By Blow and Kiss

But an hour after he went the town’s poundkeeper came to them in the bar of the hotel, and said to Darby, “I have that horse o’ yours in the pound, Darby. Ye’ll have to bail ’im out.”

Darby stared at him. “Wot ’orse?” he demanded.

“Your ’orse, or the thing you calls one,” said the man.

“You ’aven’t got mine,” said Darby. “You’ve made a mistake.”

“Mistake!” said the poundkeeper, scornfully. “Think I could mistake that hammer-headed, herrin’-gutted brute o’ yours? No mistake about ’im, old son.”

“But my ’orse – old Blunderbuss – was washed down the Crick,” said Darby, wonderingly. “You saw ’im, Steve?”

“I did so,” laughed Steve. “And he was rolling over and over like a rock going down a hill; and he was waving a fond farewell with all four feet in the air, and hurrying to keep an appointment somewhere over the Falls, last I saw of him.”

“Falls or no falls,” said the poundkeeper, “there he is in the pound. They found him down the river a piece, trying to break in an’ steal somebody’s chaff.”

“Let’s see,” said Darby, and marched off with the man.

He came back riding old Blunderbuss and grinning hugely.

“It’s a ghost, Darby,” cried Steve, from the hotel door. “Get off him. He’s a ghost.”

Darby raised himself in the stirrups and bumped back hard in the broken and dilapidated saddle. “Solid sort o’ ghost,” he said. “’E’s able to carry my weight all right.”

Blunderbuss reached round and bit at his rider’s foot, and Darby kicked him in the mouth, rode cheerfully into the yard, and fed him lavishly.

“It’s ’im, an’ as good as ever,” he announced to the other two, when he came back to the bar. “A little hole, not more’n six inch long, in ’is haunch, an’ a scrape up his ribs, and a big bump on his head – ”

“I’m sorry for the thing his head bumped, Darby,” said Dolly Grey. “If it was a rock, I’ll bet he bust it.”

“He’s a good ’orse, anyway,” said Darby, proudly. “Not many ’orses could swim the Falls in flood an’ come ’ome smilin’ to brekfas’.”

“He isn’t a horse,” said Dolly. “He’s a submarine diver, or a fish.”

“Drink up, boys,” said Steve, impatiently. “You’re as slow between drinks as a camel.”

“What is it?” asked the barkeeper.

“Whisky,” cried Steve. “No beer this time, boss. No need to irrigate just now.”

So the whisky bottle was put on the bar, and Steve poured himself a stiff dose, and the others took moderate ones, for it was barely past breakfast time yet, and, as Darby put it, there was no need to get drunk in a hurry when they’d all day and night to it.

“Go on, go on,” said Steve. “You can get drunk and sober and drunk again. It’ll take me all my time to get once drunk. Hand us that bottle out again, boss,” and he threw the silver on the bar.

So when Dan came along early in the forenoon, Darby and Dolly Grey were both in a highly convivial stage, while Steve was drinking huge doses of spirit, with his eyes glittering and his hand shaking, but his voice as coldly clear and his legs as firm as if he had drunk nothing but water.

“Come on, Dan, and have a drink,” said Steve, gaily. “That bottle, boss. Here you are, Dan, though I’m sorry to say you won’t find much bite in this stuff. It’s like penny pop.”

“So’s sulphuric acid thin,” said Dan, helping himself liberally to water. “Your health, boys… An’ now, Steve, I’ve a message for you from both the wimmin folk, to ask you to come up to the house.”

“What’s that?” said Steve, suspiciously. “Who sent the message?”

“Both the wife and the girl,” said Dan, promptly. “And I was to be sure an’ tell you it was from both.”

Steve stood twisting his glass on the counter a moment, then threw his head back and laughed, but with a hard look in his narrowed eyes. “No, Dan,” and again more emphatically, “no. Tell them I’m sorry I can’t come; tell them I have a previous engagement; tell them I’m busy getting drunk if you like, or that I’m drunk already.”

“They won’t be likin’ that, Steve, an’ the little woman will have a word to say to ye whin she sees you.”

“I could come and see Mrs. Dan, drunk or sober,” said Steve, “and be sure of my welcome and an overlooking of my misdeeds. But I’m not fond o’ eating dirt, Dan, and I’ve had about all of it I can stomach. No, I’ll not come, thanks. Carry my compliments and condolences, or whatever fits in, and let it go at that. Have another before you go. – Hi, boss, drinks here.”

Dan spent some more minutes trying to persuade him, but Steve was “stubborn as a dead mule,” as he told Mrs. Dan, and refused to be coaxed.

Dan was back an hour later, and he beckoned Steve aside.

“Steve,” he said earnestly, “the little woman was more upset than I liked to see when I gave your message. I tould her it was because the girl was in the house, but that didn’t ease her. So she’s walked down to the bridge, and asks me to bring you there. She said she asked it as a favour, Steve, that you’d give her five minutes alone. Will ye come?”

Steve fidgeted restlessly while Dan spoke, but at the end “All right – I’ll come,” he said, and turned and told the others to wait for him, and he’d be back in ten minutes.

They walked down to the bridge together, and found Mrs. Dan and a few more of the townspeople watching the flood waters sluicing down under it. Dan left them together, and walked to the end of the bridge.

“Thank you for coming, Steve,” said Mrs. Dan, quietly. “I asked you for five minutes, and I won’t waste them. Steve, I want you to come up and see Miss Ess. You know I wouldn’t ask you to do what I didn’t think was for your own good and happiness. Will you?”

“No,” said Steve, shortly. “You mean well, Mrs. Dan, but you don’t know all, or you wouldn’t ask it.”

“But I do know all,” said Mrs. Dan. “That’s why I ask.”

He stared at her. “You do know – how and what?” he said.

“All that’s happened between you as far as the girl can tell it. Steve, I asked her, and I wanted to help. I – she has no woman to speak to, Steve, and you wouldn’t grudge a girl the consolation of havin’ another woman to talk to, and her shoulder to cry on.”

“There’s nothing I mind you knowing about me, old friend,” said Steve, “and I’m glad if it eased her to tell you. But, knowing the story, I don’t see what you want me to do, or what more you expect. Everything’s finished between us.”

“Look me full in the eyes, Steve, and tell me straight, in so many words, you don’t love her, and say you don’t want to see her again – and I’ll have no more to say. Will you give me your word of honour on that?”

“No, for it would be a lie,” said Steve, steadily. “But that is beside the point, and it’s perhaps because of that I won’t see her. I could laugh and smile to myself at another girl saying her cruellest – but I can’t with her.”

“Steve, you know that what you’re saying to me will never be repeated, and you wouldn’t think more of me if I told you all the girl said to me, so I can say nothing. But surely you know I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that is going to be to the hurt of you. Can’t you take my word for it and come and see her?”

Steve looked at her keenly. “You say she has told you all; and I know you’d sooner stab yourself than pin-prick me. The two things don’t run together. There’s things she has left out, or softened down, I’m thinking, and you don’t understand yet.”

“She told me all,” repeated Mrs. Dan, “and I could have struck her myself at some of the telling. But in face of it all, Steve, I ask you to come.”

“Did she tell you what she said when I went to take her in the boat?” blazed Steve.

Mrs. Dan looked startled and a little puzzled. “She said nothing much about the boat,” she admitted. “But I don’t think she remembered much of it, Steve. She was half dazed and bewildered, I think, and I don’t wonder at it. Look what she’d been through.”

Steve laughed harshly. “Dazed,” he said scornfully; “aye, maybe she was dazed. But even when she hadn’t all her sense about her, the words came of themselves; her mind wasn’t working free enough to hold back the thoughts that were deep in her mind. I’ll not repeat what she said – it makes me run hot and cold now to think of it, and all it meant to me. And if she didn’t tell it of her free will, please don’t ask her for it. And I’d been beginning to hope again – I thought … but what good is the talk of it? It’s finished. I’m done,” and he threw out his hands with a little gesture of finality.

Mrs. Dan looked long and sorrowfully at his set face, with the gripped teeth and the bitter eyes, and sighed heavily.

“Very well, Stevie lad; I’ll say no more. They tell me you’re going. Will ye see me and say good-bye before you go?”

“If I’m sober enough,” said Steve, recklessly, “but I’m doing my best to get drunk to-day. I might as well make a finish in keeping with my character.”

“I can’t say good-bye here, Steve,” she said. “And if you come to the house to say it, I’ll promise you’ll see or be seen by nobody but myself. So come.”

“I’ll come then,” he said abruptly, and they turned and walked to join Dan, and came up off the bridge together, and parted at the door of the hotel.

Steve found the other two men sleeping, for they had had a late and wild night of it; and Steve went and flung himself into a chair and sat moodily alone, not even drinking, for the savour had gone out of the drink and the talk; and the thoughts raised by the talk with Mrs. Dan burned in his brain as bad as the fevered wounds in his breast.

He would not see her – not he. He had been flouted and scorned and whipped with thoughts and words and looks enough to last him his life. He cursed himself for a fool for taking the thing so much to heart, and wondered fiercely why ever he had hoped again after that night. And, almost without knowing it, he began to imagine and picture the interview with her, if, after all, he went to Mrs. Dan’s and asked to see her. She would be polite, of course, and thank him again for saving her, but cold politeness would cut him keener than open anger, and he would only be tempted to flaunting and taunting. And what was the good of all that? And if she met him kindly and spoke softly and held out her hands to him… He roused himself and sneered at his thoughts, and bound himself with new oaths to be done with her – to see no more of her – to suffer, if so be he had to suffer, without her looking on the suffering.

But a chance sentence of Dolly Grey’s cut his oaths and cast aside the promises he had laid on himself.

Dolly had wakened fresh and unshaken from his sleep, and had slid the after-effects of the drink from his healthy body as lightly as he had from his mind – as only the young and responsibility-free can. And he had found Steve, and, because he wanted to eat, made Steve eat with him. He talked gaily throughout the meal, and announced his intention of going along to see Miss Ess presently, and from that went into a hymn of praise of the girl’s pluck and fortitude. And in the gay chatter a sentence caught Steve and wrenched his straying thoughts back to what the lad was saying.

“Funny thing the way she collapsed at the finish, y’ know,” said Dolly. “Kept up like a Briton all through, and laughed and joked at all the discomfort, and was as cool and plucky as you like even when we couldn’t find a way of climbing that tree, and the water was crawling up on us. Then when it’s all over, and you get the boat alongside, and Seaman Dick shins up – pouf, away goes all her pluck, and she’s as scared at being dropped out of the tree as a kid. Hysteria, I s’pose, ’cos she was half crying and half tittering, sort of. Funny thing, too – what d’you think she said when Dick went to put the rope round her? ‘Don’t touch me – I’m too wet to touch.’ And she said that two or three times – ”

Steve dropped knife and fork with a clatter.

“What did she say?” he asked sharply.

“‘Don’t touch me,’ she said. ‘Don’t touch me – I’m too wet to touch…’ Dash funny notion, wasn’t it? Couldn’t help grinnin’, seeing we were both wringin’ wet ourselves – I’d just been soused in the river five minutes before. Hardly know what she was thinking of … that we would wet ourselves touching her wet things, perhaps … but it was dash funny, now, wasn’t it?”

“You’re sure that’s what she said?” asked Steve, slowly. “Those very words – ‘Don’t touch me.’”

“I’m sure enough,” said Dolly, looking at him in some surprise. “Said it over and over two or three times, and Dick What’s-his-Name’ll tell you the same thing. ’Course it was only reaction and hysteria, and she didn’t know what she was saying. I’m not surprised… But you mustn’t think she wasn’t a good plucked ’un for all that’ y’ know. I wouldn’t like you to get that notion from me. She’s pluck to her boot heels,” he went on warmly, while Steve sat, with his thoughts whirling, hardly heeding the words.

“Don’t touch me”… So she didn’t mean what he had taken the meaning to be … she’d said the same thing to Seaman Dick West and Dolly up there…

He broke in on Dolly’s talk. “Dolly, I’m going to see Miss Ess before you do, if you don’t mind.”

“Right-o,” said Dolly, cheerfully. “Or why not go together?”

“No, no,” said Steve, hastily. “I – she’ll be saying thank-you things, and that’s sort of embarrassing for both of us.”

“Oh, I see,” said Dolly. “Yes, I suppose that’s right. Beastly thing bein’ thanked. Glad it isn’t me, y’know, that has to have ’em.”

“P’raps you’ll get a share,” said Steve.

“G’ Lord – me – what for?” said Dolly, in a panic. Then he grinned sheepishly. “I see. You’re pullin’ my leg.”

“Well, you’ll get some thanks from me when I come back,” said Steve, “ – or a broken head,” he added grimly.

Dolly looked at him in some doubt. “All right, old chap. But – er – I say, Steve – you think you’re all right – eh? Don’t mind me mentionin’ it, I hope, but – er – well, you’ve been tankin’ up all mornin’, y’ know. You’re all right, eh?”

Steve laughed at him. “I’m going out now to put my head in the trough and freshen up generally,” he said, “though I feel all right, and then I’ll let you see me stand on one leg and walk a chalk line, and give me tongue-twister sentences to say, or undergo any test of sobriety you like.”

“Oh, you look all right,” said Dolly, consolingly, “only I didn’t quite follow that broken-head remark.”

“You wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t expect you to,” said Steve, and went and washed and soused his head as he had said.

“You look toppin’,” said Dolly, when he was ready to go. “Sort of got your shoulders back, and your chin up, and a spark in your eye. Feel all right? Can you say toorilooral – I mean toolitrooral – toolri – I say,” he broke off in dismay, “I’m afraid I’m not as all right myself as I thought. Tru – ly – ru – ral. Got ’im.”

“Truly rural. Got ’im,” said Steve, solemnly, but with his eyes twinkling, and marched off.

Mrs. Dan was rather a long time coming to answer his knock, but her welcome made up for that when she did let him in.

“Steve boy, it’s glad I am to see you. Come along in – and just sit a minute; I’m doing something, and won’t be a jiff.”

She went close and looked keenly at him when she came back to the room. “So ye kept sober after all, then. I’m glad, for I’m sorry enough to be losing you, and would have been sorrier if you hadn’t had sense to understand my good-bye.”

“I remembered that I’d be kissing you good-bye if Dan’s not looking,” said Steve, “and I couldn’t get the full pleasure of that if I wasn’t full sober.”

“When does the coach go?”

“They’re expecting one in from the north in two or three hours, and if it comes they’ll take the mails and go right on from here. But I didn’t quite come to say good-bye – yet. Whether I say it at all depends.”

Mrs. Dan jumped to her feet. “Steve, don’t tell me you’ve thought better and come to see her,” she said delightedly.

“I heard a chance word that made me think maybe I’d been wrong,” said Steve, gravely, “and I came to take a last chance, and maybe a last bitter speech to take with me – ”

Mrs. Dan dropped back in her chair. “And the fool I was,” she said despairingly. “Ah, well, you must just wait till she comes back.”

“Back?” said Steve, slowly. “Where from? I can’t wait. I’ve got to get this over, and know the best or the worst that is in it. Where is she?”

Mrs. Dan groaned. “I sent her out. I arranged for her to go if you came, and Dan saddled a horse for her and his own, and had them waiting in the stable; and she slipped out the back way and round, and I heard them ride by before I well spoke to you.”

“I’ll get my horse and go after them,” said Steve, rising hurriedly to his feet. “I’d just as soon say what I have to say outside in the open, and I’ll send Dan home to you.”

“But I don’t know where they’ve gone,” said Mrs. Dan.

“I’ll find that out, and I’ll come back and see you, with her – or alone. I’m still doubtful which, you see.”

“But I’m not,” said Mrs. Dan, as he strode from the door, “though, Heaven above knows, they both seem to mess things up that bad I’d believe anything might happen.”

Steve as he passed glanced at the tracks coming from Dan’s yard, and saw that they turned towards the hotel and bridge, and, when he had got his horse and saddled it, he asked a man standing about if he had seen the trooper and Miss Lincoln.

“Rode past and down over the bridge,” said the man, and Steve cantered off and across the bridge.

The water had dropped so that the road on the far side was uncovered, and Steve saw the tracks clear in the mud, and went off after them at a smart canter.

When he could no longer follow the tracks in the gathering dusk, he rode back to the bridge and sat down to wait for them, knowing they must return that way.

It was full dark when he heard the plop-plop of the horses’ feet on the soft ground, and when they came close to him he moved forward a few paces and lit a match, holding it so that the light fell on his face.

He heard the creak of leather and scuffle of the horses pulled up abruptly; he heard Ess’s voice in a gasping cry – “Steve” – and his heart jumped at the ring of joy in the tones.