Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 13

  ‘There, there. Don’t turn on the waterworks, Bunn. I thought Mrs Alfred had been cut up about something; but I wasn’t sure — that’s why I asked you, Bunn; though I think, perhaps, you needn’t name this conversation either in the servants’ hall, or tell any one else what you have told me. Yes, you may go past now. But — stop a minute, Bunn — here’s something else that you needn’t name in the servants’ hall.’

  The something else was a half-sovereign.

  ‘It was worth it, too,’ said Granville, when the girl was gone; ‘she has given me something to go upon. These half-educated and impulsive people always do let out more to their maids than to any one else.’

  He went back to Alfred.

  ‘There was something I forgot to ask you. How much money do you suppose Gladys had about her when she went away?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Alfred.

  ‘Do you know how much money you have given her since you have been over — roughly?’

  ‘No; I don’t know at all.’

  ‘Think, man. Fifty pounds?’

  ‘I should say so. I gave her a note or so whenever it struck me she might want it. She never would ask.’

  ‘Do you think she spent much?’

  ‘I really can’t tell you, Gran; perhaps not a great deal, considering everything; for, when I was with her, I never would let her shell out. I never knew of her spending much; but she had it by her, in case she wanted it; and that was all I cared about.’

  And that was all Granville cared about. He ceased his questioning; but he was less ready to leave Alfred alone than he had been before. He had found him sitting in the dark by the open window, and staring blankly into the night. Granville had insisted on lighting the gas: only to see how the room was filled with Gladys’s things. In every corner of it some woman’s trifle breathed of her. Granville felt instinctively that much of this room, in the present suspense, might turn a better brain than Alfred’s, in Alfred’s position.

  ‘Look here,’ said Granville, at last: ‘I have been thinking. Listen, Alfred.’

  ‘Well?’ said Alfred absently, still gazing out of window.

  ‘I have got a theory,’ went on Granville— ‘no matter what; only it has nothing to say to death or drowning. It is a hopeful theory. I intend to practise it at once: in a day or two it ought to lead me to absolute certainty of one thing, one way or the other. No matter what that one thing is; I have told you what it is not. Now, I shall have to follow out my idea in town; and if I find the truth at all, I shall most likely come across it suddenly, round a corner as it were. So I have been thinking that you may as well be in town too, to be near at hand in case I am successful. If you still have a club, you might hang about there, and talk to men, and read the papers; if not —— Why do you shake your head?’

  ‘I am not going to town any more,’ said Alfred, in low, decided tones. ‘If you are right, and she is not dead, she may come back — she may come back! Then I shall be here to meet her — and — and —— But you understand me, Gran?’

  ‘Not very well,’ said Granville, dryly, and with a shrug of his shoulders that was meant to shift from them all responsibility for Alfred’s possible insanity. ‘In your case I should prefer to be in town rather than here. However, a man judges for himself. There is one thing, however; if you stay here all day — —’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The question whether you should tell the Judge and the mater.’

  ‘No,’ said Alfred, resolutely; ‘I shall not tell them — not, that is, until the worst is known for certain. They think she is at the Barringtons’. I shall say I have heard from her. I would tell a million lies to save them the tortures of uncertainty that I am suffering, and shall suffer, till — till we know the worst. Oh, Granville! — for God’s sake, find it out quickly!’

  ‘I’ll do my best — I’ve already told you I would,’ said Granville almost savagely; and he left the room.

  Granville’s best, in matters that required a clear head and some little imagination, was always excellent. In the present instance his normal energies were pushed to abnormal lengths by the uncomfortable feeling that he himself had been not unconcerned in bringing about that state of unhappiness which alone could have driven his sister-in-law to her last rash, mysterious step; by a feverish desire to atone, if the smallest atonement were possible; and by other considerations, which, for once, were unconnected with the first person singular. Nevertheless, on the Wednesday — the day following the foregoing conversation — he found out nothing at all; and nothing at all on the Thursday. Then Alfred made up his mind that nothing but the very worst could now come to light, and that that was only a question of time; and he fell into an apathy, by day, that Granville’s most vigorous encouragement, in the evening, could do nothing to correct. Thus, when the news did come, when the terrible suspense was suddenly snapped, Alfred was, perhaps, as ill-prepared for a shock (though he had expected one for days) as it was possible for a man to be.

  It was on the Friday night. Lady Bligh and Sir James were deep in their game of bezique. Alfred sat apart from them, without a hope left in his heart, and marvellously altered in the face. His pallor was terrible, but perhaps natural; but already his cheekbones, which were high, seemed strangely prominent; and the misery in his large still eyes cried out as it sometimes does from the eyes of dumb animals in pain. He was conscious of his altered looks, perhaps; for he sedulously avoided looking his parents in the face. They did not know yet. It added to his own anguish to think of the anguish that must come to them too, sooner or later — sooner now — very soon indeed.

  The door opened. Granville entered, with a brisk, startling step, and a face lit up — though it was Granville’s face — with news.

  Alfred saw him — saw his face — and rose unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘Speak! Say you have found her! No — I see it in your face — she is there. Let me come to her!’

  As Alfred stepped forward, Granville recoiled, and the light left his face.

  Alfred turned to his parents. The Judge had risen, and glanced in mute amazement from one son to the other: both were pale, but their looks told nothing. Lady Bligh sat back in her chair, her smooth face wrinkled with bewilderment and vague terror.

  ‘It is Gladys come back,’ said Alfred, in tremulous explanation; ‘it is only that Gladys has come back, mother!’

  Even then he chuckled in his sleeve to think that they had never known, and never need know, anything of this, the worst of his wife’s many and wild escapades.

  But Granville recoiled still farther, and his face became gray.

  ‘I have not seen her,’ he said, solemnly. ‘She is not here.’

  ‘Not seen her? Not here?’ Alfred was quickly sobered. ‘But you know where she is? I see it in your face. She is within reach — eh? Come, take me to her!’

  ‘She is not even within reach,’ Granville answered, squeezing out the words by a strenuous effort. ‘I cannot take you to her. Gladys sailed for Australia last Monday morning!’

  Alfred sunk heavily into a chair. No one spoke. No one was capable of speech. Before any one had time to think, Alfred was on his feet again, tottering towards the door.

  ‘I must follow!’ he whispered, in hoarse, broken tones. ‘I will follow her to-night! Stand aside, Gran; thanks; and God bless you! Good-bye! I shall know where to find her out there. I have no time to stop!’

  Granville stood aside in obedience; but for one instant only: the next — he sprang forward to catch in his arms the falling form of Alfred.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  THE BOUNDARY-RIDER OF THE YELKIN PADDOCK

  Picture the Great Sahara. The popular impression will do: it has the merit of simplicity: glaring desert, dark-blue sky, vertical sun, and there you are. Omit the mirage and the thirsty man; but, instead, mix sombre colours and work up the African desert into a fairly desirable piece of Australian sheep-country.

  This, too, is a simple matter. You have only to cov
er the desert with pale-green saliferous bushes, no higher than a man’s knee; quite a scanty covering will do, so that in the thickest places plenty of sand may still be seen; and there should be barren patches to represent the low sand-hills and the smooth clay-pans. Then have a line of low-sized dark-green scrub at the horizon; but bite in one gleaming, steely speck upon this sombre rim.

  Conceive this modification of the desert, and you have a fair notion of the tract of country — six miles by five — which was known on Bindarra Station as the ‘Yelkin Paddock,’ the largest paddock in the ‘C Block.’

  Multiply this area by six; divide and subdivide the product by wire fences, such as those that enclose the Yelkin Paddock; water by means of excavations and wells and whims; stock with the pure merino and devastate with the accursed rabbit; and (without troubling about the homestead, which is some miles north of the Yelkin) you will have as good an idea of the Bindarra ‘run,’ as a whole, as of its sixth part, the paddock under notice.

  The conspicuous mark upon the distant belt of dingy low-sized forest — the object that glitters in the strong sunlight, so that it can be seen across miles and miles of plain — is merely the galvanised-iron roof of a log-hut, the hut that has been the lodging of the boundary-rider of the Yelkin Paddock ever since the Yelkin Paddock was fenced.

  A boundary-rider is not a ‘boss’ in the Bush, but he is an important personage, in his way. He sees that the sheep in his paddock ‘draw’ to the water, that there is water for them to draw to, and that the fences and gates are in order. He is paid fairly, and has a fine, free, solitary life. But no boundary-rider had ever stopped long at the Yelkin hut. The solitude was too intense. After a trial of a few weeks — sometimes days — the man invariably rolled up his blankets, walked in to the homestead, said that there was moderation in all things, even in solitude, and demanded his cheque. The longest recorded term of office in the Yelkin Paddock was six months; but that boundary-rider had his reasons: he was wanted by the police. When, after being captured in the hut, this man was tried and hanged for a peculiarly cold-blooded murder, the Yelkin post became even harder to fill than it had been before.

  During the Australian summer following that other summer which witnessed the events of the previous chapters, this post was not only filled for many months by the same boundary-rider, but it was better filled than it had ever been before. Moreover, the boundary-rider was thoroughly satisfied, and even anxious to remain. The complete solitude had been far less appreciated by the gentleman with the rope round his neck; for him it had terrors. The present boundary-rider knew no terrors. The solitude was more than acceptable; the Crusoe-like existence was entirely congenial; the level breezy plains, the monotonous procession of brilliant, blazing days, and the life of the saddle and the hut, were little less than delightful, to the new boundary-rider in the Yelkin. They were the few pleasures left in a spoilt life.

  There could have been no better cabin for ‘a life awry’ (not even in the Bush, the living sepulchre of so many such) than the Yelkin hut. But it was not the place to forget in. There are, however, strong natures that can never forget, and still live on. There are still stronger natures that do not seek to forget, yet retain some of the joy of living side by side with the full sorrow of remembrance. The boundary-rider’s was one of these.

  The boundary-rider saw but few faces from the home-station; none from anywhere else. But, one glowing, hot-wind day, early in January, a mounted traveller entered the Yelkin Paddock by the gate in the south fence. He was following the main track to the homestead, and this track crossed a corner of the Yelkin Paddock, the corner most remote from the hut. He did not seem a stranger, for he glanced but carelessly at the diverging yet conterminous wheel-marks which are the puzzling feature of all Bush roads. He was a pallid, gaunt, black-bearded man: so gaunt and so pallid, indeed, that no one would have taken him at the first glance, or at the second either, for Alfred Bligh.

  Yet it was Alfred — straight, virtually, from his sick-bed. As soon as he could stand (which was not for weeks) he had been taken on board the steamer. The voyage, it was hoped, would do him good, and he was bent on going — to find his wife. It did not do him much good; the eyes that swept at last the territory of his father-in-law were the sunken, wistful eyes of a shattered man.

  Nothing had been heard of Gladys. Granville, indeed, had written to Bindarra, but there had been no reply. Of this Alfred had not been informed. From the first moments of returning consciousness he had expressed himself strongly against writing at all.

  So, as he crossed the corner of the Yelkin Paddock, all he knew was that Gladys had sailed for Australia six months before.

  ‘If she is here, she is here,’ he muttered a hundred times; ‘and there will have been no warning of my coming to frighten her away. If she is not here — if she were dead — —’

  His eyes dropped upon the bony hand holding the reins.

  ‘Well, it would be an easier matter to follow her there than here. It would take less time!’

  But, as often as this contingency presented itself, his thin hand involuntarily tightened the reins. Indeed, the nearer he got to the homestead the slower he rode. Many a thousand times he had ridden in fancy this last stage of his long, long journey, and always at a hand-gallop; but, now that he was riding it in fact, he had not the courage to press on. He let his tired horse make the speed, and even that snail’s pace was, at moments, too quick for him.

  At the hour wherein he needed his utmost nerve to meet his fate — his nerve, and the stout heart that had brought him, weak as he was, from the opposite end of the earth, were failing him.

  The gate in the west fence was in sight, when Alfred, awaking from a fit of absence, became aware that a man with a cylinder of rolled blankets upon his back (his ‘swag’) was tramping along the track to meet him. For a moment Alfred’s heart thumped; he would know his fate now; this man, who was evidently from the home-station, would tell him. Then he recognised the man. It was Daft Larry, the witless stockman, who, being also stone deaf, was incapable of answering questions.

  Larry was a short man, strongly built though elderly, and probably less old than he looked. He had a fresh complexion, a short gray beard, and eyes as blue (and as expressionless) as the flawless southern sky. He recognised Alfred, stood in his path, threw down his swag, put his hands in his pockets, and smiled delightedly; not in surprise; in mere idiotic delight. On beholding Alfred, this had been his invariable behaviour. They had beheld one another last a year ago; but last year and yesterday were much the same date to Larry.

  ‘I like a man that is well-bred!’ exclaimed Larry, with a seraphic smile, his head critically on one side. On beholding Alfred, this had been his invariable formula.

  Alfred stopped his horse.

  Daft Larry cocked his head on the other side. ‘You’re not one of the low sort!’ he went on.

  Alfred smiled.

  ‘You’re well-bred,’ continued Larry, in the tone of a connoisseur. Then, wagging his head gravely: ‘I like a man that’s not one of the low sort; I like a man that is well-bred!’

  That was the end, as it always had been. Larry picked up his swag with the air of a man who has proved his case.

  Alfred had ridden on some yards, when a call from the idiot made him stop.

  ‘Look there!’ shouted Larry, with an ungainly sweep of the arm. ‘Dust-storm coming up — bad dust-storm. Don’t get catched, mister — you aren’t one of the low sort — not you!’

  Daft Larry had been known to give gratuitous information before, though he could not answer questions. Alfred, instead of riding on, now looked about him. There was sense enough in the warning; though Larry, apparently, did not mind being ‘catched’ himself, since he was plodding steadily on, leaving the station, probably for good, as he periodically did leave it. There was every indication of a dust-storm, though the sun still shone brilliantly. The hot-wind had become wild and rampant. It was whipping up the sandy coating of the plain in every d
irection. High in the air were seen whirling spires and cones of sand — a curious effect against the deep-blue sky. Below, puffs of sand were breaking out of the plain in every direction, as though the plain were alive with invisible horsemen. These sandy cloudlets were instantly dissipated by the wind; it was the larger clouds that were lifted whole into the air, and the larger clouds of sand were becoming more and more the rule.

  Alfred’s eye, quickly scanning the horizon, descried the roof of the boundary-rider’s hut still gleaming in the sunlight. He remembered the hut well. It could not be farther than four miles, if as much as that, from this point of the track; but it was twelve miles at least from this to the homestead. He also knew these dust-storms of old; Bindarra was notorious for them. Without thinking twice, Alfred put spurs to his horse and headed for the hut. Before he had ridden half the distance, the detached clouds of sand banded together in one dense whirlwind; and it was only owing to his horse’s instinct that he did not ride wide of the hut altogether; for, during the last half mile, he never saw the hut until its outline loomed suddenly over his horse’s ears; and by then the sun was invisible.

  ‘I never saw one come on quicker!’ gasped Alfred, as he jumped off and tethered his quivering horse in the lee of the hut.

  The excitement, and the gallop, had made Alfred’s blood tingle in his veins. It was a novel sensation. He stepped briskly into the hut.

  Almost his first sight on entering was the reflection of his own face in a little mirror, which was neatly nailed to the wall, close to the door. Alfred had never been vain, but he did pause to gaze at himself then; for his face was covered with a thin veneer of sand, as a wall becomes coated with driven snow. He dashed off the sand, and smiled; and for the moment, with some colour in his cheeks and a healthy light in his eyes, Alfred scarcely knew himself. Then he turned his back upon the glass, merely noting that it was a queer thing to find in a boundary-rider’s hut, and that it had not been there a year ago.