Despite my a.s.surance that I never had felt better, they insisted upon supporting me on either side; so slipping a hand through each of the young elbows conveniently bent, I playfully put the large hand on the right of me over the dimpling one on the left.
"There!" I said, taking advantage of the liberties extended a probable invalid, "I"ve made a breastwork of the hands of the two dearest young friends I have, so now I cannot fall;" and seeing I put it at that, at that they were content to let it remain, and the big hand very carefully retained the little one, so pa.s.sive and warm, in its shy grasp. At the gate I dismissed Ernest, and Dawn condescended to remark that he wasn"t _quite_ such a fool as usual, which interpreted meant that he had not been so guardedly stand-off to her as he sometimes was.
The trains once more entertained my waking hours that night. Under Andrew"s tutorage I had learned to distinguish the rumble of a "goods"
from the rush of a "pa.s.senger," a two-engine haul from a single, and even the heavy voice of the big old "shunter" that lived about the Noonoon station had grown familiar; but the haughtiest of all was a travelling engine attended only by its tender, and speeding by with lightsome action, like a governor thankfully free from officialdom and hampered only by a valet.
Musing on what a little time had elapsed since the work of the pa.s.senger trains had been done by the coaches with their grey and bay teams of five, swinging through the town at a gallop, and with their occupants armed to the teeth against bushrangers, I dozed and dreamt.
I dreamt that I was in one of the sleeping-cars which had superseded Cobb & Co."s accommodation for travellers, and that from it I could see in a bird"s-eye view not only the magnificent belt of mountains, the bluest in the world, but whirling down their westward slopes with a velocity outstripping the scented winds from sandal ridges and myall plains, I slid across that great western stretch of country where a portion of the railway line runs for a hundred and thirty-six miles without rise or fall or curve in the longest straight ribbon of steel that is known. But ere I reached its end I wakened with a start through something falling in Miss Flipp"s room.
Surely I had not slept for more than half an hour, because the light which had shone in the adjoining room as we returned from Grosvenor"s was still burning. Presently Miss Flipp put it out, and closing her door after her, stealthily made her way from the house. She trod cautiously and noiselessly, but her gown caught on the lower sprouts of the ragged old rose-bushes beside the walks, and though she took a long time to open the little gate opening towards the wharves and the narrow pathway running along the river-bank to the bridge, it creaked a little on its rusty hinges, so that I heard it and fell to awaiting the girl"s return.
I waited and waited, and beguiled the time by counting the trains that pa.s.sed with the quarter hours. There were so many that I soon lost count. This line carried goods to the great wheat and wool-growing west and brought its produce to the city. Many of the noisy trains were laden with "fifteen hundred" and "two thousand" lots of "fats,"
and the yearly statistics dealing with the sales at Homebush chronicled their total numbers as millions. From beyond Forbes, Bourke, and Brewarrina they came in trucks to cross the bridge spanning the n.o.ble stream at the mountain"s base, but they never went back again to the great plains where they had basked in plenty or staggered through droughts as the fickle seasons rose and fell. The voracious, insatiable maw of the city was a grave for them all, and the commercial greed which falls so heavily on the poor dumb beasts in which it traffics, caged them so tightly for their last journey that by the time they reached Noonoon they were bruised and cramped and not a few trodden under foot. The empty trucks going west again made the longest trains, as they could be laden with nothing but a little wire-netting for settlers who were fighting the rabbits, and were easily distinguishable from other "goods," as when they clumsily and jerkily halted the clanking of their couplings and the b.u.mping of their buffers could be heard for a mile or more down the valley. The splendid atmosphere intensified all sounds and carried them an unusual distance, and many a time at first I was wont to be aroused from sleep in the night with a notion that the thundering trains were going to run right over the house.
On the night in question I had not heard Miss Flipp return from her midnight tryst, though all the luggage trains had pa.s.sed and it neared the time of the first division of the up or citywards mail from the west, which was the earliest train to arrive in town from the country daily. It pa.s.sed Noonoon in the vicinity of 4 A.M.--a radiant hour in the summer dawn, but then in winter, the time when bed is most alluring, when the pa.s.sengers" breath congeals on the window-panes, they complain that the foot-warmers have got cold, and give yet one more twist to their comforters and another tug at their "possum or wallaby rugs. This train pa.s.sed with its shaking thunder, drew into Noonoon for refreshments, then on and on with noisy energy, but still Miss Flipp did not return.
I concluded that she must have decided to leave us in this fashion, or that I had missed her entry during the rumble of a pa.s.sing train, or mayhap I had snoozed for a moment, or perhaps an hour, as the unsympathetic heavy sleepers aver the insomnists must do; and ceasing to be on the alert any longer, I really slept.
FIFTEEN.
ALAS! MISS FLIPP!
I hastened to appear at the half-past seven breakfast, as no excuse for non-appearance was taken, and the only concession made to Miss Flipp, who had not been present at it for some time, was that she could make herself a cup of cocoa when she chose to rise. For this meal grandma ladled out the porridge and flavoured it with milk and sugar in the usual way.
"I say, Dawn, which of them blokes, Ernest or Dora, is the best boat-puller?" inquired Andrew as he received his portion. "You were mighty stingy with the sugar, grandma!"
"Dora isn"t in it," responded Carry. "Mr Ernest could get ahead of him every time."
"So he ought!" said Dawn. "His ears are the size of a pair of sails, and would pull him along."
Thus was published another defect in my knight, till I feared that it must be only my partial gaze that discerned a knight at all.
"Dear me," interposed grandma, "a man can"t look or speak or walk but he"s this, that, and the other. Things weren"t so in my day. Of course there were some things that were took exception to, but there must be reason in everythink, an" I don"t see what difference a man"s ears being a little big makes. My father"s ears--your great-grandfather"s--was none too small, an"
he was always a good kind man."
"I don"t care if my own ears were big, it wouldn"t make me like them,"
said the irrepressible Dawn; and grandma had just finished what she termed "dosing" the last plate of porridge, when we were interrupted by the appearance of policeman Danby at the French Lights. There was nothing strange in this appearance of the embodiment of the law, even at that early hour of the morning; for the huge young man with the rollicking face and curly hair, though a good officer in attending to his work, was a better in admiring a girl, which, after all, taking matters at the base, is the chief and most vital business of life, as, were it neglected, there would be no police or populace.
Well, as I said, policeman Danby knew a pretty girl when he saw one, and there being two at Clay"s, that household, in the way of the law, was very well looked after indeed; and for the purpose of escaping the annual registration fee, Andrew"s little dog, "Whiskey," had remained a puppy as long as some young ladies tarry under thirty.
Carry on rising to admit the caller had the usual tussle with the door, while grandma reiterated uncomplimentary remarks about the "blessed feller" who should some time since have effected repairs, and Danby upon entering wore an extremely grave face, looked neither at Dawn nor Carry, but addressed himself straight to Mrs Martha Clay.
"I have to trouble you about a very unpleasant matter," he said, and cruelly all eyes went to poor Andrew, as it was but recently he had to be chased home for breaking the law.
"Yes," said grandma, rising actively, and though a flurried colour came to the old withered cheek, the spark of battle flashed in the stern blue-grey eye.
"Could I see you privately?" said Danby.
"Certainly," said Mrs Clay: "but I"m not fond of secrecy; things is better open, and this is the first time in my life I"ve had to be seen secret by the police. Come this way."
We said nothing, but dropped our feeding tools and waited in suspense, till in less than a minute grandma thrust her head in the dining-room door.
"For mercy"s sake, Dawn, look in Miss Flipp"s room and see is she there."
Dawn rose in a hurry and boxed Andrew"s ears as she pa.s.sed, because he too rose and tumbled over his chair in her way.
"Some people ought to tie themselves up to be out of the way," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
"Miss Flipp is not in her room," she presently called, "and her bed is smooth and made up."
"G.o.d save us, then! Mr Danby says she"s drownded in the river,"
exclaimed her grandma. "What"s to be done?"
"We"ll spare you all the trouble possible, Mrs Clay," said the man, with the respect always tendered the old dame; "but I"m afraid it"s a suicide. Some men going to work on the new viaduct just noticed her clothes sticking up as they crossed the bridge at daylight and reported it, and I was sent down. We"ve taken the body to Jimmeny"s pub., and sent for the coroner, at all events."
Dawn and Andrew howled together in a frightened manner, while the sensible Carry, who never lost her head, admonished them--
"Don"t be jackdaws. That won"t mend matters. Perhaps it isn"t half as bad as some make out. Things never are when you get the right hang of them."
"Things are bad enough anyhow, but the way to mend "em ain"t to be snivelling," rapped out grandma, giving Dawn and Andrew a shaking that braced them up.
Things were indeed bad enough, and nothing could mend them. They had gone beyond repair. It transpired that my senses had been correct, and poor Miss Flipp had _not_ returned that moonlit night as I lay listening to the pa.s.sing trains. She had ended her ruined life by weighting her feet and dropping into the pretty stretch of water under the bridge, where the locomotives rushed by like thunder, and from where could be seen the twinkling electric lights of one of the oldest towns in Australia.
The inquest, at which we all had to appear, elicited information that fairly stood poor grandma"s hair on end. It was a great blow to find that she had been harbouring a woman who was not as Caesar"s wife, and that it was fear of the penalty of her divergence from what is accepted as virtue, had driven her to take her life ere she had transmitted the tribulation of being to a nameless child.
Nothing was cleared up regarding her antecedents. The person by whom she was supposed to be recommended to Mrs Clay knew of no such individual, and no one came to claim her.
Her uncle, it was discovered, had a day or two previously sailed for America on urgent business, and after the girl"s death an affectionate letter for her arrived from him. She had left nothing to fix the blame where it belonged, but with a misdirected loyalty so common in her s.e.x had paid all the debt her frail self.
The post on the day of her death brought me a pathetic little note, in which she stated that she wished to bear the whole blame; a woman always had to in any case, and as she could not face it she had decided upon death. She had written this to me because she felt I had had an inkling of how matters had been with her, and she thanked me that I had kept silent, in conjunction with the observation that it was not usual for such as she to meet with forbearance from those who had had sense to preserve their respectability. Ah, the regret that consumed me that I had not risked the unpopularity of interference and sought her confidence. I might have been able to have saved her from such an end!
I kept my knowledge to myself. It would scarcely have hurt Mr p.o.r.nsch.
Under the British Const.i.tution property is far more sacred than women.
But having a fatality in belief that there is a law of retribution in all things, I hoped to be able to sheet this crime home to its perpetrator in a way that should put him to confusion when he least expected it.
There was ample money for burial among the girl"s belongings, which were taken in charge by the police, and there let the cruelly common incident rest for the present.
The affair so upset Dawn that she refused to occupy her usual room any longer, and at her suggestion she and I determined to occupy a big upstairs room, up till that time filled with rubbish. This being agreed upon we forsook the apartments opening into the river garden, and betook ourselves to an alt.i.tude from which we had even a better view of the valley, river, and trains.
Dawn so perceptibly went "off colour" that I persuaded her grandmother to let the singing lessons begin by way of diverting her mind.
The old lady would not contemplate paying more than two guineas per quarter, so I saw a six guinea teacher, arranged with him to take the pupil at four, two of which I privately paid myself, and Dawn at last set out for the city for her first lesson in the arduous and unattractive boo-ing and ah-ing that lie at the foundation of a singer"s art.