Sheilah McLeod Part 18

'I have been deciding a very important matter!' I replied.

'Have ye accepted her offer?'

'I have; but how do you know that she had made one?' I answered.

'We discussed it together last night,' he said. 'My Sheilah is a generous girl, and she takes a great interest in ye, James, lad.'

'Who knows that better than I?' I answered. 'And I will do my best to show her that her trust is not misplaced. But her generous loan is not the chief thing I wish to speak to you about.'

'What is the other, then?' he said, looking a little nervously at me, I thought.

'It concerns Sheilah's own happiness,' I replied. 'Mr McLeod, your daughter has promised to be my wife.'

He was more staggered by this bit of news than I had expected he would be, and for a little while gazed at me in silent amazement. At last he pulled himself together, and said solemnly,--

'This is a very serious matter.'

'I hope it is,' I replied, 'for I love Sheilah and she loves me. We are both deeply serious, and I hope you have nothing to say against it?'

'Of course, if ye both love each other--as I believe ye do,' he answered, 'and ye, laddie, work hard to prove yourself worthy of her, I shall say nothing. But we must look things squarely in the face and have no half measures. Ye must bear with me, lad--if in what I'm going to say I hurt your feelings--but my duty lies before me, and I must do it. Ye see, Jim, ye have been foolish; your reputation in the towns.h.i.+p is a wild one; ye admitted to me having been a gambler; remember ye rode in that race against your father's and your best friends' wishes; ye were mixed up with a very disreputable set hereabouts, one of whom has been openly accused of felony; remember, I do not believe that ye had anything at all to do with the stealing of that horse--if he was stolen, as folks say; and now ye have also been turned out of house and home by your own father. Ye must yourself admit that these circ.u.mstances are not of a kind calculated to favourably impress a father who loves his only daughter as I love mine. But, on the other hand, my lad, I have known ye pretty nearly all your life, and I know that your errors are of the head, not of the heart, so I am inclined to regard them rather differently. Now, your path lies before ye. Ye have an opportunity of retrieving the past and building up the future, let us see what ye can do. If, we'll say, by this day year ye have proved to me that ye are really in earnest, ye shall have my darling, and G.o.d's blessing be on ye both. I can't say anything fairer than that, can I?'

'I have no right to expect that you should say anything so fair,' I answered. 'Mr McLeod, I will try; come what may, you shall not be disappointed in me.'

'I believe ye, laddie,' he said, and then we went towards the front gate together. I wished him good-bye, and having done so, left him and went up the hill towards the towns.h.i.+p.

Never in my life do I remember to have walked with so proud and so confident a step. My heart was filled with hope and happiness. Sheilah loved me, and had promised to be my wife. Her father had, to all intents and purposes, given his consent. It only remained for me to prove myself worthy of the trust that had been reposed in me. And come what might, I would be worthy. Henceforward, no man should have the right to breathe a word against me. I would work for Sheilah as no man ever worked for a girl before; so that in the happy days before us she might always have reason to look up to and be proud of me. Then in a flash came back the memory of that gruesome ride to the Blackfellow's Well. Once again I saw the murdered man lying so still in his lonely grave among the rocks on the hillside. I shuddered, and with an effort I put the memory from me.

And just as I did so, I arrived at the hotel.

As soon as I had eaten my lunch I set off to call upon my father. I found him sitting in the verandah, as usual, reading. He did not seem at all surprised at my appearance. On the other hand, he said, as I came up to the steps,--

'You have thought better of it and come back for that money, I suppose?'

'I have,' I answered. 'A chance has been given me to-day of settling down to a good thing, if I can only raise a certain sum of money. If you are still of the same mind as you were yesterday, I should feel grateful if you would let me have your cheque for the amount you mentioned?'

Without another word he rose and went into the house; when he returned he held between his finger and thumb a little slip of pale blue paper which I well knew was a cheque. Giving it to me he said,--

'There it is. Now go!'

I thanked him, and turned to do as he ordered, but before I had time to descend the steps he stopped me by saying,--

'I have asked no questions, but I trust this business you are now embarking on will prove a little more reputable than that in which you have been hitherto engaged.'

'You need have no fear on that score,' I answered. 'At the same time, I do not admit that there was anything in the last matter, to which you refer, of which I need be ashamed.'

'I think we have discussed that before. We need not do so again.'

I was once more about to leave him, when something induced me to say,--

'Father, is this state of things to go on between us much longer? Will you never forgive a bit of heedless obstinacy on the part of one so much younger than yourself?'

'When I see signs of improvement I may be induced to re-consider my decision, not till then,' he answered. 'The sad part of it is that so far those signs are entirely wanting.'

'I am turning over a new leaf now.'

'I desire to see proof of it first,' he replied. 'I must confess my experience makes me sceptical.'

'It is useless, then, for me to say any more on the subject.'

'Quite useless. For the future let your actions speak for themselves.

They will be quite significant enough, believe me.'

'Then I wish you good day.'

'Good day to you.'

And so we parted.

Leaving the old home, I strode down the hill, crossed the ford, and made my way to the princ.i.p.al bank in the towns.h.i.+p, where I opened an account with my father's cheque. This business completed, I pa.s.sed on to the agent who had Merriman's selection under offer, and when I left his office an hour later I was in a fair way towards calling myself the proprietor of the property for a term of years.

Next morning I rode over to the selection and thoroughly examined it. It was about 10,000 acres in extent, splendidly gra.s.sed, and had an excellent frontage to the river. Merriman had built himself a hut on a little knoll, and there I determined to install myself, utilising all the time I could spare from my work among the stock in building another and better one, to which I could bring Sheilah when she became my wife.

That afternoon the arrangements advanced another step, and by the end of the week following the papers were signed, and I was duly installed as possessor.

The next business was to secure the services of a man. This accomplished, I set to work in grim earnest, the fences were thoroughly overhauled and renovated--a new well was sunk in the back country--a new stockyard was erected near the hut, and, by the time Sheilah was able to get about again, I had bought a couple of thousand sheep at a price which made them an undoubted bargain, had erected my bough-shearing shed, and was all ready for getting to work upon my clip.

CHAPTER VIII

A VISIT FROM WHISPERING PETE

Three months later the shearing of my small flock was at an end, and the result, an excellent clip, had been dispatched to market. Then, having a good deal of spare time on my hands, I held a consultation with Sheilah, planned our house, and set to work upon it. Like my own old home, it was to be of _pisa_, would consist of five rooms and a kitchen, and have a broad verandah running all round it. No man, who has not built a house under similar circ.u.mstances, will be able properly to understand what the construction of that humble abode meant to me, and how I worked at it. Every second that I could possibly spare was given to it, and as bit by bit it raised itself above the earth, my love for Sheilah seemed to grow stronger and purer with it. It was a proud day for me, you may be sure, when the roof was started, and a still prouder when it was completed. The windows and doors were then put into the walls, the floors of the rooms and verandah laid, the papering and painting completed, until at last it stood ready for occupation. A prettier position no man could possibly have desired, and as far as construction went, well, when I say that I had worked at it with the patience and thoroughness that can only be brought to bear by a man in what is a labour of love, you will have some idea of what it was like. Ah! what a glorious time that was--when everything animate and inanimate spoke to me of Sheilah. When I rose from my bed in the morning, with the sun, it was to work for her, and when I returned to it again at night it was with the knowledge that I had done all that man could do for her, and was just so many hours nearer the time when she would be my wife. It may be a strange way of putting it, but if you've ever been in love yourself you'll understand me when I say that her gentle influence was with me always, in the wind blowing through the long bush gra.s.s, in the whispering of the leaves of the trees, in the rising of the moon above the distant ranges, and in the murmur of the water in the creek. Nor did I want for encouragement. When the day's work was done I would cross the creek and discuss it with my sweetheart and her father, and even Colin McLeod, now that it was all definitely settled between us and he knew his fate, treated me quite as one of the family, and without a sign of his old antagonism.

Then, at last, the joyful day was fixed, and I knew that on a certain Thursday two months ahead, all being well, Sheilah would become my wife.

The house was completely finished, painted, papered, and furnished, and even the garden, which I had constructed so that it should slope down to the river, was beginning to show signs of the labour that had been expended on it. Then, in the midst of my happiness, when I felt so secure that it seemed as if nothing could possibly come between me and the woman I loved, something happened which was destined to be the precursor of all the terrible things I have yet to tell, and which were to bow Sheilah's head and mine in sorrow and shame down even to the very dust.

It was a night at the end of the first week after the completion of the new house. Having finished his supper, my factotum had gone across to the towns.h.i.+p, and I was paying my evening visit to Sheilah. About ten o'clock I started for home. It had been hot and thundery all the afternoon and evening, and now a ma.s.s of heavy cloud had almost covered the heavens. The wind whistled dismally through the she-oak trees in the scrub and moaned along the valley. A premonition of coming ill was upon me, and when I reached the new house, where I had already installed myself, I went into the kitchen feeling ready to jump away from my own shadow. The fire just showed a red glow, and to my amazement gave me the outline of a man sitting beside it.

'You're up late, d.i.c.k,' I cried, thinking it was my man returned from his evening's outing. But he did not answer.

I lit a candle and held it aloft. Then I almost dropped it in horror and astonishment.

The man sitting beside the fire was Whispering Pete!

'Good heavens, how did you get here?' I cried, as I set the candle down upon the table.

'Rode,' he answered laconically, getting on to his feet. 'My horse is in your stockyard now. I've ridden three hundred miles this week, and must be over the border before Tuesday.'