The Touch

by Colleen McCullough

  Now they varied their diet with fresh eggs and chicken from a fifty-hen coop, duck and goose meat, pork from a pig sty, and a host of different vegetables from a thriving garden. Alexander loved Chinese food, though Summers, he noted with amusement, was not so keen. The Chinese tents were spread in an encampment some distance from Alexander’s slab house, which he shared with Sung. Summers elected to be perpetually on the move.

  At the end of six months they had retrieved 10,000 troy ounces of gold dust, tiny nuggets, a few larger ones, and an awesome beauty that weighed over a hundred pounds. Thus far their finds were worth £125,000, but more gold came in every day.

  “I think,” said Alexander to Sung, “that it’s time I paid a visit to Mr. Charles Dewy, who used to lease this land.”

  “It surprises me that he hasn’t yet descended upon us,” said Sung, raising his thin, elegant brows. “Surely he would have been notified that you bought a selection on his leasehold?”

  Alexander laid his index finger against the side of his nose, a universal gesture that Sung entirely understood. “Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” he asked, and went off to saddle his mare.

  DUNLEIGH’S HOMESTEAD overlooked the Abercrombie River to the west of Trunkey Creek, a gold-mining settlement that had made the magical transition from placer to reef gold in 1868. It had greatly irked Charles Dewy that Trunkey Creek became an official goldfield, but when the gold-bearing quartz vein was discovered, Dewy invested heavily in several of the Trunkey Creek mines; so far they had returned him a profit of £15,000.

  Unaware that Mr. Dewy was a gold investor, Alexander rode up to what was an imposing collection of well-kept buildings inside an immaculate white post-and-rail fence. In front of the stables and sheds stood a magnificent two-storied mansion of chased limestone blocks. It flaunted towers and turrets, French doors, a covered verandah, and a slate roof. Mr. Dewy, thought Alexander as he alighted from his mare, is a wealthy man.

  The English butler conceded that Mr. Dewy was at home, all the while eyeing the visitor askance—such peculiar apparel, an ungroomed horse! However, as Mr. Kinross exuded a calm dignity and authority, the butler agreed to announce him.

  Charles Dewy looked anything but a man of the land. He was short, stout, white-haired, wore prodigious side whiskers but no beard, and a Savile Row suit; the collar of his crisp white shirt was starched within an inch of its life, his cravat silk.

  “You’ve caught me in town clothes—just returned from a junket to Bathurst for a meeting. The sun,” Dewy continued as he ushered Alexander to his study, “is well and truly over the yardarm. Therefore a drink is called for, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not an habitual imbiber, Mr. Dewy.”

  “Religious scruples? Temperance and all that?”

  Charles Dewy fancied that, had he been out of doors, Kinross would have spat upon the ground; as it was, he lifted his lip. “I have no religion and few scruples, sir.”

  This rather antisocial reply didn’t dismay Charles in the least; of a sanguine temperament, he tolerated his fellow men’s foibles without judging them. “Then you may drink tea, Mr. Kinross, while I drink the nectar of your native peat streams,” he said cheerfully.

  Settled in a chair with his Scotch whisky, the squatter regarded his visitor with interest. Striking-looking chap, with those pointy black eyebrows and natty Van Dyke beard. Eyes that gave nothing away but saw everything. Probably highly intelligent and educated. He’d heard of this Kinross in Bathurst; people talked about him because no one knew what he was up to, yet everyone knew that he had to be up to something. The American frontier clothes meant that the popular guess was gold, but, though the man had been to Hill End several times, rumor said that the only gold he had paddled in was Ruby Costevan’s hair.

  “I’m surprised that you haven’t paid me a visit, Mr. Dewy,” said Alexander, sipping his Assam tea appreciatively.

  “A visit? Where? And why should I?”

  “I bought three hundred and twenty acres of your leasehold almost a year ago.”

  “The devil you did!” Charles exclaimed, sitting up straight. “This is the first I knew about it!”

  “Surely you had a letter from the Department of Lands?”

  “Surely I should have, but surely I have not, sir!”

  “Och, these government departments!” said Alexander, tongue clicking. “I swear that they’re even slower in New South Wales than they are in Calcutta.”

  “I’ll have words to say about this to John Robertson. It’s he who started this nonsense with his Crown Lands Alienation Act—and he’s a squatter himself! That’s the trouble with going into parliament, even a hamstrung one like ours—the members become blind to everything except ways of raising revenue, and the ten pounds a year a squatter pays for his leasehold isn’t much help.”

  “Yes, I met John Robertson in Sydney,” said Alexander, putting down his teacup. “However, this isn’t a mere courtesy visit, Mr. Dewy. I’m here to inform you that I’ve discovered gold placer on the Kinross River, where my selection is.”

  “The Kinross River? What Kinross River?”

  “It was an unnamed tributary of the Abercrombie, so I gave it my name. I will die, but I hope my river will flow forever. It’s full of gold, phenomenally so.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Dewy moaned. “Why do so many gold strikes have to happen on my leasehold? My father took up this land in 1821, Kinross, and squatted on two hundred square miles. Then came the gold and John Robertson. Dunleigh is shrinking, sir.”

  “Dear, dear,” said Alexander mildly.

  “Whereabouts did you buy?”

  A Department of Lands map came out of one saddlebag; Dewy set down his drink, hooked a pair of half-glasses behind his ears, and came to peer over Alexander’s shoulder. The man smelled sweet, he noticed—the leather suit was leather fragrant, and its wearer liked to wash his body too. The long, well-shaped and clean hand pointed to the very edge of Dunleigh’s eastern boundary.

  “I cleared a bit of that when I was still half a boy,” Dewy said, returning to his chair. “Before anyone even dreamed of gold. And I don’t think I’ve ever bothered to go back. The wild mountains start there, so I can’t graze sheep and cattle—they scramble up into the native forest and disappear. Now you tell me that the creek is full of alluvial gold. That means an officially declared goldfield, a shanty town and all the hideousness of a collection of human beings thrown together by mutual greed.”

  “I also bought ten thousand acres of the mountaintop at auction,” Alexander went on, pouring himself more tea. “I’ll build a house up there to get away from, as you put it, all the hideousness.” He leaned forward, looked earnest. “Mr. Dewy, I don’t want to make an enemy out of you. I’m geologically knowledgeable as well as an engineer, so there was method in my apparent madness, paying five thousand pounds for a useless mountain I’ve named Mount Kinross. Any town that grows up on the goldfield will also be named Kinross.”

  “It’s an unusual name,” said Dewy.

  “It’s mine, and mine alone. In the general scheme of things Kinross town ought to die when the gravel is mined out. However, it isn’t the placer gold concerns me, though I’ve already made a lot of money from it. Inside my mountain is what the Californians call the mother lode—a reef of quartz containing free gold—that is, gold unassociated with pyrites. As you know, any man can extract placer gold from gravel, but to mine a deep vein in solid rock is beyond the financial resources of the men who flock to a goldfield. It needs machinery and too much money to be privately funded. So when I’m ready to mine the mother lode on my own land, I’ll be looking for investors to form a company. I assure you that every investor in that company will end richer than Croesus. Rather than have you agitating against me among your political friends in Sydney, Mr. Dewy, I would prefer to have you as my ally.”

  “In other words,” said Charles Dewy, refreshing his drink, “you want investment money from me.”

  “When the time comes,
of course. I don’t want my company owned and controlled by people I don’t know personally and can’t trust, sir. It will be a private company, therefore not publicly funded. And who better to be a shareholder than the man whose family has been in the district since 1821?”

  Dewy rose to his feet. “Mr. Kinross—Alexander, if you’ll call me Charles—I believe you. You’re a canny Scot, not a visionary.” He heaved a sigh. “It’s too late to oppose the rush, anyway, so let the locusts gather to strip the alluvium as quickly as possible. Then Kinross town will settle to proper mining, just like Trunkey Creek. My investments in the Trunkey Creek mines have paid for this house. Will you stay the night, share our dinner?”

  “If you will excuse my lack of evening dress.”

  “Of course. I won’t change either.”

  ALEXANDER CARRIED his saddlebags upstairs to a beautiful room whose windows revealed the surrounding hills and the sadly dirty waters of the Abercrombie River, polluted by a dozen gold discoveries farther up toward its sources.

  Prepared to think poorly of Alexander Kinross, Constance Dewy ended in liking him very much. A good fifteen years her husband’s junior, she had been a great beauty in her youth, now twenty years in the past. Hers, Alexander divined, was the hand that had shaped this house with such good taste, for she was superbly gowned in ecru satin flaunting the rudimentary bustle just coming into fashion. She wore rubies at her throat, in her ears and over the wrists of the ecru satin gloves that sheathed her arms to the elbow. She and Charles, he noted, stood on very good terms with each other.

  “Our three daughters—we have no sons—are away at school in Sydney,” Constance said, her breath catching. “Oh, I do miss them! But a governess can educate them only so far. Once they turn twelve, they have to learn to mix with other girls, make the social connections that will help them when they’re old enough to think of marriage. Are you married, Alexander?”

  “No,” he said shortly.

  “Too busy to meet the right girl, or does the life of a gay bachelor appeal more?”

  “Neither. My wife is already picked out, but marriage is for the future, when I can build her a house like this. It’s limestone, Charles, but where on earth did you find the masons to finish and lay the blocks so professionally?” Alexander asked, changing the subject neatly.

  “In Bathurst,” said Charles. “When the Government put the railway over the Blue Mountains, the zigzag down the western escarpment from Clarence had to be partially built on three high viaducts. They could quarry the sandstone fairly nearby, but the engineer, Whitton, could find no masons. He ended up importing them from Italy, which is why the viaducts and this house are built to metric measurement, not imperial.”

  “I noticed the viaducts when I came up from Sydney—as perfect as if they’d been built by the Romans.”

  “Quite so. After the job was done some of the masons chose to settle in Bathurst, where there’s enough work to keep them occupied. I opened a limestone quarry near the Abercrombie Caves, excavated my blocks, and hired the Italian masons to build this.”

  “I shall do the same,” said Alexander.

  Later the two men repaired to the study, Dewy to enjoy his port, Alexander to puff on a cigar. It was then that Alexander broached a touchy subject.

  “It has not escaped me,” he began, “that there is a great deal of ill feeling in New South Wales against the Chinese. I gather also in Victoria and Queensland. How do you feel about the Chinese yourself, Charles?”

  The elderly squatter shrugged. “I don’t hate the heathen Chinee, that much I can say. After all, I have very little to do with them. They congregate on the goldfields, though there are a few small Chinese-owned businesses in Bathurst—a restaurant, shops. From what I’ve seen, they’re quiet, decent, mind their own affairs and harm no one. Unfortunately their capacity for hard work irritates many white Australians, who would rather not work terribly hard for what they receive. Also, they don’t care to intermingle and they aren’t Christians. With the result that their temples are usually called joss houses—a term that hints at nefarious activities. And, of course, the final indignity is that they send money home to China. This is seen as sucking Australia’s wealth out of Australia.” He giggled, a delightful sound. “In my view, what’s sent home to China is a drop in the bucket compared to what gets sent home to England.”

  Knowing that his own money resided in the Bank of England, Alexander shifted restlessly. Charles Dewy was clearly one of that emerging breed, the Australian patriot at odds with England. “My partner is Chinese,” he said, “and I will stick to him through thick and thin. When I was in China, I found that the Chinese share some qualities in common with the Scots—that capacity for hard work, and frugality. Where they beat the Scots hollow lies in their happy temperament—the Chinese laugh a lot. Och, but the Scots are dour, dour, dour!”

  “You’re a cynic about your own people, Alexander.”

  “I have good reason to be.”

  “I HAVE A feeling, Connie,” said Charles to his wife as he vigorously brushed her long hair, “that Alexander Kinross is one of those extraordinary people who cannot put a foot wrong.”

  Constance’s response was a shiver. “Oh, dear! Isn’t there a saying that goes ‘Take what you want, and pay for it’?”

  “Never heard of that one. Do you mean that the more money he makes, the bigger the spiritual price he’ll be called on to pay?”

  “Yes. Thank you, my darling, that’s enough,” she said, and turned from her dressing table to face him. “It isn’t that I dislike him—far from it. But I sense that he has many dark thoughts churning around in his mind. About personal matters. It’s in personal matters that he’ll go tumbling down, because he thinks that he can apply the same sort of logic to them as he does to his business enterprises.”

  “You’re remembering that he said he’d picked a wife.”

  “Exactly. An odd way to put it. As if he hasn’t bothered to consult her wishes.” She nibbled at a nail. “If he weren’t a rich man, that would solve itself, but rich men are greatly sought after as husbands.”

  “Did you marry me for my money?” Charles asked, smiling.

  “The entire district thinks so, but you know very well that I didn’t, you fraud.” Her eyes softened. “You were so jolly, so unruffled yet efficient. And I loved the way your whiskers tickled my thighs.”

  Charles put down the brush. “Come to bed, Constance.”

  Three

  Finding a Reef and a Bride

  A YEAR AFTER Alexander Kinross discovered placer gold on the Kinross River, he finally returned to Hill End and the Blue Room at Costevan’s.

  Ruby greeted him coolly yet warmly: the kind of reception that said he was most welcome as an old friend, but that his chances of her climbing into the blue bed were—well, not good. Pride dictated her attitude; the truth was that she had hankered for him constantly, the more so because Sung and Lee were gone too. The natural attrition of disease, disillusionment and discontent meant that all five of the girls who had worked for Ruby a year ago had decamped, replaced by five new girls.

  “I suppose I should say fresh faces, but they’re really the same old things the cat dragged in,” Ruby said a little wearily, pouring Alexander’s tea. “I’ve been in the game too long—when the bar’s busy I can’t remember which one is Paula and which one is Petronella. Petronella! I ask you! Sounds like something you rub on to discourage mosquitoes.”

  “That’s citronella,” he said gently, fished in his jacket pocket and produced an envelope. “Here, this is your share of the proceeds thus far.”

  “Jesus!” she exclaimed, staring at the bank draft. “What sort of percentage does ten thousand pounds represent?”

  “One-tenth of my share. Sung has used part of his share to buy a three-twenty-acre selection on top of a hill four miles from town, where he’s building a pagoda city in miniature—all glazed ceramic tile and brick in wonderful colors, with curled eaves and tiered towers. He’s
donated me a hundred coolies to build a dam wall out of mixed mullock and rock at the outlet of a valley that will make a perfect dam. When they’re done, they’ll go up on top of my mountain to divert a part of the untainted river into the dam. And after that, they’ll be part of an all-Chinese work force constructing my railroad. On white man’s wages, I add. Yes, Sung’s as happy as the Emperor of China.”

  “Dear Sung!” She sighed. “That tells me why Sam Wong is looking so restless. I can do without Paula, Petronella and the others, but I can’t do without Sam or Chan Hoi. They’re both muttering about going home to China.”

  “They’re rich men. Sung registered claims on their behalf, as any brother or cousin would,” said Alexander slyly, regarding her through half-closed eyes. “Kinross is one goldfield where the Chinese are in on the ground floor and are treated properly.”

  “You know perfectly well, Alexander, that Sam isn’t any brother of Sung’s, nor Chan any cousin. They’re his—serfs—bondsmen—whatever the Chinese word is for freed slaves still under his authority.”

  “Yes, of course I know. However, I can understand why Sung perpetuated that fiction. He’s a feudal lord from the north who clings to his dress and customs, and demands that his people do the same. The Chinese who’ve gone British have no love for him.”

  “Perhaps so, but don’t get the idea that Sung has no sway over the Chinese who cut off their pigtails and put on starched shirts. The common enemy is the white man.” She took a cheroot from her gold case. “You haven’t done the Chinese any favors by going into partnership with them and treating them like white men.”

  “I could trust them not to talk, which gave me six months’ headway,” Alexander said, flicking the bank draft. “The size of that is largely due to Sung’s hold over his people. The secret didn’t get out until I registered our claims.”