An Outback Marriage · Chapter 5 (2/2)

“Dear Mrs. Gordon,”

“I am writing to you about a most important matter. Colonel Selwyn is dead, and my daughter has come out from England. I don’t know anyone to take charge of her except yourself. I am an old man now, and set in my ways, and this girl is really all I have to live for. Looking back on my life, I see where I have been a fool; and perhaps the good fortune that has followed me has been more luck than anything else. Your husband was a smarter man than I am, and he came to grief, though I will say that I always warned him against that Western place.

“Do you remember the old days when we had the two little homesteads, and I used to ride down from the outstation of a Saturday and spend Sunday with you and Andrew, and talk over the fortunes we were going to make? If I had met a woman like you in those days I might have been a better man. As it was, I made a fool of myself. But that’s all past praying for.

“Now about my girl. If you will take her, and make her as good a woman as yourself, or as near it as you can, you will earn my undying thanks. As to money matters, when I die she will of course have a great deal of money, so that it is well she should begin now to learn how to use it; I have, therefore, given her full power to draw all money that may be required. I may tell you that I intend to leave your boys enough to start them in life, and they will have a first-class chance to get on. I am sending Charlie out to the West, to take over a block which those fools, Sutton and Co., got me to advance money on, and on which the man cannot pay his interest. He will be away for some time.

“Meanwhile, dear Mrs. Gordon, for the sake of old times, do what you can for the girl. I expect she has been brought up with English ideas. I can’t get her to say much to me, which I daresay is my own fault. After she has been with you for a bit, I will come up and stay for a time at the station.

Reading this letter called back the whole panorama of the past⁠—the old days when she and her husband were struggling in the rough, hard, pioneering life, and the blacks were thick round the station; the birth of her children, and the ups and downs of her husband’s fortunes; then the burial of her husband out on the sandhills, and her flight to this haven of rest at Kuryong. Though she had lost interest in things for herself, she felt keenly for her children, and was sick at heart when she thought what this girl, who was to wield such power over them, might turn out to be. But she hoped that Grant’s daughter, whatever else she might be, would at any rate be a genuine, straightforward girl; and filled with this hope, she sat down to answer him:

“Dear Mr. Grant,” she wrote, “I have received your letter. Hugh has gone down to meet your daughter, but the mails were delayed owing to the river being up, and he may not get to the railway station as soon as she arrives. I will do what I can for her, and I thank you for what you say you will do for my boys. I will let you know the moment she arrives. I wish you would come up and live on the station for a time. It would be better for you than life in the club, without a friend to care for you. If ever you feel inclined to stay here for a time, I hope you will at once let me know. With thanks and best wishes,