BARNABY

BARNABY



CHAPTER I

The lamp flickered and jumped at the stamping in the bar.

There was a frantic quality in that noise, laughter and exclamation
mixed with a wild shouting that made the crazy partition quiver. It
was a mad reaction from the common weight of despair.

From the bed in the room behind you could watch the door....


Paradise Town was a broken link in the chain of civilization; it might
have been written in letters of rusted blood on the map. Its pioneers
had forsaken it cursing, its trees had been burned for firewood, its
earth had been riddled in vain for gold. All that was left of it was
huddled near the shanty where men could buy drink and blur the spell of
awful loneliness that shut them away from life. It was worse at night.
With the darkness fell a heavier sense of the distance of human help,
and Paradise was an island in a black sea of haunted land. East and
west, wide and silent, the unknown emptiness lapped it in.

Ill-luck and some bitter trick had stranded the M'Kune Tragedy Company
in this dreadful place. Night after night they played in a shingle hut
with their useless scenery stacked outside; night after night M'Kune
broke it to his scared company that they hadn't yet got their fares.
Fear and a kind of superstition worked in their minds until they were
seized with panic. In the daylight the men hung about the bar,
muttering; and the women herded by themselves, packed like hens in a
strange run, hysterically afraid. Prisoners in a desert, when night
had fallen they wandered away to the railroad track and watched.
Towards midnight would rise a red gleam on the far horizon, and they
would hear a distant rumbling, gathering to a roar, till the darkness
was split by a whizzing bar of light. By it went, the great, glaring
thing full of life, terrible in its rush, and leaving the night
immeasurably darker. Among the watchers the men would affect to
whistle. If they couldn't board her to-night they might manage it
to-morrow.... But the women caught each other's hands fast, and
shuddered. Latterly they had felt as if the train were a devil that
counted and kept them there.

But their desperate plight inspired them. Never in their lives had
these poor mummers so hurled themselves into their parts; never again
would they murder and cheat and punish with such passionate realism.
Their fate hung upon it. Penniless and trapped, their solitary chance
of rescue lay in witching all Paradise to stare at them and furnish the
wherewithal.

"Keep it up," urged M'Kune when a tired actress flagged. The hut was
full and airless, but a few men were sullenly hanging back in the
doorway, drawn thither, but arguing if it was worth it to step inside.
"Keep it up!" hissed M'Kune.

And the heroine flung herself between the hero and the villain's knife,
slipped as she ran, and was hurt, but struggled up and cried out her
tottering defiance, bringing the house down before she dropped on her
face.

That was the last night of crazed endeavour. The curtain came rocking
down, and the villain--M'Kune--cheated the gallows to run feverishly
through his receipts. All Paradise was vociferating behind that
flapping rag, but amidst the din the players had heard their manager's
yell of triumph. They had made up their fares at last.

The Tragedy Company scattered and fled, each in search of his own
belongings; but they had little to gather, and the night wind blew them
together like drifting leaves. They durst not squander their means of
escaping, durst not loiter. The train, thundering by in its midnight
passage, must lift them out of this nightmare town. Waiting they
filled the bar, singing and shouting like lunatics, beside themselves
with joy.

The door in the partition rattled, but stayed shut, and on the inner
side was silence. Nobody lifted the latch, though the bursts of noise
shook it from time to time. A selfish panic had left no room for any
other feeling. Probably they had all forgotten that one of the Tragedy
Company who could not escape out of Paradise; and it was all in vain
that the crazy bedstead was turned in its corner to face the door.

She lay without moving. It seemed as if there were nothing of her but
the long black hair covering the pillow. In their hurry those who had
carried her in had not taken out all the pins, and a few glistened in
it still. Looking closer, one saw that her hands were clenched tight
against her breast, as if to keep her heart quiet.

How fast the minutes went! It must be nearly train time. And surely
there was a vast thing, pulsing, pulsing, like an engine, far away in
the night?