SHORT STORY

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 356, 5 March 1903, Page 7

SHORT STORY

I riBST met him in the French colony of Martinique. He came over one night in a sloop from St. Luci*, and for an Englishman had such a forlorn, insignificant appearance that the suspicious Creole rf&ciaTs promptly tock him for a spy and forthwith arrested him in order to show their t al for La Patrie. But he easily proved that he had no secret plans of the fortifications, and was merely an efficer of the British army on the retired list travelling for pleasure. So they apologised profusely, and Col. Olroyd was free to roam in his odd way the length and breadth of the beautiful island, caving, of cornse, into that mysterious maze of earthworks ar>d ambuscades which is supposed to render the tricolor unassailable in the Caribbean. We both lrdged in the dilapidated Hotel dee Bains, the sole caravansaiy cf the quaint Creo'e city of St. Pierce, and aa we were the only two Englishmen in the place we were soon naturally on a friendly footiag; bat as to knowing CoL Olroyd, that was an entirely different matter. He never r ceived ar-y letters, and never sent any, but he local bank was advised by a big London he use 1 1 cash his ch< ques. 80 the rumi r ran that he was fabul tusly rich; for th West Indian knows but the superlative degree of comparison, and after the fiasco of the spy episode the better classes treated him with great ' respect He soon became a familiar figure in the narrow, picturesque streets of the old city that began half-way up the m -untain and ran precipitously into the blue Caribbean Sea. For -he never went abroad but he was followed by all tho riff-rsff of the town.—children and leprous beggars mostly. You could always tell when he waa coming because of the shouts, of his followers, into whose midst he would throw a largess of coppers and then walk very rapidly as if to escape. ' Via le fou anglais I' cried the people in the shops as he passed. And the door cf the Hotel des Bains was constantly besieged with a repulsive, unsavory crowd of wretches, who shoved. 000 another and squabbled, and refused to move on until someoie emptied a utensil from an upper window on them, when they would scatter with maledictions, and form again farther down the street. From week to week he prolonged his stay j he said he was waiting for the spring to return to England. But I think there. was something soothing to him in the simplb, sleepy life of this quaint, worldforgotten French colony with its beautiful scenery and picturesque people and memories of a glorious bygone time. Opposite the Hotel sans Bains, as it was jestingly nicknamed, was the Mairie, a battered old building with a grandly pretending air, and in front of it was a little square, very dusty and forlorn, with a few benches under some scrubby mango trees. Barefoot women, trailing their long, colored robes, sauntered up and down, swinging their bodies voluptuously and casting challenges full of endearment at men lounging lazily on the benches, the burning ends ot whose loag-foms looked like miniature nasi lights. Trris was a favourite spot with CoL Olroyd; he liked to sit in the square and listen to that life in the dark. I often sat there with him, but it was dull work, for he never talked. Bemetimes he would sigh deeply as if he had something that weighed upon him, some care that he wanted to share. But he kept his own counsel and it was only by these reighty sighs that I guessed titers was a cause for all these eccentricitiesahd mysteries in which he wrapped.

When the French governor came from Fort da France on his yearly visit to St. Pierre, CoL Olroyd went to call on him. The next day an enormous berline with four hones rumbled heavily through the cobble-paved town and halted in front of the Hotel dea Bains, filling the entire stmt from the Maine where you turn' into the Grand Rue. It was the governor going to pay a call, an unusual thing, and all St. Pierre was agog with curiosity. The proprietor of the hotel rushed to the door, driving the beggars away with kicks and imprecations, and then blandly and obsequiously invited the governor to aliiihc " The governor's visit was to CoL Olroyd, and when he went back to Fort de France he took Co 1 . Olroyd with him on a visit—' they had been companions in arms in the Crimea, it was said. Shortly afterwards I was hastily summoned to Antigua, and CoL Olro/d had almost passed oat of my thoughts, when one morning I taw his forlorn, eccentrically clad figure standing in the custom house in the midst of a chattering lot of deckers just landed from the mail steamer. He r> eg si zed me at once and seemed glad to see me. I helped bim through the customs and got him a room near mine over a Portuguese provision store, for the dreary, dead-and-alive town boasted no hotel. Antigua is, perhaps, in spite of being the seat of government of the confederation of insignificant eyots, known pompously as the Leeward Islands, the least attractive of the West Indies. The pleasure-seekers and health-seekers in Caribbean waters alike give it a wide beith, but that Colonel Olroyd should stopfer weeks in it without visiting the sole lion the place possessed was, peihspe, in keeping with his eccentricity. Bat st last I got him to go t> English Harbor with me. It was tie day before he was to leave to go back to England, and, in point of weather, cne of the most perfect days I had ever known in the tropics. English Harbor was and still is a naval dockyard, little used now, for the modern ship-of-war is too big to cross the dangerous, rocky channel that hides it from tli e ocean. But the imperial government neverthlees keeps it in gocd repair, perhaps in readiness for some unforeseen eventuality, perhaps out of respect for the quite forgotten part it once played in the making of Britain. _ An old negro caretaker admitted us through tie gateway in the great Kails that looked like (he battlements of a medieval fortress. The courtyard within was well swept and weeded, and in the fierce glare of the sun its white soil was dazzling; the buildings had been freshly wathed a buff color, hut their neat appear-

The Colonel's Sweetheart

ance could not conceal their great ao-e. Dead as it was—for we were the only trepasaera—there was an air tf expectancy abont the place, as if at any moment a gun might echo in the offing and a threedecker drop anc&or in th 9 bay. We had our lunch in a room of a vast barrnck with long ore* zy corridors frosting the harbour. Nelson hed once occupied it, hut there was nothing now to recall a memory of him. From it we could see a promontory hiding the sea behind which Bodney ht d lain in ambush for Da Qrasse, and which many times before him had been a shelter for hunted frigatea and a lair from which, the pirate navies of Britannic majesty had swooped down upon the Spanish galleons. Ah, a great figure had this dockyard cnt in history, remembered now only in the records of the old warp! Bat full of historical association as it was, deserted 38 ve for the old caretaker, under its spick-and-span coat of buff-colored wash the past did not seem to come close to one. We paddled across the harbor after lunch, and, in spita of the blazing Bun. climbed the height above the dockyard that had once been deemed impregnable. Hslf-way up the steep giass-grown road, whose sides were strewn with old rnst, caunona, was t v e hospital of the old days, now turned into a mad-house. A« we passed we heard peals of mirthless lau.hter, and tkr high-pitched gibbering jargon of the insane And it sounded 0 ainous and vory ghostly in the brilliant day. At the top a lovely picture ot color unfolded itself: the cloudless, blue .sky was a-quivar with heat and life, the dockyard glistened in the sun, the harbor looked like ;a big bluebottle with a long necs, and on the other aid" towards the ocean the bright blue water seemed from the great height as if it had been spilled on the shore. Col. Olroyd, whoae manner had surprised me the whole day by its unusual vivacity, which coming from him seemed almost hysterical, said to me: •Will you wait here while I go down there to the old garrison graveyard ?' There was something in hi 3 voice that gave me to understand he did not wish me to follow, and with curiosity 1 watched him disappear into a tangle of aloes. Teen I wandered eff to lcok at the ruins with which these heights were crowned. On all Bides was desolation; it seemed as if at some period of its history this stronghold had suffsr. d from a devastating bombardment; but the Union Jack had never been lo ered here save in time of peace. As the course of Britain's Empire took its way eastward, the West Indies began to decline. The ong era of peace after Waterloo, the innovations in modern warfare, and the change of the strategic bases caused these island fortresses, over which France and Spain and England had wrestled, to become valueless. The troops were withdrawn and concentrated in a single island, the forts were dismantled; and the barracks left to the tropical sun and wind and rain,- which soon demolished them. They were now a fast obliterating landmark of a once very glorious past. The dilapidated ruins looked picturesque on the lofty wind-blown heights, and conjured up the past far more than the wellkept dockyard below. The officers' barracks were the most interesting. Some hurricane had long since stripped off the rco', and the worm-eaten floors would hardly bear any greater weight than the land crabs and centipedes that scurried across them. The mess-room was better preserved than the rest, but you felt that at the first storm the crasy walls would fall in. Ah, if those wails could speak, what tales they would tel.—tales of Nelson and Napoleon of a surety. The old mess dining-table was still there, and it seemed to bring the past very near. You pictured it as it had been long ago, laden with regimental plate: the room lighted with candles; the walls hung with swords and bullet-riddled flags; over there was a framed engraving of the Iron Duke signed with his own hand, and opposite, in a gilt frame surmounted with a crown, another of his majesty King William IV. You could hear the laugh of the officers as they sat at dinner—some °iu red - taced > long mustaches; others young, mere boys in the r antiquated uniforms. Suddenly the president rings his little silver bell, and, rising with a grand flourish of his arm, calls: *Mr Vice the kingl'. There is a shuffle of chairs pushed back and men starting to their feet, and a chorns of • The king, God bless him!' followed by a scattering to enforced duty, to brandy and soda, to cards. All just as it is to-day in the garrisons of the king. And I Bhiverec* in the sun at the remorselessness of fate that could so obliterate and destroy, leaving only this shell of the past! A long time passed, and, as Col. Olroyd did not appear, I began to fear that the sun and the climb had been too much for a man of his years, and I went in search of him. The old garriscn graveyard lay on the very verge of the cliff*; its iron railing bad long since mated away in the corroding air, and a few crumbling tombs, black with age, were half hidden in a jungle of wild aloea and cacti. The desolation of the heights was very apparent htre. CoL* Olroyd was lying with his head down on an old defaced tomb. I thought he had fainted, and, running to him, I touched him on the shoulder. He raised a face the tearlesß mieery of which appalled me. I had a mean sense of intruding j I could say nothing, do nothing, and, covered with confusion, I turned away. But he rose his feet, and, putting his arm though mine, said, with a waß smile:

* Come, let us go; I have been detaining youj it was very thoughtless of me.' We walked away; but as we left the place, whose drearine&B now no splendor of the sun could hide, he broke from me with a cry, and rushing back to the old dilapidated tomb, fell on his knees beside it and kissed it passionately. With such delicacy as I could, I turned my back so as not to fitness this mysterious and terrible grief. He recovered himself quickly, however, and came back to me; but he seemed to have forgotten my existence, to be Oblivious of everything, as if he were in a fit of deep abstraction. Then he l a ?.,, ,|valK verv fast > alm °st running and I followed silently, hot and winded. As we passed the lunatic asylum with its Bedlam noises he stopped suddenly, and turning to me Eaid .- 'No, no, not that! After all these j tars, to go mad! No, it wouldn't bo brave j I will pull myself together. Come, let us go back to town as if we had enjoyed our visit to the lion of Antigua!' Some forty years ago this eccentric old man was in love—the first love of a dash-

iag, ardent boy of one-and-twenty. He was lieutenant in the army with nothing bat his pay, and ordered away on foreign ; service for fire years. Five years to be i absent from her! What has prudence j got to do with love and one-and-twenty years P The less we expect the bettor, | Bay I. Laughing prudence to the winds, scouting common sense, daring Fate to do its worst, they were married." The very desperatenees of the deed but added fuel to their love. The path of life stretched out before them straight and narrow, just room enough for thomselvrs to walk in. The primrose path, no past, n » future, no thorna ! Ah, sweet one-and-twenty years, let us thank God for | you. The memory of your ardor, your i freshness, your irresponsibility, your sincerity, is like the reading of a beautiful poem, that makes one for the nonce forget the terrible relentless prose of maturity. Hi? re.iment was ordered to Antigua; he bad once sat a pink and whito beardless boy in antiquated uniform round that old mess-table. But among those redfaced and bronzed men who (alked of Waterloo and the Peninsular he was as much of a man, fcr had he not a wife, a wife, to leave whom even for the brief space of a mess dinner was like going across seas! Ah, me, and ah me! The yellow-fever fijnd appeired at English harbor, running through the white troops, feasting eagerly on their fresh northern blood, the manslayer! And one day it seized the girl-wife aod would not give her up for all the labors of Hercules rolled into one. It was a terrible/terrible blow. For him the lamp of life had gone out. And when they buried her in that lonely grave on those windblown heights, where she must lie forever alone, he realized what love is to the world, what; ' it means to a man. He was proud and brave; with a sob he bound up his broken htart and hid- the despair from all eyes He would bear the wounds of Fate manfully as he would b jar the wouuda of battle. 'He is so young, he will soon forget,' they said of him. Yes; they should all think so; the B?«ret of his heart was sacred and he alone should share it.

The years rolLd a?/ay, honors poured on him, he went through the campaigns of life with success; he alone kuew that all was ashes aad vanity. The bitterest. battle he ever fought was the day when he stood in an historic room, and her majesty's own hands pinned on his breast the V. C. . Ke his youth with its boundless love and boundless ambition, when he had promised her to win a decoration that ebe might tie the < prouder of him. And now the glory had' come too late! Life had nothing to t him that he would value; but he intended to live to the end bravely aad truly—it was all that was left him to do. One day ! a great overpowering desire seized him to see the spot in which his short span of I happiness had been buried. He travelled to the West Indies, but as he approached the scene of the sad tragedy of his youth he faltered. It was like disinterring a corpse, so drawn by morbid desire and held back by dread, he lingered in this portion of God's earth that was to him accursed.

And now after forty years he had come back; he had made a grievous mistake. In all those years he had preserved the picture of English Harbor as it had been. Every detail of the scene of that terrible day was for ever in his mind, a picture he knew.by heart. It was so real to him that he had never once thought of the changes of time, and when he onee again stood beside that old ruined grave it was as if some cruel hand had torn his picture to shreds, the picture he had treasured for forty years! He had always tried to think of her as somewhere him, and in his privacy he told her all his thoughts as if she were present. Now the devastation of time, the rank graveyard with her dear name obliterated, a wilderness inhabited by lizards and landorabs and wild aloes, smote him with desolation. She whom he had talked to, who lived near him in her impalpable world, she was gone forever! Poor old man ! Ah, well, the harder we fight the braver show we make, seems but to increase the pathos in tt»ia strange world of ours.