E. W. Hornung

“ I know I am not a likely sort of man for a young girl like you. I am years older than you are. I look older still—I’m a hundred at heart—but you would make a new man of me. I should be born again. Oh, listen, for pity’s sake, and let me speak my heart! It has been bursting with love of you so long! Whatever your answer, you must hear me out. Claire, I am not a bad man—I really am not; but I have never been myself all these years. My life has been all bitterness, my very soul is steeped in it. ”

“ Harding thought a little. “You said it was Blaydes. Well, if so, she shall never have him. But I only wish I knew where he was!”
“So do I,” said Daintree, viciously; and he held out his hand as they entered the hall; but Mr. Harding would not hear of his going to bed.
“For pity’s sake don’t desert me yet! There is no sleep for me this night. What can have happened to the fellow—between West End and this? What can have happened?”
“I neither know nor care.”
“Nor I—nor I—but a man can’t help his forebodings!” ”

“ To run no risk of observation through the dirty, bare windows, as well as to secure equidistance from all possible points of approach or escape, the hunted youth had lain him down in the hall, with the bottom stair for his pillow. He was rewarded with the full shock of this ear-splitting tattoo. Yet it shook him less than the insolent, maddening solo of the dead man’s watch; and the hollow house was still resounding like a drum as Tom groped his way on tip-toe to the garden door, and stealthily withdrew the bolts. ”

“ The crowd surrounded Tom and Daintree, who had stripped his servant to the waist, and was sawing the air with the drenched white arms and the helpless, sunburnt hands. Claire stood on the fringe of the crowd, without a clear thought in her head, but in her hand a packet that had fallen at her feet when Tom’s shirt and vest were torn off and hurled aside. The packet was sewn up in dripping oiled silk, as transparent as glass; through it she could read a name she but dimly realised to be her own; and the voices of those jostling her seemed a long way off.
“He’s dead—he’s done for,” said one. ”

“ He saw Nat Sullivan stop running, seize his father’s arm and point excitedly towards the burning hut. He saw them both about to turn, when the son was lifted off his legs as though he had been an infant; and there were coal-black arms entwined about his night-shirt, and snow-white teeth grinning over his shoulder. Hookey Simpson galloped up; Slipper and Wall-eye darted from behind their trees. All had pistols in their hands and masks upon their faces. And the masks reminded Tom that he was looking on through one himself, and had no business to be a looker-on at all. ”

“ The high forehead, the twinkling spectacles, the grey tufts and the polished hook of the elderly man; the broad, keen, flashing blade with which Slipper sat paring his finger-nails; the wall-eyes, hard, dead stare; the knotted hands that hid De Gruchy’s face, and the blue-black hair in turn hiding half his fingers; the harmless playing-cards upon the ground; the ruddy, genial fire; and the white, the watchful moon, peering through a screen of trembling leaves: all these were as pieces of a mosaic, inlaid at this instant in Tom Erichsen’s brain, for him to carry there to his grave. ”

“ He thought the doctor must give way. The doctor did no such thing; he stood fast with his cane as though it had been a sabre; and Tom, whirling his weapon still, whirled it high into the sky, and bowed to the doctor because he could not strike him down. As he bowed, the bamboo slashed his shoulder, and would have cloven him to the ribs had it been steel; next instant he was overpowered; and they dragged him back to the triangles, as Dr. Sullivan turned to his brother-magistrate with a heightened colour and sparkling eyes.
“A hundred!” cried the doctor, in his most dictatorial voice. ”

“ He would tell her, too, that Blaydes was not after all as bad as he had seemed. Yet was he not? Tom thought of the sword-stick, and was torn between duty and magnanimity. It was right that the Hardings should have intimate warning as to the manner of man who went to their house. On the other hand, even Blaydes was entitled to fair play. And for some reason, Tom now chiefly pictured him in his last and best moment, with the dawn of remorse in his eyes, and the light of the moon upon that grey, uncovered head. ”

“ Tom never forgot the night when at last he was told; the trade-wind sang steadily through the rigging; every sail was set and drawing; the motion was an imperceptible rhythm; and a monstrous moon made a shimmering path from the horizon to the vessel’s side.
“You never saw the woman who took Claire’s jewellery?” said Nicholas Harding. “It is to her we owe it that my girl is not a madman’s wife! The woman was naturally a spy; she had spied upon her mistress, but on Daintree also; and to Claire she had cause to be grateful, as Claire will tell you if you ask her. ”

“ The effect of its announcement was something incredible: all rose, save the pickpocket, who was unable. A hushed awe fell, but it was the awe inspired by sudden contact with a master hand. Tom shrank before their vile, admiring looks; they admired him all the more; the tainted air hummed with compliments, condolences, criticisms and cross-questions. One or two said he deserved to die for a clumsy workman. A thick-set young fellow, with a sleek face and his hair in his eyes, elbowed his way to the front and wanted to shake hands because they were in the same boat. ”

“ Only do not grieve for me, Claire, for I never was worthy of your sweet love. I would not leave this behind for you, I would not have you reminded of me for a single day, but for one selfish thing. Sweetheart, it is to make you believe in me. You have not done so yet—why should you? Nobody knows what you know and have so nobly hidden; but for all I said to you, I am innocent; he was alive when I left him; I did give him the receipt, and we shook hands at the end. That is God’s truth. I tell it you with the last words my hand will ever write. ”

“ Claire went to the window, and the rings rattled along the rod as she flung the curtains back. The sky swam with stars, her heart yearned for Heaven, and to the sweet stars her voice went up in broken and involuntary utterance of her soul’s pain.
“Oh, Tom,” it cried, “if you had died then it would be better now! I should be dead too. We should both be at peace. Oh, Tom, we might be together now!” ”

“ To Peggy it made none: she neither knew nor cared what it was, and there lay her slight advantage. It was too slight. She loved him, but so must the other. Her love lay near to hate; she would see if she could not push the other woman’s nearer yet.
She reached the house, and nobody was in the way. Lady Starkie was writing letters in the breakfast-room. Peggy was soon listening at the other woman’s door—listening to her sobs. She compressed her lips and nodded to herself with splendid confidence. At length there fell a silence, in which Peggy knocked and entered. ”

“ So Lady Starkie followed Claire upstairs—with the poems—which she took care to leave there when she came down again.
It was a little hard on Daintree; but he was now much too happy to be readily depressed or vexed. His rampant spirits sought relief in activity, and he galloped off to Sydney to secure rooms at the Pulteney Hotel.
Tom was meantime behind the scenes. So was Peggy O’Brien. And already those keen Irish eyes had seen more than he thought, for hopeless love had fitted them with strong lenses, even as his triumphant suit had blinded her master to every passion but his own. ”

“ She was going to marry a generous and brave man, to whom he owed, not only his life twice over, but any good that was left in him. Yet neither was the other a faultless man, though so generous and so brave, and his one great anchor to good sense and good living was his love for Claire. Tom spoke plainly, even eloquently, as he went on. He would have gone on longer, but there was no need. Claire sat meekly weeping; he bent over her—his face wrung with anguish now that hers was hidden—and so took her hand in his for the last time. ”

“ Tom looked from his own ghastly visage in the mirror to the low, gloating face puckered with sly smiles at ghoulish memories. He went elsewhere for his shave. And slowly but at last the grateful night closed in; the busy City streets became empty, echoing chasms; and Tom, feeling more than ever the guilty cynosure, drifted westward with the ebbing tide of innocent, free men.
His great dread was of the hackney-coachman. His friend Jim was perhaps the one man in the streets of London who could at present identify him at sight. ”

“ Claire did not now carry the last aspiration to its logical conclusion; but her gratitude to Daintree was such that it rose in great waves which drowned even the thought of Tom; and of the two men, if her heart was still with her first love, her admiration and gratitude were all for his preserver. Such was her feeling when she espied Daintree in the garden next morning early, and joined him on an impulse, without having decided upon a word to say.
“I think you are the best of men,” was what she heard herself saying; “and you have proved it on behalf of one of the worst!” ”

“ Seventy convicts! That was the rough number at Castle Sullivan. Then what was this to which the little man was leading them? No petty robbery, after all? A grand rebellion instead? Tom’s heart lightened at the thought. He gazed at the confident little man—looking more like a monkey dressed up as a highwayman and perched upon a horse—and he felt that he could have followed so spirited a leader with all the spirit he himself had left but for the thing that had been done before his eyes that night. ”

“ But the pin was not only the more valuable article, it was the more negotiable; and this capital point was driven home with an irresistible force that lightened every heart in court, that of the prisoner at the bar included. Here was the best argument yet. It left its mark upon every face. Even the judge looked less despondent; but the jury glanced towards the dock as one man; and there was a visible glow upon their cheeks, a visible gladness in their eyes, as though they could look a fellow-creature in the face once more. ”

“ As for Claire, however, she forgot everything but the cruel wrong she had done the man before her, the sufferings cut so deep upon his bronzed face, and her own new and blinding realisation of his innocence and heroism. For a space she could but stand and gaze upon him with burning eye-balls; then, with the noble unconsciousness of a woman stirred to the soul, she took him by both hands, and drew him into the room, and besought his forgiveness upon her knees, but with his hands still clasped in hers. ”

“ It was this dread that decided him to let Tom alone, and to bide his own time for revenge: for besides being privy to the son’s irregularities, and dangerously established in the father’s favour, the new groom had indeed done Mr. Nat an injury of which he himself was all unconscious. Days grew into weeks meanwhile; the old year burnt into the new; and one week-day was still much like another on this primitive Australian farm. When the third bell rang at sunrise, every hut disgorged its surcharge of convicts, and Ginger called them over like so many schoolboys in front of the palisade. ”

“ And yet women were wheeling barrows in the distance; women were breaking stones within the walls; and in that ghastly group were mothers as bald as their babes—their shaven heads corresponding with fifty stripes upon a male. Tom had writhed and sunk and hardened among the men; whip-cord and iron stirred his blood no more, but it ran cold enough in the factory yard at Parramatta.
“What ails you?” cried the matron, seeing him shudder and hang back. “Why, bless the man, does he think he’s got to choose from that lot? No, no, it’s only the first class we let marry, and that’s the third. ”

“ This was all Tom had seen; all he now saw was Hookey Simpson getting to his feet, with the burst cork forced high up the hook, which gleamed in the moonlight as bright and cleanly as before.
“So that’s all right!” said the little grey man, adjusting his spectacles, which had become crooked in the fray. “Half a heart is worse than no man, and as he couldn’t get on without the other heathen, why, it was the kindest thing to do. What’s more, gentlemen, I rather think that our young recruit here is going to prove himself worth the two of them put together!” ”

“ I am nearer him than any man alive. There are those who do not put me second. But all my powers have been wasted, like my life; how that had been wasted I never knew until I met you. Claire—my darling!—you have made a new man of me as it is. I am no longer the bitter fellow I was when first God brought you into my life. You have changed me; you have changed all life and all the world. You are the one thing left in either that is all good, all pure, all noble ”

“ He never told how they tried to cut his heart out with the lash; he never told her how nearly they succeeded. And still, when he thinks of that, is he grateful to the long-dead maniac to whom he owed so various a debt.
It is the old man’s pleasure to hear and read of the noble Colony sprung miraculously from the cruel dust and ashes of sixty years ago; he has never revisited it. In the Old Country he has lived and he will die. Less fortunate than Claire, his lot is that harder one of the last to go. But his life has been always brave, and he neither fears nor courts his death. ”

“ And this was why Daintree the younger was allowed to sail away betrothed to Claire, towards the latter end of January, 1838.
He arrived in Sydney some four or five months later.
It was a mild, pellucid, winter’s day. Sky and harbour wore their ancient tint of magic blue; and as the luxuriant shores unfolded before the incoming vessel, headland and inlet, inlet and headland, each with its sash of golden sand, its cord of silver foam, the homing wanderer swept the water’s edge for his own bungalow, and found it with a real thrill. He had chosen well in his adopted land ”

“ Not even yet could he think or feel acutely: a bundle of dead nerves and clouded brains, he could but ache and work, or ache and bask as he was doing now.
An odd number of “The Pickwick Papers” had found its way to the bungalow, and now lay in the sand beside Tom; he had finished it, to his sorrow, before the bells began. Presently up came Daintree with the dog that still followed him to every haunt but his study. He carried his camp-stool and an armful of books; and Tom’s heart sank; their taste in literature differing terribly, though, of the two, only one held himself qualified to judge. ”

“ There followed a silence so profound that Tom could hear the watch itself ticking in his pocket. The coachman then rose, and slowly leaned across the table, resting one hand upon it; the other was half-way to Tom’s throat when he started to his feet, and in so doing pressed his thigh against the table’s edge. Instantly there rang from his pocket a sweet and tiny ting! ting! ting! ting! ting!
It was the saving of him from Jim the coachman and his wife.
Both shrank back as Tom darted to an inner door, and so up the stairs which he had descended half-asleep. ”

“ The fields were dazzling green in the sweet, hot sunshine; the hedgerows sparkled with a million emeralds; and up the hill to the right, beneath a row of horse-chestnuts clouded over with young leaves, the white trousers and shiny hats of a body of police caught without riveting Mr. Harding’s roving eye. The sun shone brilliantly upon the cool green spot where they stood; but yet another constable, with a tall companion in plain clothes, was descending the right-of-way, and reached the road-side stile as the coach passed. ”

“ When he is my age he may do very much better, if he perseveres, as I have done. Now, my notion of treating such a theme,” said Daintree, “you have heard before, but you shall hear it again.”
And with that he drew “Hours of Exile” from his pocket, and read with ineffable unction one of the longest sets of “Stanzas to Clarinda”; while the terrier gazed up at him with eyes of devoted sympathy and admiration; and Tom fed his upon feathery emerald branches and a turquoise sky, as he reluctantly decided that the kindest of men was in some respects the most egregious also. ”

“ The Sullivans were being dragged or driven backward upon the palisade. Tom could make little of the swaying, struggling group, for Hookey Simpson brought up the rear on his horse; but through the animal’s legs he had glimpses of fluttering calico and sparkling spurs, as the glare grew more and more intense. It was now as light as day. Every board of the main building stood out, in abnormal detail, against a blackened sky, while the shadows of the palisade made a glowing gridiron of the yard within. ”

“ Tom felt the blood rush to his face—draining his heart—but he stood his ground until Daintree ordered him out of the way of the windows. Claire sat motionless. Lady Starkie was less calm. But Daintree rose up from the table, with perfect but ostentatious sangfroid, and he patted Peggy on the back as a party of horsemen rode in front of the verandah.
“Quite right, my girl!” cried he. “They shall not lay a finger on him, never you fear. He has me at his back, and so have you.” ”