“No, papa,” she said, with a sigh of relief, “I can’t recognize them at all.”
As she was turning from the door, a voice from the witness-box behind her made her suddenly pale and pause to look again. The Court itself appeared, at that moment, affected, for a murmur ran through it, and some official cried, “Silence!”
The notorious criminal, Rufus Dawes, the desperado of Port Arthur, the wild beast whom the Gazette had judged not fit to live, had just entered the witness-box. He was a man of thirty, in the prime of life, with a torso whose muscular grandeur not even the ill-fitting yellow jacket could altogether conceal, with strong, embrowned, and nervous hands, an upright carriage, and a pair of fierce, black eyes that roamed over the Court hungrily.
Not all the weight of the double irons swaying from the leathern thong around his massive loins, could mar that elegance of attitude which comes only from perfect muscular development. Not all the frowning faces bent upon him could frown an accent of respect into the contemptuous tones in which he answered to his name, “Rufus Dawes, prisoner of the Crown”.
“Come away, my darling,” said Vickers, alarmed at his daughter’s blanched face and eager eyes.
“Wait,” she said impatiently, listening for the voice whose owner she could not see. “Rufus Dawes! Oh, I have heard that name before!”
“You are a prisoner of the Crown at the penal settlement of Port Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“For life?”
“For life.”
Sylvia turned to her father with breathless inquiry in her eyes. “Oh, papa! who is that speaking? I know the name! the voice!”
“That is the man who was with you in the boat, dear,” says Vickers gravely. “The prisoner.”
The eager light died out of her eyes, and in its place came a look of disappointment and pain. “I thought it was a good man,” she said, holding by the edge of the doorway. “It sounded like a good voice.”
And then she pressed her hands over her eyes and shuddered. “There, there,” says Vickers soothingly, “don’t be afraid, Poppet; he can’t hurt you now.”
“No, ha! ha!” says Meekin, with great display of off-hand courage, “the villain’s safe enough now.”
The colloquy in the Court went on. “Do you know the prisoners in the dock?”
“Yes.”
“Who are they?”
“John Rex, Henry Shiers, James Lesly, and, and—I’m not sure about the last man.”
“You are not sure about the last man. Will you swear to the three others?”
“Yes.”
“You remember them well?”
“I was in the chain-gang at Macquarie Harbour with them for three years.” Sylvia, hearing this hideous reason for acquaintance, gave a low cry, and fell into her father’s arms.
“Oh, papa, take me away! I feel as if I was going to remember something terrible!”
Amid the deep silence that prevailed, the cry of the poor girl was distinctly audible in the Court, and all heads turned to the door. In the general wonder no one noticed the change that passed over Rufus Dawes. His face flushed scarlet, great drops of sweat stood on his forehead, and his black eyes glared in the direction from whence the sound came, as though they would pierce the envious wood that separated him from the woman whose voice he had heard. Maurice Frere sprang up and pushed his way through the crowd under the bench.
“What’s this?” he said to Vickers, almost brutally. “What did you bring her here for? She is not wanted. I told you that.”
“I considered it my duty, sir,” says Vickers, with stately rebuke.
“What has frightened her? What has she heard? What has she seen?” asked Frere, with a strangely white face. “Sylvia, Sylvia!”
She opened her eyes at the sound of his voice. “Take me home, papa; I’m ill. Oh, what thoughts!”
“What does she mean?” cried Frere, looking in alarm from one to the other.
“That ruffian Dawes frightened her,” said Meekin. “A gush of recollection, poor child. There, there, calm yourself, Miss Vickers. He is quite safe.”
“Frightened her, eh?”
“Yes,” said Sylvia faintly, “he frightened me, Maurice. I needn’t stop any longer, dear, need I?”
“No,” says Frere, the cloud passing from his face. “Major, I beg your pardon, but I was hasty. Take her home at once. This sort of thing is too much for her.” And so he went back to his place, wiping his brow, and breathing hard, as one who had just escaped from some near peril.
Rufus Dawes had remained in the same attitude until the figure of Frere, passing through the doorway, roused him. “Who is she?” he said, in a low, hoarse voice, to the constable behind him.
“Miss Vickers,” said the man shortly, flinging the information at him as one might fling a bone to a dangerous dog.
“Miss Vickers,” repeated the convict, still staring in a sort of bewildered agony. “They told me she was dead!”
The constable sniffed contemptuously at this preposterous conclusion, as who should say, “If you know all about it, animal, why did you ask?” and then, feeling that the fixed gaze of his interrogator demanded some reply, added, “You thort she was, I’ve no doubt. You did your best to make her so, I’ve heard.”
The convict raised both his hands with sudden action of wrathful despair, as though he would seize the other, despite the loaded muskets; but, checking himself with sudden impulse, wheeled round to the Court. “Your Honour!—Gentlemen! I want to speak.”
The change in the tone of his voice, no less than the sudden loudness of the exclamation, made the faces, hitherto bent upon the door through which Mr. Frere had passed, turn round again. To many there it seemed that the “notorious Dawes” was no longer in the box, for, in place of the upright and defiant villain who stood there an instant back, was a white-faced, nervous, agitated creature, bending forward in an attitude almost of supplication, one hand grasping the rail, as though to save himself from falling, the other outstretched towards the bench. “Your Honour, there has been some dreadful mistake made. I want to explain about myself. I explained before, when first I was sent to Port Arthur, but the letters were never forwarded by the Commandant; of course, that’s the rule, and I can’t complain. I’ve been sent there unjustly, your Honour. I made that boat, your Honour. I saved the Major’s wife and daughter. I was the man; I did it all myself, and my liberty was sworn away by a villain who hated me. I thought, until now, that no one knew the truth, for they told me that she was dead.” His rapid utterance took the Court so much by surprise that no one interrupted him. “I was sentenced to death for bolting, sir, and they reprieved me because I helped them in the boat. Helped them! Why, I made it! She will tell you so. I nursed her! I carried her in my arms! I starved myself for her! She was fond of me, sir. She was indeed. She called me ‘Good Mr. Dawes’.”
At this, a coarse laugh broke out, which was instantly checked. The judge bent over to ask, “Does he mean Miss Vickers?” and in this interval Rufus Dawes, looking down into the Court, saw Maurice Frere staring up at him with terror in his eyes. “I see you, Captain Frere, coward and liar! Put him in the box, gentlemen, and make him tell his story. She’ll contradict him, never fear. Oh, and I thought she was dead all this while!”
The judge had got his answer from the clerk by this time. “Miss Vickers had been seriously ill, had fainted just now in the Court. Her only memories of the convict who had been with her in the boat were those of terror and disgust. The sight of him just now had most seriously affected her. The convict himself was an inveterate liar and schemer, and his story had been already disproved by Captain Frere.”
The judge, a man inclining by nature to humanity, but forced by experience to receive all statements of prisoners with caution, said all he could say, and the tragedy of five years was disposed of in the following dialogue:—
JUDGE: This is not the place for an accusation against Captain Frere, nor the place to argue upon your alleged wrongs.
If you have suffered injustice, the authorities will hear your complaint, and redress it.
RUFUS DAWES: I have complained, your Honour. I wrote letter after letter to the Government, but they were never sent. Then I heard she was dead, and they sent me to the Coal Mines after that, and we never hear anything there.
JUDGE: I can’t listen to you. Mr. Mangles, have you any more questions to ask the witness?
But Mr. Mangles not having any more, someone called, “Matthew Gabbett,” and Rufus Dawes, still endeavouring to speak, was clanked away with, amid a buzz of remark and surmise.
*
The trial progressed without further incident. Sylvia was not called, and, to the astonishment of many of his enemies, Captain Frere went into the witness-box and generously spoke in favour of John Rex. “He might have left us to starve,” Frere said; “he might have murdered us; we were completely in his power. The stock of provisions on board the brig was not a large one, and I consider that, in dividing it with us, he showed great generosity for one in his situation.” This piece of evidence told strongly in favour of the prisoners, for Captain Frere was known to be such an uncompromising foe to all rebellious convicts that it was understood that only the sternest sense of justice and truth could lead him to speak in such terms. The defence set up by Rex, moreover, was most ingenious. He was guilty of absconding, but his moderation might plead an excuse for that. His only object was his freedom, and, having gained it, he had lived honestly for nearly three years, as he could prove. He was charged with piratically seizing the brig Osprey, and he urged that the brig Osprey, having been built by convicts at Macquarie Harbour, and never entered in any shipping list, could not be said to be “piratically seized”, in the strict meaning of the term. The Court admitted the force of this objection, and, influenced doubtless by Captain Frere’s evidence, the fact that five years had passed since the mutiny, and that the two men most guilty (Cheshire and Barker) had been executed in England, sentenced Rex and his three companions to transportation for life to the penal settlements of the colony.
CHAPTER V
MAURICE FRERE’S GOOD ANGEL
AT this happy conclusion to his labours, Frere went down to comfort the girl for whose sake he had suffered Rex to escape the gallows. On his way he was met by a man who touched his hat, and asked to speak with him an instant. This man was past middle age, owned a red brandy-beaten face, and had in his gait and manner that nameless something that denotes the seaman.
“Well, Blunt,” says Frere, pausing with the impatient air of a man who expects to hear bad news, “what is it now?”
“Only to tell you that it is all right, sir,” says Blunt. “She’s come aboard again this morning.”
“Come aboard again!” ejaculated Frere. “Why, I didn’t know that she had been ashore. Where did she go?” He spoke with an air of confident authority, and Blunt—no longer the bluff tyrant of old—seemed to quail before him. The trial of the mutineers of the Malabar had ruined Phineas Blunt. Make what excuses he might, there was no concealing the fact that Pine found him drunk in his cabin when he ought to have been attending to his duties on deck, and the “authorities” could not, or would not, pass over such a heinous breach of discipline. Captain Blunt—who, of course, had his own version of the story—thus deprived of the honour of bringing His Majesty’s prisoners to His Majesty’s colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, went on a whaling cruise to the South Seas. The influence which Sarah Purfoy had acquired over him had, however, irretrievably injured him. It was as though she had poisoned his moral nature by the influence of a clever and wicked woman over a sensual and dull-witted man. Blunt gradually sank lower and lower. He became a drunkard, and was known as a man with a “grievance against the Government”. Captain Frere, having had occasion for him in some capacity, had become in a manner his patron, and had got him the command of a schooner trading from Sydney. On getting this command—not without some wry faces on the part of the owner resident in Hobart Town—Blunt had taken the temperance pledge for the space of twelve months, and was a miserable dog in consequence. He was, however, a faithful henchman, for he hoped by Frere’s means to get some “Government billet”—the grand object of all colonial sea captains of that epoch.
“Well, sir, she went ashore to see a friend,” says Blunt, looking at the sky and then at the earth.
“What friend?”
“The—the prisoner, sir.”
“And she saw him, I suppose?”
“Yes, but I thought I’d better tell you, sir,” says Blunt.
“Of course; quite right,” returned the other; “you had better start at once. It’s no use waiting.”
“As you wish, sir. I can sail to-morrow morning—or this evening, if you like.”
“This evening,” says Frere, turning away; “as soon as possible.”
“There’s a situation in Sydney I’ve been looking after,” said the other, uneasily, “if you could help me to it.”
“What is it?”
“The command of one of the Government vessels, sir.”
“Well, keep sober, then,” says Frere, “and I’ll see what I can do. And keep that woman’s tongue still if you can.”
The pair looked at each other, and Blunt grinned slavishly.
“I’ll do my best.”
“Take care you do,” returned his patron, leaving him without further ceremony.
Frere found Vickers in the garden, and at once begged him not to talk about the “business” to his daughter.
“You saw how bad she was to-day, Vickers. For goodness sake don’t make her ill again.”
“My dear sir,” says poor Vickers, “I won’t refer to the subject. She’s been very unwell ever since. Nervous and unstrung. Go in and see her.”
So Frere went in and soothed the excited girl, with real sorrow at her suffering.
“It’s all right now, Poppet,” he said to her. “Don’t think of it any more. Put it out of your mind, dear.”
“It was foolish of me, Maurice, I know, but I could not help it. The sound of—of—that man’s voice seemed to bring back to me some great pity for something or someone. I don’t explain what I mean, I know, but I felt that I was on the verge of remembering a story of some great wrong, just about to hear some dreadful revelation that should make me turn from all the people whom I ought most to love. Do you understand?”
“I think I know what you mean,” says Frere, with averted face. “But that’s all nonsense, you know.”
“Of course,” returned she, with a touch of her old childish manner of disposing of questions out of hand. “Everybody knows it’s all nonsense. But then we do think such things. It seems to me that I am double, that I have lived somewhere before, and have had another life—a dream-life.”
“What a romantic girl you are,” said the other, dimly comprehending her meaning. “How could you have a dream-life?”
“Of course, not really, stupid! But in thought, you know. I dream such strange things now and then. I am always falling down precipices and into cataracts, and being pushed into great caverns in enormous rocks. Horrible dreams!”
“Indigestion,” returned Frere. “You don’t take exercise enough. You shouldn’t read so much. Have a good five-mile walk.”
“And in these dreams,” continued Sylvia, not heeding his interruption, “there is one strange thing. You are always there, Maurice.”
“Come, that’s all right,” says Maurice.
“Ah, but not kind and good as you are, Captain Bruin, but scowling, and threatening, and angry, so that I am afraid of you.”
“But that is only a dream, darling.”
“Yes, but—” playing with the button of his coat.
“But what?”
“But you looked just so to-day in the Court, Maurice, and I think that’s what made me so silly.”
“My darling! There; hush—don’t cry!”
But she had burst into a passion of sobs and tears, that shook her slight figure in
his arms.
“Oh, Maurice, I am a wicked girl! I don’t know my own mind. I think sometimes I don’t love you as I ought—you who have saved me and nursed me.”
“There, never mind about that,” muttered Maurice Frere, with a sort of choking in his throat.
She grew more composed presently, and said, after a while, lifting her face, “Tell me, Maurice, did you ever, in those days of which you have spoken to me—when you nursed me as a little child in your arms, and fed me, and starved for me—did you ever think we should be married?”
“I don’t know,” says Maurice. “Why?”
“I think you must have thought so, because—it’s not vanity, dear—you would not else have been so kind, and gentle, and devoted.”
“Nonsense, Poppet,” he said, with his eyes resolutely averted.
“No, but you have been, and I am very pettish, sometimes. Papa has spoiled me. You are always affectionate, and those worrying ways of yours, which I get angry at, all come from love for me, don’t they?”
“I hope so,” said Maurice, with an unwonted moisture in his eyes.
“Well, you see, that is the reason why I am angry with myself for not loving you as I ought. I want you to like the things I like, and to love the books and the music and the pictures and the—the World I love; and I forget that you are a man, you know, and I am only a girl; and I forget how nobly you behaved, Maurice, and how unselfishly you risked your life for mine. Why, what is the matter, dear?”
He had put her away from him suddenly, and gone to the window, gazing across the sloping garden at the bay below, sleeping in the soft evening light. The schooner which had brought the witnesses from Port Arthur lay off the shore, and the yellow flag at her mast fluttered gently in the cool evening breeze. The sight of this flag appeared to anger him, for, as his eyes fell on it, he uttered an impatient exclamation, and turned round again.
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 27