Read Online The Touch by Colleen McCullough - Free Book Online Page B

contained no inhabitants with whom she would care to associate. A suspicion began to grow in her that he intended to isolate her from ordinary folk, that she was doomed to dwell on the mountain in solitude. As if she were a secret.
    But as he didn’t forbid her to walk, Elizabeth walked, at first confining herself to the beautiful grounds, then venturing farther afield. She found the snake path and negotiated it down to the shelf where the poppet heads of the mine reared, but could find no vantage point from which she could watch the activity unobserved. After that she began to penetrate the mysteries of the forest, there to find an enchanting world of lacy ferns, mossy dells, huge trees with trunks of vermilion, pink, cream, blue-white, every shade of brown. Exquisite birds flew in flocks, parrots in all the colors of the rainbow, an elusive bird that chimed like fairy bells, other birds that sang more melodically than a nightingale. Breath suspended, she saw little kangaroos leaping from rock to rock—a picture book come to life.
    Finally she went far enough to hear the sound of roaring water, and came upon a clear, strong stream that tumbled in lacy leaps down a monstrous slope, down to the wood and iron jungle of Kinross below. The change was dramatic, horrific; what atop the falls was paradise was transformed at the mountain’s foot into an ugly shambles of slag heaps, detritus, holes, mounds, trenches. And the river down there was filthy.
    “You’ve found the cascades,” said Alexander’s voice.
    She gasped, whirled around. “You startled me!”
    “Not as much as a snake would have. Be careful, Elizabeth. There are snakes everywhere, some capable of killing you.”
    “Yes, I know there are. Jade warned me and showed me how to frighten them away—you stamp very hard on the ground.”
    “Provided you see them in time.” He came to stand beside her. “Down there is the evidence of what men will do to lay their hands on gold,” he said. “Those are the original workings. They haven’t yielded placer in two years. And yes, I’m personally responsible for a great deal of the mess. I was here for six months before the word leaked out that I’d found paydirt on this wee tributary of the Abercrombie River.” He put a hand under her elbow and steered her away. “Come, I want you to meet your teacher of piano. And I’m sorry,” he continued as they retraced their steps, “that I didn’t think to bring in the kind of books I should have known you’d prefer. A mistake I’m busy rectifying.”
    “Must I learn the piano?” she asked.
    “If you wish to please me, yes. Do you wish to please me?”
    Do I? she wondered. I hardly see him except in my bed, he doesn’t even bother to come home for dinner.
    “Of course,” she said.
     
     
    MISS THEODORA JENKINS had one thing in common with Jade; they had both followed the gold from place to place in company with their fathers. Tom Jenkins had died of liver failure due to strong drink when he reached Sofala, a gold town on the Turon River, leaving his plain, timid daughter with no roof over her head nor means of support. At first she had taken employment in a boarding house, waiting on tables, washing dishes and making beds; it gave her that roof over her head and her keep, if not more than sixpence a day in wages. As her leanings were religious, church became her great comfort, the more so after the minister discovered how well she could play the organ. After the Sofala gold failed she moved to Bathurst, where Constance Dewy saw her advertisement in the Bathurst Free Press and brought her to Dunleigh, the Dewy homestead, to teach piano to her daughters.
    When the last of the Dewy girls went to boarding school in Sydney, Miss Jenkins returned to the drudgery of teaching piano and taking in mending at Bathurst. Then Alexander Kinross had offered her a little house in Kinross plus a decent salary if she would give his wife daily lessons on the piano. Hugely