Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

CHAPTER XVI.

TWO SIDES OF A STORY.

A scandal had come to Birralong; a scandal that ate its way into the peace and contentment of the township; a scandal which introduced into the simple existence of the district a discordant, jarring note, common enough in more crowded centres of population, but absent up to that moment from the annals of the sober, clean-living inhabitants of the bush township. And the men who gathered on Marmot's verandah to settle all the problems and the squabbles of the locality, met to marvel and to wonder; for they who, in their wisdom, had anticipated all things; they who had solved all questions affecting the welfare of the district; they who had laid bare the skeleton of every secret for miles around—had met and heard, in painful and perplexed silence, the story of a greater secret than they had yet encountered, and a secret beside which, as it were, they had been living for months past without even dreaming of its existence.

When first it came to them through the medium of a floating shred of gossip that had filtered through to the Carrier's Rest, they were too much affected for words. Only could they sit and smoke in silence, each man turning the story over and over in his mind until his pipe went out, and under cover of the smokeless silence he slipped away into the darkness and went home, mournful and abashed; until at last Marmot awakened from the reverie into which he had fallen, and discovered that he was alone as well as silent.

By the next evening they had recovered somewhat, and discussed the story in all its detail, grown the richer and more comprehensive by the silence of the night before. Each one had some little touch, some poignant item, to add to the general outline; and when they separated that night, the shred of gossip had become the completed romance which lived ever afterwards in the traditions of the township.

The hero was Slaughter; the heroine Nellie Murray; and the theme, the shattering of idyllic bliss by the deceit of a faithless lover.

From the day of the schoolmaster's death Slaughter had been a greater conundrum than ever to the men of Birralong. His visits to the store had become less and less frequent, and his bearing, when he did come, more and more distant and reserved. Not even the story of the diggers' arrival and dispersing interested him; not even the audacity of the robbery of the miner's gold from the constable's cottage, and the fruitlessness of the subsequent chase after the robbers, moved him. He listened silently and listlessly to the account of Tony's departure with his mates to seek for a fresh fortune in the place of the one they had lost. Only twice had he manifested any attention to what was said on the verandah when he was present. He had become animated and attentive when the conversation turned on the fact that while Tony had ridden out to Barellan to see Ailleen on his first return from the diggings, he had neither gone out nor mentioned her name on his second return to the township—the occasion of the great billiard contest. It was recalled by some one how quickly he had come back from the one visit he had made, and how short his answers had been to all questions put to him, and the opinion which had been formed and was generally expressed was that the cause of it all was young Dickson and the precedence he had taken over Tony in the affections of Ailleen. When Slaughter heard that he had sniffed, as he usually did before delivering himself of a sweeping condemnation of all womankind, and looked round on his companions with eyes that were peculiarly bright—but he said nothing.

The other occasion when he showed any interest in the conversation was when it was said that Tony and his two mates on setting out for the second time to the gold-fields had taken young Murray with them as well, Dickson having paid for his share in the stores and tools of the party. That piece of information had apparently affected Slaughter almost more than the other, and although he had not spoken—as Smart put it, he seemed to have swallowed his tongue—there had been a light in his eye and an expression on his face that had escaped no one.

And yet none of them had had wit enough to understand the significance of it all—until the bald fact of the revealed secret came to them. Each one claimed then that he had seen, noted, and understood the peculiarity of Slaughter's behaviour on the two occasions, but he had held his peace lest he should be doing an injustice to a fellow-townsman. Never before had Birralong been so unanimous in forming an opinion nor so generous in respecting another's fair name. But lost time was made up in the fulness of opportunity that was now offered.

The beginning of the story was vague and uncertain, and, as no particular interest attached to it, it was practically left alone. The interest of Birralong commenced with the alarm Murray and Murray's wife experienced with regard to Nellie. With a big family and a small selection, there was neither time nor inclination on their part to mince matters, and Nellie had been questioned severely and pointedly. An obstinate silence was the only result, and her parents losing patience, she had been left in a room with a locked door in order to acquire the necessary sense to answer what she was asked. Instead, however, of learning the folly of obstruction, she found that the window was open; and when her parents returned, many hours afterwards, to renew their inquiries, they found that Nellie had vanished.