A few years before, Harrington had bought Tinandra Downs, and had
stocked the run with three thousand head of store cattle; for half of
which number he had paid, the remainder he had bought on long terms from
a neighbouring squatter--a man who knew his sterling merits, and was
confident that he (Harrington) would make Tinandra one of the best
cattle stations in the far north. Fortune had smiled upon him from the
first; for within two years came the discovery of the famous Palmer
River goldfields, only a few hundred miles distant, and cattle and
station properties doubled in value, for in less than half a year there
were six thousand diggers on the field, and more came pouring in from
the southern colonies by every steamer to Cooktown. New townships sprang
suddenly into existence, provisions of all kinds brought an enormous
price, and Harrington cleared off his debt to his squatter friend almost
ere he could realise having done so, and that he had several thousands
of pounds to the good as well. And his good luck stuck to him, for
it was attended by careful management, and every mob of fat cattle he
despatched to the goldfield instead of sending them on a three-hundred
league journey to Brisbane, meant another couple of thousand sovereigns.
Then he began to improve the head station--and to think of Myra, a girl
whom he had once met in Sydney, and who sent him newspapers, and, once
or twice, at long intervals, had written him letters. He had answered
these letters with a secret hope that, if all went well with him, he
would take another trip to Sydney, and then--well, he could at least
ask her. If she said no, why, who was there to chaff him? He was not a
communicative man, had very 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.”