The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Twenty-Five

When Black is White

IF MR THORNTON had been aware of the gradual change in his son, Kate Flinders had been acutely aware of it. There were several points that constituted the change which had seemed to begin on the night of the surprise party.

At first, Kate thought that the change might be inherself, because after the revelation that she loved Frank Dugdale she knew she regarded her betrothed in an entirely different light. The unenviable position in which she found herself she faced with courage. No doubt existed in her mind that she loved Dugdale and that he loved her, and had she been offered her freedom she would have felt both relief and joy. But she had not been offered her freedom, and, knowing that she could not expect it to be offered, she determined that at least she would try to banish Dugdale from her thoughts and be loyal in them to Ralph. And the basic reason for this decision was that her marriage to Ralph was actually desired by the two people whom she loved so well.

For Kate was nothing if not loyal. Her promise given she would keep it, and resolutely crush down any feeling for Dugdale beyond the old light-hearted friendship. But it was a task terribly bitter, so bitter that the joy of life was dulled, while to make matters worse Ralph had grown preoccupied, his usual affectionate attentions slowly becoming more indifferent.

The day after Bony discovered the clue in the cemetery was brilliantly fine, and for several hours during the morning Kate was busy among her hens and broods of early chicks. It was whilst feeding the latter, in the bottom end of thegarden, that Bony paused in passing, and spoke.

“It should be a matter of pride, Miss Flinders, having all those chickens out so early in the year,” he said, removing his old hat and standing before her bare-headed.

Kate smiled. Of all the hands on her uncle’s run the half-caste aboriginal was the most interesting. He was, in fact, not a little “intriguing’”. Several exceptionally educated and refined men had worked on the run at various periods, men whose presence there as station-hands was mystifying; but until the appearance of Bony she had not met a man so deferential to her sex, so frankly admiring of her looks for beauty’s sake. There was, too, something so easy in his speech, as though, whilst recognizing the difference of their social status, his worldly wisdom entitled him to address her at all times.

“I am proud of my chicks, Bony,” she said smilingly.

“They are, if I may guess, Buff Orpingtons, Miss Flinders.”

“Your guess is right; they are.”

“Ah! Excellent table birds, indeed, but not so excellent in producing eggs as, say, the Black Wyandottes,” murmured Bony.

Kate stared at him, and then burst out laughing.

“Is there any subject you are not well up in?” she asked.

“Too many, I am afraid,” Bony admitted. “Just now I am readingHepplewaite’s treatise on the general paralysis of the insane, a subject of which I am lamentably ignorant.”

“Do you know, Bony, that every time you speak to me you make me feel that my education has been dreadfully neglected?” she said, with another laugh. “But why in the world are you interested in insanity, of all things?”

“Because I am interested in all things, the human mind particularly. When a human being commits an act there is always a cause before it and effect after it. For instance, when a man who all his life has dressed in quiet colours suddenly takes to wearing violently-coloured socks and ties, it may be assumed that the thought has entered his mind that no longer is he young. The subsequent act proves his desire to retain his youth, at least, to make other people think he is still young and-er-daring. But the subsequent effect is to make other men regard him as-what shall I say? Vulgar, no; loud, yes. That is the effect-loudness.”

Kate could not refrain from a slight start. The threatened abnormal charge of blood to her face made her turn her head to the task of adding a little more food to the chicks’ pan. What a strange coincidence that Bony should have said that when Ralph’s sudden liking for vivid colours was one of the points of the change in him she was noticing! Or had Bony noticed it, too?

“There is no cause without effect,” Bony went on. “At one time a friend of mine died of the disease I am now studying. It was unaccountable, for he was healthy and of healthy parents; but, when he was admitted to a home for such sufferers, it was found that for many years he had been addicted to opium. The doctors said that opium was the cause. Undoubtedly it was the cause of his death, but there must have been a cause leading to the first indulgence. And that, the real cause of my friend’s death, was disappointment in a love-affair.”

“Then I hope, if I am ever disappointed in a love-affair, I shall not be so very foolish,” Kate said, still busying herself with her chicks.

“I thought of something much more drastic when I was thus disappointed,” Bony remarked, sighing.

“You!”Kate flashed round, but Bony was already leaving her. He smiled slightly.

“Even I, Bony,” he said softly. “Good morning, Miss Flinders!”

The detective was much pleased with this conversation, which had its cause and would have its effect. He had learned that Kate had noticed Ralph’s growing predilection for colours, and also he had learned that Kate was suffering from a disappointment in love; because, though her face was turned from him, he noticed the blood, which had come into her face on his introducing the subject of disappointed love, spread to her neck. But Bony thought that it was over Ralph. He was not to know that it was on account of Dugdale.

Leaving the garden by the wicker-gate, the half-caste crossed the billabong and sauntered up the river-bank with the intention of visiting the blacks’ camp, and when almost there he saw Nellie Wanting crossing the dry bed on her way to the homestead. Bony slowed in his walk and awaited her under one of the gums.

“Good morning, Nellie!” was his greeting when they met.

“Good day-ee, Bony!” she replied in her soft drawl.

“We are well met, Nellie, because I was coming to talk to you on very private business.” Bony seated himself on a fallen tree and motioned to her to sit beside him. Then, abruptly: “Are you in fun, Nellie, or do you love Mr Ralph Thornton?”

The girl, who had seated herself, sprang up. She looked at Bony as though he had struck her.

“What-what for you say that?” she demanded, the whites of her eyes very plain, her scarlet lips held apart whilst she waited for his answer. Then, since he did not reply immediately, she whispered: “What do you see, what do you find out, eh?”

“I have seen enough to make me feel very sorry for you, Nellie,” Bony said at last. “It would have been better if you had fallen in love with poor old Bony, who has a gin and three little children. You don’t expect Ralph Thornton to marry you, do you?”

“But he loves me,” she said simply.

“Does he? Are you sure he does, just because you want to believe he does? Ralph Thornton can never marry you, Nellie.”

Quite suddenly she sat down on the ground at his feet and burst into sobs. Bony’s great heart throbbed in pity. He saw the shaking shoulders and the bowed head. He saw with infinite pity the cheap cotton blouse, the cheap but spotless navy-blue serge skirt, the flesh-coloured stockings, and the brilliantly polished high-heeled shoes. Wearing a grass-plaited sarong, he thought, she would have been a queen. Wearing the clothes of a white girl, decking herself to please her lover’s eyes, she appeared a travesty of womanhood, a travesty and a tragedy. Leaning forward, he placed a sympathetic hand on her short black curls.

“You think he play with me because I am black,” she sobbed. “But helove me. Hetell me so again and again. I love him, yea-oh dear! I love him. Hedrown, and I pull him out. I save him, and hebelonga me all right now. I love him long time before I pull him out of hole, but helove me then and always ever after. Hemarry me and I go away long way off with Ralphie. Hemake me call him Ralphie. Even if he won’t marry me, no matter. I go way with him, I go bush with him, and help him-bush allalonga me. Iwanta go, hewanta go. Hewant me and I want him.”

The man found himself regarded by tear-drenched eyes.

“Oh, Bony-dear old Bony!-done you see my Ralphie allbelonga me, and me allbelonga him?” she pleaded.

“What does your mother say about it?” Bony inquired.

“Ole Sarah-shedunno. You no tell her, Bony.”

“What do you think she would say if she did know?” the half-caste persisted.

For a while Nellie was silent. Then:

“She nosay nothing.”

“That may be. But what do you think Mrs Thornton say when sheknow her son has gone bush with you, Nellie, you, a gin?”

“What matter what shesay, then?” Nellie countered naively.

“A great deal, my girl, a great deal. They would very soon have your lover back. And you would be ordered off the run, kept away like-like a dingo. Can’t you understand that?”

“They’ll never find us when we go bush. We’ll be, oh! so clever. We’ll have plenty tucker and walk, walk, walk all day, far, far away.”

Bony sighed. It was evident that the affair was already becoming serious, and that young Thornton was planning to make an irrevocable outcast ofhimself. For an outcast he would assuredly become if he took the girl away into the bush. Had the two met in the far north of Queensland, or the Northern Territory, the public eye would have been closed in a portentous wink; but here, in New South Wales, the home of the bluest-blooded squattocracy, such a course would result in utter social damnation.

So Bony played the age-old trump card, the chief trump card of all:

“But the time would come, Nellie, when out there in the bush he would begin to think of his father and mother and the home he had left. He would look at you. And you would see in his eyes the longing for all those things he had lost.”

“I won’t let him think of that,” she said fiercely. “I shall love him so, so much that he would not have any time to think like that.”

“You won’t stop him thinking when you lie asleep,” Bony pointed out gently. “And you will know, girl, that he is there living like we black people because of you. You will know that you have dragged him down to our level, he who now is so proud, so white, so high.”

Nellie made no reply to that. Bony had let her see the matter from an entirely new angle, had started a train of thought which kept her silent. Still he urged further:

“You don’t know it, Nellie, but you are an exceptional girl. I have studied you. In spite of the loose morals of your people, made loose because the iron tribal customs of old have been swamped by the white man’s damnable civilization, you are a thoroughly good girl, a throwback, as it were, to your ancestors of five hundred years ago.

“Just think now. Suppose you let Ralph take you away into the bush. It will be lovely to be wrapped in love for a little while-and a little while it will be, in spite of what you think. Love will sleep one day, and he will awake to see how deep has been his fall because of you. Now, suppose you say to yourself: ‘I love my Ralphie so much that I won’t let him fall because of me. I’ll make him stay as he is. I’ll watch him grow older, see him boss of Barrakee, see him become so fine, and I shall be able to say to myself: ‘Ralphie, you have become great because I love you so much that I would not let you sink to be an outcast, a wild man, a dingo.’ Would not that be so much nobler, Nellie, wouldn’t it?”

Whilst he spoke the girl watched his face with growingly shining eyes, but when he ceased speaking her voice was caught by a sob, and suddenly the tears fell from her eyes and rolled unchecked down her cheeks of black velvet. And then, as suddenly as the tears came, she caught him by the knees and lowered her face upon them. For a long time they remained like that, the girl passionately weeping, the man softly caressing her hair.

“Bony, oh, Bony! youis right,” she cried. “I go away now, this minute. I go down to Three Corner Station, to Mrs Hemming, who want me. Ralphie! Oh, my Ralphie! What shall I do?”