SHORT STORIES. THE REDEMPTION OF JOHN BENHAM.

Otago Witness, Issue 3352, 12 June 1918, Page 58

SHORT STORIES.

THE REDEMPTION OF JOHN BENHAM.

■"jy Warwick Deepincj.

(Copyright.) When John Benham locked the door :>f his cot', -e and wandered out over the darkening moor with a loaded revolver in his pocket, he was lost in one of those fogs ot pessimism that blind a man with morbid emotion. The dog at his heels was the more sensible creature for the moment. The artist might have taken an \xample from ">ho beast had he had the patience to reflect and to reconsider his mad whim. To be lonely in defeat is to tempt the mind to f:ed on its own fear 3. And John Benham was alone, and miserably poo'-. T l * vi ij lay before him with ite village, steeped in the mists of twilight, with here a faint light glimmering. Humanity seemed very far distant from him. Night was descending. The clouds were darkening in the western sky. John Benham drifted down into the valley, found himself in a thicket on the hillside, and eat down listlessly under a tree. . " Dan, old dog " . The rough-haired terrier had put his forepavvs on. his master's knee. " Dan, old dog, how would you like to be a drysalter, eh? What is the use of living when people don't want us or our work*/" The dog whisked a stump of a tail, and answered the impeachment with a short, sharp bark. " Supposing I don't go home agam, old otnan?" Dan's brown eyes seemed to search the morose and spiritless face. " You'll stay here and watch. No one will bother about me, and, after all, why ehould they? I'm no use to anyone in this world." John Benham glanced round nervously into the dusk like a man who has stolen a purse and sneaked away to, examine the spoil. Above him rose the deserted slopes of the moor, still touched with a vague glory of gold by the light from the fading west. The stillness of night had fallen on the Far away the lights of the village gli --•red; specks of green and red among the yellow marking the signal lamps of Wanford Station. John Benham had pulled a revolver from his pocket. He balanced it in his hand, irresolutely, yot with a sentimental selt-consciousness characteristic of the sensitive morbidity of youth. He remembered how he had once seen the body of a man w 1 ■> had died by his own hand. John Benham shuddered at the recollection. He laid he revolver on the grass beside him, fondled the dog's head awhile, and then began to unbutton his coat. Darkness gathered fast, and the spreading branches of the firs were black and motionless against the sky. The utter loneliness of the landscape intensified the morbid self-pity that engrossed the artist's consciousness like the 3elf-pity of a child. The distant roar a train ro3e from the deeps of the darkening land like the sound of the "vind through a wood at night. Far down the valley John Benham oould see the headlights moving, coming and going as the sweep of woodland screened the Hue. He sat watching "he lights with a species of irresolute apathy, h»3 fingers fumbling at the buttons of his coat. The snake-like line of brightness lengthened out as the train swerved round the misty valley. The shriek of a whistle; a sudden dull swelling roar; a sound like the grinding of great stones iher, or the rending of trees under a weight of snow. A confused turmoil of light facing and tumbling into the darkness beneath. The crackling of underwood, and the snapping of timber rising like a sharp burst of musketry from the dull underchant of war. The uproar of seconds; then, darkness and silence —silence that seemed utter in contrast to what had passed. John Benham was up like a sentinel caught sleeping at his post. The dog Dan was shivering, and giving frightened, restless whimpers. Vague cries were thrilling ut> out of the tremulous depths of the valley. In an instant this tragedy of larger issues had wiped the self-conscious egotism from the artist's mind. We forget ourselves in action, and John Benham, plunging down the hillside, swerving, dodging, leaping the roots of trees, forgot the murderous toy that he iiad left lying under the Scotch firs. The doe Dan was racing at his heels. Together they crossed some sloping grassland, scrambled through a hanging wood, and ca.ne out into a field of corn. A wavering and fitful glow, given bv the flames from some burning wreckage hung over the valley's trough. The embankment, a blank wall, shut the scene in from the woods beyond. Two coaches were still "clinging to the verge of the bank. Below, and some fifty yards in advance, n chaotic .nass loomed up above the crushed feltwork of a hazel thicket. Volumes of white vaqour riring above the foliage showed where the engine lay, salf sunk in a chasm that it had torn in the soil. Ears that have heard the cries of crushed humanity at such a moment are never likely to forget the sounds. John Benham, breathless with running through the woodland and the wheat, felt his heart lea-p with a pity that was touched wid fear. Dim figures were ro.ovii-, «e<out the crushed chaos of the splintered coaches. The wreck would have been grim enough without the threatening tonguing of the flames. man in his shirt sleeves passed Benham, carrying a hurt child in his arms. '"How did it happen?" " Good God, man, don't ask questions ! Help to fet the poor beggars oal." The last coach that had fallen down the bank lay half tilted on its side, it 3

framework crumpled and distorted like a broken box. Renham's senses were bewildered for the moment. A figure passed him crawling through the corn. The artist did not notice it. He was close to the wreckage before his eyes could discover details in the du.sk. The first tiling that Benham saw was a face overshadowed by the slanting body of the coach. A figure lay amid the crushed corn, half covered by the wreckage, a slim and consicous figure in a plain black dress. The artist was on his knees with the terrier at his side. The girl seemed pinned oy the feet. The whiteness of her face and the expression of the widely-open eyes alone betrayed that she was suffering. "Are you much hurt?" He bent over her, looking in her face. " I can't move. My feet are caught ■" " Off, Dan." The dog was licking her cheek. " I must try and get you free from the wreckage." He put his arms about her body, and tried to draw her tdwards him from the broken woodwork of the coach. A spasm of pain, and a sharply-drawn breath destroyed his fortitude. I must get help. It is no use giving you pain like this." She rested her head against his shoulder, and was silent a moment. "You must not mind me. I am xeady now-. I felt the woodwork givß uefore." "But I shall hurt you." "I can bear it." He looked at her curiously, the vision of his weaker sts-i flashing vividly across his mind. "Stop me—if it is too much." "Yes." He drew her towards him again over the corn, feeling her hands contract upon his wrists. "Am I hurting you?" "No, no, go on." "Sure?" "Yes." She was setting her teeth and beatirj back her impulse to cry out. "Quick! It is giving." To John Bftiham the relief was as great as to the girl when he felt her lying free, quivering a little, but breathing peacefully like_one in whom some spasm of pain has .ceased. He lifted her in his arms, and laid her on £ome bracken at the edge of the cornfield. "Go and help the rest," she said. "T shall be quite happy here." He rolled up his coat and put it under her head. "I will come back presently." The apathetic figure of an hour ago had changed, as it were, into the human embodiment of energy. The artist forgot the meaner part of himself in those grim hours of labour by the light of the burning wreckage. When John Benham returned to the girl in the black dress, his hands were grimed and bleeding with his work amid the wreckage. The dog Dan had stayed at the girl's side. "They are taking you all to Harborough, he said. "Yes." "There is a hospital there. Can you bear being carried to the train?" He was kneeling and looking into her p?Uid face lit by the light of the moon. She was quite young, refined, and comely to look upon —a pale, dark-eyed comeliness. Her pluck and patience were the things that impressed John Benham most. She was able to smile at him, yet in a forlorn and rather pathetic way. "I think it is my left leg that is broken. What a lot of trouble I am giving you." A couple of porters were passing with an empty stretcher. Benham hailed them; they carried the girl, up the embankment to the waiting train. There was a moment's delay before she could be lifted into the carriage. The artist sat down beside her, feeling that they had come strangely near to each other in this tragedv of the night. "My name is Benham—John Benham," he said, with a touch of deprecating shyness in his voice. She looked' up at him steadily. "I have to thank you for so much. My name is Willan—Rose Willan." He nodded. "They will take you to Harborough." "Yes." "Is there anything I can do for you?" She turned her face away uneasily for a moment. "Could you send a telegram?" "Of course." "To my mother. Make light of it. I only left her to-day. I was travelling to Harborough. t I am to be a governess there." She gave him her mother's address, the name of some dull little road in a London suburb. John Benham repeated it several time 3 to fix the words in his memory. He felt instinctively that this girl had had sorrow in her life of late. Possibly his own suffering had made him quick to detect the like expression in others. They were coming to lift her into the train. John Benham felt for one of her hands. "Good-bve," he said. "Good-bye." "I shall come to Harborough. And the hospital, may I call there ?" "To see me?" "Yes." She gave him a quick glance, as though the sympathy even of a stranger comforted her in her loneliness. "T should be so glad —' "Then—l will come." The dawn was breaking when John Benham found himself again on Wanford Moor. Dan, tired and wistful-eved, followed meekly at his master's heels. They had passed the thicket of Scotch firs on their way. and John Benham had groped for the thing he had left on the grass, feeling greatly ashamed, and contemptuous towards himself. The eastern sky was a sheet of gold as tho artlet unlocked the door of his cottage. Despite his night's work, he seemed

to feel neither weariness nor hunger as he stood on the threshold and looked out over the misty moor. Tho divine freshneeo of -a summer dawn breathed in the de*,vy air. "1 have been some jtwse for once." He spok9 the words aa though addressing the dog who sat watching his master's face. "I wonder whether she is badly hurt?" This was a thought unspoken. And then—■ "Confound it, she has more piuck than I have. If she onlv knew what I was going to do 1.,0t night." It was a i-iesday when John Benhaom took tro train to Harborough, and turned in at the gate of the County Hospital. Rose Willan was in one of the lower surgical wards, and the porter at the wicket gave John Benham the necessary direction. A lone gallery with a swing door fitted with glass panels gave the artist a g'.impse of some twenty beds with pink coverlets ranged rhythmetically round the walls. An elderly woman in a grey uniform met John Benham at the door. It was visiting day, and the artist was spared the undivided distinction of being stared at by twenty pairs of eyes. "Is Miss Willan here?" Tho sister smiled. • " Can I see her?" "Certainly. The bed in the near corner." He turned at a gesture of the sister's hand, and met the eyes of the girl whom he had taken up from the wreckage of the derailed train. John Benham drew a chair beside the bed. They had shaken hands. A slight shyness, a sensitive.reserve possessed them both for the first minute. "It was good of you to come." " Not at all. Were you much hurt?" He was looking at the face, white and spiritual below the black coils of her hair. It was a brave face, and yet the eyes were troubled. John Benham felt that he would like to hear her talk to him of herself. "Your people have been here?" he said. "Yes, my mother." " Is she staying in the town?" " No; she has her living to earn; she is a widow." John Benham nodded. "There were seven of us when father died nine months ago. He was only a clerk, and left nothing. I spent four months looking for a post, and now—it is gone.'' She spoke quietly without any trace of bitterness or complaint. The world was no mere garden of dreams for her, and yet she seemed unselfishly courageous, and ready to face the realities of life. " I thought you told me "he began. " That I was coming here as a governess." "Yes." "I was. But the people did not want me when they heard I should be a prisoner here two months." "How confoundedly meanl" "Oh, it was not their fault." "Then, after two months?" £' I shall go home." "And then?" "And then? Begin all over again, I suppose," and she gave, a tired sigh, despite her philosophy. When John Benham discovered that he had talked to her for an hour that afternoon, he condemned the thoughtless mood that'might have tried her -patienee. "I am a selfish beast," he said as he rose to' go. " You nave done me good. It helps one to talk over one~ own troubles." He bent over her with a shy but manly reverence. "Good-bye. May I come again?" She coloured slightly as hi 3 eyes held hers. •If you like." " You won't mind ? I mean—you will trust me?" " Of course." And John Benham was redeemed.