“I want you to thank her for me, Mr. North,” said Dawes.
“Thank whom?”
“Mrs. Frere.”
The unhappy priest shuddered at hearing the name.
“I do not think you owe any thanks to her. Your irons were removed by the Commandant’s order.”
“But by her persuasion. I feel sure of it. Ah, I was wrong to think she had forgotten me. Ask her for her forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness!” said North, recalling the scene in the prison. “What have you done to need her forgiveness?”
“I doubted her,” said Rufus Dawes. “I thought her ungrateful and treacherous. I thought she delivered me again into the bondage from whence I had escaped. I thought she had betrayed me–betrayed me to the villain whose base life I saved for her sweet sake.”
“What do you mean?” asked North. “You never spoke to me of this.”
“No, I had vowed to bury the knowledge of it in my own breast–it was too bitter to speak.”
“Saved his life!”
“Ay, and hers! I made the boat that carried her to freedom. I held her in my arms, and took the bread from my own lips to feed her!”
“She cannot know this,” said North in an undertone.
“She has forgotten it, perhaps, for she was but a child. But you will remind her, will you not? You will do me justice in her eyes before I die? You will get her forgiveness for me?”
North could not explain why such an interview as the convict desired was impossible, and so he promised.
“She is going away in the schooner,” said he, concealing the fact of his own departure. “I will see her before she goes, and tell her.”
“God bless you, sir,” said poor Dawes. “Now pray with me”; and the wretched priest mechanically repeated one of the formulae his Church prescribes.
The next day he told his penitent that Mrs. Frere had forgiven him. This was a lie. He had not seen her; but what should a lie be to him now? Lies were needful in the tortuous path he had undertaken to tread. Yet the deceit he was forced to practise cost him many a pang. He had succumbed to his passion, and to win the love for which he yearned had voluntarily abandoned truth and honour; but standing thus alone with his sin, he despised and hated himself. To deaden remorse and drown reflection, he had recourse to brandy, and though the fierce excitement of his hopes and fears steeled him against the stupefying action of the liquor, he was rendered by it incapable of calm reflection. In certain nervous conditions our mere physical powers are proof against the action of alcohol, and though ten times more drunk than the toper, who, incoherently stammering, reels into the gutter, we can walk erect and talk with fluency. Indeed, in this artificial exaltation of the sensibilities, men often display a brilliant wit, and an acuteness of comprehension, calculated to delight their friends, and terrify their physicians. North had reached this condition of brain-drunkenness. In plain terms, he was trembling on the verge of madness.
The days passed swiftly, and Blunt’s preparations for sea were completed. There were two stern cabins in the schooner, one of which was appropriated to Mrs. Frere, while the other was set apart for North. Maurice had not attempted to renew his overtures of friendship, and the chaplain had not spoken. Mindful of Sylvia’s last words, he had resolved not to meet her until fairly embarked upon the voyage which he intended should link their fortunes together. On the morning of the 19th December, Blunt declared himself ready to set sail, and in the afternoon the two passengers came on board.
Rufus Dawes, gazing from his window upon the schooner that lay outside the reef, thought nothing of the fact that, after the Commandant’s boat had taken away the Commandant’s wife another boat should put off with the chaplain. It was quite natural that Mr. North should desire to bid his friends farewell, and through the hot, still afternoon he watched for the returning boat, hoping that the chaplain would bring him some message from the woman whom he was never to see more on earth. The hours wore on, however, and no breath of wind ruffled the surface of the sea. The day was exceedingly close and sultry, heavy dun clouds hung on the horizon, and it seemed probable that unless a thunder-storm should clear the air before night, the calm would continue. Blunt, however, with a true sailor’s obstinacy in regard to weather, swore there would be a breeze, and held to his purpose of sailing. The hot afternoon passed away in a sultry sunset, and it was not until the shades of evening had begun to fall that Rufus Dawes distinguished a boat detach itself from the sides of the schooner, and glide through the oily water to the jetty. The chaplain was returning, and in a few hours perhaps would be with him, to bring him the message of comfort for which his soul thirsted. He stretched out his unshackled limbs, and throwing himself upon his stretcher, fell to recalling the past–his boat-building, the news of his fortune, his love, and his self-sacrifice.
North, however, was not returning to bring to the prisoner a message of comfort, but he was returning on purpose to see him, nevertheless. The unhappy man, torn by remorse and passion, had resolved upon a course of action which seemed to him a penance for his crime of deceit. He determined to confess to Dawes that the message he had brought was wholly fictitious, that he himself loved the wife of the Commandant, and that with her he was about to leave the island for ever. “I am no hypocrite,” he thought, in his exaltation. “If I choose to sin, I will sin boldly; and this poor wretch, who looks up to me as an angel, shall know me for my true self.”
The notion of thus destroying his own fame in the eyes of the man whom he had taught to love him, was pleasant to his diseased imagination. It was the natural outcome of the morbid condition of mind into which he had drifted, and he provided for the complete execution of his scheme with cunning born of the mischief working in his brain. It was desirable that the fatal stroke should be dealt at the last possible instant; that he should suddenly unveil his own infamy, and then depart, never to be seen again. To this end he had invented an excuse for returning to the shore at the latest possible moment. He had purposely left in his room a dressing-bag–the sort of article one is likely to forget in the hurry of departure from one’s house, and so certain to remember when the time comes to finally prepare for settling in another. He had ingeniously extracted from Blunt the fact that “he didn’t expect a wind before dark, but wanted all ship-shape and aboard”, and then, just as darkness fell, discovered that it was imperative for him to go ashore. Blunt cursed, but, if the chaplain insisted upon going, there was no help for it.
“There’ll be a breeze in less than two hours,” said he. “You’ve plenty of time, but if you’re not back before the first puff, I’ll sail without you, as sure as you’re born.” North assured him of his punctuality. “Don’t wait for me, Captain, if I’m not here,” said he with the lightness of tone which men use to mask anxiety. “I’d take him at his word, Blunt,” said the Commandant, who was affably waiting to take final farewell of his wife. “Give way there, men,” he shouted to the crew, “and wait at the jetty. If Mr. North misses his ship through your laziness, you’ll pay for it.” So the boat set off, North laughing uproariously at the thought of being late. Frere observed with some astonishment that the chaplain wrapped himself in a boat cloak that lay in the stern sheets. “Does the fellow want to smother himself in a night like this!” was his remark. The truth was that, though his hands and head were burning, North’s teeth chattered with cold. Perhaps this was the reason why, when landed and out of eyeshot of the crew, he produced a pocket-flask of rum and eagerly drank. The spirit gave him courage for the ordeal to which he had condemned himself; and with steadied step, he reached the door of the old prison. To his surprise, Gimblett refused him admission!
“But I have come direct from the Commandant,” said North.
“Got any order, sir?”
“Order! No.”
“I can’t let you in, your reverence,” said Gimblett.
“I want to see the prisoner Dawes. I have a special message for him. I have come ashore on purpose.”
“I am very sorry, sir–”
“The ship will sail in two hours, man, and I shall miss her,” said North, indignant at being frustrated in his design. “Let me pass.”