Barnaby Part 1

Barnaby.

by R. Ramsay.

CHAPTER I

The lamp flickered and jumped at the stamping in the bar.

There was a frantic quality in that noise, laughter and exclamation mixed with a wild shouting that made the crazy part.i.tion quiver. It was a mad reaction from the common weight of despair.

From the bed in the room behind you could watch the door....

Paradise Town was a broken link in the chain of civilization; it might have been written in letters of rusted blood on the map. Its pioneers had forsaken it cursing, its trees had been burned for firewood, its earth had been riddled in vain for gold. All that was left of it was huddled near the shanty where men could buy drink and blur the spell of awful loneliness that shut them away from life. It was worse at night.

With the darkness fell a heavier sense of the distance of human help, and Paradise was an island in a black sea of haunted land. East and west, wide and silent, the unknown emptiness lapped it in.

Ill-luck and some bitter trick had stranded the M'Kune Tragedy Company in this dreadful place. Night after night they played in a shingle hut with their useless scenery stacked outside; night after night M'Kune broke it to his scared company that they hadn't yet got their fares.

Fear and a kind of superst.i.tion worked in their minds until they were seized with panic. In the daylight the men hung about the bar, muttering; and the women herded by themselves, packed like hens in a strange run, hysterically afraid. Prisoners in a desert, when night had fallen they wandered away to the railroad track and watched.

Towards midnight would rise a red gleam on the far horizon, and they would hear a distant rumbling, gathering to a roar, till the darkness was split by a whizzing bar of light. By it went, the great, glaring thing full of life, terrible in its rush, and leaving the night immeasurably darker. Among the watchers the men would affect to whistle. If they couldn't board her to-night they might manage it to-morrow.... But the women caught each other's hands fast, and shuddered. Latterly they had felt as if the train were a devil that counted and kept them there.

But their desperate plight inspired them. Never in their lives had these poor mummers so hurled themselves into their parts; never again would they murder and cheat and punish with such pa.s.sionate realism.

Their fate hung upon it. Penniless and trapped, their solitary chance of rescue lay in witching all Paradise to stare at them and furnish the wherewithal.

"Keep it up," urged M'Kune when a tired actress flagged. The hut was full and airless, but a few men were sullenly hanging back in the doorway, drawn thither, but arguing if it was worth it to step inside.

"Keep it up!" hissed M'Kune.

And the heroine flung herself between the hero and the villain's knife, slipped as she ran, and was hurt, but struggled up and cried out her tottering defiance, bringing the house down before she dropped on her face.

That was the last night of crazed endeavour. The curtain came rocking down, and the villain--M'Kune--cheated the gallows to run feverishly through his receipts. All Paradise was vociferating behind that flapping rag, but amidst the din the players had heard their manager's yell of triumph. They had made up their fares at last.

The Tragedy Company scattered and fled, each in search of his own belongings; but they had little to gather, and the night wind blew them together like drifting leaves. They durst not squander their means of escaping, durst not loiter. The train, thundering by in its midnight pa.s.sage, must lift them out of this nightmare town. Waiting they filled the bar, singing and shouting like lunatics, beside themselves with joy.

The door in the part.i.tion rattled, but stayed shut, and on the inner side was silence. n.o.body lifted the latch, though the bursts of noise shook it from time to time. A selfish panic had left no room for any other feeling. Probably they had all forgotten that one of the Tragedy Company who could not escape out of Paradise; and it was all in vain that the crazy bedstead was turned in its corner to face the door.

She lay without moving. It seemed as if there were nothing of her but the long black hair covering the pillow. In their hurry those who had carried her in had not taken out all the pins, and a few glistened in it still. Looking closer, one saw that her hands were clenched tight against her breast, as if to keep her heart quiet.

How fast the minutes went! It must be nearly train time. And surely there was a vast thing, pulsing, pulsing, like an engine, far away in the night? She could bear the hubbub of voices, but not the dread of silence. Was it quite impossible to rise up and struggle to them, and reach a human face? ... Suddenly she took a panting breath, short like a sob, still gazing.

The door had opened at last, and a woman looked in hastily, and, flinging a word over her shoulder to the rest, stepped forward, shutting out the streak of light and the voices in the bar. Then she paused, irresolute. It was so dim in here, the atmosphere was so anxious.... And nothing stirring ... just a glimmer of wild black hair.

"You poor little thing!" she said.

Her voice was warm with the cheap kindness of a nature tuned to play with emotion, but incapable of feeling it from within. Her sympathy smacked of the stage, but as far as it went was ready to proffer easy help.

"Like the Flight out of Egypt, isn't it?" she said. "It's a shame to leave you behind. If M'Kune would hear reason, and any of us had a cent to spare, I'd make a bundle of you, and carry you on to the train myself. But it won't run to it. I asked him. We're nothing but ranting beggars.... You'd better write to your friends."

The girl on the bed laughed.

So much of despair betrayed itself in that tragic note that the woman was startled. She came a little nearer.

"You don't mean it's as bad as that?" she said, lower. "All dead?--I might have known it. They wouldn't have let a thing like you fling about with us. But you'll be all right; you'll rub along somehow. We all do.... And that man who was once a doctor--"

But at her words a quick terror came to drive out the girl's submission to despair. She threw out her hands, clutching at the other woman's dress.

"What?" said she, comprehending. "Then the brute's charity and promising to M'Kune--Oh, Lord, what a horrible place it is----!"

"Don't go!" The girl's voice was a choking cry.

The woman swung round and listened. Were the rest starting already?

Her fine eyes darkened. She was wrapped up for the night journey in a faded crimson cloak, her usual wear in tragedy, alike as empress and villainess. Its dull glow warmed a beauty that was, like her soul, not quite real. Perhaps she was repenting the hasty impulse that had brought her in. But she could not pull herself loose from that piteous hold.

The younger one looked up beseechingly in her face. Her spirit failed her; she hardly knew what an impracticable thing she was asking, how uselessly she was clinging, in her horror of friendlessness.

"I'm so frightened ... I'm so frightened..." she whispered, panting because the effort hurt her; her lips were pale, and her forehead was damp with pain.

Suddenly the woman clapped her hands.

"I've got it!" she said. Her face cleared, and she began to laugh like one whose mind was rid of a burden. Twisting a ring off her finger, she caught the little desperate hand still clutching at her skirt, and thrust the ring on.

"There!" she said. "Change with me."

"I can't understand," said the girl faintly. The other woman burst into vehement explanation.

"It's Providence!" she said. "Never tell me--! I'm used to this life with its ups and downs, and its glitter of luck ahead. It's in my bones; the restlessness, and all that. I couldn't give it up. I wouldn't. But you--! You didn't guess there was a lawyer tracking me, did you?--that I'm a widow?--that I'm wanted to go and live in England with his mother. Perhaps she'd have to pay somebody if I hadn't a sense of duty.... _Me_ picking up st.i.tches in her knitting, yawning in a parlour with a parrot!--But you'd be safe there, you child--!"

She paused for breath, triumphant.

"I'll tell him to fetch you," she said. "The lawyer. Wait a minute--I have his letter; warning me that there is no money in it--no settlements, as he calls it. I'd be depending on the old woman's chanty, like any stray cat."

She went down immediately on her knees, and plunged into a kit-bag that she had slung on her arm, turning out its miscellaneous load. There was a shiver of gla.s.s as she fumbled, spilling things right and left; and the stale air was scented with heliotrope.

"That's all you want," she said, throwing a heap of papers on the bed.

"Here's his photograph. You can have it. I can't tell you much about him, but you'll find the clues in there. He was good-looking, too, poor fellow; a great gawk of a good-for-nothing working with his hands.

John Barnabas Hill--the boys called him Lord John among themselves, and persuaded me he was incognito. But when I asked him after the wedding if I was now my lady, he just laughed and laughed; and I went right off in a pa.s.sion and never saw him again. It wasn't his fault. I was just too eager; that's all there was to it. And I'll tell the lawyer I've left you ill in this wilderness. He'll rush to your side, and take it for granted that you are me. Don't look so scared. What's the matter?"

"I can't do it," the girl panted, staring with a dizzy wonder at the casual Samaritan on her knees. Surely the lamp was sinking, the darkness seemed dangerously near, the kneeling figure brilliant in a blur. She tried to keep a picture of that kind human face wherewith to fill the darkness, while instinctively repudiating her mad suggestion.

"Rubbish!" said the woman. "It's the simplest thing. You do nothing.--And you're an actress."

"But I cannot," the girl said over and over again, holding fast.

"You'll hurt n.o.body," urged the woman, attaining to some imperfect apprehension of an att.i.tude of mind that would not, even in extremity, buy help with falsehood. "If I'm willing to have you stand in my shoes, who else has a right to grumble? It's perfectly fair all round.

Look! I'm stuffing these papers under your pillow. I'll tell them all outside that an English lawyer is coming for you, and that'll make things easy. Don't hinder me leaving you with a clear conscience.

I've been your friend, haven't I? Hush, hush! I tell you you must....

I'll not let you die in this den. I'll not be haunted----!"

There was a tramping in the bar without. They were going. She tumbled her belongings into the bag, and clapped it shut. The rest of them were calling her.