‘Did Dick bring you in?’
‘No, I found him lying in some rocks ‒ I think he fell and cracked some ribs. He can’t talk without hurting himself. What in God’s name has been happening?’
‘We had a fire, Sandy,’ said an embarrassed voice.
‘A fire?’ The speaker advanced into the firelight. He was looking about with dismay. ‘Where is everybody?’
‘This is all of us that can walk, mate. We’ve ‒ we’ve lost a few chums, you see.’
Jenny had reached the front of the group. ‘Sandy?’ she said in a faint voice.
‘Yes?’ He turned. Then he bent forward in the uncertain light. ‘Who’s that?’
She couldn’t mistake that tall spare figure, even in silhouette in the dimness.
‘Ronald,’ Jenny said, scarcely above a whisper.
‘Great God in heaven,’ said her husband in total disbelief, ‘it’s Jenny!’
Chapter Twenty-three
If anyone had told Jenny Armstrong that there would be constraint in this reunion, she would have thought it outlandish. But this tall gaunt man in the flickering light, bearded and grimy, was even more of a stranger than the man she had found by the stream at Daniell’s farm. And in front of the jostling, shouting onlookers, she didn’t know how to react.
She held out her hand. He took it. But at that moment a scream of terror split the air. Jenny jerked her hand free and ran to the canvas shelter.
Tom Seeley in his nightmare delirium was thrashing about on his bed of brushwood, tearing at the wrappings she had so painstakingly put around him that morning. He was shrieking in pain and horror. Jenny knelt beside him, trying to restrain him. After a moment one of the diggers came to help.
Dr Vance set about binding up Traherne’s cracked ribs. Mrs Gray stirred the fire to start some food for the newcomers. The fit men took the horses to picket them. The camp settled down again.
When Jenny was relieved of her watch she stole to the fire, looking about for her husband. She knew each man’s sleeping-place. The newcomer had thrown a canvas sheet over the bough of a low tree, pegging it to make a windbreak. He was lying as sleep had caught him, with the empty tin plate at his elbow and his other arm sprawled across his saddlebag. She put a hand on his shoulder to shake him awake. But then she bethought herself of the long ride with the fractious horses and an injured companion.
She fetched her cape, wrapped it about her, and lay down at Ronald’s side.
When she woke the sun was shining and the camp was up and about. Ronald had gone from his place, but the buckle of the saddlebag was undone, showing a few clean clothes and a hairbrush. Jenny sat up, stretching. She had grown accustomed to a hard bed but never got used to finding herself in her clothes instead of a nightgown. She longed for a bath, for time to brush out her hair and feel it smooth against her skull. But this wasn’t the time or the place.
Ronald strolled up, holding a tin mug of the strong tea which formed the basis of every meal. He held it out to her. Now she felt she knew him ‒ the beard was gone, the shabby jacket had been replaced by a clean shirt.
‘Good morning, wife,’ he said.
‘Good morning, husband.’
‘Chalmers told me how you come to be here. I hear you’ve been doing wonders.’
She shook her head. ‘Not enough. Things are very bad here, Ronald.’
‘So I see. I went to the old camp at first light. Fourteen graves …’
‘And some with no names,’ she said. ‘I thought one of them might be yours, lad.’
He folded himself neatly to sit cross-legged beside her. ‘I left the old camp about, let me see … it must be over a month gone by. Didn’t they tell you?’
She looked at him with eyes rimmed with tears. ‘Ach, husband, how can I keep track of a man who has so many different names? They called you Sandy last night.’
‘Yes.’ He ran his hand over his hair. ‘And of course I’m a Scot. It’s a natural choice for a nickname.’ He patted her shoulder. ‘Drink your tea, lassie.’
She gulped down a mouthful, but it met a rising sob she couldn’t prevent, and the result was a coughing fit that lasted until the emotion of the moment had passed. When she recovered Ronald had taken the mug of tea from her and was holding her close with one arm.
‘Now, now, my bonnie dearie, there’s nothing to cry over. You’re here and so am I, and we’ll go back to Daniell’s farm to pick up Heather and Mrs Baird and then we’ll be off to Sydney for the first ship to England.’
‘Ronald! You mean it?’ Delight and disbelief struggled for first place.
‘Aye, it’s time to go home, I believe.’
‘Does that mean … Did you find what you were looking for, laddie?’
He studied her and smiled. ‘There’s two questions there, I think. The answer to both is yes. I found hardship enough to make me appreciate what I’d turned my back on. And I found gold.’
‘Ronald!’
‘Ssh,’ he said. ‘It’s hardly decent to triumph over it in this place, where so many men have given their lives and not found it. We won’t speak of it to anyone, Jenny. But there’s a pouch in my saddlebag with eighteen hundred pounds’ worth of gold nuggets in it.’
She covered her mouth with her hand to prevent herself exclaiming aloud. In a low tone she said, ‘Where did you find it?’
‘In the roots of an upset tree! I was riding by, and something glinted, and I thought, Shall I bother to go back? and almost rode on. And then I thought, after all, I’m not expected anywhere so why not go back? And there they were ‒ eleven nuggets, one that must weigh almost eight ounces and the rest smaller, but pure gold.’
‘From a vein in the rocks?’
He shook his head. ‘I think they must have been washed down in some landslip during a rainy spell years ago. They caught in the tree roots, and then perhaps last year or the year before, the tree fell over during the winter weather.’
‘But don’t you want to look for the seam?’ she asked, surprised.
He hesitated. ‘I looked about, and could see that there wasn’t a gold vein near. I went up the slope and spent a day looking for it, I admit. But when I’d bedded down that night I got to thinking. I remembered what Daniell said ‒ that the craze can take hold of you and you can spend months searching, and end up wasting what you found in the first place. So, I decided to be satisfied with what I’d got. And thank God for it, because if I hadn’t turned back when I did, Dick Traherne would be making bones among those rocks where I found him.’
She hardly dared to speak. In the midst of the dirt and misery of this camp full of sick, injured and penniless men, she and her husband had everything ‒ happiness, plans for the future, and above all, each other. ‘I’m glad, Ronald,’ she murmured.
‘Aye, we’ve much to be glad for, Jenny my love. So off you go to the river and wash some of the tearstains away, and then we’ll think what’s best to do.’
As to that, there was really no argument. They couldn’t leave the camp when every able-bodied person was needed to nurse the sick. Ronald added himself to the party of fetchers and carriers who went back and forth to Forbes for supplies. At the end of a week, the long-awaited group rode in from Sydney, with additional drugs and cleansing materials.
But they were too late to save some of the patients. Tom Seeley died the day after Ronald first rode into the camp, and that same day an old man known only as Mitts slipped away. When at last the area was cleared and the remaining patients were put aboard the wagons to go to Forbes, the graves at the old camp numbered nineteen.
Once the wagons had been unloaded in Forbes and the patients settled under the care of the nursing staff who had come out from Sydney, Jenny felt free to think about setting out for Daniell’s farm. Gunder had decided to stay on, lured by hints that ‘colour’ had been found in a creek to the southwest. He consigned his cart to them, to be sold when they eventually got back to Sydney, the money to be put into the bank for him to draw on.
Ronald took turns driving with Henry Chalmers. Dr Vance had stayed with his patients, as had Mrs Gray. Jenny travelled in the back or sometimes rode, for they had Chalmers’ horse and Ronald’s mount and his pack-horse trotting along at the tailboard.
But now the winter rain had come at last, and sometimes all three had to be on foot, pushing and dragging to keep the vehicle moving. The horses were plastered with mud at the end of each day. It seemed an endless task to groom them before making camp.
It took longer to get back along the route than it had on the outward journey. At the end of six days the rain eased off, the sun came out, and the landscape sparkled. Fresh green glimmered on the tableland, there was no dry dust in the air. But the mud remained.
At Cowra they at last turned northeast. They lost the track entirely but a team coming out from Parramatta with the mail put them right. Ten days after they had left Forbes, they sighted the first of Bob Daniell’s sheep, munching contentedly among the sprigs of new grass.
It was mid-morning. They trundled over the muddy terrain, Jenny on the driving seat beside her husband with Chalmers riding alongside.
The sound of their approach set the dogs barking. The farmhouse door opened. From behind the farm a pony trotted, with a small figure on its back. The pony approached the thorn fence that separated the back paddock from the farm garden. The rider rose in the stirrups to stare.
Then Goodie was turned away from the fence, taken back a few paces, and set at it once again.
‘No!’ cried Jenny in alarm.
But Goodie rose in the air, jumped the fence, and landed with neat certainty among the shrubs.
‘Yee-hah!’ screamed the rider in triumph. ‘Mama! Mama!’
Next moment the pony had leaped the front fence and was trotting to the carriage-side. Heather beamed at her mother and waved in excitement. Ronald put on the brake, Jenny slithered down to the muddy earth, and her daughter was in her arms.
‘Mama! Mama!’
It was a strange little voice, a cracked treble that seemed unsteady in its pitch. But the word had been spoken aloud, not in a whisper. And when Heather let go to turn to her father, she spoke audibly. ‘Papa,’ she said, and held out her hand to be shaken.
‘Well,’ said Ronald uncertainly, ‘I said I expected you to be a champion jockey ‒ and so you are!’
Mrs Daniell came flying down the path to greet them, with Baird in pursuit. In a moment they were a muddle of hugs and handshakes, with Heather somewhere in the middle laughing and crying all at once.
‘Come in, come in ‒ my, you do look bedraggled.’ Mabel Daniell shooed them before her. ‘But isn’t it great the rain’s started? Saved our pasture ‒ we were getting really worried. Well, so I see you caught up with each other on the Lachlan! How thin you are, Mrs Armstrong! You need a good meal, I can see that.’
‘I need a bath and a hair-wash a lot more,’ Jenny said.
‘I’ll go and see to the hot water,’ said Baird, rushing towards the house.
Later, Jenny sat in the little room having her hair brushed. It wasn’t Baird who was doing it, but Heather.
‘How long have you been able to jump the pony?’ Jenny asked.
‘About a week.’
‘The jackaroo taught you?’
Heather nodded. ‘Can I have a pony when we get back to Gatesmuir?’ she asked in her strange, creaky little voice.
Jenny looked at her in the small mirror on the dressing-stand. ‘Yes, my darling, you shall have a pony.’
The little girl smiled. In her delight she let her attention wander from the hairbrush, which was rather too big for her hand. ‘Oh dear. I’m afraid your hair’s harder to brush than Goodie’s mane …’
‘Let me,’ said Baird. She took over and with skill disentangled the brush. ‘Go and see if dinner’s ready, Heather. Your poor mother is probably as hungry as a hunter.’
Heather darted off on this errand. Jenny said, ‘When did she begin to speak?’
‘We think it was about a month ago. Harry ‒ the apprentice boy, you know? ‒ he heard her talking to the pony while she was grooming him. So he told me and Mrs Daniell, and we decided it might be a good thing to see if she would speak to somebody other than Goodie.’
‘How did you manage it?’
‘Mrs Daniell sent the jackaroo to the other side of the farm to do some chores. When it was time for the bairn’s riding lesson, Harry was nowhere to be found. Bob Daniell’s forbidden Heather to ride unless Harry tightens the girths for her ‒ she can’t do it well enough herself. So she went hunting for him about the farm, and finally had to start calling for him in the barns and the woolshed. When he came down from the hayloft at last he said, “What time is it, Heather?” and she said, “Time for my ride” ‒ and since then she’s been almost conversational.’
‘It’s wonderful,’ Jenny breathed. ‘But what a strange little voice!’
‘Aye. I don’t think she’s ever going to sound like anyone else, and aiblins she’ll never be a bletherer ‒ but she’s come out of the silence at last.’
Heather reappeared to announce that the meal was just going on the table. They went along to the kitchen where steak and potatoes and a large dish of fresh spring greens awaited them.
Ronald and Henry Chalmers did full justice to the food. Chalmers was full of questions about what had been happening in Sydney during his absence. Mrs Daniell supplied such news as she could. Heather even chimed in to remind her that Mrs Vincent, passing by, had said the new steamer mail service was about to begin between Sydney and Colombo.
Although she was hungry, Jenny found she couldn’t eat. She was too taken up with the sensation of being with her family again ‒ Ronald and Heather and that old friend Baird. She listened to the flow of talk, but scarcely took in any of it. She had a sense of being blessed, of being granted a great boon after years of unhappiness.
After lunch the rain came down again. They sat in Mrs Daniell’s parlour telling her all that had happened on their trip to the Lachlan. Mrs Daniell at last asked the question that had so far been forgotten in the drama of the fire and its aftermath.
‘Did you turn up any gold, Ron?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes.’
‘You did! How much?’
‘Enough for a pony, Papa?’ his daughter put in.
‘Yes, enough for a pony and a bit over. I’ve got plans for the rest of it when we get back to Scotland.’
Mrs Daniell raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re going, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was a time I thought you’d settle here,’ she murmured.
‘Yes, but that was when I still believed I couldn’t set right what had gone wrong back home. Now I know better, Mabel.’
‘Yes … When you have to face a hard time, it teaches you something, I reckon.’
‘That’s what I found.’
‘So you’re going back to pick up the threads, like,’ she suggested.
Ronald looked at her in surprise. ‘That’s very apt, Mabel. You know, in the weaving trade, sometimes a thread will break while the cloth is being made. Then the machines have to be stopped and if the weaver knows his craft, he mends the broken thread so well that it scarcely makes a mark in the warp and weft.’
Mabel understood perfectly. ‘Took a long time to mend up this broken thread.’
‘Yes. The question is, whether it will leave a big blemish on the cloth.’
Later, when the downpour eased off, Jenny and Ronald went for a walk to the stream where she had first found him when she came to the farm. The path was slippery. He put an arm round her to keep her from falling. She let herself lean on him more than was strictly necessary.
When they reached the stream it had changed greatly. Bright water was pouring along the channel, lapping over the bank. Rich green grass and reeds were springing up at the verges. The trees were putting forth blue-grey leaves.
‘You know,’ said Jenny, ‘those colours would make a fine plaid …’
&
nbsp; ‘Blue, grey and green?’
‘With a brown line, perhaps. I wonder where my watercolours are?’
‘In your hotel room in Sydney, I imagine.’
‘I suppose so. I haven’t thought of them in weeks. Nor of what’s happening at the mill. I ought to write to Charlie Gaines to tell him … to tell him …’
‘To tell him what?’ he prompted.
‘To tell him when to expect me ‒ us ‒ back.’ She faltered into silence. She held her breath, waiting for Ronald’s verdict.
‘Don’t you remember? I said we’d take the first ship.’
‘You really want to go?’
His arm about her shoulders tightened. ‘In a way I want to stay. I like it here. But you know, when Mabel said something about its being midwinter here, I suddenly longed to see frost on the grass ‒ like midwinter back home in Galashiels.’
She nodded, and let her head rest against his shoulder. The rain resumed, and they had to put on the hats they had been carrying and fasten their oil-cloth coats.
‘We’d better get back or we’ll get drenched.’
‘Yes.’
When they reached the farm Ronald led her to the men’s bunkhouse, where he and Chalmers would sleep tonight. Leaving her on the shaded verandah, he ducked inside, returning a moment later with the canvas pouch from the saddlebag.
‘We never had a chance before,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d like to see.’ He opened the bag and took out a lump of gold as big as his fist. Jenny stared at it. ‘Impressive, isn’t it? I’ll have it assayed when we get to Sydney.’
He shook the bag. She could hear the other nuggets rattling together. He put back the large piece, drew the strings close, and weighed the bag in his hand. ‘I’m no expert, of course, but I’ve seen gold other men brought in. I think there’s about seventeen or eighteen hundred pounds there.’
After a moment she said, ‘And what about the future? You said at dinner that you had plans for that gold.’
‘Well, I’m certainly not going to waste it.’
‘I would quite understand if you wanted to strike out for yourself, Ronald. You left Galashiels in the first place because you were dissatisfied.’
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