“He’s promised your father to look after you so of course he wants you.”
“He might feel he must do it from a sense of duty because his conscience would worry him if he didn’t.”
“He doesn’t have any sense of duty … nor conscience either. He does what he wants, and he wants you to live with us.”
Why? “
“No one ever questions his motives. He knows what he wants and that’s about all there is to say.”
“He sounds an impossible sort of person.”
It is possible, although you might doubt it until you know him. “
“You talk of him as though he’s some sort of god.”
“Well, I reckon that’s not a bad description.”
“Does everyone have to be as reverent as his son?” That made him laugh.
“You have a sharp tongue, Nora Tamasin.”
“Do you think it will help to protect me against this Lynx?”
“You’ve got it wrong. He’s the one who is going to protect you.”
“If I don’t want to stay I shall come back here.”
He bowed his head.
There would be ways and means, I am sure,” I added.
“And you’d find them, I reckon.”
I had eaten one scone; he finished the entire plateful. He folded his arms and smiled at me as though he found me amusing. I was not sure what to make of him. Of one thing I was certain. Messrs Marlin Sons and Barlow could not have known that he had come alone to take me back with him for they, like Miss Emily, would surely consider this rather improper.
“But,” I said, speaking my thoughts aloud, “I suppose you are a sort of brother.”
He laughed.
“I reckon so. Sister Nora. And that makes everything all right. You don’t think so.”
“You have a habit of attempting to read people’s thoughts … not always correctly.”
“But you are pleased.”
“It’s too soon to answer that question. I hardly know you.”
“We’re pleased to have a new sister.”
I was silent for a while; then I said, “How did my father die?”
“Haven’t they told you?”
They merely said it was an accident. “
“An accident? He should have handed over the gold, then they wouldn’t have shot him.”
“They shot him! Who?”
“No one knows who. He’d been out to the mine and was on his way back on the dray, bringing gold with him. There was a hold-up. They were waylaid. It often happens. Those fellows have a nose for gold. They know when it’s being carried. So they held up the dray five miles out of Cradle > Creek. Your father wouldn’t give it up so they shot him.” I felt bewildered. I had imagined his falling from a tree or being thrown from his horse. I had never thought of murder.
“So,” I said slowly, ‘someone killed him. “
Stirling nodded.
“It happens now and then. It’s a wild country and life’s cheaper there than it is over here.”
“This was my father!” I felt furiously angry because someone had come along with a gun and wantonly taken that precious life. There was a new emotion to supersede my grief anger against my father’s murderer.
“If he had given up the gold he wouldn’t have died,” said Stirling.
“Gold!” I said angrily.
“That’s what they are all after. It’s what they all want.”
“And this … Lynx … he does too?”
Stirling smiled.
“He wants it. He’s determined to find it one day so he will.”
“How I wish my father had never got this idea into his head! If he hadn’t he would be here now.”
It was too much to contemplate. I turned away, deter mined that he should not ace my intense emotion.
“It’s like a fever,” he said.
“It gets into your brain. You think of everything you want in life and if you find gold … real gold … thousands of nuggets … you can have it.”
Everything? ” I said.
“Everything you can think of.”
“My father found gold, it seems, and lost his life preserving it, and I lost him.”
“You’re upset. You wait till you get out there. You’ll understand then. It’s a great life. You never know when you’ll make a strike.
It’s a constant challenge, a constant hope!
“And when you do someone kills you for it.”
“That’s the life out there. Your father had bad luck ” It’s hateful. “
“It’s life. I’ve upset you. I should have broken it gently. The only thing that matters is that it happened.”
He stood up.
“You go back to your room. You rest awhile; and then well have some dinner together and talk some more. It’s the best thing. “
I went up to my room, leaving him in the inn parlour. Was there to be no end to the shocks I was receiving, I asked myself. So he had been murdered. Killed in cold blood. It was fantastic. I pictured the dray lumbering along the road, the masked figure hiding under me trees and men ‘trtanu and deliver.
Forfeit your gold or your life. ” In my imagination I could see him clearly, the gold in bags about his waist perhaps. And he would say to himself: ” No, this is my gold . mine and Nora’s. ” Perhaps he was planning to bring me out to him so that I could share in the fortune, if fortune it was. So when the gun was pointing at him he refused to give up his gold, and so he gave up his life.
“I hate gold,” I said aloud.
“I wish it had never been discovered.” I thought in fury of the glittering eyes behind the mask, of a trigger that was coolly pulled, and a report that had put an end to all my happiness. Oh, how I hated my father’s murderer!
He had not died immediately. They were able to take him to Lynx and he wrote his last letter to me. But he was dying then. And it need never have happened.
Stirling was right. I needed to be alone. This was almost as great a shock as the news of my father’s death had been. It had not been an accident. It was deliberate murder.
I went to the window and looked out. Below me was the street with its ancient houses. I could see the spire of the church and the towers of the house they called Whiteladies. It had once been a convent, I remembered; the nuns had worn white habits; and this inn would have been there at the time. The pilgrims on their way to Canterbury would have stopped here—the last halt before they reached their goal.
Looking down on the street I could so easily picture them, weary and footsore, yet relieved because the host of the Falcon Inn was waiting to welcome them and offer them food and shelter before they went on to Canterbury.
As I stood at the window I saw Stirling come out of the inn. I watched him walk purposefully down the street taking long strides, and looking as though he knew exactly where he was going.
So stunned had I been by first finding that he had come instead of Miss Herrick to take me to Australia and then by his revelations about my father’s death that I had not had time to consider him. So . he was the son of that man Lynx who was fast becoming a symbol in my mind. The all-powerful Lynx of whom people spoke with awe and the utmost respect. Why had Lynx not sent his daughter? Perhaps he did not care that she should travel alone. I had imagined her to be a middle aged lady. But why had they said Miss Herrick would come and inc ii oui a young man? It was all very strange.
Stirling had turned off the main street. I wondered where he had gone.
His appearing like that had disturbed my train of thought. The sunlit street looked inviting. I could think better out of doors, I assured myself; so I put on my cape and went out. There were few people about.
A lady with a parasol strolled by on the other side; a dog lay sleeping in a doorway. I walked down the street, glancing as I passed at the shop window where behind bottle glass wools, ribbons, hats and dresses were displayed. There was nothing there to interest me, so I went on and came to the turning which Stirling had taken. It led up a hill and there was a signpost which said: To Whiteladies’.