A tug, and his foot was still imprisoned. A greater effort brought no release. A surge of terror swept over his mind, such terror as not even nightmare had brought within his experience. Realization that he was caught, doomed to death, seemed to stun him as effectually as a blow to the head. Then quite suddenly his stunned sensation gave place to a great calmness, during which his mind raced as never had it raced before. Strangely, however, his mind was already becoming detached from his body, as a separate and independent entity.
“It is the finish,” cried the struggling entity. “God! it’s the end. Dug is miles away and will give no help. Oh, Mother, how grieved you will be! They’ll come searching presently, Father and Dug, and some of the men. They’ll look down and see my white body, still and limp, see my wide mouth and staring eyes. Oh! I can’t—I can’t hold out much longer. I must open my mouth—I must. If only I had a chance!”
Then came to him a greater terror than the last—the final terror of dissolution, instinctive in us all. It caused Ralph’s thoughts to become chaotic, his limbs to thrash in one supreme struggle. He heard the air bubbles rising from his mouth, heard the gurgling cry for help those bubbles contained. His sight failed and revived almost the next moment. The pain of his clenched jaws became an intolerable agony whilst the conflict between the mental and the physical worlds drew to a close.
And when the inevitable moment came—when at the very climax of horror, Ralph’s mouth opened wide—it was to draw into his red-hot lungs clean, beautiful air.
So this was death! The pain had gone, as had gone the roaring in his ears. Death was not so terrible after all. In fact, it was delightfully restful. A soft, yielding something supported his neck and shoulders. And how strange it was that in this dark, restful world a crow would mournfully caw-caw! And then the young man’s eyes were open, and he was looking up into other eyes—big black eyes filled with wistfulness, a mistiness of unshed tears. And when his gaze became properly focused he saw that he was looking into the lovely face of Nellie Wanting, the aboriginal girl.
“Stay still, Misther Ralph,” she implored softly. “Bime-by your strength come, and we get out.”
She was standing on a narrow ledge of rock, the water reaching her breasts. She held Ralph closely against her, his head supported by her shoulder, his neck encircled by her arm. Her free hand was clutched against the rim of the pool for support.
When the young man realized that he was alive—realized that the air was flooding his lungs—he began to laugh for very joy. Returning strength surged through his body, the confident strength of youth. His voice trembled, however.
“Let me go, Nellie. I’m all right now,” he said.
But, though she loosened her clasp of him, she did not entirely let him go; wherein she was wise, for it required effort on Ralph’s part to clamber out upon the dry rim of the pool, where reaction robbed him of strength once more, and he was violently sick.
The sickness passed quickly, however, and, raising his head, he forced a smile at the anxious girl sitting in her drenched clothes beside him. Then giddiness overcame him, and when he lay down and closed his eyes the girl reached over, and, taking up the towels, covered him with them.
“Lie still!” she whispered. Her voice was rich and sibilant, soft and caressing. Moving her body, she came to sit closer to him, supporting herself by one arm whilst leaning over him.
“How did you get me out?” he murmured.
“I saw you go down,” she explained. “Me been down there, too. Those tree-snags, they like dingo-traps. And when you didn’t come back I run much. I look down and see. See you caught in trap.” She shivered as with chill, but it was with the vivid memory of that moment. “You struggle,” she went on simply. “No good. So I went down to free you. Oh, Mister Ralph! I were such frightened. I—I thought you died—dead.”
The young man again looked up at her. He made no effort to rise, though he was feeling much better. He experienced a growing sense of wonder, akin to amazement, for he saw quite suddenly how beautiful she was, how beautiful the outlines of her body where the damp cheap blouse clung to it. With increasing wonder he noted the bigness of her eyes, widely opened by memory of his peril. Yes, he realized that her terror was on his account and not on her own. He saw, at first with bewilderment, and then with rapidly-growing clearness, that her eyes were misty, brimming with tears, happy tears, and it seemed that this post-drowning life was beautifully different from what it had been. Slowly he raised his hand and touched her cheek, on which glinted a single tear.
And she, seeing the growing glory on his face, bent forward swiftly and kissed him on the mouth.
That kiss! Electric fire rushed through his body and surged about his brain. The recent experience was forgotten, the whole memory was dead, it was the very first moment of real life. When she quickly drew away from him, momentary fear and shyness pictured in her face, he raised himself and sat in such a way that their heads were close together, and almost face to face.
“Nellie, what—what has happened?” he whispered.
For a long moment she stared at him without answering. Then softly, so softly that her voice sounded like a zephyr among tree-leaves, she said:
“Oh, Misther Ralph, don’t you know?”
He knew! Instinct told him. It was quite unnecessary for anyone to tell him that she loved him, and that he loved her—had loved her always.
He took her face between his hands, and slowly, very slowly, drew her near, nearer, till his lips were pressed fiercely against hers, returning, with man’s awakened passion, her kiss.
Everything was forgotten but the amazing glory of that moment, a glory that whilst he lived would never cease to shine. He forgot himself, who and what he was—forgot the Little Lady, so proud and happy in him—forgot the beautiful Darling of the Darling whom he was to wed.
And on the bank of the river above them, his face white with anger, one hand savagely bitten on by his teeth, the other clenched about a fishing-line, there stood Frank Dugdale.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bony is Surprised
ASSURED THAT her hero was thoroughly recovered, of which the ardour of his kiss seemed sufficient proof, Nellie became a thing of heredity and instinct. With surprising swiftness she sprang up and ran away, along the dry river-bed towards the camp, ran with wide eyes and parted lips; full of fear of what she had done, what had been done to her; full of hope yet dread that the young man would pursue her as the bucks of her tribe had pursued their women for ages past.
Ralph, however, did not follow. Still seated, he watched her flying feet and graceful figure till she disappeared round the first slight bend; and then, his blood still aflame and his pulses throbbing wildly, he snatched up his towels, rushed up the bank, and hurriedly dressed. And it was whilst lacing his shoes that Dugdale joined him.
Immediately the young man looked up into the sub-overseer’s face he knew that Dugdale knew, had seen, what had happened down there beside the pool. The first thing to banish Nellie momentarily from his mind was his recent closeness to death, and that gave place to the memory of his position in the world. The blood crimsoned his face. As a heavy load suddenly laid upon him, he felt self-accusation, self-contempt, and shame.
“Hallo, Dug!” he said, without looking up.
Dugdale sighed, but said nothing. At last the shoes were laced. Ralph picked up his towels and rose to his feet. Tears of mortification clouded his eyes:
“I suppose you saw?” he questioned, faintly defiant.
“Fortunately, Ralph, I did.”
“Why fortunately?”
“Because, sooner or later, you would have been observed. It is better that it should have been me than—Kate.”
“But, hang it, Dug! There’s no harm in a fellow kissing a girl is there?”
“Little harm, perhaps, in an ordinary chap doing such a thing—me, for instance—but a lot of harm for Mr Ralph Thornton, promised in marriage to the Darling of the Darling, to kiss a gin
.” Dugdale paused, then repeated, with emphasis: “A gin, Ralph.”
The sting conveyed by that “A gin, Ralph” angered the young man, into whose eyes leapt a cold glare. Yet, even while his gaze was held by that of the older man, the fact that Nellie Wanting was a gin caused that feeling of shame to reassert itself, and suddenly Dugdale found himself faced by the straight young back and the bowed head.
To the sub-overseer the agony of loss occasioned by the engagement of his idol to his employer’s son had been softened by the knowledge that Ralph was a fine, sterling boy, who should, and would, prove worthy of such a gift. The very last thing Dugdale had expected of young Thornton was that he should have forgotten his colour. To him, those kisses meant far more than a mere flirtation. The thought, so dreadful to him, was that the boy’s lips, which had touched Nellie Wanting’s mouth, would likely enough be pressed to those of Kate Flinders, the loveliest and purest girl in Australia, before that day was wholly gone.
Poor Dugdale! He had never seen in any woman’s eyes be she white or black, that which Ralph had seen in the eyes of a black “gin” that afternoon.
And poor Ralph, too! Alive with the joy of youth, aflame yet with the glory of a lover’s first kiss, ignorant of the irresistible forces drawing him, for ever drawing him, along one inevitable road! Knowing that he had done wrong, done his wife-to-be a greater wrong still, it came with a shock of surprise to him that he did not feel sorry. There was a tremor in Dugdale’s voice when he spoke:
“Ralph, old boy, let’s forget it,” he said. “You have a great future and a great happiness before you. Live only for those two things. Great God! Are they not worth living for?”
The young man swung round, his face still reddened.
“What has all this to do with you?” he demanded.
“I am thinking of your father, and the Little Lady, and Kate,” came Dugdale’s answer, whilst they stared into each other’s eyes. “Three people, Ralph, whose kindness and generosity I can never repay. Surely you can understand the hurt they would receive if they knew about this flirtation. Cannot you see for yourself that the terrible part of the affair is that Nellie Wanting is black?”
It required Dugdale’s almost brutal plainness of speech to bring home to the young man the enormity of the thing. The younger man’s eyes fell. He bowed his head, and Dugdale, racked by disappointed, hopeless love, worked heroically, like the man he was, to bring his successful rival back to the path of rectitude.
“If Nellie had been a white girl,” he said, “I would have urged you to confess to Kate and ask forgiveness. The insurance of happiness must be paid by confession, and forgiveness. But confession of this would not insure happiness. How could it? It is best, as I said just now, to forget the whole wretched affair. Don’t you think so?”
Ralph did. He was utterly miserable, utterly puzzled.
“You are right, Dug,” he said a little wistfully. “I—I’ve been a beast, and I can’t marry Kate now.”
Dugdale laughed softly. He slid an arm through that of Ralph and gently urged him into the homeward walk.
“Don’t be an ass, old boy,” he pleaded. “You are not the first poor devil to be tempted by a woman, remember. And remember too, that you can’t insult Kate by jilting her. The country would lynch you, for sure. Besides, there’s Mr and Mrs Thornton. You’ll see that in an hour or so. You will become more cheerful and look upon yourself not as a beast but as a temporary fool. Hark! There’s the dressing-bell. I’ll race you home. Ready?”
Under the now lightening load Ralph laughed chokingly and assented. The half-mile to the homestead was covered in record time; and, after his toilet, when the dinner-gong sounded, Nellie Wanting’s lovely face had dimmed, and Nellie Wanting’s kisses had ceased to thrill.
But later the young man retired early to his room with the excuse that he was tired, and Dugdale returned to the hole below the garden and fished for hours in the kindly darkness.
So it happened that no one heard of Ralph’s diving adventure until Bony gleaned it from old Sarah Wanting a week later.
The attempt to arrest Clair had been less than a nine days’ wonder. The attempt had failed utterly. The gaunt man had disappeared. Regarding this, the police, reinforced by several troopers, were confident of ultimate success, in spite of the fact that the majority of the bushmen were wholly sympathetic towards Clair. Had Clair killed a white man it would have been quite different.
Bony sensed the sympathy. He was, however, quite indifferent to Clair’s fate. He was now giving all his mind to discovering who was the person who warned Clair of the coming of the police. The mystery of King Henry’s death was a mystery no longer, but the mystery behind the murder was still to be solved.
The half-caste had infinite patience. That was the keystone of his success. He made open love to the sceptical Martha, he took rations along to Pontius Pilate and spent hours in the blacks’ camp. And it was after leaving the camp late one night and whilst returning to the homestead in his noiseless fashion that he was suddenly halted by the sound of whisperings.
Bony kept quite still. Presently he observed a deeper shadow in the general darkness under the gums. From that shadow came the whisperings and occasionally the sound of passionate kisses.
It seemed then that Bony was as much interested in lovers’ meetings as he was in the atom and in Napoleon Bonaparte. He sat down on the ground just where he was. He sat there for half an hour till the lovers parted. He was still sitting there when Nellie Wanting passed him on her way back to the blacks’ camp, and when she had gone he rose silently to his feet and followed the man.
He followed him across the billabong to the lower end of the tennis-court, along by the court, and across the cleared ground between it and the offices. There was a light in the jackeroos’ sitting room, and when the door was opened to admit the newcomer it revealed Ralph Thornton.
Bony was astonished. He would have been less surprised had the lover proved to be Mr Thornton himself. For hours that night the detective-inspector lay pondering over the import of that lovers’ meeting.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Cemetery Clue
DURING THE last week in May a great rain fell over the whole of the eastern States. Many places in Southern Queensland received over eight inches, whilst the reading for the week at Barrakee was four inches and a half.
Everyone was delighted, for plentiful grass and herbage were assured for the stock and continuous employment made certain for all hands. Probably the most joyful man in New South Wales was Mr Hemming, now free from the great Thorley and master of Three Corner Station. Mr Thornton had paid forty-five thousand pounds for the property and, given average luck, the little sheepman would pay off the debt in ten years.
The action of giving Mr Hemming so wonderful a life was typical of the squatter of Barrakee. He was generous to a fault; but the safeguard to the fault was the Little Lady, and to her in this matter Mr Thornton made final appeal. She was the last tribunal, and her decision was always final, based as it was on her womanly intuition of the character of the person to be helped or benefited. And the joy of the two personages of Barrakee over the rain was no less keen than that of Mr Hemming and his wife.
The rain had come just in time to be of great profit to the ewes and lambs. The season promised to be an excellent one. Blair had finished cleaning out Tilly’s Tank with three days to spare, and was brought into the station to cart wood for the winter and the coming shearing. He continued to find life a matter of great importance, and the secret of Clair’s whereabouts was well kept by himself and his offsider.
Bony also was preoccupied by the seriousness of life, for he had discovered a most important clue, yet one which deepened the mystery he was so determined to solve.
It was late one afternoon in early June that he had strolled up on the sandy plain at the back of the homestead and visited the cemetery. The visit had not been premeditated. In fact, Bony had taken little heed of his meandering footsteps, h
is mind being occupied by the secret love meetings between Ralph Thornton and Nellie Wanting.
Now, among other things, Bony was a gentleman; which is to say that he practised the virtues of gentlemen as exemplified by the great Napoleon. Above all, Bony was intensely moral. The loose-living customs of the civilized aborigines, and the majority of white people as well, found no favour in the man who tried to pattern his life on that of his hero.
Ralph interested him because Ralph was a mystery, and the mystery to Bony was what the young man found in Nellie Wanting that he did not find in Kate Flinders. Regarding the Darling of the Darling as the most beautiful woman it had been his privilege to look upon, he was convinced that Ralph was indeed favoured by the gods. Yet here was this young man, hedged about by parental love, engaged to be married to an angel on earth, secretly meeting a black girl and, to do that, risking all worth having in life.
Where the half-caste was undecided was whether he could presume so far as to inform Ralph that his amour was discovered, and to advise him to put an end to it. Ralph was proud. He was a squatter’s son. Bony was a half-caste and ostensibly a mere station-hand. An alternative was to put Mr Thornton in possession of the facts. Yet another line of action was the moving of Pontius Pilate and his people far up the river. That could be easily done through Sergeant Knowles, but at the same time it would remove a source of information which Bony still hoped would yield the solution of the greater mystery.
So much did these thoughts engage his mind that he failed to observe that he had entered the wire-fenced cemetery, and indeed was sitting on one of the graves. And it was whilst still in deep cogitation over the lesser mystery that there grew, as it were, before his eyes the lettering on a plain granite headstone. Bony’s thoughts were suddenly wrenched away from Ralph’s amour to the name, cut deeply into the slab. With widening eyes he read:
The Barrakee Mystery Page 14
