Part 92 (1/2)

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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ps 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.