distinguished anything; I am sure it was all like a picture in a dream
to her. She could think of nothing, but that she was going to see Nick.
I felt her give a little gasp and a strange cry, as he came pressing
forward from the crowd on the wharf. He never seemed to pause or
hesitate. He knew her at once for his own.
He was a great, tall fellow, with a sunburnt face, and he had a noble
presence—I was obliged to own that. And he had clear, blue eyes and
fair, curly hair. He made me think, somehow, of one of the old Vikings
of the North. I didn’t wonder that she loved him.
[Illustration:
“He never seemed to pause or hesitate.”
]
“Nan!” I heard him say, as she cried “Nick!” and if I had ever had any
hope of change in her or him, it died in that moment, when I saw the
wonderful and immortal love in their eyes.
Love! love, real love! In spite of the cynics, there’s nothing else in
this universe that endures. I turned away feeling lonely and sick at
heart. I’d had my dream, and it was over; but I knew that I should never
love any woman as I loved Nan, and when I saw the two, drawn as it were
into each other’s arms, both uttering that strange yearning cry, of a
longing that was at last to be fulfilled, I swore to myself that I’d be
Nan’s loyal brother and Nick’s friend, as long as Fate kept us three
together.
Eungella Diggings was a wild sort of place to bring a woman to—a
straggling town, set in a hollow of the hills, with claims all about,
and heaps of mullock, as they call the refuse after the crushing of the
quartz, and queer, unsightly erections of machinery, of which the whirr
ceased not day nor night.
Then there were mushroom tenements of canvas, and shanties of bark, and
weather-board lean-to’s, and zinc-roofed buildings, mostly of a public
character—the Courthouse, and Bank, and _The Star_ Office, and the many
public-houses, into which all the scum of the earth seemed to gather
itself. And some of its aristocracy, too.
There was a baronet doing a store business two doors from _The Star_,
and “Honourables” were as thick as peas—or Chinamen, which is saying
much the same thing at the Diggings.
There were all sorts, mostly scamps; and fine, daredevil scamps they
were that went out to Australia in those days. Many are the stories I
could tell, if I hadn’t to tell that of Nick and Nan, about the Diggings
crew.
There were lags, too, of course—old hands, as bad as you make ’em, and
rough miners as honest as you make ’em, and Oxford and Cambridge men,
and army swells, that you’d expect to see in London drawing-rooms.
There were women, too, of all sorts—the worst and the best; and drink
flowing, and divine bank-notes flying, and knives gleaming, and
tomahawks and pistols at men’s belts.
I often wondered what Nan thought of it all, and if things startled her
as much as they sometimes did me. Perhaps it was a good thing for me,
that I had the new work and the queer experiences and the “copy” to
think of; they helped me to reconcile myself to my disappointment,
though I never saw Nan and Nick without a nasty pain at my heart, and at
first I rather avoided seeing them at all.
I cannot think why Nick didn’t marry Nan straight off—why he hadn’t
married her in Sydney, when she arrived, and brought her to Eungella as
his wife.
He was rich enough. He had a good claim, and was turning out gold hand
over hand. I believe that was what he wanted and intended, but Nan had
some romantic notion that she wasn’t educated enough to be his equal,
and that it would be right of her to give him a little time before the
knot was irrevocably tied, so that he might be quite certain of his own
mind.
She was a noble creature, and I am not sure that she wasn’t right. And
she wouldn’t take any more money from Nick, but insisted on working for
herself. She talked it over with the doctor’s wife, and they got her
nursing jobs to do, and she was called there, as she had been called in
the hospital, she said, “Sister Nan.”
There was sickness enough at Eungella—accidents in the mines, and
touches of fever and sunstroke cases as the great heat came on. It was
early in November when we got to Eungella, and hot indeed then. But that
heat was nothing to what came later.
Sometimes on the blazing December days, when the sun would beat on the
zinc roofs, and the glare be reflected from the white stones and the
mullock heaps, and when there was no shade to be got under the straight
lank gum-trees, and the miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf
about the street, and the bars would be filled with the sound of
swearing, I used to fancy that, if you wanted to find an earthly
similitude of Hades, you couldn’t go to a more likely place than
Eungella Diggings.
There were drink cases, too—plenty of them, only Nick drew the line
there. Though he humoured Nan’s pride and independent spirit, he watched
her as carefully as Dummy, the dog, had done in days gone by.
It was to last only a few months—this probation and testing of each
other.
[Illustration:
“Miners, red and grimy and perspiring, would loaf about the street.”
(_Page 174_)
]
Nick made a bargain for a certain date, though he was always begging her
to change her mind, and let him off a month or so, more especially as
the nuggets thickened.
And when he pleaded in his earnestness, Nan’s face, for all its wistful,
resolute look, would brighten and brighten till it seemed to me the face
of an angel, and would give me that nasty pain at my heart once more.
But she was resolute always, and the richer Nick became the more she
held to her determination.
Nan used to live with the Postmaster’s wife, who was a good sort and
something of a lady. She used to take Nan to the entertainments, that
were given at Eungella, and there were balls and picnics and concerts,
and even a kind of theatre, for money was so plentiful there just then,
that actors and conjurors and people of that sort were bound to come.
This was all good for _The Eungella Star_, which flourished mightily,
and I made quite a feature of “social topics.”
It was a short time before Christmas when there was a big ball given at
the Town Hall, as they called the zinc building. That was the wind up of
some races, to which I went as in duty bound, and at which Nick ran and
rode a horse, and Nan was present with the Postmaster’s wife, and
clapped Nick as he went victoriously past the winning post.
Nick could afford to keep racehorses in these days.
It was only a few days before, that he had come into my office—we had
got great friends—I couldn’t help liking the fine, generous fellow in
spite of my love for Nan and the soreness of my disappointment. I am
sure that Nan had told him about the whole affair, though he never said
a word to me on the subject, and that was what made him so nice in his
ways to me.
“Curran,” he said, and his whole face was alight, “do you believe in a
good fairy coming to bring a man luck? Nan is my good fairy—she has
brought me luck. The gold has been coming up thicker and thicker ever
since my darling came out to me. To-day has come the biggest luck of
all. I’m a rich man, Curran—my fortune is made.”
[Illustration:
“He went victoriously past the winning post.”
]
I could not help quoting the old proverb, but Nick only laughed.
“Unlucky in love! Looks like it, eh? Nan and I are a living disproof of
all the saws. Ah, my Nan shall drive down the Ladies’ Mile in her
carriage yet, and I shall perhaps fulfil what has been—next to Nan—my
life’s dream!”
“What’s that?” I said.
“To be a power, Curran—a power for good in that terrible city—that
Babylon in which I was born. I want to do something for the poor and the
vicious; I want to help to save such helpless, deserted children as were
Nan and I from the fate that, but for God’s mercy, might have been Nan’s
fate and mine. I want to get into the English Parliament, Curran; I want
to plead the cause of the friendless—to get protection for the
children—justice for the hireling.”
There was a great solemnity in Nick’s tone, and a curious prophetic look
in his eyes.
He had been talking it all over with Nan, he said. They were to be
married in two months’ time, which was the limit she had fixed, and as
soon as he was in a position to make a good start in the old country, he
would leave Australia. And he would leave no stone unturned to clear
himself of the charge, which would, he knew, cling to him through life,
and hinder the useful career, which he might otherwise carve out for
himself.
But I am getting away from the races. It was after Nick had won his race
that a rather handsome man of a coarse, underbred type, well dressed,
and looking what the Australians call “flash,” was brought up by a
friend of Nan’s, and introduced as Mr. Tempest.
I was standing near Nan at the time. Nick had left her to see after
something about his horse, and she was talking gaily to a little knot of
her Eungella friends, elated at the good luck that had befallen Nick,
and looking cool and fresh and surprisingly beautiful in her white dress
which she had put on in honour of the occasion.
I had been noticing this “Mr. Tempest.” He was a recent arrival at the
diggings, and I did not like his manner or appearance. He was loud,
boastful, and vulgar, with a veneer of smartness—and an occasional lapse
into ways, that would have disgraced a navvy.
Just now he was on his good behaviour. He had evidently been greatly
struck with Nan, who was certainly the belle of the Stand. He made her a
very low bow and said a few words of compliment.
I saw an odd startled look come over Nan’s face, and she looked at him
closely, and repeated his name, as if she were puzzled. “Mr. Tempest?”
“Reginald Tempest—at your service,” said he, with a kind of leer that
made me inclined to strike him.
They began to talk, and at every word, the man said, I saw the mystified
look deepening in Nan’s face. She seemed glad when she spied Nick—away
down the course—and proposed to me that we should walk and find him.
Before she went, however, Tempest had got her promise to dance several
dances with him at the ball that evening.
Nan was greatly agitated. “Mr. Curran,” she said as we walked along,
“that man’s name isn’t Tempest. I wish you’d try and find out something
about him; he is either the brother of a man I knew long ago—the man who
got Nick into terrible trouble—or he is the man himself, and his name is
Rummles. But he has grown a beard and moustache since then, and is
changed in every way, and I can’t be sure.
“Oh, if I knew!” she went on, excitedly. “He, and he only, can clear
Nick, and give him the right to go about the world without a stain.
“Mr. Curran, if there’s any spark of good feeling in him, he’d do it
now—now, after Nick and I have suffered so. And now that Nick is rich
and has a career before him, and wants so to do good—we’d pay him, Mr.
Curran.
“I’d promise for Nick the half of his fortune—you know about the big
nugget—and Nick wants me to marry him at once, and to get away from this
dreadful place, and start a fresh life in England. But what’s the good
of his trying, with that stain always on him? Oh, I feel that I’d almost
sell my soul to clear him.”
She told me that was the reason she had promised the dances to Tempest.
She wanted to find out if he was really Rummles. She said he had been
fond of her once, and perhaps he would tell her the truth now.
Remembering a look in the man’s eyes, when they had rested on Nan, I
told her it was a dangerous game, and that she had best not encourage
this Tempest, or Rummles, whichever he might be. But she shook her head,
and her eyes had that shining look, which Nan’s eyes always took, when
she was determined.
We missed Nick somehow in that walk; and it wasn’t for some time—not
till we got back near the stand—that we saw him coming from it. His face
was quite white, and I could see that he was deeply moved. He came up to
Nan.
“Nan,” he said, hoarsely, “I’ve seen him, I’ve recognized him—our enemy.
And you’ve been speaking to him! Nan, I forbid you to do it. He will
work us harm again, as he did before. And he has been talking about
you—chaffing—pretending that he has made a conquest. I won’t have it,
Nan.”
I never before saw Nick angry. He was almost angry with Nan, and when
she told him that she had promised to dance with Rummles, forbade her
sternly. But Nan tightened her lips. She had her own design, I knew. I
wished that she would not try to carry it out.
There was a coolness, it was very evident, between Nick and Nan that
evening. The Postmaster’s wife told me they had almost had words on the
way to the ball, because Nan wanted to do something that he wouldn’t
allow.
The Postmaster’s wife was curious about it, and there was talk in the
ballroom, for a good deal of interest attached to Nick just now, because
of his splendid find and his rapidly increasing fortune.
Nan looked lovely. She had a soft colour, and her white dress set off
her beautiful eyes and hair.
It was quite a grand affair, the ball. You wouldn’t expect there could
be anything so fine at a place like Eungella Diggings. The stewards had
sent blacks into the scrub, and they had brought back branches of
treefern and bunya cones and creepers, and what with flags and one thing
and another, it was as pretty a sight as you could fancy.
The Baronet had turned out in swell evening clothes, and so had the
“Honourables”—though nobody knew how they had managed it, as they had
only brought their swags on their backs to the diggings. And they had
got out all their London manners, and danced unlike the other men.
The Gold Commissioner was at the ball, too, and the Police Magistrate,
and we had all got ourselves up, as well as we could.
Tempest was in regular dress clothes, with a flower in his button-hole,
and looked like a Strand shopman, I thought.
Nan kept to her word and danced with him, and I saw them sitting out and
talking very earnestly. But for all Nan’s bright colour, she looked
unhappy, and Nick scarcely went near her. “It’s for Nick’s good,” she
said to me, when we were dancing together. “Mr. Curran, I was right; it
_is_ Rummles, and he has promised me—— Oh! Nick will thank me some day.”
Whatever Rummles had promised, he didn’t seem in a hurry to keep his
promise, and tried in the meantime to get as much as he could of Nan’s
company. He was always up at the doctor’s and the Postmaster’s, where
Nan spent most of her time, and the consequence was that Nick went
seldom to see her.
Nick began to look moody and wild; but he was so proud that he wouldn’t
go straight to Nan and have things out. He had got it into his head
already, I could see, that she was being attracted to Rummles.
Now was my time, and the devil did whisper to me—I’ll own it
honestly—that if I chose to foment the mischief by working on Nick’s
suspicions, there’d be a chance for me yet with Nan. But I didn’t yield
to the temptation.
I did my best to put it away, and I even expostulated with Nan for
letting Rummles come between her and Nick. The tears came into her eyes
as I talked to her. She was looking very worn and white and thin. All
she said was, “It won’t last much longer, Mr. Curran; I’ve got his
promise, and Nick will be grateful to me in the end.”
That very afternoon, as I was going across the gully from _The Star_
office to one of my claims, I came upon Rummles and Nan. They were
standing close by the passionfruit hedge, which screened the
Postmaster’s garden, and she seemed to be pleading earnestly, and he was
looking at her in a mad, wicked sort of way.
I crept round the hedge. I suppose it was dishonourable, but I couldn’t
help it. I wanted to take care of Nan, and I felt by that look on
Rummles’ face, that he was up to devilry.
“You’ve got to do this for me,” I heard him say, “and then I’ll do what
you ask. I’ll give you the proofs because I love you—yes, I love you,
Nan, and I’ve always loved you, and I hate Nick because he has taken you
from me.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” she cried. “You mustn’t say that. I love none but
Nick, and you mustn’t say you’re doing it for love of me. You are doing
it for love of right and justice.”
“Very well,” he said with a malign laugh, “I’m doing it for the love of
right and justice. But I’m not going to abate my terms, Nan. You are to
come yourself, and alone.”
She was frightened, and argued with him, and begged him to let her bring
Nick, but he roughly refused.
She had to come alone—to his hut up the gully—after dusk that evening,
and he pledged himself to give her the proof of Nick’s innocence. Then
they parted, and I went on to the claim, a good deal disturbed in my
mind.
I was afraid, that if I told Nick, there would be murder done, but I was
determined Nan should not go to that villain’s hut, without my being
somewhere within earshot.
I skulked about the Postmaster’s house till after sunset, and it was
almost dark when I saw Nan come out, looking very pale and very
frightened, but with the steadfast, resolute look in her face, that I
knew meant she wasn’t to be turned from her purpose. I felt easier about
things when I saw her stop and take a little pistol from her belt, look
at it, and hide it away again under her jacket. Nan was a brave woman,
but she was not blindly foolhardy.
I followed her to Rummles’ hut. I knew he had a mate, and he was by way
of working hard, but I felt pretty sure he would have got rid of his
mate that evening, and it turned out that he had.
He met Nan outside his hut, and he tried to make her go in, but she
refused. She was very quiet and gentle, and she talked to him, as she
might have done if she had been his sister.
He must have had a bad heart, indeed, not to be touched by the way she
begged him, to be true to anything that was good in him, and to turn
over a new leaf, and lead a worthy life. And then she promised him that
she would always be his friend, and that she and Nick would do
everything in their power to help him.
He listened to her for a bit, and then, when she begged him to give her
the proofs he had promised her, he came closer to her, and broke out
into a wild declaration of love; he told her he couldn’t live without
her, abused Nick, and implored her to throw Nick over and run away with
him.
I don’t know what idea he had in his mind about carrying her off.
Anyhow, he wasn’t given the chance of trying the experiment. Directly
his arm went out to draw Nan to him, there was a dash and a scuffle, and
before I could fling myself forward, as I had been about to do on Nan’s
behalf, I saw that another man had darted from the shadow of the hut, on
the opposite side to where I had hidden myself, and that it was Nick who
was wrestling with his enemy, and who finally flung him to the ground.
The fellow lay half stunned; his head had struck against the post, which
supported the bough-shade of the hut, and when I stooped over him, I saw
that blood was streaming from his mouth and nose.
“I’ve knocked one of his teeth out,” said Nick savagely. “Oh, Nan, Nan,
my darling, how could you make me so anxious and miserable?”
They were in each other’s arms, the two completely reconciled. And Nan
begged Nick to forgive her, and then they saw me and there was an
explanation, and a half hysterical laughing and crying on Nan’s part.
Nick gripped my hand. “God bless you, Curran,” he said. He told me how
he, too, had been hanging round the Postmaster’s house trying to make up
his mind to go in.
And at first, in the dusk, he had fancied I was Rummles, and when he had
seen Nan come out and me follow her, he had followed us both with rage
and jealousy tearing at his heart, till, when he had reached the hut,
and Rummles appeared, he had found out his mistake.
Rummles groaned at his pain, and Nick told me to stay and look after
him, and took Nan’s hand to lead her away.
Nan, however, clung to the idea of the proofs of Nick’s innocence, which
Rummles had promised her, and would not leave till Nick showed her, that
there could be no proof except Rummles’ own full confession, and that he
had been fooling her all the time.
This episode brought things to a crisis between Nan and Nick. Nan was so
remorseful for the suffering she had caused Nick that she was ready to
agree to anything he wished. And the whole thing had shaken her nerves,
and she longed to get away from Eungella.
As for Nick, he had an almost superstitious dread of Rummles, whom he
looked upon as his evil genius, and was firmly convinced, that, if they
all three remained at the Diggings, Rummles would in the end accomplish
his evil purpose of separating him from Nan. And so, saying no word to
anyone at first, he quietly made his arrangements for departure.
On Christmas Eve the downward steamer would touch at the seaport for
Eungella—a half day’s coach journey from the Diggings. And on the
morning of Christmas Eve Nick was married to Nan.
Nick had got a special licence, and the wedding took place very early in
the morning, and had but few spectators.
[Illustration:
“On the morning of Christmas Eve Nick was married to Nan.” (_Page
196_)
]
The day was tropical in its heat, but a faint breeze crept up the gully,
and there were some misty clouds in the bright blue sky. The grapes were
ripening in the Chinamen’s gardens on the gully slope, and we gathered
some jasmine flowers for Nan to wear. Strange irony of fate—to use the
old penny-a-liner phrase—it was I who gave Nan to her husband.
I went with them to the seaport, and waited with them till the steamer
came in.
It was just such a night as this, and the Southern Cross was shining as
brightly as it shines on me to-night. And in a garden by the wharf there
was a tree of great ghostly strong-scented trumpet flowers.
As I stood on the wharf and watched the steamer going out to sea, taking
Nan out of my life for ever, the clock struck, and I knew it was
Christmas Day. And it seemed a mockery of my sorrow, when the voices of
the children came down to me, from the road above, singing the old carol
of frosty nights and ice-bound roads and clear glistening Northern
constellations, singing here, under these tropical skies and strange
stars, and in the murmurous night laden with rich sickly perfume—
“God bless you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born this Christmas Day.”
And Nan was gone!
I went back to Eungella and duly chronicled the wedding and the
departure of the bride and bridegroom in _The Star_. And I wrote a
leader on Nick’s sudden gain of fortune, and on the finding of big
nuggets in general, and I made Nick the text for a sermon on pluck and
perseverance and fidelity.
But I didn’t write anything about my own aching heart.
I was in _The Star_ office reading over the slips of proof, one night
not long after, when a digger I knew came in. He was one of the
“Honourables,” and he and I were rather chums.
“There’s some ‘copy’ for you down at Ruffey’s,” he said.
Ruffey’s was the big public-house of the place.
“I couldn’t stand it. This devil’s hole has finished me. I am going to
clear out of it to-morrow.”
“What’s the row?” I asked carelessly. Rows were common enough at
Eungella, and knife scratches too.
“Oh, a regular ‘go-as-you-like-it’ fight,” he said. “A digger called
Voucher—you know him, next claim to mine—and another fellow, a
good-looking counter-jumper sort of fellow.
“They brought some tools in to sharpen, and they went drinking, and the
end was a flourish of the tomahawk, Voucher was sharpening. Voucher hit
the other chap on the head with the edge and rubbed it in with the flat.
“I made for the tomahawk and collared it after a scuffle, but not before
the other chap had pulled out a knife. That was the signal for Voucher’s
bowie knife, and the other fellow got a nasty wound. I came off for a
doctor, and I’ve sent him along to Ruffey’s, and now I shall go and turn
in.”
One used to get callous to that sort of thing at Eungella. But it was
“copy” for me. I prepared for a move to the scene of the fight.
“Who is the man, who has been stabbed?” I asked.
“The chap that was after that girl you saw married the other day—Sister
Nan. He is not a friend of yours, is he? If he is, I am sorry for you.
But you needn’t be uneasy. He’ll get over his scratch right enough. They
all do, worse luck.”
“No, he is not a friend of mine,” I answered. And I did not wait for
another word. An idea had taken possession of me. It seemed to me a call
of fate. I took up my hat and rushed to Ruffey’s.
The bar had a curiously quiet look. The men who were in it seemed awed,
I thought.
There was a policeman hanging about, and policemen were not common at
Eungella, and generally kept out of the way when there was a row.