'Help!' screamed Stony; but the other's hand was at his throat again.

'Listen, you foul cur!' Ryder said. 'I mean to spare you, but you must tell--tell all!'

Jim Done turned and walked away, leaving the enemies alone. Next morning he saw Stony moving about his tent, and experienced a feeling of relief.

He had been unable to divest himself of a sense of responsibility for the safety of the miserable hatter.

By this time quite a strong friendship had grown up between the three Peetrees and Done and Burton. Joshua Peetree, whom the twins called Josh, with a friendly absence of formalities, was found in his sober moments to share the moral qualities of his sons, and had the same quiet, deliberative manner of speech, as if every sentence, even those of the most insignificant character, were subjected to two or three successive processes of investigation internally before delivery. Indeed, the men spoke so little en famille that they might have lost ordinary power of easy articulation. Speech was hardly necessary between the three; they understood each other by something very like telepathic divination. At least, so it appeared to Done, who was puzzled again and again to see the ideas of one brother antic.i.p.ated by the other, and his wishes met without any communication, audible or visible, to the third person. Men who have lived together in the Bush for the better part of their lives, cut off from other society and outside interest, often develop this quaint instinct of mutual apprehension. The Peetrees were not unsociable, but with them conversation was not essential to human intercourse. They were content to sit on a log, or spread themselves on the dry gra.s.s in company with friendly diggers, smoking composedly through a whole evening, without contributing more than an approving 'My word!' or 'My colonial!'

to the night's debate. Mike was in full sympathy with their neighbours.

Like him, they were deeply imbued with the spirit of revolt stirring in the land, and they were as eager to partic.i.p.ate in the struggle that was to overthrow the rule of the nominees of Downing Street and strangle the hydra of official tyranny; but Done, although his sentiments were just as strongly on the side of the miners, was too profoundly concerned with the actions and interests of the moment to content himself with the society of the Peetrees and the discussion of possibilities. He liked them; they were amusing elements in the varied life around him, but he wanted to see and to hear. His blood ran too hotly for camp-fire argument. When the time for fighting came, well and good: none would be more eager than he; but meanwhile love and laughter, play and strife, invited a man, and Jim responded with the impetuosity of an impish boy just escaped from parental control.

The mates continued to do well at Jim Crow, and Jim Done found himself growing tolerably rich without any marked gratification. He could not see what more gold could confer upon him. He was now a nightly visitor at Mrs. Ben Kyley's tent, but gambled with rather more spirit of late, and, finding himself a much less easy victim to Mary's rum, drank more than formerly. A certain stage of intoxication--an intoxication of the blood rather than the senses--threw a roseate glamour over the gaieties of the shanty, and robbed him of that remaining reticence of manner and speech that would have kept him an observer rather than a partic.i.p.ant.

Police supervision was fitful and weak at Jim Crow, and there were wild nights at Mary Kyley's. Aurora appeared in a new character--that of popular musician. Seated with her heels tucked under her on the end of the shanty bar, she rattled off lively dance-music on an old violin; or, mounted on an inverted tub, she sang songs of rebellion and devilment to a crowd of diggers warm with rum and rampant with animal spirits. Mary Kyley, whose gay heart responded readily to the conviviality of her guests, danced at these times, contesting in breathless jigs and reels, displaying amazing agility and a sort of barbaric frenzy, while the men yelled encouragement and applause, the pannikins circulated, and the smoke gathered in a cloud along the ridge-pole. Sitting above the crowd in a gay gown, with a splash of artificial red roses in her ma.s.s of black hair, flushed with animation, her eyes beaded with fire, Aurora was a striking queen of the revels, and Done exulted over her, and called her Joy. It was the new name he had given her, Aurora sounding too formidable for a lover's lips.

One such night Aurora played them 'The Wearing of the Green,' breaking in upon a moment of exuberant merriment with the quaint melancholy of the music. She wrung from the strings a pathetic appeal, and played the crowd into a sudden reverent silence. They were rebel hearts there to a man, and many exiles from Erin were in the company. The simple tune went right home to them all. The men sat still, gazing into their pannikins, and big bearded diggers had a chastened pensiveness that might have been comic had there been any there to laugh at them. Just as suddenly the girl swung into a rollicking dance-step, abandoning her tender mood with a burst of happy laughter; but Tim Carrol, a young new chum; fresh from 'the most distressful country,' sprang to the counter beside her, and, clasping Aurora and her fiddle in a generous hug, kissed the girl on the cheek.

'Shtop!' he cried. 'Niver another word will ye play till the hold iv that's gone from us!'

Done, who was standing near, saw the action, saw Aurora laughing in the man's arms, and experienced a revulsion of feeling that turned him giddy, and blurred the lights and the figures about him. He sprang at Carrol savagely. It seemed to him that what followed occurred in darkness. A few blows, a scuffle, and then he was torn away. The next moment he found himself in Kyley's hands, and Aurora before him, her eyes flashing anger, her white teeth bared, her hands clenched--exactly the termagant she had appeared on the night she confronted Quigley in her wrath; but to-night her fury was directed against him.

'How dare you interfere?' she said. 'How dare you meddle with my affairs?' She struck herself upon the breast. She blazed with pa.s.sion.

'He kissed you!' said Jim. 'I couldn't stand that!'

'And what of me? If I do not object, what then?'

'Aurora!'

'Am I my own mistress? Are my inclinations to count for something?'

Jim had recovered himself. He felt cold, sobered. He shook the hands off him, 'Your inclinations count for everything!' he said with composure. 'I acted on impulse. I beg your pardon, Aurora. I'll apologize to Carrol if he wishes it. I've had too much rum, Tim; I acted like a fool.'

'Tush, man, 'twas nothin'! You didn't hit me,' said the Irishman cheerfully. 'Don't shpake iv it. I disarved what I didn't get fer kissin'

your sweet, heart, any-how.'

Aurora's anger fell from her suddenly, and she moved away. She played no more that night, and was markedly subdued in her manner, turning an anxious eye upon Done every now and again, and Jim, to carry off the situation, was much too free with the liquor and uncommonly friendly with everybody.

'You took my temper like a gentleman, Jimmy dear,' said Aurora, coming behind him when he sat alone. She was bidding for reconciliation.

'I ought to have known better, Joy,' he answered. I was an idiot!'

'No, dear, you were jealous, and that is an easy thing for a woman to forgive.'

'I don't think I was even jealous.'

'Then you should have been!' she said, with a flash of anger.

'Then, if I should have been, I was jealous--furiously, murderously jealous!'

'Sure, how could you blame the poor boy,' she murmured, winding an arm about his neck, 'wid the love of the dear ould sod hot in the heart iv him? 'Twasn't a lover's kiss he gave me, darlin', but a patriot's.'

'This is a lover's, Joy!' He kissed her softly.

All the same, flushed with liquor though he was, he was conscious that his attack on Carrol had been prompted by a meaner impulse than jealousy, and was more a manifestation of the rum-flown arrogance of a man fighting for a prize in the possession of which he felt a large conceit. He was conscious, too, that there was little of a true lover's ardour in the kiss he gave her. But men are deceivers ever, and never so cunning in deceit as when love has slipped from their hearts. To be sure, Jim had the grace to be ashamed of all this in certain moods, but acknowledgment of the sin was not followed by renunciation. Aurora's flash of pa.s.sion was probably due to the instinct that warned her of the fading of Done's love for her.

Mike took his mate home that night, and had to help him into his bunk, and Jim awoke in the morning with feelings of mistrust and bitterness, a craven consciousness of having been untrue to him self. For a moment there was a belief that his new life was nothing but a dream. He stepped out into the sunshine with a childish fear upon him, and looked about him, breathing deeply, and relief came, but there remained a consciousness of loss of power. Drink was not for him: he was a hale man, full of vitality; in his normal state his sensibilities were capable of drawing the most generous emotions from the events of existence; excess of liquor gave him, in place of that natural gratification, a set of feverish and unreal sensations. He could understand others, from whom Nature withheld the joy of life, finding in intoxication a pale subst.i.tute, but for him it was a sacrifice of self, a sacrifice he could not afford, for it was only the other day that self had become sweet to him. How could he exchange his rich reality for the pale, misty, groping unreality he had become last night--give up the exhilaration he derived from the stir of life and friendly contact with men for the fantastic, fleeting emotions of the reveller in drink, emotions that fly through the darkened brain like shooting stars, the stir of a blatant egotism, the p.r.i.c.kly heat of tiny, aimless joys that never penetrate below the skin!

He determined to be content with sobriety for the future.

This very excellent and virtuous resolution did not keep Done from Mary Kyley's tent, however, and he retained his relish for the revels there: the boisterous horseplay of the diggers, the dancing, the gay spirits of Aurora, her beauty and her music. He believed Aurora still loved him, but the recollection of her appearance that night, and the fury with which she had repudiated his right to interfere, contrasted with her att.i.tude on the occasion when he championed her cause against Quigley, gave him moments of dubious reflection. Coming up from their claim one evening at sundown after a particularly hard day, the mates found Aurora busy at the fire preparing their tea. They hailed her with shouts of thankfulness and welcome. She was bare-armed and bare-headed; a snowy-white ap.r.o.n of Mrs.

Kyley's covered her frock, and was, if anything, an additional adornment to her trim figure. The tea was made, and the big billy stood by the embers, while Aurora attended to the grilling of the steak. She made a charming picture, with the firelight on her face and gleaming in her hair, and the men watched her for some minutes in quiet admiration, Josh Peetree being particularly moved by the glamour of domesticity her presence threw over the camp, and throughout the evening e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed a fervent 'My colonial!' every time his eyes encountered the girl.

'h.e.l.lo!' said Aurora. 'I've invited myself to tea, boys.'

''Pon my soul, you're good to see,' cried Burton feelingly.

'That's mighty kind for a man who doesn't waste much breath in compliments.'

This is magnificent!' said Jim. 'Why have you never thought of it before?'

'Hear him! Little he knows I'm just here to convince him what a model wife I'd make. Would you believe it, boys, all the time I've known the villain it never occurred to him to ask me?'

'I'd ask yer quick enough, b'gosh!' blurted Con.

Jim blushed. 'She wouldn't have me,' he cried in self-defence.

'At laste ye might have given a poor girl the refusal.'

'Take me, then,' said Jim through the soapsuds. He was washing over a bucket.

'I will not. You know you're safe, anyhow, when there's not priest or parson to be got for love or money. Come, hurry up, there's enough for all, and my contribution is an armful of Mary Kyley's hot scones.'

The b.u.t.t of a tree lying a few yards from the fire served the diggers as table and on to this Jim lifted Aurora.

'That's your place,' he said, 'at the head of the board.'

'No, no!' cried the girl, slipping to the ground again. 'I am mistress. I mean to attend at table.' She served the men with the manners of a kindly hostess. 'There's milk for the tea!' she cried.

'Milk! I haven't seen the colour of it in Australia. Who work the miracle?' said Jim.

'Mary sent to a station out there by the ranges. She got a quart, and I cabbaged half for my tea-party.'

'You're an angel, Aurora!'

'There!' she laughed; 'and the trouble I've taken to keep it dark.'

'We'll be the envy of the whole field,' said Mike; and Con uttered a corroborative 'My colonial oath!' that was eloquent of a grateful heart.

Aurora poured out the tea and b.u.t.tered the scones, and then, sitting on a gin-case with her plate in her lap, ate a good meal in cheeriest fellowship, adding to the felicity of the party with gay badinage and happy laughter. Aurora's laugh was a delightful thing to hear; it had never ceased to give Done a peculiar stir of joyance, whilst awakening something of surprise. It was the laugh of a merry child; its mirth was strangely infectious, strangely suggestive of an unsullied soul. Hearing it, Jim turned to her wonderingly, but he had long since acquitted her of the suspicion of dissimulation. She was the least self-conscious creature living, the least calculating. If she had really set herself the task of displaying to the best advantage the more gentle and womanly side of her nature, she would certainly not have succeeded as well as she did this evening, moved by one of the thousand vagrant impulses that lent such varying colour to her character. Her humour was more subdued, her gaiety was restrained within the limits of an almost conventional decorum. She helped the men with a graciousness that was wholly effeminate, and the diggers responded to its influence.