Deadman's

By Mary Gaunt

Deadman's is a story by Mary Gaunt. Gaunt was an Australian novelist and writer. Excerpt: "She found an opportunity to speak to him alone, and pointed out to him where his duty lay. She was so sad about it all, so sad at the thought of losing him, that she wept many tears over it; she drove him to distraction, but she saw with an inward glow of triumph that she was gaining her point. And when at last she had brought him round, if not to see exactly with her eyes, at any rate to do her bidding, it was too provoking to have her husband trying to upset things. And Ben was so coarse, too; he did not care what he said."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 4066338073105

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Mary Gaunt

Deadman's

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4066338073105

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.—MAKING UP HIS MIND.

CHAPTER II.—MRS. LANGDON AS FATE.

CHAPTER III.—POTTING ON THE CHAIN.

CHAPTER IV.—THE WAY OF MARRIAGE.

CHAPTER V.—A LITTLE INTERLUDE.

CHAPTER VI.—MRS. RUTHVEN STANDS ON HER RIGHTS.

CHAPTER VII.—COMMISSIONER THOMAS NICHOLSON SETTLES UP HIS AFFAIRS.

CHAPTER VIII.—COMMISSIONER JOCELYN RUTHVEN MAKES THE BEST OF IT.

CHAPTER IX.—MISS WINIFRED LANGDON.

CHAPTER X.—COMMISSIONER RUTHVEN BEGINS A NEW LIFE.

CHAPTER XI.—COMMISSIONER JOCELYN RUTHVEN SPENDS AN EVENING AT KAROUDA.

CHAPTER XII.—THE RIOT AT THE PACKHORSE.

CHAPTER XIII.—COMMISSIONER RUTHVEN PUTS DOWN THE RIOT WITH A HIGH HAND.

CHAPTER XIV.—MRS. LANGDON SIGNIFIES HER DISPLEASURE.

CHAPTER XV.—WINIFRED LANGDON SPENDS A PLEASANT AFTERNOON, AND. COMMISSIONER RUTHVEN RECEIVES A THREATENING LETTER.

CHAPTER XVI.—THE GROWTH OF LOVE.

CHAPTER XVII.—WINIFRED LANGDON AWAKENS TO THE SITUATION.

CHAPTER XVIII.—COMMISSIONER RUTHVEN COMES TO THE SAME CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER XIX.—THEIR LAST EVENING

CHAPTER XX.—WINIFRED LANGDON GOES FOR A WALK.

CHAPTER XXI.—HARRY SELBY SEIZES HIS OPPORTUNITY.

CHAPTER XXII.—BITTER REFLECTIONS.

CHAPTER XXIII.—WINIFRED LANGDON'S DILEMMA.

CHAPTER XXIV.—HER VERY BEST.

CHAPTER XXV.—CAUGHT IN THE TOILS.

CHAPTER XXVI.—THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH.

CHAPTER XXVII.—HARRY SELBY'S DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS.

CHAPTER XXVIII.—THE SEARCH IN THE WHIPSTICK GULLY.

CHAPTER XXIX.—THE END.

THE END

"

CHAPTER I.—MAKING UP HIS MIND.

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'Pleasant the snaffle of courtship, improving the manners and carriage;

But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible thorn-bit of marriage.'

'WELL, I've warned you. If you like to make a fool of yourself——'

'What then?'

'You'll only repent it once, and that'll be always.'

Jocelyn Ruthven tapped his hand impatiently and irresolutely on the table. If only Mrs. Langdon would have left the room, it would have been so much easier to discuss matters. But no, she sat there sewing quietly, her fair face expressing little but a slight contempt, whether for his weakness or her husband's morality he could not say. Both probably. Emma Langdon had opinions of her own, very strong opinions; she was not swayed by her husband in the very least degree, that he knew quite well. There was a big heap of white work on her lap, and as he watched her needle drawn slowly through it, he knew instinctively that she was condemning him, and for Emma Langdon's approval he would have almost given his life. But she asked more than his life, and condemned him even then. He would only be righting a wrong, only doing his duty, and she would be the last woman in the world to praise him for that. If only he had known her before—if only he had, what a difference it would have made to his life! She judged him harshly, this good, pure woman, who had never known temptation; she righted wrongs with a cruel hand, but she would right them, and that was more than he or Ben Langdon, if left to themselves, would do. Ben was for letting the past take care of itself, while his wife—— Ah, she had a higher standard than either of them. But to do what she said was right.

He looked out of the long French window gloomily. It was July—mid-winter—and a dense white fog wrapped the hills that rose up all round them, shutting them in on every side. Through it he saw dimly the outlines of the tall gum-trees and the wattles, with just here and there a faint suspicion of golden-yellow breaking the gloom. It was mid-winter, but the spring was close at hand; another fortnight, and the wattles would be all in bloom, and the country would be singing to the returning spring—rejoicing—and how could he ever rejoice again if he did this thing and ruined his life, and how could he not do it when the woman he held highest in the world would never so much as look at him again if he did not?

He walked uneasily across the room, and leaned his hot forehead against the cold glass, and then he walked back again. What a peaceful, comfortable home this was! How cosy the room! How bright the firelight! The furniture was not much, of course. What could one expect in a squatter's home in the mountains? But it was so comfortable—a lady's room, a lady's home, so neat, so cosy, so dainty!—never, never, never could he hope for a home like this.

'Come, old man'—Ben Langdon's kindly hand was on his shoulder—'don't make an ass of yourself, and don't let the thing worry you. The old woman there'—his wife flashed a look of unutterable scorn at him out of her bright blue eyes, and he laughed, and repeated the opprobrious epithet—'she don't understand what she's saying. Bless you, it's the way with women. You'll know when you come to my own age. You do this thing because it's right, and never mind the consequences. Bless you, it sounds very pretty, but when the consequences come along—well, the woman ain't by to see, as a rule; anyhow, she don't give you a helping hand.'

His wife looked at him coldly.

'All I have said, and all I intend to say, is, that if Mr. Ruthven doesn't marry that girl, he will be doing a very wicked thing, and I for one will never speak to him again.'

'A d——d little———'

'Mr. Langdon! She is a good enough girl—not a lady, certainly; but Mr. Ruthven should have thought of that before he—before he took away her character. Now, of course——'

'Oh, d——n it all, Emmie! What a storm about nothing at all! How can you pay any attention to her, Ruthven—a little prude that doesn't know what she is talking about?'

'I know this much, that when a man has—has compromised a woman as Mr. Ruthven has that unfortunate girl, he ought to marry her if she's a princess or if she's a beggar. This girl happens to be a beggar—more shame to him, then! And I thought so highly of him.'

She let her eyes wander to his face with a deeply reproachful look, and Ruthven shivered hopelessly before it. Emma Langdon was the one woman in the world he desired to stand well with. He could not exactly have defined his sentiments to himself. He did not love her, of course—was she not his friend's wife?—and she herself, he knew quite well, would have been the first to shrink back in horror at the bare mention of such a thing. No; he stood at a respectful distance, and raised her on a pedestal and worshipped at the shrine. And she allowed him to. She felt she was a misunderstood woman, a woman with high ideals and more refinement than was to be found among her very limited circle, and she was thrown away upon Ben Langdon. She was proud that she kept that secret to herself and never complained, but she liked Jocelyn Ruthven because she felt that he had guessed it and sympathized with her. She was not appreciated; her husband and his brother laughed and scoffed at her 'high-flown notions,' and took every opportunity of turning them into ridicule; while this other man, Jocelyn Ruthven, thought her a pearl among women, and her lightest wish had been his law. She liked to think it, too. Jocelyn Ruthven, the good-looking young Gold Commissioner at Deep Creek, was at her beck and call; she could turn him round her finger, and her approval was the thing he most desired on this earth. He had fallen a victim when first she met him—four months ago now—and she had been fondly imagining it could go on for ever. She was perfectly satisfied, she wanted no more.

And now this thing had happened. Ben thought very lightly of it, but she had long ago known that Ben's morals were none of the best; he might be good-hearted, but he was certainly rough and rude and lax in his ideas, and she knew—she knew the proper thing was for Jocelyn Ruthven to marry the girl. It was not a desirable match, certainly—the daughter of one of the diggers at Deep Creek—and there was more than a suspicion that Mat Phillips had been an old lag; while her mother—Emmie Langdon closed her eyes and sighed—her mother was certainly a very impossible person. She had come across the ranges sometimes when they were short-handed at Karouda to help at the wash-tub, and it would not be a nice thing to belong in any way to Mrs. Phillips. But, then, he should have thought of that before.

The girl had come across the ranges—followed Ruthven across—and told a pitiful story. And he—he hung down his head, and acknowledged he had not been as circumspect as he might have been.

'Lord Almighty!' said Langdon, when he heard it. 'What the devil did you have anything to do with her for? A man in your position ought to have nothing to do with women—anyhow, the women about the camp. It'll cost you a mint of money to square things.'

'There is only one thing to be done,' said his wife. 'Mr. Ruthven will have to marry her. It's the only honourable thing to do.'

'The devil he will! Now, don't go putting such notions in the girl's head, Emmie. All they want is a good round cheque. There is no question of marriage in the matter. It would ruin Ruthven to do such a thing, and that's a heavy price to pay for a week's folly. The girl don't expect it herself, and she wouldn't be happy in such a position.'

'She does expect it—what else should she expect? and as for being happy, Mr. Ruthven should have thought of that before.'

'The devil fly away with all women!' said her husband angrily; and, as far as Emma Langdon was concerned, that sealed Ruthven's fate.

If she had any influence over him whatever, he should marry that girl.

It was hard for him, she knew, but was it not just as hard for her? She had thought such a lot of him, and now she must give up her friend and be lonely and desolate as she had been before she met him. Of course things could never be the same again between them; but she was ready for the sacrifice, and so he must do his share. All her husband's scornful scoffing only made her the more determined.

She found an opportunity to speak to him alone, and pointed out to him where his duty lay. She was so sad about it all, so sad at the thought of losing him, that she wept many tears over it; she drove him to distraction, but she saw with an inward glow of triumph that she was gaining her point. And when at last she had brought him round, if not to see exactly with her eyes, at any rate to do her bidding, it was too provoking to have her husband trying to upset things. And Ben was so coarse, too; he did not care what he said.

'It is the only honourable thing to do,' she repeated sadly, looking at Ruthven's downcast face; and then she turned and slowly left the room.

She felt she was strong enough now. Her words would prevail, she knew, no matter what her husband might urge to the contrary.

Langdon laughed a little.

'The missus has high-flown notions,' he said. 'I fell in love with her for them, I reckon, way back four or five years ago; but they don't work in, those notions, somehow. Never mind what she says, old man; she'll come round in the end, and we'll square the others somehow. It's only a matter of money, I expect.'

'I'll have to marry her,' said Ruthven gloomily, stirring the fire with his foot.

He had wished Mrs. Langdon away, and now she was gone he only felt the more bound to do what she thought right.

'Don't be an ass! It's all very well for the wife to talk rot; women don't understand things. Think what your life will be if you do. An ignorant, uneducated girl like that, dragged up in a low Bush shanty, what sort of a companion would she be for you? Why, she wouldn't even be a decent housekeeper, and think of the awful old father and mother.'

Ruthven shuddered.

'Lord Almighty! It would be a sin to marry her from all points of view. She'd be as miserable as a bandicoot, and so would you.'

'Nevertheless,' said Ruthven wearily, like a man who had done with the pleasures of this world, 'I'm going to marry her, and we'll have to make the best of it.'

Then Benjamin Langdon of Karouda, a respectable middle-aged gentleman, turned round and swore a volley of oaths that nearly lifted off the parlour roof, and he rose from his chair, and, taking his friend by the shoulders, shook him soundly.

'A fool and his folly, Ruthven! Oh Lord! oh Lord! women are the very devil! And whether the good ones or the bad ones are the worst beats me!'

---

CHAPTER II.—MRS. LANGDON AS FATE.

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'The moving finger writes; and having writ,

Moves on; nor all your piety and wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.'

JOCELYN RUTHVEN did not say good-bye to Mrs. Langdon, not a little to her disappointment. A touching farewell full of bitter unspoken regrets, regrets that could only be expressed by tender hand-clasps and sad looks, would have been just to her mind, but Ruthven never even thought of such a thing. He would do her bidding, of course; she was quite right. He must marry the girl; but the dreariness of the outlook filled his mind to the exclusion of every other thought, and even the image of the woman he worshipped faded before this great trouble. He did not want to see anyone; he wanted to get away and get it all over as soon as possible.

'Get my horse round, will you, Langdon?' he said. 'I'd better be getting back to the camp.'

'Not to-night, old man, surely,' said the hospitable squatter. 'You stop with us to-night, at least.'

'I'd better go,' he said. 'I'm not good company, anyhow. What about the girl, Langdon? Can you send her back? To-morrow will do. I'll go and see her mother and settle things up.'

'Don't do anything in a hurry, man. If you must marry her, at least put the wedding off for a month or two. It'll give you time to look about you, and you might, you know—mind you, I don't say you will, but you just might find reason to change your mind.'

'I find a hundred thousand reasons for changing my mind,' said Ruthven bitterly; 'but the original reason for marrying her still remains, and the sooner it's done the better.'

'Oh, for God's sake, bring a little common-sense to bear on the matter, and don't pay any attention to what Emmie says! She's a good enough girl, is Emmie, but she ain't quite such superior clay as you and she seem to think. She's wrong-headed at times, and she's wrong-headed now, and why on earth you should go and ruin your life just to please her, I can't think. Why she should want it, either, I'm sure I don't know,' he went on reflectively; 'doesn't strike me as suiting her book at all. However—oh, hang it all, Ruthven! you'll be casting this up in her teeth some day. I wish to Heaven either you or the girl had stopped in the camp! It would have been all right if it hadn't come across my wife.'

'Your wife isn't the only one in the world who would say I ought to marry her,' said Ruthven. 'I ought, I suppose. I'm going to, any way. Say good-bye to your wife for me, and send the girl along. I'll just go and pack my valise.'

So it happened that the first intimation Emma Langdon had of Commissioner Ruthven's departure was the sight of his tall upright figure mounted on a chestnut horse cantering slowly across the home paddock. She thought it was her husband's doing, and she did not like it at all. Here was the principal actor in the little drama at which she was assisting going away without even a word, not a single arrangement made for meeting, not a word about how the marriage was going to be settled. She ought—she felt she really ought to have had the settling up of that. She didn't know that she exactly wanted the marriage to take place at Karouda, but—well, anyhow he would never have ridden away without a word or even a message of his own accord. It was all Ben's fault, of course, and it would be no good giving a message to him, because he wouldn't deliver it, or he would so mangle it in the delivering that the original meaning would be lost. Ben was so clumsy, and, besides, she was angry with him, and didn't want to speak to him much. But, then, she must know something about Ruthven's latest plans, and there was no one else to ask, so she smoothed her hair and went back into the sitting-room again.

Ben was seated stolidly in front of the fire, one foot on each hob, a six-months-old English paper in his hands. He looked over his shoulder as his wife entered, but made no room for her before the fire. He simply gave a discontented grunt, and shrugged his shoulders in what she said was the rudest manner.

She moved about the room quietly, sighed a little in a gentle, resigned way that made her husband grunt still more angrily, put the chairs straight and tidy, and then took up her seat a little behind him, so that the firelight reached her across his stalwart right leg.

It put him manifestly in the wrong, and he didn't like it. He turned his head and looked at her sitting there sewing like a martyr, and then pushed back his chair impatiently.

'Are you cold, Emmie?'

'It doesn't matter in the least,' she sighed gently.

'It does matter. Why the dickens can't you behave like an ordinary woman, and ask a fellow to give you a bit of the fire, instead of looking like an image and sighing like a furnace?'

'It doesn't matter. I always want you to be comfortable. And, besides, of course you knew you had all the fire.'

That was true enough, and it put him so much in the wrong when he was feeling in an intangible, unexplainable sort of a way that it was he who was the injured person, that he swore helplessly under his breath, and held the paper so tight that it split in two between his strong fingers.

He dashed it on the fire, looked at his wife sitting sewing meekly, the very incarnation of wifely obedience, and then burst out:

'Emma, why the devil do you meddle in things that don't concern you?'

She looked at him with wide-open astonished eyes as one who is unjustly accused, and said nothing. He would have liked nothing better than to take her by the shoulders and shake her soundly.

'Answer me. Don't sit there like a graven image.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Don't know what I mean! You've grown mighty dense all of a sudden. Look here, then. How dared you meddle between Ruthven and that girl—that Phillips hussy?'

'How dared you meddle, then, if it comes to that? it was no business of yours.'

'You had no right to mix yourself up in such a thing.'

'The girl came to me,' said Mrs. Langdon sweetly. 'Poor thing! I was bound to do something.'

'Then you ought to have come to me. What the devil do you mean, madam, by going to any other man but your husband?'

Mrs. Langdon shrugged her shoulders. There was no pleasing this man. He was determined to work off his temper upon somebody.

'See here, Emmie, I won't stand it! I won't, and that's flat! Here have you for the last three months been carrying on a sort of desperate sympathetic friendship—I'm blest if I know what you call the thing—with that young fool Ruthven. I won't stand it, Emmie, there now! Once for all, I won't stand it!'

His wife raised her eyes as one who would say, 'This man is perfectly incomprehensible,' but she said nothing.

'Do you hear me, Emmie? I say I won't stand it!'

And he brought his hand down heavily on the arm of his chair.

'I don't understand you,' she said coldly.

'Oh yes, you do. You understand well enough. I say I won't have this mild illicit sort of love-making that's been going on between you and Ruthven. Do you think I haven't eyes in my head? You pose as a misunderstood, unappreciated woman—superior clay, in fact—and Jocelyn Ruthven, the young fool, worships. I know I'm coarse and rude and wanting in refinement and don't value you properly; but, all the same, I'm not going to stand what I've stood for the last three months. I've been expecting you to come to your senses, or Ruthven to find out what an ass he was making of himself, but it seems he hasn't. And now—oh, he's brought his pigs to a pretty market. You think you've done a fine thing, making him marry that girl, don't you? It's all your confounded vanity; you like to show your power. But I tell you what: if he marries that girl, before the month is out he'll be cursing the day he ever met you. He has made an ass of himself over you, but that's more your fault than his. He's not a bad chap at bottom, is Ruthven, and he shan't make a fool of himself if I can help it. I'll get him out of this hole, anyhow, in spite of himself. Send that girl along to me at once, Emmie.'

His wife laid her work down in her lap, and looked him straight in the face.

'Don't you hear me? Send that girl along. I want to speak to her. I guess I can make a better bargain than Ruthven.'

'There's no question of bargain in the matter.'

'Oh, isn't there? We'll soon see about that. Get the girl.'

'She's gone,' said Mrs. Langdon, taking up her work again.

'Gone? How the devil can she be gone? Bat Henderson, confound him! fetched her up along with the stores, didn't he? She got wind Ruthven would be here for a week or so, and determined to make things pleasant for him. But Henderson ain't going back, so how can she be gone?'

'She is gone, though,' said his wife distinctly. 'Naturally, she didn't like being here with all the servants wondering what she came for, and I'm sure I didn't want her, so, of course, I told Bat Henderson to put a horse in the buck-board and take her back again.'

'The devil you did! You're mighty considerate all of a sudden. Are you quite sure, now, you didn't go to her and say she was to clear out there and then?'

If she had, as her husband firmly believed, Mrs. Langdon made no sign. She went on sewing quietly, and wondered if Jocelyn Ruthven even guessed what she was suffering on his account.

'Well, I won't be done. I'll have a try for Ruthven's future comfort yet. Here, hi, you, Johanna!' as a maid passed the door. 'You go and tell Day to saddle me Lady Jane.'

The woman looked at her mistress doubtfully.

'Please, sir, Bat Henderson have took Lady Jane along a that gurl on the buck-board. Missus told him to; there weren't no other horse to take.'

Ben Langdon waited till that maid had gone, and then he did take his wife by the shoulders and shake her soundly. He had been wanting to do it all the afternoon, and now he did it. He wasn't very gentle about it, either, and when he pushed her down somewhat roughly into a chair, she put up her hands to her face and began to cry. She felt her efforts to do right were costing her a good deal. She wondered if Jocelyn Ruthven appreciated them.

Her husband looked at her shamefacedly a moment. She looked very slight and fragile, sitting huddled up there with her handkerchief to her eyes; but she was aggravating, and if he had been a brute, she had made him so.

'Oh, d——n it all!' he swore between his teeth. 'Ruthven's brought it on himself. It's no business of mine. He'll have to see it through, I suppose, and a pretty kettle of fish