The Shadow of the Lynx (2 page)

He loved the life, I sensed that. If I could have been with him he would have been perfectly happy. I believe now that had he made his fortune he could not have enjoyed life half as much as he did when he was endeavouring to find it. I should have been there with him. I could have cooked the food while they worked on the diggings; I saw myself as the little mother of the colony. Had I been there I was sure I should never have wanted them to find gold in any quantity. I should have wanted them to go on forever searching for it.

The months passed; he had moved to another field. He had found nothing but a little dust. Never mind. The new field was rich, he was sure;

and one must have experience.

His optimism never flagged; he was always on the verge of great discovery. As to myself I must have seemed strange to my fellow pupils. I was aloof; I was not interested in school affairs but I managed to satisfy my teachers and I was left a good deal to myself. I was that ‘odd Nora Tamasin whose father was a gold miner in Australia’. They had wormed that much out of me.

Then the tone of the letters changed. He met the Lynx.

“The Lynx is the most unusual man I have ever met. We were drawn to each other from the first. I have decided to join him. He knows the country inside out. He’s been here for thirty-four years. If you could see him you’d know why they call him Lynx. He’s got a pair of eyes that see everything. They’re blue—not azure blue, not like the tropical seas, oh no! They’re like steel or ice. I never knew a man who could so quell with a look. He’s the big man round here. His name is Charles Herrick. He came out as a convict and now owns most of the place I’m in.

He’s a man in a million, it’s going to oe dirterent from now on. I’m going into business in a big way. No more working overworked plots.

It’s all different and all because of Lynx. “

I thought a great deal about the Lynx. I was a little jealous of him because my father’s letters were full of him. He admired him so much.

And now, through those letters, I understood what hardships he had suffered. The stories of campfire gaiety, the songs they sang by firelight, the comradeship of the diggings were only half the story. I now sensed the apprehension, the careful rationing of food, the preservation of the precious water, the terrible despair when day after day the cradles revealed nothing but the worthless dust.

“Lynx is going to strike gold in a big way, Nora, and when he does I’ll be with him. He’s a man of experience. Besides a sizeable property he owns the local store and a hotel in Melbourne. He has hundreds of men working for him and he knows all there is to know about gold. He can’t fail. I’ve told Lynx about you. He thinks that you should come out when you’re educated. But I’ll be home before then.”

I pictured Lynx—a pair of piercing eyes, a convict! Thirty-four years ago people had been sent out to Australia when they had been found guilty of some misdemeanour. Of what had Lynx been guilty? I wondered. Something political perhaps. I was sure he was not a thief or a murderer. I wanted to hear more of him.

“Lynx is a sort of king, magistrate, employer, dictator … the head of things. He is just, but he’ll have his own way. I’ve never felt such friendship as I do for him. It was a lucky day when I met him.

I’ve thrown in all I have with him. He’s certain that we’ll find a rich vein of gold. We’re going to work as secretly as possible. If we don’t keep h dark we’ll have diggers here from all over the place. The rumour only has to get round and they come in their thousands. Lynx is wily and we’re in this together. ” Letters had been coming more or less regularly. Sometimes I would get several together. My father would explain that there had been floods which had made it impossible to get letters down to Melbourne, or an expected ship had not arrived on time. There was always an explanation for delays and he never failed to give it. The message which came to me through all the letters was that however hard he was working, whatever was happening, he never forgot me and the

alti mate goal, which was for us to be together.

And then no letters came. At first, though disappointed, I was not unduly alarmed. It was the floods or a delayed ship and there would be several when they did come. But they did not come and the weeks went on and there was still no news.

Two months passed. I was frantic with anxiety; and one day Miss Emily sent for me to come to the study. It was an arid place with its polished floor, its reverent silence broken only by the ticking of the ormolu clock on the macrame-draped mantelpiece. Miss Emily was seated at the desk, her expression one of pain which suggested, erroneously, that what was to follow hurt her more than it hurt me. Parents thought Miss Emily very kind and gratefully entrusted their children to her;

they felt she would protect their darlings from the harsher rule of Miss Grainger. In fact it was mild-seeming Miss Emily who was really in charge, but she liked it to be believed that the unpopular rules and regulations were made by her sister.

“I am sure,” she said, her elbows resting on the desk, the tips of her fingers pressed together while she regarded me with some severity, “I am quite sure that you would not wish for charity. It is now two months since we heard from your father and while Miss Grainger is always prepared to be reasonable, she cannot be expected to feed and clothe you, at the same time giving you an education fit for the daughter of a gentleman.”

“I am convinced that a letter from my father is on the way.” Miss Emily coughed.

“It is a long time coming.”

“He is in Australia, Miss Emily. Posts are delayed.”

“Those were exactly Miss Grainger’s words in the beginning. Now three months’ school bills are outstanding.”

“But I am sure it will be all right. Something has delayed the letters. I am certain of it.”

“I wish I could be … for your sake. Miss Grainger is distressed but she has decided she can wait no longer. She cannot continue to support you—feed you, clothe you, educate you….” She made each item sound like a labour of Hercules.

“But, however, she does not wish to turn you out.”

“Perhaps,” I said haughtily, ‘it would be better if I left. “

“That is a rather foolish statement, I fear. Where would you go, pray?”

When Miss Emily ‘prayed’ it meant that she was really

annoyed; but I was too apprehensive for caution. My fears for my father’s safety—because I knew that only if something dreadful had happened to him could those letters have failed to arrive—made the wrath of Miss Emily comparatively unimportant to me.

“I could do something, I suppose,” I said spiritedly.

“You have no knowledge of the world. You, a girl of what is it?

Sixteen? “

“Seventeen next month. Miss Emily.”

“Well, Miss Grainger is going to be very generous. She is not going to turn you adrift. She has a proposition and of course you will wish to accept it. Indeed you can do nothing else when you consider the alternative.”

Miss Emily’s smile was pious; the palms of her hands were now pressed together and she turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

“You may stay at the school as one of our pupil teachers. That will go a little way towards earning your keep.”

So I became a pupil teacher and knew utter despair. It was not because of my position in the school but because with every passing day, when no letter came, my fears increased. I “had never been so miserable in the whole of my life. Every day I would tell myself that a letter must come; and every night when I lay in my little attic bed—for I had been moved from the dormitory—I asked myself whether it ever would.

Should I live the rest of my life at Danesworth House waiting for news? I should grow old and fusty like Miss Graeme whose hair resembled a bird’s nest made of grey-brown fluff; I sHould become pale and wan like Miss Carter; I should peer myopically like Mademoiselle and worry because I could not control the girls.

In the meantime I was less important than they were. I joined Mary Farrow in the attic bedroom with its bare boards and rush mats. Mary had been an orphan in the care of her grandmother and when Mary was sixteen the grandmother had died and Mary was left penniless. Miss Grainger had been magnanimous as with me, and Mary had become a pupil teacher. She was as colourless in her character as in her complexion, and was resigned to her future as I never could be.

We fared worse than the servants. They at least were not constantly reminded that they owed their position to Miss Grainger’s charity.

They were more useful than we were, too. We were apprentices and our’ board and lodgings were our

only payment. We must not only give me your their lessons but act as nursemaids to them; w our attic clean and be prepared to perform a might be imposed on us by Miss Emily or Miss G they saw that there were plenty.

The mistresses despised us—as did the serval children realized that they might take liberties ii which they dared take in no others. Miss Emil:

of coming silently into a classroom—always where unruly—and standing and listening with her before she delivered a reproof in front of the eh made them more certain than ever that they cou Poor Mary suffered more from them than I c meek; I had a fiery temper and I think they wer in awe of me.

Sometimes I would lie in my narrow bed at oc attic waiting for the ghostly touch of the ches the wind moved gently through its branches, i say to myself.

“Abandoned! This is the second life. Why is it that people abandon you? Ther reason for it. Twice in one lifetime.”

But my father would never abandon me. He back. I could not face a world without him. I such contentment merely to be with him and, u the greatest gift to childhood—security. Not mo:

ity, but the only kind which is important to tt security of being loved.

I had been a pupil teacher for barely a mont seemed more like a year—when the news came.

I was reading to my class that morning, but I w attending. It was a warm spring day. A bee was i up the window, now flying off in exasperation t fling itself against the glass in a desperate el itself. It was trapped. There was no way out; bul on the other side of the room was open and creature would not go there. He continued to tic ally up and down. Caught! Like myself.

The door opened suddenly and there was Missing at me oddly. I noticed that the breeze from tl sent the bee in the opposite direction. He fou window and flew out.

“You are wanted in the study,” said Miss Gr My first thought was: There

is news of him. I I reach the study he will be there.

I turned to the door.

“You should leave your class some work,” reproved Miss Graeme.

I told them to go on reading; then I fled past Miss Graeme, up the stairs to the study. I knocked at the door and waited for the response. Miss Emily was seated at the desk, a letter before her.

“You may sit down, Nora. I have a letter here. There has been some delay in the posts owing to the floods in Australia.” I sat, keeping my eyes on her face.

“You will have to be brave, my dear,” she went on gently.

I felt sick with apprehension. It must be very bad news since she called me ‘my dear’. It was. There could be nothing more terrible.

“The reason we have not heard from your father is that he is dead.”

I stumbled up to my attic and lay on my bed. The leaves of the’ chestnut tree lightly touched the window; the breeze made a soft moaning noise and the sunshine threw dancing patterns on the wall.

I should never see him again. There would be no fortune, no travels, no being together—only utter desolation. He was buried on the other side of the world, and all the time I had been waiting for a letter from him he had been lying in a coffin with the earth on top of him.

Even Miss Emily was sorry for me.

“Go to your room,” she had said.

“You will need to recover from the shock of this.”

I had come blindly up to my room. I had not listened to what she was saying. Words came back to me as I lay there.

“It has settled your future.” I did not care for the future; I was only concerned with the misery of the present. I kept seeing him, remembering his laughing eyes, hearing his booming voice.

“When my ship comes home …”

And the terrible truth was that his ship would never come home. It had foundered on the rocks of death.

He had written to me as he was dying. How like him! The letter had come by way of his solicitors with the news of his death. Miss Emily had withheld it for a few hours to give me, as she said, a little time to recover from the initial shock.

“Don’t grieve for me. We had a happy time together. Don’t let any sadness touch your memories of me, Nora. I’d rather you forgot me altogether than thinking of me should make you sad. It was an accident and it’s finished me, but you’re going to be all right, Nora. My good friend has promised me that. Lynx is a man of his word, and he has given me that word so that I can die happy. He is going to take care of you, Nora, and he’ll do it better than I could. When you read this I’ll be gone, but you’ll not be alone….”

The writing was scarcely legible. The last words were: “Be happy’ and they were only just decipherable. I pictured the pen falling from his hands as he wrote them. To the end all his love and concern had been for me.

I read the letter again and again. I would carry it with me always.

And I lay numbly on my bed, unable to think of what the future held, unable to think of anything but that he had gone.

Miss Emily sent for me. Miss Grainger was with her in the study and with them was a man in black with a white cravat and a very solemn expression. I thought he was my new guardian, but he could never be the man my father had described as Lynx.

“This is Nora Tamasin,” said Miss Emily.

“Nora, this is Mr. Marlin of Mariin Sons and Barlow your father’s solicitors.”

I sat down and listened without taking everything in; I was still numb with misery. But I gathered that everything had been legally arranged and I was to be given into the care of Mr. Charles Herrick, the man whom my father had appointed as my guardian.