Australian Gothic. Marcus Clarke
our gold before us. Our claim had been a rich one, and we had three hundred ounces to divide, after all our sprees—and we had a few, I can tell you.
“Tom,” said Bill, as he sat looking at the gold, “if I had had as much money as that when I was in the old country, I should never have come out to the gold-fields, and my dear wife would not have died.”
“That’s more than you can say for a certainty,” I answered.
“Not a bit of it,” he said; “my wife would have been alive, and we should have been living happily together. I’ll tell you how it was. I was a contractor in a small way at home, and had lots of up-hill work, for I commenced with nothing. While I was courting Lizzie, an old hunks of a money-lender wanted to marry my girl. She had a nice time of it, poor lass! With her father on one side trying to persuade her to marry the old hunks, and me on the other, begging her to be faithful to me. But I had no need to do that. There was only one way out of the difficulty; we ran away, and got married without their knowing. We were as happy as the days were long, and should have remained so, but for the old money-lending thief. To spite me for taking the girl from him, he bought up all my debts—about three hundred pounds worth—and almost drove me mad. And one morning I caught the villain in the act of insulting my Liz. I didn’t show him any mercy; I beat him till he was sore, and then I kicked him out of the house. The next day the bailiffs were on the look-out to arrest me for debt, and I had to run for my liberty. He sold me up, root and branch, and turned my wife into the streets, and we came together to Liverpool, where Lizzie was confined. I tried hard to get work, but couldn’t; starvation or the workhouse was before us. All my chances at home were gone, and there was nothing for it but emigration. I shipped before the mast, and a friend assisted me to pay Lizzie’s passage in the steerage. A fortnight after we were out at sea, she told me that the doctor who attended her in her confinement had said that a long sea voyage would probably be the death of her. His words came true; she died within the year. So, you see, if I had had my share of that gold at home, I could have paid that damned old scoundrel, and my wife would not have died. I want to get a heap of gold, and go home and ruin him. I should die contented then.”
He rose, and walked up and down the tent, cursing the man who, he believed, had killed his wife.
“I tell you what, Tom,” he said, after a bit, “I shall tramp to Melbourne to see my little daughter, and then I shall go prospecting. There are places, I’ll stake my life, where the gold can be got in lumps, and I mean to find them out. I dreamt the other night that I came upon it in the rock, and that I had to cut it out with a chisel.”
I didn’t like the idea of losing my mate, and I did my best to persuade him not to go; but I might as well have talked to a lamp-post. So we divided the gold, shook hands, and the next morning he started on the tramp to Melbourne.
I didn’t see or hear anything of him for a good many months after this; and somehow or other, when I lost him I lost my luck. Every shaft I bottomed turned out a duffer. I could hardly earn tucker. I worked in Jackass Gully, Donkey-woman’s Gully, Pegleg, Starvation Point, Choke’m Gully, Dead-horse Gully, and at last made my way to Murdering Flat—nice, sociable names!—pretty well down on my luck. I had been in Murdering Flat three weeks, and was sitting alone in my tent one night, reckoning up things. In those three weeks I hadn’t made half-an-ounce of gold, and there wasn’t two pennyweights in my match-box—so that I didn’t feel over amiable. That day, I had been particularly unlucky, having made about three grains of gold, which I flung away in a rage. I was just thinking whether I mightn’t just as well go to the grog-shanty, and have a drink—it was past nine o’clock at night—when who should walk straight into my tent but my old mate, Bill. I scarcely knew him at first; for he had let his hair grow all over his face, and he was almost covered with it, up to his eyes and down to his breast.
“Bill!” I cried, jumping up.
“Yes, it’s me, Tom,” he said. “Are you alone?”
“Yes, Bill.”
“Stop here, then, till I come back, and don’t let anybody in but me.”
He went out, and returned in about ten minutes with a beautiful little girl in his arms.
“Hush!” he said, stepping softly. “Speak low. She’s asleep.”
She wasn’t above six years old but she was so pretty, and looked so like a little angel—such as I never expected to see under my roof—that I fell in love with her at once. Of course I was a bit surprised when he brought her in, and he couldn’t help observing it as he laid her carefully upon my stretcher.
“This is my little girl, Tom,” he said, answering my look. “If I ever go to heaven, I shall have her to thank for it. She is my good angel.”
“Where are you come from?” I asked, after we had covered the pretty fairy with a blanket. He looked cautiously round, as though he feared some one was in hiding, and then, sitting opposite me at the table, rested his chin on his hands, and said, in a whisper,
“I’ve found it, Tom!”
There was such an awful glare in his eyes that I felt quite scared as I asked him what it was he had found.
“I’ve found the place where the gold comes from,” he said, in the same sort of hoarse whisper. “I am on it, Tom! I knew I should find it at last. Look here.”
First going to the door, to see that no one could get in without warning, he pulled from his breast-pocket a nugget of pure gold that must have weighed near upon seventy ounces, and five or six others, from fifteen to twenty ounces each. Lord! how my heart beat as I handled them, and how I wished I could drop across some of the same kidney! I don’t know how it is with you, mates; but although I don’t believe I value the gold much when I’ve got it, there’s no pleasure in life so great to me as coming suddenly upon a rich patch. I think the sight of bright shining gold at the bottom of a dark shaft is one of the prettiest in the world.
“Is that good enough for you?” he asked, as he put the nuggets back into his pocket.
I laughed.
“Any more where they came from, Bill?”
“More than you could carry.”
I stared at him, believing he had gone mad. “It’s true. How are you doing?”
“I can’t make tucker, Bill. My luck’s dead out.”
“It’s dead in now,” said he; “I’ve come to put fifty ounces a day in your pocket. What do you say? Will you go mates with me again?”
That was a nice question, wasn’t it, to put to a hard-up digger, without an ounce of gold in his match-box?
“Will I, old fellow?” I cried. “Will I not! When shall we start?”
“Stop a minute, Tom,” he said gravely. “I’ve something to say to you first. I want you for a mate again, and shall be glad to have you; but we’ve got to strike a bargain. You see my little girl there?”
I nodded.
“She is the blood of my heart! I am like a plant, Tom, which would wither if deprived of God Almighty’s blessed dew. She is my dew. If anything was to happen to her I should wither, and rot, and die. I want you for my mate, because I believe you to be honest and true. And I am going to show you a place where the gold grows—a place which, of my own free will, I would not show to another man in the world. I have hunted it and tracked it, never heeding the danger I have run. But do you know, Tom, that since I have had my little pet with me”—and he laid his hand, O, so gently upon her cheek!—“all my recklessness and courage seem to have gone clean out of me. For it is her life I am living now, not my own! And I think what will become of her if I die before my time—if I should slip down a shaft, or it should tumble in upon me, or I should fall ill of a fever, or anything of that sort should happen to me that would deprive her of a protector. These thoughts haunt me day and night, and presentiments come over me sometimes that fill me with fears I can’t express. Now, Tom, listen to me. The place I am going to take you to will make you