“One of them … well, you’ll see for yourself.” And we did. We were standing at the kitchen window when we first saw him. The size of him amazed us.
“What a big man,” said Maybella.
“Did he come off the ship, then?” Uncle Harley nodded.
“Seven years. ^ Just think of that, my girl. Wrongly accused, he says.”
“Don’t they all,” said Maybella; and we laughed. But he was different. Those eyes of his burned right through you. You couldn’t treat him as a convict nor even as a servant. Uncle Harley felt it, too. He sort of quailed before him. He hadn’t been there a week before he was talking to him like an equal. Oh, he was clever. He could do twice the work of an ordinary man and he was soon telling Uncle Harley how the place could be improved. It was odd, because Uncle Harley, who had always thought he knew best about everything, used to listen to him. “
She paused and looked at me.
“You wouldn’t believe what a man could do in such a little time.”
“I could,” I told her.
“Three weeks after his arrival he was taking meals with us. There was something they had to discuss. Uncle Harley would say. His manners were different from those of the other men—different from Uncle Harley’s. When he sat at the table with us he made us feel awkward, as though he were the host and we the servants. He talked a lot to Uncle Harley. “:
He’d take a piece of paper and make a sketch of this or that bit of the property. He’d tell Uncle how he could erect; some sort of wool shed which would be raised from the ground so that the wool could be kept dry. He said our wool press was out of date and that we should have another. Uncle Harley used to listen to him fascinated and say: “Yes, Herrick,” in a sort of hushed reverence as though he were the master and Uncle the servant.
Shearing came and we had never been so successful. He made everyone come in and work at it—the gardeners, the servants, anyone with a pair of hands was set to work. By this time he had become a sort of overseer. They were all afraid of him. Uncle Harley said:
“Nothing escapes you. You’ve got the eyes of a lynx.”
t of white man’s god. They would work when he was there but when he was absent they would sit with their hands in their laps doing nothing. I remember how he made us laugh when he drew a picture of himself and it was so lifelike that you would think he was looking out of the paper.
He coloured the eyes—the same blue as his own and he pinned the picture up in the wool shed and said: “Even when I’m not here I’m watching you.” They were afraid then; they’d look at the picture and think it really was Lynx on the wall. That was the sort of man he was.
So it was small wonder . “
She stopped again and shook her head as though she wanted to linger over the memory. I waited eagerly for her to continue.
“Maybella was bewitched. The storekeeper’s son was nothing to her. Her eyes would light up when Lynx was around and she grew quite pretty.
She wasn’t really pretty . rather plain, in fact. I was prettier than she was—but I was only the master’s niece. She would inherit the property because there was no son. There’d be nothing for me. I’d been given a home; that was all.
“Don’t worry,” Maybella used to say.
“There’ll always be a home here for you, Jessie.” And she meant it.
She had a kind heart, Maybella had. “
“So she fell in love with him?”
“The place wasn’t the same. It had already started to improve. Uncle Harley thought the world of him.
“Hi, Lynx,” he used to say.
“Now this fellow Jim, or Tom—whoever it was—do you think we can trust him to take these bales to Melbourne?” It was always “we” So you see the way things were going. Maybella talked of nothing but him. She was mad about him. I don’t think there was anything she wouldn’t have done for him—and so it proved. When she was going to have the child she was afraid of telling her father. He was very religious and she thought he might turn her out. I knew there could only be one who was the father and I was horrified. I said, “A convict, Maybella!” And she held up her head and cried: “I don’t care. He was wrongly accused and I’m proud. I don’t care about anything but that I’m going to have his child.” She told her father so, and that was the most astonishing thing of all, because all he said was: “There’s only one thing to be done. There’ll have to be a wedding.” So less than a year since he had come over as a convict to Rosella he had married Maybella. Then Adelaide was born and soon after that he was the master and everyone knew it. “
She turned to me, her eyes blazing with an emotion I could not quite understand.
“If I had been Uncle Harley’s daughter I should have been the one.”
“Perhaps he loved Maybella.”
She laughed.
“Loved Maybella! He despised Maybella. He showed that clearly. Poor Maybella, she went on adoring him until he killed her.”
“Killed her?”
“As sure as if he’d taken a gun and fired it at her. He was disappointed in Adelaide. He wanted a son. He wanted a son who would look exactly like himself. Poor Maybella nearly died having Adelaide.
I thought at the time that it was all the worry beforehand, but it was the same with the others. She wasn’t meant to bear children, and she was terrified. She had suffered so much with Adelaide. He called her Adelaide after Adelaide the town.
“A tribute to his new country,” he said. Perhaps he thought he had done rather well in it. Uncle Harley doted on Adelaide. He would have spoilt her but Maybella didn’t take much notice of the child; all her thoughts were for him. He had bewitched her all right. He knew it and he seemed to despise her for it. “
“You said he killed her.”
“So he did. Year after year there was a miscarriage. Oh, she was frightened. She was almost an invalid. But he wanted a son. He had taken over the management of the place—he, a convict. Seven years he had to serve and he served them as the master. Uncle Harley was like Maybella; they were afraid of him; they never did anything without consulting him and he despised them both. He killed Maybella with her constant pregnancies. We all knew that she was not strong enough to endure them. Uncle Harley died six years after he had gone off to Sydney to bring back the servants. I remember his death-bed. We were there, Maybella, little Adelaide, myself and him. Uncle Harley believed in him until the end.
“Rosella’s yours, Maybella,” he said, “yours and Lynx’s. He’ll look after you and it. I leave you in good hands, daughter. And there’ll always be a home for you here, Jessie.” Then he died, believing that he had set everything in order. He didn’t know that within a year Maybella would be buried beside him. “
“But you said he killed her,” I insisted.
“She died when Stirling was born. I hated turn. I said to him: ” You’ll kill her! ” And he looked at me with those contemptuous eyes of his as though he considered me a fool. I loved Maybella. We were like sisters. When she died part of me died. I’ve heard people say that before. It’s a cliche, isn’t it? But it can be true, you know. And it was true for me. He killed Maybella because every year he forced her to try to bear the son he wanted, though she was more or less an invalid after Adelaide’s birth. But he was cruel and hard. He got his son, though. He got Stirling. And that was what finally killed Maybella. She would have been here today but for his determination to get a son.”
I was silent and she added: “He always gets what he wants. You’ll see.”
I thought of his dream of a golden fortune which he had never found and I said: “No one gets all they want.”
“He’ll ride over everyone to get what he wants. He’ll have it, in the end.”