The months went by and Christmas had come once more. We had the usual celebrations in the English style: the hot meal in the burning heat of the day; the plum pudding steeped in brandy; the mock mistletoe. I remembered the last Christmas when the Lambs had come and been turned away. I wondered what had happened to them now and remembering the relentlessness of Lynx on that occasion I was apprehensive. At the beginning of January, the lawyer came to the house o these councils, but I noticed that afterwards there was a triumph in Lynx’s eyes; and I guessed it had something to do with his dreams of revenge.
One evening he asked me to play a game of chess with him and when I went to him, the door to his studio was open and he called to me to come in.
“Come here, Nora,” he said; and when I went to him he put his hands over my eyes; then he turned me round until I was facing the wall.
Then he took his hands away and said:
“Look!”
It was a portrait of me in my riding habit, my top hat slightly to one side, my eyes wide and the colour in my cheeks.
“All my own work,” he said.
“When did you do it?”
“Is that your first question? I show you a portrait of yourself and all you say is ” when? “
“But I did not sit for it.”
“Did you think that was necessary? I know every contour of your face, every fleeting expression.”
“But you have been so busy.”
“I have still had time to think of you. Tell me, do you like it?”
“Isn’t it rather flattering?”
“It’s as I see you.”
“I’m glad I look like that to you. I don’t to myself.”
“That’s how you are when you look at me.”
“But why is it hanging there?”
“It’s a good place for it … the best in the room.”
“But the other picture was there.”
He nodded and I saw it then, with its face to the wall.
“But when you sat at your table you could look straight at it.”
“Now I look straight at this.”
“Is that what you want?”
“My dear Nora, you are not showing your usual good sense. Should I put it there if I didn’t?”
I went close and examined it. It did flatter me. Had I ever looked so vital? Were my eyes so large and bright? Did I have that rosy flush?
“It’s as I see you,” he had said.
“So now you will look at my picture instead,” I commented.
“Yes.”
“And Arabella …”
“She is dead.”
“I see. that’s why you have hung me up there. When did you learn that she was dead?”
“Morfeli—he’s the lawyer who has been to England on business for me—went to Whiteladies. He came back with this news.”
“I see.”
“Do you, Nora?” he said; I believed he was on the verge of confidences, but he changed his mind and suggested we play our game of chess.
The heat was intense—far greater than last summer. The grass was dried up and there was anxiety about the sheep at the station; some of the workers died of the heat; but at Nora’s Hill the gold yield continued to be spectacular.
I had seen so little of Stirling since the discovery that when I came face to face with him on the stairs one day I complained of this to him.
“We’re busy at the mine, Nora.”
“You always are,” I retorted.
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t found it for you.”
He laughed.
“Where are you going now?”
“To sit in the summerhouse.”
“I’ll join you in five minutes.”
It was pleasant to be with him, I told him when he came.
“It’s a mutual pleasure,” he answered.
“I wish there need not be this mad rush for more and more gold.”
“The mine has to be kept going.”
“Couldn’t you sell out now that you have your fortune?”
“I think that’s what my father will probably do, in due course.”
“Do you think he ever would? The more he gets the more he wants.”
Stirling rose at once in defence of his father, as I expected him to.
I wouldn’t have had it otherwise.
“He will know when the moment comes to stop. He’s making us all rich, Nora.”
“Yet what have these riches brought us? Things are the same—except that I see less of you.”
“And that’s a hardship?”
“The greatest hardship.”
He looked at me with a happy smile. I thought: He loves me. Why does he not say so? Now is the time. They have their gold; they can stop thinking of it. Let us give our minds to more important things.
“It’s too much to hope,” I said, ‘that you would share this feeling.”
“I told you when you came out here that you would receive frankness and be expected to give it. You know very well it’s not too much to hope for.”
“Then I’m gratified. Only I must say you don’t make much effort.”
“I’m constantly making efforts which are foiled.”
“Well, don’t let’s waste the little time we have for talking together in discussing lost causes. How rich is your father now and how rich does he want to be?”
“He has plans. He wants to see them fulfilled. That’s how he looks at it.”
“He confides in you.”
“He always has.”
“And you know more than anyone what is in his mind.
“I think I do. I believe he is going to England.”
“Going to England!” I had a picture of him on the lawns of Whiteladies.
“And we shall stay here?”
“I don’t know what his plans are for us.”
“His plans? Should we make our own?”
He was staring ahead of him, a puzzled expression in his eyes. I thought: Lynx has said something to him. There is something I don’t know.
I wanted him to tell me that our future was together. I wanted him to ask me to marry him at once. It was important. I had a feeling that there was a danger in delay. I loved Stirling. I wanted the future to be as I had so often imagined it. I knew exactly what I wanted—and I wanted it now. Now! I thought. We should go to Lynx and tell him. I would say it.
“Stirling and I are going to be married. I am going to belong here for the rest of my life.” And the three of us would go to his study and drink a glass of champagne as we had on that other occasion; and I would make them realize that this was a far more worthy object of celebration than that other. My happiness would be shared with Lynx as well as with Stirling. I would say to him: “The three of us belong together.” I would make him give up his ideas of crazy revenge. So even when I was thinking of marriage with Stirling, it was Lynx who was uppermost in my mind.
Stirling was smiling at me and I was sure that he loved me.
“Now,” I wanted to say.
“Now is the time.”
But he said nothing. I knew that he wanted to tell me that he loved me but that something was restraining him.
And that moment passed.
It was a week later before I was alone with Lynx. The heat was more intense than ever. Even Adelaide felt it and rested in the afternoons.
We longed for the nights but when they came they were so hot that it was impossible to sleep.
We had played our game and sat over the chess board on which my defeated king was held by a knight, a bishop and an aggravating pawn.
I said: “There is something afoot.”
“How would you like to go to England?” asked Lynx.
Alone? “
“Certainly not. We should all go—you, myself and Stirling.”
“And Adelaide?”