SHORT STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13305, 11 October 1906, Page 3

SHORT STORY.

A GHOST AND j SOME IRONY. * Hugh Hakkiston. made up his mind to come back to England. Why should he not? he said to himself. In the ten years that he had been in Australia ho had not accumulated world's goods to any great extent at any part of the time. This last. effort, namely, -a two years' surveying expedition into the wilds of the Northern Territory, during which, ho had drawn good wages, had left him, principally because there had been no opportunity of spending ■ money, with about £300 in cash. 'It had left him, also, crippled with malarial fever, at any rate, for.the time being. After he had booked his passage ho had another bad attack, and ho had to be helped Up the gangway of the great P. and O. liner by two stalwart, brown-faced quartermasters while he was in the actual quaking throes of a'fierce fit of ague. Once on deck he managed, by himself, to find his cabin in the second class, threw himself on his bunk, and stayed there for twenty-four hours. ' Harristou's life in Australia had been of that varied description that makes an educated man, such as he was, an exceptionally interesting companion,, but docs not line his pockets except with a spasmodic sparseness that tends away from thrift. He had dined at Government House, having arrived at Sydney with excellent letters of introduction, and within a year of so doing had been washing up the plates and dishes in a shearer's hut. Where there was work he ■ took it; when he had money he spent it. He had been mining for wages, and on his own » or with mates; ho had been sheepdroving, cattle-droving, and had gone through the whole mill of the wanderer on tho face of the great southern continent. Sometimes he was the guest of the house, at others he was in the men's huts. It was all one to him, for ho was at one with them all, for he had the greatest of all gifts—sympathy. Like Tennyson's. " Old Year," "Ho could so laugh or cry with' ■«ou;" or, to.be more correct, he could lift ,you out of tho morass in which you wore crying would you but put out your hand to himand you had to. : '■; ; As Harnston was helped up the gangway a girl saw him. She was a small girl with a large outlook. '• Poor follow, he does look ill," she said, turning to the man to whom she had been -talking. v -. ;'.. * , ;■"Yes, he does, poor devil," answered the man a tall, jovial, eminently i prosperouslooking individual. " But I daresay the sea will soon pick him up; I want all your pity at present, dear," he wont on, and, taking her by the arm, ho led her to a more secluded part of the deck. When the boil" rang for the last time the' tall, eminently prosperous-looking individual was the. very last person, to go down the gangway. His joviality for the nonce had vanished. Harriston's first appearance at meals was at lunch the second day out. He had, however, looked in at breakfast, said he wasn't hungry, and had gone away. Between breakfast and lunch he had an interview with tho steward who arranged the tables, which" accounted for the fact that when he. sat down to lunch Ethel Arnold, the small girl with the large outlook, found,the hitherto vacant seat oposite to her filled by a man with a handsome .though wofully thin : face, a peaked brown beard, and soft brown eyes that spoke principally of the great serenity that comes after toil and suffering. > ;,.}: The bread, the salt, the pepper, or even nothing at all, if this latter bo skilfully handled, will do for an introduction on board;ship.' 'None of these was necessary. 5 for there was much more than nothing at all in' the opon, cordial way in which, after they had hist glanced, the brown and the grey eyes, into one another, she leaned across the table and said: "I hope you are better." I y Very much better, thank you," he answered. Then there came a twinkle into his eyes and he said slowly: ;i ' ;> ' s ; 7" ,' ' ~.a "Yon .-' don't remember, ■ me, " do you? I remomber.you quite well. You're the ' Free Girl.'" .. ~ .. ■■' . --.-.-:» ■'; ''The Free "Girl," she said, with a perplexed - look; '' why, that's just what ? I'm n—" ;.. '..; r ' . ... , » ' ~. '■ v - .-■ » ,;*,i* He interrupted her. " No,- of course you couldn't know. it I gave you the ! name, though I didn't tell it to you, and, ; l: always ; .used to think of you as the ' Free Girl.'/' •■■. .'""But why?" she said, still puzzled. v •;?*■ -Because the only other girl was engaged to a . barrister down; in Sydney." ' And he fixed her eye with a gentle, amused stare. ~ Suddenly' the; light v dawned -on her. "You're not, really, are you, the English boy who was at Haddon Hill one night to dinner, and was going off, the next morning on a shoep-droving trip for months into the 'never-never country'?" ;. < * : " I am that exceedingly worthless though strangely endeavouring individual," he an-' swered her, laughing. " "That was a jolly evening, wasn't it? ;,You could hardly be expected to remember me. seeing that I was healthy, happy, . and hairless then, and that I've lost the greater part of that aspirateful -condition." "You have changed," she said, "but I'm not sure that it's—" l "Now,- please be careful, Miss Arnold. I'm in a" decidedly weaik state, and the doctor ; says that a;few nice things, just the things I feel I want, you know, would about do for me.".-.-..•' ; ,■ " : The great friendships founded on shipboard are like mushrooms; they are rare, but when found easily gathered, and they are also often so rich'.as to be almost poisonous, J like the aforesaid 'fascinating but indi- • gostible vegetable. This friendship grew apace, for the two who made it were in very truth kindred' spirits in that they know of the battle for existence. Ethel was some way down on the i list of daughters' of a North of England clergyman. After being a typewriter and governess in the battle, sho had had the luck to meet Mrs. Dorncort, the rich wife of the rich squatter, one of whose many possessions was Haddon Hill and its seventy thousand sheep. This lady had taken a fancy to the little worker from Northumberland, who was, by nature, no worker, but a- dreamer. Being fond of travel, Mrs. Dorncort had engaged her,, partly as companion, partly as a sort of higher "mistress of the robes and courier, and had taken her over most of the habitable and some inhabitable portions of the globe. All this and more Hugh came to know about her within a week, and she, in her turn, loved •his stories of strenuous toil and varied adventure. People on the ship came to leaving them alone. They wore what is called thrown together. Hugh found that she had a wonderful gift for painting with words pictures of the places she had been to, and he would lie. in his deck-chair by the hour, listening and building up to his own sight the thronged streets of Pekin, the beauties of ; San Francisco, then away to the Rhine, to Switzerland; or ho'would lead her gently to the places he himself know and. loved, the quiet, beauty of the Thames* Valley, and from there down to the roar and rush of London.... And so and on, and all the time the ocean heaving them gently on her alluring, treacherous breasts, he told her that she ought to write these pictures and she laughed. Then he told her the thing that as vet ho had only whispered, to himself; that with his slender, pitiful capital he was coming home to try to battle with the writers, that the great Australian paper that picks the brains of the Southern Hemisphere, and has launched both artists and authors that have come to fame in the Mother Country, had taken things of his and told him to go on. She had told him he would bo famous. What woman will hot say that to.the man %7T~' 1 A h ; therc was the rub. The night that he said these things she knew—she knew it was tune-time, although ! for her too late, to tell him that she was engaged to be married to the man who had been the last to go down the gangway when the big ship drew away from the wharf, away back there .billions and billions of miles it seemed, at Adelaide. Why had she not told him bofore? A fe-iling of guilt came over her, and she blushed,with shame in the darkness At any rate, she would tell him how. She told him—told him everything. Ho had been lying in his chair close to her, and he. too had come to a conclusion. There comes a time in a man's intimacy with a woman when he must either go away or he must say to her "I love you." He knew that the time had come, and so far from wishing' the impossible alternative, the equivalent of which would have been to see as little of her as possible for the remaining weeks, he lay cdntcnt and know that he would say " I love you;" lie could wait cr be-could say it to-night; he smiled to himself.';"-'',;. Then she. had told him. He lay quite still and listened. "I'm glad, Traveller"—that was his name for her— I'm irlau it's all so jolly and comfortable, and he's well off, and you won't have to buVlo any more: quaint, your wanting- to ■do for yourself till you're married and travelling.second class.;".l'm; glad you did, though. He's coming homo in threo months, eh? That's, good. Stupid, but I'm a little bit shiverv—think I'll go down. Good-night, Traveller." ' ~ "Good night," she said, and could say no more'.''.-,. , ; , -.., •'...-;, ' > Two days later the, fever throttled him suddenly in trie middle of the day. He went below, and the doctor kept him there. In the middle of the second night of his lying in "bed ho suddenly felt as if. something had gone wrong—his heart. He tried to get out of bed, to, get to the bell—as ho was falling J to the floor everything weut from him. . . ,

-: The steward found him lying there. in the morning, and brought the doctor. : By midday the ; was * extraordinarily better, ; and, for some reason ; that he could no define, knew that ,ho must dress and go on deck. He did 'so,« staggeringly, and found Ethel sitting "on a chair with a book in her lap, staring straight in front of her, and her face ghastly pale. ... '~ ' '•,: ".What's to do, Traveller?" he said, trying to laugh as he sank on to the deck beside her chair. . "You look as though you'd seen a ghost."' ' ';";/ "'I think I must tell you," she said. "It will be horrible for me if I don't. May I?" ." Of course, tell me anything." " Well, I have seen a ghost—yours—oh 1 Last night, in the middle of the night, I had been worried, I suppose, about your being ill, and I don't know—but suddenly I woke upand you wore standing by my side looking down , at me, smiling, and I don't know how I said it, but I said, ' What is it?' and you said, quite quietly, and still smiling, you said, ' I've como to say good-bye, Traveller,' and then,you were gone—and when you were gone I knew, to myself somehow that you must be dead, and I had to lie there. Oh, it was horrible!" "That's queer,'" he said slowly. . " Ono roads about those sort of things, doesn't one? And when one does, somehow they're generally true. I ought to be dead. I must have been only half a ghost; and take more killing than most people." •' . . ' At Plymouth they said good-bye, and she went off with some people who met her. - He went on up tho Channel, up the Thames, up to London; took a cab; then took one room in Bloomsbury, and wont on. with the battling. / ! 'On anight six years afterwards Hugh Harriston stood in front of the curtain of ono of the larger London theatres bowing to an ; acclaiming audience. Thoro was no; false note in the applause; it was spontaneous, almost uproarious in its greeting. To-mor-row he would be famous. She had said so years ago and it had como true. His face ■was very palo and there was no joy in it. Suddenly he remembered that some friends had told him they would be in one of tho large boxes. He looked lip, but it was the wrong one, his friends were not there. ■=- Instead, sitting in the middle of the great space, all alone, was Traveller, the small girl with the largo outlook, and the inner knowledge of him who now looked up at her. • ~;.. ..,,-'. She was smiling down at him very proudly and gladly, though from where he stood ho could see the tears in her grey eyes and on her cheeks. Ho made his way to the front hall and met her as she came down. What did it mean that sho was alone? He struggled with a fierce spasm that was almost physical for a moment's oblivion from the dread horror that lay against his heart. It seemed to come to him at sight of her.■■-". "Why, Traveller, this is splendid," he said almost joyously. '"■-'■' ■- " No, it's you who are splendid. Oh, how proud I am of my prophecy and my friend's triumph!" They had not met since Plymouth, and they had both aged a good deal. Her eyes were still shining with tears, and his met them, and again they knew that it was all just as it had been. Tho hall was almost empty now. Why are you alone?" he said. " Where is your—" He stopped. . "I've been a widow for two years," sho answered quite simply, with wide eyes, as if he must have known. There was a long pause. They were standing alone except for tho attendants of the theatre, and close to the door. Then he gave a curious little laugh, the sort of a noise you ; would expect from a man who had suddenly lost his reason. " " ' ■ "How funny," he said, "that's just about the time I've been married." . They wero the sort of people who at a milestone on life's way of this sort could make no pretence. They just looked their grief into one another's eyes, and wero the stronger for it.- ' * • " That is my brougham. Will you see me to it?" and sho took'bis arm. When he had closed the carriage door she put out her hand, and he to"C< it gently in his. "Good-bye, Hugh!".. s "Good-bve, Traveller!" • He stood on tho pavement and watched the; carriage roll away into tho night.—J. Stanley Hughes in M.A.P. ,