His Lady of an Hour

by G. B. Lancaster

HIS LADY OF AN HOUR.

By G. B. LANCASTER.

THE God of Work is not merciful to all men alike, though they bring him their muscle and sinew and the eager strength of their manhood. Lew Holderness had brought these things many times without avail during the last seven months fruitless searching for a billet; and when Steel, skipper of the pearling-brig Aurora, lifted him suddenly out of his despair, and pitchforked him into position of second mate aboard the Aurora, Lew went out and pawned the old signet ring which had been pawned five times before, and then turned into the Wharf Hotel to celebrate.

"Five hours before I need be aboard," he said. "Five hours! Heavens! A man can turn a town inside out in less time than that."

He was going to do something which would affect him rather more, but he did not know it. Life has a way of springing her tests on men and then sitting back to see how they take them.

The very ring of his feet lifted the eyes of the men in the bar, and Tommy Ives turned with the usual joke that had worn cruelly threadbare in these last months.

"Goin' to shout us, Lew? Mine's a gin cocktail."

"Yes." Lew pulled himself up on the counter and grinned at them with his eyes lit. "Yes. Make you all drunk if you like. Fill up, Joe. And if there's a man here who's been to the Thursday Island pearling-beds just lately, I'll make him blind drunk."

Five voices claimed the distinction, and Lew plucked from their midst a slim, wizened man with a bent leg, and brought him up to the bar.

"Wade in, Captain," he said, "an' tell me some o' the truth you know, an' all the lies. Ah—h! But you smell o' the shell, though."

The whole room smelt of it, and of the salt sea, and the tar, and the fruit-laden boats in the river without. And Lew sat on the counter snuffing it up, with his heart lifting for desire of the groaning rollers under a boat laden to the taffrail, and of the deep-sea wind screaming through the rigging at midnight. And the world seemed to him suddenly a very good place, and vivid with life and delight; and the haze of yellow light through the cloud of smoke and breath was a beacon of hope to his heart.

There was a little stir about the bar-parlour door. Then the barman looked at Lew, grinning.

"A lady waitin' to see yer," he said, "in there. She would not give her name at all."

Lew slid off the counter promptly, and the questions hit him.

"Not expectin' that, was yer?" "Is that Aurora herself, Lew?" "Whose young lady is she, Lew?"

This last was Jimmy Taylor, from the Condamine. And the company roared approval, for Lew Holderness would fight a man and make love to a woman with equal delight, and all the town knew it. Lew laughed over his shoulder, with the light striking the bare column of his throat and the gay, virile face above it.

"Not yours, my innocent," he said. And the company approved again. For girls were scarce in the township, and Jimmy was frankly ill-favoured.

"If it was, I'd not let her be speakin' wi' you!" he shouted. Lew wheeled where he stood. His voice was level as his eyes. But it was the cold, deadly level of steel.

"If you'd like to prove that," he said; "you needn't wait till the girl turns up."

Jimmy looked at him, hesitated, dropped his eyes.

"Guess p'raps I'll wait," he muttered.

"Guess p'raps you're pretty safe if you do," returned Lew drily.

And then he turned in at the bar-parlour door and shut it behind him.

A girl stood by the table with one hand on the shabby oilcloth, and the flicker of the gas-bracket made a half-light over her. Lew halted, holding the door-knob, and he stared at her with a swift lifting of his eyebrows. For she did not at all belong to the order of women whom he had seen in the township or in this dingy little room, with its greasy wall-paper and its smell of stale smoke and its fag-ends of cigarettes. There was fur about her stately shoulders, and fur on the well-carried, tall head, and her voice held the slow, trained charm of a woman born to high places.

"Mr. Holderness," she said. "You know my brother—Charlie Deland? He wrote telling me of his illness and giving his address care of you. I have come up to nurse him. Will you tell me where he is, please?"

At midday Lew had helped the township doctor put Charlie Deland in his coffin. He lay there still, waiting for the morrow, and those who had spoken of Charlie's last move seemed to approve of it as they had not approved many of his former ones. For the first time Lew regretted it. He stared at the girl, and his lips went suddenly dry.

The girl drew herself up. Lew was a tall man; but her long-lashed, dark eyes met his levelly.

"You are Mr. Holderness?" she demanded.

"Yes." Lew was reaching out for his wits rapidly.

"And you know where my brother is?"

"I—I—yes."

There is some doubt as to whether the body still constitutes the man when the soul is taken from it. Lew did not care to hazard an opinion concerning the resting-place of Charlie Deland's soul.

"Then you will take me to him at once, if you please," said the girl, and gathered her furs round her.

It was the manner of a woman accustomed to command—by virtue of her beauty and her social standing and her birth. Lew recognised this, and it delighted him, for he had not seen such things so closely before. He turned to the side-door leading into the street. Then he paused. In the shanty which he shared with Charlie Deland were loneliness and quiet, and the little back room where the body lay would take her grief and hide it from the eyes of men. But it seemed to Lew that there could be few more brutal things than to take this girl, unprepared, into that silent room. He looked at her again, stammering for words.

"T—there's no hurry, is there?" he said. He could not well have said a worse thing, and he knew it when the girl's indignant eyes met his.

"Come!" she said, and swept past him to the pavement and the chill of the sea-breathing night. And Lew obeyed, as all men obeyed when she commanded them.

The moonlight flung their shadows black before them on the rough stones. A pale nimbus showed round the head of each shadow as it shows only in lands where a white night is vivid as day. Lew had never by any law of his life deserved a nimbus before, but in some vague way he was qualifying for it just now; for all the chivalry and the pity of his nature were waking to help Charlie Deland's sister in the sorrow that was coming to her.

He glanced at her as they turned together up the little side street where a cow, cropping the rusty grass, raised her head and blew a sweet-scented inquiry at them, and what he saw troubled him distinctly. For her proud mouth was quivering, and the glint of tears unshed was on the dark lashes, and something infinitely childish and appealing suggested itself in the little curl of fair hair round her ear.

Then Lew girded his loins and buckled on the breast-plate of truth.

"Charlie never expected you to come," he said.

"It is customary to prefer nursing one's relation oneself instead of leaving him to strangers," said the girl, looking straight before her.

"Oh … I say. I'm not a stranger to Charlie."

"You didn't appear to know much about him just now."

This took Lew in the wind, and he had no counter. He kept silence until the row of squalid tin shanties lessened and hedges of prickly-pear raised their fleshy, flat leaves along the track. Then he said—

"I know as much about him as anyone does now."

The girl wheeled on him. Her eyes—they were very beautiful eyes—sent a shiver through Lew to his boot-heels. For he had got to put shadow into them.

"That is epigrammatic," she said suavely. But Lew, interpreting into his own language, knew that it meant: "Are you quite sober?"

"Yes," he said hurriedly. "I mean—yes, of course. And—er—here's the door."

She did not hesitate as he pushed the door wide, showing the gaping blackness within, and a thrill of admiration of her courage ran along his veins. Then he followed her into the little weather-board living-room, struck a match that quivered faint light over its bachelor untidiness, and stood a moment with sudden remembrance twitching his heart-strings. By lawful rule of the game he should have been packing his effects by now; and in two hours the key would be left in the landlord's hands, and the shanty would again be to let. For the other tenant did not intend to come back any more than Lew did.

Then he crossed to the shelf, lit the small lamp with its broken chimney, and turned to her. The collar of his shirt did not touch his throat, but he felt as though hands choked him. Never in all his days had he been nearer cowardice.

"I—have something to say to you before you see him," he blurted.

The girl threw off her cloak, and the long, supple lines of her figure were perfect as her face.

"Yes?" she said a little wearily.

"It is something that I find it rather difficult to tell you," said Lew, and the tone of his voice brought her eyes fairly on him.

His dress was rough, his hair was too long, and the firm, square chin was unshaven. But what the girl read out of the hole gave her trust in this stranger of the night.

"Is he—drunk?" she said steadily. "You need not be afraid to tell me of that."

"No. But—— Well, I don't know how long it is since he wrote you. He never spoke of his home-folk. But he has been ill a good while, and—and I'm afraid you'll find him changed, you know."

The girl put out her hands gropingly. They caught at a chair-back and rested there. Lew noted the glitter of rings, many rings and very costly, on her white fingers, and he wondered what manner of woman this was who put such temptation in the way of an unknown man.

"Tell me," she said, and her breath was shortened.

"He has been awfully ill," said Lew, standing stiffly. "And he had suffered a—a lot. He—he was bound to, you know, after the—the way he had—had fooled with himself, you know. I—he——"

"What do you mean?" said the girl, dropping her words slowly. Her big eyes were rounded and full of light. They seemed to grow bigger in the little room, and Lew's tongue was dumb before them. "Do you mean that Charlie is dead?"

The words dropped slow and detached again. They hit Lew like separate hailstones and unnerved him badly.

"I—I—— On my soul, it's best for him," he said. "If you knew—if you'd seen him—oh, good Heavens!"

Lew had seen women faint on the stage many times. But they did not do as this girl did. Possibly it was because he caught her before she reached the floor, and also because the sense of criticism was not in him just then. But he had to lay her on the floor, among the uncleaned boots and the crumpled newspapers and the riding-gear that had been Charlie's, and he had to leave her there whilst he dashed out to the water-butt with a cracked jug, stumbling over many things by the way, and leaving a trail of drippings as he came back to her.

She was the fairest, most delicate thing that Lew's hands had touched in all their thirty years, and the fine hair about her forehead twisted in little curls round his fingers as he swabbed water over her clumsily. They seemed to twist round his brain, round his heart, and the unknown fragrance that hung about her put her apart from the coarse tobacco-and-drink smells of his daily life into a strange, sweet maidenhood of her own. His teeth were shut, and there were drops on his forehead when she opened her eyes again, meeting his straightly.

"Charlie?" she whispered.

Lew got his arm round her, lifting her up against his shoulder.

"Drink this," he said, and his voice was curt by reason of the feeling that shook him.

She put her lips to the cracked jug and drank. Then Lew, watching with eager eyes, saw memory come back, whitening her face, and drawing deep lines on its softness.

"When?" she whispered.

Lew hesitated. It was better to lie; but he could not lie under those eyes.

"This morning," he said.

He felt the shudder run through her, and the lines on the softness grew deeper. But her eyes were dry, and this frightened Lew. He had heard that under great stress women needs must cry or go mad. She pushed him off and stood up. But she tottered on her feet.

"Take me to him," she said.

Lew glanced towards the inner door, latched with a piece of greasy string. He was desperately afraid, and in his fear he stammered out some words without meaning. Then, with a quick oath half said in his throat, he snatched up the lamp and followed her, for the white, shining fingers were fumbling with the greasy string.

It was a little, unlined lean-to, with moonbeams straggling through the nail-holes in the roof of corrugated iron and pouring in a soft, radiant flood between the top of the rough wall and the stringers. The floor was tramped earth, littered with rubbish, and, flat on the floor, in his coffin roughed out of stringy-bark, Charlie Deland slept more peacefully than he had slept since Lew knew him.

The squalor of all this had not struck home to Lew before. It was a part of his daily life, and he had seen many men go to their last sleep with less of Death's majesty about them than Charlie Deland held now. But when the girl made the three steps that brought her to the room-centre, and dropped on her knees by the coffin, and drew the covering from the face that Lew had hid without any sorrow, a sudden shame burnt Lew in that he had brought her here to see this. Then fiercer shame scorched him that he himself should stay to see the brother and sister meet. He set down the lamp on an empty box, crossed to the next room, found a seat of some kind, and sat waiting, with his head in his hands.

It was the keenest purgatory that life had given him yet. For sobs came from the lean-to, and piteous, broken words, and girlish, caressing speech such as Charlie Deland had never deserved this last six years. Lew bit his lips, not daring to deafen his ears, for the fear that she might faint again. And the broken voice went on, and the tearing agony of the sobs, until Lew's nails were clenched into his hands and sweat stood on his forehead. By all his manhood, by all the pity and the chivalry deep-sunk in him somewhere, he wanted to go in there and to take the girl in his arms and to give her such comfort as living, breathing tenderness could give.

Silence came at last, intermittently and slowly. Then Lew looked through the door noiselessly, with his face twitching. The sleep of exhaustion had caught her where she knelt with her arm thrown across her dead brother and her cheek laid down to the edge of the wood. The pale of her face and her dress in the moonlight made Lew think of an angel that he had seen in some graveyard, and his heart leapt up in anger that she should come to such as Charlie Deland. Then a knocking at the outer door wheeled him to it with quicker anger in his eyes. For no living man had the right to pry here on this night.

He had forgotten all the life outside the room until the world beyond the outer door showed him the Aurora's first mate, with the smell of the sea heavy on him. And the Aurora's first mate was uncivil.

"What the diversified dickens d'you mean by keeping us waiting in this diversified way?" he began. And then Lew drew the latch with a click behind him, and stood out on the rough footpath, with the call of the rising sea and the sea-smell to help him through with this.

"When does the Aurora sail?" he asked.

"She should 'a' gone an hour ago, an' you know that as well as the next man. But we've been turning the town upside down for you. They said at the pub that you'd cleared off with some girl. Well, I tell you, the skipper hasn't any time for such foolery. You're to be aboard the old hooker in five minutes, or he's taking on Joe Hanson. So now you know it."

From the river came a Kanaka chorus, where a native crew brought the anchor of an outgoing hulk to the cathead. Lew could see her lights blinking red through the white of the moonlight, and almost his feet could feel the throb of her engines as her heart beat fast in eagerness to reach the sea. In the gutter outside the hotel at the corner a man sat with his head against the horse-trough, talking to himself in the peculiar, solemn tones of the half-drunk, and from the bar itself came a burst of noisy laughter. It was the old, stale, squalid life that Lew's soul loathed, and that his body and soul ached to leave. He stood still. He heard what the sea was saying to him, and his heart answered. But within the lean-to behind him was something that spoke louder. There was no woman in all the place whom he could bring to Charlie Deland's sister to help her through with the morrow. And very assuredly there was no man. He looked at the mate.

"Tell the skipper he can have Joe Hanson," he said. "Joe's passable when he's been safe at sea for a week."

The mate objected luridly. For he knew that Lew was more than passable even from the beginning. Lew backed to the door again.

"Go an' spring that on Jow," he said. "I've no use for your comets to-night, Dicey. So-long."

Then he shut the door on the amazed first mate, and stood very still in the little dark room, with hands closed and eyes staring at nothing.

"What's the betting that it isn't the track again?" he said. "And a stone out o' one of those rings of hers would keep me in tucker an' baccy for a year. Well, it's a queer world. And I haven't got a brown to buy her a mouthful with. I wonder if there's a blessed thing here that I could put up the spout?"

He struck a match up his leg and glanced round. Then he picked Charlie Deland's bridle out of the litter and felt it over, until the light went out, burning his fingers.

"Fair dues," he said, "I might raise a bob or two on it at Milligan's. And Charlie won't want it again. Besides, she has lost me my billet."

But there was no resentment in him when he brought her strong, coarse tea and fat, heavy buns in the glare of the morning light. Instead there was an anxious tenderness and a clumsy reverence such as touched her to tears more than once and forced her to eat and to drink that he might be content. Her skin was fair and unlined as a child's in the merciless light, and her dark eyes were heavy, and the brave smile on her lips hurt Lew more sharply than her tears of the last night.

"There's the Gunyah goes south in three hours," he said. "She's a decent little boat, and I think you'd be all right on her. Shall I fix up your ticket for you?"

"Will—will——?"

Lew nodded gravely.

"It was to be at ten sharp," he said. "The parson is going on to Bullswool."

It was not necessary to add that the parson and all the rest of the township were going to a race-meeting; but Lew had something more to say.

"It—it won't be a very first-class show, I'm afraid," he told her. "We don't keep much style up here, you know, and Charlie … he wasn't very well known, you know."

Charlie was as well known as Milligan's whisky-barrel, which he had resembled too closely to gain the reverence of his fellows. The girl's lips quivered again.

"I understand," she said. "Thank you."

Then Lew went out and beat up the township to do last honours to Charlie Deland. And when all was done, and he stood with her on the deck of the dirty little Gunyah watching the last crates of bananas and the last bales of cotton swing inship, he felt some pride in his management of affairs. For sixty of the townsfolk had followed Charlie and the girl and Lew to the little barren cemetery beside the sea, and there had been no unseemly jubilation such as had been confidently expected.

The girl had said little to Lew in these hours. But his hand had held hers whilst the little parson rapidly committed Charlie to the earth whereon he had grovelled so long, and her shoulder touched his arm as she leaned back in the deck-chair which the captain had sent from his own cabin.

Suddenly she looked up at him, and the smile in the dark eyes quickened Lew's breath. For already he would have given more than was ever likely to be his for the certainty that he should see the girl again.

"You don't want me to put it into words, do you?" she asked. "I think you are one of those who understand. I shall never forget you, and I shall never cease to be grateful for all that you have done for me and mine. But there are no real words to tell it in."

"I don't want you to put it into words," he said. "But … may I come and see you? Some day may I come south to your home and see you?"

His voice was hoarse and his eyes were eager. This girl had brought him nearer the finer things of life than ever his feet had taken him before, and he was jarred out of contentment with his lot. She put her hand on his, and the gleam of the rings called a passing Kanaka's eyes to her sharply.

"Indeed you may," she said. "We shall always be glad to see you, my husband and I. Yes, come; he will thank you better than I can for all that you did for me … and for Charlie."

Her eyes brimmed, and she looked past him to the tumbling, shining sea. Lew straightened, with his hands shut as though to meet a blow. But the blow had been struck. For a little space he stood, unmoving and unspeaking. Then bare feet raced on the deck; the anchor swung dripping to the cathead, and Lew crossed the gangway at the last possible moment. He had given her no good-byes that he knew of. But as the Gunyah nosed round in the mud the girl leaned over the bulwark with her handkerchief blown out on the wind. It was a little thing of delicate lace, and Lew knew that the same faint scent clung to it. His lips twitched with half-laughter at himself as he bared his head to her under the hot sun.

The Gunyah went on noisily, belching black smoke and squattering her broad beam in the water. But Lew saw her dimly. The eyes of his memory were watching the Aurora running downwind to the pearling-grounds. Then he shook his shoulders and turned back to the town.

"Well," he said. "But I'd have done it all the same. I'd have done it. An' I wonder if it'll ever strike you that I don't know your name or where you live, my lady of the sweetest lips that ever a man wanted to kiss—and didn't?"

Copyright 1909, by G. B. Lancaster, in the United States of America.