Nevermore

'And that horse of hers is a plum,' assented Miss Bessie; 'she looked after him well, and he's worth it. I'd like to have him, I know, instead of my old crock. I believe he's thoroughbred, or close up; and if they ever have races in this beastly hole, he'd win all the money they're game to put up, hands down.'

'Nonsense, Bessie,' replied the elder woman; 'how do you know? Your tongue goes too fast, Miss. Don't you think so, Mr. Johnson? I don't know what's come to the girls nowadays, they're that forward and think they know everything. But you're a lucky man, if it's true as you're engaged to be married to the young lady, as it seems is a fact. There's very few girls like her in this country or any other, you mark my words, and I hope you're good enough for her, that I do. I'll just go and see how she is.'

The worthy dame, on returning from the bedchamber, brought the intelligence that Miss Chaloner could not appear again, being prostrated by a nervous headache, but sent a message to Mr. Johnson that she would be quite well in the morning, and would be glad to see him after breakfast. With this ultimatum 'Mr. Johnson' was fain to be outwardly content, and, though inwardly chafing, betook himself to his hut, there to spend the night with what 'companions of Sintram' might be available. He was not, however, wholly dissatisfied with the progress made. 'Anyhow,' he thought, as, after a couple of potent 'nips,' he sat smoking over his fire, 'the first act's over, and pretty right too. She believes I'm the man, and though something or other's startled her, – like a half-broken filly, – she'll come to, after a bit. I must have a regular good pitch to her to-morrow, and bring out the cove's rings, and trinkets, and keepsakes, that she knows about. I'll have the whole thing out with her, and settle about when we're to meet in Melbourne and get spliced. It's a job that won't stand waiting about. I must get her away and on the road in a day or two, and pick up the escort and get down by myself. If I leave with her, that infernal Kate'll get wind of it and be on our track as sure as a gun. She thinks I went to Monaro for horses, and won't be back for a month, but she'd fossich out any woman business if I was the other side of h – l, I do believe.'

'I shall be cornered,' he said to himself, pursuing the same train of thought, 'if she wants to stay here a while and see where I was working, and all that rot that women are so dashed foolish about. I must lay it out that I might be taken any day, and the sooner we both get to Melbourne and off by the first ship – the day after we're married, if possible – the safer for her dearest Lance – that's me —me!' – here the villain laughed aloud with fiendish enjoyment of the base deceit of which the unhappy girl was to be the victim. 'If he could only see us! ha! ha! Once we're married, there's no get over that. Once we're clear away, hang it, I'd almost like to have him alive again, to enjoy the sight of his face and see how he took it. His lady-cousin – his wife as was to be, that wouldn't touch me with a pair of tongs – if she knew —if she only knew – that it was Larry Trevenna, that used to be a stable-boy, a farm-lad, a horse-dealer's tout. If mother hadn't died, things might have been better, and old granddad too. She used to talk as if there was some mystery. I wonder if there was, and what sort. Anyhow there will be, and that's enough for the present, if it comes off.'

Estelle rose early next morning with a view to survey at leisure her novel surroundings. She had perfectly recovered from the fatigue of the previous day. The regular exercise of the bush journey had acted beneficially upon her health and spirits, as indeed such a term of travel does upon all normally constituted people. The night had been clear and frosty. As she paced the verandah, which, as in most houses of the class, absorbed the whole front of the hotel, she was first surprised, then charmed and excited, by the view of the majestic Alpine range, the snow-covered peaks of which were glittering in the rays of the morning sun.

'How grand! how inconceivably lovely!' said she, half aloud; as gradually the view opened out, in a sense expanded itself before her rapturous gaze. 'How little I expected to feast my eyes upon a scene like this! Poor Lance, poor fellow! how often such a glorious landscape as this must have comforted him in his loneliness! Perhaps he thought of me at such times; he could not help it. He used to tease me at Wychwood, I remember, about what he called my craze for scenery. I must remind him of it to-day. Yes, to-day; how strangely it sounds! I shall have to make up my mind – ' and here she seemed to fall into a musing mood, while a sigh from time to time escaped involuntarily. 'Yes,' she thought; 'it would be hardly advisable to live here after we – after we were married. Reports would be sure to get abroad, and then, perhaps, if he was recaptured his punishment would be increased, and that would kill him – would kill us both indeed. I could never survive it, I feel sure.

'Then, what would be the safer course to pursue? To go to some seaport, where they could take ship for Europe or America, as the case might be? Why should they not take their passage for San Francisco? Once landed there, who was to know Lance from any other Australian digger, numbers of whom had been backward and forward since the earliest "rush," in 1849? Melbourne in some respects would be the better port of shipment; it was nearer, more easily reached, and there was such a mixed multitude of "pilgrims and strangers," miners, speculators, colonists, Europeans, and foreigners, that any number of persons "illegally at large" (an expression she had caught in Melbourne) might pass unnoticed.'

The clang of the breakfast-bell put an end to her meditation, and exchanging the keen air of the outer world for a seat near the glowing fire, high piled with logs, she took the place reserved for her near her travelling companions of the previous day. The social atmosphere of the table d'hôte was less 'select' than that at 'Growlers',' but the utmost decorum nevertheless prevailed. Among the strangers to her was a middle-aged man, whom she heard addressed as Mr. Gray, and more familiarly as Con. He was a gold-buyer, about to leave for Melbourne on the following day.

'How many ounces are you taking down this time, Con?' asked a jocular miner at the other end of the table 'You'll be waited for some day, if you don't look out.'

'Not much this time, old man,' said Gray. 'But you're right; it is a risky game, and I don't think I'll chance it much longer. Indeed this may be my last trip.'

'Right you are,' said the furnisher of the raw material. 'I'm blessed if I'd travel that road the way you fellows do, and known to have gold on you, for all the percentage you make out of it. There's too many cross chaps about, for my fancy and so I tell you.'

'Well, a man must live, you know, Johnny,' replied the gold-buyer good-humouredly. 'But I think I'll take your advice and cut the road after this.'

When her lover arrived, Estelle, as was natural, bent an earnest gaze upon his form and features. Neatly but plainly dressed, his stalwart figure, erect and stately, showed to great advantage among the carelessly attired loungers who thronged the entrance. His bold regard, his dark and clustering hair, his regular features, stamped him as a being of different mould, in her eyes, from the ordinary persons around them. A thickly growing beard and moustache hid the lower part of his face, and concealing much of his mouth and chin, somewhat altered (Estelle thought) the expression of his countenance. It was not wholly an improvement, though she could understand his reason for adopting the prevailing Australian fashion.

He passed carelessly into the parlour, where there were still a few people gathered around the fireplace. Putting his arm round her waist, he said jocularly, as he drew her towards him, 'So you have recovered from your fatigue. After our long separation, it seems awfully hard on me that we should see so little of each other.'

The storekeeper's wife smiled, and Miss Bessie giggled, as Estelle, blushing deeply, withdrew herself from his clasp, saying hurriedly, 'I don't think there's any necessity for being so affectionate in public. We have a great deal to talk over and decide to-day.'

It was a strange feeling that had come over her for the moment. Added to her natural dislike to such endearments before spectators of the class then present, a curious indefinable sensation of repulsion took possession of her temporarily, as strong as it was instinctive. He drew back, with a half-angry look; then, assuming an air of injured dignity, said, 'I ought to apologise. I forgot you hadn't been long out from home. We don't mind these trifles in Omeo. Do we, Mrs. Caldwell?'

'Not when people's engaged,' said the matron; while Miss Bessie tossed her head, and said, 'She thought all the gentlemen wanted keeping in their places; she'd let them know when she'd a young man of her own, that she would.'

All this was of course painful to Estelle; but fearing, from his changed expression, that she had hurt his feelings, she proceeded to make amends, after the manner of her sex, by hastily proffering concessions. The sudden thought of his melancholy life, of his wrongs and misfortunes, almost impelled her to beg his pardon in the humblest manner for the involuntary slight. Yet the thought would obtrude itself of how differently Mr. Stirling or Mr. Dalton would have acted under the same circumstances, and a sigh told how grieved she felt that any environment, how sad and mournful soever, should have obscured the refinement so inherent in the blood of Trevanion.

Prompt to redress the fancied injury, she placed her hand within his arm, saying, 'I think the best thing we can do is to go for a nice long walk on this lovely day, and you shall show me a little of the "field," – you see I understand diggers now, – and your hut, where you have been living all this time by yourself, you poor lonely hermit that you were.'

"Now that's the way to behave," said Mrs. Caldwell, smiling, with motherly approval; "I see you'll know all you've got to do after a while – girls is flighty at first, Mr. Johnson."

So they walked forth along the principal (and only) street of Omeo, not wholly without observation from the miscellaneous crowd of miners, teamsters, wayfarers, tradespeople, bushmen, and others, with which a mining town where gold is abundant – and such was then the stage at which Omeo had arrived – is filled up. More than one head was turned from time to time to gaze with interest and surprise at the distinguished-looking though plainly dressed girl 'who had come up to Ballarat Harry.'

'His luck's in, my word,' was the remark of a stalwart miner, who, pick on shoulder, was following a cart with his mate, conveying their worldly possessions. 'I wonder if they're going to live in that hut of his on the ridge. She don't look as if she'd been used to cook in a slab fireplace, or lift the lid off a camp-oven.'

'Camp-oven be blowed,' rejoined his mate, who was affectionately carrying a long-handled shovel, as being too valuable an implement to be trusted in a vehicle, 'they're a-goin' to Melbourne to be spliced; and most like he'll settle there and take to gold-buying on a big scale. He's well in, is Harry, by all accounts.'

'It beats me what she sees in him, then – a gal like her, as might have any man in the whole bloomin' colony, in a manner of speaking. Harry was a jolly, free-handed chap, as you'd see when he first come, but he's got that surly and short lately as you'd hardly know him as the same man.'

'Well, I warn't here when he first come, but from the look of him, when I see him the other day, I shouldn't be surprised if there was something "cronk" about him, for all his gold-buying.'

All unheeding of this careless but not inaccurate criticism, the lovers sauntered on. As they cleared the outskirts of the town, Estelle said, 'Now you must show me your hut. I must see the place where you have lived your lonely life, poor fellow. How I used to pity you, when I thought of it.'

'There it is, on that rise – this track leads up to it. It's such a miserable hovel, I hardly like you to see it.'

'Nonsense! you forget I've been to Growlers' and Ballarat, and know all about diggings. Why, it's the regular thing, like a shooting-box or a bothy in the Highlands. Everybody does it. Better men than you (I was going to say) live in huts. Why, this is quite a grand hut! What fine broad slabs, and a big padlock too. I thought the miners were so honest?'

'Sometimes,' he said; 'not always.'

They walked into Ballarat Harry's hut. Estelle sat herself down on a three-legged stool by the side of the still smouldering fire, and gazed into the pile of ashes on the hearth. Here, for so many a lonely evening, had he sat and smoked and thought – ah! with what bitterness – of a lost home, a forfeited birthright, of a father's curse, which, harmless as thistledown at first, had commenced to be so fatally prophetic. It was hard. Fate had been against him – against them from the beginning. But she would make up to him – as far as woman's love might repair the wrongs of destiny and the cruelty of man – for this dreadful episode of his life.

'Oh Lance – dear Lance!' she said; 'how you have lived through it all I can hardly imagine.'

'If I had not had the thoughts of you to keep me up,' he said, looking at her with eyes of bold admiration, 'I might have given in. But I kept always saying to myself, she will reward me, Stella will be mine when we meet, and all the past will be forgotten – and you are mine,' he said, as he took her hand in his and made as if to exact the betrothed lover's accustomed tribute.

But again a shrinking feeling of denial – for which she could not account – possessed her whole frame. She drew back shuddering. 'Pray, don't let us have any nonsense of that kind,' she said; 'there will be plenty of time by and by. At present, I feel as if I had so much rather hear all about your trial and the cruel unjust sentence which ruined you, and of your life in those dreadful hulks; I always wonder how you managed to escape.'

For one moment the flash of his eyes in stern displeasure reminded her vividly of bygone days and their lovers' quarrels at Wychwood. Then he spoke, in a voice studiously free from irritation —

'I got out through the help and managing of Tessie Lawless – a girl that cared a deal more for me than you do, if that's the way you're going to treat me. You've forgotten our old Wychwood days, I suppose. Well, as you'll have to leave to-morrow, or next day at furthest, for Melbourne, and we go different ways, we mustn't fall out, must we? I can wait. So we'd better talk over this journey.'

'Now don't be cross, my dear Lance; you must give me time. Remember, I've been a lonely and very sad woman for years, and all thoughts of love and marriage were put out of my head. Do tell me of your escape.'

'Well, I DID escape, – which is the chief thing that concerns us now, – or I believe I should have hanged myself, like the fellow that was in my cell before me – or got shot, like two other men, for trying to clear out by day. What I suffered, no tongue can tell!' – here he assumed the most tragic expression possible, and groaned as if at the recollection, – 'the very thoughts of it make my blood boil.'

'But how did this girl – Tessie Lawless, was that her name? – succeed in releasing you?'

'Well, she persuaded a man who, I believe, was pretty sweet after her, to come one dark night with a boat to the stern of the old hulk. She sent money and bribed my warder, so I was able to get out and drop down into the boat. After I was free, she sent a man and two horses to where I could meet them, and I came up here.'

'What a brave girl! I should like to see and thank her. She must have been a great friend of yours?'

'Well, I suppose she thought a good deal of me in her way, poor thing. I believe she's in Melbourne somewhere, but I've never seen her since.'

'You don't seem to have been very anxious to thank her for all the devotion and courage, I must say. It's the way of the world, I suppose, and Australia is very like other places in essentials, I begin to suspect. And now, what are our plans to be? It will be a risk for you to remain here longer, I suppose?'

'To be sure it will. You can't tell what may happen. Any day I might be arrested. Our dart – our plan, I mean – is to get to Melbourne as soon as possible. You can go down with Holmes Dayton and Con Gray. A policeman goes with them as escort, and, I think, Gray's sister-in-law. You couldn't have a safer party. I shall go across country towards the Murray, and travel a way of my own. We can meet in Melbourne at any place you arrange, and be married at once – that is, the day before the vessel sails that we take our passage in for San Francisco. Then we're off as Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, and no one the wiser! What do you say to that?'

'I suppose,' she answered slowly and reflectively, 'that it would be the best plan.'

'The best plan!' he repeated, almost angrily, while a sudden flash shone from his eyes, and a frown of impatience crossed his face, which brought back old memories with magical suddenness. 'Why, of course it is. There can't be any other, unless I hang on here till that infernal hound Dayrell track me down. But you don't seem to be half keen about it. Can it be' – and here he changed his voice and looked earnestly, almost pleadingly, into the girl's face – 'that you have changed your mind? If you have, say so. I have lost home and friends – everything – I know. Am I to lose you too?'

His eyes rested on the girl with almost magnetic power. Then a blush came to her cheek, as she replied —

'You have my promise, Lance, and the word of a Chaloner is sacred. Surely you should know that? Of course I will do as you wish. But – and here she smiled and raised her eyes pleadingly – you must not be hasty, but bear with me a little. All things are so strange, and the time is short. After all my looking forward to our meeting, you have taken me a little by surprise.'

'Forgive me, my darling,' he said, with well-acted warmth; 'I was hasty, but you know the Trevanion temper – my pride was touched. And you will be ready to start to-morrow? That horse of yours (old Vernon, or whatever his name was, is no bad judge, if he picked him) is as fit for the road as when he left Melbourne. I suppose he expected to get a commission out of you?'

'You must not talk in that way of my good old friend,' she said gravely. 'He was like a father to me; I can't be too grateful to him and his dear good wife. But I shall be quite ready to start in the morning with the people you mention. I am so glad there is a girl in the party.'

As they walked back to the inn, the arrangements for meeting in Melbourne were discussed in detail and completely sketched out. She was to go to Mr. Vernon's house, and thence, when apprised of his arrival, she would meet him at the South Yarra Church, only escorted by her friends. Mr. Vernon would 'give her away,' and she would ask them to keep the matter secret. The ceremony would be deferred till the day before the sailing of their vessel for Honolulu or San Francisco, as might be decided. Unless Fate intervened with unexampled unkindness, it seemed as though a burst of sunshine was about to break through the cloud of misfortune which had so long encircled them.

'By this time to-morrow evening,' he said, 'you will be on your way to Melbourne. It's lucky you've had so much practice lately in riding. I suppose you found it rather awkward at first?'

'Awkward?' she said, gazing at him with astonishment, 'Why, you surely must have forgotten that I hunted regularly the season before you left home.'

'Oh yes; of course – of course,' he said. 'But I seem to have forgotten so many things,' – here he assumed an air as of one indistinctly recalling long-past incidents. 'Then the horses out here are so different.'

'I don't think that at all,' she answered; 'I have seen some wonderfully fine horses here. And I am sure my good old Wanderer, that I rode up, is as grand a hackney as ever was saddled. You mustn't run down Australian horses, you know.'

'Never mind the horses,' he said pettishly; 'I wish I'd never seen one, out here at any rate; and now let us settle it all, how we're to meet, and all the rest of it. I'm to send a note to John Vernon and Company, Flinders Lane, – is that the address? – and you'll be ready at a day's notice, won't you?'

'Yes,' she said slowly and half absently; 'I suppose so.'

'You see it's this way,' he said, coming still nearer to her and looking into her face as if to read her inmost thoughts. 'I can't afford to hang about Melbourne. What I've got to do is to find out the first steamer, take our passages as Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, then get the license: there's a church close by the Vernons, isn't there, where all the swells go? – Toorak, or some such name. We slip over there before lunch, and next day we're man and wife and at sea – clear of Australia – free and safe for ever! What a sell it will be for those bloodhounds of police!'

As he spoke rapidly, his eyes gleamed with unholy triumph, carefully schooled as was the general expression of his countenance. In spite of her deep abiding sympathy for his sorrows, the girl's gentle spirit recoiled from the savage satisfaction displayed in his closing words.

'Oh! Lance,' she said, 'do not speak like that. It pains me to hear even a tone of lightness about our deliverance. If God permits it, we should be thankful all our lives. But even if there has been pursuit, these men that you so hate have only been doing what they supposed to be their duty.'

'You are an angel,' he said, with an air of deepest conviction and tenderness, 'too good for me and for every one. For your sake, I suppose I must forgive these rascally traps, especially if they don't run me down. And now, as we shan't see each other in the morning, just one kiss before we part for the last time.'

But again she drew back; the same indefinable feeling of repulsion arose in her instinctively, as strong, as inexplicable. 'You have not long to wait now,' she said softly; 'until then, you must humour all my whims. You will, Lance, won't you?'

'I suppose so,' he said half sullenly; 'women are all alike, full of fancies. But I did think you would remember old days. You used not to be so stand off and distant.'

'We were girl and boy then,' she said. 'Everything seems so changed. I can hardly fancy even now that we are to be married in a fortnight, though I have come all this way to find you out. Some strange mysterious feeling stirs within me from time to time. I can hardly explain it. It is almost like a presentiment of evil.'

He laughed suddenly, and as suddenly stopped. 'I am not changed,' he said, 'except by what I have gone through'; then he dropped his voice into a mournful murmur, as he carelessly and apparently by chance touched the Chaloner ring. 'But if you can't make up your mind; if you would like to cry off, to leave me to my fate, say so in time. Perhaps it would be better for you after all.'

'No, Lance!' she said, and as she spoke she raised her eyes heavenward, moist with tears of tenderest sympathy, as the thought rushed across her brain of his lonely and desperate condition, abandoned by her as by all the world. 'We Chaloners keep faith. I am your plighted bride, and I am ready to fulfil my vow, my promise to the living and to the dead. But you must bear with a woman's weakness and consider how little time I have to prepare. What would they say at Wychwood, I wonder?'

'We're in Australia, Stella, and not in England – don't forget that,' he answered, the frown again darkening his countenance. 'I hope we shan't see the old country for many a day. We must learn to forget old ways and fashions.'

'I can never do so, wherever we may wander,' she answered, with quiet emotion. 'I don't like to hear you speak of it as a thing of course, and I wish you would call me Estelle, Lance, not Stella. You never used to do so.'

'Very well, Estelle,' he said, 'I won't do it again, if it bothers you. Stella's a common name out here; that's the reason, I suppose. And now, as we're at the hotel, we'd better say good-bye. I won't come in the morning. It's no use making people talk; they're ready enough, without helping them. You and that Miss Graham can get away with old Dayton to-morrow. It's the way everybody up here travels, and nothing's thought of it. I'll write the moment I get down. Most likely I'll be in Melbourne as soon as you.'

They parted with a simple hand-clasp, she gazing into his face as if to read the signs of a spirit worn and wearied with the worldly injustice. His face was calm, and betrayed no emotion other than deep regret at the departure of a friend. He tried to throw into the parting words the sentiment which the occasion demanded, but it was patently an effort, and had not the ring of truth or tenderness.

'He is changed,' she told herself, as she moved forward across the verandah of the hotel and sought her bedroom. 'How changed, I could hardly have imagined. But who would not have been altered by the frightful experience he has gone through! I must try and make him happy, as some poor recompense for all his sorrows.'

Could she have noted the dark and evil expression of her companion's face, as he lit his pipe and strode savagely along the path to his solitary hut, heard the foul oaths with which from time to time he essayed to relieve his feelings, or the vows of vengeance upon her for her coldness, she would have deemed him changed indeed.