Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕

a man’s that wrapped up in his wife or any other woman. Not that I’ve known about, and I have seen a good many, one way and another.

The Honourable Dominick Wharton wasn’t much like other people, for he seemed to have been as happy as the day was long then, when they lived in Sydney in a bit of a cottage by Double Bay, and when they went into the bush and travelled about together, making sketches, collecting specimens, hunting about for minerals, and stones, and rubbish of that kind, and she drying the plants and flowers, and putting labels on his bags, and never sparing herself in anything, only if she could please him. “The angels cannot be happier in heaven,” is what he wrote down at the end of one of his days’ work.

One thing he seemed particularly keen to find out was the gold and silver, of all things. He’d travelled in Mexico when he was a boy and seen what he called “placer” mining, same as our shallow sinking, I expect. He watched how they washed it out of the alluvial in cradles. So, besides his plants and stones and bones, and wanting to know how old the world was, which he needn’t have troubled his head about, he was always hunting and digging and washing about the creek and riverbeds, expecting to find gold, because he said the country was just like places where they always found gold and silver and other metals too.

But how did he come to the Hollow, and why did he live there so long and die there? That was what we wanted to know.

Then Starlight pulled out another parcel of paper, tied round with a black silk string, and begins to read. He looked different himself, and stopped chaffing and laughing, as we’d all been doing a bit, partly for nonsense, and partly not to seem too solemn-like.

“My wife is dead! dead! my adored, my only love, my true life, my soul! Why should I ever put pen to paper again? Why ever commit my vain thoughts and worthless words to a lasting record, when she who inspired every thought of my heart, every motion of my mind, every act of my being, lies dead! dead! pulseless, motionless for evermore! This wilderness⁠—with her companionship, a Paradise replete with treasures of knowledge⁠—seems now an Inferno, in which every tree sighs her death-note to the breeze⁠—every plant, every flower, recalls her name. Estelle! lost Estelle, when shall I rejoin thee?

“She died in my arms. God was merciful, else might I have been afar. Despite the deadly reptile poison, her senses were retained to the closing breath, until her last wishes found full expression. She gently reproved my despair, my wrath against fate, my defiance of Heaven. Was I, the philosopher, the instructed student, the votary of science, to yield to blind, unreasoning despair⁠—to blasphemous rage against that Providence which had granted us long years of happiness, ages of blissful companionship? No. I must not rave, nor weep, nor despair, if I wished my own Estelle to die happily and in peace. For her sake would I promise to carry out steadfastly, to complete, our original plan of scientific research? She adjured me by our lost love and hope⁠—by this fast-fading sunset of all our hope and joy⁠—by that dread day in which we should meet again. With such an object life would be endurable, and death not unwelcome. Would I swear?

“They smiled, how faintly sweet, those softest lips, those dying love-lit eyes, as I knelt by the rude couch and vowed to the Eternal Ruler of the Universe⁠—to the Heaven on the threshold of which she lay⁠—by our immortal love⁠—by that after life which spirits parted, but not divided, in time must share.

“Her stainless soul winged its flight from earth ere I rose well-nigh from a death-swoon, but pledged to carry out her dying wishes to the letter.”

“Poor old chap,” says Jim, taking his pipe out of his mouth, “that’s enough to show why he took it into his head to turn batter and live all by himself in the Hollow, which I expect never had an honest man camped upon it before or since. It’s curious how things turn up. Did you ever see him, father?”

“No, not I. He was dead the year before Donohoe showed me the trick of getting in and out of this place. His mates both died a bit after. One got the horrors after drinking for a month straight on end, and pitched himself down that limestone place where the waterfall is. How the gin (Warrigal’s mother) died, Donohoe wouldn’t say. The other man was shot by the mounted police. One day they had been sticking up one of old Bradley’s drays. He got home pretty right, but died of it. Donohoe was getting old and done himself, and had to get a mate of some sort. He knew I was middlin’ game, and could hold my tongue, even when I was drunk, so he took me. It’s a long story how the captain came among us; but he saved Warrigal’s life when Donohoe had tied him up to a tree and was going to shoot him. That’s why he takes to him more than anyone in the world. He’s true to you, Captain, if he is to anyone, I believe.”

Starlight didn’t read any more to us just then. We looked over all the papers, and read and sorted ’em out next day. All the specimens, and plants and letters, and private papers he put away in the iron box, and fastened them up and locked them quite careful. “These we’ll send home to the poor old chap’s relatives when we can get a chance, boys,” he said. “I know something of the family. They lived in the same⁠—well, near enough for me to know all about them. I remember hearing that one of the sons of old Lord Wharncombe had sailed away to Australia with