Part 63 (1/2)

”Not yet, my boy,” she said. ”I am all alone. I should have had a dull week, but I knew you were enjoying yourself with your old friend at Garoopna. A great party there, I believe?”

”I am glad to get home, mother,” he said. ”We were very jolly at first, but latterly Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford have been looking at one another like cat and dog. Stay, though; let me be just; the fierce looks were all on Cecil Mayford's side.”

”What was the matter?”

”Alice Brentwood was the matter, I rather suspect,” he said, getting off his horse. ”Hold him for me, mother, while I take the saddle off.”

She did as requested. ”And so they two are at loggerheads, eh, about Miss Brentwood? Of course. And what sort of a girl is she?”

”Oh, very pretty; deuced pretty, in fact. But there is one there takes my fancy better.”

”Who is she?”

”Ellen Mayford; the sweetest little mouse----Dash it all; look at this horse's back. That comes of that infernal flash military groom of Jim's putting on the saddle without rubbing his back down. Where is the bluestone?”

She went in and got it for him as naturally as if it was her place to obey, and his to command. She always waited on him, as a matter of course, save when Tom Troubridge was with them, who was apt to rap out something awkward about Charles being a lazy young hound, and about his waiting on himself, whenever he saw Mary yielding to that sort of thing.

”I wonder when Tom will be back?” resumed Charles.

”I have been expecting him this last week; he may come any night. I hope he will not meet any of those horrid bushrangers.”

”Hope not either,” said Charles; ”they would have to go a hundred or two of miles out of their way to make it likely. Driving rams is slow work; they may not be here for a week.”

”A nice price he has paid!”

”It will pay in the end, in the quality of the wool,” said Charles.

They sat in silence. A little after, Charles had turned his horse out, when at once, without preparation, he said to her,--

”Mother, how long is it since my father died?”

She was very much startled. He had scarcely ever alluded to his father before; but she made s.h.i.+ft to answer him quietly.

”How old are you?”

”Eighteen!” he said.

”Then he has been dead eighteen years. He died just as you were born.

Never mention him, lad. He was a bad man, and by G.o.d's mercy you are delivered from him.”

She rose and went into the house quite cheerfully. Why should she not?

Why should not a handsome, still young, wealthy widow be cheerful? For she was a widow. For years after settling at Toonarbin, she had contrived, once in two or three years, to hear some news of her husband. After about ten years, she heard that he had been reconvicted, and sentenced to the chain-gang for life; and lastly, that he was dead.

About his being sentenced for life, there was no doubt, for she had a piece of newspaper which told of his crime,--and a frightful piece of villany it was,--and after that, the report of his death was so probable that no one for an instant doubted its truth. Men did not live long in the chain-gang, in Van Diemen's Land, in those days, brother.

Men would knock out one another's brains in order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the judge to hang them out of the way! It was the most terrible punishment known, for it was hopeless.

Penal servitude for life, as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in old times. With a little trouble I could tell you the weight of iron carried by each man. I cannot exactly remember, but it would strike you as being incredible. They were chained two and two together (a horrible a.s.sociation), to lessen the chances of escape; there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct; there was hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement climate, in all weathers: what wonder if men died off like rotten sheep? And what wonder, too, if sometimes the slightest accident,--such as a blow from an overseer, returned by a prisoner, produced a sudden rising, un-preconcerted, objectless, the result of which were half a dozen murdered men, as many lunatic women, and five or six stations lighting up the hill-side, night after night, while the whole available force of the colony was unable to stop the ruin for months?

But to the point. Mary was a widow. When she heard of her husband's death, she had said to herself, ”Thank G.o.d!” But when she had gone to her room, and was sat a-thinking, she seemed to have had another husband before she was bound up with that desperate, coining, forging George Hawker--another husband bearing the same name; but surely that handsome curly-headed young fellow, who used to wait for her so patiently in the orchard at Drumston, was not the same George Hawker as this desperate convict? She was glad the convict was dead and out of the way; there was no doubt of that; but she could still find a corner in her heart to be sorry for her poor old lover,--her handsome old lover,--ah me!

But that even was pa.s.sed now, and George Hawker was as one who had never lived. Now on this evening we speak of, his memory came back just an instant, as she heard the boy speak of the father, but it was gone again directly. She called her servants, and was telling them to bring supper, when Charles looked suddenly in, and said,--”Here they are!”