"Did the whiskey kill the poison?" said Archie.
"Whiskey kill the poison! Why, young sir, Charlie"s whiskey would have killed a kangaroo! But nothing warmed me that night; my blood felt frozen. Well, sleep came at last, and, oh, the dreams! "Twere worse ten thousand times than being wi" Daniel in the den o" lions. Next day n.o.body hardly knew me; I was blue and wrinkled. I had aged ten years in a single night."
"I say," said Harry, "suppose we change the subject."
"And I say," said Craig, "suppose we make the beds."
He got up as he spoke, and began to busy himself in preparations for Etheldene"s couch. It was easily and simply arranged, but the arrangement nevertheless showed considerable forethought.
He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned laden with all the necessary paraphernalia. A seven-foot pole was fastened to a tree; the other end supported by a forked stick, which he sharpened and drove into the ground. Some gra.s.s was spread beneath the pole, a blanket thrown carefully over it, the upturned saddle put down for a pillow, and a tent formed by throwing over the pole a loose piece of canvas that he had taken from his saddle-bow, weighted down by some stones, and the whole was complete.
"Now, Baby," said Craig, handing Etheldene a warm rug, "will you be pleased to retire?"
"Where is my flat candlestick?" she answered. Gentleman Craig pointed to the Southern Cross. "Yonder," he said. "Is it not a lovely one?"
"It puts me in mind of old, old times," said Etheldene with a sigh.
"And you"re calling me "Baby" too. Do you remember, ever so long ago in the Bush, when I was a baby in downright earnest, how you used to sing a lullaby to me outside my wee tent?"
"If you go to bed, and don"t speak any more, I may do so again."
"Good-night then. Sound sleep to everybody. What fun!" Then Baby disappeared.
Craig sat himself down near the tent, after replenishing the fire--he was to keep the first watch, then Bill would come on duty--and at once began to sing, or rather "croon" over, an old, old song. His voice was rich and sweet, and though he sang low it could be heard distinctly enough by all, and it mingled almost mournfully with the soughing of the wind through the tall trees.
"My song is rather a sorrowful ditty," he had half-whispered to Archie before he began; "but it is poor Miss Ethie"s favourite." But long before Craig had finished no one around the log fire was awake but himself.
He looked to his rifle and revolvers, placed them handy in case of an attack by blacks, then once more sat down, leaning his back against a tree and giving way to thought.
Not over pleasant thoughts were those of Gentleman Craig"s, as might have been guessed from his frequent sighs as he gazed earnestly into the fire.
What did he see in the fire? _Tableaux_ of his past life? Perhaps or perhaps not. At all events they could not have been very inspiriting ones. No one could have started in life with better prospects than he had done; but he carried with him wherever he went his own fearful enemy, something that would not leave him alone, but was ever, ever urging him to drink. Even as a student he had been what was called "a jolly fellow," and his friendship was appreciated by scores who knew him. He loved to be considered the life and soul of a company. It was an honour dearer to him than anything else; but deeply, dearly had he paid for it.
By this time he might have been honoured and respected in his own country, for he was undoubtedly clever; but he had lost himself, and lost all that made life dear--his beautiful, queenly mother. He would never see her more. She was _dead_, yet the memory of the love she bore him was still the one, the only ray of sunshine left in his soul.
And he had come out here to Australia determined to turn over a new leaf. Alas! he had not done so.
"Oh, what a fool I have been!" he said in his thoughts, clenching his lists until the nails almost cut the palms.
He started up now and went wandering away towards the trees. There was nothing that could hurt him there. He felt powerful enough to grapple with a dozen blacks, but none were in his thoughts; and, indeed, none were in the forest.
He could talk aloud now, as he walked rapidly up and down past the weird grey trunks of the gum trees.
"My foolish pride has been my curse," he said bitterly. "But should I allow it to be so? The thing lies in a nutsh.e.l.l I have never yet had the courage to say, "I will not touch the hateful firewater, because I cannot control myself if I do." If I take but one gla.s.s I arouse within me the dormant fiend, and he takes possession of my soul, and rules all my actions until sickness ends my carousal, and I am left weak as a child in soul and body. If I were not too proud to say those words to my fellow-beings, if I were not afraid of being laughed at as a _coward_! Ah, that"s it! It is too hard to bear! Shall I face it?
Shall I own myself a coward in this one thing? I seem compelled to answer myself, to answer my own soul. Or is it my dead mother"s spirit speaking through my heart? Oh, if I thought so I--I--"
Here the strong man broke down. He knelt beside a tree trunk and sobbed like a boy. Then he prayed; and when he got up from his knees he was calm. He extended one hand towards the stars.
"Mother," he said, "by G.o.d"s help I shall be free."
When the morning broke pale and golden over the eastern hills, and the laughing jacka.s.ses came round to smile terribly loud and terribly chaffingly at the white men"s preparation for their simple breakfast, Craig moved about without a single trace of his last night"s sorrow. He was busy looking after the horses when Etheldene came bounding towards him with both hands extended, so frank and free and beautiful that as he took hold of them he could not help saying:
"You look as fresh as a fern this morning, Baby."
"Not so green, Craig. Say "Not so green.""
"No, not so green. But really to look at you brings a great big wave of joy surging all over my heart. But to descend from romance to common-sense. I hope you are hungry? I have just been seeing to your horse. Where do you think I found him?"
"I couldn"t guess."
"Why in the water down yonder. Lying down and wallowing."
"The naughty horse! Ah, here come the others! Good morning all."
"We have been bathing," said Archie. "Oh, how delicious!"
"Yes," said Harry; "Johnnie and I were bathing down under the trees, and it really was a treat to see how quickly he came to bank when I told him there was an alligator taking stock."
"We scared the ducks though. Pity we didn"t bring our guns and bag a few."
"I believe we"ll have a right good breakfast at Findlayson"s," said Craig; "so I propose we now have a mouthful of something and start."
The gloom of that deep forest became irksome at last; though some of its trees were wondrous to behold in their stately straightness and immensity of size, the trunks of others were bent and crooked into such weird forms of contortion, that they positively looked uncanny.
Referring to these, Archie remarked to Craig, who was riding by his side:
"Are they not grotesquely beautiful?"
Craig laughed lightly.
"Their grotesqueness is apparent anyhow," he replied. "But would you believe it, in this very forest I was a week mad?"
"Mad!"
"Yes; worse than mad--delirious. Oh, I did not run about, I was too feeble! but a black woman or girl found me, and built a kind of bark gunja over me, for it rained part of the time and dripped the rest. And those trees with their bent and gnarled stems walked about me, and gibbered and laughed, and pointed crooked fingers at me. I can afford to smile at it now, but it was very dreadful then; and the worst of it was I had brought it all on myself."
Archie was silent.
"You know in what way?" added Craig.
"I have been told," Archie said, simply and sadly.
"For weeks, Mr Broadbent, after I was able to walk, I remained among the blacks doing nothing, just wandering aimlessly from place to place; but the woods and the trees looked no longer weird and awful to me then, for I was in my right mind. It was spring--nay, but early summer--and I could feel and drink in all the gorgeous beauty of foliage, of tree flowers and wild flowers, nodding palms and feathery ferns; but, oh! I left and went south again; I met once more the white man, and forgot all the religion of Nature in which my soul had for a time been steeped. So that is all a kind of confession. I feel the better for having made it.
We are all poor, weak mortals at the best; only I made a resolve last night."
"You did?"