The pool of St Branok

"I shall insist. At least she will be comfortable there. And, Angel, you'd better come with her. She'll want you nearby, I daresay."

I felt excited at the prospect. Naturally I wanted to be with Morwenna, and at the same time I should enjoy being in Ben's house.

It was summer and the days were very hot, although the temperature could change abruptly—and even though it would be what we called warm in England, it seemed cool after the excessive heat. The flies were a pest. They seemed to take a malicious delight in tormenting us and the more one brushed them away the more persistently they came back. I thought longingly of home. It would be winter there now. I remembered evenings at Uncle Peter's, those dinner parties with Matthew and his political acquaintances, talking interestedly of affairs round the dinner table. I pictured my parents at Cador and an almost unbearable nostalgia beset me.

I think at that time I was beginning to fall out of love with Gervaise. He had changed, and although he was easygoing and never lost his temper, I could no longer see the elegant young man whom I had married; he was often unkempt—he who had always been so elegantly attired; this arduous labor was something he had never done before. I believe he had fancied he could come out, dig up a little soil and then ... Eureka! ... there was the precious shining fortune in his panning cradle.

It was not like that.

But I still saw the gleam in his eyes ... that feverish desire to gamble which had already cost us our comfortable and civilized existence.

And there was Ben. He worked as hard as any of them. He was at his mine most of the day ... supervising, watching, organizing, giving orders. But he retained the calm reassurance which I had noticed when he first came to Cador. He did not change.

When I saw the conditions in which most of them lived, I realized what he had done for us. We had thought our shacks very humble dwellings, but they were a great improvement on most of the others. He had put rugs on the wooden floors; he had had adequate bed linen sent for us. We owed a great deal to him.

He called in frequently at the shack. He would look at me anxiously and ask if I was all right. We were lucky to have him as our friend.

Gervaise and Justin were working hard, spurred on by the thought that one day they were going to find what was called in the township a "jeweler's shop." They did have one or two small finds which made them hilariously merry, because it was an indication that there was a possibility of finding more in that spot. Some diggers had found not a sign of the precious metal in their land, which must have been very depressing.

There had been great rejoicing the first night they had found their ounce of gold. There were a few men in the township who played cards, sometimes in one of the shacks, but mostly in the saloon. Gervaise, of course, had joined them; and I felt that he had learned nothing from all that had happened. He quickly lost all that little find had brought him. Not so Justin; he played and won a little. I began to think that Justin was as confirmed a gambler as Gervaise, but a luckier one.

I did not understand Justin very much. Morwenna was devoted to him and she talked frequently of his virtues. She was so lucky that he had chosen her, she said. She often marveled at it. But then she had been one of the most self-effacing people I had ever known. She had come to believe that she was not attractive and her coming out had seemed to confirm this. I had always tried to tell her that if she cast off that feeling of inferiority and behaved as though she were not so concerned as to whether people liked her or not, they would certainly realize that she was a very charming girl indeed. However Justin had apparently seen her worth and she was eternally grateful to him for that.

I did get the impression sometimes that there was a certain secretiveness about his past. All we knew of him was that he had been in America and had come to England to "see what he would do"; he had a small private income which enabled him to "look around." Well, he had cast his eyes on the goldfields of Australia. I wondered whether he was already regretting that.

One day when I was alone in our shack I was surprised to see him for usually he was working at the mine at this time.

He said: "I'm on my way to the Bowleses' to get some stores. But I wanted to have a word with you, Angelet. Are you busy?"

"Of course not. What did you want to say to me? Do sit down."

He sat on one of the stout wooden chairs which had come to us through Ben's generosity.

"I'm worried about Morwenna," he said.

"You mean having the baby ... here?"

He nodded. "I don't think she is very strong."

"She's stronger than she appears to be," I soothed him. "And Mrs. Bowles who is supposed to know about these things says everything is all right."

"Angelet, you will be with her."