CHAPTER XX. THE STATEMENT OF FRANCIS RATTRAY
In the year 1858 I received a bulky packet bearing the stamp of theArgentine Republic, a realm in which, to the best of my belief, I hadnot a solitary acquaintance. The superscription told me nothing. Inmy relations with Rattray his handwriting had never come under myobservation. Judge then of my feelings when the first thing I read washis signature at the foot of the last page.
For five years I had been uncertain whether he was alive or dead. I hadheard nothing of him from the night we parted in Kirby Hall. All I knewwas that he had escaped from England and the English police; his lettergave no details of the incident. It was an astonishing letter; my breathwas taken on the first close page; at the foot of it the tears were inmy eyes. And all that part I must pass over without a word. I have nevershown it to man or woman. It is sacred between man and man.
But the letter possessed other points of interest--of almost universalinterest--to which no such scruples need apply; for it cleared upcertain features of the foregoing narrative which had long beenmysteries to all the world; and it gave me what I had tried in vainto fathom all these years, some explanation, or rather history, ofthe young Lancastrian's complicity with Joaquin Santos in the foulenterprise of the Lady Jermyn. And these passages I shall reproduce wordfor word; partly because of their intrinsic interest; partly for suchnew light as they day throw on this or that phase of the foregoingnarrative; and, lastly, out of fairness to (I hope) the most gallant andmost generous youth who ever slipped upon the lower slopes of Avemus.
Wrote Rattray:
"You wondered how I could have thrown in my lot with such a man. You maywonder still, for I never yet told living soul. I pretended I had joinedhim of my own free will. That was not quite the case. The facts were asfollows:
"In my teens (as I think you know) I was at sea. I took my second mate'scertificate at twenty, and from that to twenty-four my voyages were farbetween and on my own account. I had given way to our hereditary passionfor smuggling. I kept a 'yacht' in Morecambe Bay, and more French brandythan I knew what to do with in my cellars. It was exciting for a time,but the excitement did not last. In 1851 the gold fever broke out inAustralia. I shipped to Melbourne as third mate on a barque, andI deserted for the diggings in the usual course. But I was never asuccessful digger. I had little luck and less patience, and I have nodoubt that many a good haul has been taken out of claims previouslyabandoned by me; for of one or two I had the mortification of hearingwhile still in the Colony. I suppose I had not the temperament for thework. Dust would not do for me--I must have nuggets. So from Bendigo Idrifted to the Ovens, and from the Ovens to Ballarat. But I did no moregood on one field than on another, and eventually, early in 1853, I castup in Melbourne again with the intention of shipping home in the firstvessel. But there were no crews for the homeward-bounders, and whilewaiting for a ship my little stock of gold dust gave out. I becamedestitute first--then desperate. Unluckily for me, the beginning of '53was the hey-day of Captain Melville, the notorious bushranger. He wasa young fellow of my own age. I determined to imitate his exploits. Icould make nothing out there from an honest life; rather than starveI would lead a dishonest one. I had been born with lawless tendencies;from smuggling to bushranging was an easy transition, and about thelatter there seemed to be a gallantry and romantic swagger which put iton the higher plane of the two. But I was not born to be a bushrangereither. I failed at the very first attempt. I was outwitted by my firstvictim, a thin old gentleman riding a cob at night on the Geelong road.
"'Why rob me?' said he. 'I have only ten pounds in my pocket, and thepunishment will be the same as though it were ten thousand.'
"'I want your cob,' said I (for I was on foot); 'I'm a starving Jack,and as I can't get a ship I'm going to take to the bush.'
"He shrugged his shoulders.
"'To starve there?' said he. 'My friend, it is a poor sport, thisbushranging. I have looked into the matter on my own account. You notonly die like a dog, but you live like one too. It is not worth while.No crime is worth while under five figures, my friend. A starving Jack,eh? Instead of robbing me of ten pounds, why not join me and take tenthousand as your share of our first robbery? A sailor is the very man Iwant!'
"I told him that what I wanted was his cob, and that it was no use histrying to hoodwink me by pretending he was one of my sort, because Iknew very well that he was not; at which he shrugged again, and slowlydismounted, after offering me his money, of which I took half. He shookhis head, telling me I was very foolish, and I was coolly mounting (forhe had never offered me the least resistance), with my pistols in mybelt, when suddenly I heard one cocked behind me.
"'Stop!' said he. 'It's my turn! Stop, or I shoot you dead!' The tableswere turned, and he had me at his mercy as completely as he had been atmine. I made up my mind to being marched to the nearest police-station.But nothing of the kind. I had misjudged my man as utterly as youmisjudged him a few months later aboard the Lady Jermyn. He took meto his house on the outskirts of Melbourne, a weather-board bungalow,scantily furnished, but comfortable enough. And there he seriouslyrepeated the proposal he had made me off-hand in the road. Only he putit a little differently. Would I go to the hulks for attempting to robhim of five pounds, or would I stay and help him commit a robbery, ofwhich my share alone would be ten or fifteen thousand? You know whichI chose. You know who this man was. I said I would join him. He made meswear it. And then he told me what his enterprise was: there is no needfor me to tell you; nor indeed had it taken definite shape at this time.Suffice it that Santos had wind that big consignments of Austrailiangold were shortly to be shipped home to England; that he, like myself,had done nothing on the diggings, where he had looked to make hisfortune, and out of which he meant to make it still.
"It was an extraordinary life that we led in the bungalow, I the guest,he the host, and Eva the unsuspecting hostess and innocent daughterof the house. Santos had failed on the fields, but he had succeeded inmaking valuable friends in Melbourne. Men of position and of influencespent their evenings on our veranda, among others the Melbourne agentfor the Lady Jermyn, the likeliest vessel then lying in the harbor, andthe one to which the first consignment of gold-dust would be entrustedif only a skipper could be found to replace the deserter who tookyou out. Santos made up his mind to find one. It took him weeks, buteventually he found Captain Harris on Bendigo, and Captain Harris washis man. More than that he was the man for the agent; and the LadyJermyn was once more made ready for sea.
"Now began the complications. Quite openly, Santos had bought theschooner Spindrift, freighted her with wool, given me the command, andvowed that he would go home in her rather than wait any longer for theLady Jermyn. At the last moment he appeared to change his mind, and Isailed alone as many days as possible in advance of the ship, as hadbeen intended from the first; but it went sorely against the grain whenthe time came. I would have given anything to have backed out of theenterprise. Honest I might be no longer; I was honestly in love with EvaDenison. Yet to have backed out would have been one way of losing herfor ever. Besides, it was not the first time I had run counter to thelaw, I who came of a lawless stock; but it would be the first time I haddeserted a comrade or broken faith with one. I would do neither. In fora penny, in for a pound.
"But before my God I never meant it to turn out as it did; though Iadmit and have always admitted that my moral responsibility is butlittle if any the less on that account. Yet I was never a consentingparty to wholesale murder, whatever else I was. The night before Isailed, Santos and the captain were aboard with me till the small hours.They promised me that every soul should have every chance; that nothingbut unforeseen accident could prevent the boats from making Ascensionagain in a matter of hours; that as long as the gig was supposed to belost with all hands, nothing else mattered. So they promised, and thatHarris meant to keep his promise I fully believe. That was not a wantonruffian; but the other would spill blood like water, as I told you atthe hall, and as no man now knows
better than yourself. He was notoriouseven in Portuguese Africa on account of his atrocious treatment of theblacks. It was a favorite boast of his that he once poisoned a wholevillage; and that he himself tampered with the Lady Jermyn's boats youcan take my word, for I have heard him describe how he left it to thelast night, and struck the blows during the applause at the concert onthe quarter-deck. He said it might have come out about the gold in thegig, during the fire. It was safer to run no risks.
"The same thing came into play aboard the schooner. Never shall I forgetthe horror of that voyage after Santos came aboard! I had a crew ofeight hands all told, and two he brought with him in the gig. Of coursethey began talking about the gold; they would have their share or splitwhen they got ashore; and there was mutiny in the air, with the stewardand the quarter-master of the Lady Jermyn for ring-leaders. Santosnipped it in the bud with a vengeance! He and Harris shot every manof them dead, and two who were shot through the heart they washed anddressed and set adrift to rot in the gig with false papers! God knowshow we made Madeira; we painted the old name out and a new name in, onthe way; and we shipped a Portuguese crew, not a man of whom could speakEnglish. We shipped them aboard the Duque de Mondejo's yacht Braganza;the schooner Spindrift had disappeared from the face of the waters forever. And with the men we took in plenty of sour claret and cigarettes;and we paid them well; and the Portuguese sailor is not inquisitiveunder such conditions.
"And now, honestly, I wished I had put a bullet through my head beforejoining in this murderous conspiracy; but retreat was impossible, evenif I had been the man to draw back after going so far; and I had a stillstronger reason for standing by the others to the bitter end. I couldnot leave our lady to these ruffians. On the other hand, neither could Itake her from them, for (as you know) she justly regarded me as the mostflagrant ruffian of them all. It was in me and through me that she wasdeceived, insulted, humbled, and contaminated; that she should ever haveforgiven me for a moment is more than I can credit or fathom to thishour... So there we were. She would not look at me. And I would notleave her until death removed me. Santos had been kind enough to herhitherto; he had been kind enough (I understand) to her mother beforeher. It was only in the execution of his plans that he showed hisNapoleonic disregard for human life; and it was precisely herein thatI began to fear for the girl I still dared to love. She took up anattitude as dangerous to her safety as to our own. She demanded to beset free when we came to land. Her demand was refused. God forgive me,it had no bitterer opponent than myself! And all we did was to hardenher resolution; that mere child threatened us to our faces, never shallI forget the scene! You know her spirit: if we would not set her free,she would tell all when we landed. And you remember how Santos used toshrug? That was all he did then. It was enough for me who knew him. Fordays I never left them alone together. Night after night I watched hercabin door. And she hated me the more for never leaving her alone! I hadto resign myself to that.
"The night we anchored in Falmouth Bay, thinking then of taking our goldstraight to the Bank of England, as eccentric lucky diggers--that nightI thought would be the last for one or other of us. He locked her inher cabin. He posted himself outside on the settee. I sat watching himacross the table. Each had a hand in his pocket, each had a pistol inthat hand, and there we sat, with our four eyes locked, while Harriswent ashore for papers. He came back in great excitement. What withstopping at Madeira, and calms, and the very few knots we could knockout of the schooner at the best of times, we had made a seven or eightweeks' voyage of it from Ascension--where, by the way, I had arrivedonly a couple of days before the Lady Jermyn, though I had nearly amonth's start of her. Well, Harris came back in the highest state ofexcitement: and well he might: the papers were full of you, and of theburning of the Lady Jermyn!
"Now mark what happened. You know, of course, as well as I do; but Iwonder if you can even yet realize what it was to us! Our prisonerhears that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and tells him he iswelcome to silence her, but it will do us ne good now, as you know thatthe ship was wilfully burned, and with what object. It is the singleblow she can strike in self-defence; but a shrewder one could scarcelybe imagined. She had talked to you, at the very last; and by that timeshe did know the truth. What more natural than that she should confideit to you? She had had time to tell you enough to hang the lot of us;and you may imagine our consternation on hearing that she had told youall she knew! From the first we were never quite sure whether to believeit or not. That the papers breathed no suspicion of foul play wasneither here nor there. Scotland Yard might have seen to that. Thenwe read of the morbid reserve which was said to characterize all yourutterances concerning the Lady Jermyn. What were we to do? What we nolonger dared to do was to take our gold-dust straight to the Bank. Whatwe did, you know.
"We ran round to Morecambe Bay, and landed the gold as we Rattrays hadlanded lace and brandy from time immemorial. We left Eva in charge ofJane Braithwaite, God only knows how much against my will, but we werein a corner, it was life or death with us, and to find out how much youknew was a first plain necessity. And the means we took were the onlymeans in our power; nor shall I say more to you on that subject than Isaid five years ago in my poor old house. That is still the one part ofthe whole conspiracy of which I myself am most ashamed.
"And now it only remains for me to tell you why I have written all thisto you, at such great length, so long after the event. My wife wishedit. The fact is that she wants you to think better of me than I deserve;and I--yes--I confess that I should like you not to think quite as illof me as you must have done all these years. I was villain enough, butdo not think I am unpunished.
"I am an outlaw from my country. I am morally a transported felon. Onlyin this no-man's land am I a free man; let me but step across the borderand I am worth a little fortune to the man who takes me. And we have hada hard time here, though not so hard as I deserved; and the hardest partof all..."
But you must guess the hardest part: for the letter ended as it began,with sudden talk of his inner life, and tentative inquiry after mine. Inits entirety, as I say, I have never shown it to a soul; there was justa little more that I read to my wife (who could not hear enough abouthis); then I folded up the letter, and even she has never seen thepassages to which I allude.
And yet I am not one of those who hold that the previous romancesof married people should be taboo between them in after life. On thecontrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may bederived from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and this iswhy we, in our old age (or rather in mine), find a still unfailing topicin the story of which Eva Denison was wayward heroine and Frank Rattraythe nearest approach to a hero. Sometimes these reminiscences lead toan argument; for it has been the fate of my life to become attached toargumentative persons. I suppose because I myself hate arguing. Onthe day that I received Rattray's letter we had one of our warmestdiscussions. I could repeat every word of it after forty years.
"A good man does not necessarily make a good husband," I innocentlyremarked.
"Why do you say that?" asked my wife, who never would let ageneralization pass unchallenged.
"I was thinking of Rattray," said I. "The most tolerant of judges couldscarcely have described him as a good man five years ago. Yet I can seethat he has made an admirable husband. On the whole, and if you can't beboth, it is better to be the good husband!"
It was this point that we debated with so much ardor. My wife would takethe opposite side; that is her one grave fault. And I must introducepersonalities; that, of course, is among the least of mine. I comparedmyself with Rattray, as a husband, and (with some sincerity) to my owndisparagement. I pointed out that he was an infinitely more fascinatingcreature, which was no hard saying, for that epithet at least I havenever earned. And yet it was the word to sting my wife.
"Fascinating, perhaps!" said she. "Yes, that is the very word;but--fascination is not love!"
And then I went to her, and stroked her hair (for sh
e had hung her headin deep distress), and kissed the tears from her eyes. And I swore thather eyes were as lovely as Eva Denison's, that there seemed even moregold in her glossy brown hair, that she was even younger to look at. Andat the last and craftiest compliment my own love looked at me throughher tears, as though some day or other she might forgive me.
"Then why did you want to give me up to him?" said she.
Dead Men Tell No Tales Page 20