The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 17
Chapter XVII
The full light had gone from the hills, and the little whare up Chinaman’s Gully was one smudge with the manuka scrub, except where a red finger of sunset marked the window blood-colour. Ormond flattened his nose on the six-by-eight window, walked round and kicked in the door. The place was blank-empty and dark; and Ormond hit his shin on a nail keg and ran foul of a something that smelt like green hide before he could make a light. A half-burnt-out slush lamp was on the ground, with the ash of last night’s fire and three dirty plates. Ormond lit it and set it on the rough plank shelf. Then he reviled its splutters and smell, and blinked round.
“Suppose the old chap will come along directly,” he said, and tossed that which he carried on the bunk that headed to the window.
A muddle of blankets was there already, and a gun, and a cleaning rod. Ormond sucked in his lips, reaching for the gun. He jerked open the nipple and two bullet cartridges bobbed into his palm. He held them up, frowning at them.
“Would you?” he said. “Would you? Randal, my friend, I thought there was better stuff in you than that! But—after to-night—I think I’ll take charge of these—for the present, anyway.”
He raked six from the blanket heap, picked up another on the floor, dropped them into his trouser pocket, and set about making a fire. A half-filled billy swung from the hook, and it suggested something. Ormond grunted and slipped his coat.
“You’ve washed up for me before now, Randal,” he said. “Suppose it’s up to me to do it for you. And—seeing that I’ve come to hurt you pretty severely, I’ll serve you a clean feed, anyway.”
He gathered greasy pannikins and dishes; tipped them into a deep meat pan, and cleared decks with a deft foot. . . . “And I think you’re not taking much pride in yourself just now, old man, for you’re not a pig by nature. Now where the dickens is that smelling hide?”
He went to work like a man accustomed; while the afterglow on the hills ripened to purple and claret, and sank through mouse-colour and canary to a windy black. Then the grate of pick and shovel sounded as they fell together by the door, and Randal came in, kicking the clay of the wash from his hip boots. He had grown older in the month that had brought Effie Scannell’s wedding very near, and a dull reserve had grown on him.
“Thought the place was on fire,” he said, pulling the door to against the wind.
Ormond turned from the tins where he had been tasting the difference between Navy-cut and tea.
“Just been getting a surprise party ready for you, Randal. Tea, eh? The billy is boiling its head off.”
“No, thanks.” Randal slung his kit in a corner and rubbed his hands over his forehead. “What is it, Ormond?”
“I—have brought them. You—you’re going to stand up to it all right, Randal? Yes—in the bunk.”
Randal lifted the little shapeless packet.
“This?”
“Yes.” Ormond laid a hand on the other man’s arm. “Old fellow—have something to eat first. You’re clean played out.”
Randal took his knife, and slashed through the tightly bound string with fierce upward cuts. Ormond understood that the trouble was for now, and he moved into the shadow with his head among the cross-ties.
“But you don’t need a knife, Randal,” he muttered. “Granny knots, I’ll bet my shirt! When did a girl ever tie anything else?”
Randal’s fingers were stiff. The slim shovel handle cramped more than the reins of the past years. But he tore the paper away, and shook the things out on the two-plank table. They were very ordinary things. Seven letters in Randal’s straggling writing; a bunch of dried cotton flowers and daisies gathered on the Brothers last mustering season; a chipped Maori axe found at the head of the river (he had carried it in his shirt for safety and it had rubbed a raw wound before he could give it to her), and one or two birthday and Christmas cards, with no more than the name “Effie” on them in his handwriting. Randal touched them softly with his fingertips, and Ormond looked steadfastly on the crumbling sod wall hung with the miner’s things that were so familiar.
In the dead silence the talk of little flames in the chimney piece was eager and cruelly distinct. They called for food. Ormond heard them. Then Randal passed him with a long swift step, cast a double handful of the stuff on the red, and ground it in with his heel. Ormond waited while the cotton-flower ash spun up into the night with the paper, while the green flint axe settled, strong and unflaking, into the heart of the fire. Then he came across and put a hand on the bowed shoulders. He had learned to know Randal since the night Death missed them both on the Lion.
Randal twisted away from him.
“See the axe?” he said. “We can’t turn everything into smoke and lies—though we try. Well—I’ve done it! You can go back and tell her I’ve done it!”
“You have only done half,” said Ormond, meeting his eyes straightly. “And you’ve got to do the other half now. That was what she asked, wasn’t it? And you gave your word. Has that gone? For if so you’ve lost everything, Randal.”
“No,” said Randal, “I remember.” He turned to the locker at the bunkfoot, and Ormond’s keen eyes grew graver. When a horse will not rouse to the whip the chances are that the girth-gall sore is sapping him.
From the locker bottom Randal brought out an old writing case worked in coloured silks by a mother or a sister whom he had never spoken of. It was burst at the sides and frayed from constant handling. Ormond knew that it held the core of Randal’s life, and, at that moment, he hated Effie Scannell.
“Shall I—go outside, Randal?”
“No! I don’t care—chuck some more fat into that slushlight.”
There was that in his face which made Ormond try again.
“Dump ’em all in together, man. There’s no sense in twisting the knife.”
But Randal did not hear. He stood by the slushlight, where a lump of meat swam in the unstrained fat, smelling vilely. The billy spat and dribbled on its hook, and the throb of the flames cast the stern dark face in alternate light and shadow. He shook the things out on the table. Letters, and again letters—tied with ribbon, with string and with bootlace. A painted tobacco pouch wrapped in tissue paper, and scented with lavender water; and other foolish little things such as a girl might give to the man she loves.
Ormond turned his eyes away.
“Best be getting on with it, old chap,” he said softly.
Randal straightened and his words came with a rush.
“What’s the sense of burning them? D’you think I can forget what she’s said—here? D’you think I can ever forget what she has said? D’you think there’s any fire burns hot enough for that? There isn’t! I’ve been into hell to look for it———”
“Steady, old man! Steady! Randal—Randal—oh, I am sorry!”
“D——— your sorrow! I don’t want it! Did she say she was sorry, too? Did she send me a pretty proper little message to take the place of—these?”
He swept up a handful and slung them on the fire.
“What the devil right have you to be sorry? You loved the Lion, and you can go back to her. Both the Kiliats are praying you on their knees to go back to her. But I———”
Ormond’s words struck with all the force at his command:
“And do you know why I can go back to her? It’s because I’ve held myself clean and fit to serve her all these years! It’s because I’ve never messed away my life and gone downhill, without the courage or the determination to pull in. You’re a strong man, Randal! Father Denis told you that; and you’re young yet. How dare you ruin the only life you’ve got! Go away and make something of it—something worthy of such a man as you would be! Oh, Randal! you are a slinking coward, and that’s the best and the worst word of you.”
“If you were any other man,” said Randal, “I think I’d kill you for that! But I don’t suppose it would be worth it. Nothing is worth anything much. Love and hate, and all the other things a man lives for—they’re all rotten.”
He untied a blue ribbon that Effie’s fingers had tied, and shook the letters on the fire, watching with unmoving eyes as they unrolled and shivered into tinder. Ormond went back to the dark corner. These tongues of flame held Randal’s ear to-night.
The wind was muttering very restlessly in the tussock. The back log of totara fell in half and jammed the tobacco pouch. Randal freed it with his foot. An envelope atop of all curled open, baring a quarter-plate photograph, disgracefully toned by an amateur. Randal dived after it with an oath, and the hair was singed from his hand and arm in the saving of it.
“Chuck that back!” said Ormond.
Randal cradled the indistinct little picture in both hands. There was just the dainty pose of the head and the sweet droop of the lip to show.
“She need never know—just this one thing, Ormond.”
“No! You’ve honour enough to carry you through this business properly, haven’t you? And you have no right to that of all things, Randal. You come of the breed that dies in its boots, and if anyone found that on you———”
“I have a right to it! She gave it to me! And I have a right to her—to her! She gave herself to me long ago———”
Ormond secured the photograph with a dexterous twist, and spun it into the flame.
“You’re talking piffle,” he said, “and worse. Stand up to it, can’t you? And remember that she is to be married in a week, while you”—Ormond grew suddenly angry—“you’ll go down into the gutter and lie there, I suppose! You’ve just about enough sense! Oh, Randal, Randal! you silly old fool! why don’t you punch my head? It would do you heaps of good!”
Randal did not answer. Ormond knew that he did not hear. He stared down into the fire until Ormond covered it with the frying pan, dropping a cartridge from his pocket as he stooped. Randal picked it up. Then he went over to the bunk and snapped open the breech of his gun. Lastly, he looked at Ormond and grinned. It was not a nice grin.
“Thanks,” he said. “You’re very considerate, Ormond. But don’t you think I’d have done it long ago if I’d meant to take that way?”
“I don’t know,” said Ormond; “for you do not know yourself, Randal.”
Randal slid his hand into his side pocket; pulled out some cartridges and reloaded in two movements.
“Wait a minute,” he said to the face showing faintly in the smoky shadows. “I want to ask you something.” His voice shook and thickened. “If you can tell me that she—has not forgotten, I’ll wait till the end of time to help her if she wants me. If you can’t—I’ll blaze out my own track, and it’s no business of yours or of any other man’s. Well? Tell me, can’t you? You know, for you have seen her. She gave you the things.”
“You have no longer any right to think of her at all———”
“Tell me, will you?”
Ormond knew this Randal well enough. He would kill if he did not get his answer. By all a man’s knowledge of man Ormond feared the effect of either lie or truth. Then, for the first time, he chose a lie:
“She has forgotten,” he said slowly.
Randal stretched up, and laid the gun in its slings. When he turned again his face was blank as a slate with its troublesome lesson wiped off.
“That is all, then,” he said. “The thing is out of your hands now. You understand?”
Ormond moved to the door; but it was flung wide in his face, and something ran past him, swift and light, with sobbing breath and broken laughing words.
“Guy! Guy! I’ve come back! I’ve come back to you! Oh—Guy———”
From the door Ormond saw the flushed wet dimpling face and the wonderful new light in the eyes. He saw Randal, and went out, closing the door. Then Randal spoke, unmoving.
“Kiliat?” he said.
Effie Scannell tore a ring from her finger and sent the opal spark to meet the green axe lying heavy in the fire heart.
“And that is all there is of Mr. Kiliat!” she cried. “I have told him so! I knew it when your letters went away. Oh—surely I have known it always, though I didn’t understand. Oh, Guy! there was only you for me and me for you since God made us. Guy—my own dear one!”
“No!” said Randal. “I can’t; I am not worthy!”
She came to him, standing with her hands linked, and her grave dark eyes on his.
“You have no choice, Guy,” she said simply. “And I have not any, either. I have been a child always. Now I am a woman, for I know what love means. It is very terrible, Guy, and it frightens me, because it has taken everything out of the earth but God and you. Guy—help me! For love is too big for a girl to bear it by herself!”
Her voice broke, and her hands came over her face. And, by the loss of the child-frankness of old, Randal understood, Effie had come into her woman’s heritage that was to be his also.