Luck at the Diamond Fields Part 13

She did not answer him, but watched them, speechless and tearless, with an awful look of misery on her white set face. She had not long to wait in suspense. After the work had gone on for some time, she heard a murmur from the men, which told her there was little ground for hope.

The boulder under which he had been working had shifted, and her father was lying with the life crushed out of him underneath it. They tried to get her away before they moved the boulder and dragged out the lifeless body, but she would not go, and stood watching them, and followed the men who carried it back into the house without saying a word or even shedding a tear.

"Poor girl! it's a terrible bad business for her. I'll send my missis to her; she will sit up with her and try and comfort her--not that any one can do her much good, poor little la.s.s," the old digger said, with something like a tear running down his weather-beaten old face. And then he went to his tent to send his wife, a Devonshire-born woman, whose kindly nature had not been hardened by years of rough life on Australian and South African diggings, to share poor Connie's sad watch.

On the following day the poor old General was buried at Barkly, and there was not much work done at Red Shirt Rush, for most of the diggers followed their old comrade, whom they liked and respected for all his crotchety temper and reserved manner, to his last resting-place. For years there had not been so many men from the river camps in that sleepy little township. It was remarked that the great majority of them left Barkly quite sober, and that there were not more than three fights and no general disturbance. This exemplary conduct was caused partly by a sense of the sadness of the poor old General's death, and more by the memory of poor little Connie's piteous face as she stood by the side of the grave. When the funeral was over, Connie, who, in the first shock of her sorrow, had thought nothing about herself, began to realise how friendless and homeless she was.

Jim Heap had borrowed a cart and a pair of horses, and driven her and his wife over to Barkly, and on the way back he somehow guessed what she was thinking about.

"Maybe, Miss Connie, there are some of your relations at home you ought to write to about this; but until you hear you must stay with us, if you don't mind living with plain people in a rough place that ain't fit for a lady like you. While we've a roof over our heads, you need not trouble about finding a home. You know, miss, how proud we should be to have you with us; the missis and me have talked that over already."

"How kind you are to me! I don't want to leave Red Shirt Rush; all my friends are there, and every one seems so kind to me; but I shall be a burden to you. I must try and get my own living somehow," poor Connie answered.

"Burden to us? Don't talk of that; why, you talk as if you haven't got anything of your own; why, there's those claims which are worth a good bit of money maybe, and there is a heap of stuff the General got out of it which hasn't been sorted yet."

Connie remembered how now and then in her father's lifetime Jim Heap had expressed a very different opinion about the value of the ground which had cost her so much, but she did not say any more.

Another person who thought about Connie's future was Charlie Langdale.

There is no need to say how he would have planned it, and the day after the poor old General was buried--it was a Sunday morning--he was strolling along the river-bank thinking over his plans for the future.

He would give up the river, he thought, and go to Kimberley and try and get a sub-managership or something of the sort from one of the companies which would give him a fixed income. Regular work and wages up to that time had had very little attraction to him. He liked working on his own account down the river with no one to order him about, and the gambling uncertainty of river-digging was just suited to his happy-go-lucky disposition; but he thought that he would not mind how irksome the work he got to do was, so long as it would give him a prospect of marrying Connie. If she would only give him just a glimpse of a hope he would ask for no more, till he had shown what sort of stuff he was made of, he declared to himself as he tried to weigh his chance, and went from the depths of despair to hopefulness and back, as he tried to recall the occasions on which he might possibly have shown her how much he cared for her. He had walked along the bank thinking over this question until he had come to the old General's claims, and, looking at the trees by the little house, he thought of the last time he had stood under them talking to her, and had almost made up his mind to tell her. Well, he would have to wait a bit now. Poor girl, it would not do to talk to her till she had got over the first of her sorrow. Then he walked into the claim, and stood near where the accident had happened, and as he thought he scratched with a stick he had in his hand amongst the loose gravel which the party working to rescue the General had thrown out. By chance he looked down at his feet, and found himself hitting with his stick at something that looked very different from the other pebbles. He was too intent on his thoughts to pay much heed to it, though in an absent way he was looking at it. Suddenly he gave a start, and picked it up; it was a big white diamond!

Part Two.

The diamond was just such a stone as the poor old General used to describe when he talked of the one he expected to come across--such a stone as he argued that the one he saw in the next claim years before had been chipped. The old man's theory was rubbish, Charlie had always believed, but there, sure enough, was a diamond that bore it out. It must have been dislodged from the ground that had fallen, and when he met his death the General was very near the prize he had somehow always expected to find. Charlie examined the diamond carefully; he had never seen so large a stone of the same quality before. He could not estimate its value, but it was worth a good many thousands, he believed, for it would probably be one of the finest stones in the world.

"Hullo! what have you got there? Show me. Put it in your pocket and hurry away from this place; remember we're partners, old man; come, look slippy, we don't want any one to see us mouching about here," Charlie heard a voice say in his ear, and looking round, he saw his partner, Bill Jeffson, who was staring with big eyes at the diamond, and in his amazement at seeing it had dropped a bottle of 'Cape smoke' on the ground without even using one word of bad language.

"What do you mean? What's our partnership got to do with this diamond?

it's not found in our claim."

"That's it, you darned fool! It's got to be found in our claim; that's the only place you can find a diamond in legally if one wants to stick to it."

"Stick to it. Why, this belongs to the General, and I am going to give it up to Jim Heap."

"Stop, you ain't going to give that diamond up to Jim Heap! You're mad!

Stop! Man alive, how can the diamond belong to any one except the first man who finds it? These claims are abandoned."

Charlie paid no heed to the other, who was trembling with excitement and greed, but pushed past him and walked in the direction of Jim Heap's house.

Bill Jeffson stood for some seconds watching him, thinking what he could say or do to get some share in the diamond he had seen; then he ran after him, and caught hold of him by the arm.

"Look here, Charlie--now don't get riled with an old chum. Look here, now let me put it to you--ain't you making a mistake? Why don't you stick to the diamond? You say it belongs to the old General's girl.

Well, you're sweet on her, and want to marry her, so it won't hurt her if you do stick to it; she'll get her share, and it will be all one to her; while if you give it up see where are you--why, you lose the diamond and her too. You don't suppose that she would marry you if she had a fortune of her own, and that diamond means a fortune, mind you.

She is a lady by birth, mind, and has relations in England who are as fine people as any in the land, so I've heard; and though they won't put themselves out about her now--she would only be a trouble to 'em--it would be a different story if she were a bit of an heiress. Why, every one would cry shame, and say you were standing in the girl's light and preventing her taking her proper place. Now, look here, you say you found that diamond in our claim--you and I can settle about my share-- and then you will have something to go on when you ask the girl to marry you. Now think it over, and don't act in a hurry;" and Mr Jeffson looked inquiringly into his partner's face to see if his persuasion was taking any effect upon him.

Mr Bill Jeffson, when he looked back to the incident, as he often did, with feelings of the most bitter disgust at his bad luck and Charlie's weakness of conduct, always consoled himself with the reflection that he showed the greatest diplomacy in the way he put it, and felt sure that Charlie was struck by the force of his argument. However, his ingenuity was wasted, for Charlie turned round and told him to clear off or it would be the worse for him, and, without saying a word more, went on towards Jim Heap's.

It was true enough, Charlie thought to himself as Bill Jeffson's words came back to him, that diamond, if it was worth as much as he thought it must be, would make a good deal of difference to Connie. It was one thing for him to ask her to marry him when she was without means or friends, but it would be different now she had plenty of money and the means of going home and living the life that was suitable for one of her birth. The old General, if he had lived and had found the diamond, would have princ.i.p.ally valued his good luck because it would have given him the means of sending Connie home; and he would have been right to have done so. Red Shirt Rush was not a fit place for her, and its inhabitants, who lived dull sordid lives, and whose only ambition was to be successful in their grubbing for diamonds, were not fit society for her. Yet Charlie felt doubtful whether he was fit for any better life than he was leading, and if he persuaded her to marry him he would keep her down to something like it.

Should he leave it to her to decide? Was not he somewhat premature in settling whether or no it would be for her good to marry him when he had no reason to believe that she would accept him?

But Jeffson's words came back to his mind. People would say that it was a shame if he persuaded a girl--she was only a girl--into such a disadvantageous marriage; it would be taking advantage of her want of knowledge of the world. And as he saw that, as a matter of honour, he ought not to ask her to marry him, he began to feel more confident of his chances with her, and he felt it all the harder to give them up.

He had hardly come to any decision when he arrived at Jim Heap's house.

Jim Heap was standing at the door, and he came out to meet him, and began to tell him about Connie, who was knocked up by the grief and shock of the last few days, and was in bed in a feverish state. Charlie listened to him, and then told the story of his find, and showed Jim Heap the diamond.

"Bless me! if this start don't beat anything I have ever seen, and I have been digging since gold was first found in Australia, and seen one or two queer freaks of fortune! Fancy, now, the old General was just getting on to the bit of luck he was always talking about, when he was killed! Seems something like fate in it all, don't it? Well, I suppose you are right; this diamond belongs to Connie right enough. I was telling her she was a bit of an heiress, as she had got that ground--not that I thought it was worth anything, but I wanted to cheer her up, and make her think that she wasn't under any obligation that she couldn't pay for in coming to me; but it turns out that she is an heiress after all."

"I suppose she will go home now, as that's what her father would have liked?" said Charlie.

"Go home? I never thought of that; but now you say so it's pretty clear to me that would be right. She has some relations at home, and now she has money they will be civil enough to her; and that stone means money.

n.o.body knows what a big stone like that is worth--it's 250 carats, I'd like to bet; and now things are a bit brisker, I guess some of these big dealers would give as much as twenty thousand pounds for it, and make fifty per cent, out of their money."

"Twenty thousand pounds? Yes, you bet it's worth all that," said Charlie; and as he looked at the diamond he thought how it was fated to blast all his hopes. Jim Heap, he saw, was at once of the opinion that it was best for her to go home, and every one else would think so too.

She was lost to him unless he did an unfair thing.

"Poor girl! it won't take her grief away," said Jim; "and maybe she won't like leaving us all 'cause she has never known any better place; but, after a bit, she will know what a good turn you have done her in finding this big 'un for her. It's lucky that one or two men I know on this digging didn't find it instead of you, my boy, or Connie would have been none the richer for it. Will you come in and give it her yourself?

She is asleep now, but I will tell my missis to wake her up; it's something worth being woke up for."

"No, don't wake her up--let her sleep, and you tell her about it when she is better. Maybe it will only excite her now; you had better keep it," Charlie answered, and he walked back to his tent to sit by himself, and think over his future and Connie's, and how the wonderful find he had made that afternoon would alter it.

By the next day the news of the find was all over the camp, and spread up and down the river, and to Kimberley, where it excited much interest amongst buyers and dealers, who discussed the news of the find, and discounted it and speculated as to how much such a diamond would be worth, and who could afford to buy. Connie was one of the last to hear the news, for, as the day went on, she got worse, and the next morning Charlie met the Barkly doctor coming from Jim Heap's with rather a bad report to give of her. She had an attack of fever. There was a good deal of it about down the river that year, and her trouble and the shock she had sustained had made it worse, and it would be some time before she could be told of her good luck.

"It seems hard that her father shouldn't have lived to see his luck turned, poor old fellow!" the doctor said to Charlie; "but his daughter will be able to go home now and be educated; that's what he always talked about. I remember his saying that he felt troubled to think that she was growing up out here, and he had hoped to have made something out of his claims before."

"Yes, she will be able to go home, of course; that's what she ought to do," Charlie answered, with something of regret in his voice; "but the place will seem strange without her."

"Yes, the old General and pretty little Connie were quite features in the place, weren't they? They introduced an element you don't often see in a digging; but they were both out of place, if you come to think of it; and it's a good thing that, thanks to you, she can get out of it.

It would have been a pity if she had married some river-digger, and lived all her life away from civilisation and out of society. It's bad enough for a man, but it's worse for a woman."

Charlie was inclined to think the doctor a conceited a.s.s, who gave himself airs because he was a professional man, and had come out from home, and thought the country where he made his living not good enough for him. Still, he had said what every one else was saying, that Connie ought to go home. There was no doubt about it; he ought to give up all his hopes of winning her. That big diamond had made all the difference; she belonged properly to a different world from the one in which he would have to live his life, and it would be mean and treacherous to the memory of his old friend, her father, if he hindered her from going back to it. He cursed the chance, which had thrown all his plans out of gear, and wished that his partner, Bill Jeffson, had found that diamond, or fate had not placed it in the General's claim in order to mock him.

He wondered whether Connie really did care for him; how sweet the idea of working for her and protecting her had been! Now she did not want his work or protection, and the best thing he could do would be to clear off. The idea of going away took hold of him; it seemed to him that flight was the bravest course he could take. There was some fairly good news from the Transvaal gold-fields just then, and he thought he would go up there.

That morning, as he was working at his claim, his partner, who had been across the river, turned up in a state of irritation which he appeared to think praiseworthy and just.

"You're a clever chap you are!" he snarled out, after he had looked with disgust for some time at Charlie working in the claim; "but you're too clever by half; they are all talking about you at the canteen over the river, and a precious fool they think you, though they say you acted very straight. When I told 'em that your game was to marry the girl, and get the diamond back that way, Higgins, the law agent, said that it wasn't likely, and that he believed the law would prevent it, 'cause she was a minor, and would be made a ward of the Court, and that it would be a shame if she were to marry the likes of you, and that of course she would go home; and every one agreed with him except Luney White. Why, Higgins, he said that he doubted whether you would get a farthing for having found the diamond, as the High Court, which will have to administer the estate, won't have any power to grant it. There won't be as much as a drink stood over that diamond--think of that now--the best stone ever found down the river; and not so much as a gla.s.s of square face or Cape smoke stood over it. Oh, it makes me sick!"

Charlie told him that if he ever said anything about his wanting to stop Connie going home he would give him the worst thrashing he ever had in his life, for it was a lie. Of course she ought to go away from Red Shirt, and he knew it, and he seemed so much in earnest that Bill Jeffson thought it prudent to lurch away, comforting himself with the reflection that his words had left a sting, and that Charlie would be punished for his foolishness about the diamond.

Ah, it was the same story all round; every one said she ought to go home; he must either stay there and see the last of Connie without telling her how much he loved her, or go away somewhere, and of the two alternatives the latter seemed to be the easier. He waited till he heard that Connie was better, and then early one morning he turned his back on Red Shirt, and set off to walk across the veldt to Kimberley.

Jim Heap, when he had heard of his intention to start off at once, could not understand it.

"There's nothing sticking out up there for a man without capital, and there is nothing to hurry off there for; I should have thought that you'd have waited till Miss Connie was well enough to see you; I don't think she will take it over well you're going off like this without saying good-bye; she'd like to say that, let alone saying thank you for finding it for her."

"There's no reason for her to thank me, it didn't give me any trouble to pick it up; and as for saying good-bye, you must say that for me. Tell her that I hope she will go home, as the old General always wished her, and that she'll be happy. I'd better clear off these Fields at once."