For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Clarke

  Rufus Dawes uttered one dismal cry, and then stood trembling and cowed. His companions, hearing the exclamation of rage and grief that burst from him, looked to see him snatch back the flower or perform some act of violence. Perhaps such was his intention, but he did not execute it. One would have thought that there was some charm about this rose so strangely cherished, for he stood gazing at it, as it twirled between Captain Frere’s strong fingers, as though it fascinated him. “You’re a pretty man to want a rose for your buttonhole! Are you going out with your sweetheart next Sunday, Mr. Dawes?” The gang laughed. “How did you get this?” Dawes was silent. “You’d better tell me.” No answer. “Troke, let us see if we can’t find Mr. Dawes’s tongue. Pull off your shirt, my man. I expect that’s the way to your heart—eh, boys?”

  At this elegant allusion to the lash, the gang laughed again, and looked at each other astonished. It seemed possible that the leader of the Ring was going to turn milksop. Such, indeed, appeared to be the case, for Dawes, trembling and pale, cried, “Don’t flog me again, sir! I picked it up in the yard. It fell out of your coat one day.” Frere smiled with an inward satisfaction at the result of his spirit-breaking. The explanation was probably the correct one. He was in the habit of wearing flowers in his coat and it was impossible that the convict should have obtained one by any other means. Had it been a fig of tobacco now, the astute Commandant knew plenty of men who would have brought it into the prison. But who would risk a flogging for so useless a thing as a flower? “You’d better not pick up any more, Jack,” he said. “We don’t grow flowers for your amusement.” And contemptuously flinging the rose over the wall, he strode away.

  The gang, left to itself for a moment, bestowed their attention upon Dawes. Large tears were silently rolling down his face, and he stood staring at the wall as one in a dream. The gang curled their lips. One fellow, more charitable than the rest, tapped his forehead and winked. “He’s going cranky,” said this good-natured man, who could not understand what a sane prisoner had to do with flowers. Dawes recovered himself, and the contemptuous glances of his companions seemed to bring back the colour to his cheeks.

  “We’ll do it to-night,” whispered he to Mooney, and Mooney smiled with pleasure.

  Since the “tobacco trick”, Mooney and Dawes had been placed in the new prison, together with a man named Bland, who had already twice failed to kill himself. When old Mooney, fresh from the torture of the gag-and-bridle, lamented his hard case, Bland proposed that the three should put in practice a scheme in which two at least must succeed. The scheme was a desperate one, and attempted only in the last extremity. It was the custom of the Ring, however, to swear each of its members to carry out to the best of his ability this last invention of the convict-disciplined mind should two other members crave his assistance.

  The scheme—like all great ideas—was simplicity itself.

  That evening, when the cell-door was securely locked, and the absence of a visiting gaoler might be counted upon for an hour at least, Bland produced a straw, and held it out to his companions. Dawes took it, and tearing it into unequal lengths, handed the fragments to Mooney.

  “The longest is the one,” said the blind man. “Come on, boys, and dip in the lucky-bag!”

  It was evident that lots were to be drawn to determine to whom fortune would grant freedom. The men drew in silence, and then Bland and Dawes looked at each other. The prize had been left in the bag. Mooney—fortunate old fellow—retained the longest straw. Bland’s hand shook as he compared notes with his companion. There was a moment’s pause, during which the blank eyeballs of the blind man fiercely searched the gloom, as if in that awful moment they could penetrate it.

  “I hold the shortest,” said Dawes to Bland. “‘’Tis you that must do it.”

  “I’m glad of that,” said Mooney.

  Bland, seemingly terrified at the danger which fate had decreed that he should run, tore the fatal lot into fragments with an oath, and sat gnawing his knuckles in excess of abject terror. Mooney stretched himself out upon his plank-bed. “Come on, mate,” he said. Bland extended a shaking hand, and caught Rufus Dawes by the sleeve.

  “You have more nerve than I. You do it.”

  “No, no,” said Dawes, almost as pale as his companion. “I’ve run my chance fairly. ’Twas your own proposal.” The coward who, confident in his own luck, would seem to have fallen into the pit he had dug for others, sat rocking himself to and fro, holding his head in his hands.

  “By Heaven, I can’t do it,” he whispered, lifting a white, wet face.

  “What are you waiting for?” said fortunate Mooney. “Come on, I’m ready.”

  “I—I—thought you might like to—to—pray a bit,” said Bland.

  The notion seemed to sober the senses of the old man, exalted too fiercely by his good fortune.

  “Ay!” he said. “Pray! A good thought!” and he knelt down; and shutting his blind eyes—’twas as though he was dazzled by some strong light—unseen by his comrades, moved his lips silently. The silence was at last broken by the footsteps of the warder in the corridor. Bland hailed it as a reprieve from whatever act of daring he dreaded. “We must wait until he goes,” he whispered eagerly. “He might look in.”

  Dawes nodded, and Mooney, whose quick ear apprised him very exactly of the position of the approaching gaoler, rose from his knees radiant. The sour face of Gimblett appeared at the trap cell-door. “All right?” he asked, somewhat—so the three thought—less sourly than usual.

  “All right,” was the reply, and Mooney added, “Good-night, Mr. Gimblett.”

  “I wonder what is making the old man so cheerful,” thought Gimblett, as he got into the next corridor.

  The sound of his echoing footsteps had scarcely died away, when upon the ears of the two less fortunate casters of lots fell the dull sound of rending woollen. The lucky man was tearing a strip from his blanket. “I think this will do,” said he, pulling it between his hands to test its strength. “I am an old man.” It was possible that he debated concerning the descent of some abyss into which the strip of blanket was to lower him. “Here, Bland, catch hold. Where are ye?—don’t be faint-hearted, man. It won’t take ye long.”

  It was quite dark now in the cell, but as Bland advanced his face was like a white mask floating upon the darkness, it was so ghastly pale. Dawes pressed his lucky comrade’s hand, and withdrew to the farthest corner. Bland and Mooney were for a few moments occupied with the rope—doubtless preparing for escape by means of it. The silence was broken only by the convulsive jangling of Bland’s irons—he was shuddering violently. At last Mooney spoke again, in strangely soft and subdued tones.

  “Dawes, lad, do you think there is a Heaven?”

  “I know there is a Hell,” said Dawes, without turning his face.

  “Ay, and a Heaven, lad. I think I shall go there. You will, old chap, for you’ve been good to me—God bless you, you’ve been very good to me.”

  *

  When Troke came in the morning he saw what had occurred at a glance, and hastened to remove the corpse of the strangled Mooney.

  “We drew lots,” said Rufus Dawes, pointing to Bland, who crouched in the corner farthest from his victim, “and it fell upon him to do it. I’m the witness.”

  “They’ll hang you for all that,” said Troke.

  “I hope so,” said Rufus Dawes. The scheme of escape hit upon by the convict intellect was simply this. Three men being together, lots were drawn to determine whom should be murdered. The drawer of the longest straw was the “lucky” man. He was killed. The drawer of the next longest straw was the murderer. He was hanged. The unlucky one was the witness. He had, of course, an excellent chance of being hung also, but his doom was not so certain, and he therefore looked upon himself as unfortunate.

  CHAPTER X

  A MEETING

  JOHN Rex found the “George” disagreeably prepared for his august arrival. Obsequious waiters took his dressing-bag and overcoat, the
landlord himself welcomed him at the door. Two naval gentlemen came out of the coffee-room to stare at him. “Have you any more luggage, Mr. Devine?” asked the landlord, as he flung open the door of the best drawing-room. It was awkwardly evident that his wife had no notion of suffering him to hide his borrowed light under a bushel.

  A supper-table laid for two people gleamed bright from the cheeriest corner. A fire crackled beneath the marble mantelshelf. The latest evening paper lay upon a chair; and, brushing it carelessly with her costly dress, the woman he had so basely deserted came smiling to meet him.

  “Well, Mr. Richard Devine,” said she, “you did not expect to see me again, did you?”

  Although, on his journey down, he had composed an elaborate speech wherewith to greet her, this unnatural civility dumbfounded him. “Sarah! I never meant to—”

  “Hush, my dear Richard—it must be Richard now, I suppose. This is not the time for explanations. Besides, the waiter might hear you. Let us have some supper; you must be hungry, I am sure.” He advanced to the table mechanically. “But how fat you are!” she continued. “Too good living, I suppose. You were not so fat at Port Ar— Oh, I forgot, my dear! Come and sit down. That’s right. I have told them all that I am your wife, for whom you have sent. They regard me with some interest and respect in consequence. Don’t spoil their good opinion of me.”

  He was about to utter an imprecation, but she stopped him by a glance. “No bad language, John, or I shall ring for a constable. Let us understand one another, my dear. You may be a very great man to other people, but to me you are merely my runaway husband—an escaped convict. If you don’t eat your supper civilly, I shall send for the police.” “Sarah!” he burst out, “I never meant to desert you. Upon my word. It is all a mistake. Let me explain.”

  “There is no need for explanations yet, Jack—I mean Richard. Have your supper. Ah! I know what you want.”

  She poured out half a tumbler of brandy, and gave it to him. He took the glass from her hand, drank the contents, and then, as though warmed by the spirit, laughed. “What a woman you are, Sarah. I have been a great brute, I confess.”

  “You have been an ungrateful villain,” said she, with sudden passion, “a hardened, selfish villain.”

  “But, Sarah—”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “’Pon my word, you are a fine creature, and I was a fool to leave you.”

  The compliment seemed to soothe her, for her tone changed somewhat. “It was a wicked, cruel act, Jack. You whom I saved from death—whom I nursed—whom I enriched. It was the act of a coward.”

  “I admit it. It was.”

  “You admit it. Have you no shame then? Have you no pity for me for what I have suffered all these years?”

  “I don’t suppose you cared much.”

  “Don’t you? You never thought about me at all. I have cared this much, John Rex—bah! the door is shut close enough—that I have spent a fortune in hunting you down; and now I have found you, I will make you suffer in your turn.”

  He laughed again, but uneasily. “How did you discover me?”

  With a readiness which showed that she had already prepared an answer to the question, she unlocked a writing-case, which was on the side table, and took from it a newspaper. “By one of those strange accidents which are the ruin of men like you. Among the papers sent to the overseer from his English friends was this one.”

  She held out an illustrated journal—a Sunday organ of sporting opinion—and pointed to a portrait engraved on the centre page. It represented a broad-shouldered, bearded man, dressed in the fashion affected by turfites and lovers of horse-flesh, standing beside a pedestal on which were piled a variety of racing cups and trophies. John Rex read underneath this work of art the name,

  MR. RICHARD DEVINE

  THE LEVIATHAN OF THE TURF

  “And you recognized me?”

  “The portrait was sufficiently like you to induce me to make inquiries, and when I found that Mr. Richard Devine had suddenly returned from a mysterious absence of fourteen years, I set to work in earnest. I have spent a deal of money, Jack, but I’ve got you!”

  “You have been clever in finding me out; I give you credit for that.”

  “There is not a single act of your life, John Rex, that I do not know,” she continued, with heat. “I have traced you from the day you stole out of my house until now. I know your continental trips, your journeyings here and there in search of a lost clue. I pieced together the puzzle, as you have done, and I know that, by some foul fortune, you have stolen the secret of a dead man to ruin an innocent and virtuous family.”

  “Hullo! hullo!” said John Rex. “Since when have you learnt to talk of virtue?”

  “It is well to taunt, but you have got to the end of your tether now, Jack. I have communicated with the woman whose son’s fortune you have stolen. I expect to hear from Lady Devine in a day or so.”

  “Well—and when you hear?”

  “I shall give back the fortune at the price of her silence!”

  “Ho! ho! Will you?”

  “Yes; and if my husband does not come back and live with me quietly, I shall call the police.”

  John Rex sprang up. “Who will believe you, idiot?” he cried. “I’ll have you sent to gaol as an impostor.”

  “You forget, my dear,” she returned, playing coquettishly with her rings, and glancing sideways as she spoke, “that you have already acknowledged me as your wife before the landlord and the servants. It is too late for that sort of thing. Oh, my dear Jack, you think you are very clever, but I am as clever as you.”

  Smothering a curse, he sat down beside her. “Listen, Sarah. What is the use of fighting like a couple of children. I am rich—”

  “So am I.”

  “Well, so much the better. We will join our riches together. I admit that I was a fool and a cur to leave you; but I played for a great stake. The name of Richard Devine was worth nearly half a million in money. It is mine. I won it. Share it with me! Sarah, you and I defied the world years ago. Don’t let us quarrel now. I was ungrateful. Forget it. We know by this time that we are not either of us angels. We started in life together—do you remember, Sally, when I met you first?—determined to make money. We have succeeded. Why then set to work to destroy each other? You are handsomer than ever, I have not lost my wits. Is there any need for you to tell the world that I am a runaway convict, and that you are—well, no, of course there is no need. Kiss and be friends, Sarah. I would have escaped you if I could, I admit. You have found me out. I accept the position. You claim me as your husband. You say you are Mrs. Richard Devine. Very well, I admit it. You have all your life wanted to be a great lady. Now is your chance!”

  Much as she had cause to hate him, well as she knew his treacherous and ungrateful character, little as she had reason to trust him, her strange and distempered affection for the scoundrel came upon her again with gathering strength. As she sat beside him, listening to the familiar tones of the voice she had learned to love, greedily drinking in the promise of a future fidelity which she was well aware was made but to be broken, her memory recalled the past days of trust and happiness, and her woman’s fancy once more invested the selfish villain she had reclaimed with those attributes which had enchained her wilful and wayward affections. The unselfish devotion which had marked her conduct to the swindler and convict was, indeed, her one redeeming virtue; and perhaps she felt dimly—poor woman—that it were better for her to cling to that, if she lost all the world beside. Her wish for vengeance melted under the influence of these thoughts. The bitterness of despised love, the shame and anger of desertion, ingratitude, and betrayal, all vanished. The tears of a sweet forgiveness trembled in her eyes, the unreasoning love of her sex—faithful to nought but love, and faithful to love in death—shook in her voice. She took his coward hand and kissed it, pardoning all his baseness with the sole reproach, “Oh, John, John, you might have trusted me after all?”

  John Rex
had conquered, and he smiled as he embraced her. “I wish I had,” said he; “it would have saved me many regrets; but never mind. Sit down; now we will have supper.”

  “Your preference has one drawback, Sarah,” he said, when the meal was concluded, and the two sat down to consider their immediate course of action, “it doubles the chance of detection.”

  “How so?”

  “People have accepted me without inquiry, but I am afraid not without dislike. Mr. Francis Wade, my uncle, never liked me; and I fear I have not played my cards well with Lady Devine. When they find I have a mysterious wife their dislike will become suspicion. Is it likely that I should have been married all these years and not have informed them?”

  “Very unlikely,” returned Sarah calmly, “and that is just the reason why you have not been married all these years. Really,” she added, with a laugh, “the male intellect is very dull. You have already told ten thousand lies about this affair, and yet you don’t see your way to tell one more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, my dear Richard, you surely cannot have forgotten that you married me last year on the Continent? By the way, it was last year that you were there, was it not? I am the daughter of a poor clergyman of the Church of England; name—anything you please—and you met me—where shall we say? Baden, Aix, Brussels? Cross the Alps, if you like, dear, and say Rome.”

  John Rex put his hand to his head. “Of course—I am stupid,” said he. “I have not been well lately. Too much brandy, I suppose.”

  “Well, we will alter all that,” she returned with a laugh, which her anxious glance at him belied. “You are going to be domestic now, Jack—I mean Dick.”

  “Go on,” said he impatiently. “What then?”

  “Then, having settled these little preliminaries, you take me up to London and introduce me to your relatives and friends.”