The Gold-Stealers Part 8

'Great Gosh!' murmured Peterson; 'ain't he a one-er? The beggar must 'a'

tried to murder you.'

d.i.c.k nodded.

'Yes,' he said; 'but 'twasn't Hamlet.'

'Go on!' The boys looked back apprehensively.

'No, 'twasn't. 'Twas a big feller. I dunno who; but he must 'a' bin a bushranger, 'r a feller what's escaped from gaol, 'r someone. Did you coves see which way he went?'

'No,' said Ted fearfully; and a simultaneous move was made towards the township. The boys were not cowards, but they had plenty of discretion.

'Look here,' d.i.c.k continued impressively; 'no matter who 'twas, we've gotter keep dark, see. If we don't it'll be found out what we was all up to, an' we'll get more whack-o.'

The party was unanimous on this point; and when d.i.c.k returned home he shocked his mother with a lively account of how he slipped in the quarry and fell a great depth, striking his head on a rock, and being saved from death only by the merest chance imaginable.

CHAPTER VII.

The small, wooden Wesleyan chapel at Waddy was perched on an eminence at the end of the township furthest from the Drovers' Arms. The chapel, according to the view of the zealous brethren who conducted it, represented all that counted for righteousness in the township, and the Drovers' Arms the head centre of the powers of evil. For verbal convenience in prayer and praise the hotel was known as 'The Sink of Iniquity,' and the chapel as 'This Little Corner of the Vineyard,' and through the front windows of the latter, one sabbath morn after another for many years, l.u.s.ty Cornishmen, moved by the spirit, had hurled down upon McMahon and his house strident and terrible denunciations.

Materially the chapel had nothing in common with a vineyard; it was built upon arid land as bare and barren as a rock; not even a blade of gra.s.s grew within a hundred yards of its doors. The grim plainness of the old drab building was relieved only by a rickety bell-tower so stuffed with sparrows' nests that the bell within gave forth only a dull and m.u.f.fled note. The chapel was surrounded with the framework of a fence only, so the chapel ground was the chief rendezvous of all the goats of Waddy--and they were many and various. They gathered in its shade in the summer and sought its shelter from the biting blast in winter, not always content with an outside stand; for the goats of Waddy were conscious of their importance, and of a familiar and impudent breed. Sometimes a matronly nanny would climb the steps, and march soberly up the aisle in the midst of one of Brother Tregaskis's lengthy prayers; or a haughty billy, imposing as the he-goat of the Scriptures, would take his stand within the door and bay a deep, guttural response to Brother Spence; or two or three kids would come tumbling over the forms and jumping and bucking in the open s.p.a.ce by the wheezy and venerable organ, spirits of thoughtless frivolity in the sacred place.

It was Sunday morning and the school was in. The cla.s.ses were arranged in their accustomed order, the girls on the right, the boys on the left, against the walls; down the middle of the chapel the forms were empty; nearest to the platform on either hand of Brother Ephraim Shine, the superintendent, were the Sixth Cla.s.s little boys and girls, the latter painfully starched and still, with hair tortured by many devices into damp links or wispy spirals that pa.s.sed by courtesy for curls. Very silent and submissive were little girls of Cla.s.s VI., impressed by the long, lank superintendent in his Sunday black, and believing in many wonders secreted above the dusty rafters or in the wide yellow cupboards.

The first cla.s.ses were nearest the door. The young ladies, if we make reasonable allowance for an occasional natural preoccupation induced by their consciousness of the proximity of the young men, were devoted students of the gospel a interpreted by Brother Tresize, and sufficiently saintly always, presuming that no disturbing element such as a new hat or an unfamiliar dress was introduced to awaken the critical spirit. The young men, looking in their Sunday clothes like awkward and tawdry imitations of their workaday selves, were instructed by Brother Spence; and Brother Bowden, being the kindliest, gentlest, most incapable man of the band of brothers, was given the charge of the boys' Second Cla.s.s, a cla.s.s of youthful heathen, rampageous, fightable, and flippant, who made the good man's life a misery to him, and were at war with all authority.

Peterson, Jacker Mack, Dolf Belman, Fred Cann, Phil Doon, and d.i.c.k Haddon, and a few kindred spirits composed this cla.s.s; and it was sheer l.u.s.t of life, the wildness of bush-bred boys, that inspired them with their irreverent impishness, although the brethren professed to discover evidence of the direct influence of a personal devil.

The superintendent arose from his stool of office and shuffled to the edge of the small platform, rattling his hymn-book for order. Ephraim never raised his head even in chapel, but his cold, dull eyes, under their scrub of overhanging brow, missed nothing that was going on, as the younger boys often discovered to their cost.

'Dearly beloved brethren, we will open this morn-in's service with that beautiful hymn--'

Brother Shine stopped short. A powerful diversion had been created by the entrance of a young man. The new-corner was dressed like a drover, wearing a black coat over his loose blue shirt, and he carried in his right hand a coiled stockwhip. His face had the grey tinge of wrath, and his lips were set firm on a grim determination. He walked to a form well up in front, and seated himself, placing his big felt hat on the floor, but retaining his grip on the whip hanging between his knees.

Jacker Mack kicked d.i.c.k excitedly. 'Harry Hardy!' he said.

d.i.c.k nodded but did not speak; he was staring with all his eyes, as was every man, woman, and child in the congregation. Harry Hardy had not fulfilled expectations; he had been home five days, and had done nothing to avenge his brother. He moved about amongst the men, but was reserved and grew every day more sullen. He had heard much and had answered nothing; and now here he was at chapel and evidently bent on mischief, for the stockwhip was ominous. Ephraim Shine had noticed it and retreated a step or two, and stood for quite a minute, turning his boot this way and that, but with his eyes on Harry all the time. Now he cleared his throat, and called the number of the hymn. He read the first verse and the chorus with his customary unction, and, all having risen, started the singing in a raspy, high-pitched voice.

Harry Hardy stood with the rest, a solitary figure in the centre of the chapel, still holding the long whip firmly grasped in his right hand.

Attention was riveted on him, and the singing of the hymn was a dismal failure. The young man stared straight before him, seeing only one figure, that of Ephraim Shine, until he felt a light touch on his arm.

Someone was standing at his side, offering him the half of her hymn-book.

Harry raised his hand to the leaves mechanically, and noticed that the hand on the other side was white and shapely, the wrist softly rounded and blue-veined. The voice that sounded by his side was low and musical.

'Oh! Harry, what are you going to do?' His neighbour had ceased singing, and was whispering tremulously under cover of the voices of the congregation.

Harry's face hardened, and he set it resolutely towards the platform.

'Don't you know me, Harry? I am Christina Shine. You remember Chris? We were school mates.'

His daughter! The young man let his left hand fall to his side.

'Please don't. You have come to quarrel with father, but you won't do it, Harry? You saved my life once, when we were boy and girl. You will promise me this?'

Harry Hardy answered nothing, and the pleading voice continued:

'For the sake of the days when we were friends, Harry, say you won't do it--you won't do it here, in--in G.o.d's house.'

'It was here, in G.o.d's house, he slandered my mother.' The man's voice sounded relentless.

'No, no, not that! He prayed for her. He did not mean it ill.'

'I have heard of his praying--how under the cover of his cant about saving souls he scatters his old-womanish scandals an' abuses his betters.'

'He means well. Indeed, indeed, he means well.'

'An' he prays for my mother--him! Says she's bred up thieves because she did not come here to learn better. Says she's an atheist because she does not believe in Ephraim Shine. He's said that, an' I'm here to make him eat his words.'

Harry's whispering was almost shrill in the heat of his pa.s.sion, and the singing of the hymn became faint and thin, so eager were the singers to catch a word of that most significant conversation. d.i.c.k had not taken his eyes off the pair, and already had woven a very pretty romance about Chris and the young man. Christina Shine had only recently been raised to the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged his sense of poetical fitness. He espoused her cause with his whole soul, whatever it might be.

The young woman in the stress of her fears had clasped Harry's arm, as if to restrain him, and he felt the soft agitation of her gentle bosom with a new emotion that weakened his tense thews, and stirred the first doubt; but he fought it down. His revenge had become almost a necessity within the last three days. Nothing he had heard offered the faintest hope for his brother's cause; he was baffled and infuriated by the general unquestioning belief in Frank's guilt, and a dozen times had been compelled to sit biting on his bitterness, when every instinct impelled him to square up and teach the fools better with all the force of his pugilistic knowledge. Of late years he had been schooled in a cla.s.s that accepted 'a ready left' as the most convincing argument, and, being beyond the immediate province of law and order, repaired immediately with all its grievances to a twenty-four-foot 'ring' and an experienced referee. But whilst there was a little diffidence amongst the men in expressing their opinions about Frank, there was no reserve when they came to tell of Ephraim Shine's method of improving the occasion with prayer and preachment; and for a considerable time Harry had collected bitterness till it threatened to choke him and bade him defy all his mother's cautious principles.

Ephraim had given out the third verse, and the singing went on.

'Are you thinking?' whispered the girl. 'Do, do think! Think of the disgrace of it.'

'Disgrace! There's the disgrace whining on the platform, the brute that insults a woman in her sorrow, thinking there's no one handy to take it out of the coward hide of him!

'It was wrong, Harry. I know it was wrong and cruel. I told him that, and he has promised me never to do it again. He has promised me that, really, truly.'

The word that slid through Harry's teeth was ferocious but inaudible.

'Say you won't do it!

The singing ceased suddenly, and the superintendent, who all the time had kept a lowering and anxious eye on the young couple, gave out the third verse again.

'Harry, you will not. Please say it!

The hand holding the stockwhip stirred threateningly, and the hymn was almost lost in the agitation of the worshippers. Chris remained silent, and Harry, who had taken the book again, had shifted his stern eyes to the slim white thumb beside his broad brown one. A stifled sob at his side startled him, and he turned a swift glance upon the face of his companion. That one glance, the first, left his brave resolution shaken and his spirit awed.

Harry remembered Chris as a schoolgirl, tall and stag-like, always running, her rebellious knees tossing up scant petticoats, her long hair rarely leaving more than one eye visible through its smother of tangled silk. She was very brown then and very bony, and so ridiculously soft of heart that her tenderness was regarded by her schoolmates as an unfortunate infirmity. She was tall still, taller than himself, with large limbs and a sort of manly squareness of the shoulders and erectness of the figure, but neatly gowned, with little feminine touches of flower and ribbon that belied the savour of unwomanliness in her size and her bearing. Her complexion was clear and fair, her abundant hair the colour of new wheat, her features were large, the nose a trifle aquiline, the chin square and, finely chiselled; the feminine grace was due to her eyes, large, grey, and almost infantile in expression. The people of Waddy called her handsome, and no more tender term would suit; but they knew that this fair girl-woman, who seemed created to dominate and might have been expected to carry things with a high hand everywhere, was in reality the simplest, gentlest, and most emotional of her s.e.x. She looked strong and was strong; her only weakness was of the heart, and that was a prey to the sorrows of every human being within whose influence she came in the rounds of her daily life.

Hardy was amazed; almost unconsciously he had pictured the grown-up Chris an angular creature, lean, like her father, and resembling him greatly; and to find this tall girl, with the face and figure of a battle queen, tearfully beseeching where in the natural course of events she should have been commanding haughtily and receiving humble obedience, filled him with a nervousness he had never known before. Only pride kept him now.

'Say you will go! Say it!'

Harry lowered his head, and remained silent.

'Go now. Your action would pain your mother more than my father's words have done--I am sure of that.'

The hymn was finished, but Shine read out the last verse once more. His concern was now obvious, and the congregation was wrought to an unprecedented pitch. Never had a hymn been so badly sung in that chapel.