How long she lay there she knew not. She heard a horse"s feet, but only stopped her ears from the news she thought was coming. Then she heard a steady heavy footstep close to her, and some one touched her, and tried to raise her.
She sat up, shook the hair from her eyes, and looked at the man who stood beside her. At first she thought it was a phantom of her own brain, but then looking wildly at the calm, solemn features, and the kindly grey eyes which were gazing at her so inquiringly, she p.r.o.nounced his name--"Frank Maberly."
"G.o.d save you, madam," he said. "What is the matter?"
"Misery, wrath, madness, despair!" she cried wildly, raising her hand.
"The retribution of a lifetime fallen on my luckless head in one unhappy moment."
Frank Maberly looked at her in real pity, but a thought went through his head. "What a magnificent actress this woman would make." It merely past through his brain and was gone, and then he felt ashamed of himself for entertaining it a moment; and yet it was not altogether an unnatural one for him who knew her character so well. She was lying on the ground in an att.i.tude which would have driven Siddons to despair; one white arm, down which her sleeve had fallen, pressed against her forehead, while the other clutched the ground; and her splendid black hair fallen down across her shoulders. Yet how could he say how much of all this wild despair was real, and how much hysterical?
"But what is the matter, Mary Hawker," he asked. "Tell me, or how can I help you?"
"Matter?" she said. "Listen. The bushrangers are come down from the mountains, spreading ruin, murder, and destruction far and wide. My husband is captain of the gang: and my son, my only son, whom I have loved better than my G.o.d, is gone with the rest to hunt them down--to seek, unknowing, his own father"s life. There is mischief beyond your mending, priest!"
Beyond his mending, indeed. He saw it. "Rise up," he said, "and act.
Tell me all the circ.u.mstances. Is it too late?"
She told him how it had come to pa.s.s, and then he showed her that all her terrors were but antic.i.p.ations, and might be false. He got her pony for her, and, as night was falling, rode away with her along the mountain road that led to Captain Brentwood"s.
The sun was down, and ere they had gone far, the moon was bright overhead. Frank, having fully persuaded himself that all her terrors were the effect of an overwrought imagination, grew cheerful, and tried to laugh her out of them. She, too, with the exercise of riding through the night-air, and the company of a handsome, agreeable, well-bred man, began to have a lurking idea that she had been making a fool of herself; when they came suddenly on a hut, dark, cheerless, deserted, standing above a black, stagnant, reed-grown waterhole.
The hut where Frank had gone to preach to the stockmen. The hut where Lee had been murdered--an ill-omened place; and as they came opposite to it, they saw two others approaching them in the moonlight--Major Buckley and Alice Brentwood.
Then Alice, pushing forward, bravely met her, and told her all--all, from beginning to end; and when she had finished, having borne up n.o.bly, fell to weeping as though her heart would break. But Mary did not weep, or cry, or fall down. She only said, "Let me see him," and went on with them, silent and steady.
They got to Garoopna late at night, none having spoken all the way.
Then they showed her into the room where poor Charles lay, cold and stiff, and there she stayed hour after hour through the weary night.
Alice looked in once or twice, and saw her sitting on the bed which bore the corpse of her son, with her face buried in her hands; and at last, summoning courage, took her by the arm and led her gently to bed.
Then she went into the drawing-room, where, besides her father, were Major Buckley, Doctor Mulhaus, Frank Maberly, and the drunken doctor before spoken of, who had had the sublime pleasure of cutting a bullet from his old adversary"s arm, and was now in a fair way to justify the SOBRIQUET I have so often applied to him. I myself also was sitting next the fire, alongside of Frank Maberly.
"My brave girl," said the Major, "how is she?"
"I hardly can tell you, sir," said Alice; "she is so very quiet. If she would cry now, I should be very glad. It would not frighten me so much as seeing her like that. I fear she will die!"
"If her reason holds," said the Doctor, "she will get over it. She had, from all accounts, gone through every phase of pa.s.sion, down to utter despair, before she knew the blow had fallen. Poor Mary!"
There, we have done. All this misery has come on her from one act of folly and selfishness years ago. How many lives are ruined, how many families broken up, by one false step! If ever a poor soul has expiated her own offence, she has. Let us hope that brighter times are in store for her. Let us have done with moral reflections; I am no hand at that work. One more dark scene, reader, and then.--
It was one wild dreary day in the spring; a day of furious wind and cutting rain; a day when few pa.s.sengers were abroad, and when the boatmen were gathered in knots among the sheltered spots upon the quays, waiting to hear of disasters at sea; when the ships creaked and groaned at the wharfs, and the harbour was a sheet of wind-driven foam, and the domain was strewed with broken boughs. On such a day as this, Major Buckley and myself, after a sharp walk, found ourselves in front of the princ.i.p.al gaol in Sydney.
We were admitted, for we had orders; and a small, wiry, clever-looking man about fifty bowed to us as we entered the white-washed corridor, which led from the entrance hall. We had a few words with him, and then followed him.
To the darkest pa.s.sage in the darkest end, of that dreary place; to the condemned cells. And my heart sank as the heavy bolt shot back, and we went into the first one on the right.
Before us was a kind of bed-place. And on that bedplace lay the figure of a man. Though it is twenty years ago since I saw it, I can remember that scene as though it were yesterday.
He lay upon a heap of tumbled blankets, with his face buried in a pillow. One leg touched the ground, and round it was a ring, connecting the limb to a long iron bar, which ran along beneath the bed. One arm also hung listlessly on the cold stone floor, and the other was thrown around his head, a head covered with short black curls, worthy of an Antinous, above a bare muscular neck, worthy of a Farnese Hercules. I advanced towards him.
The governor held me back. "My G.o.d, sir," he said, "take care. Don"t, as you value your life, go within length of his chain." But at that moment the handsome head was raised from the pillow, and my eyes met George Hawker"s. Oh, Lord! such a piteous wild look. I could not see the fierce desperate villain who had kept our country-side in terror so long. No, thank G.o.d, I could only see the handsome curly-headed boy who used to play with James Stockbridge and myself among the gravestones in Drumston churchyard. I saw again the merry lad who used to bathe with us in Hatherleigh water, and whom, with all his faults, I had once loved well. And seeing him, and him only, before me, in spite of a terrified gesture from the governor, I walked up to the bed, and, sitting down beside him, put my arm round his neck.
"George! George! Dear old friend!" I said. "O George, my boy, has it come to this?"
I don"t want to be instructed in my duty. I know what my duty was on that occasion as well as any man. My duty as a citizen and a magistrate was to stand at the further end of the cell, and give this hardened criminal a moral lecture, showing how honesty and virtue, as in my case, had led to wealth and honour, and how yielding to one"s pa.s.sions led to disgrace and infamy, as in his. That was my duty, I allow. But then, you see, I didn"t do my duty. I had a certain tender feeling about my stomach which prevented me from doing it. So I only hung there, with my arm round his neck, and said, from time to time, "O George, George!" like a fool.
He put his two hands upon my shoulders, so that his fetters hung across my breast; and he looked me in the face. Then he said, after a time, "What! Hamlyn? Old Jeff Hamlyn! The only man I ever knew that I didn"t quarrel with! Come to see me now, eh? Jeff, old boy, I"m to be hung to-morrow."
"I know it," I said. "And I came to ask you if I could do anything for you. For the sake of dear old Devon, George."
"Anything you like, old Jeff," he said, with a laugh, "so long as you don"t get me reprieved. If I get loose again, lad, I"d do worse than I ever did yet, believe me. I"ve piled up a tolerable heap of wickedness as it is, though. I"ve murdered my own son, Jeff. Do you know that?"
I answered--"Yes; I know that, George; but that was an accident. You did not know who he was."
"He came at me to take my life," said Hawker. "And I tell you, as a man who goes out to be hung to-morrow, that, if I had guessed who he was, I"d have blown my own brains out to save him from the crime of killing me. Who is that man?"
"Don"t you remember him?" I said. "Major Buckley."
The Major came forward, and held out his hand to George Hawker. "You are now," he said, "like a dead man to me. You die to-morrow; and you know it; and face it like a man. I come to ask you to forgive me anything you may have to forgive. I have been your enemy since I first saw you: but I have been an honest and open enemy; and now I am your enemy no longer. I ask you to shake hands with me. I have been warned not to come within arm"s length of you, chained as you are. But I am not afraid of you."
The Major came and sat on the bed-place beside him.
"As for that little animal," said George Hawker, pointing to the governor as he stood at the further end of the cell, "if he comes within reach of me, I"ll beat his useless little brains out against the wall, and he knows it. He was right to caution you not to come too near me. I nearly killed a man yesterday: and to-morrow, when they come to lead me out----But, with regard to you, Major Buckley, the case is different. Do you know I should be rather sorry to tackle you; I"m afraid you would be too heavy for me. As to my having anything to forgive, Major, I don"t know that there is anything. If there is, let me tell you that I feel more kind and hearty towards you and Hamlyn for coming to me like this to-day, than I"ve felt towards any man this twenty year. By-the-bye; let no man go to the gallows without clearing himself as far as he may. Do you know that I set on that red-haired villain, Moody, to throttle Bill Lee, because I hadn"t pluck to do it myself."
"Poor Lee," said the Major.
"Poor devil," said Hawker. "Why that man had gone through every sort of villany, from" (so and so up to so and so, he said; I shall not particularize) "before my beard was grown. Why that man laid such plots and snares for me when I was a lad, that a bishop could not have escaped. He egged me on to forge my own father"s name. He drove me on to ruin. And now, because it suited his purpose to turn honest, and act faithful domestic to my wife for twenty years, he is mourned for as an exemplary character, and I go to the gallows. He was a meaner villain than ever I was."
"George," I asked, "have you any message for your wife?"
"Only this," he said; "tell her I always liked her pretty face, and I"m sorry I brought disgrace upon her. Through all my rascalities, old Jeff, I swear to you that I respected and liked her to the last. I tried to see her last year, only to tell her that she needn"t be afraid of me, and should treat me as a dead man; but she and her blessed pig-headed lover, Tom Troubridge, made such knife and pistol work of it, that I never got the chance of saying the word I wanted. She"d have saved herself much trouble if she hadn"t acted so much like a frightened fool. I never meant her any harm. You may tell her all this if you judge right, but I leave it to you. Time"s up, I see. I ain"t so much of a coward, am I, Jeff? Good-bye, old lad, good-bye."
That was the last we saw of him; the next morning he was executed with four of his comrades. But now the Major and I, leaving him, went out again into the street, into the rain and the furious wind, to beat up against it for our hotel. Neither spoke a word till we came to a corner in George Street, nearest the wharf: and there the Major turned back upon me suddenly and I thought he had been unable to face the terrible gust which came sweeping up from the harbour: but it was not so. He had turned on purpose, and putting his hands upon my shoulders, he said,--
"Hamlyn, Hamlyn, you have taught me a lesson."
"I suppose so," I said. "I have shown you what a fool a tender-hearted soft-headed fellow may make of himself by yielding to his impulses. But I have a defence to offer, my dear sir, the best of excuses, the only real excuse existing in this world. I couldn"t help it."
"I don"t mean that, Hamlyn," he answered. "The lesson you have taught me is a very different one. You have taught me that there are bright points in the worst man"s character, a train of good feeling which no tact can bring out, but yet which some human spark of feeling may light. Here is this man Hawker, of whom we heard that he was dangerous to approach, and whom the good chaplain was forced to pray for and exhort from a safe distance. The man for whose death, till ten minutes ago, I was rejoicing. The man I thought lost, and beyond hope. Yet you, by one burst of unpremeditated folly, by one piece of silly sentimentality; by ignoring the man"s later life, and carrying him back in imagination to his old schoolboy days, have done more than our good old friend the Chaplain could have done without your a.s.sistance. There is a spark of the Divine in the worst of men, if you can only find it."
In spite of the Major"s parliamentary and didactic way of speaking, I saw there was truth at the bottom of what he said, and that he meant kindly to me, and to the poor fellow who was even now among the dead; so instead of arguing with him, I took his arm, and we fought homewards together through the driving rain.