A SHORT STORY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 699, 8 May 1916, Page 3

A SHORT STORY.

THE AWAKENING OF BRAYNE. Braync straightened the martingale and drew the girths tight, while his wife stood watching him, a queer droop about her young figure. "I'll be away a day or two," he said. "Perhaps three or four. They're mustering at Albany Down's and Balliua, and I'll have to be there to watch out for the cattle we've missed. You i won't feel lonely?'' llis wife looked over the brown plain that shimmered in the afternoon heat. "Oh, no," she said. I'm never lonely.'' Something about her voice, perhaps a touch of irony, made Brayne look at her quickly. He had never quite understood her; perhaps he never would. She was naturally soft and clinging, and he had tried to harden her, to graft on to her that stoicism which was the core of his nature. He was a big man, with reticence in his speech and his ways, and the lines of his forehead and jaw suggested steel and granite. "Good-bye, then," he said. "I won't be any longer than 1 can help." He bent down and touched her perfunctorily with his lips, and then swung ' into the saddle. She stood, watching him without moving as he rode down to the sliprails and out over the brown plain, where a few sandalwood trees huddled together in the heat, but he did not once look back. Slowly she turned and retraced her steps to the house. Everything was very quiet in the afternoon heat. There was not a sound in the white pesa homestead except the occasional movement of the pepperina tree, as it trailed its thin leaves over the iron roof of the kitchen when a breath of wind stirred. Somewhere in the back the half-caste girl was having her afternoon sleep, and Brayne's wife took her seat ou the verandah, looking out over the brown plain. She had intended to knit, but instead she merely sat with her hands turned upward in her lap, gazing ahead to where the figure of horse and rider was fading to a speck. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that something in her had withered for lack of nourishment. In the last two years Brayne had never been obviously unkind to her, but there was something about his brusqueness that chilled her to the very bones. He had always laughed at her little fears and timidities, laughed apparently without sympathy, till she had shrunk from showing him any part of her real self. And he had ridden away without thinking of what three days of isolation might mean.to her! Later in the evening, when the halfcaste girl was laying the table for tea, she looked at her mistress, probingly. "Boss gone away 1 ?" Brayne's wife replied curtly: "Yes, he's got business that will keep him away a day or two.' The half-caste girl gave something like a shrug of the shoulders. "It's lonely to be left here when you ain't got nothing to do." There was no alternative but to snub her with silence. Of late she had become a little familiar in her manner, for her small, precocious brain had fastened on the fact that everything was not quite right between her mistress and the boss. Other white men on whose stations she had been did not, go away and leave their wives alone for days at a time. And Brayne's wife, feeling the curiosity of the dark, bright eyes in every fibre, was glad when she had gone back to the kitchen again, and left her to the silence of the big, bare room. The quick autumn night had the bite of frost in it, ami a fire had been lit on the hearth. She took down a book, and sat in the easy-chair, looking into the glowing coals. Often when alone she sat thus, staring into the dissolving embers that made pictures for her; and lately the pictures had been of one particular period of her life. It had only lasted a few months, but there was a glow about it when she looked back, a freshness she had never been able to recapture. She was almost afraid she was unfaithful in remembering it at all, for the man who had made it wonderful was not Brayne. He was youth, adventure, romance, whatever else made life dazzling to the imagination of a girl of 18. She saw again the old homestead, with its wide verandahs, and its garden filled with heady oleanders. It was their scent that mingled with the pictures in the fire, and made them vivid. What was it she saw among the crackling embers? A man with a boy's face, and a boy's eyes, leaning down over the saddle-bow, and telling her he could never offer her anything but wild honey and bitter bread, and that if she wanted comfort and security she had better marry Brayne. And, sitting there in the firelight the little imps of introspection came out in the open spaces of her soul to ask her if that was really why she had married Brayne. Somewhere down near the yards a cattle-dog gave a short bark. She sprang up from her chair, her body quivering with a strange dread. The heavy footstep on the verandah told her that her visitor was a man, and when she half-opened the door her voice was thin and wavering: "Who's there?" The man gave a laugh, and that was sufficient. She could only dimly see his big figure, but his face shone for a moment in the fireglow. '' You!'' she said. It was the fear and hesitation in her face that gripped his curiosity. "I was passing here, and I thought I'd call in," he said, "it's the first time I've been near the place for two years, and it will be long enough before I'm back again. I'm joining Chris, at Itoma, and we're going to'enlist together. Where's Brayne?" She had lit the lamp, and was watching his boyish, wind-wrinkled face that hunger anil fatigue could never quite deprive of its humour and vivacity. "He's away, "she said. "He'll be away a day or two.'' "What* And he's left you here alone ?'' "1 don't mind being left, alone," she defended. "And he simply had to go.'' A touch of irony curved the corners of his lips. "Of course. Be simply had to. Some cattle deal or other, I suppose. But that, means I'll have to go, too." A swift decisiveness came to her mouth. "Nonsense, Rod. You're hungry and dead tired, and I 'll have some supper ready in a few minutes. Sit down there by the fire." By hard riding since dawn he had covered 50 miles, and his limbs ached

with fatigue, so that he was in no mood to resist. He sat down in the chair, and watched her as she whisked backwards and forwards from the kitchen, a new vitality in all her movements. A little later she sat opposite him as he wolfed his bread and meat, and somehow she found it easy to talk to him frankly. The irony had left his eyes, and he did not speak bitterly of I the past, for just then the future was too vivid and engrossing. Adventure had always been the soul of him, and this was the biggest adventure he had ever set out upon. '' I left my cattle at the border,'' he said. "A wild-horned mob of pikers they were,* and I was glad when the owner took delivery of them. Since then I've been riding night and day to catch Chris, at Roma. He's only a boy, and it's better that we should enlist together." . For the last 18 months she had heard little talk about anything but cattle, and the conflict in the world outside was hardly real to her. She awoke, to it now with a poignant intensity. The fire burst and spluttered on the hearth as they talked, and the leaping shadows dickered on the wall, but the woman leaning her chin on her hands saw nothing but the man's face. It was wrinkled by the wind and .tanned by but somehow there was stamped on it the spirit of eternal youth and freshness. The man for his part did not ask any of the questions that were in his mind. Her face told him enough, and if he ! felt any bitterness it was not towards her. When he rose to go a sudden inIstinct took command of him, and he put his arms on her shoulders. "And you've never regretted your choree, Rhodaf" She looked him square in the eyes. "Is that a fair question to ask, Rod?" "No,' he admitted; "perhaps not. But I'm going away, and there's long odds against my ever being back again. I merely wanted to be sure that you were happy.'' She averted her eyes. "If I 'in not it's, perhaps, my own fault. And, anyway, I couldn't have chosen differently." Something in the slight quiver of her lips stirred an impulse within him. He drew her to him; but there was no passion, merely a brotherly sympathy, in the kiss he pressed on her forehead. But it was the action, not the motive, that was seen by the man watching among the oleanders of the garden. His fingers clenched over the whip in his hand, and the world danced before his eyes. It had been shortly before dusk that Brayne had seen fresh tracks, and the remains of a fire at a gilgai, near the Ten Mile, and, led by some-ilistinct, he had turned his horse's head towards home again. There had been an uneasiness in his mind all the afternoon, an uneasiness that had been aroused by the irony in his wife's voice when she assured him she would not be lonely, and somehow he had been tortured by doubts. They took concrete shape now in the figure he saw standing in the lamplight. A mist swept across his brain, and he was hardly conscious of any part of him, save the hands that held the whip. A little later the sharp clack of hoofs seemed to rouse him from a swoon, and without entering the house again, he went back to his horse. Within five minutes he was racing down the track on the heels of the man wlio had gone before. All thoughts and emotions in his mind had been centred in one purpose, and he was nothing but a primitive being, with a fierce lust to strike down the man he thought had injured him. Somewhere in the back of his mind there had always slumbered a fierce jealousy of Harley; this reckless boy, who had once loved Rhoda; but it had been vague and ill-defined, finding no root in reality. He could discover no evidence that she had ever cared for him, none at all. But now "The young waster!" he muttered. "He waited till I was gone. And she must have known he was coming." Where a deep gully cut like a swordgash across the timbered plain Harley was standing beside his crippled horse. The rising moon outlined his big figure; but so immersed was he in the problem before him that he did not see Brayne until the latter was almost upon him. Then, looking up, he recognised the shadowy figure with a start. "You! " he,said. Although Brayne's being was aflame with a white-hot passion, there was a deliberate slowness in all his movements. He got down from his horse and tied the reins to a tree. "Yes," he said. "It's me —Brayne." Something in his voice made Harley a little uneasy. " It's a bit of a mess-up,'' he said. '' The mare's smashed herself on a boulder here, and it's long odds against her ever getting on her feet again. I was pushing her too hard, I know; but I had to get to Roma by to-morrow night." There was no reply, but a whinny of pain from the mare. Brayne walked over to her and drew his revolver. A flash and report echoed out in the night, and the mare ceased beating her hoofs upon the ground. Brayne turned, and in the white light of the moon he thought he read fear in his companion V eyes. "No; you needn't be afraid," he said. "I'm not going to use that on you. You've got a stockwhip; I've got one. too. That's the form of duel I prefer." He unleashed the long whip that coiled like a terrible snake on the ground, and Harley watched it although fascinated. "What do you mean?" he ejaculated Brayne's passion broke loose in f sudden flood. "Mean?" he said. "I meant I'm going to brand you for what you are. I'm going to cut the word on your flesh You didn't dare to meet me face to face. You sneaked round while I w;\ away, and made her listen to you, prob ably" pouring lies about me into hei ears.'' But the sudden scorn in the young man's face transcended his own, drying the fountains of his speech up at their source. "So that's the kind of man you are, Brayne," he said. "I half guessed it. It doesn't make any difference to me what you think. I'm going away to enlist;" but it's her name you're covering with mud. You've crushed and broken her, and now you're treading her in the dirt. I loved her once, and thought I could make her happy; but she wouldn't look at me. No; she had thoughts of no one but you. And you took her away from everything she had known, and shut her up in this Godforsaken mulga. You starved her "What?" demanded Brayne. "Yes," said Harley, passionately. "You starved her soul. You killed the girl in her, and crushed all her grace beneath your heel. My God, Brayne, if she'd loved me I could have done better than that.'' The passion in his voice and his eyes seemed to have turned Brayne into marble. It was the younger man who

had command of the situation now. Brayne could only stand there stupidly, his eyes staring straight ahead of him; but not as if they saw anything that was real. Harley slowly uncurled his whip. "Well?' he said, laconically. "I'm ready when you are." His words appeared to rouse Brayne from his lethargy; but he spoke as though in a dream. "You've lost your mare," he said, jerkily. "It's only a fair thing to offer you mine. She's a good goer over rough country; but I don't grudge her." A little later he was walking across ridges; but his eyes were turned inward, as though looking 1 into his own soul. The awakening had come to him. —Vance Palmer, in the "Australasian."