“There is nothing. We shall go away from here. You will stay in your comfortable house until you have made that vast fortune. It will probably take years and years and then we shall both be old enough and wise enough to laugh at this folly.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“What else?”
“I never accept defeat.”
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
“I am in love with you and you with me. You are married to a nice decent man. He’s a gambler. He’s a loser, Angel. I know one when I see one. Your life with him will be a continual running away from creditors. You feel you can live with that now. It has brought you to this primitive society because you had to run away. Leave him now. I shall be waiting for you.”
“You can’t really mean that.”
“What I mean is that we should not sit down meekly and accept what life deals out. You have married this man. I admit he has charm. He is gracious and courteous, the perfect English gentleman. But I will tell you what your life with him will be. I can see it clearly. I know men. He’s a loser, I tell you. He’s different from your friend Justin Cartwright.”
“What do you mean?”
“He is a man who knows how to win.”
“To win?”
“I’ve heard things. He has good luck at the table. Every time he plays he walks off with some winnings. He’s more likely to make his fortune at the tables than in the mines.”
“How do you know this?”
“They play at the saloon. Old Featherstone runs a profitable business with his saloon. He’s one of those who has a way of making money and isn’t winding up the windlasses either. There are all sorts of ways to fortune and your friend Justin is not too bad at one of them.”
“Perhaps he’ll want to go home. He is worried about Morwenna.”
“I think that’s likely. The London clubs would be more profitable than a township in the outback. Prospecting for gold by day and winning at the tables by night … well, it’s a pity for Gervaise’s sake that a little of Justin’s luck doesn’t rub off on him. Angel, you’ve got to leave him. Tell him. If we talked to him and told him how things were he would understand. He is that sort.”
“I think you are mad, Ben.”
“Yes … mad for you, Angel. I knew it would be like this between us as soon as you stepped off that ship. I thought of you often … but as a little girl. I was attracted then … I knew there was something between us … and when I saw you again I was sure of it.”
“We should not be talking like this.”
“My dear Angel, you are not in your parents’ drawing room now. Are you going to let life buffet you which way it wants to?”
“I am married to Gervaise. I love Gervaise. I will never leave him. He is a good man. He is kind and he has been good to me.”
“You will always be at the mercy of his obsession with gambling. Believe me, I know. I have seen this sort of situation before. It mustn’t happen to you, Angel.”
“And you? Are you not obsessed? You vowed to make a fortune and you say you will not leave here until you do. Isn’t that rather the same?”
“No. I am going to. … He never will.”
“How do you know? He might strike gold tomorrow.”
“Suppose he does? Suppose he goes home? I guarantee that he would lose the lot in a very short time. A couple of years … perhaps three. That’s the pattern of a gambler’s life.”
“I do not want to talk like this, Ben.”
“I never sit down and accept defeat,” he told me vehemently. “We were meant for each other. Never forget that.”
“It is foolish to talk in this way.”
“It is truthful. I love you. I want you. One day we shall be together.”
As he spoke he picked up a handful of earth and let it slip through his fingers. “I’ll find what I seek in this land,” he went on. “And one day you and I will be together.”
I said: “We must go back now. I don’t want to leave Morwenna too long. Look at your hands. What do you expect, playing with the soil like that?”
He looked towards the creek and said: “I’ll wash them in there.”
I watched him, as he knelt by the creek, and I tried hard to subdue the disturbance he had created in me.
He was right. I loved him. I knew that full well now. I doubted his faults were any less than those of Gervaise; but his would be the faults of strength; Gervaise’s those of weakness. Gervaise acted not because he wanted to but because the weakness in him made him submit to his obsession; Ben acted through strength and the certainty that the world was made for him. What was there to choose? From a point of morality … nothing. It was a matter of strength and weakness. But what sense was there in making comparisons? Love came without being bidden. One did not really love for that sort of reason.
He was a long time at the creek. I saw him dabbling his hands in the water. I rose and, going to my horse, untethered it and mounted. I must get back to Morwenna.
He seemed reluctant to leave the creek.
“I’m going now,” I called.
He rubbed his hands on his coat as he turned.
He was very quiet and seemed to be deep in thought as we rode back to the house.
He is regretting his outspokenness, I thought. He is realizing that he should never have said what he did.
I was glad he had, though. It was a warning to me. In view of those feelings he had expressed for me and mine for him, I should have to take care.
The next day there was excitement throughout the township.
One-Eye Thompson and Tom Cassidy had found gold—not just a speck or two but the real thing.
One-Eye—so called for obvious reasons, but no one seemed to know how he had lost his right eye—was a man who did not mingle very much with his fellows. He lived in a shack which he shared with his partner, Tom Cassidy; they were usually a taciturn pair, and they were rarely at the saloon unless it was to drink a mug of ale and then depart immediately afterwards.
They had worked steadily and, until this time, without success.
The news spread rapidly. If someone had found gold in any quantity it could mean that there were still rich alluvial deposits in the neighborhood. Hope ran like a fire through the settlement.
One-Eye had little to say but Cassidy could not contain his joy.
“It’s come at last,” he said. “We’re made. Soon it will be Home for us … millionaires.”
Feverishly they worked raising the wash-dirt from the bottom of their shaft, then taking it to the stream to be panned … that the dross might be separated from the precious gold.
Everyone was talking of One-Eye’s and Cassidy’s luck. There was no other topic of conversation.
For three days they worked furiously turning out the gold. But it did not last. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
“Never mind,” said Cassidy. “Our fortunes are made.”
It was going to be Home for them.
The gold was in bags ready to be taken to Melbourne. There it would be valued; and there was no doubt that they had become rich men overnight.
As was the custom when anyone, as they said, “struck it rich,” there was a celebration throughout the town.
The successful partners would be hosts to the entire community. There would be a roasted sheep; it would be out-of-doors. There would be dancing and singing for when one man experienced such luck it stressed the fact that this could happen to any of them. It was the whole meaning of the life; it brought fresh optimism to the site for everyone knew that if someone had found leads to a “jeweler’s shop” there must be others.
“Gold will be as plentiful as it had been in fifty-one,” they said. “It is just that it is farther down and more difficult to find.”