The Shadow of the Lynx (20 page)

But wait, I cautioned myself. Had I found it? Had I become touched by that madness which gold seemed to bring? j I was trembling with excitement. Perhaps it was not gold at’s all. What did I know of it?

It was just some sort of dust ?

126 3

which had been coloured by the rocks above me.

I thought of my father’s pursuing the back-aching work of cradling and panning for months, the hardships he must have suffered before throwing in his lot with Lynx. I pictured his searching wildly for the precious metal. Could it be possible that I, without thinking, had meant to drink from a stream and had found instead of water, gold!

Then I was certain, for on the bank of the creek lay a small shining piece of metal about the size of a nutmeg. I bent down and picked it up. It was yellow gold.

I don’t know how long I stood looking at the nugget. The impulse came to me to throw it away, to ride back and say nothing of what I had found. Something told me that if I took it back it would lead to disaster. I imagined the excitement there would be in the house.

Surely if I had discovered it so easily there must be a great deal very near at hand. It had killed my father; it had done something to Lynx. I thought of the Lambs who had gone in search of it, and poor Jemmy. I thought of men dying of phthisis. All for gold.

I looked up at the tall ghost gums as though asking them to decide for me. Their leaves moved slightly in the breeze, aloof, indifferent to the fortunes of men. They had stood there perhaps for hundreds of years. They would have seen the convicts come, the gold rush start and the days before it had all happened when the country was peopled only by the dark men.

There was no answer up there.

Could I find gold and not tell? How could I face Lynx in the library and keep the secret?

I put the nugget into my pocket and rode back to Little Whiteladies.

I went straight to the library. Lynx was there alone. He stood up when he saw me.

“Nora,” he cried.

“What’s happened?”

I did not speak. I merely drew the nugget from my pocket and held it out to him in the palm of my hand.

He took it gingerly; he stared at it; I saw the quick colour flame into his face. His eyes were like blue flames. He was on fire with excitement.

“By God,” he exclaimed.

“Where did you get this?”

“At the creek where my father was shot. I held out my hands to get a drink of water from the stream coming from the plateau. It left a deposit in my hands, a yellow dust. I

vasn’t sure what it was. Then 1 scooped and found this. “

“You found it! Lying there on the bank of the creek!” He stared at the nugget which he had taken from my hand.

“It’ll weigh all of twelve ounces. And you found this dust and this .. Then it’s there somewhere. It’s there in quantities….” He laughed.

“And Nora found it. My girl, Nora!” He drew me to him and gave me a hug which was almost suffocating. I thought though: He is embracing gold, not me.

He released me; he was still laughing.

“I can’t help it,” he said.

“All those years, all that toil and sweat, all that hope. And Nora goes out, thinks she would like a drink of water, and it falls into her hands!”

“It may be nothing much.”

“Nothing much! With the dust coming down in the water so that all you have to do is catch it. And the nugget lying there on the bank! And you say that may be nothing! You don’t know gold country.” He was sober suddenly.

“Not a word to anybody … nobody at all. We’re going out there at once. We’ll take Stirling. And no one is to know where we’re going. Nobody must guess what’s there until I’ve made it mine.”

I caught his excitement. Gold! And I had found it. I knew how men felt when they had their lucky strike. I was triumphant, exultant, excited as I had never been before—because I had found gold. Then I realized that this sensation did not come from merely finding gold; it was because I had found gold for Lynx.

The weeks slid by in a feverish tension which was all the more intense because the news must be kept secret. No one knew about the find but myself, Stirling and Lynx. No one must know. We lived in terror that anyone should find what I had found.

Lynx and Stirling had examined the terrain and were absolutely certain that it would give the richest yield ever found in Australia. On the top of the plateau, which was difficult to scale—and it must be for this reason that the gold field had never been discovered—was a fortune. It had been there, so close, for all these years. That was what amazed them. They regarded me as though I were some genius to have discovered it.

I myself was elated.
had brought them this luck. I had made all this possible. I was to be the maker of their fortunes. I felt proud of myself and refused to listen to the inwardp>

warning which demanded to know what good had ever come from gold.

I was caught up in the excitement. I had forgotten all the unhappy events of the past. It was only the urgent need to keep our secret which made me able to hide my exhilaration.

There were conferences in the library in the evenings when I was supposed to be playing chess with Lynx. Stirling would come in to join us. Lynx was buying the land and it was not just the ground which held the plateau that he was negotiating for. That would have been to arouse suspicion. He wanted to extend his property, he said; he was thinking of getting more sheep. It was some time before he acquired the land but he and Stirling had already scaled the plateau and found what lay at its summit. There was no doubt that it was gold. They had already discovered rich alluvial deposits as they had expected from the gold dust which was carried down by the stream; but Lynx was certain that the real wealth lay beneath the surface.

“There’ll be lodes of gold at various levels,” he explained.

“We’ll take the shafts down as deep as need be.”

Stirling was impatient to get to work. So were we all. But for the time, until the golden plateau was Lynx’s own, there must be. secrecy.

There came the day when he called Stirling and me to the library. He solemnly opened a bottle of champagne and filled three glasses.

He said: “The land is mine. We have our fortune. We are going to be rich as few people have ever been.”

He handed a glass, first to me then to Stirling before he took the other.

“First,” he said, ‘to Nora, the founder of our fortunes. “

“It was sheer luck,” I insisted.

“I shouldn’t have known what to do about it without you.”

“You did the right thing. You came straight to me.” His eyes were shining with love and approval; and I thought I had never been so happy in my life.

“Now,” he said, ‘to us. The triumphant Triumvirate. “

Then we drank.

I said: “Are you sure? After all, as yet you have not sunk your shafts.”

Lynx laughed.

“Nora, even now we have found a nugget sol.-p 129

which weighs two thousand ounces. I’ll guarantee it is worth ten thousand pounds. And we have not yet begun. There’s gold up there, gold to make any miner’s dream come true. Don’t fret. We’re rich.

After all these years you’ve led us to what we’ve been looking for.

”

We put down our glasses. I held out my hands. Lynx took one, Stirling the other.

“This is what I wanted more than anything,” I said. Lynx laughed at me.

“So you felt the gold fever, too, Nora.”

“No, not gold fever. I just want to give you both what you most want.”

Then Lynx held me in his arms again and said softly in a strangely tender voice: “Nora, my girl Nora.” Then he tet me go and handed me as it were to Stirling. Stirling’s arms were round me and I clung to him.

“I believe I’m crying,” I said.

“People who don’t cry when they’re hurt will cry for happiness.”

Now the activity had started. Everyone was talking about the find.

Lynx had struck gold—real gold. They had always known he would one day. It was just his luck. The ground yielded its alluvial gold—a fortune in itself. But Lynx was not stopping there. He was sinking deep shafts and he was going to get the gold which he knew lay in the quartz reefs below the ground. He closed the old worthless mine, all workers were transferred to the new one and more were engaged. The scene of my father’s murder had changed completely. The birds had deserted the place; the sound of gunpowder explosions had frightened them away; steps had been cut in the earth to enable men to mount the plateau;

drays were constantly passing along the road taking the gold to the bank in Melbourne. The place had been renamed. It was: Nora’s Hill.

I saw less of Lynx and Stirling. They were always at the mine. A place had been built there so that they could sleep in some sort of comfort when they did not come home. The fortune was being accumulated. I was constantly hearing of nuggets that had been found. I remember the excitement when one over two feet long was discovered. It was mentioned in the Melbourne papers and reckoned to be worth twenty thousand pounds.

There was a kind of breathlessness everywhere, but for me the excitement had worn off. I was not as happy as I had

been in the first flush of discovery.

A stranger came to the house and was closeted a long time with Lynx.

Adelaide told me that he was her father’s lawyer and that he was going to England on Lynx’s business.

It was said that Lynx was now a millionaire. This was probably true, but he wasn’t satisfied. I wondered if he ever would be.

Once I said to him: “You are very rich now.”

He admitted it.

“You too, my dear. Don’t forget you have your share in our good fortune. Didn’t I say it was a triumvirate?”

“How rich?”

“Do you want figures?”

“No. They would mean little to me. But I believe it is rich enough.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That now you might give up this feverish activity and leave others to work for you.”

“Other people never work for you as you work for yourself.”

“Does it matter? You have enough.”

“I’m going to get all the gold out of that mine, Nora.”

“You are insatiable … for gold.”

His eyes gleamed.

“No,” he said.

“I shall know when I have enough. I need to be very rich.”

“And then?”

“And then I shall do what I have always planned to do. I have waited a long time, but now I see the fulfilment in sight.”

He said no more then, but he alarmed me a little because there was a hardening of his lips and I knew that the thought of revenge was in his mind.

Revenge on the man who had had him sent away over thirty-five years ago! Did people harbour feelings of revenge for so long? A man like Lynx did, I knew. It worried me because I knew that there was no happiness to be found in revenge.

The months went by and Christmas had come once more. We had the usual celebrations in the English style: the hot meal in the burning heat of the day; the plum pudding steeped in brandy; the mock mistletoe. I remembered the last Christmas when the Lambs had come and been turned away. I wondered what had happened to them now and remembering the relentlessness of Lynx on that occasion I was apprehensive. At the beginning of January, the lawyer came to the house

o these councils, but I noticed that afterwards there was a triumph in Lynx’s eyes; and I guessed it had something to do with his dreams of revenge.

One evening he asked me to play a game of chess with him and when I went to him, the door to his studio was open and he called to me to come in.

“Come here, Nora,” he said; and when I went to him he put his hands over my eyes; then he turned me round until I was facing the wall.

Then he took his hands away and said:

“Look!”

It was a portrait of me in my riding habit, my top hat slightly to one side, my eyes wide and the colour in my cheeks.

“All my own work,” he said.

“When did you do it?”

“Is that your first question? I show you a portrait of yourself and all you say is ” when? “

“But I did not sit for it.”

“Did you think that was necessary? I know every contour of your face, every fleeting expression.”

“But you have been so busy.”

“I have still had time to think of you. Tell me, do you like it?”

“Isn’t it rather flattering?”

“It’s as I see you.”

“I’m glad I look like that to you. I don’t to myself.”

“That’s how you are when you look at me.”

“But why is it hanging there?”

“It’s a good place for it … the best in the room.”

“But the other picture was there.”

He nodded and I saw it then, with its face to the wall.

“But when you sat at your table you could look straight at it.”

“Now I look straight at this.”

“Is that what you want?”

“My dear Nora, you are not showing your usual good sense. Should I put it there if I didn’t?”

I went close and examined it. It did flatter me. Had I ever looked so vital? Were my eyes so large and bright? Did I have that rosy flush?

“It’s as I see you,” he had said.

“So now you will look at my picture instead,” I commented.

“Yes.”

i32

“And Arabella …”

“She is dead.”

“I see. that’s why you have hung me up there. When did you learn that she was dead?”

“Morfeli—he’s the lawyer who has been to England on business for me—went to Whiteladies. He came back with this news.”

“I see.”

“Do you, Nora?” he said; I believed he was on the verge of confidences, but he changed his mind and suggested we play our game of chess.

The heat was intense—far greater than last summer. The grass was dried up and there was anxiety about the sheep at the station; some of the workers died of the heat; but at Nora’s Hill the gold yield continued to be spectacular.

I had seen so little of Stirling since the discovery that when I came face to face with him on the stairs one day I com-piained of this to him.

“We’re busy at the mine, Nora.”