‘Ah!’ he would say, as we stood regarding my pretty house, the sunny, flowering garden, and the children playing on the lawn, ‘we should never have seen this if you had gone to the bottom of the Banderoar. If I had stopped to take off’ -
I felt this, too, and wrung his hand in response. Perhaps that very evening we had a small dinner-party, and when I saw a demure smile steal over everybody’s face, I knew that in the coming silence I should hear Jenkins describing what would have happened had he ‘stopped to pull’ – Then, I could have slain him. We had not a lady friend to whom he had not confided, in a loud voice, that singular instance of his presence of mind in refraining from undressing. Those male friends whom Jenkins had not insulted, I had quarrelled with on account of their frivolity in always asking me if ‘Jenkins had taken his trousers off yet?’
But the worst of it was that the dear fellow really believed that he was affording me the most exquisite happiness in entertaining him. He was convinced that for twelve years I had been pining to pay off my debt, and that now I was enraptured. He was my shadow and reverenced everything belonging to me. How could I break this charm by declaring that I was tired of him? It would have been worse than heartless.
At last my patient wife began to grow short-tempered and restless. She told me plainly once that Jenkins had not pulled her out of the Banderoar, and that she did not see why she should put up with him any longer. I tried to point out that as she and I were one it really amounted to the same thing, but she replied that it certainly did not. We were not married when it happened, and if I had been drowned she would have married somebody else – perhaps someone not oppressed by having barnacled to him a devoted rescuer who was eternally advertising that he had not taken off his trousers.
I felt that a climax neared – and that something must be done to prevent the breaking up of my once happy home. At times I meditated investing a portion of my capital in a small selection somewhere and getting Jenkins to go and look after it for me, but he expressed himself as being contented where he was, and so greatly averse to returning to the bush, that I abandoned the ideas. Now, too, he began to indulge in sheepish flirtations with the maids, and my wife sternly requested me to ‘speak to your friend.’ I attempted to do so, but when I saw his mild, affectionate eyes gazing at me and knew that he was thinking of the time when he struggled beneath the muddy flood waters without taking off his trousers, I broke down. I could not wound his gentle heart.
It came to me suddenly – the inspiration, the solution of the difficulty. Jenkins must die!
Once resolved, I acted. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it, any more than Deeming could help killing his wives, or Mr Neill Cream could help poisoning all those poor girls in London. Jenkins was a friendless bushman; I was a man with responsibilities and a family. Their happiness stood first, and it was kinder to Jenkins to kill him at once than to undeceive him.
I shall not enter into details as to the carrying out of my design. Enough to say that it was perfectly successful. I have no intention of teaching the art of murder made easy. Jenkins died peacefully and painlessly. The doctor said that his constitution had been undermined by exposure and hardship. When he was confined to his bed my wife forgave him everything, and nursed him with unremitting care. I have even seen tears in the poor little woman’s eyes as she murmured that she was afraid we should lose him. Other people came to see him, and he passed away happy in the firm belief that he left behind him a large circle of sorrowing friends.
I buried him in my own ground in Waverley cemetery, and erected a neat stone with a suitable inscription, stating that he had risked his life in preserving me from death.
All my old friends are back again. Everybody has told me what a manly fellow I was, and how they admired my social pluck in not looking coldly upon an old benefactor who did not happen to be quite up to the Government House standard of dress and manners. My conscience is easy.
E. W. HORNUNG
Ernest William Hornung was born at Marton near Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, in 1866. He came to Australia in 1884, spending two years as a tutor in the Riverina before returning to England. It was enough time to provide Hornung with the material for several novels. The first, The Bride from the Bush (London, Smith & Elder; New York, United States Book Company) was published in 1890. In 1891 he began writing for a newly established journal, The Strand Magazine, where he became acquainted with Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1893 Hornung married Doyle’s sister, Constance.
Hornung published over a dozen novels and collections of short stories in the 1890s but his greatest fame came with The Amateur Cracksman (London, Methuen) in 1899. Raffles, the gentleman thief, was introduced in this collection of short stories. There was much in common with Sherlock Holmes, not the least of which was a Watson-like associate and chronicler by the name of Bunny.
The well-bred champion cricketer who lapses into crime to supplement his income is now a well-known creation. Though subsequent adventures remained thoroughly English, Raffles’ first adventure on the wrong side of the law occurred in Yea, Victoria and forms the basis for ‘Le Premier Pas’.
Raffles’ fame outlived his creator. Hornung died at St Jean de Luz in the Pyrenees in 1921. Another writer, Barry Perowne, continued the series and did quite a good job of it. Hornung also created an Australian version of Raffles. In his novel Stingaree (London, Chatto & Windus and New York, Scribners, 1905), the main character is a gentleman bushranger with a pure heart, a monocle, a love of Gilbert and Sullivan and a dashing white charger called Barmaid.
‘Le Premier Pas’ is far more than Raffles’ rare brush with antipodean law and order. It is well regarded as one of Hornung’s best stories – or should that be one Bunny Manders?
Le Premier Pas
That night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since the fateful morning of the Ides of March, when he had just mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour, had I succeeded in getting a word out of Raffles on the subject. It was not for want of trying. He would shake his head and watch his cigarette smoke thoughtfully; a subtle look in his eyes, half cynical, half wistful, as though the decent honest days that were no more had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egoistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long before the night of our return from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffle’s cricket bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender, with the remains of an old Orient label still adhering to the leather. My eyes had been on this label for some time, and I suppose his eyes had been on mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned to hear that yarn.
‘It’s no use,’ I replied. ‘You won’t spin it. I must imagine it for myself.’