In the Roaring Fifties Part 29

'You reckoned on finding me greedy for gold.'

'I reckoned more on finding you willing to seize an opportunity of exacting from society some return for death, torture, and infamy!'

'There was a time when you might have prevailed.'

'That time may come again. It needs only a new grievance--the law to bruise you, the women to betray.'

Jim shook his head. He felt the disc of Lucy's locket pressing against his breast under his folded arms. 'I cannot believe it,' he said.

The other was silent for some moments, and Jim watched him with troubled eyes. None of the cruelty and the viciousness to which Ryder had given utterance found expression in his features, which were marked with sensitive lines and some refinement. Done thought of Brummy the Nut, and it seemed to him little short of miraculous that this man had been able to come through similar experiences and yet show no evidence of it in his face. Ryder arose and moved away a few paces.

'If you go from here to another field,' he said, 'leave word for me at one of the stores.'

'Are you going?'

'I may not leave Jim Crow for a few days.'

'You have something in hand?'

'Meaning some robbery? No; it is possible Solo has made a dramatic disappearance from contemporaneous history.'

You'll drop the game? Good! Good!'

'It all depends. I have the gold I need, but the sporting instinct may be too strong for me. Just now there is other work in view. Be a.s.sured, my intentions are not honourable, however. We shall meet again. My proposition may appeal to you later. You will not forget it.'

'Put it out of your head,' said Jim appealingly. 'Leave the country, take the gold if you must, live luxuriously if you care to, but dig out of your heart this devilish malice against people who have done you no conscious wrong. Do this for your own sake; the course you have decided upon is one of desolation and despair.'

'Least of all did I expect to find my brother a pulpiteer and a moralist with all the popular faith in the domestic virtues, and the quaint conviction that misery dogs the sinner,' said Ryder dryly.

'I have used no cant,' answered Jim, 'and I said nothing of sin or virtue. I don't ask you to trust G.o.d, but to trust man. Be at peace with your kind!'

'And this is the man they called the Hermit on board the Francis Cadman!'

'Yes; and I was wretched aboard simply because I met the free and hearty men around me in a spirit of sullenness and suspicion. But my sick misanthropy was not proof against the heart-quickening suns.h.i.+ne and the grand enthusiasm of those fine sane men.'

'Evidently your philosophy sprang from a disordered liver. The sea-voyage, in stimulating that, cured you of your cherished beliefs.

Another trip would probably make a devout Wesleyan of you,' said Ryder banteringly. 'Now, my liver is a perfect instrument, and you couldn't alter a single opinion of mine with a long course of antibilious treatment. In defiance of all Sunday-school precedents, I can be cheerful though wicked, and, having attained the splendid isolation of perfect selfishness, my happiness is not dependent on the gaiety or gloom of the crowd, My boy, you might remember that your experience is not so wide as to justify you in asking mankind at large to accept you as the touchstone for all human emotions. Good-bye.'

Jim gripped his brother's hand and held it. 'Good bye!' he said. 'I wish I could do something for you, but you leave me helpless.'

Ryder went off with a laugh, and a moment later his voice came back through the trees--a light, musical baritone, singing an Irish love-song, and Jim, listening, troubled in spirit, wondered how much of the true man he had been permitted to see.

Throughout the quiet months that followed Done lived a sober, methodical life. He saw no more of his brother while they remained on the Jim Crow diggings, but thought of him constantly, dreading to hear of some further daring escapade on the part of Solo, fearing more the possibility of his capture. Burton was perplexed by the note of gravity that had developed in his mate, until he made an accidental discovery of Lucy Woodrow's locket, and then he thought he understood all, especially as Jim's visits to Kyley's shanty were comparatively rare of late. Meanwhile, Jim had written once to Lucy, but had received no answer--a fact that did not disturb him, however, as the postal service on the fields and in the Bush was extremely erratic. He was quite satisfied now that he had been in love with his s.h.i.+pmate all the time, but it was not easy to account for Aurora. Certainly he had been very fond of her: he was fond of her still, and could not bring himself to regret having known her. He strove resolutely to refrain from applying conventional standards of judgment, with which, he a.s.sured himself, he had no sympathy, but little uneasinesses and awkward moments would obtrude. It was difficult to maintain the fine idea of rationalism. 'I won't have you bind the strange man you may be to-morrow with oaths,' Aurora had said; yet it was evident the change in him was a source of great distress to her.

'I haven't seen you for a fortnight, Jim,' she said one evening, with a tinge of reproach that she was striving to repress.

'No,' he said shortly.

'And absence hasn't made you particularly fond.'

He was leaning on the counter, and took her hand between his own, but was silent.

'At least, you don't lie to me,' she continued.

Jim did not plume himself on that; he knew in his heart that if he had not lied it was because a thoroughly satisfactory fiction had not presented itself. He kissed her knuckles, which, in itself was a lie of inference. Aurora pulled her hand away, and robbed him of his one resource. He felt abashed and defenceless without it. He thrust his hands in his pockets, and turned his shoulders to her, gazing moodily on the floor, having a dawning sense of the differences that may suddenly afflict two hearts that have beat as one, realizing that the ardent affection of yesterday and yesterday's kisses count for nothing in the present estrangement. He could, not essay the role of friends.h.i.+p: it was as if they were strangers without a single affinity.

'The fact is, Aurora,' he said desperately, 'I'm a good deal changed.

I've experienced a great shock lately, and it has pulled me up short.'

'And the woman?'

He turned upon her again with genuine surprise. 'The woman! The woman!'

he cried. 'It has nothing to do with a woman. Upon my soul, no! Something has been revealed to me that has. .h.i.t me hard. I don't get over it easily; it clings in my mind. If I could tell you, old girl, you'd sympathize; but I can't--the secret is not my own.' He spoke with emotion, and Aurora, watching him sharply, was touched. She put a hand on his arm.

'Not another word, Jimmy,' she said. 'I won't bother you. Sure,' she continued lightly, we weemin 're niver contint wid the throubles of the day. We're that curious we must be wonderin' how much more's comin'. We may boast iv bein' sensible an' sthrong, but we're alwiz pus.h.i.+n' our tentacles out to feel the sorrow iv to-morrow. I reckoned you'd be hatin'

me in a week, ma bouchal.'

Done felt himself justified in kissing her there and then, but the kiss partook a good deal of the nature of a benediction.

This explanation did not serve to restore confidence; the constraint remained, and increased with time. Jim noted its effect on Aurora with some misgiving. His appearance in the tent was the signal for a display of boisterous animation on her part. If she had been depressed before, she suddenly became gay; if she had been animated, she became jubilant.

She sang, and joked, and danced, and played, with an excess of jocosity that jarred him painfully. He gave her credit for uncommon intelligence, and undoubtedly she had been educated above the position in life she was content to occupy. Why should she resort to the shallow and obvious subterfuges of the most foolish and frivolous of her s.e.x? He had no perception of the extent of her sufferings, and would not, in any case, have understood how independent are the workings of the head and the heart of a loving woman. On such occasions she flirted audaciously with the miners, and her blood burned in her veins because Done showed no disposition to be moved by it.

Tim Carrol imagined himself to be the specially favoured man, and was Aurora's most devoted slave, and the girl played upon his big, affectionate heart, with no object but to awaken in Done a sparkle of the recent fire. One night Aurora danced with him through a lively reel, and at its conclusion, in a spirit of mirthless mischief, put up her red mouth to be kissed. Not for all the powers of good and evil would Tim have foregone that delight. He kissed her, but this time Done offered no objection. Indeed, he gave no indication of having seen what was pa.s.sing, although in reality he had been watching Aurora, impressed with the idea that she was drinking. Never since the first night he met her had she seemed to him to be under the influence of drink, and he admitted to himself that he might have been mistaken then, and was probably deceived now by the fervour of her character.

Done's indifference struck a chill to the girl's heart. She went back to her place silent, but feeling within her the stirring of a tempest. A quarter of an hour later she confronted Jim as he stood talking with Harry Peetree. For a moment she looked into his face, and all eyes were upon her. Then she struck him in the mouth with her right hand, and her eyes, cheeks, and whole being seemed to blaze into pa.s.sion at the same moment.

'I have something belonging to you. Is it that you are waiting for?' She threw the small nugget in his face with her other hand.

The gold cut his temple, but he did not flinch; his eyes met hers without pa.s.sion; his cultivated power of control helped him now. Taking out a handkerchief, he wiped the blood from his eye, and then, picking up the nugget, offered it to her.

'Aurora,' he said, 'you know in your heart that is a lie.'

His quietness made her action ridiculous, whatever his intention may have been, and the girl felt it with an access of frenzy; but at this point Tim Carrol felt himself called upon to intervene in his new character as knight-errant.

'D'ye mean to call the lady a liar?' he cried hotly.

Jim, who had a real liking for the cheerful young Irishman, evaded the awkward blow aimed at his head, and stood back, and Ben Kyley saved further trouble by seizing Tim and hustling him into a corner.

'I'm the on'y man what's permitted to punch the customers in this tent,'

said Ben.

At the same time Mrs. Ben descended upon Aurora and bore her off with a mighty hug, much as if she were a rebellious infant.

XVII

IT was some time before Jim Done visited Mrs. Kyley's tent again. He bore Aurora no animosity, he had the kindliest feelings for her, but recognised that in frequenting the shanty he increased the difficulty of the situation and prolonged the task he had set himself. A letter had come to him from Lucy Woodrow--a bright, breezy letter, about Bush-life, about herself and the youngsters, and a good deal about him. Certainly a pleasant enough letter, but, considered as a literary production merely, not deserving of Jim's high appreciation of it. Alter receiving it Jim sat down in a reverent humour and decided, with the formality of a meeting carrying a resolution, that Lucy was the only woman in the world for him, the one possible woman. The resolution practically abolished all other women so far as he was concerned. He could never think of another with patience, and his longing for her was so great that it left him little mind for Ryder, and scarcely any for Aurora. He was eager to pay b.o.o.byalla another visit, but Mike was deaf to all insinuations, and Jim consoled himself with pretty imaginative pictures in which Lucy was vividly represented sitting on the shady veranda at Macdougal's home stead, spotted with flakes of golden suns.h.i.+ne filtered through the tangle of vine and creeper. How sweet she was, how gentle, how tender, and yet brave of heart and keen-witted withal. She had understood him better than he had understood himself. That was very gratifying; it showed her deep interest in him, but he did not put it to himself in that bald way. Why hadn't he taken her up in his arms and kissed her when they parted in the garden? Every drop of his blood prompted him to it, and something told him she would not have resented it. He had been a fool. He should have told her then that he loved her. Of course, it had hardly occurred to him then that he really did love her, but he was a fool in any case for not seeing it and understanding it.

Burton and the Peetrees had resolved to try a new rush before Done called at the shanty again.