Rolf Boldrewood
The Ghost Camp
“This was a thunderclap; indeed, apart from the natural distaste felt by most men at having been suddenly displaced from a position of wealth and importance, my chief regret arose from the feeling of disappointment which my change from wealth to moderate competence would cause to my beloved Adeline.
“No doubt of her loyalty and good faith troubled me. A legacy from my mother provided a sufficient, if not unusual income, as well as a fair estate, upon which we could live in something more than moderate comfort. Surely no girl would hesitate to declare her willingness to share the fortunes of a man to whom she had plighted her troth, though dissociated from the splendour which surrounded the former position. I lost no time in telegraphing to her father the change in our circumstances, at the same time writing a full explanation and requesting a day’s delay before visiting Oldacres, on account of necessary arrangements. But little time was lost in telegraphing an answer to my communication. ‘Much shocked by your news. Please to await letter. Miss Montresor much overcome.’
“The first news had been disastrous; the second intimation was unpleasant in tone and suggestion. I could not but regard it as showing a disposition to retreat from the engagement. But was this possible – even probable? Could I think my adored one guilty of withdrawing from her solemnly pledged troth-plight, entirely on account of the change in my fortunes from those of a rich man with an historic rent-roll and estates hardly exceeded by those of any English proprietor? Was it then the rents and the three per cents which this angel-seeming creature accepted without reference to the man? It would appear so. My youth and inexperience, how inferior in worldly wisdom had they shown me to be to this calculating worldling in the garb of an angel of light.
“If so, of course it was not fully decided so far. Let the end try the man. I trusted that I should be able to stand up to my fight, heavy and crushing as might be the blow Fate had dealt me. But all light and colour, all sympathy with and savour of pleasure, so-called, died out of my life. My premonition was but too accurate. Following the statement in my legal adviser’s letter, every paper in England had a more or less sensational paragraph to the effect that the announcement of the late Sir Reginald Lutterworth’s testamentary disposition was premature and incorrect. The bulk of that gentleman’s property, his great estates, and large deposits in the funds, goes to Lord Fontenaye, the head of the house.
“Soon after this, through some channels of intelligence, came a harmless looking paragraph in the personal column of the Court Circular: – ‘We are authorised to contradict the report of the engagement of Miss Adeline Montresor to the Honourable Valentine Blount. The arrangement, if any, was terminated by mutual consent.’ A note of studied politeness from her mother left no doubt on my mind that her daughter’s engagement to me, too hastily entered into in the opinion of Mr. Montresor and herself, must now be regarded as finally terminated. ‘Mr. Blount would understand that, as no good purpose would be served by an interchange of letters or an interview, he would consult the feelings of the family by refraining from requiring either.’
“Such, and so worded in effect, was my congé. It was a hard fall. In more than one instance within my knowledge a fatal one.
“Last week, fortunatus nimium, I had stood on the very apex of human happiness. Rich – more than rich, the possessor of historic estates, with a commensurate rent-roll, above all ecstatically happy as the fiancé of the loveliest girl in England – high-born, highly endowed, the envy of my compeers, the admired of the crowd – a few short days saw me bereft of all but a moderate fortune, reduced in position, socially disrated, discarded by the woman of my passionate adoration.
“What remained, but as was suggested to the victim of an earlier inrush of disasters? To curse God, and die? The teaching of my youth, combined with a substratum of philosophic disdain of the ills of life, forbade the ignominious surrender. I took counsel with my calmer self, with my best friends, made no sign, arranged for regular remittances, and took my passage for South America.
“How I lived among the wild people and wilder adventurers, whom debt and dishonour, or Bohemian love of freedom had driven from the headquarters of art, civilisation and luxury, may be told some day; sufficient to say that during the five years I lived abroad much of my unhappiness and despair of life wore off by the slow but sure attrition of new occupations amongst strange companions. From time to time I sent home articles to scientific societies which gave me a certain vogue in literary circles. At length, and not until the end of the sixth year of wandering had been reached, a desire arose to see England and my people once more. Six months after my departure, Adeline had married an elderly peer, when, as Lady Wandsborough, she gained the position and consideration which I had been unable to offer her. Two years afterwards another excitement was caused among the smart set by her elopement with Colonel Delamere, ‘a distinguished military man,’ said the Court Circular, concerning whom there had been a growing scandal. Socially condemned, dropped and disowned, what was to be the end of the brilliant woman, whose entertainments, dresses, jewels, and friendships, made up so large a part of English and Continental chit-chat?
“Lord Wandsborough without loss of time obtained a divorce. There was no appearance of the co-respondent. Since then, there had been no authentic information about the arrant pair – neither, though I searched the fashion journals with unusual industry, did I come across the marriage of Colonel Delamere to the heroine of so many historiettes in high life. It was not that I had any strong personal interest in her career, fallen as she was now from her high estate finally and irrevocably.
“But I couldn’t attain to complete detachment from all human sympathy for the fallen idol of my youthful dreams, though perhaps my strongest sentiment connected with her was one of heartfelt gratitude for the brusque manner in which she had discarded me, and so saved me from the keenest – the most exquisitely cruel tortures to which the civilised man can be subjected.
“Of all people in the world she was the last whom I expected, or indeed desired, to see again; yet we were doomed to meet once more. I told you that I came from Hobart, the day after my arrest (save the mark!), in a vessel from Callao, of which the crew and passengers were strangely mixed, various in character as in colour and nationality; South Americans, Mexicans, Americans of the States, both Northerners and Southerners. Among them I noted, although I was far from troubling myself about their histories, a tall, handsome man, who bore on him the impress of British military service. It was Colonel Delamere! I could not be mistaken. I had formed a slight acquaintance with him in earlier days; had watched him at cards, with some of the least villanous-looking of the foreigners, to whose excitable manner and reckless language his own offered so marked a contrast. I did not intend to make myself known to him, but accident was stronger than inclination. Seeing a lady struggling up the companion (the weather was still rough), I moved forward and helped her to a seat. She turned to thank me, and after an earnest surprised glance at my face – ‘But, no! it can’t be! Am I so changed?’ she said reproachfully, ‘that you don’t know Adeline Montresor?’ She was changed, oh! how sadly, and I had not known her. The second time, of course, I recognised the object of my youthful adoration, the woman by whose heartless conduct I had been so rudely disillusioned. She glanced at the Colonel, who, engrossed in the game, had not observed her coming on deck, and motioned me to take a seat beside her, saying, ‘How you have changed since we last met! I treated you shamefully – heartlessly, I confess, but it was all for your good, as people say to children. You would never have been the man you are if Fate and I had not sent you out into the world with a broken heart. Now tell me all about yourself?’ she continued, with a glance which recalled the spell of former witchery, harmless however, now, as summer lightning. ‘You don’t wish to cut me, I hope?’
“‘Far from it,’ I replied, ‘you will always find me a friend. Is there any way in which I can serve you? you have only to say. What is your address?’ She looked over at the Colonel and his companions with a melancholy air, and replied in a low voice, ‘We are travelling as “Captain and Mrs. Winchester.” Poor fellow, he cannot marry me, though he would do so to-morrow, if he were free from his wife, as I am from my husband. But she will not go for a divorce, just to punish us; isn’t it spiteful? You can see – ’ here she touched her dress which was strictly economical – ‘that it is low water with us. I have tried the stage, and we have been doing light comedy in Callao, and the coast towns. You have seen me in the amateur business?’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘how I admired you!’
“‘I know that,’ and she smiled with a strangely mingled suggestion of amusement and sadness; ‘you were a first-class lover in the proposal scene, though a little too much in earnest. I really was touched, and if – if indeed – everything had been different, my heart, my previous experiences, my insane love of society triumphs, dress, diamonds, etc. These I thought I had secured, and so accepted your honest adoration. But even then I was in love with poor Jack – never loved any one else in fact. I have been his ruin, and he mine. I see he has finished his game, and is coming over. You may as well know each other.’ The Colonel looked at me fixedly, much wondering at our apparent friendly attitude, then bowed politely and formally. ‘No, Jack, you don’t know him, though you’ve seen him before. He’s an old friend of mine, though, to whom I did a good turn, the best any one ever did him, when I broke our engagement short off, after hearing he’d lost his money. Now you know.’
“‘You’re a queer woman,’ said he, putting out his hand in frank and manly fashion, which I shook warmly. ‘I always said you treated him brutally. It didn’t break his heart, though it might have suffered at the time. We’re all fools; I nearly shot myself when I was just of age over Clara Westbrook.’
“‘Yes, I know,’ assented ‘Mrs. Winchester,’ good-humouredly; ‘now she’s eighteen stone and can hardly get into her carriage.’
“‘She was dashed handsome then,’ pleaded the Colonel; ‘but hang the past, it’s the future we’ve got to look at – not a gay prospect, either. Some people make money here, I suppose; we were nearly getting off the boat at Hobart and trying our luck at that new silver mine, the Cornstalk, or something like that. Do you know anything about it?’
“‘I’m a part proprietor, and so on,’ said I, trying vainly to divest my manner of any trace of importance, cruel as was the contrast between my position and that of this forlorn pair. ‘It was a chance investment when I came out here.’
“‘The devil! Tregonwell, Blount, Herbert and Clarke. Forgotten your name, you know. Why, they say you’re all worth £100,000 each?’
“‘At least!’ I said; ‘quite a fluke, though. My partner, Tregonwell, who is a good man of business, wanted to throw it up. I held on out of pure obstinacy, and it turned up a “bonanza.”’
“‘Your luck was in, and ours is dead out,’ said ‘Mrs. Winchester,’ ‘there’s no denying that, but ours may turn again some day. Where are we going next, Jack?’
“‘Checked through to Coolgardie, West Australia,’ said the Colonel. ‘Know some fellows. Believe there are immensely rich gold mines there. Saw some quartz specimens in a window in London, as much gold as quartz.’
“‘Quite true. There have been wonderful yields there,’ said I; ‘it’s an awful hot place, very primitive and rough. Still, the women – there are ladies, too – manage to live and keep up their spirits.’
“‘What do you say, Addie, hadn’t you better stay behind for a while, at any rate?’
“‘All places are alike to me now,’ said she wearily; ‘but where you go I go. We’ll see it out together, Jack.’
“‘We’re to be in Melbourne to-night, the steward told me,’ said the Colonel; ‘perhaps Mr. Blount will kindly recommend an hotel?’
“‘I know a good one,’ said I, ‘handy to your boat. I’ll see you on board to-morrow. The Marloo leaves in the afternoon. I can give you letters to some people on “the field” as they call it.’
“We went to ‘Scott’s,’ where I arranged certain things with the management. So that when the Colonel paid his bill next day, and we left together in a cab for the Marloo, he told his wife that the charges were most reasonable. She looked at me with a meaning glance and wrung my hand as the Colonel hurried off with the luggage. ‘You’re a good fellow,’ she said, ‘though it’s late in the day to find it out. You’ve had your revenge, haven’t you? Are you going to get married?’
“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘next week.’
“‘I wish you joy, with all my heart, what there is of it, that is. Is she beautiful, innocent, devoted to you?’
“‘All that,’ said I, ‘and more.’
“‘Then tell her my story, and when for vanity, pleasure, or the tinsel trappings of society she is tempted to stray from the simple faith of her youth (I had it once, strange to say), let her think of me as I am now, poverty-stricken, degraded, and, except for poor Jack, whom I have dragged down to ruin with me, without a friend in the world.’
“‘While I live,’ said I, ‘you must not say that.’
“‘I know – I know,’ and the tears fell from her eyes, changed as she was, from all that she had been in her day of pride. ‘But we can take nothing from you, of all men. God bless you!’
“Here came the Colonel. ‘Come along, Addie, we shall be left behind. Ta-ta, Blount, you’re a dashed good fellow, too good altogether, if you ask me. We’ll let you know how we get on.’
“As the coasting steamer churned the far from limpid waters of the Yarra, I waved my hand once and turned my head. They went their way. She and her companion to a rude life and a cheerless future, I to love and unclouded happiness, with fortune and social fame thrown in as makeweights. So there you have the whole of it. Last dying speech and confession of a sometime bachelor, but henceforth able to proudly describe himself ‘as a mawwied man,’ like the swell in the witness-box, ‘faw-mally in the awmy!’”
Edward Bruce came back from Queensland, and for fear of accidents the wedding was solemnised quietly, but with all due form and observance, between Valentine FitzEustace Blount, bachelor, and Imogen Carrisforth, spinster, of Marondah, in the parish of Tallawatta, district of Upper Sturt, colony of Victoria, Australia. The day was one of those transcendant glories of a summer land, which, as combining warmth with the fresh dry air of the Great South Land, are absolutely peerless. The lightly-wooded downs, verdant as in spring in this exceptional year, were pleasing to the eye as they stretched away mile after mile to the base of the mountain range. The exotic trees, oaks and elms, with a few beeches, walnuts, and an ash-tree, hard by the back entrance were in fullest leaf, most brilliant greenery. The great willows hung their tresses over the river bank, swaying over the murmuring stream, while they almost covered the channel with their trailing wreaths.
The glory of the wattle gold had departed; the graceful tender fern-frond appearing chaplets were no longer intertwined with the lavish spring gold which, following the windings of every streamlet and ravine, seems to penetrate the dim grey woodlands with golden-threaded devices. Herald and earliest note in tone and tendril of that manifold, divinest harmony, the Voice of Spring. A souvenir of the ocean in the form of a gladsome, whispering breeze came through the woodland at noon, tempering the sun’s potent influence, until all comments and criticisms united in one sincerest utterance, an absolutely perfect day, fitting, indeed, as the youngest bridesmaid asserted, for such an ideal marriage.
Nothing went wrong with train or coach this time. Fate had done her worst, and was minded to hold off from these persistent seekers after happiness. Edward Bruce had arrived from Queensland, sunbrowned, rather harder in condition than when he left home, but hale, strong, in good spirits, and even jubilant, having heard by wire of a six-inch rainfall since his departure.
Little-River-Jack and the O’Hara brothers had crowned themselves with glory on Crichel Downs since they had been employed there. Energetic, athletic, and miraculously learned in every department of bush lore, they had thrown themselves into the work of the drought-stricken district with an amount of enthusiasm that rejoiced the manager’s heart, moving him to declare that they were worth their weight in gold, and had saved the lives of sheep and cattle to the value of their wages six times over. He was going to give Little-River-Jack the post of overseer at a back outstation, and felt certain that no one would get hold of calf, cow, or bullock with the Crichel Downs brand as long as he was in charge. Phelim and Pat O’Hara were kept on the home station, and for driving a weak flock of sheep at night, or “moonlighting” the outlying scrub cattle, no one in all Queensland, except Jim Bradfield, was fit to “hold a candle” to them.
It was for various reasons, the bride’s recent illness and other considerations, that what is known as “a quiet wedding” took place, yet were there certain additions to the family circle.
Pastoral neighbours, such as the MacRimmons, the Grants, the MacAulays, the Chesters, the Waterdales, could not decently be left out. Besides the seniors, they included large families of young men and maidens born and reared among the forests and meadows of the Upper Sturt. The climatic conditions of this Highland region proved its adaptability for the development of the Anglo-Saxon and the Anglo-Celt, for finer specimens of the race than these young people who rode and drove so joyously to this popular function would have been difficult, if not impossible, to find. The men, tall, stalwart, adepts in every manly exercise; the girls, fresh-coloured, high-spirited, full of the joyous abandon of early youth, as yet unworn by care and with the instinctive confidence of all healthy minded young people in the continuance of the joie de vivre, of which they had inherited so large a share.
It was noticed by some of these whose eyes were sharp and general intelligence by no means limited, that at the breakfast there was a new damsel who assisted the waiting maid, Josephine Macintyre (chiefly known as Joe Mac), a smart soubrette of prepossessing appearance.
With her the bride and bridegroom shook hands warmly before they departed “for good.” Well and becomingly dressed, she was an object of more than ordinary interest to some of the youthful squirearchy.
“Why, it’s Sheila Maguire, from Bunjil!” said one youngster to his comrade. “Thought I’d seen her before, somewhere. Doesn’t she look stunning?”
“My word,” was the reply. “They say she’s been left a lot of money by old Barney, her uncle.”
“She’s a fine, straight, jolly girl, with no nonsense about her,” declared the first speaker, “a man might do worse than make up to her, if he had to live in the back blocks.”
“Why don’t you try the experiment?”
“Thanks, awfully! Hope I shall do as well – but I’m not ‘on the marry’ just yet. Want to see another Melbourne Cup or so first.”
There was no “marriage bell,” yet all went well without that obsolete summons. Every one turned up at the right time, not even the best man was absent. He came the evening before – a cool, unpretending person, very correctly dressed, and with “soldier” written all over him – in spite of the vain disguise of mufti. He was presented as Colonel Pelham Villiers, D.S.O., Royal Engineers, just down from Northern India. That he had “assisted” at such functions before was evident by the air of authority with which he put the bridegroom through his facings, and even ordered the bridesmaids about – “like a lot of chorus girls” – as Susie Allerton observed.
She had (she said) “a great mind to refuse to obey,” but after once meeting the look in a pair of stern grey eyes – hers were hazel – she capitulated. He took her in to breakfast, it was noticed, where they seemed excellent friends.
Punctually at three p.m. the drag came round with Edward Bruce on the box – behind such a team as only one station on the Upper Sturt could turn out. The leaders – own brothers – cheap at a hundred apiece, were a “dream,” as an enthusiastic girl observed, while the solid pair of dark bays in the wheel were scarcely behind them in value.
Out came the bride in travelling suit of grey, on the arm of “the happiest man in Australia,” as he had that day professed himself to be. Black Paddy noiselessly relinquished the rein of the nearside leader, a fine tempered, but impatient animal, and like one horse, the well-broken, high-mettled team moved off. The road was level, and smooth for the first half mile, then came a long up grade pretty much against collar, the team, at a touch of the rein, broke into a hand gallop, which they kept up easily until the crown of the hill was reached. There on the long down-grade – high above the river bank on one side, and scooped out of the mountain side on the other, the powerful leg-brake was applied, and the laden vehicle rolled steadily, and well controlled, until the level track of the river meadow was reached. There was a full quarter of an hour to spare when the railway station was neared, and with the luggage checked through to Menzies Hotel, Melbourne, and an engaged carriage for Imogen and himself, Mr. Blount decided that the first stage of matrimonial happiness was reached.
