For the Term of His Natural Life Part 32

Marching in this pathetically ridiculous fashion across the sand, they halted at the coracle. "So that is the boat!" says the Queen, fairly surprised out of her a.s.sumption of dignity. "You are a Wonderful Man, Mr. Dawes!"

Rufus Dawes smiled sadly. "It is very simple."

"Do you call this simple?" says Frere, who in the general joy had shaken off a portion of his sulkiness. "By George, I don't! This is ship-building with a vengeance, this is. There's no scheming about this--it's all sheer hard work."

"Yes!" echoed Sylvia, "sheer hard work--sheer hard work by good Mr.

Dawes!" And she began to sing a childish chant of triumph, drawing lines and letters in the sand the while, with the sceptre of the Queen.

"Good Mr. Dawes! Good Mr. Dawes! This is the work of Good Mr. Dawes!"

Maurice could not resist a sneer.

"See-saw, Margery Daw, Sold her bed, and lay upon straw!" said he.

"Good Mr. Dawes!" repeated Sylvia. "Good Mr. Dawes! Why shouldn't I say it? You are disagreeable, sir. I won't play with you any more," and she went off along the sand.

"Poor little child," said Rufus Dawes. "You speak too harshly to her."

Frere--now that the boat was made--had regained his self-confidence.

Civilization seemed now brought sufficiently close to him to warrant his a.s.suming the position of authority to which his social position ent.i.tled him. "One would think that a boat had never been built before to hear her talk," he said. "If this washing-basket had been one of my old uncle's three-deckers, she couldn't have said much more. By the Lord!"

he added, with a coa.r.s.e laugh, "I ought to have a natural talent for ship-building; for if the old villain hadn't died when he did, I should have been a ship-builder myself."

Rufus Dawes turned his back at the word "died", and busied himself with the fastenings of the hides. Could the other have seen his face, he would have been struck by its sudden pallor.

"Ah!" continued Frere, half to himself, and half to his companion, "that's a sum of money to lose, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?" asked the convict, without turning his face.

"Mean! Why, my good fellow, I should have been left a quarter of a million of money, but the old hunks who was going to give it to me died before he could alter his will, and every shilling went to a scapegrace son, who hadn't been near the old man for years. That's the way of the world, isn't it?"

Rufus Dawes, still keeping his face away, caught his breath as if in astonishment, and then, recovering himself, he said in a harsh voice, "A fortunate fellow--that son!"

"Fortunate!" cries Frere, with another oath. "Oh yes, he was fortunate!

He was burnt to death in the Hydaspes, and never heard of his luck. His mother has got the money, though. I never saw a shilling of it." And then, seemingly displeased with himself for having allowed his tongue to get the better of his dignity, he walked away to the fire, musing, doubtless, on the difference between Maurice Frere, with a quarter of a million, disporting himself in the best society that could be procured, with command of dog-carts, prize-fighters, and gamec.o.c.ks galore; and Maurice Frere, a penniless lieutenant, marooned on the barren coast of Macquarie Harbour, and acting as boat-builder to a runaway convict.

Rufus Dawes was also lost in reverie. He leant upon the gunwale of the much-vaunted boat, and his eyes were fixed upon the sea, weltering golden in the sunset, but it was evident that he saw nothing of the scene before him. Struck dumb by the sudden intelligence of his fortune, his imagination escaped from his control, and fled away to those scenes which he had striven so vainly to forget. He was looking far away--across the glittering harbour and the wide sea beyond it--looking at the old house at Hampstead, with its well-remembered gloomy garden.

He pictured himself escaped from this present peril, and freed from the sordid thraldom which so long had held him. He saw himself returning, with some plausible story of his wanderings, to take possession of the wealth which was his--saw himself living once more, rich, free, and respected, in the world from which he had been so long an exile. He saw his mother's sweet pale face, the light of a happy home circle. He saw himself--received with tears of joy and marvelling affection--entering into this home circle as one risen from the dead. A new life opened radiant before him, and he was lost in the contemplation of his own happiness.

So absorbed was he that he did not hear the light footstep of the child across the sand. Mrs. Vickers, having been told of the success which had crowned the convict's efforts, had overcome her weakness so far as to hobble down the beach to the boat, and now, heralded by Sylvia, approached, leaning on the arm of Maurice Frere.

"Mamma has come to see the boat, Mr. Dawes!" cries Sylvia, but Dawes did not hear.

The child reiterated her words, but still the silent figure did not reply.

"Mr. Dawes!" she cried again, and pulled him by the coat-sleeve.

The touch aroused him, and looking down, he saw the pretty, thin face upturned to his. Scarcely conscious of what he did, and still following out the imagining which made him free, wealthy, and respected, he caught the little creature in his arms--as he might have caught his own daughter--and kissed her. Sylvia said nothing; but Mr. Frere--arrived, by his chain of reasoning, at quite another conclusion as to the state of affairs--was astonished at the presumption of the man. The lieutenant regarded himself as already reinstated in his old position, and with Mrs. Vickers on his arm, reproved the apparent insolence of the convict as freely as he would have done had they both been at his own little kingdom of Maria Island. "You insolent beggar!" he cried. "Do you dare!

Keep your place, sir!"

The sentence recalled Rufus Dawes to reality. His place was that of a convict. What business had he with tenderness for the daughter of his master? Yet, after all he had done, and proposed to do, this harsh judgment upon him seemed cruel. He saw the two looking at the boat he had built. He marked the flush of hope on the cheek of the poor lady, and the full-blown authority that already hardened the eye of Maurice Frere, and all at once he understood the result of what he had done. He had, by his own act, given himself again to bondage. As long as escape was impracticable, he had been useful, and even powerful. Now he had pointed out the way of escape, he had sunk into the beast of burden once again. In the desert he was "Mr." Dawes, the saviour; in civilized life he would become once more Rufus Dawes, the ruffian, the prisoner, the absconder. He stood mute, and let Frere point out the excellences of the craft in silence; and then, feeling that the few words of thanks uttered by the lady were chilled by her consciousness of the ill-advised freedom he had taken with the child, he turned on his heel, and strode up into the bush.

"A queer fellow," said Frere, as Mrs. Vickers followed the retreating figure with her eyes. "Always in an ill temper." "Poor man! He has behaved very kindly to us," said Mrs. Vickers. Yet even she felt the change of circ.u.mstance, and knew that, without any reason she could name, her blind trust and hope in the convict who had saved their lives had been transformed into a patronizing kindliness which was quite foreign to esteem or affection.

"Come, let us have some supper," says Frere. "The last we shall eat here, I hope. He will come back when his fit of sulks is over."

But he did not come back, and, after a few expressions of wonder at his absence, Mrs. Vickers and her daughter, rapt in the hopes and fears of the morrow, almost forgot that he had left them. With marvellous credulity they looked upon the terrible stake they were about to play for as already won. The possession of the boat seemed to them so wonderful, that the perils of the voyage they were to make in it were altogether lost sight of. As for Maurice Frere, he was rejoiced that the convict was out of the way. He wished that he was out of the way altogether.

CHAPTER XVI. THE WRITING ON THE SAND.

Having got out of eye-shot of the ungrateful creatures he had befriended, Rufus Dawes threw himself upon the ground in an agony of mingled rage and regret. For the first time for six years he had tasted the happiness of doing good, the delight of self-abnegation. For the first time for six years he had broken through the selfish misanthropy he had taught himself. And this was his reward! He had held his temper in check, in order that it might not offend others. He had banished the galling memory of his degradation, lest haply some shadow of it might seem to fall upon the fair child whose lot had been so strangely cast with his. He had stifled the agony he suffered, lest its expression should give pain to those who seemed to feel for him. He had forborne retaliation, when retaliation would have been most sweet. Having all these years waited and watched for a chance to strike his persecutors, he had held his hand now that an unlooked-for accident had placed the weapon of destruction in his grasp. He had risked his life, forgone his enmities, almost changed his nature--and his reward was cold looks and harsh words, so soon as his skill had paved the way to freedom.

This knowledge coming upon him while the thrill of exultation at the astounding news of his riches yet vibrated in his brain, made him grind his teeth with rage at his own hard fate. Bound by the purest and holiest of ties--the affection of a son to his mother--he had condemned himself to social death, rather than buy his liberty and life by a revelation which would shame the gentle creature whom he loved. By a strange series of accidents, fortune had a.s.sisted him to maintain the deception he had practised. His cousin had not recognized him. The very ship in which he was believed to have sailed had been lost with every soul on board. His ident.i.ty had been completely destroyed--no link remained which could connect Rufus Dawes, the convict, with Richard Devine, the vanished heir to the wealth of the dead ship-builder.

Oh, if he had only known! If, while in the gloomy prison, distracted by a thousand fears, and weighed down by crushing evidence of circ.u.mstance, he had but guessed that death had stepped between Sir Richard and his vengeance, he might have spared himself the sacrifice he had made. He had been tried and condemned as a nameless sailor, who could call no witnesses in his defence, and give no particulars as to his previous history. It was clear to him now that he might have adhered to his statement of ignorance concerning the murder, locked in his breast the name of the murderer, and have yet been free. Judges are just, but popular opinion is powerful, and it was not impossible that Richard Devine, the millionaire, would have escaped the fate which had overtaken Rufus Dawes, the sailor. Into his calculations in the prison--when, half-crazed with love, with terror, and despair, he had counted up his chances of life--the wild supposition that he had even then inherited the wealth of the father who had disowned him, had never entered. The knowledge of that fact would have altered the whole current of his life, and he learnt it for the first time now--too late. Now, lying p.r.o.ne upon the sand; now, wandering aimlessly up and down among the stunted trees that bristled white beneath the mist-barred moon; now, sitting--as he had sat in the prison long ago--with the head gripped hard between his hands, swaying his body to and fro, he thought out the frightful problem of his bitter life. Of little use was the heritage that he had gained. A convict-absconder, whose hands were hard with menial service, and whose back was scarred with the lash, could never be received among the gently nurtured. Let him lay claim to his name and rights, what then? He was a convicted felon, and his name and rights had been taken from him by the law. Let him go and tell Maurice Frere that he was his lost cousin. He would be laughed at. Let him proclaim aloud his birth and innocence, and the convict-sheds would grin, and the convict overseer set him to harder labour. Let him even, by dint of reiteration, get his wild story believed, what would happen? If it was heard in England--after the lapse of years, perhaps--that a convict in the chain-gang in Macquarie Harbour--a man held to be a murderer, and whose convict career was one long record of mutiny and punishment--claimed to be the heir to an English fortune, and to own the right to dispossess staid and worthy English folk of their rank and station, with what feeling would the announcement be received? Certainly not with a desire to redeem this ruffian from his bonds and place him in the honoured seat of his dead father. Such intelligence would be regarded as a calamity, an unhappy blot upon a fair reputation, a disgrace to an honoured and unsullied name. Let him succeed, let him return again to the mother who had by this time become reconciled, in a measure, to his loss; he would, at the best, be to her a living shame, scarcely less degrading than that which she had dreaded.

But success was almost impossible. He did not dare to retrace his steps through the hideous labyrinth into which he had plunged. Was he to show his scarred shoulders as a proof that he was a gentleman and an innocent man? Was he to relate the nameless infamies of Macquarie Harbour as a proof that he was ent.i.tled to receive the hospitalities of the generous, and to sit, a respected guest, at the tables of men of refinement? Was he to quote the horrible slang of the prison-ship, and retail the filthy jests of the chain-gang and the hulks, as a proof that he was a fit companion for pure-minded women and innocent children? Suppose even that he could conceal the name of the real criminal, and show himself guiltless of the crime for which he had been condemned, all the wealth in the world could not buy back that blissful ignorance of evil which had once been his. All the wealth in the world could not purchase the self-respect which had been cut out of him by the lash, or banish from his brain the memory of his degradation.

For hours this agony of thought racked him. He cried out as though with physical pain, and then lay in a stupor, exhausted with actual physical suffering. It was hopeless to think of freedom and of honour. Let him keep silence, and pursue the life fate had marked out for him. He would return to bondage. The law would claim him as an absconder, and would mete out to him such punishment as was fitting. Perhaps he might escape severest punishment, as a reward for his exertions in saving the child.

He might consider himself fortunate if such was permitted to him.

Fortunate! Suppose he did not go back at all, but wandered away into the wilderness and died? Better death than such a doom as his. Yet need he die? He had caught goats, he could catch fish. He could build a hut.

In here was, perchance, at the deserted settlement some remnant of seed corn that, planted, would give him bread. He had built a boat, he had made an oven, he had fenced in a hut. Surely he could contrive to live alone savage and free. Alone! He had contrived all these marvels alone!

Was not the boat he himself had built below upon the sh.o.r.e? Why not escape in her, and leave to their fate the miserable creatures who had treated him with such ingrat.i.tude?

The idea flashed into his brain, as though someone had spoken the words into his ear. Twenty strides would place him in possession of the boat, and half an hour's drifting with the current would take him beyond pursuit. Once outside the Bar, he would make for the westward, in the hopes of falling in with some whaler. He would doubtless meet with one before many days, and he was well supplied with provision and water in the meantime. A tale of shipwreck would satisfy the sailors, and--he paused--he had forgotten that the rags which he wore would betray him.

With an exclamation of despair, he started from the posture in which he was lying. He thrust out his hands to raise himself, and his fingers came in contact with something soft. He had been lying at the foot of some loose stones that were piled cairnwise beside a low-growing bush; and the object that he had touched was protruding from beneath these stones. He caught it and dragged it forth. It was the shirt of poor Bates. With trembling hands he tore away the stones, and pulled forth the rest of the garments. They seemed as though they had been left purposely for him. Heaven had sent him the very disguise he needed.

The night had pa.s.sed during his reverie, and the first faint streaks of dawn began to lighten in the sky. Haggard and pale, he rose to his feet, and scarcely daring to think about what he proposed to do, ran towards the boat. As he ran, however, the voice that he had heard encouraged him. "Your life is of more importance than theirs. They will die, but they have been ungrateful and deserve death. You will escape out of this h.e.l.l, and return to the loving heart who mourns you. You can do more good to mankind than by saving the lives of these people who despise you. Moreover, they may not die. They are sure to be sent for. Think of what awaits you when you return--an absconded convict!"

He was within three feet of the boat, when he suddenly checked himself, and stood motionless, staring at the sand with as much horror as though he saw there the Writing which foretold the doom of Belshazzar. He had come upon the sentence traced by Sylvia the evening before, and glittering in the low light of the red sun suddenly risen from out the sea, it seemed to him that the letters had shaped themselves at his very feet,

GOOD MR. DAWES.

"Good Mr. Dawes"! What a frightful reproach there was to him in that simple sentence! What a world of cowardice, baseness, and cruelty, had not those eleven letters opened to him! He heard the voice of the child who had nursed him, calling on him to save her. He saw her at that instant standing between him and the boat, as she had stood when she held out to him the loaf, on the night of his return to the settlement.

He staggered to the cavern, and, seizing the sleeping Frere by the arm, shook him violently. "Awake! awake!" he cried, "and let us leave this place!" Frere, starting to his feet, looked at the white face and bloodshot eyes of the wretched man before him with blunt astonishment.

"What's the matter with you, man?" he said. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost!"

At the sound of his voice Rufus Dawes gave a long sigh, and drew his hand across his eyes.

"Come, Sylvia!" shouted Frere. "It's time to get up. I am ready to go!"

The sacrifice was complete. The convict turned away, and two great glistening tears rolled down his rugged face, and fell upon the sand.