Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  The well-built homestead among the tall pines on the sandhills had absolutely no attraction for the town-bred girl. The surrounding miles of salt-bush plains and low monotonous scrub oppressed her when she wandered abroad. There was not one picturesque patch on the whole dreary “run.” Then she was prejudiced against squatters in general, and unjustly accepted her taciturn, close-fisted brother-in-law as a type of the class. Him she could not endure. She pitied her elder sister, the gentle Julia, who, having thrown herself away to begin with, made the worst of the bargain by becoming her children’s meek, submissive slave. Their name was legion, and they were young savages one and all; the only one of them that Aunt Jenny would have anything at all to do with, while she could help it, was the reigning baby in arms.

  At first, it is true, the young lady thought it rather nice to have a horse to ride at her own sweet pleasure. But this treat was minimised after the first ride, when Duncan gravely cautioned her against galloping his horses while “feed” was so scarce in the paddocks and chaff so expensive; and after Miss Jenny had frightened herself horribly by losing her way in the scrub, and not finding it again for several hours, she removed the ride from her daily programme, and reserved it for those times when her nephews and nieces succeeded in making a perfect pandemonium of the homestead.

  Her days were spent chiefly among the pines, with a book or some fancy-work, or in the verandah when the children were out of the way. It was here that she made Clinton a gorgeous sermon-case of purple velvet, with C.B. in a crest of gold on one cover and I.H.S. on the other. This touching and suggestive present brought down upon her head a very beautiful letter from the ardent curate, who rashly stated that henceforth his sermons would be inspired. But the letter was far too beautiful to be answered immediately, or even to be read over twice. Not that Browne had rivals in Messrs. Bird and Parker, overseer and storekeeper respectively. Miss Howard took not the faintest interest in either of them, though she had subjugated poor Parker (quite unintentionally) on the evening of her arrival, and been compelled to snub the forward and facetious young overseer a few days later.

  “I declare,” Jenny wrote to a friend, “except dear old Julia, there’s not a soul fit to speak to on the premises! And the children prevent one speaking to Julia — little wretches! My dear, I mayn’t even sing in the evenings for fear of waking them, and even if I might it would be no pleasure with a pannikin of a piano, besides which, none of them know a note of music! I Wish I had never carted all my songs up here — the sight of them tantalises me. As for the men, they are insufferable — not that I want to go back to Melbourne just yet. After all, I knew what to expect, for, as you know too, all bushmen are the same!”

  Fate, coming down from heaven in the form of a heavy and welcome rainfall, proved Miss Genevieve Howard at fault in respect of this sweeping judgment.

  On a gray and lowering day that young lady might have been seen cantering by the Seven-mile whim; she was seen, in fact, by the whim-driver, who ran to open a gate for her. The act of politeness did not strike Miss Jenny — as it ought to have done — as abnormal on the part of a station hand; nor did a hint about coming foul weather, spoken with unusual deference, receive the slightest attention. She threw a bone of thanks to the dog her gate-opener, and rode through without once looking under the brim of the gray felt wideawake on a level with her dogskin gloves.

  But a few minutes later, as Jim stood at his hut door watching the rain come down in real earnest, there was a muffled tattoo of hoofs upon the soft sandy soil, and a horse pulled up in front of the hut.

  The diffident tone and manner in which the young lady now addressed him offered such a pretty contrast to her monosyllable at the gate that Jim very nearly burst out laughing; instead, however, he bared, and ever so slightly inclined, his head, just as a gentleman would have done in his place.

  “I think this is called the Seven-mile hut?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Is Mr. Macdonald here?”

  “No, miss.’

  “But you expect him?”

  “No. I’ve heard nothing about it.”

  “Oh, but I heard him say he was coming here.”

  “Then he’ll come, you may be sure, miss.”

  The drops were falling thick and heavy.

  “And I thought,” said Miss Jenny doubtfully, “I might drive back with him in the buggy, which has a hood. I know Mr. Macdonald is coming here, for I heard him say so. I am only surprised he hasn’t come yet.”

  “He’ll come any minute,” said Jim with decision. “Help you to dismount, miss? That’s it. Now, if you’ll step in there out o’ the rain, I’ll take the saddle orf of the ‘orse.”

  The whim-driver followed Miss Jenny into the hut, carrying the saddle. Then he kicked the log into a blaze, drew near it the legless armchair on the soapbox, observed that Mr. Macdonald was certain not to be long, and, without another word, went out.

  Miss Jenny listened to his retreating steps (and those of her horse, which he was evidently leading to some shelter) until they were lost to the ear in the rattle of rain on the iron roof; then she stood irresolute, her mouth pursed into the tiniest crimson circle, and doubt in her eyes. She made a pretty picture in her dark blue habit, the firelight sweeping over the flushed face underneath the white straw hat, and dancing in her hair — a pretty picture in a frame of unbarked pine, with a beading of galvanised iron.

  She glanced round the wooden walls. How clean and tidy everything was! She had never imagined that common bushmen looked after their huts like this. Was this a common bushman, by the way? He certainly said “orf of” for “off,” and dropped the h from “horse”; but otherwise he spoke almost as well as she did herself; his manners were better than those, say, of Mr. Bird; and he was really handsome — she had discovered this at last. What a pity he was only an ignorant bushman! He was nothing more, after all; or else, for one thing, he would not fight so shy of a riding-habit.

  The girl sat down on the quaint seat in front of the fire, and the spurting flames made her thoughtful.... Presently she realised that there were no more flames, but only embers: her meditations had taken time. Yet the whim-driver did not return. Where had he gone? Did the absurd creature mean to leave her sitting there all day? She would demand her horse and brave the rain — only, now that she had waited so long for Duncan, it would be weak not to wait a little longer and be driven home dry. She raised her eyes from the red embers of the fire; they had rested on the glowing logs too long; they burned and ached, so that the rest of the hut was dark and indistinct to them.

  Had this sensation lasted, Miss Jenny would at least have been spared a more startling one; for her clearing eyesight was greeted by a pair of emerald eyes transfixing her from the blurred gloom of the chimney corner. The eyes had no body, and Miss Jenny jumped up in high alarm, tumbling the legless chair from its pedestal the soap-box. A horrible sound issued from the region of the staring eyes. Miss Jenny leapt upon the soap-box, and thence, with immense agility, on to the table. Her sight lost all its dimness: the owner of the unearthly eyes, the author of the unearthly sound, stood revealed — a small black demon, with a back bent like a bow before the arrow leaves it.

  Now, cats were this young lady’s pet abhorrence; so she instinctively took the measure that had served her through life on like occasions, and screamed out lustily. Nor did she stop until the whim-driver appeared at the door with a scared face. Then, in an instant, she was sufficiently collected, and more than sufficiently indignant.

  “Take that nasty, horrid little wretch away!” gasped Miss Jenny.

  Jim simultaneously grasped the situation and poor Stumpy — the latter by that loose skin at the back of the neck which is to your hand what the loop of your overcoat is to the peg.

  “Stumpy!” he began, in a terrible voice, “you’re a little—”

  His teeth came together with a snap. Terror filled his face, for he felt as a man who has driven within an inch of a precipice, and pulled the righ
t rein at the right second. And the words that Jim checked in his throat it would be grossly unfair to conjecture. He relieved himself by tossing Stumpy into the inner room, and banging the door.

  “Danger’s past,” he then said, smiling at the goddess aloft, with his head cocked at the rakish angle which he could not help. “You may venture on deck, miss.”

  He held up his hands to her assistance. What else could he do? But he may have done it awkwardly, for Miss Jenny stood immovable, vowing she was all right where she was. Jim thereupon threw himself with vigour into mending the fire. A modest idea occurred to him that advantage might perhaps be taken of his back being turned; and he was quite right, for there followed a flutter in the air and a light bounce on the floor; and when Jim looked round, after a decent interval, Miss Howard was standing gazing out of doors. He was glad she had not fallen and bothered him to pick her up.

  Out of doors it was raining hopelessly; nor was there any sign of the good Duncan. The heavy framework of the whim loomed dispiritingly through the rain. There was nothing to look at.

  “How do you work a whim?” all at once asked the visitor. —

  “By driving a horse round and round,” Jim answered; and he came and looked out at a respectful distance from her.

  “How very lively! I should rather like to see one working.”

  “We don’t do it in wet weather; there’s plenty of water without. But if you cared to come some hot-wind day, miss, I’d show you the whole thing, and welcome.”

  There was no eagerness in his tone; the invitation was inspired by a civil instinct, nothing more; and at that moment Jim-of-the-Whim was as good a misogynist as he had ever been. But Miss Jenny was rude enough not to answer; and Jim became exasperated: and that was the beginning of it all.

  “Will you look round again to see the whim at work?” Jim asked, out of pure pique.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Make it a bargain, miss!”

  “A bargain, then. If Mr. Macdonald doesn’t come at once, I must ride back, rain or no rain.”

  Jim thought that he should not grieve if she did. “I hope you’ll do no such thing, miss,” was, however, what he said; and certainly, for a common man, he was wonderfully ready with a polite falsehood. “I’ll make you a billy of tea and a johnny-cake in true bush style, miss, if you’ll do me the honour to try ‘em when made.”

  Miss Howard consented with light hauteur, and went on gazing out into the rain, wondering by what stages such a good-looking, decent-spoken man had gravitated to the bush; and whether he had ever been anything very much better than a whim-driver.

  As for Jim, he made himself very busy indeed, sitting on his heels over the fire in an attitude peculiar to back-blockers; and there was silence in the hut for several minutes. Then Miss Jenny grew tired of looking out of doors, and wandered round the room, examining the prints on the walls. Many of these she remembered in the English and Colonial illustrated papers. One from the Sketcher — one that occupied a place of honour “on the line” — she remembered particularly well; for it represented a scene from an opera of which she was passionately fond, in her passionate little way. The opera was La Traviata. In a twinkling Verdi’s airs were chasing each other in her ears. Half unconsciously she began humming the one that came first. This was the duet beginning “Parigi, o cara,” which had made a great impression on Miss Jenny once (nay, many times more than once), all because of the soulful tenor who had played Alfred. With this tenor, in fact — one Signor Roberto — Miss Howard, in common with other little sentimentalists, had fallen innocently and entirely in love during the run of Traviata at the opera-house.

  But before she had hummed the second bar of that duet, Miss Jenny turned sharply round — with animation practically suspended; for from some quarter of the hut, as if by magic, a tenor voice like unto the divine Roberto’s was boldly singing the lines that had risen faintly and formlessly to the girl’s lips —

  “Parigi, o cara, noi lasceremo...”

  Genevieve disbelieved her ears; their evidence should have been corroborated by her eyes, but it was not. She rubbed her eyes, and fastened them upon the one possible and visible owner of a tenor voice; but the whim-driver still sat at ease upon his heels, with his face turned to the fire and his back to Miss Jenny; and, before she could make up her mind that the whim-driver and the singer were one, the voice ceased softly.

  Miss Jenny knew what ought to happen now: the soprano ought to catch up the refrain, and repeat the solo. It was only a little bit of a solo, of two dozen bars or so; then why not?

  Wild with excitement, knowing the thing by heart, she opened her lips, and out it came. It was no humming matter now; Miss Jenny was on her mettle; and if there was a slight nervous tremor in the notes, they were none the less true for that, and all the more tender.

  A moment later the pace quickened, and both voices were in the running. Then it was that Jim rose to his feet — that the singers faced one another with sparkling eyes — that the whole hut rang and trembled with enchanting sounds. After that the voices sank and slackened, and died away in a soft embrace — pianissimo. And poor little Miss Jenny knew what she had done, and was instantly stunned by the buffets of a dozen different emotions.

  “I’ve no right to know Italian; please keep it quiet, miss,” said Jim humbly, speaking first, and as though nothing much had happened, yet with a rather sad smile; “and some day I’ll — show you how the whim works.”

  For at this moment Macdonald’s buggy swept in front of the hut and pulled up.

  And Jim said that night to his mate: —

  “Stumpy, you recollect what I was saying to you not so long since about wimmin? Keep clear of ‘em, Stumps, my son. Never let me catch you frightening ‘em no more, and getting your master mixed up in it, or I’ll chuck you down the blessed whim, little Christian though you are!”

  III.

  ABOUT this time a change came over the whim-driver at the Seven-mile. It was noticed by young Parker, who saw him frequently, and lamented by the landlord of the Governor Loftus Hotel, the nearest grog-shanty, where Jim and his cheque were row several weeks overdue. The fact was, Jim had renounced the luxury of the periodical “drunk,” and was coming out as a bush dandy. He shaved himself every morning of his life; he appeared in none but the snowiest moleskins and the pinkest and most becoming of striped cotton shirts; he even went to the extreme lunacy of shining his boots every evening before retiring to his bunk. But, what was far more remarkable, his speech was the speech of Jim-of-the-Whim no more. He dropped no aspirates, his sentences were grammatical; and without any specific deduction from his case, it may be noted as a curious fact that errors of speech may be easily acquired by any educated man who chooses to live long enough in a low grade, and takes pains to forget what culture he once possessed. He seldom swore, and when he did the short sharp pistol-crack was a mere mockery of his former bullock-driving broadside. Stumpy, could he but have spoken, would have borne valuable testimony on the latter point, since he was the party most affected (not forgetting the whim-horse, a hardened drudge) by his master’s change in this respect; and the sagacious little animal would have assured you that the endearing epithets now showered upon him were entirely inoffensive in their nature.

  It would have been taxing feline intelligence unfairly, however, to have expected the little cat to note the subtler indications of the change in Jim: the look of expectancy and hope with which he rose of mornings, the disappointment in his face at evening, the glances he would cast all day along the track towards the homestead, the frequency with which he sang, whistled, and hummed one tune. These points were too fine for the cleverest cat in the world — even Dick Whittington’s might have missed them.

  But events long looked for come in the end when least expected; and the coming of Jim’s goddess was a case in point.

  The whim was out of order, and Jim for once idle, waiting for the blacksmith, who had been sent out from the homestead, and gone back to his
forge there with a bit of greasy paper covered with diagrams. Jim sat outside on the ground in the shade of the hut, toes up, arms folded, eyes closed. A clay pipe was between his teeth, but the ashes in the bowl were cold. Jim was asleep, and dreaming of her who was alternately minx and angel in his waking mind, but always angel in his dreams. Suddenly he awoke: and the angel sat not far from him in her saddle.

  The pipe fell from Jim’s lips as his jaw dropped. Next moment he had sprung to his feet, and a dusky colour flooded his face with one swift wave.

  “Good afternoon,” he said, snatching off his wideawake. “I — I beg your pardon, miss.”

  Miss Jenny begged his. “I have come to be shown how a whim works,” said she.

  “Ah, I feared you had forgotten all about that!”

  “So I had,” declared Miss Jenny with unblushing readiness. “I never thought of it until, riding this way again, the whim reminded me. I am ready to be shown at once, if” — severely— “you are not too busy!”

  Jim stepped diffidently forward, gnawing at his moustache, and proffered his aid as formerly. But she cut him short.

  “No, thank you; I’m not going to get off; I can’t stay a moment longer than just to see this wonderful whim — then I’m off.”

  This was delicious. If the whim were admitted to be out of gear she would simply canter away without a thank-you; therefore Jim would admit nothing. In silence he led the way to the whim, Miss Jenny riding after him at a walk. Under the black ugly wooden framework, which was high enough for Miss Jenny to continue sitting upright in her saddle, they both stopped; and Jim began to explain.