Irralie's Bushranger/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
AN ACCIDENT
Irralie started. But the step was not Fullarton's. And the two-edged stab of disappointment and relief, instantly experienced by the girl, alarmed her later when she found time to think of it. At the moment, however, there was George Young—for he it was—to be faced and fenced with; and one glance at his heavy, wholesome face discovered it alight with unmistakable news.
"Well?" cried Irralie, and held her breath with the monosyllable. The luggage, like the overcoat, had not been found! The impostor was already exposed! That must be the news; what else?
The overseer looked from Irralie to the inscription at the base of the column, and again significantly at the girl. Irralie could have struck him for the delay.
"What's the matter with you? Why don't you speak?" she gasped. "Something has happened—and there you stand!"
"Oh, it's nothing near home, Miss Villiers; only I was just thinking, seeing the name of poor Giles there, that there may be one or two more to join him before long!"
"What do you mean?"
"Bushrangers!" replied the other. "Our friend Stingaree at it again!"
"Here?" she steeled herself to say.
"Well, no; not on the run; but somewhere or other in these back-blocks, there is little doubt. You see, Jevons has just come back with the mail—and those portmanteaus"
"Has he brought the portmanteaus?"
She steadied herself by one of the wooden palings round the grave.
"Oh, yes, he's brought them all right; it was about that I came to you; but this bit of news is the thing that's made us all sit up! Not that he's likely to come here, Miss Villiers," continued the overseer reassuringly, to unheeding ears. "Stingaree never stuck up a station in his life. Gold-escorts are his lay; he goes where money is; still, yesterday morning it seems he stuck up a bush pub by way of a change. I suppose there was money there. I know the shanty—it's over in the Balranald district—that is straight across country from here, say seventy miles by the crow. And that's far enough—across country. It would be a different thing if it were north or south of us, anywhere up or down this stock-route. Still—it's near enough to be exciting!"
Of all this Irralie had heard two sentences exactly. So not a soul save herself had suspected him here! And now—it seemed incredible—the portmanteaus had actually come, and even she could suspect nothing more. So ran her thoughts, and the overseer's voice was as the babble of a creek.
"It was about that you came to me?" she repeated after him, when he had done,as though the words had been his last. They were the last that she remembered.
"About—ah, that luggage!" said George Young. He paused; and in his change of expression Irralie's quickened eyes perceived an enemy of Greville Fullarton, and found herself wondering what the enemy would have given for her late suspicions. "That luggage," he continued, in a tone changed like his face, "is more bother than it's worth. It's great, big, heavy, regular new chum's baggage, and was bother enough to fetch. And now he's got it he can't get into it! Lost every blessed key!"
"Lost—every—key!" repeated Irralie, in a voice that must have flashed her own idea through a brain less slow than that of the overseer, who, however, bore it in mind. It was an idea that made Irralie tremble for one moment—freeze the next; and so remain, with proud, white face and flashing eye.
"They said you might have one that would fit," pursued Young; "and they asked me to go and look for you."
"Who asked you?"
"Fullarton himself."
"It was like his impertinence!"
"It was so! I'm glad to hear you say that, for in my opinion a more"
"That'll do," replied Irralie, tartly. "Don't hang a man before you try him!" And with a sudden, feverish haste, she led the way homeward through the pines; the overseer following, with a very healthy craving for the new owner's blood.
On the veranda, sure enough, were the portmanteaus, hat-box, gun-case, and dressing-bag of a sufficiently new chum. The labels of the voyage still adhered to the raw, unseasoned leather. Indeed, with the single exception of the gun-case, everything was flagrantly new and redolent of the London outfitter. And on the largest piece of all, the careless centre of a keenly interested group, sat a picturesque, unshaven adventurer, like a beggar enthroned.
"You are my last hope, Miss Villiers," said he, as the girl came up. "I've tried all the keys on the premises but yours. If you fail me"
"I shall fail you," said Irralie. "I keep nothing in the world under lock and key."
"Indeed! Then I am done."
"I am afraid you are."
The words were said in a way that attracted no third person's attention. Yet Fullarton winced as his eyes met Irralie's—winced, and then smiled. Next moment he was holding out his hand to one of her young brothers.
"That knife of yours," said he.
"To force the lock?"
Fullarton took the knife without replying, opened the big blade, got lazily to his feet, and as lazily reseated himself, cross-legged, on the veranda-boards, within reach of the brass and leather fastenings. The circle of inquisitive faces had closed in upon him when he paused to search it for the face of Irralie. All he saw was her black hair vanishing.
"Don't go away, Miss Villiers!"
"Why not—Mr. Fullarton?"
"Because I've got something in here that I want you to see. You remember our little discussion about lawn-tennis rackets? You said they were still made curved, and I said they weren't. Well, on the lower side of this portmanteau—at the very bottom—underneath my shirts—there is, or ought to be, a racket of this year. We'll see if there is, Miss Villiers; and we'll see which of us is right."
He had spoken with smiling eyes upon the girl; and his smile broadened as he specified, with more and more exactitude, the precise position of the racket. It was the address of a conjurer before his greatest trick; yet Irralie alone understood. As he finished speaking, he raised the knife and stabbed with sudden energy at the leather above the lock. Indeed the point of the blade caught the plate of brass, and the blade itself closed upon his hand amid the exclamations of the onlookers.
"You'll ruin it!" cried one or two, meaning the portmanteau.
"He's cut himself," said another.
But Fullarton doubled his fist before the blood had time to flow. "It's nothing!" he muttered, and, with his left hand, cut the straps, sawed round the lock, and had the portmanteau open in an instant. In another, the shirts were displayed and disarranged, and the lawn-tennis racket duly produced.
"As straight as my face, I think!" said Fullarton, as he held it out to Irralie. She hardly looked at it. But, from her place among the others, she did look at Fullarton—humbly, steadfastly—with an expression which he alone could read. To the rest there had merely been a friendly argument, and Irralie was merely in the wrong. Yet to the more observant there was an unprecedented absence of humor, and of spirit in Irralie's acknowledgment of the fact.
"You are right," she said, as if it were quite a tragic matter. "You are right, and I was a perfect fool! Forgive me if you ever can."
"On one condition. The racket is yours. I have more than I can use."
She then took it from him, but no thanks would come. A "perfect fool" indeed, the depth of her folly—the knowledge that he had plumbed it—and the good-humored tact of his reproof, all struck home together and choked her with simple shame. She made one effort; another, and she would have broken down; but she was saved, and strangely, at that moment.
"Mr. Fullarton!" she heard her father cry. "Your hand! your hand!"
Fullarton looked; the blood was welling through his clenched fingers. He turned his back and examined the cut.
"Deeper than I thought!" he muttered to the manager. "Have you any gut in the medicine-chest? That's an artery pumping. Gut and tweezers and a basin of water in the dining-room!"
And in the dining-room he sat with his bare arm over a basin of reddening water, and, using the tweezers with his own left hand, picked up the arteries himself and called for somebody to tie them with the gut. The manager tried, but his fingers were all hard thumbs; he was only good for standing by with the whiskey, which was needed but refused. Mrs. Villiers was too nervous; and it was Irralie herself who finally tied the arteries with her firm, nimble fingers, and who helped to bind up the hand. The young men and the boys looked on; and, when all was over, there was but one heart left for the wounded man to win, who reeled when he rose, and had to be supported to his room. The boys gave him a rousing cheer, led by their frenzied tutor; and it was none other than Jevons who cried, "One more!"
But Irralie shut herself in her room, clasped her hands stained with his blood, and went in thankfulness upon her knees. Her doubts were at an end; yet, in the first ecstasy of secret and spiritual deliverance, they seemed less preposterous than at any previous stage. The horror had been too strong for her to cease to take it seriously the moment it was removed.