Читать книгу Collected Short Stories - E. W. Hornung - Страница 9

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Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton, NSW), Tuesday 2 February 1892

Weary and wasted, and worn and wan.

Feeble and faint, and languid and low,

He lay on the desert a dying man,

Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.

—Adam Lindsay Gordon

Chapter 1

It is a well-known fact, the papers say, that there are about a dozen broken-down baronets knocking about the colonies and picking up a romantic livelihood in the bush. I cannot answer for a dozen baronets, but I did once know some one of the kind, who lived in a hut on Belville Station, New South Wales. They called him Jones, but his distinguished real name was no secret. He had talked very frankly about himself once, when the township whisky nearly killed him, but he was equally candid with my friend Leeson, the Belville overseer, when the latter stopped for tea at the hut, where for months together Jones touched nothing stronger. Leeson was a good friend to Jones—who must be Jones to us, and nothing more.

Jones drove one of the Belville whims. He spent most of the day under a great wooden drum, round which coiled a mighty rope with its two ends down two deep shafts, and a full bucket always coming up and an empty one going down. The buckets filled a tank, which fed the sheep troughs; and what Jones did was to drive a horse round and round to turn the drum; to crack a whip sometimes, and smoke continually, and talk to the horse—his only companion—in forcible terms. It was not an intellectual employment. In times of plenty in the paddocks, when the rains had filled the tanks and freshened up the salt-bush, the whim was not wanted, and other work was found for Jones. But these were rare periods, for Jones was on Belville during one of the longest and most obstinate droughts of late years. And I remember finding him conscientiously at work on a Sunday after-noon, when most men would have been “camping” in the hut, the first time I set eyes on him.

I was spending the weekend at Belville with my friend, who wanted to see Jones on some matter connected with the whim; and I was very curious to see him myself. I accompanied Leeson in the buggy, and we found our broken-down swell serving his employers very zealously, as I say, and softly swearing at their horse. We drew up in the checkered shade of the beams and uprights supporting the drum, and tied the reins to the brake and when Leeson had said what he had come to say, we all three walked over to the hut, where the whim-driver made tea for us. I watched him in the strong sunlight outside and I watched him in the hut as be bent low to blow the embers of his fire, his own face glowing at every puff. He had an unsteady humorous eye, and he was good-looking, certainly, though the hair on his face was very disorderly. He had a singularly quiet way of speaking, and he made me such civilities as a well-bred Englishman makes on ushering one into his house. There was something very incongruous in his air of gentlemanly hospitality when one considered his position and looked at his Crimean shirt and dirty moleskins; but my friend had begun the incongruity by introducing us. I found it hard not to eye the man with unmannerly curiosity.

We talked on what are called indifferent subjects. I was conscious of putting restraint on the conversation. As we drove away I observed:

“It’s drink that he came to the ground on I see it in his eye.”

“Drink—among other things,” said Leeson, carving arabesques with the whipcord on the horses’ flanks. “He was pretty rapid all round, I fancy; and a terror on the turf.”

“He drinks still, I gather; knocks down a cheque pretty regularly?”

“No, I can’t say he goes to the township so very often; though, when he does, his cheque goes too, as you say. No; racing’s the passion that sticks tightest. He lost every penny at Waverley last Christmas—he’ll lose every cent at our meeting next month.”

“And a great deal better than drinking it all,” I remarked: “Has he entirely broken with his people? Don’t they know where he is?”

“They do know—but have no idea what he is doing, I should say. Very likely they don’t much care, either. He is a younger son; he played the fool awfully in the old country—went bang to the dogs. If he went home a reformed character, well and good; but they won’t fret if he doesn’t; they have washed their hands of him. That’s his opinion. He is a very simple hearted fellow at the bottom; he has told me nearly everything. Yet they write to him now and then, his people. And there’s some one who writes oftener—some one who was very fond of him, I gather, but he hasn’t actually told me this. There is some romance, but I don’t know it. I daresay he treated her pretty badly, and sees no way of putting it right, as things stand. I know he isn’t over fond of himself, poor devil! But it is of no use guessing at the story.”

“Dear me!’ said I, very thoughtfully; for the little I had heard was certainly suggestive, and made one very inquisitive, “He’s the most interesting character I’ve ever come across. I should like to see him again.”

“Oh, you will, next month,” laughed Leeson; “at Belville races!”

And I did.

Chapter 2

Belville township is on Belville “run,” and its inhabitants are not less ardent than other colonists in the matter of horse-racing. They number some two hundred souls—not many more or less. Yet behold the Belville Amateur Turf club, a flourishing and most respectable institution. The Belville Plate, the Belville Handicap—Steeplechase—Ladies’ Bracelet and Member’s Race are events which anyone would be proud to win, and sensibly enriched by that token; and, in point of fact, I rode my own Fidgetty Dick in more than one of these, not wholly without triumph, at that meeting whereat I next encountered the romantic Jones. I was Leeson’s guest, as before—as many times before and since—for my own station was forty miles further back. The course was four miles from the home station and close to the township, through which runs the stock and coach route. We sent on our racers (for Leeson was riding, too) rather early in the morning, and ourselves followed in the buggy a little later. The township was crowded. In the post office verandah we descried Jones, in clean moleskins. He was alone there.

“He’s drawn a cheque for the last farthing” Leeson told me, when we saw him, “We’ll stop at the post office, too; the mail came in this morning. I hope our friend is sober still!”

Jones was indeed very sober. He was also pale. As we drove up, he came round to the off side and handed Leeson a letter; and Leeson exclaimed, “Good God!”

I stared at the men, who were staring at one another and beginning to smile. Then Leeson turned to me and said, tapping Jones’ letter:

“This is from a Sydney lawyer; this fellow’s father and brother have died within a few weeks of each other, and he’s—”

Leeson said what; and I confess I regarded ragged bearded Mr. Jones with new-born awe. Perhaps it was vulgar in me, but one doesn’t meet a titled, landed, Crimean-shirted gentleman every day in the bush. There may be a dozen bankrupt baronets there; but a dozen would scarcely leaven five colonies of ordinary bushmen.

“We ought to have a drink on it!” observed the landed, titled gentleman, taking back his legal communication. I noticed—we noticed, as I discovered later—that he had another letter between his fingers, a letter directed—we are both positive—by a woman’s hand.

“Yes, yes,” said my friend; “we will, of course. But—but the down coach passes through at 2 o’clock. You’ll go by her, won’t you? I don’t suppose you have left any valuables in the hut; but I’ll send them on if you have; or may I keep them in memory of——?”

He did not say Jones; and I shall never forget the rakish, reckless toss of the head he incurred from the man whose name was no more Jones than mine was.

“Go!” he cried, with noble scorn. “To-day, my good sir, I’m going to the races.”

In vain we tried to dissuade him. We told him to take that day’s coach—they ran but twice weekly—and shake the sand of Riverina off his boots for ever; or, better still, leave that decayed pair behind and return to civilisation decently shod by our Belville storekeeper. But we spoke to deaf ears—we spoke to an old sportsman. Leave then in the very middle of the races? Not he. He had backed Fidgetty Dick already (on its merits), and Leeson’s horse too (for Leeson’s sake, I suppose); besides, he was going for ever, of course, and he was not going without saying good-bye to the hut and to his friends. But we were not to think of that yet; we were only to drink to it; and he was Jones to us still, if we pleased. He thrust the lawyer’s documents carelessly into his pocket, and we saw him fold the other letter small, and stow it in a loather pouch at the back of his belt. We accompanied him to the Royal hotel, the least disreputable shanty in Belville.

“It’s my last chance for a bit of real sport,” he said gaily, grinning at us with his restless eyes. “I’m going to make the most of it. Ascot’ll be dull fun, sir, after this! To-day I’m Jones the whim-driver, out on the bust; to-morrow—”

We drowned to-morrow. And we were not the last people who drank at the whim-driver’s expense that day; nor the only ones who heard of that startling news from Sydney and the old country. Jones “shouted” for the whole township, I should say, on the course; and the township very soon knew who Jones had become, for he never could keep any secrets—save one.

We had our own interests to absorb us. We hadn’t been looking forward for months to making the most of an aristocrat in very plain clothes; that was sprung upon us, rather; but we had been looking forward to riding our own home-bred horses in the various events ordained by the Belville Amateur Turf Club, and riding to win. We were keen sportsmen. We rode and lost and won, and backed ourselves, and paid up or received, as the case was. We were not continually mindful of our friend the whim-driver. He was making his presence felt, but not disgracefully at all. When I won the Ladies Bracelet on Fidgetty Dick he fell upon my neck nearly, as he had a right to do altogether, for we had started at considerable odds. He was excited, certainly, but nothing more. After the last race, however, we could see him nowhere; and my friend and I, as we drove home, made sadly sure that the excited stage was passed, and our noble whim-driver on the broad of his back under some blue-bush or verandah.

We were wrong. We had to travel some distance along the stock route after leaving the township before hitting the track which led to the home station. And long before we reached that turning, we espied a man among the low trees, sitting on a stump with his head between his hands. It was the whiteness of his moleskins that attracted our notice, and we felt sure that it was the whim-driver. We bumped over the salt bush, and our wheels left eccentric curves among the trees; but we were quite right, it was Jones. Moreover, when he spoke to us, he was entirely sober.

“What the devil are you doing here, man?” cried Leeson, as we pulled up.

“Thinking!” said Jones, very quietly and distinctly.

“What’s the matter?” my friend asked.

“Nothing; I’ve been winning money—like a man’s luck when he don’t require it!”

“Then what is there to think about here?” Leeson persisted, greatly puzzled; and I was puzzled, too, by the wildness of the man’s eye, and the complete sobriety of his tones.

“What?” repeated Jones, with quiet emphasis. “Have you forgotten the news I told you this morning—this change in my affairs? I’m thinking about that! I’m trying to realise it; I’m trying to believe it; I’m trying to get a sight of all it means; and I can’t. To go back to my old world. I can’t for the life of me realize what it will mean, or make up my mind that I shall be better off there than here, buried in the bush. Yet I wish I’d made a start this afternoon, as you advised me to. I’ve had other chances to go; this is the last one, and I wish. I’d seized it straight away. It’s three days till the next coach passes, I was a fool not to clear to-day.”

“Jump up,” exclaimed Leeson promptly. “It can’t be helped now, and I’m glad myself not to have seen the last of you yet. Jump up, and I’ll give you a lift to the station and a bed there.”

“No; I’m going to the hut.”

“You’re not—you’re coming with us.”

“No” said the whim-driver, firmly. “I’m going back to my hut. I’ll have two more nights there, and two more day’s I’ll drive the whim for you. I never expected this, as you know; and I have a sort of affection for the whole concern. I find, now I’m going to leave it. Two more days there will do me good. They’ll help me to realise things a little, and to pull myself together. No, I’m not going to the station; I’m going straight to my hut. But of course I’ll come that way round on Saturday, and say good-bye; and you’ll look me up when you take a trip home. We’ll fraternise then.”

He was a difficult man to dissuade, as I had seen. Leeson gave it up. We drove back to the road, leaving a fresh set of curves among the trees, and bumping horribly over the salt bush.

“Is it far to his hut from here?” I asked.

“Eight miles across country.”

“Is he safe not to go and get bushed? The sun’ll be down in two twos.”

“My good fellow,” said Leeson, “he’s travelled it blind drunk before this.”

“On foot?”

“He never brings my horses to the town-ship. He goes on the spree more conscientiously than any man we ever had. But I’m glad he hasn’t gone on the spree to-night.”

And when we reached the road we saw the last of the white moleskins, in the same spot, but now at the end of a long red lane painted by the setting sun in its last moments. The fading sky was without a flaw; there was no wind; the locusts were already chirping their lilliputian chorus; it was a very still, a very innocent evening.

Chapter 3

I remember the dust-storm only too well, the morning following that demure, sweet evening. I had gone just too far on my homeward journey to make it worth while turning back—I mean when the infernal thing began. Before long, I might have been going forward or back, I should not have known which it was—you couldn’t see three yards ahead—you could only stand still to be choked by the stupendous whirl-wind of dark yellow sand.

I stood very still indeed (having dismounted), with my face to the faces of my two horses! I was leading Fidgetty Dick, you understand, who had no fidgets now, but only trembled. The vision was as completely hindered as in a very bad November fog in London, and the prevailing tint was similar; but these dust storms are a far more palpable horror. They assault the throat, they batter the skin, they blind the eyes, they fill the ears. Fortunately, when they are so very violent they seldom last long. This one lifted, as a fog, while I could still see and hear and draw a laboured breath through the sand that had accumulated in my throat and lungs. And it lifted all at once; in half an hour I saw a vague yellow sun; before noon the sky was blue.

I noticed an odd thing as I remounted. I had halted out of reach of shelter, in the middle of a sandy plain. Yet there was no track, not the mark of a single hoof, to show how I had come there, It was as though the storm had been a snow storm, and the snow yellow.

I did not get home that day; I spent the night at an intervening station. I did not get home at all just then, for a horseman arrived at this station, before daybreak next morning, with a line for me from Leeson. I read it by candle-light; and I have it before me as I am writing now:—

“Dear C.—,

“Jones has not been heard of since we saw him last night. He never reached the hut. We are organising a search party. Can you join? I thought you would like to know, anyhow. It is too awful—especially now! “J.L.”

I was at Belville again that forenoon. No one was at the homestead. I found my way to the hut by the whim, and fell in with some of the party; but nothing had been heard of the whim-driver. He had not returned to the township. He had never reached his hut. Only too clearly, he was lost in the bush.

He was not found on the first day of the search, though all hands were seeking him and there were many volunteers from the township. We were able to take a fairly straight line from the spot where we had left him to the whim, and work from this line on the zig-zag principle. But the line was eight miles long, and we never came upon a single track, save our own; for the same dust-storm that had obliterated my horses’ tracks on that plain miles away had wiped out Jones’ footmarks here. Even the deep cuts our buggy wheels had made off the track, were faintly visible in one or two places only, under the trees.

“He is dead,” said Leeson, in the evening. “He had not a water-bag: he was nowhere near any water, except he got back to the township, or on to his hut, or struck across to the station. He never got any share that we know of; he is lying dead at this moment, under these very stars—dead from thirst! We shall find him to-morrow.’

My friend shuddered. I did not remind him of the question I had put him when we were leaving Jones sitting on the stump—whether he was quite certain not to got “bushed,” or lost. But I was thinking of it; and Leeson divined my thought.

“How was I to dream of such a thing,” he asked, almost fiercely, “when he has been over the ground time after time, and sometimes, as I told you, blind drunk? Besides, he wouldn’t come with us, you know he wouldn’t. God forgive me for not forcing him; but how could I? If I had dreamt of such a thing I would have done so. We shall find him to-morrow, dead under some blue-bush. He is dead now! Now! my God!’

But we did not find him on the second day. Towards evening, on the third day, Leeson, within sight of whom I was riding, uttered a “cooee” which made my heart thump. I saw him half tumble from his horse as I dug spurs into mine and galloped towards him; and I found him trembling all over and very sick, for at his feet lay our whim-driver, under a blue-bush, just as he had figured him—and stone dead!

The letter from the Sydney lawyers was at his side, pinned to the ground by his knife; and we found, when we took it up, that he had pricked through the paper, in large capitals, the words:

“MY LAST CHANCE.”

The charred ashes of another letter were also there, with several burnt vestas. But at that story, as my friend had said, it was no use guessing.