one of the richest gold producing countries in the whole world.