Читать книгу Deadman's - Mary Gaunt - Страница 10

Table of Contents

'Perplexed no more with human or divine,

To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign.'

ONCE the pair of lovers had arranged their own affairs to their entire satisfaction, they began to bethink them of the master of the house and his troubles, and Nicholson went in search of him, and found him, to his dismay, seated on his veranda, dangerously close, thought Commissioner Nicholson, to the place where they had been standing. However, there was no help for it, and with a hasty glance back at the events of the past hour, and a heartfelt hope that he had not been very idiotic, he dragged up a chair and sat down beside his friend. Ruthven had his hands behind his head, and an empty pipe between his teeth, and he gave but a brief response to the other man's greeting.

'Did you know I was down there?' asked Nicholson anxiously, though a moment before he had not the least intention of mentioning his own affairs.

'Yes, I knew.'

'Oh!' said Nicholson, not best pleased.

'Lord, man, what does it matter?' asked Ruthven, waking up to the fact that he ought not to have owned up to that. 'You were talking to Mary Parkin, weren't you? It was no business of mine. I didn't notice what you were saying.'

'Oh, didn't you?' said Nicholson dubiously. Then he pulled himself together. 'Look here, old man: I'm going to marry Mary Parkin to-morrow.'

It was clear he was not paying the least attention to the conversation.

'Yes, I am,' said Nicholson testily. 'You don't want to go away, do you? because one of us must stop and look after the camp. Ruthven—I say, Jocelyn, you don't want to go away? In fact, you'll be wanting to stop here.'

'Yes,' said Ruthven dully, 'I suppose I'll have to stop.'

'Ruthven, I don't believe you understand. Mary Parkin showed you the letter your wife wrote her, didn't she?'

'Think?—think? Well, I think we've made a holy mess of it between us. It was more my fault than hers, I suppose. The greatest wrong I did her was to marry her, poor child! God knows I didn't mean to hurt her, but if I hadn't been a selfish beast, thinking only of myself, I might have seen more clearly for her. Poor child! poor child! We are as opposite as the poles, and she is miserable living with me, and I am—ah, well! I brought it on myself, I suppose;' and then he swore an oath between his teeth, and solemnly cursed a woman, and Nicholson guessed that it was not his wife he meant.

'But, Ruthven, pardon me,' hesitated his friend, 'what are you going to do?'

'Do? What can I do? If my wife prefers to live with her mother, there's no law to prevent her that I know of, even though the old hag does keep a sly grog-shop and assembles there the riff-raff of the camp.'

'But, Ruthven, old man, I don't believe for a moment your wife is at her mother's, or, if she is, her mother isn't the principal attraction.'

'No,' said Ruthven indifferently; 'she's a wild thing, and can't stand the restraints of civilization. That freedom has a charm for her.'

'Freedom,' sighed his comrade. 'Man alive! she's taken her freedom with a vengeance. As far as I can make out, she's gone off with that blackguard Fraser.'

Ruthven rose to his feet and dropped his pipe with a crash on the ground.

'Good God!' he said. 'Is that the end? What can I do? My God! what can I do?'

Exactly. What could he do?

There and then he rose up and went down to the Phillipses', but it was wrapped in virtuous darkness, though every other hut and tent around was lighted up, and full of men. He rapped until he produced a sleepy response, and Mrs. Phillips herself came out, very tearful, extraordinarily subdued, and entirely unintelligible.

No, she didn't know where her girl was, by the Howly Virgin an' the sowls av all the saints she didn't. She'd come along soon after she herself had returned, and had looked in for a minute and said she weren't going to no school in Melbourne, and then she'd gone off again, and Mrs. Phillips had no idea where she was—no, no more than the babe unborn. And with one hand she applied the ragged end of a dirty shawl to her eyes, while the other wildly waved a guttering tallow-candle in the air, and liberally bespattered the doorstep with grease. And that was all Ruthven could get out of her.

He went slowly back to his house, and by the end of the week was convinced—as the whole camp had been from the very first—that his wife had gone away with Fraser, and the guilty pair had fled to that ungetatable country vaguely described as 'over the ranges.'

Once again, on being interrogated, Mrs. Phillips admitted that some little time before Nellie and Fraser 'had been sort av kapin' company, but, av coorse, when his honour's self come along Nellie wouldn't be lookin' at the likes av Fraser at all, at all.' And Ruthven groaned aloud when he thought of all his folly had cost him. There had been no love even on her side, less liking, even, than there had been on his; she had simply been flattered, had come to him because he was the Commissioner; had married him only for that reason, and now she had shamed and disgraced him.

It was a nine days' wonder in the camp, the disappearance of the Commissioner's wife, just as her arrival had been. Then most people forgot all about it. As for Ruthven, he had got to face the world somehow, and he went down and took up his abode in Nicholson's quarters, and gave orders that his own house should be prepared for the newly-married couple. He had been utterly miserable there. He only hoped that they would be happier.

And, after all, once the first shock was over, he was surprised to find how little he himself minded. No one could ever have guessed the relief it was to him to sit down to table with young Buckland, the clerk, for a vis-a-vis, instead of that wife who could not open her mouth without irritating him. No one mentioned her now, and that, of course, was a relief in itself. They might think a great deal, but, at least, they said nothing, and it was better, far better, as far as his comfort was concerned, than having her always beside him, like an ever-open sore. Once he had lain awake at nights wondering what would be the end, dreading it unspeakably; and now this was the end, it had come, and it was an intense relief to know that nothing worse could happen to him now. Sometimes he took himself to task that he did not repent the wrong he had done her more bitterly; but in their brief wedded life she had filled him with such distaste and hatred of herself that he simply could not be sorry for her. Theoretically he was, practically he found himself saying over and over again that she deserved all she got, and that, on the whole, possibly she was not unhappy. He was ashamed of that episode in his life, bitterly ashamed of it; but now that it was all over, he was not unhappy.

Sometimes he caught himself thinking that he was really more contented than he had been for many a long day. Before this trouble had come upon him, he had been infatuated with that Langdon woman—he called it infatuation now—and had been always planning to get away to Karouda, planning to take her some little present, counting the hours till he should see her again. What a young fool he had been! If it had not been for her, d—— her! And he bit savagely at his pipe for a moment, and then he fell to thinking how pleasant the evenings were now that he neither wanted to see one woman nor was troubled with the thought that he had to see another whether he would or not. It was very pleasant sitting outside the tent door these warm summer evenings. They were not marred by the thought that presently he would have to go inside, and hold the nightly conversation with his wife. All that was behind him. He was content. He despised himself for it sometimes, but that did not alter the fact. He was content. What his little world thought of him could make little difference to him. He had made himself miserable to please the world; he was not going to mind what the world thought for the future.

And when Nicholson and his wife came back to take up their residence in the unlucky house on the hillside, they hesitated long before they dared ask him to dinner.

'It might be painful,' said pitying little Mary Nicholson.

And so Nicholson met his comrade every day in their daily round of duties, and thought uncomfortably how he should ever screw up his courage to ask him to visit his old home, till Ruthven, all unconscious, solved the difficulty by inquiring when he might call on his wife.

'Is the little bride ready to receive visitors yet?' he asked. 'I suppose the house is very dainty and pretty? I know more about Mrs. Nicholson's powers in the housekeeping line than you do, I expect, old man.'

Nicholson was a little shocked. He did not see things with the same eyes as Ruthven, but he promptly asked him to dinner, an invitation that was accepted with alacrity.

And when he came, it was Nicholson and his wife who were uncomfortable; for his part, Ruthven was only too thankful that they had the places that had been his and his wife's. Those were the days of his humiliation; it was past and over now, and he could not be unhappy any longer.

And the first time he met Ben Langdon in the camp after his wife had run away, Ben looked at him askance, and would have passed on pretending he did not see him, but Ruthven would not have it. He held out his hand, which the other almost wrung off.

'I'm glad to see you looking so well, my boy.'

'Thank you,' said Ruthven.

He supposed he ought not to look well, but he could not help that.

'It isn't any use,' said Langdon hesitatingly, 'asking you to Karouda?'

Ruthven shook his head and smiled faintly. He had never gone to Karouda since that day when he had agreed to marry Nellie simply because he could never go there again unless he did.

Langdon looked a little disappointed.

'Well, maybe you are right,' he said, with a sigh. 'But I've missed you a good lot, and I hope when things blow over a bit you'll see your way to coming up again and having a smoke with me of an evening. The wife——' He stopped and hesitated. He wanted to say she was very much taken up with a new Bush parson, who was filling the place of platonic friend vacated by Ruthven. Ruthven had heard all about the Bush parson from Buckland, and knew well enough what Langdon had in his mind, but he only shook his hand again warmly, and said: 'I have never yet thanked you for all your kindness to me. If I had only taken your advice!—but, like a blasted young idiot——' He felt as if years and years had passed over his head since that winter day in the Karouda sitting-room that had decided his fate. 'Come along up to my quarters and have a nobbler, will you?'