“‘When will he be back?’ I asked her.
“‘Not till to-morrow,’ she said, and as the hour was getting late and I started to yawn and nearly fell asleep as I sat on the wooden bench, she asked me if I would mind sleeping in the next room where that thing was! At first I hesitated a bit, but not liking to look a coward I pulled myself together and said, ‘Well, I don’t mind,’ for I saw that I should have to sleep outside if I didn’t, as there was only one room besides the small kitchen where we were, and just by where she sat twitching her fingers on her knees was her own bed made up. She gave me a small bit of candle and pointed to the long couch as I entered that hushed room and quietly closed the door behind me. It was a large room and as I looked around I caught sight of a long trestle up against the farther wall right opposite the small window across which hung wild vines. I began to feel pretty bad; my past experience had a bit unnerved me. Placing the candle on a little stool beside me, I settled myself on the couch, inwardly cursing my luck at being given only one inch of tallow candle. By faith, I could not keep my eyes off that thing. I heard my own breath as I lay there all of a sweat, and then the candle spluttered and went out, and as the wind blew outside, and the shadow of the boughs through the window moved to and fro on the walls just above the shrouded six-foot figure, my eyes stared and stared and it seemed as though the protruding feet moved as the moonlight crept in patches over the trestle. And then a terrible thing happened.
“I swear by all that’s holy I tell the truth—the top of the white shroud moved back and revealed a long grey-bearded face! My feet also slowly moved off that couch to make a bolt from the room, and likewise those dead feet moved slowly towards the floor to stay my flight! I was paralysed with terror. I tried to shout, but something gripped my throat. Up rose that dead man’s finger as with bright eyes gleaming he said, ‘Hush, I’m not dead!’ Outside, as he said that, I heard a whisper and the crackling of twigs and a shadow whipped across the wall as someone passed by the window. In a moment I recovered. ‘Not dead?’ thought I. ‘I’ll show you to play this trick on me,’ and I leapt to my feet, but the old bounder was too quick for me. Crash over my head went something, and before I could get out of the door he had vanished, shutting it with a bang behind him. I heard a scream. Taking a woodman’s axe from the wall I crashed away at that door to get to the woman who had befriended me. Down it came as I smashed away.
“Rushing into the room I looked round. I was too late. I stumbled over something huddled on the floor, and saw that the worst had happened. I turned round and looked through the hut door over the moonlit slopes; with the jaw-rag flapping behind him ran that monstrous man who had feigned death; in front flew a little man. I heard a scream as he uplifted his gun and shot him and then turning it on himself blew the top of his own head off. It all seemed to happen in an instant, and there was I left alone by that hut. By the door stood a coffin and that told me that the second victim was the man who had gone off to do the undertaking job. I at once started off from that cursed place, for I knew that were I found there the whole tragedy would be fastened on to me,” and saying this he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and wished me good-night and went off.”
XXVI
I play the Violin at Fashionable Concerts, etc.—Ship before the Mast for Sydney—Go Up Country—Sheep-shearing—The Shearers’ good Resolutions and the Fall
I never knew what to make of Guest; he certainly believed all that he told me. He eventually came to my lodging and lived in the next room; he had an old duck, I think he said it was eighteen years old; he carried it about much the same as folks do a pet poodle. I never saw such a wise and affectionate thing as that duck was. By his bed in a large collar-box it would sit the whole night long and follow him and me about the room like a kitten. How he got it and why he was so fond of it was a mystery to me; he was the last man in the world one would have thought to have a pet duck and put up with the nuisance of it, but he had the duck right enough, and when we sat having our meals together it would push its beak under our arms and steal the dainty bits off our plates. That was nuisance enough, but the smell of it was outrageous and I very seldom had luncheon with Guest afterwards, but had most of my meals in a restaurant hard by.
I was still engaged at playing the fiddle at the dancing hall, and now and again I accepted engagements to go out to balls, etc., among the “élite” of San Francisco. It was at the palatial residence of a ’Frisco nabob out at Menbo Park that I played my first public solo. I was terribly nervous. The solo I played was Rode’s “Air in G,” and I gave as an encore the “Cavatina” by Raff. Guest was there that night; I had managed to get him a ticket and borrowed a decent suit for him. I was sorry after that I had invited him. He got drinking too much, and though I had warned him to behave himself he shouted at the top of his voice as soon as I had finished my solo, “Good old Middleton! Give us another.” I turned hot all over and the perspiration whisked off my brow as I bowed to the applause of the audience and the pretty girl at the piano gazed up into my face and quickly placed the music of the “Cavatina” on the pianoforte and I was glad to start off playing again. I made several mistakes but I don’t think anyone noticed them; my name on the programme was not Middleton but Signor Marrionette! and everyone, of course, had great faith in the playing of a gentleman with that name.
Through my musical ability and enterprise I saw a good deal of ’Frisco “high life,” and after a deal of experience I came to the conclusion that low life was only the crude essence of high life. One set wiped their noses with a silk pocket handkerchief and the other with the thumb and forefinger, but both acted under the same impulse. The real curse of those early engagements was that after I had played the ladies would circle round me, quizz me up and down, old and young plying me with questions, telling me how they would love to spend their lives listening to delicious strains of music; they thought I was a soft sentimental poetical youth, green to the ways of life, and little dreamed that I had seen them all, so to speak, dancing in the South Seas with nothing on!