Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  He began with the great wooden drum above their heads, and step by step expounded the working of the whim; but when he led the lady’s hack into such a position that Miss Jenny could see down into the shaft, he had not yet mentioned that an accident had suspended the working.

  The sides of the shafts were lined with horizontal slabs of wood; and the mischief was that one of the slabs near the top had become loose, and had at last fallen the full depth of a hundred feet, and so smashed and jammed the bucket, which was just clear of the water at the bottom, as to make it immovable. One slab having loosened itself, others were likely to do the same; the shafts were no longer secure, and the danger of descending to the injured bucket (without testing every slab on the way, as the blacksmith proposed) was great There was only one shaft for Miss Jenny to look down, for the uninjured bucket hung at the mouth of the other. She did not much like looking down the smooth-sided, damp, narrow shaft; it put her in mind of the bottomless pit; yet to gaze down, down, rather fascinated her.

  “You have not yet shown me how it works,” she said presently, glancing across the raised lips of the shaft at the whim-driver, who was leaning over them and grasping the perpendicular rope a little higher than his head.

  “The whim’s not in working order.”

  As he spoke Jim watched her face, with a rather reckless light in his blue eyes, for the effect of his little sell. He expected her to ride off at once; but she did nothing of the kind. She exhibited no annoyance at all, but would know all about the jamming of the bucket at the bottom.

  “Then will some one have to go to the bottom?” she asked, shuddering— “down this endless awful rope?”

  “Some one will. There’s nothing else for it.”

  Miss Jenny’s eyes had been downcast; now she raised them swiftly. Her eyes often were downcast, and she as often raised them thus.

  “Dare you?”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.”

  The next sound was a sharp shrill cry from Miss Jenny. The little dainty riding-whip — which she had never once dropped on all her long and lonely rides — had somehow slipped from her fingers and fallen fairly into the mouth of the shaft, and so out of sight.

  Then came a shriller, sharper cry from Miss Jenny, followed by the exclamation, “Don’t!” reiterated in great alarm.

  But it was too late: Jim was descending the single rope into the horrible pit, hand under hand. Jenny’s vision grew dim; she lost sight of him in the deeper gloom of the shaft; and as she saw him last his upturned eyes were fixed upon her with a strange, smiling, singular expression.

  Suddenly the rope, on which the girl now concentrated her trembling, anxious gaze, ceased to vibrate. He had reached the bottom, then. But why did he not shout up to her his safety? She swayed in her saddle with the suspense.

  Watching the rope with an agonised face, she hardly breathed until it began once more to vibrate; then she lowered her eyes into the impenetrable gloom; and at length a figure, spattered and stained with dirt, sweat streaming from the white forehead, and blots of blood upon the hands, with the little riding-whip between his teeth — a figure that ten minutes of strenuous effort had turned into an apparition — climbed slowly into sight, and so, hand over hand, into the open air.

  A Count de Lorge would have struck the lady with the whip; but Jim just handed it over without a word, and flung himself upon the ground. Without a word Miss Jenny received her whip; she could not speak; but she could see four deep dents in the whalebone, where Jim’s teeth had done their best to meet, in the struggle of the stifling upward climb.

  All at once a noise came from the shaft — a thumping and a bumping against its sides — growing more distant, but ending in a loud metallic crash. Jim had leapt to his feet, and was gazing down the shaft.

  “What is it?” asked Miss Jenny tremulously; her nerves were shaken.

  “Only another slab, miss. It’ll about do for the old bucket.”

  “Are the slabs so heavy?”

  “Damp, and heavy as lead.”

  “Suppose — oh, suppose you had been down below a minute longer!”

  “Why, miss, I should have been a stiff ‘un!”

  There was a long pause between them. Miss Jenny broke it at last in a whisper —

  “Did you know the — the danger — before you went down?”

  The whim-driver laughed without answering; and a minute later a cloud of orange-coloured sand, far over the plain, was all that could be seen of Miss Jenny from the whim, even from the top of the framework, on which Jim had mounted.

  IV.

  THE gate between the home-paddock and the horse-paddock, half a mile from the homestead: half-past nine on a hot Sunday evening in December.

  A slim figure all in white leant over the gate, and the full moon shone so brilliantly that any one within a hundred yards might have seen that it was Miss Jenny. Moreover, but for the hindering box clump on the other side of the gate, Miss Jenny might herself have seen some one hurrying across the paddock towards her, and have conquered her uneasiness; for this was Jim-of-the-Whim.

  It was their first meeting by design, but there had been accidental meetings, one, two and three, since Jim’s risky descent of the whim-shaft: at least, they appeared to be accidents — like the slipping of the whip that day from Miss Jenny’s fingers.

  All at once the night air was filled with a music that should have silenced every chirruping locust in the land — music whereat Miss Jenny sighed her deep relief and fluttered with delight.

  “La donna è mobile” sang the voice, and came nearer every second. It was Verdi at his most tuneful: in the moonlit wilderness: by the sweetest tenor out of Italy.

  Miss Jenny had heard Rigoletto with the same tenor that took more than her fancy in Traviata. For the first time — for she had only heard Jim sing once before — she compared his voice with the heavenly Roberto’s. And then and there a suspicion entered her soul that would have been torture had not the opportunity of satisfying it been immediately at hand. For the song had come to an undignified end in the full tide of the second verse, — and — and Miss Jenny was on one side of the gate and Jim on the other.

  “You were singing Rigoletto?” said Jenny.

  “Yes; I was forced to sing something for very joy.”

  “I have heard Roberto sing that thing; and, do you know, you sing exactly like Roberto, and look like him too!”

  No answer.

  “Are you Roberto?” cried Jenny, in the greatest excitement.

  “Can it make any difference to you? Even so, should I not be miles beneath you still?”

  Miss Jenny did not answer.

  “You own that I should — and,” cried Jim, “that’s the best of it! You take me for what I am. Very well; I’ll tell you what I was — I was Roberto! Does it make any difference?”

  It did not — but it made them practically silent. The full moon sank lower, and peeped under the very broad brim of Jim’s wideawake. That was bad taste on the moon’s part.

  “You were to tell me your whole history,” Miss Jenny whispered. “Were you always on the stage?”

  “No,” said Jim. “Ten years ago I was at the ‘Varsity. You wouldn’t have thought it, would you?”

  “Oh, indeed, I — —”

  “Oh no, you wouldn’t! I had forgotten it myself until — until I saw you! No, it was the common savage you liked, not the ex-gentleman; and by liking him you have saved him! My angel! My good angel! For your sake I’ll be the man I was once, so help me God!”

  The girl blushed crimson in the moonlight, and Jim liked her the better for it. The poor fellow little dreamt how much she had to blush for.

  “I’m the prodigal son of rather a well-known parent,” Jim went on. “You can see his name in any English newspaper. It is the parable all through so far, minus the happy ending. That’s what you and I are going to bring about.”

  “You mean that you are disinherited! What was it you did?”

  Inquisitiveness was
innate in Miss Jenny; but at the same time, to do her justice, she was thinking of her own little dower, and of its possibilities as an aid to reconciling her future husband with his family. Yet she would have given something to know what Jim’s original crime had been.

  Jim would not answer. He said that it was a long story, and his face showed that the memory pained him still. Nor would he say why he had quitted the stage, on which he had achieved a great though brief reputation throughout the Colonies.

  Soon Miss Jenny looked at her watch, and said she must fly. Whereupon Jim opened the gate to fly with her as far as he dare. But they did not fly at all; they walked very slowly indeed; and on this walk they made their final arrangements. There is nothing to conceal in these arrangements. In the circumstances, they were the simplest and most natural in the world. Jim was to get his cheque next day, and set off walking for Wagga-Wagga. He was to wait in that town; if not in the church-porch, at any rate on the platform of the railway-station. He would not have to wait many days, though the date of Miss Howard’s departure from her brother-in-law’s station was not absolutely settled. She was preparing, however, to go down to Melbourne for Christmas, and she intended travelling by rail from Hay, by way of Wagga and Albury, instead of in the coach by the more direct route to Deniliquin. She would leave the train at Wagga, and be married then and there.

  After that, as Jim said, the world lay at their feet.

  They would go to England. His father would forgive everything; all would be well; the years of exile and degradation should be forgotten. Nor were all Jim’s prophecies so vague, and Genevieve quickly shared his high hopes; for among her own people the realisation of half the golden programme that Jim now unfolded would atone for the rash plunge she was going to take. She was intoxicated with joy, for there were prospects, as it turned out, undreamed of till now, though she had suspected from the beginning that Jim had sunk from some better state. But her little heart was honestly on fire as it had never quite been before; and in her happiness she for once shook off the haunting vision of poor Clinton, who at that moment was walking home to his Melbourne lodgings from Sunday supper at the parsonage, hugging to his heart the velvet embroidered case that had “inspired” his evening sermon.

  As for Jim, he carolled all the way back to the hut — still in Italian.

  V.

  ON Mr. Parker’s high office-stool at the desk in the store sat Miss Jenny — deep in the composition of a letter. This letter was a long business, and, what was worse, it cost the writer tribulation over every word; when from time to time she looked up, her eyes were swimming with tears. Her letter, in fact, was full of sorrow and remorse: its frankness did the writer some credit — it was the letter of a weak nature rising almost to strength in the honest admission of its weakness: it was a letter to Clinton Browne.

  It was strange that she should have the store all to herself this sultry afternoon; but the fact was that all hands were away “mustering” in a distant paddock; and, as it was mail-day, Macdonald had intrusted the key of the store to his sister-in-law, with injunctions about the despatch of one mail-bag, and permission to open the other.

  At last the dreadful letter was written, directed, stamped, and dropped into the out-going bag. Then Miss Jenny dried her eyes, tied string round the mouth of the bag, and sealed it as she had once or twice seen Mr. Parker do. The wax was still warm when the inward mail was fetched into the store.

  “The other bag is ready,” said Miss Jenny, pointing to it. “You’d better take it.”

  “No; I’ll come back for it in an hour, when me and my ‘orse has had a snack. Lots o’ time for the other bag then.” And the highly Colonial mail-boy swaggered out with characteristic independence, not having demeaned himself by a single “miss,”

  “please,” or “thank you.”

  The weekly mail had always been a source of pleasurable excitement to Miss Jenny, though of late she had neglected her formerly enormous correspondence, and allowed it to dwindle. Still, there were a hundred people from whom she might hear to-day; and it was not a little disappointing to find absolutely nothing addressed to Miss Howard. There was, however, a letter bearing the name that was soon to become her own, and its mere exterior interested Miss Jenny more than whole sheets addressed to herself could have done.

  This letter she kept in front of her on the desk after she had poured everything else back into the bag. It bore the postmark of an English town which, until the other day, had been no more than a name to her. It was superscribed in a firm, businesslike, masculine hand. Without doubt it was from Jim’s father! Miss Jenny toyed musingly with the envelope. She tried to guess the contents; she even held the letter up to the light; but the paper of the envelope was provokingly opaque. If the letter itself was written on such thick paper it must be a pretty short letter. It has been said that Genevieve was naturally inquisitive; other unfortunate qualities of hers combined to strengthen the temptation now thrown in her way.

  Perhaps the drowsy stillness of the store and her entire solitude fed that temptation; perhaps, on the contrary, she argued that she had almost a right to read the letters of the man she meant to marry next week; or it may even have crossed her mind that possibly she held in her hands words of forgiveness from father to son, and that in this case Providence had clearly reserved it for her to break the good news to Jim. In any case, the fact remains that she opened the envelope with a paper-knife, and so cleverly that she separated the flap without tearing it. Having done this she was startled. She told herself that she had done it without thinking. This was partly true, for she made more bones about reading the letter now that it was opened than about opening it. It may have been the sight of a gum-bottle and brush among the inkstands that helped to decide her the wrong way.

  When Genevieve Howard had read three lines of the letter to the man she had promised to marry, she sank forward on the sloping desk as if in a swoon, and the letter fluttered to the floor. There it lay in the dust — after all, not much more than the three lines that had been read.

  “Dear James,” the letter ran, “when I refused to see you or communicate with you any more, after your disgraceful marriage with an opera singer, I took the step after due deliberation. My decision was therefore irrevocable, and I am sorry you again compel me to emphasise it. I am not surprised to learn that this woman has proved your final ruin. That you have separated from her and left the stage may possibly be for your comparative good, unless you once more go from bad to worse. But I must repeat, and I trust for the last time, that you cheat and deceive yourself in looking to a reconciliation, no matter at how distant a date, with — your father.”

  A jingle of spurs sounded along the verandah outside. The mail-boy re-entered the store.

  “I’ll take the bag now,” said this young Australian; and he was walking off with it when Miss Howard started up from the desk with burning cheeks and flashing eyes, and stopped him.

  “Bring it to me!” she cried. “There is a letter in the bag that must not go!”

  She cut the string, extracted the letter addressed to Clinton Browne, and tore it into a hundred fragments before the mail-boy’s eyes. He saw her tie up and seal the bag once more; he saw her hands tremble so that she burnt herself with the sealing-wax. In his uncouth way he lent a hand; and he went out and told all the men at the hut that “his girl” was certainly “taken worse.” Nor did Miss Jenny’s white face that evening escape the notice of her brother-in-law, though he said nothing until she told him that she had given up the idea of rail from Hay to Albury viâ Wagga, and so on, in favour of the more direct and cheaper coach journey to Deniliquin; and then he merely praised her economy, which was after his own heart.

  VI.

  ON the railway platform at Wagga-Wagga there was to be seen daily, right through the busy time of the Christmas holidays, and principally at the hour when the train came in from Hay, a man whose appearance, at first gentlemanlike and irreproachable in point of dress, became rapidly shabby-g
enteel. This man attracted attention at first by reason of his good looks, and at last because people remembered his good looks, and wondered what had become of them. His expression, however, forbade inquiry; and as he never was seen in even the primary and confidential stage of intoxication (being evidently a teetotaller, since he was sober on Christmas Day) he was left unmolested. Just before he disappeared from Wagga, towards the end of January, this man presented an appearance that is familiar enough in cities: he had good clothes on his back and no money to live up to them; his cheeks were sunken, his chin stubbly, his linen grimy. At the first glance the man looked well to do; at the second, you could see that he was starving.

  About a fortnight later the same man walked into the store at Macdonald’s station, and young Parker cried out in surprise across the ledger—” Jim-of-the-Whim!”

  There was nothing surprising about Jim’s return, though he had never before stayed away quite so long. What was surprising was the urban cut and texture of his clothes. Parker attempted to interrogate him lightly on the point, but got short answers. The fact was, the clothes were Jim’s wedding garments, which had been made for him immediately after his arrival in Wagga, and which he would not part with though everything else had to go to buy him bread, while he waited for the bride who never came.

  Parker gave up the dress riddle, and informed Jim that he had come back in the nick of time, his successor at the whim having that very morning rolled up his swag, got his cheque, and gone.

  At the news Jim’s eyes lighted up ever so little.

  “Is the little cat there still, sir?” he asked suddenly.

  “He was this morning,” returned Parker — and the light in Jim’s eyes grew stronger. “By the way, Jim, here’s a letter for you — came the day after you went.”

  Jim read his father’s ultimatum with complete apathy. It was the few words in pencil at the end, in a different hand, over a different signature, that caused him to stagger as though drunk, and to sink down on the nearest box.