The Touch by Colleen McCullough Read Free Book Online Page A

opinion.
     
     
    CHARLES DEWY, Elizabeth discovered, was a minor partner in the Apocalypse Mine.
    “He’s the local squatter—used to run two hundred square miles until the gold arrived,” said Alexander.
    “Squatter?”
    “So called because he ‘squatted’ on Crown Land until—as possession does indeed tend to be nine-tenths of the Law—he virtually owned it. But an Act of Parliament changed things. I softened his attitude by offering him a share in the Apocalypse, and thereafter I can do no wrong.”
    They were leaving Sydney at last, no grief to Mrs. Kinross, who now owned two dozen large trunks, but no personal maid. Having, it appeared, made a few enquiries about the town of Kinross and its location, Miss Thomas had quit that morning. Her desertion did not distress Elizabeth, who genuinely preferred to look after herself.
    “Never mind” was Alexander’s response to the news. “I’ll ask Ruby to find you a good Chinese girl. And don’t start saying you would rather not have an abigail! After two weeks of having your hair dressed, you ought to know that you need a pair of hands to do it that are not attached to your own arms.”
    “Ruby? Is she your housekeeper?” Elizabeth asked, aware that she was going to a house staffed with servants.
    That made Alexander laugh until the tears ran down his face. “Ah—no,” he said when he was able. “Ruby is, for want of any better words, an institution. To refer to her in a less grand way would be to demean her. Ruby is a master of the acid remark and the caustic comment. She’s Cleopatra—but she’s also Aspasia, Medusa, Josephine and Catherine di Médicis.”
    Oh! But Elizabeth had no opportunity to pursue this avenue of conversation because they had reached Redfern railway station, a bleak area of sheds and braided iron tracks.
    “The platforms here are rather derelict because they’re always talking of erecting a palatial terminus at the top of George Street—but that’s all it is, talk,” said Alexander as he helped her down from the chaise.
    The aftermath of seasickness had rendered her incapable of curiosity when she boarded the London train in Edinburgh, but today she gazed at the Bowenfels train in awe and amazement. A steam-wreathed engine mounted on a combination of small wheels and huge ones, the latter joined together by rods, stood panting like a gigantic and angry dog, wispy smoke curling from its tall chimney. This infernal machine was linked to an iron tender full of coal, behind which were eight carriages—six second-class and two first-class—with a caboose (Alexander’s word) on the back to hold the bulky luggage, freight, and the conductor.
    “I know the back of the train moves about more than the front, but I’m compelled to lean out the window and watch the locomotive working,” said Alexander, ushering her into what looked like a plushly comfortable parlor. “For that reason, they couple one first-class car behind all the other cars. This is really the Governor’s private compartment, but he’s happy to let me use it whenever he doesn’t need it—I pay for it.”
    At seven o’clock on the dot the Bowenfels train pulled out of the yard, with Elizabeth glued to a window. Yes, Sydney was big; it was fifteen minutes before the houses became scattered, fifteen minutes of rattling along, clickety-click, at a breathtaking pace. An occasional platform flashed past after that to mark some small town—Strathfield, Rose Hill, Parramatta.
    “How fast are we going?” she asked, liking the sensation of speed, the swaying motion.
    “Fifty miles an hour, though she’s capable of sixty if they really stoke the boiler. This is the weekly through-passenger train—it doesn’t stop before Bowenfels—and it’s a lightweight affair compared to a goods train. But our speed slows down to eighteen or twenty miles an hour once we begin to climb, in some places less than that, so our journey takes nine hours.”
    “What does a goods