It Is Never Too Late to Mend — Chapter LII, part 1
CHAPTER LII.
THE old attachment was revived.
Robinson had always a great regard for George, and after nursing and bringing him through a dangerous illness this feeling doubled.
And as for George, the man who had brought him a letter from Susan one hundred and sixty miles became such a benefactor in his eyes that he thought nothing good enough for him.
In a very few days George was about again and on his pony, and he and Robinson and Carlo went a shepherding.
One or two bullocks had gone to Jericho while George lay ill, and the poor fellow's heart was sore when he looked at his diminished substance and lost time.
Robinson threw himself heart and soul into the business, and was of great service to George; but after a bit he found it a dull life.
George saw this, and said to him: “You would do better in a town.
I
should be sorry to lose you, but if you take my advice you will turn your back on unlucky George, and try the paint-brush in Bathurst.
” For Robinson had told him all about it--and painted his front door.
“Can't afford to part from Honesty,” was the firm reply.
George breathed again.
Robinson was a great comfort to the weak, solitary, and now desponding man.
One day for a change they had a thirty-mile walk, to see a farmer that had some beasts to sell a great bargain; he was going to boil them down if he could not find a customer.
They found them all just sold.
“Just my luck,” said George.
They came home another way.
Returning home, George was silent and depressed.
Robinson was silent, but appeared to be swelling with some grand idea.
Every now and then he shot ahead under its influence.
When they got home and were seated at supper, he suddenly put this question to George, “Did you ever hear of any gold being found in these parts?
” “No!
never!
” “What, not in any part of the country?
” “No!
never!
” “Well, that is odd!
” “I am afraid it is a very bad country for that.
” “Ay to make it in, but not to find it in.
” “What do you mean?
” “George,” said the other, lowering his voice mysteriously, “in our walk to-day we passed places that brought my heart into my mouth; for if this was only California those places would be pockets of gold.
” “But you see it is not California, but Australia, where all the world knows there is nothing of what your mind is running on.
” “Don't say 'knows,' say 'thinks.'
Has it ever been searched for gold?
” “I'll be bound it has; or, if not, with so many eyes constantly looking on every foot of soil a speck or two would have come to light.
” “One would think so; but it is astonishing how blind folks are, till they are taught how to look, and where to look.
'Tis the mind that sees things, George, not the eye.
” “Ah!
” said George with a sigh, “this chat puts me in mind of 'The Grove.'
Do you mind how you used to pester everybody to go out to California?
” “Yes!
and I wish we were there now.
” “And all your talk used to be gold--gold--gold.
” “As well say it as think it.
” “That is true.
Well, we shall be very busy all day to-morrow, but in the afternoon dig for gold an hour or two--then you will be satisfied.
” “But it is no use digging here; it was full five-and-twenty miles from here the likely-looking place.
” “Then why didn't you stop me at the place?
” “Why?
” replied Robinson, sourly, “because his reverence did so snub me whenever I got upon that favorite topic, that I really had got out of the habit.
I was ashamed to say, 'George, let us stop on the road and try for gold with our finger-nails.'
I knew I should only get laughed at.
” “Well,” said George sarcastically, “since the gold mine is twenty-five miles off, and our work is round about the door, suppose we pen sheep to-morrow--and dig for gold when there is nothing better to be done.
” Robinson sighed.
Unbucolical to the last degree was the spirit in which our Bohemian tended the flocks next morning.
His thoughts were deeper than the soil.
And every evening up came the old topic.
Oh!
how sick George got of it.
At last one night he said: “My lad, I should like to tell you a story--but I suppose I shall make a bungle of it; shan't cut the furrow clean I am doubtful.
” “Never mind; try!
” “Well, then.
Once upon a time there was an old chap that had heard or read about treasures being found in odd places, a pot full of guineas or something; and it took root in his heart till nothing would serve him but he must find a pot of guineas, too; he used to poke about all the old ruins, grubbing away, and would have taken up the floor of the church, but the churchwardens would not have it.
One morning he comes down and says to his wife, 'It is all right, old woman, I've found the treasure.'
“'No!
have you, though?'
says she.
“'Yes!'
says he; 'leastways, it is as good as found; it is only waiting till I've had my breakfast, and then I'll go out and fetch it in.'
“'La, John, but how did you find it?'
“'It was revealed to me in a dream,' says he, as grave as a judge.
“'And where is it?'
asks the old woman.
“'Under a tree in our own orchard--no farther,' says he.
“'Oh, John!
how long you are at breakfast to-day!'
Up they both got and into the orchard.
'Now, which tree is it under?'
“John, he scratches his head, 'Blest if I know.'
“'Why, you old ninny,' says the mistress, 'didn't you take the trouble to notice?'
“'That I did,' said he; 'I saw plain enough which tree it was in my dream, but now they muddle it all, there are so many of 'em.'
“'Drat your stupid old head,' says she, 'why didn't you put a nick on the right one at the time?'
” Robinson burst out laughing.
George chuckled.
“Oh!
” said he, “there were a pair of them for wisdom, you may take your oath of that.
'Well,' says he, 'I must dig till I find the right one.'
The wife she loses heart at this; for there was eighty apple-trees, and a score of cherry-trees.
'Mind you don't cut the roots,' says she, and she heaves a sigh.
John he gives them bad language, root and branch.
'What signifies cut or no cut;
the old faggots--they don't bear me a bushel of fruit the whole lot.
They used to bear two sacks apiece in father's time.
Drat 'em.'
“'Well, John,' says the old woman, smoothing him down; 'father used to give them a deal of attention.'
--' 'Tain't that!
'tain't that!'
says he quick and spiteful-like; 'they have got old like ourselves, and good for fire-wood.'
Out pickax and spade and digs three foot deep round one, and finding nothing but mould goes at another, makes a little mound all round him, too--no guinea-pot.
Well, the village let him dig three or four quiet enough; but after that curiosity was awakened, and while John was digging, and that was all day, there was mostly seven or eight watching through the fence and passing jests.
After a bit a fashion came up of flinging a stone or two at John; then John he brought out his gun loaded with dust-shot along with his pick and spade, and the first stone came he fired sharp in that direction and then loaded again.
So they took that hint, and John dug on in peace--till about the fourth Sunday--and then the parson had a slap at him in church.
'Folks were not to heap up to themselves treasures on earth,' was all his discourse.
” “Well, but,” said Robinson, “this one was only heaping up mould.
” “So it seemed when he had dug the five-score holes, for no pot of gold didn't come to light.
Then the neighbors called the orchard 'Jacobs' Folly;' his name was Jacobs--John Jacobs.
'Now then, wife,' says he, 'suppose you and I look out for another village to live in, for their gibes are more than I can bear.'
Old woman begins to cry.
'Been here so long--brought me home here, John--when we were first married, John--and I was a comely lass, and you the smartest young man I ever saw, to my fancy any way; couldn't sleep or eat my victuals in any house but this.'
“'Oh!
couldn't ye?
Well, then, we must stay; perhaps it will blow over.'
--'Like everything else, John; but, dear John, do ye fill in those holes; the young folk come far and wide on Sundays to see them.'
“'Wife, I haven't the heart,' says he.
'You see, when I was digging for the treasure I was always a-going to find, it kept my heart up; but take out shovel and fill them in--I'd as lieve dine off white of egg on a Sunday.'
So for six blessed months the heaps were out in the heat and frost till the end of February, and then when the weather broke the old man takes heart and fills them in, and the village soon forgot 'Jacobs' Folly' because it was out of sight.
Comes April, and out burst the trees.
'Wife,' says he, 'our bloom is richer than I have known it this many a year, it is richer than our neighbors'.'
Bloom dies, and then out come about a million little green things quite hard.
” “Ay!
ay!
” said Robinson; “I see.
” “Michaelmas-day the old trees were staggering and the branches down to the ground with the crop; thirty shillings on every tree one with another; and so on for the next year, and the next; sometimes more, sometimes less, according to the year.
Trees were old and wanted a change.
His letting in the air to them, and turning the subsoil up to the frost and sun, had renewed their youth.
So by that he learned that tillage is the way to get treasure from the earth.
Men are ungrateful at times, but the soil is never ungrateful, it always makes a return for the pains we give it.
” “Well, George,” said Robinson, “thank you for your story; it is a very good one, and after it I'll never dig for gold in a garden.
But now suppose a bare rock or an old river's bed, or a mass of shingles or pipe-clay, would you dig or manure them for crops?
” “Why, of course not.
” “Well, those are the sort of places in which nature has planted a yellower crop and a richer crop than tillage ever produced.
And I believe there are plums of gold not thirty miles from here in such spots waiting only to be dug out.
” “Well, Tom, I have wasted a parable, that is all.
Good-night; I hope to sleep and be ready for a good day's work to-morrow.
You shall dream of digging up gold here--if you like.
” “I'll never speak of it again,” said Robinson doggedly.
If you want to make a man a bad companion, interdict altogether the topic that happens to interest him.
Robinson ceased to vent his chimera.
So it swelled and swelled in his heart, and he became silent, absorbed, absent and out of spirits.
“Ah!
” thought George, “poor fellow, he is very dull.
He won't stay beside me much longer.
” This conviction was so strong that he hesitated to close with an advantageous offer that came to him from his friend, Mr. Winchester.
That gentleman had taken a lease of a fine run some thirty miles from George.
He had written George that he was to go and look at it, and if he liked it better than his own he was to take it.
Mr. Winchester could make no considerable use of either for some time to come.
George hesitated.
He felt himself so weak-handed with only Robinson, who might leave him, and a shepherd lad he had just hired.
However his hands were unexpectedly strengthened.
One day as the two friends were washing a sheep an armed savage suddenly stood before them.
Robinson dropped the sheep and stood on his defense, but George cried out, “No!
no!
it is Jacky!
Why, Jacky, where on earth have you been?
” And he came warmly toward him.
Jacky fled to a small eminence and made warlike preparations.
“You stop you a good while and I speak.
Who you?
” “Who am I?
stupid.
Why, who should I be but George Fielding?
” “I see you one George Fielding, but I not know you dis George Fielding.
George die.
I see him die.
You alive.
You please you call dog Carlo!
Carlo wise dog.
” “Well, I never!
Hie, Carlo!
Carlo!
” Up came Carlo full pelt.
George patted him, and Carlo wagged his tail and pranced about in the shape of a reaping-hook.
Jacky came instantly down, showed his ivories, and admitted his friend's existence on the word of the dog.
“Jacky a good deal glad because you not dead now.
When black fellow die he never live any more.
Black fellow stupid fellow.
I tink I like white fellow a good deal bigger than black fellow.
Now I stay with you a good while.
” George's hands thus strengthened he wrote and told Mr. Winchester he would go to the new ground, which, as far as he could remember, was very good, and would inspect it, and probably make the exchange with thanks.
It was arranged that in two days' time the three friends should go together, inspect the new ground and build a temporary hut there.
Meantime Robinson and Jacky make great friends.
Robinson showed him one or two sleight-of-hand tricks that stamped him at once a superior being in Jacky's eyes, and Jacky showed Robinson a thing or two He threw his boomerang and made it travel a couple of hundred yards, and return and hover over his head like a bird and settle at his feet; but he was shy of throwing his spear.
“Keep spear for when um angry, not throw him straight now.
“Don't you believe that, Tom,” said George.
“Fact is the little varmint can't hit anything with 'em.
Now look at that piece of bark leaning against that tree.
You don't hit it.
Come, try, Jacky.
” Jacky yawned and threw a spear carelessly.
It went close by but did not hit it.
“Didn't I tell you so?
” said George.
“I'd stand before him and his spears all day with nothing but a cricket-stump in my hand, and never be hit, and never brag, neither.
” Jacky showed his ivories.
“When I down at Sydney white man put up a little wood and a bit of white money for Jacky.
Then Jacky throw straight a good deal.
” “Now hark to that!
black skin or white skin 'tis all the same; we can't do our best till we are paid for it.
Don't you encourage him, Tom, I won't have it.
” The two started early one fine morning for the new ground, distant full thirty miles.
At first starting Robinson was in high glee; his nature delighted in change; but George was sad and silent.
Three times he had changed his ground and always for the better.
But to what end.
These starts in early morning for fresh places used once to make him buoyant, but not now.
All that was over.
He persisted doggedly, and did his best like a man, but in his secret heart not one grain of hope was left.
Indeed it was but the other day he had written to Susan and told her it was not possible he could make a thousand pounds.
The difficulties were too many, and then his losses had been too great.
And he told her he felt it was scarcely fair to keep her to her promise.
“You would waste all your youth, Susan, dear, waiting for me.
” And he told her how he loved her and never should love another; but left her free.
To add to his troubles he was scarcely well of the fever when he caught a touch of rheumatism; and the stalwart young fellow limped along by Robinson's side, and instead of his distancing Jacky as he used in better days, Jacky rattled on ahead and having got on the trail of an opossum announced his intention of hunting it down and then following the human trail.
“Me catch you before the sun go, and bring opossum--then we eat a good deal.
” And off glided Jacky after his opossum.
The pair plodded and limped on in gloomy silence, for at a part of the road where they emerged from green meadows on rocks and broken ground Robinson's tongue had suddenly ceased.
They plodded on, one sad and stiff, the other thoughtful.
Any one meeting the pair would have pitied them.
Ill-success was stamped on them.
Their features were so good, their fortunes so unkind.
Their clothes were sadly worn, their beards neglected, their looks thoughtful and sad.
The convert to honesty stole more than one look at the noble figure that limped beside him and the handsome face in which gentle, uncomplaining sorrow seemed to be a tenant for life; and to the credit of our nature be it said that his eyes filled and his heart yearned.
“Oh, Honesty!
” said he, “you are ill-paid here.
I have been well paid for my little bit of you, but here is a life of honesty and a life of ill-luck and bitter disappointment.
Poor George!
poor, dear George!
Leave you?
never while I have hands to work and a brain to devise!
” They now began slowly to mount a gentle slope that ended in a long black snakelike hill.
“When we get to that hill we shall see my new pasture,” said George.
“New or old, I doubt 'twill be all the same.
” And he sighed and relapsed into silence.
Meantime Jacky had killed his opossum and was now following their trail at an easy trot.
Leaving the two sad ones with worn clothes and heavy hearts plodding slowly and stiffly up the long rough slope, our story runs on before and gains the rocky platform they are making for and looks both ways--back toward the sad ones and forward over a grand, long, sweeping valley.
This pasture is rich in proportion as it recedes from this huge backbone of rock that comes from the stony mountains and pierces and divides the meadows as a cape the sea.
In the foreground the grass suffers from its stern neighbor, is cut up here and there by the channels of defunct torrents, and dotted with fragments of rock, some of which seem to have pierced the bosom of the soil from below, others have been detached at different epochs from the parent rock and rolled into the valley.
But these wounds are only discovered on inspection; at a general glance from the rocky road into the dale the prospect is large, rich and laughing;
fairer pastures are to be found in that favored land, but this sparkles at you like an emerald roughly set, and where the backbone of rock gives a sudden twist bursts out all at once broad smiling in your face--a land flowing with milk and every bush a thousand nosegays.
At the angle above-mentioned, which commanded a double view, a man was standing watching some object or objects not visible to his three companions;
they were working some yards lower down by the side of a rivulet that brawled and bounded down the hill.
Every now and then an inquiry was shouted up to that individual, who was evidently a sort of scout or sentinel.
At last one of the men in the ravine came up and bade the scout go down.
“I'll soon tell you whether we shall have to knock off work.
” And he turned the corner and disappeared.
He shaded both his eyes with his hands, for the sun was glaring.
About a mile off he saw two men coming slowly up by a zig-zag path toward the very point where he stood.
Presently the men stopped and examined the prospect, each in his own way.
The taller one took a wide survey of the low ground, and calling his companion to him appeared to point out to him some beauty or peculiarity of the region.
Our scout stepped back and called down to his companions, “Shepherds!
” He then strolled back to his post with no particular anxiety.
Arrived there his uneasiness seemed to revive.
The shorter of the two strangers had lagged behind his comrade, and the watcher observed, that he was carrying on a close and earnest inspection of the ground in detail.
He peered into the hollows and loitered in every ravine.
This gave singular offense to the keen eye that was now upon him.
Presently he was seen to stop and call his taller companion to him, and point with great earnestness first to something at their feet, then to the backbone of rocks; and it so happened by mere accident that his finger took nearly the direction of the very spot where the observer of all his movements stood.
The man started back out of sight and called in a low voice to his comrades, “Come here.
” They came straggling up with troubled and lowering faces.
“Lie down and watch them,” said the leader.
The men stooped and crawled forward to some stunted bushes, behind which they lay down and watched in silence the unconscious pair who were now about two furlongs distant.
The shorter of the two still loitered behind his companion, and inspected the ground with particular interest.
The leader of the band, who went by the name of Black Will, muttered a curse upon his inquisitiveness.
The others assented all but one, a huge fellow whom the others addressed as Jem.
“Nonsense,” said Jem, “dozens pass this way and are none the wiser.
” “Ay,” replied Black Will, “with their noses in the air.
But that is a notice-taking fellow.
Look at him with his eyes forever on the rocks, or in the gullies, or--there if he is not picking up a stone and breaking it!
” “Ha!
ha!
” laughed Jem incredulously, “how many thousand have picked up stones and broke them and all, and never known what we know.
” “He has been in the same oven as we,” retorted the other.
Here one of the others put in his word.
“That is not likely, captain;
but if it is so there are no two ways.
A secret is no secret if all the world is to know it.
” “You remember our oath, Jem,” said the leader sternly.
“Why should I forget it more than another?
” replied the other angrily.
“Have you all your knives?
” asked the captain gloomily.
The men nodded assent.
“Cross them with me as we did when we took our oath first.
” The men stretched out each a brawny arm, and a long sharp knife, so that all the points came together in a focus; and this action suited well with their fierce and animal features, their long neglected beards, their matted hair and their gleaming eyes.
It looked the prologue to some deed of blood.
This done, at another word from their ruffianly leader they turned away from the angle in the rock and plunged hastily down the ravine; but they had scarcely taken thirty steps when they suddenly disappeared.
In the neighborhood of the small stream I have mentioned was a cavern of irregular shape that served these men for a habitation and place of concealment.
Nature had not done all.
The stone was soft, and the natural cavity had been enlarged and made a comfortable retreat enough for the hardy men whose home it was.
A few feet from the mouth of the cave on one side grew a stout bush that added to the shelter and the concealment, and on the other the men themselves had placed two or three huge stones, which, from the attitude the rogues had given them, appeared, like many others, to have rolled thither years ago from the rock above.
In this retreat the whole band were now silently couched, two of them in the mouth of the cave, Black Will and another lying flat on their stomachs watching the angle of the road for the two men who must pass that way, and listening for every sound.
Black Will was carefully and quietly sharpening his knife on one of the stones and casting back every now and then a meaning glance to his companions.
The pertinacity with which he held to his idea began to tell on them, and they sat in an attitude of sullen and terrible suspicion.
But Jem wore a look of contemptuous incredulity.
However small a society may be, if it is a human one jealousy shall creep in.
Jem grudged Black Will his captaincy.
Jem was intellectually a bit of a brute.
He was a stronger man than Will, and therefore thought it hard that merely because Will was a keener spirit, Will should be over him.
Half an hour passed thus, and the two travelers did not make their appearance.
“Not even coming this way at all,” said Jem.
“Hush!
