He was very drunk; and because of that Victoria Lindley, barmaid at
O'Fallen's, was angry--not at him but at O'Fallen, who had given him the
liquor.
She knew more about him than any one else. The first time she saw him he
was not sober. She had left the bar-room empty; and when she came back
he was there with others who had dropped in, evidently attracted by his
unusual appearance--he wore an eyeglass--and he had been saying something
whimsically audacious to Dicky Merritt, who, slapping him on the
shoulder, had asked him to have a swizzle.
Dicky Merritt had a ripe sense of humour, and he was the first to grin.
This was followed by loud laughs from others, and these laughs went out
where the dust lay a foot thick and soft like precipitated velvet, and
hurrying over the street, waked the Postmaster and roused the Little
Milliner, who at once came to their doors. Catching sight of each other,
they nodded, and blushed, and nodded again; and then the Postmaster,
neglecting the business of the country, went upon his own business into
the private sitting-room of the Little Milliner; for those wandering
laughs from O'Fallen's had done the work set for them by the high powers.
Over in the hot bar-room the man with the eye-glass was being frankly
"intr'juced" to Dicky Merritt and Company, Limited, by Victoria Lindley,
who, as hostess of this saloon, was, in his eyes, on a footing of
acquaintance. To her he raised his hat with accentuated form, and
murmured his name--"Mr. Jones--Mr. Jones." Forthwith, that there might
be no possible unpleasantness--for even such hostesses have their duties
of tact--she politely introduced him as Mr. Jones.
He had been a man of innumerable occupations--nothing long: caretaker
of tanks, rabbit-trapper, boundary-rider, cook at a shearers' camp, and,
in due time, he became book-keeper at O'Fallen's. That was due to Vic.
Mr. Jones wrote a very fine hand--not in the least like a business man--
when he was moderately sober, and he also had an exceedingly caustic wit
when he chose to use it. He used it once upon O'Fallen, who was a rough,
mannerless creature, with a good enough heart, but easily irritated by
the man with the eye-glass, whose superior intellect and manner, even
when drunk, were too noticeable. He would never have employed him were
it not for Vic, who was worth very much money to him in the course of the
year. She was the most important person within a radius of a hundred and
fifty miles, not excepting Rembrandt, the owner of Bomba Station, which
was twenty miles square, nor the parson at Magari, ninety miles south, by
the Ring-Tail Billabong. For both Rembrandt and the parson had, and
showed, a respect for her, which might appear startling were it seen in
Berkeley Square or the Strand.
When, therefore, O'Fallen came raging into the barroom one morning, with
the gentle remark that "he'd roast the tongue of her fancy gent if he
didn't get up and git," he did a foolish thing. It was the first time
that he had insulted Victoria, and it was the last. She came out white
and quiet from behind the bar-counter, and, as he retreated from her into
a corner, said: "There is not a man who drinks over this bar, or puts
his horse into your shed, who wouldn't give you the lie to that and
thrash you as well--you coward!" Her words came on low and steady: "Mr.
Jones will go now, of course, but I shall go also."
This awed O'Fallen. To lose Vic was to lose the reputation of his house.
He instantly repented, but she turned her shoulder on him, and went into
the little hot office, where the book-keeper was, leaving him
gesticulating as he swore at himself in the glass behind the bar. When
she entered the room she found Mr. Jones sitting rigid on his stool,
looking at the open ledger before him. She spoke his name. He nodded
ever so slightly, but still looked hard at the book. She knew his
history. Once he had told it to her. It happened one day when he had
resigned his position as boundary-rider, in which he was practically
useless. He had been drinking, and, as he felt for the string of his
eye-glass, his fingers caught another thin black cord which protruded
slightly from his vest. He drew it out by mistake, and a small gold
cross shone for a moment against the faded black coat. His fingers felt
for it to lift it to his eye as though it were his eye-glass, but dropped
it suddenly. He turned pale for a minute, then caught it as suddenly
again, and thrust it into his waistcoat. But Vic had seen, and she had
very calm, intelligent eyes, and a vast deal of common sense, though she
had only come from out Tibbooburra way. She kept her eyes on him kindly,
knowing that he would speak in time. They were alone, for most of the
people of Wadgery were away at a picnic. There is always one moment when
a man who has a secret, good or bad, fatal or otherwise, feels that he
must tell it or die. And Mr. Jones told Vic, and she said what she
could, though she knew that a grasp of her firm hands was better than any
words; and she was equally sure in her own mind that word and grasp would
be of no avail in the end.
She saw that the beginning of the end had come as she looked at him
staring at the ledger, yet exactly why she could not tell. She knew that
he had been making a fight since he had been book-keeper, and that now he
felt that he had lost. She guessed also that he had heard what O'Fallen
said to her, and what she had replied.
"You ought not to have offended him," she tried to say severely.
"It had to come," he said with a dry, crackling laugh, and he fastened
his eye-glass in his eye. "I wasn't made for this. I could only do one
thing, and--" He laughed that peculiar laugh again, got down from the
stool, and held out his hand to her.
"What do you intend?" she said. "I'm going, of course. Good-bye!"
"But not at once?" she said very kindly.
"Perhaps not just at once," he answered with a strange smile.
She did not know what to say or do; there are puzzling moments even for a
wise woman, and there is nothing wiser than that.
He turned at the door. "God bless you!" he said. Then, as if caught in
an act to be atoned for, he hurried out into the street. From the door
she watched him till the curtains of dust rose up about him and hid him
from sight. When he came back to Wadgery months after he was a terrible
wreck; so much so that Vic could hardly look at him at first; and she
wished that she had left O'Fallen's as she threatened, and so have no
need to furnish any man swizzles. She knew he would never pull himself
together now. It was very weak of him, and horrible, but then . . .
When that thirst gets into the blood, and there's something behind the
man's life too--as Dicky Merritt said, "It's a case for the little black
angels."
Vic would not give him liquor. He got it, however, from other sources.
He was too far gone to feel any shame now. His sensibilities were all
blunted. One day he babbled over the bar-counter to O'Fallen, desiring
greatly that they should be reconciled. To that end he put down the last
shilling he had for a swizzle, and was so outrageously offended when
O'Fallen refused to take it, that the silver was immediately swept into
the till; and very soon, with his eye-glass to his eye, Mr. Jones was
drunk.
That was the occasion mentioned in the first sentence of this history,
when Vic was very angry.
The bar-room was full. Men were wondering why it was that the Postmaster
and the Little Milliner, who went to Magari ten days before, to get
married by the parson there, had not returned. While they talked and
speculated, the weekly coach from Magari came up slowly to the door, and,
strange to say, without a blast from the driver's horn. Dicky Merritt
and Company rushed out to ask news of the two truants, and were met with
a warning wave of the driver's hand, and a "Sh-h! sh--!" as he motioned
towards the inside of the coach. There they found the Postmaster and the
Little Milliner mere skeletons, and just alive. They were being cared
for by a bushman, who had found them in the plains, delirious and nearly
naked. They had got lost, there being no regular road over the plains,
and their horse, which they had not tethered properly, had gone large.
They had been days without food and water when they were found near the
coach-track.
They were carried into O'Fallen's big sitting-room. Dicky brought the
doctor, who said that they both would die, and soon. Hours passed. The
sufferers at last became sane and conscious, as though they could not go
without something being done. The Postmaster lifted a hand to his
pocket. Dicky Merritt took out of it a paper. It was the marriage
licence. The Little Milliner's eyes were painful to see; she was not
dying happy. The Postmaster, too, moved his head from side to side in
trouble. He reached over and took her hand. She drew it back,
shuddering a little. "The ring! The ring!" she whispered.
"It is lost," he said.
Vic, who was at the woman's head, understood. She stooped, said
something in her ear, then in that of the Postmaster, and left the room.
When she came back, two minutes later, Mr. Jones was with her. What she
had done to him to sober him no one ever knew. But he had a book in his
hand, and on the dingy black of his waistcoat there shone a little gold
cross. He came to where the two lay. Vic drew from her finger a ring.
What then occurred was never forgotten by any who saw it; and you could
feel the stillness, it was so great, after a high, sing-song voice said:
"Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder."
The two lying cheek by cheek knew now that they could die in peace.
The sing-song voice rose again in the ceremony of blessing, but suddenly
it quavered and broke, the man rose, dropping the prayer-book to the
floor, and ran quickly out of the room and into the dust of the street,
and on, on into the plains.
"In the name of God, who is he?" said Dicky Merritt to Victoria Lindley.
"He was the Reverend Jones Leverton, of Harfordon-Thames," was her reply.
"Once a priest, always a priest," added Dicky. "He'll never come back,"
said the girl, tears dropping from her eyes.
And she was right.