Kitabı oku: «Tom Gerrard», sayfa 7

CHAPTER XVI

The news of Westonley’s sudden death was a great shock to Gerrard. The brief telegram from his half-sister had been forwarded to Port Denison, and Lacey had sent it on to him at Fraser’s Gully, by the mailman, together with a copy of the Clarion, containing the telegraphed account of the Dacre’s bank failure. Had Gerrard looked at the newspaper, he might perhaps have connected Westonley’s sudden end with the financial disaster, which had brought ruin to so many thousands of Australian homes, for he knew that his brother-in-law banked at Dacre’s. But Mrs Westonley had said nothing of the cause of her husband’s death—“Edward died suddenly yesterday. Am writing you fully to-night to Port Denison” was all that she had said.

“Dear old Ted!” he said as his eyes filled, and he saw before him the great, bearded face with the kindly, mirthful eyes, and heard the deep, gruff voice. “How can I tell Jim—the boy will be heartbroken.”

And Jim’s grief almost unmanned “Uncle Tom,” as the boy now called him. Putting the telegram in his pocket, he went down to the battery, where his protégé was being inducted into the mysteries of amalgamation by Fraser.

“Jim,” he said quietly, “come along the creek with me for a bit of a stroll.”

“Is your face paining you much this morning, Uncle Tom?” said the boy, as they left the battery, and walked towards the creek, “you look quite white.”

“No, sonny,” and he placed his hand affectionately on the boy’s shoulder, “my face isn’t paining me, but I have a thundering big pain in my heart, Jim—a pain which you must share with me. I have just had a telegram ‘from Marumbah—with very, very sad news.”

“Is it about Mary?” and the boy’s lips quivered; “is she sick, Uncle?” and then, with a gasp—“is she dead?”

“No, sonny, Mary is all right, but Mr Westonley is dead,” and then he told him all that he could tell.

An hour later, when they returned to the house, and Kate Fraser wondered why they looked so quiet and depressed, Gerrard told her of the news he had received.

“Poor Jim!” she said, as she put her arms round the boy, who was trying hard not to again break down.

Then Gerrard went on to say that he would now have to change his plans somewhat.

“I must get back to Port Denison tomorrow, Miss Fraser. I want to send some telegrams as well as letters. But as it will take my sister’s letter quite a fortnight to come from Marumbah, I shall put in most of the time at Kaburie, and, if I may, also inflict myself upon your father and yourself occasionally.”

“Do. We shall be so glad.”

Two days later he and Jim were back in Port Denison, and lunching with Lacey at the Queen’s Hotel. Then for the first time Gerrard heard of the Dacre bank failure.

“It must have been a fearful shock to poor Ted,” he said to Lacey; “and perhaps it was that that killed him, for, as you say, the bank suspended on Saturday, and he died early on the Monday following. I fear he must have been hit very badly by the smash, for he not only had a lot of money in it, but was a big shareholder in the concern as well.”

“That’s unfortunate, for yesterday’s news gives further revelations of the smash, which is the very worst that has occurred in the Colonies. Every one thought that Dacre’s bank was as solid as the rock of Gibraltar.”

This intelligence disturbed Gerrard greatly—so much so that after lunch he sent a telegram to Westonley’s Melbourne agents—who were also his own—and asked them if they could tell him how his sister would be affected by the collapse of Dacre’s. In a few hours he received an answer—“Deeply regret to say everything will be swept away.”

“Poor Lizzie!” he said to Lacey after dinner, as they sat on the verandah smoking; “this will be terrible news for her—if she does not already know of it. Thank God, I can help her to some extent,” and he meant to “help” her by giving her Kaburie, for which he had only a few days previously sent Mrs Tallis a draft upon his bankers for six thousand pounds.

“You were lucky not to have had anything in Dacre’s.”

“Very, for Westonley was always cracking it up to me. He urged me strongly only six months ago to buy a hundred shares—a pretty hole I should be in now if I had taken the poor fellow’s advice.”

“Yes, indeed. But no one ever dreamt of Dacre’s being anything but one of the soundest banks in the world It is a blackguardly affair—a cruel, shameless fraud—and I hope that the men who are responsible for it will each get seven years’ hard labour.”

“They deserve it I suppose that Westonley, with Marumbah Downs, and Comet Vale, and the funds he had in Dacre’s was worth a hundred thousand at least; and now my poor sister and little Mary Rayner will be absolutely penniless. Thank heaven, I did not take his advice, but stuck to the Capricornian Pastoralists’ Bank.”

The editor of the Clarion gasped and dropped his cigar. But he quickly recovered himself, and turning his face away from Gerrard, puffed out volumes of smoke most energetically, considering what he should do. He soon decided. “Better tell him the grim truth at once,” he thought.

“Gerrard!”

The change in his voice struck his companion—it was low, grave, and sympathetic.

“What is it, Lacey? Now, out with it. You have something unpleasant to tell me, and don’t like doing it. I’ll bet you drinks that I can guess what it is. I saw you start when I mentioned the Capricornian Pastoralists’ Bank. Has that ‘busted’ too?”

“Yes. It smashed yesterday as a result of the Dacre collapse. The news was in my rag this morning.”

“Was it? I didn’t look at the Clarion to-day. Is it a bad case?”

“Very bad; about a shilling in the pound is all that will come out of the wreck. Will you be hard hit?”

“Rather! Curls me up like a corkscrew. To pay Mrs Tallis her six thousand pounds I gave a mortgage on Ocho Rios for five thousand pounds as I only had about three or four thousand pounds in the Capricornian. I’m deuced lucky that it wasn’t more.”

He rose from his seat and paced angrily to and fro on the verandah for a moment or two, then he stopped suddenly, and a smile lit up his scarred face.

“What an ass I am, Lacey! The thing can’t be helped, but only a little while ago I had made up my mind to give Kaburie to my sister; and now I can’t pay for Kaburie, for my draft for six thousand pounds is worthless to Mrs Tallis, and all the labouring of mustering and branding has gone for nothing. Poor little woman! I am sorry for her! Isn’t it a beastly mess?”

“You think too much of others, Gerrard, and too little of yourself.”

“I don’t! I’m very fond of being good to myself, I can assure you. But a smack in the face like this is enough to make a saint swear like an Australian Member of Parliament. Now, I bought Kaburie with the idea of making it a breeding station—prize cattle and all that sort of thing—for Ocho Rios. Then when I received this telegram from my agents in Melbourne telling me that my sister would be left penniless, I made up my mind to write to her by the next mail south, and tell her that Kaburie was for her and my niece Mary. And another thing I wanted to do was to give a man I know a good lift.” (He meant Fraser.) “And now I’ll be as good as stony-broke for the next two years.”

“I wish I could help you,” began Lacey, earnestly.

“Thanks, old man. It is awfully good of you, but I shall pull through all right in the end, and with a good season or two should easily lift the mortgage on Ocho Rios. All I am scared of now is a drought, but if a drought does come, I can’t stop it, and therefore, it is no use my worrying about it.” He hoisted his feet upon the table, and touched the bell for the waitress. “Well, thank heavens, Lacey, I still have a thirst, and an iced brandy and soda is very soothing to the nerves. Milly, bring the ice again please, and if you see the boy tell him to come here.”

Jim soon appeared, still looking subdued and depressed.

“Sit down here, old son, and have a long drink of ginger ale with a lump of ice in it,” and he put his hand on the boy’s arm, and made him sit down between himself and Lacey. “Jim, my son, I’ve just had some beastly bad news. I’ve lost a lot of money, and you and I will have to work like niggers when we get to Ocho Rios. Savvy?”

“Yes, Uncle Tom. I will work very, very hard for you.”

“For us both, Jim, and for Mary and Aunt Lizzie; for we are all in the same boat I’ll tell you the whole yarn by and by; but for the present well talk about something else for a change.”

Lacey looked at him in silent admiration and wonder. “Nothing can disturb the equanimity of such a serene mind,” he thought, “and I like him for taking the youngster into his confidence like that.”

“I wonder what made Aulain leave so suddenly,” said Gerrard, as Milly appeared with the ice, and the ginger ale for Jim. “It was strange of him not to even leave a note for me.”

“Oh! when a man has fever he does very queer things. All he told me was that he was off to Brisbane to tender his resignation in person, and as that is against the regulations he hoped to be dismissed. He has been very strange lately. I think that matters have gone wrong in a certain quarter.”

Gerrard nodded. “I know. Well, I’m sorry if it is the case. She is a bonny little lady.”

Milly again appeared. “If you please, Mr Gerrard, Sergeant Macpherson would like to see you for a few minutes on important business.”

“All right, Milly! Ask him to come up. Jim, I hope you haven’t been up to any games while I was away.”

The local Sergeant of Police was shown up.

“Good evening, sir,” he said. “I have just had a wire from Cardwell from Inspector Sheridan, saying that news had come through by the mail boat from Somerset, that there has been a very bad bush fire up your way, and Ocho Rios station is destroyed.”

“Any lives lost?”

“No, sir, but the fire spread all over the run for fifty miles about, and your stockman thinks that there are hardly two hundred head of cattle left I am sorry to bring you such bad news, sir.”

“Oh! don’t apologise, Sergeant,” was the quiet reply, “I’m getting used to bad news. Milly, bring a chair for Mr Macpherson, and another big glass, and some more ice. Now sit down, Sergeant, and tell me all about it. Jim, get off that railing, or you’ll fall off into the street, and break your leg. My luck is dead against me. Light your pipe, Sergeant, and make yourself comfy.”

CHAPTER XVII

“The saying that misfortunes never come singly seems to be verified in your case, Mr Gerrard,” said Kate Fraser, as, a fortnight after he had received the news of Westonley’s death, he was relating his disastrous experiences to her and her father.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it? But there are lots of fellows who have had worse luck than me, and so I shouldn’t ‘make a song’ over mine. Now, do you know the story of Knowles’s life?”

“No, he has never told us.”

“Well, he told it to me yesterday” (Gerrard had been to Kaburie to tell the dapper little overseer that he could not pay for the station, and that he, Knowles, must re-take possession as manager for Mrs Tallis), “and I think the poor little chap only related it out of pure sympathy for me when I explained to him how I was fixed, and how sorry I was for him—as well as for myself—for I had doubled the salary he was receiving from Mrs Tallis.”

“He told me that,” said Kate, and her eyes sparkled with fun.

“Naturally, he would tell you” and Gerrard, with a faint quiver of one eyelid, gave Douglas Fraser a sly glance. “I am sure you must be the recipient of the confidences of all the country side, and would never ‘give any one away,’ as vulgar persons like myself would say; so please don’t ‘give me away’ to Knowles.” Then his voice changed. “Miss Fraser, that little man is both a hero and a martyr. He was in the Naval Brigade at Sebastopol, and was recommended for the V.C. for distinguished bravery in one of the futile attacks on the Redan. Did you know that?”

“No! He only told us that he was with Peel’s Naval Brigade and had seen most of the fighting, was severely wounded, and that after he came home he left the Navy through ill-health, and came to Australia.”

“Well, he didn’t get the Cross after all; that was his first bit of bad luck. Then his father, who was always looked upon as a very wealthy man, went smash for a huge amount, which ruined hundreds of people, and then shot himself; so poor Knowles left the Navy and took a billet as house-master at a boys’ college. Six months after, his uncle, Lord Accrington, died, and left Knowles twenty thousand pounds. Of that twenty thousand pounds he kept only five hundred pounds; every penny of the rest he gave to his dead father’s creditors.”

“How noble of him,” said Kate. “It was indeed, ‘but you see,’ he said to me, ‘I didn’t want the money. My mother had died years before, and I have no brothers or sisters, and it would have been a disgraceful thing for me to have kept the money after what had occurred. Lord Accrington was my mother’s brother, and I was always a favourite of his (he did not like my father, and had not spoken to him for years). I never expected he would leave me a cent, and so it was no sacrifice on my part’ And then he said that ten years ago he had saved enough money to buy a small sheep station in the Riverina District, and then came the drought of ‘72 which broke him.”

“Poor fellow!” said Kate, “I shall like him now more than ever.”

Gerrard nodded. “One doesn’t often come across such men. And, as I was saying, I have no reason to make a song over my affairs when so many other fellows have had worse luck than me.”

Douglas Fraser, who for the past few days had been depressed in spirits, said, as he rose from his seat:

“True, Gerrard. It is of no use any one girding at his misfortunes, if they are not caused by himself. Sometimes a man thinks in mining parlance that he has ‘struck it rich,’ and straightway begins building his Chateaux en Espagne. Then he finds he has bottomed on a rank duffer, and wants to swear, as I do now.” He smiled and spread out his chest, “Kate, I’m going up to the claim to see Sam Young.”

“And Mr Gerrard and I are going to the creek to catch some fish for supper.”

“Very well! I shall come back that way and join you,” and the big man strode off to the claim—half a mile away.

“Your father is not in his usual spirits, I think, Miss Fraser,” said Gerrard, as he and Kate walked down to the fishing pool through the ever-sighing she-oaks which lined the banks of the creek.

“He is not; the reef has been gradually thinning out, and Sam Young told him yesterday that he is afraid it will pinch out altogether. Last Saturday’s cleaning up at the battery only yielded ten ounces of melted gold—worth about forty pounds—and the week’s expenses came to one hundred and forty pounds. I am afraid, Mr Gerrard, that father and I and all the men will have to leave Fraser’s Gully, and set our faces to the North, and leave the old battery behind us to the native bears and opossums and iguanas and snakes,” and her voice faltered, for she dearly loved the place where she had spent so many happy years.

“I am sorry,” said Gerrard, musingly. “I suppose your father—if he does leave here—from what he said to me is thinking of going to the newly-opened gold fields on the Gilbert River?”

“Yes, in that direction at any rate, prospecting as we travel. That is the one thing that consoles me; I love the idea of seeing new country.”

Gerrard made no answer for some minutes. He was thinking of a certain place on a creek, running into the Batavia River—the place “with a hunking big boulder standing up in the middle of a deep pool,” of which he had spoken to Aulain, and he now half-regretted his promise to him to “keep it dark” for six months.

“Of what are you thinking, Mr Gerrard?”

“I was wondering if your father would care to make a prospecting trip up my way instead of going to the Gilbert rush. When I left Ocho Rios there were several prospecting parties on Cape York Peninsula—some of them doing very well—and I myself got seven ounces of gold in a few hours from a creek about sixty miles from my station. Unfortunately, however, another man as well as myself knows of this place, and he asked me not to say anything about it for six months. He means to go there with a prospecting party.”

“You mean Mr Aulain,” and Kate turned her frank eyes to his.

“How did you know?”

She flushed. “You remember the letter you brought me from him. In that letter he told me that he was leaving the Native Police, and intended going in for mining, as he knew of some very rich auriferous country near your station, and that you, who also knew of it, had promised him to keep it secret from any other prospecting party.”

“Yes, I did. I should like to see Aulain ‘strike it rich’ as your father says, Miss Fraser,” and then he smiled. “If only for the sake of my kind, patient nurse of last month.”

Again Kate’s face flushed. “I know what you mean, Mr Gerrard, but–” she bent her head, and began to tie on a fishhook to the line she was carrying. “But you are mistaken. I like Mr Aulain very, very much, but I do not like any one enough to—to—oh, dear! I’ve broken the snooding.”

“Never mind, I’ll fix it for you,” and as his hand touched her’s, a new hope came into his life. He knew what she meant him to understand—that she was not going to marry Aulain—and then he went on quickly.

“I gabble like an old woman, do I not, Miss Fraser? Oh, this is what I was about to say, I believe that the Batavia River district is full of rich reefs and alluvial gold as well, and from what I hear from Lacey, I don’t think the Gilbert will prove a permanent gold-field. Now, I will try to persuade your father to come to my part of the country instead of the Gilbert, which, by the time he reaches it, will probably be played out altogether, and abandoned.”

“Ah! do persuade him, Mr Gerrard; I liked the thought of our going to the Gilbert, but I like better—oh, ever so much better—your suggestion of the Batavia River, for there we should be near the sea; and I love the sea and the beaches. I am horribly selfish, I am afraid.”

Gerrard stroked his beard meditatively. “Yes, you’ll be near the sea, Miss Fraser. But it is an awful country for a lady to live in; the fever is very bad there, and the blacks are a continual source of danger and trouble.”

“Anything that my father can go through I can face too,” she said proudly; “and besides that I have had fever, am not afraid of blacks or anything—except alligators,” and she shuddered, as she smiled.

“Then you will be in a continual state of fear. All the rivers on the Peninsula are alive with them, and I have lost hundreds of cattle by the brutes.” Then he laughed. “But they won’t get many this year.”

“How bravely he takes his misfortunes,” she thought. Then she said, “Well, I shall take good care of myself, and not cross any creeks if the water is not clear. Now here we are at the pool. Isn’t it lovely and quiet? I do hope we shall have caught enough fish by the time father comes.”

Gerrard, as he filled his pipe, watched her smooth, slender brown hands baiting the hook of her line with a small grasshopper, and noted the beautiful contour of her features, and the intent expression in her long-lashed eyes as she surveyed it. She looked up.

“Now, Mr Gerrard what are you doing? Don’t be so lazy. I’ll have at least three fish before you have your line ready. Oh, I do wish I were a man!”

“Why?”

“Because then I could smoke a pipe when I am fishing. It must be delightful! When father and Sam Young and Cockney Smith come here with me to fish, and I see them all looking so placidly content with their pipes in their mouths, I feel as if I was missing something. Now, watch!”

She made a cast with her light rod of bamboo, and almost at the same moment that the impaled grasshopper fell upon the glassy surface of the pool it was seized by a fish of the grayling species; known to Queenslanders as “speckled trout.”

“There you are!” she cried triumphantly, as she swung the silvery-scaled beauty out of the water, and deftly grasped it with her left hand. “First to me.”

The music of her laugh, and her bright, animated features, filled Gerrard with delight as he watched her make a second cast. Then he too set to work, and, for the next quarter of an hour, they vied to make the greatest catch. Gerrard was a long way behind, when Douglas Fraser appeared. He was saying over and over again to himself: “There is nothing between her and Aulain! there is nothing between them!” Then, as he put his hand to his scarred face, the wild elation in his heart died away.

“Well, young people, what luck?” said the burly mine-owner, as with his hands on his hips, he leant against a she-oak.

“Splendid, father! thirty-five. How is the reef going?”

“Pinched out all together, chick. We can hang the battery up now.”

Kate laid down her rod, and covered her face with her hands, and Gerrard saw the tears trickling through her fingers. For she loved the Gully, as she had loved no other place before.

Fraser stepped over to her, and placed his hand on her bent head.

“Never mind, little girl! We’ll strike it rich some day.”

“Yes, father!” she whispered, as she smiled through her tears, “we shall strike a patch some day.”