The Pride of the Peacock

  “Surely something beautiful shouldn’t be hidden in rock. It should be brought out for people to enjoy.”

  “Who knows? But it could be the curse of the Green Flash getting me.”

  “You don’t believe that, Ben. How can you? You were well enough when you owned it.”

  He didn’t answer. He merely took my hand and held it. “Later on,” he said, “I shall send for Joss.”

  “You mean bring him here?”

  His shrewd eyes were on me. “I can feel your pulse quicken. He excites you, doesn’t he…I mean the thought of seeing him does.”

  “Why should it?” I asked. “I know you think a great deal of him, Ben, but what I have heard doesn’t make me admire him very much.”

  He started to laugh so hard that I thought it might be bad for him. “Stop it, Ben,” I said severely. “It’s not a bit funny.”

  “It is, because I know you’re going to change your opinion when you meet him.”

  “So you really are going to ask him to come here?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got some time left to me. When he comes it will be to see me out. He’s got work to do out there. He can’t dilly-dally shilly-shally for a year. But when the end is near—and I’ll know it—there’s no doubt of that, I’ll send for Joss. I’ll have to tell him what I want him to do before I go.”

  I was unhappy, for I could see the change in him every day. Being Ben, he would cling to life tenaciously, but in the end he would have to give way.

  This time next year…I thought; and I was filled with melancholy.

  ***

  The weeks passed, and I continued to visit Ben every day.

  My grandmother could not be kept in ignorance of my visits, and while she expressed disapproval she did not attempt to stop them. I was sure she knew that if she did I should blatantly disobey her.

  “Your friend, the miner, seems to be getting his just desserts,” she commented sourly. “People of his station clambering about in mines so that they can ape their betters are bound to come to grief.”

  I couldn’t respond with my usual flippancy. I felt too deeply about Ben.

  He used to talk incessantly about the days in Australia, and I would encourage him to do so because it comforted him. He often mentioned the Green Flash opal and once or twice he seemed to be wandering in his mind because he talked as though he still had it.

  “People get fancies about opals,” he said, “and the Green Flash was no ordinary gem. Diamonds can be of greater value, but they don’t seem to have the same effect on people. I’ve seen men going for gold…it’s a sort of fever, but the lust is not for the gold in itself. It’s what gold can bring them. Perhaps it’s because opals are different. One nugget looks very like another, but opals are varying. There are such legends about that stone. People read messages in the colors. In the past they were omens of good fortune. People say they can bring bad luck though. I always used to say this was because some of them could be so easily chipped, and a stone a man has regarded as his fortune can thus lose much of its value. I’ve known men desperately in need of money and yet refusing to part with a stone that could save them. That’s how it was with the Green Flash.”

  “Yet you say it was called the Unlucky Stone.”

  “There’s bound to be legends about a stone like that. It was one of the first black opals to be found. It’s odd that there should never have been anything like it since. There never will be in my opinion.”

  “Who found it?”

  “It was an old miner…fifty years ago. He’d had bad luck all along…the sort of fellow who’d give up just as he was almost on a find…and then someone else would come along and reap the reward of his labor. He was called Unlucky Jim. Then…he found her. It was rather like what happened to me with Green Lady. The rock collapsed on him, and he was found dead clutching the Green Flash in his hand. Perhaps that’s what started it all. I think bad luck’s sometimes wished on to you…if you follow. Unlucky Jim finds the Flash and, taking her, loses his life. His son found him and the stone and he knew right away that she was a winner. One look at her was enough…though she was in the raw state then. He wanted to get her into Sydney right away, but he’d showed her round a bit. He couldn’t help it, he was proud of her. He was warned by an old gypsy woman that it wouldn’t be wise for him to carry that stone through the Bush because already people were talking of it…how it was the finest opal in the world and worth a fortune. So he had a plan. He gave it to his younger brother to take…and none knew he had it. A bushranger shot him on the way, determined to get the opal, but of course he couldn’t find it because the brother had it. So that was two deaths already.”

  “And what happened to it then?”

  “It was cut and polished and, by heavens, what emerged dazzled just everyone who saw it. The size…the color…it had never been suspected that such a stone existed. This younger brother had it then. I only half remember what happened to him. His daughter eloped and he tried to stop her and in the scuffle with the would-be husband, the owner of the Green Flash was thrown downstairs. He spent two years in acute pain before he died but he wouldn’t give up the Green Flash. I heard he used to carry it with him so that he could look at it every day and he thought it was worthwhile…everything that had happened…just to possess it. His daughter though was afraid of it, and she put it in the hands of a dealer and from him it passed to some Eastern ruler. That’ll give you an idea. It was worthy to fit into some jewel-studded crown. He was assassinated a year or so after, and it passed to his eldest son who was sold into slavery but not before the Flash was taken from him by his captors. One of them stole it and ran off with it, and when misfortune started to hit him he blamed the stone. He died of a fever but not before he’d told his son to take it back where it belonged. That was how it was brought back to Australia. Old Harry I told you about gambled for it. It was one of those occasions when Harry won.”

  “Did he believe the legend?”

  “All I know is that when people get that stone they want to keep it at all cost.”

  “And you weren’t afraid when you had it?”

  “No. But look what happened to me. Look at me now.”

  “You can’t blame that on the ill luck the stone has brought you because you no longer have it. I wonder what happened to whoever took it?”

  He held my hand firmly and began: “Jessie…” I waited for I thought he was going to tell me something, but he seemed to change his mind.

  He looked very tired, and I said: “I’m going to leave you to sleep now, Ben.”

  Oddly enough, he made no protest, so I quietly left him and went back to the Dower House.

  ***

  The next year was with us. Every now and then Ben rallied so that I thought he was going to defy the doctors and get well, but there would be days when he would appear to be exhausted in spite of his efforts to hide it.

  It was in the middle of February, a cold day with a north wind blowing and flurries of snow in the air, that I went to see him.

  There was a fire in the grate and Hannah looked sad.

  She whispered: “He’s failing, I think. Lord help us. What’s going to become of us all?”

  “I daresay he will have made some provision,” I assured her.

  “That Banker is really cut up, and Mr. Wilmot hasn’t mentioned Mr. Henniker’s not the right sort of master of Oakland for the last six weeks. I reckon he’d give a good deal to have things go on as they were.”

  “We all would, Hannah,” I said.

  So I was prepared when I went into his room. It may have been the cold white light of the snowy weather which gave his face that bluish tinge, but I didn’t think so.

  He smiled when he saw me and tried to appear jaunty.

  “What I call roast chestnut and hot spud weather,” he said. “I once did very well with them…chestnuts and roast pot
atoes cooked on a little brazier at the corner of the street. Lovely to warm your hands on. It’s a cold day today, Jessie.”

  I went to the bed and took his hands. They were indeed very cold.

  “I can’t seem to keep myself warm these days,” he said.

  We talked of Australia and the mines and men he had known; and I made tea on the spirit lamp, which he liked to see me do.

  “I picture you boiling the billy can out in the Bush. That’s what I used to think we’d be doing one day. They say Man proposes and God disposes. He’s disposing a bit today, I’m afraid, Jess.”

  I gave him the tea and watched him drink it.

  “Good strong stuff,” he said. “But, you know, tea never tastes as good as it does out in the Bush. I’d like to have been out there with you, Jessie. I’d have liked to see you—a damper in one hand and a cup of good brew in the other, and I’d like to have heard you say you’d never tasted anything so good. Never mind, you’ll know it all one day.” I must have looked very sad because he went on: “Cheer up, my girl. Oh yes, you’re going out there. I’m certain of that. I won’t have it otherwise.”

  I didn’t answer. I let him go on with his fancies, and I wondered what I was going to do when he was gone and I should no longer come to Oakland Hall.

  “I’ve been thinking of something,” he said. “I reckon the time has come. Joss should be told. He ought to start thinking about coming over now. It’ll take him time. You can’t expect him to catch the first ship. He’ll have things to arrange. Without Joss the Company will be in need of a bit of organizing.”

  “You want to write to him?” I said. I took paper and pen and sat down by the bed. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I’d like you to write it in your own way. I want it to be a letter from you to him.”

  “But…”

  “Go on. It’s what I want.”

  So I wrote:

  “Dear Mr. Madden,

  Mr. Ben Henniker has asked me to write to you to tell you he is very ill. He wants you to come to England. It is very important that you should leave as soon as possible.

  Yours truly,

  Jessica Clavering”

  “Read it to me,” said Ben, and I did.

  “It does sound a bit unfriendly,” he commented.

  “How could it be friendly when I haven’t met him?”

  “I’ve told you something about him.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t make me feel particularly friendly.”

  “Then I haven’t told you the right things and I’m to blame. When you meet him, you’ll feel like all women do…you’ll see.”

  “I’m not a silly little peahen to goggle at the magnificent peacock you know, Ben.”

  That set him laughing so much that once again I was afraid it might be bad for him.

  When he was quiet he lay back smiling happily as though, I thought, he had discovered a rich vein of opal.

  “Anyone would think you’d found the Green Flash,” I told him, and a strange expression crossed his face. I could not guess what he was thinking.

  He rallied a little after that, and in due course I received a reply from Josslyn Madden. It was addressed to Miss Jessica Clavering at Oakland Hall, and Wilmot handed it to me on a silver salver when I arrived.

  I saw the Australian postmark and the bold handwriting, and I guessed from whom it came so I took it up to Ben and told him that Joss Madden had answered my letter.

  I opened it and read aloud:

  “Dear Miss Clavering,

  Thank you for your letter. By the time you receive this I shall be on my way. I shall come immediately to Oakland Hall when I arrive in England.

  Yours truly,

  J. Madden”

  “Is that all he says?” cried Ben querulously.

  “It’s enough,” I replied. “All he has to tell us is that he is on his way.”

  ***

  April had come. I should be nineteen in June.

  “You’re growing up,” said my grandmother. “How different it might have been. We should have done our duty by you and you would have come out with dignity. Here…in this place…what can we hope for? There isn’t even a curate for you. Mind you, your fondness for low company might exclude you from such as Miriam has turned to.”

  “Miriam is very happy, I think.”

  “I’m sure she is…wondering where her next meal is coming from.”

  “It’s not as bad as that. They have enough to eat. She enjoys managing and I know she is much happier than she was here.”

  “Oh, she was glad enough to get someone to marry her…anyone…it didn’t matter who. I hope you’re not going to get into that desperate state.”

  “You need have no anxieties on that score,” I retorted.

  I was feeling very sad because I knew that Ben’s health had taken a turn for the worse; he was visibly deteriorating and I wondered what would happen when he died. The future stretched out drearily before me. I was still doing what my grandmother called those duties expected of people in our position even though we were in such reduced circumstances. That meant taking to the poor dusters and the preserves which had not turned out as well as my grandmother had expected them to, taking charge of a stall at the church fete, attending the sewing class held at the vicarage, putting flowers on the graves, helping decorate the church, and such activities. I could see myself growing old and sour as Miriam had been before she married her curate—but even she had had him in the background. I was no longer very young. I was now a woman and the older I grew the more quickly would the years slip by.

  The day began ordinarily enough with prayers in the drawing room, where the family assembled with the servants while my grandmother, as I once irreverently observed to Miriam, gave the Almighty His instructions for the day. “Do this…” and “Don’t do that…” By force of habit I counted up the injunctions.

  That April Mrs. Jarman had been delivered of another child and Jarman was more melancholy than ever. Nature, he told me, showed no signs of curbing her generosity. My grandmother sharply retorted that he was not so simple that he did not know that a little restraint might ease the situation. He was indeed Poor Jarman; he looked at my grandmother with such reproach that he made me want to laugh.

  “Talk of Poor Jarman,” she said to me sharply. “I think it’s a case of Poor Mrs. Jarman.”

  In an outburst of generosity she packed a basket for the fertile lady and even put in a pot of raspberry jam which had not started to go moldy, a small chicken, and a flask of broth.

  “You can take this over to Mrs. Jarman, Jessica,” she said. “After all her husband does work for us. Take it while he is working, for I am sure he seizes the best of everything for himself and she needs nourishment, poor woman.”

  That was how on a breezy afternoon in late April I came to be walking over to the cottage where the Jarmans lived, a basket on my arm, thinking as I went of Ben and wondering how soon the day would come when I would go over to Oakland Hall and find that he had left it.

  Outside the Jarman cottage was a muddy pond and a scrap of garden overgrown with weeds. It was strange that Poor Jarman, who spent his days making other people’s gardens beautiful, should so neglect his own. I contemplated that they could have grown some flowers there, or perhaps some vegetables, but instead of daffodils and flowering shrubs there were little Jarmans playing games which seemed to involve the maximum of noise, confusion, and an abundance of litter.

  One of the young ones who must have been about three years old had a small flowerpot into which he was shoveling dirt and turning it out into neat little mounds which he patted with hands understandably grimy, after which operation he rubbed them over his face and down his pinafore. Two others were tugging at a rope, and another was throwing a ball into the pond so that when it bounced a spray of dirty water rose, splashing him
and anyone near to the immense delight of those who were thus anointed.

  There was a brief silence as I approached, all eyes on the basket, but as I went into the cottage the noise broke out again.

  I called out: “Good afternoon, Mrs. Jarman.”

  One stepped straight into the living room, and I knocked on a door which I knew from previous visits to be that of the connubial bedchamber. There was a spiral staircase leading from the room to two rooms upstairs which were occupied as sleeping quarters by the ever-increasing tribe.

  Mrs. Jarman was in bed, the new baby in a cradle beside her. She was very large. Like a queen bee, I had once remarked to Miriam, and indeed nature had clearly furnished her for a similar destiny.

  “Another little girl, Mrs. Jarman,” I said.

  “Yes, Miss Jessica,” said Mrs. Jarman, rolling her eyes reproachfully up to the ceiling as though Providence had whisked this one into the cradle when she wasn’t looking, for she shared Poor Jarman’s complaint that it was Nature at her tricks again.

  The little girl was going to be called Daisy, she told me, and she hoped God would see fit to bless her.

  “Well, Mrs. Jarman,” I said, “you have your quiverful and that’s supposed to be a blessed state.”

  “It’ll mean getting another bed in time,” she said. “I only hope the Lord sees fit to stop with Daisy.”

  I talked for a while and then came out of the house to where the noise seemed to have increased. The maker of dirt mounds had had enough of them and was cheerfully kicking them down to the pond. The ball went straight into the pond, and the Jarman who had thrown it shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

  I was about to cross the road when the mound-maker, having seen the ball go into the pond, decided to retrieve it. He walked in, reached for the ball and fell flat on his face.

  The other children were all watching with interest, but none of them thought of getting the child out. There was only one thing for me to do because he was in imminent danger. I waded into the pond, picked up the little Jarman, and angrily strode with him onto dry land.