Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “Old Stafford and you seemed as thick as thieves,” said the young man, cutting his horses smartly on the way home. “Was that another poem of his that he was giving you?”.

  “Yes.”

  “One of his own writing, for a change?”

  “He wrote them all, Mr. Pochin.”

  “So he’s cracking — as they once used to say about here, and still do in your brother’s books!”

  “I don’t see why you should disbelieve it,” said Olive, warmly. “At any rate there’s no question about the verses I’ve borrowed.”

  “Then we shall have a treat!”

  Olive felt seriously aggrieved. All that was great in her had been touched and fired by the wild old fellow and his almost wonderful work; but she was not great enough to resist snubbing Godfrey as he deserved, even though she thought him a very nice young man, and had made a friend of him so far to the comparative exclusion of all the other members of his family. She let him have his chuckle in advance at the fun they would all have over the manuscript in her possession; then she informed him, cavalierly as she knew even at the time, that they were none of them to see a single line.

  “Was that what he was getting you to promise him?” demanded Godfrey in his point-blank fashion.

  “Yes — it was.”

  “Well, of all the cheek!”

  “On my part?”

  “You know I mean on his. As if it were a pearl of price, and we the swine!”

  “That’s not a very pretty way of putting it,” retorted Olive. “But it is a little gem, in my opinion, though I don’t suppose you would see its beauty even if you could!” That was obviously the last word, but Olive was not proud of it for a single instant. She felt hot and sore, and soon not least so with herself, for her own rudeness; but that only angered her the more with Godfrey, who had brought it on himself. It was too much that she should come out there to be told what was and what was not a genuine poem. That was not exactly what had happened, but her pride of intellect was wounded; it was a vulnerable point. Olive was the last person in the world to exploit her learning or to give herself conscious airs of scholarly superiority; but she considered her opinion entitled to some respect on matters of which she might be accounted a reasonably qualified judge. She did not realize that she had a rather decided opinion on most mundane matters, and often a tart way of expressing it under opposition. An expert on some subjects, she was inclined to extend her own province unduly, and to meet rather more than half-way the slightest attack upon her intellectual frontiers. But in this case her heart was involved as well, since into it she had taken the outcast poet and all his works. And matters were not mended by the only other remark that Godfrey ever volunteered on the subject.

  “I’m sorry we got to logger-heads about poor old Stafford,” said the frank young man, as they exchanged good-nights on the veranda. “I’ve no doubt the poem you liked is all you think it. I’m no judge of that; but I know the man better than you possibly can. If it’s as good as all that, you bet he’s bagged the whole thing from Harvey Devlin or some other old poet!”

  And this time Olive did succeed in curbing a natural pugnacity to which she had given only too much rein before; but her silence was more chilling than any words, and henceforward there was a studied coolness between two young people who had been drawn together, almost at sight, by a strong mutual attraction. Its very strength made their mutual resentment ail the stronger in its turn. In her ignorance of the world, Olive had not expected to meet a young man of Godfrey’s parts at its uttermost ends. He was quick-witted, capable, full of character as herself; her inferior in book-learning, but by no means in general knowledge or intelligence. Through him she gained some insight into the modern live Australian, clear thinker and plain speaker on social and industrial questions, sapper and miner in the world’s advance, as opposed to the hardy upstart with a nasal twang who seemed to have made such an impression on Philip in his early wanderings. Philip, she began to fear, had not been a very great character as a young man from the old country; but Godfrey Pochin, still so young, had every strong quality except breadth and charity of view.

  In much the same fashion Godfrey revised his opinion of young Englishwomen in general, and of young women with degrees before all others; but it was at a distance that the pair came to appreciate each other to such a nicety. Their intimacy was a matter of the first twenty-four hours only. They were alike in nothing more than in their pride. They had come to blows about a matter of no importance to either of them, and each was too proud to refer to it again.

  Not that it was so unimportant to Olive as she pretended on occasions when Stafford and his hobby became a table topic, and she would fight his battles with a forced levity, while Godfrey sat ostentatiously aloof from the discussion. Stafford himself she saw more than once, but never again alone in his hut. It was remarked in her presence that he had beaten all his records in the length of time which had elapsed since he last knocked down a check. That was as yet her only reward for the little she had done for him, and the much, the very much, she hoped to do.

  Late summer cooled into an autumn in name only, and a winter unworthy even of that, despite a fire at nights and coats on horseback, and all the wraps that one could find for a long drive across the plains. Olive thought it the loveliest weather she had ever known; it was the safest subject that she still had in common with Godfrey, and they discussed it daily with animated courtesy. Olive was to stay till after shearing, if her people at home could spare her so long; it would only mean a six months’ visit then, her kind friends said. She was more than willing to stay; it was a glorious rest and change, and the girl was happy enough, and the cause of happiness to all save one. But after about three months she grew suddenly restless; the incoming mail excited her strangely; she was absurdly disappointed when there was nothing for her. And then one day her delight knew no bounds, and it was a little awkward, because Godfrey had been the one to empty out the mail-bag, and they happened to have the homestead to themselves. Olive had backed out of a ride for no other purpose than to see if her letter had not come at last; and it actually had.

  “Godfrey!” she cried, as he was retreating into the store with the business correspondence. She had never addressed him so familiarly before, and did not know that she had done it now.

  It brought him to her in a stride.

  “Not bad news, I hope?”

  “No, no, the very best! I don’t know how to tell you; it seems like raking up disagreeables, and I know I was very rude. But I was right, right, right all the time!”

  “Right?” he repeated. “Right about what?”

  “That poor man Stafford, of course.”

  “Oh! I saw him this afternoon, when I got the mail,” remarked Godfrey, with forced inconsequence.

  “I’m thinking of three months ago. I never told you what I did at the time. You were so dreadfully unsympathetic, but I know you won’t be now! I sent the poem he lent me home to Phil!”

  “Well?”

  “You said it couldn’t be original!”

  “I only said what I thought on general grounds.

  You wouldn’t give me a chance of judging for myself.”

  “Well, if it wasn’t original, they would hardly put it in the Scrutator, would they?”

  “Not if they knew it.”

  “They’d know it all right!” the girl assured him, with radiant confidence. “Yet they did put it in, word for word as I wrote it out, and the very week after Philip submitted it!” Godfrey found it good to look upon her triumph, even at his own expense. Never had he seen so keen a brain flashing through such sparkling eyes, or such a great heart flooding with its warmth a face so sweet and fine. But there was something fine about Godfrey, too; he was not the one to truckle in his discomfiture.

  “Is that what Mr. Armitage says?” he inquired.

  “I haven’t read what he says; but here’s the poem itself from the Scrutator!”

  He read it while she read
her letter. It was rough, but noble; even Godfrey could see the nobility; and there was nothing in the thought that might not have come to a rugged solitary over his hut fire, and found its way out in just such words. A broken cry from the wilderness, it had won a ready hearing on the other side of the earth, and now it had travelled all the way out again to wake an echo in the heart of Godfrey. And he looked back, and saw himself in the wrong.

  But just as he was as near abasement as was possible to his nature, a real cry broke from Olive. And the change in her was past belief; she stood before him abashed, humiliated, demoralized by her letter.

  “You were right — I was wrong — after all!” She spoke in jerks of passionate indignation. “The whole thing was a fraud! You always said so; you were absolutely right. You said it was probably taken from Harvey Devlin, and so it was, almost word for word! No sooner did it appear than some one wrote to say so — and — and there’s a fearful row about it!” She could not help smiling guiltily at what she had done. It had its humorous side, and to her credit Olive was the first to see it. She pictured poor Philip, sometimes a little self-important, always ready to do the striking thing and to boast of having done it — pictured him in person at the Scrutator office — taking the greatest and kindliest trouble, but also some little credit for her find. And then all the vials of editorial wrath on his devoted head, as his were poured on hers, and hers on the original culprit out at Jumping Sandhills!

  “I’m glad there’s something original about him,” said Godfrey, grimly, when she used the phrase among harder sayings. And Olive laughed until she cried, which, however, was next moment, and quite bitterly. But Godfrey had not even smiled.

  And then and there came the climax, with the uneven trailing of long spurs through the veranda, and the gaunt, uncouth figure of the pseudo-poet swaying in the doorway. His eyes were wilder than ever, but they steadied themselves in a long gaze upon the guilty girl, and his voice did not disgrace him when he spoke.

  “Was it you, Miss Armitage, who sent my verses to a London paper?”

  His speech was low and yet distinct; it afforded no excuse for immediate interference on Godfrey’s part. But Godfrey was not given a chance.

  “They weren’t yours!” cried Olive, passionately.

  “They were!” he thundered back. Godfrey sprang forward; the man stopped him with the masterful wave of his lean brown hand. “They were my property,” he resumed with his former self-control. “This young lady had no right to send them to any paper. I only lent them to her. It was a wrong thing to do.”

  “What about foisting what you never wrote on a lady who showed you kindness, and swearing it was all your own?”

  Godfrey was very severe, but he had not yet adopted the bullying tone into which the best masters fall under sufficient provocation.

  “That may be worse,” returned Stafford, still slowly; “I don’t say it isn’t. But two wrongs never made a right, Mr. Godfrey, and it’s no wrong of mine that’s put all this fat in the fire.”

  “Then you admit that the thing was lifted bodily out of Harvey Devlin?”

  “Out of a suppressed edition of his poems,” supplemented Olive, quickly consulting her letter— “with hardly a single alteration!”

  “Oh, all right! I’ll admit it if it makes you happy. Is that it in your hand, sir?”

  And the man was actually holding out his own.

  “What the devil do you want with it?” Godfrey so far forgot himself in his lady’s presence.

  “Well, Mr. Godfrey, it’s only fair that a man should see what’s brought against him. I’ve only seen what the Bulletin’s got to say about it, so far. They’ve got their laugh o’ the old country again; but it’s not my fault, not altogether. Thanky, much obliged!”

  His words now telescoped in a manner worthy of his gait. He had certainly been drinking, and had abandoned a fine effort to conceal the fact. No sober impostor would have carried himself so jauntily in the hour of exposure, or gloated with maudlin humor over so futile and impudent a fraud; but the last proof of poor Stafford’s condition was afforded by a sudden revulsion from fatuous fun to furious earnest.

  “And you put my name to it!” he shouted, crumpling the cutting in his fist. “I’d forgotten that!”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Olive, with unthinking penitence. “I never meant it to be done. I had to give his name,” she explained to Godfrey, “but it must have been the editor in London who put it to the poem.”

  “Then damn the editor in London!” cried Stafford, and flung himself from the room with Godfrey at his heels.

  It was his last appearance at the home station; within a very few minutes Godfrey had made out the man’s account, and sent him about his business with a check for the uttermost farthing standing to his credit in the station books.

  Olive, flown in more tears from the scene, did not know this at the time; when she found out it incensed her afresh against the poor young man. Had he really no sense of justice? Could he not see that this preposterous reprisal made it all the worse for her, since the whole thing was her fault in the beginning? She could not even swear that Stafford had actually said the poem was his; the fact did not affect his grievance against her; and now, so far from undoing an atom of the harm she had done, she had got him discharged into the bargain! Godfrey was bidden to repair his share of the damage without delay; and apart from all other considerations whatsoever, he had the fairness of mind to recognize that of the girl’s demand.

  But unfortunately a very serious delay had taken place before this scene between the two young people; and Stafford had spent a long night on frosty ground, heavily asleep in nothing more than his moleskins and his Crimean shirt. Olive had a note from Godfrey to say that the man had been reinstated in his hut; but Godfrey himself did not return, and old Mr. Pochin looked worried but said nothing.

  And then next night Olive was awakened by a queer noise on the blind of her open window, and there was Godfrey just below, flogging it like a trout-stream with his buggy whip.

  “It’s poor old Stafford,” he whispered. “He’s pretty bad and wants to see you. If you’d care to bring one of the girls-”

  His sentence had to wait unfinished while she dressed.

  “It’s only you he wants to see,” he went on under the stars; “but if you’d like one of the others-”

  “I’d like to start this minute,”, said Olive, decidedly. “How long will it take us to drive?”.

  It took them the best part of the hour before dawn, arid the smoke from the horses’ backs was a visible pillar of cloud when they pulled up.

  A tongue of orange light played in and out of the open door, and on and off the faded purple blanket spread like a canopy over four low uprights driven into the naked earth; but under the blanket ran the ridge of a great gaunt frame, and from one end a pair of cavernous eyes burnt like beacons as they entered. Olive stooped over the pinched and shrunken face, and could feel its heat as though it were a fire.

  “It’s kind of you to come,” he whispered — but his eyes rolled uneasily. “And you’ve really come alone? That’s right, that’s right! I’ve something to tell you both, but no one else. You promise? Not another soul?”

  They promised, and Godfrey gave him new life from a replenished flask. In another instant they were trying to talk the sick man down; for he had begun at once about those unlucky lines of Harvey Devlin’s. He had another confession to make. That was quite enough for them. Olive especially begged him to say no more. But he would go on; and they must hear the truth; for that was why he had got them there together, but no third person must ever know.

  “Harvey Devlin! What a poet to steal from!”

  There was the gallant twinkle in his fevered eyes; they seemed to have caught the scraps of paper on the walls.

  “But he was a worse man,” he muttered. “You know the life he led, and how he was supposed to have finished himself in the bush? It wasn’t quite true, though very nearly. He was sick of life
; dead sick of writing all he wrote, and yet being what he was! He hid his head in the bush, and was very near what he thought of doing, when he came across a man who’d done it weeks before. That was the man they found and buried as Harvey Devlin. I took good care they should!”

  “You?” they cried.

  “And I’ve lived to be accused of stealing from myself!”

  A sovereign effort had given him a dear run of intelligible speech, and now it was as though his voice fell dead at the post. But the tragic eyes were still twinkling as they closed in the sudden sleep of sheer prostration. The two watchers exchanged long looks, but not a word, and presently one went and stood in the doorway as she had done that afternoon three months before.

  The dawn was coming up in a coppery glow, straight ahead over the sandhills, and the stars going out like street lamps at the proper time. In a minute the copper turned to paler bronze, and the bronze to dead pink gold, with a last star blazing just above. The contour of the hills stood out, studded with telegraph posts that dwindled into nothing north and south. And the new day woke with a sigh that blew a puff of sand into the hut, and fluttered the captive scrap of paper nearest the door.

  Olive peered at it between firelight and daylight, and for once even she could find no flaw in the quotation:

  “The same that oft-times hath Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”

  Godfrey came very quietly and took her hand. One look told her why; for a magic casement had opened in the hut, and the young man and woman were there alone.

  CHRYSTAL’S CENTURY

  I really began in the pavilion up at Lord’s, since it was off Tuthill that most of the runs were made, and during an Eton and Harrow match that the little parson begged him to play. They had been in the same Harrow eleven some eighteen years before. The Rev. Gerald Osborne had afterwards touched the hem of first-class cricket, while Tuthill, who captained a minor county, was still the very finest second-class bowler in England.