In The Far North

The doctor’s hand descended upon the inspector’s shoulder. “Shut up, you beastly old wretch—do you think all women are alike. Come, now, let us have another nip and get away. Mr. Harrington is tired. Sergeant!”

The sergeant came to the door.

“Thompson, take good care of that young lady. We happen to know her. If she awakes before eight o’clock in the morning, tell her that she is to stay with your wife till I come to see her at nine o’clock. Any effects, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir,” and the sergeant took out his note-book, “seven pawn tickets, five pennies, and a New Testament with ‘Nellie Alleyne’ written inside.”

“Here, give me those tickets, I’ll take care of them; and Thompson, if the newspaper fellows come here to-night, say that the young lady fell over the wharf accidentally, and has gone home to her friends. See?”

“I see, sir,” said Thompson, as the good-hearted doctor slipped half a sovereign into his hand.

Then the three men stepped out into the street and strolled up to the Royal Hotel, and sat down in the smoking-room, which was filled with a noisy crowd, some of whom soon saw Walters and called him away, leaving the doctor and Harrington by themselves.

“Better take this back, Mr. Harrington,” and Dr. Parsons handed him his cheque. “Two or three pounds will be quite enough for the poor girl.”

“Not I,” said Harrington with a smile, “fifty pounds won’t ruin me, as I said—and it may mean a lot to her, poor child. And I feel glad that I can help some one… some one who is all right, you know. Now I must be off. Good night, doctor.”

Parsons looked at the tall manly figure as he pushed his way through the noisy crowd in the smoking-room, and then at the cheque in his hand. “Well, there’s a good fellow. Single man, I’ll bet; else he wouldn’t be so good to a poor little devil of a stranded girl. Didn’t even ask her name. May the Lord send him a good wife.”

The Lord did not send Harrington a good wife; for the very next day he called upon Mrs. Lyndon, and Mrs. Lyndon took good care that he should be left alone with Myra; and Myra smiled so sweetly at him, when with outstretched hands she came into the drawing-room, that he fatuously believed she loved him. And she of course, when he asked her to be his wife, hid her face on his shoulder, and said she could not understand why he could love her. Why, she was quite an old maid! Amy and Gwen were ever so much prettier than she, and she was sure that both Gwen and Amy, even though they were now both married, would feel jealous when they knew that big, handsome Jack Harrington had asked her to be his wife; and so on and so forth, as only the skilled woman of thirty, whose hopes of marriage are slipping by, knows how to talk and lie to an “eligible” man unused to women’s ways. And Harrington kissed Myra’s somewhat thin lips, and said—and believed—that he was the happiest man in Australia. Then Mrs. Lyndon came in, and, in the manner of mothers who are bursting with joy at getting rid of a daughter whose matrimonial prospects are looking gloomy, metaphorically fell upon Harrington’s neck and wept down his back, and said he was robbing her of her dearest treasure, &c., &c. Harrington, knowing nothing of conventional women’s ways, believed her, and married, for him, the most unsuitable woman in the world.

A week or so after his marriage he received a letter from Dr. Parsons enclosing the cheque he had given him for Nellie Alleyne:—

“Dear Harrington,—Girl won’t take the cheque. Has a billet—cashier in a restaurant. Says she is writing to you. She’s true gold. You ought to marry her and take her away with you to your outlandish parts. Would ask her to marry me—if I could keep her; but she wouldn’t have me whilst you are about. Always glad to see you at my diggings; whisky and soda and such, and a hearty welcome.”

And by the same post came a letter from the girl herself—a letter that, simply worded as it was, sent an honest glow through his heart:—

“Dear Mr. Harrington,—I shall never, never forget your kindness to me; as long as I live I shall never forget Dr. Parsons tells me that you live in Queensland—more than a thousand miles from Sydney, and that you are going away soon. Please will you let me call on you before you go away? I shall be so unhappy if I do not see you again, because in a letter I cannot tell you how I thank you, how deeply grateful I am to you for your goodness and generosity to me.

“Yours very sincerely,

“Helen Alleyne.”

Harrington showed the letter to Myra, who bubbled over with pretty expressions of sympathy and wrote and asked her to call. Nellie did call, and the result of her visit was that when Harrington took his newly married wife to Tinandra Downs, she went with her as companion. And from the day that she entered the door of his house, Helen Alleyne had proved herself to be, as Dr. Parsons had said, “true gold.” As the first bright years of prosperity vanished, and the drought and financial worries all but crushed Harrington under the weight of his misfortunes, and his complaining, irritable wife rendered his existence at home almost unbearable, her brave spirit kept his from sinking under the incessant strain of his anxieties. Mrs. Harrington, after her third child was born, had given up even the semblance of attending to the children, and left them to Nellie and the servants. She was doing quite enough, she once told her husband bitterly, in staying with him at such a horrible place in such a horrible country. But she nevertheless always went away to the sea-coast during the hottest months, and succeeded in having a considerable amount of enjoyment, leaving the children and Jack and Miss Alleyne to swelter through the summer at Tinandra Downs as best they could.