Going round presently to the front of the hut, the first thing she saw was the stockrider’s boots, with the spurs on them, standing just outside the door; within there was a merry glare, and Wilfrid Ferrers cooking more chops in his stocking soles before a splendid fire.
“Well!” she exclaimed in the doorway, for she could not help it.
“Awake at last!” he cried, turning a face ruddy from the fire. “You’ve had your eight hours. It’s nearly five o’clock.”
“Then I must start instantly.”
“Time enough when we’ve had something to eat.”
The first person plural disconcerted her. Was he coming too? Mr. Pickering had taken it for granted that they would go together; he was sending another man to look after the out-station; but then Mr. Pickering was labouring under a delusion; he did not understand. Wilfrid was very kind, considering that his love for her was dead and buried in the dead past. The gentleman was not dead in him, at all events. How cleverly he managed those hissing chops! He looked younger in the firelight, years younger than in the cold grey dawn. But no wonder his love of her was dead and gone.
“Now we’re ready,” he cried at last. “Quick, while they’re hot, Lena!” His tone had changed entirely since the early morning; it was brisker now, but markedly civil and considerate. He proceeded to apologise for making use of her Christian name; it had slipped out, he said, without his thinking.
At this fresh evidence of his indifference, the girl forced a smile, and declared it did not matter.
“Surely we can still be friends,” said she.
“Yes, friends in adversity!” he laughed. “Don’t you feel as if we’d been wrecked together on a desert island? I do. But what do you think of the chops?”
“Very good for a desert island.”
She was trying to adopt his tone; it was actually gay; and herein his degeneracy was more apparent to her than in anything that had gone before. He could not put himself in her place; the cruel dilemma that she was in, for his sake, seemed nothing to him; his solitary dog’s life had deprived him of the power of feeling for another. And yet the thought of those boots outside in the sand contradicted this reflection; for he had put them on soon after her reappearance, thus showing her on whose account they had been taken off. Moreover, his next remark was entirely sympathetic.
“It’s very rough on you,” he said. “What do you mean to do?”
“I suppose I must go back to Melbourne.”
“And then?”
“Get another place — if I can.”
He said no more; but he waited upon her with heightened assiduity during the remainder of their simple meal; and when they set out together — he with all his worldly goods in a roll of blankets across his shoulders — she made another effort to strike his own note of kindly interest and impersonal sympathy. “And you,” she said as they walked; “what will you do?”
“Get a job at the next station; there’ll be no difficulty about that.”
“I’m thankful to hear it.”
“But I am in a difficulty about you.”
He paused so long that her heart fluttered, and she knew not what was coming. They passed the place where her resolution had given way in the dark hour before the dawn; she recognised that other spot, where, later, he had found her asleep in the sun; but the first fence was in sight before he spoke.
“I can’t stand the idea of your putting in another appearance in the township,” he exclaimed at last, thrilling her with the words, which expressed perhaps the greatest of her own immediate dreads. “It won’t do at all. Things will have got about. You must avoid the township at all costs.”
“How can I?”
“By striking the road much lower down. It will mean bearing to the right, and no more beaten tracks after we get through this gate. But the distance will be the same and I know the way.”
“But my trunks — —”
“The boss said he would have them put on the coach. They’ll probably be aboard whether you are or no. If they aren’t, I’ll have them sent after you.”
“I shall be taking you out of your way,” objected the girl.
“Never mind. Will you trust me?”
“Most gratefully.”
She had need to be grateful. Yes, he was very kind; he was breaking her heart with his kindness, that heart which she had read backward five years ago, but aright ever since. It was all his. Either the sentiment which was one of her inherent qualities, or the generosity which was another, or both, had built up a passion for the man she had jilted, far stronger than any feeling she could have entertained for him in the early days of their love. She had yearned to make atonement, and having prayed, for years, only to meet him again, to that end, she had regarded her prayer now as answered. But answered how cruelly! Quite an age ago, he must have ceased to care; what was worse, he had no longer any strong feelings about her, one way or the other. Oh, that was the worst of all! Better his first hot scorn, his momentary brutality: she had made him feel then: he felt nothing now. And here they were trudging side by side, as silent as the grave that held their withered love.
They came to the road but a few minutes before the coach was due. Ferrers carried no watch; but he had timed their journey accurately by the sun. It was now not a handbreadth above the dun horizon; the wind had changed, and was blowing fresh from the south; and it was grateful to sit in the elongated shadows of two blue-bushes which commanded a fair view of the road. They had been on the tramp upwards of two hours; during the second hour they had never spoken but once, when he handed her his water-bag; and now he handed it again.
“Thank you,” she said, passing it back after her draught. “You have been very kind!”
“Ah, Lena!” he cried, without a moment’s warning, “had you been a kinder girl, or I a stronger man, we should have been happy enough first or last! Now it’s too late. I have sunk too low. I’d rather sink lower still than trade upon your pity.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
He pointed to a whirl of sand half a mile up the road. It grew larger, giving glimpses of half-harnessed horse-flesh and heavily revolving wheels. The girl’s lips moved; she could hear the driver’s whip, cracking louder and louder; but the words came hard.
“It is not true,” she cried at last. “That is not all. You — don’t — care!”
He turned upon her his old, hungry eyes, so sunken now. “I do,” he said hoarsely. “Too much — to drag you down. No! let me sink alone. I shall soon touch bottom!”
She got to her feet. The coach was very near them now, the off-lamp showing up the vermilion panels; the bits tinkling between the leaders’ teeth; the body of the vehicle swinging and swaying on its leather springs. The governess got to her feet, and pointed to the coach with a helpless gesture.
“And I?” she asked him. “What’s to become of me?”
The south wind was freshening with the fall of night; at that very moment it blew off the driver’s wide-awake, and the coach was delayed three minutes.
A few yards farther it was stopped again, and at this second exasperation the driver’s language went from bad to worse; for the coach was behind its time.
“What now? Passengers?”
“Yes.”
“The owner of the boxes?”
“Yes.”
“And you too? Where’s your cheque?”
There was a moment’s colloquy between the two dusky figures in the road; then the man took a slip of paper from the left-hand pocket in his moleskins, and held it to the off-lamp for the driver’s inspection. “The two of us,” he said.
“Yes? Well! up you jump.... All aboard!”
And with his blankets round her, and her hand in his, the little governess, and her lost love who was found, passed at star-rise through the Greenbush boundary-gate, and on and on into another life.
A FAREWELL PERFORMANCE
Sam Eccles had killed a brown snake in his wood-heap, and had pro
ceeded to play a prehistoric trick on all comers to the Murrumbidgee Bridge Hotel. He had curled up the carcase under a bench on the verandah, and the new chum from Paka, riding in for the station mail, had very violently killed that snake again. But the new chum was becoming acclimatised to bush humour; and he arranged the lifeless coil in a most lifelike manner on the snoring body of a Gol-gol boundary-rider who was lying deathly drunk inside the bar. This a small but typical company applauded greatly; but Sam Eccles himself leant back against the wall and laughed only softly in his beard. There was a reminiscent twinkle in his eye, and someone offered him something for his thoughts.
“I was thinkin’,” said Sam, “of another old snake-yarn that come my way last Christmas-time. Was any of you jokers in the township then? I thought not; it was the slackest Christmas ever I struck.”
“My troubles about Christmas!” said a drover with a blue fly-veil. “Pitch us the yarn.”
“Ah, but it’s a yarn and a half! I’m not sure that I want to pitch it. I do and I don’t; it’d make you smile.”
“Yes?”
“Rip it out, Sam!”
“See here, boss,” said the drover, “mix yer own pison and chalk it to me.” And that settled the matter.
“Any of you know the I-talian?” began Sam, by way of preface, as he mixed his grog.
“Pasquale?” said the new chum. “Rather! I sling him out of my store periodically.”
“He’s our local thief,” Sam explained, for the benefit of the drover and his mates, who were strangers to the township. “A real bad egg, so bad that we’re proud of him. Shakes everything he can lay his dirty nails on, and smokes a meerschum he must have shook before we knew him. An organ-grinder in redooced circumstances, that’s what’s the matter with old Squally; but he must have been out a good bit, for he speaks as good bloomin’ English as you or me. Came this way first a year or two ago; hadn’t been here a month before every decent door in the place was slammed in the beggar’s face. I’ve fired him out of this again and again. The last time was last Christmas Day. He had the cheek to shove in his ugly mug, first thing in the morning, and ask if there was any free drinks going. Free drinks for him! He went out quicker than he come in. But he turns up again in the afternoon, as bold as blessed brass, and, by cripes, I didn’t fire him then!
“The joker was bit by a snake. His face was as white as his teeth, an’ there was the fear o’ death, yes, an’ the heat of hell in his wicked eyes. He’d chucked his hat away, after ripping out the greasy blue linin’, and that’s what he’d got twisted around his right wrist. Twisted so tight, with the stem of his pipe, that the hand looked dead and rotten, all but a crust of blood between the knuckles. Then he licks off the blood, and there sure enough were two little holes, just like stabs, five-eighths of an inch apart. My blessed oath!
“‘What kind?’ says I, though I thought I knew.
“‘A coral,’ says Squally, as I expected. And you know what that means, you mister; there’s not one in ten as gets bit by a coral-snake and lives to show the place.”
The new chum nodded.
“Well, there was just one chance for the joker and that was all. I filled a tumbler with whisky straight — hanged if he’d touch it! Never see such a thing in my life! That swine who’d get dead drunk every time he got the slant — who’d been round that very mornin’, cadgin’ for a drink — the same obstinate pig wouldn’t touch a drop now to save his life. ‘No, no,’ says Squally, ‘I have been drunken dev-ill all my days, let me die sober, let me die sober.’ So we had to take him and force that whisky down his throat, like giving a horse a ball, and another big nobbler on top of it to make sure. Then we stood round and looked on. D’ye see, mister, if it made him tight we’d pull him through; if it didn’t, there was no hope for him; and there’d be one blackguard less in Riverina. Well, for a bit he stood as straight an’ as firm as them verandah posts; but it wasn’t long before I see his knees givin’ an’ his chin comin’ down upon his chest; an’ then I knew as all was right. In less than five minutes he was blind and speechless; we’d got him spread out comfy in that corner; and the rest of us were quenching the little thirst we’d raised over the business.”
Here Sam Eccles suited the action to the word, and the drover with the blue fly-veil shook his head.
“You didn’t deserve them drinks,” said he. “What did you want to go and save a thing like that for? You should have let the joker die. I would.”
“I wished I had,” replied Sam, ruefully. “That’s not the end of the yarn, d’ye see, and it’s the end what’s going to make you chaps smile. There’s a rabbit inspector lives in this here township, and knows more about nat’ral history than any other two men in the back-blocks. He happened to be at home that day, and he’s at home to-day, too, if you’d like to see the snake what bit the Italian. He has it in his house — and this is how he come to get it. Somebody tells him what’s happened, and he looks in during the evening to see for himself. There was old Squally drowned in whisky, sleepin’ like a kid. ‘So,’ says Mr. Gray — that’s the rabbit-inspector— ‘now’s my time. The other day I lost my pen-knife; must have dropped it out of the buggy, but remembered the place and drove back; met Squally on the way, and nat-rally never saw my knife again. Now’s my time,’ says he, ‘to get it back. Now’s the time,’ he says, ‘for all of us to get back everything we ever lost!’ And down he goes on his knees beside Squally, and starts feeling in his pockets.
“‘Here it is!’ he says directly; and yet he never gets up from his knees.
“‘Struck anything else, Mr. Gray?’ says I at last.
“‘Yes, Sam, I have,’ says he, turning round and fixing me with his blue goggles. ‘What sort of a snake was it our friend here said had bitten him?’
“‘A coral,’ says I.
“‘Not it,’ says he.
“‘What then?’ says I.
“‘A new variety altogether,’ says Mr. Gray, grinning through his beard.
“‘Give it a name, sir,’ says I.
“‘Certainly,’ says he, getting up. ‘If we call it the knife-snake we shan’t be far out.’ And blowed if he didn’t show me the little blade of his own knife blooded at the point; blowed if he didn’t fit the blessed point into Squally’s blessed bites!”
Sam covered his face for shame, but joined next moment in the laugh against himself. Not so he of the blue fly-veil. The drover’s hairy visage was a strong study in perfectly candid contempt.
“You run a bush pub, and you were had by that old dodge. It hasn’t got a tooth in its head — it’s as old as the blooming sandhills — yet you were had. My stars!”
The new chum from Paka diverted the laugh by innocently inquiring what that dodge might be.
“A free drunk,” said the drover. “And you ought to stand us free drinks, mister, for not knowing. You’re only a shade better than our friend the boss. To swallow that old chestnut at this time o’ day!”
Sam Eccles lost his temper.
“You’ve said about enough. The man I mean was a born actor. Either shut your blessed head or take off that coat and come outside.”
“Right,” replied the drover, divesting himself on his way to the door. Sam followed him with equal alacrity, but came to a sudden halt upon the threshold.
“Wait a bit!” he cried. “Jiggered if here ain’t the very man I’ve been telling you about; running on one leg too, as if he was up to the same old dodge again. He can’t be. It’s too steep!”
Even as he spoke there was the bound of a bare foot in the verandah, and a hulking Neapolitan hopped into the bar with his other foot in his hand and apparent terror in his eyes. But his face was not white at all; it was flushed with running; and the actor seemed dazed, or disconcerted by the presence of an unknown audience.
“Bitten again?” inquired Sam Eccles, genially.
“Bitten by a coral. Bitten in my foot! Look, look at the marks. Per Dio! I am dead man. A drink — a drink!”
“H
ark at that!” said Sam Eccles, nudging the man whom he had been about to fight. “You’re in luck; I never thought, when I was pitching you that yarn, that you’d see the same thing over again with your own eyes. Who’d have believed he’d try the same game twice? But don’t he do it well?” And as Sam said this, he wrested the whisky-bottle from Pasquale’s hands, and put that worthy down on his back.
“No, you don’t. Not this time, Squally. Not much!”
The Neapolitan was up again in an instant, foaming at the mouth, and cursing volubly, but ready hands held him back.
“You ought to have been an actor, old man,” said one.
“He ought so,” laughed the drover. “He’s a treat. I wouldn’t have missed him for a lot.”
Pasquale spat in his face.
“No, no, you don’t see him at his best,” said Sam Eccles, apologetically. “He’s over-doing it. He was three times as good last trip.”
The actor turned and reviled him, struggling with his captors, kicking them harmlessly with his bare feet — gesticulating — pointing to the twin blood-spots on his left instep — and weeping prayers and curses in the same breath. But if none had heeded him at first, much less would they do so now; for he had fallen incontinently upon his native tongue.
“A damned good performance,” said the drover, wiping his face. “But I guess I’ll burst him when he’s finished.”
“I wouldn’t,” said the tolerant Eccles. “I let him off light last time. It’s something to have an actor like him in the back-blocks. Look at that!”
The Neapolitan lay bunched and knotted on the ground in a singularly convincing collapse.
“I don’t believe it’s acting at all!” cried the youth from Paka, in a whinny of high excitement.
“You’re a new chum,” retorted Sam Eccles. “What do you know about it? You wasn’t even here last time.”
“I know a sham when I see one. There’s not much sham about this!”
And without more words the new chum fled the bar, a shout of laughter following him out into the heat.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 429
