Far From Home (23 page)

‘No. No, I didn’t. I had money until that fellow asked me if I wanted a boat! You’d better take me back to shore and let me off.’

‘Can’t do that, mister. Can’t turn this old girl around. You’ve got to travel along whether you want to or not. Unless you want to swim with the crocs.’ He grinned malevolently. ‘And if you can’t pay for your passage, then you’ll have to work for it. So git bailing, mister.’

‘And that’s the last time I saw him.’ Allen finished his tale of Edward Newmarch’s disappearance. ‘I waited for over a month but he didn’t come back. Rodriguez came looking for him. Oh, not himself of course, but two of his men, and villainous characters they were. I tried to convince them that I didn’t know where Newmarch was, but they were hanging around the hotel every day waiting for him to come back, and the management were getting jittery and asked me to leave. I was glad to go in any case, as the bills were getting bigger and bigger, so I paid from out of the money Mr Newmarch had left, found some rooms and moved in there.’

‘He might have come back and not been able to find you,’ Georgiana commented.

Allen shook his head. ‘I left a forwarding address at the hotel and I went in several times to ask if they’d heard from him. But there was nothing. I took a job as a porter to pay for my rooms, but the Negroes and quadroons made life very difficult. They said I was taking their livelihood, so after another month I decided to move on.’ He shrugged and said defensively, ‘I had no identification of my own, only the papers belonging to Newmarch, and I reckoned that if he was playing at being a valet, then I could pretend to be him.

‘I wanted to travel light so I sold some of his things. I’ve still got the money,’ he added, ‘but as he owed me my year’s wages I felt this was within my right. I dressed in his clothes as he’d taken mine and set off back to New York.’

‘How very extraordinary,’ Georgiana said. ‘It’s so preposterous that it could be true!’

‘Oh, it’s true all right, but as to what happened to him, I can’t tell you. I asked around New Orleans. I went down to the wharf to ask if he’d taken a boat passage. But no-one had seen him, or said they hadn’t, and he hadn’t booked a ticket, not in my name or his own.’

‘Well,’ Georgiana said reluctantly. ‘Perhaps I owe you an apology, and I give it. I beg your pardon if I doubted your integrity, but you must see how it appeared?’

‘I do! But just to ease your mind further, I’ve told Bill Dreumel about it,’ he said. ‘He guessed there was something wrong when you and I met at the Marius. He’s an astute man and asked me if I knew you. I gave him the story as far as I knew it on our journey here.’

‘Except that he’s not here!’ She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

‘No. We parted company at Trenton. He has a newspaper company in Philadelphia and needed to go there first. He’ll be back here within the week, I expect. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Gregory.’ He eased himself up from the chair as if he was aching. ‘I need to wash and eat and go to my bed. I’ve had a hard day.’

‘There’s something cooking on the stove,’ she told him. ‘If you can stay awake long enough perhaps you’d like to eat with us? Kitty is making soup and dumplings.’

He stopped in his tracks and his eyes grew large. ‘Soup and dumplings!’ He licked his lips. ‘You mean, real food? Not dry tack?’

‘Yes. I don’t know how she’s managing it but she says that she can!’

When Georgiana next looked out of the cabin door, she saw him swimming in the creek, dipping and diving, disappearing beneath the water, then reappearing. She glanced again and saw, to her great amusement, two other men jump in. Both were quite naked, their white bodies gleaming in the half-light.

Kitty had made a cauldron of onion and barley soup with dumplings floating on top. Isaac had caught a fish, a large one with sharp silver scales, which he cleaned and gutted and which Kitty then floured and fried. She had also made a batch of bread. ‘’Tis Irish soda bread,’ she said proudly. ‘I found baking soda and I remembered my mammy making this when I was just a little bairn.’

‘Just the other day, then, was it?’ Jason grinned. He was one of the men Georgiana had seen swimming in the creek. The other man was Ellis. Both had been working at the mine with Robert Allen, or Ted as they knew him, for as he had explained to Georgiana earlier, he had not felt comfortable with the pseudonym of Edward and had decided to shorten it.

‘Well, ladies.’ Isaac looked up from his dish and wiped his bearded mouth with the back of his hand. ‘If it was up to me, you can stay for good and need never go home, wherever home might be.’

‘It was in England,’ Georgiana said. ‘Now it’s wherever we happen to be. So right now it’s here, wherever this is,’ she added.

‘It’s Dreumel Creek,’ Robert Allen replied, and Georgiana tried her best to think of him as Ted. ‘Though there’s a big question mark as to how much longer we stay. The mine has just about run out,’ he explained. ‘Most of the men who were working here have left. There’s just me, Jason, Ellis and Pike, who’s up there now on guard.’

‘So what’s he guarding if the mine has run out?’ Kitty asked perceptively.

‘Equipment.’ Ted glanced at her. ‘Bill Dreumel and Charlesworth have spent a deal of money on laying the claim, buying pumping machinery – sinking a shaft and timbering it. And paying the men. Then we’ve put up these shanties. We only had canvas tents to begin with but it was so cold in winter. But we’ve to guard the claim in case somebody else comes along.’

‘So all of that will be dead money if the gold’s run out.’ Jason’s words were thick as he munched a mouthful of bread.

‘Why are you still here?’ Georgiana asked him. ‘Why didn’t you leave like the other men?’

‘Don’t know!’ Jason dipped a crust of bread into his tin bowl and wiped around it, soaking up the last of the soup. ‘Just a feeling, I guess.’ He was a young man, maybe nineteen or so, with thick dark hair and a merry grin. ‘I suppose I just want it to succeed. Dreumel’s a great guy. He has – well, vision, I suppose, so I’ll stay until he says it’s all over.’

‘And I’ve nowhere else to go,’ Isaac said, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket he brought out a blackened clay pipe.

Georgiana and Kitty glanced at each other. The longhouse was warm and smelled of wholesome bread and barley. It was now about to be filled with the odour of tobacco.

‘Isaac!’ Kitty got up from the table to serve the fish. ‘How would you like it if I made some sweet bread tomorrow? Sweet honey bread?’

Isaac’s mouth dropped open and he drooled. ‘Oh, Miss Kitty! I ain’t tasted a piece o’ sweet stuff in I don’t know how long.’

Kitty gave him a big smile. ‘Well, all right then. There’s plenty of flour. I’d make a cake only there’s no butter.’

‘There’s a can of corn oil, miss,’ Ellis, who had said very little so far, chipped in. ‘Would that do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Kitty said dubiously. ‘But I could try it. There’s just one thing though.’ She raised a finger and shook it at all of them. ‘I don’t allow smoking in my kitchen – or spitting,’ she added. ‘So if you want to eat cake you’ll have to smoke outside.’

Isaac stared at her. ‘No pipe?’

She shook her head. ‘And no spitting,’ she repeated. ‘Not inside.’

Georgiana hid a smile. She was amazed at Kitty. Everything they had done or been through since leaving England, the girl had taken in her stride. No complaints or moaning. She’d just got on with whatever she had to do. And now, within hours of arriving here, she had taken charge and was giving out orders to these men.

When they had finished eating, all the men except for Ted went outside and Georgiana and Kitty started to clear away, though each man took his own bowl and tin plate to wash in the creek. ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Ted said, and filling a pan with water from a bucket he put it on the stove.

‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said to Georgiana. ‘Although Dreumel knows my story, the other men know me as Ted Newmarch, an immigrant from England. A miner. They’ve no reason to doubt who I am and I’d rather they didn’t know. If they heard I was just a valet, I’d never hear the last of it and they wouldn’t trust me up at the mine.’

‘So you want us to call you by the name of Newmarch?’ Georgiana said. ‘It won’t be easy, considering that the real Edward Newmarch is married to my cousin!’

‘You could try calling me Ted.’ He looked at her with an anxious appeal in his eyes. ‘Otherwise I might as well pack up and leave. And I’ve worked hard on this project.’ He suddenly sounded bitter. ‘For the first time in my life I’ve done something that
I
wanted to do, not just to earn a living, but because I felt it worthwhile. And,’ he went on, ‘I don’t want to let Bill Dreumel down. He’s given me a chance, you see. He’s trusted me, even when he found out I wasn’t who I said I was.’

Georgiana studied him and it was then that she realized that he was only young, maybe twenty-one or -two, younger than her, and as she looked at him in his working clothes and with a rough scrubby beard, he seemed vulnerable. And his present life was in her hands.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘There’s no advantage to me in the men knowing who you are. I came here because I thought you were depriving someone else of their identity, my cousin of her rights, and even betraying Mr Dreumel.’ She saw him bite his lip and take a deep breath. ‘So unless you are a consummate storyteller, I’m quite satisfied on all of those points,’ she continued. ‘And Edward Newmarch has apparently gone to where we can’t find him.’

Relief flooded his face. ‘Thank you, Miss Gregory. I do appreciate that. I’ll be honest with you. I had no intention of staying on with Newmarch. I took advantage of his offer to come to America but I was going to leave as soon as the time was right.’ He gazed keenly at her. ‘He’s an arrogant swaggering fool and a philanderer, but I don’t wish him harm. If ever you write to your cousin, you can say quite honestly that her husband seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘Mm.’ Georgiana was thoughtful. ‘I don’t think so. This is such a vast country, he could be anywhere, and there is no knowing whether he’s alive or dead. You say you’ve still got his papers and pocketbook?’

‘Yes, he’d been to the bank just before he disappeared, but I’ve used most of that money on my wages and paying the hotel bill. There’s not much left. There are notes of credit – you can have those,’ he offered, ‘though I’d rather keep the papers as proof of identity.’

‘I don’t want them,’ she said. ‘If there had been anything worth having I would have written to his wife to tell her. As it is,’ she added, ‘I think we’ll forget about him for the time being. He was always going to be trouble. I suspected that from the first time of meeting him.’

Would I have been so open back in England? she thought. Would I have had such a conversation with a former valet? I am amazed at myself. ‘We’d better just get on with our lives, I think,’ she advised. ‘What mine or Kitty’s will be I don’t know. We’ll just take each day as it comes.’

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Miss Gregory,’ he said awkwardly, ‘I think that you’re very brave.’ His face flushed at the acknowledgement. ‘I was wrong about you,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t think that a lady such as yourself would have had the courage or determination to set off on such a journey with only a maid for company.’

‘Oh, Kitty’s not a maid any more,’ she said. ‘She’s a companion! And
I
must confess that I had underestimated her worth when I asked her to come with me. I knew her to be reliable but I hadn’t realized how dependable she would turn out to be. I wouldn’t have got so far without her. She’s been my strength, she’s cheered me up and not once has she said that she wants to go home.’

‘How much we’ve all changed,’ he murmured. ‘Out here I feel the equal of any man.’ He gave her a fleeting grin. ‘And I never thought that I’d be speaking to a lady of your class in such a manner.’

‘You didn’t know me, that’s why,’ she answered. ‘I haven’t changed all that much but I was as restricted by convention as you were. You may not have known it, but in England I was an active campaigner for the rights of women.’

‘I’d heard something,’ he admitted. ‘But I thought that you were only amusing yourself with the latest fancy! I’m sorry.’

The next morning, when Georgiana and Kitty awoke, the three men had already left for the mine, Isaac remaining behind to guard the camp. ‘Pike will be down later,’ he said. ‘He’ll be coming for breakfast and a sleep.’

‘I’ll make some gruel, shall I?’ Kitty asked. ‘And some more bread?’

When Isaac eagerly nodded, she said, ‘You’d best keep the stove in, then, Isaac. Could you make that your job? See that it doesn’t go out?’

‘I’d sure be glad to! I get darned fed up here on my own with nothing to do all day. Nobody to talk to. It’ll be mighty good to have some company.’

Whilst Kitty organized Isaac and the kitchen, Georgiana saddled up Hetty and rode towards the mountain which led to the mine. The meadowland on either side of the creek was lush and green, with the scent of wild sage. As the slopes rose higher, the terrain changed from bracken to a covering of fir and pine trees. At the end of the valley a trail which had been made by the miners led up the mountain and, although it looked easy at the base, higher up were large boulders which appeared to block the way.

The creek was narrower at this end, its flow coming from a gap beneath the rocks. So what is at the other side of the mountain? she pondered. Where is the creek’s source? And where does it go to at the other end of the valley?

She would have to cross the creek to peer beneath the gap to find out where the waters were coming from. The waters rushed and frothed as they escaped, and, reluctant to get wet as she hadn’t a change of clothes, she decided that she would leave the exploring for another day.

Such a beautiful valley, she considered as she cantered back, letting Hetty have her head. It seems almost a pity that it is hidden away.

Pike appeared a little later in the morning. He was a thickset man with bulging muscles and a scarred face. On Georgiana enquiring if he had had a quiet night up at the mine, he replied that the only thing that had disturbed him was a lone wolf. ‘He nodded a greeting to me,’ he said laconically, ‘and I did the same. Then he went on his way.’