MATES

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 March 1904, Page 429

MATES

By Claude L. Jewell

* C^^^OR a gumdigger, Jim Jack-T-'|h^ son was fairly respectable. He frequently paid the y'tVcTN storekeeper for his rations, ■k^VV and had been known to fw come back to camp from / f Rangitawa in a reasonable V^ : state of sobriety. Hence, C/ although Jim did these '^) ' things, lie was respected.

Jim had been on the arid stretches and ugly pipeclay country poking- it with a spear for six months.

He had arrived one day, whitehanded and short-cropped, wildeyed and nervous-looking. He had awkwardly unburdened himself of a swag, said to the diggers with a bow : " How do you do V which greeting he immediately altered to :

" Good day, mates \" and had helplessly endeavoured to erect a six by eight tent.

The gumdiggers in camp sent telegraphic winks from eye to eye. They understood, bless you ! Short hair ? Gaol of course. White hands ? Well, he might have been doing the gaol cooking. The innate sense of what it is kind to avoid in speaking to a fellow-unfortunate prevented the motley diggers from putting questions to Jim. They accepted him unconditionally.

As for Jim, after he had blundered with the tent, and been helped with its erection by experienced hands, he went to his hastily improvised bunk. Jim asked no questions, his mates gave him no advice.

The new chum gumdigger stole away at day-break and speared and dug. The point of the spear struck nothing 1 the first day. Its user had

no eye for gum indications. He had been told by the labour agent in Auckland to poke about with the spear until it " gritted/ and dig with the spade until he found gum. He poked about and dug accordingly. v ow dyer get on mate ?" This, a dissolute old reprobate, who had drunk as much alleged whisky as any man North of Whangarei, to Jim as late at night, having been temporarily " bushed/ lie wandered, footsore and gumless, into camp. " I am grieved — that is — cr — I ain't found no thin/ said Jim. Whereupon the said dissolute reprobate took Jim in hand. Bill Brien, the reprobate, and Jim, the supposed gaol-bird, became mates. In the ensuing six months Bill had fewer wild bursts of alcoholic sinfulness than for many years previously, which was good for Bill. Once during the continuance of their mateship, Bill did " break out," on which occasion Bill's English was excellent. At all other times his vocabulary was limited and his alphabet innocent of an aspirate. One might have scraped gum and cooked " doughboys " among less interesting surroundings than those of the diggers' camp. It was smiled on by picturesque bush. A great silvery waterfall lent distinction to the poor whares, and the tourist in search of beauty had been known to condescend so far as to ask ques^ tions of the gum-hunting, derelicts. One youthful aristocrat had, on one occasion, even overcome his

caste scruples, and had entered Bill's whare, sharing the meal of boiled rice and treacle with the " simple peasant/ as he designated him mentally. The aristocrat in search of sensations was willing to pay for this, and he had tossed a half-sovereign on the corrugated tin table of the whare, on leaving. Bill had flushed redly, and tei'/ing the gold, had pitched it :into the near creek. " I don't keep a' eating house," he had said tersely. " What very quaint persons gumdiggers are !" the aristocrat had remarked on telling the story afterwards in an Auckland hotel.

" Lady Lyndon is visiting the colony for the benefit of her health. She is staying at the Beverley Hotel, and leaves for the thermal district in a few days." Thus the daily paper.

Lady Lyndon certainly had intended " doing " Rotorua when she ■came to Auckland.

A photographer was the means in the hands of Providence of making her ladyship change her route. She would send some of the exquisite scenic photos she saw exhibited in the photographer's window to her friends in Gloucestershire. She turned over piles of pictures in the unheeding way of the satiated sightseer. There were lakes and bits of bush, rivers and Maori belles, and — a waterfall.

It was a beautiful picture, the one showing the waterfall. Fern-fring-ed bush and glistening water and huts in the foreground, etherealised by the lens that tells but white lies. Lady Lyndon asked the photographer about the picture.

A gumdiggers' camp ? If the lady would look she would see the gumdiggers standing in the foreground. Would she like a magnifying glass ? It would enable her to see the detail more clearly.

Lady Alyce took the glass, and scanned the picture carelessly. Then

her eyes became fixed in a. semifascinated way on the print.

" I will take these," shei said without visible emotion, handing some photos, of which the waterfall picture was on top, to the photographer.

"It is very pretty, this first one. How could one reach this delightful spot V she asked steadily.

She could take boat to Whangarei, and train, if agreeable, to NghuiNghui, and then by saddle-horse, or she could ride all the way from the town perhaps. It was simple ; she could get a Maori guide. The portrait of a gumdig^er, backed by a waterfall, the whole embowered in bush, was the reason why Lady Alyce went aboard the s.s. Wellington next day.

Gabrielle, Lady Lyndon's maid, was not well. The tiresomeness of New Zealand coastal steamship travelling had upset her. Behold her then left to her own devices in Whangarei. Her mistress would Lj'o to see the sights, would drink soda-water at Kamo, enjoy the beauty of its architecture, gloat on the art treasures of Hikurangi. and sketch a gumdiggers camp. Gabrielle did not object. Madame was mistress, as for Gabrielle, she would accept the loss of the sights calmly.

So Lady Lyndon, mounted, and accompanied by the quaintest SToom fruide she had known — a fourteen year old Maori boy — set out for Kamo — and elsewhere.

Her ladyship did not take the waters of Kamo, and Hikur.angi and its limestone rocks interested her not at all. Although unaccustomed to the jog- of the weedy hack that carried her, she did not murmur, and by the time the bare, scrubby hill of Nghui-Nghui was in sight she got reconciled to colonial equitation. The picture of a dun-garee-clad gumdigger, backed by a silvery waterfall, was ever on her mind, and urged her on.

" What's that a coinin' over the rise, George ?" Thus a gumdigger in the waterfall camp to a mate.

" Looks like a woman and a man on 'orseback, don't it ?" replied George, alert like all solitary men: at the prospect of seeing something new and strange.

" Why, I do b'lieve it's a lady !" said George, vainly endeavouring to button a shirt neck that had been innocent of fastening any time during the past year.

Lady Lyndon rode up to the two men and bowed graciously. Both doffed their hats awkwardly.

"' Does a gentle a man named Morton Trevor live here ?"

They didn't know, these gumdig•gers. They knew "Tussocky Jack/ " Kauri Bill," " Carroty Ike/ and so on, but surnames as a general things didn't worry them.

"Ye might try Jim Jackson's tent over there, Missus," ventured George. " He's doin' a bit of scrapin' to-day/

Lady Lyndon rode over to the indicated tent.

" Does Mr. Jackson live here ?" she queried of that gentleman, who was sitting with his back to the tent entrance scraping gum.

Jim Jackson started violently, ■dropped his knife with a clatter, and jumped up in confusion. He hadn't heard a lady's voice for some time.

" Yes/ he said, as he turned towards the questioner. "My God ! Alvce V

Lady Lyndon called Jim Jackson " Morton/' gave Mm her hand, and dismounted.

Tata, the Maori boy, took the lady's horse, and for the first time since it was made, Jackson's tent had a lady visitor. Jim's face was white, and his grimy hands twitched.

" And how did you discover my wretched whereabouts ?" he asked.

The lady produced the photo. " And Lyndon, what of him ?" continued Jim nervously.

Lady Lyndon shuddered. Here was her curate lover, the man who

had been flouted by her parents because he was poor. The man who has been told to go by a parent who desired a better marriage for his daughter, the man who had weakly gone, leaving the field open for a peer, who, it was hoped would repair the fortunes of the house of Templeton. She told him what he did not know of her story. She had married Lyndon by the command of her parents who were too proud to face poverty, but not too proud to barter their own blood for gold. And the peer ? He had given his name to the directorate of a swindling corporation whose doings roused all England to anger, he had become involved in a social scandal that made a section of the army and nobility reek with the shamefulness of it. He had squandered his patrimony. He had disappeared to America. His death had been cabled. Lady Lyndon almost forgot Morton Trevor was a gumdigger here. A woman likes something to weep over at times. " Hullo, Jim ! Where are ye V It was Bill Brien's voice. Bill was not a quiet man. He liked people to know he was coming. " My mate is coming/ said Morton to Lady Lyndon. " He's an awfully roiifh chap, you know — hut good as gold." Jack bustled up and dropped his pikau outside the tent. Then he brushed the calico aside. " Where are ye ? Alyce !" The dissolute gumdigger gasped for breath. He clutched at his throat, the veins knotted on his forehead, and the red, coarse face became blue. " Alyce ! My God ! The gumdigger stagaered and fell. He had looked on Alyce' s face for the last time. " Lyndon is dead. The cable from America was a lie. He lied always. I have seen heart disease before, I cannot pretend to be sorry for this." Morton, horror-stricken, gazed at the calm woman and his dead mate.

He rushed to Lord Lyndon and felt the breast under the rough shirt. ' " My poor mate \" he cried in his agony. " And you are sorry V she asked him. " Yes ; yes, God knows how sorry \" Morton rose solemnly, and beckoned to Tata, the Maori boy. "My mate is ill," he said. "It is no sight for the lady. Guide her back to Whangarei." i( And you, Morton, why do you

look at me like that ? Will you not come too 1" " No ; I am a gumdigger, and Bill Brien's mate." " Wonder what's broke the lady up V s asked George of his mate, as she rode out of the camp. They never really loiew.

Lord Lyndon is not buried in the family vault in Gloucestershire. Bill Brien's tombstone at NghuiNghui bears only the name his mate knew him by.