For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

  That afternoon, while Mr. Meekin was digesting his lunch, and chattingairily with Sylvia, Rufus Dawes began to brood over a desperate scheme.The intelligence that the investigation he had hoped for was not to begranted to him had rendered doubly bitter those galling fetters of selfrestraint which he had laid upon himself. For five years of desolationhe had waited and hoped for a chance which might bring him to HobartTown, and enable him to denounce the treachery of Maurice Frere. He had,by an almost miraculous accident, obtained that chance of open speech,and, having obtained it, he found that he was not allowed to speak.All the hopes he had formed were dashed to earth. All the calmnesswith which he had forced himself to bear his fate was now turned intobitterest rage and fury. Instead of one enemy he had twenty. All--judge,jury, gaoler, and parson--were banded together to work him evil and denyhim right. The whole world was his foe: there was no honesty or truth inany living creature--save one.

  During the dull misery of his convict life at Port Arthur one brightmemory shone upon him like a star. In the depth of his degradation,at the height of his despair, he cherished one pure and ennoblingthought--the thought of the child whom he had saved, and who loved him.When, on board the whaler that had rescued him from the burning boat, hehad felt that the sailors, believing in Frere's bluff lies, shrunk fromthe moody felon, he had gained strength to be silent by thinking of thesuffering child. When poor Mrs. Vickers died, making no sign, and thusthe chief witness to his heroism perished before his eyes, the thoughtthat the child was left had restrained his selfish regrets. When Frere,handing him over to the authorities as an absconder, ingeniously twistedthe details of the boat-building to his own glorification, the knowledgethat Sylvia would assign to these pretensions their true value had givenhim courage to keep silence. So strong was his belief in her gratitude,that he scorned to beg for the pardon he had taught himself to believethat she would ask for him. So utter was his contempt for the coward andboaster who, dressed in brief authority, bore insidious false witnessagainst him, that, when he heard his sentence of life banishment, hedisdained to make known the true part he had played in the matter,preferring to wait for the more exquisite revenge, the more completejustification which would follow upon the recovery of the child fromher illness. But when, at Port Arthur, day after day passed over, andbrought no word of pity or justification, he began, with a sickeningfeeling of despair, to comprehend that something strange had happened.He was told by newcomers that the child of the Commandant lay stilland near to death. Then he heard that she and her father had left thecolony, and that all prospect of her righting him by her evidence was atan end. This news gave him a terrible pang; and at first he was inclinedto break out into upbraidings of her selfishness. But, with that depthof love which was in him, albeit crusted over and concealed by thesullenness of speech and manner which his sufferings had produced, hefound excuses for her even then. She was ill. She was in the hands offriends who loved her, and disregarded him; perhaps, even her entreatiesand explanations were put aside as childish babblings. She would freehim if she had the power. Then he wrote "Statements", agonized to seethe Commandant, pestered the gaolers and warders with the story of hiswrongs, and inundated the Government with letters, which, containing, asthey did always, denunciations of Maurice Frere, were never suffered toreach their destination. The authorities, willing at the first to lookkindly upon him in consideration of his strange experience, grew wearyof this perpetual iteration of what they believed to be maliciousfalsehoods, and ordered him heavier tasks and more continuous labour.They mistook his gloom for treachery, his impatient outbursts of passionat his fate for ferocity, his silent endurance for dangerous cunning.As he had been at Macquarie Harbour, so did he become at Port Arthur--amarked man. Despairing of winning his coveted liberty by fair means,and horrified at the hideous prospect of a life in chains, he twiceattempted to escape, but escape was even more hopeless than it had beenat Hell's Gates. The peninsula of Port Arthur was admirably guarded,signal stations drew a chain round the prison, an armed boat's crewwatched each bay, and across the narrow isthmus which connected it withthe mainland was a cordon of watch-dogs, in addition to the soldierguard. He was retaken, of course, flogged, and weighted with heavierirons. The second time, they sent him to the Coal Mines, where theprisoners lived underground, worked half-naked, and dragged theirinspecting gaolers in wagons upon iron tramways, when such great peoplecondescended to visit them. The day on which he started for this placehe heard that Sylvia was dead, and his last hope went from him.

  Then began with him a new religion. He worshipped the dead. For theliving, he had but hatred and evil words; for the dead, he had love andtender thoughts. Instead of the phantoms of his vanished youth whichwere wont to visit him, he saw now but one vision--the vision of thechild who had loved him. Instead of conjuring up for himself pictures ofthat home circle in which he had once moved, and those creatures who inthe past years had thought him worthy of esteem and affection, he placedbefore himself but one idea, one embodiment of happiness, one being whowas without sin and without stain, among all the monsters of that pitinto which he had fallen. Around the figure of the innocent child whohad lain in his breast, and laughed at him with her red young mouth,he grouped every image of happiness and love. Having banished from histhoughts all hope of resuming his name and place, he pictured to himselfsome quiet nook at the world's end--a deep-gardened house in a Germancountry town, or remote cottage by the English seashore, where he andhis dream-child might have lived together, happier in a purer affectionthan the love of man for woman. He bethought him how he could havetaught her out of the strange store of learning which his roving lifehad won for him, how he could have confided to her his real name, andperhaps purchased for her wealth and honour by reason of it. Yet, hethought, she would not care for wealth and honour; she would prefera quiet life--a life of unassuming usefulness, a life devoted to gooddeeds, to charity and love. He could see her--in his visions--reading bya cheery fireside, wandering in summer woods, or lingering by the margeof the slumbering mid-day sea. He could feel--in his dreams--her softarms about his neck, her innocent kisses on his lips; he could hear herlight laugh, and see her sunny ringlets float, back-blown, as she ranto meet him. Conscious that she was dead, and that he did to her gentlememory no disrespect by linking her fortunes to those of a wretch whohad seen so much of evil as himself, he loved to think of her as stillliving, and to plot out for her and for himself impossible plans forfuture happiness. In the noisome darkness of the mine, in the glaringlight of the noonday--dragging at his loaded wagon, he could see herever with him, her calm eyes gazing lovingly on his, as they had gazedin the boat so long ago. She never seemed to grow older, she neverseemed to wish to leave him. It was only when his misery became toogreat for him to bear, and he cursed and blasphemed, mingling for atime in the hideous mirth of his companions, that the little figure fledaway. Thus dreaming, he had shaped out for himself a sorrowful comfort,and in his dream-world found a compensation for the terrible afflictionof living. Indifference to his present sufferings took possession ofhim; only at the bottom of this indifference lurked a fixed hatred ofthe man who had brought these sufferings upon him, and a determinationto demand at the first opportunity a reconsideration of that man'sclaims to be esteemed a hero. It was in this mood that he had intendedto make the revelation which he had made in Court, but the intelligencethat Sylvia lived unmanned him, and his prepared speech had been usurpedby a passionate torrent of complaint and invective, which convinced noone, and gave Frere the very argument he needed. It was decided that theprisoner Dawes was a malicious and artful scoundrel, whose only objectwas to gain a brief respite of the punishment which he had so justlyearned. Against this injustice he had resolved to rebel. It wasmonstrous, he thought, that they should refuse to hear the witness whowas so ready to speak in his favour, infamous that they should send himback to his doom without allowing her to say a word in his defence. Buthe would defeat that scheme. He had planned a method of escape, and hewould break from his bonds,
fling himself at her feet, and pray her tospeak the truth for him, and so save him. Strong in his faith in her,and with his love for her brightened by the love he had borne to herdream-image, he felt sure of her power to rescue him now, as he hadrescued her before. "If she knew I was alive, she would come to me," hesaid. "I am sure she would. Perhaps they told her that I was dead."

  Meditating that night in the solitude of his cell--his evil characterhad gained him the poor luxury of loneliness--he almost wept to think ofthe cruel deception that had doubtless been practised on her. "They havetold her that I was dead, in order that she might learn to forget me;but she could not do that. I have thought of her so often during theseweary years that she must sometimes have thought of me. Five years!She must be a woman now. My little child a woman! Yet she is sure to bechildlike, sweet, and gentle. How she will grieve when she hears of mysufferings. Oh! my darling, my darling, you are not dead!" And then,looking hastily about him in the darkness, as though fearful even thereof being seen, he pulled from out his breast a little packet, and feltit lovingly with his coarse, toil-worn fingers, reverently raising it tohis lips, and dreaming over it, with a smile on his face, as though itwere a sacred talisman that should open to him the doors of freedom.

  CHAPTER VIII. AN ESCAPE.