'And your ruffianly husband, Mrs. Kyley?'
'I haven't such a thing about me; but if you mean Ben Kyley,' said Mary,
'come down in your private capacity, sergeant, and put the question to
him in the same gentlemanly way. I'll hold your coat and see you get fair
play, if I have to referee the argument myself.'
'Where is Kyley, you harridan?'
'He went out an hour ago to watch the murder and manslaughter going on
down at Eureka, Sergeant Wallis, and if you miscall me again, you
Vandemonian pig-stealer, I'll drag you from your horse and drown you in a
tub of suds!'
Wallis struck his horse with his open hand, and rode away, followed by
his men, laughing back at the seemingly furious Mrs. Kyley, whose assumed
anger, however, suddenly gave place to a broad grin as they passed from
sight, and she winked a mischievous aside at the bearded digger.
'My oath, but that's a beautiful beard you have,' she said. 'I've a mind
to see how it would suit me.'
'Get a doctor to Done as quickly as you can. There are several among the
diggers who'll stand by you,' said Ryder, disregarding Mary's levity.
'You'll look after him? You can draw on me for money to any amount.'
'I'll look after the poor boy, and I won't draw on you for a sixpence.'
'He's with good friends, I know.'
'He is. There's a girl in there who would work the fingers off her two
hands to serve him.'
'I will call again when I can, and as often as I can, but I'm in no
little danger myself.
I understand. You were one of Lalor's men.' Ryder nodded. That idea would
suit him very well.
Then, if it wasn't that I love the boy in there, I'd do it for your sake
as a good man and true,' continued Mary.
Ryder gave a few directions as to the treatment of the patient and then
turned and sauntered away, carrying the loaf under his arm. Mary
reentered the tent, and found Aurora, very pale but apparently quite
calm, busying herself about the patient. She had removed all the blood
articles, and they lay in a heap on the floor. These Mrs. Kyley would
have gathered up, but the girl interfered.
'No, no,' she said, 'leave it to me--leave it all to me! I must work--I
must be busy! If I stopped now my heart would break. Look at him!'
'My God! it is very like death,' whispered Mrs. Kyley.
It was not easy to get a doctor in Ballarat that day. Ben was entrusted
with the mission, and warned to proceed cautiously. He found the doctors
in urgent demand. There were wounded men hidden away in many places, and
the authorities had obtained a monopoly of the services of the practising
physicians. At ten o'clock that night Ben led a young Scotchman named
Clusky in triumph to the tent. Clusky had qualified but gold on the
rushes had proved more attractive than the wearisome hunt for fees in a
Scottish villages and on Ballarat Dr. Clusky was a working miner.
'He's the third to-day,' Clusky said to Mary, 'and the worst--by far the
worst. No fool did that, though,' he continued, referring to the
bandaging of the shoulder, as he rapidly removed the linen. 'The damage
is not so very great here, after all,' he said a moment later; 'but
there's no blood to spare left in his veins, poor devil!'
The doctor refused to interfere with Ryder's stitching in the scalp
wound, and gave a long prescription and much advice, and Jim was left to
the tender mercies of Aurora, Mary, and Ben. Ryder called every night for
a week, and then, having received a favourable verdict from the doctor,
disappeared, his disappearance being satisfactorily accounted for by the
earnest inquiries of a police officer who called upon Ben a few days
later. Meantime, Harry Peetree, who had remained in Ballarat to try and
discover the whereabouts of Jim and Mike, hunted the Kyleys out, and
learned the truth. He left a message for Jim, and then followed his
father and brother, who had made for Simpson's Ranges again immediately
after their escape from the stockade. But ere this, and long before Jim
Done was again conscious of the world about him, poor Mike Burton had
been buried with the rest of the slain insurgents in a common grave.
Fever supervened on Jim Done's injuries, and December passed as he lay
helpless in Mary Kyley's tent, babbling of Chisley, of life on the
Francis Cadman, and of Diamond Gully and Boobyalla. The injury to his
head proved the most serious wound, and there were moments when despair
filled the heart of Aurora; but she nursed him with a devotion that
overlooked nothing, and Mrs. Kyley, and Ben, and the business were all
sacrificed to the patient's needs. Mrs. Kyley and Ben made the sacrifice
gladly, the former because of the big soft heart she hid under her
formidable bulk, and Ben because gall and wormwood were sweet compared
with the bitterness he felt in being one of the many whose neglect had
contributed to the sacrifice of the rebels in the stockade. Business was
practically suspended in the shanty while Done lay in the adjoining tent,
only peaceful drinkers being permitted to refresh themselves with Mary's
wonderful rum. Mrs. Ben, too, was indefatigable in her care of the
wounded man; but Aurora was jealous of her labour of love, and Mary was
sometimes compelled to force her to take rest, and to go out in the open
air and make some effort to drive the pallor from her cheeks.
Aurora's beauty was entirely the beauty of perfect health and fine
vitality; under the influence of her long labours and the wearing anxiety
she endured her good looks faded. She was apparently years older than she
had seemed a month before.
'Your prettiness is all dying out of you, dear,' said Mary; 'you must
rest yourself, you must go into the air and let the roses freshen again,
or the boy won't look at you when he wakes.'
''Twill all come back fast enough when he is well,' Aurora would answer;
and it was into her pale face that Jim gazed with a long look of
childlike gravity when he opened his eyes to consciousness. She detected
the light of reason in his gaze, and her fingers clasped his hand. From
her face his eyes went slowly round the apartment, lingering with an
intent look on familiar objects, and then they went to the roof, and for
fully twenty minutes he watched the glowing patch where a sunbeam struck
the canvas cover, and there was in his face something of the wonder of a
creature born into a new world. Aurora was very grave: she did not smile,
her heart felt no elation--it was numb and old. Jim had a perplexing
sensation of feathery lightness; he felt like a frail snowflake in an
unsubstantial world. The bed under him was a bed of gossamer, if not
wholly visionary. He might fall through at any moment, and if he did he
might go on falling endlessly, a pinch of down in a bottomless abyss. He
tried to close his fingers on Aurora's strong hand. He knew she was
there, and she was real, substantial, although something of the wanness
of this mysterious world was about her.
'Joy,' he whispered. She bent her head to him. 'Where--what--' He
relapsed with a sigh. After all, it did not matter.
'You have been very ill, Jimmy,' she said.
His eyes moved to her face again, and he tried to nod, but found that
that was too much trouble too. It was too much trouble to pretend to
understand even. Aurora would hold him and prevent his floating out into
the fantastical, fairy atmosphere. It seemed right and natural that she
should be there. He had quite expected it. But had he? The train of
thought was too laborious: he abandoned it. Joy gave him something to
drink. She poured it into his mouth, and it ran down his throat. It was
good, wonderfully good--nectar, surely. Had he been told it was water he
would have resented the lie with as much energy as he was capable of
putting into any thought, and that was just the thin, silken line, next
to none at all. As a matter of fact, Joy had given him nothing but water.
It seemed to add to his weight, to give some little quality of substance
to his being. He thought he might thank her with a pressure of his
fingers presently, but the necessary power did not come, and he drifted
into sleep.