The Pride of the Peacock (16 page)

reason for it’ What reason ? He’s not so very young, is he? “

“He’s the other side of thirty. To think ifs all that time since he came strutting across that lawn with his suitcase.

“I’ve come here. I like it here. I like the peacocks …” What a boy! I reckon he’s liked it there ever since. I want him to marry the right woman. Thafs important. So I’m glad he hasn’t married yet. “

“You were going to tell me the reason.”

“Oh, he’s been involved here and there. He’s a man who likes women and they like him.” Ben chuckled in that fond way which I always found irritating in this connection.

“Everything Joss does is done with more energy than ordinary people use. So ifs like that with women. He’s got the roving eye all right, but he never seemed anxious to settle.”

“He gets more attractive than ever,” I said sarcastically.

“He’s now added promiscuity to his arrogance.”

“Joss is a man, remember. He’s strong, proud, sure of himself. He’s all that a man should be. He’s myself made tall and handsome and got the right education too, which was what I missed. I sent him to school over here when he was eleven years old and he stayed here until he was sixteen. I was a bit worried about that. Afraid it might change him too much. Not a bit of it. An English education just gave him something more. When he was sixteen he refused to stay at school any longer. He was raring to get to work. He was mad about opals and mining and all that went with it. When I showed him the Flash that night I remember the look in his eyes … But that’s past. What I want to talk about is now. A year at the most, they say. Well, perhaps old Ben can make it a bit longer. But before I go everything will have to be in order. Now you can do all sorts of things for me. You can write letters and such like.”

“I’ll do everything I can. You know that, Ben.8 ” Well, the first letter I want you to write is to my solicitors. Now they’re in London and in Sydney. I want you to write to the London address right away and tell them that their Mr. Venning is to come and see me down here without delay. Will you do that? “

“Of course. Immediately. You must give me all particulars.”

“Ifs Mr. Venning of Venning and Caves, and they’re in Hanover Square and you’ll find the complete address in a book in that drawer over there. That’s the first thing.”

I wrote the letter and said I would post it.

I sat by his bed, and he said: “I’m glad there’s some time left to us, Jessie.”

The doctors could be wrong,” I insisted. They have been known to be.”

That’s so. I wonder if it is the curse of the Green Flash after all. I told you that misfortune dogged those who owned it, didn’t I? “

“But you don’t own it. You lost it… nearly twenty years ago.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But there was my accident in the mine … and there’s the suggestion that I might have caught this infection of the blood, or whatever it is, in those mines. Perhaps that’s the price you have to pay for gouging those beauties out of the rock, taking them from where they belong a sort of revenge they have.”

“Surely something beautiful shouldn’t be hidden in rock. It should be brought out for people to enjoy.”

“Who knows? But it could be the curse of the Green Flash getting me.”

“You don’t believe that, Ben. How can you? You were well enough when you owned it.”

He didn’t answer. He merely took my hand and held it.

“Later on,” he said, “I shall send for joss.”

“You mean bring him here?”

His shrewd eyes were on me.

“I can feel your pulse quicken. He excites you, doesn’t he … I mean the thought of seeing him does?”

“Why should it?” I asked.

“I know you think a great deal of him, Ben, but what I have heard doesn’t make me admire him very much.”

He started to laugh so hard that I thought it might be bad for him.

“Stop it, Ben,” I said severely.

“It’s not a bit funny.”

“It is because I know you’re going to change your opinion when you meet him.”

“So you really are going to ask him to come here?”

“Not yet. I’ve got some time left to me. When he comes it will be to see me out. He’s got work to do out there. He can’t dilly-dally shilly-shally for a year. But when the end is near-and I’ll know it-there’s no doubt of that, I’ll send for Joss. I’ll have to tell him what I want him to do before I go.”

I was unhappy, for I could see the change in him every day. Being Ben, he would cling to life tenaciously, but in the end he would have to give way.

This time next year . I thought; and I was filled with melancholy.

The weeks passed, and I continued to visit Ben every day.

My grandmother could not be kept in ignorance of my visits, and while she expressed disapproval she did not attempt to stop them. I was sure she knew that if she did I should blatantly disobey her.

“Your friend, the miner, seems to be getting his just deserts,” she commented sourly.

“People of his station clambering about in mines so that they can ape their betters are bound to come to grief.”

I couldn’t respond with my usual flippancy. I felt too deeply about Ben.

He used to talk incessantly about the days in Australia and I would encourage him to do so because it comforted him. He often mentioned the Green Rash opal and once or twice he seemed to be wandering in his mind because he talked as though he still had it.

“People get fancies about opals,” he said, ‘and the Green Hash was no ordinary gem. Diamonds can be of greater value, but they don’t seem to have the same effect on people. I’ve seen men going for gold . it’s a sort of fever, but the lust is not for the gold in itself. It’s what gold can bring them. Perhaps it’s because opals are different One nugget looks very like another, but opals are varying. There are such legends about that stone. People read messages in the colours. In the past they were omens of good fortune. People say they can bring bad luck, though. I always used to say this was because some of them could be so easily chipped, and a stone a man has regarded as his fortune can thus lose much of its value. I’ve known men desperately in need of money and yet refusing to part with a stone that could save them.

That’s how it was with the Green Rash. “

“Yet you say it was called the Unlucky Stone.8 There’s bound to be legends about a stone like that. It was one of the first black opals to be found. It’s odd that there should never have been anything like it since. There never will be in my opinion.”

Who found it? “

“It was an old miner … fifty years ago. He’d had bad luck all along the sort of fellow who’d give up just as he was almost on a find and then someone else would come along and reap the reward of his labour. He was called Unlucky

Jim. Then . he found her. It was rather like what happened to me with Green Lady. The rock collapsed on him, and he was found dead clutching the Green Flash in his hand. Perhaps that’s what started it all. I think bad luck’s sometimes wished on you . if you follow.

Unlucky Jim finds the Flash and, taking her, loses his life. His son found him and the stone and he knew right away that^ she was a winner.

One look at her was enough . though she was in the raw state then.

He wanted to get her into Sydney right away, but he’d showed her round a bit. He couldn’t help it, he was proud of her. He was warned by an old gypsy’ woman that it wouldn’t be wise for him to carry that stone through the Bush because already people were talking of it . how it was the finest opal in the world and worth a fortune. So he had a plan. He gave it to his younger brother to take . and none knew he had it. A bushranger shot him on the way determined to get the opal, but of course he couldn’t find it because the brother had it. So that was two deaths already. “

“And what happened to it then?”

“It was cut and polished and, by heavens, what emerged dazzled just everyone who saw it. The size … the colour … it had never been expected that such a stone existed. This younger brother had it then.

I only half-remember what happened to him. His daughter eloped and he tried to stop her and in the scuffle with the would-be husband, the owner of the Green Flash was thrown downstairs. He spent two years in acute pain before he died but he wouldn’t give up the Green Flash. I heard he used to carry it with him so that he could look at it every day and he thought it was worthwhile . everything that had happened just to possess it. His daughter, though, was afraid of it and she put it in the hands of a dealer and from him it passed to some Eastern ruler. That’ll give you an idea. It was worthy to fit into some jewel-studded crown. He was assassinated a year or so after, and it passed to his eldest son who was sold in slavery but not before the Flash was taken from him by his captors. One of them stole it and ran off with it and when misfortune started to hit him he blamed the stone. He died of a fever, but not before he’d told his son to take it back where it be longed. That was how it was brought back to Australia. Old Harry I told you about gambled for it. It was one of those occasions when Harry won. “

“Did he believe the legend?”

“All I know is that when people get that stone they want to keep it at all cost, ” And you weren’t afraid when you had it? “

“No. But look what happened to me. Look at me now.”

“You can’t blame that on the ill luck the stone has brought you because you no longer have it. I wonder what happened to whoever took it?”

He held my hand firmly and began: “Jessie …” I waited for I thought he was going to tell me something but he seemed to change his mind.

He looked very tired and I said: “I’m going to leave you to sleep now, Ben.”

Oddly enough, he made no protest so I quietly left him and went back to the Dower House.

The next year was with us. Every now and then Ben rallied so that I thought he was going to defy the doctors and get well, but there would be days when he would appear to be exhausted in spite of his efforts to hide it.

It was in the middle of February, a cold day with a north wind blowing and flurries of snow in the air, that I went to see him.

There was a fire in the grate and Hannah looked sad. She whispered:

“He’s failing, I think. Lord help us. What’s going to become of us all?”

“I dare say he will have made some provision,” I assured her.

“That Banker is really cut up, and Mr. Wilmot hasn’t mentioned Mr. Henniker’s not the right sort of master of Oakland for the last six weeks. I reckon he’d give a good deal to have things go on as they were.”

“We all would, Hannah,” I said.

So I was prepared when I went to his room. It may have been the cold white light of the snowy weather which gave his face that bluish tinge, but I didn’t think so. He smiled when he saw me and tried to appear jaunty.

“What I call roast chestnut and hot spud weather,” he said.

“I once did very well with them … chestnuts and roast potatoes cooked on a little brazier at the corner of the street.

Lovely to warm your hands on. It’s a cold day today, Jessie. “

I went to the bed and took his hands. They were indeed very cold.

“I can’t seem to keep myself warm these days,” he said. We talked of Australia and the mines and men he had known; and I made tea on the spirit lamp, which he liked to see me do.

“I picture you boiling the billy-can out in the Bush. That’s what I used to think we’d be doing one day. They say Man proposes and God disposes. He’s disposing a bit today, I’m afraid, Jess.”

I gave him the tea and watched him drink it.

“Good strong stuff,” he said.

“But, you know, tea never tastes as good as it does out in the Bush. I’d like to have been out there with you, Jessie. I’d have liked to see you-a damper in one hand and a cup of good brew in the other, and I’d like to have heard you say you’d never tasted anything so good. Never mind, you’ll know it all one day.” I must have looked very sad because he went on: “Cheer up, my girl. Qh yes, you’re going out there. I’m certain of that I won’t have it otherwise.”

I didn’t answer. I let him go on with his fancies, and I wondered what I was going to do when he was gone and I should no longer come to Oakland Hall.

“I’ve been thinking of something,” he said.

“I reckon the time has come. Joss should be told. He ought to start thinking about coming over now. It’ll take him time. You can’t expect him to catch the first ship. He’ll have things to arrange. With out Joss the Company will be in need of a bit of organizing.”

You want to write to him? ” I said. I took paper and pen and sat down by the bed.

“What do you want me to say?”

“I’d like you to write it in your own way. I want it to be a letter from you to him.” - “But…”

“Go on. It’s what I want.” So I wrote:

Dear Mr. Madden, Mr. Ben Henniker has asked me to write to you to tell you he is very ill. He wants you to come to England. It is very important that you should leave as soon as possible. Yours truly, Jessica Clavering.

Read it to me,” said Ben, and I did.

“It does sound a bit unfriendly,” he commented.

“How could it be friendly when I haven’t met him?”

“I’ve told you something about him.”

“I suppose it doesn’t make me feel particularly friendly.”

Then I haven’t told you the right things and I’m to blame.

When you meet him, you’ll feel like all women do . you’ll see. “

I’m not a silly little peahen to goggle at the magnificent peacock, you know, Ben. “

That set him laughing so much that once again I was af it might be bad for him.

When he was quiet he lay back smiling happily, as through I thought, he had discovered a rich vein of opal.

“Anyone would think you’d found the Green Rash,” I told him, and a strange expression crossed his face. I could not guess what he was thinking.

He rallied a little after that and in due course I received a reply from Josslyn Madden. It was addressed to Miss Jessica Clavering at Oakland Hall, and Mr. Wilmot handed it to me on a silver salver when I arrived.

I saw the Australian postmark and the bold handwriting, and I guessed from whom it came, so I took it up to Ben and told him that Joss Madden had answered my letter.