John Caldigate Part 59

'I'm sworn off these two years.'

'Touched nothing for two years?' said the mother exultingly, with her arms and shawl again round her son's neck.

'A teetotaller?' said Maria.

'Anything you like to call it. Only, what a gentleman's habits are in that respect needn't be made the subject of general remark.' It was evident he was a little sore, and Jane, therefore, offered him a dish full of gooseberries. He took the plate in his hand and ate them a.s.siduously for a while in silence, as though unconscious of what he was doing. 'You know all about it now, don't you?'

'Oh my dearest boy!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the mother.

'You didn't get better gooseberries than those on your travels,' said the doctor, calling him back to the condition of the world around him.

Then he told them of his adventures. For two terrible years he had been a shepherd on different sheep-runs up in Queensland. Then he had found employment on a sugar plantation, and had superintended the work of a gang of South Sea Islanders,--Canakers they are called,--men who are brought into the colony from the islands of the Pacific,--and who return thence to their homes generally every three years, much to the regret of their employers. In the transit of these men agents are employed, and to this service d.i.c.k had, after a term, found himself promoted. Then it had come to pa.s.s that he had remained for a period on one of these islands, with the view of persuading the men to emigrate and reemigrate; and had thus been resident among them for more than a couple of years. They had used him well, and he had liked the islands,--having lived in one of them without seeing another European for many months. Then the payments which had from time to time been made to him by the Queensland planters were stopped, and his business, such as it had been, came to an end. He had found himself with just sufficient money to bring him home; and here he was.

'My boy, my darling boy!' exclaimed his mother again, as though all their joint troubles were now over.

The doctor remembered the adage of the rolling stone, and felt that the return of a son at the age of thirty, without any means of maintaining himself, was hardly an unalloyed blessing. He was not the man to turn a son out of doors. He had always broadened his back to bear the full burden of his large family. But even at this moment he was a little melancholy as he thought of the difficulty of finding employment for the wearer of those yellow trousers. How was it possible that a man should continue to live an altogether idle life at Pollington and still remain a teetotaller? 'Have you any plans I can help you in now?' he asked.

'Of course he'll remain at home for a while before he thinks of anything,' said the mother.

'I suppose I must look about me,' said d.i.c.k. By-the-by, what has become of John Caldigate?'

They all at once gazed at each other. It could hardly be that he did not in truth know what had become of John Caldigate.

'Haven't you heard?' asked Maria.

'Of course he has heard,' said Mrs. Rewble.

'You must have heard,' said the mother.

'I don't in the least know what you are talking about. I have heard nothing at all.'

In very truth he had heard nothing of his old friend,--not even that he had returned to England. Then by degrees the whole story was told to him. 'I know that he was putting a lot of money together,' said d.i.c.k enviously. 'Married Hester Bolton? I thought he would! Bigamy! Euphemia Smith! Married before! Certainly not at the diggings.'

'He wasn't married up at Ahalala?' asked the doctor.

'To Euphemia Smith? I was there when they quarrelled, and when she went into partners.h.i.+p with Crinkett. I am sure there was no such marriage.

John Caldigate in prison for bigamy? And he paid them twenty thousand pounds? The more fool he!'

'They all say that.'

'But it's an infernal plant. As sure as my name is Richard Shand, John Caldigate never married that woman.'

Chapter L

Again at Sir John's Chambers

And this was the man as to whom it had been acknowledged that his evidence, if it could be obtained, would be final. The return of d.i.c.k himself was to the Shands an affair so much more momentous than the release of John Caldigate from prison, that for some hours or so the latter subject was allowed to pa.s.s out of sight. The mother got him up-stairs and asked after his linen,--vain inquiry,--and arranged for his bed, turning all the little Rewbles into one small room. In the long run, grandmothers are more tender to their grand-children than their own offspring. But at this moment d.i.c.k was predominant. How grand a thing to have her son returned to her, and such a son,--a teetotaller of two years' growth, who had seen all the world of the Pacific Ocean! As he could not take whisky-and-water, would he like ginger-beer before he went to bed,--or arrowroot? d.i.c.k decided in favour of ginger-beer, and consented to be embraced again.

It was, I think, to Maria's credit that she was the first to bring back the conversation to John Caldigate's marriage. 'Was she a very horrible woman?' Maria asked, referring to Euphemia Smith.

'There were a good many of 'em out there, greedy after gold,' said d.i.c.k; 'but she beat 'em all; and she was awfully clever.'

'In what way, d.i.c.k?' asked Mrs. Rewble. Because she does not seem to me to have done very well with herself.'

'She knew more about shares than any man of them all. But I think she just drank a little. It was that which disgusted Caldigate.'

'He had been very fond of her?' suggested Maria.

'I never knew a man so taken with a woman.' Maria blushed, and Mrs.

Rewble looked round at her younger sisters as though desirous that they should be sent to bed. 'All that began on board the s.h.i.+p. Then he was fool enough to run after her down to Sydney; and of course she followed him up to the mines.'

'I don't know why of course,' said Mrs. Posttlethwaite defending her s.e.x generally.

'Well, she did. And he was going to marry her. He did mean to marry her;--there's no doubt of that. But it was a queer kind of life we lived up there.'

'I suppose so,' said the doctor. Mrs. Rewble again looked at the girls and then at her mother; but Mrs. Shand was older and less timid than her married daughter. Mrs. Rewble when a girl herself had never been sent away, and was now a pattern of female discretion.

'And she,' continued d.i.c.k, 'as soon as she had begun to finger the scrip, thought of nothing but gold. She did not care much for marriage just then, because she fancied the stuff wouldn't belong to herself. She became largely concerned in the "Old Stick-in-the-Mud." That was Crinkett's concern, and there were times at which I thought she would marry him. Then Caldigate got rid of her altogether. That was before I went away.'

'He never married her?' asked the doctor.

'He certainly hadn't married her when I left n.o.bble in June '73.'

'You can swear to that, d.i.c.k?'

'Certainly I can. I was with him every day. But there wasn't anyone round there who didn't know how it was. Crinkett himself knew it.'

'Crinkett is one of the gang against him.'

'And there was a man named Adamson. Adamson knew.'

'He's another of the conspirators,' said the doctor.

'They won't dare to say before me,' declared d.i.c.k, stoutly, 'that Mrs.

Smith and John Caldigate had become man and wife before June '73. And they hated one another so much then that it is impossible they should have come together since. I can swear they were not married up to June '73.'

'You'll have to swear it,' said the doctor, 'and that with as little delay as possible.'

All this took place towards the end of August, about five weeks after the trial, and a day or two subsequent to the interview between Bagwax and the Attorney-General. Bagwax was now vehemently prosecuting his inquiries as to that other idea which had struck him, and was at this very moment glowing with the antic.i.p.ation of success, and at the same time broken-hearted with the conviction that he never would see the pleasant things of New South Wales.

On the next morning, under the auspices of his father, d.i.c.k Shand wrote the following letter to Mr. Seely, the attorney.