Читать книгу Out There: A Romance Of Australia - James Edward Muddock - Страница 6

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THE township of Gordonstown, although only a little over forty miles from the Glenbar Run, was outside the belt of drought that every now and again withered up the plains. It could boast of a Town Hall, Club, Library, weekly newspaper, and streets of stone-built houses. It wore an air of prosperity, and the district round about was fertile enough, while a projected railway from Melbourne had recently caused a boom in "town lots" which for years had been waiting for buyers. Pleasantly situated on a bend of the river which was navigable for small craft up to that point, it was a place of some importance, as a port of shipment for live stock, wool, hides and other produce. Its population of between five and six thousand was a thriving and contented community, proud of their pretty little town, and particularly proud of their excellent racecourse on the outskirts. Racing went on practically all the year, but the great event, when all the town got racing mad, was the "Gordonstown Gold Cup Day," in the middle of June. It was the chief event of a four days' programme, and it attracted racing lovers from far distant parts. Oliver Gordon was prominent among those who fostered the sport, but it was generally believed that for some time his luck had been out.

Mary Gordon's home was a picturesquely situated stone villa, standing in about five acres of charming grounds on the outskirts of the little town, near the race-course. Here she lived with her aunt, Margaret Bruce, her mother's widowed and childless sister. Mary was left an orphan when she was a child. She had a brother, her senior by some years, and Mrs Bruce came from Scotland, where she had resided with her husband, to mother them. The brother died three or four years later, and since then Mary had lived under her aunt's care. Margaret Bruce was a middle-aged lady, sweet tempered and devotedly attached to her niece. She was exceedingly fond of Harold Preston, and from the very first had encouraged the love-making between him and Mary. For a brief period, however, just prior to Harold's declaration of love, she was inclined favourably to Oliver Gordon, but his gambling propensities and love of horse-racing caused her to mistrust him, and she set the seal of approval upon Harold. For nearly four years the young people, who were nearly of the same age, had been very happy, and but for the drought which had brought disaster to him, Harold would have made her his wife.

When Mary and the two men arrived at Gordonstown after their night journey from Glenbar, Gordon proceeded direct to his house, and Harold was a guest at Mary's house, where he was cordially welcomed by Margaret Bruce. She commiserated with him in his misfortune, but encouraged him to hope that there would speedily be a change for the better. Mrs Bruce was always optimistic, and her influence invariably inspirited Preston whenever he was inclined to be despondent.

A hearty breakfast the next morning after a good night's rest, combined with the cooler air and greenery and freshness of the place, heartened Harold considerably, and about noon he set off for the hospital. It was a white building, with green shutters and flower-covered walls; it stood in a neatly kept garden, and the long veranda that ran round the building afforded a pleasant promenade or resting-place for those patients who were not compelled to keep to their beds in the wards.

As Harold mounted the steps to the main entrance he ran up against Doctor Blain, who had just finished his morning round. They greeted each other very heartily.

"No need to ask why you are here," said Blain. "Miss Gordon told me she was going to bring you back. I hear you've been having a bad time up there. These scorchers try a man's patience, but one has got to take the rough with the smooth, and lucky he who can smile at misfortune."

"Lucky he who can smile at misfortune, as you say," Harold answered, "though one wants to have a deuced lot of philosophy to smile when he is face to face with stark ruin."

"Come, come. I trust things are not so desperate as that."

"I am afraid they are. To the struggling man two years of drought spells disaster."

"By Jove I am sorry, truly sorry," said the doctor with a ring of genuine sympathy in his voice, "but all trouble has its compensations. You have troops of good friends—"

"Thank God, yes," exclaimed Harold earnestly; "more than that I have health and strength and am going to win through."

"That's the way to look at things," the doctor remarked. "Pluck and energy can do wonders."

"Well now, who is this mysterious patient of yours—Bill Blewitt, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's the name he gave when he was brought in. He's a tough old nut, who seems to have had a pretty bad time of it. It appears he's been out West in some God-forgotten place and has tramped back through the wilderness. How he's managed to live, heaven knows, I don't. But there's precious little to be got out of him: he's as reticent as the Sphinx. I fancy there is something on his mind, and he declares that you are the only man in the world he'll tell it to."

"It's strange," said Harold in a musing voice, toying with his moustache; "I can't place him. I certainly don't remember the name. Is he very ill?"

"Yes, he's pretty bad."

"Dying?"

"Well—he's got a sporting chance. He has wonderful vitality, and may possibly pull through. Anyway, I am doing my best; the beggar interests me. But come, I'll take you to him."

The two men mounted the broad stone stairway, and entered a long, scrupulously clean ward, with about a dozen beds ranged on each side. The windows were screened with sunblinds that subdued the glare, and kept the atmosphere relatively cool. The polished floor was speckless; flowers were arranged on little tables down the centre of the wards, interspersed with tail palms in pots. There was the sad spectacle of sick and dying men, but sympathy and human charity had done their best to brighten and cheer them in their sufferings.

Nurse Wood, a sweet-faced, middle-aged woman, was busy in the ward as the doctor and the visitor entered. She hurried up to Preston and shook his hand.

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come. Mary told me she would be sure to bring you back. Our interesting and mysterious patient asks for you every hour of the day, and calls your name in the night. Poor old fellow; he has evidently gone through terrible hardships."

"I'll hand Mr Preston over to you, Nurse," remarked the doctor as he consulted his watch; "you'll excuse me, I'm sure, Preston. I didn't know it was so late. I have an appointment I must keep. Look me up at the Club between four and five, will you, and we can have a chat?"

Harold promised to do so, and when the doctor had gone, he and Nurse Wood walked to the extreme end of the ward where there was a partitioned recess that was quite brilliant with flowers and plants. On a narrow bed in this recess lay a wild-looking, haggard man. His long, matted grey hair, his straggling unkempt beard and moustache, his sunken eyes, and drawn, tormented face gave him the appearance of being very old. His skin was burnt to the colour of brick, but even the tan could not disguise the pallor of his face. He seemed to be dozing. The Nurse went gently to the bedside, and asked softly:

"Are you asleep, Blewitt?"

"Eh—what—hullo; who coo-eed?"

"I have brought Mr Harold Preston to see you."

The old fellow's face seemed to suddenly re-animate, and a light came into his bleared eyes. He turned quickly, raised himself with an effort on his elbow, and stretched forth a brown withered hand.

"God's in His heaven still," he mumbled, with something like a smile.

Harold tried to identify the man but failed. The patient was quick to understand.

"You don't know me, boss; 'tain't likely you would with all this weed about my face. Besides, it's nigh on to three years since we met."

There was a chair by the bedside. The visitor seated himself and held the withered hand between his own, and the sick man resumed the recumbent position. Then there was an awkward little silence. Harold was busy racking his brains to try and recall where he had seen Bill Blewitt before. Bill turned his eyes on Nurse Wood with a look that spoke plainer than words. She was leaning over the foot-rail of the bed; she understood the meaning of that look; Bill did not intend to talk while she was there.

"Well, I'll leave you for a while," she said softly; "and mind you don't exhaust yourself too much." She turned and walked down the ward, and following her with his eyes, Bill said:

"That's one o' God's women. A rough devil like me ain't fit to be 'tended by the likes o' her."

"You mustn't say that, old chap. A man's a man, whether he's rough or smooth, and when we get bowled over women are ministering angels."

"God love 'em, that's true," replied Blewitt, with a lump in his throat. "Until I managed to stagger into this settlement I hadn't set eyes on a white woman for three years. I'm only a dingo, boss, but I'm grateful, and I don't forget them as does anything for me. That's why I sent for you."

"What have I done?" asked Harold, still studying the old bushman with mingled curiosity and interest.

"Do you mind about three years ago, when four chaps stayed on your Run for a few days, and you was good to 'em?"

"Oh, by Jove, yes," exclaimed Harold, as light began to dawn on him.

"Well, I was one on 'em. We had tramped down from the Snowy River, and was stony broke. We was intending to push out West prospecting. We was all old hands and were searching for gold. You was a white man to us; you fed us and was good to us. I asked you to lend me some dust and you gave me twenty quid!"

"Good Lord! Yes, now I remember," cried Harold. Then with a bitter laugh, "I was pretty flush then, now I'm stony broke."

The old man fixed him with his eyes as if doubtful about the truth of the statement.

"On my honour, it's true," Harold said, interpreting the look correctly. "Two years' drought has cleaned me out."

"Give us your fist, boss. I believe you now." They shook hands, and Blewitt continued, "I says again, God's in His heaven, and He's let me come back to help you, 'cos you helped me, see. I ain't got no religion, but I believe that these things is arranged." Harold was all eagerness now. Instinctively he felt that this wanderer had some interesting revelation to make. "When you gave me that twenty quid, a lump came up in my throat, boss, and me and my pals swore as we'd pay you back if we lived, P came down here to the township and bought some outfit, and the four of us set our faces to the wilderness. We struck out over the plains, and steered for the north-west. Sand and heat, thirst and hunger, that's what we had to endure. But we was all born bushmen and used to roughing it, so we pulled through, and after being out for many weeks we came to the foothills of a great range, and fell in with a tribe of Myalls (wild black men). We seemed in for a rough time, for I don't think they'd ever seen white men before; but we fired off our revolvers, and told 'em we could make thunder and lightning that would kill 'em all off. They believed the yarn and was good to us. We were about at the end of our tether when we met these black devils, but they gave us grub, and when we had been with 'em for two or three weeks we persuaded half a dozen of 'em to guide us into the mountains.

"One day we struck a deep gorge with a river running through it. It had a promising look, and we found gold-bearing quartz cropping out of the hill-sides. We fossicked around, getting out lumps of stone with hundreds of pounds' worth of gold in 'em, but it was no use to us, for we couldn't crush it. Then we began to pan the river dirt, and we got out pounds' weight of scale gold. I tell you, boss, it made our eyes water; here was thousands and thousands of pounds' worth of gold, but civilisation was far off, and we was hard put to it to get grub enough to keep body and soul together. But we had struck it rich, and we made up our minds to load ourselves up with as much as we could carry and come back to make proper arrangements to work the claim.

"But things went wrong. One of my mates fell ill of fever and died, and we buried him under a rock; another went out one day further in the hills prospecting, and never came back. Me and the other chap then packed up our traps and started for home. We tramped into the desert, and I tell you, boss, it was hell. We did about three hundred miles when my chum fell ill. I stayed with him till he died, and his bones are bleaching out there in the wilderness. It was awful lonely for me. God! what I suffered. I kept the life in me with vermin and roots, and the thirst was awful. I must have gone mad, because there was many days that I couldn't remember anything. But I was tough. I was a sailorman in my younger days, and I suppose that made iron of me. How long I tramped I don't know, for I lost count of the days; but there was one clear thought in my head, I wanted to find you; I wanted to prove to you that even a rough old dingo like me has a heart. I laid my course pretty straight for this place, and the night I stumbled into the settlement I was done. I suppose I went off my nut, 'cos I don't remember 'em bringing me here, and when I came to again they told me I'd been here a week."

"It's wonderful!" commented Harold thoughtfully, as the old man paused from exhaustion; "we are poor weak creatures, but our lives sometimes seem influenced by a strange destiny that we cannot understand."

He spoke to himself, and Bill Blewitt made no reply, but pointing to a locker at the side of his bed, he said:

"Open that there locker, boss, and you'll see two billy cans, give 'em to me." He took the lid off a two-pint billy, and Harold saw, to his astonishment, that it was more than half full of scale gold. He opened the other which was filled with pieces of quartz; he took out three or four lumps and examined them with the eye of the expert.

"If I'd nothing to prove that my yarn is true, you might 'a' thought I was raving. But seeing's believing, ain't it, boss? Look at them pieces of stone, why, there's more gold than stone. And from where I brought them from, out there, beyond the thirst land, there are thousands of tons. Some day there'll be stamping mills by scores put up, and the place will hum."

Harold would have been a strange man if he had failed to "be moved by this ocular evidence of the buried wealth the old man spoke of. It needed no expert knowledge to determine that the specimens of quartz the miner had brought back with him were exceedingly rich in the precious metal. He was excited, though he tried to keep his feelings in check.

"Well, all I can say, Blewitt," he remarked, "is that you can enrich yourself and your relatives."

Blewitt's sunken eyes turned to him, and with a strange little laugh, he said:

"I ain't got no relatives that I know of, boss. I've been wandering over the world for nigh on sixty years, thirty of 'em in this country and ten afore that in New Zealand. I'm one of those chaps as can't settle anywhere, and I've never been much given to womenfolk. The pals I've left out yonder were the best chums I had. Now God Almighty is a-finishing of me up. What does it matter! He's been good to me, to let me win through to this place and find you. You gave me to drink when I was dry, and to eat when I was hungry, and you helped me and my chums like a white man. I'm only a dingo, but I remember things. Give me out that bundle, boss."

Harold handed him a bundle from the locker. It contained a few old rags of clothing, a much rusted revolver, and a frayed, worn, leather pocket-book.

"I ain't no scholar," he said, "but I can read and write, and in this book which I'm going to give to you, there's a lot of notes written that will help you, and a kind o' map I drew of the gold region. I calculate it's about eight hundred miles nor'-west, and by west half west from here, and the way is hard. You'll take the gold too, boss, and look after me while I'm here. If the Doc. can patch me up I'll guide you to the place. But I give you this advice, don't you blab about the business, or there'll be a rush and you'll lose your chance. Well, I'm pretty well pumped now, but my mind's easier now I've seen you. I didn't want to peg put before I had a chance of giving you the information. Now you've got it, use it. You ain't a dingo like me; maybe you've got a wife or a gal, and dust and gold stone will be useful to you."

Harold gripped the hand of this rugged gold seeker, and there was a tremor in his voice as he spoke.

"Bill Blewitt, don't you call yourself a dingo again. You've got the heart of a true man. You've given me new life, new hope. Yes, I have a girl, one of the dearest women on God's earth, and for her dear sake I accept your gift. May God prolong your life, that I may prove to you that I, too, can be grateful."

A wan smile spread itself over Blewitt's brown, wrinkled face as he made reply:

"I'm worn out, boss, and pretty tired. I've played the game fairly and never wronged no man, and I've never knowed what fear was. I ain't going to be a skunk now, and if Almighty God says as I've got to hand in my checks I'm willing and ready."

It seemed as if all that had been said was all that could be said at that moment, and as the old man was obviously exhausted and drowsy, Harold left him, promising to see him on the morrow. He carried off the old pocket-book in his pocket, and the two billies weighty with their precious contents he wrapped in a newspaper the patient had been reading, as he did not wish to attract attention as he passed through the town. A feeling of elation possessed him, for his star having dipped low on the horizon, seemed to be in the ascendant again. Save for those weighty tin cans under his arm, which were substantial and real enough, he might have found some difficulty in convincing himself that he had not dreamed a fairy story. But it was the kind of fairy story common enough in those days in Australia, and as many a man still living can testify, they were far more wonderful than fiction.