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