“Every concern of yours is mine, too.”
“How is the mine going?”
He did not answer. He looked very sad.
I said: “Everyone here is so kind to me.”
“I shall make sure everything is done … everything possible.”
“Thank you, Ben. It was good of you to call.”
“You speak as though I am just one of the others.”
“That, Ben, is really what you have become.”
“I’ll talk to you later. At the moment you are too shocked.”
I said, “Thank you,” and he left me.
Gervaise was buried in the graveyard. They gave him a hero’s funeral. The parson came from Walloo to preside.
It was very moving. I was there, Morwenna on one side of me, Justin on the other. I was a pathetic figure … the widow soon to bear the dead man’s child … the man who had died a most heroic death and had won the admiration of every single one of them.
The parson spoke of him most movingly.
“His death is an example of the supreme sacrifice. His friend was in danger. No one could have expected him to take such a terrible risk. But he did not hesitate. They had come out together; they had worked together in amity; they were friends.”
Visions of them, facing each other across the card table, came to me … Gervaise, departed from his usual nonchalance, blazing with anger; Justin crouching before him: Gervaise seizing Justin and shaking him as though he were a dog.
“Greater love hath no man than he who layeth down his life for his friend,” said the parson.
I saw that many of those present were openly weeping.
And so they laid Gervaise to rest not far from the remains of David Skelling.
I thought: He will never go home now. He will never find that fortune which he was so sure would be his.
Poor Gervaise. He had always lost.
Morwenna had left Golden Hall, much to Lizzie’s sorrow. She visited us frequently and was constantly bringing gifts for the baby. She was worried about me, too.
“Angelet,” she said, “you must go and stay at the Hall. Your baby must be born there.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Thank you, but that is not possible. You are so good to us all and it is so kind …”
“But I want you to come,” she insisted, her eyes filling with tears. “I love little babies.”
“We have to be in our own homes, Lizzie,” I said. “We just cannot go into other people’s.”
“Ben wants you to come.” She smiled triumphantly. “He says he is going to insist.”
“I couldn’t, Lizzie.”
She thrust that aside. I could see she thought Ben’s wish must be law.
I had long talks with Justin and Morwenna.
“We’re going home,” said Morwenna with delight. “We have decided that, haven’t we, Justin? I have written to Pa and Mother. They’ll be so very pleased. They’ve hated our being so far away. We are going to take you with us, Angelet.”
I looked down at my spreading figure.
“We’re going to wait,” said Morwenna. “We’ve worked it all out. We won’t go before the baby is born. You couldn’t travel yet and then you wouldn’t want to until the baby is, say … six months old.”
“That will be nearly nine months. You wouldn’t want to wait all that time. You’d better go now. I’ll make my own way home.”
“Of course we wouldn’t do that, would we, Justin? You see, if you know that you are going, it is not so bad. You count the days … You tick them off as they pass and you know it’s getting nearer. What is so dreadful is not knowing when it is going to end. We want to wait for nine months, don’t we, Justin?”
Justin answered: “Yes, we do and we shall. We’re not going to leave you here, Angelet. We shall all go back together. After all, even if we weren’t going to wait for you we couldn’t just walk out. In the meantime I shall get someone to help me work the mine.”
“Oh Justin, you can’t go down there again … after what happened.”
“I think I know where it went wrong. There was so much damp down there that the wood rotted. You get to learn these things, you know. You don’t make the same mistakes twice.”
“I know you are longing to get away after all you went through … particularly Justin. Please don’t worry about me. I’ll manage.”
But they would not hear of it.
Later I talked to Justin alone.
He said: “I feel so ashamed. Only you in this place can know how ashamed I feel.”
“It’s all over,” I said. “Gervaise is dead. Only the three of us knew what happened on that night. You can’t go on thinking of it forever.”
“We had not spoken in friendship … since it happened,” he went on. “He despised me, I know he did. I saw it in his eyes …”
“Yes,” I said. “Cheating at cards. It was the ultimate sin. Gervaise was obsessed by gambling …”
“So many of us are.”
“Are you going to give it up?”
He looked helplessly into space.
I said: “You could go home. There would be a place for you with Morwenna’s father …”
“I know. I’m going to try. I feel I can never forget this. It was so noble of him.”
“There was a lot of nobility in Gervaise.”
“Oh yes. He hated me. He despised me. There was no need for him to come down like that. If he had not, he would be here today. I should be lying where he is. Why did he do it? He knew what a risk he was taking.”
“He liked to take risks. He was a gambler right to the end. He thought he could win … always. He was betting then against the biggest odds ever. But this time he was betting for a different reason. Not for gain … but for another man’s life.”
“And he lost,” said Justin.
“No, he won. He saved your life, Justin. That was his aim.”
I turned away to hide my emotion.
“Oh, Angelet, I’m sorry. I should have been the one. I’m the unworthy one.”
I said: “You have made Morwenna happy. That is wonderful. You have your son. You will love him and care for him. Justin, we have to forget what we have done in the past. We have to grow better for our experiences … we have to learn from them.”
He looked at me very seriously and said: “I shall do all I can for you, Angelet. I shall try to repay Gervaise through you.”
The weeks passed. Everyone in the township wanted to show their appreciation to the widow of a hero.
Morwenna was my constant companion. She was very happy at the prospect of going home. She talked of it most of the time. “Eight more months … the time will soon be gone.”
Justin had taken a partner with whom he worked—John Higgs, who would take over the claim when he left. They had shored up the mine afresh and everyone declared it was as “safe as houses” now—however safe they were.
I believe it must have been something of an ordeal to descend the mine after what had happened to him; but he did. I daresay he was spurred on by the hope that he would find gold after all. What a wonderful conclusion to his life at Golden Creek that would be … to have escaped death to find a fortune.
Nothing so spectacular happened; there were the trivial finds now and then—just enough to raise hopes. He played cards occasionally. I wondered if he cheated. I did not ask. I did not want to know.
I no longer wanted to make hasty judgments of people. One could not know them … ever, it seemed. I thought often of Gervaise … sadly, nostalgically, remembering so much of him that I had loved. Whenever I thought of our escape from the auberge I would supplant that image with one of the hero and remember the last glimpse I had had of him, the dirt caking his hair and streaking down his face—Gervaise the elegant man about town as I had first seen him. I would always remember the look of triumph on his face when he had brought up Justin. He had gambled his life and lost it but he had won in the end because his goal had been to save Justin, the man whom he despised as a cheat.