Burke, then there would----"
"You must not say that, Mr. Durham," she interrupted.
"But indeed I must," he answered softly. "You have not only brought me back to health, but you have given me new life--something I never had before--not until I met you. I want to tell you. I want----"
"No, no," she exclaimed, as she rose to her feet. "You must not talk like that. You must not, really. I will not listen to you, I must not."
He lay back in his chair and she resumed her seat in silence.
"What news had Brennan?" she asked presently. "You see, I have not been in the town since you came here," she went on. "One likes to know what is going, especially when one is isolated. Has the new manager arrived at the bank yet?"
"I think not, but I did not ask. Brennan would probably have mentioned it though, if it were so."
"I must come in and see about engaging someone to get the place ready for stock," she said. "The old man is not a sc.r.a.p of use. In fact, I wish he were back in Ireland. He has the usual Irish failing, Mr.
Durham. You know what that is. I"m always afraid that he will break out if ever he gets into the town by himself."
"Drink?" Durham asked.
"Oh, something terrible. I don"t think he has had any since you have been up here, but one never knows. Any time I may find him helpless. It makes me uneasy until I have someone else about the place. Sure you can never say what a man like that will do. He might set the whole place on fire over my head, and I should never know it till I was burned to death perhaps."
"May I make inquiries for you to-morrow, when I get into town? Mr. Gale may know----"
"Mr. Gale? Oh, he"s a likely man to bother himself about my affairs now.
It was Mr. Gale stopped me from going to Taloona when I heard first about your--accident. All he could talk about was the good Mrs. Eustace was doing, and I said it was as well perhaps that Mr. Eustace was not at home, seeing the interest all the men in the place were taking in his lady. Sure now, is there any news of the creature--Mr. Eustace, I mean--there"s no need to ask about Mrs. Eustace. Has any trace at all been found of the scoundrel?"
"I can"t say, really," he answered slowly. "I shall know to-morrow. We did not go into everything to-day. Brennan only reported certain matters of official routine."
"Well, well. I should have thought he would have given you all the news seeing how long you have been away, and knowing how anxious you would be to have the latest tidings. Did he say at all how the old curmudgeon was? Is Mrs. Eustace still dancing attendance on him, and making herself a public martyr to cover up the tracks of her levanting husband?"
"I believe Mr. Dudgeon is practically well again--the doctor could have told you about that."
"Oh, he did, but I wondered whether you had other news. Sure it"s not always a doctor"s word that is worth considering. They lie almost as well as lawyers--or the police."
"To whom you come for verification."
"Now, that"s just like me, giving away my own private opinion of you without the asking. But there! Did you ever hear the reason why the old man hated so much to let me buy this place? The doctor was telling me.
He said the old man was never done telling him and Mrs. Eustace all about it. It"s the funniest story ever you heard. Do you know it?
"Sure I"ll tell it to you," she went on, without heeding the absence of any reply to her question. "The old man was once in love. You"d hardly believe that, would you? But you never know. It"s the most unlikely people on this earth who are the most like to make fools of themselves in that way. You and me and the rest of us, sure we"re none of us safe, though I will say I"d like to see the woman who could get the blind side of one man I"ve met in these parts. Who he may be is no matter. But about old Dudgeon. It"s long since he was in love, you must know, but when he was it was with a girl who was the daughter of the people who owned this station, years and years ago, before you and I were born, indeed. Well, the girl wouldn"t have him, or preferred someone else, which is about the same thing. Kitty Lambton was her name when he was after her; it was a man named O"Guire she married to get away from the old soured rascal, though he was young at the time, and mayhap a sour young man at that. Would you say she was wrong? Would you?"
"I suppose every woman has a right to please herself in such a matter,"
he replied evasively.
"That"s what I say, and it"s what poor Kitty did, rest her soul, for she is dead now, poor thing."
Her voice dropped to a softer tone suddenly, and she was silent for a few seconds; but when she resumed her story the shrill tone, the tone which irritated and hurt him, he knew not why, rang out again.
"But the old man would have none of it. He swore all the vengeance he could think of against her and hers. He swore no woman should ever set foot in this place again. He hounded the father and mother of that unfortunate girl to their graves; he chased her and her husband from pillar to post, robbing them, swindling them, betraying them until there was no place on the face of the earth they could call their own, no, not even a stick nor a shred. The devil was good to him--sure he always is good to his own. Money came to him by the waggon-load, and ever did he use it to hound those two unfortunates down, lower and lower until there was no hope nor peace for them, and they wandered outcasts in the sight of man and woman. And that"s the man, that old double-dyed, heartless scoundrel that you police flock to preserve and protect, while the likes of Kitty and her husband are forced down and down and down to the lowest dregs of life. Is that justice? Is that law? Is that right? Answer me that now."
"Probably Mr. Dudgeon coloured his story a good deal when he told it: old men usually do when they recount their youthful doings," he said quietly. "But, in any case----"
She held out her hand impulsively.
"Wait a moment," she said. "Supposing he did. Supposing the tale is only half true; but supposing that he did drive Kitty and her husband to the gutter, and suppose they had children--do you think if those children knew what that old scoundrel had done they would not be right to pay him back in his own coin? Sure I"m glad I was able to make the old vagabond eat his own words when I bought the place over his head. He"s met one woman in the world who has defied him. And do you know what? If I knew where any of Kitty Lambton"s children were at this moment--or her husband, seeing she is dead, poor thing--at least, so the doctor said--I"d go to them and say they could have the place free if only they would go and taunt that old fiend and fling it in his face and hound him down as he hounded down their parents."
"What good would that do either you or them?" he asked.
"Good?"
She sprang out of her chair and stood facing him.
"Don"t you know what it is to hate?" she cried. "Is it only Irish blood that can boil at rank injustice? Is it only Irish hearts which burn to aid the oppressed and torture the oppressors as they tortured their poor unfortunate victims? You said you would shoot the man who struck you down, shoot him like a dog, if he were escaping your clutches. Don"t you think Kitty Lambton"s children have as great, if not a greater right to shoot that bloodless, heartless monster like a dog or a cat or any other vermin, if they met him on this earth? I"d tell them to do it; I"d tell them to do it if there were no other way to make his last hours more full of misery and agony. That"s what I"d do, the dirty old traitorous villain that he is. Pah!"
She uttered the words with a tigerish pant as she swung on her heels and strode away to the end of the verandah, where she stood for a moment staring up at the sky, before she returned.
"It"s the curse of the Irish to feel the wounds of others as keenly as though they were one"s own," she said, as she sat down again. "What concern is it of mine whether the old fool h.o.a.rds his money and drives lost souls to perdition? I"ve no right to worry about other people"s troubles. Sure I have enough of my own. But it just maddened me to think of it. Oh, it"s the Irish hearts that suffer!"
The harsh vibrant tones had gone; the voice he heard was that of the woman who had pleaded earlier in the evening for compa.s.sion for the men who had injured her.
Impulsively he reached out his hand and touched hers.
"You must not," he said. "You must not heed such tales. You are too warm-hearted. The sordid side of life is not for you. We who have to come in contact with it, and know it in all its wretched squalor, know only too well that rarely, if ever, can one of the high-pitched stories of personal wrong be justified. The greater the criminal, the greater the protestations of innocence and injustice. Do not be deceived. You, who are so full of sympathy and gentleness, you who would not, by your own hand, hurt the hair of a man"s head, you----"
She sprang up.
"Don"t!" she cried. "Don"t! You must not--never--never--I told you I would not have you speak to me of--I must not hear such things. I----"
He was by her side, his two hands clasping hers.
"Nora, I must. Darling, I love you. I cannot bear to see----"
She pushed him back, flinging her hands free from his grasp, to clasp and press them to her bosom as though to still the great heaving gasps which made it rise and fall in tumultuous spasms.
"Mr. Durham! You forget!"
Her voice fell like a whip-lash, cold, haughty, stern.
"I forbid you ever to speak to me so again. Good night."
She swept past him and entered the house, closing the door after her.
Hours pa.s.sed before he could obtain control over his thoughts, before he could face the blackness her rejection of his declaration had brought upon him. Then he rose and stood staring blankly out over the sombre mystery of the bush, long since bereft of the faint glimmer of the new-born moon, veiled in shade, silent as the thin wisps of filmy mist which floated in the still air along the course of Waroona Creek.
In the morning Mrs. Burke met him without a trace in her voice, face, or manner of the resentful indignation she had shown on the previous night.
She talked, as she had talked on many a morning at the breakfast-table, with an uninterrupted flow of chatter, inconsequential, airy, frivolous.
She met his eyes openly, frankly, without a glimmer to show she noticed the lines which furrowed his face. Yet they were so marked that when Brennan drove out for him later, he glanced at his superior officer with apprehension.
"Do you think you are well enough to return to duty, sir?" he asked.
"You don"t look half so well as you did yesterday, and you were not looking too well then. If a few more days" rest----"