Some Persons Unknown

"You may let go those reins," replied Pickering. "I'm not frightened of you, though you have the better of me by twenty years. But I think you're on the right side in a more important respect than that; and if I've done Miss Winfrey an injustice, I hope I'm man enough to apologise in my own way." He slid from his horse, and walked into the hut with his wide-awake in one hand, and the other outstretched. "I beg your pardon," he said.

"I don't blame you," she replied.

He kept her hand kindly.

"Perhaps we shall meet again, Miss Winfrey. I hope so. I don't know how it stands between you two, but I can give a guess. You're a good girl; and we've always known what Bill was underneath. Good luck to you both! I shall send another man out here to-night."

The girl stood still and heard him ride away. The soft words stung worse than the harsh, she scarcely knew why. She was bewildered and aching in heart and body and brain. On some point she should have enlightened Mr. Pickering, but she had let it pass, and now what was it?

Ferrers had accompanied the squatter outside; had seen him start; and now he was standing in front of her with eyes that seemed to speak to her out of the past.

"Two men have insulted you this morning," he was saying. "One has apologised; it is the other's turn now. Forgive me – Lena!"

It was his old voice. The tears rushed to her eyes, and she stepped out blindly for the door. "I have nothing to forgive!" she cried. "Let me go. Only let me go!"

"Go where?"

"To the township – anywhere! I should have told Mr. Pickering. Call him back! – Ah, he's so far away already! What am I to do? What am I to do?"

Ferrers pushed the wooden box into the doorway where she stood leaning heavily against the jamb. "Sit down on that," said he, "while I brew you some tea. You're tired to death. Time enough to think of things after."

The girl sat down, and for a while she cried gently to herself. Her physical fatigue was enormous, rendering her perfectly helpless for the time being, with a helplessness which she resented more bitterly than the incomparable mental torments of the situation. These she deserved. If only she could get away, and turn this bitter page before it drove her mad! If only she could creep away, and close her eyes for hours or for ever! Surely this was the refinement of her punishment, that the flesh, which had stood her in too good stead hitherto, should fail her utterly in her supreme need!

The red sun burst out of the plains, as it were under her very eyes – blinding them. Miss Winfrey would not look round. She heard matches struck, sticks crackling, and later, the "billy" bubbling on the fire. She knew when the "slush-lamp" was extinguished; her sense of smell informed her of the fact. She heard a chop frizzling at the fire, the cutting of the damper on the table; but not until Ferrers touched her on the shoulder, telling her that breakfast was ready, would she turn her head or speak a word. The touch made her quiver to the core. He apologised, explaining that he had spoken thrice. Then they sat down; and the girl ate ravenously; but Ferrers did little but make conversation, speaking now of the Pickerings, and now of some common friends in London; the people, in fact, who had brought these two together.

"They knew I had come out here; didn't they tell you?"

"I never went near them again."

This answer set Ferrers thinking; and, after refilling the girl's pannikin and cutting more damper, he took a saddle from a long peg. He must catch his horse, he said; he would come back and see how she was getting on.

He did not come back for nearly an hour: the horse was a young one, and the horse-paddock, which was some little distance beyond the hut, was absurdly large. He returned ultimately at a gallop, springing off, with a new eagerness in his face, at the door of the hut. It was empty. He searched the hut, but the girl was gone. Then he remounted, and rode headlong down the fence; and something that he saw soon enough made his spurs draw blood. She was lying in the full glare of the morning sun, sound asleep. He had difficulty in awakening her, and greater difficulty in dissuading her from lying down again where she was.

"Have you spent half a summer up here without learning to respect the back-block sun? You mustn't think of going to sleep in it again. It's as much as your life is worth."

"Which is very little," murmured Miss Winfrey, letting some sand slip through her fingers, as if symbolically.

"Look here!" said Ferrers. "I shall be out all day, seeing to the sheep and riding the boundaries. There's a room at the back of my hut which the boss and those young fellows use whenever they stay there. They keep some blankets in it, but I have the key. The coach doesn't go till eight o'clock to-night. Why not lie down there till five or six?"

"I'm not a fool in everything," said the girl at length. "I'll do that."

"Then jump on my horse."

"That I can't do!"

"I'll give you a hand."

"I should fall off!"

"Not at a walk. Besides, I'll lead him. Recollect you've nine miles before you this evening."

She gave in. The room proved comfortable. She fell asleep to the sound of the horse's canter, lost in a few strides in the sand, but continuous in her brain. And this time she slept for many hours.

It was a heavy, dreamless sleep, from which she at last awoke refreshed, but entirely nonplussed as to her whereabouts. The room was very small and hot. It was also remarkably silent, but for the occasional crackling of the galvanised roof; and rather dark, but for the holes which riddled that roof like stars, letting in so many sunbeams as thin as canes. Miss Winfrey held her watch in one of them, but it had stopped for want of winding. Then she opened the door, and the blazing sun was no higher in the west than it had been in the east when last she saw it.

On a narrow bench outside her door stood a tin basin, with a bit of soap in it, cut fresh from the bar; a coarse but clean towel; and a bucket of water underneath. The girl crept back into the room, and knelt in prayer before using these things. In the forenoon none of them had been there.

Going round presently to the front of the hut, the first thing she saw was the stockrider's boots, with the spurs on them, standing just outside the door; within there was a merry glare, and Wilfrid Ferrers cooking more chops in his stocking soles before a splendid fire.

"Well!" she exclaimed in the doorway, for she could not help it.

"Awake at last!" he cried, turning a face ruddy from the fire. "You've had your eight hours. It's nearly five o'clock."

"Then I must start instantly."

"Time enough when we've had something to eat."

The first person plural disconcerted her. Was he coming too? Mr. Pickering had taken it for granted that they would go together; he was sending another man to look after the out-station; but then Mr. Pickering was labouring under a delusion; he did not understand. Wilfrid was very kind, considering that his love for her was dead and buried in the dead past. The gentleman was not dead in him, at all events. How cleverly he managed those hissing chops! He looked younger in the firelight, years younger than in the cold grey dawn. But no wonder his love of her was dead and gone.

"Now we're ready," he cried at last. "Quick, while they're hot, Lena!" His tone had changed entirely since the early morning; it was brisker now, but markedly civil and considerate. He proceeded to apologise for making use of her Christian name; it had slipped out, he said, without his thinking.

At this fresh evidence of his indifference, the girl forced a smile, and declared it did not matter.

"Surely we can still be friends," said she.

"Yes, friends in adversity!" he laughed. "Don't you feel as if we'd been wrecked together on a desert island? I do. But what do you think of the chops?"

"Very good for a desert island."

She was trying to adopt his tone; it was actually gay; and herein his degeneracy was more apparent to her than in anything that had gone before. He could not put himself in her place; the cruel dilemma that she was in, for his sake, seemed nothing to him; his solitary dog's life had deprived him of the power of feeling for another. And yet the thought of those boots outside in the sand contradicted this reflection; for he had put them on soon after her reappearance, thus showing her on whose account they had been taken off. Moreover, his next remark was entirely sympathetic.

"It's very rough on you," he said. "What do you mean to do?"

"I suppose I must go back to Melbourne."

"And then?"

"Get another place – if I can."

He said no more; but he waited upon her with heightened assiduity during the remainder of their simple meal; and when they set out together – he with all his worldly goods in a roll of blankets across his shoulders – she made another effort to strike his own note of kindly interest and impersonal sympathy. "And you," she said as they walked; "what will you do?"

"Get a job at the next station; there'll be no difficulty about that."

"I'm thankful to hear it."

"But I am in a difficulty about you."

He paused so long that her heart fluttered, and she knew not what was coming. They passed the place where her resolution had given way in the dark hour before the dawn; she recognised that other spot, where, later, he had found her asleep in the sun; but the first fence was in sight before he spoke.

"I can't stand the idea of your putting in another appearance in the township," he exclaimed at last, thrilling her with the words, which expressed perhaps the greatest of her own immediate dreads. "It won't do at all. Things will have got about. You must avoid the township at all costs."

"How can I?"

"By striking the road much lower down. It will mean bearing to the right, and no more beaten tracks after we get through this gate. But the distance will be the same and I know the way."

"But my trunks – "

"The boss said he would have them put on the coach. They'll probably be aboard whether you are or no. If they aren't, I'll have them sent after you."

"I shall be taking you out of your way," objected the girl.

"Never mind. Will you trust me?"

"Most gratefully."

She had need to be grateful. Yes, he was very kind; he was breaking her heart with his kindness, that heart which she had read backward five years ago, but aright ever since. It was all his. Either the sentiment which was one of her inherent qualities, or the generosity which was another, or both, had built up a passion for the man she had jilted, far stronger than any feeling she could have entertained for him in the early days of their love. She had yearned to make atonement, and having prayed, for years, only to meet him again, to that end, she had regarded her prayer now as answered. But answered how cruelly! Quite an age ago, he must have ceased to care; what was worse, he had no longer any strong feelings about her, one way or the other. Oh, that was the worst of all! Better his first hot scorn, his momentary brutality: she had made him feel then: he felt nothing now. And here they were trudging side by side, as silent as the grave that held their withered love.

They came to the road but a few minutes before the coach was due. Ferrers carried no watch; but he had timed their journey accurately by the sun. It was now not a handbreadth above the dun horizon; the wind had changed, and was blowing fresh from the south; and it was grateful to sit in the elongated shadows of two blue-bushes which commanded a fair view of the road. They had been on the tramp upwards of two hours; during the second hour they had never spoken but once, when he handed her his water-bag; and now he handed it again.

"Thank you," she said, passing it back after her draught. "You have been very kind!"

"Ah, Lena!" he cried, without a moment's warning, "had you been a kinder girl, or I a stronger man, we should have been happy enough first or last! Now it's too late. I have sunk too low. I'd rather sink lower still than trade upon your pity."

"Is that all?"

"That's all."

He pointed to a whirl of sand half a mile up the road. It grew larger, giving glimpses of half-harnessed horse-flesh and heavily revolving wheels. The girl's lips moved; she could hear the driver's whip, cracking louder and louder; but the words came hard.

"It is not true," she cried at last. "That is not all. You – don't – care!"

He turned upon her his old, hungry eyes, so sunken now. "I do," he said hoarsely. "Too much – to drag you down. No! let me sink alone. I shall soon touch bottom!"

She got to her feet. The coach was very near them now, the off-lamp showing up the vermilion panels; the bits tinkling between the leaders' teeth; the body of the vehicle swinging and swaying on its leather springs. The governess got to her feet, and pointed to the coach with a helpless gesture.

"And I?" she asked him. "What's to become of me?"

The south wind was freshening with the fall of night; at that very moment it blew off the driver's wide-awake, and the coach was delayed three minutes.

A few yards farther it was stopped again, and at this second exasperation the driver's language went from bad to worse; for the coach was behind its time.

"What now? Passengers?"

"Yes."

"The owner of the boxes?"

"Yes."

"And you too? Where's your cheque?"

There was a moment's colloquy between the two dusky figures in the road; then the man took a slip of paper from the left-hand pocket in his moleskins, and held it to the off-lamp for the driver's inspection. "The two of us," he said.

"Yes? Well! up you jump… All aboard!"

And with his blankets round her, and her hand in his, the little governess, and her lost love who was found, passed at star-rise through the Greenbush boundary-gate, and on and on into another life.