Читать книгу The Hillyars and the Burtons - Henry Kingsley - Страница 18

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THE place in which he had received this letter was the post-office at Palmerston, one of the principal public buildings of that thriving capital,--a majestic and imposing pile of galvanized iron, roofed with tin, twenty feet long, surmounted by a pediment, the apex of which rose fifteen feet from the level of Banks Street, and carried a weathercock.

The mail was just in, and the place was crowded. Roaring for his orderly was of very little use; it only raised a few eager eyes impatiently from their letters, or made a few disappointed idlers wonder what the Inspector was hollering after. His orderly had probably got a letter, and was reading it in some secret corner. He would wait for him.

The devil had been in him a few minutes ago; but as he stood and waited there, in the sweltering little den called the post-office, with all the eager readers of letters around him, the devil began to be beat out again. There was an atmosphere in that miserable little hot tin-kettle of a post-office which the devil can't stand at all,--the atmosphere of home. Old loves, old hopes, old friends, old scenes, old scents, old sounds, are threads which, though you draw them finer than the finest silk, are still stronger than iron. Did you ever hear the streams talk to you in May, when you went a--fishing? Did you ever hear what the first rustle of the summer-leaves said to you in June, when you went a-courting? Did you ever hear, as a living voice, the southwest wind among the bare ash-boughs in November, when you were out a-shooting? If you have imagination enough to put a voice into these senseless sounds of nature, I should like to stand with you in the Melbourne post-office on a mail day, and see what sort of voice would speak to you out of the rustling of a thousand fluttering letters, held by trembling fingers, and gazed on by faces which, however coarse and ugly, let the news be good or bad, grow more soft and gentle as the news is read.

Poor George Hillyar. His letter had no hope or comfort in it; and yet, by watching the readers of the other letters, and seeing face after face light up, he got more quiet, less inclined to be violent and rash, less inclined to roar for his orderly, and make a fool of himself before Gerty. He leant against an iron pillar, and fixed his attention on a good-natured-looking young man before him, who was devouring an ill-written, blotted letter with an eagerness and a delight which made his whole face wreathe itself into one very large smile.

He was pleased to look at him, and looked at him more earnestly. But, while he looked at him, he found that he could not concentrate his attention on him. He tried to do so, for this young fellow, by reason of a deficient education, was enjoying his letter amazingly; he was reaping all the pleasures of anticipation and fruition at one and the same time. When he began a sentence, following the words with a grimy forefinger, he grinned, because he felt certain that something good was coming; when he had spelt through it he grinned wider still, because it surpassed his expectations. Once, after finishing one of these hard-spelt sentences, he looked round radiantly on the crowd, and said, confidentially: "I told you so. I know'd she'd have him!"

At this gushing piece of confidence to an unsympathizing crowd, poor George Hillyar felt as if he would have liked to meet this young man's eyes and smile at him. But he could not. Somehow, another pair of eyes came between him and everything else,--eyes which he could not identify among the crowd, yet which he could feel, and which produced a sensation of sleepy petulance with which he was very familiar. He had read some account of the fascination of snakes, and because it seemed a bizarre, and rather wicked sort of amusement, he had tried it for himself. He used to go out from the barracks on Sunday afternoon, find a black snake among the stony ridges, engage its attention, and stare at it. The snake would lie motionless, with its beady eyes fixed on him. The fearful stillness of the horrible brute, which carried instant death in its mouth, would engage him deeply; and the wearying attention of his eye, expecting some sudden motion of the reptile, would begin to tell upon the brain, and make the watcher, as I have said before, petulant and dull. At length the snake, gathering confidence from his stillness, would gleam and rustle in every coil, stretch out its quivering neck, and attempt flight. Then his suppressed anger would break forth, and he would arise and smite it, almost careless, for the moment, whether he died himself or no.*

He passed out of the crowd, and came into the portico; the people were standing about, still reading their letters, and his own orderly was sitting with his feet loose in his stirrups, nearly doubled up in his saddle, reading his letter too, while he held the rein of George Hillyar's horse loosely over his arm. The flies were troublesome, and sometimes the led horse would give such a jerk with his head as would nearly pull the letter out of the orderly's hand; but he did not notice it. He sat doubled up on his saddle, with a radiant eager smile on his face, and read.

Time was when poor Hillyar would have sworn at him, would have said that the force was going to the devil, because a cadet dared to read a letter on duty. But those times were gone by for the present. George Hillyar had been a bully, but was a bully no longer. He waited till his orderly should have finished his letter, and waited the more readily because he felt that those two strange eyes, of which he had been clearly conscious, were plaguing him no more.

So he waited until his orderly had done his letter before he approached him. The orderly, a gentle-looking English lad, with a kind, quiet face, looked on his advance with dismay. He had committed a slight breach of discipline in reading his sister's letter while on duty in the public streets; and Bully Hillyar, the man who never spared or forgave, had caught him. It was a week's arrest.

Nevertheless, he looked bright, pushed the letter into his breast, and wheeled the led horse round ready for the Inspector to mount. He knew, this sagacious creature, that he was going to catch it, and, so to speak, put up a moral umbrella against the storm of profane oaths which he knew would follow.

Will you conceive his astonishment when the Inspector, instead of blaspheming at him, took his curb down a link, and said over the saddle, preparing to mount, "What sort of news, Dickenson? Good news, hey?"

Judging by former specimens of George Hillyar's tender mercies, the orderly conceived this to be a kind of diabolical chaff or irony, preparatory to utter verbal demolition and ruin. He feebly said that he was very sorry.

"Pish, man! I am not chaffing. Have you got good news in your letter, hey?"

The astonished and still-distrusting orderly said, "Very good news, sir, thank you."

"Hah!" said George Hillyar. "I have n't. What's your news? Come, tell us."

"My mother is coming out, sir."

"I suppose you are very fond of your mother, ar'n't you? And she is fond of you, hey?"

"Yes, sir."

"She don't play Tom-fool's tricks, does she? She would n't cut away with a man, and leave you, would she?"

"No, sir."

"If she were to, should you like her all the same, eh?"

"I cannot tell, sir. You will be pleased to close the conversation here, sir. My mother is a lady, and I don't allow any discussion whatever about her possible proceedings."

"I did n't mean to make you angry," said Bully Hillyar, the inspector, to quiet Dickenson, the cadet; "I am very sorry. I am afraid my manner must be unfortunate; for just now, on my honor, I was trying to make a friend of you, and I have only succeeded in making you angry."

Young Dickenson, not a wise being by any means, remembered this conversation all his life. He used to say afterwards that Bully Hillyar had had good points in him, and that he knew it. When George Hillyar was condemned, he used to say, "Well, well! this was bad, and that was bad, but he was a good fellow at bottom." The fact is, that George unbent, and was his better self before this young man. He had been slowly raising himself to a higher level, and was getting hopeful. When he felt those eyes fixed upon him, as he read his letter,--which eyes gave him a deadly chill, though he had not recognized them,--the vague anxiety which possessed him had caused him to be confidential with the first man he met.

So he rode slowly home to the barracks and sat down in his quarters to business, for he had taken the business off the hands of the Palmerston Inspector, and had so given him a holiday. The office was a very pleasant place, opening on the paddock,--at this time of year a sheet of golden green turf, shaded by low gum-trees, which let sunbeams through their boughs in all directions, to make a yellow pattern on the green ground. The paddock sloped down to the river, which gleamed a quarter of a mile off among the tree-stems.

It was a perfectly peaceful day in the very early spring. The hum of the distant town was scarcely perceptible, and there was hardly a sound in the barracks. Sometimes a few parrots would come whistling through the trees; sometimes a horse would neigh in the paddock; sometimes a lazily-moved oar would sound from the river; but quiet content and peace were over everything.

Even the two prisoners in the yard had ceased to talk, and sat silent in the sun. A trooper going into the stable, and two or three horses neighing, to him was an event. George Hillyar sat and thought in the stillness, and his thoughts were pleasant and held him long.

At length he was aroused by voices in the yard,--one that of a trooper.

"I tell you he's busy.

"But I really must see him," said the other voice. "I bring important information."

George listened intently.

"I tell you," said the trooper, "he is busy Why can't you wait till he comes out?"

"If you don't do my message, mate, you'll repent it."

"You 're a queer card to venture within a mile of a police-station at all; leave alone being cheeky when you are in the lion's jaws."

"Never you mind about that," said the other. "You mind your business half as well as I mind mine, and you 'll be a man before your mother now. What a pretty old lady she must be, if she's like you. More mustache though, ain't she? How's pussy? I was sorry for the old gal getting nabbed, but--"

As it was perfectly evident that there would, in one instant more, be a furious combat of two, and that George would have to give one of his best troopers a week's arrest, he roared out to know what the noise was about.

"A Sydney sider, sir, very saucy, insists upon seeing you."

"Show him in then. Perhaps he brings information."

The man laid George's revolver on the table, put the newspaper carelessly over it, saluted, and withdrew. Directly afterward the evil face of Samuel Burton was smiling in the doorway, and George Hillyar's heart grew cold within him. * This is my theory about snake-fascination. The above are the only results I ever arrived at (except a creeping in the calves of my legs, and an intense desiro to run away). Dr. Holmes don't quite agree. But I will publicly retract all I have said, if he will promise not to try any further experiments with his dreadful crotuli. The author of "Elsie Venner" is far too precious a person for that sort of thing.