“I want to have him watched, so that he may feel that if he attempts to destroy my property his guilt will be detected.”
“Who is to watch him?”
“He is in your employment.”
“He lives in the hut down beyond the gate. Am I to keep a sentry there all night, and every night?”
“I will pay for it.”
“No, Mr. Heathcote. I don’t pretend to know this country yet, but I’ll encourage no such espionage as that. At any rate, it is not English. I dare say the man misbehaved himself in your employment. You say he was drunk. I do not doubt it. But he is not a drunkard, for he never drinks here. A man is not to starve forever because he once got drunk and was impertinent. Nor is he to have a spy at his heels because a boy whom nobody knows chooses to denounce him. I am sorry that you should be in trouble, but I do not know that I can help you.”
Harry’s passion was now very high, and his resolution to be cool was almost thrown to the winds. Medlicot had said many things which were odious to him. In the first place, there had been a tone of insufferable superiority—so Harry thought—and that, too, when he himself had divested himself of all the superiority naturally attached to his position, and had frankly appealed to Medlicot as a neighbour. And then this newfangled sugar grower had told him that he was not English, and had said grand words, and had altogether made himself objectionable. What did this man know of the Australian bush, that he should dare to talk of this or that as being wrong because it was un-English! In England there were police to guard men’s property. Here, out in the Australian forests, a man must guard his own, or lose it. But perhaps it was the indifference to the ruin of the women belonging to him that Harry Heathcote felt the strongest. The stranger cared nothing for the utter desolation which one unscrupulous ruffian might produce, felt no horror at the idea of a vast devastating fire, but could be indignant in his mock philanthropy because it was proposed to watch the doings of a scoundrel! “Good morning,” said Harry, turning round and leaving the office brusquely. Medlicot followed him, but Harry went so quickly that not another word was spoken. To him the idea of a neighbour in the bush refusing such assistance as he had asked was as terrible as to us is the thought of a ship at sea leaving another ship in distress. He unhitched his horse from the fence, and galloped home as fast as the animal would carry him.
Medlicot, when he was left alone, took two or three turns about the mill, as though inspecting the work, but at every turn fixed his eyes for a few moments on Noke’s face. The man was standing under a huge cauldron regulating the escape of the boiling juice into the different vats by raising and lowering a trap, and giving directions to the Polynesians as he did so. He was evidently conscious that he was being regarded, and, as is usual in such a condition, manifestly failed in his struggle to appear unconscious. Medlicot acknowledged to himself that the man could not look even him in the face. Was it possible that he had been wrong, and that Heathcote, though he had expressed himself badly, was entitled to some sympathy in his fear of what might be done to him by an enemy? Medlicot also desired to be just, being more rational, more logical, and less impulsive than the other—being also somewhat too conscious of his own superior intelligence. He knew that Heathcote had gone away in great dudgeon, and he almost feared that he had been harsh and unneighbourly. After a while he stood opposite Nokes and addressed him. “Do the squatters suffer much from fires?” he said.
“Heathcote has been talking to you about that,” said the man.
“Can’t you say ‘Mr. Heathcote’ when you speak of a gentleman whose bread you have eaten?”
“Mr. Heathcote, if you like it. We ain’t particular to a shade out here as you are at home. He has been telling you about fires, has he?”
“Well, he has.”
“And talking of me, I suppose?”
“You were talking of having a turn at mining some day. How would it be with you if you were to be off to Gympie?”
“You mean to say I’m to go, Mr. Medlicot?”
“I don’t say that at all.”
“Look here, Mr. Medlicot. My going or staying won’t make any difference to Heathcote. There’s a lot of ’em about here hates him that much that he is never to be allowed to rest in peace. I tell you that fairly. It ain’t anything as I shall do. Them’s not my ways, Mr. Medlicot. But he has enemies here as’ll never let him rest.”
“Who are they?”
“Pretty nigh everybody round. He has carried himself that high they won’t stand him. Who’s Heathcote?”
“Name some who are his enemies.”
“There’s the Brownbies.”
“Oh, the Brownbies! Well, it’s a bad thing to have enemies.” After that he left the sugar-house and went across to the cottage.
V
Boscobel
Two days and two nights passed without fear of fire, and then Harry Heathcote was again on the alert. The earth was parched as though no drop of rain had fallen. The fences were dry as tinder, and the ground was strewed with broken atoms of timber from the trees, each of which a spark would ignite. Two nights Harry slept in his bed, but on the third he was on horseback about the run, watching, thinking, endeavouring to make provision, directing others, and hoping to make it believed that his eyes were everywhere. In this way an entire week was passed, and now it wanted but four days to Christmas. He would come home to breakfast about seven in the morning, very tired, but never owning that he
