A woman of stone, she saw him go, heard the door close behind him. For several moments she stood there, unable to move for the terror which chained her limbs. Then came a moan of anguish. With tottering steps she gained the inner room which was her bedroom, and, falling beside the bed, burst into a passion of weeping.
At that time WiIIiam J. Anchor was warmly greeting the blind Martin. The scene with Austiline was the “very delicate experiment” which had prevented his being the first to welcome the brothers.
CHAPTER XXII
THE OMEN
"JUMPING nannygoats!” repeated an astonished Monty, gazing towards his bed.
“What is the matter?” Martin demanded.
“An infant.”
“A what?”
“There is a sleeping baby on my bed,” Monty replied in a hushed whisper. “The loveliest baby you could imagine, old son. Must be between three and four years old, but I’m beaten badly in deciding whether it’s a boy or a girl. Anyway, sex don’t matter-it’s a miniature angel, Martin, the most beautiful kid you ever saw.”
Knowing his brother to be a lover of children, Martin was not surprised at the other’s raptures. He said:
“Describe it, mine eyes.”
“It’ll be hard, but I’ll do my best. It has a round chubby face unlike the full, fat, balloon kind of kisser of most kids of that age. The colouring of the face is a marvel of beauty, equalled by the colour of the long, curly, pale gold hair. I’ll bet you a fiver that when those eyes are open they’ll be dark blue, and big. My! I wouldn’t mind owning it.”
“This is a peculiar house in which to find a child,” Martin said softly.
“M’yes. A little angel kept prisoner in hell. It’s a damned shame.”
“‘And a little child shall lead them’,” quoted the blind man.
“That infant could lead me all right,” Monty assented, now in his pyjamas. “Well, I’m for a snore off.”
“I doubt that I shall sleep,” Martin opined, lying full length on the most luxurious of beds. “My mind is too much excited by Anchor’s revelations. I wish––oh, I wish I could see them all! To me they are so unreal, so inhuman.”
“Reckon they are human enough,” said Monty sleepily. “This child, though, is extra human. It’s like finding a diamond in a muck-heap. If it had belonged to Mrs. Minter…she wouldn’t…have run…into the house like…”
The big man slept. The infant slept at his side, a mother’s dream come true, God’s hope so patent in two pure faces. Martin, however, as he foretold, found sleep difficult to woo, even though the scant periods of slumber during the past few days engendered an intense mental weariness.
With the eyes of his mind––and it was wonderful how he could now often escape his black prison and journey in the light––he pictured newspaper contents bills, with deep, thick headlines and startling phrases. Subconsciously he was aware of the stillness of the world about him, the only sounds drifting through the open windows being caused by the small petrol engine, evidently driving a dynamo, the occasional caw-caw of a sleepy crow, and once the far-off bellow of a cow.
A hundred questions clamoured to be answered, the most momentous of them all being why Austiline Thorpe held back from meeting him. He pictured her as she always had been: understanding, loyal, a warm-hearted loving woman beneath her proud, beautiful exterior. The only possible explanation of her attitude was his terrible affliction, cried insistently that small voice of doubt which he vainly tried to drown. It was a lover’s doubt, and he was ashamed of it, but it persisted. Yet, according to cool reason, it was more probable that she was a prisoner, unable to follow the dictates of her heart; and, hugging this consoling thought and determined to advise drastic action on the morrow if their interview with her was delayed beyond that day, sleep captured him before he knew of its approach.
Almost together the brothers were awakened by the slamming of several doors and windows. Martin, who awoke with a start, listened uneasily to the sound of hurrying feet on the bare veranda floor and along the corridor; but Monty, who awoke, as was usual with him, without other sign than the quiet opening of his eyes, heard a low, far-off roar in the short pauses in the human commotion. That sinister sound he recognized as an approaching sand-storm, and guessed that the occupants of the house were closing every opening to shut out the besieging sand. Some one tapped on their door.
“Hullo!” the big man called.
“Will you please close your windows?” he heard Mrs. Jonas say. “There is a violent dust-storm approaching from the south.”
“Very well, Mrs. Jonas,” the big man replied, proceeding immediately to close the two pairs of French windows, reaching from floor to ceiling. When he turned he found the child sitting up, regarding him solemnly with great, glorious eyes of sapphire blue.
“Cheerio, Bubbles!” he said. “How do?”
“Is the mite awake?” Martin inquired, fumbling at his cigarette-case.
“He is. Hear him!” Martin heard in a child’s singing voice the sounds: “Ooo-oo! Ooo-oo! Ooo-oo!” uttered while the little body was executing a sort of war-dance on the bed. “He’s going to be a musician, is Master Bubbles,” concluded Monty.
“Anything like the picture?”
“Dead image.”
“You have decided, then, the question of sex?”
“Yep! I’ll bet on it,” replied the big man, sitting on the edge of his bed and lighting his pipe. When he withdrew the match from the pipe bowl, he discovered the child beside him on all-fours, ready and eager to blowout the flame.
That accomplished, to the intense satisfaction of the child, the blue eyes stared with what to the average person would be uncompromising directness. Then Monty smiled broadly, and great was his amazement when, with a delighted gurgle, the mite leapt forward into his arms.
“You mine daddy––you mine daddy come back?”
”Let’s say I’m your play-daddy,” Monty returned swiftly.
“What’s your name?”
“Daddy! Mine daddy! Mine daddy come back!”
With his tiny arms round Monty’s great neck, the child pressed moist, warm lips against the big man’s mouth with joyous abandonment.
“Daddy been far ’way. Now daddy come back. Ooo––mine daddy!”
“Well then, who is your mummy?” Monty managed to say.
“Mummy! Go tell mine mummy.”
With surprising agility the baby slid out of the big man’s arms, and in a practised manner kicked his legs over the edge of the bed and lowered himself to the floor; whereupon he ran to the locked door and, just managing to reach the handle, half-turned it, crying:
“Opey! Opey door! Go tell mummy! Mine mummy!”
With some misgiving the big man opened the door. The child scampered along the carpeted corridor, shouting for “Mummy” at the top of his voice. Wearing only pyjamas, Monty dared not follow, but was relieved when a door opened further along the passage, and the laundress girl, appearing, swept the child up into her arms.
“Mummy! Mummy! Daddy come back!” he heard the excited infant shout, and, with only his head thrust outside the room, saw Mabel Hogan give him a grateful look before she drew back. When he closed the door his eyes were wonderfully bright. To Martin he said in a voice which held a song:
“Bubbles apparently belongs to the laundress. She lives a little way down the street, and dived out to meet the youngster who escaped me.”
“You seem quite enthusiastic about the boy,” Martin observed, with his whimsical droop of the mouth.
“I think you would be, too, if you could see him. What particular brand of murder is Mabel Hogan addicted to, do you remember?”
“Anchor said, I think, that she gave her betrayer strychnine.”
“Ugh!” Monty shuddered. “I’ll bet she never understood just how strychnine acts, or she would have used a gun instead. Never saw a human die of it, but it gives a dog ten minutes of hell.”
“It must indeed be a frightful de
ath. To me the surprising thing is the carelessness of the average bushman who handles it.”
“’Tis amazin’. But familiarity, you know––” Monty chuckled, and from that chuckle Martin knew something was coming. “Knew a bloke once who used to empty a bottle of strych. into a waistcoat pocket and carry it around over his trap-line in case a beast died handy and could be baited. Used to eat his tucker with the waistcoat flapping against him and grains of poison flying all over the country. And yet he was dogging and foxing for fifteen years before he eventually poisoned himself, a grain of it falling on his meat one dinner time. I’ll bet he was surprised.”
Martin had to laugh at Monty’s quaint surmise.
“You should tell that at the dinner-table––it would set them in a roar,” he said. “Like our friend Anchor, you can show us even tragedy in a comic light. Naturally, after fifteen years’ immunity, the poor man would be surprised.”
“Naturally! That’s why I said it. Here comes the wind.”
With startling swiftness the daylight vanished. Beneath the ever-increasing roar came the baying of the huge hounds––cries quickly swamped when the storm swept over the house, rocking it with its tremendous pressure. Through every crack and crevice the wind forced long streams of fine sand into the spotless interior. In five minutes every article was covered with a red-brown film.
In the light of the electric bulbs the room appeared as though filled with red-hued smoke. Outside, the world, seen in the dim twilight, which was not of fading day, was being swept up in thousands of tons and thrown to high heaven as by the explosion of a million mines. For two long hours the roaring wind beat furiously on the rambling wood and iron bungalow. Then the storm ceased as suddenly as it had arisen.
The ensuing calm was as stupendous as the storm. By Monty’s watch it was five minutes past seven. The light began to return, to filter through the high-flung sand particles which slowly fell like rain. Then gradually the light took on an orange glow, and with the passage of minutes grew steadily in power, the tint changing gradually to pink, then to red, and finally to the colour of fresh blood.
When Monty opened the windows and stepped out on the sand-covered veranda he was faced by one of the rarest and most beautiful of Central Australia’s natural phenomena. The sun, setting behind the blanket of sand moving at cloud height and, in cloud fashion, letting fall a rain of sand, caused the whole world to appear as on fire. The buildings opposite the house, the bore vomiting blood, and the sand-hills beyond, appeared exactly as though viewed through crimson-tinted glasses.
Above the house the moving canopy whirled in and out upon itself, bellying downward in bright crimson masses of fire, criss-crossed by masses of deeper red. Such a sky it must have been in that dreadful hour that witnessed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
When Monty struck a match to light his pipe the flame appeared blue-white by comparison, but his hands looked as if he had washed them in gore. He saw Earle emerge from one of the outbuildings, and, holding his hands before his face, look at them with wide, dreadfully staring eyes. A raindrop fell on the corrugated iron roof as a hammer striking an anvil. Thunder rumbled far away and, racing towards the house with a series of crackling strides, halted over it with a single sharp report. Earle, turning about, dashed back into the outhouse and crashed the door behind him.
“Does it look like rain?” asked the dweller in darkness.
“It looks exactly like hell,” Monty replied, re-entering the room. “Only once in my life have I seen the bush bathed in blood. That was New Year’s Day, 1912. This makes the second time. I wish you, too, could see it, old lad. It is very beautiful and very terrible, I should think, to the superstitious.”
“Perhaps it is the end of the world,” Martin said softly.
“It will be the beginning of a new one if it rains. It’s trying hard enough.”
But not more than a dozen drops of rain fell. The glow slowly faded with the dipping of the sun below the invisible horizon. Martin was helped to wash and dress, after which Monty attended to his own toilet. Not till eight o’clock did the dinner-gong sound, and, on opening the door, a waft of cool air, made fragrantly earthy even by the few drops of rain that had fallen, met them coming from the south, cooling the sun-heated house, sweeping away the clamminess of both body and brain. Such was the sighed-for, prayer-for, cool change: so important, so desirable, in and to the lives of those who year by year live in Central Australia.
Moving along the passage, they heard a child’s plaintive cry.
“I want mine daddy! I want mine daddy 1”
“Hush, darling! See daddy to-morrow. Come now, bye-bye now,”· they heard the mother say; and Martin, while they moved towards the hall, felt the big man’s hand tighten on his sleeve.
“That kid’s arms get around a man’s heart as easily as they slide around a man’s neck,” Monty said slowly.
“It is a shame for it to grow up in such a––” A firmer pressure on his arm cut short the sentence and started him off on another. “However, one is thankful for this cool change.”
“It is certainly much appreciated here, Mr. Sherwood,” he heard Mrs. Jonas say. “It really has been a terrible afternoon, and I am so sorry dinner had to be postponed to such a late hour. I hope I did right not to disturb you with afternoon tea at four?”
“Quite right, Mrs. Jonas, thank you,” Monty assured her. “We both enjoyed a sound sleep. Who would not sleep soundly in such beds?”
The woman smiled up at him wistfully, and, drawing nearer, commandeered the blind man’s arm. Monty found himself joined in the hall by the rotund Mallowing, who chirped:
“What an extraordinary evening, Mr. Sherwood! Never before have I seen the atmosphere turned to such a vivid colour. One might almost take it as an omen.”
“Of what?” inquired Monty smiling.
“Oh! of blood and war; of the end of the world; some might say of the Day of Judgment.”
“The Day of Judgment will probably prove disastrous to a lot of people,” pointed out the big man, still smiling broadly. He meant his own day of judgment.
“Ah! I see you believe in a hereafter,” the rotund little fellow said quietly. “Now, my philosophy will admit of this life only.”
“You must find, then, your philosophy to be a comforting one.”
“Sir, I am glad to say that I do! Philosophy is made for man, not man for philosophy; and I believe in each man being his own philosopher. My philosophy is one of happiness. To be happy is to live; to be fearful and wretched is to be better dead. But come! Johnston is in an evil humour. As practical philosophers, let us not be late for dinner.”
CHAPTER XXIII
THE SKELETON AT THE FEAST
WHERE is Earle?” Anchor inquired when everyone was seated and he was carving the roast.
“I think he is unwell,” Mrs. Jonas informed them. “The storm has upset him and he is keeping to his room.”
“Poor fellow! I feel his days are numbered. How many do you give him, Moore?”
“Give him! I don’t give him a minute. He should be dead by this. His Bathurst doctor was right in his diagnosis, but life is a wonderful thing in that it will cling to decayed or diseased bodies like a plant tenaciously growing in a hot, dry crevice of a sun-scorched rock.” The doctor accepted his portion with a nod, adding: “The will to live or to die has never been given its due.”
“Why, or rather how, is that, may I ask?” questioned their host with his customary politeness. The doctor glanced round at the company, and, observing that in general everyone was interested, he said:
“A person who, for any length of time, has lived among primitive people, like those of the Pacific, is soon convinced beyond question of the fact that if a nigger makes up his mind he is going to die he will assuredly do so. His body may be free from disease, and from any foreign substance of a disruptive nature; but, if you get him to believe he is marked for death, that belief will kill him more surely than poison.
“Among the natives of Northern Australia the witch-doctors practise what is known as bone-pointing. The victim is unaware at the time, usually at night, that the specially contrived apparatus is being pointed at him, and continues to live with the utmost cheerfulness until he is told that the bone has been pointed at him and he is a doomed man.
“Physically there is absolutely nothing the matter with the poor wretch. In the majority of cases the witch-doctor does not even trouble to administer poison. Knowing that to poison without necessity is waste, he carries on as usual, merely speculating on the precise hour when he will hear the wailing howls of the victim’s gins.”
“Quite a casual sort of bloke,” remarked Monty.
“Exactly,” Moore agreed, with a dour frown at the big man’s irrepressible flippancy. “On the reverse side we have the man who, like Earle, continues living when by every law of pathology he should be dead. When I enjoyed an extensive practice in London I had experience of several similar cases. To instance two. A man was brought back from the river of death when already he was wading into it by his wife repeatedly imploring him to return to her. Not only did he come back; he regained complete health. In the other case a woman, obviously at the edge of the river, stayed herself from wading in, being kept back merely by her will to live until her son arrived from America. That will failed her immediately he did arrive, and the river claimed her. It is my belief she would have lived a further three weeks at least, had her son been delayed so long.”
“It must be very trying for a doctor to ease the passing of so many fated souls,” ventured Martin. “I am afraid that the death of a person I was trying hard to save would upset me greatly.”
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