Of course glances of pitying wonder were cast from time to time, especially by the female passengers in the crowded coach, at the men in police uniform and the sad, sallow, clean-shaved man sitting between them. One young girl alone, though sitting nearly opposite, had exhibited no interest in the trio. She sat near the right-hand door of the coach. Closely veiled, she had turned her head towards the town and the crowd always attendant on the departure of a coach.
The clock struck six. The powerful high-conditioned horses sprang at their collars, obedient to the practised hand of 'Cabbage-tree Ned,' one of the 'stage' heroes of the period. The heavily-laden coach swayed on its thorough-brace springs and rattled down Sturt Street at the rate of twelve miles an hour. More than once had Lance been the envied occupant of the box seat beside this very driver, who, smoking the proffered cigar, was as civil to Trevanion of Number Six as an official of his exalted position could afford to be to any one.
And now he sat, chained and alone, The 'warder' by his side, The plume, the helm, the charger gone, etc.
Gone, gone, indeed,--how many things had gone!--fame and fortune, hope, honour,--all that made life worth living. The sooner that wretched dishonoured life went too, the better for all. Thank God, it would be easy to drop overboard from barge or boat--the waters of the bay had ended the sorrows of many a hopeless wretch, it was said. The heavy irons provided for a quick and silent escape from life's weary burden.
An involuntary sigh, as the sequel to the train of thought, from the fettered captive, together with a faint but distinct tinkle from his leg-irons, appeared to arouse the girl from her reverie.
She gazed at the prisoner long and earnestly, then with a cry of grief and despair which thrilled the hearts of all who heard her she threw herself forward, and clasping his manacled hands within her own looked into his face, worn and altered in every feature as it was, with the piteous agony of a frightened child.
It was Tessie Lawless!
'Lance! oh, Lance!' she cried in tones so full of anguish that the warders forbore to interfere, and the coach passengers listened in sympathetic wonder. 'Is this what they have brought you to? Oh, wicked wicked girl! Worse and more wicked man! For I know now how they plotted to destroy you. Your blood will be on our heads. Surely we must suffer for this if there's a God. Where are they taking you to? Oh, God! have mercy!'
The driver having inquired tersely into the occasion of the disturbance, and having gathered that a girl had recognised a friend or relation in the prisoner, lighted a fresh cigar and let his horses out adown the incline with the remark that accidents would happen, but a good-looking girl like her had no call to fret; she might have her pick of twenty new sweethearts long before this one had served his time. Women would go on like that, he supposed though, to the end of the world.
The public, as represented by the twenty inside passengers, did not exhibit undue surprise or other emotion. Some of the women whispered 'poor thing--fine young fellow too--pity he's gone wrong,' and so on.
The men kept mostly mute, though not unsympathetic. They were not unused to seeing tragedies acted in everyday life in those unconventional days of the early goldfields. The passions had lacked hiding-places such as are furnished by a highly-civilised community.
The crowded goldfields camp more nearly represented 'board ship' than the provincial life pure and simple, and things were done and said, necessarily _coram publico_, which in more conventional communities would have been wholly suppressed or excited inconvenient remark.
Therefore, after a vain attempt to persuade poor Tessie to moderate her feelings, Lance was fain to yield to the contagion of her grief.
Weakened in mind and body by his late sufferings, softened by the tenderness of her every tone, and touched by the first kind words he had heard since his imprisonment, he was fain, though hating himself for the weakness, to weep for company. As the tears streamed down the convict's grief-worn countenance--tears which he vainly strived to hide with his manacled hands--every heart was touched, and those emotions of our common humanity which ennoble the species were deeply stirred. Murmurs of 'Poor things,' 'Poor girl,' 'Hard lines,' etc., were heard. Even the warders, though unused to the melting mood, were raised from out of their ordinary groove of total indifference to human suffering not provided for by the gaol regulations. After a short colloquy the one nearest to Tessie motioned to the girl to exchange seats, an offer which she thankfully accepted.
There was no dereliction of duty involved in this charity, which was heartily and unanimously endorsed by their public. Relaxation of discipline was necessarily permitted in the case of escort of prisoners from one part of the country to another. Such a task was generally looked upon in the light of a holiday by warders or police troopers. It involved change of air and scene, higher pay for a time, and with various perquisites and indulgences. All that was required of them was to deliver over their charge safely to the authorities. That being the result, they were allowed a certain latitude with regard to the means.
If the prisoner thereby escaped, their punishment was exemplary. It often happened, however, that the prisoner, being a fair sort of fellow (as prisoners go), was conversed and generally associated with on terms of equality. Of course proper security was exacted. A single trooper, camping out through a stretch of thinly-inhabited pastoral country, has been compelled to handcuff himself to the prisoner nightly for his better safeguarding. But these formalities apart, much cheerful companionship has ere now been enjoyed between the (official) 'wolf and hound.'
Hence, as the first warder observed in a gruff whisper, 'they had no call to bother their heads if the poor chap's girl wanted a yarn with him. It was the last one as he'd see for a spell, unless he fell across a mermaid.' Here the speaker, who had been a ship's carpenter once, growled a hoarse rumbling laugh. 'Let him have his bit o' luck for once.
He'd got stiffish times to come, or else they'd heard wrong.'
So Tessie, sitting on the right side of Lance--there being no one to the left of him at the coach-window--leaning her head on his shoulder, commenced to whisper in his ear. The friendly warder studiously gazed at the fast-flying landscape, as if it possessed peculiarly picturesque effects. The second man almost turned his back upon Lance in his anxiety to be out of the reach of confidential communications, while Tessie's murmuring voice, instinct with more than womanly tenderness, sounded in the ear--ay, in the heart of the captive, so lately sullenly despairing of God and man--like the voice of an angel from heaven.
'You may think me immodest, Lance,' she said--'I may call you that now, may I not?--but I don't care. There are times when a woman must follow her own heart, and this is one of them. I would tell you what I feel now if there were hundreds looking on. I cannot help it; and what does my poor life matter? When I think of what you were when I first saw you!
full of health, hope, and spirits, with a smile for every one, and under compliment to no living man, I felt as if my heart would burst when I saw you--saw you--as you are!'
Here the girl's tears streamed down like rain--and she sobbed, though striving with all her will power to restrain her feelings--till her slender form shook and trembled in a manner piteous to see. Her forlorn companion gazed at her silently, with a world of misery in his hollow eyes. Just at that particular juncture the conversation in the coach became, if not more cheerful, decidedly more loud and animated, and their united voices helping to drown poor Tessie's lamentations, some poor opportunity was given her to recover herself.
'You think me very silly,' she said, with a miserable attempt to smile.
'I did not know how much I cared for you until the trial--women don't always. I thought I had a friendly feeling, and no more, till I felt I could have killed Kate--wretch that she is! for the part she took against you. Then I knew--that I loved you! Oh! my God! I know now! But you would never have been told it if you had been free and rich--not now--not now either--except I thought I could do you some good--some good, after helping to ruin you. God forgive me!'
'I have been back to Ballarat, back to Eumeralla and the Snowy River, to other places, too, because I was determined to find out how the thing was worked between Dayrell and Kate.'
'And did you find out?' Lance said, and his voice sounded strangely hoarse in the girl's ear--even his voice had changed, she thought. 'What fiends there are on earth!'
'I am certain that I have,' she answered. 'I daresay you wondered--and so did I--what made Kate so venomous against you all of a sudden?
Dayrell didn't like you because you thought yourself above him, and for another reason, and besides he wanted to get his name up for a conviction, because so many horses had been stolen and the Commissioner had been blaming the police.'
'What was the other reason, Tessie? I never did him any harm.'
'Well, it doesn't matter now, but he--he--chose to fancy he admired me--poor me!--when we lived at Eumeralla. I never could bear the sight of him--and showed it. One of the boys stupidly chaffed him about it after we came to Growlers', and said I was "gone upon you," as he called it. That foolishness made all the mischief, I believe. He set himself to have you somehow.'
'And he did! May God blast and wither his soul and body, as he has mine!' groaned Lance, with a savage intensity that made the girl shudder.
'Oh, don't--don't!' she cried. 'I can't bear to hear you speak like that, you seem so different when you do. Then, when you were searched, he found a letter which you had half-written to your cousin in England, and out of that he made greater mischief still. He finished it himself in his own way, and then read it to Kate, making her believe that you had been engaged to your cousin all along, and were making game of her as a half-bred, common bush girl that you were amusing yourself with.'
'Then how about seeing me at Eumeralla? _you_ swore to that!' said Lance reproachfully, unable to repress his anger as he thought of the strange medley of fact and fraud by which he had been betrayed.
'I did, God help me!' said poor Tessie, very humbly. 'Why couldn't I swear falsely, like others? It was that villain Trevenna. I have seem him since, but only for a moment or two. It is the most extraordinary likeness that ever was seen. I was deceived, and so were the other honest witnesses. He was also in the plot against you. He was an admirer of Kate's, and she played fast and loose with him. When he heard that you and she had met at Growlers', and were seen riding about together, he was furious, and vowed to shoot you if he got a chance. He was in with Ned and Dan in some cross work at Eumeralla, but only showed on occasions. He used to come across from Omeo, where, if all reports are true, the worst villains in all Australia are gathered together.'
The day was cold, and long besides to the crowded passengers, relieved only by a short mid-day halt for refreshment. The roads chiefly unmade and deep with mud, through which the steaming team rushed, unrelaxing the high rate of speed with which they had started. Their colours were hardly discernible. Along the plank road for twenty miles matters were something better; here the pace was at times little less than full speed. Even then occasionally a loose plank would fly up as a horse trod too near the end, and a shower of mud and water would be impartially distributed. Two persons only felt not the enforced tedium to be a weariness. Lance and Tessie, in the early gloom of a winter evening, were enabled to talk still more at ease. They enjoyed their opportunity, this wintry smile of fortune, as those who might never meet again in life. So many chances were against it. But this strange interview had been most beneficial to Lance. It had softened his heart and revived his drooping, well-nigh extinguished faith in Providence and his fortune.
The girl persuaded him to promise that he would do his best to disarm his gaolers by good conduct. The chances were against his finding a second Bracker. She would find means of communicating with him from Melbourne. Trust her for that! She had already given liberally to his present guards, who were fully convinced that she was a young woman deserving of every consideration.
'You promise me, on your honour,' she said, as the lights of the town and the well-macadamised street warned of the approaching halt.
'My honour?' he said drearily.
'Yes, your honour,' she answered proudly; 'I believe in it, and so will others yet.'
'I promise,' he said; 'may God bless you, Tessie, whatever may be my fate.'
They sat silently, her hands clasped around his, her head against his shoulder.
'Mine is a strange love tale,' she said, 'is it not? But for this meeting, it might never have been told. No living man shall hear such words again from me. And to think that you and I may never meet again!'
The coach stopped. There was the usual bustle of escaping passengers and mislaid luggage, as the girl threw her arms around Trevanion's neck and kissed his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, with passionate fervour.
'You are mine,' she said, 'for this day if for no other, and, unless my heart tells me false, it is the last last time! Do not forget poor Tessie; if she could have saved you with her life you would have been free and happy. May God bless and keep you.'
She descended the coach-steps slowly, and, walking calmly down the lighted street without looking back, was soon lost in the crowd of busy or pleasure-seeking wayfarers.
CHAPTER XV
After the conclusion of the sitting of the Court as presided over by His Honour Judge Buckthorne, when Lance and Ned had been carried off to undergo their allotted sentences, it was observed that Kate Lawless and Sergeant Dayrell, while apparently strolling aimlessly together along the street, were engaged in an earnest and apparently confidential conversation.
'Well, that chap was got to rights if ever a man was,' observed the Sergeant. 'There'll be some of the flashness taken out of him before he comes out again.'
The girl looked at him searchingly before she answered. When she did there was no triumph in her voice.
'Poor devil! it _was_ hard lines, when you come to think of it. And all for a horse that he knew no more about than the dead! He looked at me, as he walked out, so sad and fierce-like I couldn't help pitying him.'
'You mean you might have pitied him if he hadn't thrown you over for the girl at home--if he hadn't treated you like the dirt beneath his feet after promising to marry you--after amusing himself by making love to you as if you were a South Sea Island _wahine_!'
'Perhaps he did. Suppose he did,' replied the girl musingly, evidently in one of those fits of reactionary regret which so often in the feminine nature--strange and enigmatical always--are prone to succeed the exaltation of passion. 'For all that, I feel sorry, now it's over. I can't get him out of my head, locked up in one of those beastly cells.'