The Luminaries

an evening of his life, no doubt, with Lydia Wells at his elbow, blowing on his dice!’
    ‘Was he in on the secret?’
    ‘I don’t think so,’ Lauderback said, shaking his head. ‘He had shore leave that night—there was a naval occasion, an official event of some kind. Nothing untoward. And I never got a funny feeling, afterwards.’
    ‘What’s he doing now?’
    ‘Raxworthy? Helming the bloody
Spirit of the Thames
, and bored as a tiger in a carriage car. The man can’t stand steam. He’s furious with me.’
    ‘Does he know?’
    Lauderback looked angry. ‘I’m a public figure,’ he said. ‘If anybody knew about this, you’d know. I’d be sunk. Does he know? Of course he doesn’t know!’
    He had become suddenly impatient with his own story, Balfour saw. The narration of the events had only rekindled his shame at having been made a fool.
    ‘But the sale of the ship,’ Balfour said after a moment. ‘That’s public knowledge—printed in the papers.’
    Lauderback swore. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘According to the paper, I sold that d—ned ship for a very reasonable price indeed, and all in pure. Of course I never saw a penny of it. The gold stayed in that d—ned trunk, and when
Godspeed
made her voyage to Melbourne the next day, the trunk was collected on the other side—as it had been every month for the past year. And then it disappeared, of course. I couldn’t do a thing about it, without bringing down all hellaround my ears. God only knows where that gold is now. And he’s got the ship, to boot.’
    Lauderback toyed angrily with the cruet stand.
    ‘What was the true value of the gold in the trunk—to your eye?’
    ‘I’m no prospector,’ Lauderback said, ‘but by the weight of the gowns I’d estimate it was a couple of thousand, at least.’
    ‘And you never saw that gold again.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Or heard tell of it.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did you ever see the girl again—Lydia Wells?’
    Lauderback laughed harshly. ‘Lydia Wells is no
girl
,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what she is—but she’s not a
girl
, Thomas. She’s not a
girl
.’
    But he had not answered Balfour’s question.
    ‘You know she’s here—in Hokitika,’ Balfour reminded him.
    ‘So you mentioned,’ said Lauderback grimly, and would not say more.
    What a strange, unbroken beast is adulation! How unpredictably it rears its head, and tears against the bridle of its own making! Balfour’s worship of the other man—that which had so easily become petulance—now became, in rising flood, disdain. To have lost so much—and over a
mistress
! Over another man’s wife!
    Disdain, for all its censorious pretension, is an emotion that can afford a certain clarity. Thomas Balfour watched his friend drain his glass and snap his fingers for another round, and was scornful—and then his scorn gave way to mistrust, and his mistrust to perspicacity. There were elements of Lauderback’s story that still did not fit together. What of the timely death of Crosbie Wells? Lauderback had yet to address that coincidence—just as he had yet to explain why he believed
that
Carver and Wells had been, of all things, brothers! What of Lydia Wells, who had swept into Hokitika to claim her rightful inheritance, arriving so promptly after his death that the harbour master asked, half in jest, if the Hokitika Post Office had installed a telegraph? Balfour knew without a doubt that he had not been told the whole truth; what he did not know,however, was the reason for this concealment. Whom was Lauderback protecting? Himself merely? Or someone else?
    Lauderback’s eyes had sharpened. He leaned forward and stabbed the table with his index finger. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve just had a thought. About Carver. If his name really
is
Carver, then the sale of the ship is void. You can’t sign a deed in another man’s name.’
    Balfour made no reply. He was distracted by his new appraisal of the other man, and the critical distance that had opened as a sudden gulf of doubt between them.
    ‘And even if his name is really Wells,’ Lauderback added, brightening further, ‘even if
that’s
true, Lydia can’t be married to two men at once, can she? It’s as you said: either lying about a marriage, or lying about a name!’
    A boy brought a fresh pitcher of wine. Balfour picked it up to refill their glasses. ‘Unless,’ he said as he poured, ‘it
wasn’t
both at once. She might have divorced the one, and married his