April 10th.–We had a state dinner last night. The conversation was about nothing in the world but convicts. I never saw Mrs. Frere to less advantage. Silent, distraite, and sad. She told me after dinner that she disliked the very name of “convict” from early associations. “I have lived among them all my life,” she said, “but that does not make it the better for me. I have terrible fancies at times, Mr. North, that seem half-memories. I dread to be brought in contact with prisoners again. I am sure that some evil awaits me at their hands.”
I laughed, of course, but it would not do. She holds to her own opinion, and looks at me with horror in her eyes. This terror in her face is perplexing.
“You are nervous,” I said. “You want rest.”
“I am nervous,” she replied, with that candour of voice and manner I have before remarked in her, “and I have presentiments of evil.”
We sat silent for a while, and then she suddenly turned her large eyes on me, and said calmly, “Mr. North, what death shall I die?” The question was an echo of my own thoughts–I have some foolish (?) fancies as to physiognomy–and it made me start. What death, indeed? What sort of death would one meet with widely-opened eyes, parted lips, and brows bent as though to rally fast-flying courage? Not a peaceful death surely. I brought my black coat to my aid. “My dear lady, you must not think of such things. Death is but a sleep, you know. Why anticipate a nightmare?”
She sighed, slowly awaking as though from some momentary trance. Checking herself on the verge of tears, she rallied, turned the conversation, and finding an excuse for going to the piano, dashed into a waltz. This unnatural gaiety ended, I fancy, in an hysterical fit. I heard her husband afterwards recommending sal volatile. He is the sort of man who would recommend sal volatile to the Pythoness if she consulted him.
April 26th.–All has been arranged, and we start to-morrow. Mr. Pounce is in a condition of painful dignity. He seems afraid to move lest motion should thaw his official ice. Having found out that I am the “chaplain”, he has refrained from familiarity. My self-love is wounded, but my patience relieved. Query: Would not the majority of mankind rather be bored by people in authority than not noticed by them? James North declines to answer for his part. I have made my farewells to my friends, and on looking back on the pleasant hours I have spent, felt saddened. It is not likely that I shall have many such pleasant hours. I feel like a vagabond who, having been allowed to sit by a cheerful fireside for a while, is turned out into the wet and windy streets, and finds them colder than ever. What were the lines I wrote in her album?
“As some poor tavern-haunter drenched in wine With staggering footsteps through the streets returning, Seeing through blinding rain a beacon shine From household lamp in happy window burning,–
“Pauses an instant at the reddened pane To gaze on that sweet scene of love and duty, Then turns into the wild wet night again, Lest his sad presence mar its homely beauty.”
Yes, those were the lines. With more of truth in them than she expected; and yet what business have I sentimentalizing. My socius thinks “what a puling fool this North is!”
So, that’s over! Now for Norfolk Island and my purgation.
Chapter II.
The Lost Heir
The lost son of Sir Richard Devine had returned to England, and made claim to his name and fortune. In other words, John Rex had successfully carried out the scheme by which he had usurped the rights of his old convict-comrade.
Smoking his cigar in his bachelor lodgings, or pausing in a calculation concerning a race, John Rex often wondered at the strange ease with which he had carried out so monstrous and seemingly difficult an imposture. After he was landed in Sydney, by the vessel which Sarah Purfoy had sent to save him, he found himself a slave to a bondage scarcely less galling than that from which he had escaped–the bondage of enforced companionship with an unloved woman. The opportune death of one of her assigned servants enabled Sarah Purfoy to instal the escaped convict in his room. In the strange state of society which prevailed of necessity in New South Wales at that period, it was not unusual for assigned servants to marry among the free settlers, and when it was heard that Mrs. Purfoy, the widow of a whaling captain, had married John Carr, her storekeeper, transported for embezzlement, and with two years of his sentence yet to run, no one expressed surprise. Indeed, when the year after, John Carr blossomed into an “expiree”, master of a fine wife and a fine fortune, there were many about him who would have made his existence in Australia pleasant enough. But John Rex had no notion of remaining longer than he could help, and ceaselessly sought means of escape from this second prison-house. For a long time his search was unsuccessful. Much as she loved the scoundrel, Sarah Purfoy did not scruple to tell him that she had bought him and regarded him as her property. He knew that if he made any attempt to escape from his marriage-bonds, the woman who had risked so much to save him would not hesitate to deliver him over to the authorities, and state how the opportune death of John Carr had enabled her to give name and employment to John Rex, the absconder. He had thought once that the fact of her being his wife would prevent her from giving evidence against him, and that he could thus defy her. But she reminded him that a word to Blunt would be all sufficient.
“I know you don’t care for me now, John,” she said, with grim complacency; “but your life is in my hands, and if you desert me I will bring you to the gallows.”
In vain, in his secret eagerness to be rid of her, he raged and chafed. He was tied hand and foot. She held his money, and her shrewd wit had more than doubled it. She was all-powerful, and he could but wait until her death or some lucky accident should rid him of her, and leave him free to follow out the scheme he had matured. “Once rid of her,” he thought, in his solitary rides over the station of which he was the nominal owner, “the rest is easy. I shall return to England with a plausible story of shipwreck, and shall doubtless be received with open arms by the dear mother from whom I have been so long parted. Richard Devine shall have his own again.”
To be rid of her was not so easy. Twice he tried to escape from his thraldom, and was twice brought back. “I have bought you, John,” his partner had laughed, “and you don’t get away from me. Surely you can be content with these comforts. You were content with less once. I am not so ugly and repulsive, am I?”
“I am home-sick,” John Carr retorted. “Let us go to England, Sarah.”
She tapped her strong white fingers sharply on the table. “Go to England? No, no. That is what you would like to do. You would be master there. You would take my money, and leave me to starve. I know you, Jack. We stop here, dear. Here, where I can hand you over to the first trooper as an escaped convict if you are not kind to me.”
“She-devil!”
“Oh, I don’t mind your abuse. Abuse me if you like, Jack. Beat me if you will, but don’t leave me, or it will be worse for you.”
“You are a strange woman!” he cried, in sudden petulant admiration.
“To love such a villain? I don’t know that. I love you because you are a villain. A better man would be wearisome to such as I am.”
“I wish to Heaven I’d never left Port Arthur. Better there than this dog’s life.”
“Go back, then. You have only to say the word!” And so they would wrangle, she glorying in her power over the man who had so long triumphed over her, and he consoling himself with the hope that the day was not far distant which should bring him at once freedom and fortune. One day the chance came to him. His wife was ill, and the ungrateful scoundrel stole five hundred pounds, and taking two horses reached Sydney, and obtained passage in a vessel bound for Rio.
Having escaped thraldom, John Rex proceeded to play for the great stake of his life with the utmost caution. He went to the Continent, and lived for weeks together in the towns where Richard Devine might possibly have resided, familiarizing himself with streets, making the acquaintance of old inhabitants, drawing into his own hands all loose ends of information which could help to knit the meshes of his net the closer. Such loose ends were not numerous; the prodigal had been too poor, too insignificant, to leave strong memories behind him. Yet Rex knew well by what strange accidents the deceit of an assumed identity is often penetrated. Some old comrade or companion of the lost heir might suddenly appear with keen questions as to trifles which could cut his flimsy web to shreds, as easily as the sword of Saladin divided the floating silk. He could not afford to ignore the most insignificant circumstances. With consummate skill, piece by piece he built up the story which was to deceive the poor mother, and to make him possessor of one of the largest private fortunes in England.