For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Clarke

  Oh, how strangely must the world have been civilized, that this most lovely corner of it must needs be set apart as a place of banishment for the monsters that civilization had brought forth and bred! She cast her eyes around, and all beauty seemed blotted out from the scene before her. The graceful foliage melting into indistinctness in the gathering twilight, appeared to her horrible and treacherous. The river seemed to flow sluggishly, as though thickened with blood and tears. The shadow of the trees seemed to hold lurking shapes of cruelty and danger. Even the whispering breeze bore with it sighs, and threats, and mutterings of revenge. Oppressed by a terror of loneliness, she hastily caught up the manuscript, and turned to seek the house, when, as if summoned from the earth by the power of her own fears, a ragged figure barred her passage.

  To the excited girl this apparition seemed the embodiment of the unknown evil she had dreaded. She recognized the yellow clothing, and marked the eager hands outstretched to seize her. Instantly upon her flashed the story that three days since had set the prison-town agog. The desperado of Port Arthur, the escaped mutineer and murderer, was before her, with unchained arms, free to wreak his will of her. “Sylvia! It is you! Oh, at last! I have escaped, and come to ask—What? Do you not know me?”

  Pressing both hands to her bosom, she stepped back a pace, speechless with terror.

  “I am Rufus Dawes,” he said, looking in her face for the grateful smile of recognition that did not come—“Rufus Dawes.”

  The party at the house had finished their wine, and, sitting on the broad verandah, were listening to some gentle dullness of the clergyman, when there broke upon their ears a cry.

  “What’s that?” said Vickers.

  Frere sprang up, and looked down the garden. He saw two figures that seemed to struggle together. One glance was enough, and, with a shout, he leapt the flower-beds, and made straight at the escaped prisoner.

  Rufus Dawes saw him coming, but, secure in the protection of the girl who owed to him so much, he advanced a step nearer, and loosing his respectful clasp of her hand, caught her dress.

  “Oh, help, Maurice, help!” cried Sylvia again.

  Into the face of Rufus Dawes came an expression of horror-stricken bewilderment. For three days the unhappy man had contrived to keep life and freedom, in order to get speech with the one being who, he thought, cherished for him some affection. Having made an unparalleled escape from the midst of his warders, he had crept to the place where lived the idol of his dreams, braving recapture, that he might hear from her two words of justice and gratitude. Not only did she refuse to listen to him, and shrink from him as from one accursed, but, at the sound of his name, she summoned his deadliest foe to capture him. Such monstrous ingratitude was almost beyond belief. She, too,—the child he had nursed and fed, the child for whom he had given up his hard-earned chance of freedom and fortune, the child of whom he had dreamed, the child whose image he had worshipped—she, too, against him! Then there was no justice, no Heaven, no God! He loosed his hold of her dress, and, regardless of the approaching footsteps, stood speechless, shaking from head to foot. In another instant Frere and McNab flung themselves upon him, and he was borne to the ground. Though weakened by starvation, he shook them off with scarce an effort, and, despite the servants who came hurrying from the alarmed house, might even then have turned and made good his escape. But he seemed unable to fly. His chest heaved convulsively, great drops of sweat beaded his white face, and from his eyes tears seemed about to break. For an instant his features worked convulsively, as if he would fain invoke upon the girl, weeping on her father’s shoulder, some hideous curse. But no words came—only thrusting his hand into his breast, with a supreme gesture of horror and aversion, he flung something from him. Then a profound sigh escaped him, and he held out his hands to be bound.

  There was something so pitiable about this silent grief that, as they led him away, the little group instinctively averted their faces, lest they should seem to triumph over him.

  CHAPTER XI

  A RELIC OF MACQUARIE HARBOUR

  “YOU must try and save him from further punishment,” said Sylvia next day to Frere. “I did not mean to betray the poor creature, but I had made myself nervous by reading that convict’s story.”

  “You shouldn’t read such rubbish,” said Frere. “What’s the use? I don’t suppose a word of it’s true.”

  “It must be true. I am sure it’s true. Oh, Maurice, these are dreadful men. I thought I knew all about convicts, but I had no idea that such men as these were among them.”

  “Thank God, you know very little,” said Maurice. “The servants you have here are very different sort of fellows from Rex and Company.”

  “Oh, Maurice, I am so tired of this place. It’s wrong, perhaps, with poor papa and all, but I do wish I was somewhere out of the sight of chains. I don’t know what has made me feel as I do.”

  “Come to Sydney,” said Frere. “There are not so many convicts there. It was arranged that we should go to Sydney, you know.”

  “For our honeymoon? Yes,” said Sylvia, simply. “I know it was. But we are not married yet.”

  “That’s easily done,” said Maurice.

  “Oh, nonsense, sir! But I want to speak to you about this poor Dawes. I don’t think he meant any harm. It seems to me now that he was rather going to ask for food or something, only I was so nervous. They won’t hang him, Maurice, will they?”

  “No,” said Maurice. “I spoke to your father this morning. If the fellow is tried for his life, you may have to give evidence, and so we came to the conclusion that Port Arthur again, and heavy irons, will meet the case. We gave him another life sentence this morning. That will make the third he has had.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I sent him down aboard the schooner at once. He ought to be out of the river by this time.”

  “Maurice, I have a strange feeling about that man.”

  “Eh?” said Maurice.

  “I seem to fear him, as if I knew some story about him, and yet didn’t know it.”

  “That’s not very clear,” said Maurice, forcing a laugh, “but don’t let’s talk about him any more. We’ll soon be far from Port Arthur and everybody in it.”

  “Maurice,” said she, caressingly, “I love you, dear. You’ll always protect me against these men, won’t you?”

  Maurice kissed her. “You have not got over your fright, Sylvia,” he said. “I see I shall have to take a great deal of care of my wife.”

  “Of course,” replied Sylvia.

  And then the pair began to make love, or, rather, Maurice made it, and Sylvia suffered him.

  Suddenly her eye caught something. “What’s that—there, on the ground by the fountain?” They were near the spot where Dawes had been seized the night before. A little stream ran through the garden, and a Triton—of convict manufacture—blew his horn in the middle of a—convict built—rockery. Under the lip of the fountain lay a small packet. Frere picked it up. It was made of soiled yellow cloth, and stitched evidently by a man’s fingers. “It looks like a needle-case,” said he.

  “Let me see. What a strange-looking thing! Yellow cloth, too. Why, it must belong to a prisoner. Oh, Maurice, the man who was here last night!”

  “Ay,” says Maurice, turning over the packet, “it might have been his, sure enough.”

  “He seemed to fling something from him, I thought. Perhaps this is it!” said she, peering over his arm, in delicate curiosity. Frere, with something of a scowl on his brow, tore off the outer covering of the mysterious packet, and displayed a second envelope, of grey cloth—the “good-conduct” uniform. Beneath this was a piece, some three inches square, of stained and discoloured merino, that had once been blue.

  “Hullo!” says Frere. “Why, what’s this?”

  “It is a piece of a dress,” says Sylvia.

  It was Rufus Dawes’s talisman—a portion of the frock she had worn at Macquarie Harbour, and which the unhappy convict h
ad cherished as a sacred relic for five weary years.

  Frere flung it into the water. The running stream whirled it away. “Why did you do that?” cried the girl, with a sudden pang of remorse for which she could not account. The shred of cloth, caught by a weed, lingered for an instant on the surface of the water. Almost at the same moment, the pair, raising their eyes, saw the schooner which bore Rufus Dawes back to bondage glide past the opening of the trees and disappear. When they looked again for the strange relic of the desperado of Port Arthur, it also had vanished.

  CHAPTER XII

  AT PORT ARTHUR

  THE usual clanking and hammering was prevalent upon the stone jetty of Port Arthur when the schooner bearing the returned convict, Rufus Dawes, ran alongside. On the heights above the esplanade rose the grim front of the soldiers’ barracks; beneath the soldiers’ barracks was the long range of prison buildings with their workshops and tan-pits; to the left lay the Commandant’s house, authoritative by reason of its embrasured terrace and guardian sentry; while the jetty, that faced the purple length of the “Island of the Dead,” swarmed with parti-coloured figures, clanking about their enforced business, under the muskets of their gaolers.

  Rufus Dawes had seen this prospect before, had learnt by heart each beauty of rising sun, sparkling water, and wooded hill. From the hideously clean jetty at his feet, to the distant signal station, that, embowered in bloom, reared its slender arms upwards into the cloudless sky, he knew it all. There was no charm for him in the exquisite blue of the sea, the soft shadows of the hills, or the soothing ripple of the waves that crept voluptuously to the white breast of the shining shore. He sat with his head bowed down, and his hands clasped about his knees, disdaining to look until they roused him.

  “Hallo, Dawes!” says Warder Troke, halting his train of ironed yellow-jackets. “So you’ve come back again! Glad to see yer, Dawes! It seems an age since we had the pleasure of your company, Dawes!” At this pleasantry the train laughed, so that their irons clanked more than ever. They found it often inconvenient not to laugh at Mr. Troke’s humour. “Step down here, Dawes, and let me introduce you to your h’old friends. They’ll be glad to see yer, won’t yer, boys? Why, bless me, Dawes, we thort we’d lost yer! We thort yer’d given us the slip altogether, Dawes. They didn’t take care of yer in Hobart Town, I expect, eh, boys? We’ll look after yer here, Dawes, though. You won’t bolt any more.”

  “Take care, Mr. Troke,” said a warning voice, “you’re at it again! Let the man alone!”

  By virtue of an order transmitted from Hobart Town, they had begun to attach the dangerous prisoner to the last man of the gang, riveting the leg-irons of the pair by means of an extra link, which could be removed when necessary, but Dawes had given no sign of consciousness. At the sound of the friendly tones, however, he looked up, and saw a tall, gaunt man, dressed in a shabby pepper-and-salt raiment, and wearing a black handkerchief knotted round his throat. He was a stranger to him.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. North,” said Troke, sinking at once the bully in the sneak. “I didn’t see yer reverence.”

  “A parson!” thought Dawes with disappointment, and dropped his eyes.

  “I know that,” returned Mr. North, coolly. “If you had, you would have been all butter and honey. Don’t trouble yourself to tell a lie; it’s quite unnecessary.”

  Dawes looked up again. This was a strange parson.

  “What’s your name, my man?” said Mr. North, suddenly, catching his eye.

  Rufus Dawes had intended to scowl, but the tone, sharply authoritative, roused his automatic convict second nature, and he answered, almost despite himself, “Rufus Dawes.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. North, eyeing him with a curious air of expectation that had something pitying in it. “This is the man, is it? I thought he was to go to the Coal Mines.”

  “So he is,” said Troke, “but we hain’t a goin’ to send there for a fortnit, and in the meantime I’m to work him on the chain.”

  “Oh!” said Mr. North again. “Lend me your knife, Troke.”

  And then, before them all, this curious parson took a piece of tobacco out of his ragged pocket, and cut off a “chaw” with Mr. Troke’s knife. Rufus Dawes felt what he had not felt for three days—an interest in something. He stared at the parson in unaffected astonishment. Mr. North perhaps mistook the meaning of his fixed stare, for he held out the remnant of tobacco to him.

  The chain line vibrated at this, and bent forward to enjoy the vicarious delight of seeing another man chew tobacco. Troke grinned with a silent mirth that betokened retribution for the favoured convict. “Here,” said Mr. North, holding out the dainty morsel upon which so many eyes were fixed. Rufus Dawes took the tobacco; looked at it hungrily for an instant, and then—to the astonishment of everybody—flung it away with a curse.

  “I don’t want your tobacco,” he said; “keep it.”

  From convict mouths went out a respectful roar of amazement, and Mr. Troke’s eyes snapped with pride of outraged janitorship. “You ungrateful dog!” he cried, raising his stick.

  Mr. North put up a hand. “That will do, Troke,” he said; “I know your respect for the cloth. Move the men on again.”

  “Get on!” said Troke, rumbling oaths beneath his breath, and Dawes felt his newly-riveted chain tug. It was some time since he had been in a chain-gang, and the sudden jerk nearly overbalanced him. He caught at his neighbour, and looking up, met a pair of black eyes which gleamed recognition. His neighbour was John Rex. Mr. North, watching them, was struck by the resemblance the two men bore to each other. Their height, eyes, hair, and complexion were similar. Despite the difference in name they might be related. “They might be brothers,” thought he. “Poor devils! I never knew a prisoner refuse tobacco before.” And he looked on the ground for the despised portion. But in vain. John Rex, oppressed by no foolish sentiment, had picked it up and put it in his mouth.

  So Rufus Dawes was relegated to his old life again, and came back to his prison with the hatred of his kind, that his prison had bred in him, increased a hundred-fold. It seemed to him that the sudden awakening had dazed him, that the flood of light so suddenly let in upon his slumbering soul had blinded his eyes, used so long to the sweetly-cheating twilight. He was at first unable to apprehend the details of his misery. He knew only that his dream-child was alive and shuddered at him, that the only thing he loved and trusted had betrayed him, that all hope of justice and mercy had gone from him for ever, that the beauty had gone from earth, the brightness from Heaven, and that he was doomed still to live. He went about his work, unheedful of the jests of Troke, ungalled by his irons, unmindful of the groans and laughter about him. His magnificent muscles saved him from the lash; for the amiable Troke tried to break him down in vain. He did not complain, he did not laugh, he did not weep. His “mate” Rex tried to converse with him, but did not succeed. In the midst of one of Rex’s excellent tales of London dissipation, Rufus Dawes would sigh wearily. “There’s something on that fellow’s mind,” thought Rex, prone to watch the signs by which the soul is read. “He has some secret which weighs upon him.”

  It was in vain that Rex attempted to discover what this secret might be. To all questions concerning his past life—however artfully put—Rufus Dawes was dumb. In vain Rex practised all his arts, called up all his graces of manner and speech—and these were not few—to fascinate the silent man and win his confidence. Rufus Dawes met his advances with a cynical carelessness that revealed nothing; and, when not addressed, held a gloomy silence. Galled by this indifference, John Rex had attempted to practise those ingenious arts of torment by which Gabbett, Vetch, or other leading spirits of the gang asserted their superiority over their quieter comrades. But he soon ceased. “I have been longer in this hell than you,” said Rufus Dawes, “and I know more of the devil’s tricks than you can show me. You had best be quiet.” Rex neglected the warning, and Rufus Dawes took him by the throat one day, and would have strangled him, but that Troke bea
t off the angered man with a favourite bludgeon. Rex had a wholesome respect for personal prowess, and had the grace to admit the provocation to Troke. Even this instance of self-denial did not move the stubborn Dawes. He only laughed. Then Rex came to a conclusion. His mate was plotting an escape. He himself cherished a notion of the kind, as did Gabbett and Vetch, but by common distrust no one ever gave utterance to thoughts of this nature. It would be too dangerous. “He would be a good comrade for a rush,” thought Rex, and resolved more firmly than ever to ally himself to this dangerous and silent companion.

  One question Dawes had asked which Rex had been able to answer: “Who is that North?”

  “A chaplain. He is only here for a week or so. There is a new one coming. North goes to Sydney. He is not in favour with the Bishop.”

  “How do you know?”

  “By deduction,” says Rex, with a smile peculiar to him. “He wears coloured clothes, and smokes, and doesn’t patter Scripture. The Bishop dresses in black, detests tobacco, and quotes the Bible like a concordance. North is sent here for a month, as a warming-pan for that ass Meekin. Ergo, the Bishop don’t care about North.”

  Jemmy Vetch, who was next to Rex, let the full weight of his portion of tree-trunk rest upon Gabbett, in order to express his unrestrained admiration of Mr. Rex’s sarcasm. “Ain’t the Dandy a one’er?” said he.