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

feeling between. They hate making up their minds, most of ’em as I’ve known, and jump from being ready to drown themselves one moment to being likely to go mad with joy another. Anyhow you take ’em, they’re better than men, though. I’ll never go back on that.

So Aileen used to send me and Jim long letters now, telling us that things were better at home, and that she really thought mother was cheerfuller and stronger in health than she’d been ever since⁠—well, ever since⁠—that had happened. She thought her prayers had been heard, and that we were going to be forgiven for our sins and allowed, by God’s mercy, to lead a new life. She quite believed in our leaving the country, although her heart would be nearly broken by the thought that she might never see us again, and a lot more of the same sort.

Poor mother! she had a hard time of it if ever anyone ever had in this world, and none of it her own fault as I could ever see. Some people gets punished in this world for the sins other people commit. I can see that fast enough. Whether they get it made up to ’em afterwards, of course I can’t say. They ought to, anyhow, if it can be made up to ’em. Some things that are suffered in this world can’t be paid for, I don’t care how they fix it.

More than once, too, there was a line or two on a scrap of paper slipped in Aileen’s letters from Gracey Storefield. She wasn’t half as good with the pen as Aileen, but a few words from the woman you love goes a long way, no matter what sort of a fist she writes. Gracey made shift to tell me she was so proud to hear I was doing well; that Aileen’s eyes had been twice as bright lately; that mother looked better than she’d seen her this years; and if I could get away to any other country she’d meet me in Melbourne, and would be, as she’d always been, “your own Gracey”⁠—that’s the way it was signed.

When I read this I felt a different man. I stood up and took an oath⁠—solemn, mind you, and I intended to keep it⁠—that if I got clear away I’d pay her for her love and true heart with my life, what was left of it, and I’d never do another crooked thing as long as I lived. Then I began to count the days to Christmas.

I wasn’t married like Jim, and it not being very lively in the tent at night, Arizona Bill and I mostly used to stroll up to the Prospectors’ Arms. We’d got used to sitting at the little table, drinking our beer or whatnot, smoking our pipes and listening to all the fun that was going on. Not that we always sat in the big hall. There was a snug little parlour beside the bar that we found more comfortable, and Kate used to run in herself when business was slack enough to leave the barmaid; then she’d sit down and have a good solid yarn with us.

She made a regular old friend of me, and, as she was a handsome woman, always well dressed, with lots to say and plenty of admirers, I wasn’t above being singled out and made much of. It was partly policy, of course. She knew our secret, and it wouldn’t have done to have let her let it out or be bad friends, so that we should be always going in dread of it. So Jim and I were always mighty civil to her, and I really thought she’d improved a lot lately and turned out a much nicer woman than I thought she could be.

We used to talk away about old times, regular confidential, and though she’d great spirits generally, she used to change quite sudden sometimes and say she was a miserable woman, and wished she hadn’t been in such a hurry and married as she had. Then she’d crack up Jeanie, and say how true and constant she’d been, and how she was rewarded for it by marrying the only man she ever loved. She used to blame her temper; she’d always had it, she said, and couldn’t get rid of it; but she really believed, if things had turned out different, she’d have been a different woman, and any man she really loved would never have had no call to complain. Of course I knew what all this meant, but thought I could steer clear of coming to grief over it.

That was where I made the mistake. But I didn’t think so then, or how much hung upon careless words and looks.

Well, somehow or other she wormed it out of me that we were off somewhere at Christmas. Then she never rested till she’d found out that we were going to Melbourne. After that she seemed as if she’d changed right away into somebody else. She was that fair and soft-speaking and humble-minded that Jeanie couldn’t have been more gentle in her ways; and she used to look at me from time to time as if her heart was breaking. I didn’t believe that, for I didn’t think she’d any heart to break.

One night, after we’d left about twelve o’clock, just as the house shut up, Arizona Bill says to me⁠—

“Say, pard, have yer fixed it up to take that young woman along when you pull up stakes?”

“No,” I said; “isn’t she a married woman? and, besides, I haven’t such a fancy for her as all that comes to.”

“Ye heven’t?” he said, speaking very low, as he always did, and taking the cigar out of his mouth⁠—Bill always smoked cigars when he could get them, and not very cheap ones either; “Well, then, I surmise you’re lettin’ her think quite contrairy, and there’s bound to be a muss if you don’t hide your tracks and strike a trail