“You are ill,” said North. “You will faint. Why do you look so wildly?”
“What is it?” she whispered, more in answer to her own thoughts than to his question–“what is it that links me to that man? What deed–what terror– what memory? I tremble with crowding thoughts, that die ere they can whisper to me. Oh, that prison!”
“Look up; we are in the sunshine.”
She passed her hand across her brow, sighing heavily, as one awaking from a disturbed slumber–shuddered, and withdrew her arm from his. North interpreted the action correctly, and the blood rushed to his face. “Pardon me, you cannot walk alone; you will fall. I will leave you at the gate.”
In truth she would have fallen had he not again assisted her. She turned upon him eyes whose reproachful sorrow had almost forced him to a confession, but he bowed his head and held silence. They reached the house, and he placed her tenderly in a chair. “Now you are safe, madam, I will leave you.”
She burst into tears. “Why do you treat me thus, Mr. North? What have I done to make you hate me?”
“Hate you!” said North, with trembling lips. “Oh, no, I do not–do not hate you. I am rude in my speech, abrupt in my manner. You must forget it, and–and me.” A horse’s feet crashed upon the gravel, and an instant after Maurice Frere burst into the room. Returning from the Cascades, he had met Troke, and learned the release of the prisoner. Furious at this usurpation of authority by his wife, his self-esteem wounded by the thought that she had witnessed his mean revenge upon the man he had so infamously wronged, and his natural brutality enhanced by brandy, he had made for the house at full gallop, determined to assert his authority. Blind with rage, he saw no one but his wife. “What the devil’s this I hear? You have been meddling in my business! You release prisoners! You–”
“Captain Frere!” said North, stepping forward to assert the restraining presence of a stranger. Frere started, astonished at the intrusion of the chaplain. Here was another outrage of his dignity, another insult to his supreme authority. In its passion, his gross mind leapt to the worst conclusion. “You here, too! What do you want here–with my wife! This is your quarrel, is it?” His eyes glanced wrathfully from one to the other; and he strode towards North. “You infernal hypocritical lying scoundrel, if it wasn’t for your black coat, I’d–”
“Maurice!” cried Sylvia, in an agony of shame and terror, striving to place a restraining hand upon his arm. He turned upon her with so fiercely infamous a curse that North, pale with righteous rage, seemed prompted to strike the burly ruffian to the earth. For a moment, the two men faced each other, and then Frere, muttering threats of vengeance against each and all–convicts, gaolers, wife, and priest–flung the suppliant woman violently from him, and rushed from the room. She fell heavily against the wall, and as the chaplain raised her, he heard the hoof-strokes of the departing horse.
“Oh,” cried Sylvia, covering her face with trembling hands, “let me leave this place!”
North, enfolding her in his arms, strove to soothe her with incoherent words of comfort. Dizzy with the blow she had received, she clung to him sobbing. Twice he tried to tear himself away, but had he loosed his hold she would have fallen. He could not hold her–bruised, suffering, and in tears–thus against his heart, and keep silence. In a torrent of agonized eloquence the story of his love burst from his lips. “Why should you be thus tortured?” he cried. “Heaven never willed you to be mated to that boor–you, whose life should be all sunshine. Leave him–leave him. He has cast you off. We have both suffered. Let us leave this dreadful place–this isthmus between earth and hell! I will give you happiness.”
“I am going,” she said faintly. “I have already arranged to go.”
North trembled. “It was not of my seeking. Fate has willed it. We go together!”
They looked at each other–she felt the fever of his blood, she read his passion in his eyes, she comprehended the “hatred” he had affected for her, and, deadly pale, drew back the cold hand he held.
“Go!” she murmured. “If you love me, leave me–leave me! Do not see me or speak to me again–” her silence added the words she could not utter, “till then.”
Chapter XIV.
Getting Ready For Sea
Maurice Frere’s passion had spent itself in that last act of violence. He did not return to the prison, as he promised himself, but turned into the road that led to the Cascades. He repented him of his suspicions. There was nothing strange in the presence of the chaplain. Sylvia had always liked the man, and an apology for his conduct had doubtless removed her anger. To make a mountain out of a molehill was the act of an idiot. It was natural that she should release Dawes–women were so tender-hearted. A few well-chosen, calmly-uttered platitudes anent the necessity for the treatment that, to those unaccustomed to the desperate wickedness of convicts, must appear harsh, would have served his turn far better than bluster and abuse. Moreover, North was to sail in the Lady Franklin, and might put in execution his threats of official complaint, unless he was carefully dealt with. To put Dawes again to the torture would be to show to Troke and his friends that the “Commandant’s wife” had acted without the “Commandant’s authority”, and that must not be shown. He would now return and patch up a peace. His wife would sail in the same vessel with North, and he would in a few days be left alone on the island to pursue his “discipline” unchecked. With this intent he returned to the prison, and gravely informed poor Troke that he was astonished at his barbarity. “Mrs. Frere, who most luckily had appointed to meet me this evening at the prison, tells me that the poor devil Dawes had been on the stretcher since seven o’clock this morning.”
“You ordered it fust thing, yer honour,” said Troke.
“Yes, you fool, but I didn’t order you to keep the man there for nine hours, did I? Why, you scoundrel, you might have killed him!” Troke scratched his head in bewilderment. “Take his irons off, and put him in a separate cell in the old gaol. If a man is a murderer, that is no reason you should take the law into your own hands, is it? You’d better take care, Mr. Troke.” On the way back he met the chaplain, who, seeing him, made for a by-path in curious haste. “Halloo!” roared Frere. “Hi! Mr. North!” Mr. North paused, and the Commandant made at him abruptly. “Look here, sir, I was rude to you just now–devilish rude. Most ungentlemanly of me. I must apologize.” North bowed, without speaking, and tried to pass.
“You must excuse my violence,” Frere went on. “I’m bad-tempered, and I didn’t like my wife interfering. Women, don’t you know, don’t see these things– don’t understand these scoundrels.” North again bowed. “Why, d–n it, how savage you look! Quite ghastly, bigod! I must have said most outrageous things. Forget and forgive, you know. Come home and have some dinner.”
“I cannot enter your house again, sir,” said North, in tones more agitated than the occasion would seem to warrant.
Frere shrugged his great shoulders with a clumsy affectation of good humour, and held out his hand. “Well, shake hands, parson. You’ll have to take care of Mrs. Frere on the voyage, and we may as well make up our differences before you start. Shake hands.”
“Let me pass, sir!” cried North, with heightened colour; and ignoring the proffered hand, strode savagely on.
“You’ve a d–d fine temper for a parson,” said Frere to himself. “However, if you won’t, you won’t. Hang me if I’ll ask you again.” Nor, when he reached home, did he fare better in his efforts at reconciliation with his wife. Sylvia met him with the icy front of a woman whose pride has been wounded too deeply for tears.
“Say no more about it,” she said. “I am going to my father. If you want to explain your conduct, explain it to him.”
“Come, Sylvia,” he urged; “I was a brute, I know. Forgive me.”
“It is useless to ask me,” she said; “I cannot. I have forgiven you so much during the last seven years.”
He attempted to embrace her, but she withdrew herself loathingly from his arms. He swore a great oath at her, and, too obstinate to argue farther, sulked. Blunt, coming in about some ship matters, the pair drank rum. Sylvia went to her room and occupied herself with some minor details of clothes-packing (it is wonderful how women find relief from thoughts in household care), while North, poor fool, seeing from his window the light in hers, sat staring at it, alternately cursing and praying. In the meantime, the unconscious cause of all of this–Rufus Dawes–sat in his new cell, wondering at the chance which had procured him comfort, and blessing the fair hands that had brought it to him. He doubted not but that Sylvia had interceded with his tormentor, and by gentle pleading brought him ease. “God bless her,” he murmured. “I have wronged her all these years. She did not know that I suffered.” He waited anxiously for North to visit him, that he might have his belief confirmed. “I will get him to thank her for me,” he thought. But North did not come for two whole days. No one came but his gaolers; and, gazing from his prison window upon the sea that almost washed its walls, he saw the schooner at anchor, mocking him with a liberty he could not achieve. On the third day, however, North came. His manner was constrained and abrupt. His eyes wandered uneasily, and he seemed burdened with thoughts which he dared not utter.