In The Far North by George Lewis Becke (readnow .txt) 📖

few intimate men friends, and the few women whom he knew were not the sort he could possibly talk to about a lady. Both his parents had died before he was ten years of age, leaving him utterly alone in the world. Born in a bush town, in the interior of New South Wales, he had turned to the bush and to the wide, open, grassy plains, as an infant would have turned to its mother in its distress; and the bush and the plains and the grey mountain ranges had taken him to their bosoms; and the silent, reserved boy became the resolute, hardy bushman, stock-rider, and then miner--a man fit and ready to meet the emergencies of his rough life. Of the outside world he was as ignorant as a child, as indeed were most of the men with whom for many years he had associated. But there was nothing despicable in his ignorance; and when as time went on, and his improved circumstances threw him in contact with men and women of refinement and culture, he was quick to take advantage of such opportunities; but the honest, simple nature of the man always remained the same.

Before he was thirty, Harrington was known as one of the most experienced and fortunate over-lander drovers in Australia, and he became as familiar with the long and lonely stock-route from the stations on the Gulf of Carpentaria to Sydney and Melbourne, in his many journeys, as if it were a main road in an English county.

At the conclusion of one of these tedious drives of seven months' duration, the brown-faced, quiet drover was asked by an acquaintance with whom he had business transactions, to spend the evening with him at his house. He went, and there met Myra Lyndon. He was attracted by her bright manner and smiling face, and when she questioned him about his life in the Far North, his adventures among the blacks, and the many perils of a drover's existence, he thought her the fairest and sweetest woman in the world. And Miss Myra Lyndon encouraged him in his admiration. Not that she cared for him in the least She had not reached eight-and-twenty years of age to throw herself away on a man who had no other ambition than to become a squatter and live amongst a lot of "horrid bellowing cattle." But he was nice to talk to, though terribly stupid about some things, and so she did not mind writing to him once or twice--it would reward him for the horse he had one day sent to her father with a lamely worded note, saying that it was one of a mob he had just bought at the saleyards, and as he had no use for a lady's hack, he thought that perhaps Miss Lyndon would be so kind as to accept it Mr. Lyndon smiled as he read the note, he knew that drovers did not usually buy ladies' hacks; but being a man harassed to death with an expensive family, he was not disposed to discourage Harrington's attentions to Myra; though, having a conscience, he felt that Jack Harrington was too good a man for such a useless, empty-brained, and selfish creature as his eldest daughter.

So Harrington went back to his "bellowing bullocks," and then, having saved enough money, bought the very run he had so often wished he could buy; and "Jack" Harrington, the overlander, became "Mr." John Harrington, the pastoralist and owner of Tinandra Downs, and then the vision of Myra Lyndon's face came to him very often--now that he was so prosperous.

One day he told his overseer that he was going to Sydney for a trip, and being a man of action, packed his valise, mounted his horse, and rode off on his journey of five hundred miles to the nearest seaport where he could take passage for Sydney.

For the first week or so after his arrival in the city, he "mooned" about doing nothing, and trying to pluck up courage enough to go to Myra Lyndon to ask her to be his wife. He had called several times upon her father and discussed business matters with him; but beyond inquiring after "Mrs. Lyndon and the Misses Lyndon," had said nothing further, and in a nervous, shamefaced manner had each time accepted Mr. Lyndon's invitation to "come and see the girls before he went back to the North," but had not had the courage to go. Next week, or the week after that, would do, he thought. If she said "No," he wouldn't feel it so much--once he was on his way North again in the old _Florence Irving_; he would put it off till just as he was ready to start. Then if she said "Yes," he would stay in Sydney as long as his love wished--a month--aye, six months, so long as she came back with him to Tinandra Downs. And Myra Lyndon, who knew from her father that her "bullock-driver admirer," as she had mockingly called him to her friends, was in Sydney, waited for him impatiently. A systematic course of jilting and being jilted had made her feel anxious as to her future, and gall and wormwood had come to her now that her two younger sisters had married before her, and left her, as her somewhat acidulous-tongued mother said, "the Lyndon family wallflower." She meant to marry him, spend a year or so among the "beastly bellowing cattle," and then return to Sydney, where as Mrs. Harrington, the wealthy squatter's wife, she could enjoy herself thoroughly, snub some of the women she hated, and flirt with some of the men she liked.

Late one night, Harrington, sauntering from the theatre to his hotel, met, to his intense astonishment, a man he knew--had known years before when he (Harrington) was a drover and the other man--Walters--was a mounted trooper in the Queensland police.

They shook hands warmly, and then Walters said, "Come along with me, Jack, to the Water Police Station; we can have a yarn there.... Oh, yes, I'm a Sydney man now--a full-fledged inspector of police... tell you all about it by and by. But, push along, old man. One of my men has just told me that a woman who jumped off the Circular Quay and tried to drown herself, is lying at the station, and is not expected to pull through. Hallo! here's a cab! Jump in, Jack; there's some whisky in the sergeant's room, and after I've seen the cadaver--if she has cadavered--we'll have a right down good yarn."

The cab rattled through the now almost deserted street, and in a few minutes Harrington and his friend alighted at a small stone building overlooking the waters of Sydney Harbour. A water-policeman, who stood at the door under the big gas-lamp, saluted the inspector and then showed Harrington into the sergeant's room.

Ten minutes passed, and then Walters, accompanied by a big, stout, red-faced man, came in.

"Ha, here you are, old man. Jack, Dr. Parsons--the man who does the resuscitating and such silly business of this institution; Parsons, my old friend, Jack Harrington. Sergeant, where is that whisky?"

"Is the woman dead, doctor?" asked Harrington presently, as the sergeant's wife brought in a bottle of whisky and some glasses.

"No," replied the police doctor slowly, as he poured some whisky into his glass, "she is not dead; but she may not live much longer--a day or so perhaps. It all depends. Shock to the system."

"One of the usual sort, Parsons, I suppose?" inquired Walters--"left the baby on the wharf, with a written request for some 'kind Christian to love it,' eh?"

The fat doctor grunted. "You're a beast, Walters. There's no baby in the case. Here, give me ten shillings--you'll spend more than that in drinks before you go to bed to-night This girl _isn't_ one of the usual sort. She's a lady--and she's been starving. So ante-up, you ex-nigger-shooting Queensland policeman; and I'll add another half-sov. Then perhaps your friend will give me something for her. And I'm not going to send her off to the hospital. I'm going to take her to some people I know, and ask them to keep her for a few days until she gets round."

Harrington put his hand in his pocket, and then in a nervous, diffident way, looking first at Walters and then at the doctor, put five sovereigns on the table.

"I'm pretty flush now, you know.... I'm not a plunger, but I shall be glad, doctor, if you will take that and give it to her.... I was almost starving myself once---_you_ know, Walters, when I got the sack from the 'Morning Star' Mine for plugging the English manager when he called me a 'damned colonial lout.'"

The fat-faced doctor looked steadily at him for a moment or two. Then he reached out his hand.

"You're a good fellow, Mr. Harrington. I'll take a sovereign or two. Come in here with me."


III


Harrington followed him into an adjoining room, where, upon a wicker-work couch was reclining the figure of a young girl. Standing beside her was the police-sergeant's wife, who, as soon as the two men came in, quietly drew aside.

"Now, here I am back again, my dear child," said the doctor good-humouredly, "and here is a very old friend of mine, Mr. Jack Harrington; and we have come to cheer you up and tell you that you have two or three good friends. And we won't let any women or parsons come to you and worry you, and tell you that you have been a wicked girl, and ought to have thrown yourself upon God's mercy and all that sort of thing. So just drink that coffee, and then by and by we will take you to some people I know well, and you shall come and tell us in a day or two how sorry you are for being so foolish."

The girl's dark hazel eyes looked steadily at them both; then she put out a thin white hand.

"You are very kind to me. I know it was very wicked to try and kill myself, but I was so lonely, and... and I had not eaten anything since Wednesday... and I wanted to die." Then she covered her face and sobbed softly, whilst the doctor patted her on the shoulder and said--

"Don't worry, little girl; you are in good hands now. Never mind Mrs. Thornton and her un-kindness. You are better away from her--isn't she, Mr. Harrington?"

Mr. Harrington, knowing nothing about Mrs. Thornton, promptly said "Oh, most certainly," and the girl's eyes met his for a second, and a faint smile flushed upon her pale lips. The tall, bearded, and brown-faced man's face seemed so full of pity.

"Now you must go to sleep for an hour or two," said the doctor imperatively; "so now then, little girl, 'seepy-by, beddy-bo.' That's what _my_ mother used to say to me."

Harrington followed the doctor out into the sergeant's room, where Inspector Walters, with his heels upon the table, was falling asleep.

"Sit down a moment, Mr. Harrington," said Dr. Parsons, taking up a book which the sergeant had left upon the table; "this is a sad case. Here is a girl, Nellie Alleyne, age 19, nursery governess to Mrs. Lavery-Thornton, of Waverly, jumped into the water off the Quay; rescued by Water-police Constables Casey and Boyce."

Harrington nodded.

"This girl has told me her story. She is alone and friendless in Sydney. She came out to Australia when she was seventeen, got a billet with this Mrs. Lavery-Thornton--who seems to be a perfect brute of a woman--suffered a two years' martyrdom, and then was dismissed