“It does sometimes.”
“It’s the one exception to the rule,” he said. “And that’s that. I suppose you’re now counting the hours?”
“I am. Ralph’s train reaches Bourke at eleven, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. They should be here about three.”
“I quite expect he will have grown enormously,” she said with wistful eyes.
“He will certainly be a man. Nineteen years old yesterday. Even five months makes a big difference to a lad of that age.”
For a while they were silent. Having finished his morning tea, the man lit a cigarette and the woman pensively picked up her sewing. Her boy was coming home from college, and she ached for the feel of his strong arms around her. To her it had been a sacrifice to agree to his spending the last Christmas vacation with friends in New Zealand. She had not seen the boy, whom she passionately loved, for five long months, and was as tremulous as a woman standing on a jetty watching the arrival of her sailor husband’s ship.
“More than once it’s occurred to me,” drawled her life-partner, “that as Ralph is almost of age it would be a wise thing to tell him the truth regarding his birth.”
“No, John … No!”
And before he started the fight Thornton knew he had lost it, seeing the iron will reflected in his wife’s face. That Mrs Thornton was strong-willed, a woman who invariably had her own way, he had known long before marriage. It was that trait of dominance in her character which had attracted him. He had been comparatively poor when the need of a partner was felt first; and, like a wise man, knowing the trials and hardships of the Australian bush, he did not select a weak, clinging woman, doubtless an ornament to a city drawing-room. His choice was reflected by his poise as well as his bank balance.
“But what we have to remember, Ann, is that Ralph one day may find out,” he argued. “Would it not be better for us to tell him gently, than for someone to tell him roughly that he is not your son, but the son of a woman who was our cook?”
“I see neither the reason nor the necessity,” she said, her eyes on the darting needle. “Mary, his mother, is dead. The doctor who brought him into the world is dead. Don’t you remember how ill I was when Ralph was born, ill and nearly mad with grief because my baby died? In her last moments Mary gave him to me. She saw me take the baby with a cry of joy, and cover it with hungry kisses. And when Mary died she was smiling.”
“But—”
“No, no, John. Don’t argue,” she pleaded. “I made him mine, and mine he must be always. If he knows I am not his real mother there will be a difference, there will arise a barrier between him and me, no matter how we try to keep it down.”
The woman’s passionate desire for a baby, and subsequently her sublime love for another woman’s child, had always been a matter of wonder to John Thornton. He, no less than his wife, had been deeply grieved at the death of his day-old heir, and he, with her, had opened his heart to the adopted boy. But he was a man who hated secrets, or subterfuge. His mind would have been relieved of the one burden in his life had his wife agreed to their adopted son being informed of his real parentage. Still he struggled:
“Ralph is too fine a lad to allow the knowledge to make any difference,” he said. “We know that Mary would not name her betrayer to us, but the man, likely enough, is alive and knows our secret. We can never be safe from him. He may come forward any day, probably try to blackmail us. If such a thing should happen, we should be obliged to tell Ralph, and the boy would then be perfectly justified in blaming us for our silence.”
“Mary’s betrayer would have come forward long ago if he intended to get money by blackmail,” she countered.
“But the possibility remains. Again, one day Ralph will marry. It might be Kate, or Sir Walter Thorley’s daughter. Think of the recriminations that would occur then. Can’t you see that absolute frankness now would be better for the lad, and better for us?”
“The past lies buried twenty years deep, John. Ralph is safe. I made him my baby. Do not ask me to put him from me.”
The man gave the sigh of the vanquished. Rising to his feet, he said:
“All right! Have it your own way. I hope it may be for the best.”
“I am sure it will, John,” she murmured. And then, by way of final dismissal of the subject, she changed it. “Who is it working among the orange-trees? Is he a new hand?”
The squatter paused in his walk along the veranda to say: “Yes. I put him on this morning. I thought I knew him at first, but he says he has been all his life in Queensland. He answers to the name of William Clair.”
Mrs Thornton leaned back in her chair, her eyes closed as though relieved from great strain. And about her firm mouth was the ghost of a smile.
Chapter Three
The Homecoming
The homestead of Barrakee Station was set, white-walled and red-roofed, in an oasis of brilliant green lawns and orange groves, the whole surrounded by a thick windbreak of ten-foot waving bamboo. The bottom extremity of the gardens was separated from the river by a dry billabong, some fifty-odd yards in width.
At that point of the river were moored the station boats used chiefly to transport travellers to the farther side, as well as to provide anyone belonging to the station with recreation on the river.
To the south of the homestead, and close to it, were the offices, the barracks used by the bookkeeper and the jackeroos, the store, and the shops. Facing the offices and divided from them by a large clear space were the tennis-courts and the croquet-lawn.
The essential factor, which made Barrakee homestead one of the show places in the western division of New South Wales, was the limitless supply of water from the river. Mrs Thornton ruled the homestead; her husband reigned over the vast run, the thirty or forty employees, and the fifty to sixty thousand sheep. Neither interfered, by a single suggestion, in the domain of the other. Both were united in the one purpose of leaving Ralph Thornton a great inheritance.
At a quarter past three, one of the junior hands, who had been stationed on the staging supporting the great receiving tanks, observed through field-glasses the approach of the Barrakee high-powered car. He signalled its appearance by firing a shotgun.
Thornton and his wife were outside the garden gates which opened to the clear ground in front of the offices to receive their son. The car drew up close by with a noiseless application of brakes, and from it sprang a dark handsome boy dressed in grey tweed of most fashionable cut. He was followed more circumspectly by a young woman dressed in white.
“Mother!” ejaculated Ralph Thornton, clasping the small mistress of the homestead in his arms.
“Ralph! Oh, Ralph, I am glad you are here,” she said, looking up with proud, wistful eyes.
For a moment he held her, more like a lover than a son and, during that moment, it flashed into her mind that if he had known his maternal parentage he would not have held her thus. How glad she was that she had been firm in her insistence that the knowledge must be withheld.
“You must be tired, Katie,” the squatter said gently to the girl. “It’s been a hot day.”
“Has it, Uncle?” Her voice was sweetly allied to her fresh beauty. “I’ve been too excited meeting Ralph to notice it. Don’t you think he has grown?”
“I haven’t had much chance to notice anything yet,” he replied, with twinkling eyes.
“Notice now, Dad,” the young man commanded, his face flushed with happiness, reaching for his foster-father’s hand. “I declare, both you and the Little Lady look younger than ever.