Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk Part 20

But now the soldier and official in the other were awake. He drew himself up, and appeared to measure his visitor as a swordsman would his enemy. "What is your object in coming here?" he asked.

"For you to send that message if you choose. That you may arrest me peaceably if you wish; or there are men at The Angel's Rest and a Chinaman or two here who might care for active service against Roadmaster." He laughed carelessly.

"Am I to understand that you give yourself up to me?"

"Yes, to you, Louis Bachelor, Justice of the Peace, to do what you will with for this night," was the reply. The soldier's hands trembled, but it was from imminent illness, not from fear or excitement. He came slowly towards the bushranger who, smiling, said as he advanced: "Yes, arrest me!"

Louis Bachelor raised his hand, as though to lay it on the shoulder of the other; but something in the eyes of the highwayman stayed his hand.

"Proceed, Captain Louis Bachelor," said Roadmaster in a changed tone.

The hand fell to the old man's side. "Who are you?" he faintly exclaimed. "I know you yet I cannot quite remember."

More and more the voice and manner of the outlaw altered as he replied with mocking bitterness: "I was Edward Golding, gentleman; I became Edward Golding, forger; I am Roadmaster, convicted of manslaughter, and bushranger."

The old man's state was painful to see. "You--you--that, Edward!" he uttered brokenly.

"All that. Will you arrest me now?"

"I--cannot."

The bushranger threw aside all bravado and irony, and said: "I knew you could not. Why did I come? Listen--but first, will you shelter me here to-night?"

The soldier's honourable soul rose up against this thing, but he said slowly at last: "If it is to save you from peril, yes."

Roadmaster laughed a little and rejoined: "By G.o.d, sir, you're a man!

But it isn't likely that I'd accept it of you, is it? You've had it rough enough, without my putting a rock in your swag that would spoil you for the rest of the tramp. You see, I've even forgotten how to talk like a gentleman. And now, sir, I want to show you, for Barbara's sake, my dirty logbook."

Here he told the tale of his early sin and all that came of it. When he had finished the story he spoke of Barbara again. "She didn't want to disgrace you, you understand," he said. "You were at Wandenong; I know that, never mind how. She'd marry you if I were out of the way. Well, I'm going to be out of the way. I'm going to leave this country, and she's to think I'm dead, you see."

At this point Louis Bachelor swayed, and would have fallen, but that the bushranger's arms were thrown round him and helped him to a chair. "I'm afraid that I am ill," he said; "call Gongi. Ah!" He had fainted.

The bushranger carried him to a bed, and summoned Gongi and the woman from the tavern, and in another hour was riding away through the valley of the Popri. Before thirty-six hours had pa.s.sed a note was delivered to a station-hand at Wandenong addressed to Barbara Golding, and signed by the woman from The Angel's Rest. Within another two days Barbara Golding was at the bedside of Captain Louis Bachelor, battling with an enemy that is so often stronger than love and always kinder than shame.

In his wanderings the sick man was ever with his youth and early manhood, and again and again he uttered Barbara's name in caressing or entreaty; though it was the Barbara of far-off days that he invoked; the present one he did not know. But the night in which the crisis, the fortunate crisis, of the fever occurred, he talked of a great flood coming from the North, and in his half-delirium bade them send to headquarters, and mournfully muttered of drowned plantations and human peril. Was this instinct and knowledge working through the disordered fancies of fever? Or was it mere coincidence that the next day a great storm and flood did sweep through the valley of the Popri, putting life in danger and submerging plantations?

It was on this day that Roadmaster found himself at bay in the mangrove swamp not far from the port of Rahway, where he had expected to find a schooner to take him to the New Hebrides. It had been arranged for by a well-paid colleague in crime; but the storm had delayed the schooner, and the avenging squatters and bushmen were closing in on him at last.

There was flood behind him in the valley, a foodless swamp on the left of him, open sh.o.r.e and jungle on the right, the swollen sea before him; and the only avenue of escape closed by Blood Finchley's friends. He had been eluding his pursuers for days with little food and worse than no sleep. He knew that he had played his last card and lost; but he had one thing yet to do, that which even the vilest do, if they can, before they pay the final penalty--to creep back for a moment into their honest past, however dim and far away. With incredible skill he had pa.s.sed under the very rifles of his hunters, and now stood almost within the stream of light which came from the window of the sick man's room, where his sister was. There was to be no more hiding, no more strategy. He told Gongi and another that he was Roadmaster, and bade them say to his pursuers, should they appear, that he would come to them upon the sh.o.r.e when his visit to Louis Bachelor, whom he had known in other days, was over, indicating the place at some distance from the house where they would find him.

He entered the house. The noise of the opening door brought his sister to the room.

At last she said: "Oh, Edward, you are free at last!"

"Yes, I am free at last," he quietly replied.

"I have always prayed for you, Edward, and for this."

"I know that, Barbara; but prayer cannot do anything, can it? You see, though I was born a gentleman, I had a bad strain in me. I wonder if, somewhere, generations back, there was a pirate or a gipsy in our family." He had been going to say highwayman, but paused in time. "I always intended to be good and always ended by being bad. I wanted to be of the angels and play with the devils also. I liked saints--you are a saint, Barbara--but I loved all sinners too. I hope when--when I die, that the little bit of good that's in me will go where you are. For the rest of me, it must be as it may."

"Don't speak like that, Edward, please, dear. Yes, you have been wicked, but you have been punished, oh, those long, long years!"

"I've lost a great slice of life by both the stolen waters and the rod, but I'm going to reform now, Barbara."

"You are going to reform? Oh, I knew you would! G.o.d has answered my prayer." Her eyes lighted.

He did not speak at once, for his ears, keener than hers, were listening to a confused sound of voices coming from the sh.o.r.e. At length he spoke firmly: "Yes, I'm going to reform, but it's on one condition."

Her eyes mutely asked a question, and he replied: "That you marry him,"

pointing to the inner room, "if he lives."

"He will live, but I--I cannot tell him, Edward," she sadly said.

"He knows."

"He knows! Did you dare to tell him?" It was the lover, not the sister, who spoke then.

"Yes. And he knows also that I'm going to reform--that I'm going away."

Her face was hid in her hand. "And I kept it from him five-and-twenty years!... Where are you going, Edward?"

"To the Farewell Islands," he slowly replied.

And she, thinking he meant some island group in the Pacific, tearfully inquired: "Are they far away?"

"Yes, very far away, my girl."

"But you will write to me or come to see me again--you will come to see me again, sometimes, Edward?"

He paused. He knew not at first what to reply, but at length he said, with a strangely determined flash of his dark eyes: "Yes, Barbara, I will come to see you again--if I can." He stooped and kissed her.

"Goodbye, Barbara."

"But, Edward, must you go to-night?"

"Yes, I must go now. They are waiting for me. Good-bye."

She would have stayed him but he put her gently back, and she said plaintively: "G.o.d keep you, Edward. Remember you said that you would come again to me."

"I shall remember," he said quietly, and he was gone. Standing in the light from the window of the sick man's room he wrote a line in Latin on a slip of paper, begging of Louis Bachelor the mercy of silence, and gave it to Gongi, who whispered that he was surrounded. This he knew; he had not studied sounds in prison through the best years of his life for nothing. He asked Gongi to give the note to his master when he was better, and when it could be done unseen of any one. Then he turned and walked coolly towards the sh.o.r.e.

A few minutes later he lay upon a heap of magnolia branches breathing his life away. At the same moment of time that a rough but kindly hand closed the eyes of the bushranger, the woman from The Angel's Rest and Louis Bachelor saw the pale face of Roadmaster peer through the bedroom window at Barbara Golding sitting in a chair asleep; and she started and said through her half-wakefulness, looking at the window: "Where are you going, Edward?"

THE LONE CORVETTE

"And G.o.d shall turn upon them violently, and toss them like a ball into a large country."--ISAIH.

"Poor Ted, poor Ted! I'd give my commission to see him once again."