The Shadow Of A Man Part 22

"I don't think so; they'll think I've gone somewhere else."

The convict gave her a long look, and his hawk's eye gleamed; then he turned his attention to the dapple-grey. It was over a minute before he spoke again.

"Do you know who I am?" he then asked.

"Captain Bovill."

He smiled wickedly.

"And nothing else?"

"Oh, yes," said Moya, sadly; "I know what else you are, of course. His father!"

"So he's had the pluck to tell you, after all?"

"He should have told me at once."

"And lost you?"

"He hasn't lost me yet!" cried Moya impulsively, but from her loyal heart none the less.

"Then why break away from him like this? Wasn't his word good enough?"

"I haven't broken away," said Moya, "from him. I couldn't. I've come to tell you why. They've taken him to prison!"

"Taken _him_!"

"On your account. They know he helped you. That's all they do know."

The convict stared; but, in the perpetual twilight of the mallee that was the only fact to which Moya could have sworn. She could make nothing of the old man's expression. When he spoke, however, there was no mistaking his tone. It was hard and grim as a prison bell.

"In his turn!" said he. "Well, it'll teach him what it's like."

"But it isn't his turn," cried Moya, in a fury; "what has he done to deserve such degradation, except a good deal more than his duty by you?

And this is all the thanks he gets! As though he had taken after you!

How can you speak like that of him? How dare you--to me?"

So Moya could turn upon the whilom terror of a colony, a desperado all his days, yet surely never more desperate than now; and her rings flashed, and her eyes flashed, and there was no one there to see! No soul within many miles but the great criminal before her, whose turn it was to astonish Moya. He uncovered; he jerked a bow that was half a shrug, but the more convincing for the blemish; and thereafter hung his cropped head in strange humility.

"You're right!" said he. "I deserve all you've said, and more. He has treated me ten thousand times better than I deserve, and that's my grat.i.tude! Yet if you had been half a lifetime in the hulks--in irons--chained down like a wild beast--why, you'd _be_ one, even you!"

"I know," said Moya in a low voice. "It is terrible to think of!"

"And G.o.d bless you for admitting that much," the old man whined, "for it's few that will. Break the law, and the law breaks you--on a wheel!

Talk about the wrongs of prisoners; they have neither wrongs nor rights in the eyes of the law; it's their own fault for being prisoners, and that's the last word."

"It is very terrible," said Moya again.

"Ah, but you little know how bad it is; and I'm not going to tell you.

It's worse than your worst dreams, and that must do for you. The floggings, the irons, the solitary confinement in your irons with the blood running down your back! No, I said I wouldn't, and I won't. But it's hard to hold your tongue when you're talking to a lady for the first time in thirty years. And to think of a young lady like you coming all this way, alone too, to say a kind word to a double-dyed old rogue like me! It's the most wonderful thing I ever heard of in all my days. I can't think why you did it, for the life of me I can't!"

"It was to tell you about your son," Moya reminded him.

"Ah, poor fellow! G.o.d help him, for I can't."

"Are you quite sure?" said Moya gently, and for once rather nervously as well.

"Sure? Of course I'm sure! Why, what can I do?" cried the other, with sudden irritation as suddenly suppressed. "Hiding--hunted--with every hand against me but yours--I'd help him if I could, but I can't."

"So he's to go to prison instead of you?"

Moya spoke quietly, but with the more effect; indeed, she was herself beginning to feel surprised at her success with a desperate man in vital straits. He was more amenable than she had imagined possible. That he should parley with her at all was infinite encouragement. But now there came a pause.

"I see what you're driving at," he cried savagely at last. "You want me to give myself up! I'll see you--further."

The oath was dropped at the last moment--another strange sign--but the tone could not have been stronger. Yet the mere fact that he had seen her point, and made it for her, filled Moya with increasing confidence.

"I don't wonder," she had the tact to say. "How could you be expected to go back--to that--of your own free will? And yet what can be worse than waiting--waiting till----"

"I'm taken, eh? Is that what you want to say? They shall never take me alive, curse them; don't you trouble about that!"

The tone was stubborn, ferocious, blood-curdling, but at least it was in keeping with the blazing eyes and the great jowl beneath. Moya looked steadily at the bushranger, the mutineer, the indomitable criminal of other days; more remained of him than she had fancied. And to think that he had soft answers for her!

She made haste to earn another.

"Please--please--don't speak like that! It is dreadful. And I feel sure there is some middle course."

"I'm no believer in middle courses!"

"That I know. Yet--you have suffered so--I feel sure something could be done! I--that is my people--have influence--money----"

"They can keep their money."

Moya begged his pardon. It was not an act in which she excelled. Yet nothing could have been sweeter than her confusion, nothing finer than her frank humility.

"I was only wondering if there was anything--anything--we could any of us do! It would be understood so well. His father! Surely that would be enough! I know the Governor. I would think nothing of going to him. I honestly believe that he would pardon you both!"

Moya felt the black eyes burning, and for once her own eyes fell; indeed she was a wondrous picture of beauty and youth and enthusiasm, there in that place, in her dainty blouse and habit, with the dull green mallee above and all around her. But they were a yet more extraordinary pair, the old bushranger of a bygone day, and the Melbourne beauty of the present.

"So you believe that, do you?" said the former sardonically.

"From the bottom of my heart."

"Suppose you were wrong?"

"I would move heaven and earth."

"Then jump on your horse!"