Title: The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans
Author: William Gosse Hay (1875-1945)
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Language:   English
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The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans
(And the mystery of M. Daunt).
A Romance of Tasmania
by William Gosse Hay (1875-1945)



To
M.
in Memory of our ascent of Mount Arthur, Port Arthur, and discovery in
the undergrowth of the iron arms
arms of the Semaphore, whose wooden flag-poles, when lifted from the
ground, fell back to earth in
dusty fragments



CONTENTS


BOOK I.   HIGH WATER

I.     TO PLAY THE GAME OUT
II.    HIGH AND DRY
III.   THE BRAVE FELLOWS
IV.    SIR WILLIAM IS LATE
V.     A ROUGH NIGHT FOR THE "SAILORS' BALL"
VI.    FIDUS ACHATES
VII.   WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BIRTHDAY BALL
VIII.  LOVE AND DEATH
IX.    A P.P.C. CARD
X.     A PROUD MOMENT
XI.    HE MAKES A GOOD-BYE
XII .  NEARING THE END
XIII.  CAPTAIN SHAXTON NUDGES DAUNT
XIV.   HEANS'S TICKET-OF-LEAVE
XV.    SHAXTON FORGETS THE CANISTER


BOOK II. NEAP TIDE

I.     THE PRISON ARTIST
II.    WINE WITH MR. MAGRUDER
III.   "MY ONCE DEAR FRIENDS THE HYDE-SHAXTONS"
IV.    AN OLD HOUSE STAINED OF WEATHER AND MEMORIES--A REPUTATION AND A
       REMARK
V.     ANOTHER BLACK STRING
VI.    BLIND ABELIA SEES SOMETHING
VII.   POISON
VIII.  O'CRONE'S FETCH
IX.    CAPTAIN COLLINS' ROOM
X.     DISCOVERY OF A NEW AND AN OLD DOCUMENT
XI.    INTO A VULGAR QUARREL--AN ALBUM LEAF--MISCHIEF IN THE WIND
XII.   A LAST SHIFT--CARNT'S NEWS
XIII.  SURRIDGE'S NARRATIVE
XIV.   THE GREEN-ROOM
XV.    HEANS SEARCHED
XVI.   THE PAD OR FAIRPLAY
XVII.  SIR WILLIAM BY HIS FIRE THAT NIGHT
XVIII. IN THE DEAD-WATER
XIX.   WILD WORK
XX.    MR DAUNT'S CARELESSNESS


BOOK III. LOW WATER OF SPRING TIDES

I.     A VIGNETTE IN AN OLD KEEPSAKE
II.    THE ABBEY IN THAT FAR COVE
III.   SIR WILLIAM JOINS THE WANDERERS
IV.    A PRINCESS OF THE TIERS


* * * * * * *





BOOK I   HIGH WATER




CHAPTER I



TO PLAY THE GAME OUT


When Sir William Heans first reached Hobarton, Tasmania, he was placed in
the Government Architect's office on the strength of having erected
additions to the family home in Ireland. Thus he spent a good deal of
time designing penitentiaries, riding, reporting himself at the prison,
"punting," and visiting among a few friends to whom he had brought
letters. Indeed, when he first reached the island, on the strength of his
family connections, he walked for a fine and chequered summer in quite
exalted society. And it is of this prolific year--prolific of so much
terror and good--that we have first to tell.

A great deal had occurred before he met his friend Mr. Jarvis Carnt, also
a prisoner. Not that he would have looked down on Mr. Carnt, if he had
met him then; he always had a fine eye for a male acquaintance; but he
was living a somewhat protected life for a gentleman prisoner (or
"long-coater") at that time, and being careful not to compromise his
friends by frequenting the lower clubs, he had not come across Mr. Carnt.

It is strange how the world will give a man a second chance--especially
if he be a good-looking one. This perennial instance of man's patience is
no more evident in our male clubs and criminal courts than in the
cabinets of the women. Sir William Heans' crime--his sin--which we shall
touch on most briefly hereafter, and the committing of which had pushed
him from the places that he loved into exile and boredom in a wild island
at the bottom of the world--his sin seemed like to have been forgiven him
by certain of his new acquaintances, one of whom, in particular, was a
woman. This had not arisen from a rumour which had arrived with him--it
is said, his own opinion somewhat too freely expressed--that he had been
as much the sinned upon as the sinner, nor yet altogether from the far
more potent argument of his good health and handsome face.

Captain Hyde-Shaxton and his wife, Matilda, had received him from the
first with kindness, and even with warmth. The Captain, a man of
forty-six, had some four years previous left a regiment and a young wife
in India for a trip to Sydney, then in its first fashionable prime [Note
1. after this para.]; and afterwards, to his lasting glory, had voyaged
thence to Hobarton, in the now famous BEAGLE, with Captain Fitzroy and
Charles Darwin--whom he ever after elected to bring into his chuckling
conversation as "young skins and bones." Unlike Darwin, who could say
even of Mount Wellington that it had "little picturesque beauty," he fell
in love with the island, and returned northward only to resign his
commission and return with the young wife to Tasmania. Here, taking up
land in the ranges near Flat Top Tier, the scenery and solitude had
palled on both, and both had been glad when the restless busband had been
given a small staff appointment in Hobarton, and moved into a secluded
red brick house, facing down the bay over the shingles of the town.

[Note 1.--'Sydney' in 1836.--"Early in the morning a light air carried us
towards the entrance of Port Jackson. Instead of beholding a verdant
country, interspersed with fine houses, a straight line of yellowish
cliff brought to our minds the coast of Patagonia. A solitary lighthouse,
built of white stone, alone told us that we were near a great and
populous city. Having entered the harbour, it appears fine and spacious,
with cliff-formed shores of horizontally stratified sandstone. The nearly
level country is covered with thin scrubby trees bespeaking the curse of
sterility. Proceeding further inland, the country improves: beautiful
villas and nice cottages are here and there scattered along the beach. In
the distance stone houses, two or three stories high, and windmills
standing on the edge of a bank, pointed out to us the neighbourhood of
the capital of Australia.

"At last we anchored within Sydney Cove. We found the little basin
occupied by many large ships, and surrounded by warehouses. In the
evening I walked through the town, and returned full of admiration at the
whole scene. It is a most magnificent testimony to the power of the
British nation. Here, in a less promising country, scores of years have
done many times more than an equal number of centuries have effected in
South America. My first feeling was to congratulate myself that I was
born an Englishman. Upon seeing more of the town afterwards, perhaps my
admiration fell a little; but yet it is a fine town. The streets are
regular, broad, clean, and kept in excellent order; the houses are of a
good size, and the shops well furnished. It may be faithfully compared to
the large suburbs which stretch out from London and a few other great
towns in England; but not even near London or Birmingham is there an
appearance of such rapid growth. The number of large houses and other
buildings just finished was truly surprising; nevertheless, every one
complained of the high rents and difficulty in procuring a house. Coming
from South America, where in the towns every man of property is known, no
one thing surprised me more than not being able to ascertain at once to
whom this or that carriage belonged."

CHARLES DARWIN, Voyage of Beagle, pp. 431--432.]

The influence of an aspiring woman for good and peace is incalculable.
(What men rare Queen Elizabeth made, giving them something they could not
but revere!) Not only in her casual acquaintances did she inspire trust,
but even (as a certain Mr. Daunt put it) in her husband, he, in his large
way, entrusting her with the financing of both their large
establishments--a matter she carried out with her fine financial head,
with only the rarest and most hugely forgiven of blunders. This woman
with the dreadful name and the Bedouin husband--a man always with his
mind's eye over the next mountain--this by no means extraordinary woman,
by achieving something every once in a while without a tinge of self in
it, drew soon a circle of hard-eyed people about her, whose smiling
faces, if they did not become more natural, went away as determined as
they came. It seemed her desire to steal rather than to aid, teach, or
pass judgment. Her sweet face seldom smiled. It was high, small, bright,
and shyly serious. She seemed taller than she was; would have been active
if she had not been delicate; and was straight as a needle. You would see
her talking with someone in her drawing-room, near a chandelier, with
that fine antagonistic eye of hers wild and full of a strained yearning.

Incidentally she was a beautiful woman--if not for exhibition purposes.
She seemed to put it away from her as she talked, much as she would
thrust back her hair--so golden. She admitted it, but it was not the fact
apparently which she most wished to urge upon you. Even had it been it
would have bothered but little the kind of women and men who sought her.
They went there in homage--most of them--for some clever, invisible
unselfishness in which they had caught her, and into which they could
argue (clever as they were at scenting them) no slight to themselves or
anyone else except herself and her private interests. The prisoner Carnt
called her, in his wild, amusing way, "the carpet serpent." We don't know
whether he was referring to her selfless subtleties or what. It seems the
convict never forgave her for once distinctly bowing to him from a
fly--when walking with Sir William Heans--though, with what he curiously
described as the remnants of compunction, he had not bowed in return.
Carnt, by the way, was not at all a bad fellow. He had been a steward or
land-agent in England. He drank seldom, but when he drank heavily, it is
said he became a devil of selfish treachery and calculation.

Heans, with his high black collarless stock, matchless claw-hammer, plaid
breeks and hunting air, had received slight after slight on landing, and
came at last, pale, proud, yet still on his dignity, to the Shaxtons'
door. His health had really suffered on ship-board, and he had obtained a
Government Pass to ride beyond the town bounds in four directions: the
village of New Town, and five miles towards the ferry; Sandy Bay, but not
more than two miles towards the Probation Station; and a gallop up the
Storm Mountain track towards the Springs. On pain of the withdrawal of
the pass, he was to call at no ale or dwellinghouse besides that known as
"Muster-Master-Mason's Place" above the Cascades Prison: this being
within sight of the courtyards.

As Captain Shaxton's house was a mile outside the Boundary he had, of
necessity, applied for a fresh pass giving permission, for one day, to
leave the Mountain Road and break his ride at Pitt's Villa. He had
obtained this on producing a familiar letter of introduction from an
aunt, showing he was distantly related to this family, with the proviso
that he would be within boundary before dusk.

In the drawing-room, Daunt, of the foot police, was sitting with Mrs.
Shaxton. He was a dark man, quick and neat, in a high-shouldered,
kerseymere frock-coat, and duck breeches strapped over Wellingtons. He
had slighted Heans (or Heans had fancied that he had) once already on the
Hulk, and when the latter came in, having recovered himself, grey and
quiet, he recognised him instantly, and entreated something of Mrs.
Shaxton in a low voice near the mantel-piece. It sounded like "MAUVAIS
SUJET." She rose, however, with her shy, staring, antagonistic look. It
was hot and the drawing-room had been darkened: one of those dusky,
dreamy interiors of the summer antipodes generally filled with dreamy
women. Heans' face and head were in the line of the one raised blind, and
he stood gravely before her, fine, pale, and wonderfully dignified. She
withdrew her staring eyes in a strange way, and gave him her hand warmly.
She was an earnest woman. Her welcome was unmistakably sweet, and kind;
but she did not look at him again, searching about her, even while he
bowed over her hand, for a chair on which he might sit. She introduced
him to Daunt, who had risen. Daunt said darkly that they had met, but
Heans, with some appearance of good-humour, begged his pardon for a
"devilish bad memory for faces."

"Ah," said Daunt, "I've a good one." And he made his little hearty,
silent laugh. He was a very witty man in another way. It was he who had
given vent to the clever saying: "He did not admire the gossiping ladies:
their lips were too red."

Matilda said into her embroidery, that, "we heard about you, Sir William
Heans, from the Gairdeners. Your Aunt wrote one of her wonderful
letters."

"She said she would write," said Heans.

"She must be eighty-three. She wished to know what had become of Mr.
Macaulay, the young orator. He was in Calcutta when I came out to my
husband, and people were saying great things of him. I myself heard him
say at a dinner-party, in a voice that rang with feeling, that he 'would
not give one fallen pillar of Rome for all the marvellous Colonades of
Hindostan.'"

They all laughed at her way of saying it.

"Ah," said Heans, with some patience. "Macaulay has been her hero ever
since the death of old Sir Walter. I protest, she would meet Scott
wherever she went according to her own account, though, as she would say,
'he has lately written such dreadful things about us women!' 'The great
poet,' she would say, 'was there with Lady Buccleugh: I knew him by his
DESHABILLE and faithful eyes.'"

Matilda glanced at the speaker with her own strange orbs. A soft look lay
at the root of their strained stare. She let her chin drop into her
needle-hand, and looked into the distance.

"Ah," she said, in a soft voice, "it is a pleasure to answer Miss
Gairdener's letters. Anything will interest her with a great or good wish
in it. You can begin a despatch with Mr. Macaulay and end it with a
receipt for plum chutney. She tells me she has been reading Pope's Homer,
and that she finds Mr. Crabbe's poems so rousing. She begged us to look
out for you, Sir William, and see that you took care of your health."

"Ah," put in Daunt, with decency, "the old lady will be glad then to hear
safe news of you."

"She has a great heart, sir," said Sir William, in a fine even voice. He
leant a little back in his chair, put a tortoise-shell eyeglass into his
eye, and glared at Daunt through it.

Daunt laughed again hissingly. "Great heart, great anxiety," he said, not
so pleasantly. He turned in his neat, brisk way to Matilda. "When you
write, don't make us out such bugbears, Mrs. Shaxton. You are inclined to
think us severe, but you would be surprised how politeness begets
politeness, and contentment a return of tolerance and help, here in
Hobarton."

Mrs. Shaxton frowned and shook her bent head.

"Contentment under suffering--yes, that is what you are always
demanding," she said, into her embroidery, and rather fiercely. "Mr.
Daunt, you approach every one with a list of rules and a club--isn't that
the weapon? Shouldn't suffering be approached with shame--shame and
pity," (A sort of quiver in her breath stopped her.) "I have no
experience, but it numbs them I think."

"Oh, the club's only to save one's head," said Daunt, with his hissing
laugh. "The shame's there, but experience has taught us to take a stick
in with it."

"You're always rappin' 'em," said Sir William, oh very fine and pale!
"Isn't that what Mrs. Shaxton means?"

"I agree," said Daunt, with a sharp grin. "But what can you do with
assurance? Where would you be with pity in one hand, and shame in the
other, with a fellow that has none?"

"With the great--and Mr. Robinson," [Note 2. Pacificator of Blacks, and
visitor at prisons.] said Matilda, steadily.

"With the Chaplains, Mrs. Shaxton, and the unleavened dough they leave
for our baking. I'm an advocate, I fear, for less mauling and more
discipline. The law or some local rule invariably stops you just as you
have your hand upon some old offender. Egad, I'm anything but a convert
of Paul Shaxton's! I cannot endure this silent-cell miasma."

Matilda turned towards Heans, dropping her work, her eyes at first on the
window. "You must forgive us," she said, feelingly. "We have got into a
too common Hobarton groove. With the best of intentions we cannot prevent
our conversation from tottering back towards the improvement of the
prisons. So many here are connected with, or interested in, them." (Heans
felt suddenly easier.) "My husband has just invented a scheme for dealing
with the desperado: silent confinement. To me it is hideous beyond
words." (He found her steadily staring at him, her face glowing with
excitement.) "He has made plans for a prison in which a man may live for
weeks with open air exercise, and yet see no human face, and hear no
sound, but that of a slippered warder and clergyman for a few moments in
the week." (Her voice quivered. She seemed entirely unaware, or to have
forgotten in her intense interest in the subject, the barrier she was
erecting between her husband and herself in Sir William's mind.) "Mr.
Daunt," she added, "if you do not agree with Captain Shaxton, why do you
not prevent him?"

"It's of no use," said Daunt, with his sharp laugh; "they are all wild
about it. Government wants to experiment at Port Arthur [Note 3.
Second-sentence prison.]. The Commandants want to try it on the confirmed
absconder. The doctors are ardent upon it for the malingerer and the
sham. Every warder's grabbing at it as a new handle for discipline--I
declare it is marvellous clever the way Captain Shaxton gets the light
and air into so many massive walls. I really believe Hobart Town has, at
least, one architect to be proud of!" Daunt's shrugging smile and averted
eye seemed to emphasize that she was anything but proud of the others.
Sir William Heans flushed a little. He was vain of his architectural
re-birth, and with a slight tightening of his eyelids towards Daunt, took
a masterly triumph.

"Surely it was Captain Shaxton's plan which I was asked to elevate this
morning," he said, with an elegant quietude, "though possibly, being a
prisoner, I was given only one half of the prison." (He lightly brushed
his grey plaid trousers with his left hand which clasped, and on which
remained, a mourning glove of lavender.) "The passages, all radiating
apparently from a central hall, struck me as especially economical. One
man might stand in the centre of the building and see any one of the iron
signals move at those icy doors." He sat forward in his chair and slowly
removed his eyeglass from his eye. A maidservant had set some tea beside
Matilda, and she was pouring it into the large green cups with a dazed
grey face. As he lounged there, he glanced at her with a covert look of
regret, seeing doubtless that he had troubled her by his plunge into
tragedy, and wishing that he might unsay it for so kind a woman. "Oh, you
got that," said Daunt, deliberately. "I hope you are giving them
sufficient light."

"Seven inches by three," said Sir William, with a steady glare at him,
"crossed by two iron bars." "Glass, I suppose?"

"Ribbed, opaque glass, half-an-inch thick."

"Egad!" ejaculated Daunt, with a shake; "glad I'm not responsible for it!
Thank you," he said, as he took a cup of tea from Mrs. Shaxton, adding
very gently, "Why, your hand's shaking, Mrs. Shaxton! This beastly
subject's worrying you."

There was an uproar in the hall at that moment, and the drawing-room door
opened with a clatter and a swish. A man with bushy little whiskers, a
depressed moustache, and a jocular little voice, whirled into the room.
He bundled heartily to the window and lugged the blind half-down, saying
"Too much light for this climate." Then, with a laugh, he turned and
approached the others. "Ah, Daunt," he bowed, "how are you?" Then to the
other, "Sir William Heans, isn't it? I heard you were here. I've seen you
in the street. We heard from your aunt. I'm glad to have the honour of
making your acquaintance."

"Thank you--thank you," said Sir William, in his grey, grand way. The
other, who never seemed to see anyone out of his curious little eyes,
rolled nautically to a chair in his military uniform, dragged it nearer
to the tea-table, and squatted on it.

"Everlasting smash," he said, seizing his tea-cup, "down at the
cantonments. Billy Bannister" (he swallowed his tea and gave a great
bushy laugh) "brought a woman to a rout in the--oh, this'll be too strong
for you, Matty! You fellows--presently! Bannister" (still laughing)--"the
new cadet--has arrived with the idea that there's no Mrs. Grundy in this
small starched town. You know the way they talk about the place at home.
When old Neames gently remonstrated, young Sawyer replies: 'It wasn't a
woman, sir, it was a female prisoner.'" He chuckled so much that a crumb
stuck in his throat, and Daunt had to smack him on the back. Meanwhile he
was holding out his cup for more, and Heans, who handed it to his wife,
saw in the instant that his eye touched her face that she was flushed and
cowed. Daunt had resumed his seat and cup of tea. "Sir William Heans has
been telling us, Shaxton," he said, "how he's been told to put your plans
in order. He thinks them wonderfully clever."

Shaxton looked a little green. "You thought it good, Heans, did you?" (He
nodded over his cup after a sharpish glance.) "Keep the expense in as
much as possible. They're growling over all those cut edges. He!" (he
began to chuckle again), "you'll have a booby old time with the round
roof!"

"That was in the right rear court-yard," said Sir William calmly. "I have
a scheme for that. I'm bothered if I know what to do for the middle
lighting. What was the suggestion?"

"I'd put the old ship's skylight on it," said the other, all agog with
his subject. "Why--the old three-decker skylight Governor Philip brought
with him; had a flat roof where the skipper put his spy-glass--unless,
indeed, we need a lantern."

He began to explain volubly his scheme to Heans.

Daunt drew his chair nearer to Matilda and began to talk to her in a
rapid and courteous undertone. He seemed to have a great deal to say.
Heans seemed ill-at-ease under the discussion of the prison, and looked
once or twice towards his hostess as though, though interested, he could
not forget her distaste for it. Shaxton seemed conscious of his
stiffening manner, and was trying to pierce it with good-natured jesting.
Perhaps Daunt's cold movement towards his wife had brought, for the first
time, to his comprehension the peculiarity of the situation for the
prisoner. His manner grew warmer. "Why, Matilda," he cried, laughing,
"hang it, you've been pitching into Sir William Heans about my prison!
He's frightened to say a thing. I can't get a word out of him."

She gave a little, blind look at Heans.

"You know how agitating it is to me," she said, in a low voice. She
seemed to stoop, and her hand fingered among the tea-cups. "Could you not
take Sir William Heans to the study?"

"Why yes, come," Daunt cried, springing up with chivalric impatience.
"The ladies don't want the thing in their very drawing-rooms!"

"Indeed, I must be taking my departure," said Heans. He gave a grey look
under the blind where the fire of the day was dying stubbornly among the
leaves. The three others knew instantly from his tone what was in his
mind.

"Nonsense!" cried Hyde-Shaxton. "Daunt will manage that for us. What's
it? Must be past the Boundary before five, Mr. Daunt?"

Daunt left a black silence for a full minute. "No, I'll see him past
Boundary," he said, with a look of steady, careful courtesy towards
Heans.

"Come, Daunt," cried Shaxton, "you'll get him a pass to break his rides
at Pitt's Villa?"

Daunt gave a sharp, good-natured laugh, saying: "We'll see--we'll see."
Then he added, "Now, Captain Shaxton, what is this that you wish to do
with Sir William Heans?"

The Captain was chuckling. Heans' grave dignity was perfect. "Ah," cries
the former, "Daunt's one of these dangerous men! I'll have to have you
for my turnkey, Daunt--ha! ha! Why, Matty--have you told Sir William
about our chapel? I protest, if ever my plans are used, we'll get a
dispensation and put you in the wooden pulpit!"

"Does Mrs. Shaxton, then, think even the malingerer a subject for
sentiment?" asked Sir William, with a lame lightness. "I declare I'd
throw up the work if----"

"Oh, please, no," cried Mrs. Shaxton, with a flashing look at Daunt.
"Don't do that, Sir William Heans." She gave him her staring glance in
which was something of a proud beseechment.

"Ah," said Daunt, "we won't require that of you!"

"Ho-ho! it's the 'poor' malingerer, the 'poor' absconder, to Matty!"
chuckled Shaxton, not without signs of pride in his remarkable
possession. "She's so soft-hearted, everything's sentiment to Matilda.
Don't let her proselytise on you, Heans. She's a dangerous woman. She'll
have you buildin' St. Marys and St. Judes all over Tasmania--ho-ho! It
was Matty prevailed upon me to put in the chapel. I had to go and invent
stalls for it so that the poor fellows couldn't see anyone but the
parson. Did they give that to you?"

"Half of it--wasn't it?" said Daunt.

"I have the chapel," said Sir William. "It will be rather an unpleasing
place."

"Well, that's an outcome of Mrs. Shaxton's sentiment," cried Shaxton.
"There was another one when she had old Thomas Thou to experiment on the
grog--I mean the garden. You can't shake her faith. It's all sentiment to
Matilda--sentiment and self-discipline. She won't have you disciplining
anyone else." He gave a great bushy laugh, and whisked out of the room,
beckoning the men after him. They went out. His chuckling voice was heard
subsiding down the hall. "That reminds me, I've got a laugh for you
fellows over old Clisby, the corn contractor. It seems that old Miss
Milly Shadwell, the old maid" (even this appeared to be a fact of some
amusement), "wouldn't marry him because she said he looked too
goody-goody. Ho-ho ho!"




CHAPTER II



HIGH AND DRY


Heans and Shaxton became rather thick on architecture during this and
the next month. The "Silent Prison" was still a castle-in-the-air,
however; though two sites--one near the Cascades Women's Prison and
another on the opposite side of the Derwent at Kangaroo Point--had been
discussed and gone over. Suddenly the whole matter had been shelved--and
art and Sir William with it into obscurity--for one more important in
the eyes of the officers, the gallant explorer Governor, Hobarton
society, and even of Hyde-Shaxton himself: the arrival of the bombships
EREBUS and TERROR in the Derwent, under the intrepid captains James Ross
and Crozier, to refit for a hair-raising thrust into the ice of the
pole. The Captain and his wife had been summoned by Sir John Franklin to
an explorers' dinner at Government House, and all the winter months the
former was on and off the EREBUS, or chuckling among the prisons and
waterfalls with her officers.

The Captain would come home and chuckle over the day with his wife--and
Daunt and Sir William Heans, who were sometimes with her--over Sir John
Franklin's "family prayers" before the quailshoot, or "old-lady" sermons
to the prisoners. "How those men listen to him without exploding," he
would say, "I don't know! I give you my word, I can't! Yesterday he was
up with the women in the Cascades. There they were ranged up in one of
the yards in their aprons and white bonnets, lounging and smirking and
bobbing at the sailor-boys as gay as paroquets. Says he, taking off his
hat to them and stepping forward in his uniform, with his funny old black
tragedy eyes blazing with good intentions, 'Now, women,' says he, 'any
little goodness or kindness will do for your Governor. Just take that to
heart. God Almighty's looking down on you in His mercy. He sees your
troubles. Take a reef in, there's good girls; and see and shape a kinder
course.' All the while there was young Willie Bannister nudging my arm,
and asking who the woman was in the black shawl, with the brown hair: 'A
stunning girl, Shaxton,' says he. Entre nous, Daunt," cries the Captain,
turning on that officer, who, with Sir William Heans, was calling that
afternoon on Mrs. Shaxton, "who is the convict in black? Everybody's
asking about her. If she's a common prisoner, why don't they clothe her
like the others?"

"That would be the woman known as 'Madame Ruth'," pondered Daunt; "a
long, thin, lofty face, had she?"

"You couldn't see her eyes," said Shaxton; "she held them down, much to
Bannister's annoyance. She stood with another woman at the back near a
wall, a bit apart from the line, with a black shawl on her hair. A
regular Juno! I heard old Franklin ask Leete, the Governor, about her.
Leete starts nodding in his short, angry way . . . such stunning,
beautiful hair! My heaven, what hair!"

"That was who it was," said Daunt, as one speaks who is about to thrust
aside the subject. "You must ask Leete about her. She's of good birth, or
pretends to be. I suppress the details."

"Go along with you!" laughed Shaxton. "I knew you wouldn't be open . . .
I'd like to hear that woman's story--if only for Franklin's stare of
amazement."

"He is not made for this work," said Daunt, whose subsequent quarrel with
Sir John is history. "Whensoever he is brought into touch with the
prisoners--which is as little as convenient--he asks for plain dealing
and bother the elaborations of experience. He thinks he can
ye-ho-heave-ho at them as if they are unruly sailors. After he's gone,
they're off their balance and quite unmanageable."

"Mr. Daunt," said Matilda, who looked soft pink and white to-day, and
whose eyes blazed almost eerily, "I don't think you understand Sir John
Franklin, any more than he does your convicts. He is always trying to put
heart into them, when they are all too full of spirit already. And you
are always expecting him to understand that these men he condemns you for
condemning are untiring and would wear down an angel. Surely it is better
to have somebody like this here for a few years. It is giving you a lot
of trouble, but it is making us all better. You say yourself they're
all--oh so tired of cold, level-headed punishment." (She shook her
serious head with a frown and a shiver.)

"Come, Mrs. Shaxton," said Daunt, grimly, "what would you do with a
prisoner with the energy and temper of a fiend, who won't control either
of them--turn Sir John on him with that passionate note of his and a
little scripture?"

The three men laughed. Matilda, though daunted, glared on in her blazing
way through the Frenchwindows. "Give him a week's 'solitary' and
silence," cried Hyde-Shaxton, "and let him try his energy and temper on
our three-foot walls. Eh, Heans--they'll come crawling to me for my
snuff-box yet? Some man'll drive 'em mad with his talking and 'For
Heaven's sake, Shaxton,' they'll say, 'put it up and give us some peace.'
"

"Yes?" said Sir William, leaning on his knees, and swinging the ribbon of
his glass with veiled eyes. (He looked very pale, gentle, and handsome
that day.) "And what shall it be called--a motto for your lintel, Captain
Shaxton: DULCE DOMUM--HOTEL DIEU--VAE VICTIS?"

He gave a quiet look at Matilda Shaxton, and her eyes dropped.

The Captain put up his hand for peace, and with his head down, racked his
brains. "Ut prosim," ["That I may do good."] he presently hauled forth,
with a somewhat laboured solemnity.

"LEX TALIONIS," ["The law of retaliation."] hissed Daunt, in his dark way.

Mrs. Shaxton had risen-with a jerk and taken her SOUVENIR from the
what-not behind her chair. "I have my motto too," she said. "Paul knows
it well enough." Before her husband could speak, she read out, as she
stood, with her sweet face pale and half-turned from the window: "HOMO
SUM, ET NIHIL NIHIL HUMANI A ME ALIENUM PUTO.["I am a man, and count
nothing human alien to me."]"




CHAPTER III



THE BRAVE FELLOWS


For the first two months of his acquaintance with the Shaxtons, Heans
had seen very little of Matilda. Once and again he had taken tea with
her--when the weekly meeting in the study had finished late--but more
than once he had himself been responsible for a curtailment of the
discussion between himself, Shaxton, and two or three "silent-treatment"
enthusiasts, that he might, as he said, "get the alterations worked in
that evening."

He had not much to which to return.

At that time he was allowed a phantom salary from "the Crown," and rented
a "registered lodging," under the shingles, from an old prisoner-landlady
in a two-storied brick tenement in ---- Street. Several causes (one of
which we shall soon learn) had reduced him to this room. It was a long,
low attic, but quite sumptuous in its way.

Dotted about a ripped and faded amber carpet were some little chairs of
sun-blistered marquetry, roughly mended with pine, and against the walls,
quite a sumptuosity of stowed-away, old-time furniture--heavy, fan-backed
arm-chairs, bursten and threadbare, their legs straight and
uncompromising; Grecian sofas, black, with faded terra-cotta cushions,
such as we see in David's portraits, and since become so universal an
object in our Colonial huts and homesteads; also dolphinarmed and even
gilt chairs, and others yet with corkscrew legs and remnants of tasselled
cushions.

There they were along the walls: little but the patched wood left of
their travelled pride: the seats of some of them mere webs or nests of
cloth, whose ends hung to the floor in curious and amazing festoons. His
landlady, Mrs. Quaid, after a week of sordid, sulky exteriors, had
solemnly apologised for the torn cushions and rickety legs, but Sir
William had politely admired the wood-work.

Against the left-hand wall was a tall, red rosewood bookcase, with bars
instead of glass, inhabited by a drunken row of casuals in one shelf:--a
tattered novel called LOCHANDU, a tome entitled LITERARY GEMS, described
as "from grave to gay, from lively to severe," THE WOLF OF BADENOCH, some
odd remnants of Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL, a stray from THE HOBART TOWN
MAGAZINE, and six greenmarbled volumes of Langhorne's PLUTARCH, the last
named having been purchased in Mrs. Quaid's past from "a distressed
soldier--a bad un'--who'd never read them"; the others during Sir
William's tenure for some dark reason connected with "cultured manners,"
and carried up with some kindling wood (like so many cabbages or roses)
for the "cheerfuller appearance" of the prison. At the moment, Sir
William had omitted to examine the titles, but had passed the "Ancients"
through his fingers, remarking how pleasantly their key-patterned backs
reminded him of his schooldays.

On the other side of the room, near the chimney, was a row of brown
samplers in frames, to the verses of which Sir William gave, through his
eyeglass, some pondering contemplation. We may suppose that he gained,
like the cynical ladies who worked them in with their cotton, some
consolation from that dry passage from Aurelius:--


Thou seest how few the things are the which if a man lays
hold of, he is able to live a life which flows in quiet.


Of a tonic sadness from this little poem:--


SIC PASSIM.

The world's a stage; and players know full well
That they must part, when rings the caller's bell.
Yea, they must part and mourn their faithful loves;
The cote is silent; sundered all the doves!


To the right of the samplers, in the dark corner, was a large, dim
painting in a gilt frame, with indistinct boats and a muddy blue sky
punctured by three holes, such as might have been made by a musket
bullet. The landlady, with a sort of mourning air, for something which
was peculiar, and couldn't help it, said she had been told by a certain
Mr. Six, a prisoner, and "a gentleman with learning," that it had been
painted by "a mad artist," with a "kind of gambler's name" like "TOTEM."
There was yet another picture to the left of the chimney, hardly
decipherable under a covering of soot and age. An ash-coloured sea
spread back to a gleam of cliffs. A little to the right, a jumble of old
vessels fought in mist and smoke. Yet further to the right, gummed, as
it were, upon the sea, as from a child's transfer-paper, stood line upon
line of stiff regiments of soldiers--mitres and cornered hats spreading
back to giant pennants and heads of barred steel. It was not very well
done. The artist's name had been obliterated; nor was there any title to
the old piece; but Sir William, in a homesick moment, had christened it
"England--and the English!"

It was Sir William's habit to sit at the fire in a low, walnut-wood
chair, having a seat of vari-coloured patterns, while he took his meals
off a tiny gilt-legged table, propped for security in the corner of the
whitewashed chimney. It was here that he, subsequently, made his study of
the jailed volumes, having, in a jaundiced mood, freed one of the
PLUTARCHS of its bars, and been spurred to further reading by this highly
interesting discursion: "Speaking of the power of women, he said, 'All
men naturally govern the women, we govern all men, and our wives govern
us.' But this might be taken from the Apophthegms of Themistocles. For
his son directing in most things through his mother, he said, 'The
Athenians govern the Greeks, I govern the Athenians, you, wife, govern
me, and your son governs you; let him then use that power with
moderation, which, child as he is, sets him above all the Greeks.'"

What more he found in these remarkable volumes we have presently to tell.

For writing or drawing out his plans, Heans used the desk of a little
travelling escritoire, yellow, brasshandled, and covered with
voyage-marks. Near this, for the convenience of writing, he had drawn up
a great armless, 'cello-backed chair, having in its back a carved Greek
vase, and from which the green brocade had rotted and the gimp hung in
shreds.

His landlady, a little, old, pinched woman with long grey ringlets and
large, passionate black eyes, gradually changed the expression of tragic
hostility, with which she had received him into her house, to one of
tragic anxiety. She would watch him go from her door, up the street, with
her seamed hand on the post. (She was very fond of opening doors and
looking out.) Thence she would ascend to his room, and desultorily dust.
Afterwards she would go down to her kitchen and cook for him. To Heans,
she was a funny, passionate, asperse, tragic, kindly, uncordial, evasive,
cheerful, smiling, grim old womam; and if he had been asked, he would
doubtless have said that he had "conceived quite an attachment for her."

The first floor was rented by a Mr. Boxley, grocer, retired, who paled
when he met "the notorious Sir William Heans" in the passage. The front
ground room was haunted by a young man named Pelican, with whom, for some
reason mysterious to his landlady, Sir William was at pains to perpetuate
a precarious bowing acquaintance.

On his arrival at Pitt's Villa, by appointment, one afternoon at the end
of January, Heans was told of the Captain's wild departure an hour
previous, and taken by a distressed Matilda to the hanging garden, from
which she was shown the bomb-ships EREBUS and TERROR, motionless upon the
mountain sea, their pennons flying in honour of Governor Franklin.

They stood listening to the "o-o-m" of distant guns, and talking--Matilda
a trace hectically--of the grim men who were to force those blunt-bowed
ships, past roaring beaches, into the unhumaned ice. "How inspiring," she
cried, pointing down among the cots and buildings of the slopes, "to all
these humdrum people, steadily living and dying, that a man should
attempt this--this outrageous thing in his life!" Sir William, in his
beautiful shepherd's-plaid trousers, towering stock, and short nankeen
riding-coat--

Sir William, sad of face to day for something that he had missed--agreed,
and spoke of "the seasoned look of the hulls--brown like a good cheroot
and of the flat bow like a scutcheon." The leading vessel would be the
EREBUS--James Ross's ship. How would Sir John let them go out without
him!

"How fast they fold the sails against the varnished yards!" said Matilda
breathlessly. "It is just as if they vanish!"

"Line of battle style," said Sir William. He struggled up his eyeglass
and put it into a grey, excited eye.

"Good God, Mrs. Shaxton," he said, "do you think they'd give a fellow a
berth in them?"

He was staring out in his fine way, and if his grey face chimed with his
tragic question, he did not move, even when Matilda turned to him her
fearful and shy face.

"You have been suffering, Sir William Heans," she said, breathless, yet
eager. "I am afraid you are finding--finding the life difficult." Sir
William did not answer for a moment. He dropped his head and tapped his
cane upon the wooden rail.

"These men are voracious against misfortune--against a sentence--in one
of my standing," he said, in a quiet voice. He went on to tell how
Head-warder Rowkes or Captain Jones, who have raised themselves, and from
whom temper and selfishness have barred the goal of their ambition,
oppressed him with a secret and careful resentment. In the strangest way
did the most successful, commanding-looking men disclose some private
disappointment by a severity or a grim snub which they knew he was
powerless to return. "The resentment of the prisoners in the Hulk, when I
go to report myself, against my clothes" (he looked upon his gauds with a
sighing laugh) "is kinder than the hate of these deluded men."

Sir William stopped, drew himself up, and tapped his expanding chest with
his riding-cane. He had surprised himself in an honest moment, and--like
most of us when we let ourselves fall for a moment into the
honest--growing tragic and selfish. He simpered a little as he withdrew
his eyeglass. "Don't let my cause interfere, Mrs. Shaxton." he said,
"with these inspiring vessels. I am one of your humdrum people now. I
must be content to grow excited from the shore. I must try, Mrs. Shaxton"
(removing his grey top-hat to her with a hoarse if merry laugh), "to
imitate your wonderful feminine enthusiasm for other people's honour."

"This is national honour," she said in her strained voice, but when she
stopped quickly with her eyes on the ships, her lips twisted with
sympathy and bitterness still unspoken. She trembled suddenly and spoke.
"I am so sorry, Sir William Heans, to hear of your terrible difficulties,
but so very glad and so proud that you have spoken openly to me about
them. I knew--from what my husband has told me--and--and from what I know
of the world--that presently wicked men would make you feel your
position. But we were hoping that you would find in our house, and in the
faces of some of our friends at least, a refuge of private acquaintance.
Will you come up oftener, sir? This will always be a friendly garden. If
I am down in town, will you not come down to this seat and take tea--but
I am here nearly always, and--and--I want you to think--always steadfast
for you and for your good." Heans had kept his hat in his hand. His
handsome face, with its full hair and French moustaches, was flushed,
stern, and moved. He had dropped his grey head a little.

"I spoke foolishly, Mrs. Shaxton," he said, jerking out the words with
nervousness and difficulty. "It was the English fog in those old sails
creeping about a fellow's heart. I knew John Ross's second officer. He
may be there with his ardent face--in one of those ships. I can't
comprehend readily that I have no share in all the bravery and heartiness
of their coming in--that I'm--pardon--pardon" (he tried to simper again
and put his eyeglass heavily up). "How Englishly the flowers grow in your
garden, here, Mrs. Shaxton--those hollyhocks with their stakes."

She looked about and nodded wildly. Her grey cashmere shawl had fallen
down her heavy sleeves till it reached her hands. Sir William gazed at
her. A libertine onlooker might have asked: "What did this earnestness
with so much beauty! What did this flower with a stern and feeling soul!"
The soft white of her dress brought out her faint colour and bright gold
hair. But that struggling earnestness, with its hint of a strain, that
serious concern, peered striving through her star-like face like the head
of some angelic soldier.

Above them the sun was dipping behind Old Storm Hill, and below the
shadows of late afternoon were creeping over the ships towards the
opposite mountains. It was dark down the great channel, and seahorses
were leaping in on a rising wind. Mrs. Shaxton's hair fluttered and she
put her hand upon it. One end of her shawl flew out and hit Heans on the
mouth, and he caught it in a flurry and gave it to her quietly. They both
stood looking at the approaching storm, and the thoughts of each fled
slowly to the same thing: the coming winter.

Matilda looked pale and frightened.

"You will find the winter hard, Sir William Heans," she said, hurriedly.
"You must come up often--often--and never forget how anxious we all are
about you. It is such a--such a stern place. I am so frightened of your
being worn down--as some have been." (She turned to him, staring
earnestly at him.) "You will want to be so careful--especially as you are
not very happy. Perhaps some of them are wicked, and will watch for
discontent. It is unbelievable, but I have been told how some have played
upon it, when they were jealous of a prisoner; and one false step and
they all must harden. I am afraid you are one who will create jealousy. I
am afraid of your pride, sir, and that you will bring some annoyance upon
yourself. You will need all your tact, and all your good temper, and
patience--do, sir, try and be patient. I know--it is the disappointed man
you will have to fear--no gentleman will harm you. But some are highly
placed and very powerful. Indeed, if they once begin to hate, their good
impulses seem to go."

"Steady for a year, they say," said Heans, smiling a little through his
eyeglass. "Then a fellow has a chance. 'Pon my word, you're goodness
itself, Mrs. Shaxton! I'll come up as often as you will allow me."

"We feel very responsible for you," said Matilda, "after Miss Gairdener's
letter." And she turned and led the way across the terrace into the
drawing-room. "The storm is coming," she said, looking back out of the
window; "will you get down in time?"

"What a good thing the ships are in!" said Heans, with a glance down the
black harbour.

 * * * * *

 "Be very careful, Sir William Heans," she repeated, as she said
good-bye. "I have heard my husband speaking." She seemed almost
frightened to let him go.

He kissed her hand. The rain pattered on the shingle roof.




CHAPTER IV



SIR WILLIAM IS LATE


Matilda had seen a great deal of Sir William Heans during February.
Several times among his many calls he found her alone, and then,
suddenly, with no word of explanation, their genial tete-a-tetes had
ended, and she seemed to become absorbed with Captain Shaxton in the
hospitalities to the explorers, and such engagements. Heans, calling now
and then, was compelled to take tea alone upon the terrace in the
increasing cold.

Whether Sir William was aware of some cause for this is not clear, but
his face in these days grew somewhat blue and thin, while a certain
dark-eyed, scowling servant-maid--a convict--seemed to think his somewhat
bowed attitude anything but calling for sympathy, eyeing his back with a
dark hate as she brought him his tea.

Sir William thanked the woman with politeness.

One evening, on a lonely visit in April, Mrs. Shaxton hurried down from
the drawing-room, and greeting him palely, said how sorry she had been to
miss so many of his visits. She did not look at him intently, and Sir
William hardly seemed to see her. She spoke excitedly, as if she were
abstracted with her hurry or possibly at the aspect of his figure alone
upon the seat. He was very proud, and spoke of the happiness of being
made free of her garden, and the beauty of the ride up.

Now it was palpable that he had lost some indefinable something since she
had last seen him. His face was thinner and paler, and, worst sign of
all, his eyes, rather hollow, had a curious white glare of excitement,
strain, or desperation in them. The woman must have noticed that he was
in some way beshadowed and different--some way fallen in his pride--for,
her face breaking suddenly into an almost foolish panic, she asked him if
"all was well--and if his health was good." He said "All goes well
enough, Mrs. Shaxton," in a rapid tone, but stood as if he had not told
all. She did not seem to know how to express her anxiety. Her hand was on
the seat-back, and she moved her fingers to and fro a little, as hardly
knowing what she did. She asked suddenly, in an earnest voice: "Oh, I
hope some refreshment was brought out instantly; I shall--I shall hope to
be at home more."

"Indeed--I hope I do not inconvenience the woman," Heans brought to her
rescue. "I feel that I am something of a nuisance----"

"My maid tells me you have been later coming--half-past four instead of
three--I think. They were taken by surprise. It may have made them seem
slow in attending upon you!"

Heans interrupted with a singular thickness of speech.

"I have been later getting here only on the last three occasions," he
said, with a sort of abruptness, and the blood died slowly out of his
face until he was deadly white. He suddenly put round his hand and caught
the seat-back, sitting into it with a jerk. His grey top-hat hung loosely
from his lavender fingers, and he looked about him in a wild way like a
man clutching at a point.

"I am sorry," he said. "I feel a faintness for some reason." She remained
where she was, but slid her hand a little nearer along the seat-back, her
shawl trailing and trembling, her face in its heavy bonnet as white as
that near her hand. She said at last, with fright in her voice: "Sir
William Heans, what have you been doing?"

He raised his drawn face, and stared grimly into her eyes long that they
had time to soften with tears.

"Why, what would I do?" he said, breathlessly.

She was standing there behind him, leaning away a little--he staring up
white and sharp--when a man's voice rang metallically from the top of the
terrace: "Ah, there she is!" Both glared up towards it, and then smiled.
Grey Heans rose up with a heavy ceremonious air.

Daunt, of the Police, immaculate in his grey coat and Wellingtons, had
just emerged from the drawingroom, followed by two officers, one in naval
uniform. They made at once for the side-steps leading to the lower
terrace, and came bowing down. The sailors were brown-whiskered men in
little naval caps, great stocks enwrapping choking collars, voluminous
holland bags, tight single-breasted waistcoats and high-waisted
ill-fitting frock-coats, very high of collar and very tight of sleeve.
Daunt, very yellow in the face, ushered them energetically along. There
was a wild look beneath his heartiness.

Matilda went across, met, and welcomed them. She seemed to know them, and
bowed a little over some little complimentary jest. When she turned for
Sir William, he came forward in his fine way, and was made known by name
to the sailors, who were somewhat awed out of their jollity by his
reserve and pale, grave air.

Mrs. Shaxton took a seat by a rustic table, and Daunt, with a long
peculiar stare and stern nod at Heans (a form of greeting which seemed to
surprise the officers), drew a chair near Matilda's, and began a string
of rapid sentences. Heans was left talking with the sailors. This he did,
swinging on his legs, and tending gradually to the light and witty. His
eyeglass was up, and soon the three of them were grinning. Down in the
vast valley the ships were drying sails, but he never once looked towards
these or mentioned them.

"We met Captain Shaxton on the wharf," said Daunt, with a sudden
distinctness; "and I asked if we should find you at home. He said you
would be leaving the Hall about five. You would be busy dressing, he
thought, but Boyd and Cooke were both eager to see the view, and thought
they might get you to keep them a dance! You know what sailors are!"

(How often does it happen in life that we have a Daunt
fellow-secret-holder with us!) In a moment Heans was out of it, and the
sailors were "'hanging' the view, madame," and protesting round his
shoulders that they had made the ride solely for the honour of an
engagement. "Sir William Heans has forestalled us," cried Boyd, with an
outcry of pleasant laughter. "How many do you entreat, sir, for the
gallantry of the assault?"

Sir William laughed steadily. Before he could speak, even if he had found
anything to say, Matilda said rather wildly, "Sir William Heans does not
dance." Then, shaking her ringlets over a sudden laugh, she asked Cooke
if he thought the ride worthily recompensed with two.

Both officers, wreathed in smiles, took off their tiny naval caps and
made their gallant bows. Daunt, turning a little with them, bemoaned in a
sort of rueful monotone that he must take his chance, as there was a late
meeting at the Colonial Surgeon's.

"Mrs. Shaxton," began Sir William Heans, laughingly (and both Matilda and
Daunt looked slowly up at him), "has not even told me the name of the
ball! Is it for to-night you are in such good fortune?" "Hallo, sir!"
cried Lieutenant Boyd, staring round. "It's His Excellency's birthday,
sir! You must be a hermit!"

"Ah," said Daunt, hissing suddenly in, "Sir William Heans is too much of
a student: chained to his books--isn't that it?" But the ladies haven't
chosen a convenient night for anybody but you idle sailors.

Mrs. Shaxton, you should hear Montague and Leete on the subject. I heard
Montague say, shrugging his Norman shoulders, 'When Neptune's here, what
woman considers poor Vulcan!'"

"Why Vulcan?" cried Boyd.

"Leete's Governor of the Cascades, and Montague is our eminent Colonial
Secretary."

"Forgers of chains," said Matilda, "we may not consider you!"

"Fair too," said Sir William. "Who should lionize poor storm-beaten
Neptune if not the ladies! In a little while it's 'Come aboard, sir,' and
gone all the beauty and gentleness of home life but a daguerreotype
swinging on a hook--and yet," looking for the first time at the ships,
"which of us but is not deeply envious?"

"Oh, we're snug enough when the wind's favourable," said Boyd, chuckling.
"But you should come, sir." Magruder (with a cock of his eye at
Heans)--"old Magruder tells us all the supremest TON of Hobarton are
gathering to do it honour."

All the rest laughed politely, including Sir William.

"Should not even my grey hairs omit me?" said the latter. "I honour you
fellows by envying you--rancorous envy, I can assure you!" He ended with
a little brief, defensive bow.

"Sir William Heans has fallen in love with your ships," said Matilda. "I
remember his saying on the night you came in, 'They have the fog of Old
England in their sails.' We were thinking how wonderful you were, and how
you broadened life for all us humdrum people. Here we sit on these slopes
with our fixed joys and troubles, and in you sail with your stern little
ships, and lo, all is sublime and hazardous!"

Sir William did not move, but Daunt raised his eyes upon her slowly. The
flushed officers were laughing with her, and beneath their deprecating
badinage, Daunt's gaze passed from her to Heans. The latter was now
looking towards the ships, but one hand which he had placed upon the
seat-back was trembling. The police-officer's mouth seemed as if it were
laughing with the rest, but no sound came from it.

"Ah," he presently threw in, "you lucky gentlemen with your grand
adventures! May I mention it--I got a bang from an ankle chain this
morning." (He touched his knee carefully). "The anklet was intended, but
through a native sharpness I received the chain."

"Mutineer or escapee?" asked Cooke.

"The savage seditionary with a brain he fancies quicker than yours!
Nothing will do for him but proof. I am nothing if not a 'frustrator of
hopes,' Mrs. Shaxton. For Heaven's sake find us something sublime in our
humdrum bruises!"

"I have praise even for the stern frustrator of hopes," said Matilda.
"But some one has written or said: 'The sailor into the unknown sea hurts
no one with his heroism.'"

Heans alone did not turn his head.

"You stopped him?" cried the sailors again.

"Stopped him? Yes, I stopped him," echoed Daunt, "there are many ways.
See," he said, springing upright in his chair, "I have a little invention
of my own here, which, domestic article as it is, I have known stop an
assaulting prisoner."

Leaning forward, he produced a flint-steel: a little thing shaped like a
horseshoe, which (he explained) you could conceal in your hand, or fix on
your thumb or forefinger. At once, having closed his left fist, he fixed
it as if it had been a ring on his third finger, and held both up that
they might see how the "striker," not blunt, as was usual, had been filed
to a razor's edge.

"That is one way," he said. "Here is another. Permit me to take your hand
a moment, Sir William Heans."

He rose and came forward, and, as Sir William, whose back was half turned
to him, lifted his right hand, as much in instinctive amazement as
consent, from the seat-back, took it powerfully in both of his and
twisted the side of the palm up and over till, as the wrist resisted with
a twinge, the hand and arm doubled in against the baronet's back, forcing
him to bend a little over the seat in front of him. Sir William, pale
with surprise amid the laughter (Matilda was laughing), tried to
straighten himself, but met by a stubborn twinge, stooped again. In the
instanat Dunt had dropped his hand. "An old grapple," said Daunt. "Now,
sir," he said, putting out his hand and turning his back on Heans, so
palely smiling, "try it on me."

Heans made just the breath of a movement towards him, then laughed and
shook his head. A trifle haughtily he said something about being "too old
for horse-play." Boyd said, "I will," and pushed forward, half-laughing,
with the intention of seizing Daunt's hand, when the latter suddenly
subsided into his chair, saying, "No, I know you sailors." Boyd drew back
from his dark, immaculate face a trifle crestfallen. He saw amazedly that
it was stern.

"Ah, an experienced man!" he burst out, lamely. "You shouldn't have let
him do it, Sir William Heans. By Heaven, he's a slippery gentleman!"

"Quite an entertainment!" said Sir William lightly, clutching the seat;
"I am the misguided victim who lends his watch, with which the fellow
does his tricks!" (He lifted his lavender glove and shook it laughingly).

"My hand has come back to me not much the worse. Ha-ha, I leave my
revenge with you, Lieutenant Boyd! Mrs. Shaxton, I hear the mare
whinnying. Forgive me, I must get away. Gentlemen, your most humble,
obedient servant."

He advanced quickly towards Matilda, but she, as she rose to meet him,
said, "Oh, I will come up to the house with you, Sir William Heans." She
made her excuses, quick and greyly, and led the way to the steps. Heans
simpered his grey chimney-pot at this one and that. The officers waved
their preposterous little caps. Daunt, who had risen, bent his brisk back
with a kind of tragic courtesy. Slowly up the steps went Matilda and Sir
William, saying little, pale and tense.

"Can't we make him change his mind," said Boyd. "It's such a pity, a
jolly fellow like that. I'll hail him again, Daunt. If he's so set on the
old ships, he must come on board."

"You would hardly think it," said Daunt, bluntly, "but that poor fellow
is a prisoner."

"A prisoner!" They edged nearer to Daunt, tugging their whiskers, very
pale and aghast.

"Heavens, man!" cried Boyd. "Why did you do that beastly business with
him?"

Daunt was looking after them, ill now and yellow.

"A kindly feeling--well----" (He hesitated in a half-bitter manner).
"Don't ask me! This place seems to have a curse of looseness for men in
his position."

The two officers watched the two figures--now smiling a little--pass in
through the French-windows; pallor on their whiskered faces.




CHAPTER V



A ROUGH NIGHT FOR THE "SAILORS' BALL"


On the same evening, Matilda Shaxton, sitting at her toilette, was
hailed by her husband from his dressing-room with the remark: "Have you
seen Sir William Heans this week?"

Matilda answered: "Sir William was here to-day, Paul."

"Looking well?"

"Yes--pretty well."

"Daunt has got a beastly story of his being mixed up in some affray in
Tout Street, at a gambling room. He oughtn't to go there." Matilda smiled
in a wild way, and the tears pressed into her eyes. "Was Mr. Daunt stern
about it?"

"Daunt says it's a bad downward step. He protested he would come against
all sorts of undesirables there: prisoners, low ship's-officers, and
drunken soldiers. Some of the prisoners are Government constables, and
they listen to what a prisoner says when he's taken too much, and watch
whom he associates with. He'll have to be doubly careful if he haunts
those places. Daunt says Heans hadn't been inside the door a half an hour
when he was told of it. The police don't like his airs. Half of this is
Daunt's HOCUS POCUS, but it's a pity to think of its getting about. I
told Daunt to close his mouth about it. He's" (chuckling suddenly)
"not fond of Sir William Heans."

"Was he--was he gambling his money?" asked Mrs. Shaxton, putting up her
soft hair.

"Yes, and drinking more than was good for him--if all's true. He came out
with a convict named Carnt--a swindler of all people--and a shady fellow
named Stifft, who's been suspected of connivance in escape, and lost a
schooner and twenty lives off the Iron Pot. Went to his rooms. He mustn't
take up with those fellows--can't you go for him about it, Matty?"

Mrs. Shaxton's prisoner-maid was arranging her mistress's lace with
impassive face. Matilda turned her head aside and a sudden sob shook her.
"Is it too tight, madam?" said the woman, pausing and looking up, and
seeing her mistress's eyes, she bowed her head and continued.

"Mr. Daunt is so stern now," Matilda called, with a little quaver of
fear. "I don't know what is coming to him. I used to think him brave and
just."

"Gracious G--d, bring these fellows up against a prisoner, and out come
their claws! Daunt comes up here with his police-brand in his pocket, and
he can't help testing it against Heans. But Daunt's a careful man. He
wouldn't say a thing like that if it hadn't some truth in it."

"Yes," said Matilda, "but he's very stern, and very clever. He might
exaggerate. He has not been kind in his manner to Sir William Heans. You
remember he was here when Sir William first called. He intimated to me,
when he was shown in, that he was not very desirable. Oh, I was so glad I
had Miss Gairdener's letter!"

"Egad--that's what he said, is it! What do you think he said to me on
Thursday? Ho-ho!--he said he didn't like his manners towards you--Mrs.
Providence! Yes, I laughed. 'Speaking of a nunnery,' says I, 'it must
have been virulent if Mrs. Providence passed it!'

"Ah, poor Heans!" said Shaxton, in a lower key; "he's paying heavily for
that business. Talk of dignity--people are always asking a fellow to know
who he is! Higgs of the Guiding Star was asking me only last week
(ho-ho-ho!) if it was the military commandant! There was Heans riding by
with his eyeglass. Hanged if I know what to tell them!"

"And--was he drinking--Sir William Heans?"

"I don't think he was taking much--singing a song and that. (Where are my
dancing-pumps?) Made'em all laugh the way he sang--so stiff and such a
funny little dandy voice. I'd ha' given (bah! there's no buckling this
cravat!)--I'd ha' given a quid--he-he--to have seen Heans singing."

Mrs. Shaxton threw open her jewel-case, and fingered blindly among its
contents. Her wild and determined eyes were on themselves in the glass.
Her fingers slipped through pearls and garnets, and caught upon an old
silver cross. This she drew out, and clasped by its hanger about her
neck. It seemed too heavy for that frail pillar, but not yet for those
wild eyes.

"Oh, Paul, he is in terrible danger!" she said, as she put on her long
ear-rings. "I must see Mr. Daunt and try and win him over. Sir William
Heans is very sensitive. His manner is all fineness and bravery.
Perhaps--perhaps Mr. Daunt could privately shut those places to him. It
is just their terrible temptation!"

"No--no," answered Hyde-Shaxton. "Be careful how you interfere with a
man's liberty. He's little enough of it--poor fellow, and jealous enough
of that, I suppose. Think of it, after the way he was lionized in London!
I'd put it to him yourself. He's very fond of you, Matilda. Get him up
here on Friday (I'll be up at Risdon with a surveying party). Tell him
that story about Megson and Relph, who were sent to Macquarie Harbour.
Stay a moment, you've never heard that. Wait till I get this cravat
buckled. It's bad, but it's Gospel truth. They were men of his own
station, you know. It began, as I told you, by their going to those low
places."

Captain Shaxton here related a story which, for those interested, will be
found at the end. [Note 4. See end of this chapter.] When he had done so,
his voice dropped away, and for a while there was silence. Outside there
was a pattering sound and a low roaring of the wind.

"Poor Miss Gairdener----" said Matilda, in a trembling tone, and then
broke off. Presently her brave voice cried out: "I cannot bear to think
of Sir William Heans even touching these places!" "I can't think of the
handsome old 'Marquis' on the downward path at all," chuckled Shaxton, in
a subdued way, "though it's getting an oldish tale with him, I suppose. I
can't help seeing the joke of it, though, gracious G--d! it can be a
black business. What would he do with his eye-glass at Port Arthur--ho,
ho! It tickles me to think of it!"

"Don't!"

"Bless you, he's too fastidious! There's no danger!"

"Oh, do not!"

"Egad, it would be like thinking of somebody who was buried in a
chimney-pot!"

No answer came from Mrs. Shaxton. There was a sound as of the Captain
rising from a chair in his dressing-room.

"Beastly night, Matty! Wasn't that sleet on the windows? Ha," he cried,
"there's the carriage! Hurry up!"

Then in the distance, as he opened his door: "Be kind to the poor fellow,
Matty; he's got no decent woman but you to go to. You're not very kind to
him--are you? Short--or something! He's out here alone. You've been
treating him to some of your high moods, haven't you now?"

He seemed to wait in the passage for an answer, but none went to him. In
her room Matilda whispered, "God forbid!" as, with pale throat up, she
wound a shawl about her cheeks and side-curls.

[Note 4.--The Story of MEGSON AND RELPH (as told by Captain Shaxton).
"Why, Megson and Relph came out here, fast, hot-spirited College men, who
had embezzled their uncle's money. They expected to go free, and brought
out ponies, a caleche, and all sorts of finery. They had been implicated
in some sort of rumpus on board, and when they landed near everything was
taken from them, while they were put under strict surveillance in a
Government office under a man named Barlings, who was strict, and perhaps
inclined to bully them. This man's usage, and the fact that they were nor
well received by some people named Rose (you know--the James Roses) who
had known them in England, drove them to the gambling places, where they
won a lot of money, came out more than ever in dress, and for a while
seemed prosperous. You'd see'd 'em in their little ponychaise driving
from Cascades Road to the jetty with their gold-tasselled caps and
puddingcravats, and quarrelling--they were hot-tempered men--like a pair
of undergraduates coming in from Newmarket. It seems they had come to
some sort of compact about the ladies--a relic of some fast business at
home no doubt. Barlings deposed you would hear them talking jealously if
one or other was seen for a moment with a woman. Presently Megson falls
in love with a girl--a lady, they say, of the melancholy beautiful kind;
hides it from Relph; and a fierce quarrel and blows occurred one morning,
when, the girl being ill, he told about it. Megson was put in irons for
assaulting the others: he said under taunts from Barlings and Relph. When
Relph recovered, he lived alone, driving past Megson sometimes where he
worked in the iron-gang. He seems to have lavishly abused him when in
hospital, but seeing him in yellow and black on the orad-side, he
repented, and made a clever and careful plan for their escape. Half
starving himself, he collected a lot of ship-biscuits, which he packed in
a false bottom in the pony-trap. He got 450 packed away in various parts
of the vehicle. Suddenly drawing up beside the gang one day, he leant out
and abused Megson (at the same time telling him to run for the chaise on
the following Friday, and he would pull up for him round the corner). He
oven gave him a light blow on the face, and drove off in a fury, shaking
his fist. He was hauled up for this, but got off, with some excuses,
being a small and gentle-looking man. Megson did not get off so easily
and was punished. See how the luck hung against that man!

"Megson waited for Relph all Friday, and towards evening, seeing him
drive by and slacken round the corner, loosened his ankle-chain and ran
for it. He was shot at and hit, but he got into the caleche. Relph
galloped him up the Dalrymple Road; along the river-side; and a bit into
the bush. In the dusk they were missed. Abandoning the trap, they packed
the stuff on the pony, and on it also got Megson with his wound. He was
light, small, and delicately-made like his cousin, and they got a good
way towards Launceston, when the blacks began to dog them, and they had
to push for the road. Then Megson became feverish, and the police
discovered them from his delirious talking. Relph was holding him on the
pony and scolding at him. "The case created a good deal of sympathy.
Relph might have got off fairly easily but for his bitterness and
bad-temper. He was assigned to a clergyman at Clarence Plains, and having
challenged his master to a duel over something or other, and used
threatening language when his request was refused, was sentenced for a
month to the iron-gang, losing his civilian clothes, and putting on the
stripes and chains. Relph must have felt the ground slipping from beneath
his feet, for he was insubordinate, and therefore remained in the gang
month after month. Several people who had taken an interest in him saw
him on the roads. His light, erect little figure was easily recognisable,
but he would glare at them defiantly. All seemed enemies to him now. One
day Megson was drafted into the gang with four other insubordinates. He
also had been assigned, been insolent, and sentenced by the magistrate to
the roads. The latter worked in a stiff, unaccustomed way (he had been
coachman to a doctor and very well treated) till he saw Relph, and then,
as they say, he seemed, as he picked, to recognise something in the
other's figure, and kept looking at him covertly. At last he stood up and
called 'Relph,' and the other looked over with his brilliant smile,
crying: 'No go now, Alfred!' That was all, and on they worked, the one
smiling, the other shaken with grief.

"It is said that returning one day into Hobarton, Megson saw the girl
that he had loved with some little children in a garden, and thinking her
married, upbraided her furiously by name and was whipped for indecent
behaviour. The girl is not married. They say it is that dark Miss
R----living with her mother and sisters in Lavisham Terrace. There's some
mystery about her. When Relph heard that Megson had been punished over a
woman, he quarrelled with his overseer, assaulted him, and ran for it
over a sandbank into a fringe of bush. Though fired at with a
blunderbuss, he got away unwounded. All Hobarton was out after him.
Megson, working in the gang two days afterwards, hearing of his cousin's
escape, decided to make a run also, but they had their eye on him, for he
was shot down a few yards from his tools. Relph was taken, a month later,
on a small island in the Huon River, where a man was seen by the police
struggling with some reptile, and beating it with a stick. They captured
him there, well and hearty but terrified, with ten or eleven great snakes
dead about him. He said he had killed thirty and could not sleep at
night. The island is thick with them.

"Both Megson and Relph were sentenced to Macquarie Harbour, and a month
later the weekly cutter took them out, shivering among a huddle of
convicts, over the yellow sea. In the winter, five years ago, they
escaped inland into the mountains behind the Harbour, and no doubt joined
the many skeletons that strew that pathway back to civilization."]




CHAPTER VI



FIDUS ACHATES


One evening in the month before these happenings, Heans, returning
frozen in mind and heart from a lonely vigil upon the terrace at Pitt's
Villa, had unlocked his little cabin chest of drawers, and taken from a
pigeon-hole at the back of the desk 20 pounds in gold and notes. Hitherto,
in his precarious respectability, he had solaced his evenings with a
little wine, a tobacco-pipe, and those more congenial inhabitants of the
"jail": the green-marbled volumes of Langhorne's PLUTARCH. Of the
latter, the shrewd worldly sense, truth, and determination to be
interesting amazed him, and with a little more ease in his day-lit life,
he might have passed his evenings in this quiet way. Now his pipe and
his wine, together with a volume of PLUTARCH open at the life of
Themistocles, lay set for him on the gilt-legged table beside the bare
chimney. A silver pocket-comb lay across the page below the following
remarkable passage: "For when elected Admiral by the Athenians, he would
not despatch any business, whether public or private, singly, but put
off affairs to the day he was to embark, that having a great deal to do,
he might appear with the greater dignity and importance."

In connection with these books, Sir William had discovered a curious old
Colonial manuscript, which had given him considerable food for thought,
and for some time highly, and almost entirely, engrossed his mind. In
turning over, one evening, the second book of the set, he came upon an
MS. letter, written across the white paper which covered the inside of
the back. The caligraphy was strange and not readily decipherable--part
of it, if not all, written in agitation--the ink, or whatever the
pigment, faded to faint sepia. But if the ink was old, the passion and
agonised bereavement in which the lines were steeped were as fresh as
when written. Their sublime force, seemingly, would last as long as the
writing could be read.

It was written in a species of loose print, closely resembling the
letters we see cut on tombstones, known as Old English; and done rather
from habit, one would say, than with idea of elaboration. In that style,
therefore, we reproduce it, though giving a somewhat colder and far less
intimate impression than the grim and untrammelled original. Here
follows, then, the letter which Sir William found of such engrossing
interest, and the romantic "directions" written above it:--

Gullyhole. Nov. 23rd. Walk here 11 on 1st. Famine Assembly 5 after 10.
           Hope you not hungry.
Gullyhole. Dec. 7th. Wander by here 11th. 25 after 2.
Gullyhole. Dec. 16th. Wander here 23rd. Foot-boy J.S. sharpening eyes
           on me. Don't give him more of your coins.
Gullyhole. Dec. 30th. You sadden me. Don't forsake me. Did you give
           Spars money? Muster Roll Jan. 5th, 4.
Gullyhole. Jan. 20th. If no answer, don't hang about the hole. For answer
           I will hammer three times thrice. Alarum Assembly 5 after 4.
           27th.
In the Cave. Jan. 29th.


My angel Moicrime,

I hear you are to be punished, and sent away to camp-life with the black,
Ondia. This you have never known, you so dainty reared, so much petted by
the grand folk. Oh, my darling, I can't consider of it! I am so terrible
sad. The agony this causes me, I cannot tell you! I am in Hell. My heart
is swelling with fury. You, my darling Moicrime, degraded to camp-life,
what will happen to you, what shall I do! I am to be whipped and confined
for the while--perhaps for ever--out of the garden. They have shut me in
the cave. Damnation seize them--if they put me to my chisel again, I will
do something awful! His Honour shall know of me. I will carve something
awful out of these men-stones.

Oh Moicrime, my poor, my dear Moicrime, I shall win after you or die!
Peter Naut will pass this to Joe, for Joe to put in the Gully-hole, in
case you wander by once more.

Your despairing
WALTER SURRIDGE.

P.S.--When Spars reads this, if he do not put it in your hands by my
oath, he'll know of me.

W. SURRIDGE.


Here was an interesting relic, the date and mystery of which much
occupied Sir William. A grim romance, the place, date, and meaning of
which were obscure, of the secret attachment of a prisoner artificer for
a young native girl, and its attendant tragedy, seemed clear. Sir
William, being of an elegant turn, thought of Pyramus and Thisbe: "Wall,
that vile Wall, which did these lovers sunder." "Did he escape?" he
would ask-somewhat ruefully puffing his new tobacco-pipe among the web,
hung chairs: "did he escape, or did he weep away his wild and angry
heart in his cavern?" And she, was her love equal to his (Indeed, God
forfend!), or did she soon forget the white man's petting, and find a
charm in the way of her blood and people? Such passion interested Sir
William--interested and indeed, if it did more than entertain, perhaps
enlightened him. Poor love's young dream! Those were grimmer days! Well,
well--how long may a man live in the romance of another?

At about eight o'clock Sir William drank two glasses of wine, and
descended the rickety stairs as decorously as the height of the ceiling,
his dignity, and the darkness would permit. His grey top-hat bumps
against a beam, falls, and must be groped for. With a knocking upon the
street door, the tragic landlady comes up from the nether regions with a
key in her hand. She opens the door and looks after her lodger. Her rough
hand, which rests on the post, shakes a little. Heans turned down the
street a few yards, and then hurried along a series of back lanes towards
the sea. The rain was pattering chillily, and he put up his umbrella.
Just where the waves began to lash at the bottom of the road, and a
chemist's red light was dipping, he turned to his left into a sort of
court-yard, and approached the door of an out-house built against the
hill. A man was hovering near the door, and he came in front of it with a
sweeping quietness as Heans arrived. With his hand on the handle, he
opened the door a little so that a bright light fell on Sir William's hat
and plaid neck-cloth.

Heans passed a few pence into his hand, asking if these were "Fraser's
Rooms." There was a subdued noise of nasal voices within, and a sudden
shrill laugh; a soft grating as of metal spoons, and the sharp ringing of
a little bell. The door was opened and shut behind Heans. Within there
was a smell of damp broadcloth. He found himself in a vestibule
boarded-off to the width of the building, in which some Benjamins and
cloaks were hanging upon pegs. Inside, in a long, squarish room, whose
walls were shabbily if ingeniously covered with green baize picked out
with framings of pink tape, he found many tragically grave flushed men,
sitting or standing round a green table, on which was a splash of cards,
and roughly drawn in red and yellow chalk, the compartments and four
diamonds of Trente-etquarante.

Across from this table two others swam in the smoke, upon the nearest of
which a chalk line about the cloth edge told that Faro was in play. The
farthest had a plain wooden surface and was haunted by a grim and shabby
crew. Here was being whirled, by individuals in turn, a large wooden top,
having four corners marked T (totem), A (all), N (none), and P (pay), the
stakes being coppers, sleeve-buttons, snuff-boxes, sham seals, sham
neck-chains, and even squares of Caporal or Cavendish tobacco. There was
a bar beside the first table, where an attendant in brownish kneebreeches
and a white frock-coat was opening a bottle: the while keeping an eye on
the game. At the top of the room were two loo tables, at one of which a
silent party of five was seated. A sort of tragic and polite sternness
was the more general fashion of this place of entertainment. The dark,
shabby-grand room was a House of Hideous Risk, and the men who walked in
it had the faces, many of them, and the brave diplomacy of men besieged
in a hopeless hold. Sir William changed some money at the bar, drank a
glass of wine, and strolled over to the table. He presently took his seat
on the form nearest the "taillier," shouldering along a young wild man
with black whiskers who was sprawling on his elbow.

"Have a care," the fellow growled, in a flashing mutter.

"I must have room," said Sir William, seating himself not very gently.
The other with a sour snarl gave his back to him, subsiding again a
little further down with his elbow on the table. There was an air of
character and individuality about the inmates of this gaming-room which a
general sameness of napless top-hat and shabby short frock or SURTOUT
could not wholly subdue. There seemed a predominance of charming people
with quick strong smiles and flashing teeth; so many seemed to touch, but
yet fall short of, the status of an accomplished gentleman. The bow and
the smile would be a trace too low and too wide; the air a little too
sharp. Even the most forlorn and tragic loser seemed yet to possess the
faculty of suddenly and brilliantly smiling. A fine, tall, pale man,
dark, with a handsome countenance creased by tragic worry, rose angrily
on the other side, crying: "You are surly, Jarvis; give Sir William
room."

The other sat down again without a glance at Heans. It was Henry S----, a
well-known gentleman of Bristol, here a writer in one of the public
departments, transported for life for forgery, deserted by his wife, and
predestined to undergo the second sentence of Port Arthur and die there
in the hospital. Among others punting at the Faro table were several
officers in military cloaks and shakoes, very much the worse for liquor.
These young men kept jesting among themselves, and staking wildly. The
web was evidently yet a joke and a pleasure to them.

The dealer was a plump, dark Jew, very handsome and sleepy-looking. This
was "Fraser," the owner of the place, so drowsy, so ready to be blind
when necessary, such a manager of men. His was one of those
personalities, cited by a great statesman, in the category of "diplomats,
women and crabs," as always going when coming, always coming when going.
When he beamed, things were all over with you; when he frowned, you were
not yet his. He was one of the few people in his grim rooms whose
meteoric history had not formed the theme (and was not still) of some
wild crime or scandal. Fraser's history was mysteriously untragic.

Sir William's shepherd-plaid trousers commanded something of a sensation.
Eyes shot glances at him, and shot back to play again. There was a groan
in some of them; in others a curious birdlike interest; in some yet a
black, angry look; in others a sticky and obsequious welcome. The
"banker" made a heavy inclination towards him, and then proceeded to deal
the cards. Heans staked alternately on COULEUR and INVERSE, but lost as
persistently. The man beside him, who had been addressed as "Jarvis,"
changed his cheek for his chin as the game went on, and watched Sir
William's play with a sort of sulky and despairing cynicism. By slow
graduations his face, with its respectable little black whiskers and
die-away air, changed a little. His expression of snarling dislike
dropped gradually to a snarling blase tolerance. This did not seem
designed altogether to put Sir William off his play. Though the man was
visibly younger than the new-comer, there was a worldly fatherliness in
his cynical demeanour.

"You bore me with your play, sir," he said at last, in a hissing
undertone. "There are the red and black. Why lose with such monotony?"
Sir William pushed along to him a half-crown bit. "Put that on the red or
black, if you wish it," he said.

The other, not moving his cheek from his hand, took the coin and tossed
it on the black. Heans, meanwhile, continued staking as before. The man
named Carnt won another half-crown. Throwing the two coins on the red he
won four. Then with the four, eight. With the eight, sixteen. With
sixteen (staked with the same appearance of tolerant cynicism) 4 pounds.
He then pushed back a half-crown to Heans, who staked it, with a nod of
thanks, upon the INVERSE, and lost it.

At this moment S---- rose and asked Heans by name if he would make one
for a game of loo. Heans, with a glare through his eyeglass at S----,
bowed and began to gather up what change remained to him. S---- then
asked Carnt if he would join them, but Carnt; who was playing with his
wins on the table-edge, shook his head, stating that he had a whimsy to
start a charitable institution. At this the other stepped backward over
the form, and beckoning to a man with a fixed grim stare of enquiring
disapproval--probably a natural feature helped by art and practice--and
to a little pale fellow with a tremendous air, led the way to one of the
tables at the top of the room. The gentlemen so summoned rose and
followed with deprecatory coughs of acquiescence. Heans sat at play with
these three and another (a silent man who through the evening stared for
long periods at every one in turn with strange fixed eyes) till a late
hour.

At about eleven there was a scattering of men about Sir William's table.
The four were playing still, and there was spirit beside them. The
new-comer had been loo-ed constantly, but in the last quarter of an hour
the tide had turned and Heans was not so far from making good. About this
time there was an attempt on the part of a little clique of men behind
S---- to hustle Heans with several careful but, of course, impalpable
rudenesses. A funny fellow with a strange, unsmiling face had placed a
paper eyeglass in his eye, and was cutting a jocose caper in the shadow
of a friend. They would ponder with a burlesque heaviness when Sir
William pondered, and nearly collapse in their ecstasies of wild
anticipation when Sir William elected to play. A lank, black Jew, who was
standing at S----'s elbow, made a false signal to Sir William as to the
number of that gentleman's trumps by holding up four fingers against his
chin and slowly spreading them up his cheek. When the luck was with him
they were careful to show their tolerant acquiescence; when against him,
their sudden antagonism and unveiled contempt. Heans became conscious,
presently, that an old decrepit man was seated in a chair a little way
back and outward from his elbow. A glance at him showed high aristocratic
if dissipated features and an impressive dignity. He was too far from the
table to admit an objection to his presence, and yet near enough to make
it difficult for Heans to conceal his cards. As if to himself, Heans
heard him murmur: "Rowdyism, eh?" and presently, in an angry whisper:
"Too much intoxication here tonight." On several occasions he spoke a
critical word upon the game, but always heavily and impersonally, if with
a touch of age's privilege. A small eruption from S----'s backers screwed
from him the indignant mutter that "the place was rapidly being made
uncongenial for the older men." Unfortunately for his bona-fides, he
pronounced uncongenial as "uncongenni-al;" and this mistake rioted in
Heans' ears.

Heans was much embarassed by the presence of this friendly,
quiet-speaking, yet, he was certain, evil-intentioned man. Beyond the
flurry of an actual protest, he could, however, think of no way of
ridding himself of it. Meanwhile the unrelieved antagonism was beginning
to tell upon his play; he made several slips, though his cards were good.

Every faculty he possessed was now engaged in his play. His luck holding,
he won on the next two deals; and he was conscious of a private chuckle
in his ear, and a secret pat from the old man upon his chair-back. On the
next round--which was "unlimited" and all players playing--he lost
remarkably and of course heavily.

Earlier in the game Sir William's tranquillity had been a little steadied
by the approach of Carnt, the gambler to whom he had lent money. He had
caught his figure among the others round S----, his arms folded, his
rusty top-hat cocked over a morose eye. Now, as he played, he had a
strange vision. Once and again, in the course of that disastrous deal, he
fancied he had caught a fresh glimpse of Carnt, but with his face yellow
with anger, and standing close in to the right of the table, his eyes
bent with a curious intentness on some spot on a level with Heans'
shoulder. Sir William, fierce as was the game, several times shrugged his
right shoulder under the influence of this strange impression.

Suddenly, during a fresh deal, when Heans, being elder hand, holding back
two trumps in sequence, nine and seven (S----, sitting opposite, having
taken the first trick with the eight of trumps), and winning the second,
finessing with his seven--at that moment, there was a sharp scream like a
sheep's bleat, and his chair was violently pushed forward. Springing
round in it, with anger and promptitude, he discovered Carnt with one
hand holding the old man's hand against the chair, with its index finger
waving over Hean's back, while with the other he threatened to impale it
with an open penknife. There was an outcry of anger about the table, but
whether for the liver-coloured, chattering old man, or against him, was
not clear. Carnt's triumphant, angry, yet amused face, was calm and pale.
"You know me, Rudstone," he hissed. "Keep it still or by Heaven I'll
split it! Here S----, here's a trump, look! Egad, a big one! See it
wriggle!"

"Who's a cheat in his liquor?" someone called from the Totem-table.

"Begad, Mr. Jarvis is the Christian when he's sober!"

"A--h--twitch away, would you!" said Carnt. "You scandalous blackguard!
Take that, then!" There was a horrid scream, and the old man, suddenly
released, hobbled out of the room, holding a maimed hand.

S---- had risen, tall and noble, beside his chair.

"I hope," he said, turning huskily on the rowdies, "that you will
understand, gentlemen, how great a service has been done to this room by
Mr. Jarvis Carnt. The treachery on our visitor, to-night, was no greater
than the detestable insult offered to me." He graciously bent forward
over the table.

"Your hand, Carnt--a very noble service, sir."

Carnt was glooming at his knife. "You know my practice, S----," said he.
"I never shake hands in this place."

Sir William, still turned in his chair, was eyeing Carnt with his rather
queer eyeglass. Slowly he drew out and proffered him a fine chequered
silk handkerchief. "Take my handkerchief," he said, "and clean your
knife." Carnt took the article; drew the knife through it; pondered over
it a moment; and then threw it under the chairs. Sir William laid down
his cards, and bowing to S----, the little important man, the
disapproving gentleman, and the man with the silent examining eyes who
was at the moment examining S---- (all of whom returned his bow not much
disturbed), gathered up his change, and rose. Carnt was moving away down
the room, and Sir William pushed after him through pale faces and
charming teeth. Fraser, standing near the bar, bowed with a sort of
deference in his grave smile.

"Mr. Carnt, it is barely the half hour," said Heans. "A word and a glass
of wine."

The back of the other's clawhammer seemed inclined to move on without
answer, but suddenly turning, disclosed a pair of dark harassed eyes and
a slow pale smile. "What's this?" he said. "Wine?"

"What have they got?" said Sir William, drawing his arm through his in
his stately way.

"All sorts," said Carnt, rubbing his blue hands over the counter.
"There's an old brandy somewhere. Fraser, here's a specially bad case!
This gentleman honours us by treading the inclined plane in our company.
Let us fittingly celebrate his first step. What about French Sally! Is
she extant?"

That giddy party known as Fraser, with a moment's stern glare at Heans,
suddenly bowed and came with a simpering ceremony into the bar, where he
procured from a back cupboard a green coloured flask. From this, with
care and mystery, he filled two glasses with a liquid the colour of
bronze--putting these before the two "gentlemen" as from one who
regretfully but finally confers. Carnt was still grey of face from what
he had done, and Sir William, with a grave if somewhat voluble tact,
discussed with him the intricacies of a certain game of "Patience," in
the moves of which the other made an effort to become engrossed. S----
brought his friends to the bar, and owing to Sir William's increasing
volubility, the conversation soon became general. Half an hour later the
bar was thronged, and a low ship'scaptain named Stifft, with a tiny mouth
and a beautiful silvery voice, was singing a French song. Sir William
Heans was (with little difficulty) induced to follow this friendly
gentleman--a luckless skipper of wrecks and suborner of absconders--with
a ballad given in a very small formal pipe. Carnt alone did not seem
happy in these amenities. He stood with his arms folded against the bar,
white and bored. At Sir William's invitation not only Carnt and Captain
Stifft, but a pawnbroker and bric-a-brac man, of the curious name of Six,
accompanied him to his room.




CHAPTER VII



WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BIRTHDAY BALL


As they descended in the carriage, over the quiver and shriek of the
heavy break, with now a splash of sleety rain and once a boom of
thunder, a tragic idea came to Matilda, that if she could manage it, she
would speak with sympathetic Lady Franklin about Sir William Heans, and
see if some organising secretaryship or honorary post could not be
obtained for him by which he would be bound among a better set, and the
suffrages of "one side" of Hobarton society be gradually opened to him.
She put it to herself as "one side." There was another side of Hobarton
society over which she was aware the Governor's wife had less power, and
with whom a prisoner had less chance: that of the old families, led by
Mr. Montague, the Colonial Secretary, whose famous quarrel with Sir John
Franklin was already simmering above the surface. [Note 5. See end of
this para.] Matilda, though she disliked her pretty ladyship's stern and
masculine attitude, her ill advised and too forcible championing of her
husband, yet believed her at bottom a kindhearted, sensible personage,
and like many another distracted woman, determined to penetrate the
attitude and besiege the good for her purpose.

[Note 5.--As early as 1830 Lieut. Breton, R. N., writes that Hobarton
society was more exclusive than that of "an English town." "If, however,
a person can obtain one or two good letters of introduction he may get on
well enough with both the aristocracy and the merchants, though decidedly
better with the last."]

At the wharf they descended, into the EREBUS, the high pent-house awnings
of the Arctic ship glowing and tugging in the lowering night. The moon
shone for an instant on Kangaroo Point. It was all half-wild. Flying,
gauzy clouds sped across the light blue satin of the sky. The sea was
green-black, flecked with foam about the shores, and crying free. There
were a few--a few silver stars.

The quarter-deck was hung with bunting, giving a fine floor broken only
by the companion-way; while astern, a beflagged opening gave to two small
rest-rooms, where among the decorations stood the embowered wheel. The
grim, clean smell of hemp and tar exuded from the walls, upon which were
sewn great laurel wreaths of silver paper, with the motto: ANIMO ET FIDE
(misread by the jealous landsmen for "Ann and Fido"), while across from
screen to screen great ropes of monthly roses, hung by the young ladies
of Hobarton, met a fine wreath hanging from the centre.

Perhaps no decoration could have been discovered so moving to the hearts
of the men and women gathered there as this mingling of bunting and
roses--the scent of flowers and stern hemp and tar. Franklin himself must
have thought of it when, years after, he walked the deck caught in the
ice of William's Land. Everywhere were immaculate white breeches and
waistcoats; the plain beside the epauletted coat. The whiskered sailors
jested merrily in their high cravats. Little ladies looked up out of
chignons and swinging curls. The ship suddenly shook with thunder, under
which the wave of cheerful voices clattered shrill and unmoved. A band
began bumping in a corner.

In the ballroom things happened very differently from what she expected.
Her ladyship was unwell, and Miss Sophia Crackcroft, who had taken her
place beside Captain Ross, was, at their entrance, somewhat flurried by
the congratulations of another party. Swarthy, round-faced Sir John
Franklin himself, with Mr. Bedford, the Colonial Chaplain, and old Mr.
Duterreau, the artist of the natives, came forward to receive them. On
the very edge of distraction as she was, Sir John took her wild and
pretty face for a picture of enthusiasm, and gallantly jested with her as
"the presumptive belle of this occasion." "You make me," he said, "regret
my young days, madam." She curtsied and laughed, and from her mourning
heart returned some witty answer, which, echoing among the men, and in
her husband's chuckles, made a little triumph for her, at the feet of
which his gallant Excellency begged a dance, and put that still
unsilenced name upon her programme for a quadrille.

Sir John strode up the deck with round, bare, cheery face. Behind him,
among a little group of uniforms, went a thin, active man, clad in black,
and leaning on a Neapolitan cane. His brow was dark, and now and then he
gave a low, most courteous bow. It was Mr. Montague, the Colonial
Secretary.

Matilda Shaxton, as she danced with this or that sailor, or discoursed on
the wildness of the night with some old police-magistrate or bronzed
young settler, watched the Governor's face as he slowly talked his way
through the room, and suddenly, in the midst of a discharge of sleet
which nearly drowned the music, made up her mind to lay Sir William's
case before the tragic kindness of it. Her ears were used to ridicule
among her associates on the "softness" of Sir John's prison legislation,
and although her instinct warned her that this was the exaggeration of
harsh, experienced men, and that he was a ruler with plenty of sternness
where his just-heartedness or anger called for it, yet she was certain if
she could chance upon a subject that would help her in bringing up a
prisoner's name, she would be met with kindness. As she looked or laughed
into this or that stern or beseeching face--for wild-eyed Matilda had a
belle's triumph to-night--she quivered inwardly at each thunder-clap and
gust of wind, and saw the prison-cutter plunge out upon it with the
fallen, gale-deafened Megson and Relph--out upon a yellow sea towards the
bare, wind-blown ditch of Macquarie Harbour. How could these kindeyed
sailors, these fine old magistrates, witty Mr. Montague, satirical Mr.
Daunt, gallant Colonel Snodgrass, honest Sir John himself--these feeling
gentlemen--jig and jest, while a fellow, a man more gently reared than
themselves, tottered and struggled, so bravely and so much alone, upon
the brink of terror and ruin? She would tell that man there if she could,
the one with the round ugly face and tragic eyes (eyes which seemed yet
to harbour the glory and smoke of Trafalgar and Copenhagen)--she would
tell him what temptations and dangers were at the proud feet of this
gentleman, and how no hand troubled to stay them. In her bosom she had a
letter of Miss Gairdener's. The old woman wrote how her nephew, Sir
William Heans, had been loved and honoured by his tenants. The letter was
full of loving admiration, chattering hope, and brave proud humour, and
though it never so much as hinted at his fast life or his disgrace, was
palpably the wail of his own people for a loved and trusted figure
brought low by a sin which for some reason--some woman's reason--they
found not unforgivable. This letter, with its garrulous, well-bred
recommending of a favourite and petted nephew, its purposeful ignoring or
innocent misunderstanding of his hideous disgrace or danger, so increased
by its innocence the horror of possible catastrophe as to constitute an
argument for his succour--and such protection as a woman might need who
stood forward with his name on her lips.

Matilda, so determined and loving-hearted, was perhaps too confident in
her woman's armour of precocious experience. Her friend, the
Superintendent, Mr. Daunt, in speaking of women, has said of her wittily
that "she hardly resorted to the evasive with the accustomed
roguishness." She seemed, in a word, to have an unnatural distaste for
"practising," even where the interests of those she loved were concerned.
This is, I suspect, as much as should be expected of any good woman, just
as we may well expect something more, in like difficulty, than the lying,
stab-in-the-back methods, the treacherous use of youth's belief in her
saintship, of the ordinary wicked one. Surely life holds few contrasting
facts so confusing as its vulgar-minded woman--than which no man can be
so little or so base--and its angel, rich or poor.

Daunt arrived very late, but Matilda, though her programme was full, gave
him a little walk between two dances. He was very kind and amusing, until
quite suddenly he began to talk about Sir William Heans: "We are somewhat
bothered about Heans," he said, with his eyes on his excellent white
breeches as he walked. "I am afraid you will not thank me for dragging in
a business matter to-night, but may I ask you a question--about him?"

Matilda, who supposed, in a breath of fear, he referred to the affray her
husband had mentioned, said: "Oh, certainly. But my husband heard all he
has told me from you. What do you want?"

"Nothing more than I can almost prove, Mrs. Shaxton, I am glad to say. I
think he was up at your house, was he not, on the 27th?"

"Yes--on the 27th," she said, with a sort of shivering gladness. "I am
sorry I wasn't in. But what is the reason for proving that?"

"I have no reason yet. It is just the curse of my work that I have to go
round poking in my nose where I have no business. It was a wet afternoon,
and he arrived at your house--say--at three o'clock."

Matilda caught him looking at her with a pale, sharp deference. "No, it
was later than that--half-past four. He has usually been early." She
caught her breath and pondered a moment. Then rapidly, with precision, "I
wonder whether I am right. He has been up so often. It was possibly
half-past three--on that day. Indeed, I could discover the time from the
servants. What is it about, Mr. Daunt?"

"It is nothing. Since this business at Fraser's we have been deluged with
information about your friend. It is always the way when a prisoner takes
a foolish step of the kind, and we must sift it all. You would be
surprised at the vicious rubbish which has reached us. If you could give
Sir William a hint to be careful who he mixes with--above all to be
constant in his punctuality."

"Yes, I can tell him that."

"These men are so devilish clever at inventing the likely." There was a
look almost of pity in his dark and deferent gaze.

"We may not know then," she said, "this new rumour against Sir William
Heans?"

"I would not assoil your hearing with it," he said, in an indifferent
tone. "Don't think any more about it, madam. Only for a while it would
save us a world of trouble if he is careful to take his pleasure in your
direction." In the midst of music he bowed and went off, friendly,
smiling, if a little drawn and stern. Matilda, as she turned to look for
her next partner, drew a deep breath. Indeed, she could have cried out,
The strange man's rumours and warnings, the double-meanings she knew him
to employ, his kind actions, his excellent cleverness, his deferent,
polite, sharp eyes, his lawful activity, filled her with distrust. She
knew him for an alarmist; a man who, if with a sharp guard upon himself,
instinctively exaggerated While dismissing much that he said as a sort of
fussiness, her excitement for Sir William, facing unknowingly this man's
activity (this man's--was it jealousy or stern probity?) was feverishly
increased.

At that moment the great Mr. Montague, ambling by with his tremendous
coat-collars and high oldfashioned airs, bowed low to her, saying: "What
a fey night! Only we Derwenters would think of dragging out our ladies to
dance in a storm!"

There was a hoarse growl of thunder.

She bowed towards his dark, experienced, weighing eyes. "We women, sir,"
she said, "must think of it as part of the brave decorations."

"Flags and guns--good! good!" He laughed a quick, dry laugh. "The
convicts have it," he said, "that the devil has a fort of his own up on
Old Storm Hill. Listen! There they go! You'll see the smoke of 'em
hanging about his old head in tomorrow's sun." He laughed and nodded
himself away.

Immediately after the next dance, Shaxton called to Matilda
that Sir John was "exploring" for her. She at once walked more towards
the centre of the room that he might see her, her heart beating
painfully. He came towards her, his round, swarthy face rather strained
upon the short neck, but very dignified, with those splendid tragic eyes
which had seen men languish, and yet had drawn the weak body beneath them
from camps of the dead--came to her--she, Matilda Shaxton--and bent to
her that small limb of flesh and blood which was to stiffen against years
and acres of white sleet, and at last to hold fast among those howling
winds--a monument--for good.

The east wind was pulling and harshing at the awnings, the ship was
groaning at her ropes, and the thought came to her: "These wonderful
men!"

Up the room a rather severe and dignified set of notabilities were
preparing for a set of quadrilles. She recognised Mr. Montague, Captain
Crozier of the TERROR, the Colonial Surgeon, and Mr. Bichino. The fans of
several ladies fluttered upon her with some wonder, but whether at Sir
John's choice, or some visible sign of the excitement and anguish that
was in her heart, she cared little. Sir John called some jests at her in
the intervals of the music; but on whole he seemed distrait, with a
fierce eye upon his dignity.

As she danced, she learnt something of the little treacheries which
assail the great. A glance at Mr. Montague's pale face, strangely
attenuated; at his malignant smile; at his eye, which never touched Sir
John Franklin's; at his carefully pruned and deliberate dignity; above
all at his grim unreadiness, which infinitesimally kept the dance waiting
on him, reminded her of the rumours of political trouble, and (as had
been whispered by Mr. Montague himself) "of a local North-West Passage
still undiscovered by Sir John."

The rain stopped with the music, and Matilda, suddenly very pale, was led
by Sir John to a flagged-off enclosure about the wheel. There he took his
seat beside her upon a couch. Beside themselves, there were two old
ladies, with fine, remote faces, talking serenely in a corner. An
aide-de-camp came quietly to the door, looked in upon his chief in a
troubled manner, and as quietly departed.

Feverishly excited, and with only a short time in which to bring up her
plea, Matilda turned to Sir John and expressed for a second time her
regret at Lady Franklin's indisposition. She continued that she had hoped
to have spoken to Lady Franklin about a prisoner--a sort of relation of
her family--about whom the Hon. Miss Gairdener had written from England.
She had wished to ask her ladyship if she could help him a little. It was
a gentleman of good family who was likely to go under for want of a few
friends and a more congenial atmosphere. She and her husband had done
what they could, but some one in authority only could save him from his
sensitiveness to his position, by perhaps giving him some little literary
secretaryship or organising work. She took then the letter from the
breast of her gown and put it in the Governor's hands as he sat beside
her somewhat amazed.

"It is there, sir, the Hon. Miss Gairdener speaks of this gentleman," she
said, in a low violent voice, approaching tears.

Sir John took the letter and opened it. As he began to read it, he said:
"It is not easy to do anything for these men." Suddenly he let it dangle
from his fingers, and looked up and outward. "Do I not know that name?"
he said: "Heans? Pray wait a minute."

He seemed to recollect something and began slowly to fold up the letter.
His face seemed to have deepened in tragedy a shade.

Matilda must have seen this. Her head drooped a little. "We have known
Sir William Heans since his arrival here," she said, a faint trace too
desperately; "it has been dreadful to see the difficulties a man in his
position is faced with. Up to now he has bravely resisted temptation to
join the lower clubs--though he is entirely alone."

Beneath his formality, the Governor's dark face, under its auburn hair,
had taken a stunned look. He was very polite and spoke in a low voice. "I
don't know what to say, Mrs. Shaxton. This letter in my hand" (his voice
quavered) "is not the story I have heard."

The blood rushed to Matilda's face: "No," she said, "but that letter
shows how the prisoner was respected and loved in his own family. Miss
Gairdener asks our help for her nephew. I knew Miss Gairdener. She is a
dear old woman. She would not--she would not ask a favour----"

"For anyone unworthy of it?" said Sir John. He raised his hands in a
foreign sort of way. "Oh these old mothers, madam!"

Matilda was silent for a long while.

At length Sir John said kindly: "How old now is your experience of this
Sir William Heans?"

"He has been often to our house, Sir John Franklin," she answered, "being
engaged with my husband on some prison plans. And we have encouraged him
as much as we could to come to us. Lately the plans have been put aside
and engagements with the explorers have claimed a great deal of our time.
We have seen much less of Sir William Heans. Oh, I think it must
sometimes have seemed as if his only friends had forsaken him! And I fear
his loneliness has driven him to one of the halls where cards are played.
It seems such a little thing--if a man could be kept straight, and such a
terrible--terrible thing if he goes wrong--in this place."

Sir John nodded several times in a sort of tragic confirmation, but his
mind was not in it. He got up and took a quick, sedate walk past her: his
head bowed. As he came back he glanced up at the pretty, determined face
of his partner out of anxious eyes, and though the glance was still
veiled with politeness, seemed to see something that quieted them. He
re-seated himself, inclining towards her with plain kindness.

"A woman who has the courage to come to me," he said, "with a word for a
man of such a reputation shall have what aid my wife and I can give her.
As you must know, a prisoner not only needs courage, but indeed
immaculate behaviour, to even touch on the fringes of the proud little
society here. There is strong prejudice against the name. You have much
troubled me, Mrs. Shaxton, by this tremulous handwriting" (he gave her
back the letter), "and by the danger of this man. I promise you I will
see a Superintendent of Police, who is, I think, here this evening, and
if this Sir William Heans has done nothing worse than some preliminary
haunting of gambling rooms, some organising matter may be found for him."

He rose again, hesitated an instant, and passed over to the door of the
ballroom. Pausing there, he beckoned, and the young aide-de-camp
appeared. Him he dismissed with an order and returned. On the
quarter-deck, the band began suddenly blaring, and the two old ladies, as
if fascinated by the old summons, rose and tottered with smiles and
trembling yellow ringlets towards it.

"I have sent for the officer," said Sir John Franklin. "He will tell us
in two words all we want to know. Who are those two old angels, Mrs.
Shaxton?"

"It is old Mrs. Ordway, of Saltin Island, and Miss Meurice, sir," said
Matilda, who was near to weeping. "Thank you--thank you, sir, for doing
so much for our prisoner. But," she added, hastily, "if the
police-officer is Mr. Daunt, he knows Sir William Heans well and has
often met him at our house."

At that moment Daunt entered from the ballroom with the aide-de-camp, and
the Governor rose and went forward a little way to meet him. They were
out of earshot, but Matilda was reassured much by the quiet ease of
Daunt's face as he talked, and the look of helpful friendliness and
familiar acquaintance he several times threw towards her. They stood a
short time talking earnestly. Presently Sir John turned and came rather
heavily towards her. "It can be done--possibly, Mrs. Shaxton," he said.
"Mr. Daunt says he thinks the news of Sir William Heans is satisfactory,
and that he has as clean a bill of health as himself. I am glad of this."
(Yet he did not smile.) "Accept my compliments for a brave woman." He
offered her his arm, and she rose and took it. They passed Daunt as they
traversed the little enclosure, and he gave a brisk shadow of a smile and
a nice little bow. There was something so pleasant and unexacting in what
he surely had kept to himself, and how it had all been done, that a rush
of gratitude flooded Matilda's heart and she bowed to him affectionately.
She looked back as she passed into the ballroom and thought how thin and
pale he looked. Sir John Franklin said very little to her as he took her
along, erect and fine, beside the flags. His conversation had become
polite and brief. Once he said: "Mr. Daunt tells me he is your husband's
oldest friend here. According to Mr. Charles Lamb, the ladies are chary
of their husband's friends. Your happy circle seems an exception." She
laughed a little, wondering, yet thanking him once again. His
chieftain-like eyes seemed a little tired as he bade her a somewhat grave
good-night.




CHAPTER VIII



LOVE AND DEATH


The Captain's house was, perhaps, the highest on the left of the town. It
can be seen to-day, reared aloft on stone retaining walls, above the
golf-links; while the precipitous road leading up to it, now open to
gazers in the Reservoir Valley, was then hidden in wild scrub and trees.
Still well above the later born houses, the place lies secluded beneath
the impregnable woods of the hills, its walls starred with the crimson
blossoms of knotty old geraniums.

On an afternoon, not many days after the ball, a tall man in a pea-coat
and small, black, flat-crowned slouch, started to ascend the Pitt's Villa
Hill, stopping, however, before he reached the retaining wall across the
top. Here, in the shadow of the hanging woods, he gave up his climb, and
began to stride about among the logs and bushes by the wayside. He seemed
pale with the upward tramp from the town. His face was peaked, small,
doubting, and gaunt; and curious brown leather half-boots poked from the
broken straps of his black frieze trousers. He had a very small mouth
like a button, an immense sharp nose, and watery, uncertain eyes. His
movements were stiff--his air even stupid--and he looked about him, his
hat somewhat back upon his head, as if he had been born uncertain into
this world, and was still far from being confident of his foundation.
This dull and temporary air was not only a characteristic of his
countenance, but seemed to sit even in the hang of his still aspiring
neckwear. The man, after a little, wandered from the right to the left
hand of the road, and here stood with his foot on a recumbent tree,
looking dully down into the wood. He was there, singularly quiet, for a
matter of twenty minutes, when, a noise of galloping rising from behind
the trees, he immediately returned into the road and began to descend. He
again stopped, however, as Sir William Heans turned into the road on a
bay horse and galloped easily up the hill.

His somewhat fevered eyes were on the man from the first, and not till he
was close up under the wall did he rein in, trotting up with spurring
heels.

"Captain Stifft sir." he cried. "you will have to scuttle from here. The
police are awake to some faddle on the way. The good lady, above, wrote
yesterday. The fellow Daunt is testing the ground about me--poking into
my coming and going. Give me my news, sir. Get down by the wood and in by
the beach."

"Why," said the other, his dull eyes yellowing a little, "some
servant-woman up there must have turned on you!"

"One of the young women, you think--more possibly a mere nosing into my
business. Basset was at the Boundary and saw me as I came through. Some
of them want to take away this pass. They may take a gallop along here."

"Hang it, have you been dallying with some young woman, Sir William?"

"'Pon my word," said Heans; "it doesn't always require such strong
measures, does it! Come, Captain, I'll spare you two minutes!"

"Well, if they've got a vapour of evidence you've been meeting me," said
Stifft, dully, "they'll never take eyes off us. I'll take my hook through
the scrub. Mr. Daunt has never stood me since I dealt with Shelk. I don't
know how he found out. We landed him with the sealers on Kangaroo Island.
Daunt all but spoke to me."

Sir William began to shake his reins.

"Wait a minute," said Stifft. "I've got a piece of good news. Here, I
have a provisionary receipt for the EMERALD--yes" (he hastily held up a
paper to the rider), "that's all right now, if you've got the 400 pounds.
She's dirty and not much as to bottom planking, but she'll do the v'ige
with a red-leading and a bit of a scrape. She goes for the seal-skins
again. That's repeating my last venture with the Jargonelle; but Dawson
and O'Neil made that reputable. It's a piece grim, my buying her myself."

Heans took the paper. His voice was high and his hand was trembling.

"And Dawson and O'Neil won't move?" he asked.

"No, they won't do it."

"What are they propping at?"

"They've been to look at her. They don't favour with the ship. But she's
well enough. She'll do Vansittart Island."

Sir William crushed the document into his waistcoat pocket. "My Heaven,
Stifft," groaned he, stretching out a lavender glove and touching the
other's shoulder, "so you've done it, have you! Why, it's too good to
believe!" (He drew away sharply, staring behind him.) "These great lanky
trees!" he said, "I can't believe I shall ever rid my eyes of them! How
shall I get those notes to you?" he finally asked. "Ought I to see you
after this?"

"No," said Stifft. "I can't come again. Better not risk it all." He
looked at Heans' face with a dazed, peculiar, shy look. "Would the
lady--Mrs. Shaxton--er--do something for us in that line? Look, sir, I'd
be at the turning into Davey Street on Tuesday after three, and she could
drop them out of the fly as she drove down."

Heans glared down the hill again with his hand on his croupe. He was
white in the face, but calmer.

"Would she do it?" hazarded Stifft, with that dull, peculiar stare.

"Yes, I am sure she would do it," said Heans.

"Well then, I'll wait under the oil-lamp at the corner. You can describe
my features," he explained, with a facile naivete, "and she'll hear me
call out 'Stifft'--so--as if I was sneezing. I needn't see you after that
for the four weeks. I'll tar her outside, get the red-lead in at once,
and pick the boy. When all's ready, I'll go to Fraser's and hang about.
Don't speak to me. I'll pass a message to you, somehow. Just give me a
nod like a respectable gentleman."

"Well, Captain," said Heans, "it will leave me--so to speak--cleaned out.
You must do with the 400 pounds, and I must give up my Burgundy. 'Pon my
soul, I'd sell my bed and take to 'pink champagne' for a chance of that
schooner!" He flushed slowly over the face and temples. "The good woman,"
he said. thinking possibly of his landlady, "she'll do that much!"

"Name of Quaid, isn't it, 25 ---- Street?" asked Stifft.

Sir William nodded, looking back and listening.

"Ah, faithful soul!" he sighed, settling his reins. "Thanks, Stifft. I'll
get away up--I'll get her--madam--to do that, and," he put his hand again
on the other's shoulder, gazing at him sternly, "help a poor devil out of
it."

Stifft eyed him darkly, with his dazed, disappointed eye. "I don't know
whether to warn you for or against the blessed women," he cried, in a
sudden high panic. "In my knowledge, they've saved men, and they've
brought men to the roads, for a lark as I see it. Spitfire
beldams--beauteous, kindly natures--you can trust this one, ye can nurse
that one, ye can pray to the one yonder, ye can take and dub that one in
the rivulet and be in your rights. Yes, and this will go over to the
enemy of its father, while that'll sit with its mother's son all its
life. Oh, mercy upon us, I leave it to you gentlemen, Sir William
Heans--to your gentleman's honour and cunning, if that'll tell you!"

The man snatched his hand from Sir William's saddle, and with a cry of
warning, sprang away across the road, and down the embankment into the
broken logs and wattle of the lower wood. Sir William did not pause to
listen, but, to cover Stifft, slashed down his cane and shot his horse to
a gallop. In a few terrible jerks he was round in the shelter of the
retaining wall.

* * * * *

On this same Wednesday following the Sailors' Ball, Matilda had gone out
into the front to gather some white valerian for a child's burial, and
was tragically picking among the blowing bushes, when she heard the
distant thumping of a horse in the wood. In some alarm because of the
pace, she listened with the valerian in her hand, while it thundered
nearer, till--suddenly bellowing into a gallop below the garden--the
horseman appeared flashing up along the sea-wall towards the gate. This
was near the house-door, and some twenty yards to her right, and through
its slats could be seen the greygreen channel flecked with storm-waves.
Next instant the rider dismounted between sea and gate, and Sir William
Heans came in, with his face much flushed, hurrying behind him his
frightened horse. He swiftly latched the gate without looking about him.
He then urged his horse along the walk across the house front. The quiet
and trembling Matilda he did not see. Pausing beside a hitching-post in
some uncertainty, he eventually came to a decision, and continued along
the drive to the stables, through the high wooden gate of which he led
the animal. He was out again almost as soon as he had entered, but,
still blind to Mrs. Shaxton's tearful figure among the flowers, returned
at a swift pace to the front. In a few seconds the lowering maid opened
the door and let him in.

He had no sooner gone than Mrs. Shaxton ran to the stable gates, pushed
the great prison-bolt to, locked the staple and removed the key. Then,
still clinging to the flowers, she fluttered after Heans to the front,
where she was met by the servant-maid, who held aside the door.

Not five minutes afterwards, a fresh guest appeared behind the sea gate.
It was actually. Daunt of the foot police himself. He entered in a
leisurely way, though his brown cob glistened with sweat; and with a
glance of some intentness about the garden, took the animal to the
hitching-post.' Buckling it securely, he did not approach the door, but
strode on as if to stretch his legs, past the stable, the entrance to
which he stared at, but did not closely approach. The next instant, he
took a running leap at the gate, pulled himself up with splendid and
finished agility, and sprang over. A few minutes after, he appeared again
on the gate, wiping his hands with his handkerchief, and jumped into the
garden. Returning along the drive, he seemed hardly flustered by his
exertions, but his alert face was stern as death. The same maid--a large
brown woman with a sinewy step--let him in. She greeted him with a
little, hissing, serene smile--a sort of half-angry familiarity--as if
she half-expected he would ask her more than the whereabouts of Mrs.
Shaxton.

* * * * *

Matilda came into the drawing-room with the valerian, and greeting Sir
William, told him of the child for whom she had been picking it. Sir
William touched the flowers in her hands with his lavender glove, and,
remembering death, was dumb. She looked up at him with her staring eyes.
Presently she went to a table, on which were some vases of cut green,
and a buckram shape in the form of an anchor. Here she sat down and
began to cut and plait the leaves. The man--hot and flushed--took a
chair, and watched her through his eyeglass.

"You're making new moorings for the little ship?" he said.

"Yes--that's for hope," said Matilda Shaxton.

The channel wind howled up and shook the windows.

"Ah, there's the wind!" said Sir William; "I'm sorry the little child's
dead."

"She was like my own," said Matilda, dropping her face a little nearer
the flowers. "She would come here in the morning, and I used to tell her
what I could of the world--and there--she's not to be troubled!"

"You too--not in love with life!" said Heans. "The dead child has missed
nothing--you think?"

"Missed!" said Matilda, reaching slowly among the green. "She might have
been beautiful for a little while; used it for good--she was a good
little girl--she might have married; yes; might have helped and aided by
her patience. Men's and women's patience--it's wonderful. Don't you
think" (suddenly staring at him) "it's wonderful!"

"Yes," said Sir William, dropping eyes and head floorward; "somehow the
grave shows us where we sit. There are only one or two things."

"We sit here in this room," she said, "a little way behind the child."

"Soon we're gone," agreed Sir William, looking hungrily at her lit hair.
"And the room's empty of us."

"Yes--all go," she said chokingly, breathlessly. "She's gone a little
sooner. But she knew affection and kindness. She'd seen the beauty of the
world. She'd enjoyed and--and helped. There wasn't much she'd missed. I
think, with her, love meant help."

"Help!" cried Heans. "But the child might have been loved for her
beauty!"

"Oh----" (looking away at the grey window), "she might have loved."

"She might have loved passionately," whispered Sir William Heans. "Would
not her silent chamber be the warmer for that?"

"But there's the wind goes by the window, sir," she said, wildly, "crying
'What were they all wearying for; what was it all about? They're gone
now--gone--gone, and at peace!'" Suddenly she was weeping as she looked
out.

He had risen to his feet. "And here's the silent room," he said, in a
shaken whisper, "and yourself gone, and the flowers, and none to treasure
your beauty or your kindness----"

A sudden thumping of hoofs came up the passage and Sir William stiffened.
Pale Matilda seemed to hold her breath, and suddenly dragged her eyes
from the window, and rose. She stopped, however, as she was sidling past
him, shrinking away with a grave face. "I will leave the anchor," she
said, in a wraith of a voice, putting it upon the table, "and go from
here, Sir William Heans. You speak of my beauty, sir," (in a voice almost
baleful) "as if it were of value. I tell you it is the least part of me:
a poor, ephemeral summer's garment. Here stand I among my bones--Matilda
Shaxton. Am I not your friend? They will bury my bones, like those of the
little body here" (she pointed down at the wreath), "and I will still be
that."

He turned and would have stayed her--he with his heated, pallid face,
shame, shrinking, recklessness of imminent danger, and all--but she had
slipped to the door with her dark dress and her fair head.

 Sir William went to the window, and putting his foot upon a chair, leant
upon his elbow looking out. There was a gleam of sun on the lashing
channel and the opposite hills. The trees heaved and the house sang. He
was there still--but little calmer--when the door opened and Daunt was
shown in by the woman: he dapper and smiling, she white-eyed, with
significant mouth-corners.

Daunt's eye dwelt for a second on the cut flowers, and flashed about at
Heans, who turned at that moment with a proud face, moved and pale.

"You here, Daunt?" he said, clearing his throat.

"Mrs. Shaxton has just gone away. There is to be a funeral."

"So the maid tells me," said Daunt, somewhat curtly, in spite of his
amiable expression. His eyes, as he spoke, passed curiously from Hean's
face to his coat, and from his coat to his trousers. "You rode?" he
asked. "I did not see your horse in the garden?"

"I put it in the stable out of the plaguey wind," said Heans, sitting
down and throwing his head up. "What a place it is for wind!"

Daunt also sat down upon a chair by the table.

"Has Mrs. Shaxton been long gone?" he asked, swiftly.

"Just gone," said Heans. "I must explain. Er--it was a little child--a
neighbour's child. Mrs. Shaxton is sad about it."

"Heavens! it must be little Emily Meurice!" said Daunt, with a dark
flush. His amiable manner suddenly left him, and he became sharp and
bitter. "You can tell me," he hissed, "If the Captain is about to-day?"

"I do not know, sir," said Heans, stiffening.

"What! You don't know!" (He gave his hearty little laugh.) "You haven't
quarrelled with him, come now! He'd have been in, if he was at home?"

"I don't think he would have much to gain, sir!" said Sir William,
forcing out a jerky laugh. "I tell you what it is" (with a glaring
hauteur, if still laughing), "you do talk damnable rubbish!"

Daunt darted a look at him, "Indeed--indeed!" said he, holding himself
calmly. "Indeed, who would quarrel with a man like that! An easy-going,
unsuspicious, joking, hospitable gentleman! Heans, you have my sympathy
about the neglected prison. I suppose, sir, you hang about here in hopes
of your colleague's return?"

"I hang about here!" said Heans. He dropped his glass, and swinging it,
said in a hoarse voice: "We must remember where we are!"

"Oh, very well--I merely understood you'd been about here all day. I
agree with you, it is a thankless task waiting upon these restless
fellows--these witty gentlemen so much in demand!" Daunt had his mouth in
his cupped hands, and he was speaking into them as one might into a
trumpet.

Sir William suddenly rose to his feet, saying, with a fierce reserve:
"Whom have I the honour to discuss with you? Is it our hostess, Captain
Shaxton, or myself--a prisoner at a disadvantage with you? This woman has
by her kindness--her companionship----"

"This woman!" slashed back the other, with an upward glance. "This is a
lady, sir--one whom I have known and revered dearly for these three
years--years of honourable friendship and close intercourse."

Each eyed the other in a fierce silence for a moment.

"Mrs. Shaxton has, I say," continued Heans, "made my life bearable
here----"

"Yes, and for comfort's sake, she may connect her name with
yours--yes--yes----?"

"What!" "I say, connect her name with yours--your name."

"My name? My----name!"

Sir William stood there daunted for a moment. Suddenly he burst out: "She
has made my life more tolerable, I say--a mode of existence, you appear
to think, needs the addition of your flippancy and approbation!"

"My flippancy, you singed butterfly!" (Daunt rose with eyes balefully
fixed.) "I put it to you, you'd find a flower to trifle with in the
Garden of Eden."

Sir William had been standing there, his hand in his velvet waistcoat,
and scorn on his pale face. A great relief suddenly overcharged this, and
possibly to hide a change he was aware of, he bowed his head with
elaborate courtesy, stepping backward. Daunt whipped a glance behind him.
Just inside the door, Mrs. Shaxton was standing, with her hand still on
the handle. Her long forehead-curls vibrated about a face of tense anger.
She pointed her hand at Sir William Heans.

"You are to blame, sir," she said, in a strained, broken voice, "for"
(and her voice suddenly broke altogether) "this behaviour in a house
where you know that there is mourning. Stand back, sir--and you, Mr.
Daunt, if Sir William Heans can so easily forget a friend's grief, you
need not have forgotten the many days of friendship this room has
seen--its record of goodwill which you have broken. Ah, Sir William
Heans, is this a gambling-house that you should dare to speak as you
choose in it? It is my home, to which I made you welcome. Mr. Daunt, you
are an old friend here----"

"Always your servant, madam," interrupted Daunt, with his frowning face
hung towards her.

"Give it to me, then, with less show of sternness."

"I serve you, madam, with such means as I am allowed; as an old friend I
serve you."

"A friend too eager--too eager--too bitter after fault, Mr. Daunt--too
ready to punish--too doubting----"

"To a lady so fine-hearted--to an old friend?"

"Have I a fine heart, Mr. Daunt? Thank you--thank you! It's a heart
helpful or hating, as its friends choose to make it. This has been a
terrible day! Emily dead--ah, threats and anger in the house whose blinds
are drawn for her! You had better go--my--my comforting friends--what
have you for a bitter woman?" She turned back through the door, her hand
still on the handle, yet again confronting them, as though she could not
let them go with such sour words. Daunt stood among the chairs between
her and Heans, and faced her with head slightly lowered, yet stern eyes
lifted, as if he would probe her soul. Heans, glass in hand, with a sort
of homage, yet with his pale, handsome face tense and unutterably
dignified in its withheld anger, seemed patiently to wait until he might
go. Yet the hand which held the eyeglass had dulled it, and the fingers
quivered over some regret.

"Go now, please, Mr. Daunt," whispered Matilda, "and please come back
again when you can, and we are happier, and help me to forget the anger
and dreadful words which have been spoken here." She held out her hand,
and he suddenly sprang forward and bent his head over it. He was going
out, and Sir William Heans would have passed her without a word, when she
touched him--speaking rather appealingly.

"Sir William Heans, here is the key of the yard gate." (Daunt did not
turn his head.) "We have locked your horse in. He is restive and the
latch is loose. We were frightened that he would break his bridle and get
into the garden."

He started, almost snatching the key. "Thank you, thank you," he said
gratingly. "I am sorry he has given you this trouble. The confounded
wind--it maddens him."

It must have suddenly flashed upon him why she had done it, and why she
had just been so hostile to him. Bending away, he gave a blind look into
her face, repeating, "Thank you." As Daunt passed down the four steps to
the lower hall, he looked up and saw the tears falling from the woman's
proud eyes as she stood against the door.




CHAPTER IX



A P.P.C. CARD


What a poor thing--this woman--at which the ages rail! Pray let us
fashion a better and more miraculous gift from God and the spirit; from
darkness, gloom, and dust! Empty the world of her airs, and her hair,
and her loving, ironic, slightly wearied eye! Take her away, with her
music, her wit, her strangeness, her frail body and her pain, her brave
little feet walking beside us. Give us--the road without her! What a
gimcrack companion for the grim road! Is it Galatea? Is it the draggled
figure of Patience, come down from her monument, and defending us with
arms meant for loving? Heavens! we scientists could fashion something
with a less unexpected voice! What is it? What is it, with its head
decked with gew-gaws, its dragging feet, its jewelled voice, its black
and silver pearls? Is it a statue from the Pyramids? Is it Peron's Oura
Oura from the Tasmanian forests? Take away her tragic face, grown thin
with love: what does she mean by this for us! Cross those little arms?
Away with the fair young head; it's been weeping! How strange! How
unfortunate! Heaven and earth, evolve us something different!


When Sir William rode up on Saturday to Pitt's Villa, he found a little
party at tea on the terrace. It was a close, breathless day. An unearthly
sun flamed in the garden and woods. But the channel and hills were
black-blue.

An old Mrs. Testwood; a minister, with a bitter mouth; and a young woman,
with long copper-coloured ringlets, addressed as Henrietta, were sitting
with Matilda before the windows. Sir William had fastened his horse at
the door, and was shown in by the dour maid, who contrived in the short
distance between front and drawing-room doors to convey a singular
impression of familiarity and faithlessness. Matilda Shaxton, who looked
exceedingly sad and pale, received him with a sort of gladness and took
him to a chair between her own and that of old Mrs. Testwood. The latter
only ceased her rapid, harmonious chatter when Matilda muttered Sir
William's name, when, bowing elaborately if languidly, she resumed it
without the faintest increase of emphasis. Old Craye, the clergyman, had
ducked out of the mist of talk with a sort of daunted gleam. While the
pretty girl with the copper-coloured ringlets pulled her shawl about her
with a shrivelling timidity, and did not bow at all.

"Now would Miss Lecale be of use to you?" Mrs. Testwood was asking of the
old clergyman. "She treads on everybody's toes, but, her tread being
unintentional, leaves no bad impression. She is one of the most uncourtly
ladies of my acquaintance, but for some reason the Hobarton world permits
her tongue a licence for which it would ostracize another's. She is brave
also. Nine years ago, when the Blacks were threatening the country
between Hobart and Launceston, she brought all the girls home from
school, at Ellenborough Hall, going herself in the fly-coach with the
cavalry. Henrietta"--turning with a rustle of fringed shawl to the young
woman--"you were one of the distressed Rebeccas!"

"Oh, indeed," said Henrietta, flushing, "I shall never forget the terror
of it. Some of the girls had pistols given them. She was just like a
man--so brave and collected. The men were very reassuring. The most
distressed of them were cracking jokes as they rode beside the
carriages."

The whole party was for a moment lost in reverie.

"I have already seen Miss Bullinger Lecale," said the clergyman, in a
gentle, acid voice. "She has somewhat lost her faith in subscriptions and
indeed in the whole scheme. 'The poor wretched creatures,' she said, 'do
not want money or its equivalent. They are dying of home-sickness.' The
Bishop, she considers, should petition Government for their removal
home."

"Bishop Nixon has been Fidus Achates to the natives," chattered on the
old woman, "but he is stricken down with marsh fever. He has been a
champion of Flinders Island. [Note 6. The place of exile of the Tasmanian
Blacks.] But since he has been ill, the Blacks have sunk from people's
minds."

"If he be disheartened, what faith may we place in any one man's care of
men?" said the clergyman. "Our health fails and our love sours for an
instant. In that instant the devil of sternness or indolence is put in
charge and some hideous wrong is done. Charity seems to demand machines
of health--not men."

"We are weak vessels," smiled the old woman, with her crinkled lavender
hands clasping her toy parasol. "Homer nods! Even that devoted 'Father
Clark' of Flinders tells me how, one day, when not quite himself, he lost
his temper with, and chastised, some women. Afterwards, he said, he went
along the shore, trying to forget their piteous appeals. 'They knew that
I loved them, ma'am,' he said."

Sir William had become somewhat haggard and pale, as he sat by Mrs.
Shaxton. He pushed his chair a little behind those of the two ladies.

Matilda's eager face was very small, and seemed almost lost in her hair.

"They--the natives," she said, leaning forward, her neck rather sadly
drooping, "have to rely on our mercy."

"God has put them in our hands," said Craye, "for some reason."

"How can we deal with home-sickness?" said the old woman.

"We--we could lighten it," said Matilda.

"Indeed--it might be lightened," echoed the rather hoarse voice of Sir
William Heans.

"Miss Lecale always said," the sharp old woman muttered on over all
obstructions, "that the 'wretches would die out of some gentle ailment,
just to aggravate us for calling them savages.' I'm sure, from what I
have seen, many of them are gentlefolk. I remember my mother reading to
me from the Post, fifty-four years ago, when I was a girl of seventeen,
how that they had won the hearts of D'Entrecasteaux and his
Reign-of-Terror Frenchmen, by holding aside the bushes for them as they
guided them into the Island. Was it not civil in them?"

(Sir William Heans had turned to Mrs. Shaxton, and was murmuring under
the talk: "Grief in your voice--as I can't forget it--might have kept me
away, madam. A grave reason has brought me up--or it seemed grave, before
I sat here with these happy people."

"Is there anything amiss?" asked Matilda, in a kind of crushed way.

"Amiss--oh no!" said Sir William, almost lightly. "Look--what a fantastic
sea--what a sad sea--what a grim sea! I have never seen it look so
strange. What would you do, Mrs. Shaxton, if you were situated as I am,
and some one came and told you you could get out?"

She seemed to touch the tea-cups blindly. But her face was turned away
from him. She seemed to ruminate, but he could not see what she did for
her ringlets.)

Sly little Henrietta was saying, she did not think it would do to be lost
among them, meaning the natives.

Mrs. Testwood answered, that she had been told by old Mrs. Mountgarret
herself, how she had strayed as a girl from the Camp, in 1804, and been
directed back from the forests by some natives. "It is these little
refinements," she continued "these humane doings, more than the terror of
their stand, which made us women weep in the streets, when Monpeleata and
the blacks of Frenchman's Cap walked in behind Mr. Robertson--eight
Januarys ago."

"Ah," nodded the old clergyman, who sat with his back to the sea, "who
will forget it, who saw it? I recollect some noble lines by 'Hobartia,'
in the HOBART TOWN MAGAZINE:


They came like straggling leaves together blown,
The last memorial of the foliage past. . . ."


("Would you bravely do this?" Heans leant towards Matilda on his plaid
knees, and seemed to murmur, as if lost in his subject. "I cannot buy the
schooner--The EMERALD--Mrs. Shaxton. Captain Stifft must do it. My
skipper--Captain Stifft--has narrowly escaped prison for some affairs of
this kind, and, with heavy suspicion upon him--and these sharp fellows on
me--our chance lies in not meeting. For me to be seen again with him is
precarious. Fraser's Club, a mutual rendezvous, is full of convicts--many
of them constables; registered rooms are not for secret meetings. Should
he buy a ship, after he has again been seen with me--even if they do not
see the money pass between us--I may be watched too closely. I fear I
shall hardly trot my nag to Spring Bay."

"Am I to give it--to him?" breathed Matilda.

"Can you?"

"Here--at this house?"

"No--not here," said Heans, with a slight flush. "Some runner fellow may
follow him.")

They listened a moment to old Mr. Craye, who was reciting in a fine
indignant sing-song: "The wounded were brained; the infant cast into the
fire; the musket was driven into the quivering flesh; and the social
fire, around which the natives gathered to slumber, became, before
morning, their funeral pile----" But Miss Henrietta, who had espoused the
side of the Colonists with unexpected fire, returned upon him pluckily
with the tale of old Ibbens, who, having his wife and little children
killed in his absence from home, followed the Eastern tribe, creeping
upon them at dusk with his musket, till he had avenged their deaths.

("There is danger after Mr. Daunt's inquiries?" Matilda said, half
heedfully.

"Yes, with a fellow of poor Stifft's fame," nodded Sir William Heans. "We
met that day in the wood below your gate. We have been meeting there on
my pass. We heard the sound of Daunt's horse and ran for it. Stifft hid
in the wood. But for your letter, Daunt would have discovered the Captain
and me in conversation. I am not certain whither Daunt's motives may be
leading him. He may trace delay, but anything more, he does not!
Latterly, Stifft and myself have had no open communication. We have been
subtle as the grave. Yet--permit me--though a lady would not lightly be
suspected of dropping a purse from her carriage to help an absconder; if
a man like Captain Stifft came within touch of the house servants, there
might be some after-clap." He presently asked her if she would drop the
notes from her carriage.

"From my carriage?" with a slight look of straining. "Do I understand
you----?"

"Yes, if you can and will. Time is limited. To be of any service it must
be on the afternoon of next Tuesday. I have taken the liberty of writing
down directions, and when and where Captain Stifft will wait."

"On Tuesday?"

"Yes--on Tuesday--after three o'clock."

"Someone, who saw him pick it up, might arrest him for stealing it."

"I have explained that. He will run after the carriage with it, if he is
seen. He will stand under an oil-lamp half-way up a lane ascending from
Macquarie Road. You will face him as you turn into Davey Street.")

"Ah, give them their due, ladies," said the indignant old man. "They were
treated shamefully. I was reading only yesterday in a back number of THE
ALMANAC: 'Let them have enough of red coats and bullet-fare. For every
man they murder, hunt them down and shoot ten of them. That is our
specific--try it.' . . ."

"Oh, but Mr. Craye," cried Henrietta; "the little babies they speared!
There was the child, brave Dolly Dalrymple, couldn't get through the door
into shelter, because of the spear----"

("Presently, if you will permit me, I will get up and go," muttered Sir
William Heans. "Where I pass through the drawing-room window, there is a
small box on a fringed table. It has a picture in coloured woods. Is it
not Tunbridge ware? I will put the money in that--if you will allow me?"

"Pray put it there," she answered, at the same time smiling a little
sadly at something Henrietta said. "I must think . . . I think I will
help you."

He too laughed; a kind of ironical laugh, for his face had grown pallid.

"How quietly, madam, you said those words!" he murmured. "When I'm a
dying man, it will be there."

"The danger--the danger!" she muttered. She had taken up her embroidery
again, but her head seemed to tremble as she bent over it.)

"It is a sad fact," said the inexorable Mr. Craye, "that the Blacks
killed many of their own little children, during the war, that they might
march the quicker."

"Ah, Mr. Craye, there was pain on both sides!" said Matilda, possibly
with an eye to Henrietta's heightened colour.

"I have always heard," said old Mrs. Testwood, flowing in on the ebb,
"that one of the causes of the estrangement was an incident which
happened in the Government Paddock, where many tribes of Blacks, invited
in by Governor Sorrell, were manoeuvring before the whites. It seems a
young native beauty, who had been much petted, suddenly threw a spear at
Captain Hamilton--the aide-decamp and a man of great dignity--narrowly
missing him. When he complained to the Governor, for he was very angry,
his Honour--as he was then, you know--sent the whole of the natives away.
They retired, brandishing their weapons, furious at the discourtesy which
they considered had been done them. . . . The native tribes never again
accepted an invitation from Government, until, eighteen years after, Mr.
Robinson brought in the dreaded enemy. . ."

("How the voice haunts," said Sir William Heans quietly.

"Didn't you know it, sir?" said the bowed woman, sadly.

"No, I did not know it," he said.

"Whither are you going, Sir William Heans?"

"Oh, we are going--how shall I tell it! Should the schooner be
sound--some high-toned Chilian port, Santiago, Valparaiso! If she's
leaky, as we fear, Gun-carriage Island, or the Babel Isles in the
Sealer's Group, there to catch a seal-ship!"

"Did you know someone had spoken to Sir John Franklin about you----?"

"No, I did not. 'Pon my honour, I'm most thankful to them!"

"Stay--you had best consider of it--the life--here--before taking so
terrible a risk. It is likely that her Ladyship or Miss Crackcroft will
be requiring your services--in the Aborigines Society--or the new
Circulating Library. Indeed, your surroundings would be happier----"

"No--no! I'm too old--too old. I'm grown--forgive me--beaten and
close. . . . If Heaven will not let me choose--then nothing!"

"Ah--but what shall we do . . . if they----!"

"Don't say it"--looking downward with a harsh flush. "Say, 'Friend, go in
peace!'"

"Then--then," she whispered, seeking the table with her fingers, "my hand
must help you--Oh, God, pray Heaven, 'in peace'!")

The young lady with the brown ringlets, named Henrietta, warmly shifting
her Indian shawl, was saying that when she was at school at Ellenthorpe
Hall, a circular reached Mr. and Mrs. Clark recommending all owners of
dwelling-houses to create trap-doors in the ceiling, by which the women
might escape to the roof.

Sir William had risen, regretting with a somewhat drawn gallantry, and in
a voice a little too excited, that he must interrupt so alarming a
reminiscence. "Might he be permitted," he said, "to give his casting vote
to that young lady," indicating Henrietta. He was certain that his friend
in holy-orders stood in a false position--on the trap-door. There was a
little reluctant clatter of laughter, and old Mrs. Testwood turned and
looked at him out of her feathered poke, her glance strained and fetched
from far, but intent, voluminous, and on the whole charitable. The
Reverend Mr. Craye, rising ceremoniously, eyed him with a bitter little
gleam; while the girl known as Henrietta blushed a little and smiled, but
did not look towards him.

Matilda did not move from her place, but, when she had risen, and he had
kisssed her hand, she said, quietly and gravely, "Am I to tell my husband
the drawing is finished?"

Heans paused an instant, looking down over the terrace and sea as if he
would reassure himself. "Pray tell Captain Shaxton," he smiled, "that my
drawing is concluded, even to his motto over the main door."

The blue of mountain and sea had darkened, and the sun shone in patches
on the descending landscape of the nearer slope like a light at night.
Heans left Matilda, straining after him, dark-faced, if standing a little
bowed, with her hands clasped upon her heart.

Striding towards the windows of the drawing-room, he stumbled upon the
flag-stones, dropping his grey hat as he regained his balance. From
within the glass, as he stooped, came subdued male voices. A step nearer
and there was the red of a uniform, and Hyde-Saxton's broad, round face.
His companion was Garion, of the mounted police.

Shaxton's mouth had a little melancholy drag at one corner, unusual to
it, but he began laughing as Heans entered. "Ho-ho!" he said, "it's you,
Heans! Here, Garion--Sir William Heans. Where's the drawing? Have you
finished the drawing, Sir William?"

"Finished it! Yes, I've finished it," said Heans, a little angrily. He
had acknowledged the Lieutenant's somewhat steely obeisance. "When will
you see it?"

"Oh, come, you're losing patience with me! You're giving me pepper! Has
Matilda got tea there? Yes--I'll come into the office some day next week.
Mark that. You must be sick of me. It really is highly civil of you. I'm
nothing but a consummate puppy when I get going with those hero fellows.
Now--you're a perfect pattern, Heans--aren't you--got all the possible
virtues! I suppose you call it frittering away my time! Oh, now--you must
have patience--like the woman in the tale--ho-ho!--who asked her husband
what she ought to do when the men flattered her: 'Give them time, my
dear,' he said; 'it's only a freak of the moment!'"

He laughed, but there was something weak-winged in his bubbling
merriment. His chuckle never entirely exorcised the hovering droop. He
joked, but half-crossly, and in a subdued way, not quite like himself.
There was a tinge of the puzzled pettish in it.

Matilda was heard calling from the terrace, "Wouldn't they join them at
some tea?" Sir William, at that instant, said he must go, and bowing
ceremoniously to both gentlemen, made through the chairs towards the
door. Captain Shaxton, loudly laughing, ushered his friend through the
French-window on to the terrace.

Sir William turned near the door, and crept back, yellow as death, to the
red table. He fumbled some papers into the hand that held his hat, and as
he drew back the lid of the pretty box and thrust in the papers, he
glanced up. The terrace was gleaming with a wild light, and Matilda was
receiving the two men with her sad face lit.




CHAPTER X



A PROUD MOMENT


When Heans reached his attic that night, he found Mrs. Quaid waiting,
wild and tragical, among the classic furniture. She handed him a letter
which she said had been left two hours previous by what she described as
"a garringson gentleman in a cloak." "Bad news or good," she said, "I
would not let him past the door, especially as he seemed undecided in his
purposes. He spoke amiable however. Presently he asked if he might sit a
bit 'in Sir William's room,' and I showed him into Mr. Boxley's
sittingroom, where I left him staring at the ancient ALMANACS. At last he
summoned me and said he was afraid he could not wait, but left a message
that he would be in the Private Secketry's Office at Government House on
Monday morning, if Sir William Heans would be pleased to call."

Heans approached the hooded windows with the letter. Mrs. Quaid removed
her doubting old face through the doorway. The gusts were huddling past
the dormers, and an old prisoner in grey hobbled across the street below,
with his head bowed to meet them. A dull evening was closing in. There
was a remote noise of hoofs, and a stout man in a caped overcoat, with a
singularly rough, sly face and a small chimney-pot on his head, rode down
the street, slopping forward in his saddle, and staring about him at the
houses with wide, short-sighted eyes. Sir William, as he opened the
letter in his hand, saw this fellow twitch his heavy horse about and come
slowly back up the street.

The letter was headed Government House, May 4th, 1840. It said kindly
that "Lady Franklin, hearing from Mrs. Hyde-Shaxton that he was a
relation of old Miss Gairdener, whom she knew for a famous old blue,
wished to know whether Sir William Heans were interested sufficiently in
poetry and literature to aid them in the noble task of forming a
Circulating Library for the industrial classes. Our humble friends," she
went on, "have so little chance of reading the nobler forms of
literature, and so few suitable places in which to gratify the pastime,
that several gentlemen and ladies have banded together to erect a reading
room, and have already prevailed on mutual friends in the Old Country to
provide suitable volumes. Half the funds for the building and sixty books
are already at our disposal. Lady  Franklin would be glad to know whether
Sir William Heans, if proposed and elected, would accept the position of
Secretary to the project and Treasurer of the funds. She wishes to be
informed at an early date."

A somewhat satirical look passed over Heans' pale face, and, as he stood
by the attic window, he let the letter flutter from his hand to the
floor. He saw the rough fellow stop in the drab street beneath him and
dismount, with his capes flapping about his head. Heans snatched away his
eyes. Far down through a vista of roofs the grey water slopped about a
black pier.

He dropped an eyeglass from a pallid eye.

Then lifting the pale blue letter, with its lavender writing, from the
boards, with his first and middle finger, he seated himself at the chest
of drawers which did him for an escritoire, and 'nibbing' a quill, began
to flourish off an epistle with the graceful elaboration of the beautiful
hand of the day.

"Sir William Heans with his duty to Lady Franklin, and begs to reply that
he will be pleased to offer his services for the position of Secretary if
Her Excellency wishes it and those interested elect him. He thanks Lady
Franklin for her kindness, and is prepared to further the project with
such address and energy as he possesses." (Gently swinging his eyeglass
by its gold chain, Sir William looked away. His fire ducked under a gust
and puffed smoke into the room. The fastenings of the blistered windows
smacked taut and held. The rafters rattled above his head. His face
slowly fell to a deep despair.) "Sir William Heans," he suddenly
flourished on, "will be very pleased to wait upon the Society."

Again he stopped, and slowly erased a sentence. He rose, and there was a
look in his white, tired eyes almost of panic. His fine face seemed to
have crumbled. He drew a deep breath and put his eyeglass carefully back
in his eye. Perhaps he thought he was growing too servile under the
Hobarton weather--too eager in his attic--too hopeless in his great hope.
Or was he possibly lying too well for his erection of a gentleman----?

Hurrying steps creaked on the stairs outside his door, and Mrs. Quaid
knocked and put her head in. Her eyes were grim and dark. "A bearded
gentleman," she said, "is asking for you, sir. I can't make him out. He
says he can offer Sir William Heans a service, if he will see him. But
there's something about his face, sir, that I remember seeing. Do you
know, sir, I don't think he's----"

"What is this?" said Sir William, with his face but half turned to the
stairway.

"Why, sir, I've seen the man in uglier clothes than black--I'm certain
about that."

"Is this--tut--tut--is the man a prison-incorrigible?"

"No, sir. But the airs of the person. He's dressed up like a long-coater,
but gives himself too many airs."

"Is it one of the policemen----?"

"No, sir, I've seen him once in a prison uniform."

"You've seen him in the prison uniform! Aren't you mistaken?"

"No, sir. It's his short-sight I go by and his legs: a dangerous sort of
man."

"That would be some time back?"

"Fifteen years--perhaps. He must have made money. Oho dear!"

"He doesn't know you?"

"No," she said, and cracked out wanly: "he doesn't know me no longer!"

"You had better show him up," said Sir William. "Say 'Sir William Heans
will see you.'" (He returned and took his seat with a certain ceremonious
abstraction at the chest of drawers, lifting and reperusing the letter of
debate.) "This is highly extraordinary," he muttered.

Mrs. Quaid disappeared, and presently there was a sound of heavy
breathing on the stairs. A small, stout man in oiled jack-boots and
Benjamin overcoat, with a thin growth of black-brown beard about a broad
chin, hobbled into the room, his legs bowed as with too much riding. He
held a whip and a small chimneypot before him on his stomach (it was a
large, ornate whip, covered with much silver), and looked about with sly,
blindish eyes. Detecting Sir William near the escritoire, he stopped, and
said in a shrill voice, "I've found you, have I? S'cat, what a world!
Aha" (looking about him as he shook his coat from his arm)--"so this is
where Sir William Heans--lives."

"Thank you," said Heans, looking up rather testily, "it is. I did not
catch the name."

"Oughtryn--Charles Oughtryn--d--n it, honour, can't I put my hat down?"
He went searching about for a chair. He seemed half blind.

Heans came forward, took the curious article, and deposited it with
ceremony upon the escritoire. The other unbuttoned his cloak, disclosing
a fine, over-long frock-coat, many-buttoned and tight-sleeved. He sat
down slowly and somewhat carefully on a dilapidated sofa.

"Gentlefolk--gentlefolk! in such conditions!" he shrilled. "Well--well! I
remember when I would have thought this a penny heaven. But see what
uprightness has brought me to. I can sneer at you, Sir William Heans."

"Can you?" said Heans, nodding at his letter. "Well?"

"Well, honour--I know all about you--but you don't know about me. I say
that with all the satisfaction of the vengeful devil I am. Ha, what a
mess your blood has brought you to--I suppose you say it's your blood!"

Sir William stared at him for a while. "By Heaven," he said, laughing a
little, "you are a rude creature! Have you brought me some better news
from the--Penitentiary?"

"Uh, the old scold told you that! A vulgar passionate person--I remember
her in mutch and duffle. I see through her. I've a daughter now--but no
wife. Look, honour" (with a shrill heave), "I've seen you at Fraser's,
and on your pleasure-horse. I know all about you. You're ginned. You
haven't got a chance. I've been waiting till you reached low enough for
me to offer you a service."

Sir William grunted just audibly. He was rather white and frowned a
little.

"A singularly modest nature!" he said. "You're quite certain that it
is--the moment?"

"If any one wants, he'd better move soon."

"Even--the man known as Charles Oughtryn--you put it that way?"

"Yes--I want a gentleman for my business."

"Devil take you, fellow!" burst out the other, breathlessly. "Get up!
Take your gross figure from this room."

The man rose from the box with a shrill cry.

"No, wait a moment," he cried, stretching out a blind hand, "I'm before
my time, perhaps. If you listen to me I'll be respectful. I have a farm
at Bagdad, and a fine stone house in Macquarie Street. Money and sneers!
I'm here about this child. She's a thin, young child, plain to look at,
and it's my whim to see her brought up to ride and that in the company of
a gentleman. She won't look at a horse yet, and is clumsy and blind. I
want her made to take an interest. Now, need I explain to you, honour,
any more what I came here to--to--offer you?"

There was a tense silence for a few moments while Sir William raised his
despatch before him and continued to stare upon it. Presently he said
with calmness, "No, you need not explain. I do not wish to hear anything
further about you or your daughter."

"Trust you!" said the man. "I know you gentlemen. You must have your
feelings touched--the girl's as unpleasing as I am; it's no favour I'm
asking. It's a sacrifice, dammee! Fancy a man asking that for his young
child!"

Heans' face had softened a little. Before him was the letter to the
Governor's lady, and he had taken up his pen and dipped it carefully in
the ink, as if about to continue it. Indeed, his eye was half-consciously
re-reading as the man spoke: "Sir William Heans with his duty to Lady
Franklin----"

"They used to call me 'Belial,'" said the convict, "so I call her
'Abelia.'"

Heans began a kind of polite laughing.

"You make me very curious, Mr. Oughtryn," with a sort of merciful irony,
"as to the arrangements you may have formed for the acquiring of a luxury
like myself. Forgive me for laughing." (He suddenly bowed his head.) "I
have so few jokes. I am at present in great demand. It is rather
overwhelming. Let me initiate you into this letter on my desk here. I am
asked by a lady, the wife of a high official, to become the organiser of
a society charity. I am just now accepting this responsibility. This was
gained for me by the efforts of an angelic soul, Mr. Oughtryn, a lady of
great beauty and goodness. Had this not been done--and but for a private
matter--I am not certain but that I would have accepted the care and
instruction of your daughter."

The man's beard trembled and he put up his hand and pulled at the yellow
handkerchief which did duty for a neck-cloth. His eyes glared into Heans'
face.

"Ah," he cried, with an oath, "it's hopeless, is it? The child must go
begging for her gentleman! I'll never get such another chance; you're
ginned, for all your great ladies; and she--poor ignorant person--she'll
remain the shrinkable chit she is." He rose, and waddling forward to the
escritoire, took the hat Sir William held towards him. The former rose
kindly from his chair, with his quill in his fingers. The other turned
and walked towards the door without saying anything. At the door he
turned and looked back. "When the notables has done with you," he said,
in a small bitter voice, "and you go back to Fraser's, Charles Oughtryn
will keep his sneering eyes to himself."

The door banged upon him as if it would thrust him out, and his tread
went heavily down. Again the sea-gusts huddled against the dormers. Sir
William, with a somewhat ironical smile, returned to his escritoire. Even
while the man was yet upon the stairs, he took up his letter of reply and
slowly tore it into small pieces. He then began an answer in the
negative. Presently Mrs. Quaid appeared, her anxious face lit by the soft
beams of two home-made candles.




CHAPTER XI



HE MAKES A GOOD-BYE


One morning some weeks on, Heans was waked by a loud rapping upon his
door. He was instantly conscious of Mrs. Quaid's voice telling him from
the stair that the constables had just called and informed her that 2749
(the exalted number of her listener) was to report himself at the
guard-room at the jetty-head at ten o'clock. Heans had no word yet of
the EMERALD or his money. He had drunk rather heavily of some cheap wine
before retiring (for economical reasons he had resigned his Burgundy),
and as he rose and called tragically for his breakfast, his brain surged
with fears for Stifft and a wrecking of his hopes. Habit, rather than
will, dressed him with leisurely detail. When he had fitted his breeches
over his devotedly varnished boots, "mounted" his satin stock, assumed
his black-velvet waistcoat, his chains, seals, and wonderful spotless
clawhammer; combed his French moustaches, arranged with exquisite
neatness his slightly-curled grey hair, he came less shakily up the few
steps into his sitting-room. A wan sunlight was on the windows, and his
egg, toast, and favourite jelly lay on the precarious table by the
chimney. He was about to breakfast, all standing, when Mrs. Quaid
appeared with the grey earthenware coffee-pot. Instantly he grew his
ceremonious self, and she, from a somewhat agonised entry, stiffened to
a grumbling defence.

"The police have gone?" he asked, settling himself in his chair and
opening a handkerchief over his trousers.

"Oho yes, they're gone," she sighed out. (She had a trembling stealth
about her.) "What have you been doing, fetching the constables to my poor
house, Sir William 'Eans?"

"You're certain they have gone?" he said, as he carefully cut his egg.

"There's not a soul in the lane--that I know," she informed him, placing
the coffee before the fire and moving covertly here and there. "That's
why your egg's hard. Young Bertram's gone up the street. When he comes
back he's to whistle--hark, sir!" She put up her trembling hand.

"Whistle if the road's clear?"

"Yes, sir." (She had gone back to the door, and was listening.) "I can't
bear them constables coming here, sir. I must speak plain. Oho dear! I
hope there's nothing wrong. No lodgers 'll stop where there's police.
I'll lose all my figure--I will. They know where I've been." (She was
listening as hardly knowing what she said.) "Mr. Boxley 'ardly sees you,
sir, without threatening me under the table-cloth to Mrs. Boxley, though
he do copy your honour's cravats and--hark, sir!--waistcoats. There's
whistling now, sir. That's my boy Bertram. There's no one about." Her
seared old face, as she looked into the room, and her numb lifted hand
were grim with gratitude.

Inwardly Sir William was easier. He rearranged his handkerchief upon his
knees and began to approach his egg. Possibly he had witnessed the arrest
of an absconder. The stubborn inexorability of that operation in no sense
resembled this mere visitation--this tainting touch and light
evanishment. He was also familiar with the bottomless strategy of the
police--their preference for arrest in the open, and pains to accomplish
it--yet was calmed by the conviction that neither his own nor his
landlady's defences (nor even consideration for the eclectic cravats of
Mr. Boxley) invited to any such refinement of method. The face of his
prisoner-landlady would alone have confirmed him that he--the plotter
Heans--was safe yet with such vague usage.

Mrs. Quaid waited a moment on the second stair, the door at her shoulder.

"Mr. Daunt 'as a room at the jetty," she stated. "He's severe on some of
'em."

"At the jetty--yes--yes--so he has. He's severe, is he?"

"Oho, dear, a fair gentleman, but severe on some. I hope he'll get no
down on my house! He's quick to detect good--and kind to improvement,
I'll say that. He's been very kind to me. (Yes, Bertram, we 'eard you.)
'You're past the Rubicon, Mrs. Quaid,' he says; 'keep this up, and you've
nothing to fear from me.' Oho, dear, it was a great day for me when I saw
Mr. Boxley walk out of my door with his high collars. If you could
consider Mr. Boxley a bit, sir, and give him a bow now and then? It's not
only my respectability I'm serving."

"We will put it down to your conscience, dear Mrs. Quaid."

"Well, sir, I get into such a fright. It's anxiety! If gentlemen come
here and make mistakes I can't be blamed----You're looking pale this
morning, sir." This was said with a trace of sympathy.

"In mourning for my Burgundy, madam. I'm better already for your
enchanting Mocha."

She stared steadily, yet not quite at him, her ringlets dangling about
her scarred ember of a face.

"I'd ha' given up my horse, Sir William, I would," she said, "sooner than
take in that stuff of Braxley's."

"Come, Mrs. Quaid, what is your quarrel with old Suffolk? I can't give
him up?" (He seemed moved.)

"Wait--I shall want him this morning. Pray, tell Master Bertram to fetch
him."

"What time, sir?"

"About ten."

"They said ten."

"Did they indeed . . . well--well, you will give him my order. I will
ride from here at ten."

"Ah, them constables . . . I've no right to speak with a gentleman of
experience! They never moves, Sir William, I'll warn you, never without
intention."

"Why, Mrs. Quaid, I have been fretted abominably by these fellows: pulled
up for nothing here, reported for less there. I am acquainted with Mr.
Daunt--I know their arrogant, abusive methods. This is my 'circulating
library' affair, in which more than likely Mr. Daunt has thrust his
altruistic oar. Ha--ha!" (he began to walk rather wickedly)--"our careful
Mr. Daunt! Quick to detect anything and kind to improvement--well--well!
It would never do, dear Mrs. Quaid, if I improved myself quite out of
touch with these constables--now would it?"

"I get in a fright when I think of you, sir," she cried, "so
innocent-like among these men." (For the instant her face looked among
its ringlets as full of memories as that of an old galley-witch.) "That's
Mr. Boxley calling for his shaving-dish! Coming, to your honour's
pleasure--coming! Oh, for the love of Heaven, sir, be obedient! That's an
officer who's an influential man, sir! I'll never listen to a word
against Daunt in this house. I've lived in Hobarton too long not to know
my rock and defence, and the good advice and remembering I've 'ad from
him. There--that's what he's done for a prison-woman! I'd swear to that
gentleman's conscience afore a court of law!"

Sir William rose and irritably shook his kerchief napkin into the fire.
He then carefully dusted his shepherd's-plaid legs with it. His face was
somewhat sad and angry. "You will not, Mrs. Quaid," he said, "forget
about my horse?"

She had pushed the door before her till the little stair was disclosed,
and, five steps down, Sir William's bedroom, and the dark tea scented
mouth of the well.

"Your honour, Mr. Boxley's pleasure, sir," she shrilled; then threw her
ringlets up with a glare of anger. "Ah, I'll order your horse," she said,
in a trembling voice, "and you'll ride down the town with it. I wish you
a brave journey--a brave journey--and may God keep the crumbs off your
honour's fine pantaloons!"

The door banged behind her, and Sir William, flashing round, put a hand
tremblingly towards the logs. Suddenly he swung back to his "escritoire"
and seizing a sheet, began a letter with the words, "My dear Stifft,"
only to pause with a wide eye, and presently pitch it carefully on the
fire. With his eyeglass in, he now took his seat again, and ceremoniously
opened his PLUTARCH. He began reading at the eighth page of the life of
Cato the Censor. "This contrast was found, not only in his manners, but
in his style, which was eloquent, facetious, and familiar, and at the
same time grave, nervous, and sententious. Thus Plato tells us, 'The
outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his soul was all
virtue; and from within him came such divine and pathetic things as
pierced the heart and drew tears from his hearers.'" (Here Sir William
heard a slow foot mounting his stairs, looked up, paled, stilled his
shaking hands, and read sternly on.) "One day, when the Romans clamoured
violently and unreasonably for a distribution of corn, to dissuade them
from it, he thus began his address: 'It is a difficult task, my
fellow-citizens, to speak to the belly, because it has no ears----'"

There was a summons upon the door, and it was drawn back. A shabby man,
with a handsome dieaway air, stood in the gloom of the stair. He had
little dyed whiskers and a seared top-hat worn awry. Successful--in
better heart and better dress--he might have been a sardonic young
doctor; now, black clawhammer, strained breeches, boots, and even his
harrassed, tragic, petulant, unshaven face, seemed one and all
infinitesimally in decay.

He stood in the dark, smiling and swinging his cane, until Sir William,
breaking off his reading, gave him a glassy if ceremonious stare.

"Well?" called Heans, in a faint, sharp tone.

"Carnt," said the visitor, with a sort of sharp laugh. "Can I see you?"
He was staring in openly and darkly.

"Heavens, come in, Carnt!" said Sir William, struggling slowly up. "How
is your Piccadilly influenza?"

"Catching--plaguey catching," said Carnt. (He came up; threw his hat and
cane upon a battered ottoman which was producing some promising iron-grey
beards, and with his hands on his high hips, stood gazing at Heans.)
"Cornered by Mrs. Quaid in the passage," he continued, "who seemed afraid
of me--a grim sensation. She is in my catalogue as the angelically rudest
woman I beard."

"And you with your lively ladies," said Heans (for Carnt was then clerk
to the women's prison at the Cascades), "should have experience. I
suppose, sir, you get soured?"

"I do," said Carnt. "Yet the lowest of them flaunts one high moment in
her face if you could but tap it."

"Why, Jarvis," cried Heans, with a light laugh, "still digging after
marsh-lights in that miasma!"

"Jack-o'-lanterns!" laughed Mr. Carnt.

"Light-o'-loves," laughed Sir William Heans, and then turned deadly pale.

Carnt was silent, swinging a little.

"Bromley was at the prison last night," he began, "togged up for some
state dinner. I was hauled out of the office into the gateway, and
questioned as to my goings to and fro. I was asked when I had last seen
S----, then Henry Six, then Weighton, Starkey, Dalgleish, and you." (He
stared for a moment rather sheepishly at the other.) "They wanted to know
whom you played with, and whether I was one. I said I had seen you
playing with Six and, I thought, Starkey, but not with Weighton or
Captain Stifft. I told them you were rather a duffer at cards, but were
very careful whom you played with after I pinked Rudstone. I said,
moreover, that I seldom played with you because your play bored me----"

"Rather untruthful of you," said Sir William, greyly testy, "seeing that
I beat you against the cards three consecutive nights in Six's shop."

"Pooh--pooh--'a game of chance in the nursery,' as old Rudstone says when
they catch him cheating. Moreover--d--n it!--you had all the aces! They
know me better than you do. I think I was believed, a peculiar sensation
from Bromley. Careful as he was to hide it, I gathered Daunt has a secret
contempt for you--a golden asset I did not corrode with heroics; though
not clever, that man has a sort of feminine intuition. How have you
deceived him?"

"Heavens, the feminine intuition is not always right!" said Sir William,
rising and dropping out his glass with a puff of relief. "The fellow is a
hazing booby. I am, believe me, favoured with a visit from constables
this morning. My presence is required at the quay office at ten o'clock.
(Oh, don't be alarmed--yes, they're gone, sir!) Through Shaxton, and his
generous lady, I am offered a secretaryship among the literary people
which I have refused. I am--hang it!--possibly to be inquired into for
that!"

"Singular!" said Carnt. (His thin lips were twisted in his high-coloured
face, and he seemed inclined to shadow some sardonic morality at the
other through a startled look.) "Deuced singular! But stoopid--heavenly
stoopid! Heave the anchor! All hands to the sails! Ah--and all your
friends--and the lady, Mrs. Shaxton--with what a romantic interest you
will remember the old prison station, Heans!"

Sir William Heans grew haggard as he stood eyeing the speaker. Carnt
slowly dropped his eyes, and began to draw from the tight sleeve of his
coat a small uneven packet, which he handed to Heans with a somewhat sour
irony. Sir William took the enclosure in a short wild way, with a face
half ecstatic, half touched with amazement and confusion. Perhaps the
smell of tar upon it had reached his nostrils with a hint of open sea.

Carnt turned away to the window, swinging with wide eyes and hands on
hips. "There was another row," said he, "last night at Fraser's. Silk and
Goddesden fought like cats over a story about Silk's murder case. Stifft
moved up while the row was on, and passed this into my hand with the debt
of a quid owing. He said, 'Pass that in to Sir William. He'll give you
five pounds for that.' Singular way he talks. We then had some words
about the woman dropping the money from her fly----"

"Did he--was he so little of a gentleman----?"

"As to mention names--yes, he was! Stifft is too talkative. I think
you're a fool to trust a man with such a little mouth."

"Faithful," mumbled Sir William, terribly moved.

Carnt, in his light way, swore before G--d he was lucky.

They were silent for a while. Carnt seemed to grow harassed and tragic as
he looked through the little windows over the brick walls and black
shingle roofs to the dipping green waves, on which a tarred skiff with a
long stack and great paddles was heaving her way slowly across from the
Point. Her whistle went dimly. There was a far-off noise as of heavy logs
falling on iron: an organ note. He went to the window and put his hand
upon it. Presently he spoke from there. "Pray give me my money and let me
be off," said he.

"Certainly," said Sir William, "I have it here--I would it were fifty.
One moment--don't go yet--let us see what he says."

He reached for the comb in the PLUTARCH, and slit the package. Unfolding
this with a slight increase of colour, he eyed the few words: "Money to
hand. Secured boys. EMERALD near dry. Launch next Saturday. Sail on
Wednesday morning, August 22nd. Hang off Spring Bay on Thursday, where
boat will wait near mouth of creek after dusk."

"Listen, Carnt----" he began hoarsely.

Carnt flashed round, "Stop," he said. "D--n you, I mustn't hear it! I
can't listen to you!"

The other looked at him with a flash of grey amazement in his face.

"I am still a prisoner here," said Carnt, with maddened dignity. "You
knew I was dangerous."

"And a d--n fine fellow, Carnt," Heans said gravely; "ah, I'm grateful to
you, sir; this is for my friends to hear!" But he dropped his head, for
he remembered once having seen this sentimental, worldly brother under
the transformation of wine, eloquent, convincing--an accomplished
cheat--giving away a friend's soul-secrets in a malignant rattle of
treachery.

"The poison of asps was under the lips" of poor Carnt when he had been
drinking.

He moved slowly round, and pulling open his writing drawer, took from a
pigeon-hole a green netted purse, in which were some fifteen sovereigns.
From this, screening the action with his person, he worked out ten coins
upon the desk lid. Then sweeping them into the drawer, he rose and
advanced towards Carnt.

"Accept this purse," he said, "it is valueless, but done with devoted
fingers."

Carnt held it up, dangling it cynically in the window light.

"Feminine, I suppose!" said he.

"You refer to the women with some bitterness, Mr. Carnt!"

"Oh, I haven't your method for referring to them lightly!"

Sir William turned away. "No," he said.

"I would to G--d you could leave me your remainder in another of them!"
Sir William was grey as ashes. Carnt was still in the window. "D--d if
you couldn't take your wide free skies, and me these bonds with her."

"And how would you have won her?" asked Sir William quietly.

"I'd obtain a promise from her to drop a purse to a drunken skipper--and
all the rest of it. Then when I went to say 'farewell,' I'd----"

"What?" in a somewhat brokenvoice.

Carnt was looking at the dipping green water and the life-empty hills of
a thousand trees.

"G--d--I'd go," he said, hoarsely; "yes, I'd cut myself of man and place!
I'd fall, like you, and be my petty master. I'd leave the lady--and the
others--leave 'em to bleach, blast 'em, and never think of them again!"

He turned with his sardonic face sad and dark, and put the purse
carefully into the lapel of his breeches.

"You speak hardly, sir," said Heans.

"Away with you," said the other; "away with you, Sir William, like Flora
in her car. But, by Heaven, don't get grabbed! Possibly you wouldn't
bleach so prettily as me."

"Let us end it, then, in this familiar strain," said Sir William, acidly.

"Let us enumerate our pleasures together," hoarsed Carnt, throwing his
body up.

"Why should that word touch me?" cried Sir William.

"Heaven knows--excuse me! I'm in love with some of the women!" said the
other; and both were silent.

Drip--drip--drip! a rainy mist had begun to patter from the gables on the
sills of the little windows. Carnt had been swinging in the centre of the
room, his hands in his lapels, his gay head down. Suddenly he threw it up
and laughed gently. "Ha-ha-ha!" And he began to walk, a trace ruefully,
towards the stair.

"Why, Carnt," said Sir William, from his desk, "I shall go a sad man for
life, with these words upon us, Carnt. I'm getting freedom, but losing
people I desire to speak with, in life--the irony of it. The little world
won't give them back--no. And I--I am not such a God-forsaken egotist I
can speak words of anger and go out--anything but shamed and cut to the
heart. From my own, I know how cruel and bitter is the life I'm
leaving--made bitter by small men and our pride--eh, our pride. I wish I
had the strength--I'd be better no doubt--to wait it out with you."

Carnt turned near the door, laughing gently.

"You wouldn't," he said, shaking his head. "You mistake me. I have
business--cards--wine--dominoes--totem--and 'lively ladies of the
Cask-Hades,' ever new, changeable as an April day. What more will you
have in Dieppe? I'm even something of a poet, Sir William, and can find
considerable pleasure in our 'exquisite surroundings.' It is so large to
us English--eh! Yet under the mountains there's many a little hill and
trickling water. Now, now, here's a hand--indifferent clean, Sir William!
Stifft keeping his button shut, you'll get now out of it, thank Heaven!"

He strolled back and the two men locked hands. Carnt turned, strolled out
of the door, and went humming down the dark stair.

Now, the reader may be interested to read how curiously the irony of Fate
played with the relations of these two men.




CHAPTER XII



NEARING THE END


Sir William, in a graceful variant of that over-clawhammer known as a
spencer, and a tall straightbrimmed hat, arrived in a drizzle at the
pier-head. To the right, running out of sight along the stone
shore-wall, was a line of massive brick buildings, closely alike,
many-windowed, low and shingleroofed. At a door in the blind wall of the
nearest--over which hung an oil lamp--stood a triangular sentry-box, and
by it a soldier, with a waterproof covering on his shako (from which his
long neck-hair draggled in the wet) and a cape half-covering the white
bandoliers and double breast of his coat. On the glass of the lamp were
the printed letters: "Sub-inspector." To his left, and behind him, rose
an abrupt knoll of small-dwellinged streets. There were few people
about. A squad of constables in clawhammers and leather top-hats (and
carrying short, heavy guns) tramped sullenly up into the town. Two
stiff-linened old men clad in frock-coats, very high-waisted and
full-shouldered, walked across with their hands stuck in their breasts
and their old precise heads nodding together. A few carts, with names of
river stations upon them, were drawing or drawn up at a bar behind the
offices watched by convicts in grey, with black straw hats, and grim
mouths cropped of hair. Over the water to the left, piles were being
driven to support a new pier, and an army of prisoners-for-life, in
yellow uniforms, with flaps of their leather caps drawn down over their
ears, were raising, by a pulley, on wooden shears, a great mass of iron,
which fell every few minutes on the iron-capped pile with varying notes.

The EREBUS lay against the side of the pier, a red-coat pacing her
quarter-deck, her masts moving solitary against the hills. Nearer the
shore-end, two ship's officers and a gentleman in a short soldier's cloak
stood waiting above a boat which swung a little on the waves, its
whiskered, black-hatted crew sitting with vertical oars. Some ships were
lying out, pulling heavily at their chains, while, splashing the water
like a lame duck, one heavy steamboat with a machicolated funnel was
paddling slowly into the channel, while another, with a tarred body, was
dwindling slowly out of the opposite trees.

As Heans dismounted on the wet flags, a gipsy-like convict, incongruously
devil-may-care with his felt jacket and shaven face, approached,
brilliantly smiling, and made proffers for his horse. The man professed
to admire the animal: qualifying his praise, however, with the wager that
"the beautiful gentleman's honourable legs had straddled a neater
barrel." Behind his volatile flattery, he was significantly, if
half-sneeringly hostile: a form of approach familiar to Heans from the
prisoners. It was as if the convict--unable to help forcing the fact that
he knew him, as did many in the town--would have given this man his
championing as a fellow prisoner, and one, moreover, who carried it off
so cleverly, could he only have resisted the chance Heans' situation gave
him of making one of the "swellmob" feel his position. The temptation
seemed tragically irresistible.

Pale Sir William, who had gained in confidence after his unmolested ride,
tossed the man his bridle, asking his name with an admirable kindness.
The man's eyes returned him a black look, answering abruptly:

"Jack Marback."

"Indeed--well, Jack, keep him walking," he directed, "while I take my
honourable legs into yonder door. I shall be gone but a few minutes."

"The Honourable John Franklin himself has just arrived," said the man,
with a covert enthusiasm, as he took the horse. "He went in that very
door like a hadmiral. There's the gig there, with the jacks in her,
holding up their oars to dry 'em."

"They'll wet their brave laps," said Sir William, as he hopped off.

The door of the office was now open, and in it stood a colossal constable
in a top-hat, muttering and flipping his fingers at Heans. Sir William
was engaged in avoiding the puddles between the flags. The sentry was
grinning from his box. Heans glanced a polite glass at the warder as the
latter said, vibrant with cold anger, "Late, No. 2749. Pass in--pass in!"

"Ah--ah!" said Heans; "most sorry, most sorry."

The door gave on a great bare hall, the size of the entire front of the
building. It was full of waiting police with guns: some like him at the
door; others with black blouses, belted, and heavy peaked caps strapped
about their whiskered cheeks; others yet, in the grey uniform of the
prisoner, with muskets and single shoulder-belts, the latter divided into
two compartments, or canvass bottles, with nozzles hanging in
finger-reach on right hip. Sir William, as he strode through them at the
order and beckoning of a second constable of a horse-power integrity,
endeavoured to forget the smiles and slights--the herding of dissipated,
wondering-eyed men--the lining up--the silencing--in that very room on
the day of landing.

A Heep-like man who was taking down names at a table at a far window
ostentatiously leant back in his chair and contemplated the new-comer
with the tips of his long fingers touching. Further down the room, two
officers, in full uniform, stood in the channel windows, talking with
their cloaks on their arms. As Heans was led towards a great stair in the
wall at the right end, one of these gentlemen turned and put his hand to
his cocked hat. It was Daunt. But he did not come forward--the other did
not turn his head. Sir William's glass whipped out as he ascended the
boards of the deadly shoe beaten stair. With him this was evidence of a
brain very heavily taxed.

"Some inspection?" he inquired, as he turned the corner and ascended
towards two great doors that opened against the walls.

"Inspection--country-wards," smacked that brisk and weary self-sufficient
in a steam-power voice somewhat restrained.

"I did not see His Excellency?"

"H'Excellency in the ward-room." He pointed up.

"By whose orders am I here?"

"Order last night through Government Offices for No. 2078, No. 160, No.
2749, No. 270, and No. 1350 to attend guard-room before ten. No. 160 and
2078 prompt to time--now attending His Excellency in ward-room. No. 2749
late. Message from Excellency wishing Sir William Heans to honour him
with attendance on arrival."

A stern old man at the stair-head called out: "Pass up--pass up." He was
all covert keenness and discipline, like a knife in a sheath. It was as
if he had drawn himself just so much as to give a glint of the steel.

Sir William put up his eyeglass as he came into the upper room. "How
d----d unkind!" he muttered, apropos of some inward thought. Near the
door stood a little group of civilian gentlemen: one of which--a stout,
little, short-necked man with whiskers and a tortoise-shell
glass--glinted up at Heans and then quickly away. They were at the moment
silent. None spoke. The room was long, bare, and narrow, with two windows
on the street. A line of seven policemen, claw-hammered, white breeched,
and top-hatted, armed with cutlasses and guns, stood at attention by a
closed door in a wooden wall across the upper end; behind them a
corporal's guard of red-coats. Two young constables held a prisoner in
yellow in the first window. His face had been made grim by cropped hair
and shaven lip, but his eyes were wild, angry, heroic,
nothing-contenting, entirely-unappeasable eyes of those unfortunates of
life born without the seventh sense of values. At Heans' entrance, this
man pulled his guards round towards the window, with a deep, hysterical
protest. They permitted him to stay in that position.

"Ruddy's got Port Arthur, I see, sir," said Heans' conductor to an old,
fine man, very hook-nosed and high-stocked, in white breeches and police
buttons.

"Ah," said the other, "Ruddy says 'he'll get himself hung!'"

The speaker strode over to the door in the partition, knocked upon it,
and presently entered and closed it. A shy murmur--three quarters rattle,
one quarter boom--had been filtering through the wood. Again the door
opened, and a sergeant in a red coat with a white breast came out
followed by two soldiers. Behind them lurched out two chained prisoners
in black and yellow: one a giant figure of a man, with a covert, cunning
countenance; the other a little, gay old fellow, with a keen malignant
face, and the erect athletic body of a child--indeed, it was difficult to
judge if he were old or a mere boy. They were marched away to the window,
and after them came a couple of constables. Reached there, the sergeant
in a loud voice halted them, and began to look about him, pulling at his
whiskers; his eyes then falling tentatively on Heans' guide, he
shouldered his weapon and made over to him.

Sir William could not prevent himself from looking exceedingly pale. Many
apprehensions must have occurred to him, as, some way inward from the
gentlemen at the door, he stood looking through his glass about him; one
immaculate, plaid leg a little in advance of the other on the coarse
boards; his cane swinging gently from his canary fingers. On the one side
he saw the chained "second-sentencer" condemned to Port Arthur; on the
other, the little band of gentlemen; in the midst, himself, a convict,
summoned seemingly on a matter of "literature." While a certain
benevolence of acceptance, since he had passed into the upper room, might
have assured him of safety--nay, even of support--yet there was something
in the manner in which he had been summoned to the Governor's presence,
in company with a man sentenced to Port Arthur, which may well have sent
a shudder of apprehension through him. Again, all this display of ordered
force: what an unkind turn of fate which had thrown into it a secret
absconder! "How d----d unkind," he said, as he rose into the room. Last,
Daunt's show of friendliness! What did the forgiveness of a man like
Daunt mean? He might well have asked: "Did Daunt credit him with the
weakness of being confused by compliment? Was Daunt at the old game of
stripping a foe's heart of armour for the next man's sword to play upon?
Had Daunt, at sight of him forcing his way through that sea of police,
been startled into one of his half-friendly moments? Or, more likely, had
the man's mistrust been allayed by the sight of his (Heans') reply to
Lady Franklin?"

(Devil or philanthropist, which was Daunt?)

The sergeant approached Heans. "His Excellency will receive 2749," he
said in a loud voice. Sir William stepped forward, and followed the man
across the room to the partition door. There, while they waited an answer
to their knock, he examined, with some curiosity, the side-arms of the
sardonic line of police.

The Government Surgeon, a brisk, white-whiskered gentleman opened the
door, and the sergeant, stepping aside, sharply beckoned Heans to enter.
The old, fine man in the top-hat and police buttons, made way for Sir
William as he came in, and departed with the doctor, who shut the door
behind them. The small room was barish, with a window hung with heavy red
curtains looking on the street. A dark, athletic-looking man, in a
captain's uniform, was sitting back against a table, with his fine hairy
hands resting on the edge. The sensitive lips gave the bald head and
bull-dog face a halfsardonic air, belied somewhat by the quick and
saddened concern of the wide bold eyes. There was no one else in the
room.

It was an age of stiff and laudable pedantry; when Adolphus and Achilles
were christian names of the vulgar; when man, in a fine endeavour to
ornament his speech, to elevate his person, to "exalt his Maker," often
dropped to mere, cold precisionism--even hypocrisy; when common women
read Scott, and spread his poems by the heart. We can afford to laugh--we
who, in our own time, with our wild equalizing of human temperaments, are
threatened with a drab end of formlessness! Franklin was one of these
men, his precisionist air softened by a great and feeling heart; his
religious, Dominie-Sampson face in strange contrast to the free, athletic
grace of his person; the whole softened by that slightly sardonic,
sensitive, dangertautened mouth. These were lips, whose love of man was
such that they were incapable of forming the word "beast."

Sir William remained just inside the door. He had removed his hat and
stood fiddling at the buttons of his black spencer, somewhat constrained,
his grey head bent. Franklin sat there a full minute, staring at him;
then he said, softly and quickly, "Do me the honour to listen to me, Sir
William Heans. I want to beg you to earnestly--to earnestly" (his voice
was hoarse and he cleared it) "reconsider your position. A lady has
interceded with me for you--a gentlewoman--and I am inclined to grant her
request. You have had some visible token of what--with help from you and
God's help--we may endeavour to bring about. Your refusal was a formal
one. Tell me--is it your actual wish to" (hoarsely)--"to refuse to make
this effort?"

Sir William took his eyeglass out, and fingering it a little
pedantically, looked gravely into the street, where the carters stood
staring up under their black hats.

"It was my regret, sir," he said, pushing forth his words one by one, "it
was my regret to answer the letter received in the negative. I could wish
to accept the position perhaps, had I the power to--the power to keep my
patience." He flushed slowly as he fingered his glass and stared out of
the window.

"I think--courage is all that is necessary," said Sir John, with a
compunction almost familiar in his voice, "courage and forbearance. . . .
Wait! perhaps you had better think a little before you decide. I, at
least, have felt it my duty to tell you so."

"I cannot think so," said Sir William Heans, after a little.

The Governor was now very moved, and spoke quickly in his hoarse, quiet
voice.

"Sir William Heans, I have seen men in the North-West sink to degradation
and death under too adverse circumstances. The slow degradation of a
gentleman is a torturing sight, for his very pride and heroism. I have
seen a man's hands tied to prevent him injuring himself, and yet he would
crawl about on his knees sooner than trouble a weaker brother with his
wants. I have seen pride and I know its value, and how trivial is the
worth of life when it is gone, but I do not care--like that good young
lady, your friend, and I cannot stand--if an effort can prevent it--that
we shall have to think of you with utter ruin upon you. This is a stern
place; man's inconstant heart cannot manage man without iron laws. If
once you stoop beneath a certain level, we are powerless; the law is
written in iron that will deal with you. When the ship's loose of her
anchor she must sail or drift. They tell me, Sir William Heans, you stand
in a serious risk of drifting--aye, drifting deeper and deeper into the
pack, till your sails rag on the mast. These are men who think they know
my charge better than me."

The Governor's daunted face; the firm, small, trembling mouth; the
feeling, danger-deadened, carenothing eyes, waited on the prisoner's--it
seemed almost world-indifferent--for an answer. Heans stood looking out
of the window, but he said nothing.

"You will not move your proud foot thus far," said the Governor, "in
pursuit of an honoured life!"

"Your Excellency said 'honoured life,'" said Heans, dropping his glass,
with a wild, little bow. "Is there such a thing? And will you find it,
sir--great traveller as you are--for a convict in this town? I put little
value on existence. My dignity and honour none of your laws can touch. If
I lose them, I shall cry out to no one. When they are gone, the more
vulgar officials can use no more worse methods against me than have been
used hitherto. Do not fear for me, kind sir. I am grown too old and grim"
(with a bow) "with the grey side of difficulty to play with the young
ladies. The worth of a man's life--what is it? I pray you credit me with
a certain happiness in my own way of it."

The Governor had risen, and was looking at him, one arm akimbo on the
lace of his clawhammer, the other fingering the hilt-tassel of his
grounded sword. Utter dismay, sadly withheld, was in his face. He spoke
after a little--at first with difficulty. "Possibly I do not value life,
sir," he said, "any more than do you. But I believe in an honoured life,
or a life deserving of it. We have to fight for our very sacrifices in
this world. Not only that, but, when sacrificed, they may be written down
as errors. That is what many a prisoner here runs foul of. He thinks his
quarrel is against man. It is Life he is in engagement with. It is of
Life he is asking justice. And Life often reserves its justice. . . ."
(He stopped suddenly, as though conscious that his feelings had bolted
with him.) "You talk of honour. Hush!" he went on, deeply moved; "I will
give you my idea of it in a man. It is that he should not wound his
friends by his falling. If a man have bravery and not compunction, he is
no gentleman. What to him becomes mere life, must be to his friends a
perpetual tragedy. If you must go your own way, Sir William Heans, see
that you wound as little as need be that gentle woman who has tended you
in your distress--by some unthinking bravery."

Something of the sternness of Heans' position was echoed in Franklin's
face. He stood looking at the other with a sort of mute invitation. Sir
William Heans took up his glass, as he stood staring out (at the
grey-clad prisoners in their black hats, at the wet town, and vastly
above, the splendid frown of Old Storm Mountain, from whose forested
bosom had come the shingles of the snuggling roofs), and put it carefully
in his eye. Then he turned and bowed quickly and gravely.

Franklin swung round to the table, and, fingering for a second among some
papers, lifted his hand towards a brass touch-bell. "I am waiting for
your word to ring, sir," he said.

Sir William Heans said, after a moment's hesitation, "Pray be good enough
to ring, your Excellency."

The bell clanged, and the door opened. The doctor entered, and saluting
the Governor with a bright inquiry, stood quietly upon one side. The
sergeant put his KEPI round the door and nodded. Through the opening, the
chimney-pots of the line of police bobbed oddly, as the men lowered
bronzed or pallid faces.

Heans made a bow, which the Governor answered with a nod jerked sadly out
of his high cravat. Then Sir William went again into the outer room,
across which he followed the sergeant, not to the window where the other
convicts were standing with their warders, but towards the incurious
gentlemen at the stair-head (old Mr. Magruder, the magistrate; Mr.
Duterreau, the famous artist of the Blacks; Dr. Jeanerret, the new
Governor of Flinders Island; the volatile Mr. O'Crone, the travelling
SAVANT, a small, handsome, fair-whiskered, excited, intellectual
personage, young, if rather oldfashioned as to costume, with a stoop, a
shirt-frill (of all things!) and tasselled Wellingtons, just arrived in
his pleasure yacht, the QUENOSABIA, from England, and very interested in
prison-life; Major Leete, of the Women's Prison, stiff, handsome, grey,
but somewhat falling to pieces; the famous Mr. Robinson, short,
red-haired, wearing trousers without straps and a balloon crowned
travelling cap, whose freckled face, so peculiarly gentle and commanding,
had faced, with incredible courage, tribe after tribe of murdering
Blacks, and, unarmed, brought in 450 in one year to lay down their arms
in Hobarton; dangerous Mr. Montague, the Colonial Secretary, deep in
conversation with old Mr. Gellibrande, the attorney)--through these
incurious gentlemen at the outer door went Sir William, down those
abominable stairs into the thronged hall, where Daunt, in animated
conversation with his brotherofficer, looked up, laughing very heartily,
till his eye touched Heans, when it lost something of its jollity.

The Heep-like man at the table again relinquished his work, leaned back,
and stared rigidly at Heans as he passed across the room. The door was
crowded, and the sergeant had to push a path through surly shoulders. A
prisoner was being brought in. He was a little, grey-bearded man,
dreadfully quickglancing and amiable, but deadly pale. His irons and his
black and yellow dress were covered with wet sand. The constables were
carrying him in with a kind of cynical compunction.

Heans passed close beside them, and reached the door as pale as he. Had
the man's pride-stripped face troubled him?

Outside, the sun was shining on the wet flags, and the place echoed with
the "splash--splash" of the paddle-skiff rounding into the pier. Sir
William Heans paused beside the sentry and beckoned for his horse, which
was brought up at a sort of prancing run.

Along the shining pier, the officers, above the swinging boat, watched
him rise upon his horse.

"Has the beautiful gentleman caught a wigging?" asked the carter, peering
up at him as he buttoned his spencer and straightened his hat.

"I should think I had," said Sir William. "Here's your shilling, Jack
Marback."

"Lag's luck to your honour! I'll wet it with a mug of bull." [Note 7.
Spirit.] Heans smacked his whip down suddenly, and caracoled off towards
the rise, his graceful tails slapping the back of his saddle.




CHAPTER XIII



SHAXTON NUDGES DAUNT


On the 19th there was a banquet to the officers of the bomb-ships at
"Hodgson's celebrated Macquarie Hotel," and Captain Hyde-Shaxton and
Daunt, of the foot police, found themselves only divided at the table by
Lieutenant Cooke, a mutual acquaintance. A rich globe-trotter and SAVANT,
Homely O'Crone, who sat on Shaxton's right, claimed much of the Captain's
attention during luncheon, more especially as the former did not seem to
be in good odour with the Colonial officials about him--neither with old
Magruder, the police magistrate, who was grumbling his food in on his
right, nor yet with Daunt, who twice ignored his approaches. This
gentleman enveloped Shaxton in an excited discussion on navigation, in a
rapid, cultivated voice. In the muddle of it, Shaxton
laughed--agreeable--jolly--if, for instants at a time, lost and
abstracted. He would lean over his plate chuckling as he related some
anecdote of his BEAGLE voyage, but his gaze would float away sometimes as
though he heard "voices in the wind."

Duty took Cooke away before the speeches, and Shaxton, with a lack of
ceremony which would have been brutal if it had not been somehow a part
of his Bedouin nature, forsook his excitable friend, and slid talking
into Cooke's seat. He seemed, though once he chuckled out a tale,
mentally to lean on Daunt. He tittered gloomily.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Daunt, frowning about him with wide eyes
and neat air. "Was she taken ill suddenly?"

"It seemed to me sudden enough," said the other. "She had a sort of
fainting-fit. Dr. Wardshaw won't say anything. We couldn't get her out of
it. She'd had people calling about the young girl's death, you see. Heans
was there. I thought him bad-tempered. He may have been losing his temper
with the women."

"Creating a scene--destroying the harmony, and that, you mean?" Daunt
leant forward half-smiling, half-indignant. His hand was clenched on the
tablecloth.

"Ho-ho-ho--indiscreet, poor beggar! The women were purring on his raw
side possibly. But if that's it--he mustn't go up there when I'm away any
more. Matilda feels for him. She's far too delicate for these tragic
situations."

Daunt was staring stern and concerned at his plate. The other gave a
little look at his face.

"Of course your wife told you," Daunt said, at last, very deliberately,
"about my tiff with Heans in your drawing-room?"

"No," said the other, chuckling, but turning white. "What's this?
Quarrel?"

"Surely you've forgotten, Shaxton?" speaking very quietly. "She must have
said something about it?"

"No," said Shaxton, "I never heard of it."

"Well, it was nothing," said Daunt, briskly. "I'm afraid I lost my temper
with the man for being there. His--I can't say it delicately enough--the
idea of his gross behaviour--and all that, in connection with that pure
bower makes me mad whenever I meet him there. I hated--forgive me,
Shaxton--I hated to see your wife even look at him. I must remind you I'm
a constable, and am not touched by the good appearance of a prisoner. I
felt she wasn't discreet enough with him. See them as I saw them
together. Finding him there, sitting like a full dog among my old
friend's embroideries and flowers--and his languid greeting of the
privileged guest--of 'Oh Daunt--so it's you, is it?'--I say this drove me
mad that afternoon, and for a moment I--I lost control of my feelings. I
said he was there for no good. I beg your pardon. Indeed I beg your
pardon, Shaxton. Your wife interrupted us. At the sight of her face, with
signs of tears (she had been mourning her friend), I admit I was very
much ashamed of my show of feeling."

At this moment, old Magruder's growling voice rose in answer to some
rattling of O'Crone: "You should take your pleasure-boat round to Port
Macquarie, sir. There is some clever prison-building there. The scenery's
wind-blown and harsh for those fond of it, and empty of human sadness, as
you know--abandoned."

"My skipper is frightened of your Hell's Gates," said O'Crone, stooping a
little, with his fingers in his beard. "Once in, and I and my schooner
might stay among those abandoned prisons for life." He turned suddenly to
Shaxton. "Forgive me, Captain Shaxton," he said, "but did I hear you
mention a name, 'Sir William Heans?' I am acquainted with a certain Miss
Gairdener, a relation of this prisoner, and knew him a little before his
conviction. Indeed, I thought I saw him at the police muster. Has he
passed down out of all communication?"

Shaxton puffed out his pale cheeks, and stirred himself in a frowning
way.

"Oh, he's all serene," he said. "You can meet him if you like--I can get
him up to tea at my house, if you want to meet him." He gave Daunt a
nudge with his left arm. Now, Daunt was a strange man to nudge.

"Can I--can I?" nodded O'Crone, with keen interest. "Well, I must say I'd
like to see the man. Thank you--wouldn't it be putting Mrs. Shaxton in a
curious position?"

"A curious position! Oh, bother it, no!" chuckled Shaxton. "We see a lot
of Heans. She had a letter from your Miss Gairdener about him."

"Indeed--indeed!" said the other, stooping over and feeling the table
with his hand in a somewhat harassed manner. On his little finger there
was a peculiar black ring with red hair in it. His nature seemed to be
that either of an untactful intellectual, or one to whom life had allowed
a peculiar and, perhaps, just egoism.

"I'll tell you what," said Shaxton, with a hospitality half-bright,
half-wounded; "Mrs. Shaxton's in ill health. Dr. Wardshaw orders a change
to my place on the Tier. It's a grand drive. When you've lionized the
Factory, you come up for the day with a party. Daunt, you'll bring Mr.
O'Crone up. We'll get Cooke. Perhaps Captain Crozier would come. And
Daunt" (with a drooping of the lips), "you could get Sir William Heans a
pass out. I said I'd show him the place, and he'd meet somebody he'd
known,"

Daunt poured himself out a glass of wine. His face was meditatively
knitted, but he gave a little worried nod towards O'Crone. It seemed like
acquiescence.

"Indeed, very happy!" said O'Crone. "It might be as well, Mr. Daunt, not
to mention names. If he is the man he used to be, he might refuse to meet
me."

"Ah, I suppose he would come, if he was told directly?" asked Shaxton,
looking palely round at Daunt; "he's a proud man."

"Do you wish him particularly to come?" said Daunt.

"Yes, I do," scrambled out Hyde-Shaxton, who looked suddenly almost
drawn.

"I may say--I am not so prejudiced in this man's favour, Mr. O'Crone,"
said Daunt. "He is one of a class which--as Sir John Franklin puts
it--has no sense of compunction. Superior in manner, of course, but,
still, to me, one of that class of men."

"Ah, Mr. Daunt," cried O'Crone, in his rattling, cultivated way, "you
police are too prosaic! This is a man who was condemned on a woman's
code. In men's eyes he committed a capital crime in the meshes of a net
of intrigue and allurement. He was a man, by repute, peculiarly sought
after by women."


(N.B.--The abduction case of Sir William Heans and the Lady Charlotte
S----t hardly needs retelling even at this date: so world-wide was the
story and so much discussed and questioned the actions of both. They used
to say of the beauty, as they said of Mary Stuart, that "only one man
ever encountered her and came away uninfluenced." Sir William Heans
wanted to run away with her to the Continent. The high status and
celebrated attractions of both people; the fact that the beauty was a
married woman; and their names being so often connected (indeed too
often) in society and in public, spread the sensation widely throughout
England and over the Channel. We will not detail the story. Sir William
and the lady, having arranged to coach together to a house-party in the
country (not a novel excursion to the pair), they met at the mail office,
where Heans handed her to the wrong coach for which he had obtained both
fares. The lady must have been more innocent than her reputation if she
had not suspected he had purposely made this mistake, but were she
innocent, or a species of coquette, his sin remains indelible. The
"mistake" was not discovered till late afternoon, and when discovered
they alighted at a certain village where a hack-chaise was procured, and
they posted across a county with the object of catching a late coach on
the other route. The lady does not seem to have shown alarm at the
escapade until dark fell and the roads became difficult, when the
outrider, who was in Heans' pay, overheard an angry altercation in the
carriage. The sympathies of this man had from the first been with the
beauty, and they were not much allayed when, on his confessing he could
not make his way, she haughtily demurred to their turning into a
neighbouring property owned by a friend of the Baronet--then absent. She
was persuaded at last to drive to the door of the mansion, which for a
long while she could not be persuaded to enter. When, loudly protesting,
she at length did so, Sir William--much out of countenance--led her to an
upper drawing-room, and locked the door upon them both. An outcry was
shortly heard, and the postillion, having aroused the feelings of the
servants, they demanded the door should be opened, and when this was not
done--maddened at the continued screams--two of them entered by a ladder
through the window, when the furious woman sought their protection. Thus
the story. It is a fair comment on the case that the lady was in after
life again in the Courts.)


 "Ah, sir," returned Daunt, in a somewhat ironical tone, "you, with your
pleasure-yacht and your musical-glasses, have leisure for these
intricacies. I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, women are
given as the excuse for their downfall by every four convicts out of
seven! We police have come to regard it as a particular sign. Experience
brings us to that decision. We are interested to hear it in so far as it
tells us the kind of man we are facing."

"Upon my soul, sir," said O'Crone, with signs of anger, "you're a trifle
stern, sir! You make me damn glad, sir, I'm not a prisoner in one of your
prisons!"

He said this in such a significant way, and his heat was so sudden and
evident, that Magruder and others bent over the table to see who it was.

"Oh, yes," said Shaxton, chuckling out wildly. "That's Daunt--all over.
Too stern--too severe! Now, Daunt--ho-ho!--have him up! Mr. O'Crone is
interested! Matilda, too, will be glad to----

"You shall have the prisoner, Shaxton," said the Superintendent, who,
unusually for him, had lost control of himself, and seemed to speak for
O'Crone's admonishing; "he shall come up to Flat Top Tier if I have to
send a message by him to the District Constable at Jerusalem!"

"Pon my soul, you're good, Daunt! Thanks--thanks. Who's this speaking?
Why, there's Jeanerret up!"

A tall florid man was speaking, now with wit, now with a sort of bitter
indignation. He was using impassioned gesticulations and such phrases as
"Let a man put his hand to his heart and say" and "an arrearage of
justice." He seemed to be appealing for the exiled Blacks of Flinders
Island, and said they "were dying like bears." [Note 8. The small
tailless opossum, which, when captured, refuses to eat, and mopes and
dies.]




CHAPTER XIV



HEANS'S TICKET-OF-LEAVE


* * * * *

[Ticket of leave]
POLICE NO.     POLICE OFFICE    HOBART TOWN,

21st August, 1840.

The Bearer. WILLIAM HEANS, a Prisoner holding a Ticket of Leave, has
permission to pass this day to the house of Captain Shaxton at Flat Top
Tier, and return on or before ten p.m. of the 22nd day of August, to this
office.

To whom it may concern. JAS. MANWOOD.

* * * * *

N.B.--THIS PASS IS TO BE TAKEN ON THE DAY THE BEARER ARRIVES IN THE
DISTRICT TO MR. Chief District CONSTABLE OF Richmond, WHO WILL WRITE HIS
NAME AND DATE ON WHICH IT IS EXHIBITED TO HIM HEREON, AND ENTER THE PASS
IN HIS BOOK. THE PASS IS TO BE RETURNED TO THE POLICE OFFICE AT HOBART
TOWN BY THE BEARER; AND SHOULD HE HAVE OCCASION TO RETURN BEFORE THIS
PASS IS OUT, HE MUST LEAVE IT AT THE POLICE OFFICE ON THE DAY HE ARRIVES
AT HOBART TOWN, AND SHOULD HE BE UNABLE TO LEAVE HOBART TOWN THE DAY THIS
PASS IS DATED, HE IS IMMEDIATELY TO RETURN IT TO THIS OFFICE.


It was a still, oppressive night, and very cold. Sir William had with
difficulty settled himself to his PLUTARCH and his tobacco-pipe. The
ragged, amber room, if outwardly the same, from being a permanent place
of residence to which the chilled mind had endeavoured to yield itself,
had become a dangerous and precarious lodging for three days--a restless
place of harassment--a mutter with a half-a-dozen chiding ghosts. One of
them more than muttered; it moaned incessantly, like the old clock of
the poet, "Never--forever"; it had a bitter, beautiful image; it wept.
Liberty! What was liberty? It was life! What was life? A little while!
Oh, fair young head! Oh, kind heart! Oh, lost affection! Oh, voice with
your: "Didn't you know it, sir?" Yes.

He thrust his book and pipe on the rheumaticky table, and took a stroll
to the cold windows. Over the wet shingles, he could see a ship's light
moving on the frosty water. A cart jingled across the top of the street,
with a tilt and some rolling oxen. Heans looked a wild relief as he
turned and strolled back, but, near the fire, the samplers drew him
over:--


The world's a stage; and players know full well
That they must part when rings the caller's bell.
Yea, they must part and mourn their faithful loves;
The cote is silent; sundered all the doves.


There he stood, Sir William Heans; his irksome and tainting bars all
crumbling about him; now excited and oppressed by the dark pall of
danger; now exalted and cheered by the warm clasp of liberty, stayed
yet--pained yet--by something of which a heaviness in his heart told him
he would never again touch the like. His heavy-lidded eyes saddened as
he stood. How curious! Had the dagger of her beauty gone so deep in the
earth of his being? Was it bemoaning so great a bereavement? Crying
after a woman: frail creature of ephemeral moods? Could earth weep for
earth, grieve for earth? Could earth find an agony in good things
spoken, in help given, in the things of simple intercourse? Be still,
inward moan! Frail human cry--for the good of her--be still! He
cherished a vision of Matilda Shaxton, with her eyes strained, and her
brows drawn, beautiful, serious, eager, with that indefinable warring in
her--that look of Galatea, elevated by life. "Heaven deal with me, if
ever I trouble her!" he said, and went to the windows with his hands
over his face.

For something like an hour he walked up and down the garret, past and
past the ragged chairs, his handsome face pinched and small. At last he
sat down, lit his pipe, and took his PLUTARCH. He elevated the latter
towards the candle in a short-sighted way, and his expression seemed aged
and pedantic. Slowly and with great pains he began to read aloud from the
Life of Cato, the Censor: "He adds . . . that he never gave more for a
slave than fifteen hundred DRACHMAS, as not requiring in his servants
delicate shapes and fine faces, but strength and ability to labour, that
they might be fit to be employed in his stable, about his cattle, or
such-like business; and these he thought proper to sell again when they
grew old, that he might have no useless persons to maintain. In a word,
he thought nothing cheap that was superfluous; that what a man has no
need of is dear even at a penny. . . ." He was so concentrated in his
book that he did not hear his landlady's knock, nor her rather heavy
entrance as she came in, clasping a large blue haversack, and a letter.
She looked perfectly calm, but her eyes were significant and mistrusting.
She said nothing till she reached the escritoire, when something whistled
from her lips, as she put down the haversack. At the word "Soldiers"
Heans dropped his book with a great clatter, she observing him with a
flash of terror.

"Upon my word, madam," he jumped, "I didn't hear you!"

"No--it was Corporal Hares came," covered she. "Did you think it was
police?"

"Aha, that sycophantic fellow! He has left these, has he? Was the man
rude to you?"

"Oh no, sir! Not rude. People know better in my house."

"You look frightened yourself!"

"Oho dear, I've a clean hand whatever happens! Registered rooms is
registered rooms! But it's a worry with lodgers! You gets your
constitution touched!"

"Ah, poor human conscience, madam!" (as he took the letter), "how it
discredits our discreetest precautions!"

"I know you, if I don't know your talk, sir. But I'm anxious for my own,
and the boy there; a woman can't do more. And my own's the lodgers, while
they're in my house, and behaves theirselves. I gets taken up with them
I'm working for, and feels uncomfortable-like if calamity threatens.
'Respectable's' my motto, and a 'good name's' my policy. But if my trial
comes, I can't trust myself. Mr. Daunt, he says, 'You're not hard-hearted
enough, Mrs. Quaid. Keep shell-fish,' he says, 'and you'll keep a
reputation.' Ah, I'd do anything for Mr. Daunt--I say that where none can
hear. Yes, in spite of feeling for all, I leaves 'em to their own keep,
and holds my counsel. So I'm a sad woman."

"What--never rejoice with your lodgers, Mrs. Quaid!"

"Well, as I was apologizing for my vapours, Mr. Daunt said, 'Never mind
looking down in the mouth, Mrs. Quaid. It's a sure sign of health in a
prisoner.'"

"Well--you've one, here, sad enough, madam!"

"Now I see you, sir, you're looking sadder--I hope for good!" And she
began to hobble out through the chairs, looking however as she did when
she came in.

Sir William rose suddenly, with his eyes in his letter, and felt with his
hand, as if for support, along the whitewashed chimney., "Heaven help
us," he hissed out, wildly, "all's against me!" His face grew livid and
then flushed dark. With a swift oath he turned and snatched up the
haversack, weighing it in his hand by the straps. He then drew it close
to his eyes and examined the fastenings, both of which were sealed.

The old woman stopped in the doorway with a stern and tragic air, as if
she would have uttered some word of sympathy--before she stepped down and
let it fall.

The letter was headed:

POLICE OFFICE, HOBART TOWN.
August 21st. 1840.
To William Heans, Ship, Juliana.

SIR,

Captain Shaxton has asked me to convey to you, as arranged previous,
a request for the honour of your company, with that of several ladies and
gentlemen, to meet Captain Crozier of the TERROR, at his estate, at
Flat-Top Tier, near Jerusalem, on Wednesday, the 22nd. inst. The Police
Office encloses, herewith, haversack of papers, to be carried by you on
that date to the District Constable at Richmond. With said packet is
Ticket-of-leave, permitting you to pass with same, and break journey at
the cottage of Captain Shaxton. I have the honour to remain,

Sir, Your obedient servant,
J. GATES,
Chief Dist. Const.

To-morrow!

Heans swayed over to the cold windows. He saw again the ship's light, and
followed it with his eyes, as it pitched slowly out into the dark.




CHAPTER XV



SHAXTON FORGETS THE CANISTER


"Bingo is shy. We must give him a little line."

ST. ROMAN'S WELL


Oh very fine and grey, Sir William entered the large central room at
Flat Top Tier! There must have been over forty guests. The morning had
been clear and frosty: the day was sunny. Many of the men stood in their
cord gaiters, and a few even of the women wore their riding-habits and
male waistcoats of satin. Some lounged on the veranda--high over a
plunge of forests; others simpered within over their tea, or Tokay,
their spirited eyes laughing unseeingly through the four double
casements of ambercoloured cedar, shipped by Shaxton from Singapore.

Sir William in a pair of exquisite duck breeches, with white leather
straps, a high-shouldered clawhammer, and a "pudding cravat" of blue
satin, held his grey hat and cane by the door. A few women placed pale
eyes on him; a few looked coldly; a few stared evilly. How shocking is
evil in a woman! The men--benevolent, courtly, diplomatic, grizzled,
grave, jocose--treated the appearance of the newcomer after their several
ways: some--of those that knew him--simulating surprise; others
concealing discomfort; one or two speaking suddenly to him, as they
passed, of the weather, this or that. His eyeglassed eye passed slowly
round. Daunt was not present--yes--there on the veranda edge in his
Wellington grey--hatless, efficient, and rather wan--with a proud
top-hatted young lady. Where was--no--no--no--pretty women, but no
Matilda Shaxton! Just outside one of the windows, stood the Captain, his
jolly, pale face half towards Heans, with a fine old lady in a poke and
sable shawl. With them was a little man in a peaked tasselled cap, with a
tight face and whiskers. That man was Crozier. Sir William saw and
possibly envied the dapper, little gentleman. We see one doomed to
achieve a series of singular heroisms--a burial of Sir John Franklin--a
last letter from that starving army in the snow--an agonizing
spectre-march through sleet--tracked--shadowed--swallowed--by half-told
Fate.

Here and there were grim heads, poised like decapitated John the
Baptists, on chargers of satin cravat, and offered up to some epicure
Herodias in a wreathing of social smiles, which Heans had seen in
situations less gentle. The transmigration, if convincing, did not seem
to reassure the absconder, whose eyes, if indifferent, had a chilled look
when resting on them. By the chimney, however, to the right of the cedar
mantelpiece, there was a figure which had a much stranger effect on him.
It was that of a small, aquiline-faced man, somewhat archaically dressed,
with a white cravat loosely knotted up in a bow, showing a small frill,
in wellingtons with tassels. He held a grey chimneypot and a little
tasselled rattan, and stood alone, rather shouldered out of a group of
which he made one and yet did not make one. His eyes--his restless
eyes--were on Sir William in a wild concentration, when the latter's,
catching upon them, blazed to a grey dismay. Instantly--and very
sharply--the other depressed significant brows, and a faint amazement
flushed in on the pallor of Sir William's stately face.

At that moment someone touched his arm, and looking down out of his
astonishment, he found Matilda, very haggard and unlike herself, passing
out with the Colonial Chaplain in gaiters. She stopped and welcomed him;
that old hero, who had reformed the wilder elements of old Hobart, bowing
beside her. Matilda looked feverish and tremulous, and her forehead was
shrunken in its fair ringlets. Her strained eyes, softening on him as he
stood bowing, were steadfast, if not quite guiltless of fear. How
proudly, how conventionally, in what pain of precarious change, with what
burden of doubt and risk--did these two meet--for the snapping of their
erring love. Matilda would have been better had she valued less the
attachment of such a man. Sir William would have been better had he loved
the woman just so little more that he could have seen no reason to regret
leaving her.

"You have not been well!" said Sir William, with a slight hoarseness of
sympathy. "I hope, madam, your health is better?"

"Thank you, sir. Have you met your friend, Sir William?"

He laughed a little. "Do you mean Mr. Daunt? I have seen him."

"Yes, Mr. Daunt is here----" (She let her eyes wheel quickly round.)

"There is Mr. Daunt on the veranda. See, he is looking at us!"

"Yes. He is looking fine. I hardly recognised him."

"Indeed, he is looking wonderful--But I mean Mr. O'Crone. He has come
specially up in the hope of seeing you, Sir William Heans."

"Mr. O'Crone--I don't know Mr. O'Crone."

"It is an English traveller who says he has met you: a Mr. Homely
O'Crone: a very learned little man."

"Would you be kind enough to point him out?"

"Mr. O'Crone," said old Mr. Bedford, "is standing alone to the left of
the mantelpiece."

There is an alarm of movement, chuckling, and chatter, and Shaxton comes
pushing through towards them. His moustaches fall in a good-humoured,
hospitable grin, but he looks restless and out of place. "Matilda,"
called he, "they are starting for the Waterfall. Ah! Heans! You've got
up. Good of you. I asked Cooke and Garion if they'd seen you behind. Our
party made a regular troop. Sheriff Fereday said it brought to mind the
Bllack String days. Lacy told him he wasn't swell enough in his old
cabbage-tree for The Line. [Note 9. See end of this para.] ''Pon my word,
sir,' says he, 'you look more like a Five Pounds Catcher. [Note 10. See
end of this para.] Ho--ho--ho!"

[Note 9.--The Line (or 'Black String') of 3000 soldiers, settlers,
police, and prisoners stretched in 1830 about Central Tasmania and the
East Coast, in an attempt to corner the murderous tribes in Tasman's
Peninsula.] [Note 10.--Men who made a profession of catching the blacks
at 5 pounds a head.]

"Ah," grinned the old Chaplain, "Lacy was one of the Elegant Extracts.
[Note 11. See end of this para.] He was pitching into the Sheriff, who
was chaffing the Battery Guard."

[Note 11.--Nickname given to the 2nd (and Beaux) Division of the Town
Guard, instituted for the protection of Hobart during the "Line."]

"We're all King's Own [Note 12. Nickname, 1st Division.] to-day,"
chuckled Shaxton. "You're very late, Heans! Matilda, you'll look after
your cousin! See that he gets some of that Indian sherry. Bedford,
they're asking for you! Come along! Sir William Heans, you'll look after
my wife. No, she's not to come. She's been unwell. Hang it, yes--very!
Don't let her take you down the garden! Too restless--too restless!"

Matilda had moved aside to whisper to the young lady named Henrietta,
whose copper-coloured ringlets were tucked away under her ears in
imitation of pretty Queen Victoria. Old Mr. Bedford lumbered obediently
towards the windows, and Shaxton butted after him, rousing this group and
that with hospitable bursts of humour. Preoccupied group after group rose
and stirred. People were departing on the veranda.

Natty Daunt of the foot-police, looking as depressed as if he'd been
getting a wigging, gallanted out with an active old lady in gigot sleeves
and buckles. As they talked their way by, he darted up a bow at Sir
William, saying with a flash of surprise, "Why, Sir William Heans! What a
giant you are, sir! A foot taller, 'pon my soul!"

In the general movement for the windows, "Sir William--Sir William
Heans," muttered a rapid, rattling voice, and Heans, drawing white eyes
from Daunt's back, found beside him the solitary gentleman from the
mantelpiece. The proud, agitated, aquiline face, with now a narrow,
Jewish glare, and now a gleam of wonderful goodness, gave a strange
impression of one not quite honest, aspiring after moral good. "I
remember you, Sir William Heans," he said, "if you have forgotten me."

Heans was staring at him now with a courteous intentness.

"Ah, I remember you--your face--well sir," he said, bowing twice, and
speaking as with a great effort.

"Do you come with us up the valley?" asked the other, looking towards the
windows where the people were departing. "The ladies and gentlemen are
carrying tea and bushman cakes to the Waterfalls--quite A LA CHAMPETRE!"

"'Pon my word, I hardly know! I am, I think, to take some refreshment
here."

"You are late arrived! May I make the remark that as you entered you
struck me as looking very fatigued? Your health keeps well, I hope?"

"My health! It's well--I was delayed over some despatches for the
police."

"I am to have the honour of gallanting my Lady Grumpus up the valley. I
should be happy to have had a few words with you."

 "You honour me, indeed--sir," said Heans.

He was standing with white legs apart and hands behind back; and he
looked away through the windows, his eyeglass up and a very faint smile
on a sallow face somewhat wildly sad in the eye. The room was near
emptied, though a few people still darkened the windows and veranda.

"Ha," cried O'Crone, clutching up his cane, "Captain Shaxton calls me! I
must go! Sir William, I shall discover from Shaxton where I may call on
you. All the way to the Waterfall, Sir William, as I stumble over your
mountainous trees, and thread your twenty-feet ferns, I shall be
discussing the musical glasses, and endeavouring honestly to explain my
presence in Hobarton. THE ALMANAC, it seems, has been vague about me. Ah,
sir, these funny human worms! They do not believe in nature--poetry! They
cannot--will not--believe a sane being capable of keeping a yacht full of
idle sailors from a love of nature!"

He seemed sensible of the agony in Sir William's pale, proud,
preoccupied, yet would-be attentive face. Sir William, on his part,
seemed to have discovered a hidden agony in what he said.

"Could you not persuade the lady," said the latter, somewhat balefully,
"to abate her curiosity over a poetical lingering, with which she cannot
sympathise?"

"No. Let me reply in the words of Miss Fanny Burney: 'Her character, and
the violence of her disposition, intimidate me from making the attempt;
she is too ignorant for instruction, too obstinate for entreaty, and too
weak for reason.' God forgive me, talking so of the women! This lady will
ask me, grim enough, if I grow tired of Hobarton----" (Suddenly he
dropped his voice). "What should I say, Sir William Heans, if I wished to
confuse her?"

"Hardly a possible contingency, sir," answered the other, with a slight
hoarseness; "and one more tragic than I looked for as I rode up through
those clear valleys" (he waved outward with his glass), "that you, so
distinguished and high-hearted, as I remember you, should find a vital
necessity for confusing any impudent woman!"

O'Crone stared steadily at him.

"And are you then so unchanged, sir!" he said, half-ironically. "Has
adversity left your spirit unimpaired? Indeed, how little can the world
change us! It has no respect for difficulty; but with a gentleman's heart
it can do little. Hush, here's a lady approaching! (In a hearty voice) "I
hope I find you of a calm mind, Sir William; with plenty of optimism.
Congenial male companionship; the more kind sex, indeed, as your Aunt
Miss Gairdener would say, not being accountable--ha-ha----! I hope I find
you happier than--than we all might be?"

"You put calamity as the chance of all," said Sir William, quietly.
"Strange indeed, sir, if you had come upon it!" His voice
trembled--either at some pleasanter recollection of his little
acquaintance, or from the nearer presence of Mrs. Shaxton, who passed at
the instant through the door.

"Now, now, sir," laughed the other, "do I look like one struggling in a
web of affliction!" (A voice shouted "Mr. Homely O'Crone" from the
emptying veranda. He made to go off, waving his hat; but as suddenly
returned.) "Look! I laugh, do I not, quite nicely! I discuss with acumen!
I am courteous with the ladies! I sing--I am in good voice at the
forte-piano. And yet, you, who hardly know me, hint that I am harassed."
He stared at him suddenly, with great sadness, in the face.

"Egad, sir," said Heans, "it was your name that stung me!"

O'Crone--the last but Heans in the room--turned and went to the windows,
a curious figure with his nervous and agitated face, his bent shoulders,
and his tasselled boots. As he put on his hat in the veranda, he was
greeted by an impatient summons. At the same instant Shaxton's voice
called: "Mr. Daunt, will you bring a rug for the ladies!" O'Crone
vanished past the windows with a nervous step. But for Sir William, the
large room with its chairs littered with shawls, cloaks, pelisses,
SURTOUTS, paletots, and pea-jackets, was now empty. He stood for a few
minutes where O'Crone had left him, his eyes looking across the room into
the lit plunge of forests.

Matilda Shaxton came quickly in with tears in her eyes, and said--though
she could barely speak--"I'll say good-bye now, sir. I think--I believe
this is the last time I shall see you."

He was pale also. He took from her the decanter and sandwiches she
carried, and put them on a table. Then he said, "May a fellow have--those
hands?"

She gave her hands to him, staring. Tears pressed out and dropped. She
was not graceful in her love--no, she seemed an awkward woman. Neither
was Heans his fine, grey self. He dropped on his knee, and put them
against his forehead.

"Ah, friend, friend," he said, "this is for life! Am I to yield up this?
I'm a worldly fellow. No, madam, I am not a man to believe in love!
What's this--what's this that begs God not to take you from me? What is
it that would speak with you: that would not lose your face? My God," he
said, "I think there's faithful love!"

"Oh, yes . . . very faithful, sir."

"I go to-morrow. The schooner is now off Spring Bay."

"To-morrow--how dreadful!"

"Would you tell me--not to go?"

Her whole figure shivered. "Why, I shall lose you, sir,"

"Well . . . I'm going . . ." He raised his head, and his eyes stared on
hers. "There's just one thing. Look away," he cried, "those staring eyes
won't let me speak."

"Nay, Sir William. I'll not look away." She did not move her trembling
hands.

"How true they are! How brave! How proud! .. for whom are they
sorrowful?"

"Why--when a friend goes----?"

"Turn them away, Matilda . . . This is the crying of a man's soul--I tell
you--as he rides up those deep valleys. See, the sun leaves them! What a
grey return!"

They both stared out in silence.

The faces of both were haggard and sad.

"As I came up, my escape to-morrow seemed a romance. With the schooner
gone, and all my risk an afternoon's canter a few miles beyond my pass--I
began to long for happiness--because freedom seemed so simple. Your
guests passed me on the road, and I thought of them returning in the dusk
to Hobart Town. I reflected that you would be returning with them, and
that I might ride behind the coach, and see your face and--a
stranger--hear you speak . . ."

The faces of both were haggard and sad.

"Then my heart cried, 'My God, I can't lose her!' If there is anything
true in human love, she will come with me in the EMERALD! If she knows
anything of this agony of broken affection--this bitter sense of things
snapped and finished--this longing for a face that--for all you had of
it--might be vanished--torn away like a scrip--in death----"

"Ah--sir!"

He stopped.

"Good-bye, Sir William Heans," she said. "Death--and, they say, a better
re-uniting--nay, even a kinder affection--are not so far from us
all . . . No--no--no, the other is not for me--no--nor you."

He stared up and cried out: "Ah, you'll not come with me?"

She glared down . . . and he let her hands go, and groaning turned away.
She was gone from the room when he rose to his feet. Stooping, very old,
he walked over to the left of the Frenchwindows, emerging presently on
the veranda. Standing there, his nostrils were assailed by a strong odour
of bruised rosemary.

* * * * *

Three minutes previous, a man had been sitting in the veranda on a low
chair by this window. That he might shelter himself from the wind, he had
sought guard behind the backs of some armchairs, and the view over that
end of the veranda was hidden from him. Over to the left, however, he
could observe Nature at her wildest; unimpeded by aught but a few English
hollyhocks.

At first he sits far back, and very erect. Afterwards he leans a little
forward. His hair is dark and neat. He wears a high-waisted,
grey-frock-coat, a white cravat, and his cord trousers are stretched over
wellingtons. There are flat surfaces in his face, which make it slightly
too solid for his costume; for though thin to refinement, it is thickly
boned, and gives promise, at some future day, of a heavy, aldermanic
weight.

His expression is at first so stern that it seems--as he sits there--as
if it is set in bands of black iron. Perhaps his very stillness increases
its sullen energy. It is one of those faces which look as though they
have been hardened with human hands, or like some species of rock have
become indurated with exposure. Though a latent and almost malignant
self-sufficiency invites opposition, you are forewarned it is already
world-petrified.

He is not long in this resolution of mind. The demeanour of our doomsman
gives way to something tragic, dark, and moved. Stay--has the brass
armour of the punisher crumpled a little before some deeper reality--has
the riveted ceremonial of justice backed aghast before unexpected pleas!
Ho for our code dealing with the shocks of human contact--our police-book
on the human heart--our learned inken precedent touching these documents
in blood. Our justicer has some troublesome affection of the bowels,
which still a tone too high can irritate--a breath too quick can
inconveniently disturb. He would grace the bench better with a still
tougher stomach.

See--he seeks to recall himself--to look his stern conviction. Nay, he
cannot. Nay, a jaundiced judge. See him as he leans on his chair-arm,
with his hand on his chin; a sharp, keen-edged efficient, yet momentarily
at throat-grapples with frenzy. Order conquers! His small, delicate hand
flings away. A dark stain is on his determined face. He springs more
erect. See him, the reliable, the patient hearer, the man of feeling
power--his mind is settled. He is right with himself. O just judge! It is
the pillar of order, the hearth-protector, the experienced in violence,
wickedness and bounce, with whom the scarifying of social "growths" is
duty. He must work--stern orderer--even if his ears be assailed with
sadness. Ah, the fortitude! It is a Daniel come to judgment, with arms
custom-bound! See him push in, e'en though he have no stomach for it.

Hush! It is a kindly day! How prettily the near hollyhocks shine out
against the mountains. The orderer's stony eyes look out upon these
harmonies of Art and Nature. How far is he from seeing them! He draws
from his pocket a revolving-pistol, and fixes the paper of caps under the
hammer! This is ready on his left knee. Half out of his breast comes an
iron gyve.

Tragic--dark--moved! Bah! a fine business if your Honour cannot go
through with it better! A more even air--pray A less mercurial
countenance. For very dignity, contemn. Scorn them, justice! Silence in
this court! See, where his Honour crouches forward. He is about to
admonish--nay, to cry us a mercy--nay, to grant time--nay, to cry
"Death." Grim execratory, if you must condemn, condemn less implacably.
If pardon, come not so hardly at an admitting--finger not at credence
with so cynical a touch. O drab judge--O shaken Judge--O dark, dispirited
orderer, what tone unthought of, what inhuman plea has shivered those
tense bands, and frenzied those hard eyes with hope unwelcome!

Pallid sentencer, what tickle of compunction stills thee! Stern man of
order, what delays the march of proved, smooth precedent. Haste, dark
efficient--haste, honest hand of retribution--veteran hound of the
state--hungry fang for right! To your feet, reluctant minister! Oh,
strange! Crouch not there halfrisen--hands clenched to strike--eyes
glazed outward on the sun-blessed gullies! Action--action! Strike, bloody
lash! Snake whose venom is for right, dart in your stinged tooth and
anguish out another good! Press in your stiletto, right's assassin! What
hinders thee! Tried punisher, what tickle of compunction still delays
thee! Ah, yellow Hamlet--what do you among the headsmen!


Hold! There is yet another doomsman upon the bench today! No judge, this;
yet one singularly interested in the case. Is he one of those onlookers,
who half in sympathy, half curiosity, attend these tragic functions--one
of those strange beings who, with their feet in the quicksands, find a
pleasure in contemplating the sinking of others? Is he there by some
accident of eminence on a holiday; or for some selfish or some malicious
interest? There he listens.

With the grate of the new-comer's footsteps, Daunt shrinks back. It is as
well for his Honour's privacy that he has taken shelter from the breeze.
For as the other lowers a basket to the veranda, he glances along among
the cloak-hung chairs. Is he so certain of its emptiness? He does not
give it another glance. Some thought or sound stops him in the very act,
for he remains turned inward, his head down, and the basket-handle tense
in his hand.

The new-comer's breeches and waistcoat incline to the mode, and like his
broadcloth coat--so tight of sleeve and waist--seem over-nicely fitted
for the stoutish face. On his head is a hat of rice-straw, cocked
forward. His face is broad and sad. Who is it? Bah, what a pother over
some old police magistrate or clipper-commodore! Some joking ancient (say
you) and pet of the young ladies--some retired notable, with wit
undaunted if legs surrendering. He seeks quietness. His soul--like his
jocular face--has become grave. He would rest, and look at life grimly.
We cannot all be joking with the children. . . .

Nay, he is restless! He turns away, and swings back again! Has he got a
fright or something! Bah! no peace in the quicksands, even for your
detached student of 'em! Yet what in Nature could be so fascinating and
yet so aging! He turns purple, then white! God Almighty--the poor
gossip's mouth hangs like a dead man's! Ah, listening Tom--listening
Tom--here's treasure-trove of a fearful kind--here's grave
gossip--here's a common crying in the court that spreads like a chill
about the heart!

Hark, your Honours both, is it the prisoner speaking? Nay, it is an
interruption from the prisoner's accomplice. Weigh it carefully. A grave
fine voice: yet judging by your Honours' four white eyes, an unjust one,
hardly tolerable! The eyelids of the doomsman behind the chairs are thin,
however. He seems bitterly to mutter, "Duty and I will bear with this
much!" But our contemplating clipper-commodore looks fighting-white. His
fallen mouth whimpers: "God, I cannot bear with it!"


"Turn them away, Matilda. This is the crying of a man's soul--I tell
you--as he rides up through those deep valleys. See, the sun leaves them!
What a grey return!"

"As I came up, my escape to-morrow. . . ."

"Then my heart cried out, I can't lose her. . . ."

"This longing for a face that--for all you had of it--might be
vanished--torn away like a scrip--in death--"

"Ah--sir!"

Would your Honours tell us who spoke at the end? Will your Honours have
the sound investigated? Fetch the policebook, constable! It was like the
cry of a point of granite in the ebb of the sea, or a woman's voice in
travail. Of what? Of a soul, an't please your brooding lordships--of a
fine soul--a soul, in verity, larger than life, oh sour incredulous! An
anomaly in human regulations! Have it catalogued! A disconcerting sound
in the grim routine of prisons! We have blundered into this! What, you
sway forward! Shall the court rise?

Aye, and you too, an't pleasure your straw-hatted excellency--of a little
soul! Think you, the lady does as well as can be expected? A healthy
woman--ready we think to tend another at pleasure! Your hatbrim nods
against the wall, and your strong fingers loose the basket till it
trembles on the ground! Greedy sib! These fine births, though rare for
the gossip, smack something tragically upon the holiday palate!

"Good-bye, Sir William Heans. . . . Death--and, they say, a better
re-uniting--nay, even a kinder affection--are not so far from us
all. . . No--no--no, the other is not for me--or you."

Ah, old commodore, there you stand in the wind, with your face towards
the wall! We might be reading into that cold stone and plaster--what?
Hope--amazement--grief--despair--ruth--remorse! He sighs. Sick of courts,
your worship! Let us spend our holiday with nature! Ho, for the
waterfalls! He gathers up his basket with both hands, and, as he does so,
stares round at the view. My God, what sunken eyes! What eyes! There! He
turns away! He's gone! The path flings back his jerking footsteps!

And you--dark judge--have risen too! Those eyes show a glare of
agitation. What is it that you would aid--what is it that you would
spare? Nay, God defend us from that ugly brow: if it is not sparing, is
it serving? Thou to serve--thou veteran punisher, what dost thou serve?
An aroma of rectitude? A smell of honesty? Some small, smug tinkle of
inner comfort? Indeed, where would we be, my lord, these wraiths
dispersed!

Gyve and pistol slap slickly away. Risen, and holding to a chair-back, he
glances this way and that. To the right, the long veranda, raised on a
four-feet parapet, stretches before three drawing-room casements; to the
left, a shorter and higher span runs to a lofty corner, past the fourth
and another. Cautiously pushing aside an armchair, he creeps stooping to
the parapet, and drops into the garden. There, crouching on his haunches,
he creeps through mignonette and "ragged Robin" to the corner. His
wellingtons bruise the rosemary, and its sickly smell rises about him.
The thorn of a white lady slits his coat sleeve. The sun yet dabbles the
far hillsides.

At the corner he rises, hurrying rearwards past woodbined windows, past
kitchen and through stables, past coaches and diffident grooms--till,
circling the house, he runs--runs--heavy-footed and fearful, sinister of
face, to join the ladies at the Waterfall. Nay, it is a holiday, Mr.
Daunt, for us lovers of Nature! Let to-morrow do for the treadmill of
stern work again: "let tomorrow take thought for the things of itself."

* * * * *

Above the lash of water, where, in a stepped gorge, behind the butterfly
wings of ferns, the ladies could be seen exclaiming and laughing as they
ascended, Daunt came upon his host, who had retraced his steps, it seems,
for the forgotten tea-caddy and "a couple of those Indian cheroots for
Captain Crozier." Here he was overtaking his guests with a gleaming face.

He laughed out, when, staring back, he saw Daunt. "Here are the
cheroots," he said, thrusting the box towards the Superintendent; "will
you run on and beg a hero's tolerance for the Captain?"

As Daunt received it in his efficient, steadying way, he met the other's
eyes.

"You asked me, sir," he said, "to bring a rug for the ladies, but I could
find none in the drawing room or on the veranda."

"Egad," muttered Shaxton, pressing on with a bottomless stare, "you could
find none in the drawingroom or on the veranda?"

"No," answered Daunt, in a laughing voice; "but you would hardly tell me
to go back!"





BOOK II NEAP TIDE




CHAPTER I



THE PRISON ARTIST


At an upper window, in the first courtyard of the Cascades Prison, a
convict known as Madam Ruth sat sewing. She was making night-shirts of
the rough cloth made by the prisoners on the lovely Maria Island. Below,
in a large courtyard, surrounded by low buildings of gold
sandstone--black-barred and doored--some grey-gowned, check-aproned
women were tending vegetables under a female. Among the plants, accident
had dropped some hollyhock seed, and a red rosette fluttered on a yellow
spear. The afternoon sun hung on the transverse bars of the opposite
windows and on the shoulder of a great forest towering over the shingles
to the left.

Madam Ruth was in black, and wore a black shawl over her dark red hair.
She seemed hard. In appearance she was long-faced, young, and
intellectually noble, but looked anaemic and melancholy. The room in
which she sat was long and narrow--with the barred window at one end, and
was freshly papered in gold on a faint blue ground. Two beds of unpainted
wood touched one the north and one the west wall, and both were adorned
with coverlets of elaborate embroidery. There was a fireplace and small
fire in the corner between the beds. The rest of the appointments were
rough enough, if entirely neat. Over the window-bed, a strung shelf held
some black and brown volumes: among which were Johnson's satires, Scott's
poems, and some numbers of BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. In the corner opposite
there were some tomes of French History piled by the wall, and, hung
above a small table, some little flower-paintings in water-colours on
cardboard, and the sketch of a ruined chapel, faultily done, with a
knight in stone lying within among the weeds, on which a little fawn was
cropping--the subject taken, perhaps, from the "White Doe of Rylstone" by
Mr. Wordsworth, a volume of whose verses, under that title, was hanging
in the shelf. On the table were some loose watercolours in a cedar box,
and a sketch, on a band-box lid, of an ancient, rough-cast house
surrounded by decrepit trees.

The woman's head was bowed over her sewing. On the near bed lay some
lint, bandages, and a pile of coarse night-dresses. Just beneath the
window--which was open--projected the mouth of the massive gate-house.
Flagged with huge flags, it plunged heavily into the court like the port
of some old hold: the houses of the end wall clinging upon it like
"Phrygian Bonnets" upon a scallop.

The wheels of the outer gates creaked upon the flags, and Madam Ruth
looked up. She was listening. The great gate was opened only for women
off the ships, occasionally helpless soldiers, visitors, and high
officials, so that the sound held something of import. The vegetable
gardeners up the court stooped over their rakes the better to look
outward through the gate. A warder in a chimney-pot looked in, from the
gatehouse, ordering some women, who were washing at a sink cut from a
single stone, to go indoors.

All, with Madam Ruth, heard the boom of a carriage coming across the
Cascades bridge upon the level before the walls. "The Governor, or
visitors, then!" Madam knew that all were hoping for "visitors." They
were often fresh from home and freedom; and the factory seemed to strike
each one so differently. She had risen. She now caught the bar of her
window and peered down. She was crying. What hard, inscrutable lines for
tears!

The chaise had stopped, and she could hear the boom of voices in the
gatehouse. Somebody seemed to be speaking with too much enthusiasm,
answered by the turnkey with a harsh, good-humoured bark. The visitors
were often nervous. . . . Madam wiped the closed casement in front of her
eyes with the night-shirt.

First Mr. Carnt, the prison writer, came out of the gate. She drew back a
little, her face graver. His tall hat was on one side, and he tugged his
dark bronze whiskers, staring consciously about in his light bored way.
When he could not be making a joke, he seemed always wild and bored. He
was a prisoner.

Slowly appeared Mr. Shaneson, the turnkey, tall, and harshly, yet
courteously, laconic. He was followed by a small, fair-whiskered
gentleman, very pale, in a tall hat, cape, and tasselled boots. He kept
pushing on his cane with both hands, and staring about with both eyes
that winced even as they stared. His face, aquiline, fine, and aspiring,
was creased and strangely drawn. He stooped much as he came slowly into
the courtyard.

Crying out, Madame Ruth ran and flung herself upon the inner bed. There
she held her mouth, and laughed, and sobbed, until she slept.




CHAPTER II



WINE WITH MR. MAGRUDER


There was a party at Albuera House in Davey Street.

Hobarton was singing with a cold south wind. The house, with its brass
doorstep, iron railings, window pediments, and brown freestone, might
have been shipped holus bolus hot from Bath or Tunbridge Wells. Davey
Street sloped steeply towards the sea, and the two lit carriages, waiting
without, had their brakes down, and their wheels blocked with drags.

The prisoner, Jarvis Carnt, wandered up with his rusty chimney-pot, his
seedy great-coat with the little shoulder cape, his war-worn Malacca, and
paused on the threshold. The door was ajar and opened upon a square,
slated ante-room. Wandering in, he sat, with an assumed negligence, on
his cane: his hat--nonchalantly awry as its habit was--still upon his
falling, untidy hair. His face was thinnish, bored-looking, and harassed.
He seemed rather humorous, rather sad, rather wicked, rather
affectionate, rather sick, and rather viciously on his rickety dignity.
His buttoned shoes, round which his trousers were strapped, had lost two
buttons on the left foot, and were very old and carefully cleaned.

A man-servant--old and pompous--issued at this moment from a side-door
with some tea on a tray. He came ceremoniously towards the prisoner, but
at a closer glance, asked his business--staring grimly. Carnt, with a
forced air of condescension, collapsing rapidly to one of mere
harassment, coughed, removed his hat with a crestfallen air, replaced it
with bravado, and said, in a fine, rattling voice, "A message from Major
Leete of the Cascades Prison, for a gentleman named O'Crone--if he be
present." The other, in a deep bleat, said he would "discover," and
passed with the tray through the end door, from which came a flush of
light and women's voices. Carnt went wearily round the dim hall, sitting
on his cane and staring into print after print of Hogarth's, "Idle and
industrious apprentices." With a sudden cry of impatience he left
these--these famous prints indissolubly connected with the repellent side
of London--and returned into the middle of the hall, whence a faint and
soothing smell of wine and fruit came to him. His pale, puffy face fell,
as with some sad thought, as he stood tapping his cane on the floor
behind him.

The butler suddenly returned and announced that the gentlemen were at
their wine. "Mr. Magruder," said he, "asks you to remove your coat, and
step in with your message." For an instant Carnt hesitated, and then
began to peel off his coat. His old clawhammer was green, patched under
the elbows, and lacking in a breast button, but if PASSE, it had an
elaborate once-fashionable air. His rusty satin stock--mounted without
collar--was transfixed with two immense pins joined by a chain. His linen
was soiled and dirty, but his hands were roughly clean. The butler
flustered him by offering to remove his coat, which he relinquished
warily, clutching suddenly at it with his first free arm, and pulling it
to him that the other might not see the lacerated arm-holes.

The butler opened the first door on the left, and motioned him in with
elaborate ceremony. Carnt strode in with pale face and baffled air. There
were four men in the room, two at a mahogany and two by the fire. Wine
was on the table, and candles. The room was of a gold-black tint, with
portraits on the walls of two broad-faced men with hands in breasts--and
one of a woman trying to smile through some inner harshness. Three of the
men made no movement as the butler shut the door behind him.

A little man, with fair whiskers, and a snarling crestfallen face, perked
forward by the mantelpiece and looked from Carnt to the company. His air
was mystified. He seemed puzzled at the reception of the new-comer, and
indeed, barely certain of his own. He frowned, however, and seemed
himself about to make some advance, when an old, careful gentleman at the
table head spoke with reserve and deliberation. "Sit down, Mr. Carnt.
Will you take some wine?" (Then with a slurring and subtly sour
modulation) "This is the gentleman--Mr. O'Crone--for whom you have a
message from the women's factory. Perhaps you--er--may learn what you
desire of the life of the women from him." He bowed coldly towards the
fire.

The little man sprang hungrily from the fire-place, and advanced on Carnt
with outstretched hand. Misplaced as was his eagerness, he seemed nearly
reckless of concealing it. Perhaps the necessity had gone, and was
dragging down with it self-respect. Or was it temper had him by the neck?
So earnest was he for news or message, that he seemed unaware of Carnt's
nice and tragic attempt to accept Magruder's invitation, and his own
hand, with some measure of deliberate ease. As Carnt took a
chair--concealing, as he did so, the lapel of his coat with his
hand--O'Crone began to whisper, even as he drew another before him:
ingratiating himself, as it were, with snarling smile alone, that he
might unburden his heart, without compliment.

Magruder rose with a decanter, and, waddling along, placed it between
Carnt and O'Crone. Carnt shivered back into his chair (as the magistrate
bent over them) watching, spell-bound, his stern eyes. Motioning
hospitably at the decanter, Magruder drew back and returned. As he did
so, the man left at the fire joined him and his companion. He had
coal-black whiskers, and grinned, grim and halfindifferent, like some
keen, kind hound of death, in leash. "You conjecture right, Doctor,"
muttered Magruder, in answer to a grinning whisper; "it is the one who
conveys the assigned women from the prison. Hush, hush!" Did Carnt hear
him? His face was of a purplish grey; the same colour as that to which
the face of O'Crone was turning as he listened to his message.

"Major Leete," he said, in a low voice (it might have been remarked that
the bearing of the message was known to the somewhat disquieted trio at
the head of the table)--"Major Leete wishes me to say that he regrets he
can do nothing against special advices, and that the signature of the
Duke, which you have submitted, though still carrying some weight at
home, is not sufficient to cancel the special prison-regulation attaching
to the keep of this woman. Major Leete suggests, if Mr. O'Crone still has
the leisure, and with the signature to back him, a letter to the Home
Office might bring about some commutation of the penalty--even a
conditional pardon."

O'Crone had poured Carnt and himself a glass of Madeira, and as the
latter concluded his message, he bent over his, and hastily drank it. He
remained noticeably pale. For a while he sat in silence, with hand on
cheek, concealing his face from the three gentlemen--who muttered,
fingering their almonds, with a plausible appearance of concentration.

Now Jarvis Carnt, despite the constraint under which he laboured, began
to observe O'Crone with a sort of curiosity. It might be his own
affection for Madam Ruth was not such that he could comprehend this
earnestness--nay agony--of one who was not a prisoner; on the other hand
perhaps it was. O'Crone, like his host, was in evening dress--white
cravat, satin waistcoat, kid boots--there was nothing distinctive about
him except his face, his hastiness, a slight frill to his shirt, and a
pair of diamond sleeve-buttons. Carnt knew this traveller of distinction
by town-rumour, and by one other interview. Arriving in a wooden
steam-vessel in the Derwent, he had--like Colonel Mundy, Darwin, and M.
Domeny de Rienzi--done the usual round of the prisons and waterfalls. The
ship proving a private yacht, and himself a person of intellect and
means, though a romantic recommendation to Hobarton, hardly palliated an
insatiable curiosity and peremptory temper, which, jarring from the first
on the overworked officials and stipendiaries (sick already of the
scribbling traveller, and his subsequent horror-mongering in London),
culminated disastrously from a hostile interest in the "prison systems,"
to a too tragic curiosity in a welfare of a particular prisoner,
incarcerated in the Cascades for murder. Like a Phoenix from the flames
of the gentleman's indignation against "the system," was born a romantic
letter, demanding a personal interview with the murderess, and refused on
the excuse of a high-strung female's frail health and approaching release
(she was to be liberated on a conditional pardon in five years). Out of
this had sprung the quarrel, already public property, between the prison
officials and their persistent petitioner: the latter not improving his
position by losing his discretion, and backing an amazing demand for her
release on Ticket-of-leave with an exalted signature; indeed, only
bringing to a head the now obvious pique of his hosts. It was now that
his tragic requests began to smell of appeal, and, as in most human
cases, when one has begun with an exalted argument, and later adopted
this method, it was soon apparent that he was done. The authorities were
beginning individually, and then collectively, to avoid him as a
busybody, an offended prancer, a bewitched person, a crazy devotee,
without solid faith in his bona fides, or in a backing out-of-office, if
renowned, and but chillingly inscribed.

The female prisoner thus forced into notice had been transported for a
tragic crime, and Carnt, in his capacity of clerk to the factory, saw her
weekly, and had once even spoken with her. Madam Ruth's life-sentence had
been given her for homicide, and the history of her crime closely
resembled that of Lucy Ashton, or rather the legend on which the great
weaver, Scott, wove his saddest and most poetical tapestry. She had shot
her dissipated husband. A special interest clung to her figure in the
prison. As one of the commandant's servants, and for some reasons
connected with her state of health and nurture, prison discipline was
somewhat lightened for her. She shared a single room with a
fellow-servant; was attached to the hospital; and had the privilege of
private dress. Thus she had been seen for three years reading or drawing
at her window; hurrying with head down from hospital; or wheeling the
commandant's child in the quadrangle. She drew pictures of flowers, which
were brought to her now and then by Mr. Shaneson, the quadrangle women,
or even saved for her, in a withered state, from the table of the
Commandant. Some examples of these Mr. Shaneson had in his room off the
gate for the amusement and charity of visitors. Sir John Franklin,
himself, had accepted one of a cabbage flower. It was indeed the habit of
the generous visitor to buy one as a momento. In short, it was in this
room, with its sidelong peep-holes or curious places of espial, for
observing unseen the knocker or incomer at the gate; with its rows of
light manacles, leather tawse, and iron gags; the little pictures of
single flowers always held by a conventional pink hand with motto, that
Carnt docketed his ledgers. In the evening, as he lingered in the arch of
the gate, preparatory to exit, he would often see the woman hugging the
wall with the child's carriage, or talking with the females, few of whom
seemed to bear her malice for her privileges. Yes, he would often see the
tall and fragile figure, and sometimes a stooping woman picking up a toy
in her track. He had once fallen in love with her auburn hair and her
melancholy, but only once had dared to speak with her. He knew what it
would mean, did he accost her--while she--with her chill, hard face--was
not one who looked at men. It happened thus.

He had ascended one evening to the Major's dining-room, at the door of
which he had been bidden to wait. The soldier-servant had gone in,
leaving him in the passage. Below, on the flags, he had left a string of
good-conduct women, who had been assigned, by doctor's orders, to
domestic situations. He was often chosen to conduct the reformed women on
his way town-wards. It seemed beneath the gravity of the free
warder--unless in special cases. This was a favour that he loathed, but
dared not, or was too kind to refuse--loathed because of its indignity to
one whose pose was the swell devil-may-care. For the females, pleased at
their "fresh chance," and even, for the moment, timid, they seldom gave
him trouble. Indeed, there is no doubt, he was made use of by the prison
psychologists, because the women bowed to the easy merriness of his
character, his strange, witty way, his goodhumour, tact, and ready
tongue--even if they battened on his sensitiveness to ridicule and
affectionate indecision of will.

It was the Major's habit to descend himself into the yard, and address a
few words to the women before signing them through the gate, but that
winter, grown rheumaticky with the Cascades mists, the clerk had been
bidden up with the book and he had docketed his charges and harangued
them from the window. That night, as Carnt waited, an opposite door
opened, and a woman in black came into the passage with a kettle and tray
of medicine bottles. Seeing her bewildered, as with a service unusual,
and more at the absence of the man-servant whom she wildly looked for,
Carnt offered to give the man the tray, whereupon she spoke to him in a
low voice, saying it was Mr. Carnt, and she was afraid his life was not
congenial to him, there, any more than was her own; but, please, would he
make the best of it, and keep his heart up. Carnt saw that it was Madam
Ruth, but for heaviness could say nothing. The woman put the tray into
his hands, and with a touch on his arm, went back. He was waiting there
with the tray when the man came out, but it was some seconds before he
explained how he got it. This was Carnt's one interview with Madam Ruth.
He did, however, sometimes pass her in the laundry-courtyard on her way
to and from the hospital; but her face, though it smiled, had beseeched
him vaguely not to speak. Once only, on a day of exasperations, he had
dared whisper "Ruth" as she passed, but the fragile figure, when next he
met it, was so grandly troubled, the pale face so fearfully averted, that
he had been grateful enough, when one day she palely smiled.

Now Carnt sat and faced this accomplished traveller, so broken by a last
assurance that he would not be allowed to even look on the poor artist of
the Cascades. Short as was the time Carnt had been in the room, his
wine-driven wits, aided by rumour, had perceived admonition in the manner
of Magruder and Tresham, the two magistrates, and even of their
companion, Dr. Wardshaw, directed not only against himself. Indeed, he,
the prisoner, felt himself if anything happier than the poor gentleman,
nay--in the higher favour. He knew that the message he bore was not
friendly; more especially the second thought about the Home Office, with
its sneer at the conditional pardon. That something in the traveller's
bearing--that mixture of tragic appeal and peremptory demand--that subtle
weakness in a proud carriage--which had shaken the faith of all in him
and his backing, had chilled Leete also, whom Carnt had overheard to add,
as he took the message, that "money-bags has seen the prison, but shall
not interfere with a hysterical woman for a mere buttonholing of a great
man,"--referring of course to O'Crone, to whom Carnt himself had shown
the laundry and great hall. Leete was ill and might be forgiven some
shortness of temper. For Carnt's own feelings, he had, at that visit,
noted an excitement and compunction in O'Crone, where other
visitors--like O'Crone, not taking their guide for a prisoner--had been
grim, mildly ribald, or nervously congratulatory. At this moment he knew
something of what the man--before the pictures in the porter's room and
under the windows of the courtyards--had managed to conceal. Indeed,
Carnt might well have hated this figure with the stoop, the fair whiskers
and the heavy head, but that he had seen a head of the same reflective
cast, bent not unlike it, so often, in that upper window on the left of
the gate in Courtyard I. One of those surges of grim generosity to which
he was subject shot into his heart as he leant with an elbow on the
cloth, stiffly sipping at his wine. A tragic frown was on his sickly
face. He did not know it, but he was eyeing O'Crone with a grim distaste.
His wild heart was troubled with sympathy for the poor traveller, facing,
like himself, a black wall of authority, and burning with it for the
woman whose sad and shrinking vision he had grown to seek along the
quadrangles. He bent forward and began to talk of Madam Ruth,
unquestioned, and in a low voice: at times much moved--as it were,
sulkily harassed--at others with a wide, stiff ease, as he recollected
his position. While doing so, he consciously or unconsciously revealed
more and more of his half-official position in the factory, and in a
while, O'Crone's face rose again out of its apathy, and eyed him
steadily.




CHAPTER III



"MY ONCE DEAR FRIENDS, THE HYDE-SHAXTONS"


It was an afternoon a year and two months after Carnt's evening at
Magruder's, and he was to meet Heans at the tavern known as
"Muster-Master-Mason's Place," at the top end of Macquarie Street, on
the right of the old place of execution. It was a roughish house,
frequented by sub-overseers, people with business in the prison, and
turnkeys, and that he might catch the late-working clerk, Heans, when he
could get it, armed himself with the after-sunset pass. Their reason for
meeting to-night was one of some excitement. As for the place, it was
handy to Mr. Carnt, and there was attention and a view! From its veranda
you saw the town and bay (forsaken now of the heroic bomb-ships), and
across the pretty rivulet, under your eyes, sat the heavy courtyards of
the prison, gold of stone and black of bars. Heans, dismounting at the
veranda, could see the women taking the air in their grey gowns and
mutches--some sad and dark, some light and lackadaisical--like figures
in a frowning box. A few were gazing up, past him, at the vast hills.

It was a close evening. Keeping the bridle in his hand, he carefully
wiped a bench with a faded handkerchief, and sat down in the veranda. Out
past the horse, his eye looked down with a glint of eagerness, a touch of
the haggard, upon the gate of the near courtyard, and the foliaged
bridge, by which Carnt would come. Sir William would show a certain
agitation--in a word his gold eyeglass would drop on his breast--when his
"acquaintance, Mr. Carnt," emerged lightly from that spy-holed port. Poor
Carnt, with his secret sentiment and hidden feeling (Sir William would
reflect) was "d----bly out-of-place" behind those gates.

Sir William's thin, ceremonious face, to-night was slightly hectic--that
is more so than its habit. It seemed that he, with difficulty, viewed the
hated prospect before him without exhilaration. Now he would fan himself
with a worn canary glove, or knock the dust artistically from his
much-brushed if divinely fitted spencer; now rise on his tight plaid
trousers--so carefully embroidered--and clink delicately to and fro in
the tether of his bridle.

There was no one but himself on the veranda, though from the passage came
a scraping of feet, eager speaking and a tapping of glass. A single elbow
in a torn black cloak projected about the doorway, as though the
accommodation of the little room were overtaxed. This lively and somewhat
mud-bespattered limb held something arresting for Sir William Heans;
twice he turned about and gave it his stare. The man, however, disclosed
no more of his identity--only once showing the point of a sharp nose, and
a hand uplifting a hair ring and a porter glass.

Heans rose and called "Islip" through the doorway. He had been reseated
for some minutes, when the landlord hurried out, followed by the prison
porter, Shaneson. The latter seemed in a hurry to be gone, not only from
the tavern, but from the company of the man in the dirty cloak whose
bearded face Heans could now see in the door, delaying him as he came.

"Mr. Carnt!" exclaimed Shaneson, rather blatantly, "yes, he'll be by now
if he's not wanted by the 'biddies.' There's a couple asking out, though
the bulk's due on Friday. I tell you a gentleman like you would never
have resisted 'em!"

There was some energetic giggling within, and Shaneson hurried down upon
the road, followed suddenly by the passage-loafer at an undignifying run.
He was holding a chimney-pot to his head and his glass dribbled over in
the other hand, while he plied Shaneson with questions--to be answered at
last, as Shaneson disappeared over the embankment, by a halt and a swart
cry of, "It's not discipline. I'll not move an inch for that--not if you
was to appeal till you was blue for it."

Heans had observed them quietly. Something of a student of the human
being, he might well have been excused had he failed to place the meagre
man in the cloak. Voluble in speech, and full of an insinuating disquiet,
he gave an impression of crazy strain. The whole cunning make up of him
from his beard to his coarse boots seemed made for another. While his
ingratiating talk constantly struggled back into the reserved, his
grating comradely tone shrilled with a high demand for sympathy in some
illstifled need. It looked as if he relied rather on appeal and
persuasion--even hectoring--than an attempt to rate or outwit his
fellow-man. The easy half-jocular manner of the turnkey would alone have
assured this. Observe two men, and if one address the other with the
deference due to a woman at one moment, and the next with a jocose
good-fellowship, you may be fairly certain there is disappointment
threatening one of them.

As the stranger returned, the landlord--a tall, sly man, with grey
hair--came along the veranda. "Mr. Shaneson's not the one to sweat a
thing out of," he said, in a slow, distinct voice. "Your order, Sir
William? Them turnkeys want knowing."

"Yes, indeed," said the other; "gin, Islip. I pity the man that attempts
it."

Islip, an old sub-overseer, knew well when to chime with the well-known
"prisoner's growl."

"Gentleman interested in the factory," he gave information in a low
voice; "skipper of a private-sealer, they tell me, endeavouring to ease
the drefful life of a relative immersed in them walls. Odd gentleman! One
day he'll question Mr. Carnt or Mr. Shaneson, and next he'll pass them by
without a look!"

The man in question was again mounting the veranda. He lifted his head
and glared at Sir William Heans, but that gentleman looked away with
almost an insulting languor. To Islip Heans was nodding graciously, and
presently he asked if Mr. Carnt had sent a message.

"Will be up, if possible, at twenty to the hour," said the landlord, "and
would be up before, but the biddies' as been playing up over the new
washing regulations. A guard of redcoats went in over the bridge this
very morning."

"What! Won't the little vixens soap themselves?"

"Nay, it's the floors, your honour. They prefers to pass the water over
them as they has a grudge with, so Mr. Jarvis says. Mr. Jarvis 'as
'imself, I understand, had several buckets."

Sir William was never sympathetic about your bad women.

"The huzzies!" says he, in a quick, distinct voice. "Carnt has no luck. I
declare I would sooner be wardsman to a road-gang than cooped up in that
female bedlam. 'Pon my word, what a life Government leads us fellows! No
consideration for feelings, repute, habit! Remonstrance or complaint
unheeded! Your most courteous letter unanswered! The publicist at home
careless what befalls us!"

He leant forward, slapping his mouth with his fine canary glove, with a
throw of his eyes towards the man in the torn cloak, who, again in the
veranda, was standing somewhat heavily beside the door, kicking the
plaster with one foot. Sir William Heans, it may be mentioned, had penned
in all eight pompous, distinguished, painstaking "complaints" to the Home
Office, only one of which had gone further than the waste-basket of the
head constable--that one, indeed, grown flippant with despair,
penetrating to the desk of a police magistrate, and pulling its writer
after it into the sour gloom of the bar, where he was told to remove his
canary gloves, where his fine air barely stood him before the stern
phrase "admonished" and the term "an impudent fellow "; and whence he
escaped with the "obnoxious smell" of the dock on his delicate hands.

"Just what I says to Mr. Shaneson two years ago," fluted the soft voice
of the landlord. "What be they thinking of shutting up a gentleman among
them termagants? But--himself--he cocks his eye in 'is funny way--you
know Mr. Carnt!--and flings off one of his jokes about his 'ladies of the
Cask-hades.' All the same, Mr. Carnt's not the man he was two years past.
You'll agree, Sir William, the years are showing on him. A joke's a rare
thing now from Mr. Jarvis."

"Carnt is a very soft-hearted man, you know," said Sir William, loudly
and bitterly. "They're breaking Mr. Carnt's heart." As he spoke, the
other man came along the veranda, demanding in a sort of patter "some of
the bottled pale ale." "A moment--a moment," added he, with a singularly
dreadful pallor, "I can't help hearing you talking of Mr. Carnt. Now,
sir, is not your name Sir William Heans?"

"And yours, sir, I am informed, is Captain O'Crone." (Bowing in a
half-abstracted, gracious manner.)

"Yes, sir, but if you are Sir William Heans, I may say I know Mr. Carnt
well, and have heard him speak of you in a friendly way."

Heans' face did not respond to these overtures. It was also somewhat
yellow.

"Now then, sir, you musn't bother the gentleman," laughed the landlord,
taking his glass. "Was it gin, Sir William?"

"Gin, Islip." (He tapped his canary knuckles on the form beside him.)
"You do not bother me, sir," continued he. "Sit here and talk, if it is
your wish."

Islip shot down on the speaker a sly, sour, blindish look, and passed
indoors. For Heans, he leant forward, fiddling with his bridle, a little
flushed suddenly, and knocked out of his reserve. The other, having taken
his seat on the form, sat looking down on the prison with little, blind,
pale eyes, and a small ineffectual snarl of good fellowship.

"Good heavens," drawled Sir William, bronzing somewhat, "is it really
you, sir?"

"Sir--sir, no irony!" whispered the other, in a tone of querulous
disquiet; "I cannot do it. You and Mr. Carnt would engage me and all I
hope for in a calamitous project--no, I cannot. Sir, it spells ruin! I
was friendless and hopeless when I met Mr. Carnt at Albuera House. My
God--he was sympathetic then! Now I am in a net between you and that man.
You know what you would do. Yet I look in your face, and I say you have
kindness and--and honour. I wish to appeal to you as a broken-hearted
man--as one who has been patient--one who has haunted these hills in fear
and longing."

Sir William had suddenly risen, and now, turned half-away, he bit his lip
over the prison, his arms folded, his face brooding and somewhat fallen.

"It is no use, sir," said he; "you cannot get rid of me. Carnt will not
move without his friend Sir William Heans, and I admit I have made but a
poor attempt to prejudice him against my freedom. Ah, sir, you find us
somewhat weak! I little thought a year ago that I should come to
understand the word 'desperate,' and how it preys on a fellow's courtesy
and endurance. Upon my word, sir, Carnt has had degradation on
degradation thrust upon him, culminating in the post of conductor of the
prison women, sir, from the factory to their place of service; dragging
him raw through the town, subject to silly indignity from every free cad
or vicious emancipist! I, sir--I have stood the indignities showered upon
a prisoner who" (he made a little gesture with his canary gloves down his
yet marvellous trousers), "still dresses as he would wish to be
remembered by his English friends. My status is known to be such that I
may be whipped at any time for disobedience or negligence, and the
underlings do not forget it. I am repeatedly told that I am 'dead to the
law.' I can hold nothing of my own--no particle of property. I must
obtain a pass from a reluctant source, or be within doors at sundown.
Should I go out for a game of cards, every petty official I meet halts
me, and orders out my permission."

"Sir," cried O'Crone, "I heard you were an architect."

"I am no longer employed . . . in that capacity."

They were silent as Islip came out with their refreshment and returned.

For a while O'Crone looked as if he would have asked what was his
business, but in the event elected not to. He had listened during this
bitter revelation with a glare of cynical irony. Yet a gleam of sympathy,
quite gentle and kind, glinted in the daunted and sorrowful cunning of
his face. With his head low on his shoulders, he rose and moved nearer to
Sir William Heans.

"I could almost forgive you, sir," he said, hushing his voice, "in your
bitter desire. If anything could prevail on me to risk it with you, it
would be that repeated irritation of a prey of petty power. If anything
could make palatable to me the way in which you and your friend have
netted me about, have taken advantage of my anguish and my adoration for
an erring woman, it would be this destructive suffering which you have
confided to me . . . yet" (in a low, impressive, almost gentle tone),
"have you thought well to what you--you in your weariness, jeopardy, and
impatience of spirit--nay, you as I met you at the Shaxtons' a year
ago--would risk this tender and shrinking soul?"

"Yes--yes, Captain O'Crone," said Heans, now patting his horse with an
air of quizzical weariness; "should the plan miscarry, a year perhaps
upon her sentence, if your great friends do not interfere with a
suddenness for which I give them credit; for Jarvis Carnt and myself, it
will be, at the best, that thing they call a 'chain-gang' (you have seen
them working on the roads), with Port Arthur waiting on a last skedaddle
for it." He put up his tumbler and finished its contents, the other
watching him rather sympathetically than evilly.

"My G--d, sir, not that place of dogs and black mountains!"

Heans turned with his glove still on his horse, and quizzed him a little
through his eyeglass.

"Dogs?" he said, with an ironical obtundity; "well, sir, they tell me
there are dogs that guard the isthmus--good dogs, many of them, I
daresay; and mountains--yes, there are mountains--devilish, high, black
mountains. And you go there in an old decayed cutter, sir, through a cold
yellow sea. And you pass in, they say, through giant gates of decayed
black rock. And the harbour, sir--the harbour is all o'erhung with a
blight of foliage; and choked with a blight of leathery seaweeds; and
shadowed with a blight of immeasurable forests, so that if a man cast
himself overboard, he is like to be strangled in the seaweeds; and if he
get away his voice only will be heard of; and if he be carried ashore, he
soon grows desperate in that wall of close, black hills, and in case he
should escape his sins, they bury him in a graveyard out in the sea. And
the very ships, sir, crawl in stubbornly round this dead-man's isle for
the clogging kelp about their keels. And if you ask me what they do
there, sir, I'll inform you that they spend their lives like legendary
Sisyphus with his unruly globe, shouldering trees from those unending
forests and replanting them as jetties POUR ENCOURAGER the navies of
Tasmania."

Sir William made a little laughing noise, and straightened his handsome
shoulders. "That is what these fellows tell me, Captain O'Crone," he
added, tautening his gloves at the wrist and speaking in a somewhat
forced and social manner. "It may be a paradise for what faith I place in
their veracity!" So saying, he stepped down upon the road, and patting
his old beast upon the neck, began to hitch up his girths.

"You're going?" asked O'Crone, staring out amazement, anger and pity at
him from under grudging brows.

"The sun's going and so must I," said Sir William, "unless I wish to be
stopped by every small official in Macquarie Street in whose harried eyes
my trousers catch. My once dear friends, the Hyde-Shaxtons, used to call
it my 'evening bathe.' . . . See, Mr. O'Crone, you have angered the
turnkey, and he has delayed Carnt. I beg of you, as you hope soon to see
that woman's face--as you hope for Carnt's help--to assume some dignity
and reserve."

 You should have seen O'Crone laugh.

"Now, now, Sir William Heans, you take too much for granted!" whispered
he. "Should our connection with you add to my calmness! When first I met
Carnt, it was pure sympathy with him. He would take a given sum for
having her out on the bridge, there. I believed him, too, when he came
saying it meant certain discovery for him, and he couldn't do it. I
persuaded him to come too. He agreed. Then greed grew upon him, and
nothing would do for him but he must have the woman risked with a certain
Sir William Heans, who, they told me, had been saved hardly from the
penalties of one 'absconding' by official clemency. Is this interesting
story true? I ask you. Or is a piece of gossip more accurate which
whispers of a reputation being bound up with your forgiveness? See--I
care not which it is! They are equally threatening. Sir William, I am
explaining my wild demeanour--my somewhat desperate air. Sir William
Heans thinks it sufficient to advise a more discreet demeanour!"

Heans put one foot in the stirrup, and before answering, looked over his
saddle at the prison. "You put it," he said, "as if Sir William Heans had
counselled calmness of a drowning friend while his hands were hanging on
his shoulders. I put it that your hands are on the rocks while mine are
on the heaving seaweeds." (He got gracefully into the saddle. The valley
was already in twilight. High in a remote wood flashed the retreating
spears. Sir William drew out a black enamel watch).

"Ah, it is past six. When you see Mr. Carnt, would you be good enough to
tell him I have an engagement with a Mr. Charles Oughtryn?" (He cackled
amiably.) "He and his remarkable daughter are desirous of seeing me no
later than 6.30."

O'Crone went to the steps, and came down, still with those bereaved,
dissatisfied eyes.

"Ah, I saw you only last Friday," he said, spitefully, "with a child on
horseback. I suppose that was your Miss Oughtryn?"

"Miss Abelia Oughtryn," corrected Sir William handsomely. He was somewhat
hectically jocund as he arranged his reins. "I can assure you, sir, a
lady as uncommon as her name."

"Indeed I have heard rumours of an uncommon lady, but pictured her
somewhat older than the girl who accompanied you. This was a quite young
girl, weak-looking, with blue glasses."

Sir William's glass fell from an abstracted eye, and he stared at the
harbour. "Miss Abelia rode with me on that day," he said, grandly enough.
"We went towards the ferry to see the first heath. But there was none in
bloom."

"Ah, there was romance in it!" snarled the other. "Indeed, the lady I was
with told me you had taught the young woman to ride, and that her
attachment to you was pathetic."

Heans greyed just a little more. "Sir," said he, with a light laugh, "I
fear she would have better suited herself with some one less pettily
tyrannised--than your light words suggest."

"And you desert your charge without a thought?"

"It is only a child, Mr. O'Crone," said the other, laughing a little, yet
with a groaning in his tone, "a young thing, who will forget me before my
old nag here."

"And yet you have been living in the man Oughtryn's house, sir, and
benefiting by his friendship and hospitality?--so the woman informed me,
in whose carriage I sat."

Sir William was still laughing a little. "In what capacity--tell me--did
the lady tell you I--er--used the man's house?'

"Rather as you pleased in your self-liberality--nay, forgive me--I did
not credit the rancorous woman."

"A kind woman," said Sir William.

"What!"

"She knew very well--the truth."

"The truth?" cried the other, advancing nearer, a tremor of apprehension
in his ironical face . . . Heans put in his eyeglass and leant over on
his knee towards him.

"I will tell you," he said, swinging his cane slowly and speaking with a
somewhat hectic air, "since you will have me even earthier than it is
wise for me yet to believe I am. I was assigned as groom, or (let us be
definite) 'pass-holder servant-man' to this Charles Oughtryn sixteen
months ago. I had been seen in conversation with Captain Stifft, of the
schooner EMERALD, too frequently for the police, and in the end--a
humorous end of which you appear to have heard an echo--I was ordered by
the policemagistrate to be assigned out as a servant. 'White-fingered
men' were not then in demand, but some one told Oughtryn at Fraser's
Club, and Oughtryn applied for me. Some time before, he had asked me if I
would train his young miss to the saddle. What would have become of me I
don't know, but for this old fellow--himself a freed prisoner--who had
often seen me riding for my pleasure. He was jubilant at obtaining for
his own what he was pleased to describe as 'a gentleman with some
varnish.' Indeed, he seems to have a feeling that it is a perishable
article, which it is a public duty to preserve. Oughtryn has a small
property at Bagdad, and I would gladly have been altogether removed there
from Hobarton, but this, as I am under the personal guidance of Mr.
Daunt, is forbidden. Oughtryn, if rough beyond notion, has treated me
with consideration; and I have had considerable latitude for a convict
servant."

O'Crone was glaring at him with his bearded face fallen and sinister.

"And now," he said, at last, "it is cut and run at the first
opportunity!"

"And now," echoed the other, tapping his varnished boot with his cane,
"it is cut and run--at the first opportunity."

His fingers clenched, as he spoke, upon his whip, and relaxed with the
worn, canary glove split across the knuckles. He smiled a faint, forced
smile and advanced it ruefully towards the other's face. "Answer that,
sir, if you can," he said. "My pride, under raw supervision, is wearing
bare. It has been long past the standing capacity of just anger. Look at
these darns--rotting fast, my old acquaintance, Mr. O'Crone. Human thread
will no more!"

O'Crone threw up his hand despairingly, and turned back towards the
veranda. He had gone but a few steps--his head bowed, his cane rapping on
the great stones of the fore-way--when a party of three men issued from
the door and descended helter-skelter upon him. They were sub-overseers
in grey, and as they moved aside for O'Crone, one plucked at his cloak
with a rude laugh, and pointed down upon the prison. "There's Mr. Jarvis,
now," said he, "stringing the biddies out of the gate."

O'Crone put up his elbow and snarled, but as they went joking down the
sloping bank, he turned and stared back at the bridge. A small door had
been opened in the nearest gate, and a black figure, which might have
been that of Shaneson, stood just outside. A man in a tall hat, with a
swaggering air, was accompanying three shawled women across the rivulet:
the latter arm in arm, the former sauntering a pace in the rear. One of
the women tripped in the twilight as she went for sheer lightheartedness;
the others seemed old, and did not remove their faces from the ground.
The man kept his eyes up upon the ale-house, and hardly once changed
their direction.

Sir William had started off down the inn-approach, but reined up suddenly
some twenty yards from the road. His fine voice came up in a polite hail.
"You will not be able to see him, Captain O'Crone. Here comes Carnt, now,
with his three women."

O'Crone said nothing, but stood glooming at the party with his two hands
on his cane. The thin, nice figure of Islip was clearing the glasses from
the veranda, pallid with the valley's pallor. They heard the door in the
prison-gate close, and the sudden "mingle-mangle" of a bell. Sir William
sat where he was until Carnt and the women vanished underneath the
eminence, when with a sharp farewell of O'Crone, he urged his horse
towards the road. On a sudden, there, halted before him at the bottom,
was Jarvis Carnt, and the women, and in another moment Carnt's figure,
detaching itself, came running up towards him. As the prison-writer
approached Heans (who pulled up) he laughed loudly, though his pale face
was agitated. He put a hand on Sir William's knee, muttering something,
and patting his old beast. "Oh, I'm famous, thanks," he said, and
suddenly turning, ran back. Sir William's stiff figure had hardly stirred
in his saddle, and he had said nothing at all.

O'Crone had been late to detect Carnt's approach, but had instantly
started to meet him. Carnt had broken back, however, before Captain
O'Crone reached Sir William's side, and as the other came behind him,
Heans put out his hand.

"Stay, sir," he said, "Carnt gives us terrible news. Leete is worse, and
is to have command at Port Arthur, and my Heaven, sir, they say he'll
take his servants with him!"

"What's that," cried O'Crone, "his servants! Why then, my God, they'll
take my Ruth away!"

"Yes, she will be taken! Next Monday is the day rumoured."

"Mr. Carnt will get her out on Friday! There'll be women out on Friday!"

"Else she'll go, sir, and we're left," said Sir William, trembling in his
saddle.

"This may be false! You and that man----"

"False!"

"You and that man----"

"It is all false--false as life itself! There's not a word of truth in
it, or in any of us, or Life, sir--in man, woman, or child. It is a lie.
You and I are a lie, sir; and that prison; and the confounded, jangling
bell. And the hills in their shadow--what a pitiful lie! Everything--hurt
or joy, or faithfulness like yours, or hope like mine, Carnt's
generosity, Islip's spying deference--all a damnable fancy! Why should I
be brave enough to hope--or you mad enough to care!"

"Hold!" snarled O'Crone, touching his arm, "I believe in your
bitterness."




CHAPTER IV



AN OLD HOUSE STAINED OF WEATHER AND MEMORIES--A REPUTATION AND A REMARK


Strange that Sir William should have been talking of the Hyde-Shaxtons,
for he was to see them both again that night!

It was near the half-hour when Mr. Oughtryn's groom arrived at the house.
It was one of a row of buildings on a hillside and was approached through
a long garden. Heans turned off the main street into a lane, and let
himself in through a double back-gate. An abrupt cliff frowned over the
back, and out of this, extensive stables--now much neglected--had been
hollowed. The yard was flagged between these and the house, which was a
long, oblong, ungabled structure, with a low shingle-roof almost hiding a
cramped second story. It was a faint, old, imperishable dwelling, with
wild bushes in unsought places, growing it seemed from the stones.

The house was harshly built, and had a dignity bred rather of the
bourgeoning of human necessity than the arts. Oughtryn, his daughter, and
a woman inhabited seven rooms in the centre portion, while Heans had two
ground chambers entered from the yard on the right. The left end,
including a large conical room or meeting hall, was uninhabited. Heans'
sitting-room was at first plainly furnished with some chairs of pink
horsehair, a beaufet, and a dining-table, while the bedroom, looking on
the yard, was simple and clean. To the former room, however, Oughtryn had
added from time to time a few "gentleman-like adornments"; such as some
prints of strangled race-horses; a large copper epergne like an
outstretched hand, asking nothing less than pumpkins; a stuffed clock in
a glass-case; and an immense piece of catacomb furniture having a strange
resemblance to a palace wardrobe. It was an old house: once inhabited, it
was said, by the officers of the garrison. It was in the large council
room--so it was told--that the first officers of the settlement burnt the
early records of the colony, and the Governor was found dead in his
chair.

[Note 13. Captain Collins: The author may be accused by some, of
confounding fiction with reality. He therefor thinks it necessary to
state that the circumstances of the death of Governor Collins as
described in the text are, as far as he knows, entirely imaginary. But it
is well known that the Governor was found dead in his chair about the
date mentioned, and how he died is still a mystery. A similar note to
this is to be found in Sir Walter Scott's "Waverley", explanatory to a
parallel historical narrative half-true, half-unknown.]

A whinny greeted Sir William's beast as, opening a great bolt in the
first of the three doors, he led it in and baited it beside a pretty gray
with a black mane and a fine, large dapple horse. The stalls were narrow
and partitioned off by walls, the place--according to rumour--having once
been the quarters of a considerable establishment of assigned servants.
It was lit by three port-holes cut in the front wall, which, like that at
the back, seemed of basalt or dark freestone, and built into the latter,
the partitions, each with its cap of wood, ran away in dim rotation into
gloom.

Changing to a pair of highlows, Heans arranged his horse's bed. He was
thus engaged when a light fluttered in on the walls, and a young girl
stood in the door with a lantern. She had a hand over her eyes, which
were almost entirely shut as if blind, and blinked weakly as she peered
into the stall. She wore a gray dress with a cape, and a small black
apron. Her soft amber hair was parted flat on her head, which she carried
slightly bowed, as if with constant groping through the mist of those
poor restless windows. Her face, with its trembling lids, expressed the
words "serene music."

She put the lamp down by the door, and said it was late, and his supper
was in his room. She added that she had fed and watered "Jan and Vesta."
Her voice had a natural unquiet, yet withal a sort of echo of precision.
Sir William thanked her rather brusquely. He was brushing his animal down
with great nicety, and seemed hardly to hear what she said.

She watched him in a serene way, while he concluded his task. The lantern
threw its beams about the lengthy place, showing the stalls like walls in
a dream, and the high back rock scarred here and there with
hieroglyphics. Just above the dapple cob had been cut the bust of a man
in cocked hat and epaulettes, and further up, under a great crack
splitting the wall across, were the rude letters--

STONE HIM TO DEATH

Below these, on a level with the stall walls, was the rough semblance of
a clenched fist and arm bound across with a knife, while low on the rear
of the stall in which Sir William worked was the rickety announcement:
"W's got a BLACK charmer." Cobwebs hung upon these dusty wounds,
softening the fierce injunction, mocking the ribald jest with waving
threads. Either cut as a pathetic sentiment, or for instruction in the
picklock art, was a carving in the far reaches of the stable of a massive
prison lock, with bolt shot, having three pieces of steel inserted in the
keyhole at different angles, and beside it a key with its handle broken.

The girl shifted the lantern where its light ran further into the stall
and said, as she did so:--"Sir William, Sergeant Morrissett was here this
afternoon."

"Morrissett! What was it this time, Miss Abelia?"

"He did not ask to go through the dwelling rooms--I don't think father
would have countenanced it."

"Oh, he might and welcome, miss!" said Heans. "Last time he purloined
only some letters, of an old relation. They were returned to me--somewhat
spilt over and scarred with cigar marks--but, after all, given back. Ah,
ah, my dear, so they've been bothering you in my absence!"

"Sir, there is no reason for anxiety." (She spoke her mind in a precise,
even, blinking way.) "If Mr. Daunt was your enemy, Sir William, for what
reason could he want the 'big room'?"

"What, they're not going to quarter police in the chamber!"

"Oh no, Sir William; on Friday there's to be a grand ball. They want to
hire the room, because of the size and the carven cornice. They have been
flattering father. Mr. Daunt when he was here in September asked what was
in that part of the house, and when father took him through the room, he
said something about its being 'made for a reception.' I heard father
say, he'd heard Governor Collins had been found dead there, and Mr. Daunt
answering, 'Nothing so famous, I'm afraid; it happened in another house
called Regent's Villa.'"

"Ah, most faithful reporter," panted Heans; "it is Daunt's very voice and
greedy heart. That would be too valuable a piece of history for your
father to possess. Daunt will have the Governor die appropriately in a
house of his own naming. How do you know, pray, it is the Superintendent
who wants it?"

"Mr. Morrissett told me so. Mr. Daunt thought the old room would be
curious to her ladyship. It is a farewell party for the Lady Franklin
herself, who is leaving with her husband to explore the swamps and
snow-mountains between here and Macquarie Harbour. The gentlemen are so
charmed with her intrepidity."

"So that was his reason, Miss Abelia?"

"Oh sir, I don't know that he is such a provoking gentleman! But he seems
to anger you, sir, and you are never so very hasty. I have noticed
certain things: for instance, he will nearly always accept an advantage
from anyone, however little it is, and however lowly they're situated. He
doesn't seem to be able to resist doing so. Then, though he seems just
and scrupulous, he is stern in his profession. I think--he likes
overlooking his prisoners. Father says his mind is on you too much--as if
you were the place of a crime he had committed."

A woman's voice called "Abelia" from the house. The girl turned and
groped back into the yard. "Oh, see, sir, there is a light now in the
great room!" said she. "There are some gentlemen in the window in
uniform----"

Sir William strode in his highlows out of the stall, and stood beside
her. A lit door was open on the right of the house and a woman stood
there. Some ladies and gentlemen were also visible in a pair of
windows--candle-lit--on the extreme left. Lit as the windows were, the
figures and faces stood out but softly--a number of ladies and six or
seven men. A single female sat talking with an officer near the glass,
her head a little turned aside and her hand under her chin. She was pale,
and though the wings of her bonnet hid all but her nose and cheek, Heans
recognised her, saying in a sharp voice, "By Heaven, I know the lady in
the window!"

Abelia gave him one quiet, fluttering glance. She then made across the
yard in her wavering, half-blind way. As she did so, a door opened in the
great room, and a second candle shone into the yard. Three men were
gathered dimly in it, and the voice of one harshed hollowly across the
court: "These are the stables where the lantern is--very extensive," They
stepped, as he spoke, into the yard, and advanced slowly across, their
sabres tapping the flags.

Sir William moved from the stable-door and went into a smaller cavern on
the right where he kept his brushes and accoutrements. As he went in he
heard Abelia's voice rising in answer to someone's in the yard. She said,
with a quavering distinctness: "The door where the light stands." Sir
William stepped further into the dark, and touching some bags of chaff,
sat down on one of them.

The men came into the stable, talking loudly. "How can a woman judge!"
said a high, excited voice. "It would seem they are either all mercy or
all severity."

"For every young woman willing to learn," came a downright answer, "my
dear fellow, there are fifty mad to teach--and these, as stands to
reason, the more ignorant."

"Hullo--the old fellow's got a regular mews, here!" said a third voice,
with a hoarse chuckle. "Did Daunt tell you he's been a prisoner, and
don't care who knows it? Always hauling it into the talk. Fantastical
chap. 'Oh, I'm a free man now,' says he, 'and risen, as they call it.'"

"Shist! He may have a fellow here, somewhere. Mind what you say."

"That the daughter--the girl that passed us?"

"Yes."

"Something about her like a child I've seen--oh, I know, riding with a
prisoner called Heans. I used to be interested in that man. He was a bit
of an architect, and quite a nice fellow for a prisoner. Got the gambling
virus, and did a wonderful escape the very day after he'd been at my
house. Daunt, there, caught him at Spring Bay, not a mile from the
schooner. Very sly, he was, keeping it dark. He's a farm servant now at
New Town--he, a capital top-sawyer of a fellow."

"Why that man, Heans, is a groom somewhere in the town--so Somers
informed me."

"No--no, Daunt said his punishment was a sinecure--got him through Sir
John or somebody interfering with the proper course of the law! You know
how Daunt goes on where Sir John is concerned."

"Well, Garion told me Daunt himself put him with an emancipist." [Note
14. Freed prisoner.]

"Eh! that's bad. I can't imagine him so diminished. No doubt Daunt's
having him watched. I like Daunt in private life--I like some of the
things I've seen him do--things for a friend--but, d--n it, I don't know
that I'd care to be in his hands! He had a hate for that man--above his
mere scepticism of the bailiff."

"Of course, Kent and I are new comers here, Shaxton, but we heard Daunt
and his prisoner fell out over some officer's wife. It's hard to see
Daunt heart-struck on a woman!"

"What--ho-ho--who spread that?"

"It's common talk. ON DIT, leaked out through a maid-servant. She caught
them at blows in the lady's drawing-room."

"Who said that?"

"Beal told me that . . . But I heard Daunt himself say, in a discussion
on women, that the woman in a certain case was so infatuated she acted as
go-between for a prisoner and a schooner captain. Yes--dropping her
husband's money from a fly in a by-street. And when Beal taxed him with
its being the same woman, he said, 'You're the very devil himself, Beal!'
Mind, I don't think Daunt's quite the thing. I mean, I think he's one of
those men who doesn't realise how much he guides himself by the letter.
He thinks he can act a man-of-honour and think a cad. Look at the things
he says. I've known him go on like a mean woman. These fellows are
dangerous, Captain Shaxton. The letter's nothing but a fine uniform when
your passions become involved. Any day they are liable to slop over into
some satanic tyranny."

"Why--d--n it! you'd make a villain of old Daunt! I never saw a man with
such an obstinate sense of right. Do you know that fellow spent a week
cross-examining a prisoner before he'd flog him--and that with Magruder
against him! There was that case of Welland. Ho, there's name!"

"Ah, you're a loyal fellow, Shaxton! I request your pardon if I've said
anything against a friend."

"A friend! Ho-ho, Daunt's a crotchety fellow! No, I don't say that. Lord,
what a devil of a lark! Now, I'll tell you--I know that woman. I've heard
of that affair with Heans. But you don't mean to say she used her
husband's money?"

"Come, Shaxton," put in the younger man, pursing his lips and wriggling
his shoulders as he turned away, "let us go back to the ladies. These
stalls will do." He stalked slowly to the door as he spoke.

"Why, Shaxton," said the other, staring at him earnestly, "I hope I
haven't offended you."

The younger man, without turning from the door, where he was now looking
out with arms folded, said easily enough: "Some one is coming across,
sir. Swords, sir. It is the Commandant of foot-police himself, I think."

Shaxton, modulating his voice a little, was simulating a kind of wild
badinage. "What--ho-ho--this is good as GALIGNANI'S! Now, Karne, did he
spread that--let that go, I mean--about the woman? I mean, did Daunt
really tell it that way? Now I want to know the truth, for a reason, yes.
I thought I knew what happened on that occasion. I may be able to correct
you."

"Me! Shaxton, I swear, on my soul, he let the thing pass! You wouldn't
accuse me of speaking like a cad about a man. Watch him when he comes in
now, how wary--how stern and definite he will be. That was how he spoke,
touching the table nicely with his fingers. It was obvious what he meant.
Why should I, for this once, suppose he had no double meaning!"

"Tell ye what," said Shaxton, "ho-ho--have you any objection to my asking
him?" (In a fierce chuckling whisper) "I'll bet ye a fiver--here you are,
Captain Karne--a fiver it wasn't true about that girl. She'd never," he
added, SOTTO VOCE, as steps were heard, "she'd never do a trick like
that."

Karne had his elbow on the stall wall, and was trying to laugh away his
irritation as he looked towards the door. The horses rattled up their
running-chains.

Steps and a sabre echoed in the yard, and a man in a cocked hat appeared
in the light, backed by two faces in gray stove-pipes. He was talking
rather drowsily, but his stout, short, flattish face was alert and grave.
His over-thick, bristly black hair was cut short like his side-whiskers,
and greying where it sprouted from his temples. He wore a white overcoat
buttoned across his uniform, the sleeves hanging empty, and carried a
sword in a small white hand. Moreover, his stern eyes were dark and
tired.

The three men turned in, chorusing in a high indifferent manner some
surprise at the fittings and features of the shadowy place. The two last
in black, a young man with a red chin-beard, and a yellow-haired, high
coloured little gentleman with a strong horse face, wore single-breasted
frockcoats of almost pea-jacket length, velvet of cuffs and collars, the
severity of which was qualified in the second instance by a buff
waistcoat, and in the first by a green cravat tied in the large new bow.

"Ha!" said the red-faced gentleman, showing his strong teeth in an
apologetic yawn, "an opportune size. Been stealing some plums, Shaxton,
for that model prison of yours?"

"I?" said Shaxton, glancing up at the cliff, yet continuing to thrust at
a hole in the stall-wall with his sword-hilt. "Ho-ho, it's you, Sturt!
No, this wouldn't do for the Port Arthur people. Give us credit for fires
and ventilation!"

"Shaxton's is a moral place--in the form of a cross," said Daunt, who had
advanced in, looking indifferently about him, but now was eyeing Shaxton
with a keen and curious expression. "With Leete of the Cascades to cut
the stone out" (he looked up at the wall, now addressing Shaxton) "and
such places as this as blundering examples, you should raise a monument
to solitude at Port Arthur."

"Yes, that's good," approved Shaxton, giving a grunting laugh, but not
turning. "And none knows better than you what we're attempting. As
Binifield said, why should we degrade ourselves by whipping these
harebrained fellers? They abscond and abscond and abscond. They are
apprehended, read encouragement in another's eye, and again endanger the
safety of the settlements with their cunning. This is an attempt to let
their own brains punish 'em."

Daunt continued to examine Shaxton. He detected, evidently an unusual
note in his tone, while the sharpish smile of Karne, swinging
wide-legged, hands behind back, against the stall-end, invested both men
with a suggestion of constraint. He suddenly turned his full steady stare
upon the latter, saying rather sharply and in a peculiar, questioning
manner, "I've seen you before, sir?" It was with him a favourite method
of human approach, invented possibly for use among the criminal. Even
among the free it was invariably taken as a statement. In the present
case the officer approached, smiled angrily, stammering, "Yes--yes, I've
had the honour of meeting you several times. My name's Karne."

At that moment the red-faced gentleman drew attention to the
hieroglyphics on the wall, announcing that some "old-timer had been
emphasizing his sentiments in the stone." "Slash," says he, buttonholing
his companion, "read it, Slash. Is that first letter a B or a W?"

"I make two letters of it," said the man with the red beard. "Stone him
to death," he spelt out, in a tone fallen rather hoarse.

"Ah," says the red-faced gentleman, "and what would you have dealt out to
that ruffian, Mr. Commandant?"

Daunt's face looked up wooden and stern. "This was mere bravado," he
muttered, with a slight smile of politeness, "done in a night, no doubt,
by three or four men. Such publishings of hate are meat and drink to
those who cannot nurse their grievances, and would not much increase the
unhappiness of the officer who walked, as he knew, with his life in his
hand. Shaxton, here, believes all this natural hate is to be stilled by a
dose of 'silence.' Well and good! We prison people, however, cling to
bodily punishment--degrading as it is to punisher. The prisoner's brain's
a variable engine. We learn early just how much to tamper with it.
Shaxton steps in with a whole gallery of masks and slippered warders over
a bit of flooring that would sink me."

"Ho-ho," chuckled Shaxton. "I must laugh at you, Mr. Superintendent. When
you're angry you're so good-tempered. Like the lady in the play--so
'precise' even when you're presuming. Say at once we're building a
Bedlam."

"I do," said Daunt, with a cold and expressionless certainty, "and for
the very brain you want to punish: the brain that feeds on society."

Shaxton gave up his play with the wall, and, giggling a little, faced
round with his shoulder against it.

"Well, I know you," he said, looking at Daunt and smiling, his face
rather yellow. "You're right, you think, and so you'll say it. The place
is to be put into being. There's no stopping it now. Heavens! I'm tired
of it. They've had me stuck down to details like a fly on a pin. You saw
the first plans, didn't you: you and Shelstone? It was Heans--a
convict--elevated it; and we all attended that night. What's become of
that fellow since his skedaddle? These fellows--Karne here--tell me
you've got a fine old story about a woman in the case?"

"Oh, come now, Shaxton!" laughed the officer known as Kent.

"I was present at Wellington Crescent, sir," said Karne, folding his arms
and staring downwards, "when you were discussing with Beal the
infatuation of certain women with prisoners. You remember you left it
open to conclude a certain officer's lady had helped the convict with her
husband's money?"

Daunt gave the speaker a sort of pondering glare, never glancing at
Shaxton

"You young hell-rake!" he broke out, laughing loudly, yet frankly
crestfallen. "Very well done--ha, ha! I shall have a nice name! You
mustn't go watching me over the wine-glass. Jack's not satisfied with my
entertainment; he must have a quiz at the sit of my cravat." (He looked
round with his rueful laugh.) "He's peeping under the table, all the
while we're hobnobbing, measuring the indifferent style of my pantaloons!
By all the laws of friendship, what have you caught me saying? Named no
lady, I hope!"

"Karne's joking," said the red-faced gentleman, with an immense grin.

"No, sir," said Karne, somewhat wildly. "Certainly you named no lady."

"Was it true though, about that woman?" asked Shaxton, hoarsely chuckling
with the others.

Daunt swung a little towards his questioner, his hand on his chin, his
brow slightly knitted over the ghost of a hardening smile. Their eyes
met, and Shaxton dropped his, lifting and tapping his sword as he leant
against the wall.

"I'll be perfectly candid with you, Shaxton," said Daunt, with a sudden
deepening to official weariness. "The police, in this case, had knowledge
of a package dropped from a carriage by this woman, and picked up by a
discredited gambler who, immediately becoming possessed of funds,
purchased and fitted out the old Government schooner in which Heans tried
to effect his escape. The carriage-hood was up, and in throwing back the
package, a tassel of the lady's shawl became caught in the hoodspring,
attracting the driver; who seeing something in the road, would have
stopped, had not the lady bidden him somewhat hastily to get on. This
crossing his suspicions, caused him to look back at the bottom of the
street, where he caught the Captain lifting the package. When we
advertised for information concerning the escaped schooner, the
hackneyman brought in the story."

A sudden heave of the shoulders and Shaxton pushed himself from the
partition. With much chuckling and a very pale ugly ironical countenance,
he caught Daunt's arm, staring up into his quiet hardening face. "Well,
look there now!" he cried as if lost in the story's scandalous interest,
"and didn't you say the very money was her husband's?"

The other shifted back a precise, cold step.

"To be properly honest with you, Shaxton," he said, with a stern
swiftness, "I concluded so. We knew one of the men was indigent, and the
convict--then allowed a small remittance from the Crown--had been punting
openly."

"Upon my oath," chuckled the other, turning away with a sort of slow
jocularity, "I thought I knew that woman! I'm a worldly sort, but I don't
go these depths. If I was to tell you gentlemen that I believed it true,
you'd call it an amazing tale. I'm sure you would--ho-ho! Mind, she had a
leaning for him not only! She must give the cadging beast the money--the
money of the--ho-ho--the money of the cheerful piece--her husband! Here's
a prisoner of good family--tchic, tchic!--a baronet of breeding, drags
the poor soul into the kennel beside him, and bares her silly bosom, that
would have harboured him, to this and that man's mud. I--I feel this."
(He strode to the door into the yard, slurring his words.) "You remember,
Mr. Gentleman Superintendant, I opened my door to him!" he shouted. "My
God--my God--the poor little witch! I thought it was one of our Mothers
of Patience!"

The gentlemen exchanged discomfited glances.

"Speaking frankly," said Daunt, with a hoarse droop in his voice, as he
turned after Shaxton, "I can't forgive myself for letting the prisoner
into a gentleman's house. We police see so much ugly depravity, we lose
our sense of vigilance before the filbert-nailed criminal. But I
admit--well--it was a case in which I was to blame, Shaxton, for a piece
of bitter weakness: an old matter of belief in women."

"Ah, I know that," said Shaxton, rounding by the lantern and pushing it
aside with his wellington. "Lucky beggar--you never need to believe in
anything. But you musnt't go saying these things--you've got a reputation
to keep up. I stick by the Superintendent--don't I, Karne?" He looked up,
chuckling whimsically, and Karne barked an ambiguous--

"Indeed, indeed, sir," amid a negative laugh of relief.

In the midst of it, a crash as from a falling chain startled the company,
and Sir William Heans stooped into the light, feeling his way slowly with
his hand round the side of the arch leading from the harnesscave. He had
removed his highlows, and held an amber-headed cane and a black top-hat
in his left hand. In their surprise, the gentlemen, who had been moving
doorwards, slowed to a halt, and Shaxton, whipping up the lantern from
the floor, shot the light on the moving figure.

Under his hair, somewhat deranged and streaked upon his forehead, his
face looked thin, puffed, and grey of cheek, and his plaid legs stepped
out in a slow, cramped, and painstaking manner. He stopped in the arch,
somewhat dazzled by the lantern, but staring at Shaxton, who with a
strange hard cry suddenly dropped the light a foot and then again
tremblingly raised it.

"Shaxton--you know me," Heans said.

"Heans," said the other, thickly.

"I am not happily known to these gentlemen." (He bowed three shivering
angry bows.) "I heard what has been said. I couldn't allow this to go on,
for the sake of the woman you have been discussing. I am as worldly a man
as any here, and if she had been a bad woman, you understand me when I
say I should not have faced you." (His quickened breaths cut for an
instant through the caves.) "If she had done what Mr. Daunt credits her
with doing--taken her husband's money to help me--Sir William
Heans--there would have been no need for this. I am such a fellow as
that. I would have remained in that place." (He motioned back with his
hat in a kind of choked silence), "till these gentlemen had gone--till
you had done--you, Captain Shaxton, and you" (he looked at Daunt,) "who
dismiss your prisoner's feelings--grooms and what not--and arrange your
SOIREES with so rough a conscience."

The gentlemen--still struck aback--stood staring in a kind of sour
nonchalance--Sturt's horse face with a faint point of encouragement;
Daunt somewhat negative and distressed.

"'Pon my life, sir," muttered Karne, with a reddish countenance, "might
have given us a hint, sir! Didn't dream the man we were discussing was in
engagement here!"

"Indeed, I must apologise," said Daunt, wearily enough. "I am confronted
by these people, every hour of the day. It depends on their conduct. I
cannot allow one to be more important than another."

Shaxton's voice wheezed out: "Oh, come, now, you knew that I and my wife
had known him."

"Perhaps you will tell me what would become of me," said Daunt, with a
little injured laugh, "if I countenanced the social claims of every
prisoner in my safe-keeping?"

"'Pon my soul," wheezed Shaxton, "I'll drop this light! I can't stand it
to his face. . . . Heans now--Heans--Heans--how did you get her to do
that?"

Heans made an unmoved, deprecating gesture with his eyeglass--a little
pathetically dingy. "Forgive me, Shaxton," he said, "for being material.
I have unfinished duties. Do not drop it. . . . ."

"Damme, it's heavy, Sir William Heans! I can't hold the thing up for
ever."

"I take you, Shaxton," said Sturt, with his brave head up and speaking in
a strong cool voice. "You are inclined to be sceptical. Now, I am not.
Isn't this in the circumstances the action of one of our gentlemen? If I
may put a word in, sir," said he, addressing Heans, "and urging its
indelicacy in behalf of the unknown, I should ask you to state exactly
how you came by that sum of money?"

"Indeed, my service to you, sir," said Sir William, bowing towards the
speaker in some confusion and sadness. "I can correct Captain
Shaxton. . . . if he is still sceptical. . . . about the fair incognita.
It took the entreaties of myself, green to the place and desperate, to
persuade her to take my money and drop it from her barouche. When the
police deprived me of my effects on landing, they had passed and returned
to me my handkerchiefs, among which were some notes concealed in a
perfume-pad. At first I put these aside with a view to escaping. In the
end, however, I played away and was cheated of twenty pounds. The
remainder--after my friend and I had by a miracle evaded Mr. Daunt--I hid
in a box of Tunbridge-ware, having a picture of the Pantiles on the lid,
in this woman's house, and she at my begging entreaty, and because of the
horror she had for my situation, at the mercy, as I was, of certain
unscrupulous persons beneath my station, removed them and cast them into
the hands of my friend at the top of Davey Street."

"Ah yes--yes," said Daunt, removing a cheroot which he had just lighted,
and staring at Heans rather dark-humouredly, "that is true. Certainly I
was on his track."

"Ah, sir, you approve of me!" said Heans, tossing his glass icily.

"Steady now," said Kent.

"I know you for a man who will cut any number of capers," said the
Superintendent, with an ugly sternness. "You would not ask me to
approve."

Hereupon Shaxton--who seemed to have recovered from his first shocking
pallor at the sight of Heans--lowered his lantern, and stepping back,
button-holed the Superintendent with a remarkable and clumsy freedom.
"I--ho-ho--" he said, bending and staring in the other's eyes with a
giggling, ironical smile, "I ask you to approve."

Daunt, seemingly jealous for his privacy, and much ashamed of the
business, here pulled away, rather protestingly staring into the other's
baleful eyes. "Shaxton," he said, with a sudden little smile and nod,
"you may command even the police, and call us careless. We will pass the
pad for you and Heans' rash incognita with pleasure."

"Bravo--bravo," said the gentleman with the red chin-beard. Sturt stared
inquiringly from one to the other, his face a brave question. Sir William
looked for an instant in deadly earnest. "An acknowledgment of mistake, I
give you my honour!" Karne was heard to mutter.

Shaxton dropped Daunt's coat, while his chuckling eye flashed laughingly
away and laughingly back. The lamp swung in his hand, and he continued to
giggle menacingly between his depressed and drooping lips. "Ho-ho," he
said, his eyes again on the other's, "you must allow me to protect the
woman! It's rather funny of you, Superintendent. So help me G--d, I
thought you were devoted to her! Weren't you--you won't mind my saying
it?--weren't you constantly in her drawing-room when I was present?"

"True," said Daunt, staring palely at the other, "the foolish girl
certainly had her day of lionizing."

"I swear before G--d, I thought you set up for a sort of guardian of
her," Shaxton chuckled, approaching a fraction closer. "Chedsey, or is it
Beal? has a tale about your having a heroic set-to with Heans, there, in
her husband's room?"

"Yes, I attempted to protect her name," said Daunt, lifting his head a
little proudly and sourly. "We all have our heroic moment about the
women."

At once Heans, who, leaning with his right hand against the wall, and
looking down, had listened to the labelling of his character, uncaring,
if with a vexed and wearying air, whipped out in a burdened ill-held
voice: "What incident is this which has broken your belief in the
unknown?"

The Superintendent raised his eyes to the prisoner, with the question:
"You will continue to connect yourself with her--and her reputation?"
while Shaxton, yet chuckling, stared back over his shoulder into Heans'
face. A blenched stare took Heans, like a reflection of the latter's
unseen eyes. He picked suddenly at the stones with his riding-cane.

Shaxton flashed back at Daunt. "She was struck on you, too," he went on,
as if there had been no interruption; "I think this very sour of you,
Superintendent. You want a better bile. You're rather cynical--aren't
you! Here you are squeezing her through--for a friend--with a lavender
pad! Poor piece!" (He smiled malignly at the Superintendent who, for some
seconds, stared or glared at him.) "Come, gentlemen," he added, hoarsely,
"we must get back to the ladies." (The shadows leapt as he turned
doorwards.) "Bah! it reminds me of the old woman who regretted she had
not married a watchman, as he had his lantern in everybody's yard. Dash
it, before I went for any one, if I was in the habit of rooting in refuse
with it, I'd wipe my weapon!"

Raising the lantern, he again squared round by the door, and stood
staring back at Heans, The others stopped rather protestingly: Daunt, as
it happened, in sombre, nodding expostulation with Sturt. "There you are,
Heans," sighed the Captain, ruefully; "all the possible virtues
still--eh? It's a strange world! 'Pon honour, I hope you're comfortable
in it--not too much against you! Why now--have you still that pad in your
possession?"

Sir William's eyes flashed at the other, and he half turned away as if he
would return into the cave, pushing back, however, with a quick, cramped
effort. "Indeed, sir, I have not," he said, shaking in an agitated way
the frayed ribbon of his glass as if he would have slightly snubbed the
other; "it is in the possession of a Mrs. Quaid, from whom I had rooms,
at No 5, B---- Street. She was a selfish, bothersome, anxious person, and
would no doubt have retained it. Indeed, I may say, she was so much
impressed by the story that it had been embroidered by an acquaintance of
my own, a lady of title, that, when leaving, I bestowed it upon her that
she might be easy in her mind, at least, about my ton." (Here Heans, with
a slight grey laugh, put his eyeglass to his eye.) "Do me the kindness,
Captain Shaxton, should you call and examine the scent-pad for the
purpose of assuring yourself against a baseless aspersion--do me the
honour to obtain at my expense--I have an old ring here which I am sure
she will accept--some volumes of PLUTARCH'S LIVES OF THE ANCIENTS in her
possession, the study of which I have missed sadly since I have been in
assignment here."

Shaxton, striding across half-jovially, half-malignly, wheezed, "Yes,
I'll do it--yes, poor Heans. You don't mean to say the old hussy deprived
you of 'em!" and clasped carelessly the ring which Sir William thrust
into his hand. At the same moment Captain Sturt stepped over and offered
the prisoner some choice Orinoco tobacco from a silver box.

"In bargaining as to price," continued Sir William, bowing and dipping in
his hand in an abrupt manner, "she wanted a shilling more than I could
reasonably expend. So agreeable in you to oblige me, Mr. Shaxton, and
you, sir--in a stranger too Pray give my respects to the poor woman. The
fellow with the books will find me, here, in Oughtryn's house!" (He nodded
here and there, suddenly broken in spirit and rather ghastly pale.) "I
ask permission," he added, "to remind you I have some duties yet
unfinished." And before any one could speak, he whipped on his hat, and
turned very quickly away into the arch. Perhaps to lessen the impression
of sadness left by his stumbling shadow, Daunt, of the police, called
after him in a hoarse, leisurely voice, "Very good hit, sir--very good
hit!" And as he put the gentlemen through the door, he glanced slowly
about the stable, up at the walls, and at the legend: "Stone him to
death."




CHAPTER V



ANOTHER BLACK STRING


Outside the stable, Daunt, despite Sir William's request for polite
reading, took a piece of yellow chalk from his uniform, and marked round
the bolt of the upper door with it. Inside, there was Heans, satisfied,
no doubt, that he had capped an impression of resignation to stables,
and Mr. Oughtryn's service, by his mild fever for the lost classic,
which the cynical officer seems to have treated rather as if a proud and
incorrigible prisoner, having handed over all his belongings to those
about him, now demanded only, for a more perfect peace, one little bunch
of violets to sniff.

One of the gentlemen, moving across the yard, rather urgently hailed the
Commandant, and catching up his sword, he departed, brushing and flipping
the chalk from his fingers. It was Captain Sturt.

"Hope there was nothing wrong in my offering the poor fellow tobacco,"
said he; ranging up and eyeing his preoccupied face.

"No, you did quite right," said Daunt; "they get little enough of that
kind. In any case I am like enough to have trouble with him after
this--bless his mercurial ecstasies!"

"Most interesting. I'm afraid you mean you're sceptical about his
gentility!"

"Not of its endurance, but of its honesty. That man will fight me with it
as long as he can scrape a satin stock together. I leave a visitor like
you, sir, to allow himself the luxury of being moved by him--to offer him
your kindness--while I observe how much he is keeping as a hostage for a
future life of gentility here, what sort of a practical notion he has of
settling down on the tags and tatters he's clinging to--as against those
he's lavish with as he's been to-night."

"Pitching too much ballast overboard for a prisoner, eh?"

"Most fine and magnanimous, isn't that the word? It's wonderful how long
they keep it up--almost as if it were part of the blood. But piecing
together his careless manner about the lady, and himself, and to me, I am
about to keep my eye, for a week or so, about the back gate here. These
are technical horrors, Captain Sturt--pray forget them!"

* * * * *

To retrace our steps, a second and no less curious accident had happened
to Sir William when hiding in the harness-cave. When, to avoid the
officers, he had returned in among the chaff-sacks, in feeling about him,
his shoulder had struck a heavy chain pendant from the two smaller ends
of the place, used for suspending the spare sacks and horse-rugs, and in
thrusting up his hand to stay the rattle of the slack, it had
encountered, not the chain only, but a place of juncture where it ceased,
and its last link was upheld by a double greasy leather thong (resembling
those used by prisoners for tricing up their anklets) to some moving
substance against the back wall. Now what brought Sir William to return
to this again, even after his tragic encounter with the gentlemen, was
this, that while he sat upon an upright sack near the wall, with his hand
still upon the thong, stilling the swinging chain, his arm beginning to
tremble in agitation as he heard what was said, he was confused by the
sudden "jingle" of a lighter chain, inside the wall, and somewhere above
his head. More than once, while the chain still swung, and he durst not
remove his hand, he heard distinctly the steady "tinkling" of this other
in some crevice of the wall. But what had specially roused his curiosity,
was that it had the iron "jangle" of the anklechains of the road-gangs,
known to his ear, [Note 15. The chain makes a deep sound in concussion
with the anklet.] and for one foolish moment--before he realised that it
was connected with the thongs on which he had his hand--he had a fancy
there was a convict up there concealed in a hole. It gave him quite a
turn.

We have said the horses were attached by running-chains to the mangers,
and the occasional rattle, no doubt, prevented the gentlemen from being
attracted by the other. When Heans had forgotten all this, and jerked
himself up by the thong to go out and meet the gentlemen, the whole
erection whipped up, the chain in the cave rattling, and the gyve--if
that it were--lashing the stones in its prison in the wall.

It was some time after the yard had ceased to echo with the visitors'
swords and wellingtons, that he came out and took in the lantern. Having
coated the beasts, he returned, and with the lantern in his hand, was
about to leave, when, being interested in the extraordinary way the
sack-chain was secured, he once more shook it into voice, holding up the
light, and eyeing the wall with it. He saw that it was split by two heavy
cracks, each about the width of an elephant's leg, and running obliquely
to the roof like those in the stable. While one crossed the corner of the
wall high up, the other began about five feet from the floor, making at a
sharp angle for the other side. Strolling inward, he ran his glove along
the chain, and, where it ended, the black thongs, pressing in till he
came under the higher of the two cracks, out of which, as he now saw,
they hung. He became very curious. Pulling himself up upon a sack, he
stared up the crack after the strings, but could not see the end of them.
He now lifted and held up the lantern. The strings ran, it seemed, to the
very socket of a narrowing fissure, but he could see no chain or sign of
one. Again he pulled them sharply and heard the hidden iron ring in some
stony crevice. There was plainly a second chain hidden up in the wall;
and, fetter or what not, how had it come there?

He could make little of it, and at the moment, as it happened, cared not
enough to enquire further. It seemed out of the question that a man, even
with the arm of an Ourang, could have jammed a pair of irons so far
within the wall. Nay, an urchin could not have swarmed up the crack far
enough to fix them. Heans climbed down and examined the thongs. They were
of leather, black with age or dust, and carefully knotted--the knots
being flattened as with friction and somewhat greasy and evil-smelling.
Where they met the cable-chain, they were not attached, but passed
through an end link and upward without a knot. Once more--this time with
both hands--Heans had given the chain a heavy pull, and harkened till the
noise ceased. On a sudden he stilled the quivering thongs. It had
occurred to him that they might still be attached to dead legs.

His mind, as we have seen, was only half in that matter, and at length he
left the lantern in the place and went and stood at the door into the
yard. Other things were exercising his thoughts. The two windows of the
large room were still candle-lit, and he saw someone standing alone there
with head bent, and hands on a table. He knew from the hang of her back
and head it was Abelia. From a reflected glow in his bedroom window, he
saw there was unwonted light in his passage. He listened. There was a
muffled "gurr" of conversation. They had not yet departed. The visitors
were still somewhere in the house--possibly on a search for
waiting-rooms. As if in answer to his query, a military cloak moved in
the end window of the chamber, while a shrill volume of conversation told
that some persons were still congregated in its doors into the main
passage. The latter was disclosed to him, both back and front doors being
now open. It was broad and roomy and lit half-way down by a double
oil-lamp not much brighter than the moonlit garden at the other end. He
made out, or thought he made out, a man standing in the garden in a
cocked hat. But this might have been a bush or tree.

That restless officer in the window kept snatching at his cloak, and the
hum of conversation proved it was no breeze that did it by bursting into
a high laugh. Blind Abelia might have been reading alone from a book on
the table. Two fingers of moonlight had shot into the yard over the
eastern roof. Now that the moon had reached the yard, the figure by the
front door was not so easily to be made out. Had the motionless fellow
left the garden!

Oughtryn's shrill voice is heard suddenly in the great room, and the
windy rumours of conversation break into a ripple. All at once Abelia's
constrained figure curtsies, and her shy head is smiling, nodding, and
blinking. Heans sees her grope across the room, and out across the dim
passage. By the light in the hall she has left open the opposite door.
Now a piano tinkles shrill and dim, and suddenly the great room has
people laughing and dancing in it. "Tang--tang--tinkle--tang,
tang--tang--tinkle--tang." The old house lit and peopled after many
years--the old deserted, dumb, black place--where once the King's
representative had court, and died with a secret on his widening lips!
Only yesterday, Oughtryn was asking: "Where are the notables and little
ladies, now!"

Something had frightened them all away. And here they were back again,
tripping over what grim stain--sporting with what new-old tragedy! Was
the old place clean? Those years of emptiness and obscurity--had they
served to cleanse it?

Bring your silken dusters, little ladies!

With a sigh, Heans put on an old cloak, and taking up the lantern, walked
sadly along past the horses, and held it over against the carving of the
prison lock, and the largest of the two great fissures in the stable
wall. This mammoth crack, springing in the last or ninth stall, was wider
than those in the other cave, and split the back wall almost in half,
vanishing into the rocks of the ceiling about a fathom from the
harness-room. Had some maddened, and care-nothing old-timer wriggled up
for a wager--or a crime--or some insane hope--or injury--up the great
fissure, and got stuck in some cul-de-sac above the harness-room, where
the great crack junctured with that of the strings! Who had fed him? Who
had kept his trap a secret? Who had tied his fetter-strings to the chain?
Who had forsaken him at last in his crack of doom? Had no one heard the
whispers begging in the stones?

Why? It was a singular place for a chain to be!

Awful to think some tide of human flotsam had wrestled up those cold
rocks and fallen away--all but its iron and bones!

Heans swung the lantern down, arresting it for an instant on the hewn
image in the cocked hat, and the letters "Stone him to death." For whom
was this dooming? Him they found in the chair in the ball-room there? Or
another whose sepulchre these rocks became? Strange if the doomer cut his
own: "Stone him to death."

Hark! Music! "Tang--tang--tinkle--tang," and the soft thunder of boots,
swords, and voices! The old house sounds hoarse! Grim old house! not
clean yet--not clean yet! Who is it has started the music here? Who
brings poor man and woman together? Who is the new dance-master--whose
stern swift fingers are on those keys? Who will arrange a meeting for two
who were old lovers once--or a hand-fast with her husband, once your
friend! Is it another cutting wicked dooms, and this time as a grace to
his own image! Is it good will or ill will? Is it a good spirit or a
practiser? Is Fate dragging him reluctant, or has he put out his knife
and carved another boding on her stony face?

Sir William spat and blew out the lantern.

He picked his way back to the entrance. When near the door, he started
back into the dark, but staring. Mrs. Shaxton was in the hall--Matilda
Shaxton, beautiful as a lily, but a flushed lily, and a much thinner
woman. There was a man there listening to the music with her, a man with
black-grey hair. He had his back to the yard and seemed to be pointing
out the beauty of the entablement, and widening his arms to the width of
the doorway. She did not seem happy in his company, for he said a smiling
something in answer to her, from which she shrank with an evasive
feminine shrinking. Suddenly he bowed and strode out of the front door.
He wore a cocked hat. Heans saw that it was Daunt. Sir William was not
certain whether Daunt had taken his leave, or waited crying back some
polite cry from the garden.

Poor Mrs. Shaxton seemed uneasy, and looked out at the front and back
into the yard. Heans had the horrid thought that she was still under the
gossip of that man who was growing older and--for so stern a man--loose.
Sir William knew from two spirit-stilling interviews how ugly this
playful mood of Daunt could be. He was troubled for Matilda Shaxton.

There was something threatening in the ENNUI of this stern and bitter
man. Sir William, in his exaggerating, over-angry mood, had likened him,
to-night, to some fine reptile, which had stung its way to supremacy, and
languid with success, was half-inclined to put its fang aside--yet could
not refrain from stinging the boobies, and wanting yet some drawing-room
weapon for common defence. Perhaps Sir William knew him better than those
gentlemen. Yet Sir William, from the moment of their first meeting, had
nursed a dislike for Daunt, and with a mind unhinged by real or fancied
wrongs, had not undermagnified the change in his warder. The prisoner--it
may be told--had imagined his jailer's mood of tolerance unpleasantly
mischievous, and as wide for himself as for the world. Now that he had
got there, this man, said Heans, is not really interested in a position
of eminence. It crosses him to aim fine and kindly, without change,
praise, or cessation; and if he must put a sheath on that venomed
instrument, his tongue (always phonetically right), the good folk, to
whose level he had won, must permit him, for sheer boredom, to wear it in
his cheek. "Surely," he could see him say, "that will be sufficient
homage to stupidity!" That seemed his half-weary, half-laughing attitude.
Yes, the man is dropping his guard (still speaks Sir William's hate and
anguish), and while doing so, is letting go his stern self-discipline.
There he lies, wallowing in the trough, an ugly and sly craft, shockingly
efficient, and unable yet to discard his sinister excess.

It was told that two young ladies, polking together, had been relating
how gallant had been the conduct of a prisoner out in the stable in
behalf of a certain unknown woman, and poor Matilda, dancing by, had
overheard the title, "Sir Somebody Lane." Being curious, she asked her
partner if that was the name of the prisoner; and he corrected her,
putting her right.

She had at length excused herself and crept into the hall alone; and
there, moving out too, was the Commandant of foot-police, who, perhaps
seeing her disquiet, or because, as we understand, there had been already
some slight coolness between them, had very coldly and briefly pointed
out the beauty of the architrave and the doorway. She had not seen him
for a matter of months, and she looked as keenly as she could at him to
discover if it was the same Mr. Daunt, who had made, it seems, some
mistake--quite an old story between them. After a second's scrutiny, she
said, in a rather silly, laughing way--her voice sharp: "How clever of
you, sir, to have discovered a house with a ghost in it!"

But he kept his face away, himself laughing half-ruefully and shrugging
his shoulders. "Oh, you've heard of the ghost?" he said, rather
indirectly. "Would you like to see it, madam? Shall we resurrect it for
you? I never know whether you ladies are serious or laughing!" (He looked
tired, and smothered a little, involuntary yawn.) "Little to be
frightened of," he assured her, "after a period in these obscurities! You
will not see it, madam! Ignore it, in your sternest style--look the other
way, if it come! Do not let their tales trouble you!"

He bows again in a steady, polite, mirthless, disillusioned way; puts on
his hat; and takes his leave. Very abstractedly, and almost a little
goutily, he hurries over the threshold.

Presently, alone there, in the hall, she falls on her knees, and presses
her two hands into her bonnet. Heans saw her sway, and then roll over and
lie there. And the music!

He was hesitating at the hall door, when it filled with fluttering women.
There was a sharp scream, and a long, little moan. Sir William moved back
into the yard. They had removed her bonnet, and her hair was upon the
floor. Captain Shaxton, who, like Mr. Daunt, was just departing, ran back
and knelt over her, chuckling her fears away and gently smoothing her
face and forehead. And the music ran like a little maiden about the
frowning yard--"Tang--tang--tinkle--tang, tang--tang--tinkle--tang,
tang--tang--tinkle--tang, tang--tang--tinkle--tang, tinkle--tang,
tinkle--tang, tinkle--tang, tang--tang--tinkle--tang,
tinkle--tinkle--tang----"




CHAPTER VI



BLIND ABELIA SEES SOMETHING


Heans, from his breakfast-room window, saw Abelia searching for flowers
among the bushes with trembling hands. Her grey figure, tight of sleeve
and bodice, relieved only by white vandyke collar, long black apron, and
smooth red head, moved with a blinking serenity along unkempt beds
bordered with broken cement; here culling some small creamy thing from a
gnarled tree that declaimed with every brandished limb it could ill
spare its one rosette; there choosing among little armies of red
valerian which fought and beat the grass unaided under a barren rockery.

Thus began for Heans a day pregnant with curious events. It was Sir
William Heans' fate in these eventful hours to ask a surprising number of
questions, and to have them answered with a remarkable grossness.

The house was built of smallish bricks, with windows and corners of
immense uneven stones, curiously alternating in size with a cumbrous
attempt at the Academic, and hewn sharp. The long narrow roof was only a
few feet high and shorn off at either end without ornament with a stern
and laconic expediency. Along the garden's eastern side, a wall of yellow
freestone, turning yellow-green, ran from street to cliffs, and after a
picturesque and elaborate plan darted up the latter, being breached about
ten yards over the summit by an arch having a white door now fallen
aside. Propped against this, the west wall, and the house-front, were
several pieces of rude sculpture hewn from the same stone. Among these
were two immense acorns and several of those curious pieces of
architecture known as modillions. An immense ball of the same substance,
four feet high, and smoothed to a nicety, stood on the left side of the
main-door, on a wide sunken step of wood. It had a hard, grim look, as
though the carver in his fancy had conceived, and wrought to a hair, a
symbol of a world he hated. It might almost have been the actual block of
Sisyphus. Over the door itself, a single welcoming hand projected  from
the lintel, also carved in stone. The same artist too, or one-whose
manner was similar, had carved a figure on the black stone-fountain that
broke the main path, half-way from the street. Once a beautiful, golden
thing, from which silver splashed against the mountains (for the
triangular ornaments on its five octagonal pillars were yet mustard
yellow), it was now darkened and water-less, and offered as an acceptable
substitute the vegetable waves of periwinkle, with which it was filled,
and which threatened to engulf its central figure. This little black
statue, mounted on a tulip-shaped pedestal ornamented with diagonal
grooves, and evincing considerable ingenuity, if ignorantly moulded,
could hardly have been intended to chime with a peace of bees and
jonquils, for it was only malignant and threatening. It was the figure of
an epauletted soldier, prone on a rock with head thrown back, eyeing the
sky, at whose lips was an iron trumpet through which the water--with a
rather violent fancy--must once have risen and dropped. But when the eye
sought for some fine aspiring face, fitted to the conception, it was
haunted by a mouth and brow wild with a hideous surprise. It may be that
such water as had splashed back upon the sandstone face had exaggerated,
if it had not entirely defaced it, to this strange look. If not, the
notes of that wild clarion had never brought the help so dreadfully
desired, any more than had the water which had fallen upon it washed away
the look of terror.

It was Charles Oughtryn's opinion, not professing it, as he mentioned, to
be worth much, being that of a man who "knew next to nothing," that
fountains and garden ornamentations built for frightening people "was a
mistake, though noble; that gentlefolks was better provided in the garden
with Italian ladies and the new-born young. However, he was not one to
lower the condition of a place by misplacing a remnant of its fine days,
however puzzling to the ignorant."

Had you seen Oughtryn riding to and from his farm at Bagdad--his custom
every Tuesday and Friday--you might have catalogued his peculiar figure,
in a sort of black livery frock over-supplied with cloth buttons, tight
black breeches lost in dull oiled jack-boots, and odd, curious, little
chimney-pot, as something between a lion-tamer and a funeral attendant;
his thin beard and stoutish figure completing the incongruity of his
arrangements with the suggestion of a wilier Falstaff. In his garden,
where it seemed his desire to ruminate in a dark green slop, slippers,
and a Manilla straw, but where, from a gnawing sense of the
fitting--especially since his prisoner had been assigned to him--he had
his rare, grim attacks of path-hoeing and reproving with a bill-hook,
when the results would show traces of a mind attuned rather to an
antagonism of 100 feet gums and repelling mountain-sides of wattle and
dogwood than wrestling blackberry and briar rose (when Abelia would hover
on his flanks with a deprecating crying for the slain, combining the
grieving of a distant relative with the matter-offact encouragement of
the undertaker--answered with curious, shrill, wild shouts)--in his
garden, the lion-tamer dissolved into a rather troubled elder, given to
lapses of cards and worldliness, with very little belief in his
associates, with a dislike for reading but a respect for "works," but at
the root of his being, a determination to perceive, if he could, the best
in the standard--an obstinate reverence for things that have been named
first, which bade him search them towardly rather than sceptically. It
was this curious quality possibly which had so early gained him his
"conditional pardon." We have all met, once or twice in a life-time, with
this singular nature.

Oughtryn had, according to his own account, been card-bitten when, as a
convict-shepherd, he and three fellow solitaries had been gathered for
defence into the hut of one of them during the Black revolt of 1816, and
he expected to carry the sting to his grave. With him, however, it seemed
less a living poison than an irritant. "Fraser's" and ecarte acted as his
dead-nettle rather than his bane, while the occasional exceptions
incidental to thin-voiced companions and whist on Saturday evenings in a
corner of the great room were irregular and seemed limited to meet a flux
of "blunt" rather than some gnawing need or canker. He was a careful
wastrel. As he put it, staccato voce, to Sir William: "He played only
with pudding-ends."

It is to be remarked that from the windows the west wall was almost
hidden in shrubs, as was also the front fence of bars and masonry which
met the decapitated gate-posts. Some yards along the housefront to the
left of the door--which was six feet across, glassless, and sunk in the
wall at most an inch--there stood an old sentry-box shaded by a
tobacco-tree, between two fragments of sculpture: one a biblical group
with the features defaced, the other a great corbel. This was Oughtryn's
summerhouse and here he stocked his cans and tools. In this also, since
he had come to distrust his directness in dealing familiarly with his
prisoner; since they had more than once disagreed with regard to the
signing of the sunset pass; and because Sir William refused excepting on
special occasions to "intrude himself" in the front garden, Oughtryn
would sit, half in, half out, with the COURIER, the VAN DIEMEN'S LAND
ALMANAC, or a piece of knitting, until Heans chose, or did not choose, to
open his window two yards beyond, when, after the unaltering question
"Complaints, honour?" had been answered, gossip, philosophy, or print
would pass between them.

Though they would meet in the cave, Oughtryn seldom entered Sir William's
portion of the house, and Sir William entered his only for an occasional
game of cards in the great room with Six of the pawnshop, himself, and a
floating member who was never, by the way, Mr. Carnt, who had not
Oughtryn's approval, as one who'd "let a friend down" when drinking. The
blind girl, and a sad, monumental, leisurely person with heavy
hair--introduced as "the woman"--came, went, and held the ends together.
Not that Oughtryn had been able to give over immediately, wholly, or
unshared, his "gentleman's apartment" to Heans, to meet whose standard it
had been piled and embellished into being. For the first months of Heans'
service, he had haunted the stuffy passage between the kitchen and his
creation, liable to rushes and intrusions, trampings, tiptoeings, and
clarions of domestic regulation. But, in this way, no one learned more
finally or more entirely than Oughtryn. Heans' high "good graciouses!"
and "good heavenses!" his negative shocked laughs as if some one should
apologise; his quick departures and jolly little "good days"; his long
stable-absences, presently made plain to the builder how much he might
enjoy of the cake his standard sense had prepared--his beautiful, much
mahoganied cake, garnished with cushions of pink horsehair; with plaster
ladies on the mantel-piece, three feet high, protecting doves; with a
brand new marble lamp standing seven feet on the beaufet and vouchsafing
on favourable occasions a peculiar far-off glow; with a life-size plaster
figure of a Roman soldier, quaintly fitted with a drum and a pair of
whiskers, wheedled out of old Asbold, the snuff-man, for an experience;
with the terrible, tomb-like, high-and-mighty wardrobe of a writing
cabinet and the armchairs, one of beads and one of iron covered with
yellow graining and full of hidden springs for pinching the unwary finger
(not indeed a chair to lightly rest in); with its strange china and its
choked race-horses all galloping in tune, ready rung from the
prisoner-auctioneer at a ring-dollar apiece; with the fine things
mentioned and the fine things unmentionable, from the numerous
embroidered mahogany-footed stools which macadamised the floor to the
immense, blue, mosque-andminaret bird cage in the window, containing one
very small and slightly apologetic bird--these poor Oughtryn discovered
must be renounced--lavished, into the limbo of "right done"--yes, better
to cut the painter entirely, so difficult is it to keep a large traitor
hand from patting about you as you enter, or an ignorant brain
mild-tempered before the aggressive dignity of your own arrangements.

But "lavish" as he was with his arts and possessions, Oughtryn was a
miser when his fears or his fetish were in question. It was not his view,
though a vulgarian given that way, that a gentleman keeping in good
smellage with the police should be seen too much at "dives" such as
Fraser's; nor (as well for the first reason as another) should the
notability and gentry approach the desperations in anything--such as
drinking, for instance, or slopping about the blunt. In this certainty,
he begged to be allowed one morning to discontinue the official wage he
paid Heans, as dangerous, being an encouragement to black thinking in the
police-spy, of whom he never feigned to any feeling but fear; and when
that received no answer from Sir William's window, and Oughtryn did not
chance to look round from his knitting (he was in the sentry-box) he had
sworn a very ugly frightened oath that he would be persuaded by no
feeling of veneration for his betters to sign more than one fortnightly
night's pass out. And though, as time went on, it was suggested by the
nameless woman that Sir William's health was being jeopardised by his
closer confinement, yet Oughtryn frequently returned such extra passes as
were conveyed to him, unsigned, with such written comment as: "You knows
the traps is watching an old convict, honour"; or "The traps is sharp
after Bully Suire--your honour will be pulled up constant"; or he would
draw a manacle instead of his sign-manual; or if he were easy in his
mind; for "he was as much bothered with devils as a black-fellow," he
would send a written message by Abelia, to the effect that he was
reluctant to pass the gentleman out into danger and temptation, but
offered to play him crib for it in "Captain Collins' Chamber." As for the
woman--he would say that he had never known one to hit off a man's health
yet: she must slop over him too kind for manhood, or present him with a
sour "hiceberg" whereon to lay a swounding head.

At the sentry-box also, certain favourable occasions (the peace of a
close garden after rain--the unconscious consciousness of Abelia at her
piano, or blinking near among the plants) had wooed even Sir William from
his grievance, and set him off, burning with recollection, on some
fineness of his past, till the window rang with huddled, stilted phrases,
starting Oughtryn, in return, troubled brow and beard buried in knitting,
on some bad narrative of the Black String, and his experience therein, or
that other which gave it light, so wildly connected with his life, the
Black War and the Bounty Five. How it began with the hanging of
"Muskitoo," the bad New Holland black, who led a hell-pack that adored
him; Oughtryn had stood in the hills and seen him hung; Oughtryn heard
the black women wail. "After that they'd spear the very dogs." How fifty
of them caught the Richmond "traps" in a valley, and set on them with
stones, but were beaten with the bayonet. How a man ran forty-three miles
from Swan Port for the Pittwater garrison, his hair turning grey. How
they killed the lonely women. How Dalrymple Briggs, "the beauteous
half-caste," snatched in her speared baby, and beat them off with
duck-shot, "near done up by their bursting through the chimney"; how the
lady mother, Mrs. Jones, with her faggoted roof, won three hundred acres
from Government, cowing them with a fire-arm and a cauldron--them twice
in. How they'd creep up at dark, flinging lit wingwangs on the gentry's
roofs, and a palsy hung on property. How they would suddenly pounce on
the unprotected and lonely, till the whites got the scares and some died
of terror.

How they had a funny hate for a red-coat, and how the escorts were
doubled. How Hobarton shrank when Captain Thomas and Mr. Park were found.
How he shared a bunk with Don, of Don's Battery: the hill he shot from,
knocking them back with an old Bess. How he (Oughtryn) was shepherd to
Captain Blythe, of Oatlands, and warning given by a burnt stick at Table
Hill, when fallen asleep, he waked with his gun gone, in a ring of
blacks. They were doubled up with laughter. Most they killed, but one or
two they spared--him, he supposed, for the stupid sight.

Thus were a number of evenings spent, Sir William flapping a magazine,
and fingering something lengthily in an old landscape which had been
summoned up as a frame to a tale of stalking; Oughtryn, with beard buried
in chest and bowed legs folded one inside the other, knitting and
grumbling along in a high, tinny voice; sometimes, I fear, expectorating
tobacco-juice; at others pausing, stroking his knitting, and staring
round, pale-faced and plausible of eye, as if to fascinate his
hearer--like some old gardenspider who has once pounced with rather
poisonous consequences, and if somewhat stout for the kill, will spin
you, from habit, a cunning, sinister, if vaporous net.

* * * * *

Sir William had just been thinking, as he watched Abelia on that eventful
morning, how strange, how grim, that anything so frail, so vague of aim,
trembling blindly to each flower, blown whither it would not, yet
flutteringly determined, could instil into the midst of pain a flitting
as of peace. There was peace indeed in that bare life--gentle and remote
Abelia. She had a sort of habit of serenity.

As if to belie his thought, he saw her pause in the path that skirted the
great shrubbery bed along the eastern wall. In it grew high baggy bushes,
and fronting her, in particular, that leggy thing imported from the
Amazon, with elephantine leaves, and sweet blue poisonous flowers. He was
amazed and then startled to see the girl spring back and turn away as if
to run to the house; but in her terror she went but a few steps, suddenly
dropping her basket and creeping back again to the tree. He could see how
distraughtly and yet how cautiously her feet took the ground. Some fancy
about a reptile, thought he, some love affair--yet why does the child
move back so shudderingly? There was indeed something repulsive in the
great bush through whose black stems he could see the wall, with, near
the ground, some half-lit crack or opening. Heans sniffed the air. He
could smell the heavy perfume from his window. It was like the caress of
a tiger--soothing, gentle, yet with faint reptilian hintings.

Oughtryn, he knew, had gone off early with few words, and in a black
mood.

Now for fear the girl should come to harm--there was something fascinated
in the way she returned upon her course--he snatched up his walking cane
from behind the Roman, and climbed over the sill upon the path. That he
might not interrupt Abelia rudely in some private endeavour, he sauntered
at a slow pace along the house-front. Almost immediately he stopped,
however, for the girl had seen him. She was in a bowed position, as if
about to thrust her way beneath the tree, and now turned with the leaves
about her head beckoning him away. He had never seen her so distressingly
in earnest, and at the same time her face half-kept the wall as at the
hint of something ugly and unpleasant there. Heans held up, swinging his
cane in some annoyance and perplexity. The garden was quiet, its bushes
crinkling with an occasional gust. Sunlight just gleamed on their slope:
the opposite clouded in fine greens. His attention was suddenly drawn
over the wall by a soft exclamation, moaning and guttural. This was
followed by a rattle of talk very short and sharp. He had been accustomed
to hear a strange childish jargon from that direction, and these were two
grown voices. Some seventy yards over the wall were the pediments of the
next house; a small gloomy institution situated on a bare green rise,
where were maintained and educated the few children of the exiled Blacks.

Heans made slowly along his path and down that beside the wall. Abelia
had actually crawled in beneath her tree. Its great leaves, though heavy,
were sparse, and Heans, approaching and piercing them with shaded eyes,
could see distinctly a hole or waterway in the wall and the form of the
girl stooping before it. Something in the picture of the girl's figure
before the cement-framed hole held some curious, half-recalled interest
for him. He stopped. He could no longer see Abelia's figure. He
immediately decided to follow her. He had advanced but four or five paces
when, as if she had seen him, she came groping out from among the dank
loose leaves, and met him with a mouth contracted with fear. Her restless
lids were almost closed, and she sought to get her trembling hands upon
him. When he reached her, she sank against him and seemed unable to
stand. Her white face clutched its shred of serenity.

She pointed to the house and Heans guided or rather pulled her across the
beds to the front. Beneath his window, she beckoned towards one of the
carven stones and fell upon it, letting go of him immediately.

"What is the matter?" Sir William Heans asked.

"I'll speak now," she promised, in her distracted way.

"Why, Abelia--nothing to frighten you, my dear?"

"Yes--yes," she persisted. "I was coming--past the tree--with the blue
flowers--when I saw something scarlet in its centre. It was so bright--I
thought it might be some strange flower. But when I peeped inside, there
was a break there in the wall above the opening, and the scarlet was
showing through. Just then I heard a man speak very quickly. I saw it
must be a soldier, and creeping in, I caught through the wall a man's red
coat and the peak of hair on his collar. Below the crack was a hole for
the runaway water. I thought I would be able to see who they were through
the runaway" (she stopped, blinking before her, for an instant dumb),
"and sinking down I saw them sitting before one another on the grass: a
soldier, one of them, a large angry-speaking man, and the other the old
nurse black-woman, Conapanny. She was holding out her hand and seemed to
moan and pray for something--and he--he had his shoes and gaiters beside
him, and was putting kangaroo moccasins over his stockings. But when
Conapanny went on staring at him--begging and begging--he put his hand on
his bayonet and said--oh, Sir William, the man said 'If she made a noise
he would stick her with his gully!'"

"Gracious heavens," said Sir William, in a soothing voice, "my dear, I'm
quite certain you misheard him!"




CHAPTER VII



POISON


The world will hardly make much progress until the wicked man is
segregated; he tires out so many good men.

When Abelia, half-fainting, had been carried in to the nameless
woman--and an explanation vouchsafed--Heans hurried out again, stepping
his way swiftly towards the waterway. Quite clearly, as he approached, he
heard the sound of suppressed weeping. Pushing aside the dank obstructing
bush, he crept in beneath. The opening was some fifteen inches high by a
foot broad, and ornamented by a rough frame of concrete, in which the
trowel had dug like a dagger. It had been opened to drain the upper side
of the wall into the house-gutter, which here hugged the lower, but the
roots of the great heliotrope had cracked gutter, hole, and wall. Not
content with shaking the foundations, the tree had thrust two black arms
through the fissure, pushing beyond its scented flowers.

Sir William, putting his eyeglass to the crack, saw no red-coat, but made
out something like a heap of old clothes spread on a bush. He lowered
himself upon his side in the pallid grasses and stared through the
waterway.

A few bushes were scattered about a hollow of lean grass, in which lay a
couple of bundles in net bags (quaintly ornamented with soiled pink
bows), some roots, and some fragments of raw flesh, which, from the gray
hair attached to it, he took to be that of a native animal. How these
came to be thrown broadcast was his conjecture, but among them was a
small old black-woman, pinched and grim of face, and sunk as it were in
the earth rather than sitting upon it. Her body was covered with a pink
skirt and tasselled shawl, and in her lap, though her eyes were not upon
it, was something that looked like a dead reptile, but which he presently
saw was nothing more than a withered cluster from the tree above him
whose plucked blue blossoms rot as quickly as the hint they give with all
their sweets. Heans considered it more than likely that he had been
observed by the native, whose senses would be more alert than his own;
but she had given no sign. She seemed sunk in a kind of stupor of
weeping, and plucked slowly at a bit of growing grass with slim black
fingers.

He was dragged out of his thought by the groaning of the hinges of the
street gate, and the noise of footsteps on the central path. He could not
at first see who it was for the bushes, but once he caught a gleam of
colour, and suddenly, across the fountain, where the black bugler blew
his trumpet, through a clear pass of leaves, he saw a soldier pass slowly
up, a bundle in his hand, and his cold, bold eyes on the house.

Sir William let the man go past and presently started towards the house
along his own path--never, however, coming abreast of the other. When the
soldier reached the door, he did not immediately knock, but stood swaying
and looking about him, tapping his loose trousers with a gnarled stick he
carried. He was smart to note Sir William as the latter turned into the
transverse path, and forsaking the door, came swaying in an easy way to
meet him. He was a tall, full-complexioned, dark-looking man, high of
cheek-bone, thick of chin, but over his limber--almost
skittish--friendliness, stared an obstinate eye, coldly and covertly
angry. He saluted as he approached, yet with an open smiling countenance,
as it were, just civil, if not unlikely to be caught in a rudeness. A
hasty stare would have painted him that sort of ragamuffin personage who
has led the village pack of toughs in his youth, and would spend his age,
the revered of a certain class of toper, in its inn. No worse.

Sir William could hardly believe but he was identical with the man over
the wall, yet noted if it were he, he had, for a reason somewhat
troubling, discarded the moccasins again for muddy shoes. He thought to
himself, perhaps there were soldiers about. He carried no musket. Still
with that belittling pleasantness of his--by which Sir William supposed
he was known to him--he asked, in a rich, glib, fluting rattle, "if Mr.
Charley Oughtryn had the place here: as he had orders to scrub the floor,
and take in furniture for the swarry? A nice thing it is, sir," he
continued, not waiting for an answer, nor giving a chance for one,
"laying us battery-men on to this tack of decorating, a-running us here
and a-running us there--to this 'all and that manshin, like biddies with
their scrubbing brushes. Sooner go after the crows [Note 16. Natives.]
again on the hills--I would, sir--like running children and rusting your
regimental fire-arm--on convict rations. I would, sir--on convict
rations! Spafield: that's my name S-p-a-f-i-e-l-d: pronounce the A like a
R. Now, sir, pleased to tell me, sir, if they expect a man named with a
name like Spafield?"

Sir William, looking, with his fallen, aged face, rather baleful about
the eyes himself, answered nothing, examining the other where he stood
saluting and half-stifling his malign pleasantries. The latter
titillation no more hid, nor yet revealed, his adamant assurance, than
did his rich rattle and untidy moustaches his long ham-like cheek and
thick, heavy chin. The commanding man of a low pack showed just so much
under his wicked geniality as the tell-tale smear on an urchin's mouth.

"Oughtryn, as you may know, is away," said Heans upon a sudden. "You will
produce your permission. I know you soldiers."

The other grinned up with a slight glint, his voice beginning to drag
truculently.

"Fare and bed till the Sunday morning: Joseph Spafield. That's the
gentleman's name; and that's the order."

"Where is it?" asked Heans, for the man had produced nothing.

His trousers-lappet hung undone, and, after an interval, in which he
watched the other with his angry facetious eye, he thrust in his hand,
pulling it forth again, however, empty.

"I'll give it into the biddie's fingers, if you'll excuse," he answered.
"You've two 'andsome women in the house, I'm told. I'm not responsible to
any one but the people. . . . You'll understand my lord" (dropping his
voice to a whisper). "I 'appen to know your connection here to be a funny
one, and I'm here on dooty. It's not for a guard to be too free. You'll
comprehend my footing's delicate." The man folded his arms under that
malign look.

Still staring at him, Sir William put his glass in, and after a moment's
pause, said: "You may come with me"; whereon the man whipped his bundle
up unpleasing sharp, and followed, almost treading on his heels. As they
passed the sentry-box, he piped up a sportive sing-sing for his private
ear, being a repetition of some curious Indian or Native ditty, in a
rich, harsh tenor:


Morruda, yerraba, tundy kin arra
Morruda, yerraba, min yin guiny wite ma la


but dropped it for a great laugh, as an article escaped his bundle, and
he turned to snatch it up. Though he did so, and thrust it away, in one
movement, Heans had seen on the path a sort of slip-knot of waxed string
on a locket of black wood. It seemed to him a sort of tourniquet.
"Them's the boys to silence the bettong," [Note 17. Kangaroo rat] said
the man, with a loud dark laugh, as he sprang upright. "Aha, my lord,
for a June night in good old England! How a poaching turn do cling!"

Heans turned away from him and tapped with his cane upon the door, which
lay open. The nameless woman appeared on the instant, but not before the
soldier had remarked the ornamental hand over the door, and gabbled out,
how "we was in old somebody's grip, mister, by the look of it!"

(It seems the carved fingers in their form offered rather a grip than a
welcome.)

The woman heard him as she came underneath, but Sir William broke her
statuesque alarm somewhat by a faint smile and the remark, "It appears
differently to different people, sir . . . This red-coat," he added,
indicating the man to the woman, "has just come from the street, giving
the name of Spafield, and stating that he carries an order, quartering
him here for the period of her ladyship's party. There is no question of
his entering the door, of course, unless he can show you authority."

The woman gave a slow cold nod, though she was pale, and said that she
took orders from no one but Oughtryn, and he would be home about three.
She then stared down the man in her remote way, reaching her hand vaguely
towards the door. "We must take you in," she added, as if with a sudden
wavering, "if the gentleman knows what he's saying, and you're here for
the chamber."

A worldly tolerance was in the man's eye, standing there with folded
arms. He had put his bundle down upon the round stone. "I see," he said.
"Now I tell you what, my amiable girl. Here's my Queen's uniform, and
here's me presenting myself, fair and square. My noble here thinks he can
put a man down. I know how much down that gentleman's got to his coat.
He's got a doctor, he has." (Here he laughed.) "Well, here's my word and
title as a soldier. You take me to the room, and I'll start a-work
scrubbin' it. Let me have no more setting in judgment on an officer as is
ordered on nonpleasant duty."

"Ah," said the woman, "well, I don't know but what you mightn't come in.
I'll show you the chamber, and you can speak to the master when he comes
in."

Heans, standing on one side of the door, hit the brick arch sharply with
his cane.

"That satisfies you, then," he said. "The soldier is to enter."

"We understood some help would be sent this evening," the woman
explained. "The officer can come in. Come in, officer."

The man was about to speak, stepping forward after the woman, when Heans
tapped his shouldercushion with his stick. The fellow turned his face
like a snake. "One moment." persisted Heans, motioning the woman back;
"the presence of this man in the house may be alarming to Miss Abelia, as
she is not herself. The entry of a stranger, and one likely to be noisy
and inconsiderate, will hardly restore her. She has been thoroughly
frightened." The man gloomed at Sir William, then threw up his head and
laughed, in a merry, gleeful way. "The 'andsome miss afraid of a uniform,
well, this is news! You're not half a Jo, my lord. I can see that by the
way you talk to 'em. The amiable young charmer'll never 'ear a shoe-step
from me, bar she beckons first--that I'll promise. Abeelya. Abeelya.
That's poetry, that is. There I'm defenceless already! Now tell me, sir,
what was them women's name's made for, opposing or seducting? The girl's
sacred as a funeral, lady, from this hour. While I'm about this 'ere
manshin I'm that young lady's natural protector."

Unexpectedly the woman asked the soldier to wait, while she consulted
with young miss, and turning, stalked back into the side door. Sir
William faced away, resting his right hand upon the arch, and looking
down the garden. The soldier, after examining his companion narrowly over
his folded arms, turned also, and glanced about. A clouded sun threw
dapples of light upon the dark green pleasance, touching the forest of
the hills with a tender gleaming. The garden, ensanguined with wild
valerian, gilded with the cracked and wavering lines of its concrete
borderings, lay out obscure enough, with a beam here and a beam there
upon its weedy paths, and upon the small high figure with the bugle,
a-blowing his silent peal from his periwinkle couch. They were thus
standing, when the street gate--as who should say a far note of the very
bugle itself--again groaned, and an old woman in a black beaver bonnet
entered scrapingly, and came busily up the path. She held up her cashmere
skirt with one hand, carrying a small bundle in the other, but at sight
of the two men, seemed to waver by the fountain, as if uncertain, in a
sudden shyness, whether to return or proceed.

"On my oath," said the soldier, with a deep laugh, as he directed his
gaze about the garden, "old Nick's been a-chipping round this here park
with his chisel, mister, by the appearance of it. And a d--d funny hand
he's made of it. Ah," he cried, turning and accosting the hand above the
doorway in a sharp voice, "ah, welcome me, would yer; and break my 'and
too, by the look of you." And so saying he raised his arm, and struck the
outstretched fingers with his stick. Much to his surprise, and apparently
a little to his confusion, a portion of the carving fell "tap" upon the
top of his shako, and dropped thence upon the wooden step at his feet.
Stooping, he picked up a small black object, and after examining it,
threw it with an oath away to the right, across beds and bushes.

Heans noted that he had broken one of the fingers, but he made no comment
upon the man's actions. With the soldier he turned to meet the woman as,
issuing from the side room, she came again into the hall. She was placing
a handkerchief in her apron pocket, and her heavy chignon of hair seemed
to have become loosened, otherwise she was her remote, tolerant,
statuesque self.

"My young miss," she said, "is glad enough for you to come in, soldier.
She hopes you'll not find the chamber rough. The ladies and gentlemen
said they would polish it theirselves." At this she quavered up a grin
and edged aside, while the soldier instantly snatched up his bundle with
a rattle of broad fun, and made to go in. He seemed now in a hurry and
threw a glance behind. Over his shoulder the woman saw the newcomer
approaching up the path. Turning back, she called a "What is it, ma'am?"
and with her the man turned half-malignly: Sir William also, with his
back a little bent and polite. The old woman came on, shaking the curls
from her face, and mopping it with a large chequered handkerchief. She
stopped down, staring into the hall, as if to locate the feminine voice
which had hailed her, and then turning, bobbed a curtsey at Heans.

It was Mrs. Quaid.

"I'm sure, sir, you'd hardly know me in my poke," she said, in a shrill,
wavering voice; "I'm Mrs. Quaid, what 'ad you as a lodger."

"Why, Mrs. Quaid," he said, his face turning pale, "is this indeed you?"
He put his eyeglass up and smiled and nodded. "What--you don't mean to
say you have earned my gratitude by bringing me the ancients?"

"Yes, sir, very truly I've fetched you them myself--volubles as I thought
I couldn't part with--which I bought seven years agone from a soldier,
the very living smoke of our young guard here, though he was a holder
man. Oho, young friend, are you there?" (to the woman). "He came to the
door, and, says he, 'You'll take them off me, biddy; I'm in trouble, and
old Asbold's got my watch and my Bible. I'll take their worth to you, no
more.' So I give 'im a dollar for the appearance sake. Come now, young
friend," she said, turning to the soldier, who, swinging his bundle on
the threshold, eyed her cold enough, "you'll not surprise me by telling
me your name's Spadefields. A bold and a long-cheeked man he was, like
you, and a careless way with him. But I reckon he was a bolder and a
holder man, even in those days. Ah, I see by your temper--you'd be above
coming to my house with books!"

"How old do you take me for, biddy?" cried the soldier, rattling it out
through a rather stupid grin; "seven years ago I was no battery man."

"Oh well! it wasn't then, young friend."

"Devil's in it," chuckled the other, with an amused yet rueful admitting,
"yes, I 'ad you over the coals about them books--old Biddy Quaid! I knew
you as you came in at the old gate. Fancy now your fetching them books
for the gentleman, to-day! Why, they come from this very manshin! Break
your 'art, you'd 'eave them away if you knew what was on 'em! I'd burn
'em if I had 'em."

"These books are for the gentleman, soldier. So you've a something in
your life, friend, you don't want reminding of!"

"There's something quare," says he, "in your bringing them up to this
door before my very face--old Sall."

"To this door, young friend? Was the wrong done ye perhaps in this very
manshin?" (staring at him.)

"Well, to any door."

"Look there now! and they come from here, did they? I see you staring
round as I came up. A funny old place, I say" (nodding about) "for bad
books to come from!"

The soldier was silent.

"Very peculiar I should have met you," she added, and pointedly turned to
Sir William, leaving the man swinging a quivering bundle and staring out
under his eyebrows.

Heans, who had turned his shoulders that he might better observe him,
swung slowly away to her accosting. He somewhat absently, yet bowing and
smiling, received the books from her hands. Indeed, he seemed preoccupied
by the coincidence, or struck by the man's change of face, as also did
the nameless woman; she addressing the soldier from the shadow of the
portal with the remark: "Well now, they told me I'd be frightened out of
here by the old Governor, but I never have been."

The man laughed. "If it aint remarkable you should mention the Captain,"
said he. "Why, I've seen them very books in Governor Collins' 'ands, I
'ave. But--'e's dead, I 'appen to be certain of that bit of news."

Sir William's eyes had again sharpened on the fellow even while the old
woman was accosting him, and indeed, she too took no pains to conceal a
sort of distaste for the man, putting out her mitted hand and drawing
Heans, by the coat-sleeve, down the path in the direction of the gate.

"Is 'e after them for something?" she asked.

"No, indeed," said Sir William; "there is to be some dancing for the
Governor's lady, and he is to scrub the floors."

The old woman began immediately to pour forth her news.

"The gentleman come in last night," she was saying, "by the name of
Captain Shaxton. I noticed, over the chain, he was an officer, or for Mr.
Boxley's troublesome ears, I wouldn't have allowed it. Oho dear! I saw at
once he was not in a calm state of mind, and I was for calling down Mr.
Pelican, what now 'as the loft (Ah, them was regal places for the poor
baronet--I often says--now in Oughtryn's dangerous 'ands!), when he asked
if I still 'ad the ancient books Sir William 'Eans had favoured, and
showed me a ring, saying you was desirous of purchasing them. As he'd
broached the subject, I let him in, and went to 'unt them up. It could
'ardly be a wager, I considered; yet I did not think the gentleman was
drunk, though I saw his hand a-trembling-like in his sword. When I
fetched the books, he took one or two from the table, and turned the
pages. He agreed they was the ones, and read out about 'Fabulus Miximus,'
saying it was 'a fine sentiment.' But it licked him what you wanted with
them; and he did not seem contented-like. He then offered to give me the
price of them in place of the ring, and again asked me if I knew it for
yours, sir--holding it up--which I said I thought very probable I did. He
paid my demands out, and said you were not applicably situated. He then
asked me, light-like, if I still had in my possession a perfume pad which
Sir William 'Eans said had belonged to him; and he said (with a strange
look, which frightened me back off him), he said, if he could see it, so
that he might know there existed such a thing, it would, for some reason,
help your credit and honour. Well, sir, I couldn't see how it could
redound to that, and you know, sir, I'm not one who can afford to mix my
reputation with sacheys which 'as leather skeletons in their cupboards!
Indeed I had small-stitched it, very careful, since you was taken; but
what could I say? Was he following out evidence, I asked myself, or
satisfying his uneasy mind? I soon saw you must have somehow let it out.
Anyhow, while I was downstairs, I deemed I'd not give it into his
trembling 'and, not for the Governor's acres!"

She gave a sort of sob and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief.

"He was a clever gentleman, and when I told him so and he'd examined it
by the candle, he asked if I'd mind his feeling of it. When I asserted I
wouldn't have it touched, he bent down and smelt it, and then asked
me--staring up at me--if I'd cut a few of the stitches, just to make
certain it was lavender. Says I--drawing it away--'I'm loath to destroy
it for a matter I'm not easy on; it's all I have in memorial of the poor
baronet; besides being embroidered very rare by a honourable woman of the
realm of England.' He was not taken in, however, but said Sir William had
sworn against Captain Daunt to a leather pocket in the lavender, and if I
would satisfy him it was there, a lady might be protected from insult,
and Sir William 'Eans' honour backed. It was different sir, when I 'eard
about the lady. His anger seemed to choke the gentleman, and it was as if
he wouldn't speak no more. 'Oho dear,' says I, 'this sounds like
quarrelling and black blood!' 'No,' says he, 'you're frightened of
getting Heans into more trouble.' 'Well,' says I, I'm thinkin' of all,' I
said, 'but, by your leave, it's me and my boy would be back again, if
Daunt was to think I kept things from him; and you've done me a wrong
repeating it.' 'Ardly 'ad I spoken, when he snatched the pad out of my
'and, and slipping out his sword, there in the 'all, forced the point
into it on the floor: as swift a thing as ever I see. I couldn't 'ave
been more surprised, sir, if he'd stabbed me with it! 'There,' he said,
in a loud, wild voice, 'you can't be blamed now, madam! You can tell them
it was Captain Shaxton discovered it, but when he thrust it back" (the
old woman began sniffing in her bonnet) "torn in my chilled 'and, I
declare, sir, I was thinking it was somebody's bleeding 'art!"

Heans, striding beside her stiffly, with the books tucked high under his
left arm, here turned aside, stopped, and put his foot upon the
fountain-edge. He looked deadly chilled and fallen of face. Mrs. Quaid
extinguished her outbreak, and asked his pardon "for a weak 'eadedness
unnatural in a woman of 'er troubles. I couldn't be so mad with Captain
Shaxton," she said, as if begging forgiveness for failure, "seeing he was
so broken with it. But when, hasty-like, he would have taken the books
from the table, I pulled them away from him, saying I'd bring 'em to you
myself, for that I knew where you was placed. And so I'd find what was
true about it--and if it was for Sir William 'Eans he'd took the secret.
And he asked me when I should go. And I said, in the morning; for if it
wasn't right, I must get somehow into Mr. Daunt's good books. And the
gentleman, he laughed his hoarse little laugh, and he spoke very strange.
'Daunt won't molest you,' he said, 'but if he should come, or send a
constable, show him the thing by all means, and tell him'--the gentleman
laughed--'by a funny accident, I cut it with my sword.'"

"Enough, Mrs. Quaid." (Sir William turned and sat down upon the
fountain-edge, dropping the books to his plaid leg. Before him the
comfortable house--its stones and peeling sashes staring in the midday
grey--stretched soldierly under the royalling of a single gun. It was
empty, the red-coat and the woman having disappeared; though a hoarse
shock of laughter--a laugh like the angry roar of a beast--told they were
in the chamber. A glint of annoyance leapt into Heans' face, but was
suppressed. He began to question her: she facing him, her withholding,
tragic face ungranting among its quivering curls.)

"I wish to ask you," he said, "the old fellow seemed to speak serious?"

"Well, sir," she said, as a whim of compromise, "I'll tell you what I
thought--I thought, sir, you'd really 'ave to be careful mixing yourself
up between a crazy gentleman like him, and a official gentleman such as
you're aware 'as your name and hage in his black-books--a man as 'as made
a powerful place. Oho, dear, that's what I thought! And, now I begs to
remind you, Superintendent Daunt is changed if he's let himself be
maddened into a quarrel--that's without a woman's broke him down. He's a
successful gentleman, and knows how much respect to show to womenkind.
Sir, take an old woman's advice, and wait his reasons before you go
siding with the weaker side!"

"Come now--you, as a lady of experience, consider there is bad blood
between the two?"

"Well, sir, it's time I was returning home, and indeed I'm glad you're
still situated safe." (A couple of tears dropped from the beaver bonnet
on the gnarled fingers.) "But I'll recommend you private, as a lady that
knew you in your palmy days, and 'as 'erself 'eard the staple of 'er cell
clash, unless you're siding with the cleverer, give them their 'eads and
'ands, and don't speak for neither." (She dabbed her handkerchief into
her bonnet.) "Men with bleeding hearts is dangerous, but Mr. Daunt--
well, an older man he may be, but if he's committed a mistake, it's from
the sternness of his judgment. God bless me, never a fear had that
official! Side wise, Sir William. Where other men goes wrong Mr. Daunt
don't. A man as I've 'ad a great kindness from, yet one I can't help
respecting. Oho dear, I don't like to think of the old gentleman's glum
white face--laughing as he did! And the lady!"

"I must indeed side wisely," Heans said, "for more than one reason.
Yet--wait--I have a strange notion----" (He rose slowly from the
parapet.) "Now wait where you are, Mrs. Quaid. I will return in an
instant."

With the books under his arm, Heans turned down the path towards the
gate, walking at a good pace. The old woman remained by the fountain.
Heans was muttering as he walked. He seemed to argue with himself, and
spoke with a sort of menace. At the gate, he paused for an instant,
nodded, and turned back. "Daunt is cynical," he argued. "It is a
farfetched story. He may not believe me. Why should he! It is against his
acumen, in which he is a firm believer. However, he may desire to know
whether Shaxton called on Mrs. Quaid even if he keep away himself. His
position is difficult--nay, very difficult. Hobarton will be talking of
last night. The curious incident of 'the stable-baronet' will be about
among the messrooms. He may send to Mrs. Quaid to make sure Shaxton got
nothing. Would he, if he called there, and found the pad--is he the kind
of man to leave it there?

"He is in a difficulty. Mrs. Shaxton's fainting-fit will have called
attention to her. Suppose it comes out who the lady is--suppose in his
anger, or his cunning, Shaxton should let it out--whom the lady is, whom
Daunt has so terribly condemned, it will be remembered instantly how kind
she had been to him. People will wonder how it happened that he came to
treat people, with whom he had been intimate, in this way; how a man
could be so bound up in his profession, so stern in probity, and yet deal
a blow like this at an intimate acquaintance. And let us suppose--cynical
men as we are--it should get about that Heans had spoken the truth--and
there did exist a pocket--before Daunt knew whether he should contradict
it, or steady it out. He might want to know if Shaxton had the thing in
his hands."

Sir William's air was tragically final as he reached the fountain. "Dear
Mrs. Quaid," said he, "only one thing more--risk this for the 'poor
baronet.' Bring the pad to me, and should a policeman wait on you, tell
him that its owner has it again. Come, you will do this?"

"Lord help us, sir, what would you be doing with it!"

"Mrs. Quaid, I have reason to think Mr. Daunt will call for it--if he has
not done so. That is my judgment of him. He may order you to surrender it
for examination. We may lose it--sole evidence of the good fame of a
lady. My Heaven, that cannot happen! Send somebody here with it to-night.
Why, don't you see--he could come to me."

"You don't want the gentleman to come to you, sir," said the old woman,
shrilly. "I'm speaking for you, sir, remembering your difficulty. You
can't speak up against him. You've had too heavy a dose from him."

"His unappeasable hunger and his scepticism will bring him to this
house," Heans said.

She faintly shook her ancient curls:

"Now he'll send somebody else!"

"Not to me. I believe he won't do that. He will fear what I might say."

"Ah, frightened of what you know, sir!" She shook a wild finger at him.
"Mr. Daunt's too clever for you!"

"If you kept the pad, he might deprive you of it!"

"No, sir" (trembling.)

"I will tell you. I have a heartfelt wish to help this lady."

"He might send you a police-officer."

"Mrs. Quaid, I don't think he would risk any one else in evidence. As yet
there are only that silly giddy fellow (excusing his wife) and a
convict's shadowy testimony."

"Nay--nay, sir, I won't hear it from any one! I'm affrighted, sir, of the
gentleman's stern way!"

"Let me request you to tell him, how, in your kindness, you brought
prisoner Heans the books, and he demanded that the pad should be returned
to him."

"Ah, I'll see--I'll see! You didn't mention money, did you?"

"I have my old pelisse in very good wear," Heans said. "If the pad comes
to me to-day, I will send that to you. The fur is of considerable value."

She looked down nodding in not very gracious acquiescence.

"As I'm a sad woman, I never put the pad in the hands of the snatching
gentleman!"

"That is true."

"If he presses me, as God's with me" (trembling violently,) "I'll give
him the gentleman's ill message."

"You, madam, know better than I how to go about it."

"Well, sir, I won't answer for the secret, but you can 'ave the pad, sir.
I won't be troubled any longer with the risk of it--no, sir. Oho dear,
I'm not a trusting woman! Charity begins at 'ome, and I've known days
past what you're experiencing, and masters worse than this low Oughtryn.
What you're up to I'm not certain. You're not a person as'll suffer a
woman to advise. Because of better days, and because I had the
looking-after of you in brighter years, I adjures you, be watchful of
them as overlooks you. Ah, a funny place! And funny doings, as I've
'eard, and as this very founting will tell you, with its dead man
a'blowing his ghostly tunes for others' ears. Oho dear, I'm glad mine are
deaf to them, and I pray yours won't be opened to 'em, sir, by violent
doings, in this house. They're going to dance, are they?" She turned
housewards, with a grave air, "Her ladyship and all--ah, a funny place
for the music! Look," (pointing up) "there's my young friend at the
window, this moment, a-peeping at his old friend in the garden. A nice
old young man--not a-scrubbin' yet. So I'll go home, sir. Women 'as their
work."

At her indication, Sir William saw in a window on the extreme right, the
slats of whose shades were just perceptibly raised, the outline of a
figure standing motionless between it and the one behind. He changed his
glance to the heavy bonnet of the old woman--who, with an open
unsatisfied, grey-old stare bobbed a curtsey, and turned shruggingly
away. He looked after her as she hurried downward, a dark curl flapping
about her bonnet.

"And troth, Mrs. Quaid," called he.

When at length he turned and moved housewards, his ear was attracted to a
spot in the eastern wall, whence from beneath the heliotrope came yet a
faint runnel of crying.




CHAPTER VIII



O'CRONE'S FETCH.


At four in the afternoon, Heans, in frogged pelisse and travelling
cap--his horse saddled on his arm--still paced the yard, awaiting
Oughtryn. He arrived at about half-past; unlatching the gate and jogging
in gloomily on his horse. Heans, gathering his reins as the other's
low-crowned straw appeared over the wall, got into the saddle as he came
in.

"Now, where's the child, honour," asked Oughtryn, passing the gate:
"making puddings, odrabit her, when she might have her pleasure-horse and
elegant gallanting! I hope she's not been keeping your honour argufying
again, and begging herself off. The tea-kettle for company and drudging
about--that's her green bay tree! A lowly spirit! Poor chit--poor 'omely
one--I asks pardon for thinking better of her! If she 'ad age, she'd know
how reasonable she was getting her pleasuring!"

Sir William explained immediately how that morning there had been
something of an intrusion, and that Oughtryn's presence was urgently
wanted. He himself, he said, had hesitated to admit a noisy character to
the house, but the women had overruled him, expecting someone for the
great room. Not liking, however, the man's manners, he thought it wiser
to await his return, before leaving. He gave now a short account of the
morning.

Oughtryn had dismounted. "So," said he, chewing at a forgotten quid and
straining up his eyes at the other, "did the woman bid him in against the
gentleman's remonstrance?"

"Certainly."

"Without showing his voucher?"

"Just so--feminine excitement, I daresay, in view of Friday's festivity."

"Stay--them feminines sometimes see more than us. Something strange for
that here woman to go lunatic over a novelty man. Yet who'll say! They
burns their boats sudden. Why," asked he, with a sudden knitting of his
brows, "have they got soldiers about after somebody?"

"I cannot say," said Sir William, paling and straightening his hat. And
he urged his horse slowly out of the yard.

Sir William ambled past the cliffs and up the lane to Davey Street: a
part, thronged as it was with memories of Pitt's Villa, he seldom
frequented. Turning down, he stopped only at the cemetery, turning into
the street above it, and galloping airily beside the graves. Past these,
the road turned at right-angles to avoid the sea, and Heans pulled in
before a stern Roman villa lightened a little by an encircling of
ironwork, before whose woody garden were drawn up two white-bodied flys
and a dusty barouche filled with baggage. The gate was open, and riding
in, he dismounted and threw his bridle over a paling. He then advanced to
a door in the blind centre pediment and found it open. In the amber light
of the hall inside, a muscular-looking man in split sailor's trousers and
pea-coat stood with his hand on the stair-rail, talking with a groom. It
was a dark, friendly, masterful fellow, the lower part of whose face was
set in a fine toothy geniality, tinged, however, at the moment, by some
lofty cloudiness of the fine brow. He pushed in a half-meaning way to
meet--or almost it seemed to bar--Sir William's entrance.

"Mr. O'Crone is engaged, sir," he said, in answer to Heans' enquiry.
"Indeed, I am to say that he is no longer free to receive any but the few
friends summoned this morning."

"Nonsense, man!" said Sir William, somewhat hectically. "I am certain Mr.
O'Crone will see me! My name is Heans."

The man put up an implacable hand.

"You can hardly be aware, sir," he insisted, his large mouth growing less
genial, "of Mr. O'Crone's sudden attack. I have orders to state plainly,
to whoever may enquire, that on receipt of the news that his unfortunate
friend was to be removed to Port Arthur, and all hope of a meeting taken
from him, he was attacked with such deep grief as to endanger his mind,
and it has been thought wise by his servants to remove him this evening
to the ship, and sail from the place. I can assure you, sir, we have been
much put to it to know what to do. Our master has for some time been
uncertain in his behaviour."

"This is sharp news," said poor Sir William, his legs spread apart, but
very still and pale. "Can I not enter and see him? He knows my name,
'Heans': an old friend." As he spoke he made grandly to push in, but the
man advanced, spreading his large hands apart.

"I must add, sir--and pardon us ignorant men protecting a poor master--we
are in a quandary about admitting any not known to us. My master, sir, in
his wandering, has expressed a dislike, sir, of certain black-mailing
people--prisoners, sir,--who have got the holt on him; and we've sworn,
sir (those of us watching), that to ease him like, we'll have no soul in
but those two or three special named. It's pardonable in us sir, to be
jealous for him. Some of us is mere sailors, hot of head and easy
angered. Understand, we'll not have the master troubled any more than can
be mended."

Sir William was superb at this moment. He put up his glass, and hiding
his trembling lips with his hand, stared the man wanly in his large,
bland, conciliating, brisk, yet bothered face.

"I," he said, with a short cough, "will barely be taken for the
black-mailer. It is a man named Heans, Sir William Heans, and quite well
known to O'Crone. It is a heavy blow that Mr. O'Crone is to be taken
away, and I shall not see him."

The man yet stared with his peculiar friendly implacability.

"You look genuinely hurt, sir, and I feels it," said he. "But I assures
you, no. Several gentlemen has been here--saying the like, but we gave
them that answer. Let me have your message, sir, if it please you. My
master is heavily reduced, sir, and quite unfit for strained talk."

Sir William asked in a low voice for a little "clemency." "Now," he said,
"I had a certain arrangement with your master, which is cut off by his
sailing in a very heart-breaking way. Do you think" (removing his hat,
bending down, and peeping into the hall), "do you think now you could
persuade him to come for a moment to the top of those stairs there. Now
you go, sir, and beg that much for Sir William Heans. I promise you, as
Heaven is my witness, I will go no further than the stair's-foot, and
speak no more than six dozen words!"

The man looked at him for a full minute with a sort of open glaring of
eye and knitted forehead. "If I were to do it, sir," he said at length,
"and anything was to happen beyond what you promise, I'd not pause to
think, sir, before using my arm against you. You can take that risk, sir,
and the risk of my misunderstanding what you might happen to say in them
six dozen words, if you please, and my master wishes."

"Ah," said Heans, chuckling and showing his white teeth, "you take me for
the black-mailer. I am afraid I am dusty with my ride. I shall be sorry
to hear this from his own lips, but I shall take it better, when I have
seen him." (He cleared his throat, and the man slowly moved back from the
door.) "Good Heavens!" he cried, as he stepped in, "I am a gentleman of
my word--as men go! I will stand here in the hall!"

It was a small place, rather dirty, with a well-worn cedar-wood floor
painted in white and varnished squares to imitate marble, and yellowish
walls coloured to a curious imitation of stone with orange-tinted
pillars. The stairway ran up the right wall, guarded by an iron
balustrade in numerous round O's, and where it turned there was a tall
bronze lamp on a stone pedestal. A narrow old key-patterned carpet ran up
the steps, which were broad and coarsely varnished, while light crept
down upon, rather than illumined, the apartment from a half-moon above
the blind windows in the pediment.

The man reluctantly bowed Sir William in, with his hand on the banisters,
and then went up the stairs. At the bend, he took another stare,
breathing athletically through his fine teeth and eyeing, with
halfdecided reluctance, those yet beautiful plaids, and the tasselled cap
in the gentleman's glove: somewhat overhung and full. He then
disappeared, and immediately, and quite plainly, was heard the announcing
of "Sir William Heans." At once a voice answered querulous and arbitrary.
Presently after the man came down, and taking up his place by the door
with his face inwards, superintended a long wait of more than half an
hour, through which the three men stood swaying and sighing without a
word, the groom under the stairs surveying O'Crone's man, O'Crone's man
surveying the groom, but vouchsafing no explanation but a troubled air of
expectation. Into this, creeping down and floating about the orange
pillars, a drone of persuasive speaking.

At last there was a stamping and rustling, and two rather archaic ladies
in skittle-waists and heavy leghorns appeared on the stairs, and came
hurriedly down, enveloping a pair of flushed faces in grey veils.
Immediately after--but somewhat painfully--came a feeble old woman in a
cashmere shawl and pleated bonnet, followed by two new-fangled young
persons with hoops in their tight buckled dresses, and pretty shawls of
the sham cashmere made at Paisley. A clergyman was with these people, and
all showed fewer traces of emotion than the first pair: indeed the old
woman, though she once put her handkerchief to her face, seemed
peculiarly serene. The young ladies, as they kept their hoops steady with
their haftless parasols, chattered audibly in a discomfited undertone.
Bitter-faced Mr. Craye--for it was he who accompanied the party--found
time during the descent to remark the people in the hall, and took the
occasion--in a somewhat deliberate way, as one piloting newcomers about
the colony--to whisper the name of the slightly PASSE figure cooling his
heels there. The young women were sharply interested--even a trifle
dismayed--while the old woman--who was none other than Mrs.
Testwood--halted half-way down and observed the gentleman with great
intentness. Sir William moved and bowed a little over his glass. He
looked old and flushed, and his face was somewhat deephewn now with
lines; he hardly seemed to observe them as they passed. The young ladies
went prettily out. The old one came down leaning in a sort of serene pain
on her cane. In the door she turned, and beckoning to the clergyman, had
a whispered word with him. Immediately Craye turned in his bitter way and
regarded Heans. Then with evident stiffness and reluctance--as it were a
gentleman breaking in upon a settled theory--he at once approached him,
and whispering, drew, by the purport of his words, Heans' heavy eyes from
vacancy, as it were, upon those of the old woman, who took him
immediately with a quiet bow, and tapped her way out. Craye added
something for himself, as it were, and also departed. His words had been
something as follows: "We heard tell this morning of your last night's
action, Sir William Heans, and as friends of the lady, request permission
to thank you." So it was out already! As Heans did not answer, Craye
seems to have added: "Indeed, sir, it has explained an impression of our
last meeting."

"May I be dead, if I comprehend you!" Heans whipped out. He did not seem
to wholly hear.

When the clergyman had gone, and also the groom, O'Crone's man again
advanced to the banisters, holding there and looking up with an
expectant, set, and anxious face. Sir William advanced round him to the
bottom of the stairs, fiddling with the tassel of his cap and looking up
also, his amber-headed cane under his arm. In the dead silence, suddenly
was heard the rolling of the carriages in the street, and the thumping of
Heans' horse. Presently there was a murmur up the stairs, and the ceiling
shook. O'Crone slowly appeared at the bend, tottering forward, with his
left arm round the shoulders of a dark-bearded servant. With his right
hand he supported himself by the banisters. He was dressed in a black
coat and trousers, but his cravat lay loose and unbuckled upon his neck.
That curious angry dignity which was his, was gone very shockingly for a
mien of weak and shrinking pallor. He looked half his width, yellow, and
shrunken--the look of a man who has yielded. Yet his stooping Jewish
figure had become, as it were, endignified with renunciation, if it shook
in an enfeebled, angry way, as if it were against the making of another
unselfish effort. With the two of them was an oldish man--perhaps the
very last who should have companioned such a nature at such a time--a
stout, pompous, aldermanic looking personage, with a prominent stomach.
(Yet how often and how curiously is it the case that the most faithful
are the most incongruous. Happy is he who sees this early. Poor Lear
might have never turned mad had he recognised his Jester for his
Fortune-destined friend.) This gentleman, who was very thick set, and who
wore his frock-coat open--curtain-wise--over his cord protuberance, took
up a fine position, with hat a-cock and hand in waistcoat: his face in a
state of obstinate muddled depression.

Half-weakly, half-snarlingly, O'Crone stared down at Heans. Indeed, his
face looked for an instant unhealthily wicked, as of one who had found,
in spite of things, a sniff of pleasure in the ill wind.

"Well, Sir William Heans," he said, "here I am. You know you would see
me. I am not a pleasant object."

"Ah," said Heans, lifting one foot to the stairs, and leaning back upon a
quivering stick (the man beside him darkly leaning with his fingers on
the banister, watching with his cloudy smile, that foot beneath his
eyes), "I am sorry, sir, you seem ill. This amazing news--is it really
true? You leave us all with no warning, and with hardly a word?"

"I fear I'm weak," said Mr. O'Crone, "now I'm in it. Nay" (and a dark
stare came into his eyes and he looked rather into vacancy than at the
man below), "who shall hinder me to wail and weep. . . ?"

He muttered on, restlessly smoothing the banister with his right hand,
while Heans stood feeling his chin and glaring up.

"I've joined in black despair against my soul," said Mr. O'Crone, "and to
myself become an enemy."

The fat gentleman behind endeavoured to pull him from his abstraction.
"Nay, nay, a little crotchety," he said, in a faint fussy murmur, "a
little natural contrariety. Do not distress yourself. Let us beg the
visitor to shorten the interview."

"You wish me, Heans," said O'Crone, looking very white, "to carry a
message to your friends in England. Now, are you asking more? You have my
signature for nothing. I have nothing to fear from you. You know as well
as I do I haven't given you or your friend a single moral or business
claim over me."

"I came in to see if it were true," said Sir William, looking up like a
pale old man.

"Come--come, I should compound with a ten-pound note," put in the old
fellow, with a large peevishness. "That is what I would do, gentlemen. It
would satisfy everybody and there will be no rhyme or reason for pokey
speaking." ("Extremely ingenious and agreeable," he whispered, rather
privately, "when he's paid for it. Know him well! Regular quiz. Daren't
do it directly. Too much of a gentleman. I never understood it!")

"Ah, you mistake Sir William Heans," said O'Crone, grimly feeling the
banisters. "Money! My Heaven, it is merely a matter of a little
sharpness! God help you, sir," he cried out, with extreme anger and
bitterness, "I reject your offer, who once, in a different situation, had
my personal acquaintance. I no longer bend to your importunity, nor, in a
private transaction, do I hold myself bound to men who have shown
themselves cruelly void of forbearance. My honour is sadder and wiser out
of the hands of such men. Nay, sir--nay, sir" (lifting his hand and
crying out pettishly), "I have the excuse of illness for speaking
bitter!"

"In a word," said Sir William, staring in extreme sarcasm from the bottom
stair, "you have no need of such men."

"I am too shaky for recrimination. You must pardon me," said O'Crone.

"Stoopid economy, my dear sir," pattered the old personage, pitching up a
shower of snuff.

"God save me," hissed Sir William Heans, "am I in a position to be
quarrelled with!"

"He is asking me a question," said Mr. O'Crone.

"A costly conversation," nodded the old personage. "Come now. Allow me to
hazard----" (He somewhat privately put round a hand towards the back of
his coat.)

The man in the pea-jacket stood leaning against the banisters looking up,
his fist clenched over the rail. Heans, if he were in the position of
some one staring, as it were, through a hopeless window--if he seemed to
stoop under a weight--swung his glass, as he turned away, and jumped his
cane on the pavement, even with a half-jocular appearance.

O'Crone, holding by his man, with his white sick air, cried after him
rather chillily: "I'll not forget you, sir."

Hotly the other halted and looked back. "Ah, you had once a better heart,
my lord," he hissed, whereon O'Crone cried out in agitation:

"Peace, Heans, oh peace . . . go!" And as he hung on his man his eyes
were lowered.

"No, but let me speak your name," said Sir William, whitely staring; "a
man, by G--d, of such a nice forsaking humour----"

O'Crone suddenly covered his eyes, and there was a loud burst of sobbing.
At once he staggered backward, and surprising his man's grasp, fell over
in a faint upon the person behind, who caught and clasped him to his
front with a confused, unstately tenderness.

"Swooned away, 'pon my word!" cried the old fellow. "Tell the man to get
out. I say so--tell him to go out. A nasty business. Very obstinate! Give
it over to 'em. They don't come here for nothing. I say to everyone, if
he's got round you, it's dangerous to bullyrag. If he hasn't, he'll
pretend he 'as. A ten-pound note," he panted; "and rather polite, than
otherwise----" He stopped and his mouth fell open as his eyes caught upon
the action of the body-servant at the door.

This man, removing his eyes from his master, turned and ran at Sir
William, when seizing him by the front of his pelisse, he dragged him
from the centre of the hall into the doorway; Sir William meanwhile
struggling to strike him with his cane, which, being in his left hand, he
used weakly and to little purpose. The other servant, leaving O'Crone,
with lifeless face, propped against the person of the old man, had come
half-way down the stairs, where, seeing that Sir William was being
already thrust through the door, he remained, in pale, if inscrutable
inaction. Heans' antagonist (continually struck at and endeavouring to
shelter his head beneath Sir William's chin) never once released his hold
of the pelisse, but thrust the other backwards against the door--a panel
of which was open--and thence into the garden, where he released him, and
receiving as he turned a heavy cut from the staggering prisoner, ran in
and bolted the door.

Sir William fell to the ground with his effort, but rising lightly,
brushed himself delicately and instinctively where he stood. His glass
was gone and he must search before he recovered it. There was a somewhat
irreparable tear above one knee of his plaid trousers. Presently he went
over to his old beast. There, beside the animal, he rested, with his
hands on the saddle and his head bowed. At length, seeming to become
aware that he was being watched by the man on the box of the barouche, he
moved to the fence and lifted the rein from the paling.




CHAPTER IX



CAPTAIN COLLINS' ROOM


When Oughtryn had put up his horse, he did not go in to the women, but
entered the house by the yard door that opened into the Chamber. He
found the red-coat standing with his back to one of the windows in the
same wall, his face somewhat pale and hang-dog. His coat and shako lay
on a threelegged table by the chimney, and he stood in his grey shirt
and dirty white breeches, to protect the knees of which he had bound
together a sheaf of straw, and this with wooden bucket and brush lay in
the middle of the floor. Half of the room was damp with his scrubbing,
the other untouched. It was fine and long. Three small white windows
broke the walls on either side, the two most eastern with their shutters
closed, the further with their shades raised a few inches over the slate
sills. Between the outer pairs and the middle, on each wall, shallow
arches had been sunk, and in these, in lieu of papering, some elegant
amateur, dreaming of a classic past, had painted archaic shrubs and
ferns waist-high, with here and there a Grecian pillar to the height of
a woman. The sprays and pendants peeped from the plaster with a veiled
air, the leaves, a bluish-emerald, the stiff stems and branches sunken
to the drab of old wounds in cupboarded masters. At the west end, in a
bow of windows, was a small mantel-piece of stone, its supports grooved
and voluted to represent Ionic pillars; while a stone cornice, grooved
in harmony--as with a rude tool groping after the Greek--joined walls
and ceiling. There were two doors into the hall; one close to the north
wall, and another not far from the south. Both were open at the moment,
the room indeed being lit from the hall and the span of light beneath
the shades. Against the more southern door, an octagonal table and three
chairs had been pushed back, the soldier's blue bundle lying there, with
his cane, a besom, and an empty drinking-glass.

When Oughtryn came in, he did not at first see the man, and when he had
peered round, under his hat, at glass, bundle, coat, and shako, he
shrilled out, "Where have ye got, officer?" rousing the hang-dog figure
to a gabbling response.

"What's this!" he said, without the least movement of body or pale bold
head, "Bonnypart himself! Been a-talking it over with your prisoner, Mr.
Oughtryn. Very pleasant, you were, very pleasant and chatty. Yes, I seen
you under the blind. My faith, says I, it's a herridge I see--what with
swells turning prisoners, and prisoners turning swells! Not saying it
mean-like, but the curiousness, Mr. Oughtryn, of the old fellow being
your servant-man, and your treating him so deferential!"

"Why," said Oughtryn, advancing on the figure in his blind, wide-eyed
way, yet looking rather drawn in about the mouth-corners, "I don't quite
remember you. You must be a older man than you look?"

"You're speaking hoarse. You needn't be afraid with me. Weren't you
shepherding for Captain Blyth when the niggers was round Swan Port? You
had a burning scare and we soldiers was run across from Richmond, one of
us dying from fatigue. I remember at the burnt hut, a small hulking
feller very bandy in the leg. My, you was doing the deferential in them
days! Helping here, Capt., and smiling there, Capt. I didn't forget you,
did I?"

"No," said Oughtryn, "you didn't forget me. Nevertheless you're a puzzle
to me. If you is a oldish guard, how do it come doing menial work at your
time of service? It puts me to my trumps. Are you a special
confidential--you don't look to me like a groom for the young ladies?"

"Ah, you want to know why they sent me? As to that matter you've fallen
on your feet. Yes, I can fit you. I'm a gentleman as has had a experience
lately as has made a changed man of me. To out with it flat, my wife has
left her home, and gone off in suspicious circumstances on a ship for
Port Phillip. I've been a bit snappish and sour, and they've put me here
for this work, thinking the sight of the pretty young women would soften
my business for me. Funny cures for funny ailments. It's as much as I can
do to behave unrude to females."

"What packet was that?" says Oughtryn. "We read of a prison-woman running
off with the surgeon of the old CARDEBEQUE. Was that your young woman?"

"Nay, I won't tell you what she went off in. She was no prisoner. Have
some gumption, mate! You ask me why I'm a-scrubbin here, and I tell you
I'm a man who's sick in his mind. I can't help that, can I? You'll have
to put up with a bit of moonying and temper from this officer. You'd
'ardly call the old room cheerful for one of my ailment--yet I say this;
these young ladies of yours is considerate of a man. They seem to scent
he's off of the steady. You see 'em tip-toe in; leave a foul clout, or a
sneaker of punch; and melt like a shadow."

Oughtryn--as his habit was--retired backwards to a chair near the door at
which he had entered, and sinking upon it, and removing his hat, stared
widely and bulkily about the room. Once or so he made use of a box of
sawdust behind him under the table. He had a foolish, half-placable look
upon his face; the curious look of a man not quite comfortable in his own
house, and not very pleased thereat.

"You've been here before, then?" he said, at length. "I hear you speak of
it as the old room?"

"Long before youse come into dwelling here," said the other, "that I can
assure you."

"Not in Collins' day, I bet! I can tell you they say his Honour, the
Governor, died in this very room!"

"Well," gabbled the soldier, laughing very quiet, "I know a bit more than
that about Collins. I tell you I seen Collins dead on the floor of this
very room when I was a young boy. I used to go of errands for him, and
running in late from Government Paddock when the famine was on, I found
Muster Gargrave and Dr. Mountgarret standing over someone on the floor by
that right window. They must have dragged him over to the light. I saw it
was Collins, though he was changed and dark in the face. The doctor told
me to run off; the Governor was dead. I heard they'd found him
a-crouching in the corner of a sofa by the fire, his hat on his head."

"So you seen that?" said Oughtryn, rising and walking over to the
fireplace. "Well, it wasn't usual." (He stood peering stupidly into the
right pillar of the mantel, and under the jalousie.) "I suppose it was
done right," he said, presently. "It was a strange time, I've heard say,
when the famine was on:--kelp and kangaroo, and the prisoners freed into
the bush, each man for himself. A fellow might have crept back through
the lines--some one who hated bigger than he starved--and--but I heard
say there was no wounds found on his Honour?"

"I seen blood on his Honour's fingers, I'll tell ye that, and some was on
the books he had with him, as I know, because they come into my handling.
The Governor's sister was about and the doctor. Can a man murder silent,
and leave no mark?"

"Nateral 'istory narrates he was found dead in his chair. Being resident
among these valuables, I get apicturing what took place. It makes me
curious to meet a man as saw him lying on this very floor. Now, Captain
Daunt--you know the notable Superintendent Daunt--he says to me he didn't
die in this mansion. 'Collins,' says he, 'lived in a house called
Regent's Villa.'"

"Daunt couldn't 'a said that. That gentleman knows I was here. You'd
believe what I say if you knew how I've been all day dreading scrubbin'
up a bloody board by that window."

Oughtryn stood there bow-legged, very glum, and staring from the
mantel-piece to the boards beneath the right jalousie.

"So you is to be made a useful nuisance?" said he at last, as with one
rather crushed in his own house.

"A nuisance, mate! What do you mean?" The soldier turned his malign,
efficient head towards him.

"Hang me, you say them as sent you knew of your knowledge of my place!"
(He lifted again his hat to his head.) "You know the place better than I
do. Hang me, if I'll give in to too much open house!"

"My faith, I think you'll take as you're given!" said the soldier,
feeling in his lapel. "Here's my order, and pretty stiff it is." He did
not move, but stood with the order in his hand.

Oughtryn, after an interval, squirted some juice into the box and came
over. The order evidently displeased him, for he shifted his hat up,
drawing his hand over his forehead, somewhat patient and fallen to
pieces, while he brought the paper to bear against his wide eyes. "I
see," he said, resignedly, "when you're done inside, you're to take over
the stabling. You're to 'ave the chaff-room for your bed. Well--no--it
'ud be handsomer between you and me and my gentleman if I give you the
empty room above here, where there's an old squab and sofa. My
gentleman's in and out of the stable. He wouldn't get along with that
sort of plan."

"Very considerate you are, mate, for me and the pass-man. What about the
young ladies wanting available room? Read your paper. I've orders to
occupy the stable and not to disturb the quality."

"I see--they asks free of all available rooms, specally ground floor. I
suppose you want your key and your independence?"

"You're a knowing one, asking why a man of my age and reckoning should
refuse to be locked up!"

"Well, you'll sleep up above till the room's wanted. My gentleman won't
stand you about his work. I don't know who would think of it."

"Hang me--he'll get along safe enough for his ease and comfort--though I
hears grumbling in stricter parts about you 'mancipists and your convicts
would cause a man guard a good hand. I'll keep out of the old raff's way,
if that's your fright, though I value a sack out there before a squab in
the barrack. Believe me, it leaves a bad taste, Bonnypart, what with my
disease and what I saw under the window. I cain't forget the old fellow.
You give me the key and I'll sleep out."

"I'll give you the key when the ladies want the room. I'm not going to
have my man put upon."

"My body, I don't want to be boxed up!"

"You can go and come as you wish."

"I've told you, break your 'art, I don't want to be bothered with the
women!" (There was a noise of footsteps in the yard, and the soldier drew
aside the blind, looked out, and then back.) "I'm all sour like," he
continued. "No more relish for merryin' with 'em. I go off slack like a
Birmingham gun."

"My blind chit and the woman won't hurt you." The soldier dropped back
the blind.

"Well--d--n it!--you look out, altering orders!"

"I'm here a-making a private asking for my stable till the Sunday?"

The other kimboed his arms and gave a cold, hang-dog shrug about the room.

"I tell you, mate," gabbled he, "I don't want in here."

"Why, gammon," cried Oughtryn, "you're persistin' in that false bruit
about my house, are you! Ill-tempered as like as ill I take it. I can't
have you pertendin' to it. We'll have the whole rout of young ladies
a-fainting and calling 'ghost' if you don't stifle that bit of 'istory.
We're all friends here. We're your obedient, 'umble servants as long as
you don't behave malevolent, and quick to obey orders. The ladies and
gentlemen is welcome to all I have. I have no say where my benefactors is
concerned. The 'ouse is theirs. But you leave my gentleman his place, and
me a private say, and behave yourself healthy."

"Nay, I'll not promise you, mate," said the soldier, pushing himself from
the wall. "Give me the order."

Oughtryn held it near to him, congenial, dazed, and rather sunken of
face. "Them orders is worded over-stern," he said, shaking his head. "An
old-timer doesn't need that."

"Stern you'll discover 'em," said the other. "You get me a drink,
Bonnypart. I've a throat like a padded wall." As he spoke, he thrust the
thing in his pocket, and whipped up and shifted the bucket along the
floor. "It's getting dark," he added, kneeling upon the straw; "to-night
won't see me at the chimbly."

"You get your work done and eat a good meal," said Oughtryn, making away
through the north door. "You don't look to me like a supernatious man.
Hang me, you spoil my cheerfulness talking heavy! Get your scrubbing
done. I want to raise a talk about old times with you, bye and bye, in
the garden."

In the door he stopped and called high for "Abelia," ordering some
"cognac in a glass," and after an interval, in which he stood chewing his
quid and looking into the fading garden, while the soldier knelt upright
in the middle of the floor, holding a brush in his hand and staring like
a bald bad image of Pharaoh at the chimney--Abelia, blind and pale, came
feeling over the half-lit hall, and approaching Oughtryn, thrust
something white into his hand.

She would have given him the glass also, but that he beckoned her, with a
neighing negative, into the Chamber, indicating, in a wide absorption in
what she had brought him, the soldier kneeling upright in the centre.
Holding forward the trembling, amber glass, the girl moved in, a
blind--knowing not whither--smile under frightened lids. At first she
seemed unable to locate a figure in the dark room, going south towards
the table, but when she did so--her sight catching, perhaps, in the gleam
in the bucket, or the man's white legs--then indeed she stopped, her face
rigid, as if transfixed with horror, advancing only after an interval
with frightened, late, placating smile. She came so lightly beside him,
and the man was so absorbed in his sly, black-pupilled reverie, that he
seemed be mazed by her appearance, ducking back with a violent laugh, as
she stopped, with her hand out, holding the glass to him.

"Why, my charmer, I didn't know as it was you," he said, and cursed, and
took the glass as she held it out half-seeing what he did. Taking a swig,
he stole a hard look at her pretty, nodding head, and afterwards another
swig (more slowly), and then another longer look at her serene,
trembling, pallid face.

"Ah," he said, trying to soften his bold white stare, "it's you that was
a-peeping round the other this morning. You're the 'ouse-pet, aren't you,
my pretty? I can say that quick, can't I? You needn't be frightened of
them soldiers no more, now you can start 'em like a sheep. A soldier of
the Queen and your gentleman protector. Eh--now what 'ave I done?
What--you won't forgive me! I'm a shiver yet. It's not the first time
your pretty face trapped a great stoopid of a man or I don't know liddle
shy--do I?"

Abelia drew away awkwardly, blushing a little, and trying to see him
through her lids. "What's your will, soldier?" she whispered.

He gave another fluting guffaw, and threw up and lingered over his
heel-tap. "That's brandy--that is," he said, handing her the glass. "I'm
no man for cat-lap." Before she could free the glass he had her by the
fingers. "Come, you think I jabber enough for two," he whispered; "now,
you say you forgive me for being a soldier and spoiled a-standing
night-guard at the watches. That's where I been when you was sleepin'
sulky, and you shrinks away from us now we're serviced. Remember the poor
irongrays, Queeny. Now then. Are you docile?"

She twisted in his clutch--striving to free herself with her other
hand--her blind serenity trifled with--startled, paling, and
then--laughing low.

"Oh, soldier, let go," she whimpered.

"I'll let go, little shy," he whispered--"I'll let go, if you say 'poor
iron-gray--he's rough.'"

"Poor iron-gray, he's rough," she said, and he took his hand off hers and
the glass. She went to the window for a moment, standing strange against
the grey-green blind; and then fingered along the frescoed leaves towards
the old man. He--Oughtryn--had not looked round. He had a paper in his
hand, but was not looking at it. He was standing in his bulbous, bland,
bandy way, masticating and looking out at twilit bushes. When Abelia got
to the door, she examined him uncertainly. She then whimpered the
question, "Will you sign the pass? It is Mr. Starkey who brought it, and
he has been drinking. He says Sir William has had a fainting fit down in
Asbold's shop."

"It might be a mistake," pattered Oughtryn, low but on a high key. "He
has never drunk too much in daylight. Perhaps he is hac'ally taken ill.
Eleven-thirty. Hang me, if I'll pass him out so late!" (He slowly tore up
the paper.) "Things are not a-boding good. I will go down and bring him
home."

He had let the paper fall in little pieces over the floor. The next
moment, reminded perhaps what was forward by the noise of the soldier's
clout rinsing in the bucket, he turned, adding in a high, tinny manner:
"Here, child, pick 'em up, every one of 'em. At that rate, we'll get no
ball-room." In answer, Abelia knelt in the door and began to gather them
painfully and with a fumbling care that her blindness doubtless made
necessary. Behind, the soldier suddenly made the gloaming clamorous with
a harsh scrubbing and fluting:


Morruda, yerraba, tundy kin arra,
Morruda, yerraba, min yin guiny wite ma la.

* * * * *

Of this day, crowded with strange incidents, perhaps the most surprising
have yet to be related. Oughtryn had not been gone a quarter of an hour,
when old Conapanny, the black, came into the yard, and sat smoking, among
her bundles, at the kitchen door. A neighbour of two or three years, she
paid the two women occasional visits, when she would tell of her yearning
for the scrub, and ask questions about God and life, rather penetrating
than curious, and always in the character of one who spoke to keep
another talking. The Oughtryns were rather flattered by than enduring of
her visits, for she was something of a celebrity, being one of those
faithful women who acted as guides and gobetweens to Mr. Robinson on his
"pacifications," in particular his last journey over swamps and snow from
Western Bluff: indeed, it was said that, like Truganinna, she had saved
his life from drowning. "Marmanuke," she would say, speaking by title of
Robinson, "he stare at blackfellow--blackfellow lay down weapon"; adding
when she chose to talk obscurely--for she had good enough English--
"Blackfellow know Marmanuke velly angly for blackfellow," Enough, though,
of Conapanny's celebrity. She was one of perhaps seven natives left in
the island for various reasons, herself at the instance of Robinson, who
had appointed her native-nurse to the children of the exiles, in which
capacity she served with a restless and convulsive devotion; now shrill
and motherly; now taken by a fit of study and sunk in tattered copies of
ROKEBY or PAUL AND VIRGINIA: for she had that elegant accomplishment; and
now and again (after pining entreaty) dropping harness, and
disappearing--humpbacked--into forests after roots and simples for
childish ailment and perhaps her own.

This evening she had come a-begging a net of kidney beans from the
fountain plot, and for these, since the women were bustled by the extra
hand, "come scrubbing of the Chamber," they had bidden her round by the
house to pick for herself. She seemed shy of this, doubting "big-fellow
Oughtryn, him hound her off," and "Mr. Tuso-servant-man" (as she for some
reason christened Heans, whom she divinely mimicked), "him holler to me
from window," It seems Sir William, early in his assignment, seeing her
hanging about the garden, and puzzled by her appearance there, had, with
one shout, caused her to flee away like the silent shadow that she was.
It is to be added in fairness when next day Heans passed her in the yard,
and stopped to listen to her "'ohoning" with Abelia, as is the way with
women, Conapanny's amber eyes--instead of blazing with angry
recollection--filled with inscrutable tears. Tonight, when told that
Oughtryn and 'Mr. Tuso' were not yet home, she consented with reluctant
"youeys" [Note 18. Youey=yes.] to help herself, but instead of rising,
began emptying dainties, gathered elsewhere, from rush-bag to net. Abelia
had seemed shy of her Conapanny to-night, and hung in the shadow of the
kitchen, or behind the woman. She suddenly moved alone (serene and
enigmatic) to the door-post, and stood blinking upon her. "Where you been
to-day, Conapanny?" she trembled out.

"Where?" grunted the black, not looking up, but continuing her work with
subtle fingers: "Mitis Langdale--Mitis Hall--Mitis Quaid--Mitis Shakerly.
Mitis Hall poorly, Mitter Hall poorly----"

"Out all day?"

"Out all day."

"Conapanny, who was it you talk with on the other side of the wall in the
morning? Conapanny know! Tell me, Conapanny."

"Ai--me talk with a friend," said Conapanny, and she stared up.

"He spoke bad. I hear him. Why you no tell--poor Conapanny?"

"He spoke bad? You hear him?"

She took out her pipe, and knocking it on the flags, rose, hardly putting
hands to ground. Then shouldering her bags, she stepped forward, staring
past Abelia into the kitchen. The woman was busy at the range, and with a
glance about, Conapanny stepped out again and stood a minute under her
bundles with eyes on the ground. The courtyard was yet cosily alight, and
now and then the leaves whimpered in their eyry at the summit of the gum.
Steps came from the hollow room where the soldier was at work, and then a
laugh, and then a swelling song. On a sudden, shockingly on this, there
was a shout and a grim noise of struggling. Abelia turned and pushed
inward to the other kitchen door, where the woman met her, and they put
their arms on one another. It was pretty dark in the passage, which ran
past kitchen and staircase--under which a doorway gave into the hall.
Through the door the latter place gleamed faintly, showing in the
opposite wall the south Chamber door standing open, and even the glass
standing on the table and the bedimmed uprights of a chair. The struggle
continued for the space of a half-minute, with now and then a desperate
cry or exclamation; dropped; was resumed; and then dropped outright. Then
followed the sound of a sort of shamed breathing. In the kitchen, the
woman took courage, and called in a hard slow voice, "What is happening
in the room?" There was a harsh noise as of an effort to speak, but
nothing intelligible. Presently the woman called again: "What's befallen
you, sir? Speak, if you please." And now there came a sullen shout:

"Bring a light here. My 'and's caught."

The woman, turning, snatched a candlestick and lit it at the fire. She
ran to see if Conapanny was at the door, but she had gone. They then
advanced along the passage--serene Abelia holding to the woman's
waist--and turning down the warm hall, peered in at the Chamber. By the
light of the candle, some one was seen lying by the right wall, near the
upper end. "Is it you, soldier?" asked the woman, and the answer came in
that swift unmistakable flute, "My b----y 'and's caught in the skirting,
Sal; it's fair crushed, I'se warrant." With a sigh of hesitation they
sidled in along the wall, and looked upon the man from a little distance.
"Ah," cried the woman, starting back, "there's blood--you've wounded
yourself!" Abelia did not move, however: she stood there gently blinking
in the candle. He lay half on his back, his head sunk, his gaze
adder-like, his long legs spread out towards them, unable to rise for his
left hand, which was caught below the wrist between floor and skirting,
which here gaped--as happens in sun-shrunken houses--near the distance of
an inch. Supporting his body on his right hand, he gave an explanation in
the jabbering jocular, though his words, his massive cheek, and his
assured hard face were a trifle too remote and grey. "For a
guard-officer, I've given us all a bit of sport," said he. "Why, liddle
shy, you'll have to beckon me over; I've no more pluck for the stormin'
of your havenly citydel. My faith, you'll have the laugh of me yet! Mice
is my game. Yes--I see something glint, and I put in me 'and after it (it
was a little lady's ring and d----d if it didn't run in before my
fingers), when I fancied something crossed my palm, and I fell
a-struggling like a woman. Here she is--gripped," he added, and gave a
pull at his wrist, which was ringed about with a scar like a bracelet.
"Now you get my bagnet from the chair, my tender girl, and I'll see if I
can lever 'im out."

The woman did not move, but Abelia, finding a strange courage, felt
through the shadows and found and pulled the bayonet out of its black
case, which the man, rolling over towards the skirting, took in his right
hand, and thrust in beside the other. There was a crack, a struggle, and
he swung over and sat up. After a space, he said: "You women scamper and
get me a clout for my hand," and the two left the candle and went away
together. Presently after, Abelia came feeling in with some linen; and he
rose from the floor and held out his wrist--silent while she bound it
about.

Indeed, how silent these old homes can be in the evening!




CHAPTER X



DISCOVERY OF A NEW AND AN OLD DOCUMENT


It was dark when Oughtryn and Sir William Heans rode into the yard, the
former taking both horses and bidding Sir William in: a service which he
accepted without a word, moving slowly across but not using his cane. In
the kitchen candles his fine eyes looked for once sightless and vague.

The soldier was in the stable, and emerged into the door, as Oughtryn led
in the beasts. Sir William did not look back, though the yard skellocked
to the sudden battery of talk, the brazen confident rattle, almost done,
you might have said, and yet laughed at yourself for saying so, with a
purpose. The sharp fellow seemed to note Sir William's dejection, for he
distinctly gabbled at his back: "A down peg, on my oath!" At the moment
Heans thought it singular the man should exercise his resentment when he
saw he was discomposed.

In Sir William's dusky room, the tall lamp had been lit, but not turned
up, and there was an infinitesimal noise of welcome from the bird cage,
as the silent one moved one step away along his perch. A cloth had been
laid on the table, which was spread with its usual groaning profusion of
oversalted bacon, slices of underdone mutton, calcined eggs, ill-washed
butter, and multitudinous preserves in extraordinary china, the jam
itself as palatable as jam can be that is made inclusive of stones,
skins, and kernels. And yet there was such steady profuseness, such
decent generosity, such faithful hospitality in the old prisoner's house,
that the waste, the briny meat, the bitter fruit, had come to stand with
Heans--a man of fastidious taste--on a level with the quality missed in
each.

An elegant decanter, shaped like a swan, and ornamented with
many-coloured pimples, two of which stood for eyes, swam in its wonted
place beside Heans' glasses, glowing as usual with a somewhat bilious
appearance, being filled with an arrangement of Oughtryn's known as
"beer": a fantastic thing of varying and often alarming nature. The
ingredients for making tea, excellent cheese, and an immense, tough,
home-made loaf, were also part of the feast, the former including a green
earthenware teapot, remarkably shaped like an elephant, which old Six had
given Miss Abelia.

Heans strolled past the groaning board, unbuttoned his pelisse, and threw
that, stick, and cap in the iron chair. The fender was full of logs from
the hills, but the fire had been forgotten, and was in embers. A pair of
kid boots was freezing on the kangaroo-rug behind the wood. Heans knelt
and put in some long boughs, waiting there until they flamed. It occurred
to him to wonder if the presence of the soldier was responsible for this
neglect. On the way up, Oughtryn had remarked, how "the officer there,
a-scrubbing of the room--a man of small-conduct to his mind--had act'ally
seen Collins' body lying there dead, and seemed troubled by, or was
pertendin' to, a disrelish for sleeping above." And he himself had
answered, that "he had caught him at it with Mrs. Quaid, who met him in
the morning with her books, and went for him like a vixen." Well--strange
fate!--pimps, blacklegs, turnkeys, spies--all may come and go, for Sir
William Heans has nothing left to hide--no broken window-bar to curtain,
no hole half-chiselled, to conceal, through which the prisoner fancies he
can smell old summers! Poor dungeoned fool, didst dream thou hadst a
cleavage in thy chains, and when thou wast roused, and knew it sound,
could not but kneel and long again for the lost anguish of thy sleep! He
rose and went into the bedroom, where he removed his coat and slept.

* * * * *

He was waked by voices, feeling very cold. Getting up and finding his
door ajar, he stood beside it a moment collecting himself and listening
to what at first he thought some human quarrel coming from the garden.
This little passage ran north and south, and he could feel by the draught
and the sour smell of the tobacco-tree that the window at the north end
was open. Putting on his coat, he went up the passage, stopping by the
window just before his own door. The blind was up, and several stars
rested like beacons on the mountain-side. He moved to close the window
(it was not usual to find the windows open in the house, and more
certainly so early in the summer), when the voluble gabble of the
soldier, breaking out just under the sill, made him withdraw his hand.
"Ah," said the man, with a lazy irony, "us redcoats was soft against
them, was we! Well, I think we did better alone than when the Black
String was on, and you lags put in--though we 'ated the work. 'Not
fittin' for the King's Regiment's,' as Cap'n Vicary used to say. Our
Besses was rusted agin the bushes, and our shoes, being private found,
went to pieces on the stones. When we struck, 'owever, we struck, sure
enough, Bonnypart. I reclect when me and Roe was two of a military post
at Crass's out-station on Cross Marsh." (Here the soldier paused to
strike his flint-steel.) "The scrub was so thick, a man with a tomahawk
could barely make a quarter-of-a-mile's progress in eight hours. The
postman he come running in with his mouth bruised and a spear through his
jacket. Out we turns. There was snow on the ground. We come up with them
a-squatting in a break around the blaze--men, biddies, and children. The
corporal he shouts, 'Alt--'fire! . . . ." Sir William saw the ruby of a
match rise in the dark, and the image of the man's KEPI and hanging hair,
while slowly the window and passage filled with tobacco. "I tell you," he
added, quick and glib, "I've balked at the look of a black ever since."
Heans put forward his hand to close the window, but changed his mind, and
turning aside into his sitting-room, shut the door. Here the fire had
fallen low again and the room seemed cold. He looked about, thinking he
must have caught a chill from his sleep, or from the open passage; but
was surprised to find the nearer of the two windows open. This caused him
a moment's surprise. He did not remember to have felt the cold when he
returned. Oughtryn's high voice, muffled by the sentry-box, was neighing
through the blind.

Before closing it, he lifted some wood on the fire, and squeezed a
fraction more light from the illustrious lamp. A kettle of water had been
placed in the fender, and this he put on the mutinous wood. Moving back
to the window, he heard Oughtryn cry out: "Not he. Jones was saved by
being a cockney, as I remember him a-saying. He took to the surf, the
blacks running along the sand and throwing waddies at him, which, he,
being street-born, dodged." Heans harkened a few moments, then softly
closed the sash. Instantly it seemed as if the soldier heard it or had
seen the reflection of the raised lamp, for from that moment there was an
aggressive rise in his narrations penetrating the night, unrelieved by
equal returns from his companion, whose voice Heans scarcely again heard.

It may be said that he gave the matter his attention because of what
followed in the room. Under the window was a small mahogany table, its
round top composed of seven saucers of wood, once used, it was said, by
Governor Davey for his plates in rough weather. On this, beside a
standish and quills, lay Sir William's new-found PLUTARCHS in a pile,
minus the topmost, which was fallen to the floor. When he had picked up
the latter--for he had put his foot upon it in closing the window--and
returned it to the pile, he noticed that not only had the first been
thrown from its place, but that the whole six volumes had been
disarranged as by a blow or fall against the table, while, either by some
inadvertence of Mrs. Quaid's, or the intention of an intruder--for he
soon connected the open windows with an intruder--something in the
nature of a green paper-packet had been shaken out of, or hastily
inserted, between the second book and the third. Removing the packet, but
never lifting it to the level of the sill, Heans lowered his face once to
it, then carried it, with the volume which had been under it, to the
fire, when, falling upon a chair with his back to the window, he tore it
open, keeping the cover of the book about it. The green enveloping paper
gave place to a small feminine article, carmine coloured, somewhat too
flat for a pin-cushion, somewhat too stout for a book-mark, worked very
indecisively in lavender and gold, and bore his monogram and coat-of-arms
in many coloured silks. Altogether a gay and brilliant thing, it would
have been difficult to place colours together more likely to please or
attract the eye. Yet like a beautiful and tender female, designed
seemingly to grace and sweeten the earthy garden of life, it held in its
tender silks--its pinks, its golds, its greens, its lavender--a stitch or
two of black, as if to warn it too were woven of the elements of tragedy.
It lay only for an instant in Sir William's hand, for across the upper
end of its golden side, a hand had worked in yellow thread:--

"See within. . . . and help you God."

Instantly Heans, now pale as death, took a knife from the table, and
severed the upper stitches against the pages of the PLUTARCH. In his
effort, the green envelope escaped the book and fell upon the vermilion
roses of the carpet. It was addressed:


"SIR WILLIAM HEANS
(per countenance and favour of two ladies)
Charles Oughtryn's Mansion House,
Macquarie Street."


But Sir William, giving it no heed, found and extracted from within the
pad a small folded paper, stamped with official-looking print, which,
when opened, revealed, itself a cancelled ticket-of-leave to one
"Patrick Clench," but on the back (over the list of the prisoner's
favours) ran a mass of tremulous writing in violet ink, even as
stereotype, and close as a missal. Sir William, if he was now looking
for something of the kind, would have instantly known it for the writing
of Mr. Carnt.

He lay back in the chair, almost upon his left elbow, and a sort of groan
escaped his lips as he puzzled out the burden of it. Slowly a tear broke
from the corner of his glass, fell upon his cravat, and ran down his
velvet waistcoat. Yes, indeed he seemed exalted, and twice corrected a
swift, joyous ejaculation with a lift of his gaze and a harkening pause.
Presently, at a noisy outburst from the hall, he sat up and rose to his
feet. The kettle was bubbling and rattling on the fire. Quickly folding
the ticket, he approached the mantel-piece, and raising the statue of the
lady with the dove at the left end, placed the paper beneath it; then
removing the pad from the book, he took this also, and after carefully
extracting with a penknife the direction in yellow stitch, hid it beneath
the angel at the other. He then dropped the enveloping paper in the
embers.

After he had done this, he took his pelisse from the chair, and holding
it up to the lamp, examined the fur lining with a gleam of interest. He
then with some care folded it, and taking out an old GAZETTE from the
catacomb cabinet, wrapped it up, tying it with a piece of blue tape.
Afterwards, removing the tea-kettle, he was at some pains to produce,
with its aid, and that of various articles about the tea-pot, a cup of
tea, sinking the tea in a silver tea measure (artfully contrived to
resemble a dromedary), fishing the animal out, and with difficulty
extracting the leaves through the howdah, that he might afterwards eat
them upon his toast. Indeed, Sir William was at some trouble to come at
his meals, from the wealth of ornament that leagured them about. Part of
his service was adorned with portraits of "Suffolk Worthies"; part with a
many-hued acrostic; each plate demanding the same burning question, till
temporarily extinguished under a piece of bread or mutton--once more to
be offered inexorably when the appetite was assuaged. His sky-blue
tea-cup, lost from the cupboard of some Regency blue, was shaped like a
kylix, and stood unsteadily on its little pedestal--indeed, was
precarious when its shallow basin held its amber quantum. The very knives
with which he now cut the bread or carved the meat were precarious with
rough carvings of tigers, snakes, and dying ladies. It seems to have been
one of Oughtryn's opinions--aided by Abelia's straying, untutored
fancy--that the nobility "was like horses; and would wither away if made
to take their food in rude directness," indeed, only thrived when
permitted to approach the board in a circuitous manner.

* * * * *

It must be enough to state, for the moment, that something in Carnt's
communication had turned Sir William's thoughts with gratitude towards
the black woman, Conapanny. Not that she wholly occupied them--the
sharpened air, the energy which had gripped his frame, the swift fallings
of face and sudden exaltations, had their goad and spur elsewhere; yet
there was something in what had happened, something in the room or its
appearance, which pulled Sir William repeatedly into the actual and
stumbled him against his old landlady and that brown woman. Once he rose
from the table (where, hardly seeming to do either, he was steadily
eating ham and drinking tea), opened the door and peered into the passage
towards the open window; and once more, when he had shut out the evil
tobacco, he paused by the left window in his own room before returning to
his seat. A few moments after, he went again to that window, and returned
with Fate in his hands--a volume of the Ancients--which, holding up with
one hand, he began to read, the while attending to his inner man, his
whole air showing a pallid effort to concentrate his mind upon the fate
of that most noble Newton of the Greeks:--

"But what most of all afflicted Marcellus, was the unhappy fate of
Archimedes, who was at that time in his study, engaged in mathematical
researches; and his mind, as well as his eye, was so intent upon his
diagram, that he neither heard the tumultuous noise of the Romans, nor
perceived that the city was taken. A soldier suddenly entered his room,
and ordered him to follow him to Marcellus; and Archimedes refusing to do
it till he had finished his problem, and brought his demonstration to
bear, the soldier, in a passion, drew his sword and killed him. Others
say, the soldier came up to him at first with a drawn sword to kill him,
and Archimedes, perceiving him, begged he would hold his hand a moment,
that he might not leave his theorem imperfect; but the soldier, neither
regarding him nor his theorem, laid him dead at his feet. A third account
of the matter is, that, as Archimedes was carrying in a box some
mathematical instruments to Marcellus, as sun-dials, spheres, and
quadrants, by which the eye might measure the magnitude of the sun, some
soldiers met him, and imagining that there was gold in the box, took away
his life for it. . . ."

Whether or not it was the odour of the man's pipe, pervading the room, or
his unending, fluting jabber, which forced his image on Heans' thoughts,
he found himself defeated in his attempts to read; and not for the first
time during his repast, reverted to the violent scene between man and
black which had so affrighted Abelia that morning. Conapanny's wailing,
too, rung on his mind with a strange persistency. Now came that faint
familiarity in the name "Spafield," and the insistent feeling that it was
connected in his memory with a black woman and a hole in masonry. . . .
He made another attempt to lose himself in the fate of the ancient
engineer, when he was reminded that the book in his hand was one of those
recognised before the door by the soldier, who hinted at some unpleasing
tragedy or superstition connected with it; and it was with this in mind
that Sir William Heans began to turn it in his hand and examine the
gilded back. Was the book a possession of that same Governor Collins
whose body was seen by Spafield lying in the Chamber? He turned the
leaves, searching for signs of former ownership--for fates other than
that of the ingenious defeater of Marcellus--only to remember with a
feeling of curious alarm that there had been a scrawl at the end of one
of the volumes; whereon, searching the end-papers of the book, and
finding nothing but an old superscription, he rose and returned to the
window. Two of the volumes on the table yielded nothing more. There was
nothing in the third. Only against the blistered back of the bottom one
was the object of his search--the old letter--and though he could not
decipher it in the faint moon, its poignancy and wild threats came back
to him as he stood staring at the curious printed characters. He did not
at once seek the lamplight. The appearance of it recalled enough of the
burden to enchain him. He remembered the stolen meetings--the passionate
attachment amid the lack of food--the threat against the usurous boy, Joe
Spars. He recalled how the book--the volume in his hand--had been given
to Joe Spars to put in the waterway. If it was still here with its
fellows--could Spars have put it there?

He approached close to the blind, and lifting a slat stared through it
towards the heliotrope, and then the other way; but here his view was
impeded by the triangular side of the sentry-box. The two men were still
talking, but their voices sounded short and angry. In the instant that he
harkened, Oughtryn's voice piped out: "You'll never manage it. The likes
of you can't do it." To which the other gabbled softly: "What's there in
it! I've known worse than me 'as rose flash--aye, played long-coat,
clergy, and company manners, after shooting a crow 'en in a tree." Heans
moved slowly to the other window. The blind was down and he took the cord
and raised it. Just below the sill, on the mossy path, was the carven
stone on which poor Abelia had fallen; a kind of corbel, of which the
flat back stood towards the house, its round, grooved front in the moon.
Was it a neglected example? To support what groined wonder had it been
wistfully foreshadowed? Leaning on the sill, he stared down upon it,
enwrapped and grave. He then lifted his glance over the garden,
clear-pathed, and backed by beckoning hills . . . Of course he could not
see the face, but there it was, the small stone image, with the raised,
black trumpet. At that moment Heans was amazed to hear a note of muffled
music. There had sounded a distinct three or four notes, rather rapid and
tinny. And then, when suddenly there came a knock at his door, and the
woman appeared asking if she might remove the cloth, and as he (Heans)
turned nodding to the fire, he was agreeably relieved to hear Abelia
playing her Spanish songs.

* * * * *

It was often his habit, rather than smoke his tobacco-pipe among finery,
or for the silent company of the horses, to carry it to the stable; and
now, while the monumental woman was leisurely denuding the table, he took
from the door a plaid shooting-jacket, and sought cap and tobacco-box.
Before he left the room, however, he carried the volume of PLUTARCH to
the lamp, and examined the messages, and the resulting cry of anguish, of
the malign carver. A prisoner. A stone-cutter, who hewed his creatures in
a garden near which were "caves." Finally a captive in them, still
attended by the usurous boy Joe Spars. Standing stiff and tense, Heans
read it through: "I am to be whipped and confined for the while--perhaps
forever--out of the garden. They have shut me in the caves . . ." Here
he paused, shutting the cover a moment, and glaring aside. Thereafter
lifting his glass--which had dropped--to his eye, he read, "Damnation
seize them--if they let me have my chisel again, I shall do something
awful!" (He gave a sharp exclamation as the woman dropped an array of
spoons, but bowed as of habit, as this fate-like personage begged a
remote and symbolical pardon.) The soldier's malicious laugh broke again
upon the window, intermingling with the tang-tinkle-tang of the buried
piano. He read very slowly; "His Honour shall know of me."

Afterwards he went over to the standish, thinking deeply and twisting a
pen in his fingers. Abruptly he took a dip of ink, and returned to the
cabinet, where above the name "Spars" in the postscript of Surridge's
letter, he made the entry "Joseph Spafield," and the date "Nov. 4th
1841." So the document remains in the old book with his addition in
scarce darker ink.

He now closed the book on a piece of blotting-paper, leaving it on the
catacomb cabinet. The little wizen face of the clock informed him from
its weary weight of ornament that it was nine. He could not find his pipe
on the stone sill where he usually laid it, nevertheless he moved on the
door, where, turning, he asked the woman for the lantern, as he had
mislaid one of his smoking appliances. She left the room, and he heard
her slow tread stop and resume as she engaged in a whispering in the
passage. A high cry of, "I was a young boy afore you in and out of these
old rooms," informed him who had stopped her. While she was away, he
found his pipe on the drum held by his whiskered friend, the Roman, but
before she returned he had concealed it, and when she fetched the lantern
ready lit, he did not extinguish it. Before he departed, however, he
asked the woman if it were true, what was said about the old black,
Conapanny, that she spoke like an educated women? And they had a few
words about it, the woman waiting a moment over the folded cloth, and
speaking with more than usual reluctance.

"Conapanny can speak elegant enough when she likes," said she, and would
have moved leisurely away.

"Miss Abelia is better?" asked Heans. "I hear her at the pianoforte."

"Yes, she is well."

"It was she who told me the black carried a book about her?"

The woman paused at the drawer of the beaufet, and seemed to consider.
Finally she muttered, rather than said, "she carried in her nets a book
called 'Colonel Jack,' she thought, but she did not think her reading of
it was more than a penance."

"Penance! Then it is indeed she I hear crying. I cannot get it out of my
mind that she has been injured."

"Nay--you don't need to have done crime to be made to weep," said the
woman, in a distinct, low tone. "Maybe she weeps for her kith--like."

"That is so," answered Sir William, and for a moment he seemed about to
speak further, but changed his mind, and went out into the passage. When
yet in his door, he saw the white shoulder-pads of the man in the window,
and moving with relief to the entrance, stepped out into the yard. The
night was quiet and cold. The soft fingers of the moon had the foliaged
cliff and the doors beneath, but the hulk of the great dwelling behind
him was dark, only for one candle in the kitchen. Heans stepped swiftly
across, dodging the wet grass among the flags. The remnant gum wafted a
forest breath in the walled yard. Where his light touched the built-in
stone about the doors, he actually records noticing a yellow streak near
the upper hinge of the first, which he does not remember to have before
seen, but does not stop to look now. In haste, he wrenched back, rather
than pulled, the bolts, making his entrance into the stable so suddenly
that Oughtryn's great dapple gelding strangled up upon his feet. It was
at this moment he found he was clutching a cane along with the lantern,
and connecting this unconscious arming of himself with to-night's news
and Spafield's intention to sleep here, he lit his way hurriedly through
the arch of the harness-room. The man had as yet made no preparations,
excepting a few sacks taken from the chain and thrown in a corner,
showing where he was making possibly a sort of trial of it. (He had not
then heard of Spafield's hurt.) With Sir William, we may wonder whether
Spafield, when he removed the sacks, noticed the ringing of the walled
chain. In reference to this curious discovery, Sir William had become
possessed of a rather terrible idea, and we now tell how he made haste to
test it.

Listening for a moment towards the house, where the piano was faintly
tinkling, he pushed up to the back of the cave, and here fixed the
lantern about neck-high in the lower crack. He then did a very simple
thing, and one we may well wonder he had not thought of before--he put up
his hand and pulled steadily at one only of the two strings which ran
from the sack-chain up into the wall. As he had anticipated, after a pull
or two, it gave and ran steadily, the link of the sack-chain acting as a
pulley, and the weight of it keeping the strings taut. The walled chain
no longer rattled, as, steadily watching its place of outlet, he paid in
the string through a pair of grey cotton gloves. With five or six pulls,
however, the thing stuck, and after a tug or two, he relinquished the
pressure upon it, loth to risk force. Now pushing back till his shoulders
met the sack-chain, he pulled that upon them, thus taking the weight off
the strings, while, with his hand, he swung the latter in the crack--as a
fisherman might his fouled line. On this there was a 'clink,' and then a
loud 'clash,' and a glittering metallic shower fell out of the crack,
splashing on the floor and on the wheat-sacks below. Stooping, Heans
picked a fragment from a sack and held it to the lamp. It was a piece of
yellow glass, portion, he judged, of a flattish bottle or jar. Stretching
up, he again tried the string, and it running steadily, from the crack
appeared the neck of a small flask, such as might once have contained
Tokay. It was fastened by a bit of dirty rag. Heans, however, had hardly
this to hand, when the strings, again sticking above the outlet, gave
sharply to an increasing pressure, and much exalted, he hauled at
something which came uneasily--indeed bunching like a garment--till a
dusty object dropped out into the cave, about the size of a man's head:
an old officer's hat, as he afterwards found, cocked at front and back,
the front cock being torn away and bound over the head-hole, making a
rough wallet. For the instant, he was prevented from handling it by the
bottle-neck: that fouling the sack-chain. To get at the second arrival,
Heans had to mount upon a sack, from that height being near enough to
sever the attaching cord--a bit of ribbed maroon ribbon--and bring the
thing down to the candle. Much litter had been knocked off in the
descent, and he considered by the edgings of the flaps, and the stains
upon the felt, that it had been an old hat before it was tied upon the
strings. He remembered such hats worn by officers in his childhood;
indeed, similar to that worn by the carven officer over the stalls in the
stables. The ribbon which had attached it to the thongs, also held the
cock or lid in place over the head hole; but though severed with a
penknife, the mossing of small webs about the tie-holes, and in the ribs
of the tie, still held the lid. When Heans attempted to open it, he found
the ribbon still further stiffened by some substance with which it was
coated, and which had stained a part of it black, and it was only by
exerting his strength that he forced it apart. The inside was in fair
preservation, though stained with dirt and perspiration. It had once been
a fine hat, and a ragged piece of pleated satin still clung to one side:
white once, now stained enough. A fine circle of ribbed silk lined the
crown, and on this lay a small article or tool about the size of a
fourinch nail, of which the last inch had been filed and rubbed down till
it was not much thicker than a sailor's needle. Its tip was still stained
with some dark pigment. Besides this there was no other object in the hat
but a piece of dried fern of the kind known as 'maiden-hair.' When he had
lifted out the tool from the bottom, he spelled out the hatter's name,
half-quagged in the discoloured silk:


STANTON & BEDYLL,
SIDE ARMS AND CHAPEAU
(PORTUGAL SNUFF, SCOTCH RAPEE),
24 SHOE LANE.


And here, his eyes grown sharp in searching after the printed letters,
came suddenly upon the words, "Pull my body down," written in a darkish
ink, above the advertisement; whereon, putting the hat nearer the light,
he read without difficulty: "Pull my body down. The cleft's cut." Not
long afterwards, his eyes discovered above, in a small blotched,
straggling print (as though done by a hand practising with a new,
perhaps unfinished tool), "W. Surridge," and the word "faithful." Heans
made out nothing more at the top of the circle of silk, though there
were two or three unmistakable blotches of ink concealing letters if not
words. Underneath the advertisement, however, but somewhat to the right,
was a plain direction, though unfinished, and somehow fraught with
sadness. It appeared to read: "Over on the back see what I did. I
said----" and there it ended, or seemed to end. Finally, after five
minutes' further examination of this surface, Sir William inserted his
fingers under the bottom of the silk and began to separate it from the
crown. He found it came easily away, excepting the top side, where it
was still sewn to the felt. He was, however, considerably surprised to
find the under surface of the material white, clean (but for a few
blots) and bare of hieroglyphic. It was not till, in thoroughly
searching it, he drew it out of the hat to its full stretch, that at the
extreme top, under a few words in hand print, badly blotched, he found a
second careful direction: "Damp defeated me. Muslin runs. Try on the
leather."

For a moment at sea, Sir William laid back the satin in the crown. What
leather was referred to? Had it been lost or dropped above? There was a
narrow kid head band, stained almost blue, and if anything had been
written there in explanation it was unreadable. Not a word or letter was
to be found. Pulling a corner of the leather up, he thought he could see
something peculiar in the colouration of the under side, and instantly,
he ran his hand round underneath it, wresting it up as he went. Inside
the band was undressed, tough as parchment, and near white as the day it
was sewn, while upon its even surface a mass of close minute hand-print
wound its spidery way about the circlet. Hardly touched by the seadamp,
the MS. was even readable in the candle. There was one slit in the
leather, where the ends of the band met at the back of the head, and in
the left top corner on the right of this, a rough drawing of a head with
wings, such as we see on ancient tombs, seemed to indicate the beginning
of the manuscript. Heans, without difficulty, spelt out the first words
in the lamp: "Here's to you, Carrow, and you, black Derrick, or Hammes,
or any other desperate man. If ever you return, see what it came to after
all; and if not you, for I know not what they'll do now, some poor wretch
wild enough to try, and slim enough to break his luck." Before reading
further, Sir William glanced down the lines for the name Spars, and found
it occurring near the bottom of the leather. Before he desisted he had
found also that of another. He now lit his tobacco-pipe at the lantern,
and picking his way with the latter to the arch, there blew it out. He
had the chapeau in his hand, and leaving that against the lantern by the
arch, he went into the stable, there standing for some half-an-hour
smoking beside the door.

Towards the end of that time, a second light appeared in a window above
the Chamber. It was a dim light, the window, as well as being shaded,
appearing to be coated with dust. Presently after Sir William saw this
window darken, but almost instantly the blind next on the right was lit
from behind. This, however, only for half a minute. The next it was dark
again, and suddenly he noticed that the gaps in the first jalousie were
once more illuminated. A few seconds after, Heans stepped back from the
door as the slats of this jalousie ran crookedly up, and the white
facings of the soldier's coat appeared close against the glass.
Afterwards there was a patient manoeuvring with the catch, and at last
the damp-swelled window was heavily raised.

It was a still, dewy night, the crescent moon running shyly among
mackerel clouds, to which clung a few bright stars like diamonds among
wadding. Sir William distinctly heard Spafield pull a hoarse breath, and
mutter gloomily to himself. Though he could see his features but vaguely,
he considered by the foreshortening of the breast of his coat, that he
was bending down and looking under the window at the stable. He remained
in this posture for one or two minutes, breathing at intervals in a
curious, whale-like way, and then suddenly called "Mate," loud and
distinct, presently repeating it lower yet sharper.

Sir William did not answer, and he could see the man, after a short
silence, press into the window and throw his leg over the sill. His head
was now outside and facing away from the gate, and he leant still further
out, holding to the window with his left hand. From this position he
began calling in an insistent, powerful flute, at first quietly, then
louder and more obstinate, "Halloo, Oughtryn--halloo--halloo!" till
finally, with an oath, leaning in, as no one answered, and the kitchen
light remained passive, he handled and cast out along the wall, hallooing
all the time, what sounded from their "hocking" fall in the yard like a
pair of shoes, and after them, something that flashed in the kitchen
window, and fell almost against the door with a wonderful, vicious
clattering. At this there was a cry within, and something like a chair
falling, and presently Oughtryn stood sleepily at the door, muttering and
crying high and anxious:

"Did I 'ear any one, now? 'As you spoke, please?"

Instantly Spafield hissed from his window: "Devil take your soul, 'ave
you locked me in here?" Oughtryn started and turned slowly round. For a
few seconds he examined him, seeing him plainly no doubt in the light
from the room. "You know I haven't," he said, somewhat between wheedling
and hectoring. "I said I'd leave the door open."

"Them hall doors is locked."

"You were using the Chamber. I left that one open."

"Suspicious, mate! You locked me out of your parts after I came up?"

"I haven't locked the passage under the stair. Presently I'll be going
up."

"Well, I saw someone go through there. It was locked when I tried it."

"Perhaps the women locked it--you being a stranger. They're not gone
yet."

"No, it wasn't one of them I seen----"

"You seen--did you? Come now--bad agin!"

"Yes, I've had a poisonful, mate. I hoped it was you done it."

"What's this! What 'ave you been doing? Luny about the 'ouse again! Come
now, 'ave you trooly seen his Honour Governor Collings' walking, living
ghost!"

"Break your 'art--if I told you, you wouldn't believe it!"

"Ho well--you can tell me--if you please."

"Ha-ha--well--if I told you I seen a black on them stairs, what would you
say?"

"Go it, yer cripple. Crutches is cheap," called the old convict, heavily
ironic.

"Rot you--I knew you'd bilk!"

"Saw a black?"

"A black woman. I told you they was poison to me. I hear something, and I
comes out of my room. I sees her standing by the wall next the stairs.
Afore I could move, she steps down."

"And you goes down after that, a man of conduct?"

"Poison-quick, I went. There was a glint in the front hall. As I come
down, I see, underneath, something pass through the door. But when I
come, there it was locked."

"This is something pretensed by your mind," said Oughtryn, after a
sceptical pause. "I've known of it before. Rum and yarns on your disease
'ave done you this. Give yourself and the 'ouse justice, officer. Wait."
(He spat out his quid.) "I'll go in and try the door myself."

He turned and made for the lit kitchen--pausing however to stoop and feel
along the flags for a bright object which he had kicked with his foot,
but which he eventually found and held to his eyes. It was a naked
bayonet, and he disappeared, shaking it doubtfully in his hand.

The soldier remained in the high window, staring over towards the cliff,
and now and then kicking the skirting within with a heavy thudding. The
foliage in the yard made an infinitesimal rustling. In the stables, Sir
William Heans moved to the small square hole on the left of the
door--that he might command a view of Spafield's face. As he stopped and
looked through, his lips moved. He said, "God pity you--Joseph Spafield!"

Almost instantly Oughtryn came out of the kitchen.

"You had 'er on your mind," neighed he, turning and blinking up under his
hand. "It's not locked. Too much yarning about them sometimes punishes
you in that way--unless you done 'er a bad turn."

"Ah," said the soldier, speaking after a long silence in which his foot
could be heard banging against the wood, "black-bottle, you're thinking?"

"Well, you've had your drink to-day. You lie down. You won't see them
black charmers any more . . . I've lived here four years, and never seen
no ghost to stare me out."

"Devil take her soul, so long as I don't hear her! I heard her feet."

"You've been like that all evening, officer. The mind's a fickle thing.
You're hanging too much on them blacks. You can spit 'em from your mind
when you like--hear that. That's what I tells you."

"Friendly with me now," gabbled the man; "spit 'em from my mind, can I!
Ha" (more sharp and malign), "I've been foul chid enough by an old lag!
Condemn the house, will I! Faith, I've given you a queer dance, old mate,
what with my ailment and my unhappy life! Come now, keep it from the
girls. They'll be laffin' old Sly out. Devil take your soul, I'll spit it
out, will I! Ha-ha! Where's the old beau--gone a bye-bye? 'Appy dreams! I
tell ye the place is past damning!"

In this half jocular strain he threw in his leg over the sill, but leant
out again to ask the other, "That my gully in your 'and? Is 'e damaged?"

"Not beyond a dent," said Oughtryn. "He'll do you for the spirits yet."
With that he went indoors, and Spafield, after moving a little about his
room, and once returning to the window, shut it.

* * * * *

It was after the half-hour when Heans returned across the yard, and as he
passed up the passage, he heard Oughtryn moving uneasily in the kitchen.
It was a night's custom with Oughtryn to hail him from that obscurity
with a "My duty to your honour, and a sheltered night," or "Calm repose
and four walls, honour"; but now, standing in the kitchen door, he
stopped him with the words: "You was in the stable, I know. I hope you
don't let the man disturb you."

"He has not yet intruded upon me," said Sir William, tightening on the
old chapeau under the lapel of his jacket: "a man with a very scandalous
mouth. And a coward too."

"He seems frightened of the old house," repeated Oughtryn; and he related
how the man had alarmed the women by his flurry in the Chamber. "Lost his
bad woman, as I told you," said he, "and gone sour and angry like without
her."

"Do you believe that?" called Sir William, casually.

For a moment Oughtryn said nothing--standing in his door just able to see
Sir William as he stood by his.

"There's something amiss with him," he presently remarked. 'He's not a
nat'rally scared man. He's bore a bold life. I should--speaking under
correction--I should say fate was worriting him for something he's
adone."

"We must put up with him? I believe you wish me to understand that?"

"A powerful man--I'd 'ardly dare provoke with one who's plainly got
privilege."

"What makes you think that, sir?"

"Oh, I know. I know when humility is scarcely pretensed."

"So we must bow to the dust. Is that the Order?"

"It's in his v'ice and manners, Sir William Heans," said Oughtryn,
somewhat hoarse and shaken. "He doesn't need to care. Perhaps, if others
can't, God Almighty is a-provokin' him."

"Perhaps He is," said Heans.

They parted and Sir William went into the sitting-room. Oughtryn came
along to the back door and locked it with a tremendous clap. It was his
notion of the fitting to remain in hiding till Sir William had gone. He
had slithered back into the kitchen passage, and extinguished a dim light
there, when Sir William re-opened his door. "What do the women think of
it, Oughtryn?" he called.

"Oh," said Oughtryn, in a small, haggish voice and coming to the corner
of his passage as fearing an eavesdropper, "the woman--she slides away
from the subject, calling him 'a well set-up army officer,' but the two
are resting down to-night."

"And Miss Abelia--how does she take it?"

"Well, women seldom spurns the sick man, even if he's a ill one," he
said; "and since she's been atendin' of his wrist, Abelia, she says he's
'a brave bold man,' she thinks . . . But I'll ask you, sir, to read the
back-hand for yourself." So the cautious fellow said "Good-night," and
Heans heard his steps dwindle along the flagged passage and the stair
door slam.

When he turned into his room, he felt a half-chill which told him at once
one of the windows was again open. He was of course much surprised. The
green blinds were now down, and the room lay serenely in its illustrious
half-light, the fire burning quiet. The chill from the window was
unpleasantly sharp. He put the old chapeau on the table and turned to
shut it. He was not, however, done with the horse happenings of that day.

Thinking he heard the left jalousie flapping, he went first to that, but
stooped first to raise the books, two of which had again fallen from the
table. This startling him, he turned to the cabinet, on which he had left
Surridge's volume of the PLUTARCH. It was gone. At the same moment he
noticed that a thinnecked vase, top-heavily stuck with rose-apples, had
been overturned upon the table. He picked up the vase, searched the room
for the missing volume, and then returned to the window. He now noted
that the little table had been pushed to the left of the sill,
occasioning perhaps the fall of the books. He put his hand on the cord
and pulled the blind. The window had been thrown up to the limit of the
lintel. Of the cedar shutters (nightly fastened by Oughtryn from
outside), the right was still open, and leaning forward, he saw, in the
soft moon against the wall, the cloth-enwrapped face and shawled
shoulders of a black-woman. She seemed like a small beast that crouches
in, half fascinated, half terrified into courage. Her large eyes, at
first unseeingly upon the garden, when she turned them upon himself, she
either could not or would not move as the fear in them prompted--nay,
importuned. As, in the surprise of the instant, he drew back into the
room, and again looked through the shutter, a faint sound, something
between threat and bleat, escaped her frozen figure. Sir William saw with
a sudden and dreadful sense of shock that beside her bundles, by the
corbel, the PLUTARCH lay upon the path.

"Why," said he (as he relates), speaking as carelessly as he could, "so
it is you, Conapanny! What can I give you for bringing me my precious
package to-day?"

She said nothing, though once more that curious sound escaped her; and
she moved, as with a vast effort, perhaps a foot nearer to him. The moon
fell from a mackerel cloud, and she put up her hand to shield her face.
In a moment it was gone, yet as if her movement had freed her from the
spell of a stricken hour, and still shielding her face though the terrace
was beshadowed, she bent down, and raising the book from the path,
stretched forward and held it to the sill by Heans' hand. He gently put
out his hand and pushed it back.

She slowly drew back her hand with the book in it. Her eyes were on him.
At last her voice issued from her lips--panting, low, entreating:
"Conapanny know old house--old book. In old time Conapanny Moicrime.
Moicrime go away----" Her voice broke, and she fumbled open the cover of
the book, holding Surridge's letter up to him on a level with the sill.
"You take Mitta Tuso," she entreated. "Conapanny see book in
window--afternoon. Me come see you to-night. Me read what poor Walter
wrote."

"How many years ago was this written?" asked Heans, taking the book from
her, and pretending to peruse the letter, yet at a loss what to say,
seeing what he knew.

"O--oh, thirty-three--thirty four--thirty-five year," said Conapanny,
dropping to the native's droning way. "Gubner Collins--Gubner
Davey--Gubner Arthur, all gone. Gubner Franklin now. Collins--him
die.----" And she stopped short, rose without a sound, and looked along
the front of the sleeping house.

"You call him 'poor Walter?' " asked Sir William Heans, sharply. "Why do
you think him lost to you?"

"He no alive," said she. "Years ago--gone. Moicrime look long time. She
not know yet."

"What doesn't she know yet?"

"She not know yet--how!"

"Does Moicrime think any one--knows?"

"Some one know."

"Why should she think he died so long ago as that?"

"Not forget," she said, in a faint, harsh whisper at the bottom of her
throat, and she shrank back once more into the wall.

Sir William--waiting there with his unhallowed knowledge--was too moved
for a while to continue. "Do you mean," he said unsteadily, "that--after
so many years--you are still looking for someone to tell you what
happened to Walter Surridge?"

"Yes, Mitta Tuso," she said, staring at him. Before he could continue,
she suddenly rose by the window, and snatching the book which Heans had
replaced, opened and examined it in the faint moon. Turning then with her
finger on a word in the postscript of the letter, she elevated the book
towards Heans' face.

"That bad wite," she said, "him know how Walter go from Moicrime."

Sir William bent his eyes to the name by which her finger rested, but
whether by accident or design, she was pointing not to the name in the
old document, but the one beneath it, the ink of which was hardly dry.

"Years ago, Moicrime try make him speak. No. Old Conapanny--she ask him
about Moicrime--Walter--other day--to-day--no. She ask old Gubner
Collins' house--old house dumb. She ask book, book speak----"

Sir William could barely brook her figure hanging by the window, and
turned back into the room, folding his arms. When angry at his
ineptitude, his powerlessness to speak of Surridge's brave end because of
the deed he believed had led to it (not knowing whether this silent
spirit of the past had had time, or yet allowed herself, to connect
threats with death), when rendered bitter with his locked mouth, he
turned to the window, his heart heavy with its burden, yet half inclined
to speak something of the entombment of lost Walter--there was the corbel
lying by the wall, but no sign of Conapanny or her beribboned bags. She
was gone. In the soft moon, the gilt-framed book lay foreignly on the
edge of the stone sill.

Then, across the garden, he caught the shadow of her, striding under her
bundles by the Orphanage wall. Near the heliotrope she disappeared. Nay,
she has turned west. There she goes (he pulls the shutter closer) between
bush and tree, her head in its white kerchief on a level with her burden.
Her hate or agony have brought the sweat upon her face and its dark skin
glitters. Now, past the medlartree, she turns down beside the fountain,
her eyes bent upon the periwinkle in its broken basin, where once the
water had reflected her young face.

How still are these old gardens in the night! How indurate, scarred, and
meaning are their once graceful ornament! For how long can they nurse a
wrong in their old bosoms! Queen Elizabeth (we read in history) expressed
a doubt to her General in France of the wisdom of turning persons out of
their houses that Havre might be safer held; she 'doubted,' if they were
driven from their homes, 'whether God would be contented with the rest
that would follow.' History tells us what happened to the garrison in
Havre, and by what they were defeated.

Perhaps Sir William Heans, as he glared about the garden upon this and
that, upon its heroic arrangement, its wrestling roses, its finger-marked
rocks half swallowed in weeds, its blackened, corroded, presiding
figurette, realised a little plainer than "brother Warwick" of the old
day with what strange line and rule the Almighty works. Heans relates how
later he had a vision of Moicrime, slim and straight, in a blue,
high-waisted dress. (Poor, pretty, vivacious Moicrime!) But this, we
think, was only his poetic way of putting it, unless, indeed, his tired
fancy had gotten the better of him after he had read the writing in the
chapeau.




CHAPTER XI



NOT A VULGAR QUARREL--AN ALBUM--MISCHIEF IN THE WIND


It seems that daft devotee, Homely O'Crone, had, before his departure,
received and lent to Mrs. Scudamore a copy of Serjeant Talfourd's latest
tragedy: GLENCOE; or, THE FATE OF THE MACDONALDS, just produced by Mr.
Macready at the Haymarket. All young Hobartia had been spouting the
sonorous lines, and it had not been long before a clique had been
meeting at Isnaleara, the mansion of the Hon. Mrs. McKevin, with the
intention of producing it on its own account. Let it be said that the
occasion of its playing--though semi-private--was such a success, the
audience were so pleasantly elevated by the nobility of the tragedy
(Ensign Tipton, as Henry, the traitor brother, being especially stormy
and successful in a uniform of the Argyll Regiment designed by old
Duterreau), that, at her Ladyship's request, and out of compliment to
the intrepid lady, it was agreed to reproduce the first scene of Act 2,
and the last, in "Mr. Daunt's room" at the fascinating old ruin in
Macquarie Street.

It was so kind of Mr. Daunt to bend to triviality--a man so preoccupied
with real things. The young ladies were full of admiring gratitude. Miss
Gargrave, who though she was eighteen, still wore an iron collar covered
with velvet to make her hold up her beautiful neck, said of him: "He is
such a nice man--I think." On the other hand old Miss Bullinger Lecale,
who had watched him from the past with 'an illboding eye,' and for years
had pounced with unerring instinct on any sign of horsiness in him,
"could not think what Satan would be up to, leading the gells into those
old damp places." But then Miss Lecale, if once a war-heroine, had
troubled her vogue somewhat. She was inclined to the outrageous after
enforced silence. Was it not she who had remarked before a gentleman,
"she would like to see the women with their tobacco-pipes"; and was it
not Mr. Daunt who asked: "But would the ladies keep it up?" She was
angelical, but she had no repose! It is a pity--perhaps an insuperable
tragedy--that so many of the things which make for our peace depend upon
the petty observances of life. Ah, we can all bear the smarts; the
difficulty becomes dangerous when they are inflamed by the flunkey and
the cad! "Even the gentlemen do not approve of her PRONONCE style," said
young Miss Gargrave, as she brushed her hair before a friend's toilette.
"Men are such fools," answered her insouciant companion, and straightway
descended to the withdrawing-room, where she presented the young
gentlemen with their image of a good woman.

When on Monday night the rumour got about that the Commandant of the foot
police had said something derogatory to the reputation of a certain lady,
and, at a luncheon on Tuesday, that comical Captain Shaxton had daringly
confirmed it, and laughingly (and actually with his wife on his arm) said
that he was going to make a serious thing of it and bring Mr. Impudence
out in a new line--that of Mr. Pickwick in the challenge scene, "brandy
and water--jolly old gentleman--lots of pluck," though there was swiftly
and magically a slump in Mr. Daunt, and his thoughtfulness for the young
people, there were those who remembered meeting the man Heans both at
Pitt's Villa and Flat Top Tier, and feeling for Mrs. Shaxton in being
forced by their relationship, and common kindness, into intimacy with a
person of such a notoriety. It was really very interesting to hear how
the better nature of the man had prevailed and he had come forward in his
humiliation to speak for one who had shown him so much kindness. "Common
kindness! well, it had been more--it was exceedingly romantic; brave;
indiscreet; and unpleasant; and all were glad--glad and happy--to feel
the man's testimony was unnecessary. Captain Shaxton was right in showing
it all up and forcing Mr. Daunt forward."

She had fainted, it seems, when she heard her cousin was actually
assigned in the house.

The reader will remember how, on the occasion of a certain dinner to the
explorers at Hodgson's Hotel, Captain Shaxton took occasion to nudge Mr.
Daunt. A nod is as good as a wink to some. After Sir William Heans'
arrest at Spring Bay, concerning which there was so much sympathy for the
Shaxtons, the prisoner having cleverly made use of their reunion at the
Tier as a blind to his absconding (for that was how the story began),
there could not help but be a little tension in the relations between the
Shaxtons and Mr. Daunt: mere good taste--it was noticed--rendering their
relations less intimate for a while, and indeed, bruising the pleasant
ties of acquaintance, so that, though all parties met and conversed, it
was evident the same degree of familiar intercourse, which had been known
to exist, was never quite resumed. Not that any vulgar cold-shouldering
or boding looks had been observed; nothing more than your good woman's
inability to forgive a too open clamouring of Duty in the gentle house of
Friendship. Nor had it ever been held against Mr. Daunt in society that
he had given permission to a prisoner acquaintance to attend a friend's
SOIREE, knowing him to be in leaguer for his escape. It was even
whispered that Heans' conspiracy, which had been for some time preceding
his escape under the eyes of the authorities, had been known in much
higher quarters, and that this was but one more chance to persuade him to
acquiesce in his position. No, it was a high feather in Mr. Daunt's cap,
about which, be it said to his credit, he had never "spoken a word." Let
us say here, concerning this matter, not a breath of suspicion had been
breathed against him--even of "a little natural jealousy": a phrase not
unfamiliar upon his lips. Among his faults he had the rather forgivable
one in a police officer of being a little too easy with the small sins of
character. "It always came as a relief to him," he once said, in his
brisk way, "and somewhat of a surprise, to see people content with the
smaller crimes"; or, as poor Shaxton had added with a chuckle: "content
with their pocket knives."

In point of fact, would the thing have got out, but for Captain Shaxton
himself? It seems Mr. Daunt had spoken under the rose; hadn't mentioned a
single name. Was he really to blame? The subject had cropped up and the
other gentlemen had given this and that tale. Mr. Daunt had kept his
secret, merely relating what seemed to him a certain probability. Of
course it was a scandalous thing to say, even of an unknown person, if
you had not had the direct evidence. But then the Superintendent had
given no date, and he had been in Hobart Town many years. (Fought his way
up, it was said, in Davey's time, and had a scar or two.) It might have
been any officer's wife from Governor Davey to Governor Franklin, and any
escaping convict. Really nobody would have connected such a thing with
the Mrs. Shaxton, who had the cousin, the prisoner. Yet--there had, after
all, been a low 'Captain' in Sir William Heans' case; every one had
laughed over the old Government schooner, the farce of her dilatory
arrival at Spring Bay, [Note 19. There was a probation station at Spring
Bay.] and bare escape out of the police boats. Everybody remembered the
case in the COURIER. Would you then have credited Mr. Daunt with
recklessness? Had the guilty secret, which he had kept so strictly, and
which he fancied true, made him cynical about women? He often said those
bitter little things. But he must have known dear Mrs. Shaxton----

Here we must pause to confess that what happened to Heans at his capture
at Spring Bay is unknown to us. He is reticent of his experience at that
moment. Neither can we furnish a more definite reason for the ensuing
coolness between Daunt and Matilda Shaxton than her account to a friend
of an interview in which the Superintendent made some "grave mistake." We
give here, however, a "reflection" written by Sir William Heans, at the
moment of his assignment to Charles Oughtryn, in the pages of his private
album (September 6th, 1840): the latter a species of memorandum, begun
but rudely broken into, from which we get some drops of confirmation of a
narrative based too much on letters written with reserve. Is it a sober
thought that this has an echo in it of the indignities of capture--and
even throws a light on Mrs. Shaxton's words of reprobation? Perhaps a
troublesome inference, yet, as will be seen, confirmed much in Sir
William's portfolio of French despatches to his friend Charles
Scarning:----

"Say, when the protagonist of gross ambition has you in his hold, when
will he strike you, when will he use that power? When will come the
irresistible moment? It will be in a moment of ENNUI--in an instant of
impatience. Ah, how pitiless can be this being--with no uplifting ardour
save ambition--and a heart resilient with released enmity, is known only
to those who have survived revolution, mean stagnation, or any of those
abnormal moments in which he finds his power! Of what use the chivalric
sentiment that in the last extremity of human wrong a tyranny may be met
by force! How bravely, for a while, shall the lonely penitent face the
inquisitors! Such sad survivors know how strange the earth looks close
against the eyes."

Between the caligraphy of wounded pride, the flourish of ill-borne
humiliation, can we detect a something pricking through law's spirit--a
half-vindictive weapon come of self-guidance by the sound of right which
can so easily become its echo?

In any case, Captain Shaxton was afraid it would be traced to his wife,
as the stableman's name was known, and he (himself) had shown interest in
the slandered woman. Captain Kent, who was in the stable, said it was
wonderful how he took everybody in, only showing decent feeling for 'the
poor woman,' and how all along it had the making--what with Daunt's
sternness and conviction--of an ugly affair. Of course Daunt had backed
him up and behaved decently. What might not a man of less refinement have
said of a lady in a stable! As for Heans, he was sharp as a needle,
speaking of Mrs. Shaxton as "the fair incognita." How impossible it was
to imagine Mrs. Shaxton in an AFFAIRE DU COEUR, even with a man of so
handsome a person as some remembered that of Sir William Heans when first
transported! Nowadays, with that PASSE figure, with the port-wine face,
and shred of pathetic ceremony, it was very unpleasing. True, the lady's
very indiscretion proved her probity. Captain Kent said he protested he
did not think anything would have come of it if Captain Shaxton had but
held his tongue. But, indeed, how could he let it rest on the silence of
a gentleman, who, if he had mistakenly spread a falsehood, had once been
an intimate of his house--and the other man's generosity. As a man of
honour--how could he bear it! Captain Shaxton was so important now that
he was to be architect of the Port Arthur prison, and so, of course, was
Commandant Daunt. All the world wondered why, having kept the secret so
long, he made so strange a mistake.

There must have been some reason. Mrs. McKevin (who was quite one of his
admirers) thought it was all Mrs. Shaxton's fault for never quite
forgiving the Commandant for catching Heans. It was very unwise of her
not to forgive a man so clever--but our Miss Lecale who, as we said, had
pursued him with dislike from days out of mind, and watched for his real
or fancied weaknesses with the unaltering perseverance of a cat upon a
field-mouse, or as Shaxton said, "with a highly sisterly affection," and
in justice to Daunt, with very few wounds in return--Miss B. said:
"Captain Shaxton will never get the man to fight, and if he doesn't look
out, for all his chuckles, his pistols, and his perfume-pad, he will
never quite clear his stainless wife of her silly play with the old BEAU
GARCON.

While Hobarton was hesitating whether to laugh with Captain Shaxton, or
fear with some indefinable prompting that the moves of two such quiet
players held some indeterminate danger, Mr. Daunt actually appeared the
following morning at Pitt's Villa, rang, and was admitted to the presence
of Mrs. Shaxton, who was lying on a sofa in her drawing-room; with her
being Mrs. Meurice, her old neighbour, a Miss Towerson, and Ensign
Tipton. The last named were in riding attire, and had, it seems, galloped
up to rehearse with Mrs. Shaxton their respective parts in GLENCOE in
which tragedy Matilda still bravely held to her promise of prompting. The
audacity of this interview caused unfavourable comment throughout the two
cliques of Hobart Town, coming even to the ears of the Governor, who
touched on his attempts to divert Heans from his downward course, and
expressed a doubt "If Mr. Daunt (with whom he could not always agree)
were wise in waiting on Mrs. Shaxton in view of the freshness of the
wound."

Tipton, when he caught the name and who it was, was inclined to resent
the visit, and rose with a dark air, but Mrs. Shaxton, with a softened
look, got up and received him; and in a sort of grey flurry pointed him
to a chair. Mrs. Meurice herself sprang up, and made him a little CONGE,
with tears in her very red face. The beautiful Miss Towerson, who was
taking the part of 'Helen,' nodded forward from her chair, but did not
take her chin from her hand. She held herself rather annoyed and aloof. A
quite accomplished actress of tragedy, she was only barely acquainted
with Mrs. Shaxton and not much more with Mr. Daunt. For her it was a
vexatious moment. Who would wonder if she were a little frightened!

Daunt, who was attired in a tight black frock and cords, looked somewhat
too saddled with grave issues for his company. For a time he said very
little, leaning forward upon his hat and gloves, his grizzled face sunk
in his collars, listening with intentness to all that was said, only now
and then giving, by witticism or steely word, a hint of his alertness.

It was a doubtful situation, and though it was late in the morning, none
of the three other visitors would leave Mrs. Shaxton--a club antagonism
to Daunt alone rendering Tipton blind to the signals of Miss Towerson.
All three sat on in their chairs, keeping up a flagging talk, which Mr.
Daunt aided with terse anecdote or a bit of news. Even with such a deadly
business under the surface, none could help but be interested in the
surface reason for his visit. He wished to ask Mrs. Shaxton whether she
were interested enough in human sadness to undertake a call upon the
woman in the Cascades in whom poor O'Crone had been interested. She was
as suddenly stricken as had been that person at the news that she was to
go away. It was thought of asking Lady Franklin to visit her. It was
believed that a visit from any one of her own status of refinement would
revive her. "If he could prevail on Mrs. Shaxton," he said, "and perhaps
Mrs. Meurice, if that lady had pity to spare, he believed the woman would
make an effort and they would get her away."

"Was not her crime something very unpleasing?" Mrs. Meurice had asked.

"Very," said Daunt, and then seemed to demur, dropping his chin in his
hand. "Forgive me for putting it frankly. But there is no getting round
the fact that, however merited it may have been, she pistolled her
husband."

The visitors found it difficult to hide their interest in the history of
"O'Crone's convict," though sharp old Mrs. Meurice, who had regained a
scarlet composure, warned Matilda: "I am sure, with your BAL PARE, you
could never go throngh with it!"

"Believe me," said Daunt, "you are wrong. She is a proud, gentle-natured
woman, given to reading and hand-painting. Her influence in the prison
has been widely felt. She has made quite a name for herself--playing the
lady bountiful: even refusing an assignment, preferring apparently her
work among the sick and private studies. Her sickening has given the
notion she has been informed of the departure of her impetuous admirer,
though according to Leete she has never acted up to his eaprice. Yet with
the women coming in to the factory and going out, it might have got
about. She weeps. She will not eat. Tears--tears! She will unbend to no
one. It is--we think--a pity. She has set her will against Port Arthur.
If she could but be got to the Commandant's house there--a breezy place
in its own grounds--she will be out of danger."

"Is it so dreadful as that?" asked Matilda, unfurling her pale flag of
help: "a matter of returned devotion?" (Of course, none present knew so
early poor O'Crone had been the Earl of Daisley.)

"Call it a recluse's whim to remain in her den, madam," said Daunt, "and
you will be near the opinion of your obedient humble servant."

"I protest--the poor soul expiring of a--a whim, sir!" objected Mrs.
Meurice, who would have said anything in antagonism to Daunt; "people do
not expire of such thing!"

"We are all dying of whims, madam," said Mr. Daunt; "a few preferring
that the whim should be a fine whim: the rest of us for a whim. Ah, Mrs.
Shaxton, you who are expiring of a fine one, at least you will accompany
me to the prison. You will come with me in a fly to-morrow--out of pure
kindness. Between us can we not rescue the woman?"

"I don't think I can go with you," said Matilda, very quiet.

"You don't do yourself justice, then," said Daunt, leaning forward with a
strange pallor. "There is something about this woman that will appeal to
you. I beg of you to come with me on this peculiar occasion. You, with
your cleverness and sensibility, will manage it. Won't you come to the
rescue? Our man's wit is at a dead wall."

Matilda raised her sick eye a little from her work. She seemed almost
grave: "I could not stand grossness or