“Well, I bet you the man who takes your place thinks differently.”
“Very likely.”
“Got a decent hutkeeper?”
“What? Oh yes. Pretty fair.”
Clearly Stanesby was not in the mood for conversation, and Turner gave
it up as a bad job. It was about two o’clock now, the very hottest hour
of the day, and all nature seemed to feel it. Not a sound broke the
stillness, not the cry of bird or beast, nothing save the sound of their
horses’ hoofs on the hard ground was to be heard.
“By Jove!” said Turner, “this is getting unbearable. I vote we get down
and shelter for a spell under the lee of the bank.”
For all answer, Stanesby raised his whip and pointed ahead.
“There ‘s the hut,” he said. “Better get on.”
It was hardly distinguishable from the surrounding plain, the little hut
built of rough logs, and roofed with sheets of bark stripped from
the trees which grew in the river-bed. Down in the creek there was
a waterhole, a waterhole surrounded by tall reeds and other aquatic
vegetation which gave it a look of permanence, of freshness and
greenness in this burnt-up land. But that was down in the creek, round
the hut was the plain, barren here as elsewhere; no effort had been made
to cultivate it or improve it, and the desert came up to the very doors.
The only sign of human life was the refuse from the small household--an
empty tin or two, fragments of broken bottles, and scraps of rag and
paper, only that and the hut itself, and a small yard for horses and
cattle, that was all--not a tree, not a green thing. The bed of the
creek was their garden, but it was not visible from the house; its
inmates could only see the desolate plain, nothing but that for miles
and miles, far as the eye could see. So monotonous, so dreary an
outlook, it was hardly possible to believe there was anything else
in the world, anything but this lonely little hut, with, for all its
paradise, the waterhole in the creek below.
Turner said nothing. It was exactly what he expected; he lived in a
similar place, a place without a creek close handy, where the only water
came from a well, and undiluted, was decidedly unpleasant to the taste.
No, in his eyes Stanesby had nothing to grumble at.
The owner of this palatial residence coo-eed shrilly.
“Jimmy; I say, Jimmy!”
A long, lank black boy, clad in a Crimean shirt and a pair of old riding
breeches, a world too big for him, rose lazily up from beside the house,
where he had been basking in the sun, and came towards them.
Stanesby dismounted and flung him his reins, Turner following suit.
“All gone sleep,” said Jimmy, nodding his head in the direction of the
hut, a grin showing up the white of his regular teeth against his black
face.
“Come on in, Turner.”
The door was open and the two men walked straight into the small hut.
It was very dark at first coming in out of the brilliant sunshine, but
as Turner’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, he saw that the interior
was just exactly what he should have expected it to be. The floor was
hard earth, the walls were unlined, the meagre household goods were
scattered about in a way that did not say much for his friend’s
hutkeeper, a shelf with a few old books and papers on it, was the only
sign of culture, and a rough curtain of sacking dividing the place in
two, was the only thing that was not common to every hut in all that
part of Western Australia.
“Howling swell, you are, old chap! Go in for two rooms I see.”
The curtain was thrust aside, and to Turners astonishment, a girl’s face
peered round it. A beautiful girl’s face too, the like of which he
had not seen for many a year, if indeed, he had ever seen one like it
before; a face with oval, liquid dark eyes in whose depths a light lay
hidden, with full red pouting lips, and a broad low brow half hidden by
heavy masses of dark, untidy hair, which fell in picturesque confusion
over it. A beautiful face in shape and form, and rich dark colouring,
and Turner started back too astonished to speak. Such a face! Never
in all his life had he seen such a face, and the look turned on his
companion was easy enough to read.
“Come here, Kitty,” said Stanesby in an unconcerned voice. “I want some
dinner for this gentleman.”
Then she stepped out, and the illusion vanished. For she was only a
half-caste, beautiful as a dream, or he who had not seen a woman for
many a long day--he never counted the black gins women--thought so,
but only a despised half-caste, outcast both from father’s and mother’s
race.
Not that she looked unhappy. On the contrary, she came forward and
smiled on him a slow, lazy smile, the smile of one who is utterly
contented with her lot in life.
“Whew! So that ‘s our hutkeeper, is it?”
“Dinner, Kitty.”
The girl took a tin dish from the shelf and went outside. She walked
well and gracefully, and Turner followed her with his eyes.
“By Jove!” he said, “talk about good looks. Why, Dick, you--”
“Hang it all, man,” said Stanesby. “I know well enough what you ‘re
thinking. The girl _is_ good-looking, I suppose, for a half-caste. The
boss’s sister, old Miss Howard, found her among the tribe, a wild little
wretch, and took her in and did her best to civilise her; but it wasn’t
easy work, and the old lady died before it was done.”
“And you ‘re completing the job?”
Stanesby shrugged his shoulders.
“I saw her, of course, when I went in to the head-station, which wasn’t
very often, and I suppose I told her she was a good-looking girl. She
mayn’t understand much, but she understood _that_ right enough, trust
a woman for that. Good Lord! I never gave her a second thought, till I
found her at my door one night. The little beggar had had a row with ‘em
up at the house and came right off to me. It wasn’t any use protesting.
She might have done worse, and here she ‘s been ever since. But she’s
got the temper of a fiend, I can tell you, and it ain’t all skittles and
beer.”
The girl entered the room and Stanesby began turning over his mail
letters, making his companion feel that the subject had better be
dropped between them. He had explained the girl’s presence, he wanted no
comments from his old friend.
He filled his pipe and sat down on the only three-legged stool the hut
contained, watching his friend seated on a box opposite and the girl
passing in and out getting ready the rough meal. She was graceful,
she was beautiful, as some wild thing is beautiful, there was no doubt
whatever of that. Her dress was of Turkey red; old Miss Howard had had a
fancy for dressing all her dark _protegées_ in bright colours, and they
had followed in her footsteps up at the station, and Turner mentally
appraising the girl before him, quite approved her taste. The dress was
old and somewhat faded, but its severe simplicity and its dull tints
just set off the girl’s dusky beauty. Shoes and stockings she had
none, but what matter? any touch of civilisation would have spoiled the
picture.
Stanesby apparently took no notice of her, but began to read extracts
from his letters and papers for his companion’s benefit. He was hardly
at his ease, and Turner made only a pretence of listening. He could not
take his eyes from the girl who was roughly setting out the table for
their meal. “The temper of a fiend,” truly he thought it not unlikely,
judging by the glances she threw at him whenever she took her eyes
from Stanesby. She could hardly have understood what he read, but she
listened intently and cast angry glances every now and then on Turner.
He and these letters, she seemed to feel, were not of her world, they
were taking this man away from her. Yes, he could well believe she had
the temper of a fiend. But she said nothing. Her mother had come of a
race which from time immemorial had held its women in bondage, and
she spoke no word, probably she had no words in which to express her
feelings.
The table was laid at last, and a piece of smoking salt beef and a great
round damper brought in from outside and put on it.
“Dinner,” said the girl sullenly, but Stanesby went on reading, and paid
no attention, and Turner felt himself watching to see what would happen
next. He caught only snatches of the letter, just enough to know it was
a description of a hunt in England, of a damp, cold, cloudy day, of an
invigorating run--the contrast struck him forcibly--the stifling, hot
little hut, and the jealous, half-savage woman standing there, her eyes
aflame with anger at the slight she fancied was put upon her.
She stole over and touched Stanesby lightly on the arm, but he shook her
off as he would a fly and went on reading calmly.
The other man watched the storm gather on her face. She stood for one
moment looking, not at Stanesby but at him; it was very evident whom she
blamed for her lover’s indifference; then she stretched across to the
table and caught up a knife. Her breath was coming thick and fast and
Turner never took his eyes off her, in between her gasping breath he
heard his friend’s voice, slow and deliberate as ever, still telling the
tale of the English hunting day, still reading the letter which put such
a world between him and the girl standing beside him. Then there was a
flash of steel, Turner felt rather than saw that it was directed at him,
and, before he even had time to think, Stanesby had sprung to his feet
and grasped her by the arm.
“Would you now? Would you?” He might have been speaking to a fractious
horse. Then as Turner too sprang to his feet and snatched the knife from
her hand, he flung her off with an oath.
“You little devil!” He sat down again with an uneasy laugh, and the girl
with an inarticulate cry flung herself out of the open door. In all
the half hour that had elapsed, she had spoken no word except when she
called them to their dinner; but in that inarticulate moan the other man
seemed to read the whole bitterness of her story.
“I told you,” said Stanesby, he seemed to feel some explanation or
apology were necessary; “I told you she had the temper of a fiend. I
hope she didn’t hurt you, old man?”
“No, no. She meant business, though, only you were too quick for her.
But I say, old man, it isn’t well to have a good-looking young woman fix
her affections on you in that ardent manner. There’ll be the devil to
pay, some day.”
The other laughed, and then sighed.
“I tell you it was no fault of mine,” he said.
“Come on and get something to eat. There’s whisky in that bottle.”
Virtually he had dismissed the subject; with the disappearance of the
girl he would have let the matter drop, but he was not at his ease, and
his old chum was less so. It was all very well to talk of old times,
of college days, of mutual friends, each was thinking, and each was
uncomfortably conscious that the other, too, was thinking, of that
dark-eyed, straight-limbed young savage who had forced her personality
upon them both, and was so far, so very far, removed from the world of
which they spoke. There was another thing too, a fair-haired,
blue-eyed girl, as different--as different as the North Pole from the
Equator--each had loved her, to each she had been the embodiment of
all earthly virtues, and each thought of her as well, too--the one
man bitterly. Why should this man, this whilom friend of his, have
everything? And the other man read his thoughts, and unreasoning anger
grew up in his heart against his old chum. It has nothing whatever to do
with Dick Stanesby’s hutkeeper, of course, nothing whatever; but it is
nevertheless a fact, that these two old friends spent what should have
been a pleasant afternoon, devoted to reminiscences of old times and a
renewal of early friendship, in uncomfortable silence. The monthly mail,
which Stanesby had brought in, contained many papers, and after their
meal they lighted their pipes and read diligently, first one paper
and then another. At first they made efforts at conversation, read out
incidents and scraps of news and commented thereon, but as the afternoon
wore on, the silence grew till it became difficult to break it. The
sunlight outside crept in and in through the open doorway. There were no
shadows because there was nothing to cast shadows, save the banks of the
creek down below the level of the plain and the red bluffs, thirty
miles to the eastward. But the sun stole in and crossed the hard
earthen floor, and stole up the wall on the other side, crept up slowly,
emphasising the dull blankness of the place. So did the sun every day
of the year, pretty nearly; so did he in every stockkeeper’s hut on
the plains of Western Australia; but to-day he seemed to Turner to be
mocking his misery, pointing it out and emphasising it. Such his life
had been for the last three or four years; such it was now; such it
would be to the end. He could see no prospect of change, no prospect
of better things: always the bare walls and the earthen floors for him;
unloved, uncared for he had lived, unloved and uncared for he would die.
And this man beside him--bah! it would not bear thinking of. He pushed
back the stool he had been sitting on, and strolling to the door looked
out. Nothing in sight but the black boy, who wasn’t a boy at all, but a
man apparently over thirty years of age, lolling up against the verandah
post, like one who had plenty of time on his hands.
Stanesby got up and joined him. The hot wind that had blown fiercely all
day had died down, and now there hardly seemed a breath of air stirring.
It was stupid to comment on the weather in a place where the weather
was always the same, but Turner felt the need of something to say, so he
seized on the well-worn topic.
“It’s getting a little cooler, I think.”
“Confound it, no.”
Stanesby looked round discontentedly. The untidy, uninviting remains of
their midday meal were still on the table, pushed aside to make room
for the papers they had been reading; it gave the place a dishevelled,
comfortless air, which made its dull blank-ness ten times worse.
Turner noticed it, but he did not feel on sufficiently good terms to
rail at his friend’s hutkeeper, as he would have done in the morning. He
only shrugged his shoulders meaningly when Stanesby called out,
“Boy! I say, Jimmy, where’s the girl?”
Jimmy turned lazily and showed his white teeth.
“Sit down along a creek, you bet.”
“Go and fetch her.”
Jimmy showed his white teeth again, and grinned largely, but he did not
stir.
“My word! Baal{1} this blackfellow go.”
“Much as his life is worth, I guess,” said