His tactics indicated a desire to glide swiftly through the township without either stopping or being stopped, if possible without being seen. He took the very centre of the broad straggling street, and showed in this a nice judgment, for the night was so thick that from neither side of the street could one see half-way across it. But the flaring hotel verandahs on either side were plain enough from the middle of the road, and not only could the traveller hear the sounds of revelry issuing from them—for these had been audible for the last half-mile—but he distinguished some of the voices, and caught scraps of the high-toned conversations. In what was generally known (though not from its sign-board) as the “opposition shanty,” they were talking politics—Colonial politics, and in that instance tipsy ones. In the verandah of the Royal, however, a more practical discussion was on foot—on the ringing of the Timber Town church-bells. One roysterer wanted to ring them at twelve o’clock—it was then 11.40—while another objected on traditional grounds. The latter said the good old English custom was to ring in the New Year, but not Christmas; the former ridiculed the notion that old English customs should obtain, unchallenged, in the bush; and this one, who was the more fluent swearer of the two, and had all the popular arguments on his side, seemed to have a majority of roysterers with him.
“The ringers win—it’s odds on them,” said the new arrival; and he hurried noiselessly on.
He was soon in the region of the little iron church for whose bell-ropes those roysterers’ fingers were itching. The church was invisible in the opaque darkness; but the traveller knew well enough where it was. The State school and the police barracks, on the other side of the road, were also invisible, at least their outlines were; but faint lights revealed their whereabouts.
The mysterious visitor now left the middle of the road, skirted the police-barrack fence, and came—with steps that all at once became halting and unsteady—to the school gate; and there he paused, and started back-ward with his hand upon the latch.
Barbara was seated in the verandah, leaning forward, her head bowed and her hands clasped. Seth Whitty bent over her.
“You know how I have waited,” he was pleading—and dignity and humility jostled each other in his deep manly tones; “how long I have loved you, how hopelessly once, how deeply all through. You must know that what I profess is at least true.”
“I know that. Oh, I know that so well!”
“Yet you still refuse me.”
“No, no. I say, give me time. Do not count upon me; never again count upon a woman.”
“And I have said I will give you until we both are gray!”
“It shall not be so long as that, if it is to be at all,” said Barbara gently; “only do not count.”
They were both silent. Seth disturbed the eloquent silence most rudely by flying incontinently to the gate, where he stood motionless in a listening attitude.
“What was it?” Barbara called to him.
“I heard something.”
“Can you see anything?”
“Nothing. The night is like pitch. But I feel certain—”
At that moment the bells rang forth, and unholy shouts came with the clangour from the iron church over the way. Seth came back to the verandah.
“It was those men that you heard,” said Barbara.
“I don’t think it was; it seemed, like footsteps quite near, and I thought some one touched the latch. But it doesn’t matter now; for it’s Christmas morning—: Christmas again, Barbara! And I wish you a very happy Christmas, and—and I will wait as long as you like!”
He pressed her hand and dropped it: he took her hand again, and raised it reverently to his lips.
Those merry souls tugged at the bell-ropes until they were tired, and that was not immediately. But before the wild ringing ceased the solitary mysterious pedestrian had retraced his steps rather better than a mile. None knew his coming nor his going; and the single street of Timber Town never saw him more.
THE END.
Note on the Author
Ernest William Hornung (1866 – 1921) was a prolific English poet and novelist, famed for his A. J. Raffles series of novels about a gentleman thief in late 19th century London.
Hornung spent most of his life in England and France, but in 1883 he traveled to Australia where he lived for three years, his experiences there shaping many of his novels and short stories.
On returning to England he worked as a journalist, and also published many of his poems and short stories in newspapers and magazines. A few years after his return, he married Constance Aimée Doyle, sister of his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with whom he had a son.
During WWI he followed the troops in French trenches and later gave a detailed account of his encounters in Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front.
Ernest Hornung died in 1921.
Discover books by E.W. Hornung published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/EWHornung
A Bride from the Bush
Under Two Skies
This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1892 Ernest William Hornung
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eISBN: 9781448213351
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Under Two Skies Page 18