Robbery Under Arms - Rolf Boldrewood (most important books of all time .TXT) 📗

came to the pass out of the valley, we none of us got off; it was better going up than coming down, and it would have tired Aileen out at the start to walk up. So the horses had to do their climbing. It didn’t matter much to them. We were all used to it, horses and riders. Jim and I went first, then Warrigal, then Aileen and Starlight. After we got up to the top we all stopped and halted a bit to look round.

Just then, as if he’d waited for us, the sun came out from behind the mountain; the mists lifted and rolled away as if they had been gray curtains. Everything showed clear out like a playhouse, the same Jim and I used to see in Melbourne. From where we stood you could see everything, the green valley flats with the big old trees in clumps, some of ’em just the same as they’d been planted. The two little river-like silver threads winding away among the trees, and far on the opposite side the tall gray rock-towers shining among the forest edges of the high green wall. Somehow the sun wasn’t risen enough to light up the mountain. It looked as black and dismal as if it was nightfall coming on.

“Goodbye, old Hollow!” Aileen called out, waving her hand. “Everything looks bright and beautiful except the mountain. How gloomy it appears, as if it held some dreadful secret⁠—doesn’t it? Ah! what a pleasant time it has been for me. Am I the same Aileen Marston that went in there a few weeks since? And now I suppose there will be more misery and anxiety waiting for all of us when I get back. Well, come what will, I have had a little happiness on this earth. In heaven there must be rest.”

We all rode on, but none of us seemed to care to say much. Every step we went seemed to be taking us away from the place where we’d all been so happy together. The next change was sure to be for the worse. What it would be, or when it would come, we none of us could tell.

Starlight and Aileen rode together most of the way, and talked a good deal, we could see. Before we got to the stockyard she rode over to Jim and cheered him up as much as she could about Jeanie. She said she’d write to her, and tell her all about him, and how happy we’d all been together lately; and tell her that Jim would find some way to get down to her this spring, if he could manage it any road.

“If I’m above ground, tell her I’ll be with her,” says poor old Jim, “before Christmas. If she don’t see me then I’ll be dead, and she may put on black and make sure she’s a widow.”

“Oh, come, you mustn’t talk like that, Jim, and look to the bright side a bit. There’s a good chance yet, now the country’s so full of diggers and foreigners. You try your luck, and you’ll see your wife yet.”

Then she came to me, and talked away just like old times.

“You’re the eldest, Dick,” she said, “and so it’s proper for me to say what I’m going to say.” Then she told me all that was in her heart about Starlight. He and she had made it up that if he could get away to a foreign country she would join him there, and take mother with her. There was to be no marrying or lovemaking unless they could carry out that plan. Then she told me that she had always had the same sort of feeling towards him. “When I saw him first I thought I had never seen a man before⁠—never one that I could care for or think of marrying. And now he has told me that he loves me⁠—loves me, a poor ignorant girl that I am; and I will wait for him all my life, and follow him all round the world. I feel as if I could die for him, or wear out my life in trying to make him happy. And yet, and yet,” she said, and all her face grew sad, and put on the old look that I knew so well, so hopeless, so full of quiet bearing of pain, “I have a kind of feeling at my heart that it will never be. Something will happen to me or to him. We are all doomed to sorrow and misfortune, and nothing can save us from our fate.”

“Aileen, dear,” I said, “you are old enough to know what’s best for yourself. I didn’t think Starlight was on for marrying any woman, but he’s far and away the best man we’ve ever known, so you can please yourself. But you know what the chances are. If he gets clear off, or any of us, after what’s been done, you’re right. But it’s a hundred to one against it.”

“I’ll take the odds,” says she, holding up her head. “I’m willing to put my life and happiness, what little there’s left of it, on the wager. Things can’t well be worse.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I ought to tell you⁠—I must tell you something before we part, though I’d a deal rather not. But you’ll bear it better now than in a surprise.”

“Not more blood, more wickedness,” she said, in a half-whisper, and then she looks up stern and angry-like. “When is this list of horrible things to stop?”

“It was none of our doing. Moran and Daly were in it, and⁠—”

“And none of you? Swear that,” she said, so quick and pitiful-like.

“None of us,” I said again; “nor yet Warrigal.”

“Then who did it? Tell me all. I’m not a child. I will know.”

“You remember the man that was rude to you at Rocky Flat, and father and he fired at one another?”

“Of course I do, cowardly wretch that he was. Then Moran was waiting