XXVI
We did a little gold digging, and got the colour here and there, just enough to show us we might make a haul some day, but we couldn’t hit it good. We rode and shot a bit till somehow I got restless, and said I’d go home for a day. It was risky, but I’d stand the racket. There couldn’t be police there night and day. Father growled and said I was a dashed fool. What did I want to run my head into a noose? We were waiting for the straight tip and then we’d try another lay. But I was that obstinate I wouldn’t be turned. I wanted to see Aileen and mother very bad; perhaps I thought I might hear something about Gracey Storefield. Anyhow I meant going.
I dressed myself pretty neat, though I took care to have nothing on to be noticed by, and rode away on an old horse that had been very fast in his day and was just good enough for a short ride like this. He was gone in the legs, but wouldn’t fall with you, and he could do his mile still in fairish time.
It was grand weather, and jolly enough till I got to the hill that looked down over the stockyard, where Goring nailed me so simple; I wondered whether he would ever have the chance again. It was getting on late in the day, so I thought I would take a good look round in case anyone was on the lookout. I could sneak down after dark and get in on the quiet easy enough. There wouldn’t be a constable on the watch always; still I knew they’d know we couldn’t keep away forever from the old place, and they wouldn’t be many days without taking a look round. Anyhow I’ll chance it tonight. I’d come out for a talk with Aiken and to see mother once more. And I’d do it, no matter what turns up.
I waited and waited—how long it seemed—till it was quite dark, in the scrub, for how did I know they wasn’t watching the place now? Then I rode over to the barn and shoved my horse in. He was pretty hungry, though I’d pulled him some grass, and there happened to be some oaten straw. I could see the oats had been threshed out of it, and I wondered who had been doing it. I loosened the girths; but didn’t take his saddle off, and hung the bridle round his neck. It was a halter-bridle, and I left the bit out of his mouth.
I walked quietly over to the hut, and looked in. There was nobody there but the two of ’em, mother and Aileen. Lonely and miserable enough they looked, God knows, but I was that glad to see them again I hardly minded it as long as they were alive. Mother was sitting in the armchair working away—knitting, I think. I never saw her without something in her hand when she was well. Aileen was reading a book at the table, and every now and then breaking off to talk to the old woman, and trying to look cheerful like.
I knocked twice, and gave a bit of a whistle. They knew Jim and I always did that. Aileen jumped up and came to the door. Mother dropped her knitting, and sat trembling all over and crossing herself.
“Who is there?” says Aileen, coming to the door, but not opening it. Her voice was pretty firm, but I thought she trembled a bit herself.
“All right, it’s me.”
“Is that you, Dick?” says she, putting her hand on the bolt, which they had well fastened below the latch.
“It’s all that’s left of me,” says I, “may I come in?”
Well, it’s a wonderful thing how your own flesh and blood sticks to you through thick and thin, particularly the womenkind! If I’d been the best son and brother that ever lived, they couldn’t have been more glad to see me, or made more of me—bless their hearts. Mother kept on thanking the Virgin and all the saints that had brought her her boy again before she died. If I’d come hack from the wars, like fellers in books covered with glory, she couldn’t have been more loving and tender-like. Aileen kept on huggin’ me till I was most out of breath. Then they both turned and looked at me again and again.
“Oh! it’s me,” I said, just for something to say. “I suppose you hardly know me again.”
“I’d know you if you were painted green,” Aileen said, with the tears still wet on her face; “but oh, how well you look, beside what you did when you came out of that terrible Berrima. You’ve grown brown and healthy-looking again, and the light has came into your eyes, and the blood to your cheeks. You look like a man again. Oh, my God! only to think that anything should have power to alter any living creature like that. And if we could only think it would never happen again. Oh, Dick! Dick!”
“It won’t ever happen again, for I’ll be dead first,” I said, “but we won’t talk about these things, Aileen, will we? I’ve run a big risk to see your face and mother’s again, and we must be gay as we can.”
“So we will,” she said, trying to smile, “so we will. Poor fellow. I mustn’t make things worse than they are. Tell me all that’s gone on at the Hollow. How’s Jim, and father, and the captain?”
After that she never said a word that wasn’t bright and cheerful; though often enough I saw her face change, and sighs would come as if her whole heart was speaking in misery and despair she couldn’t stifle. But she bustled about, and got me some tea. Ready enough for it I was, too, I’d had nothing all day; and after that we had a regular right-down good talk.
I told her all about the sort of life we led at the Hollow, and what a wonderful place it was; all about Jim and me finding the last remains of Mr. Wharton and his curious story; and all about his wife. She was ever so much taken with it, and said what a loving, true woman she must have been, and how brave it was of him to keep his promise to her, and spend the rest of his life in loneliness and hardship for her memory’s sake. “They were worthy of each other, Dick,” she said. “Theirs was a life worth living, not merely eating food, wearing clothes, sleeping and rising like most of the world. I could kneel at such people’s feet and worship them, while I can’t help despising most of the men and women that I meet. But God help us,” she said again, “who am I that I should talk in that way? Tell me more, Dick. You can’t tell how I have hungered and thirsted to meet some of you again and open my heart.”
Then I told her about Starlight, and how he had proposed to send everything home to England, even the gold, because the dead man wished it. She was quite overjoyed at the idea of our having all agreed so willingly, and couldn’t praise Starlight enough. “It’s like him,” she said, “there’s something noble about that man, in spite of the life he has led and still leads. No one can look at him without thinking what a dreadful pity it is that a blight should have fallen upon so fair a promise as his must have been. He has friends—perhaps a mother and sisters. What demon could have tempted him to wreck his whole life—the lives and happiness of others? How full of sorrow this world is! No wonder the people of our faith are glad to leave it and hide themselves where they can pray night and day for those they love, and have all great temptations hid away from them!”
We sat up late that night talking—talking away, as if we never would stop, about everything that had happened since we left. As the night went on, she seemed to grow calmer-like and more ready to tell me all about her thoughts and feelings, till we began to feel as if we were children again, when Jim and I and she used to sit yarning away by the hour together in the old barn and in this very verandah after mother was gone to bed. She’d let us sit up till all hours; but father never would when he was at home.
Of course I began to talk about George Storefield, and she told me how he was getting on better and better in the world; everything seemed to go right with him. He’d been slaughtering at the diggings, and kept a lot of men at work, and drove about in a smart dogcart with a fine horse in it, and was making no end of money—so everybody said. He was just as kind to her and mother when he met them, and always wanted to help them. But they wouldn’t take it from him or anyone else. “Why should we?” said Aileen, holding up her head, “I can work for both of us, and what little we want I can always have.”
I looked at her hands as she said this; and it was a little thing after what we’d all gone through, but it touched me up to see how rough and hard-looking her poor hands were. In old times Jim and I had been proud of their being so small and pretty looking, almost like a lady’s. She took great care of them too. Now they began to look like any old washerwoman’s, and it made me feel savage with myself that she should have been brought to this.
“Never mind my hands, Dick,” she said, smiling at me so sweet and pitiful-like. “That’s not the worst of it. They keep my heart from aching. The harder I work the better I feel. It’s trying to do without honest labour that we were all born to that makes more than half the sin and misery in the world.”
“Why shouldn’t we be able to do without it as well as others?” I said, roughly. “Lots of men and women never do a hand’s turn, and expect us to have all the work, while they have all the play. That’s neither right nor justice, and I’ll never think it so.”
“We mustn’t be angry with one another—must we, Dick?” she said, “now we meet so little; but they were born to it. We were not. Their fathers made it for them, as George Storefield is making it for his children, if he ever has any. And why shouldn’t they have the benefit of it?”
“Well, they’re good friends to us, anyhow.”
“There’s poor Gracey,” (she went on); “she rides over, and sits with me for half a day, every now and then. You can’t think how kind she is! Last time she was here I was threshing out a few oats that I knew I could sell, and nothing would serve her but she must off with her skirt, and buckle to at it with me till it was done.”
“I was wondering who threshed it, when I saw it in the barn.”
“Well, we did it between us, and great fun it was. She’s a great girl for work, and says George wants her to keep a servant, but she won’t do it just yet. I got 10 s. a bushel for the oats; wasn’t it a fine price?”
“You’re no end of a farmer,” I said. “So Gracey comes often, does she?”
“Yes, she does; she’s the only girl I almost ever see. Most people don’t trouble themselves to come to Rocky Flat now! Oh! Dick, that girl thinks of no one in the whole world but you. Don’t you think for her sake you might leave off—leave off what your life is now. I know it’s hard. But surely you might find out some way to change it.”
“Change! that’s easy said. How is a fellow to change, once being started on a road like this. We may as well have some fun while our liberty lasts. Nothing’ll make much difference in the sentence we must get if we’re taken. The only chance I see is to make a good haul, and clear out of the colony altogether.”
“But is there any hope of that?” Aileen said, looking up at me with all her heart speaking in her eyes. “If I thought it was possible I should die happy.”
“Well, Starlight says so; and he’s the man to manage it if anyone can; he has friends in Melbourne and the other colonies, he says, and he believes it might be managed easy enough some day.”
“God in Heaven grant it,” she said; “it’s a blessing to think of it anyhow.”
“Why, you might have been a lady and lived in a fine house yet, if you’d made it up with George Storefield,” I said. “Why didn’t you?”
“I could never have had a better husband. I shall always respect him; but it’s all over between us forever and a day. Poor George, I wish I could have liked him sometimes; but it doesn’t matter; nothing matters now.”
It was late enough when we parted; but there was plenty of time for sleep when I was gone, and the chances of seeing one another were getting smaller and smaller. There was no knowing what might happen to us at any time, and any little luck like this was like a bit of Heaven while it lasted. I was glad enough I’d come in spite of dad and the rest.
Next day I went off pretty early; not before daylight, though—I couldn’t do that—but the sun wasn’t very high for all that. It wasn’t a safe thing to hang about longer. It would be sure to leak out, and then the police would keep closer watch on the place than ever. As it was, they hadn’t bothered them much, though mother used to get all of a tremble, Aileen said, whenever she heard a horse’s hoof now or the jingle of a bit.
Before I went I wanted Aileen to take a few notes in case she needed anything for mother or herself till she saw us again. But the wouldn’t touch one of them.
“No, Dick,” she said, “not if I was starving. I wouldn’t stain my soul with using a shilling that had come in that way. We’ve enough to keep us. Why, the butter and the bacon are rising every week,” she said, trying to turn it off with a laugh. “We’re getting quite rich.”
What she said was true enough in one way, poor thing, though some people wouldn’t have turned out summer and winter at daylight, as she did, to milk the cows, feed the pigs, and do all the work she did, for ten times as much. But all the farmers, little and great, were finding the benefit of the gold and the thousands of new people it brought into the country with ready money in their pockets. That made their regular business a sort of goldmine for them.
Butter and cheese, corn and chaff, beef and mutton, bacon, horses, and cows, everything they had to sell in a small way, were doubled and trebled in price. They hadn’t much labour to pay. The carriage of all kinds of goods rose and rose till it was a hundred pounds a ton—even more. What a chance a man had then who had a middling farm, a couple of teams, and sons able to work. That was how we stood in one way. And what had we made of it? And worse might come yet!
I couldn’t stand these kind of thoughts long, so I said goodbye to mother and Aileen, and pushed away off. I was just in time, for I hadn’t gone half-a-mile from the house when two troopers rode at me from different sides and called on me to stand.
I wasn’t going to do that, so I rammed the spurs info the old horse, lay down well on his neck, and went away as if I’d just caught sight of a mob of wild cattle in the old days. One of them let drive at me; the other raced as hard as he could lick to see if he could overhaul me. The old horse I rode wasn’t a slow one; and when I was riding for my life, there wasn’t that man in the whole force, then, that could see the way I went, if the timber was thick. It was a little too open at first, but it got thicker as we got up the gully. I was making good headway when one of the men pulled up, dismounted, and took a steady aim with his rifle; it was a long shot, but be was a cool card, and nearly had me. I felt something sharp strike my shoulder, more like a stone a bullet feels than anything else, and down dropped my bridle arm. I reeled for a second or two, but gathered myself up and shifted my hand. It didn’t much matter to us which hand we rode with or whether we had a bridle at all if the horse didn’t run against anything. Another and another shot came, it was a repeating rifle, I heard afterwards, a weapon we didn’t know much about then. They came close enough, but didn’t ring the bell either of them. I got well into the mountain after a bit and all the sounds died away. It was hard and rough for hours after, but I never drew rein till I got to the tableland above the Hollow. The old horse had had pretty well enough of it by that time, but he was game and had a dash of blood in him and knew he was going home, and he wasn’t likely to give in. By this time my arm, which had been broken near the shoulder, began to be awfully painful. I was nearly as bad as Starlight must have been the first day we saw him come down the track on the other side of the valley with Warrigal. But I had no half-caste to help me; what I was afraid of was that I might faint and fall off. Then if they followed up the tracks they might have me and find out the Hollow, which was worse than all.
They hadn’t a black tracker with them, that was one thing, and as none of the police.at that time were natives of the colony, or had been brought up in it, it wasn’t likely that they’d be able to run a single horse’s tracks through such a country. I’d got off once or twice too in the rockiest places and led the old horse, so that it was pretty likely they’d be thrown bodily off the tracks after a few miles, and, not knowing which way I was heading, never find ’em again. Anyhow, I was too stiff to get off now; so I rode right down the mountainside track, and every step the old horse took I thought my arm would come right off, and my head burst in two with the pain. When the old horse pulled up at the cave (they’d often used him as a packhorse, and he knew it like a book) I dropped slap off, and never knew anything more about anything till I found myself in my blankets, and Jim sitting smoking alongside of me. My arm and shoulder were all bound up, and I felt as stiff as if the whole of me was made of wood, and had been broken and fresh mended again.
“You’ve been and done it this time, old man,” says he; “looks as if you’d been in the hands of the Philistines. Starlight says dad was awful wild, cursed, and swore terrible, till we had to shut him up. Tell us all about it. You seen ’em at home, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said; “had a good yarn with Ailie and mother. I’m glad it wasn’t going there, when those thundering police dropped across me. By Jove! I’ll be quits with them some day.”
“They’re only doing their duty, Dick. It’s all in the day’s work. It’s no use growling at them. We should do the same in their place.”
“I suppose so, but its enough to make a fellow savage to think be can’t ride home for a yarn with his own people, not thinking of doing harm to any living soul, but he must be hunted down and potted at as if he was a wild bullock in George-street.”
“They ought to let us have a week now and then,” Jim said, with a kind of smile on his face. “What do they call it in the history books. A truce, you know. When we could run in and out and have a bit of quiet time like, and then start fair again next Monday morning. I’m afraid our army’s too small for that. We can’t expect any mercy—or the rules of war.”
“No; and I’ll show them none,” I said. “Wait till I get out again.”
“I don’t hold with you there, Dick,” said he, very sober-like. “We must stand up to our fight now and take our punishment when we get it like men. It’s no use losing our tempers, and making innocent people suffer. That won’t mend it, and I’ll never agree to it for one, and so I tell you.”
Jim began to look quite fierce for him. I was going to say something pretty hot, too, I expect, when a terrible pain shot through my head, and then something deadly cold crept about my heart. I didn’t hear any more. I suppose I fainted.