Here was a bombshell, from the least expected quarter, at the least expected time. Tom felt the blood rush to his face — draining his heart — but he stood his ground until Daintree ordered him out of the way of the windows. Claire sat motionless. Lady Starkie was less calm. But Daintree rose up from the table, with perfect but ostentatious sangfroid, and he patted Peggy on the back as a party of horsemen rode in front of the verandah.
“Quite right, my girl!” cried he. “They shall not lay a finger on him, never you fear. He has me at his back, and so have you.” With that he strutted through the French windows, flourishing his napkin and quite delighted at the prospect of a little simultaneous display of power, generosity and laudable cunning, before so select an audience.
“Sorry to trouble you, sir,” said a voice, “but I believe you have an assigned convict here of the name of Thomas Erichsen?”
“What name?” cried Lady Starkie.
“Hush, aunt!” whispered Claire.
“I have not,” said Daintree.
“You have not?” roared Nat Sullivan himself.
“I have not,” repeated Daintree blandly. “I had — but he has absconded from my service.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Any notion where he went?”
“Not the least.”
“And you don’t much care, eh?”
“Not a bit. May I ask a question in my turn?”
“Surely, sir.”
“Do you want him for the Castle Sullivan business?”
“We do.”
“I thought so. I’ve heard the idea. But who will you get to swear to him as having been there?”
“This man here,” said Nat. And Tom, in the background, listened curiously; he was cool enough now, and his air shameless; it was assumed for Claire’s benefit.
“I’m not so sure,” said the voice of Ginger, in a rather dejected tone.
“You were sure enough in your cups!”
“That’s another thing.”
“Well,” said the constable, “he’s left this, anyhow. No use our wasting any more time here, Mr. Sullivan. Good morning, sir. I’m afraid he’s given us the slip again.”
“But not for long,” cried Nat. “I mean to catch him and to hang him yet!”
They had ridden away. Daintree had re-entered the room, puffed up and smiling. Tom also had a kind of smile, and Peggy was gazing at him with shining eyes, when Claire rose from the table and swept out of the room without a word.
Daintree looked at Lady Starkie in dismay, and hastily ordered the servants to withdraw. Her ladyship rose also.
“Can you wonder at it?” she cried.
“At what?”
“Your bride disliking to be waited on by convicts. And — and — did I understand that young man’s name was Erichsen?”
“Yes.”
“The murderer of Captain Blaydes?”
“No.”
“Who then?”
“His reputed murderer. He is an innocent man. You know I thought so at the time; you know, I believe, how I backed my opinion to the tune of several hundreds? I’m backing it still, Lady Starkie, I’m backing it still — that’s all.” It was not. He went on to tell of all that Erichsen had gone through, to his knowledge, in the settlement; how he was trying, in his small way, to make up to the poor fellow for the shocking injustice of his fate; and yet how even now the unlucky wretch went in danger of his neck, as Lady Starkie had seen for herself, and all for siding with some bushrangers under circumstances of extraordinary compulsion and provocation combined. Of all this James Daintree spoke so feelingly, and with such an obviously earnest purpose, that Lady Starkie was quite moved, and undertook to use her influence with Claire in the matter of the convict servants.
But it was of no avail.
Daintree drove the ladies into Sydney, and drove back alone late at night. Tom awaited him, and as they walked from the stables to the house, the master’s arm ran affectionately through that of the man.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “it grieves me more than I can say, but I cannot go against my young wife where there is apparent right upon her side. She will have no convicts in her house. You and I will be compelled to part.”
“It was bound to come,” was Tom’s reply. “I am only thankful it didn’t come before you gave me back a little of what I have lost. I shall be grateful to you till my dying hour!”
“Oh, but I’ve not done with you yet! I must have you out of this country by hook or crook — that I’m bent upon. That brute Sullivan is actually at the Pulteney. It seems his overseer never meant to split on you, for some reason; but he did so when drunk, and now the other holds him to it. Until we spirit you out of the country you’ll never be safe.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Tom. “I would rather stay where I am and take my chance.”
He was thinking of Daintree and his wife; even through his gratitude he was thinking of that darker side.
CHAPTER XXXVII
FARM COVE
THAT was a long week at the bungalow; it was to culminate at St. Philip’s Church in Sydney on the Saturday morning. The license was bought; the bridegroom carried the ring in his pocket; everything was ready but a best man. And here another peculiarity stood out: there was no best man to be had. As in London so in New South Wales: this baronet’s son and heir, this man of blood and means and literary feats, was unbeloved in spite of all. Claire and her aunt had been absolutely the only guests at the bungalow in all Tom’s time there. Nor was it because Daintree had never made a friend in the settlement; it was because he had never kept one in any quarter of the globe.
Meanwhile the ladies came to Rose Bay no more. The happy man went to them instead, and would stop till midnight, to gallop home by starlight and pour out his happiness to Tom until the harbour turned from jet to polished steel; and twice the steel was silver, and once the silver was flaming gold before the poet would hold his peace. It was a long week, but the nights went quicker than the days. Daintree had never been a better companion than in those long, confidential, starlit talks. They were not exclusively on the one subject. Tom learnt at last how the murder had affected the party at Avenue Lodge, and one whole night and day he never closed an eye for thinking of two men in two new and startling lights. They were the living man Harding, and the dead man Blaydes; the first haunted Tom the longer; why had he insisted on dragging Daintree to the trial?
The days were lengthened by Peggy in the kitchen with her kind, uninjured looks, and the unfailing, friendly, amiable word that made him feel the meanest of men. The girl could be an angel when she had him, with all his coldness, to herself. He never suspected what she had been from the Sunday night to the Monday afternoon. And now they were both under notice to leave.
“If only you two would make up your minds to marry!” said Daintree to Tom. “I have you both on my mind; but I could provide for the two of you at one stroke as a married couple. It has long been my wish to start a model farm up country, and you and Peggy would certainly make model managers! Nor is my wife likely to retain all the prejudices of Miss Harding; in fact, I still entertain hopes of our all being stanch friends all our lives.” But Tom shook his head even more decidedly than he had shaken it while the little Rosamund was pricking her way across the chart On the Friday — the same breeze holding good all the week — Daintree decided to sail round to Sydney instead of driving. He had a solid cheque to cash for the wedding-trip, and the Point Piper Road was no route for a pocketful of money and a life at its very highest value. Tom asked if Nat Sullivan was still in Sydney, and was told that he had drunk himself prostrate at the Pulteney, whereupon Tom volunteered for the voyage, and so escaped Peggy for one afternoon. To make safety doubly safe, however, they ran into Farm Cove, and Tom and the dog were to wait in the Domain while Daintree went to the bank and called at the hotel.
It was then three o’clock, and Daintree was to be at least two hours gone; but he returned in less
than one, bringing Claire with him for a sail. Tom’s surprise at seeing her was less than that of the girl at sight of him; the indignation was altogether on her side, and sufficiently perceptible, in spite of all Claire’s efforts to conceal an inappropriate displeasure. Daintree did not see it — but what they all three missed was the furtive figure which emerged from the trees as the boat put off.
Claire was given the tiller and told simply to obey orders, Daintree took the sheet, and Tom was put into the bows to be out of the way. The sail made a convenient screen; it also prevented Tom from knowing in the least what happened. As a matter of fact, they were just taking the wind — which was by this time fresher than ever — when Daintree’s attention was diverted by an apparition at the water’s edge. It was the man who had followed him through the Domain, and so rapt was the gaze with which Daintree beheld him that he forgot to let the sheet go at the critical instant. Smack came the wind against a sail like the side of a house. “Let go! Let go!” screamed Tom. It was too late. She was gunwale under, the sail lay a moment on the water, drinking it like blotting-paper. Then the saturated canvas sank, and the boat tossed keel upwards within fifty yards of the shore. —
Claire sank clear of the wreck, and had the presence of mind to strike out before coming to the surface. And even as the sun lashed her wet eyes, strong hands slid under her arms, and she was being pushed face forward to the shore. The trees were waving in the sun; it was no distance; and Daintree’s dog was swimming happily on ahead. Suddenly, with a piercing yelp, the dog disappeared; at the same moment Daintree began splashing vigorously; and when the smooth sand came under Claire’s feet, but a few yards farther on, her knees were too weak to support her weight.
“The happiest moment of my life,” said a deep voice in her ear. “I have saved—”
She turned, and there was Daintree, up to his waist in water, with the drops raining from his face and whiskers, and shaded eyes sweeping the blue. The boat was coming in keel upwards with the tide. The dog and Tom had vanished off the face of the waters.
Daintree dashed in again, and met the wreck as her mast struck bottom. Tom was still struggling underneath her, caught fast in the cordage; his struggles ceased as he was wrenched free; when Daintree got him to land, his mouth and ears were in a froth, and Claire stood by like a woman turned to stone.
A small crowd collected slowly; it did not contain the man who had caused the mischief; the trees had swallowed him once more.
The crowd surrounded Tom and Daintree, who had stripped his servant to the waist, and was sawing the air with the drenched white arms and the helpless, sunburnt hands. Claire stood on the fringe of the crowd, without a clear thought in her head, but in her hand a packet that had fallen at her feet when Tom’s shirt and vest were torn off and hurled aside. The packet was sewn up in dripping oiled silk, as transparent as glass; through it she could read a name she but dimly realised to be her own; and the voices of those jostling her seemed a long way off.
“He’s dead — he’s done for,” said one.
“Give him time, you fool!”
“Fool yourself! His time’s up.”
“What’ll you bet?”
“A shilling.”
“Done with you.”
Daintree and a boatman were working on and on and on with the white arms that had dried already in the wind and sun. Neither said a word; the next minute must settle it one way or the other.
“Ah!” exclaimed the last speaker.
“What was it?” faltered Claire.
“His eyelids trembled.”
“It was the death-shiver.”
“They’re trembling still!”
“They aren’t!”
“They are; hand over that shilling.”
“He is alive!” said Daintree, looking up. “Has nobody run for brandy?”
Nobody had.
And it was wanted now for two people.
Claire Harding had swooned away.
Daintree had his hands full with the pair of them, but in a little they were both conscious, and able to drive away with him in a hired chaise. They drove to the hotel, forgetting the risk. On the way Tom stretched forth a feeble hand.
“How many more times are you going to save my life?” he asked.
“You saved mine too,” said Claire sadly.
“It is the happiest day of my own,” replied Daintree, without noticing her tone.— “Non cuivis homini — what other bridegroom would have had such luck?”
“Or pluck!” cried Tom.
“I trust I am not lacking in that quality either,” rejoined the other. “It was nervous work after the way my poor wee dog went. Did you see that, Claire? Poor thing, it was a shark!”
“Yes.” She shuddered.
“But if he will but splash a bit, your man of courage is all right. Do you mind if we drive round by the Herald office? They publish on Monday, but it’s just as well to be in time.”
So the conceit of him overlapped even his heroism. And Claire and Tom sat shivering in their wet clothes, while Daintree in his was several minutes inspiring and all but dictating the paragraph which duly appeared in the Sydney Herald. But during those minutes the pair in the chaise never exchanged a word; and afterwards — in the hotel — not one word.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
TWO FAREWELLS
DAINTREE was driven home before dusk, for his pocket-book was bloated with moist bank-notes, besides which, Lady Starkie positively refused to have him about the hotel that evening. It was against the rules for bridegrooms as laid down by her ladyship, who dined very solemnly with her niece alone, and got to bed at a reasonable hour for the first time that week. Claire then had their sitting-room to herself, and she drew out the oiled-silk packet which had fallen into her hands that afternoon. It was thin and oblong, like the letter it plainly contained. Under the lamp Claire’s name and the address of her old home were still legible beneath the silk, though they no longer stood out as when the skin was wet. And on the reverse side was written very small —
“For pity’s sake forward this.”
When? After his death? Pate had forwarded it before — should she read it or should she not? It was addressed to her, it was hers; should she read, or destroy, or return this letter to its writer — to the criminal who had confessed to her his crime? Some minutes after Claire Harding asked herself this question, she turned up the lamp, and cut the oiled silk open with a pair of scissors. She now saw that the letter had been written some time; yet it was with a strange thrill, a wonderment beginning at the heart, that she read the heading within. It was Newgate, and the date May 29 1837 — the blackest day of all her life — the eve of that on which they would have hanged him.
Agitated as she was, however, by these dreadful memories, and touched by the mere fact of his having written to her on that awful Monday, it was the first sentence of his letter that ran into her heart like molten lead. He called himself an innocent man! From the brink of the grave came that lie, that blasphemy, which he had lived to confess to her with his crime! She read on mechanically. And all at once her pain ceased; she was lost and absorbed in the plain, straightforward, circumstantial story into which he plunged without preliminary. He told her everything from the moment they parted at the garden gate. Nothing was left out, nothing extenuated, nothing enlarged or even commented upon by the writer.
Her heart was beating wildly long before she reached the end of this plain statement She had forgotten all about his confession. This rang true — this rang true.
“Sweetheart,” he went on, “ — for I must call you so once more — I cannot tell you how I feel, for I vary from hour to hour. Now and then I feel the murderer they say I am, now and then an abject coward (without the pluck to show it), now and then a sort of Christian martyr! But with God’s help I hope to finish up a man. Do not grieve for the ugly way of it: there’s no disgrace in that, since it’s a mistake, and if there is a God never fear but He will make it up to me one day. Oh, but it is
sweet to talk to you again! I used to tell you everything, and so I must until the end. Ah! if only I had been worthy of you I shouldn’t be here! I am punished; when I think of your white soul, and of mine that couldn’t even be its mirror, then I sometimes think that my punishment is not too great. Those are my Christian moods! They don’t live long. The turnkeys are looking through my grating now; they are telling each other what I am at, and coming back and back again to have a peep. My Christianity isn’t proof against that. I say nothing, but I could do the thing I’m going to die for — God help me, I may do it yet! You see how I change! There is only one thing in which I can never change — my grateful love and reverence for the great girl-soul that forgave me and would have given me another chance if this had not happened. Sweetheart, my love for you has grown in prison, it has been my only comfort in this vile place, and it will go with me where I go to-morrow — it will stay with my poor soul through all eternity. Only do not grieve for me, Claire, for I never was worthy of your sweet love.
I would not leave this behind for you, I would not have you reminded of me for a single day, but for one selfish thing. Sweetheart, it is to make you believe in me. You have not done so yet — why should you? Nobody knows what you know and have so nobly hidden; but for all I said to you, I am innocent; he was alive when I left him; I did give him the receipt, and we shook hands at the end. That is God’s truth. I tell it you with the last words my hand will ever write. I meant to write to the kind fanatic who paid for my defence, and is working still (they tell me) for a reprieve. But now I cannot. If you could find him out, and thank him for me, I should be grateful; but my last words in this life must be to you. God bless you, dear, and give you somebody much better than I ever could have been. Only do know that I never did this thing; and when you realise that, think no more of me, my dear love, but pray to-morrow for the soul of your unworthy boy...”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 106