The Shadow of the Lynx (19 page)

He said abruptly: “Let us have our game of chess.”

So we played the strangest game we had ever played. Hitherto he had always beaten me, but that night I turned the tables. I took his queen and a strange feeling of triumph ran through me as I seized her.

“There,” he said rather mockingly, ‘now you have me . provided you play with care. “

So we played on and an hour passed and every time I was ready to make the winning move he baulked me.

But finally I had him cornered.

“Checkmate!” I cried.

He sat back, his elbows on the table surveying the board as if in dismay, and I knew suddenly that he had allowed me to win, just as my father had.

“You let it happen,” I accused.

“Do you think I would?” he asked.

I looked into those extraordinary eyes and did not know the answer.

Yes, indeed our relationship had changed.

Jessica came into Adelaide’s sitting-room where I was sewing. She sat down, looking at me.

“Did you come to hear the book?” I asked.

“Adelaide is busy today so I am not reading.”

“Then we can talk,” said Jessica.

“You affect him deeply,” she went on.

I knew to whom she referred, of course, but I pretended not to.

“He changes when you’re there. I’ve never seen him like that with anyone else … except perhaps Stirling.”

“Stirling is his son,” I reminded her.

“And he looks upon me as his daughter.”

“Not for Adelaide,” she said with a look of triumph.

“She is his daughter. But he was never like that with Adelaide. He killed a man for you.”

I shivered.

“People don’t talk of it.”

“Things are still there even if you don’t talk of them.”

“Plants stay green through constant watering,” I said.

“So do memories. If they are pleasant, that’s good; if not, it’s folly.”

“You’re clever with your talk,” she said.

“It may be that. I wonder whether she was clever.”

Who? “

That woman in England. Poor Maybella wasn’t clever. I was cleverer than she was. If I had been the daughter instead of the niece, I should have been the one. I daresay I would’ve had sons. I wasn’t such a weakling as Maybella. He preferred me. ” A cunning look came into her eyes.

“He wasn’t faithful to her, you know. There were others besides me.”

Then I understood her feelings for Lynx. He had been her lover. She had loved him and now she hated him; and she had allowed this double-edged emotion to govern her life. She had loved Maybella and been deeply jealous of her; she had alternately loved and hated Maybella’s husband. Life had suddenly become very complicated. The present was deeply overshadowed by the past. What had happened in Whiteladies all those years ago haunted the present just as what had happened later at Rosella did.

“Be careful,” warned Jessica.

“It’s not good to come too near to him.

He’s unlucky for women. “

“He’s my guardian. He has taken good care of me. Why should I be afraid?”

“Poor Maybella! She was the most unhappy woman I knew. He despised her; he ignored her; if he had quarrelled with her it would have been better for her. But to be nothing to him, nothing but the means of getting a son. That wounded her; if she had not died in childbed, she would’ve died of a broken heart. I wouldn’t die of that. I wasn’t so weak. I just let my hatred grow and loved to plague him. For he is plagued by my presence here. I see it in his eyes when he looks at me.

He would like me out of the way, but he can’t send me away, can he?

“Jessie shall always have a home.” My uncle said it; Maybella said it.

He couldn’t flout the dead, could he? But he’s a man who would flout the devil. He pretends he doesn’t care that I’m here, that it makes no difference one way or the other. I’m just nothing . nothing in his eyes. But [ think he’d like to see the back of me. “

“Whatever took place years ago is best forgotten when no good can be done by remembering.”

She narrowed her eyes and gazed intently at me.

“He didn’t kill Jagger for attempted rape. He didn’t care about Mary, did he? But this was you. He’s killed a man for you. That’s why I say Beware.”

I put down my sewing.

“Jessica,” I said, ‘it is good for you to be concerned for me, but I can look after myself, you know. “

“You couldn’t, could you, at Kerry’s Creek? So he came to look after you and he killed a man for you.”

I wanted to get away. She was bringing up the memory of that day in all its horror; and superimposed on it was a picture of Lynx arriving at Rosella Creek, with festering sores on his wrists where the manacles had cut into him, and bitter hatred in his heart and a determination that he would one day take his revenge. So he took the short cut to freedom. He married Maybella and Jessica was angry because she had felt that magnetic power and had been his mistress for a time;

and had she been the daughter of the house instead of the owner’s niece, she would have been Lynx’s wife instead of Maybella.

I understood Jessica’s bitterness as I never had before. Yes. my experiences had made me grow up.

The winter came ana inc ya. Airt lands were under water. This was an anxious time for the property, but James Madder proved to be a skilful manager. With the help of Stirling, who was spending more and more time on the property, he worked so hard in these difficult circumstances that the damage proved to be less than had been feared.

The winds were bitingly cold and we had snow; it was hard to believe that at Christmas time the heat had been almost unendurable.

There was an explosion in the mine and several men were hurt. Stirling and his father rode over and spent two weeks there. The mine was of greater concern to Lynx than the property. I wondered what disaster would strike next.

I was very sad one morning when the body of a boy was brought in. He had been found by some of the men who worked on the property.

Evidently lost in the bush, he had died of exposure and starvation. It was a further blow to discover that the boy was Jemmy, the stowaway.

He must have been trying to find the road back to us, though what his reception would have been had he arrived, he must have known. Perhaps he believed that I would have intervened to plead for him and that I should have succeeded again as I had on the ship.

“He was lost in the bush, poor boy,” said Adelaide.

“It can so easily happen, as I told you. One takes the wrong path without knowing and goes on and on through country which looks exactly the same as that a hundred miles back.”

“Poor Jemmy, if only he’d stayed here.”

“If only they would all stay here, but this lust for gold is the irresistible temptation.”

We buried poor Jemmy; and I wondered what he had run away from in London that had been so terrible. Poor Jemmy, who had come to Australia to be buried in the bush.

Lynx talked to me of the boy and there was a return of the old mockery.

“Your efforts were of no avail,” he said.

“How that boy suffered in his short life!”

“He brought on his own suffering. He could have stayed here and lived.

But he chose to go after gold . and he died. “

“He’s not the first one,” I said bitterly.

“Save your sympathy. He was a runner, that boy. He would never have settled anywhere; and if he had ever found gold

he would have squandered his fortune and then been in dire straits again. “

“How can you know?”

“I know men and women—and that is Jemmy. So don’t grieve for him. You did your best. You brought him here. He left us of his own free will.

He chose the way he would go. No one is to blame but himself. “

“Some people have hard decisions to make.”

“We all do. Let’s forget him. Come, let us play on your board with your beautiful pieces.”

“I believe you regret letting me win them from you.”

“I do … deeply.”

“I don’t believe they were ever yours.”

“Then I did right to let you have them back.” He laughed ruefully.

“What matters it, Nora, that they are yours or mine? We still play with them. They are here in this house and this house is your home.”

He had brought the board and set it between us. He stood for a moment looking across at me.

“I hope, Nora, that it will always be.”

It was indeed true. Our relationship had changed. There was a new gentleness in his manner.

The winter was over and September had come. I spent a good deal of time out of doors, often in the garden. The bush was lovely in springtime when the wild flowers were in bloom; and I had taken to going out riding alone again. I felt safer than I ever had before. At least that terrible affair had done that for me. Everyone for miles round had heard of it and they knew what would happen to any man who dared molest me. They would have to answer to Lynx.

It was a bright and beautiful morning when I rode out. The crows were cawing overhead and the inevitable kookaburras were laughing at the scene; the lovely galahs and rosellas flew back and forth and I feasted my eyes on the wild flowers—reds and blues, pinks and mauves.

In a week or so they would be magnificent—so pleasant to the eye after the winter scene, and even in summer there were few blossoms except those of the flowering gums.

I was glad to be here and alive; I had learned to enjoy again the solitude of my rides. During them I could think of the two men who were rarely out of my thoughts. I did not understand my feelings entirely. I loved Stirling, but I was not sure whether I was in love with him. My feelings for Lynx

were dimcun to oenne. I admired him; I was to some extent in awe of him. t enjoyed as much as anything else in the world to cross swords with him; I loved to see his eyes flash with appreciation when I said something which amused him.

I said aloud: “I’m happy.”

And I was. What had gone before did not matter. The future lay bright before me; I only had to move towards it-and it contained both Stirling and Lynx.

I was in a strange mood that morning. I had always avoided the spot where my father had been killed; but I had a sudden desire to go there. I was not going to brood on the past; I would ignore the shadows it cast. I would accept the fact that life was different here, it was cheaper and death could come suddenly, more suddenly than at home. Men lost their way in the bush and died, or they were shot for disobeying the moral code laid down by the people. This was the nature of things and one did not brood.

My father had died. I had lost the one I had loved beyond all others . then. But now my life had changed and there was another . others, perhaps I should say. I had a father to replace the one I had lost; he was entirely different and I was not sure of my feelings for him, but that he was important to me there was no doubt. And there was Stirling—my dearest Stirling—named after one of the rivers of this country, a tribute to Australia from one of its unwilling sons because here he had found a way of life which was tolerable for a man of his spirit. I did not believe he could live in quite the same way in England. I remembered an occasion when I had mentioned this to him and he had replied: “Some men can, Nora. It depends. A man can rule his village if he is its squire. He lives in a big house; he controls the lives of all those around him; that is how it was with Sir Henry Dorian.”

I had replied that it was a sad thing when people could not be content with their lot. They might have a great deal but they hankered after what they fancied they had missed. Did he think he could have more power, or whatever it was he craved, in his English village than here in his Lynx Empire?

He had laughed at me; he knew what he wanted; he had fashioned a dream, I told him, and if he ever realized it it might well be that the reality was different from the dream.

How we talked and how reluctant I always was to leave him!

I had come to the clearing—that spot where my father had

been shot. The sheer beauty of it was breathtaking. It looked different from when I had last seen it; the multi-coloured wild flowers had transformed it; the ghost gums rose high, majestic and imperious, indifferent to what happened so far below them. Here was the path along which the dray would have come. The bush rangers would have been hiding in the grove of wattles. I must not think of it, or if I did I must remember that it was in the past, and mourning could do no good, and that because it had happened I had a new father. And I had Stirling to love and cherish me—perhaps for ever.

I was thirsty and wondered whether the water in the creek was drinkable. I dismounted, tied up Queen Anne and walked over to the creek. The water was silvery in the sunlight as it trickled down from the high plateau. There were deep gullies on the side of the hills;

here and there I saw the granite rock, the slate and what looked like quartz.

I cupped my hands and caught the water as it tumbled down the side of the plateau. It was not drinkable, I decided; it was muddy and as it trickled through my fingers it left a sediment.

I stared. I could not believe it. The sediment was like yellow dust.

I had begun to tremble. I looked up at the plateau. I stared at the trickling water. I held out my hands again and caught it as it fell.

There was the same yellow sediment.

Could it be? I had heard such talk of it. Was this possible? Gold!

Could it fall into one’s hands when one was not searching for it?

I looked up again at’ the plateau. The sides were steep; the water trickling over could be conveying the message.

“There is gold up here.” But if that was so, why had no one discovered it? The answer to that was: Because someone has to for the ;

first time. I remembered stories of how shepherds minding their sheep had come across gold in the fields, and a humble shepherd had ;

become a rich man. It had happened more than once.

I stood uncertainly. Then I heard the kookaburras laughing.

It was ironical, if this should be true, that I who hated gold should be the one to find it.