"I"ve come for him."
The woman gasped and caught her breath.
"No, no," she said in a strained tone. "I cannot part with him. It would kill me."
"It"s ten years and more since I was here, and now I"ve come back to see you, perhaps at the risk of my neck, you--you shrink from me," the man said, with cruelty in every line of his face and malice in his voice.
The woman stood still and silent. The last time, and every time, he had come he had said such things, but only when he threatened to take from her the one thing she cherished did she wince.
"Who was the girl?" he asked, watching her colourless face and staring eyes from under his black, heavy brows.
"She is a friend staying with me."
He laughed, not unmusically.
"Staying with you? A plaything for the boy, eh?"
"No," she said quickly. "No; he is not like that."
Again the man laughed.
"There are different tales in the district," he said. "I"ve been back long enough to learn that. If he were different, I"d have him out of this soon enough to learn him what to do--only he don"t want teaching."
She shrank back a step, and the man noticed it and understood.
"Do you think I have forgotten?" he said, with a return of the vindictive cruelty in his voice. "Do you think I"d leave him here if it weren"t to make things square? I"ve been away ten years--where, it"s nothing to you; but it hasn"t made me softer. I thought I"d come and see how the old place looked, and see whether you still were enjoying the affection of your son and keeping my hiding-place free."
"No one has touched it," she answered quietly.
"No; because you hadn"t the pluck to destroy it. Don"t tell me you kept it because you promised. I know how much your promises are worth. I"ve not forgotten."
She did not answer as he paused, and he went on:
"The boy"s got to come here; I"ve got something for him to do. Then he and I----"
"No," she said quickly; "he shall not come."
He took a step forward, and seized her arms between the shoulder and the elbow in his strong, powerful grip, grasping them until his muscular fingers seemed to sink into the flesh. Then, in a sudden access of rage, he shook her to and fro, her slight form being as a lath in his hands.
"You tell me so?" he said. "You attempt to disobey me?"
He let go of her, and she sank to the ground.
"I"d kill you if I didn"t hate you too much," he went on. "Get up and go back to the house. When I am ready, I shall come again; and when I come, I take him with me."
She heard his footsteps retreating through the clump of trees, and waited as she was, half kneeling, half sitting, on the ground, where he had left her. She felt her arms throbbing as the bruises formed where his hands had gripped; her head was swimming and giddy from the shaking he had given her; her heart was palpitating with fear and emotion; and as she crouched to the ground, there came back to her the words she had said to Ailleen. She had come to the place to think--and to pray!
The irony of it came to her in her helplessness and misery. Only a short while before she had been flattering herself that, after an absence of ten years, she might believe that the dark shadow which had so marred her life had pa.s.sed away for ever; that, after a period of ten years"
silence, she was never to hear again the voice of the man which held her helpless and unresisting to do his bidding, to suffer whatever his merciless hatred might dictate, to submit, silently and bitterly, to anything that he should command. And even as the shattering of all those hopes went on, leaving her trembling and unnerved, there came to her the knowledge that with one effort she could snap the influence that he had over her, could end for ever her thraldom to him. It looked so easy, so simple, from her present position, and so awful. To speak, to tell the world the great secret of her life, the maintenance of which had lain between her and the chasm she, in her timidity, dare not look towards, was to end this hold of terror, and, so it seemed to her, to shatter at the same moment that to which she clung with all the instinct of her very existence--the affection of her son.
That always appeared to her to be the price of her emanc.i.p.ation. Through all the dark years of her blindness the solace had been in the love she gave to him, and in the ideal sympathy with which she persuaded herself he regarded her. Sometimes she thought what the effect would be if he ever learned the truth, and was half inclined to speak and end her misery, trusting to his generous instincts, which were so manifest to her when he was absent; but when he came to her and spoke, there was something in his voice and manner which she would not own, even to herself, as being a contradiction to her faith, and yet which chilled her and made her seek a refuge in the haven of the cowardly--procrastination.
Now another element had come into her life--her liking for Ailleen. The simple courage the girl had displayed in the trial which had fallen upon her, the unselfish putting aside of her own grief to soothe and make happier the life of her blind friend, all weighed against the uttering of the story which would destroy the overpowering demon of terror to which she was subjected; for the uttering of the story would shatter, at one word, she thought, the confidence, the affection, and the kindliness of Ailleen.
Of the threat the man had made she thought nothing; he had made similar threats too often before, until she felt he only used them to goad her into deeper misery. He was merciless and, to all save himself, treacherous--how much she dared not think--but she would not believe that his threat to take her boy from her was genuine. All she could think of, as she sat huddled up on the ground, was to cling to the belief that her boy would not be taken away, and that somehow the mental torture the man"s existence caused her, and the physical pain he never hesitated to inflict, might some day cease.
While she was under the protecting shade of the trees another little drama was being enacted on the verandah of the station-house.
Scarcely had Ailleen, obedient to the elder woman"s wish, reached it, when she saw a horseman come through the gate from beside which she had first seen Barellan. He rode rapidly towards the house, and as he approached her heart gave a leap, for she recognized first the grey horse, and then its rider. He saw her as she came up, and waved his hand. Springing from the saddle a few moments later, he fastened the bridle round the hand-rail which served as the blind woman"s guide to and from the house and the trees, and hastened to where Ailleen was standing at the top of the steps.
"I only heard last night, Ailleen," he said simply, as he came and took both her hands in his. "I--I don"t know what to say; but you know, don"t you?"
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak to the only one whose sympathy she really wanted, but whom she did not want to know it.
"I hardly knew what to do when they told me," he went on, looking at her with eyes that she glanced into once and then avoided--sympathy, love, and tenderness were too manifest in them for her to look again without revealing what she, in the perversity of her feminine way, still wanted to hide. "I didn"t know what to make of it when they told me you were here, till Nellie Murray said I should ride over to see."
It came to her, with a jealous little twinge, that after all the haste he had shown in riding had been prompted by another girl; and in the midst of her battle with feelings realized and feelings unrealized, the struggle between the important and the unimportant, Ailleen, as a woman, naturally jumped at the unimportant, and clung to it.
"That was very good of her. I"m glad you had her advice. Won"t you sit down?"
The words were as foreign as they well could be to what was in her heart, but they relieved the situation for the moment, and saved her from showing what she really meant.
"Why didn"t you go to the Flat?" he asked, not heeding her words; "mother would do anything for you, and father too--or to the Murrays, or anywhere but here? Won"t you come now? Mother wants you to come to the Flat, and every one in Birralong----"
"I promised before----" and her lip quivered for a moment--"to come to Mrs. d.i.c.kson. She asked me. I don"t want to--offend any one, but--she is so kind to me, and she"s blind too, poor creature, and all alone."
"But, Ailleen----" he began, and stopped, looking hard at her face, turned half away from him in her anxiety to avoid meeting his glance.
"We"ve found gold," he went on presently, after a few moments" silence.
"Not much, but still enough to--enough for us. When I"ve got enough--when I come back--after this trip--if--I----"
He was floundering along, struggling vainly to put just one simple little sentiment into a simple little sentence, and drifting more and more into confusion and away from what he wanted to say. What that was she was quite well aware, and also was aware what reply she would make to it when once it was said; but for the present, with eternal feminine perversity, she did not want it said, so she saw an imagined rider across the paddock, and exclaimed--
"Is that w.i.l.l.y d.i.c.kson over there?"
Tony looked, half angrily.
"It isn"t anybody," he said.
"Oh, I thought--yes, it"s a shadow," she said, as she walked to the end of the verandah and, leaning her hands on the rail, looked away into the distance.
He turned and followed her, and had one of his hands over hers and his arm ready to put round her.
"Ailleen, you"re all alone now. Let me be your----"
"You are always my friend," she answered softly, but without raising her eyes, and with a barely perceptible movement away from him.
The arm that was ready was around and restrained her, and her hand he was clasping was pressed to his breast.
"More than that, Ailleen."