Harold could not persuade himself to bring out any answer but "I'll see about it;" and when we were alone, he said with a sigh, "If I should be any comfort to her poor heart."
"I should think there was no doubt of that."
"I am afraid of committing murder," answered Harold, almost under his breath, over the trunk.
"Oh, Harold! Not now."
"I don't know," he said.
"You have not seen him for ten years. He may be altered as much as you."
"And for the worse. I could almost say I dare not."
"There's nothing you don't dare, God helping you," I said.
"I shall think. If it is my duty, I suppose God will help me. Hitherto, I have thought my rage against the brutes made it worse for her, and that I do best for her by keeping out of the way."
"I think they would respect you now too much to do anything very bad before you."
"She would fare the worse for it afterwards."
"I am of Mrs. Alison's opinion, that she would be willing for the sake of seeing her son, and such a son."
Harold sighed.
"But it could not have been so dreadful when Eustace lived with them, and was so fond of the man."
"He nattered Eustace to curry favour with him and his father. He has sunk much lower. Then he lived like a decent clergyman. He has thrown all that off in New Zealand, and fallen entirely under the dominion of that son. I could wish I had quite throttled that Dick when I so nearly did so at school."
"If you say such things, I shall think you ought not to trust yourself there."
"That is it--I am afraid. I have crimes enough already."
It was too great a responsibility to persuade him to put himself into temptation, even now that he knew what prayer was. I longed to have seen him come yet nearer, and taken the means of strengthening and refreshing. But he said, "I cannot; I have not time to make fit preparation." And when I pleaded that I could not bear to think of his encountering danger without fulfilling that to which the promise of Everlasting Life is attached, I struck the wrong key. What he was not ready to do for love, he would not do for fear, or hurry preparation beyond what his conscience approved, that he might have what I was representing as the passport of salvation. Whether he were right or wrong I know not even now, but it was probably through the error of the very insufficient adviser the poor fellow had chosen in me. It may seem strange, but I had never thought of his irreligion as an obstacle with Viola, for, first, I knew him to be a sincere learner, as far as he went; and next, her sister's husband had none of the goodness that Lady Diana's professions would have led one to expect in her chosen son-in-law.
We all met and parted at the railway-station, whither Viola came with her brother. Dora had been only allowed to come upon solemn promises of quietness, and at the last our attention was more taken up with her than anyone else, for she was very white, and shook from head to foot with the effort at self-restraint, not speaking a word, but clinging to Harold with a tight grip of his hand, and, when that was not attainable, of his coat. Fortunately the train was punctual, and the ordeal did not last long. Harold put in all his goods and Dermot's, and finally he lifted the poor child up in his arms, held her close, and then, as her hands locked convulsively round his neck, Eustace unclasped them, and Harold put her down on my lap as I sat down on the bench, left a kiss on my brow, wrung Eustace's hand, pressed Viola's, saying, "I'll take care of your brother," and then, with one final impulse, carried the hand to his lips and kissed it, before springing into the carriage, which was already in motion. Poor Dora was actually faint, and never having experienced the feeling before, was frightened, and gasped out, "Hasn't it killed me, Lucy?"
The laugh that was unavoidable did us all good, and I sent Eustace for some restorative from the refreshment-room. The child had to be carried to the carriage, and was thoroughly out of order for several days. Poor little girl, we neither of us knew that it was the beginning of her darker days!
Of Harold's doings in Australia I can tell less than of those at home. He kept his promise, dear fellow, and wrote regularly. But, alas! his letters are all gone, and I can only speak from memory of them, and from what Dermot told me.
Making no stay in Sydney, they pushed on to Boola Boola, avoiding a halt at Cree's Station, but making at once for Prometesky's cottage, a wonderful hermitage, as Dermot described it, almost entirely the work of the old man's ingenious hands. There he lived, like a philosopher of old, with the most sternly plain and scanty materials for comfort--a mat, a table, and a chair; but surrounded by beautiful artistic figures and intricate mathematical diagrams traced on his floor and wall, reams of essays and poems where he had tried to work out his thought; fragments of machines, the toys of his constructive brain, among which the travellers found him sitting like a masculine version of Albert Durer's Melancholia, his laughing jackass adding tones of mockery to the scene, perched on the bough, looking down, as his master below took to pieces some squatter's crazy clock.
When Harold's greeting had aroused him, Dermot said, nothing could be more touching than the meeting with Prometesky, who looked at him as a father might look at a newly-recovered son, and seemed to lose the joy of the prospect of his own freedom in the pride and exultation of his own boy, his Ambrose's son, having achieved it. The beauty of the place enchanted Dermot, and his first ride round the property made him marvel how man could find it in his heart to give up this free open life of enterprise for the tameness of an old civilised country. But Harold smiled, and said he had found better things in England.
Harold found that there were serious losses in the numbers of the sheep of the common stock, and that all the neighbouring settlers were making the like complaint. Bushranging, properly so called, had been extinguished by the goldfind in Victoria, but as my brothers had located themselves as far as possible from inhabited districts, Boola Boola was still on the extreme border of civilisation, and there was a long, wide mountain valley, called the Red Valley, beyond it, with long gulleys and ravines branching up in endless ramifications, where a gang of runaway shepherds and unsuccessful gold diggers were known to haunt, and were almost certainly the robbers. The settlers and mounted police had made some attempts at tracking them out, but had always become bewildered in the intricacies of the ravines, and the losing one's way in those eucalyptus forests was too awful a danger to be encountered.
A fresh raid had taken place the very night before Harold arrived at Boola Boola, upon a flock pasturing some way off. The shepherds were badly beaten, and then bailed up, and a couple of hundred sheep were driven off.
Now Harold had, as a lad, explored all the recesses of these ravines, and was determined to put an end to the gang; and when it became known that Harold Alison was at home, and would act as guide, a fully sufficient party of squatters, shepherds, and police rallied for the attack, and Dermot, in great delight, found himself about to see a fight in good earnest.
A very sufficient guide Harold proved himself, and they came, not to any poetical robber's cavern, but within sight of a set of shanties, looking like any ordinary station of a low character. There a sudden volley of shot from an ambush poured upon them, happily without any serious wounds, and a hand-to-hand battle began, for the robbers having thus taken the initiative, it was hardly needful to display the search warrant with which the party had come armed. And to the amazement of all, the gang was headed by a man who seemed the very counterpart of Harold, not, perhaps, quite so tall, but with much the same complexion and outline, though he was somewhat older, and had the wild, fierce, ruffianly aspect of a bushranger. This man was taking deliberate aim at the magistrate who acted as head of the party, when Harold flung down his own loaded rifle, sprang upon him, and there was the most tremendous wrestling match that Dermot said he could have imagined. Three times Harold's antagonist touched the earth, three times he sprang from it again with redoubled vigour, until, at last, Harold clasped his arms round him, lifted him in the air, and dashed him to the ground, where he lay senseless. And then, to the general amusement, Harold seemed astonished at his state as he lay prone, observing, "I did not want to hurt him;" and presently told Dermot, "I believe he is old Mrs. Sam Alison's son."