Drifting under the Southern Cross. An Australian romance

Chapter I

A world all hope, a past without a stain. And one said, " He is sick Of poison," and another, " He will die." But I, who could not lose my precious boy, Prayed of them physic, which might bring the light Back to his eyes. " Can we do nothing more, nothing at all ?" " I know of nothing. I believe the child will die. " No, no," came in an agonised tone from the mother, crouching on her knees by the bedside with a formless prayer in her heart that if it were indeed to be so, she, too, might die that night. A long silence, broken only within the room by faint moans from the bed, on which lay a beautiful boy four or five years old, his brown curls clinging round his fair broad brow and round dimpled cheek, which had so suddenly become drawn and pinched. I! The child's dark blue eyes were half upturned and encircled with heavy dark rings which heightened the grey paleness of the poor little face, his breath came in faint moaning gasps, and one would have said, with the father, that the child had not long to live.

The simple remedies which the poor mother had tried had produced no effect, and now, at the end of her resources, she began wholly to despair, for she had no inkling of the nature of the attack. Was it sun-stroke? It might be, the symptoms were somewhat similar. Had he been bitten by a snake, death-adder, or some poisonous insect ? There was no mark to indicate it. Was it possible he might have eaten something poi sonous, or could he by any chance have got at a poisoned bait, set for the native cats in the garden ? The mother thought it was not likely, he had been play ing by her side all the morning, as she sat at work on the verandah ; and she had only left him for about an hour when she had been obliged to go and weigh out stores to some bullock-drivers passing through the run with their drays — for Jack Payne, whose work it was, had .not returned from his round of ration-carrying.

And when she came back to the shady side of the verandah, where her book and work were, there was her boy lying with his eyes turned up and his hands clenched as if in terrible pain, and he had not spoken since. Poor mother, there was no one to help or advise her on that lonely Barionga station, where travellers rarely came, and where the nearest neighbour was fifteen miles off, and no doctor to be had nearer than the township of Illabri, forty miles off. Her husband, even, was not at home at first ; and when he did come, cold and careless, he gave neither help nor comfort. The Irish women servants were only able to suggest the most absurd and impracticable remedies, and show their sym pathy by appeals to the Holy Virgin and all the saints for aid. " Not much good sending for a doctor," said Darcy Morton, at length, in a captious tone, looking up from the absorbing task of paring his nails and closing his pen-knife with a vicious snap, "no use at all, I should say."

" Oh yes, it will, it must be of use," said his wife ; " young Payne, as soon as he came in, offered to go to Illabri for Dr. Arnheim. I told him to take the grey mare." " Much good Arnheim will be ; if he comes he will probably be drunk ! And what business had you to give a careless jackanapes like Payne my best horse ? You know he can't ride, young Cockney that he is ! He'll ride the mare to death and think he has done rather a fine thing, the fool ! If you must have sent someone, why not have got Fellows to go? He has got a head on his shoulders, though he can't ride either." Darcy Morton grumbled on in his most can tankerous tones ; he never would admit that anyone else could ride. "You forget, you told him to go to Darribri to arrange about mustering the scrub cattle. He took a valise and went off about twelve o'clock — only about an hour before the drays came by, when I left Hugh to give them flour and tobacco."

Lindsay Morton spoke in a far-off dead sort of voice, which even struck her own ear as unfamiliar — for once she was beyond the reach of the B bitter taunts and petty stings which made life such a hopeless affair for her, with just the one bright spot, her boy, her bright bonny Hugh, who now lay there apparently dying. Distrusting her own powers in such a case, she had however tried everything which had suggested itself to her ; and now she could but watch and wait and long for the doctor's arrival. Darcy Morton, the owner of Bariongo Station, was a tall, lean man, with cold, hard, handsome features, in manners harsh and sullen, with a way of speaking through his closed teeth which seemed somehow to speed the curses which came so frequently in his speech. He was what they denominate in Australia " a hard drinker ;" not through conviviality, led on by companionship while talking and smoking from one glass to two, from two to many, but alone, in what he called his office.

Every evening after dinner he in dulged himself to an unlimited extent, and his office table showed more bottles than books. No man could ever say he had seen Darcy Morton drunk, but he bore signs of his fatal passion in his face, that those could read who had gained the sad experience necessary. The morning found him per fectly sober and fit for any sort of work, but with his most forbidding manner and a taciturnity which never allowed him to open his mouth save to find fault, to com mand, or to sneer. His men disliked him cordially, but nevertheless they stayed on for years in his employ ment ; he worked them hard, but then he worked with them ; and if he never spared them he never spared him self. He was a splendid horseman, and understood and loved horses far better than he did men and women ; he could become almost genial in the saddle with a horse under him tearing wildly after cattle bounding over logs and wheeling impetuously in dangerous prox imity to trees ; or when running in young unbroken horses from their life-long freedom with their dams.

Why this man had married was a marvel to everyone, and how he had got such a wife was a greater marvel. No one knew, not even his wife, that he married believ ing he was securing in the simplest and surest way a handsome fortune with her, in the shape of a poor little piece of land which would turn out of immense value for the mineral wealth it contained. Mr. Marston, Lindsay's father, had told Morton only a few days before his sadly sudden death from pneumonia that he had almost certain proof that gold existed on his land — a " selection" of one hundred and sixty acres — in great quantities and in almost unheard of combinations, and that he was only waiting until he had fulfilled his condi tions and secured his Government title before going to work to bring the proof of his convictions to the surface.

After Mr. Marston's death, Morton worked to secure the selected land for the daughter, and when the title was safe he proposed to her. Poor Lindsay, now an orphan, felt lonely and deso late, notwithstanding the great kindness and hospitality shown her on all sides, and grateful for the kindness and interest Morton had shown, she consented to become his wife. She had been left at school in Tasmania by her father, while he wandered about the colonies looking for some abiding place, and little more than a year before he had sent for her to join him in Queens land, to be his housekeeper and companion in the homely cottage he had erected on his land. She came full of bright hopes and ingenious plans to meet and conquer the melancholy which, during every visit he paid her at school, she found more marked, and the reasons for which she had only lately known.

Now, with all her energies thrown back on herself, and with no one wanting her love and care, the prospect of a home and duties was pleasant to her. Her beautiful delicate mother she could only remember as a dream that came back to hcr with the touch of a velvet gown and a faint halfforgotten perfume of carnations. Darcy Morton had known her mother, which seemed a fresh link with him ; and when she came to Queensland, she found him living on neigh bourly terms with her father, though they had so few tastes in common ; this, however, was not so apparent then as it afterwards appeared to her. Lindsay Mars ton's only other relation, besides a half-sister married in Ireland, was a cousin of her father's, Dale Marston, a man who had amassed an immense fortune in city lands in Melbourne, and had married his housekeeper ; but he had calmly ignored the letters her father had written him, on his arrival in Australia, asking for advice.

Amongst the warm-hearted colonists she need have been at no loss for a home. Invitations to come and stay as long as she liked were showered on her, and as she could not have long remained with only the " married couple " servants in the lonely cottage, if she had not married Morton, she would have accepted their proffered kindness, as freely as it was offered. A little while after his marriage, Darcy Morton, determining to realise on his wife's dowry, got a practical miner to come and look at the ore ; it was pro nounced not to be gold, and absolutely worthless, and though Lindsay never knew what his hopes had been, he let her plainly perceive that he considered he had made a great mistake in marrying. Matters were not mended when the land, having been sold for a nominal sum, was discovered to contain valuable copper, which only required capital to work it to make from it as large a fortune as if it had been indeed the more precious metal.

The beauty of the anxious mother must not be judged now as she gazes with strained, sad, tearless eyes at her suffering child. You can see now the tall graceful figure, slight and round, and the fine head most per fectly set on, like that of a high bred race-horse, and the long hands, which seem moulded for caressing touches and refined work of any sort. Hers was a complex character, full of contradictions, strength and weakness, coldness and passion ; a certain strong sense of justice and right and purity, truth, as most men (but not all women) understand it, and a tenacity and con stancy wholly feminine. Lindsay was perhaps not really beautiful, though there was a charm about her, both of face and manner, which made all willing to grant her beauty without question. She had a rather small oval face, with a low, broad, Grecian forehead, and small straight nose, full red curved lips, and a round firm chin ; brown-grey eyes that met yours full and frankly, grey-brown eyes liberally shaded with eyelashes almost black ; her eyebrows were also dark, straight, and rather strongly marked ; soft dark hair, which curled and waved in great masses, a round, firm, white throat, and softly-coloured cheeks with a tint that deepened with her passing emotions.

She was clever, too, though not brilliantly accomplished ; she read and thought and dreamed much in her lonely, cheerless life. Her manners were brightly attractive, showing (perhaps too plainly) a desire to please, no matter to whom she might be talking, were it but an old woman, a " cranky " shepherd, a child ; she would talk and listen to each as if it were for her own pleasure, not theirs. She had never really known what failure was except in this one instance of conciliating her husband and keeping his affection. Chilled by repeated repulses, she had at length come to be satisfied if only by forethought and care she could avert his bitterest words (not only from herself, but from others) and avoid his sneers or reproaches, and she breathed a sigh of relief when a meal had passed without an outbreak of temper or a shower of oaths.

Wrapped up in her child, as the one outlet for the love with which her heart was full, what wonder when this blow came suddenly and struck him down without warning, that she, too, should be stricken and helpless. The sudden darkness of the no twilight latitude had long set in, and the stillness outside — broken only by a distant rumble of thunder on the hot night air and the mournful cry of the curlew from the creek — was oppres sive. Suddenly a sharp crack like a pistol shot was heard, then another. Lindsay started to her feet, and with the knowledge of help at hand, a glimmer of hope returned, and tears of relief came into her eyes as she said in a trembling tone : — " Ah, thank God ! It is young Payne at the slip-rails. How thoughtful of him to crack his whip to let me know he is near. How quick he has been ; I hardly dared expect him until midnight."

Morton muttered something about not wanting to see " that German fellow," and, glad of an excuse to end his perfunctory attendance, he stalked off, hardly glancing at the sick child. Only a few minutes more to wait, while they ride rapidly up through the home paddock, with the spurt that the most tired horses will put on when they know they are near their destination ; then the click of the garden gate and footsteps on the verandah ; how Lindsay's heart bounded at the sound ! and then Jack Payne's good-humoured, boyish face at the French window (open wide to get the light breeze, which was hardly enough to sway the muslin curtains) met her longing gaze. He looked pale, tired, and anxious, as he said : — "How is he? I have brought a doctor, Mrs. Morton." " No better, Jack," said the mother, in a low despond ing tone.

" How quick you have been ; thank you, thank you." Lindsay left the bedside and went forward to meet the man she expected to see, the old German, Dr. Arnheim, a queer old character ; praying in her inmost heart that he might prove sober enough to cure her child. A tall fair man certainly, but it was not the loose, shambling figure of Dr. Arnheim who came into the light of the room, bowing over the hand Lindsay had eagerly outstretched in welcome. " Mrs. Morton," he said, in a quiet, low voice ; " I hope I can be of use to you. Your messenger was passing me, like the wind, about ten miles this side of Illabri, and I stopped him to ask my way. I heard that he was on an errand of life or death, and prevented him from continuing his useless journey, knowing that Dr. Arnheim had left Illabri to go to a station sixty miles in the opposite direction.

I am not a doctor, but I have studied medicine, and I hope to be able to take his place until he can arrive. Even as he spoke he had gone to the bedside of the child, and Lindsay felt perfect confidence in the new comer from the moment she saw with what a tender and practised hand he lifted and felt the child. " Bring a light," he said. Lindsay held a candle close while he examined the child's eyes. " What has he taken ? He is poisoned." " I don't know. I cannot think of anything, except that they are all very careless about the strychnine which they use for poisoning the dingoes." " It is not that ; it is more likely belladonna. What have you done ? " Lindsay explained the remedies she had tried without avail. " You have drugs — a medicine chest ? " " Oh, yes ; there's a fully supplied one in the office.

I will send for it." The medicine chest was brought, and by great good fortune the required drugs were found in it. The young doctor made a dose, which he administered, and then carefully watched and noted every slightest change. After hours of watching an improvement was observed, a relaxation of the muscles of the face, a movement of the eyelid, and a cessation of the moaning, and at length the hands unclenched, and the purple hue left the lips. From the moment Lindsay had some one to direct her, she became as helpful as woman could be. No words passed between the watchers except curt direc tions or questions from the young man, and quiet, direct replies from Lindsay ; and so the night wore on. "You must be very tired," at last he said to her. " I will watch alone ; there is really a little improvement, and you must take some rest."

Lindsay could not speak ; she stretched out her hand to clasp his with fervent thanks, and left the room. In a short time she had laid a table in the dining-room with the choicest the larder afforded, and had made some fragrant coffee and buttered toast. She had sent her servants to bed early in the night, but the ashes of the great wood fire still burned brightly, and what an inexpressible pleasure she felt in doing with her own hands any trifle for this stranger who had come into her life to-night, and had done so much for her ! If he saved her boy's life, what a life-long debt of grati tude would she not owe him ! Then going back to the bedroom she said : — " I have been sadly selfish all this weary time not to have remembered your fatigue, and that you must be in need of rest and refreshment.

You will forgive me, will you not, and go now into the dining-room and have something to eat ? " " Really, I do not want anything," he replied ; " and I do not wish to leave the child." However, he yielded to her entreaties, and after a very hurried repast he returned to sind Lindsay bending over the child rubbing his body and limbs as she had seen him do ; the little fellow was again moaning painfully. " Will he die ? Oh, will he die ? " " I believe not — I really think not ; but it all depends on the next few hours. If we can counteract the poison he will get over the prostration in a little while." As he spoke the child had a dreadful paroxysm of pain, which left him pale indeed as before, but the drawn, pained looked had left his face, and opening his eyes, a faint flicker of a smile passed over his face at the sight of his beloved mother, soon after his eyes closing fully and naturally, he fell asleep.

" He is safe now, I think," said the watchful doctor. " You really must go and rest now, I will make myself comfortable on this sofa." Lindsay brought pillows and rugs for her companion's comfort, and resigned herself to leave her boy, for she felt bound to obey the commands of this man who was curing him for her. She went first to her husband's office, from whence opened a small skillion room, in which was a stretcher bed. Here he usually slept ; to-night the door was locked, but she could hear inside the heavy snores and breathing which told her that Darcy had not been deterred by the danger of their only child from indulging himself as usual. " I will not wake him," she said to herself; " he does not care for either of us." And with her eyes full of tears, she turned away to a spare room, if not to sleep, at least to rest, after the anxiety and strain of the day and night.

Lindsay could see from where she lay right away over the broad rolling plains to the distant line of purp!e hills, which were gradually separating themselves from the sky as it slowly lightened with the coming dawn. She watched Venus rise with almost dazzling splendour in the pink morning flush ; and soon after, when the six o'clock bell rang to arouse the station hands, her anxiety would allow her to remain no longer. She rose and made a rapid toilet, and went to the end of the verandah, where the sick-room was, intending to satisfy herself with a peep at her darling. At the window stood the young doctor, who met her with a re-assuring smile, and pointed to the bed where Hugh lay sleeping, with a faint flush like the reflection of the dawn on his sweet little face. " Don't go in," he murmured ; " sleep will do him good now."

" Oh, how much better he looks ! " she exclaimed softly, all unconscious that she had closed her two hands over his. " How can I thank you enough !" " We will see how he gets on. That young fellow who came out with me last night looked in some time ago to see if he could do anything. I asked for milk, and I think he milked a cow himself; the boy had a good drink, and see him now ! " "Jack Payne is good and kind, too," said Lindsay; " but you must go to bed now ; that is to be your room at the end, I have had your things put there." " Oh, no ; I am not in the least tired. Payne is coming when he is ready to show me the hole they bathe in. After a 'bogie,' as he calls it, I shall be as fresh as possible." " I forgot to ask your name," said Lindsay, half blushing. "Gerard Grant." " You came out of your way last night to help us, Mr. Grant.

I hope your business will not suffer through your kindness." " No, indeed," he said, smiling brightly. They had moved out of the rocm now on the wide verandah, where the fresh morning air blew them the odour of the magnolias and tube roses, and Gerard Grant looked with interest on the fair scene spread before them. " I am the merest idler, Mrs. Morton, and am only going on a visit to Darribri, my cousin Brian Daly's station, and I believe this is really on my way there. Anyway, it does not matter ; to-morrow, next week, a month hence, will do for Brian — especially as he has no idea I am even in the colony." " Are you indeed Mr. Daly's cousin ! How very strange. He is a great friend of mine, and the best man I know." " Indeed he is a good fellow, Mrs. Morton, as I have had many good reasons for knowing ; he was always ' my guide, philosopher, and friend ' when I was a lad.

Ah, there is Payne beckoning. If the child awakes get him to take that nasty dose in the glass there ; he will sleep nearly all day, and you really need not sit with him all the time.

Chapter II

Sleep breathes at last from out thee, My little patient boy ; And balmy rest about thee Smooths off the day's annoy. I sit me down and think Of all thy winning ways ; Yet almost wish with sudden shrink, That I had less to praise. Leigh Hunt. At eight the bell rang for breakfast, and when Lindsay came into the dining-room great was her surprise to see her husband talking to Mr. Grant on the verandah in what (for him) was a pleasant, genial, even animated way. She would have better understood the phe nomenon if she had heard the subject of conversation, which concerned a black horse Grant had ridden out, and which Morton much approved of; he was ready to form a favourable opinion of the man who had the sense to become possessed of such a good animal, and he unbent from his normal taciturnity to make himself agreeable, in the hope of ultimately persuading Grant to " swop " horses — as Grant's formed a perfect match for a favourite mare he had long wanted a fellow for, to drive in his buggy.

Jack Payne was waiting as usual for Lindsay, in order to fetch and carry for her, and help her make the tea, from the big tea kettle which was deposited on the fireless hearth. He was a nice-looking, good-tempered lad ; hardly out of his teens when fresh from Winchester a year ago, he had come to Bariongo to learn " colonial experience" so that by-and-bye, with the help of a wealthy uncle he might start as a squatter himself. Payne did not mind work, and was ready to turn his hand to anything, from milking the cows, if there was no one else to do it, to shooting down and cutting up a bullock ; and from weighing out meat, flour, tea, sugar and tobacco for rations, to dragging a bogged cow out of the mud of a half dried-up water-hole. He bore harsh treatment and harsher words from " the boss " with unfailing sang froid, taking it all in the day's work, without a grumble ; telling himself it would only be for three years, and that after all, he was learning a great deal, though he might have acquired his experience in a pleasanter school ; and that Mrs. Morton's kindness compensated for much of her husband's rough usage.

" I am so thankful to hear Hugh is better, Mrs. Morton ; I don't know what I should have done if I had gone on to Illabri and Dr. Arnheim had not been there. I never knew miles seem so long before, and yet I never did ride so fast ! I kept wishing for mile posts like there are in England, that I could tell off the distance as I raced by them." " You were very thoughtful to announce your arrival by cracking your whip as you did. At first I could hardly trust my ears, it felt as if something might have snapped in my brain and deceived me ! I was dreadfully afraid, too, that you might have been compelled to return without Dr. Arnheim, from one cause or another. " Oh, for the matter of that, I made up my mind to bring him if he was as drunk as Tim Dooly, the day he waked his grandmother ; I would have sobered him somehow, and he likes coming here because ' Mrs. Morton she do know how to cook de wonga,' but it was much better getting Mr. Grant, wasn't it, though he doesn't call himself a doctor.

I say, now, he is what I call a handsome man ! Isn't he ? " he wound up with schoolboy enthusiasm. Gerard Grant now came into the room with her husband, and Lindsay looked with fresh interest to see how far Jack Payne's praise was justified. Yes, she told herself, he was certainly handsome. A tall man, as tall as Darcy, but with a far better carriage, he had rather deep -set, dark blue eyes, which would alone have entitled him to be called handsome ; he had regular, refined features, a beautiful mouth which dis played the most perfect teeth Lindsay thought she had ever seen, and his hair was rather fair, and though kept short you could see it was inclined to be curly. Lindsay took in, too, the manly figure, broad-chested, flat-backed, and the brown, well-formed hands ; the good fit of his clothes, and above all the look of knowledge and power which had unconsciously influenced her last night, and which now appealed more strongly to her taste than his physical perfections.

And he had a pleasant, cultivated voice, too, and how kind and gentle he was ! Yes, he was certainly handsome, more so even than his cousin, Brian Daly (whom Mrs. Blake called " a pocket edition c of Adonis " ), who had such a dear, kind, handsome face — spoiled though by the effeminacy of the lower part. Mr. Grant had also something of the same quizzical look which gave so much point to Brian's dry fun, probably he had the same quick sense of the ridiculous. What had come over Darcy, he spoke quite kindly to her? " You must be feeling quite done up, Lindsay, but the child is out of danger, Mr. Grant hopes ; so your anxiety is over now." " Yes, Darcy, Hugh is certainly better this morning, thanks to Mr. Grant's care and treatment," answered Lindsay ; " I have left him in a nice sleep now."

Gerard Grant looked at Mrs. Morton as her husband spoke, indeed she did not look as if she had had such a unit blanche, her eyes shone softly and brightly, and she looked very fresh and bright and youthful in her simple white gown confined at her slender waist with a black ribbon. Was this the woman, with the white drawn face, who had helped him so intelligently last night at the bedside of her child and had retained her presence of mind in the worst emergencies ? Young Payne had talked of her as something quite out of the way, charming, " as good, too, as she is pretty ; " and Gerard remembered he had had a doubt if that were she, when he saw her first. However, she did not look the sort of woman who would bore a man so much during the first day's acquaintance, that he would shun her ever after !