The Lust of Hate by Guy Newell Boothby (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

Title: The Lust of Hate

Author: Guy Boothby

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Date first posted: June 2006

Date most recently updated: June 2006

 

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The Lust of Hate

Guy Boothby

 

INTRODUCTION. MY CHANCE IN LIFE.

CHAPTER I. ENGLAND ONCE MORE.

CHAPTER II. A GREUSOME TALE.

CHAPTER III. THE LUST OF HATE.

CHAPTER IV. A STRANGE COINCIDENCE.

CHAPTER V. THE WRECK OF THE “FIJI PRINCESS”

CHAPTER VI. THE SALVAGES.

CHAPTER VII. A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT.

CHAPTER VIII. WE ARE SAVED!

CHAPTER IX. SOUTH AFRICA.

CHAPTER X. I TELL MY STORY.

CHAPTER XI. A TERRIBLE SURPRISE.

CHAPTER XII. THE END.

 

INTRODUCTION. MY CHANCE IN LIFE.

 

Let me begin by explaining that I have set myself the task of

telling this story for two sufficient reasons. The first, because I

consider that it presents as good a warning to a young fellow as he

could anywhere find, against allowing himself to be deluded by a

false hatred into committing a sin that at any other time he would

consider in every way contemptible and cowardly; and the second,

because I think it just possible that it may serve to set others on

their guard against one of the most unscrupulous men, if man he

is—of which I begin to have my doubts—who ever wore shoe leather.

If the first should prove of no avail, I can console myself with the

reflection that I have at least done my best, and, at any rate, can

have wrought no harm; if the second is not required, well, in that

case, I think I shall have satisfactorily proved to my reader,

whoever he may be, what a truly lucky man he may consider himself

never to have fallen into Dr. Nikola’s clutches. What stroke of ill

fortune brought me into this fiend’s power I suppose I shall never be

able to discover. One thing, however, is very certain, that is that I

have no sort of desire ever to see or hear of him again. Sometimes

when I lie in bed at night, and my dear wife—the truest and

noblest woman, I verily believe, who ever came into this world for a

man’s comfort and consolation—is sleeping by my side, I think of all

the curious adventures I have passed through in the last two years,

and then fall to wondering how on earth I managed to come out of them

alive, to say nothing of doing so with so much happiness as is now my

portion. This sort of moralising, however, is not telling my tale; so

if you will excuse me, kind reader, I will bring myself to my

bearings and plunge into my narrative forthwith.

 

By way of commencement I must tell you something of myself and my

antecedents. My name is Gilbert Pennethorne; my mother was a

Tregenna. and if you remember the old adage—“By Tre—, Pol— and

Pen— You may know the Cornishmen,” you will see that I may claim to

be Cornish to the backbone.

 

My father, as far back as I can recollect him, was a highly

respectable, but decidedly choleric, gentleman of the old school, who

clung to his black silk stock and high-rolled collar long after both

had ceased to be the fashion, and for a like reason had for modern

innovations much the same hatred as the stage coachman was supposed

to entertain for railway engines. Many were the absurd situations

this animosity led him into. Of his six children—two boys and four

girls—I was perhaps the least fortunate in his favour. For some

reason or another—perhaps because I was the youngest, and my advent

into the world had cost my mother her life—he could scarcely bring

himself at any time to treat me with ordinary civility. In

consequence I never ventured near him unless I was absolutely

compelled to do so. I went my way, he went his—and as a result we

knew but little of each other, and liked what we saw still less.

Looking back upon it now, I can see that mine must have been an

extraordinary childhood.

 

To outsiders my disposition was friendly almost to the borders of

demonstrativeness; in my own home, where an equivalent temperament

might surely have been looked for, I was morose, quick to take

offence, and at times sullen even to brutishness. This my father, to

whom opposition of any kind was as hateful as the Reform Bill, met

with an equal spirit. Ridicule and carping criticism, for which he

had an extraordinary aptitude, became my daily portion, and when

these failed to effect their purpose, corporal punishment followed

sure and sharp. As a result I detested my home as cordially as I

loathed my parent, and was never so happy as when at school—an

unnatural feeling, as you will admit, in one so young. From Eton I

went up to Oxford, where my former ill luck pursued me. Owing to a

misunderstanding I had the misfortune to incur the enmity of my

college authorities during my first term, and, in company with two

others, was ignominiously “sent down” at the outset of my second

year. This was the opportunity my family had been looking for from

the moment I was breeched, and they were quick to take advantage of

it. My debts were heavy, for I had never felt the obligation to stint

myself, and in consequence my father’s anger rose in proportion to

the swiftness with which the bills arrived. As the result of half an

hour’s one-sided conversation in the library, with a thunder-shower

pattering a melancholy accompaniment upon the window panes, I

received a cheque for five thousand pounds with which to meet my

University liabilities, an uncomplimentary review of my life, past

and present, and a curt announcement that I need never trouble the

parental roof with my society in the future. I took him at his word,

pocketed the cheque, expressed a hypocritical regret that I had

caused him so much anxiety; went up to my room and collected my

belongings; then, having bidden my sisters farewell in icy state in

the drawing-room, took my seat in the dog-cart, and was driven to the

station to catch the express to town. A month later I was on my way

to Australia with a draft for two thousand pounds in my pocket, and

the smallest possible notion of what I was going to do with myself

when I reached the Antipodes.

 

In its customary fashion ill luck pursued me from the very moment

I set foot on Australian soil. I landed in Melbourne at a

particularly unfortunate time, and within a month had lost half my

capital in a plausible, but ultimately unprofitable, mining venture.

The balance I took with me into the bush, only to lose it there as

easily as I had done the first in town. The aspect of affairs then

changed completely. The so-called friends I had hitherto made

deserted me with but one exception. That one, however, curiously

enough the least respectable of the lot, exerted himself on my behalf

to such good purpose that he obtained for me the position of

storekeeper on a Murrumbidgee sheep station. I embraced the

opportunity with alacrity, and for eighteen months continued in the

same employment, working with a certain amount of pleasure to myself,

and, I believe, some satisfaction to my employers. How long I should

have remained there I cannot say, but when the Banyah Creek gold

field was proclaimed, I caught the fever, abandoned my employment,

and started off, with my swag upon my back, to try my fortune. This

turned out so poorly that less than seven weeks found me desperate,

my savings departed, and my claim,—which I must in honesty confess

showed but small prospects of success—seized for a debt by a

rascally Jew storekeeper upon the Field. A month later a new rush

swept away the inhabitants, and Banyah Creek was deserted. Not

wishing to be left behind I followed the general inclination, and in

something under a fortnight was prostrated at death’s door by an

attack of fever, to which I should probably have succumbed had it not

been for the kindness of a misanthrope of the field, an old miner,

Ben Garman by name. This extraordinary individual, who had tried his

luck on every gold-field of importance in the five colonies and was

as yet as far off making his fortune as when he had first taken a

shovel in his hand, found me lying unconscious alongside the creek.

He carried me to his tent, and, neglecting his claim, set to work to

nurse me back to life again. It was not until I had turned the corner

and was convalescent that I discovered the curiosity my benefactor

really was. His personal appearance was as peculiar as his mode of

life. He was very short, very broad, very red faced, wore a long grey

beard, had bristling, white eyebrows, enormous ears, and the largest

hands and feet I have ever seen on a human being. Where he had

hailed from originally he was unable himself to say. His earliest

recollection was playing with another small boy upon the beach of one

of the innumerable bays of Sydney harbour; but how he had got there,

whether his parents had just emigrated, or whether they had been out

long enough for him to have been born in the colony were points of

which he pronounced himself entirely ignorant. He detested women,

though he could not explain the reason of his antipathy, and there

were not two other men upon the field with whom he was on even the

barest speaking terms. How it came about that he took such a fancy to

me puzzled me then and has continued to do so ever since, for, as far

as I could see, save a certain leaning towards the solitary in life,

we had not a single bond in common. As it was, however, we were

friends without being intimate, and companions by day and night

without knowing more than the merest outside rind of each other’s

lives.

 

As soon as I was able to get about again I began to wonder what on

earth I should do with myself next. I had not a halfpenny in the

world, and even on a gold field it is necessary to eat if one desires

to live, and to have the wherewithal to pay if one desires to eat. I

therefore placed the matter before my companion and ask his advice.

He gave it with his usual candour, and in doing so solved my

difficulty for me once and for all.

 

“Stay with me, lad,” he said, “and help me to work