In the Roaring Fifties Part 30

'I have come to say goodbye, Mrs. Ben,' he said to the big washerwoman, 'and to thank you for a thousand kindnesses.'

'Thank me for nothing!' cried Mrs. Kyley. 'Is it true you are off on the wallaby again?'

'We shall start for Simpson's Ranges in the morning.'

'It is so long since we've seen you that you won't mind if we don't break our hearts at parting.' She glanced towards Aurora, who had turned her back to them.

'That's the least I expect of you, Mrs. Ben.'

'Well, you're not a bad lad, though inconstant. Give me a kiss, and good luck go with you. Be a man,' she added in a whisper. 'Say a few kind words to the poor girl.' She nodded towards Aurora.

'I came wis.h.i.+ng to.'

'You ruffian!' she said aloud; 'and you pretending you cared a copper dump about Mother Kyley. She pushed him towards Aurora, and rolled from the tent with one of her great gusts of laughter.

'I'm off, Joy!' said Done.

She turned and looked at him. She was in one of her quiet humours. If she had felt much grief, it had left little impression upon her. She was neatly dressed and looking very fresh and girlish to-day.

'I heard you were going,' she answered.

'Joy!' He put out an open hand. 'Let us part friends; I'm fond of you--I am, upon my soul!'

She caught his hand in both of hers and pressed it to her breast. 'I was wondering if you would come to see me before leaving.'

'Ah, that's better,' he said. 'I'd be pretty miserable if I went thinking I'd left you an enemy, because--because--' He had a heart full of grat.i.tude and big, generous emotions towards her, and could not express himself. 'G.o.d bless you, Joy! he murmured, kissing her hair. 'Don't think me an utterly selfish kind of brute, dear.'

'I haven't one ill thought of you, Jimmy. Didn't I woo you with every trick I know, but with my whole heart, too, for all that? It's been a fair deal, old man.'

'I'll never cease to wish you happiness, and I'll always regret any trouble I may have caused you.'

'Regret nothing--nothing! You've been a big joy to me, and you bore my tantrums like a brick. I'm sorry I struck you, Jimmy.' She drew his head down and kissed the scar over his right eye.

'There was another blow here.' He touched his left cheek, and she kissed that too, but she was showing no sign of sentimentality. Her att.i.tude was that of a good friend, and in this pose she was delightful, Jim thought.

'We are certain to meet again, Joy,' he said. 'If ever I could do anything for you, would you ask me?'

She looked into his eyes for a moment. 'Yes,' she answered, 'before anyone else in the world.'

'That's good. You're one of the best, Joy. We go to Simpson's Ranges, but may find our way down to Ballarat in the course of a few months if things don't pan out well.'

'When you hear of anyone coming this way, you'll send a message, Jim?'

They were interrupted by three or four diggers, and in the course of half an hour the tent filled. Aurora was very charming that night, very gracious, very like the Aurora who supervised their open-air tea the night of Lambert's big speech, but less buoyant. Jim felt her soft touch upon him many times, and watched her with curiosity. She had retained this peculiar quality of provoking faint wonder. He felt that he had not known her thoroughly, and drifted into the building of the suitable future for her with many 'ifs' and 'buts.'

'I am going, Joy,' he whispered later.

'Not here,' she said, taking his arm. 'Outside.'

They pa.s.sed out together, and stood by the big tree in which Mrs. Ben's stock was hidden.

'Good-bye!' he said.

'It's hard!' She put her hands upon his shoulders, and her voice trembled. 'I've been pretty badly in love, Jimmy. Remember that in kindness, Won't you? It seems to excuse a good deal. It might even excuse a poor colleen makin' the fool an' all iv herself.' The brogue sounded deeply pathetic. 'A kiss,' she whispered quickly. 'One of the old kisses, dear.'

As he bent down to her his cheek crushed a tear on hers, and he was touched deeply. The kiss was long and tender; as the kiss of a man for whom there was only one woman in the world, and she not the one being kissed, it was emphatically successful. It drew a deep sigh from poor Aurora, and thrilled Jim with not a little of the old rapture.

'Good-bye!' she said; but her fingers clung to him.

'Good-bye!' he repeated, taking her hands in his.

'Have you the little heart of gold?' she asked.

'It's here.' He drew it from his pocket.

'Give it back to me.'

He pressed it into her hand, kissed her cheek, and hurried away. Aurora stood for some minutes turning the nugget over and over in her fingers; then she moved to the shanty door and looked in, but turned away with a muttered exclamation, and went to the entrance of the back tent.

'You'll have to attend to those brutes in there,' she said to Mary Kyley.

'I've had as much as I can stand for one night.' She threw herself upon her bed, and hid her face in the pillow.

'Has he gone, dear?' asked Mrs. Kyley, laying a big but gentle hand upon the girl.

Aurora nodded her bead in the pillow, and after looking at her in silence for a moment, Mary went in to attend to her customers, shaking her head sadly as she went. When she peeped into the back tent again an hour later Aurora still lay face downwards upon the bed.

'Are you asleep, Aurora?' whispered Mrs. Ben. 'No!' answered the girl fiercely. 'For G.o.d's sake, don't bother me!'

Mrs. Ben went away again, sadder than before.

'Oh, the men, the men!' murmured the wise woman. 'To think of the good women wasted on them, and the chits they're often wasted on!'

Jim Done enjoyed the tramp to Simpson's Ranges. The weather was fine, the country was picturesque, and the company highly congenial. He liked the Peetrees better in his present mood, and his interest in the popular movement that was to culminate at Eureka was deepening daily. He had even addressed a small meeting of miners on the subject of the rights of the people, and he was no pusillanimous reformer. He declared the diggers had reached that point at which toleration meant meanness of spirit. The thought of civil war was appalling, but not so much so as the degradation of a nation in which the manhood plodded meekly under the whip, like driven cattle yoked to their load.

The men carried small swags, having entrusted their tools and tents to teamsters, and, travelled quietly, taking four days to accomplish the journey. The route lay through trackless country. As yet few parties from Forest Creek had set out for Simpson's Ranges, and Jim and his friends encountered no other travellers until they were approaching the new rush, and then the road a.s.sumed the familiar characteristics, and the noisy, boisterous troops went gaily by. These might have been the identical men who tramped to Diamond Gully through the Black Forest, so much did they resemble the former in their joyousness and their wild exuberance of word and action, and in their manner of conveying their belongings too, and in their frank good-fellows.h.i.+p. But by this time Jim was an experienced Antipodean, and knew that in such circ.u.mstances men always behave much in the same way, and that dignity is the first oppressive observance to be abandoned immediately man breaks loose from the restraints of society.

The novelty had gone from the rushes, but not the charm. The sight of the courageous, healthy, happy gold-seekers swinging by struck sympathetic chords in his own heart. He had kindred impulses, and was by far the most jubilant of his party, the Bush-bred Australians being the least demonstrative of all the men on the track.

On the morning of the fourth day Jim encountered a face he knew amongst a party of five travelling with a waggon.

'Hullo, Phil Ryan!' he said.

Phil advanced with a puzzled expression on his face, that presently gave way to a broad grin.

'The Hermit!' he cried, and, seizing Jim's hand, he shook it with effusive heartiness. One might think he had occasion to remember Done for many kindnesses, whereas the ignominious beating the Hermit had given him on the Francis Cadman was all he had to be grateful for.

'I've given up trying to be a hermit,' said Jim. 'There was nothing in it.'

'Begor, I'm that glad!' said Phil, and he certainly looked radiant. 'But you're th' changed man, Done. I hardly knew you wid th' amiable shmile.

Have things been goin' rare an' good?'