Under Two Skies Read online

  “I always was,” he answered, in quite sad and serious humility. “I am glad you have found it out, for I am afraid I always shall be.”

  “Yet you hide it very well, you know!”

  “I do know; but that’s the acute form of vanity.”

  “It’s the best form,” said Maud Cunningham, with a touch of envy in her tone. “The complaint is common in our tribe. Perhaps you are not the only one whose troubles arise from it!”

  Sergeant Seth.

  I.

  Trooper Whitty was off for a holiday at last. The circumstance was in itself strange enough, for Whitty had been two years in the Mounted Police without ever once seeking leave of absence until now. What, however, seemed really unique was that a man who took only one holiday in two years should be content to go and spend it in a dismal, dead-alive hamlet like Timber Town.

  “Some jokers are easily pleased, we know, and you’re one; but what can be the attraction in that dull hole, Seth?” Whitt’s sergeant asked him the night before he started. “If there is one you might have ridden over there any day these eighten months; but I never heard you had a friend there, did I?”

  “No; but then I didn’t know it myself until the other day,” said Whitty. “It was only then that I heard of an old friend of mine being there.”

  The sergeant pulled reflectively at his pipe.

  “Your friend should welcome you with open arms, Seth,” said he presently. “Your friend should leave you his money for looking him up just now, Seth. It will be the making of him, this Christmas, to be seen along with you. It would be the making of any one not a teetotaller, at any time, but Christmas for choice, to be seen along with the man that took Red Jim. I know Timber Town; I know Timber Town ways; there’ll be liquor enough going to float an Orient liner. Take my tip, Seth—keep in your depth!”

  Whitty laughed. “No fear, sergeant. You don’t know my friend. But if it’s as bad as you say, you ought to come too, and see me through, since we were both in the Red Jim go. Bad luck to Red Jim! I’m not going to Timber Town to get clapped on the back and made a fool of. I’m going to see a very old friend, sergeant—a very great friend. I’ll go in plain clothes.”

  It was Christmas Eve at the loneliest little police-barracks in those ranges. The verandah was too dark for the sergeant to see how the younger man’s face flushed, how his eyes glistened, as he spoke of his friend. Nor did the sergeant know, in the early morning following, with what high spirits his subordinate set off. Seth hummed in his bedroom, whistled in the stables, and burst into lusty song as he rode out of the yard at daybreak; and the sergeant would certainly have been interested had he been awake, for Seth was seldom so ill-advised as to try to whistle or sing, while his normal temper was sedate and self-contained to a degree unusual in young men.

  It is a matter of opinion, however, whether Seth Whitty was a young man; and if he was not, there was something highly refreshing in the middle-aged fellow’s boyish behaviour. In dry fact, Seth was just thirty; but a man, one knows, does not age only by years. Seth looked more than thirty. Often he looked nearer forty. The times when one would have stood a chance of gauging his years accurately were rare; but this morning was such a time.

  Whitty was so very happy this Christmas morning; his face showed it so very plainly, too. It was not by any means a striking face: the cheek bones were prominent, the nose aquiline and thin; but a broad high forehead and good brown eyes, and a certain regularity of features, gave him at least average good looks. Moreover, his short black beard and long black moustache, though they helped to make him look so old, became his dark style very suitably.

  The sun had made him very dark indeed; but it had not blistered him as it blisters your “new chum”; he was an Australian by birth, and he only bronzed. And this man’s eyes this morning shone with a happy, hopeful, youthful light, having good reason so to shine: for Trooper Whitty had had his chance, and seized it; Trooper Whitty had covered himself with honour and glory; the immediate promotion of Trooper Whitty was certain, and something a million times nearer to his heart than prosperity and promotion and fame Trooper Whitty was all but certain of, and intended to make dead certain of, that Christmas Day.

  No wonder he rode away singing. When the sun got up (which was not just at once) and struck fire from Seth’s spur and stirrup on the near side, he was singing still, in his own quaint fashion. Ultimately Whitty fell into a more natural mood. He grew silent and sensible. But the joyous light shone as bright as ever in his eyes; though his mind was occupied with some very ticklish questions.

  “Shall I find her the same?” This was the main question. “It’s eighteen months ago; lots of time to change. We have heard nothing of each other all the time; every facility for getting out of it. But no, no, no: she promised; I promised too, and to-day I’ll fulfil—my future being so certain now—though even if it weren’t I couldn’t help it, knowing her so near. If only she thinks as she thought then! But all life is change. Eighteen months ago! Who’d have dreamt then that Barbara Lyon would clear out of the station to work for her living? Who could fancy Barbara as school-missis? But it shall not be for long, Barbara; it shall be for a very, very little while now, my darling!”

  This, in fact, was the “very old friend”—Barbara Lyon. It is not strictly true that she was a very old friend. Whitt’s first six months in the constabulary he was quartered near Kyneton, and within pistol-shot of Barbara’s father’s boundary fence. The very old friendship was squeezed into that half-year.

  The ride to Timber Town was a long one; fifty miles. Whitty left home at four in the morning; he hoped to arrive, riding easily, not much later than noon. Rapid travelling was impossible, for the track was not only very rugged, and often steep, but it was so extremely faint, in the hard flinty places, that some vigilance was required merely to follow it. But it was wild, picturesque country, and the morning air was fresh and cool; and Whitty was not much more impatient than most men would have been in the circumstances. At nine he breakfasted at a queer little hostelry deep in a gully of gum-trees. Then came a long, slow, tiresome ascent; but Seth was on the southern edge of the ranges well before noon, winding slowly down to the thickly-timbered flats. Just below him, thin colums of smoke ascended through the treetops. The chimneys that the smoke came from were invisible; but deep down there, at the bottom of that leafy sea, and on the very edge of the level country, lay Timber Town; and Timber Town was just sufficiently civilised to have its State school; and the Timber Town State scholars were so inexpressibly privileged as to have Barbara Lyon for their schoolmistress—at the moment.

  Whitt’s predatory designs upon the Timber Town scholars swelled within him when his sharp eye descried the Timber Town smoke. He pressed on down the steep winding path. The trees closed over him; the track twisted, turned, but still descended; and Seth lost patience at last, and was riding recklessly, when a loud shout from the hill-side on the right startled him. He pulled up with some difficulty. Peering upward through the colonnade of smooth round trunks, he saw a tent, and, what was more alarming, a human ball bounding down headlong through the trees; and in an instant an acrobatic young man—a well-built and particularly nice-looking young man, of the Saxon order—stood breathless at the horse’s head.

  “Seth Whitty, as I live!” gasped the acrobat.

  “That’s my name, mate; but—”

  “Mean to say you don’t know me?”

  “I’ll be shot if I do.”

  “You don’t remember the new chum who brought a letter of introduction to your father, stayed at your farm at Whittlesea for weeks on end, shot—but you’re playing it too low down, Seth! Never pretend you don’t remember Jack Lovatt!”

  Seth jumped from his horse and wrung the young fellow’s hand.

  “How should I have remembered you? You were a boy then, without a hair on your face; now you sport a thundering great moustache—”

  “And have just shaved off a thundering great beard: made to.”

>   “Then, too, you were a bit of a wild young spark; frankly, I never thought you’d do much good; I made sure you’d either be back home years before this, or at the dogs; but now—”

  “Now I’ve gone in for complete reformation: made to!”

  “Who is it that’s taken you in hand?”

  Jack Lovatt winked, but said there was time enough for that, and that he too had some questions to put. And he soon learnt how Seth’s old father had been dead and buried those two years; how the farm at Whittlesea had been sold, and at a cruel figure; and how Seth had joined the Mounted Police and been quartered six months near Kyneton and eighteen at his present station in the ranges. Lovatt said that Seth’s being in the force was no news to him—for wasn’t Trooper Whitty a public hero? A hand-shaking over the Red Jim affair naturally followed, Lovatt being bound over to hold his tongue about it in the township. Then the two men strolled down the track together, Whitty leading his horse; and it was Lovatt’s turn to give an account of himself. He had been four years and a half in the Colonies, and he proceeded to tick off the items on his fingers.

  “Those weeks at Whittlesea; three or four months travelling about; three weeks billiard-marking in Queensland, when I’d travelled away all my money. That was the first half-year. Nine months store-keeping, Queensland station; eight months droving—fat wethers—Melbourne market; one month’s spree, Melbourne. First two years. Next two years on Riverina station, overseer; another month in Melbourne; rest of my time here. Rest of my days—here!”

  “What, never going home again?”

  “Never.”

  “You still don’t write?”

  “Not a line.”

  “So they don’t know whether you’re dead or alive?”

  “They know nothing about me: I know nothing about them.”

  “Forgive us, Jack; but have you quite forgotten—her?”

  Lovatt burst out laughing.

  “Years ago, my good fellow. Why—” he hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I’m going to marry here! I’m engaged. That tent you saw is the site of my homestead; I’ve taken up two hundred acres.”

  Trooper Whitty stopped short in his walk, and whistled. But he did not get a chance to say much; Jack Lovatt took care of that. Jack Lovatt opened his heart.

  Whitty listened with very natural sympathy, seeing what his own condition was; but he did not speak of his own condition. He listened with great interest, but with an unpleasantly vivid remembrance of a previous occasion when Jack Lovatt had opened his heart to him about the girl in England who had engaged herself to some one else. Jack’s calm, reasonable, blissful state to-day did not contrast to Whitty’s liking with the wild hopeless, honest fervour of four or five years ago. But then Jack was so much older now, so much more sensible. There was no reason for supposing that he was less in love now than he had been then, simply because he showed it less. In any case, Seth, who was such an accomplished hand at concealing his own feelings, should have been the last person to suspect this; nor did he suspect it; it merely occurred to him.

  Rather jauntily, perhaps, but with sufficient gusto, Jack told everything—everything except who and what the lady was. But these are really unimportant details when you are telling a fellow about a thing of this kind, if there is no chance of his having met the girl anywhere. Whitty only gathered that she lived in Timber Town, of which he was glad, for Barbara’s sake. Before Jack gave him time to edge in a question the road had become wide and level; the trees had parted; they were in the township.

  Timber Town was unpretending in those days: it is now a respectable centre. Then most of the houses were public-houses, or at any rate gave that impression; and, of course, on that particular day the public-house verandahs were black with Christmas customers. But even then there were the State school and the police-barracks, cheek by jowl, with the little iron church (now neither little nor iron) opposite—all three at the north end of the single broad and straggling street. This was the end at which the two men entered the township. They stopped at the barracks and leant against the fence, to which Whitty tethered his horse. He was most interested, of course, in the State school; but Lovatt drew his attention to the church over the way.

  “They’re in at service now, but they’ll be out directly; and then, Seth—”

  “She’s there, of course?”

  “Rather! She plays the harmonium for them. Hark! there it goes! That’s the last hymn,”

  It was strange to hear the glad old Christmas hymn across that glaring road, in the breathless heat, under that sky of flawless sapphire; at least, it should have struck the Englishman as strange. As for Seth, his only ideas of English Christmases came from English Christmas cards; and as he stood listening he was wondering how it was that Barbara did not play the harmonium for the Timber Town folks. Barbara was so very musical. He was wondering also why Lovatt was not in church with his sweetheart on Christmas morning, as he himself would have been with Barbara, could he only have managed to reach Timber Town earlier. And as he wondered and speculated, and as his pulse quickened—his meeting with Barbara, who of course was in church, being so very near—the hymn ended. Then there was a short silence; then the voluntary sounded, and the small oddly-assorted congregation poured out.

  “I’ll go and fetch her,” said Lovatt “Stop where you are; you shall be introduced to her now at once.”

  He hurried over.

  Seth felt that he ought to go too—that he must go; yet he remained where he was. He could not move. He was trembling with excitement. He had no desire just then to see Lovatt’s sweetheart; he was straining his eyes to find his own. She did not come. Yet all the other people were now clear of the church—all but the organist. Was she a friend of the organist—of Lovatt’s intended? Was she waiting back for her? Stop. The voluntary is over at last. Here is Jack Lovatt—

  “Ah!”

  Seth Whitty started back against the picket fence. His hands clutched it. His eyes fastened themselves upon the pair who came so slowly towards him. A moment, an hour, a lifetime—and he was introduced to Lovatt’s fiancée.

  Whitty laboured to pull himself together and uttered a grating laugh.

  “You needn’t have troubled,” he got out at last indistinctly. “We’re old friends—quite old friends, eh, Miss Lyon?”

  Barbara gave him her hand. In the shadow of her great hat her face seemed gray and bloodless; but her blue eyes never flinched, and her lips only slightly trembled, and her little head was proudly raised. Barbara was lovelier than ever.

  II.

  “Seth! Seth Whitty! What ails you, man?”

  It was Lovatt’s voice. Whitty removed the hand he had pressed to his forehead, and stood stiffly erect.

  “Forgive me, Miss Barbara; I feel silly like. It must be the sun. These felt things are no protection once you’re used to the helmet.”

  No pretence could have been older, more decrepit; but, as it happened, it was the one pretence of all others that was absolutely certain to take folks in just then at Timber Town. Lovatt looked alarmed, and glanced involuntarily at the front windows of the barracks, where the blinds were drawn. At the same moment, raising his hat to Barbara, Whitty turned hastily away and went in at the barrack gate.

  “Stop,” cried Lovatt, but softly. “Don’t go in there!”

  Whitty faced about “Why not? We receive each other with open arms, we fellows. Why shouldn’t I go in?”

  “Because the sergeant’s lying dead there from sunstroke!”

  Whitty had not known that sergeant even by name. He had nothing to say to his death. But he returned to his horse, and unfastened the reins from the fence.

  “Where shall you go?” asked Lovatt doubtfully.

  “One of the publics.”

  “Do you feel better?”

  “All right again, thanks.”

  “I feared it was our poor sergeant over again. You had such a jolly bad look a moment ago; hadn’t he, Barbara?”

&
nbsp; Barbara said nothing.

  “But look here; don’t be in such a hurry, if you’re all right!” Lovatt caught hold of the bridle. “We two are going to picnic at the selection. Join us. Since you know Barbara—a rum coincidence that—you won’t mind? And as for us, we shall be delighted; sha’n’t we, Barbara?”

  Again Barbara did not speak.

  “Come and make up a jolly party, and blow the proverb!” said Lovatt persuasively.

  Whitty vaulted into the saddle, with another grating laugh, and rode off without so much as a thankyou.

  Higher up the street, in the alcoholic region, he met one of his own kind, a trooper, but on foot, and in full uniform. He was the poor sergeant’s temporary substitute, and he and Whitty had met before. They stopped and conversed now. The man who was in uniform complained of the man who was not.

  “If you’d got the togs on,” he said, “you might have been of some use, and seen me through, instead of playing the bloated civilian.”

  “Then there aren’t two men stationed here? Township duty must be pretty light duty if one’s enough.”

  “It is; but not at Christmas,” grumbled the war-paint man. “You might have seen a fellow through.”

  Trooper Whitty regretted he couldn’t, and went on to say he was particularly anxious that no one there should know he was Trooper Whitty. Trooper Whitty had been ass enough to make himself notorious, but, oddly enough, had not the least wish to get drunk at the expense of Timber Town. The other trooper made promises accordingly, and claimed to be rendering good for evil.

  Whitty rode on, and put up his horse at Burns’s Royal Hotel, one of the slightly less disreputable establishments. Already there was a good deal of advanced drunkenness there. Seth had never been a drinking man, but the sight of the men lying serenely senseless in the shade filled him with a sudden, passionate envy. They had forgotten their troubles, those happy wretches. The means lay handy for drowning his trouble too. A savage craving came over him, and held him one hellish minute. He conquered it, and strode alone into the breathless solitude of the surrounding forest.