The Tracks We Tread/Chapter 19
Chapter XIX
“Well, dear, it doesn’t really matter. It’s only till to-morrow.”
“But it’s a brutally rough place, Effie. I don’t like your being here at all, little girl.”
Randal drew the flimsy window curtains together, pinned them, and came across to the horsehair sofa.
“We’ll shut out what we can,” he said. “And that’s not much, I’m afraid. All these confounded township hotels are just a bar and a lean-to and a drunken row—’specially in this part of Queensland.”
Effie pinched his cheek with soft fingers.
“Let’s pretend we don’t hear it. We used to be so good at pretending. And now there isn’t any make-believe left———”
“Too much solid fact, eh?” demanded Randal, dropping on one knee to bring his face close beside hers on the cushion.
“Too much solid happiness,” she said softly.
“You are sure of that, Effie? Oh, are you sure? I have taken you away from so much. Remember that there will be hard work on the station when we get out to it. Hard work and loneliness. And there’s a good deal of the sinner left in me yet, Effie. I have hurt you more than once already. I shall do it again. And yet—you know—I could kill myself for being such a brute—to you———”
“Oh, silly boy! I am content with you—just as you are. And—you are content with me, Guy?”
“Shan’t tell you, little Madame Vanity. Effie, I think I’ll go out and see what those fellows are doing. The Chows are on to some poor beggar, I’m afraid.”
“Guy—you’ll be careful? They sound—it’s like angry dogs snarling!”
“So it is! I’ll just go out and find what bone they’re after. It’s all right, dear. I can take care of myself.”
The wide, unmade street was breathless with the heat and the dust of an afternoon sun. It was wild with sound, and with the reek of spirits, and the crowding of half-drunken men. Boobyalla had been a notable mining township once. Now the strong souls had gone; and Chinamen and the riff-raff that they bring with them swarmed on the mullock heaps and the wornout claims, and made the little township more hideous than of old.
Randal stepped from the verandah upon a yellow group beating tom-toms; swerved from it, and asked questions of a drover leaning against the half door. The drover spat a chewed straw from his mouth and grinned.
“Jes’ lookin’ roun’ fur suthin’ ter worry,” he said. “It’s a common enough caper when they’ve been doin’ ’emselves pretty well. P’raps they’ll quiet down; p’raps they’ll hev knives goin’ direckly. We jes’ keeps our eyes skinned—but it’s best ter light out ef they gits nasty.”
There were some white men in the shouting half-maddened crush. Randal’s glance dropped on a little thin face under a big-brimmed hat hung round with bobbing corks, and he started.
“Know who that little chap is?” he demanded. “The fellow with the corks to keep the flies off. New to the country, eh?”
“You’ll be wearin’ them yerself nex’ month—what chap? No—dun’t know his name. He’s slabbin’ in with the Chows. A rotter, by the look o’ him.”
Randal agreed without hesitation. For the little man was Jimmie Blaine.
Jimmie wore union shirting and dirty corduroys. He was unkempt, and the shifty lines on his face had deepened. Moreover, the sidelong look in his small eyes told of a dogging fear. He stood with hands thrust in his pockets on the rim of the crowd, and Randal shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re scum even of that lot, my friend Jimmie,” he murmured; and then a man pushed up from behind, and caught Jimmie by the arm.
He was a big man, and the swag on his back had not bowed him, nor cramped the free swing of his limbs. Something in the carriage of his head was familiar to Randal. Then the face showed as Jimmie wrenched himself free.
“Ted Douglas!” said Randal in amaze. “Ted Douglas, by all that’s crazy! Ted—oh, you fool! You silly fool! Did you think he was going to be worth the finding?”
For one moment the pure joy of Ted’s face shone in the sunlight. Then Jimmie broke from him, screaming in frenzy. Ted sprang after. And then words came to Randal which brought him across the street to struggle through the heated massed bodies.
“Thief!” yelled Jimmie. “Murderer! Thief! He’ll kill me! Catch him!”
The howl in answer put fear into Randal for a breath. The yellow faces took on another look; and somewhere, flashing across Randal’s sight came the glint of a knife. He heard the drover shout warning from the verandah, and he put his head down and beat his way toward Ted. Then remembrance of Effie caught him and sickened him, and he would have slung free of them all but that there was no longer any choice left. The murderous-working faces were close, pressing forward; and he ran with them, shouting:
“Get the little one! The little one! He’s gamming you! He’s the thief!”
Despite himself he chuckled at the yell that followed.
“Jimmie’s going to pay,” he said. “The little devil! He’ll pay when they get him!”
In the red of the low sun he saw Jimmie run up the street. He saw Ted Douglas burst out through the press, flinging the men behind, and heard the cry as of old:
“Jimmie! It’s all right! I’ll take care on yer, lad! Come back—Jimmie!”
A foot tripped Randal. He fell, jagging his temple against a broken boarding; and when sense and movement came back the quick twilight had settled to night, and the noise came fitfully, blown in gusts from the hotel bars.
He went down the emptied street slowly; met the drover at the comer, and sent him back with word to Effie. Then he turned into the first hotel and asked news of Ted Douglas and Jimmie. Six men told him, while the seventh bound his forehead skilfully. “... An’ it’s well there weren’t more murder done,” they said. “For them Chows is all on fur a bun-worry o’ sorts. It ain’t all over yet, perhaps. But the little one won’t do no more interferin’.”
“And the other?” asked Randal.
“Don’t know. He weren’t talkin’ o’ hisself—yes, they’re in there.”
It was a dirty little wattle-and-daub shanty set back in the dust of a section; and the power which had swept the rioters away from it, leaving it still and silent to the two, was the Shadow of Death. Randal went in, shutting the door on the curious stretched faces. The light of a tallow dip blinded his eyes after the soft glow. Then he walked over to the far end of the shanty.
There were two voices there. One muttering, sobbing, blaspheming in utter terror; the other low and tender and patient. Randal spoke:
“Ted,” he said; “Ted Douglas. It’s only Randal. Are you hurt?”
“Randal—oh, Randal! good enough! Tell Jimmie as I never come meanin’ ter git him run in. Tell him as he kin trust me still—tell him, Randal!”
Randal dropped on one knee by the thing that moaned and writhed.
“You needn’t judge Ted by yourself, you little brute,” he said roughly. “I can swear to it that Ted’s never felt anything but love for you—though what makes him such a blamed fool is more than I can tell you.”
Jimmie’s breath laboured and fluttered. He twisted weak fingers in Randal’s cuff.
“He don’t mean it!” he gasped. “He don’t! He’s lyin’! Where’s a priest fur ter confess ter? He’d let me die wi’out it! Father Denis said as there was blood on me!” His voice thinned and rose, making Randal thrill with the terror of it. “He’s keepin’ me here ter die an’ be damned! Randal———”
Randal looked over at Ted in the dim light.
“There ain’t a priest in the township,” said Ted, briefly. “I bin askin’.”
“And a doctor?”
“He’s jes’ gone. Can’t do nothin’. Chest’s crushed in.”
There was a quiver over the strong tender face, and Ted bent down again.
“Jimmie—dear old lad—ef yer’d let me holt yer up a bit, p’raps———”
“Let me be! Let me be, you———! Ah-h!”
Then all the agony of an unforgiven soul leapt upon Jimmie, and the two watched, sick and shaken and helpless, save that Ted’s heart knelt in him with prayer. A truth told Randal long years back came to him suddenly.
“Jimmie, the rule of your Church says that when there is no priest one man can confess to another, and receive absolution from him. That’s true, I know. So if that is what you are afraid of———”
Jimmie lay still, fighting for breath.
“Do you mean it?” he said slowly.
“On my soul!”
“Then, Randal—yer knows I stole that cash an’ sunk it all in minin’. An’—I wanted Ted killed jes’ now ’cause he would ’a’ given me up. An’ tell me God will furgive me fur all that.”
There was blood on Ted’s lip where he bit it, and his strong hands were working. Even in this hour Jimmie had no forgiveness for that day on the Mains cattle camp.
Randal was kneeling upright, and his face was dark. There was nothing in him but disgust, and a righteous anger. The heavy pressing dark of the shanty; the drunken shouts up the street, and the plop-plop of the guttering candle flame filled up the measure of squalid dread.
“I—can’t,” said Randal, briefly. “Before God I’d be lying if I told you that I thought you deserved forgiveness, Jimmie.”
Ted stopped with a little cry, pitiful as a mother’s.
“Jimmie—Jimmie, lad. Will yer take it from me? Oh, Jimmie, dear old chap! D’yer think as anythin’ cud change me, Jimmie?”
“Yer can’t!” cried Jimmie. “Yer dun’t know! I never run when Murray tolt me ’bout Buggy, fur I saw as I cud get yer inter trouble. I knew as yer’d take it ’fore yer put it outer me—an’ yer did. But I funked wi’ the boys—now yer know—git out!”
“I knowed that long ago. I knowed yer’d not any love fur me, now, lad. But if I loves yer jes’ the same, Jimmie———”
“Yer can’t!”
“Jim, d’yer remember when we wus jes’ little chaps———”
Randal turned away from the murmur as Ted’s head went down on the bag pillow beside Jimmie’s. He walked to the window, looking out on the open bar across the street. It was foul with drunken laughter and noise of quarrelling, and vivid with the gleam of angry white faces mixed with the yellow. Beyond lay God’s own stars on the peaceful breast of Heaven, and behind a soul was struggling to bridge the gulf between.
Then Ted called sharply. Randal came with swiftness, and did all that he could. But Jimmie’s arm was hooked round Ted’s neck, and nothing would loose it until the end came. Then it was Randal who laid him back on the bags.
“You did more for him than any priest could have done, Ted,” he said. “Now you’ll let me patch up that side of yours. D’you think I didn’t see blood on your shirt?”
Ted did not hear. He went through all that was necessary with unshaking hands. Then he stood up.
“It’s nothing but a scratch,” he said. “Good-night, Randal, and thank yer. I’m goin’ ter stay wi’ him.”
Randal looked round the smelling, dirty shanty where the nine-inch draught space between wall and ceiling let in the red dust of the street, and he looked down on the little mean face in the quivering candle light.
“Don’t, Ted!” he said. “We can lock the place up. Come round to my———”
Ted shook his head.
“He were always that nervous,” he said. “I—I’d ruther stay wi’ him ter-night. Per’aps—if I’d done differently that day on Black Hill yards———”
“You could not have done differently,” said Randal. “And you know it. Now you will go back to Mains, and———”
“No!” Ted’s eyes were fixed on the still thing by his foot. “No! Never Mains an’ the township agin wi’out Jimmie—now. I loved him too dear fur that!”
“Then will you come out West with me?” said Randal.
“I don’t know. I don’t know nothin’ ter-night, I think. I’ll see yer ter-morrow. If yer’d jes’ go, Randal———”
Then Randal went back. And Effie scolded him, and cried and laughed at the set of the bandage round his head; and crept into his arms as they sat in the little dark parlour where the horsehair sofa and the dust made by the white ants did not show in the light that was given by the wide stars only.
“Who was it spoke of the ‘Wine of Life’?” she said. “Do you think he meant love, Guy?”
“I know he did,” said Randal. Then he held her closely. “Effie—Effie—I thought that our love was the greatest thing in the world. But it isn’t! It isn’t! I’ve seen a greater to-night, little girl. It was a beautiful thing, and—very terrible, dear.”
She pulled down his face and kissed him.
“All love is beautiful and terrible,” she said. “But we have worked out the terrible part of ours, Guy.”
And Randal’s lips met hers for answer.