The Luminaries

and this was not the first time I had caught him in questionable circumstances … though never in a situation of this criminal magnitude, I should hasten to say.
    ‘My real amazement came when I inquired after my brother, and learned that he had been my father’s agent from the outset: they had orchestrated the abandonment together, and had journeyed south as partners. I did not wait to encounter Frederick too—I could not bear it, to see them both together—and made to leave. My father became aggressive, and attempted to detain me. I escaped, and made the immediate plan to journey here. I had money enough to return to London directly, if I wished, but my grief was of a kind that—’ Moody paused, and made a helpless gesture with his fingers. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘I believed the hard labour of the diggings might do me well, for a time. And I do not want to be a lawyer.’
    There was a silence. Moody shook his head and sat forward in his chair. ‘It is an unhappy story,’ he said, more briskly. ‘I am ashamed of my blood, Mr. Balfour, but I mean not to dwell upon it. I mean to make new.’
    ‘Unhappy, indeed!’ Balfour cried, plucking his cigar from his mouth at last, and waving it about. ‘I am sorry for you, Mr. Moody, and commend you, both. But yours is the way of the goldfields, isit not? Reinvention! Dare I say—revolution! That a man might make new—might make
himself
anew—truly, now!’
    ‘These are words of encouragement,’ Moody said.
    ‘Your father—his name is also Moody, I presume.’
    ‘It is,’ Moody said. ‘His Christian name is Adrian; perhaps you have heard of him?’
    ‘I have not,’ Balfour said, and then, perceiving that the other was disappointed, he added, ‘—which means very little, of course. I’m in the shipping line of business, as I told you; these days I don’t rub shoulders with the men on the field. I was in Dunedin. I was in Dunedin for three years, near about. But if your pa made his luck on the diggings, he’d have been inland. Up in the high country. He might have been anywhere—Tuapeka, Clyde—anywhere at all. But—listen—as to the here and now, Mr. Moody. You’re not afraid that he will follow you?’
    ‘No,’ Moody said, simply. ‘I took pains to create the impression that I departed immediately for England, the day I left him. Upon the docks I found a man seeking passage to Liverpool. I explained my circumstances to him, and after a short negotiation we swapped papers with one another. He gave my name to the ticket master, and I his. Should my father inquire at the customhouse, the officers there will be able to show him proof that I have left these islands already, and am returning home.’
    ‘But perhaps your father—and your brother—will come to the Coast of their own accord. For the diggings.’
    ‘That I cannot predict,’ Moody agreed. ‘But from what I understood of their current situation, they had made gold enough in Otago.’
    ‘Gold
enough
!’ Balfour seemed about to laugh again.
    Moody shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said coldly, ‘I shall prepare myself for the possibility of their arrival, of course. But I do not expect it.’
    ‘No—of course, of course,’ Balfour said, patting Moody’s sleeve with his big hand. ‘Let us now talk of more hopeful things. Tell me, what do you intend to do with your pile, once you have amassed a decent sum? Back to Scotland, is it, to spend your fortune there?’
    ‘So I hope,’ Moody said. ‘I have heard that a man might makea competence in four months or less, which would take me away from here before the worst months of winter. Is that a probable expectation, in your mind?’
    ‘Quite probable,’ Balfour said, smiling at the coals, ‘quite probable , indeed—yes, one might expect it. No mates in town, then? Folk to meet you on the quay, join up—lads from home?’
    ‘None, sir,’ Moody told him, for the third time that evening. ‘I travelled here alone, and, as I have said to you already, I intend to make my own fortune, without the help of other men.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said Balfour, ‘making your own—well, going
after
it, in the modern way. But a digger’s mate is like his shadow—that’s another thing to know—his shadow, or his wife—’
    At this remark there was a ripple of amusement around the room: not open laughter, merely a quiet expulsion of breath, issued from several quarters at once. Moody glanced around him. He had sensed a slackening