Under Two Skies/Jim-of-the-Whim

by Ernest William Hornung

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JIM-OF-THE-WHIM

I

HIS real name had gone no further than the station store. There it appeared in the ledger, and sometimes (though very rarely) on a letter in the baize-covered rack, under post marks which excited the storekeeper's curiosity; but beyond the store verandah he was known only as Jim-of-the-Whim.

He lived by himself at the Seven-mile whim. Most of his time was spent under a great wooden drum, round which coiled a rope with its two ends down two deep shafts, raising a bucketful of water from the one while lowering an empty bucket down the other. The buckets filled a tank; the tank fed the sheep-troughs; and what Jim did was to drive a horse round and round to turn the drum. It was not an arduous employment. Jim could lean for hours against a post, smoking incessantly and but occasionally cracking his whip, yet serenely conscious that he was doing his duty. In times of plenty, when there was water in the pad docks and green life in the salt-bush, the whim was not wanted, and other work was found for the whim-driver. Unhappily, however, such intervals were in his time rare, and Jim was busy, though his work was light.

Jim never neglected his work. Sometimes he took a few days' holiday, and exchanged his half-year's cheque for poisonous bush alcohol; this was only customary; and Jim was highly considerate in his choice of the time, and would go after a rainfall, when the sheep could not suffer by his absence. He never allowed his excesses to degenerate into irregularities. He knew his work thoroughly, and applied his knowledge without sparing his bones; when not actually driving the whim, he was scouring the plains for thirsty stragglers. As a permanency at the Seven-mile he was worth higher wages than he was ever likely to get from Duncan Macdonald, though this squatter would have conceded much (for him) rather than lose so reliable a hand. But Jim never asked for a rise; and Macdonald was perhaps not eccentric in declining to take the initiative in this matter.

Jim's hut was two hundred yards from the whim. As bush-huts go, it was a superior habitation. It was divided by a partition into two rooms; it had a floor. In the larger room stood a table and a bench, which were both movable; and this merit was shared in an eminent manner by a legless armchair mounted on an old soap-box. Prints from illustrated papers were pasted neatly on strips of sacking nailed to the walls. Sacks filled with the current rations hung from the beams. The roof was galvanised iron; the walls, horizontal logs of pine between pine uprights.

Civilisation was met with on the threshold in the shape of a half-moon of looking-glass, nailed to the doorpost on the inside. This glass was only put to practical use on the in frequent occasions when Jim amused himself by removing his beard. At such times, when the operation was over, and Jim counted the cuts, the reflection showed a sun-browned face of much manly beauty, invested with a fine moustache in a state of picturesque neglect. His eyes were slightly sunken, but extremely blue; and he had an odd way of looking at you with his head on one side, owing to a breakage of the collar-bone from a fall far up country, when the bones had overlapped before growing together again.

The station storekeeper, a young Englishman named Parker, who gave his services to the economic Macdonald in return for 'Colonial experience,' and, among other duties, drove out with Jim's rations, was the only regular visitor at the Seven-mile hut. Yet Jim had one constant companion and sympathetic friend. This was Stumpy, the black kitten. The genesis of Stumpy was unknown to Jim, who had found him in a hollow log, while chopping up a load of wood sent from the homestead. Jim had chopped off two inches of what he took to be a new variety of the black snake before discovering that he had mutilated an unlucky kitten. The victim became 'Stumpy' on the spot; and from that moment the kitten shared every meal and sentiment of the man, and grew in wisdom with increasing inches.

One cloudless winter's day (it was in July) Mr. Parker, arriving at the Seven-mile hut at high noon, found Jim idly caressing the kitten, and singing. He always did sing when he played with Stumpy, except when he broke off into affectionate imprecations upon some new impertinence on the part of that quaint little creature. In fact, Jim sang a good deal at any time. At general musters of all hands, such as at the lamb-marking, his voice made him popular in spite of his reserve, though he sometimes sang over the heads of his mates. To-day his singing was over the head of Mr. Parker, for it was in Italian, and Jim looked up with a quick change of colour at detection. He had, however, nothing to fear. Young Parker, so far from knowing Italian when he heard it, had been sent away from his public school because the rudiments of Latin were still beyond him at seventeen. Jim was pronouncing his words funnily—that was all that struck young Parker.

'You've heard the news, Jim?' were Parker's first words. 'We've a visitor—a lady, ye gods!—Mrs. Macdonald's sister.'

Jim had heard nothing about it. He appealed to Stumpy, and inquired if he had any information. Altogether he treated the intelligence with indifference, and went on playing with the kitten. Parker was piqued. He was full of the guest at the homestead, Mrs. Macdonald's enchanting sister, and must tell some one about her, even though the only accessible ear was a whim-driver's. He launched into a rhapsody which occupied some minutes, and blended the old public school slang with the stronger-flavoured bush idiom, newly acquired. Jim heard him stoically; then he held up Stumpy by the fore-quarters, and addressed this animal gravely.

'D'ye hear all that, Stumpy? Then just you forget it again, my little feller. Wimmin is nothink to us, as I've told you before; so never think on 'em, Stumps, or you an' me'll fall out! That's it—he says he hears, Mr. Parker.'

Parker changed the subject.

'Here's a letter for you,' he said, and tossed a square blue envelope across to the whim-driver. It was not one of the well-directed letters he occasionally received, with English postmarks which invited speculation. It came only from Sydney, and the superscription was amusingly illiterate. Jim opened the letter—and turned whiter than the soiled sheet which now began to tremble violently in his hand. There were merely a few written words on this sheet of paper, but a short newspaper extract was pasted below them. The written words danced before Jim's eyes; the printed words became illegible; and if young Parker had not been deep in the contemplation of his own face in the looking-glass on the doorpost (gloating over the promising beginnings of a russet bushman's beard, and wishing he could have his photograph taken as he was, to send home to the old country), he might have seen Jim shiver from head to foot, and push the kitten from his trembling knees. As it was, by the time the youth did turn round, Jim-of-the-Whim looked and spoke like a calm and rational man.

'Mr. Parker, sir—I want a cheque.'

'You aren't going on the booze again, Jim—already?'

'No, sir. I want you to make out a cheque for—as much as I'm worth, payable to this name and at this address.' He tore off the portion of the sheet of letter-paper above the newspaper-cutting, scored out a few words with a stump of pencil, added three words of his own, and handed this upper portion to young Parker.

'And please to put in this slip with the cheque, sir.'

These were the three words that Jim had written—

'To cover expenses.'

II

The young lady whom Mr. Parker had raved about to Jim-of-the-Whim was Miss Genevieve Howard, of Melbourne; and, to do that young fellow justice, he had but praised one who gained golden opinions on almost every hand.

Miss Jenny had a pretty face, a perfect figure, a sweet soprano voice; and she was run after at the Government House assemblies. She was hardly, however, one of the Melbourne beauties. Her hair was free from special merit; she had no complexion at all. Even her eyes were of a neutral tint, though as a rule they were subject to such clever control that the colour was of no consequence; the rule was broken when emotion softened them; then they required no management to render them quite bewitching. Genuine feeling was no stranger to Miss Jenny, but depth of feeling was. She was emotional. And greater even than her talent for singing was her natural turn for coquetry, which amounted to genius.

But when Miss Jenny came to stay in the back-blocks with her sister (whose invitations she had persistently refused for years) her little fling was over: she was engaged. It was a startling engagement. Her world could scarcely believe its ears when it was announced that the popular Genevieve—with her beauty, her money, her fairly smart tongue—had engaged herself to Clinton Browne, a country curate no better than a pauper. It seemed preposterous. It vexed many; it wounded one or two; but at least it scored off those hanging judges of Miss Jenny's own sex who had averred that Miss Jenny was holding back until the Australian squadron should anchor once more in the bay, or another cricketing team come over from the old country. But these were not the people to be silenced for long. They presently heard of Mr. Browne's translation from the country to a town curacy, and about the same time that Miss Jenny was going up country. They promptly declared that she was frightened of seeing too much of him. She was tired of an amphibious position in society (for Government House had been renounced); her enthusiasm for aboriginal missions and the rest had gone out as suddenly as it had caught fire; the originality, pathos, and romance attaching to the voluntary immolation of the brilliant Miss Howard on true love's altar were losing their fragrance in her own delicate nostrils. All these points, and worse, her judges insisted on—not knowing that their most ingenious malice could not have condemned the accused to a worse servitude than station-life in the remote lonely regions of Riverina, where Miss Jenny now was.

The well-built homestead among the tall pines on the sandhills had absolutely no attraction for the town-bred girl. The surrounding miles of salt-bush plains and low monotonous scrub oppressed her when she wandered abroad. There was not one picturesque patch on the whole dreary 'run.' Then she was prejudiced against squatters in general, and unjustly accepted her taciturn, close-fisted brother-in-law as a type of the class. Him she could not endure. She pitied her elder sister, the gentle Julia, who, having thrown herself away to begin with, made the worst of the bargain by becoming her children's meek, submissive slave. Their name was legion, and they were young savages one and all; the only one of them that Aunt Jenny would have anything at all to do with, while she could help it, was the reigning baby in arms.

At first, it is true, the young lady thought it rather nice to have a horse to ride at her own sweet pleasure. But this treat was minimised after the first ride, when Duncan gravely cautioned her against galloping his horses while 'feed' was so scarce in the paddocks and chaff so expensive; and after Miss Jenny had frightened herself horribly by losing her way in the scrub, and not finding it again for several hours, she removed the ride from her daily programme, and reserved it for those times when her nephews and nieces succeeded in making a perfect pandemonium of the homestead. Her days were spent chiefly among the pines, with a book or some fancy-work, or in the verandah when the children were out of the way. It was here that she made Clinton a gorgeous sermon-case of purple velvet, with C. B. in a crest of gold on one cover and I. H. S. on the other. This touching and suggestive present brought down upon her head a very beautiful letter from the ardent curate, who rashly stated that henceforth his sermons would be inspired. But the letter was far too beautiful to be answered immediately, or even to be read over twice. Not that Browne had rivals in Messrs. Bird and Parker, overseer and storekeeper respectively. Miss Howard took not the faintest interest in either of them, though she had subjugated poor Parker (quite unintentionally) on the evening of her arrival, and been compelled to snub the forward and facetious young overseer a few days later.

'I declare,' Jenny wrote to a friend, 'except dear old Julia, there's not a soul fit to speak to on the premises! And the children prevent one speaking to Julia—little wretches! My dear, I mayn't even sing in the evenings for fear of waking them, and even if I might it would be no pleasure with a pannikin of a piano, besides which, none of them know a note of music! I wish I had never carted all my songs up here—the sight of them tantalises me. As for the men, they are insufferable—not that I want to go back to Melbourne just yet. After all, I knew what to expect, for, as you know too, all bushmen are the same!'

Fate, coming down from heaven in the form of a heavy and welcome rainfall, proved Miss Genevieve Howard at fault in respect of this sweeping judgment.

On a gray and lowering day that young lady might have been seen cantering by the Seven-mile whim; she was seen, in fact, by the whim-driver, who ran to open a gate for her. The act of politeness did not strike Miss Jenny—as it ought to have done—as abnormal on the part of a station hand; nor did a hint about coming foul weather, spoken with unusual deference, receive the slightest attention. She threw a bone of thanks to the dog her gate-opener, and rode through without once looking under the brim of the gray felt wideawake on a level with her dogskin gloves.

But a few minutes later, as Jim stood at his hut door watching the rain come down in real earnest, there was a muffled tattoo of hoofs upon the soft sandy soil, and a horse pulled up in front of the hut.

The diffident tone and manner in which the young lady now addressed him offered such a pretty contrast to her monosyllable at the gate that Jim very nearly burst out laughing; instead, however, he bared, and ever so slightly inclined, his head, just as a gentleman would have done in his place.

'I think this is called the Seven-mile hut?'

'Yes, miss.'

'Is Mr. Macdonald here?'

'No, miss.'

'But you expect him?'

'No. I've heard nothing about it.'

'Oh, but I heard him say he was coming here.'

'Then he'll come, you may be sure, miss.'

The drops were falling thick and heavy.

'And I thought,' said Miss Jenny doubtfully, 'I might drive back with him in the buggy, which has a hood. I know Mr. Macdonald is coming here, for I heard him say so. I am only surprised he hasn't come yet.'

'He'll come any minute,' said Jim with decision. 'Help you to dismount, miss? That's it. Now, if you'll step in there out o' the rain, I'll take the saddle orf of the 'orse.'

The whim-driver followed Miss Jenny into the hut, carrying the saddle. Then he kicked the log into a blaze, drew near it the legless armchair on the soap-box, observed that Mr. Macdonald was certain not to be long, and, without another word, went out.

Miss Jenny listened to his retreating steps (and those of her horse, which he was evidently leading to some shelter) until they were lost to the ear in the rattle of rain on the iron roof; then she stood irresolute, her mouth pursed into the tiniest crimson circle, and doubt in her eyes. She made a pretty picture in her dark blue habit, the firelight sweeping over the flushed face underneath the white straw hat, and dancing in her hair—a pretty picture in a frame of unbarked pine, with a beading of galvanised iron.

She glanced round the wooden walls. How clean and tidy everything was! She had never imagined that common bushmen looked after their huts like this. Was this a common bushman, by the way? He certainly said 'orf of' for 'off,' and dropped the h from 'horse'; but otherwise he spoke almost as well as she did herself; his manners were better than those, say, of Mr. Bird; and he was really handsome—she had discovered this at last. What a pity he was only an ignorant bushman! He was nothing more, after all; or else, for one thing, he would not fight so shy of a riding-habit.

The girl sat down on the quaint seat in front of the fire, and the spurting flames made her thoughtful.… Presently she realised that there were no more flames, but only embers: her meditations had taken time. Yet the whim-driver did not return. Where had he gone? Did the absurd creature mean to leave her sitting there all day? She would demand her horse and brave the rain—only, now that she had waited so long for Duncan, it would be weak not to wait a little longer and be driven home dry. She raised her eyes from the red embers of the fire; they had rested on the glowing logs too long; they burned and ached, so that the rest of the hut was dark and indistinct to them.

Had this sensation lasted, Miss Jenny would at least have been spared a more startling one; for her clearing eyesight was greeted by a pair of emerald eyes transfixing her from the blurred gloom of the chimney corner. The eyes had no body, and Miss Jenny jumped up in high alarm, tumbling the legless chair from its pedestal the soap-box. A horrible sound issued from the region of the staring eyes. Miss Jenny leapt upon the soap-box, and thence, with immense agility, on to the table. Her sight lost all its dimness: the owner of the unearthly eyes, the author of the unearthly sound, stood revealed—a small black demon, with a back bent like a bow before the arrow leaves it.

Now, cats were this young lady's pet abhorrence; so she instinctively took the measure that had served her through life on like occasions, and screamed out lustily. Nor did she stop until the whim-driver appeared at the door with a scared face. Then, in an instant, she was sufficiently collected, and more than sufficiently indignant.

'Take that nasty, horrid little wretch away!' gasped Miss Jenny.

Jim simultaneously grasped the situation and poor Stumpy—the latter by that loose skin at the back of the neck which is to your hand what the loop of your overcoat is to the peg.

'Stumpy!' he began, in a terrible voice, 'you're a little——'

His teeth came together with a snap. Terror filled his face, for he felt as a man who has driven within an inch of a precipice, and pulled the right rein at the right second. And the words that Jim checked in his throat it would be grossly unfair to conjecture. He relieved himself by tossing Stumpy into the inner room, and banging the door.

'Danger's past,' he then said, smiling at the goddess aloft, with his head cocked at the rakish angle which he could not help. 'You may venture on deck, miss.'

He held up his hands to her assistance. What else could he do? But he may have done it awkwardly, for Miss Jenny stood immovable, vowing she was all right where she was. Jim thereupon threw himself with vigour into mending the fire. A modest idea occurred to him that advantage might perhaps be taken of his back being turned; and he was quite right, for there followed a flutter in the air and a light bounce on the floor; and when Jim looked round, after a decent interval, Miss Howard was standing gazing out of doors. He was glad she had not fallen and bothered him to pick her up.

Out of doors it was raining hopelessly; nor was there any sign of the good Duncan. The heavy framework of the whim loomed dispiritingly through the rain. There was nothing else to look at.

'How do you work a whim?' all at once asked the visitor.

'By driving a horse round and round,' Jim answered; and he came and looked out at a respectful distance from her.

'How very lively! I should rather like to see one working.'

'We don't do it in wet weather; there's plenty of water without. But if you cared to come some hot-wind day, miss, I'd show you the whole thing, and welcome.'

There was no eagerness in his tone; the invitation was inspired by a civil instinct, nothing more; and at that moment Jim-of-the-Whim was as good a misogynist as he had ever been. But Miss Jenny was rude enough not to answer; and Jim became exasperated: and that was the beginning of it all.

'Will you look round again to see the whim at work?' Jim asked, out of pure pique.

'I don't mind.'

'Make it a bargain, miss!'

'A bargain, then. If Mr. Macdonald doesn't come at once, I must ride back, rain or no rain.'

Jim thought that he should not grieve if she did. 'I hope you'll do no such thing, miss,' was, however, what he said; and certainly, for a common man, he was wonderfully ready with a polite falsehood. 'I'll make you a billy of tea and a johnny-cake in true bush style, miss, if you'll do me the honour to try 'em when made.'

Miss Howard consented with light hauteur, and went on gazing out into the rain, wondering by what stages such a good-looking, decent-spoken man had gravitated to the bush; and whether he had ever been anything very much better than a whim-driver.

As for Jim, he made himself very busy indeed, sitting on his heels over the fire in an attitude peculiar to back-blockers; and there was silence in the hut for several minutes. Then Miss Jenny grew tired of looking out of doors, and wandered round the room, examining the prints on the walls. Many of these she remembered in the English and Colonial illustrated papers. One from the Sketcher—one that occupied a place of honour 'on the line'—she remembered particularly well; for it represented a scene from an opera of which she was passionately fond, in her passionate little way. The opera was La Traviata. In a twinkling Verdi's airs were chasing each other in her ears. Half unconsciously she began humming the one that came first. This was the duet beginning 'Parigi, o cara,' which had made a great impression on Miss Jenny once (nay, many times more than once), all because of the soulful tenor who had played Alfred. With this tenor, in fact—one Signor Roberto—Miss Howard, in common with other little sentimentalists, had fallen innocently and entirely in love during the run of Traviata at the opera-house.

But before she had hummed the second bar of that duet, Miss Jenny turned sharply round—with animation practically suspended; for from some quarter of the hut, as if by magic, a tenor voice like unto the divine Roberto's was boldly singing the lines that had risen faintly and formlessly to the girl's lips—

 

'Parigi, o cara, noi lasceremo. …

 

Genevieve disbelieved her ears; their evidence should have been corroborated by her eyes, but it was not. She rubbed her eyes, and fastened them upon the one possible and visible owner of a tenor voice; but the whim-driver still sat at ease upon his heels, with his face turned to the fire and his back to Miss Jenny; and, before she could make up her mind that the whim-driver and the singer were one, the voice ceased softly.

Miss Jenny knew what ought to happen now: the soprano ought to catch up the refrain, and repeat the solo. It was only a little bit of a solo, of two dozen bars or so; then why not?

Wild with excitement, knowing the thing by heart, she opened her lips, and out it came. It was no humming matter now; Miss Jenny was on her mettle; and if there was a slight nervous tremor in the notes, they were none the less true for that, and all the more tender.

A moment later the pace quickened, and both voices were in the running. Then it was that Jim rose to his feet—that the singers faced one another with sparkling eyes—that the whole hut rang and trembled with enchanting sounds. After that the voices sank and slackened, and died away in a soft embrace—pianissimo. And poor little Miss Jenny knew what she had done, and was instantly stunned by the buffets of a dozen different emotions.

'I've no right to know Italian; please keep it quiet, miss,' said Jim humbly, speaking first, and as though nothing much had happened, yet with a rather sad smile; 'and some day I'll—show you how the whim works.'

For at this moment Macdonald's buggy swept in front of the hut and pulled up.

 

And Jim said that night to his mate:

'Stumpy, you recollect what I was saying to you not so long since about wimmin? Keep clear of 'em, Stumps, my son. Never let me catch you frightening 'em no more, and getting your master mixed up in it, or I'll chuck you down the blessed whim, little Christian though you are!'

III

About this time a change came over the whim-driver at the Seven-mile. It was noticed by young Parker, who saw him frequently, and lamented by the landlord of the Governor Loftus Hotel, the nearest grog-shanty, where Jim and his cheque were now several weeks overdue. The fact was, Jim had renounced the luxury of the periodical 'drunk,' and was coming out as a bush dandy. He shaved himself every morning of his life; he appeared in none but the snowiest moleskins and the pinkest and most becoming of striped cotton shirts; he even went to the extreme lunacy of shining his boots every evening before retiring to his bunk. But, what was far more remarkable, his speech was the speech of Jim-of-the-Whim no more. He dropped no aspirates, his sentences were grammatical; and without any specific deduction from his case, it may be noted as a curious fact that errors of speech may be easily acquired by any educated man who chooses to live long enough in a low grade, and takes pains to forget what culture he once possessed. He seldom swore, and when he did the short sharp pistol-crack was a mere mockery of his former bullock-driving broadside. Stumpy, could he but have spoken, would have borne valuable testimony on the latter point, since he was the party most affected (not forgetting the whim-horse, a hardened drudge) by his master's change in this respect; and the sagacious little animal would have assured you that the endearing epithets now showered upon him were entirely inoffensive in their nature.

It would have been taxing feline intelligence unfairly, however, to have expected the little cat to note the subtler indications of the change in Jim: the look of expectancy and hope with which he rose of mornings, the disappointment in his face at evening, the glances he would cast all day along the track towards the homestead, the frequency with which he sang, whistled, and hummed one tune. These points were too fine for the cleverest cat in the world—even Dick Whittington's might have missed them.

But events long looked for come in the end when least expected; and the coming of Jim's goddess was a case in point.

The whim was out of order, and Jim for once idle, waiting for the blacksmith, who had been sent out from the homestead, and gone back to his forge there with a bit of greasy paper covered with diagrams. Jim sat outside on the ground in the shade of the hut, toes up, arms folded, eyes closed. A clay pipe was between his teeth, but the ashes in the bowl were cold. Jim was asleep, and dreaming of her who was alternately minx and angel in his waking mind, but always angel in his dreams. Suddenly he awoke: and the angel sat not far from him in her saddle.

The pipe fell from Jim's lips as his jaw dropped. Next moment he had sprung to his feet, and a dusky colour flooded his face with one swift wave.

'Good afternoon,' he said, snatching off his wideawake. 'I—I beg your pardon, miss.'

Miss Jenny begged his. 'I have come to be shown how a whim works,' said she.

'Ah, I feared you had forgotten all about that!'

'So I had,' declared Miss Jenny with unblushing readiness. 'I never thought of it until, riding this way again, the whim reminded me. I am ready to be shown at once, if'—severely—'you are not too busy!'

Jim stepped diffidently forward, gnawing at his moustache, and proffered his aid as formerly. But she cut him short.

'No, thank you; I'm not going to get off; I can't stay a moment longer than just to see this wonderful whim—then I'm off.'

This was delicious. If the whim were admitted to be out of gear she would simply canter away without a thank-you; therefore Jim would admit nothing. In silence he led the way to the whim, Miss Jenny riding after him at a walk. Under the black ugly wooden framework, which was high enough for Miss Jenny to continue sitting upright in her saddle, they both stopped; and Jim began to explain.

He began with the great wooden drum above their heads, and step by step expounded the working of the whim; but when he led the lady's hack into such a position that Miss Jenny could see down into the shaft, he had not yet mentioned that an accident had suspended the working.

The sides of the shafts were lined with horizontal slabs of wood; and the mischief was that one of the slabs near the top had become loose, and had at last fallen the full depth of a hundred feet, and so smashed and jammed the bucket, which was just clear of the water at the bottom, as to make it immovable. One slab having loosened itself, others were likely to do the same; the shafts were no longer secure, and the danger of descending to the injured bucket (without testing every slab on the way, as the blacksmith proposed) was great.

There was only one shaft for Miss Jenny to look down, for the uninjured bucket hung at the mouth of the other. She did not much like looking down the smooth-sided, damp, narrow shaft; it put her in mind of the bottomless pit; yet to gaze down, down, down, rather fascinated her.

'You have not yet shown me how it works,' she said presently, glancing across the raised lips of the shaft at the whim-driver, who was leaning over them and grasping the perpendicular rope a little higher than his head.

'The whim's not in working order.'

As he spoke Jim watched her face, with a rather reckless light in his blue eyes, for the effect of his little sell. He expected her to ride off at once; but she did nothing of the kind. She exhibited no annoyance at all, but would know all about the jamming of the bucket at the bottom.

'Then will some one have to go to the bottom?' she asked, shuddering—'down this endless awful rope?'

'Some one will. There's nothing else for it.'

Miss Jenny's eyes had been downcast; now she raised them swiftly. Her eyes often were downcast, and she as often raised them thus.

'Dare you?'

'I shouldn't wonder.'

The next sound was a sharp shrill cry from Miss Jenny. The little dainty riding-whip—which she had never once dropped on all her long and lonely rides—had somehow slipped from her fingers and fallen fairly into the mouth of the shaft, and so out of sight.

Then came a shriller, sharper cry from Miss Jenny, followed by the exclamation, 'Don't!' reiterated in great alarm.

But it was too late: Jim was descending the single rope into the horrible pit, hand under hand. Jenny's vision grew dim; she lost sight of him in the deeper gloom of the shaft; and as she saw him last his upturned eyes were fixed upon her with a strange, smiling, singular expression.

Suddenly the rope, on which the girl now concentrated her trembling, anxious gaze, ceased to vibrate. He had reached the bottom, then. But why did he not shout up to her his safety? She swayed in her saddle with the suspense.

Watching the rope with an agonised face, she hardly breathed until it began once more to vibrate; then she lowered her eyes into the impenetrable gloom; and at length a figure, spattered and stained with dirt, sweat streaming from the white forehead, and blots of blood upon the hands, with the little riding-whip between his teeth—a figure that ten minutes of strenuous effort had turned into an apparition—climbed slowly into sight, and so, hand over hand, into the open air.

A Count de Lorge would have struck the lady with the whip; but Jim just handed it over without a word, and flung himself upon the ground. Without a word Miss Jenny received her whip; she could not speak; but she could see four deep dents in the whalebone, where Jim's teeth had done their best to meet, in the struggle of the stifling upward climb.

All at once a noise came from the shaft—a thumping and a bumping against its sides—growing more distant, but ending in a loud metallic crash. Jim had leapt to his feet, and was gazing down the shaft.

'What is it?' asked Miss Jenny tremulously; her nerves were shaken.

'Only another slab, miss. It'll about do for the old bucket.'

'Are the slabs so heavy?'

'Damp, and heavy as lead.'

'Suppose—oh, suppose you had been down below a minute longer!'

'Why, miss, I should have been a stiff 'un!'

There was a long pause between them. Miss Jenny broke it at last in a whisper—

'Did you know the—the danger—before you went down?'

The whim-driver laughed without answering; and a minute later a cloud of orange-coloured sand, far over the plain, was all that could be seen of Miss Jenny from the whim, even from the top of the framework, on which Jim had mounted.

IV

The gate between the home-paddock and the horse-paddock, half a mile from the homestead: half-past nine on a hot Sunday evening in December.

A slim figure all in white leant over the gate, and the full moon shone so brilliantly that any one within a hundred yards might have seen that it was Miss Jenny. Moreover, but for the hindering box clump on the other side of the gate, Miss Jenny might herself have seen some one hurrying across the paddock towards her, and have conquered her uneasiness; for this was Jim-of-the-Whim.

It was their first meeting by design, but there had been accidental meetings, one, two and three, since Jim's risky descent of the whim-shaft: at least, they appeared to be accidents—like the slipping of the whip that day from Miss Jenny's fingers.

All at once the night air was filled with a music that should have silenced every chirruping locust in the land—music whereat Miss Jenny sighed her deep relief and fluttered with delight.

'La donna è mobile' sang the voice, and came nearer every second. It was Verdi at his most tuneful: in the moonlit wilderness: by the sweetest tenor out of Italy.

Miss Jenny had heard Rigeletto with the same tenor that took more than her fancy in Traviata. For the first time—for she had only heard Jim sing once before—she compared his voice with the heavenly Roberto's. And then and there a suspicion entered her soul that would have been torture had not the opportunity of satisfying it been immediately at hand. For the song had come to an undignified end in the full tide of the second verse, and—and Miss Jenny was on one side of the gate and Jim on the other.

'You were singing Rigeletto?'said Jenny.

'Yes; I was forced to sing something for very joy.'

' I have heard Roberto sing that thing; and, do you know, you sing exactly like Roberto, and look like him too!'

No answer.

'Are you Roberto?' cried Jenny, in the greatest excitement.

'Can it make any difference to you? Even so, should I not be miles beneath you still?'

Miss Jenny did not answer.

'You own that I should—and,' cried Jim, 'that's the best of it! You take me for what I am. Very well; I'll tell you what I was—I was Roberto! Does it make any difference?'

It did not—but it made them practically silent. The full moon sank lower, and peeped under the very broad brim of Jim's wideawake. That was bad taste on the moon's part.

'You were to tell me your whole history,' Miss Jenny whispered. 'Were you always on the stage?'

'No,' said Jim. 'Ten years ago I was at the 'Varsity. You wouldn't have thought it, would you?'

'Oh, indeed, I——'

'Oh no, you wouldn't! I had forgotten it myself until—until I saw you! No, it was the common savage you liked, not the ex-gentleman; and by liking him you have saved him! My angel! My good angel! For your sake I'll be the man I was once, so help me God!'

The girl blushed crimson in the moonlight, and Jim liked her the better for it. The poor fellow little dreamt how much she had to blush for.

'I'm the prodigal son of rather a well-known parent,' Jim went on. 'You can see his name in any English newspaper. It is the parable all through so far, minus the happy ending. That's what you and I are going to bring about.'

'You mean that you are disinherited! What was it you did?'

Inquisitiveness was innate in Miss Jenny; but at the same time, to do her justice, she was thinking of her own little dower, and of its possibilities as an aid to reconciling her future husband with his family. Yet she would have given something to know what Jim's original crime had been.

Jim would not answer. He said that it was a long story, and his face showed that the memory pained him still. Nor would he say why he had quitted the stage, on which he had achieved a great though brief reputation throughout the Colonies.

Soon Miss Jenny looked at her watch, and said she must fly. Whereupon Jim opened the gate to fly with her as far as he dare. But they did not fly at all; they walked very slowly indeed; and on this walk they made their final arrangements. There is nothing to conceal in these arrangements. In the circumstances, they were the simplest and most natural in the world Jim was to get his cheque next day, and set off walking for Wagga-Wagga. He was to wait in that town; if not in the church-porch, at any rate on the platform of the railway-station. He would not have to wait many days, though the date of Miss Howard's departure from her brother-in-law's station was not absolutely settled. She was preparing, however, to go down to Melbourne for Christmas, and she intended travelling by rail from Hay, by way of Wagga and Albury, instead of in the coach by the more direct route to Deniliquin. She would leave the train at Wagga, and be married then and there.

After that, as Jim said, the world lay at their feet. They would go to England. His father would forgive everything; all would be well; the years of exile and degradation should be forgotten. Nor were all Jim's prophecies so vague, and Genevieve quickly shared his high hopes; for among her own people the realisation of half the golden programme that Jim now unfolded would atone for the rash plunge she was going to take. She was intoxicated with joy, for there were prospects, as it turned out, undreamed of till now, though she had suspected from the beginning that Jim had sunk from some better state. But her little heart was honestly on fire as it had never quite been before; and in her happiness she for once shook off the haunting vision of poor Clinton, who at that moment was walking home to his Melbourne lodgings from Sunday supper at the parsonage, hugging to his heart the velvet embroidered case that had 'inspired' his evening sermon.

As for Jim, he carolled all the way back to the hut—still in Italian.

V

On Mr. Parker's high office-stool at the desk in the store sat Miss Jenny—deep in the composition of a letter. This letter was a long business, and, what was worse, it cost the writer tribulation over every word; when from time to time she looked up, her eyes were swimming with tears. Her letter, in fact, was full of sorrow and remorse: its frankness did the writer some credit—it was the letter of a weak nature rising almost to strength in the honest admission of its weakness: it was a letter to Clinton Browne.

It was strange that she should have the store all to herself this sultry afternoon; but the fact was that all hands were away 'mustering' in a distant paddock; and, as it was mail-day, Macdonald had intrusted the key of the store to his sister-in-law, with injunctions about the despatch of one mail-bag, and permission to open the other.

At last the dreadful letter was written, directed, stamped, and dropped into the out going bag. Then Miss Jenny dried her eyes, tied string round the mouth of the bag, and sealed it as she had once or twice seen Mr. Parker do. The wax was still warm when the inward mail was fetched into the store.

'The other bag is ready,' said Miss Jenny, pointing to it. 'You'd better take it.'

'No; I'll come back for it in an hour, when me and my 'orse has had a snack. Lots o' time for the other bag then.' And the highly Colonial mail-boy swaggered out with characteristic independence, not having demeaned himself by a single ' miss,' 'please,' or 'thank you.'

The weekly mail had always been a source of pleasurable excitement to Miss Jenny, though of late she had neglected her formerly enormous correspondence, and allowed it to dwindle. Still, there were a hundred people from whom she might hear to-day; and it was not a little disappointing to find absolutely nothing addressed to Miss Howard. There was, however, a letter bearing the name that was soon to become her own, and its mere exterior interested Miss Jenny more than whole sheets addressed to herself could have done.

This letter she kept in front of her on the desk after she had poured everything else back into the bag. It bore the postmark of an English town which, until the other day, had been no more than a name to her. It was superscribed in a firm, businesslike, masculine hand. Without doubt it was from Jim's father! Miss Jenny toyed musingly with the envelope. She tried to guess the contents; she even held the letter up to the light; but the paper of the envelope was provokingly opaque. If the letter itself was written on such thick paper it must be a pretty short letter. It has been said that Genevieve was naturally inquisitive; other unfortunate qualities of hers combined to strengthen the temptation now thrown in her way.

Perhaps the drowsy stillness of the store and her entire solitude fed that temptation; perhaps, on the contrary, she argued that she had almost a right to read the letters of the man she meant to marry next week; or it may even have crossed her mind that possibly she held in her hands words of forgiveness from father to son, and that in this case Providence had clearly reserved it for her to break the good news to Jim. In any case, the fact remains that she opened the envelope with a paper-knife, and so cleverly that she separated the flap without tearing it. Having done this she was startled. She told herself that she had done it without thinking. This was partly true, for she made more bones about reading the letter now that it was opened than about opening it. It may have been the sight of a gumbottle and brush among the inkstands that helped to decide her the wrong way.

When Genevieve Howard had read three lines of the letter to the man she had promised to marry, she sank forward on the sloping desk as if in a swoon, and the letter fluttered to the floor. There it lay in the dust—after all, not much more than the three lines that had been read.

'Dear James,' the letter ran, 'when I refused to see you or communicate with you any more, after your disgraceful marriage with an opera singer, I took the step after due deliberation. My decision was therefore irrevocable, and I am sorry you again compel me to emphasise it. I am not surprised to learn that this woman has proved your final ruin. That you have separated from her and left the stage may possibly be for your comparative good, unless you once more go from bad to worse. But I must repeat, and I trust for the last time, that you cheat and deceive yourself in looking to a reconciliation, no matter at how distant a date, with—your father.'

A jingle of spurs sounded along the verandah outside. The mail-boy re-entered the store.

'Ill take the bag now,' said this young Australian; and he was walking off with it when Miss Howard started up from the desk with burning cheeks and flashing eyes, and stopped him.

'Bring it to me!' she cried. 'There is a letter in the bag that must not go!'

She cut the string, extracted the letter addressed to Clinton Browne, and tore it into a hundred fragments before the mail-boy's eyes. He saw her tie up and seal the bag once more; he saw her hands tremble so that she burnt herself with the sealing-wax. In his uncouth way he lent a hand; and he went out and told all the men at the hut that 'his girl' was certainly 'taken worse.' Nor did Miss Jenny's white face that evening escape the notice of her brother-in-law, though he said nothing until she told him that she had given up the idea of rail from Hay to Albury viâ Wagga, and so on, in favour of the more direct and cheaper coach journey to Deniliquin; and then he merely praised her economy, which was after his own heart.

VI

On the railway platform at Wagga-Wagga there was to be seen daily, right through the busy time of the Christmas holidays, and principally at the hour when the train came in from Hay, a man whose appearance, at first gentlemanlike and irreproachable in point of dress, became rapidly shabby-genteel. This man attracted attention at first by reason of his good looks, and at last because people remembered his good looks, and wondered what had become of them. His expression, however, forbade inquiry; and as he never was seen in even the primary and confidential stage of intoxication (being evidently a teetotaller, since he was sober on Christmas Day) he was left unmolested. Just before he disappeared from Wagga, towards the end of January, this man presented an appearance that is familiar enough in cities: he had good clothes on his back and no money to live up to them; his cheeks were sunken, his chin stubbly, his linen grimy. At the first glance the man looked well to do; at the second, you could see that he was starving.

About a fortnight later the same man walked into the store at Macdonald's station, and young Parker cried out in surprise across the ledger—

'Jim-of-the-Whim!'

There was nothing surprising about Jim's return, though he had never before stayed away quite so long. What was surprising was the urban cut and texture of his clothes. Parker attempted to interrogate him lightly on the point, but got short answers. The fact was, the clothes were Jim's wedding garments, which had been made for him immediately after his arrival in Wagga, and which he would not part with though everything else had to go to buy him bread, while he waited for the bride who never came.

Parker gave up the dress riddle, and informed Jim that he had come back in the nick of time, his successor at the whim having that very morning rolled up his swag, got his cheque, and gone.

At the news Jim's eyes lighted up ever so little.

'Is the little cat there still, sir?' he asked suddenly.

'He was this morning,' returned Parker—and the light in Jim's eyes grew stronger. 'By the way, Jim, here's a letter for you—came the day after you went.'

Jim read his father's ultimatum with complete apathy. It was the few words in pencil at the end, in a different hand, over a different signature, that caused him to stagger as though drunk, and to sink down on the nearest box.

Young Parker was going on with his entries, and his back was turned to Jim.

Jim read the pencilled words over and over again without grasping their meaning; yet they were simple enough. They told very shortly how the letter had been opened, what its first words revealed, how the writer would see him no more, yet forgave him, and wished him well. There was not one syllable of reproach. Jim blessed her in his heart.

In a few minutes, when he was quite calm again, he put his hand into an inner pocket, and drew out an old and dirty blue envelope, the same that Parker had handed to him in the hut on the day when he first heard of Miss Jenny, and would not listen. From this envelope Jim took the newspaper cutting which had agitated him on that occasion: it was an announcement of the death of Jim's wife at Sydney.

Jim rose and obtained from the storekeeper a clean envelope, into which he slipped his newspaper cutting, closing up the envelope without adding a written word; merely underlining the date of his wife's death.

'Mr. Parker, will you be so kind as to address this to the young lady that was staying here—Miss Howard, wasn't her name? You needn't whistle; it's only a cutting that'll interest her. Come, sir, as a favour to me.'

That was what Jim said. But he was thinking—'I won't add a word. She'll see it all and write. Then I'll go down to her, and after all—after all—after all——'

'Her name isn't Howard, Jim,' said Parker, taking the envelope.

'What is it, then?'

'This,' said young Parker, squaring his elbows to direct the envelope: and the address began: 'Mrs. Clinton Browne.'