Colonial Born Part 21

He mounted his own horse and rode slowly back to the station, striving to form some plan in his mind by which he could explain matters to Ailleen, or at least prevent her from telling his mother of what had transpired. When he arrived at the house, he found Ailleen sitting alone on the verandah.

"Funny how Nellie rode over to-day, just as you were talking about her, wasn't it?" he asked, as he came up beside her.

Ailleen looked at him without answering, and, with his glance averted, he went on--

"I think she's a bit gone, don't you? Fancy her talking like she did. I thought you----"

"Look here," Ailleen exclaimed quickly, "Nellie and I have been friends since we were children, and I'm not going to hear you run her down. The less you say the better."

He was taken aback at her words and manner, and stood, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other and with his eyes moving restlessly from side to side. He had made up his mind on his ride home that Ailleen had ridden away in anger, and that the first thing she would wish for would be an opportunity to abuse Nellie. It was quite inexplicable to him that she should defend instead of attack her.

Ailleen looked at him steadily for a while, watching his confusion and discomfiture, and feeling more and more angry with herself for having, earlier in the day, allowed his words to have even a pa.s.sing effect upon her.

"Look here," she repeated, yielding to a sudden impulse which came upon her to talk seriously to him, "I heard quite enough from Nellie to understand. Are you going to tell your mother what you have done?"

She waited until he answered, in an indistinct mumble, that he did not know.

"Very well, then, I do," she retorted. "If you don't, I shall."

"But I say----" he began, and hesitated. He had always had a certain amount of fear for her when he was near her--a fear which changed into a covetous admiration when he was away from her; but the present att.i.tude she adopted towards him accentuated that fear until he knew no other sentiment.

"Well?" she said, as he stopped.

"It'll be all right," he said in a cringing tone. "You'll only make things worse by interfering. It's not your business. If Nellie and I like to have a quarrel, we can make it up our own way. We don't----"

"If you think you can make me believe a story like that, you are very much mistaken," she interrupted quickly. "I heard quite enough----"

"You didn't hear everything," he interposed quickly; for an idea came to him--if Mrs. d.i.c.kson had to hear the tale she should hear it from him, with certain little embellishments and figurative allusions, which would effectually destroy any chance Ailleen might have of making capital out of the episode.

"I heard quite enough," she answered.

"No, you didn't," he retorted, growing desperate lest his mother, hearing their voices, should suddenly come out on to the verandah and learn what they were talking about before he had time to put his side of the story to her. "If you had you would have known I tried and tried to get Nellie to come in so that I could tell the old woman about it, only she wouldn't, and that's why we quarrelled. Now I don't care, so I'll tell the old woman all about it. There'll be a bigger row with Nellie when she comes to know, but I don't care. It'll be your doing, not mine."

He didn't give her time to answer, but turned away and left her, proceeding at once to Mrs. d.i.c.kson and telling her--his story.

When, some time afterwards, the blind woman came out to the verandah, Ailleen began to carry out her intention.

"Mrs. d.i.c.kson, I'm going to tell you something," she began. "I hope it won't seem----"

"Is it about Nellie Murray?" the blind woman asked, with a smile on her face.

"Yes," Ailleen answered. "About Nellie Murray and----"

"I know. w.i.l.l.y has told me already. Don't worry about that, my dear. I understand, and I'll just tell you this, and then we'll say no more about it for the present--I am very pleased to hear it."

Ailleen looked at her in surprise.

"Pleased, Mrs. d.i.c.kson?" she asked.

"Yes, my dear, very, very pleased, and I quite understand how you look at it; and now let us say no more about it, till--well, till the proper time comes."

The girl sat still, looking at the staring, sightless eyes and the smiling, happy face of her companion, unable to understand; while round a convenient corner, d.i.c.kson stood with the crafty grin on his face as he overheard the conversation.

CHAPTER XIII.

TONY VISITS THE FLAT.

Palmer Billy, never very averse to free comment on pa.s.sing events, was the personification of eloquence on the day that the robbery of the digger's gold was discovered. Restrained by Tony and Peters from joining in the senseless hue and cry after the robbers, he had, as he expressed it, been sitting on dynamite up to the time when there was a chance of letting off superfluous energy in the form of speech on the verandah of Marmot's store. Tony had wanted him and Peters to ride out to the Flat and stay there until the New Year, but they (and especially Palmer Billy) would have none of it. A holiday spoiled was no holiday at all, Palmer Billy averred. He had urged that to work right through Christmas was a tempting of Providence, but, as he explained, that was before Providence played it low down on them in permitting them to be robbed of their gold. As it was, there was only one course to pursue. They would get as much stores as their credit would permit, and they would be off again to the creek they had worked out, to test a little theory he had formed about a possible lode which, if found, would make a millionaire of each of them. The next day, at the latest, they were to start, and Tony rode away by himself to the Flat to explain the situation to Taylor and his wife.

With the characteristic freedom of bush-life, which gives to every unit the right to come and go as he pleases, and the typical independence of the Australian spirit, home-ties, as understood in more closely populated or more conventional countries, are not conspicuous. As soon as the fledgling finds his wings, the parent-nest ceases to be the centre of his universe; the forbears are no longer the dictators of his actions. He is an individual, free and self-reliant; a member of the race which has subdued the vast territories of the island continent--territories which in Europe would hold a dozen states and kingdoms--and as he has the birthright of freedom to empower him, so has he also the birthright of territory to enable him to live his own life, expanding as his instincts dictate, broadening as experience teaches, deepening as his sympathies are touched. He may lose somewhat of the softer sensibilities which gather round the home memories of older generations; the clinging affection which lingers through life for the places where the earliest years of childhood and youth were pa.s.sed, can scarcely have existence amongst a people to whom the word "home" only suggests the motherland, the parent country, or, as often as not, the country of the parents. But instead he becomes the possessor of an open, self-reliant independence; quick to see and understand; cringing to no man; satisfied with the right and the chance to work for his wants; and with the part of his nature which would otherwise be absorbed in the gentle bonds of home-ties, free to act in accordance with the dictates of humanity, with the world for his home and all mankind for his relatives. Hence Tony, in returning for a visit to the Flat, was merely paying a visit, and by no means yielding to the demands of home or family affection.

His point of view in that respect was the point of view of the remainder of the Taylor offspring, but it was the only trait which they had in common with him. As had been said on Marmot's verandah, Tony was alone among them; not one of them had the black hair and dark eyes nor the quick, alert spirit which characterized Tony. They rather followed the example of Taylor, and were stolid, hard-working fellows, content with enough of eating, working, and sleeping, and neither needing nor heeding aught else. The only one at the Flat with whom he had any close sympathy was Mrs. Taylor, and even with her he felt a restraint occasionally which perplexed him, for she gave him of her matronly love to a greater degree than she gave to the others. She had never lost the influence of her old-country up-bringing, and to Tony, her own and yet not her own, she was bound by more than the ties of maternity.

His return at the present juncture was fraught with keen interest to her, for she, in her remnant of old-world romance, had watched with kindly sympathy the growing companionship of Tony and Ailleen from the time when they were school-children together; and in between the busy but withal prosaic hours of her life, she had stolen enough time to weave daydreams round the union, some day, of her handsome, dark-eyed, daring boy, and the fair-haired Saxon Ailleen. She had watched the companionship ripen into something more--into something which the two did not even realize themselves, but which was only too evident to her jealously sharpened eyes; for she was jealous of the boy, although far from spitefully.

Most of his daring escapades had been performed under the influence, unrecognized by him, of Ailleen's pa.s.sing disregard, and the elder woman had often inveighed in her mind against the waywardness of the younger, who, having such a treasure within her grasp, ignored it, and ran the risk, however slight, of losing it. Unfortunately, both Tony and Ailleen possessed the free-born Australian spirit to a degree which made it more than difficult to guide or counsel them--only could one stand idly by and, apparently without noticing anything, chafe and worry lest the break away should come.

And the break away had come. The starting away with the gold-diggers was an unmistakable token of Tony's revolt; the moving out to Barellan immediately after her father's death was the unquestionable reply of Ailleen. But it did not necessarily follow that the result was foregone, and Mrs. Taylor, in her efforts to grasp the movements of the modern development of youth, had argued with herself that perhaps, after all, this double split might only be the later form of the old-fashioned lover's quarrel. The return of Tony, on the first occasion, was an evidence that she was right, and she watched him as he hastened away to Barellan. But he came back and never mentioned Ailleen's name, and set out again for the gold-fields still without mentioning her name; and then, while he was away, there came to her brief shreds and echoes of gossip, all circling round Ailleen, and all tending to prove that she was striving to wed young d.i.c.kson--and Barellan, as Mrs. Taylor added with scorn--and to forget the comrade of her childhood.

Tony had now come back again, and Mrs. Taylor wondered, as she saw him, whether he had heard any of the stories she had heard about Ailleen's change. He told her all about the rich patch of gold-bearing gravel they had struck in the creek, and the way they had worked it out so as to be able to get to Birralong for Christmas, but only to find themselves stranded almost before their holidays began, and with all the work to do over again, to say nothing of the finding of a new claim.

"And you are starting out again to-morrow?" she said.

"Yes; and we shall stay out till we find another patch. Palmer Billy swears he can trace out the mother-reef of the alluvial, and that it will be rich enough to make us all station-owners and able to run horses for the Melbourne Cup."

"And if you don't find it?" she asked.

"Then--well, I reckon we'll try the northern fields. Palmer Billy and Peters have both been up there, and they say there are tons of gold to be had if one only has the capital to go on. But I don't fancy we shall go there. Palmer Billy is too fly to talk about a reef if there is none. We'll strike it, you see, and come home with a team-load of nuggets."

"You'll be rich then, Tony," she said.

"Yes," he answered, with a laugh.

"Richer than young d.i.c.kson of Barellan," she added, watching him closely.

"I dare say," he answered, half impatiently.

"And then--I suppose you'll get married?" she said softly, but with her eyes still fixed on his face.

"Oh, _my_ troubles," he exclaimed.

"I suppose it will be Ailleen?" she went on.

He got up from where he was sitting.