The Marriage of Esther. Guy Boothby

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СКАЧАТЬ gauged by an investigation of the company he keeps. To think that I should fall as low as this spawn!" Here he looked round the room, and having spat in disgust upon the floor, said in conclusion, "How long, my God, how long?"

      A big pearler, known in the settlement by reason of his fighting powers as Paddy the Lasher, rolled heavily along the counter and confronted him.

      "Look here, my duck," he said warningly, "I don't want to interfere with you, but if our company aint good enough for the likes of you and your mate there, I don't know as how it wouldn't be best for us to part."

      But the little man only sighed, and then remarked somewhat inconsequently to the moths fluttering round the lamp above his head:

      "The honest heart that's free from a'

       Intended fraud or guile,

       However Fortune kick the ba',

       Has aye some cause to smile."

      Paddy the Lasher's reply was a blow direct from the shoulder. It caught the other half an inch above the left eyebrow, and felled him to the ground like a log. In an instant the whole bar was alive; men rose from their seats inside, and more poured into the room from the benches outside. There was every prospect of a fight, and as the company had stood in need of some sort of excitement for a considerable time past, they did not attempt to stop it.

      Murkard lay just as he had fallen, but his companion was not so comatose. He picked the inanimate figure up and placed him in a corner. Then, without the slightest sign of emotion, rolling up his tattered shirt-sleeves as he went, he stepped across to where the hitter waited the course of events.

      "I believe I shall be obliged to have your blood for that blow," he said, as calmly as if it were a matter of personal indifference.

      "You mean to say you think you'll have a try. Well, all things considered, I don't know as how I'm not willing to oblige you! Come outside."

      Without another word they passed from the reeking, stifling barroom into the fragrant summer night. Overhead the Southern Cross and myriads of other stars shone lustrous and wonderful, their effulgence being reflected in the coal-black waters of the bay until it had all the appearance of an ebony floor powdered with finest gold-dust. Not a voice was to be heard, only the roll of the surf upon the beach, the faint music of a concertina from somewhere on the hillside, and the rustling of the night wind among the palms.

      Having made a ring, the combatants faced each other. They were both powerful men, and, though temporarily the worse for the liquor they had absorbed, in perfect condition. The fight promised to be a more than usually exciting one; and, realising this, two little Kanaka boys shoved their way in through the circle to obtain a better view.

      Half an hour later Ellison had sent his adversary home with a broken jaw. As for himself, he had for the time being lost the use of one eye and a thumb, and was mopping a cut on his left ear with a handkerchief borrowed from his old enemy the barman. Everybody admitted that never before, in the history of the island, had a more truly gorgeous and satisfactory fight been seen.

      And it was curious what a difference the contest made in the attitude of the public towards him. Before it had occurred openly despised, Ellison now found himself the most courted in the saloon; there could be no doubt that the fair and open manner in which he had taken upon himself the insult to his friend, the promptness with which he had set about avenging it, and the final satisfactory result had worked wonders with the on-lookers. He could have been drunk twice over without cost to himself, had he complied with the flattering requests made to him. Even the barman invited him to name his favourite beverage. But he would accept nothing. Hardly replying to the congratulations showered upon him, he reentered the bar and hastened towards his now recovering companion. Passing his arm round him, he raised him to his feet, and then drew him from the house. Together they picked their way through the circle of benches outside, and making towards the east, disappeared into the darkness of the night.

      Without talking, on and on they walked, slowing down now and again to enable Ellison to mop the blood that trickled down his neck. The path was difficult to find, and very hard to keep when found; but almost without attention, certainly without interest, they plodded on. Only when they had left the last house behind them and had entered the light scrub timber on the hillside did they call a halt. Then Murkard seized the opportunity, and threw himself upon the ground with a sigh of relief.

      At first Ellison did not seem to notice his action; he stood for some moments looking down upon the star-spangled sea in a brown study. Presently, however, he returned to consciousness, and then, also with a sigh, sat down a few yards away from his companion. Still neither spoke, and after a little while Murkard fell asleep. In the same posture, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, the other sat on and on, gazing with eyes that saw nothing of the Present into the tangled wilderness of his Past.

      The waves broke on the shingle among the mangroves with continuous rhythm—a night-bird hooted dolefully in the branches above his head—the wind moaned round the hillside; but still he sat oblivious of everything—thinking, thinking, thinking. He seemed unconscious of the passage of time, unconscious of what was going on around him, of everything but the acute and lasting pain and horror of his degradation. The effect of the liquor he had drunk was fast clearing off his brain, showing him his present position in colours of double-dyed distinctness. He had once been what the world calls "a gentleman," and it was part of his punishment that every further fall from grace should cut deeper and deeper into his over-sensitive soul.

      The question he was asking himself was one of paramount importance: Was he past pulling up? And if he did manage to stop himself before it was too late, would his stand against Fate be of any avail? Would he ever be able to rid his mind of the remembrance of these days of shame? He very much doubted it! If that were so, then where would be the advantage of pulling up? Like a good many men in a similar position, he had discovered that it was one thing to commit acts which he knew to be degrading, and quite another to be saddled with the continual remembrance of them. Jean Paul argues that "remembrance is the only Paradise from which we cannot be driven"; Ellison would have described it as "the only hell from which there is no escape." Moreover, he was the possessor of one besetting sin, of which he had good reason to be aware, and the existence of that peccability was the chief terror of his existence. It crowded his waking hours, spoilt his dreams, operated on all his thoughts and utterances, was a source of continual danger and self-humiliation, alienated his friends, reduced the value of his assertions to a minimum; and yet with it all he considered himself an honourable man.

      His had been a gradual fall. Coming to Australia with a considerable sum of money and valuable introductions, he had quickly set to work to dissipate the one and to forfeit any claim upon the other. His poverty forced uncongenial employment upon him when the first departed; and his pride prevented him from deriving any benefit from the second, when his hunger and destitution called upon him to make use of them. In sheer despair he drifted into the bush, and, by reason of his very incompetence, had been obliged to herd with the lowest there. At the end of six months, more of a beast than a human, he had drifted back into the towns, to become that most hopeless of all the hopeless—a Remittance man. At first he had earnestly desired employment, but try how he would he could discover none; when he did find it the desire to work had left him. His few friends, tried past endurance, having lost what little faith they had ever had in him, now turned their backs upon him in despair. So, from being an ordinary decayed gentleman, he had degenerated into a dead-beat beach-comber of the most despised description. And the difference is even greater than the lay mind would at first suppose. By the time he had come down to sleeping in tanks on wharves, and thinking himself lucky to get one to himself; to existing on cabmen's broken victuals, and prowling round dust-bins for a meal, he had brought himself to understand many and curious things. It was at this juncture that he met Silas СКАЧАТЬ