There was something so pitiable about this silent grief that, as they led him away, the little group instinctively averted their faces, lest they should seem to triumph over him.
Chapter XI.
A Relic Of Macquarie Harbour
“ou must try and save him from further punishment,” said Sylvia next day to Frere. “I did not mean to betray the poor creature, but I had made myself nervous by reading that convict’s story.”
“You shouldn’t read such rubbish,” said Frere. “What’s the use? I don’t suppose a word of it’s true.”
“It must be true. I am sure it’s true. Oh, Maurice, these are dreadful men. I thought I knew all about convicts, but I had no idea that such men as these were among them.”
“Thank God, you know very little,” said Maurice. “The servants you have here are very different sort of fellows from Rex and Company.”
“Oh, Maurice, I am so tired of this place. It’s wrong, perhaps, with poor papa and all, but I do wish I was somewhere out of the sight of chains. I don’t know what has made me feel as I do.”
“Come to Sydney,” said Frere. “There are not so many convicts there. It was arranged that we should go to Sydney, you know.”
“For our honeymoon? Yes,” said Sylvia, simply. “I know it was. But we are not married yet.”
“That’s easily done,” said Maurice.
“Oh, nonsense, sir! But I want to speak to you about this poor Dawes. I don’t think he meant any harm. It seems to me now that he was rather going to ask for food or something, only I was so nervous. They won’t hang him, Maurice, will they?”
“No,” said Maurice. “I spoke to your father this morning. If the fellow is tried for his life, you may have to give evidence, and so we came to the conclusion that Port Arthur again, and heavy irons, will meet the case. We gave him another life sentence this morning. That will make the third he has had.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. I sent him down aboard the schooner at once. He ought to be out of the river by this time.” “Maurice, I have a strange feeling about that man.”
“Eh?” said Maurice.
“I seem to fear him, as if I knew some story about him, and yet didn’t know it.”
“That’s not very clear,” said Maurice, forcing a laugh, “but don’t let’s talk about him any more. We’ll soon be far from Port Arthur and everybody in it.”
“Maurice,” said she, caressingly, “I love you, dear. You’ll always protect me against these men, won’t you?”
Maurice kissed her. “You have not got over your fright, Sylvia,” he said. “I see I shall have to take a great deal of care of my wife.”
“Of course,” replied Sylvia.
And then the pair began to make love, or, rather, Maurice made it, and Sylvia suffered him.
Suddenly her eye caught something. “What’s that–there, on the ground by the fountain?” They were near the spot where Dawes had been seized the night before. A little stream ran through the garden, and a Triton–of convict manufacture–blew his horn in the middle of a–convict built–rockery. Under the lip of the fountain lay a small packet. Frere picked it up. It was made of soiled yellow cloth, and stitched evidently by a man’s fingers. “It looks like a needle-case,” said he.
“Let me see. What a strange-looking thing! Yellow cloth, too. Why, it must belong to a prisoner. Oh, Maurice, the man who was here last night!”
“Ay,” says Maurice, turning over the packet, “it might have been his, sure enough.”
“He seemed to fling something from him, I thought. Perhaps this is it!” said she, peering over his arm, in delicate curiosity. Frere, with something of a scowl on his brow, tore off the outer covering of the mysterious packet, and displayed a second envelope, of grey cloth–the “good-conduct” uniform. Beneath this was a piece, some three inches square, of stained and discoloured merino, that had once been blue.
“Hullo!” says Frere. “Why, what’s this?”
“It is a piece of a dress,” says Sylvia.
It was Rufus Dawes’s talisman–a portion of the frock she had worn at Macquarie Harbour, and which the unhappy convict had cherished as a sacred relic for five weary years.
Frere flung it into the water. The running stream whirled it away. “Why did you do that?” cried the girl, with a sudden pang of remorse for which she could not account. The shred of cloth, caught by a weed, lingered for an instant on the surface of the water. Almost at the same moment, the pair, raising their eyes, saw the schooner which bore Rufus Dawes back to bondage glide past the opening of the trees and disappear. When they looked again for the strange relic of the desperado of Port Arthur, it also had vanished.
Chapter XII.
At Port Arthur
The usual clanking and hammering was prevalent upon the stone jetty of Port Arthur when the schooner bearing the returned convict, Rufus Dawes, ran alongside. On the heights above the esplanade rose the grim front of the soldiers’ barracks; beneath the soldiers’ barracks was the long range of prison buildings with their workshops and tan-pits; to the left lay the Commandant’s house, authoritative by reason of its embrasured terrace and guardian sentry; while the jetty, that faced the purple length of the “Island of the Dead,” swarmed with parti-coloured figures, clanking about their enforced business, under the muskets of their gaolers.
Rufus Dawes had seen this prospect before, had learnt by heart each beauty of rising sun, sparkling water, and wooded hill. From the hideously clean jetty at his feet, to the distant signal station, that, embowered in bloom, reared its slender arms upwards into the cloudless sky, he knew it all. There was no charm for him in the exquisite blue of the sea, the soft shadows of the hills, or the soothing ripple of the waves that crept voluptuously to the white breast of the shining shore. He sat with his head bowed down, and his hands clasped about his knees, disdaining to look until they roused him.
“Hallo, Dawes!” says Warder Troke, halting his train of ironed yellow-jackets. “So you’ve come back again! Glad to see yer, Dawes! It seems an age since we had the pleasure of your company, Dawes!” At this pleasantry the train laughed, so that their irons clanked more than ever. They found it often inconvenient not to laugh at Mr. Troke’s humour. “Step down here, Dawes, and let me introduce you to your h’old friends. They’ll be glad to see yer, won’t yer, boys? Why, bless me, Dawes, we thort we’d lost yer! We thort yer’d given us the slip altogether, Dawes. They didn’t take care of yer in Hobart Town, I expect, eh, boys? We’ll look after yer here, Dawes, though. You won’t bolt any more.”
“Take care, Mr. Troke,” said a warning voice, “you’re at it again! Let the man alone!”
By virtue of an order transmitted from Hobart Town, they had begun to attach the dangerous prisoner to the last man of the gang, riveting the leg-irons of the pair by means of an extra link, which could be removed when necessary, but Dawes had given no sign of consciousness. At the sound of the friendly tones, however, he looked up, and saw a tall, gaunt man, dressed in a shabby pepper-and-salt raiment, and wearing a black handkerchief knotted round his throat. He was a stranger to him.
“I beg yer pardon, Mr. North,” said Troke, sinking at once the bully in the sneak. “I didn’t see yer reverence.”
“A parson!” thought Dawes with disappointment, and dropped his eyes.
“I know that,” returned Mr. North, coolly. “If you had, you would have been all butter and honey. Don’t trouble yourself to tell a lie; it’s quite unnecessary.”
Dawes looked up again. This was a strange parson.
“What’s your name, my man?” said Mr. North, suddenly, catching his eye.
Rufus Dawes had intended to scowl, but the tone, sharply authoritative, roused his automatic convict second nature, and he answered, almost despite himself, “Rufus Dawes.”
“Oh,” said Mr. North, eyeing him with a curious air of expectation that had something pitying in it. “This is the man, is it? I thought he was to go to the Coal Mines.”
“So he is,” said Troke, “but we hain’t a goin’ to send there for a fortnit, and in the meantime I’m to work him on the chain.”
“Oh!” said Mr. North again. “Lend me your knife, Troke.”
And then, before them all, this curious parson took a piece of tobacco out of his ragged pocket, and cut off a “chaw” with Mr. Troke’s knife. Rufus Dawes felt what he had not felt for three days–an interest in something. He stared at the parson in unaffected astonishment. Mr. North perhaps mistook the meaning of his fixed stare, for he held out the remnant of tobacco to him.