In the Roaring Fifties by Edward Dyson (best classic books TXT) 📖

fleecy clouds chased each other. Presently Jim discovered a brown space in the distance, and detected a thin column of smoke rising on occasions between the vagrant winds. He called Burton's attention, and Mike turned experienced eyes in that direction.

'A settler's clearing,' he said. 'No; by Jove, it's Macdougal's homestead!'

'What!' cried Done, sitting up with a jerk. 'Donald Macdougal's station?'

'Yes, Monkey Mack's.' Burton rose to his feet and looked about him. 'There isn't a doubt,' he continued. 'That's Boobyalla all right. I was over the country to the west once with cattle.'

'And since we came to Jim Crow I have been so near.'

''Bout twenty mile as the crow flies. Why, old man, you look all caved in.'

'I'm greatly surprised. I thought Boobyalla was right away in the wilds.'

A pity this isn't wild enough for you.'

'Yes; but cut off completely from the people.'

'The people have been distributin' themselves a good deal o' late. Boobyalla was far enough out o' the runnin' till the rushes broke out at Forest Creek an' Jim Crow. As 'tis, I'll bet my boots the Macdougal's as lonesome down there as a sick sheep.'

'Why do you think that?'

''Cause you can't keep white men on the runs these times; they prefer the rushes. Squatter, J.P., ain't the little god almighty he used to be when he held his hands as if they were niggers bought an' paid for.'

Done was silent and thoughtful for a few minutes. The knowledge of his proximity to Lucy Woodrow awakened mixed feelings, and contrition was prominent. He had promised to write to her. He remembered how anxious she seemed to win the promise, and how deep her interest in him had been. Suffused with a melancholy tenderness, he told himself he had never forgotten her; her image had lived in his heart as in a shrine, screened perhaps, but only for sanctity's sake. No thought of Aurora stole in to disturb his unconscious hypocrisy. He had an unexpected longing to see Lucy again.

'Fact is, Mike,' he said presently, 'there is a ship mate of mine down there at Macdougal's I should very much like to meet again. What do you say?'

'I'm on. This shipmate, is she married or single?' Mike accented the third person feminine.

'Single. She is teaching Macdougal's youngsters. I had no other friend aboard.' Aurora obtruded now, and he looked into his mate's face. It was suspiciously vacant. 'What the devil are you thinking of, Mike?' he said with warmth.

'A friend o' mine,' answered Mike.

'Oh!'

'Aurora!'

'The devil you are? It's an infernal impertinence, then, let me tell you.'

'That Irish girl would tear hair like a mountain cat,' continued Mike serenely.

'You're wrong, Mike, quite wrong,' said Jim impressively. 'This girl is--well, absolutely different.'

Done found the trip to Boobyalla very much longer than he had expected, but the mates reached the homestead at about two o'clock. The place was almost deserted. Two or three wolfish cattle-dogs ran from the huts, and barked at them in a half hearted kind of way; a black boy shouted from the shed, and two gins came to the kitchen door, watching them. On the shady side of the same structure a dilapidated, miserable-looking white man of about fifty lay in a drunken sleep, buzzed over by a swarm of flies. The dwelling-house was a wandering weather-board structure with shingle roofs and iron chimneys; a deep veranda, partly latticed, ran round three sides, and ebullient creepers of many kinds swarmed over the house at their own wild will. The homestead faced into a big garden spreading into an orchard, now green and gay with the verdancy and the blooms of spring.

'Didn't I tell you? Not a white man round but the motherless drunk there,' said Mike.

One of the cattle-dogs had returned to the side of the sleeper, and employed himself snapping at the greedy flies, yapping impatiently to keep them from the man's face.

'No boss sit down there, Mary?' said Mike, addressing the eider of the gins.

The aborigine grinned cheerfully. 'Boss him bin gone sit down longa Porkpine,' she said. 'Missus ride by Longabenna. Bill dam drunk, White feller all gone make it hole, catch plenty gold. Gib it 'bacca!'

Burton threw his half-plug of tobacco to the gin; she caught it deftly, the second one snatched, and the two set up a shrill yabbering, like excited monkeys.

'Miss Woodrow?' said Jim interrogatively.

'Teachy missie longa garden,' answered the gin, with illustrative pantomime.

'Better go and hunt her out,' Mike said. 'I'll find the black boy, and work him for drinks if possible.'

Done passed through a side-gate into the garden, found his way to the main walk, and looked about him.

'Well?' called a voice from the veranda.

He turned quickly. Within a few feet of him, in the space between the vines where the steps led up to the doorway, a little dark-eyed girl of about seven, the miniature of Mrs. Macdougal, peeped round her skirts at the stranger. Lucy did not recognise Jim in a moment.

'Lucy!' he said.

'Jim!' Her face crimsoned; she sprang down the steps, extending two hands.

He took both in his, and looked at her. She had changed and strengthened--he could see that. Evidently she had lived much in the sun; the pallor had gone from her face, and it had warmed to a tender olive-brown, pure and soft, deepening to a ruddier tint on the cheeks. She was much stouter, too, and carried herself with more character. There was a swing in her movements, hinting at hearty exercises in the open. She was looking at him, and saw a wonderful difference. There was a short, thick, youthful beard upon his chin, a slight moustache upon his lip, both heightening the Grecian quality of his face; his tan had taken a deeper tone; he was the picture of health and strength, she thought.

Done saw that she was greatly disturbed, and regretted having come upon her so suddenly. There was no questioning her delight; her colour came and went half a dozen times as they stood thus, hand in hand; her eyes were misty with tears, but she laughed through all.

'Well?' he queried.

'Oh, I am so glad to see you--so very glad!'

'And is it to be Jim and Lucy still?'

'Yes, to be sure. How changed you are! Come, come, sit down and talk. Talk till my senses come back to me. I am bushed!' She laughed a little hysterically.

'I have startled you.'

'No, no, it's pure gladness--it is indeed. It was good of you to come.'

'You are changed, too. Have you stood to your determination to be happy?'

'I am not unhappy.' She had seated herself beside him, and passed an arm about the shy child, of whom little more than one dark eye was visible, peeping at Jim from the other side, and yet that one eye recalled humorous impressions of Mrs. Donald Macdougal of Boobyalla. He expected to see it start revolving coquettishly.

'You are stronger. You have grown,' he said.

'Yes, I ride a lot with the children. It is good for me. I love it. This life agrees with me well. But it is not only a change in you, it is a transformation. Why, you can laugh!'

'Come, come! I could always laugh.'

She shook her head. 'Not convincingly. You love the new land? You have prospered?'

'Yes,' he answered, 'I have had a wonderful spell of life.'

'And the people--you find you can like them?'

The question gave him rather a shock; he had to think a moment to recall her optimistic advice and his old frame of mind.

'Like is too feeble a word,' he said presently. 'The thought of them warms my heart.'

'Ah, that is good!' She clasped his hand impulsively. 'That is best of all. I was afraid you might cling to your mistrust, and shut the kindly people out of your life.'

'Before it was the people shut me out.'

'Are you sure?'

He had never doubted, now the question set him wondering for a minute. He looked at her again. Certainly she had developed observation, acuteness. Or had he? Once more he wondered. He watched her with new interest. She was not so pretty as she had seemed on the Francis Cadman; the ethereality was gone, but Done liked her the better for it. He felt his whole physical being to be in sympathy with vital things, and, after all, how often the poets, in their rhapsodies on spirituelle and unearthly women, were merely rapturously apostrophizing the evidences of dissolution! He met her now without a doubt in his heart, with a soul free to respond to his natural emotions, and she filled him with delight. Unconsciously he was wooing her--not with words, but with accents more eloquent, and the girl felt it instinctively, with a sense of triumph.

'I can't take my eyes off you,' he said. 'In what are you so different?'

She smiled pleasantly. 'I am dreadfully sunburnt; I am no longer thin; I do not brood.'

'No, no; it is a difference of spirit. Where is that constraint we felt?'

'The constraint was wholly with you.' She blushed again.

The kissing episode had been recalled to both. He laughed gaily, feeling very comfortable, quite forgetful of his mate.

'Yes, I was certainly a humourless, gloomy young fool he said.

'Only an unhappy boy,' she murmured, 'and my wonderful hero.' She, too, spoke as if it were a matter of long years ago, when she was a silly slip of a girl.

'And is there no hero now?'

'I have found no other.'

'Ah, that is something! Do you still pray for the old one, Lucy?'

'But you have no faith in prayers.'

'I may have in the prayer.'

'Well, then, I do. You see, you can never be wholly undeserving in my eyes.' With Lucy, as with many girls in whom gratitude is the precursor of love, most of the sentiments due to the kindling affection were credited to gratitude.

'You have not blamed me for neglecting to write.'

'No; I have had no anxiety for some time. I knew where you were and how you were.'

'You knew!'

'I knew that you had made friends, that you were on pay dirt at Diamond Gully, and that the good Australian sunshine had warmed your heart.' She smiled mysteriously.

'Ah, I know,' he said after a moment's thought--'Ryder.'

'Yes, Mr. Walter Ryder. He wrote me that he had come across you at Diamond Gully. He seemed quite interested in you.'

'And I am interested by him. He is a peculiar personality.'

'Yes, so flippant; and behind it all you seem to feel something iron-like, strong and impenetrable.'

Flippant! Ryder had appealed to Jim as anything but a flippant character.

'He is a man of good family. He came to Australia seeking change and adventure. He is rich--very. He did Mr. Macdougal some service, and we saw a good deal of him in Melbourne. Mrs. Macdougal thinks he is an earl at least, and has woven quite a romance about him. She will be glad to see you.'

Done's mind had flown to Burton's estimate of Ryder, and Lucy's evident admiration of, him gave him a little uneasiness.

'Is Mrs. Macdougal of Boobyalla quite well?' he asked.

'Quite. But you must not