'I shall travel at once to this--to where he is,' said Estelle quickly.
'You did not expect me to do anything else, did you?'
'I am afraid that I did not,' he said, smiling; though he added gravely, 'None the less, both Stirling and I think it imprudent for you to take such a journey by yourself.'
'Yet I came here safely--even pleasantly.'
'Omeo is a very different place. It has the worst reputation of any goldfield yet discovered. The outlaws of all the colonies are gathered there. Police protection is a mockery; they have no "Launceston Mac" to regulate them, and the road is impracticable for wheels--well-nigh impassable, indeed.'
'All this sounds bad,' said Estelle, 'and, if I _could_ be intimidated, might prevent my wishing to go. But I am past all that feeling. I must have one more talk with you and Mr. Stirling. But on Monday I sleep in Ballarat.'
'Of course Mrs. M'Alpine will be most happy to receive you again,' he said, rather ruefully; 'and next day the coach will take you to Melbourne. I wish the rest of the journey was as plain sailing. If you would accept me as your escort to Omeo, and I could go, nothing would give me greater pleasure. But I am in honour bound to stay with my mate here and see our claim worked out, or I would leave to-morrow.'
'It is a great pity that Mr. Stirling can't shut up his bank and come too,' she replied, smiling. 'But I know enough now about mining matters to judge of the impossibility of your departing at a moment's notice. I have been wonderfully helped so far. It really appears miraculous. And I have the fullest faith that I shall not fall short of that aid which a merciful God provides for His helpless creatures in the future. I will write to you both, and hereby constitute Mr. Stirling as my banker and guardian while I remain in Australia.'
In this fashion it came to pass that on the Monday morning Estelle carried out her purpose of making the start--that all-important _premier pas_ which is so often the insuperable difficulty in life.
The Growlers' Gully coach, departing with American punctuality at the appointed minute, bore her away again as box-seat passenger, and, not having more than two others besides the driver, went round by Mr.
M'Alpine's cottage and deposited her at the remembered garden gate.
Before leaving she had a long and earnest conversation with Charles Stirling, whom she had grown to regard almost as a brother. His uniform gentleness of manner, his chivalrous courtesy and studious consideration for her in every possible particular, joined with a certain firmness in maintaining his opinion in matters of importance, had insensibly won upon her regard. She would have been no true woman had it not been so.
Nor could she, from time to time, refrain from involuntarily drawing mental comparisons between her _fiance_ and his friend.
Their circumstances and surroundings being similar, why could not Lance have conducted himself with the prudence and self-respect which characterised Mr. Stirling, and indeed Mr. Hastings also? Perhaps the former, from holding a responsible position, was necessarily more guarded by the proprieties; but there was Mr. Hastings, whom she had seen working with his mate Bob, dressed like an ordinary miner, more roughly living and lodging even than Jack Polwarth. Yet she could see that he bore himself in all respects as a gentleman, and that such rank by others was cheerfully accorded to him. Why could not Lance----? and then she sighed deeply and turned her thoughts abruptly into another channel.
It had been decided in council that Miss Chaloner should be suffered to pursue her journey towards Omeo, at any rate as far as Melbourne, when she would again place herself under the guardianship of Mrs. Vernon.
After much difficulty, the friends prevailed upon her to promise that she would not commence the journey to Omeo until Mr. Vernon had arranged for, in his opinion, a suitable escort. Thus reassured, she was permitted to depart, being seen off by Mrs. Polwarth and Mrs. Delf, besides a score or two of casual spectators and miners off work. These worthy fellows had gradually come to the conclusion that a young lady who was known to the Commissioner, and treated with such high consideration by Mr. Stirling, must be a person of rank and title.
Indeed such a report gained common credence, and Estelle was long referred to in the chronicle of Growlers' as 'the lady in her own right as had come from England to see after poor Trevanion of Number Six.'
Before leaving, Estelle had volunteered to take charge of the portmanteau which Lance had mentioned in his letter as containing some of his much-cherished souvenirs and other possessions. But Stirling had doubted the propriety of her burdening herself with a heavy and presumably valuable package. It would be sure to cause her anxiety, and from its very appearance might stimulate the cupidity of members of the lawless class, at that time by no means easy to evade while travelling.
Both in her interest and Lance's he preferred to forward it by gold escort to an agent in Melbourne, who again would await the opportunity of police protection to send it on to Omeo. He would be in possession of Lance's receipt for it before she had reached Omeo; perhaps even before she had left Melbourne.
It was finally decided by the friends that Lance should not be informed of Estelle's arrival. 'It would only unsettle him,' she said. 'He might even come to Melbourne, and so run the risk of recapture. It will not be long before I rejoin him at Omeo, or the North Pole,' she added, with a smile, 'if he roams so far.'
The intervening stages were necessarily identical with those previously encountered. Mrs. M'Alpine was still hospitably eager to receive this wandering princess, as she evidently considered her to be. She would not hear of her going on to Melbourne the following day, and Estelle, fearful of the appearance of insufficiently appreciating her unusual kindness, gracefully, though reluctantly, consented. Her hostess then arranged so that a discreet selection of the officials then resident at Ballarat should arrive in the evening. These were mostly young men, among whom Estelle was pleased to greet her first Ballarat acquaintance, Mr. Sub-Commissioner Dalton. Ladies were few and far between at that period of 'the field,' but those who accepted Mrs. M'Alpine's invitation showed that the exceptional circumstances amid which they lived and moved had wrought no change in manner or mental habitudes. As for the men, Estelle found them distinctly above the average in appearance, bearing, and accomplishments. These last Mrs. M'Alpine unobtrusively brought forward. Then it appeared that this one was well known as an artist; another sang 'like an angel,' as one of his feminine admirers expressed it, playing his own accompaniments on the piano; a third was a distinguished performer in private theatricals, while all talked well and amusingly. A rather extended course of travel, continental and otherwise, joined with army and navy reminiscences, seemed to be common to all. Mr. M'Alpine had arrived too, from some mining town with an aboriginal name, and, much to Estelle's surprise, was a punctiliously courteous and chivalrous elderly personage, mild and almost deferential in manner to ladies, and possessing a vein of quiet humour which aroused unexpected merriment from time to time,--very different, indeed, from the stern, inflexible Rhadamanthus whom she had pictured in her imaginings of the terrible 'Launceston Mac.'
When the evening came to an end--not particularly early, it must be confessed--and the piano and whist table were succeeded by a modest but very cheerful supper, Estelle came to the conclusion that she had never seen so many entertaining, cultured, and, in a sense, distinguished people gathered together in one small room in her life. That it should be her experience in this curious corner of the remote antipodes was the crowning marvel of the whole.
Melbourne again! which--so accommodating is our mental to our bodily vision--seemed quite a small London after Ballarat and Growlers'.
Mrs. Vernon, who was just about organising one of her regular winter parties, hailed Estelle's arrival with unaffected joy. This was rather dashed when she understood her guest's intention to depart for Omeo at the earliest possible moment. If the truth must be told, she considered the discovery of Lance's abiding-place at Omeo to be an unalloyed misfortune. This view of the case was of course unexpressed, out of deference to Estelle's feelings, who made it--the announcement--with such unfeigned pleasure that her hostess could not, for pity's sake, forbear the conventional words of sympathy.
'But, my dear, you cannot possibly go to that dreadful Omeo at present, if indeed at all. It was only yesterday that I heard Mr. Vernon telling some young man (a young man, my dear!) that he advised him to wait till the winter was nearly over before he started for Omeo, as the roads were positively dangerous.'
'I will wait any reasonable time, and I shall certainly be guided by Mr.
Vernon's kind advice,' the girl said; 'but I am resolved to reach Omeo before the spring.'
'"A wilful woman,"' quoted the old lady, '"must, I suppose, have her way," like a wilful man, but I am charmed to see that you recognise the propriety of consulting Mr. Vernon. He has business relations with Omeo--what they are I have not the faintest idea--mining requisites, I presume--everything from picks and shovels to pianos and cornopeans--so that he will know how to manage the transport service for you. And now, my dear, come and see your room.'
Mrs. Vernon's home was enticing. A roomy, well-furnished modern house, the upper windows of which commanded a far-reaching view of the waters of the harbour and the bluffs and headlands trending easterly towards a dim and mighty forest world, beyond which again rose mountain peaks. A broad verandah protected it equally from winter rain and summer heat.
The gardens, filled with exotics of every land, sloped down, with winding walks amid trim grass lawns and thickets of ornamental shrubs, to the waters of the Yarra. Exclusive enough for meditation and rambling walks, beautiful also with the carefully-guarded flowers which the half-tropical summer and mild winter of the south permit to develop in rarest beauty, had Estelle desired a restful retreat wherein to stay her pilgrim feet for a season, no pleasanter spot, no more alluring bower, could she have found. But such loitering in the path of duty, synonymous in her case with the passion around which the tendrils of her heart--the heart of a self-controlled, habitually reserved woman--entwined, was not for Estelle Chaloner. Pleased and grateful as she could not fail to be with Mrs. Vernon's motherly warmth and kindly tendance, she told herself that she would rather have been in a stagecoach, rumbling along the roughest road towards Omeo, the goal of all her thoughts and aspirations, than playing her part mechanically among the pleasant society people seated around Mr. Vernon's handsomely appointed dinner-table.
As for that gentleman himself, he vied with his wife in welcoming his prodigal daughter, as he persisted in calling her.
'We have adopted you, my dear Miss Chaloner; ask Mrs. Vernon if we haven't. We wept till bedtime after your departure, didn't we, Mary? and now that our daughter that we lost is found, what do I hear about her going away again? It can't be done. It's against Scripture; ask Mr.
Chasuble here if it isn't. The fatted calf is doomed, and she must stay for the feast.'
'I daresay you won't find me an undutiful daughter,' she replied smilingly, 'but you must wait till I have returned from the wilderness before feasting will be appropriate. I have seen little or nothing, so far, of the rude and lawless waste I was led to expect--on the contrary, refinement and courtesy seem indigenous to Australia.'
'Oh! that's all very fine,' laughed back Mrs. Vernon; 'you've been spoiled at Ballarat, but you mustn't expect to find the country full of handsome Goldfields Commissioners, six feet high, and crammed full of accomplishments--like Mr. Dalton, or even Mr. Annesley, whom you saw here. There are places so different.'
'Which we won't describe to-night, shall we, my dear?' Mr. Vernon interpolated, appealing to his wife. 'Miss Chaloner shall do as she likes, as the daughter of the house, while here and afterwards. If she wants to go to the South Pole, John Vernon & Co. will charter a ship for her, or a camel train; if Fort Bourke requires her presence, only give us a little time--that is all I ask.'
CHAPTER XX
Those adventurous wayfarers only who have traced the sources of the Snowy River, which in its southward course pierces the fertile district of Gippsland, are familiar with the strange wild region which lies between it and the northern watershed, where the Ovens, the Mitta Mitta, and the King rivers swell with their hurrying waters the Mississippi of Australia. The scenery is of a weird and wondrous majesty. Far as eye can reach, a verdurous plain extends--a mountain park, in truth, it may be called, differing from almost any other such formation in Australia.
Three thousand feet above the sea, a sheet of snow in the mid-winter, it is a prairie waving with giant grasses when remorseless suns are scorching the heart of the continent into barrenness. Standing on the northern edge of the Dargo plateau, what a landscape bursts upon the view! Mount Feathertop, divided by a ravine two thousand feet in depth from Mount Bogong, with Kosciusko, king of Austral Alps, like twin Titans, rise snow-crowned in awful majesty amid the mist and cloud rack of the illimitable mountain world. Storm-swept and desolate is this region in winter. The strayed traveller wanders beneath an endless succession of wooded peaks, descends abysmal glens, and seems doomed to traverse eternally the unbroken solitudes of the primeval forest.
Here first arose the hamlet, later on the mining township, of Omeo, taking its name from the lonely lake so named by the wild tribes who had hunted on its borders and fished in its depths from immemorial ages. Who shall count the years from the launching of the first frail bark canoe on its lonely waters? Situated in closest proximity to the region of snows, which, if not eternal, commence to crown the mountain summits in the early autumn, it is separated from the more civilised portions of New South Wales and Victoria by roads which border precipices, by mountain tracks, known only to the cattle-drover and the horse-stealer, which, overhanging rivers thickly strewn with granite crags, offer suicide on easy terms to the careless or the despondent.
Rivers, full-fed from a thousand springs which have their sources in these mountains, rush from unexplored heights in the springtime, or murmur musically the long green summer through, when the great levels of Australian deserts are sun-baked as the plains of Hindostan.
Here dwell in scattered families or sparsely settled hamlets the various classes of Australian highlanders. Hardy, active, fearless are they as their Scottish prototypes;--originally recruited from the wandering stock-rider, or in later years the lonely gold-seeker prospecting the basaltic dykes and quartz-filled fissures of the foot-hills of the Australian Alps. Herds of half-tamed or wholly wild cattle and horses roam the profuse pastures, richly verdant during the short summer, though snow-covered and deathlike during the winter months. Here, late lingering and entrapped, they often perish, a company of skeletons within a circle formed by unavailing trampling of the surrounding snow only remaining in the spring to show the operation of nature's stern, irrevocable laws.
Lonely and chiefly silent this mountain land--dividing the watersheds of three colonies--pierced by precipitous defiles--barred of access by rugged ranges, the only means of crossing the savage region being by dangerous tracks skirting terrific precipices, sometimes, as is the well-known King River pass, narrow, elevated, almost in mid air, with abysmal deeps on either side.
The first dwellers in these dread solitudes were men inured to every peril of the Australian bush, to whom the faint trail of the wilderness was familiar as the field-path to the village rustic. Strayed cattle and ownerless horses accumulated in the virgin mountain pastures. These were at first driven to the nearest market by tracks only known to the outlaws of the waste, or their confederates the stock-riders in charge of rarely visited cattle-stations. Suddenly the trade developed, owing to the higher prices ruling since the gold eruption. An organised system of horse and cattle stealing arose. Outlying lots of fat cattle were 'cut out' or separated from the border herds of Monaro or Gippsland, and crossed into opposite colonies. Detection in such cases was well-nigh impossible. Much of the illegal work was done at night. If pursued, the tracks were purposely blinded by station cattle driven across the trail, while, from the rugged character of the country, strangers were at a special disadvantage. Horses averaging from fifty to a hundred pounds each, if capable of drawing a wash-dirt cart or transporting a digger's movables from one mining district to another, were profitable plunder.
Chief among these _caterans_ of the southern highlands--raiders, however, of a lower grade than their Scottish prototypes--was the well-known and deeply distrusted Caleb Coke--an ex-convict who had 'served his time,'--that is, completed the term of penal servitude to which he had been originally sentenced. He had graduated in a school of lawless license tacitly permitted by the customs of the country. Commencing as a stock-rider on Monaro Plains, then a wild unsettled region, he and his convict companions reigned unchecked amid the aboriginal tribes. Reports of capricious cruelty or savage vengeance against the blacks were more than whispered. Wild tales were told of lawless deeds--of inoffensive natives wantonly shot down in satisfaction for stock killed or missing--of reckless indulgence in all the baser passions by these modern buccaneers. The lack of police supervision enabled them to revel in every species of lawlessness unchecked and unchallenged, and as surely as any deed involving exceptional craft or cruelty came to light the name of Caleb Coke was rarely absent from the recital.
Rudely reared and wholly uneducated, this man represented the type of Englishman that in earlier days helped to found the reputation of British sailors and soldiers. Smugglers, mutineers, or buccaneers they might become, but, whatever their faults, they possessed the cardinal quality of courage in a degree unequalled by any other nation.
Scarcely above the middle height, and possessing no remarkable muscular development, Coke had proved himself the possessor of a measure of endurance and sinewy strength which rendered him totally indifferent to the hardships of a life in the wilderness. Heat or cold, night or day, on foot or on horseback, all seemed alike to Caleb Coke. Like many of the early stock-riders, though born in English hamlets and grown to manhood before expatriation, the erstwhile poachers, smugglers, or deer-stealers took kindly to the wild life of the interior of Australia.
Long used to watch the habits and follow the haunts of fur and feather, the tracking of the half-tamed herds of cattle and horses came natural to the quick eyes, from childhood studious of the waste. Those among these exiled shepherds and stock-riders whom favourable conditions of life tended to soften saved their money, acquired property, and founded families not undistinguished in the future. On the other hand, all whom misfortune had soured or crime indurated, found in their newly acquired quasi-freedom the means of safely engaging in practices more secret but not less nefarious than of old, or criminal operations on a scale hitherto unprecedented.
With the formation of a rich goldfield at Omeo, the centre of a proverbially lawless region and a roving population, the results may be imagined. Cash became plentiful, and was habitually carried in large sums on the persons of gold-buyers and other speculators. Crime for a while seemed about to overshadow the land. Fierce of aspect, ruthless in beak and talon, 'the eagles were gathered together.' Had there been an Asmodeus of the mountain, how plainly would he have descried, almost without the aid of _le diable boiteux_, the Alsatia from which, as surely as the levin-bolt from the thunder-cloud, wrong and rapine were destined to result.
With his habitual want of caution, Lance Trevanion made the acquaintance of Caleb Coke soon after he reached Omeo. That worthy, wily and unscrupulous, found means to ingratiate himself with the stranger, apparently flush of money, and no novice in mining. He made a point of providing horses when there was a newly-discovered 'rush' to inspect. In certain ventures, as so often happens, when the broad road is to be traversed, all his 'tips' proved correct. His advice, _quoad hoc_, seemed uniformly trustworthy. Coke, however, had an advantage on his side of which Trevanion little dreamed. Before long he was fully posted in Lance's history; whereas, of Mr. Coke's eventful career, beyond the careless chatter of goldfields, Lance knew nothing. Still less did he suspect aught of the sinister influence behind Coke. Not many days had elapsed after Lance had resolved to take up his abode at Omeo before he received a letter from Tessie Lawless, to whom he had sent a few lines by his returning guide. It was addressed to Mr. Harry Johnson, miner, to the care of the chief storekeeper, a man of multifarious trusts and responsibilities, keeping the post-office among other duties, and being entrusted with all deposits, from a parcel of gold to a quartz-crushing machine--from a 'last will and testament' to a baby 'to be left till called for.'
Tessie Lawless's missive--the outflow from a heart as true and faithful as ever beat in a woman's bosom--ran as follows--
'MELBOURNE HOSPITAL.