A Crime of the Under-seas Part 22

"'Let me tell you why I asked you that question,' he said at length, when he had recovered his calmness. 'We spoke to-night of Buda. I was born within ten miles of it, the eldest of a family of eight. Our farm was as good land as any in the district, and we had held it under the Counts Romanyi for centuries. My father, I must tell you, died when I was only nine years old, and so my mother, who was famous through the district for her beauty and her zither-playing, was left alone to look after us.

"'One evening while she sat playing, as was her custom, at our cottage door, the Count pa.s.sed, and, hearing her music, stopped to buy a gla.s.s of milk. He was an accomplished musician himself, and at his request she played to him. Then, after saying many pretty things, and distributing a handful of coins from his pocket among us children, he rode away.

"'Next day he came again, and the next, and so on, day by day, till we children, who had hitherto feared his name more than G.o.d's, grew so bold that we could quite look upon him as one of ourselves.

"'Ah, how well I remember the night he played that h.e.l.lish air for the first time! I can see the drift-smoke lying low upon the land, and smell the smell of the pines floating down the mountain-side. I can see my mother sitting, watching, and listening like one spellbound. It must have been the music of the devil, for it ate into her heart, and the same day a week later, a neighbour came to tell us that our mother would not come back to us again.

"'Six years after, when I was almost a man, she returned. I can remember that homecoming as if it were but yesterday.

"'It was a night late in winter, and the young moon was s.h.i.+ning faintly above the snow. A knocking came to the door, and I opened it upon a heap of rags--my mother!

"'She died with the dawn, but not before she had told me everything. I want now to meet the Count. I have sworn that the hour I come face to face with him shall be his last! Wouldn't you do the same?'

"Yadeski's head had sunk on his outstretched arms, and, but for a certain tremulous movement of his shoulders, he might well have been asleep. I lay in the shadow of my bunk, wondering what it all might mean.

"'I commenced my search in Vienna, where he had a house; but it seems he was in serious trouble with the Government, and had fled from Austria. I followed him to Italy, to England, and to America, but in vain. I have continued it all over the world; but I do not despair, for I am certain that, sooner or later, G.o.d will lead me to his side.'

"Controlling his voice with an effort, Yadeski asked,--

"'And what then?'

"'Ah! what then? But I fear I have wearied you with my story. I am sorry. Good-night!'

"He dropped on to his blankets, curled himself up, and spoke no more.

Only the crackling of the burning logs disturbed the silence.

"Just before dawn I was awakened by the sound of gentlest music--the same weird melody we had heard earlier in the evening. It began, but was never finished.

"Unseen by us, a thick glaze was creeping over the player's eyes, and his supple fingers were stiffening in the grasp of Death. The music grew fainter, and still more faint, until finally it merged itself into a thick, monotonous drip--drip--drip, which caught the first red signs of day as they stole into us under the old hut door.

"Then there was a curiously heavy sob, and a half-turn of the musician's figure. After which a long, keen-bladed knife fell from the table, and the clatter roused us both to action.

"But Yadeski was beyond the reach of human vengeance. He had severed a vein in his arm, and so bled peacefully to death. _Quo cunque nomine de mortuis nil nisi bonum loqua._

"See, here comes the moon, and the wind with her. You'd better take this extra blanket. It will be cold before dawn.

"Hark! The horses have crossed the creek and are making towards the hut we've just been talking of. They will be miles away in the morning.

Never mind! Good-night!"

Mr. Aristocrat

"'Shepherd, what's love? I pray thee tell.'

'It is that fountain and that well Where pleasure and repentance dwell; It is perhaps that sauncing bell That tolls us all to heaven or h.e.l.l, And this is love as I heard tell.'"

--Sir Walter Raleigh.

The Australian Bush is pre-eminently a charnel-house of human lives, and therefore of the affections. Innumerable histories, neatly folded up and hidden away in the by-places of the great island continent, labelled _Not wanted till the Judgment Day_, will prove this indisputably. When Gabriel's trump shall call the sleepers from their resting-places in the shadows of the frowning mountains, in the long, grey gullies, and from the deserts and hopeless open plains, Australia's Bush contingent will be among the saddest and most miserable to face the Judgment Throne.

"Mr. Aristocrat" will be there, and his case alone will be worth hearing.

At the time I'm going to tell you about we were pus.h.i.+ng out to new country at the head of the Flinders River, in Northern Queensland, and when three camps this side of our destination, horses and men knocked up, things began to look the very reverse of cheering. Night was coming on; the cold wind murmured among the rocks, and the high cane-gra.s.s bowed its head before it, whispering, "Weep, weep, weep." Then the full moon soared over the gaunt shoulders of the hills that peaked up into the lonely sky, and as she rose, we saw in front of us the lights of Mintabera Head Station.

To come across a dwelling in such a wilderness was a stroke of good fortune we did not expect. We rode up, made ourselves and our errand known, and were hospitably received. The manager, who came out to greet us, was a middle-aged man, very tall and broad-shouldered. He was also very quiet and reserved, which may or may not have been because he had been cut off from the doubtful advantages of civilization for so many years. He took me into the house and set his best before me. After dinner we lit our pipes, and sat talking in the verandah until about nine o'clock, when I craved permission to retire. My host accompanied me to my room, and before saying "good-night," surprised me by inquiring if I was to be easily frightened. Asking "By what?" he replied, "By anything; by noises you might hear, or things you might see."

On my a.s.suring him that I thought my nerves were equal to a considerable strain, he left me to puzzle it out alone.

I was more mystified than I cared to own, and to tell the honest truth, I crawled into bed, half wis.h.i.+ng that, after all, we had camped in the gully, as had been at first proposed. But, as nothing out of the common occurred for fully half an hour, I rolled over, and was soon in the land of dreams.

It must have been about midnight when I was suddenly awakened and brought up to a sitting posture by a scream, so terrible, so unearthly, that I could compare it to nothing I had ever heard before. Three times it rang out shrill and distinct upon the still night-air, and at each repet.i.tion my heart thumped with a new violence against my ribs, and the perspiration rolled in streams down my face. Then came the words (it was certainly a woman's voice), "They're coming! they're coming! Will n.o.body save me?" Leaping out of bed, I huddled on my clothes, seized a revolver, and rushed across the verandah in the direction whence I thought the sound proceeded.

It was a glorious night, and the moon shone full and clear into the room where we had dined; but, before I could look in and satisfy my curiosity, my arm was seized from behind, and turning, I confronted the manager.

"Hush, hus.h.!.+" he whispered. "Not a word, for G.o.d's sake. Watch and listen!"

He pointed into the room, and my eyes followed the direction of his hand.

In the centre, looking straight before her, rigid as a marble statue, every muscle braced for action, stood the most beautiful and majestic woman I have ever seen in my life. To the stateliness of a Greek G.o.ddess she united the beauty of a Cleopatra. Her eyes rivetted my attention; they seemed to blaze from their sockets; her expression was that of a tigress wounded and waiting for the death-stroke. But her hair was the most weird part of her appearance, for it hung in glorious profusion down to her waist, and was white as the driven snow.

When we looked she had paused for a moment, as if listening, and then came that awful blood-curdling cry again:--

"They're coming! they're coming! Will n.o.body save me?"

It was so horrible that my blood felt as if it were freezing into solid ice. However, before I could pull myself together, her whole demeanour had changed, and she was kneeling on the floor kissing and caressing something she believed to be beneath her. Then, gradually, her voice died away in heart-rending sobs, and at this juncture my host went in and lifted her up. She seemed to have lost all power of recognition, and allowed him to lead her in a dazed sort of way to her room.

As he pa.s.sed me the manager whispered, "Wait here!"

On his return, he led me across the verandah and into the garden. When we were out of hearing of the house, and leaning on the slip-rails of the horse paddock he told me the following extraordinary story, and the glorious night and the long sighing night-breeze sweeping down from the mountains seemed a fitting accompaniment to his tale.

"Fourteen years ago," he said, "by G.o.d's ordinance and with the blessing of the Church of England, I married that woman whom you saw just now in there.

"All my family were against it from the beginning. They had no name and no story bad enough for her. One said she bore a most suspicious character; another, that she had a temper like a fiend; but the princ.i.p.al charge against her was that she had been a governess in a certain n.o.bleman's household, and had been the cause of the eldest son's leaving home. However, I didn't care for anything they said; I was madly in love, and I believe I would have married her if she had been proved to have been the vilest wretch unhung.

"After we'd been married a month or so she begged me to sell my bit of a farm in Somersets.h.i.+re and take her to Australia.

"Accordingly, I got rid of the place that had been in our family for centuries, and having packed up, set off, nearly breaking my old mother's heart by doing so.

"Arriving in Sydney, I took a small house down Bondi way, and made myself comfortable; but I couldn't be idle long, so after properly providing for her happiness there, I said good-bye to her for a while, and came into the Bush. Every time I could get a holiday I'd run down to Sydney, and I believe, in a way, she was glad to see me, though her manner was never anything but cold.

"By-and-by I drifted into Queensland, worked my way north, and then got the management of this place. You must remember that it was almost unknown country out here then, and what with blacks and wild dogs, want of water, and ignorance of the lay of the land, I had troubles enough to drive a man crazy. Before we had been here a year we were very hard pushed for men, and the owner sent me up a young Englishman, who, he said, was anxious to get as far out of the ken of the world as possible.

I didn't ask any questions, but made him as welcome as I could. He was a decent enough young fellow, tall, graceful, and very self-contained.

Somehow, the hands took to calling him 'Mr. Aristocrat,' and the name fitted him like a glove. He came up with pack-horses, and among other letters he brought me one from my wife.

"'She had grown hopelessly tired of Sydney and the south,' she said, 'and after mature consideration, was coming out to join me in the Bush.'

"I didn't know what to do. We were too rough out here then for any decent woman. But as she had evidently started and couldn't be stopped, we had to make the best of it, and accordingly up she came with the next bullock-teams.