The small, wooden Wesleyan chapel at Waddy was perched on an eminence at
the end of the township furthest from the Drovers' Arms. The chapel,
according to the view of the zealous brethren who conducted it,
represented all that counted for righteousness in the township, and the
Drovers' Arms the head centre of the powers of evil. For verbal
convenience in prayer and praise the hotel was known as 'The Sink of
Iniquity,' and the chapel as 'This Little Corner of the Vineyard,' and
through the front windows of the latter, one sabbath morn after another
for many years, lusty Cornishmen, moved by the spirit, had hurled down
upon McMahon and his house strident and terrible denunciations.
Materially the chapel had nothing in common with a vineyard; it was built
upon arid land as bare and barren as a rock; not even a blade of grass
grew within a hundred yards of its doors. The grim plainness of the old
drab building was relieved only by a rickety bell-tower so stuffed with
sparrows' nests that the bell within gave forth only a dull and muffled
note. The chapel was surrounded with the framework of a fence only, so
the chapel ground was the chief rendezvous of all the goats of Waddy--and
they were many and various. They gathered in its shade in the summer and
sought its shelter from the biting blast in winter, not always content
with an outside stand; for the goats of Waddy were conscious of their
importance, and of a familiar and impudent breed. Sometimes a matronly
nanny would climb the steps, and march soberly up the aisle in the midst
of one of Brother Tregaskis's lengthy prayers; or a haughty billy,
imposing as the he-goat of the Scriptures, would take his stand within
the door and bay a deep, guttural response to Brother Spence; or two or
three kids would come tumbling over the forms and jumping and bucking in
the open space by the wheezy and venerable organ, spirits of thoughtless
frivolity in the sacred place.
It was Sunday morning and the school was in. The classes were arranged in
their accustomed order, the girls on the right, the boys on the left,
against the walls; down the middle of the chapel the forms were empty;
nearest to the platform on either hand of Brother Ephraim Shine, the
superintendent, were the Sixth Class little boys and girls, the latter
painfully starched and still, with hair tortured by many devices into
damp links or wispy spirals that passed by courtesy for curls. Very
silent and submissive were little girls of Class VI., impressed by the
long, lank superintendent in his Sunday black, and believing in many
wonders secreted above the dusty rafters or in the wide yellow cupboards.
The first classes were nearest the door. The young ladies, if we make
reasonable allowance for an occasional natural preoccupation induced by
their consciousness of the proximity of the young men, were devoted
students of the gospel a interpreted by Brother Tresize, and sufficiently
saintly always, presuming that no disturbing element such as a new hat or
an unfamiliar dress was introduced to awaken the critical spirit. The
young men, looking in their Sunday clothes like awkward and tawdry
imitations of their workaday selves, were instructed by Brother Spence;
and Brother Bowden, being the kindliest, gentlest, most incapable man of
the band of brothers, was given the charge of the boys' Second Class, a
class of youthful heathen, rampageous, fightable, and flippant, who made
the good man's life a misery to him, and were at war with all authority.
Peterson, Jacker Mack, Dolf Belman, Fred Cann, Phil Doon, and Dick
Haddon, and a few kindred spirits composed this class; and it was sheer
lust of life, the wildness of bush-bred boys, that inspired them with
their irreverent impishness, although the brethren professed to discover
evidence of the direct influence of a personal devil.
The superintendent arose from his stool of office and shuffled to the
edge of the small platform, rattling his hymn-book for order. Ephraim
never raised his head even in chapel, but his cold, dull eyes, under
their scrub of overhanging brow, missed nothing that was going on, as the
younger boys often discovered to their cost.
'Dearly beloved brethren, we will open this morn-in's service with that
beautiful hymn--'
Brother Shine stopped short. A powerful diversion had been created by the
entrance of a young man. The new-corner was dressed like a drover,
wearing a black coat over his loose blue shirt, and he carried in his
right hand a coiled stockwhip. His face had the grey tinge of wrath, and
his lips were set firm on a grim determination. He walked to a form well
up in front, and seated himself, placing his big felt hat on the floor,
but retaining his grip on the whip hanging between his knees.
Jacker Mack kicked Dick excitedly. 'Harry Hardy!' he said.
Dick nodded but did not speak; he was staring with all his eyes, as was
every man, woman, and child in the congregation. Harry Hardy had not
fulfilled expectations; he had been home five days, and had done nothing
to avenge his brother. He moved about amongst the men, but was reserved
and grew every day more sullen. He had heard much and had answered
nothing; and now here he was at chapel and evidently bent on mischief,
for the stockwhip was ominous. Ephraim Shine had noticed it and retreated
a step or two, and stood for quite a minute, turning his boot this way
and that, but with his eyes on Harry all the time. Now he cleared his
throat, and called the number of the hymn. He read the first verse and
the chorus with his customary unction, and, all having risen, started the
singing in a raspy, high-pitched voice.
Harry Hardy stood with the rest, a solitary figure in the centre of the
chapel, still holding the long whip firmly grasped in his right hand.
Attention was riveted on him, and the singing of the hymn was a dismal
failure. The young man stared straight before him, seeing only one
figure, that of Ephraim Shine, until he felt a light touch on his arm.
Someone was standing at his side, offering him the half of her hymn-book.
Harry raised his hand to the leaves mechanically, and noticed that the
hand on the other side was white and shapely, the wrist softly rounded
and blue-veined. The voice that sounded by his side was low and musical.
'Oh! Harry, what are you going to do?' His neighbour had ceased singing,
and was whispering tremulously under cover of the voices of the
congregation.
Harry's face hardened, and he set it resolutely towards the platform.
'Don't you know me, Harry? I am Christina Shine. You remember Chris? We
were school mates.'
His daughter! The young man let his left hand fall to his side.
'Please don't. You have come to quarrel with father, but you won't do it,
Harry? You saved my life once, when we were boy and girl. You will
promise me this?'
Harry Hardy answered nothing, and the pleading voice continued:
'For the sake of the days when we were friends, Harry, say you won't do
it--you won't do it here, in--in God's house.'
'It was here, in God's house, he slandered my mother.' The man's voice
sounded relentless.
'No, no, not that! He prayed for her. He did not mean it ill.'
'I have heard of his praying--how under the cover of his cant about
saving souls he scatters his old-womanish scandals an' abuses his
betters.'
'He means well. Indeed, indeed, he means well.'
'An' he prays for my mother--him! Says she's bred up thieves because she
did not come here to learn better. Says she's an atheist because she does
not believe in Ephraim Shine. He's said that, an' I'm here to make him
eat his words.'
Harry's whispering was almost shrill in the heat of his passion, and the
singing of the hymn became faint and thin, so eager were the singers to
catch a word of that most significant conversation. Dick had not taken
his eyes off the pair, and already had woven a very pretty romance about
Chris and the young man. Christina Shine had only recently been raised to
the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had
betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged
his sense of poetical fitness. He espoused her cause with his whole soul,
whatever it might be.
The young woman in the stress of her fears had clasped Harry's arm, as if
to restrain him, and he felt the soft agitation of her gentle bosom with
a new emotion that weakened his tense thews, and stirred the first doubt;
but he fought it down. His revenge had become almost a necessity within
the last three days. Nothing he had heard offered the faintest hope for
his brother's cause; he was baffled and infuriated by the general
unquestioning belief in Frank's guilt, and a dozen times had been
compelled to sit biting on his bitterness, when every instinct impelled
him to square up and teach the fools better with all the force of his
pugilistic knowledge. Of late years he had been schooled in a class that
accepted 'a ready left' as the most convincing argument, and, being
beyond the immediate province of law and order, repaired immediately with
all its grievances to a twenty-four-foot 'ring' and an experienced
referee. But whilst there was a little diffidence amongst the men in
expressing their opinions about Frank, there was no reserve when they
came to tell of Ephraim Shine's method of improving the occasion with
prayer and preachment; and for a considerable time Harry had collected
bitterness till it threatened to choke him and bade him defy all his
mother's cautious principles.
Ephraim had given out the third verse, and the singing went on.
'Are you thinking?' whispered the girl. 'Do, do think! Think of the
disgrace of it.'
'Disgrace! There's the disgrace whining on the platform, the brute that
insults a woman in her sorrow, thinking there's no one handy to take it
out of the coward hide of him!
'It was wrong, Harry. I know it was wrong and cruel. I told him that, and
he has promised me never to do it again. He has promised me that, really,
truly.'
The word that slid through Harry's teeth was ferocious but inaudible.
'Say you won't do it!
The singing ceased suddenly, and the superintendent, who all the time had
kept a lowering and anxious eye on the young couple, gave out the third
verse again.
'Harry, you will not. Please say it!
The hand holding the stockwhip stirred threateningly, and the hymn was
almost lost in the agitation of the worshippers. Chris remained silent,
and Harry, who had taken the book again, had shifted his stern eyes to
the slim white thumb beside his broad brown one. A stifled sob at his
side startled him, and he turned a swift glance upon the face of his
companion. That one glance, the first, left his brave resolution shaken
and his spirit awed.
Harry remembered Chris as a schoolgirl, tall and stag-like, always
running, her rebellious knees tossing up scant petticoats, her long hair
rarely leaving more than one eye visible through its smother of tangled
silk. She was very brown then and very bony, and so ridiculously soft of
heart that her tenderness was regarded by her schoolmates as an
unfortunate infirmity. She was tall still, taller than himself, with
large limbs and a sort of manly squareness of the shoulders and erectness
of the figure, but neatly gowned, with little feminine touches of flower
and ribbon that belied the savour of unwomanliness in her size and her
bearing. Her complexion was clear and fair, her abundant hair the colour
of new wheat, her features were large, the nose a trifle aquiline, the
chin square and, finely chiselled; the feminine grace was due to her
eyes, large, grey, and almost infantile in expression. The people of
Waddy called her handsome, and no more tender term would suit; but they
knew that this fair girl-woman, who seemed created to dominate and might
have been expected to carry things with a high hand everywhere, was in
reality the simplest, gentlest, and most emotional of her sex. She looked
strong and was strong; her only weakness was of the heart, and that was a
prey to the sorrows of every human being within whose influence she came
in the rounds of her daily life.
Hardy was amazed; almost unconsciously he had pictured the grown-up Chris
an angular creature, lean, like her father, and resembling him greatly;
and to find this tall girl, with the face and figure of a battle queen,
tearfully beseeching where in the natural course of events she should
have been commanding haughtily and receiving humble obedience, filled him
with a nervousness he had never known before. Only pride kept him now.
'Say you will go! Say it!'
Harry lowered his head, and remained silent.
'Go now. Your action would pain your mother more than my father's words
have done--I am sure of that.'
The hymn was finished, but Shine read out the last verse once more. His
concern was now obvious, and the congregation was wrought to an
unprecedented pitch. Never had a hymn been so badly sung in that chapel.
It was taken up again without spirit, a few quavering voices carrying it
on regardless of time and tune. Chris had noted Harry's indecision.
'Do not stay and shame yourself. Go, and you will be glad you did not do
this wicked thing. You are going. You will! You will!
He had stooped and seized his hat. He turned without a word or a glance,
and strode from the chapel. The congregation breathed a great sigh, and
as he passed out the chorus swelled into an imposing burst of song--a
paean of triumph, Harry thought.
Through the chapel windows the congregation could see Harry Hardy
striding away in the direction of the line of bush.
Christina, from her place amongst her girls, watched him till he
disappeared in the quarries; and so did Ephraim Shine, but with very
different feelings. Many of the congregation were disappointed. They had
expected a sensational climax. Class II was inconsolable, and made not
the slightest effort to conceal its disgust, which lasted throughout the
remainder of the morning and was a source of great tribulation to poor
Brother Bowden.