Denis Dent: A Novel

These wonderful days were also the most comfortable that the partners had yet spent upon the diggings. They were properly looked after for the first time. They had three good meals a day, to say nothing of coffee and a biscuit before they went to work in the early morning and afternoon tea with hot cakes or any other incongruous luxury which happened to occur to the steward's mind. Denis said it was a good thing they were working so hard. Doherty rolled his eyes and put on flesh. The pair were being spoiled and cosseted by a master-hand, and it did them more good than their success. They were the better workers by day, the better sleepers by night, and this despite the manifold excitements of every waking hour.

Jewson was excelling himself; but an outsider would have said it was well worth his while, for Denis had hit upon a scale of pay which made him after all a small partner, whose earnings might amount to several sovereigns a day, and could not fall below five pounds a week. As prices went, the bargain was not extravagant, and Denis was the first to appreciate the blessing of better food; the steward's prowess was no small asset in the suddenly successful concern, and he must be kept in it by hook or crook; on that the partners were agreed. And yet Denis was as far as ever from trusting the man in his heart, though his original prejudice had abated not a little.

Jewson wore a shade over the blackened eye, which had only been exposed by moonlight; but Denis's distrust was not such as to make him want to lift it, because it never occurred to him to discredit the account of his cousin's violence; and therein is seen the working of another prejudice, on which a cunning brain had counted all along. A simple nature, on the other hand, is simple even in its suspicions; and the worst that Denis harboured were engendered by Jewson's strange practice of shopping at night only and usually being hours about it. Denis sometimes had a mind to follow him, but it was not in his nature to play the spy, and so the real spy went free.

The lucky pair took their luck very coolly, one because he did not understand the value of money, the other because he understood it too well to estimate a thousand pounds at a penny more than a tithe of the ten thousand on which he had set his heart. In money matters, however, the point of view is everything, and in none is it more mercurial. A day or two served to inure the partners to the idea of dividing a couple of thousand a week, and Denis began almost to resent the fact that at this rate it would take ten whole weeks for him to reach his minimum; he was also annoyed that in all the gold they had got there was not as yet a single nugget.

"I promised to send the first one home to England," he said openly in the hut. "I would give a hundred pounds to have one worth fifty to send by the mail to-morrow night!"

Jewson was crouching over his camp-oven at the time; his back straightened, and for some moments he sat in an arrested attitude, his head thrown up in undisguised attention; but this was not noticed, and his face could not be seen.

That night the steward was so long upon his rounds that Denis did not sit up for him, but decided on a word of remonstrance in the morning. Yet when morning came, the coffee was so hot and aromatic, the biscuit so crisp, the fresh air so cool and so invigorating, that he found it difficult to complain just then. And in the first hour of the new day that happened which effaced all untoward impressions from his mind.

Denis had been lowered into the shaft to dig. Doherty had raised one bucket of wash-dirt, and was waiting for the next, when a loud shout brought him to the shaft's mouth.

"A nugget, Jimmy! A nugget in the nick of time! I nearly cut it in two with the spade!"

It was a very small nugget, much in the shape and size of a kidney-bean, but of singularly pure and smooth gold, and Denis declared that it was just the thing. With the point of his knife he removed every particle of earth, and then scrubbed it with soap and water until it was as bright as the last sovereign from the mint. It seemed to give him greater pleasure than all the gold-dust despatched to Geelong; and no more work was done before breakfast, which was taken with the nugget on the table in front of Denis, save when he pressed a piece of twine into the cleft made by the spade and tried how it looked round Doherty's neck.

"Half should be yours, by rights," he said; "but you won't mind if I credit you with the weight instead? Don't be a fool! Of course I'll do that! But it was almost my last promise – to send her my first nugget – and it's been such a long time coming."

"Funny it's coming just when you wanted it for the mail," remarked Doherty in perfect innocence; but the steward spoke up from his self-appointed place beside the fire.

"I only wonder it's the first," said he; "but you take my word it ain't the last. Talk about jewelers' shops! You've opened one of the best on Ballarat. Look at the men you're bringing back to the gully; there'd be a rush if it wasn't for the depth they've got to sink, and that you had all done for you. I sha'n't be satisfied till I see you put your pick into a bit like they took out of Canadian Gully twelve months ago."

Nothing could have been more consistent and withal less officious than the discreetly sympathetic encouragement of the steward; he also knew something about gold-mining, and his unobtrusive suggestions were often of value. Denis was indeed more and more unable to reconcile the useful landsman with the ship's steward who had broached the ship's spirits and misbehaved himself in other ways; but after all, a man might pull himself together, and having suffered from a bad master, might well desire to make the most of a good one. So Denis was imposed upon while still as much on guard against imposition as these engrossing days allowed.

And the eight days of harvest were almost at an end; that very morning there was a subtle change in the appearance of a bucketful that Doherty sent up, and Denis forthwith washed an almost wholly unprofitable tub. He then went down the shaft, and found as he expected that they had struck the bottom of the gutter, and were on the hard paleozoic floor. The difference was even more marked than that between the red clay and the auriferous drift, here only four or five feet thick. There were still some tubs to take before the corners of the shaft were cleared to the bed-rock.

"And then?" asked Doherty with a blank face.

"Then the fun begins."

"Tunneling?"

"Of course."

"But how do you know which way?"

"Down the gully; nothing simpler. But first of all we can try all round with trowels, in holes just big enough to take your arm, like tasting cheese; then where it's richest we shall tunnel for another three months, and if this is the gutter and not a pocket we shall be well enough off by that time to take a spell and talk things over."

They were for once down the shaft together, and as they stood discussing the situation the steward's small head appeared like that of a pin against the little square of sky high above.

"There's a Chinaman selling beer," he shouted down. "Would you like some?"

"Very much," answered Denis. "Draught or bottle, steward?"

"Draught."

"Then take three pints, and cool it in the gallon jar. It's an occasion," continued Denis down below. "The first of the nuggets before breakfast and the last of the gutter before noon; only, it's not the last; and even if it were, that little nugget would be some consolation to me."

When they regained the upper air there was still half-an-hour before the midday meal, and Denis spent it in finishing a long letter and packing the nugget with it in a small tin box unearthed by Jewson. This he tied up in brown paper, but was unable to seal for want of wax; and the parcel remained by his plate as the naked nugget had done at breakfast.

It was now the middle of January, and the hottest weather that Denis had ever known on land. The well-built hut was cooler than the open air, but to swallow a pannikin of tea was to have a warm bath in one's clothes. The beer was therefore a great and timely treat; each man made short work of his pint, and the little package was duly toasted on the eve of its travels. Denis intended taking it to the post-office himself, while the other two enjoyed the siesta which was a necessity of the digger's existence in the hot season. A pipe on the bed was all he would allow himself that day; the others were already asleep when he lit up and began puffing vigorously to keep his eyes open. The eight long days were beginning to tell on him. This one was also of an unbearable and inhuman heat.

Denis was the first to open his eyes. The pipe had dropped from his teeth. It could not have dangled very long, yet the bowl was the coldest thing Denis had touched that day. Well, it was lucky he had not set fire to himself; and since the others were still stretched in slumber, the steward on his blanket near the door, it could not be very late. Time enough at least to do what he had intended doing without disturbing them – and with a bound Denis was in the middle of the floor.

The packet was not on the table where he had left it. Had he left it there? He tore the blankets off his bed in the wild hope of finding it there. No; he remembered keeping his eye on it as he lay back smoking like a sot. In an instant the things were swept off the table in a vain search for the little brown-paper parcel. All this time Denis was venting his feelings in little involuntary cries, but now he called the other two by their names. They stirred uneasily without waking.

Denis began to guess what had happened. His mouth was dry and his head heavy. The light had altered. Outside the shadows had run like ink, and by the watch it was almost five o'clock. A three hours' sleep instead of one! And his packet gone with the time for posting it!

He searched further before finally rousing his companions; and there were signs that the whole place had been carefully ransacked, but none as yet that anything else had disappeared. Denis was equally thankful that he had got rid of the gold-dust and that cash payment was still to come; after all, the value of the nugget was chiefly sentimental; and there was some compensation in the thought that the thief could not have chosen a worse time for himself or a better one for his victims.

"Robbed!" echoed Doherty, sitting up stupidly at last. His eyes had lost all their brightness, and he was soon nursing his head between his hands. But Jewson was quicker to grasp what had happened – quicker than Denis himself.

"That yellow devil of a Chinaman!" he exclaimed, and sat smacking his lips with a wry face. "Opium! I thought so! I've known the taste too many years; but I'll know him when I see him again, and I'll string him up to the nearest tree by his own pig-tail. Draught beer, eh? I wonder who else he offered it to? See what comes of striking it rich and letting it get about that you have struck it! No, I know you can't help it, unless you've got a private river to wash your dirt in; but that's what's done it, as sure as I'm standing here."

"But you are not standing there," rejoined Denis, as the servant made for the door. "Where are you off to in such a hurry?"

"To lay my hands on John Chinaman!" answered Jewson with an oath. "To catch him red-handed with your nugget on him, and to ram his own pig-tail down his yellow throat!"

The partners were left looking at each other with rather different expressions.

"He'll do it, too," said Doherty, jerking his head toward the door. "Trust the old steward!"

"I suppose one must trust him," remarked Denis in a dubious tone.

"Trust him? Of course you must! Why not, mister? Hasn't he looked after us well enough so far? Hasn't he made all the difference in the world to us, and haven't you admitted it every day? I don't care what he was at sea; let's take him as we find him ashore, and then we sha'n't get wrong. You don't seriously think the steward's had anything to do with this, do you?"

"Not seriously," replied Denis; nor, on reflection, had he the smallest ground for any such suspicion.

"Because," pursued Doherty, triumphantly, "if he wanted to put up a robbery, it's a funny thing he should wait until there was hardly anything to rob – isn't it?"

"Of course."

"And you've lost nothing except the nugget, have you?"

"And the parcel it was in, and my letter!"

"Perhaps he's a chap like me, wot can't read," the lad suggested by way of consolation. "But are you sure that's all you've missed?"

He was looking very hard at Denis.

"I think so, Jimmy. Why?"

"If you undo another shirt-button I'll tell you."

There was no need for Denis to do that. His fingers were down his neck in an instant. And the lanyard of his beloved's hair, which had encircled it day and night for the last three months, was gone with the little ring that Nan had given him at their farewell on board the Memnon.

His rage and distress knew no bounds; the loss of a far larger nugget had been a bagatelle compared with this. A certain superstition was ingrained in Denis; it was one of the few things he had inherited from both the races whose blood clashed in his veins; and in a moment it was as though his star had fallen from the zenith. Apart from the loss of that which he held dearer than aught but Nan herself – her talisman – there was the utter ill-omen of such a loss. And Denis raved about both, bidding Doherty find another mate as quick as he could, for they were at the end of their tether and would wash no more ounces.

"And if we did," cried the distracted fellow, "if we took out a million between us after this, it would only be to go home and find her dead! You make a note of it, and then clear out of the sinking ship. My luck has ended this day!"

Doherty bore it as long as he could, then jumped up saying he was going for the police. "Not for you," he added, "though you deserve the Logs if ever a man did. I've heard a blackfellow talk like that, but not a white man, and may I never hear the like again! We'll have the traps on the track of that Chinaman, as well as Jewson; and we'll get back what you've lost for its own sake, not for what it can't alter one way or the other."

This bracing remonstrance was not without effect. Denis controlled himself by an effort, dashed away an unmanning tear, and was soon the severest critic of his own despair; but he would not let Doherty summon the police, neither would he go himself.

"It is too intimate – too sacred – her hair!" he whispered in a fresh access of misery. "Fancy furnishing a description of that, and letting them publish it broadcast! No, no; better lose it altogether; and may the thief never dream what it was he took!"

"Then where are you going?" asked Doherty, following Denis as he strode out of the hut.

"Down the shaft, to start the tunneling, and to try just one tub before six, to see if the luck has changed or not."

While he was down, Doherty, waiting at the windlass, received a visit from the friendly neighbour who had kept an eye on their cradle at the creek. He said that one of his mates was minding it still, but as no one had been near it all the afternoon, and nothing seemed doing on the claim, he had just come to see if anything was amiss. The man was a genial, broad-shouldered, black-bearded digger of a rough but excellent type, and on reflection Doherty told him of the drugged beer and the resultant loss of the nugget, but of nothing else. The digger seemed considerably interested, asked several questions, and good-naturedly lent a hand to raise Denis from the depths.

"I've just been hearing of your loss," said he, "and I congratulate you! It's not many lucky diggers whose luck attracts the light-fingered gentry and who only lose a four-ounce nugget after all! So that cook of yours has gone to look for the Chinaman?"

"Yes."

"I hope he'll find him," said the burly digger, and went off with a dry smile and a good-humoured nod.

But it was no Chinaman whom Jewson had gone to seek; it was a gentlemanly digger of peculiarly British appearance, with military whiskers which had never been allowed to meet upon the chin; and he was found waiting at the place where the special coach with the English mail was due to start for Melbourne at six o'clock.

"At last!" said he in an ungracious undertone. "What happened to you, Jewson? I had given you up altogether."

"I thought he'd never wake up," whispered Jewson as they drew aside, "and I dursn't run the risk of his finding me gone, as well as – as well as this, sir!"

"What the devil are you talking about, Jewson? And what's that?"

It was a small brown-paper parcel which the steward had produced.

"Something you're going to be so kind as to post and register in Melbourne, sir. In Melbourne, mind – not in London, Captain Devenish!"

"But it's addressed – why, damme, it's addressed to Miss Merridew!"

"I know that, sir."

"Who addressed it?"

"The clever bloke who thinks he's going to marry her," answered Jewson through his artificial teeth. "Clever he may be," he added, "and successful he is, but he ain't so clever that he's going to succeed in that!"

Devenish took heart from the cunning and confident face raised so slyly to his. Yet his heart of hearts sank within him, for it was still not utterly debased, and his compact with this ruffian was a heaviness to him. "What do you mean by asking me to post his presents to her?" he demanded angrily; but his anger was due less to the request than to the underlying subtlety which he felt he had far better not seek to probe.

"I'm not going to tell you, Captain Devenish. You said you'd leave it to me, sir."

"But it is something from him to her?"

"That I promise you; but it'll tell its own tale, and you'll hear it soon enough, once you get home safe and sound."

The driver had mounted to his place, the five horses had been put to. Devenish hesitated with the little brown paper packet in his hand.

"And she really ought to have it?"

"It's only due to her, poor young lady."

"But to me? Is it due to me, man?"

"It'll do you more good, sir," said Jewson, raising his crafty eyes, "than ever anything did you yet, in that quarter, Captain Devenish."

Ralph put the packet in an inner pocket. "Well, I'll think about it," said he. But he did not take the hand that was held out to him. He went from Ballarat with no more than a nod to the man whom he was leaving there to play a villain's part on his behalf. It was enough for Ralph Devenish that he had soiled his soul.

CHAPTER XXI

THE COURIER OF DEATH

Denis passed many days underground, in the fascinating pursuit of driving a tiny tunnel due south from the bottom of the shaft. That way ran the lead as traced already on its outer skirts, and that way burrowed Denis through its golden core. The miniature corridor which he made was but two feet wide, and not six inches higher than its width. Denis could just turn round in it by a series of systematic contortions.

He would have made the drive roomier but for an early warning as to the treacherous character of the red clay stratum immediately overhead. Thereafter he confined his operations to the lower half of the auriferous drift, which being gravelly, was more or less conglomerate, and formed a continuous arch corresponding with the brickwork in a railway tunnel. The drive was not timbered like the shaft which led to it, but at intervals props were wedged against the walls, with flat wooden caps to support the roof. Yet the task seemed to Denis too precarious to depute, and worming every inch of his way, it took him till February to penetrate fifteen feet.

Doherty was consoled by a position of much responsibility above ground: he had the washing of every bucketful which came out of the drive, and he also was single-handed, but for some help at the water-side from the friendly fellow with the black beard, whose offices he was able to repay in kind. The creek hereabouts was more populous now than the partners had found it. Their success had had the usual effect of attracting numbers to the gulley. Some had taken possession of holes prematurely abandoned the year before, and were working them out in feverish haste; larger parties with plant and capital were rapidly sinking their seventy feet on the very edge of the successful claim. "We'll be down on top of you before you know where you are," said one of the newcomers when they heard the direction in which Denis was driving. Thereupon he redoubled his efforts to such purpose that Doherty could not keep pace with the output, and a stack of untried wash-dirt grew up beside the shaft. In spite of this the average yield in washen gold was many ounces a day. And daily Denis took it, his revolver in his pocket, to the Commissioner for transmission to Geelong, where the accredited gold-buyer had turned out so well that the partners no longer received his payments in cash, but had several thousands standing to their credit in his books.

Jewson was much subdued. There was something uncanny in the way this fortune was growing under his eyes, in spite of him. But he had his own reasons for undiminished confidence in the end which an undying grudge and innate cupidity alike demanded; meanwhile his honest emoluments were not to be despised, and he continued to earn them by the consistent exercise of his one accomplishment. His cooking was as good as ever, his behaviour even better, since the nocturnal excursions were a thing of the past. This circumstance was too much of a coincidence to decrease Denis's suspicions; on the other hand, nothing occurred to increase them, and Denis was not sorry for that. The man was invaluable. So much labour underground must have been deadly in its effects without regular supplies of proper food properly cooked. And there the steward never failed. But Denis had his eye on him, and was wise enough never to betray whatever suspicion he had entertained with regard to Jewson's complicity in the theft of the nugget and the ring.

Jewson naturally thought that matter had blown over; but one morning, as he was happily occupied with the duties which he really relished for their own sake, the door darkened as a pair of broad shoulders jammed between the posts; and the steward found himself confronted by a blue-black beard which contrasted invidiously with the unwilling whiteness of his own.

"Well," said a voice of grim good-humour, "have you found him yet?"

"What are you talking about?" replied the steward, testily. "Who are you – and what do you want?"

"Never you mind who I am," said the big man at the door. "You've seen me afore, and I've seen more of you than you might think. What I want is to know whether you ever found the Chinaman you went lookin' for a month ago; and that's what I be talkin' about. So now you know."

The steward stood at the table with his wicked head on one side, considering rapidly while he affected to ransack his memory.

"You mean the Chinaman who sold the doctored beer?"

"I mean the Chinaman who sold you the beer that got doctored."

"No – I never could lay hold of him," said the steward, ignoring the pointed improvement upon his phrase.

"Well, I have," said the big miner in the doorway.

"You've laid hold of him?" the other queried in nervous incredulity.

The digger nodded a big black head that looked as picturesque as piratical in a knitted cap of bright scarlet.

"I'd been lookin' for him, too, you see. You weren't the only folks who had some beer off that Chinaman the day he come along first; me and my mates had some, and it did us so little harm that we've always wanted some more. So I've been lookin' for him ever since, and yesterday I found him at the other end o' the diggin's, away past Sailor's Gully. And why do you suppose he'd never been near us again?" asked the big black man without shifting a shoulder from either door-post.

"I don't know," said the steward, sulkily. "How should I?"

"How should you? Because you told him never to come no more!"

"He's a liar," hissed Jewson, with a tremulous oath.

"And why should you say he ever came at all?"

"Some other lie, I suppose," said Jewson, with another oath.

"Because you told him to: went to the other end o' the diggin's to find him; bought a bit of opium from him, and told him to bring the beer next day. Oh, yes, they may be all lies," said the big digger, cheerfully, "but then again they may not. It's a rum world, mate, especially on the diggin's. I've known worse things done by coves I wouldn't have thought it of; but by the cut of your jib I should say you was capable of a good lot. Boss down driving, I suppose?"