“Thanks, Brooke,” and the big man grasped his friend's hand mechanically. “This has dazed me a bit. Come outside, and well talk it over.”
He rose unsteadily, placing his hand on the edge of the table, and then fell forward upon his face, and lay still—his big, generous heart had ceased to beat.
When Brooke rode away late that night on his way home thinking of his dead friend, he reproached himself for so often having spoken of Elizabeth Westonley as “a pretty automaton, with as much heart in her as a doll.” For her silent grief had showed him that she had loved her husband.
CHAPTER XVI
The news of Westonley's sudden death was a great shock to Gerrard. The brief telegram from his half-sister had been forwarded to Port Denison, and Lacey had sent it on to him at Fraser's Gully, by the mailman, together with a copy of the Clarion, containing the telegraphed account of the Dacre's bank failure. Had Gerrard looked at the newspaper, he might perhaps have connected Westonley's sudden end with the financial disaster, which had brought ruin to so many thousands of Australian homes, for he knew that his brother-in-law banked at Dacre's. But Mrs Westonley had said nothing of the cause of her husband's death—“Edward died suddenly yesterday. Am writing you fully to-night to Port Denison” was all that she had said.
“Dear old Ted!” he said as his eyes filled, and he saw before him the great, bearded face with the kindly, mirthful eyes, and heard the deep, gruff voice. “How can I tell Jim—the boy will be heartbroken.”
And Jim's grief almost unmanned “Uncle Tom,” as the boy now called him. Putting the telegram in his pocket, he went down to the battery, where his protégé was being inducted into the mysteries of amalgamation by Fraser.
“Jim,” he said quietly, “come along the creek with me for a bit of a stroll.”
“Is your face paining you much this morning, Uncle Tom?” said the boy, as they left the battery, and walked towards the creek, “you look quite white.”