For the Term of His Natural Life Part 43

"Then listen respectfully, sir," said Meekin, roseate with celestial anger. "You have all day to break those stones."

"Yes, I have all day," returned Rufus Dawes, with a dogged look upward, "and all next day, for that matter. Ugh!" and again the hammer descended.

"I came to console you, man--to console you," says Meekin, indignant at the contempt with which his well-meant overtures had been received. "I wanted to give you some good advice!"

The self-important annoyance of the tone seemed to appeal to whatever vestige of appreciation for the humorous, chains and degradation had suffered to linger in the convict's brain, for a faint smile crossed his features.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said. "Pray, go on."

"I was going to say, my good fellow, that you have done yourself a great deal of injury by your ill-advised accusation of Captain Frere, and the use you made of Miss Vickers's name."

A frown, as of pain, contracted the prisoner's brows, and he seemed with difficulty to put a restraint upon his speech. "Is there to be no inquiry, Mr. Meekin?" he asked, at length. "What I stated was the truth--the truth, so help me G.o.d!"

"No blasphemy, sir," said Meekin, solemnly. "No blasphemy, wretched man.

Do not add to the sin of lying the greater sin of taking the name of the Lord thy G.o.d in vain. He will not hold him guiltless, Dawes. He will not hold him guiltless, remember. No, there is to be no inquiry."

"Are they not going to ask her for her story?" asked Dawes, with a pitiful change of manner. "They told me that she was to be asked. Surely they will ask her."

"I am not, perhaps, at liberty," said Meekin, placidly unconscious of the agony of despair and rage that made the voice of the strong man before him quiver, "to state the intentions of the authorities, but I can tell you that Miss Vickers will not be asked anything about you. You are to go back to Port Arthur on the 24th, and to remain there."

A groan burst from Rufus Dawes; a groan so full of torture that even the comfortable Meekin was thrilled by it.

"It is the Law, you know, my good man. I can't help it," he said. "You shouldn't break the Law, you know."

"Curse the Law!" cries Dawes. "It's a b.l.o.o.d.y Law; it's--there, I beg your pardon," and he fell to cracking his stones again, with a laugh that was more terrible in its bitter hopelessness of winning attention or sympathy, than any outburst of pa.s.sion could have been.

"Come," says Meekin, feeling uneasily constrained to bring forth some of his London-learnt plat.i.tudes. "You can't complain. You have broken the Law, and you must suffer. Civilized Society says you sha'n't do certain things, and if you do them you must suffer the penalty Civilized Society imposes. You are not wanting in intelligence, Dawes, more's the pity--and you can't deny the justice of that."

Rufus Dawes, as if disdaining to answer in words, cast his eyes round the yard with a glance that seemed to ask grimly if Civilized Society was progressing quite in accordance with justice, when its civilization created such places as that stone-walled, carbine-guarded prison-shed, and filled it with such creatures as those forty human beasts, doomed to spend the best years of their manhood cracking pebbles in it.

"You don't deny that?" asked the smug parson, "do you, Dawes?"

"It's not my place to argue with you, sir," said Dawes, in a tone of indifference, born of lengthened suffering, so nicely balanced between contempt and respect, that the inexperienced Meekin could not tell whether he had made a convert or subjected himself to an impertinence; "but I'm a prisoner for life, and don't look at it in the same way that you do."

This view of the question did not seem to have occurred to Mr. Meekin, for his mild cheek flushed. Certainly, the fact of being a prisoner for life did make some difference. The sound of the noonday bell, however, warned him to cease argument, and to take his consolations out of the way of the mustering prisoners.

With a great clanking and clas.h.i.+ng of irons, the forty rose and stood each by his stone-heap. The third constable came round, rapping the leg-irons of each man with easy nonchalance, and roughly pulling up the coa.r.s.e trousers (made with b.u.t.toned flaps at the sides, like Mexican calzoneros, in order to give free play to the ankle fetters), so that he might a.s.sure himself that no tricks had been played since his last visit. As each man pa.s.sed this ordeal he saluted, and clanked, with wide-spread legs, to the place in the double line. Mr. Meekin, though not a patron of field sports, found something in the scene that reminded him of a blacksmith picking up horses' feet to examine the soundness of their shoes.

"Upon my word," he said to himself, with a momentary pang of genuine compa.s.sion, "it is a dreadful way to treat human beings. I don't wonder at that wretched creature groaning under it. But, bless me, it is near one o'clock, and I promised to lunch with Major Vickers at two. How time flies, to be sure!"

CHAPTER VII. RUFUS DAWES'S IDYLL.

That afternoon, while Mr. Meekin was digesting his lunch, and chatting airily with Sylvia, Rufus Dawes began to brood over a desperate scheme.

The intelligence that the investigation he had hoped for was not to be granted to him had rendered doubly bitter those galling fetters of self restraint which he had laid upon himself. For five years of desolation he had waited and hoped for a chance which might bring him to Hobart Town, 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 calmness with which he had forced himself to bear his fate was now turned into bitterest rage and fury. Instead of one enemy he had twenty. All--judge, jury, gaoler, and parson--were banded together to work him evil and deny him right. The whole world was his foe: there was no honesty or truth in any living creature--save one.

During the dull misery of his convict life at Port Arthur one bright memory shone upon him like a star. In the depth of his degradation, at the height of his despair, he cherished one pure and enn.o.bling thought--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, he had felt that the sailors, believing in Frere's bluff lies, shrunk from the moody felon, he had gained strength to be silent by thinking of the suffering child. When poor Mrs. Vickers died, making no sign, and thus the chief witness to his heroism perished before his eyes, the thought that the child was left had restrained his selfish regrets. When Frere, handing him over to the authorities as an absconder, ingeniously twisted the details of the boat-building to his own glorification, the knowledge that Sylvia would a.s.sign to these pretensions their true value had given him courage to keep silence. So strong was his belief in her grat.i.tude, that he scorned to beg for the pardon he had taught himself to believe that she would ask for him. So utter was his contempt for the coward and boaster who, dressed in brief authority, bore insidious false witness against him, that, when he heard his sentence of life banishment, he disdained to make known the true part he had played in the matter, preferring to wait for the more exquisite revenge, the more complete justification which would follow upon the recovery of the child from her illness. But when, at Port Arthur, day after day pa.s.sed over, and brought no word of pity or justification, he began, with a sickening feeling of despair, to comprehend that something strange had happened.

He was told by newcomers that the child of the Commandant lay still and near to death. Then he heard that she and her father had left the colony, and that all prospect of her righting him by her evidence was at an end. This news gave him a terrible pang; and at first he was inclined to break out into upbraidings of her selfishness. But, with that depth of love which was in him, albeit crusted over and concealed by the sullenness of speech and manner which his sufferings had produced, he found excuses for her even then. She was ill. She was in the hands of friends who loved her, and disregarded him; perhaps, even her entreaties and explanations were put aside as childish babblings. She would free him if she had the power. Then he wrote "Statements", agonized to see the Commandant, pestered the gaolers and warders with the story of his wrongs, and inundated the Government with letters, which, containing, as they did always, denunciations of Maurice Frere, were never suffered to reach their destination. The authorities, willing at the first to look kindly upon him in consideration of his strange experience, grew weary of this perpetual iteration of what they believed to be malicious falsehoods, and ordered him heavier tasks and more continuous labour.

They mistook his gloom for treachery, his impatient outbursts of pa.s.sion at his fate for ferocity, his silent endurance for dangerous cunning.

As he had been at Macquarie Harbour, so did he become at Port Arthur--a marked man. Despairing of winning his coveted liberty by fair means, and horrified at the hideous prospect of a life in chains, he twice attempted to escape, but escape was even more hopeless than it had been at h.e.l.l's Gates. The peninsula of Port Arthur was admirably guarded, signal stations drew a chain round the prison, an armed boat's crew watched each bay, and across the narrow isthmus which connected it with the mainland was a cordon of watch-dogs, in addition to the soldier guard. He was retaken, of course, flogged, and weighted with heavier irons. The second time, they sent him to the Coal Mines, where the prisoners lived underground, worked half-naked, and dragged their inspecting gaolers in wagons upon iron tramways, when such great people condescended to visit them. The day on which he started for this place he heard that Sylvia was dead, and his last hope went from him.

Then began with him a new religion. He wors.h.i.+pped the dead. For the living, he had but hatred and evil words; for the dead, he had love and tender thoughts. Instead of the phantoms of his vanished youth which were wont to visit him, he saw now but one vision--the vision of the child who had loved him. Instead of conjuring up for himself pictures of that home circle in which he had once moved, and those creatures who in the past years had thought him worthy of esteem and affection, he placed before himself but one idea, one embodiment of happiness, one being who was without sin and without stain, among all the monsters of that pit into which he had fallen. Around the figure of the innocent child who had lain in his breast, and laughed at him with her red young mouth, he grouped every image of happiness and love. Having banished from his thoughts all hope of resuming his name and place, he pictured to himself some quiet nook at the world's end--a deep-gardened house in a German country town, or remote cottage by the English seash.o.r.e, where he and his dream-child might have lived together, happier in a purer affection than the love of man for woman. He bethought him how he could have taught her out of the strange store of learning which his roving life had won for him, how he could have confided to her his real name, and perhaps purchased for her wealth and honour by reason of it. Yet, he thought, she would not care for wealth and honour; she would prefer a quiet life--a life of una.s.suming usefulness, a life devoted to good deeds, to charity and love. He could see her--in his visions--reading by a cheery fireside, wandering in summer woods, or lingering by the marge of the slumbering mid-day sea. He could feel--in his dreams--her soft arms about his neck, her innocent kisses on his lips; he could hear her light laugh, and see her sunny ringlets float, back-blown, as she ran to meet him. Conscious that she was dead, and that he did to her gentle memory no disrespect by linking her fortunes to those of a wretch who had seen so much of evil as himself, he loved to think of her as still living, and to plot out for her and for himself impossible plans for future happiness. In the noisome darkness of the mine, in the glaring light of the noonday--dragging at his loaded wagon, he could see her ever with him, her calm eyes gazing lovingly on his, as they had gazed in the boat so long ago. She never seemed to grow older, she never seemed to wish to leave him. It was only when his misery became too great for him to bear, and he cursed and blasphemed, mingling for a time in the hideous mirth of his companions, that the little figure fled away. Thus dreaming, he had shaped out for himself a sorrowful comfort, and in his dream-world found a compensation for the terrible affliction of living. Indifference to his present sufferings took possession of him; only at the bottom of this indifference lurked a fixed hatred of the man who had brought these sufferings upon him, and a determination to demand at the first opportunity a reconsideration of that man's claims to be esteemed a hero. It was in this mood that he had intended to make the revelation which he had made in Court, but the intelligence that Sylvia lived unmanned him, and his prepared speech had been usurped by a pa.s.sionate torrent of complaint and invective, which convinced no one, and gave Frere the very argument he needed. It was decided that the prisoner Dawes was a malicious and artful scoundrel, whose only object was to gain a brief respite of the punishment which he had so justly earned. Against this injustice he had resolved to rebel. It was monstrous, he thought, that they should refuse to hear the witness who was so ready to speak in his favour, infamous that they should send him back to his doom without allowing her to say a word in his defence. But he would defeat that scheme. He had planned a method of escape, and he would break from his bonds, fling himself at her feet, and pray her to speak 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 her dream-image, he felt sure of her power to rescue him now, as he had rescued her before. "If she knew I was alive, she would come to me," he said. "I am sure she would. Perhaps they told her that I was dead."

Meditating that night in the solitude of his cell--his evil character had gained him the poor luxury of loneliness--he almost wept to think of the cruel deception that had doubtless been practised on her. "They have told 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 these weary 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 be childlike, sweet, and gentle. How she will grieve when she hears of my sufferings. Oh! my darling, my darling, you are not dead!" And then, looking hastily about him in the darkness, as though fearful even there of being seen, he pulled from out his breast a little packet, and felt it lovingly with his coa.r.s.e, toil-worn fingers, reverently raising it to his lips, and dreaming over it, with a smile on his face, as though it were a sacred talisman that should open to him the doors of freedom.

CHAPTER VIII. AN ESCAPE.

A few days after this--on the 23rd of December--Maurice Frere was alarmed by a piece of startling intelligence. The notorious Dawes had escaped from gaol!

Captain Frere had inspected the prison that very afternoon, and it had seemed to him that the hammers had never fallen so briskly, nor the chains clanked so gaily, as on the occasion of his visit. "Thinking of their Christmas holiday, the dogs!" he had said to the patrolling warder. "Thinking about their Christmas pudding, the luxurious scoundrels!" and the convict nearest him had laughed appreciatively, as convicts and schoolboys do laugh at the jests of the man in authority.

All seemed contentment. Moreover, he had--by way of a pleasant stroke of wit--tormented Rufus Dawes with his ill-fortune. "The schooner sails to-morrow, my man," he had said; "you'll spend your Christmas at the mines." And congratulated himself upon the fact that Rufus Dawes merely touched his cap, and went on with his stone-cracking in silence.

Certainly double irons and hard labour were fine things to break a man's spirit. So that, when in the afternoon of that same day he heard the astounding news that Rufus Dawes had freed himself from his fetters, climbed the gaol wall in broad daylight, run the gauntlet of Macquarie Street, and was now supposed to be safely hidden in the mountains, he was dumbfounded.

"How the deuce did he do it, Jenkins?" he asked, as soon as he reached the yard.

"Well, I'm blessed if I rightly know, your honour," says Jenkins. "He was over the wall before you could say 'knife'. Scott fired and missed him, and then I heard the sentry's musket, but he missed him, too."

"Missed him!" cries Frere. "Pretty fellows you are, all of you! I suppose you couldn't hit a haystack at twenty yards? Why, the man wasn't three feet from the end of your carbine!"

The unlucky Scott, standing in melancholy att.i.tude by the empty irons, muttered something about the sun having been in his eyes. "I don't know how it was, sir. I ought to have hit him, for certain. I think I did touch him, too, as he went up the wall."

A stranger to the customs of the place might have imagined that he was listening to a conversation about a pigeon match.

"Tell me all about it," says Frere, with an angry curse. "I was just turning, your honour, when I hears Scott sing out 'Hullo!' and when I turned round, I saw Dawes's irons on the ground, and him a-scrambling up the heap o' stones yonder. The two men on my right jumped up, and I thought it was a made-up thing among 'em, so I covered 'em with my carbine, according to instructions, and called out that I'd shoot the first that stepped out. Then I heard Scott's piece, and the men gave a shout like. When I looked round, he was gone."

"n.o.body else moved?"

"No, sir. I was confused at first, and thought they were all in it, but Parton and Haines they runs in and gets between me and the wall, and then Mr. Short he come, and we examined their irons."

"All right?"

"All right, your honour; and they all swore they knowed nothing of it. I know Dawes's irons was all right when he went to dinner."

Frere stopped and examined the empty fetters. "All right be hanged," he said. "If you don't know your duty better than this, the sooner you go somewhere else the better, my man. Look here!"

The two ankle fetters were severed. One had been evidently filed through, and the other broken transversely. The latter was bent, as from a violent blow.