Читать книгу Under Two Skies - E. W. Hornung - Страница 4

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His real name had gone no further than the station store. There it appeared in the ledger, and sometimes (though very rarely) on a letter in the baize-covered rack, under postmarks which excited the storekeeper's curiosity; but beyond the store verandah he was known only as Jim-of-the-Whim.

He lived by himself at the Seven-mile whim. Most of his time was spent under a great wooden drum, round which coiled a rope with its two ends down two deep shafts, raising a bucketful of water from the one while lowering an empty bucket down the other. The buckets filled a tank; the tank fed the sheep-troughs; and what Jim did was to drive a horse round and round to turn the drum. It was not an arduous employment. Jim could lean for hours against a post, smoking incessantly and but occasionally cracking his whip, yet serenely conscious that he was doing his duty. In times of plenty, when there was water in the paddocks and green life in the salt-bush, the whim was not wanted, and other work was found for the whim-driver. Unhappily, however, such intervals were in his time rare, and Jim was busy, though his work was light.

Jim never neglected his work. Sometimes he took a few days' holiday, and exchanged his half-year's cheque for poisonous bush alcohol; this was only customary; and Jim was highly considerate in his choice of the time, and would go after a rainfall, when the sheep could not suffer by his absence. He never allowed his excesses to degenerate into irregularities. He knew his work thoroughly, and applied his knowledge without sparing his bones; when not actually driving the whim, he was scouring the plains for thirsty stragglers. As a permanency at the Seven-mile he was worth higher wages than he was ever likely to get from Duncan Macdonald, though this squatter would have conceded much (for him) rather than lose so reliable a hand. But Jim never asked for a rise; and Macdonald was perhaps not eccentric in declining to take the initiative in this matter.

Jim's hut was two hundred yards from the whim. As bush-huts go, it was a superior habitation. It was divided by a partition into two rooms; it had a floor. In the larger room stood a table and a bench, which were both movable; and this merit was shared in an eminent manner by a legless armchair mounted on an old soap-box. Prints from illustrated papers were pasted neatly on strips of sacking nailed to the walls. Sacks filled with the current rations hung from the beams. The roof was galvanised iron; the walls, horizontal logs of pine between pine uprights.

Civilisation was met with on the threshold in the shape of a half-moon of looking-glass, nailed to the doorpost on the inside. This glass was only put to practical use on the infrequent occasions when Jim amused himself by removing his beard. At such times, when the operation was over, and Jim counted the cuts, the reflection showed a gun-browned face of much manly beauty, invested with a fine moustache in a state of picturesque neglect. His eyes were slightly sunken, but extremely blue; and he had an odd way of looking at you with his head on one side, owing to a breakage of the collar-bone from a fall far up country, when the bones had overlapped before growing together again.

The station storekeeper, a young Englishman named Parker, who gave his services to the economic Macdonald in return for 'Colonial experience,' and, among other duties, drove out with Jim's rations, was the only regular visitor at the Seven-mile hut. Yet Jim had one constant companion and sympathetic friend. This was Stumpy, the black kitten. The genesis of Stumpy was unknown to Jim, who had found him in a hollow log, while chopping up a load of wood sent from the homestead. Jim had chopped off two inches of what he took to be a new variety of the black snake before discovering that he had mutilated an unlucky kitten. The victim became "Stumpy" on the spot; and from that moment the kitten shared every meal and sentiment of the man, and grew in wisdom with increasing inches.

One cloudless winter's day (it was in July) Mr. Parker, arriving at the Seven-mile hut at high noon, found Jim idly caressing the kitten, and singing. He always did sing when he played with Stumpy, except when he broke off into affectionate imprecations upon some new impertinence on the part of that quaint little creature. In fact, Jim sang a good deal at any time. At general musters of all hands, such as at the lamb-marking, his voice made him popular in spite of his reserve, though he sometimes sang over the heads of his mates. To-day his singing was over the head of Mr. Parker, for it was in Italian, and Jim looked up with a quick change of colour at detection. He had, however, nothing to fear. Young Parker, so far from knowing Italian when he heard it, had been sent away from his public school because the rudiments of Latin were still beyond him at seventeen. Jim was pronouncing his words funnily—that was all that struck young Parker.

"You've heard the news, Jim?" were Parker's first words. "We've a visitor—a lady, ye gods!—Mrs. Macdonald's sister."

Jim had heard nothing about it He appealed to Stumpy, and inquired if he had any information. Altogether he treated the intelligence with indifference, and went on playing with the kitten. Parker was piqued. He was full of the guest at the homestead, Mrs. Macdonald's enchanting sister, and must tell some one about her, even though the only accessible ear was a whim-driver's. He launched into a rhapsody which occupied some minutes, and blended the old public school slang with the stronger-flavoured bush idiom, newly acquired. Jim heard him stoically; then he held up Stumpy by the fore-quarters, and addressed this animal gravely.

"D'ye hear all that, Stumpy? Then just you forget it again, my little feller. Wimmin is nothink to us, as I've told you before; so never think on 'em, Stumps, or you an' me'll fall out! That's it—he says he hears, Mr. Parker."

Parker changed the subject.

"Here's a letter for you," he said, and tossed a square blue envelope across to the whim-driver. It was not one of the well-directed letters he occasionally received, with English postmarks which invited speculation. It came only from Sydney, and the superscription was amusingly illiterate. Jim opened the letter—and turned whiter than the soiled sheet which now began to tremble violently in his hand. There were merely a few written words on this sheet of paper, but a short newspaper extract was pasted below them. The written words danced before Jim's eyes; the printed words became illegible; and if young Parker had not been deep in the contemplation of his own face in the looking-glass on the doorpost (gloating over the promising beginnings of a russet bushman's beard, and wishing he could have his photograph taken as he was, to send home to the old country), he might have seen Jim shiver from head to foot, and push the kitten from his trembling knees. As it was, by the time the youth did turn round, Jim-of-the-Whim looked and spoke like a calm and rational man.

"Mr. Parker, sir—I want a cheque."

"You aren't going on the booze again, Jim—already?"

"No, sir. I want you to make out a cheque for—as much as I'm worth, payable to this name and at this address." He tore off the portion of the sheet of letter-paper above the newspaper cutting, scored out a few words with a stump of pencil, added three words of his own, and handed this upper portion to young Parker. "And please to put in this slip with the cheque, sir."

These were the three words that Jim had written—

"To cover expenses."