MISS LILETH MUNDELLA AND MR. WILSON GILES.
“Where the banana grows the animal system is indolent, and
pampered at the cost of the higher qualities; the man is
sensual and cruel.”—EMERSON.
It is a blazing winter day in Northern Queensland; a morning when
it is quite a pleasure to turn one’s eyes from the sun-scorched,
shadowless “open country” outside to the cool, thatched verandah of
“Government House” (head station-house), where Mr. Wilson Giles, the
owner of Murdaro run, resides. It is particularly grateful to do so
to-day, for in addition to the soft green shade of crimson-blossomed
Bougainvillias and other northern floral favourites, the presence
of a fair female form in a cool, light dress—that sight so dear to
men imprisoned in up-country, societyless wilds—lends a double
charm to the already attractive shelter from the sun’s rays. The
young lady who is now to engage our attention for a brief period
is Miss Lileth Mundella, to whose future hopes and ambitions we
have already alluded in Chapter V. On the day in question she sits
in the shelter of the verandah, slowly rocking herself in a great
cane-chair, the embroidery of light and shadow cast by the motionless
leaves falling in picturesque chiaroscuric effect upon her handsome,
artistically-draped figure.
Miss Mundella is in deep thought, and the long, dark lashes of her
half-closed eyes are turned earthwards as she gently rocks herself
to and fro. In front of the low-eaved station-house, on a withered
grass-plot,—a futile attempt at a tennis-lawn,—two of the house
cats are bounding in turns over a small brown snake, trying to get
an opportunity of breaking the angry reptile’s back with their
sharp teeth. Upon the verandah a few emerald lizards are chasing
the house-flies; and, looking through the passage to the quadrangle
at the back of the house, where the store, bachelors’ quarters,
and kitchen buildings are situated, we can see the dark-skinned,
brightly-dressed aboriginal “house-gins” as they prowl about,
grinning and chattering over the preparation of “tucker long a
boss,” or master’s dinner. It is nearly “tiffen time,”—a term for
the midday repast copied by Australians from their Anglo-Indian
brethren,—and Miss Mundella, who acts as housekeeper to her uncle,
having finished her light household duties for the day, is now giving
herself up to her thoughts anent the scheme which so nearly concerns
our young friend Claude Angland.
A casual male observer, with the average amount of discernment and
experience of the fair sex, would doubtless have decided in his
own mind that this young thinker, with the low forehead and dark,
pronounced eyebrows, was pondering over her next new costume, or
perhaps of some rival’s successes. For the young lady’s thoughts are
evidently intense, and also unpleasant. But neither dress, envy, nor
in fact any of those other common troubles that come to ruffle the
soft feathers of ordinary maidens’ meditations, ever disturb the firm
balanced mind of Miss Lileth Mundella.
“I will make myself honoured, obeyed, perhaps even loved, by means
of that one talisman that has survived the ages, and can still work
efficiently in this extremely practical world in which I find myself.
Money alone will give me the social position which will make life
worth living. I will strive to make myself rich.” This had been the
young lady’s keynote of thought and action since the day when she
found herself dependent upon an uncle’s generosity. Much had it
marred the original beauty of her pure, æsthetic soul.
In addition to her duties as hostess and commander-in-chief over the
native contingent of her widower-uncle’s household, Lileth was also
his secretary.
The ladies of an up-country squatter’s family very often act in this
capacity, for they are generally better educated than the ‘boss,’
and, moreover, have plenty of leisure time.
Miss Mundella was glad to find herself in this position of trust, for
it afforded her the means she sought of strengthening her hands for
the ambitious _coup d’état_, that she intended to put into practice
some day. Already Giles’s niece had profited by the opportunities
her secretaryship gave her, by learning far more of her uncle’s
past career than that jolly-looking, selfishly-cunning, middle-aged
gentleman had any idea.
Wilson Giles was afraid of his niece. A fast youth had enervated
his mental powers considerably, and without knowing it, he fell
by degrees nearly entirely under the almost mesmeric influence
of Lileth’s dark eyes and powerful will, whilst yet he fondly
half-flattered himself that he was only acting the part of the
“generous relation.” The two had only had one serious struggle for
supremacy: it was in reference to Miss Mundella’s brother. This
young man had held a position in a southern bank for some years, but
being discovered in running a nice little private discount and loan
business over the “teller’s counter” at which he presided, he was
forced to seek fresh fields of labour.
Lileth won the battle with her uncle, “hands down,” and her brother
became a “rouse about” (apprentice on a run) at Murdaro station.
That her uncle was indebted to a large amount to the late Dr. Dyesart
she knew well; she believed the two men, also, to be partners in the
run. But this was one of the few things she found herself unable to
pry fully into. Miss Mundella had taken charge of the letter from
the dead explorer, which faithful Billy had curiously brought to the
very station his late master had been so much interested in. She had,
moreover, carefully opened the packet which contained the message
from the dead; not from idle curiosity, but with the idea that it
probably contained something that would assist her in her plans. The
words of the letter she saw at once clearly pointed to three things:
firstly, a reparation or gift to be made to some one through the
nephew; secondly, a command to this nephew to visit the grave of the
writer; thirdly, a suspicion of the honesty of squatters,—possibly a
concealed distrust of her uncle Wilson Giles himself.
Miss Mundella’s first thoughts were to destroy the letter, but upon
consideration she thought she saw in it a means of obtaining further
command over her uncle, and so sent it on its road to New Zealand.
She must act, and act quickly, for her brother had informed her from
Sydney of young Angland’s departure for the north; but before she
could move in the matter she must know more of the relations that had
existed between Dyesart and her uncle.
The young lady is sitting wrapped in these cogitations, oblivious of
the snake-hunting cats and meteoric lizards, when we first see her,
rocking herself gently under the cool and shady verandah. Presently a
light step is heard in the large room whose French windows open upon
Miss Mundella’s leafy retreat, and the little figure of an aboriginal
girl appears, her dark limbs and cream-coloured gown making her
resemble one of those composite statues of bronze and marble.
It is Dina, Miss Lileth’s special handmaiden. Caught as a child,
she is the sole surviving member of a once great _Otero_, or
tribal-family, which was annihilated by the Black Police some eight
years before, at a “rounding-up” of the natives in the neighbourhood.
It is she alone, as we see her, of all the house-gins, or unpaid
native women, who are employed about “Government House,” that is
decorated with that insignia of civilized female servitude,—a white
lace cap; and though Dina looks to-day slightly untidy, one generally
sees her glossy, luxuriant locks of jetty hair as neatly stowed away
beneath the natty ornament before mentioned as Phyllis of old herself
could have desired.
Dina stalks slowly towards her mistress, with a grin of respectful
humility wrinkling her dark, shiny face, which would be beautiful
but for that excessively triangular appendage, her nose. Suddenly,
however, remembering that “missie” has threatened her with a flogging
if she appears before that lady without her stockings on, she sneaks
off again, softly as a bat upon the wing, and presently reappears
with her calfless lower limbs clothed in neat white cotton and shod
with highly polished shoes.
The girl stands for some time with her arms akimbo, and her
white-palmed hands resting open upon the waistband of her short gown,
meekly waiting for her mistress to notice her. But Miss Mundella’s
thoughts are far away. So Dina at last looks round for something with
which to while away the time.
A large beetle, with tesselated-pavement back and enormous antennæ,
presently attracts her attention, and squatting down the dusky maiden
plays with it, till the frightened insect escapes through a joint
between the floor-boards. However, she soon finds fresh amusement in
the troubles of a _mantis religiosa_, which has foolishly attempted
to cross the thin brown stream of hurrying ants that extends from
the house to their mound, a hundred yards away. Dina’s childish face
beams with fun as she watches the contest. She is not cruel,—few
Australian natives delight in seeing pain in any form,—but she is,
like many of her sex, white and black, indifferent, that is all;
content to be amused, and forgetful of the suffering anything may
feel so long as it pleasantly tickles her sense of the humorous.
The mantis on the path by the verandah is invulnerable to the ants’
attack, save at two points,—its soft tail and long, facile neck. On
the other hand, the mode of warfare employed by those tiny, insect
bull-dogs, the emmets, is simplicity itself. Laying hold of whatever
part of the intruder’s awkward body happens to come near them, they
“freeze on,” their hind legs being used as drag-breaks to impede
the mantis’s forward march. The mantis, although covered with busy
foes, marches on, with that prayerful aspect—the beseeching, upturned
head and pious, folded, hand-like front-legs—that has earned it its
name. Ever and anon some enterprising ant ventures to attack the
weak points already alluded to of this insect Achilles; then are the
lately-folded mandible claws deliberately brought into play, and the
enemy is crushed, even as a nut is broken in a pair of nut-crackers.
The solemn, preoccupied air of the bigger insect, and the plucky
onslaught of its tiny foes, at last cause Dina to forget her state
of bondage, also the august presence of her mistress, and she bursts
into a merry fit of laughter. Her hilarity, however, ceases as
suddenly as it commences.
“Dina, what are you doing there?” comes the clear, contralto voice of
Miss Mundella.
The culprit stands before “missie” with downcast eyes and trembling
figure.
“Your cap is half off your head, and your stockings are coming down.
You have forgotten to tie your shoe-laces. And why have you not an
apron on? Don’t you remember the flogging you received for forgetting
what I told you about your coming to me in an untidy state? Be off
and get yourself straight at once, and hurry that lazy Sophy with
tiffen. Marmie (master) will soon be back.”
Miss Lileth always refrains from employing that foolish pigeon-English
that generally obtains amongst Australian settlers in their
conversations with aborigines. And she has found herself perfectly
understood and implicitly obeyed since she first arrived at the
station, and established her authority by having the house-gins flogged
for the slightest misbehaviour, till they were thoroughly “broken into
her ways,” as she pleasantly termed it.
Dina, who had come to ask her mistress for leave of absence for
the next day, is afraid to do so now, and instead bursts into a
theatrical cry, with her knuckles rubbing her eyes and tears rolling
down her ludicrously-wrinkled face and dusky bosom. The moment the
girl thinks herself out of sight, however, she is transformed into a
laughing little nigger once more.
She stands in the passage giggling with all her might at the sight
of the youngest house-gin, Lucy, _ætat_ ten summers, who out in the
quadrangle at the back is up to one of her favourite tricks. This
consists of imitating the ungraceful waddle of that head of the
culinary department, “Terrible Billy,” the old man-cook.
Poor little, large-mouthed, wriggling Lucy loves to get behind the
spare, hardship-twisted, little old man as he crosses the yard, and
burlesque his every action, to the delight of the black heads that
appear at the doors and windows, and grin white-teethed plaudits at
the little actress’s histrionic powers.
Every action of Lucy’s lithe little body, every gleam of her
cunning little black eyes, was wicked to a degree. Needless to say,
her powers of mimicry were perfect. Nothing escaped her active
examination. To see the suddenness with which she could flash from
merriment to passive stupidity when discovered in her pranks, or
when Terrible Billy—a harmless, old periodical-drunkard retainer of
Mr. Giles, whose awkward, stumbling gait she imitated exactly—turned
round, was worth a good deal. Her bended little body shaking with
bubbling merriment in her single garment of an old gown; the thin,
ugly little face, against which her tiny black hands are pressed,
as if to stifle the sound of her giggles, whilst she hobbles after
the dilapidated old model; and then when he turns, flash! Lucy has
changed as quickly into a dull, sad-looking child, who has apparently
never known what laughter means, and has thoughts for nothing
evidently but her work, to which she is sullenly creeping when “the
Terrible” changes his position, and looks suspiciously at her with
his bleared old eyes.
Dina is looking at and enjoying the fun, and quick as both she and
Lucy are, they are caught by Miss Mundella, who has followed her
untidy handmaid to the door.
Lileth says nothing, but rebukes the laggard Dina with a look so
fraught with cruel meaning that the black girl melts into real tears
this time, as her mistress returns to her seat on the verandah.
The sound of wheels is now heard approaching, and a buck-board buggy
(a kind of light chaise) appears, driven by an elderly gentleman,
with a very red face and very white linen suit and hat.
The trap is pulled up near the house, and the driver, taking a
boatswain’s whistle from his pocket, blows a couple of shrill notes
thereon, when two native boys, in dirty moleskin trousers turned up
to the knee and grey flannel shirts, hasten up and take their station
at the horses’ heads.
The occupant of the buggy, however, does not release the reins, but,
calling up first one boy and then the other, hits each a couple of
stinging cuts with his driving whip round their bare legs, and makes
the recipients roar with agony.
“I’ll teach you to keep me waiting, you black beggars!” the red-faced
man roars. “Couldn’t you hear me coming? Now, Tarbrush, yer’d better
look out, for, swelp me, but if I have any more of your durned
laziness I’ll flay you alive, like I did your cursed brother Bingo!”
“Now, look alive, and take the mare and water her,” the speaker
continues in a calmer voice, “and mind you put a soft pair of hobbles
on her. You can let Joe go in the horse paddock. It’s your turn,
Dandie, to get the horses to-morrow, and if you keep me a minute
after seven o’clock I’ll loosen some of your black hide, swelp me if
I don’t.”
The speaker, who is Mr. Wilson Giles, now gets out of the trap, and
taking his whip in one hand and a revolver that he always has with
him in the buggy in the other, he toddles with the usual short steps
of a bushman to the house, just nodding a brief “good-morning” to his
niece as he crosses the verandah.
Mr. Giles is, as we have said, an elderly man, but he has rather
grown old through his kind of life than the number of his years. A
somewhat corpulent man too is he, with a heavy, sensual countenance,
on the sides of which, in pale contrast to his scarlet face, are
ragged, light-red whiskers. The expression upon this gentleman’s face
before strangers is generally either a look of suspicious cunning or
an affected one of jolly frankness,—the latter having once formed an
ample cloak for many a mean action, but, being now worn threadbare,
is less useful than its owner still fondly imagines it to be.
After copious “nips” of whisky and soda-water, Mr. Giles presently
throws himself into a chair before the elegantly provisioned table,
where his niece and a middle-aged gentleman have already taken their
places, and immediately betrays the fact, by the impartial way in
which he thrusts his knife into meat, butter, cheese, and preserves,
that he is either an eccentric or an ill-educated man.
“Come outside, I want to speak to you,” he grunts to his niece, when
he has finished a very rapid repast, quite ignoring throughout the
presence of the third person at the table. This is Mr. Cummercropper,
the store- and book-keeper of the run, who, being a new arrival
in the wilds, has not yet been able to obtain that point of rapid
consumption of diet at which most station folk are adepts.
“I will be with you shortly, uncle,” Miss Mundella replies, and
proceeds to enter into a conversation upon music and art with the
polished storekeeper, who is the very opposite of his highly inflamed
“boss.”
Mr. Cummercropper is hopelessly in love with Lileth, like most of
the men this young lady thinks it worth while to be civil to. It is
a curious feature about Lileth’s male acquaintances that they soon
become hot admirers or warm haters of the dark-eyed, haughty young
lady.
“Oh, you’ve come at last, have you?” Mr. Giles says, as his niece
sweeps to her chair on the verandah, and she knows by experience that
his bullying air is the result of something having annoyed or puzzled
him, and that probably he will end what he has to say by asking her
advice. But her uncle must “blow off his steam,” as he sometimes
calls it, on somebody, and a scapegoat must be found before he will
become quiet enough to talk sensibly. So Lileth’s first act is to
pacify her uncle in the following way.
“Before you begin,” she says, “I want you to have Dina and Lucy
beaten. You had better have it done at once, because the Rev. Mr.
Harley may be here this afternoon. He said he would try and do his
circuit in one month this time.”
“Oh, you needn’t mind Harley,” replies Mr. Giles; “he knows better
than to interfere with our ways, Lileth. Besides, he used to ‘dress’
his wife’s little gin down proper at Croydon last year. Even the
squatters at the hotel he was stopping at kicked up a row about it.
The servant gals told me the little nigger’s back was pretty well
scored. What have the gals been doing now?”
“Oh, I don’t really think that it is worth while my going into the
long exposition of household arrangements that an explanation would
necessitate.”
Mr. Giles looks sideways at the calm dark eyes that are lazily
looking upwards, as their owner sits slowly rocking her chair by his
side.
“I’ll soon fix their hash for them,” he growls forth at last,
feeling glad of the opportunity to wreak his anger on somebody. Then
he whistles upon the boatswain’s call, which had once before that
morning heralded a punishment, and shortly a big native appears,
whose well-pronounced nasal bones proclaim him to belong to a Cape
York or Torres Straits tribe. The black’s oily face is surmounted by
an old cabbage-tree hat, and he wears trousers and shirt like the
other boys; but he also rejoices in a pair of Blucher boots, of which
he is inordinately proud.
“Here, Carlo,” says Mr. Giles, in the curious pigeon-English already
referred to, “you know that um fellow waddy (that stick); him sit
down alonger office (it is in the office); mine beat it black fellow
(my black fellow beater). You fetch um along.” The oily face lights
up with a smile of anticipation, for he it is that generally acts the
part of executioner, and “combs down the gals” by Marmie’s orders
when it is needed in the cause of discipline. As a member of an alien
tribe, Carlo returns the hatred of the station blacks with interest.
The waddy, a long-handled “cat” of six tails, made of leather, is
brought to Mr. Giles.
“Go and catch Lucy and Dina,” says that gentleman.
Both uncle and niece sit in silence till the girls arrive, the two
miserable creatures having been found at the collection of huts
close by, known as the native camp, where they had run to hide on
seeing Carlo take the whip to the “boss.”
“Don’t move till I come back. Won’t be long,” murmurs the squatter
rising, and presently the yells and screams of the two girls are
heard down by the stockyard, where the boss is standing admiring
their graceful, naked bodies as they writhe beneath the lash wielded
by the brawny Carlo.
Mr. Giles returns quite an altered man. Either the enjoyable sight
he has just witnessed, or a couple of “pegs” of whisky he swallowed
medicinally afterwards, has sweetened his soul for the time being.
“Well, niece,” he said, sitting down, “I’ve done your little job. And
now I want you to listen to what I’m going to tell you, and tell me
what you think of it.” Miss Mundella’s handsome, white-draped figure
rocks a little faster than before, but her eyes remain still fixed on
the leaves above her head.
“You know, Lileth, I think,—no, I’m pretty sure you do,—that I’d have
gone a ‘broker,’”—the black eyes flash a rebuke at him for the slang
he presumes to use before her. “Oh, you know what I mean. I’d have
had to have filed in ’85 if it hadn’t been for Dr. Dyesart turning
up trumps and lending me some of the ready. Well, when the doctor
died he held promissory notes of mine for nearly £20,000. D’you know,
niece, why he lent me the money?”
After a short pause the speaker continued, “But I don’t know why I
should tell you. Likely enough I’ll be sorry for it to-morrow.”
“If you think I can advise you, uncle, the more I know about the
matter the easier can I come to a decision. That is your excuse
for telling me and mine for listening to what would otherwise not
interest me.”
[Illustration: DINA’S FLOGGING.]
“Well, I suppose that’s logic, Lileth. At any rate, Dr. Dyesart, I
may tell you, was once engaged to be married to my late wife, to the
mother of Glory and Georgie.”
“Indeed, uncle, and how long is it since poor Aunt Mary was engaged
to him?”
“Don’t exactly know. I never saw Dyesart till about five years
ago—two years after the death of my poor old wom——, of your aunt.”
The speaker hastily corrects his _lapsus linguæ_, glancing at his
niece meanwhile, and continues:—
“Dyesart comes here. Glory and little George,—Lord, what I’d give to
find out what’s become of my little George,” and a tear moistens the
inflamed orbits of Mr. Giles,—“Glory was playing with George on the
verandah here. The doctor speaks to them, and was telling Glory he
was an old friend of her mother’s when I arrived on the scene. ‘My
name’s Dyesart,’ said he; ‘let me speak to you in private. I had the
honour of knowing the late Mrs. Giles, your wife.’”
Miss Mundella’s chair ceases rocking, and that lady’s eyes watch her
uncle’s lips.
“He told me,” continued Mr. Giles, “and I will just cut what he said
as short as I can, that he was a wealthy man and a bachelor; that
his agents in Sydney had told him Murdaro station would probably
be in the market before long; also that he had discovered that the
lady to whom he had once been engaged in England had married me,
the proprietor of Murdaro, and was dead. He had come up to see the
place, as it was interesting to him. Well, the doctor went into a
rapture over Glory,—who’s neat enough, I believe, but wasn’t a patch
on little Georgie. ‘She’s like your late missus,’ he said; and then
before I knew it he offered me money on loan without interest, enough
to put me on my feet again.”
“It was he that gave Glory her money, then?” asks Miss Mundella,
showing for the first time her interest in her uncle’s narrative.
“Yes, he did all that he did do in a real gentlemanly way, I’ll say
that for him,” returned Mr. Giles, lighting one of two green-leaf
cigars that Johnnie, the Chinese gardener, presents to his boss about
this time every day. “Whilst I’m on the subject I may as well tell
you that I find Dyesart’s death doesn’t affect Glory’s money; I’ve
got a satisfactory letter from my Brisbane lawyers about that.
“Now I have told you pretty well all, Lileth. Is there anything else
you’d like to know?”
“Well, yes, uncle; first, how are you situated as regards funds—money
matters—now? I should like to know particularly before I ask any more
questions.” As she ceases speaking Miss Mundella cannot help glancing
scornfully at her relative, for she sees he is afraid to ask her
advice, although his object in opening up the conversation was to do
this. But her look changes as the thought enters her brain, “Is this
story of the money the real and sole reason of his anxiety?”
“Well, I’m tight pressed,” replies Mr. Giles, looking nervously at
his niece; “that confounded spec. of mine on the MacArthur River was
a stiffener for me, and for better men than me too.”
“You could not refund the money lent you by Dyesart if his
executors,”—the young lady watches her uncle as she speaks, and
sees that gentleman’s rather washy eyes open a little bit wider and
become fixed, a sign that expresses in his physiognomy what turning
pale would in most other men,—“could you refund this money if his
executors were to press you to do so?”
“Jupiter! No!” gasps Mr. Giles, without an apology for the oath.
Indeed, neither notice it in their interest in the matter in hand.
“What would you have to do if you were forced to repay this £20,000,
say, to his nephew Angland?”
“I’d have to sell every beast on the run,” gasps Mr. Giles, his eyes
protruding more than ever, “and I’d have to sell my own carcase into
the bargain,” he adds, coarsely.
“You must please control yourself, uncle, or I must go indoors,”
murmurs Lileth, leaning back in her chair.
“Oh, you’re not inquisitive about hearing any more, ar’n’t you?”
begins Mr. Giles, angrily. “You are a woman, although you’ve got
brains, and you needn’t pretend——” But the uncle is obliged to nip
his ungallant speech in the bud, and afterwards to apologise for it;
for his niece rises to leave him, and he feels he cannot afford to
quarrel with her at any price.
“Well, uncle,” the young lady inquires, “would you be sorry if these
promissory notes were found?”
“Why, of course. They’d ruin the whole bilin’ of us.” Mr. Giles’s
answer, coming as it does from a mouth whose chin is sunk upon a
desponding breast, is scarcely audible.
“With the exception of Glory?”
“Oh, her money’s all right; can’t touch hers.”
“You have tried, then,” thinks Lileth, “and this is the reason you
inquired about it. You are desperate. The game is mine if I play my
cards carefully.”
“Well, uncle,” she continues, “there are only two ways that I can see
to get rid of this awkward state of affairs.”
“What’s them?” comes the snappish inquiry.
“Either to find out a means of getting at and destroying these
P.N.’s, or——” Here Miss Mundella pauses so long that her uncle’s face
grows redder than ever with excitement, till at last he bursts out
impatiently, “Or what?”
“Or destroy the means this young Angland has of finding where the
notes are.”
“Can either of these things be done?”
“Yes, the latter.”
“How can it be done?”
“By means of money.”
“Who will do it?”
“I will.”
Mr. Giles cogitates for a minute or two.
“You know more of this matter than you pretend.”
“Than I pretend!” The young lady expresses her surprise at this
accusation in her sweetest tones.
“Well, then, than you have told me, if you like that way of putting
it better. You’re a clever gal, and have more ‘savez’ than I have in
a matter like this.” The speaker’s eyes withdraw into his head, and
he feels more cheerful and hopeful as he goes on speaking.
He ends by placing the whole affair in his niece’s hands for her to
fight out for him.
Lileth has her fish in the shallows now, but she knows she must not
startle him till her landing net is safely under and around the
prize. So putting a little softer intonation into her voice, and
rising from her seat, she goes to her uncle’s side.
“Uncle, I am only a poor orphan,” she begins, looking almost through
Mr. Giles’s downcast eyelids. Mr. Giles can feel the power of his
niece’s glance and fairly trembles, for he is always most afraid of
her when she speaks thus softly.
“You have given my brother and myself a home,” goes on the young
lady. “We owe you everything. I _can_ help you and I will.”
Mr. Giles breathes more freely, but he would hardly have done so if
he had known that Miss Mundella only wanted to make him easier for a
moment in order to insure his feeling shy of having the whole trouble
back on his own shoulders again.
“But, uncle, I have my good name to think of. I must risk that and a
good deal more besides in forwarding these interests of yours. I owe
it to Mr. Puttis as well as to myself to ask you if you will make me
some token of regard, of appreciation, if I clear this trouble out of
your way.”
“Anything you like,” Mr. Giles murmurs sleepily, almost as if the
words were somebody else’s and he was simply repeating them.
“I have thought out a plan of releasing you entirely from your
indebtedness, but both myself and my future husband will have to risk
everything in doing it. Will you promise to give me a quarter share
in the run if I succeed?”
Mr. Wilson Giles’s tenderest point is touched at this request, and
the pain wakes up his courage for a moment or two.
“You’re not afraid of opening your mouth to ask,” he says, fighting
his ground as he retreats. “You know I’ve never given up all hopes
of finding little George some day. I don’t believe the niggers that
stole him killed him, or I’d have heard of it. I’d look nice if I
gave away what’s to be his some day if he turned up afterwards,
wouldn’t I?”
“If you make me a partner in the run I’ll help you. If not, I’ll
marry Mr. Puttis at once, as he wishes me to do, and go to Brisbane.
I don’t mind,” adds Lileth, pausing for a moment, “agreeing to give
up to poor Georgie half my share if he ever returns to you.
“I shall want a written and signed agreement, uncle,” she observes,
as she leaves him to enter the house, “before I commence work.” Then
at the doorway she turns and remarks, in a careless tone of voice,
“You may like to know that Angland—Dyesart’s nephew—has already left
Sydney, and may be here any day.”
This last bit of news was just what was wanted to complete the
subjugation of Mr. Giles to his niece’s will. How did she know of
this news about Angland? Why, of course, from that young devil of a
nephew of his, whom he had bribed to intercept the dead explorer’s
approaching relative. His own rough-and-ready plan had failed;
perhaps his niece’s scheme would succeed. Anyhow, it was best to
have her on his side, for otherwise she might consider it best for
herself to make young Angland fall in love with her. She could do
that, if she liked, Giles felt certain. The squatter rises and paces
up and down the creaking floor of the verandah restlessly at the
thought.
“Fool that I was to let that black boy of the doctor’s escape me,”
he murmurs aloud. “Torture and money would have made him reveal the
grave to me. It is in that grave, or near it, where the secret that
can blast and ruin me lies. If that girl knew that secret she would
kill me without compunction. I know it. At any risk she must remain
on my side till the danger is past.”
So the agreement is signed and handed to Miss Mundella that night.
And the dark eyes flash like unto Diana’s upon a successful
mythological hunting morning as Lileth’s steady pen directs two
telegrams,—one for Inspector Puttis, which we saw him read at
Ulysses, and another to an influential admirer of hers in the office
of the Commissioner of Police, Brisbane. And then the active brain
falls to pondering over the something that she believes her uncle
kept back from her that afternoon.