CHAPTER IX

The probable day of their arrival had been telegraphed from Perth, duly noted and published by the local press. Furthermore, later intelligence from the last stopping-place had been supplied, so that, when, at mid-day, the Perth express steamed into the Pilot Mount platform, there was the largest crowd collected there since the official turning-on of the main of the Great Aqueduct by the Premier of West Australia.

‘This seems a busy place,’ said Alister Lilburne, as he marked the crowded platform, the equipages great and small, mounted and foot police, ordinary miners in hundreds, besides others who walked in procession, and carried flags—not to mention a camel train, with turbaned Afghan drivers, standing patiently on the outer edge of the assemblage. ‘Is this an everyday gathering, or is there any person of distinction expected? What a number of nurses, in uniform too! Ha! a light breaks in on me. Is it—surely not to greet you on your return?’

‘I am afraid that all this fuss is about your wife, and no one else, my dear Alister,’ she answered, not without perturbation. ‘I expected some kind of greeting, but nothing on so large a scale. Yes! it must be so. Here comes my good friend the Mayor—with the Councillors in their robes too. I suppose we must face it. Gore Chesterfield too, Mr. Southwater, old Jack. I see my friends have “rolled up,” as we say here. I am afraid I shall break down.’

‘My future rank and position are now irrevocably decided,’ said he; ‘I shall go down to posterity as Mrs. Lilburne’s husband. Very proud of the title, I assure you. Wish for nothing better—only, if only _they_—well! it can’t be helped.’

‘Do you miss any one, Alister?’ she asked, looking anxiously in his face.

‘Only two faces, darling! If only Carteret and Hayston were present, what a tone it would have given to the whole thing!’

‘Poor Lytton, how he would have revelled in it! As for the bold sea-rover, I shall always pray for him. But perhaps he is safer (and others too) on board that dear _Leonora_. Now for the serious business of the day. Mind you recognise it as such!’

The band struck up the National Air as the Mayor in his robes advanced with dignity, and, bowing respectfully, shook hands with Mrs. Lilburne and congratulated her warmly, greeting also her husband, who was introduced formally to them. His Worship then stood up, and begged to express briefly the pleasure which it afforded him, and the members of the Pilot Mount Municipal Council, to welcome back a lady to whom, speaking in their name, and as representing the miners of the field, the citizens, and the inhabitants generally, they felt they owed so deep a debt of gratitude (here he paused for a moment, to afford opportunity for a burst of cheering—loud, hearty, and protracted), for her services—valuable—he might say, invaluable, such as they would never forget as long as there was an ounce of gold left in the field, or in West Australia! Here the cheering was long—so protracted that the Mayor held up his hand, and, motioning for silence, concluded his remarks by inviting Mr. and Mrs. Lilburne to a banquet at the Town Hall.

A carriage with four greys was in attendance, into which, in company with the Mayor and Mayoress, the distinguished visitors were handed, and driven to the Town Hall. Arrived at this imposing structure, they were ushered into the Great Hall, where tables had been laid for apparently about a thousand people. On the right hand of the Mayor sat the guest of the day, with the Warden of the Goldfield—a dread and awful potentate, having power of life and death (financially)—beside her; the Lady Mayoress on the left hand of her lord and master (ancient figure of speech now chiefly obsolete). Next to her sat a lately elected Councillor, who was a representative citizen in several departments of industrial and social development, and might be trusted to find her ladyship in light and airy converse. On either side, as well as at the end of the long table, sat leading mine managers, ‘golden hole men,’ and mercantile representatives, with, of course, their wives and daughters. In prominent positions were distinguished visitors and tourists, such as General Sir Walter and Lady Cameron, the Honourable Denzil Southwater, Sir John and Lady Woods, and other notables of rank and fashion. With the exception of the memorable gathering when the Great Aqueduct discharged its first bounteous, providential flow, no such gathering had ever been witnessed at Pilot Mount. Full justice having been done to the repast, and the healths of the King and Queen heartily and loyally, if briefly, responded to, the Mayor called upon all present to charge their glasses, as he was about to propose the health of the guest of the day—he might say, the heroine of the hour—Mrs. Lilburne. If he gave her the title of Nurse Lilburne, by which she had been known so favourably to the population of the city, and the goldfields generally, perhaps he would be better understood. That burst of cheering, straight from the heart, showed how miners and workers of all classes recognised their true friends, of whatever class or occupation. He had taken the liberty of describing that lady as a heroine. There had been heroines in the history of our Motherland, who had stood upon the battlefield, ministering to the wants of the wounded and the dying, unmoved by feelings of personal danger; heroines who had dared the risks of plague, pestilence, and famine, with unshaken courage and faith in an all-seeing Providence; heroines who had donned armour; heroines who had dared hurricanes or shipwreck, calmly pursuing their ministrations until the ‘whelming wave’ ended the tragedy; but none of these exemplars of womanhood, whether ancient or modern, exceeded in lustre the self-devoted attendant upon the feeble, the stricken, the sick, and the dying, who patiently—at all hours, in all seasons—fought the dread epidemic which had ravaged their city in its earlier days. It had slain a large proportion of the pioneers. Young and old, gentle and simple, tenderly or rudely reared, there had been but little difference in the death-roll. Thank God! the plague had been stayed. Their city was now as free from it and other diseases as the leading metropolitan towns. But they owed it not alone to their excellent medical staff, not to improved sanitation, but, under Heaven, to the nursing staff—among whom the earliest, the most capable, the most unwearied, the most successful in wresting patients from the very jaws of death, was their distinguished—he might say, their illustrious guest, to honour whom they were met that day. He gave them the health of Mrs. Alister Lilburne, more widely known, perhaps more loved and honoured, as ‘Nurse Lilburne.’

Long, loud, protracted indeed were the responses of the guests. Heterogeneous as was the assembly, but one feeling—that of deepest gratitude, of heartfelt respect—seemed to actuate the great gathering. When at length Mrs. Lilburne stood up in her place, and the Mayor requested silence, it was wonderful how suddenly all sound and motion ceased.

She wore her simple nurse’s uniform. ‘This,’ she told her husband, ‘is the dress in which I worked, the dress in which I earned the gratitude of these people—out of respect to them, and the sisterhood who worked with me so loyally, I prefer to wear it to the end of the ceremony.’

As she stood there, outwardly calm and collected—although naturally roused to an unwonted state of exaltation by the electrical atmosphere of the assemblage—she spoke the first few words in a comparatively low tone, vibrating though they were with deep feeling and suppressed emotion; but as she became more fully pervaded by the unusual nature of the situation, and the exceptional circumstances under which the acquaintance—the friendship even, with so many now present had arisen, the colour came to her cheek, the dark eyes glowed with a fire none had recollected to have seen before, and with head erect, and fearless mien, she appeared to the excited crowd not only a beautiful woman—as she had always been considered—but as an inspired prophetess, dealing with questions not only of the life here, but of that beyond the grave. Adverting to the formation of the Pilot Mount hospital, and its humble inception by the committee of energetic, liberal-minded men—nearly all of whom she was glad to see here to-day—she congratulated the ladies and gentlemen present on the generous response made to the first appeal for subscriptions. Money flowed in, not only from the city, but from distant camps and ‘rushes.’ Rude though the first building was, and humble the couches and pallets, the essentials of careful nursing and skilled medical aid were there. Crowds of patients taxed all their energy, but they were helped and encouraged by the medical staff, then and now self-denying, and generous, she might say munificent, in personal outlay—in giving freely of their time and skill. Every one helped, from his Worship, the Mayor, to the humblest tradesman. Progress was made—a large proportion of cures was effected. Gradually, medicines, scientific appliances and inventions were provided. And now what did they see? A noble building with an efficient staff, a decreasing death-rate—an institution comparing favourably with those of the metropolis, of her connection with which she would be proud to the last day of her life. With a parting word she would say farewell to Pilot Mount and the friends she had made there—friends of all classes—some of whom she had been privileged to help in the hour of need. Not only for this magnificent recognition of her humble work, but for the unaffected respect and sympathy which had been accorded to her since her first arrival as a stranger in the field, was she deeply, sincerely grateful. It would be among her most cherished memories, and would remain with her to the last day of her life. She could not conclude without a reference to not the least important feature of hospital duties and experiences, in which she had been enabled by reason of her opportunities to say a word in season of a wholly unsectarian nature to those to whose bodily health it was her duty to minister. In the hour of death, almost within view of the Day of Judgment, surely it was appropriate to suggest repentance, to enjoin prayer! She respected the creeds under which all had been reared. No minister of religion had disapproved of her action, and she would now adjure those who, like herself, had felt the dread presence of the Shadow of Death, to recall the resolutions, the vows they had then made, and to act up to them for the rest of their lives. She would be here for a few weeks more; after her departure they would most probably not set eyes upon her in this world again; but she would never forget her friends of Pilot Mount, and would trust that her memory would always be associated with words and deeds worthy of their mutual esteem.

The Warden of Goldfields, ‘rising in his place,’ begged leave of his Worship the Mayor to speak briefly to the toast they had lately honoured. From his necessarily extensive official knowledge of the miners on this field, he could assert that many of them believed that their lives had been saved by Mrs. Lilburne’s skill and devotion to duty. The Chief Commissioner of Police was convinced that her advice and personal influence had prevented one serious riot, and had exercised more weight on the side of law and order than half the force under his command.

* * * * *

‘Now, my dear Alister,’ said Elinor Lilburne, when, the function being concluded, they had been deposited safely at their hotel, after a spirited progress through an excited crowd, which might well have confused a less experienced driver, ‘how about the “necessarily rough, uncivilised inhabitants of a mining camp”?’

‘I apologise humbly for my presumption in offering an opinion founded upon ignorance the most dense, combined with prejudice the most childish. I shall submit all future statements to my “guide, philosopher, and friend.” For the attainment of sound, practical common-sense—combined with perfect manners—I shall always recommend (as I once did hear an English squire of my own county do seriously to a friend’s son and daughter) a year’s travel in Australia.’

‘Now, you are _too_ penitent; I don’t want that; but you will acknowledge that you have learned a lesson!’

‘Lesson! I have gained an experience which I trust to profit by to my life’s end. And now, when are we to have this drive to the real Pilot Mount, which I heard you arranging with that good-looking young fellow? May I venture to risk the assertion that _he_ is English?’

‘You are right there, or nearly so—he is a Scot—the Honourable Denzil Southwater—youngest son of the Earl of Southwater—and a very fine fellow he is. He is thinking of leading an exploring expedition across the desert—where he may find gold, or the other thing.’

‘What other thing?’ asked Lilburne.

‘A death in the Waste,’ replied his wife sadly. ‘It is a gamble with the King of Terrors. _He_ won in a late encounter. Two brothers—sons of the soil—trained bushmen too, left their bones on the same track last year.’

‘Killed by the blacks, I suppose?’

‘No! They went off the recognised trail, believing that they would find water, but were deceived. They left a letter written just before delirium set in—with farewells to their kin. Their bones were found by the next exploring party.’

‘There are blanks, it appears, as well as prizes—though, after your banquet, it is hard to believe in anything but general prosperity. Fortune of war, of course, and so on.’

* * * * *

Five o’clock in the afternoon was the hour named, and, faithful to his engagement, Mr. Southwater drove up to the door of the Palace Hotel, with a pair of well-groomed, efficient-looking horses and a double-seated American buggy. This, it may be mentioned, is the accepted vehicle for business, or pleasure, on all goldfields, pastoral stations, and, indeed, throughout Australia generally—when fashionable metropolitan form is not imperative. If the load be heavy, the American waggonette is employed—which combines the lightness and toughness of the buggy with a weight-carrying capacity unknown to any ordinary vehicle of British origin. The practical advantages of this carriage were enhanced by the addition of a collapsible hood of white canvas, a protection equally from sun, wind, or rain; thus combining lightness, and a cool appearance, with efficiency. Mr. Southwater had been asked to bring a lady with him, to make the party even, as well as to provide agreeable society for Mr. Lilburne, while his wife sat in the front seat, and conversed with him as driver.

‘Whom would you like, Mrs. Lilburne?’

‘Oh, I leave that to your taste and discretion. You know everybody in Pilot Mount, as well as in Perth, I believe.’

‘If Mrs. Wharton has returned from Perth, she would be the ideal fourth. If not, one of the Harley girls, or Jean White.’

‘You accept the responsibility, mind; I won’t interfere.’

As it turned out, Mrs. Wharton was still in Perth, and the Harleys had gone to Adelaide. So when they drove up to a house in the suburbs, surrounded by an unusually well-kept garden, and half-covered with a purple flowering tacsonia, a tall and beautiful girl, very well dressed, walked forth, and was introduced as Miss Jean White. Mrs. Lilburne’s face became expressive.

‘Oh, I see! No one else but the “Fair Maid of Perth” to be found—what a search you must have made. However, I trust you will be as successful in another quest one of these fine days. You have my best wishes, at any rate.’

‘I feel sure of that, Mrs. Lilburne, or I shouldn’t be here now, should I?’

‘I suppose you mean that trifling affair after the skirmish of Pilot Mount.’

‘Not at all. Much more serious—the fever I brought with me from Salt Lake. I don’t easily give up, yet I really thought I was gone then. But I see your husband and Miss Jean are getting on quite nicely, and old Hotspur is beginning to paw the ground preparatory to rearing. We had better start.’

One touch—a mere hint from the rein, and away go the fast, impatient pair. The road is smooth, sandy, and just sufficiently firm to make the going perfect; no trees to speak of, a dead level for many a mile, with a faint blue range of hills on the farthest horizon. There had been a shower or two—the dust was minimised.

The low sun brought with it the promise of a graduated coolness, operating until midnight. The conditions of travel were perfect. As the light vehicle, behind the pick of the city harness pairs, swept smoothly on, the sensation was, in its way, pleasurably exciting; the feeling of vast, almost illimitable space—the dry, warm air—the absence of sound or movement other than the slight disturbance caused by the quick hoof-beats and faint whirring of their own wheels, which seemed like a rash intrusion into a vast, hostile, formless region. For a short time conversation had ceased—simultaneously. Miss White was gazing dreamily into the ultimate west, where the cloud scheme had resolved itself into a vast sheet of crimson and gold, deepening at the edges to orange, with gradually intruding blends of lake, pale green and violet.

‘A penny for your thoughts, Jean,’ said Mrs. Lilburne. ‘And suppose we make it binding on all four of us. We seem to have been suddenly stricken dumb. I wonder what the occult influence could have been? Miss White is to speak first.’

‘I was thinking,’ said the girl, ‘of the strangeness of life here. Civilisation on one hand, with books, music, London fashions, art novelties, scarcely a month old—all the great world’s great events published at breakfast time from day to day. On the other hand, to quote dear Sir Walter, “a sun-scorched desert, brown and bare”—and here come the camels to fill in the picture!’ As she spoke, a long train wound round the edge of a line of hillocks—their leader, with turbaned attendants, adding the Eastern tone and flavour to the apparition from the underworld.

‘Thanks very much,’ said Mrs. Lilburne. ‘You are evidently destined to make a name in literature, when you elect to traverse that thorny path. What is to be the title?—for a book it must be within the year! Write while the “impulse” is fresh and unquestioned. Now for a title—_The Yellow Slave_, or _Western Whispers_, by “Winifred.”’

‘You are making me blush,’ said the girl. ‘Who said I ever wrote? If it were any other person I should call it unkind.’

‘My dearest Jean, you are convicting yourself out of your own mouth. I did not say that you _had_ written, but that with your poetic tastes and strong turn for idealising our everyday life, you would be certain to write in the future. Not that I should care for your becoming a “writing woman.”’

‘Now you are disrespectful to authors. Why should I not write? I might give the English cousins a clearer insight into our lives, about which, it seems to me, they are so strangely ignorant.’

‘All in good time, my dear! You were intended by Nature for something much better than to write books for idle people to read. What do you think, Mr. Southwater?’

‘Quite agree with Mrs. Lilburne,’ said the young man, looking upon the lovely _ingénue_ with such manifest admiration that she turned to Lilburne, and playfully besought his aid against her opponents.

‘Miss White is perfectly within her rights in extracting intellectual pleasure from the scant materials which lie around her. She is making the world at large her debtor by doing so. On the other hand, is the game worth the candle? Think of the careworn expression, the harassed nerves, the premature departure of youth—that divine if ephemeral gift. And all for what? For the sake of a book which half the world don’t understand, and the other half dislike.’

‘But think of the pleasure of being successful—really successful! What a glorious privilege! And such a joy while one is writing! I think I should die with ecstasy over a real triumph.’

‘Trust me—believe me, my dear Miss White, I have known writers, successful ones, too, of both sexes, and they were mostly disillusioned, if not disappointed. No, my dear young lady, the kind gods have blessed you with the chief treasures of this mortal life—health, youth, warm friends, and, I might say, the highest endowment of all. Tempt not the jealous goddess.’

‘All this is very fine, and, no doubt, elevating,’ interposed Mrs. Lilburne; ‘but suppose we revert to the practical. Here we are at Pilot Hill, a place where romance has been acted—not merely written about, as Mr. Southwater, quite among friends, might tell us if he would.’

‘Nothing much to tell,’ said that young man, who, like all men of true heroic mould, hated talking about his deeds of valour. ‘Only a quick thing, soon over. Casualties few. Enemy routed with loss.’

‘What a shabby account of a real affair of outposts. Here’s Jean dying to hear about it. You _were_ wounded, you know, or was it Lord Newstead? We can’t let you off. Support me, Jean, love! Look at her, Mr. Southwater.’

The girl, who had been gazing at Southwater with a world of interest, admiration, and pained sympathy in her beautiful eyes, dropped them at this appeal, and could only murmur pleadingly, ‘Please do.’

The young fellow was but a man. Thus adjured he would have been more than mortal if he had resisted such an appeal.

‘Now, Mrs. Lilburne, this is hardly fair. But I’m not a public character, and I know I can rely on you not to give me away. So here goes, while we walk the horses up the hill:—

‘The night was hot and steamy. I was sitting in my tent writing home, and Newstead was talking to Minniekins—really half the credit belongs to her, for she gave us warning, you know. We were enjoying the quiet loaf, when suddenly she began to growl—not a bark, but a low, suspicious, disapproving note, hinting at undesirables. It was too dark to see more than a few yards; but Minniekins rarely made a false point.

‘We had finished a big clean up, and were mostly tired—perhaps a trifle sleepy. I stopped writing and watched. Minniekins kept on growling. On a sudden she burst into a fierce bark. Then I heard an oath, and a sharp yell of pain, after which she went on barking worse than ever. Then the scoundrels made their rush—it was a “put-up thing,” I mean planned beforehand—and the scrimmage began.

‘A fellow jammed a revolver into my face, which I instinctively knocked up, knocking him down with a left-hander at the same time.

‘His “gun,” as Americans call it, fell wide of him, and I grabbed it before he got on his legs again. I heard shots while this little bit of business was going on, and Mr. Banneret got a scratch—a close shave all the same. My man was soon made safe, and I was just in time to see Newstead laid out with a bullet through his left shoulder, not so far from the heart. A police detachment came in on the top of the shindy; but the battle was over. A tall man lay dead not far from the gold-room—poor Dick Andrews was down, and played out; but he had saved Banneret’s life by dropping “Long Jack” as the tall scoundrel—a noted criminal from another colony—was taking a second shot.

‘Old Jack, who was just going to the township, and, being in full fig, had of course got his six-shooter, had fired right and left with good effect, so that when the Inspector lined up with the flower of the police force, fully armed, there was nothing to do but to carry off the wounded and bury the casualties. That was our Waterloo—short, sharp, and decisive; if it hadn’t been for Minniekins, we should have been taken, wholly unprepared—like the War Office in the Boer War. I think she ought to be decorated for it.’

‘And Lord Newstead—I suppose he recovered?’

‘I can answer for that,’ said Mrs. Lilburne, ‘as I had him under my care for a month, and a very refractory patient he was. He went home by the next P. & O.’

‘Of course he did,’ said Southwater, in an aggrieved tone, ‘and swelled about with his arm in a sling, giving himself the airs and graces of the wounded warrior, and letting the girls wait upon him all the way to Marseilles, under the impression that “his heart was weak,” and all sorts of humbug, while Chesterfield and I had to come back here and—er—take up the weary round of toil and what’s-its-name.’

‘Well, it seems to agree with you, Mr. Southwater,’ said the girl, smiling in so bewitching a fashion that a man might have been nerved to even greater exertion than such as was demanded from the shareholders in a mine which had reached the dividend-paying stage, and _such_ dividends too, as the ‘Last Chance, Limited,’ was even now disbursing.

‘“All’s well that ends well,” is a comfortable proverb. I feel pretty well, thank you, Miss White, and am gratified for the compliment. But here is old Jack coming forward to welcome this honourable party, and to do the honours in proper goldfield style.’

That venerable ancient now arrived on the scene, his bronzed and gnarled countenance wrinkled into an expression of welcome, which seemed with difficulty to adapt itself to his rugged face. The intention, however, was unmistakable.

‘Proud to see you, Mrs. Lilburne—and Miss Jean. Lord love her, hasn’t she growed into the beauty of the world! How you’ve shot up, to be sure! It’s many a long year since your father and I met on the other side. Well, he was always lucky—in more ways than one—that I’ll say and stand to. Glad to see you, sir! Like to see the mine? Saw the big silver mine at Los Angelos, did you? I was there many a year ago. Didn’t ought to have come away neither. But I was a “forty-niner.” Couldn’t help following the rush to ’Frisco—what a time it was! There’ll never be anything like it again while the world lasts.’

‘My husband would like to see the machinery,’ said Mrs. Lilburne. ‘What a grand view you’ve got!’

‘That’s what I thought when I first seen it, ma’am. I was pretty well told out when I got here first—thought I’d turn round and get back while I’d a little strength left. But I couldn’t help standin’ still to look at the view. The sun was just a-settin’, and there was a kind of gold and red look over that far plain country. So, thinks I, it looks mean to cut away back without proving one or two of these “gulches”—that’s what we called them in San Francisco. So I stayed and camped—and next day if I didn’t fall plum centre on the—the——’

‘The Great Pilot Mount Reef, going twenty ounces to the ton,’ said Mr. Southwater, ‘which you’re going to show these ladies and Mr. Lilburne—not forgetting a five-ounce nugget for Miss White.’

‘We’ve been breaking down the south end of the reef to-day, and got some pretty coarse gold, so the ladies has come at a good time, sir. Please to follow me, and we’ll see what we can do. It ain’t every day we see a young lady like Miss Jean. Lord bless and prosper her!’

So the party was introduced to the ‘shift boss,’ with other leading officials and men in authority; afterwards to be lowered down in the ‘cage’ to where men were working two hundred yards from the surface, in narrow alleys with gleaming white or pink walls of quartz, in which were golden streaks. Narrow bands of dull red or yellow metal, almost unrecognisable as the root of all evil, and the lure for which men—ay, and women—bartered soul and body, and were content to work in hunger, dirt, rags, and wretchedness, if only they could gain a sufficiency of the dross, so called, which people profess to despise, but which all men covet and hanker for to their lives’ end.

The atmosphere was hot and humid; the men at work in these lower levels might have passed for Red Sea stokers, as they laboured with tense muscle and sinew.

To what purpose this labour was expended—so far from the light of the sun or the fresh air of heaven—a visit to the treasure-chamber, in one side of the great gallery, was recommended. There the person in charge of the gold pointed out some of the specimens which had recently been sent in. Besides these there was the retorted gold.

After the gold was extracted from the innocent-looking matrix, it was poured into shapes, one of which, looking like the half of that anchor of British loyalty and instinctive reverence to the Empire, the British plum-pudding, the guardian had more than once offered to an adventurous damsel ‘on tour’—if she could _carry it away_: a challenge sometimes accepted; but in all cases the weight proved too great for the fair arms which so lovingly enfolded the bullion. However, fragments of the pure, precious metal were extracted from the glittering heap and handed to Mrs. Lilburne and the fair Jean, with apologies, even entreaties that they would deign to accept them, and so bring good luck to the mine, and all who laboured in it.

‘I must say,’ said Lilburne, after marking with experienced eye the various indications on this and other ‘drives’ (galleries), and workings generally, ‘that this country of yours appears to me more wonderful every hour I spend in it. Think of a solitary traveller, “remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,” dropping upon a property like this, and, what is more noteworthy, being able to keep possession of it.’