“I am not a fool,” he said, speaking at last. “I was never yet fool enough to tackle a forlorn hope. Therefore, even if I had come into this room armed to the teeth to offer you violence, I should not dream of competing against those double-barrels. But as I came empty-handed, and in peace, I, for my part, can say all I have to say comfortably into their muzzles — they can make no difference to me, unless you press too hard on those triggers in your anxiety; and if you did, perhaps it would be the best turn you or any man could do me! At the same time you are treating me like a dog. The only words that have left my lips were as submissive as any victor need want; I turned my back on you without the smallest suspicion, yet turn round again to find you pointing a gun at me!”
“You call that bad treatment!” Edmonstone sneered. “You forget, perhaps, that you have no business to be loose in the world; you forget that I found you out and shielded you, wrongly enough, on certain terms, which you have broken! Well, I am reminding you; but I am not likely to give you a second chance of playing me false. That is why I keep the sight of my gun in a line with your stud — so; that is why, if you come a step nearer, I won’t answer for consequences.”
“Considering,” said Miles, “how I treated you a few years ago, and what you owe to that treatment, I should have thought you might behave rather differently to-night; you might have shown a little generosity, outlaw as I am.”
“You remind me,” said Dick, “that in ‘82, in the scrub near Balranald, you stuck up me and my mate, and took almost everything we had — except our money. I didn’t require to be reminded of that forbearance of yours. I haven’t forgotten it, and I know pretty well its worth by now, though hitherto I have overvalued it. But that old account — supposing it to be one, for argument’s sake — was squared last month; you have been fool enough to open a new one.”
“It is a pity,” said Miles, bitterly, “that I didn’t let Jem Pound knife you!”
“On the contrary, through saving me then you found one man in England actually ready to screen you from justice. If you had not broken faith with him that man would screen you still; but as it is — Steady! don’t move! I am pressing the trigger.”
“Do you mean that you are going to betray me after all?” cried Miles, in a quick gasp of dismay, yet drawing back — he had taken a step forward in his agitation.
“What else would you have me do? Give you another chance? Honestly,” cried Dick, with honesty in his tone, “I wish that I could! But can you expect it?”
“Listen to me!” cried Miles, in a deep faltering voice. “Listen to me!”
“I am listening.”
“The other day, then — I mean the night you found me out, you and those blood-suckers — I was on the brink of a new life! You smile — but before Heaven it is the truth! I had lived for weeks as I never lived before — among good people. Bad as I was, they influenced me, at first without my knowing it. It was a new side of life to me. I found it was the best side. I grew — well, call it happy. Then I looked back and loathed the old days. I began to map out a better life for myself. I was a new man, starting afresh. I thanked God for my escape, for it seemed like His act.”
“If the fellow isn’t in earnest,” thought Dick, “this is the worst blasphemy I ever heard. I half think he means what he says, poor wretch.”
“It was you that blotted out that new existence — just as it opened out before me! It was you that drove me from my haven! It was you that turned me adrift in a city full of foes! So much for your side of the balance between us!”
Dick was half-carried away by the man’s rough eloquence, and the note of pathos in his deep tones. But he was only half-carried away; he was a man hard to shift when his stand was once taken. His answer was shrewd:
“That city is the safest place in the world for such as you — safer even than the bush. As to your friends, did you expect to live on them forever?”
The other’s vehemence was checked.
“Perhaps you intended to become one of the family!” said Edmonstone scornfully, pursuing his advantage.
Miles pulled himself together, and dismissed this keen question with a smile and a wave of the hand; but the smile faded quickly; nor had it been anything better than a ghastly mockery.
“You do not appreciate my position,” said Miles presently, fetching a deep sigh; “you cannot put yourself in my place. No honest man could, I suppose! And you shut me off from all decent living; you made me bid good-bye to the people who had befriended me, and somehow — well, made me wish I was a little less the ruffian! I became an outcast! I tried to make new friends, but failed. I had lost my nerve somehow — that was the worst of it! I resolved to throw it up, and quit England. I took my passage for New York, and—”
“Do you mean what you say? Have you actually done that?”
“Yes. The ticket is in my room, which is opposite this room.” He pointed to the door. “I can bring it to show you.”
“No; stay where you are; I believe you. When do you sail?”
“In a week — next Tuesday.”
Dick breathed more freely. Here was an extenuating circumstance of the broken compact. On the whole, Dick was glad to find one.
“Go on,” said Dick, in a slightly less hostile tone: “tell me the rest, and what it was that induced you to come up here.”
“Surely you can see the rest for yourself? Surely you can put yourself in my place at this point? I own that hearing you were not to be of the party finally induced me to come — I thought you would not hear of it till afterwards; but I came to bid my friends good-bye! to get one more glimpse of a kind of life I had never seen before and shall never see again! for one more week in a pure atmosphere.”
“Oh! not to make up to Miss Bristo, then?”
Blunt though the words were, each one was a self-inflicted stab to the heart of the man that spoke them.
“No!” cried Miles, and his voice was turned suddenly hoarse; “no, before Heaven!”
“If I believed it was that, I think I should pull this trigger on the spot.”
“It is not,” cried Miles; “I swear it is not,” he whispered.
And Dick believed him then.
“Why, man,” the bushranger went on, more steadily, “you have got me under the whip here. Down with the lash and cut me to ribbons the first time you see me playing false. Keep your eye on me; watch me all day; I can do nothing up here without your knowledge; I cannot speak but you will hear what it is I say. As to Miss Bristo, I will not go near her — but this is a small part of the whole. In my whole conduct you will find me behave like — like a changed man. Only let me stay this week out. But one other thing — a thing I would go down on my knees to you for, if that would do any good: don’t open their eyes when I am gone. There will be no need to; they will forget me as Miles the squatter if you let them. Then let them. They think well of me because I saved the old man from drowning. Edmonstone, you can let me keep their good opinions if you will. God help me! they are the only good opinions I ever honestly earned, because I got them entirely through that simple, paltry affair at the seaside. Do not rob me of them, now or afterwards. That is all I ask.”
Dick was beginning to waver.
There was an honest ring in Ned Ryan’s asseverations; and after all it was just possible that a villain, who had shown a soft side at least once before, might be softened right through by the gracious influence of an English home. Then Sundown, the bushranger, desperado though he had been, had preserved hands unstained by blood; and Sundown the bushranger had saved him, Edmonstone, from death and ruin in the Australian wilds, and Colonel Bristo from drowning. Such acts could not be made light of or forgotten, no matter who was their author.
Dick was relenting, and the other saw it.
“Stay!” said Miles, suddenly. “You have my word only so far. I can show you a better pledge of good faith if you will let me.”
“Where is it?”
“In my room.”
Edmons
tone nodded. Miles left the room, and returned immediately with a paper, which he handed to Edmonstone.
“Why, this is a receipt of passage-money for two!” said Edmonstone, looking up. “You are not going out alone, then?”
“No,” said Miles. His voice was low. His back was to the window, through which grey dawn was now stealing. It was impossible to see the expression on his face — its outline was all that was visible.
“Who is going with you?”
“My wife!” whispered Miles.
Dick was taken aback, glad, incredulous.
“Your wife!” he said. “Then you admit that she is your wife? When did you see her?”
“Yesterday.”
“But not until then!” Dick meant to put a question; he did not succeed in his excitement — his tone was affirmative.
“No, not until then,” said Miles quietly; “because, though I have been watching her as closely as I dared, it was the first chance I got of seeing her without seeing Pound. He thinks she has not seen me since the night in Bushey Park. She must not escape him until the very day of joining me on board the steamer. If she did, he would find her sooner or later; and then he would find me, which is all he is living for. That man would murder me if he got the chance. Do you understand now?”
Dick made no reply, but it all seemed clear and intelligible to him; Pound’s hold upon Mrs. Ryan, and the false position in which that fiend placed the woman at the meeting of husband and wife, which accounted for Ryan’s misunderstanding and heartless treatment of his wife on that occasion; the reconciliation of husband and wife; their projected departure for America; the necessity of deceiving Pound meanwhile, and getting away without his knowledge. All these things seemed natural enough; and, told in the desperately earnest tones of a strong man humbled, they carried conviction with them. Nor were they pleaded in vain.
The way in which Dick finally put the matter was this: —
“Remember,” he said, “that it is for my friends’ sake as much as for yours; that this is our second treaty; and that if you break one particle of it there are always four men in the house here, and villagers in plenty within a cooee of us.”
“I know all these things,” said Miles, very humbly, “and will forget none of them.”
And so the interview ended.
When Miles was gone, Dick lifted his gun, which had lain long upon the counterpane, pressed the lever, bent down the barrels, and aimed them at the glimmering window-blind. The early morning light shone right through the gleaming bores — the gun had been empty all the time! Dick felt ashamed of the part that it had played in the interview.
XXI
AN ALTERED MAN
Colonel Bristo was rambling about the place, according to habit, for a good hour the next morning before the early breakfast, but he saw nothing of Dick until the bell rang for that meal.
“I thought you meant turning out early?” said the old fellow to the young one, with a smile. “I’ve been looking for you in vain; but I’m glad you followed my advice and took it easy. Did you sleep well, though? That’s the main thing; and ‘pon my soul, you look as though you had been awake all night!”
“Oh, I was all right, thanks, sir; I slept pretty well,” said Dick, with awkward haste.
The Colonel felt pretty sure that Dick had been all wrong, and slept not at all. There was a haggard look about him that put the fact beyond the contradiction of words.
“You didn’t see Miles, I suppose?” said the Colonel after a moment’s thought. “His room is close to yours, you know.”
“I did see him. We — we exchanged a few words.”
Dick’s tone and manner were strange.
“Confound them both!” thought the Colonel. “They have clashed already. Yes, that is it. I wonder how it came about? I didn’t think they were such implacable foes. Mrs. Parish hinted to me long ago that they were, and that it would be best not to have them here together. Is it all on Alice’s account, I wonder? Anyway, it is by no scheme of mine that they are here together. Why, I wrote Miles a list of our little party without a word about Dick. I never thought Dick was coming. Yet I am glad now he is come.”
“It was really kind of you,” said Colonel Bristo aloud, “to give in and come after all.”
“No,” said Dick, with sudden fire. “I’m thankful I came! I am grateful to you for refusing to take my first refusal. Now that I am here, I would not be elsewhere at this moment for the whole world!”
The Colonel was pleased, if a little puzzled, by this vehement outburst.
“Are you really going out again — back to the bush?” he said presently.
“Yes,” said Dick, the fire within him quickly quenched. “I have quite settled that point — though I have told no one but you, Colonel Bristo.”
“Well, well — I think you are making a sad mistake; but of course every man decides for himself.”
That was all Colonel Bristo said just then, for he knew that the young people had barely seen one another as yet. But up on the moor, an hour or two later, when the guns divided, he felt inclined to say something sharp, for the manner in which Dick avoided shooting with Miles was rather too pointed, and a good deal too ridiculous and childish for the Colonel’s fancy.
That evening the conversation at the Colonel’s dinner, and that around the beer-stained board — dedicated of an evening to the engrossing domino — in the inn at Gateby, were principally upon the selfsame topic — to wit, the excellence of Miles’s shooting.
“I can’t conceive,” said the Colonel, “seeing that you have never shot grouse in your life before, how you do it.”
“If I couldn’t shoot straight,” said the hero of the evening (for the bag that day was the biggest yet, thanks to Miles), “I ought to be shot myself. I was reared on gunpowder. In the bush — instead of the silver spoon in your mouth — you are born with a fire-arm in your hand!”
Dick smiled grimly to himself. And yet this was the longest speech the Australian had made all the evening. Miles was strangely subdued, compared with what he had been at Graysbrooke. The Colonel and his daughter had each noticed this already; and as for Mrs. Parish, she was resolved to “speak up” on the subject to Alice, whom she blamed for it entirely.
“Yon yoong man — him ‘t coomed las’ night — t’ long wan, I mean,” declared Andy Garbutt in the pot-house, banging down his fourth glass (empty) upon the table, which upset several dominoes and led to “language”— “yon yoong man’s t’bes’ shot I iver seed. The way he picked off t’ould cocks, an’ let be t’yoongsters an’ all, was sumthink clever. I niver seed owt like it. They do say ’tis his first taast o’ t’mowers — but we isn’t the lads to swaller yon! Bob Rutter, y’ ould divle — fill oop t’ glasses.”
And though perhaps, hyperbole ran riot upon the heels of intoxication, still in Robert Rutter’s genial hostelry “t’ long chap’s” reputation was there and then established.
But the marked change in Miles’s manner was, to those who had known him best before, inexplicable. Never had a shooting-party a more modest, mild, and unassuming member, even among the worst of shots; and Miles was, if anything, better than Captain Awdry. His quiet boastfulness was missing. He might have passed the weeks since the beginning of July in some school of manners, where the Colonial angles had been effectually rounded off, and the old free-and-easy habits toned down. Not that he was shy or awkward — Miles was not the man to become either the one or the other; but his manner had now — towards the Colonel, for instance, and Alice — a certain deference-with-dignity, the lack of which had been its worst fault before. Dick, who scarcely spoke three words to him in as many days, suddenly awoke to a sense of relief and security.
“Poor fellow!” he thought, “he is keeping his word this time, I must own. Well, I am glad I didn’t make a scene; and the week is half over. When it is quite over, I shall be still more glad that I let him off. For, after all, I owe him my life. I am sorry I threatened him during our interview, and pe
rhaps I need not have avoided him so studiously since. Yet I am watching him, and he knows it. I watch him sometimes when he cannot possibly know it, and for the life of me I can see nothing crooked. My belief is that he’s only too thankful to get off on the terms, and that he wouldn’t break them for as much as his life is worth; besides which, his remorse the other night was genuine.”
Mrs. Parish, for her part, was quite sure that it was love unrequited with Mr. Miles, and nothing else. She fumed secretly for two days, and then “spoke up” according to her intention. What she said was not well received, and a little assault-at-words was the result.
Dr. Robson told Mr. Pinckney that he found Miles a less interesting man to talk to than he had been led to expect from his conversation the first evening. Mr. Pinckney replied that if all the Australians were as unsociable, he was glad he didn’t live out there. Though Miles, he said, might be a fine sportsman and a devilish handsome dog, there was evidently “nothing in him;” by which it was meant that he was not intellectual and literary — like L. P.
Colonel Bristo was fairly puzzled, but, on the whole, he liked the new Miles rather less than the old.
As for Alice, though she did her best to exclude her personal feelings from the pages of her diary, she could not help just touching on this matter.
“I never,” she wrote, “saw anybody so much changed as Mr. Miles, and in so short a time. Though he is certainly less amusing than we used to think him, I can’t help admitting that the change is an improvement. His audacity, I remember, carried him a little too far once or twice before he left us. But he was a hero all the time, in spite of his faults, and now he is one all the more. Oh, I can never forget what we owe to him! To me he is most polite, and not in the least (as he sometimes used to be) familiar, I am thankful to say. The more I think of it the less I can account for his strange behaviour that night of our dance — because it was so unlike what he had been up till then, and what he is now.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 228