Ernest William Hornung

“ Barbara was lovelier than ever.
II 'Seth! Seth Whitty! What ails you, man?'
It was Lovatt's voice. Whitty removed the hand he had pressed to his forehead, and stood stiffly erect.
'Forgive me, Miss Barbara; I feel silly like. It must be the sun. These felt things are no protection once you're used to the helmet.'
No pretence could have been older, more decrepit; but, as it happened, it was the one pretence of all others that was absolutely certain to take folks in just then at Timber Town. ”

“ She shut down the window. A minute later all was in darkness, and Seth went back to the barracks in a tumult of honest emotions—not suspecting for a moment that he had stultified himself and utterly undone the wholesome effect of his admirable attitude on Christmas Day.
As for Barbara, her vanity had been liberally gratified. Moreover, a sore point, dating from Christmas, was now healed. And lastly, she had played the rôle she revelled in—the rôle that was out of the question with the man she really loved. So altogether she may have gone to bed an extremely happy woman. ”

“ Whitty laughed. 'No fear, sergeant. You don't know my friend. But if it's as bad as you say, you ought to come too, and see me through, since we were both in the Red Jim go. Bad luck to Red Jim! I'm not going to Timber Town to get clapped on the back and made a fool of. I'm going to see a very old friend, sergeant—a very great friend. I'll go in plain clothes.'
It was Christmas Eve at the loneliest little police-barracks in those ranges. The verandah was too dark for the sergeant to see how the younger man's face flushed, how his eyes glistened, as he spoke of his friend. ”

“ Nor did Whitty think any worse of Lovatt because of this news than he had already thought of him for his heartless behaviour; that, indeed, would have been impossible. What troubled the sergeant now had no reference to Lovatt; it had all to do with Barbara. The news had come; the news must be broken. It was the second time Seth had been compelled to break a blow to Barbara, but then last time Barbara had been a very different woman, one infinitely better able to bear bad tidings. ”

“ Idle, gossiping women are not necessarily unfeeling; what they found made some of them shed tears on the walk home.
Barbara was the shadow of her former self—herself of a fews weeks ago. Thin and pale and bright-eyed, irascible, listless, limp, she was indeed a proper object for compassion; and compassion was the last thing Barbara could stand. Yet, though the callers were sent away with their sympathy still on their hands, they did not toss it to the winds for that reason. It was impossible to resent the schoolmistress's incivility while the schoolmistress looked so. ”

“ It was not difficult to conceive how Barbara had been fascinated by this young man; Seth was fascinated himself. Seth should have hated him; but it was impossible to hate the fellow. Seth came nearest to hating him when he fancied (as he sometimes did fancy, from little things) that Lovatt did not value Barbara quite as he ought.
Theoretically, it is better that you should not think a girl perfection just because you are in love with her, but there is generally something wrong somewhere if you don't. Perfection had once been too weak a word for Seth's estimation of Barbara. ”

“ Lovatt looked alarmed, and glanced involuntarily at the front windows of the barracks, where the blinds were drawn. At the same moment, raising his hat to Barbara, Whitty turned hastily away and went in at the barrack gate.
'Stop,' cried Lovatt, but softly. 'Don't go in there!'
Whitty faced about. 'Why not? We receive each other with open arms, we fellows. Why shouldn't I go in?'
'Because the sergeant's lying dead there from sunstroke!'
Whitty had not known that sergeant even by name. He had nothing to say to his death. But he returned to his horse, and unfastened the reins from the fence. ”

“ SERGEANT SETH I TROOPER WHITTY was off for a holiday at last. The circumstance was in itself strange enough, for Whitty had been two years in the Mounted Police without ever once seeking leave of absence until now. What, however, seemed really unique was that a man who took only one holiday in two years should be content to go and spend it in a dismal, dead-alive hamlet like Timber Town.
'Some jokers are easily pleased, we know, and you're one; but what can be the attraction in that dull hole, Seth?' Whitty's sergeant asked him the night before he started. ”

“ Annie nodded.
'Mark my words, then, Annie: he's in love with her still, but too honourable to speak it! And he as fine a man as ever walked: and she going throwing her heart away on a villain that's cleared out and left her!'
What Mrs. Waters went on to say there is no need to record. She inveighed vehemently against the idiocy of women generally, and that of Barbara in particular, and worked herself into such a temper that Barbara's servant began to regret having said anything at all. And from that day the sergeant had the old woman's eyes upon him. ”

“ Whitty was so very happy this Christmas morning; his face showed it so very plainly, too. It was not by any means a striking face: the cheek bones were prominent, the nose aquiline and thin; but a broad high forehead and good brown eyes, and a certain regularity of features, gave him at least average good looks. Moreover, his short black beard and long black moustache, though they helped to make him look so old, became his dark style very suitably.
The sun had made him very dark indeed; but it had not blistered him as it blisters your 'new chum' ”

“ He became haunted by the thought that he had treated Barbara inexcusably, and that she was breaking her heart for him across the sea in lonely little Timber Town.
When there was more sea between them, Timber Town seemed still farther away. It seemed to exist in his brain only.
To cheer himself up he made friends with other passengers. He found one who knew his people at home—in fact, a neighbouring Norfolk squire out globe-trotting. These two talked of the old country all day long: of London, of Oxford, of Norfolk, Scotland, and the shooting. Cold fires were rekindled in the young man. ”

“ I learnt last night that my brother—I had only one—who was heir to everything, has been dead these two years, and that my father was at death's door two months ago. I cabled at once to learn his condition. The reply is just to hand. He is still lingering on; he desires to see me. What can I do but sail at once? The steamer leaves to-morrow; there is no time to go back to Timber Town and bid Barbara good-bye, and I dare not put off starting for a week. As it is, I do not expect to find my poor father alive ”

“ He would have discovered in her all the sweetest attributes of woman, and some masculine little traits as well. Only—he would have found her a coquette. Any one but Seth, it is to be feared, would have found her a dire and a mischievous coquette—and the worst one in that she had fallen too desperately in love with Jack Lovatt to work off her coquetries any more upon him. To Sergeant Seth (though one would think he might have known by this time what Barbara was) this experience was denied at present for a very simple reason: he was barely on bowing terms with the schoolmistress. ”

“ I congratulate you—Sergeant Seth Whitty!'
Whitty stared like a fool.
'You're promoted,' the other sergeant went on. 'I told you they'd take the first opportunity, and they've taken it. You're to be sergeant, and sole boss of the show—for they don't need two there—at Timber Town. What's wrong? Isn't it good enough? You look like death, mate!'
Seth tumbled out of the saddle and stood just outside the verandah, shaking. ”

“ But what was all over now had never been so dear to him. When the body is newly dead, and even more beautiful than it seemed in life, it is sweet to linger by it, to muse upon it, to remember all: and it is sometimes thus with events and time. ”

“ They were never meant for each other, you know. No one could understand the engagement; and now I don't think Laura will ever marry at all.'
For a minute Jack's face was transfigured. It shone with a light that did not seem human, though it cannot have been divine. During that minute Australia was wiped clean from his mind. And it was a disastrous minute for poor Barbara over the seas in Timber Town. ”

“ But all life is change. Eighteen months ago! Who'd have dreamt then that Barbara Lyon would clear out of the station to work for her living? Who could fancy Barbara as schoolmissis? But it shall not be for long, Barbara; it shall be for a very, very little while now, my darling!'
This, in fact, was the 'very old friend'—Barbara Lyon. It is not strictly true that she was a very old friend. Whitty's first six months in the constabulary he was quartered near Kyneton, and within pistol-shot of Barbara's father's boundary fence. ”

“ The girl gave up Jack for some one else, who was not going to the deuce, but in quite the contrary direction—got engaged, in fact, to her uncle's curate; and, contemporaneously, Jack's father cut him off with a thousand and closed the doors upon him.
So Lovatt came out to Australia. On the voyage he saw his follies in the plain light of reflection, and brooded fiercely over what he had lost, but railed at his family. And the first thing he did in Melbourne was to take a few letters that were awaiting him, slip them unopened into a big envelope, and post them home with his initials. ”

“ Barbara, especially, was quite ridiculously in love; and Lovatt possessed the very qualities to keep her in love: thorough-going masculine selfishness, and a command of others which was as strong as his self-command had been weak.
Sergeant Whitty, during his first weeks at Timber Town, saw a good deal of Lovatt, and, as has been indicated, next to nothing of Barbara. To the sergeant's thinking, the Colonies, and the Colonies alone, had made a man of Lovatt; and, allowing for Colonial bias, there is no doubt that the sergeant was mainly right. ”

“ Whitty rode on, and put up his horse at Burns's Royal Hotel, one of the slightly less disreputable establishments. Already there was a good deal of advanced drunkenness there. Seth had never been a drinking man, but the sight of the men lying serenely senseless in the shade filled him with a sudden, passionate envy. ”

“ The sergeant pulled reflectively at his pipe.
'Your friend should welcome you with open arms, Seth,' said he presently. 'Your friend should leave you his money for looking him up just now, Seth. It will be the making of him, this Christmas, to be seen along with you. It would be the making of any one not a teetotaller, at any time, but Christmas for choice, to be seen along with the man that took Red Jim. I know Timber Town; I know Timber Town ways; there'll be liquor enough going to float an Orient liner. ”

“ By that time the five years in Australia were little better than a dream And what Barbara was, Heaven knows.
Lovatt's sister met him at the docks, with a male cousin. They were both in mourning. The news was broken almost without a word, and it made the meeting, at any rate, silent. But afterwards, in the train, they talked of other things. The sister, Ethel, had been in short frocks when Jack went out; she was now a handsome girl of twenty, and he was enchanted with her. ”

“ Certainly Lovatt had roughed it a good deal, and that is always improving. His English conceit (Seth called it 'English') was, at least, no longer conspicuous: those English mannerisms which, in the new chum, had been so very offensive to Colonial Seth, were invisible in the energetic selector. Yet the young fellow's charm of manner remained, and this was considerable; it had made even the new chum popular, and popular even in the bush. ”

“ That evening Laura's grievance became really grave; for after dinner she took her banjo and gently fingered it on the gray shingly drive; but Jack never strolled out with his cigarette, as he had done the previous evening—as she quite thought he would do every evening; yet he must have heard. Laura stole at last to the billiard- room window; and Jack was there, playing pool with the other men. He played pool with the horrid men until long after she had gone to bed and cried herself to sleep. Then at last Jack crept up to bed himself, but never slept a wink ”

“ I only realise that I sail to-morrow in the Orient liner.
'Only one word more. Seth, I know something of your old relations with Barbara. She told me. She was terribly at fault, and she knows it. But you will forget all about this now, won't you? No, I believe you have forgotten about it. Fellows always do get over these things: you know I did. But even if you hadn't got over it, I believe you would do what I'm now going to ask of you without my ever asking at all. Yet I do ask it—I implore it. I implore you, Seth, to look after her, to watch over her, to be good to her. She is sensible ”

“ They were slack weeks at the barracks. With the schoolmistress's love affair going on under his nose, the weeks were something worse than slack for Seth. Now, had the authorities only sent some one else to Timber Town, Seth would have been spared all this, while the other fellow might have filled up his odd half hours very agreeably with Lovatt and Barbara. If a student of human nature, he never need have been dull ”

“ This was the end at which the two men entered the township. They stopped at the barracks and leant against the fence, to which Whitty tethered his horse. He was most interested, of course, in the State school; but Lovatt drew his attention to the church over the way.
'They're in at service now, but they'll be out directly; and then, Seth—'
'She's there, of course?'
'Rather! She plays the harmonium for them. Hark! there it goes! That's the last hymn.'
It was strange to hear the glad old Christmas hymn across that glaring road, in the breathless heat, under that sky of flawless sapphire ”

“ Certainly his bearing before Barbara had been very, very different.
III Of course Seth Whitty did not leave the Mounted Police, and of course he went to Timber Town, as sergeant, in the end. He was the last man to obey on calm reflection the impulse of a craven moment. At the same time, the calmest reflection could not deny that Timber Town, in the circumstances, held out a prospect of personal discomfort such as a man might well be justified in shirking; and Whitty went there with set teeth and a heart of lead. ”