The Goldminer's Sister

by Alison Stuart

  Alec stared at her. He had no idea how one addressed a woman who had just declared her passion for calculus. He cleared his throat. ‘That is admirable.’

  She entered the room and held out her hand. ‘We didn’t meet under very favourable circumstances yesterday, Mr McLeod. I am Eliza Penrose. You may have known my brother?’

  Alec dusted his palms on his trousers and took her small hand in its black glove. ‘I owe you an apology for my boorish behaviour.’

  ‘You had an emergency and I was in the way,’ she said. ‘It is I who owes you an apology. I trust you managed to right the boiler?’

  He nodded. ‘Aye, we got it up to the mine in one piece.’ He turned back to the blackboard and began rubbing away the lecture.

  ‘What are you teaching?’

  ‘I give the occasional Saturday afternoon lecture on physics and calculus and sometimes geology to those who are interested. Ours is an industry that often relies on such fine detail, but I suspect you know that, Miss Penrose.’ He set down the rag and considered his next words. ‘I didn’t answer your question. I did know your brother and considered him a friend. Please accept my condolences on his loss. It must have come as a shock.’

  She sniffed and looked at the floor as she gave a brisk shake of her head. ‘It did. There was no way I could have known …’ She looked up at him, her mouth twisted in anguish and her grey eyes smudged by grief. ‘That was why I was standing where I was in the road. I had expected him to meet the coach and when he didn’t come …’ She cleared her throat and looked away.

  ‘He was admired by all who knew him,’ Alec said, adding, ‘and he is missed.’ The words seemed trite and inadequate. He had no idea what he could say that would ease this woman’s pain. The only words that came to mind sounded like what they were: empty platitudes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ve just been to pay my respects at the cemetery. I saw there was a lending library here and thought it would be good to borrow a book.’ She looked at the well-worn volume in her hand, George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss, Alec noted. ‘I heard your lecture and curiosity got the better of me. I’m sorry about my interruption. My father always said curiosity would be my downfall.’ She managed a thin smile.

  ‘Curiosity is an admirable concept,’ Alec said, ‘but it’s not often I come across a woman familiar with the theorems of calculus.’

  The smile broadened. ‘I told you, I love mathematics,’ she said. ‘I teach it, but not very successfully. I am yet to find a child who finds the same pleasure in it that I do.’

  ‘Your own education must have been quite unusual.’

  ‘My father had liberal views on the education of women and allowed me to attend Will’s lessons with his tutor, until he went away to school. Then I just read as much as I could.’

  ‘The Mechanics’ Institute committee would be interested in anything you are able to teach, Miss Penrose. There is, alas, no remuneration attached to the work, but there’s great satisfaction.’

  Eliza Penrose’s smile slipped. ‘Unfortunately, I cannot afford to work for nothing,’ she said. ‘Neither Will nor my mother left me enough to live on.’

  Alec frowned. ‘But the Shenandoah Mine should provide you with some income?’

  ‘My uncle Cowper tells me it’s failing. And, it seems, Will left his interest in it to my uncle.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘You can’t miss what you don’t have. I am sure there are teaching positions in Melbourne I can take up.’

  ‘Something will come your way, Miss Penrose,’ Alec said, conscious of the package concealed beneath the floorboards in his cottage. He pulled his watch from his pocket and glanced at it. ‘Please excuse me. I had best return to the mine and check on the installation of that boiler.’

  As if remembering why she had stepped through the door of the Mechanics’ Institute, Eliza held up The Mill on the Floss. ‘And I had better see to the borrowing of this book. Good afternoon, Mr McLeod.’

  Alec pulled on his hat and coat and stepped out into the cool air, pulling up his collar and thrusting his hands into his pockets as a cold gust of wind swept down the valley.

  The elderly gentleman who looked after the library at the Mechanics’ Institute had an idiosyncratic method of filing the books that seemed to have more to do with the colour of the binding than any other logic. Under the eagle eye of the library’s custodian, Eliza had managed to locate the novels, gratified to find a good selection of reading. She had not seen a book in her uncle’s house, not even a bible.

  Clutching The Mill on the Floss, she wandered back up the main street, stopping to look in the window of the large double-fronted store proclaiming MACKIE’S GENERAL STORE, EVERY PROVISION FOR HOUSE AND MINE. From the display in the windows, it did indeed appear to sell everything from gold pans to handkerchiefs. Passing the post office, she recalled that she needed to write to her aunt in Bath and tell her of Will’s death. Another grief for the poor woman to bear.

  Eliza entered her uncle’s quiet house by the back door, coming into a comfortable, well-scrubbed kitchen. Through a half-open door, she glimpsed a small bedroom off the kitchen with a neatly made single bedstead covered in a patchwork quilt.

  Mrs Harris sat at the table shelling peas and a boy sat by the fire polishing a man’s boots, a large wooden box open beside him. He looked up and smiled. He had the round, flat face of a child suffering from what she had heard described as ‘Mongolian idiocy’. Seeing the gentle honesty of his smile, her heart lifted, and she smiled in return.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tom.’ He held up the boot he had been polishing. ‘I keep Mr Cowper’s boots so shiny he says he can shave in them. Do you have any boots that need polishing?’

  Eliza looked down at her footwear, still muddied from the previous day. ‘I do,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid they’re very dirty.’

  ‘Then best take them off at the door,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘Tom’ll see to them. You’re traipsing mud all over my clean floor.’

  Eliza turned to the woman and apologised. Balancing against the door jamb, she removed her boots and handed them to Tom.

  He turned them over in his big hand. ‘So small,’ he said. ‘I won’t be able to get my hand inside them.’

  Eliza smiled. ‘I know. I keep hoping I will wake up one day and be six inches taller but I’m always the same. Now, Mrs Harris, if you have a cloth, I will see to the mess I have made.’

  The woman coloured. ‘Oh, you don’t need—’

  ‘Yes, I do, and I will make us both a cup of tea. Would you like tea, Tom?’

  The boy glanced at the housekeeper.

  ‘What do you say, Tom?’

  ‘Yes, please, and can I have some cake too?’

  Mrs Harris’s smile betrayed the relationship. Mother and son without a doubt.

  ‘How old are you?’ Eliza asked as Mrs Harris handed around cups and plates laden with sizeable hunks of cake.

  ‘I’m fifteen years old.’

  ‘And do you go to school?’

  Tom shook his head and his mouth turned down. ‘No. Mr Emerton says there is no place at his school for idiots like me.’

  Eliza bristled. ‘Who is Mr Emerton?’

  ‘Schoolmaster. Right old so-and-so he is,’ Mrs Harris said with such vehemence, Eliza couldn’t help but stare at her.

  ‘Is Tom your son?’

  Mrs Harris raised her eyes to meet Eliza’s and lifted her chin with a practised defiance. ‘He is, what of it?’

  ‘Perhaps I can help him with a little schooling.’

  ‘Why’d you want to do that?’

  ‘I’m a schoolteacher, Mrs Harris, and I have no time for intolerance such as this Mr Emerton has shown.’

  Mrs Harris glanced at her son. ‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘No good making promises you won’t be in a position to honour.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ve no reason to stay in Maiden’s Creek,’ she said. ‘You’ll be of
f to Melbourne soon enough.’

  ‘I’ve not made any decisions.’

  The housekeeper gathered up the dirty cups and plates and set them on the sink. She turned back to Eliza. ‘I do my best by the boy,’ she said quietly, ‘and Mr Cowper is good to let him stay on and do the odd jobs around the house.’

  ‘Does he pay him?’ Eliza asked.

  Mrs Harris turned back to the dirty dishes in the sink, her silence answering for her. Tom was tolerated on a grace and favour basis.

  ‘Tom’s brought your brother’s box in from the shed,’ she said. ‘Key’s in the lock. I’m afraid we took the liberty of donating his clothes to the Ladies’ Committee for charity and his books to the Mechanics’ Institute Library. We weren’t—’

  ‘You weren’t expecting me to turn up in person and claim them?’

  The woman flushed.

  ‘You did exactly what I would have done.’ Eliza glanced out the window. The day seemed to be closing in already. ‘Please excuse me, I have letters to write.’

  ‘There’s a fire in the parlour. It will be warmer than your bedroom.’

  Eliza thanked her and walked down the corridor that ran from the front door to the kitchen. The sizeable parlour and dining room were to the left, Eliza’s bedroom was at the front of the house along with a second, closed door adjoining her room—that must be her uncle’s bedroom. As she passed, she tried the handle of the second bedroom and found it locked.

  In her own room a battered travelling box had been placed beside hers. The initials WJP had been stencilled on the lid and she traced them with her forefinger before turning the brass key in the lock and lifting the lid. Eliza sat back on her heels and considered Will’s meagre possessions. There seemed little to show for his life. The contents barely took up the base of the trunk and, despite what she had said to the housekeeper, Eliza wished that his clothes had not been so quickly given away. She longed for something tangible, something that still carried the essence of him.

  The first object she took from the trunk, neatly wrapped in a silk handkerchief, proved to be Will’s gold pocket watch. Their father, Josiah, had given Will the timepiece when he had turned twenty-one and Will had always worn it tucked into his waistcoat pocket. She opened the dented and scratched cover and traced the engraved inscription with her finger.

  WJP from JEP

  7th August 1854

  Punctuality is the politeness of kings

  The glass had cracked and the hands stopped at just past twelve-thirty. It took her a long moment to realise that the damage may well have occurred during Will’s fall and the frozen hands marked the hour of his death. The thought turned her blood to ice. Her fingers closed over the cold, hard object, willing it to tell her the story of what happened that night.

  Chiding herself for being a sentimental fool, she rewrapped the watch and put it away in the pretty little inlaid jewellery box that had been her mother’s. So little to show for our lives, Eliza thought. A few pieces of paste jewellery, her locket, her mother’s wedding ring and a broken watch.

  The brown leather writing box that she had given Will when he left for Australia contained the letters she had written to him over the years, bundled up and tied with a piece of frayed string. They were crumpled and smeared with mud and she could imagine him taking them out and rereading them in quiet moments in the mine or sitting before the fire of an evening. With her back propped against the iron bedstead she started to read them, reliving the loneliness and despair of a young woman cut off from her family that had poured from her pen. Will had never been much of a correspondent himself but she had cherished his letters and, like Will, carried them with her.

  She stood and brought out the leather folio where she kept his letters and arranged the two collections on the bed covers in date order. Seeing his familiar scrawl brought on tears, an unstoppable flood that poured from her, and she fell across the bed, crumpling the papers in her hand.

  It had gone dark when she rose, cold and stiff. She washed her face and gathered up the scattered letters, tying them together with the string. She placed them in the leather folio and replaced it in the bottom of her travelling trunk. As she did so, she resolved not to bring them out again—they belonged to the past and spoke of a future that had been nothing more than a dream. She couldn’t dwell on the might-have-been, she needed to make plans for a future that no longer included her brother.

  She closed the lid on Will’s chest and turned the key in the lock. It occurred to her that she had found no reference to his work over the past years. Will had adopted his father’s work practices and kept detailed notebooks, including a daily journal, with conversations, calculations, predictions and outcomes noted with his engineer’s eye for detail. She would have to ask her uncle what had become of them.

  But when she raised the subject with Cowper over dinner, he just shrugged. ‘If they’re not there, then your brother didn’t have them,’ he said. ‘Tehan assures me that everything belonging to Will was packed in that trunk.’

  ‘Who’s Tehan?’

  Cowper looked up from his dissection of the rather tough mutton. ‘Tehan is the chap who is managing the Shenandoah for me. The men call him Black Jack. He’d been working as foreman for your brother so he knows the mine and seemed a sensible choice as mine superintendent. Obviously he’s not got your brother’s education but he has a good instinct and he’s steering the mine on a steady course.’

  ‘But you said it has no future.’

  ‘And neither does it. But until the majority shareholders return, I am obligated to keep it operational.’

  ‘And this Tehan saw to Will’s belongings?’

  ‘After your brother’s accident, I suggested he could have the use of your brother’s cottage at the mine and left it to him to pack up Will’s possessions. Next time I see him, I’ll ask about the notebooks.’

  Eliza turned back to her meal. While Mrs Harris may have been considered a good cook, the sheep from which the mutton had been taken must have been extremely elderly. When she looked up she found her uncle watching her, a frown creasing his forehead.

  ‘Is something troubling you, Uncle?’

  ‘You know, Eliza, as your only surviving male relative, you are now my responsibility—’

  ‘Not at all. I do not consider myself anyone’s responsibility. Least of all yours.’

  ‘Nevertheless, there is nothing for you here. I will be happy to pay your passage back to England and provide a small income sufficient for you to keep a small cottage, perhaps.’

  Eliza stared at him. She had just travelled thirteen thousand miles to come to this country—nothing could possibly induce her to go back and live out her days in lonely spinsterhood in a cottage in some tiny village, teaching Dame School if she was lucky.

  ‘That is exceedingly kind of you, Uncle, but I have no wish to return to England. I am sure there is some useful employment I can find here in the colony.’

  Cowper speared pieces of carrot and potato with his fork and chewed them slowly, his eyes fixed on her face. ‘Very well. If you don’t wish to go back to England, at least let me assist you in setting up in Melbourne—or Sydney, if you prefer. Maybe a little business, or if you are set on teaching, I could assist in finding a position at a respectable ladies’ college, somewhat like the one you left?’

  Eliza thought of the forbidding stone walls of Miss Drury’s Academy for Young Ladies on the edge of Dartmoor. It had been a lonely life, but she had enjoyed teaching and that alone had provided some consolation. But now she needed time—time to mourn Will and to recover from the rigours of the long journey.

  ‘That is very kind of you but if I am not an inconvenience, may I stay here for a little while? Will loved this place and I owe it to his memory not to desert him the moment I arrive.’

  Cowper set his plate to one side and nodded. ‘Of course. You are not an inconvenience and I welcome the company. Stay as long as you wish. And if there is anything I can help you with, please do no
t hesitate to ask me.’

  Eliza set down her knife and fork. ‘I would like to see the Shenandoah Mine.’

  Her uncle blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Will’s mine, the Shenandoah.’

  ‘Why? It’s just a mine. No place for a lady.’

  ‘Because … because it was important to Will.’

  A muscle twitched in her uncle’s cheek and he glanced at the window, where icy rain lashed the glass. ‘Bear in mind it is winter and, in this weather, the road up to Pretty Sally is well-nigh impassable, but next time Tehan is in town, I will mention your wish and we will see what can be done.’

  ‘We’ve spoken of the Shenandoah, but what of your mine, Uncle? The Maiden’s Creek. Is it doing well for you?’

  Cowper sat back, lacing his fingers over his waistcoat. ‘We have hit the main reef in the deep lead and our yield is improving already. I have assured the other shareholders we can expect a good return this year. You have to understand, it can be years before a mine can pay a good dividend. The investors have to have a lot of faith in it.’

  ‘My father always said that it’s a form of gambling.’

  ‘Indeed, and look what became your father. But I can assure you there is nothing to concern yourself about. It’s a man’s business.’

  Eliza bit her tongue. She had been brought up in a house where the main topic of conversation around the dining table had always been mines and mining. Tin or gold, the story was the same, and she probably understood more than many men about the risk/reward proposition. That had been her father’s undoing.

  ‘Take my advice, gold mining is no business for a woman, Eliza,’ Cowper continued, ‘and this is a hard place to live. My offer stands. While you are welcome to stay as long as you wish, I will provide every assistance for you to leave Maiden’s Creek and find something more congenial.’

  Eliza forced a smile. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me, Uncle?’

  He held up a hand. ‘Not at all, not at all. It is merely your own health and sensibilities I am concerned about. Once winter really sets in, it will be hard to leave and the weather can be harsh.’