For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

  Maurice Frere's passion had spent itself in that last act of violence.He did not return to the prison, as he promised himself, but turned intothe road that led to the Cascades. He repented him of his suspicions.There was nothing strange in the presence of the chaplain. Sylvia hadalways liked the man, and an apology for his conduct had doubtlessremoved her anger. To make a mountain out of a molehill was the act ofan idiot. It was natural that she should release Dawes--women were sotender-hearted. A few well-chosen, calmly-uttered platitudes anent thenecessity for the treatment that, to those unaccustomed to the desperatewickedness of convicts, must appear harsh, would have served his turnfar better than bluster and abuse. Moreover, North was to sail inthe Lady Franklin, and might put in execution his threats of officialcomplaint, unless he was carefully dealt with. To put Dawes again to thetorture would be to show to Troke and his friends that the "Commandant'swife" had acted without the "Commandant's authority", and that must notbe shown. He would now return and patch up a peace. His wife would sailin the same vessel with North, and he would in a few days be left aloneon the island to pursue his "discipline" unchecked. With this intenthe returned to the prison, and gravely informed poor Troke that he wasastonished at his barbarity. "Mrs. Frere, who most luckily had appointedto meet me this evening at the prison, tells me that the poor devilDawes had been on the stretcher since seven o'clock this morning."

  "You ordered it fust thing, yer honour," said Troke.

  "Yes, you fool, but I didn't order you to keep the man there for ninehours, did I? Why, you scoundrel, you might have killed him!" Trokescratched his head in bewilderment. "Take his irons off, and put himin a separate cell in the old gaol. If a man is a murderer, that is noreason you should take the law into your own hands, is it? You'd bettertake care, Mr. Troke." On the way back he met the chaplain, who, seeinghim, made for a by-path in curious haste. "Halloo!" roared Frere. "Hi!Mr. North!" Mr. North paused, and the Commandant made at him abruptly."Look here, sir, I was rude to you just now--devilish rude. Mostungentlemanly of me. I must apologize." North bowed, without speaking,and tried to pass.

  "You must excuse my violence," Frere went on. "I'm bad-tempered, and Ididn't like my wife interfering. Women, don't you know, don't see thesethings--don't understand these scoundrels." North again bowed. "Why,d--n it, how savage you look! Quite ghastly, bigod! I must have saidmost outrageous things. Forget and forgive, you know. Come home and havesome dinner."

  "I cannot enter your house again, sir," said North, in tones moreagitated than the occasion would seem to warrant.

  Frere shrugged his great shoulders with a clumsy affectation of goodhumour, and held out his hand. "Well, shake hands, parson. You'll haveto take care of Mrs. Frere on the voyage, and we may as well make up ourdifferences before you start. Shake hands."

  "Let me pass, sir!" cried North, with heightened colour; and ignoringthe proffered hand, strode savagely on.

  "You've a d--d fine temper for a parson," said Frere to himself."However, if you won't, you won't. Hang me if I'll ask you again."Nor, when he reached home, did he fare better in his efforts atreconciliation with his wife. Sylvia met him with the icy front of awoman whose pride has been wounded too deeply for tears.

  "Say no more about it," she said. "I am going to my father. If you wantto explain your conduct, explain it to him."

  "Come, Sylvia," he urged; "I was a brute, I know. Forgive me."

  "It is useless to ask me," she said; "I cannot. I have forgiven you somuch during the last seven years."

  He attempted to embrace her, but she withdrew herself loathingly fromhis arms. He swore a great oath at her, and, too obstinate to arguefarther, sulked. Blunt, coming in about some ship matters, the pairdrank rum. Sylvia went to her room and occupied herself with some minordetails of clothes-packing (it is wonderful how women find relief fromthoughts in household care), while North, poor fool, seeing from hiswindow the light in hers, sat staring at it, alternately cursing andpraying. In the meantime, the unconscious cause of all of this--RufusDawes--sat in his new cell, wondering at the chance which had procuredhim comfort, and blessing the fair hands that had brought it to him. Hedoubted not but that Sylvia had interceded with his tormentor, and bygentle pleading brought him ease. "God bless her," he murmured. "Ihave wronged her all these years. She did not know that I suffered." Hewaited anxiously for North to visit him, that he might have his beliefconfirmed. "I will get him to thank her for me," he thought. But Northdid not come for two whole days. No one came but his gaolers; and,gazing from his prison window upon the sea that almost washed its walls,he saw the schooner at anchor, mocking him with a liberty he couldnot achieve. On the third day, however, North came. His manner wasconstrained and abrupt. His eyes wandered uneasily, and he seemedburdened with thoughts which he dared not utter.

  "I want you to thank her for me, Mr. North," said Dawes.

  "Thank whom?"

  "Mrs. Frere."

  The unhappy priest shuddered at hearing the name.

  "I do not think you owe any thanks to her. Your irons were removed bythe Commandant's order."

  "But by her persuasion. I feel sure of it. Ah, I was wrong to think shehad forgotten me. Ask her for her forgiveness."

  "Forgiveness!" said North, recalling the scene in the prison. "What haveyou done to need her forgiveness?"

  "I doubted her," said Rufus Dawes. "I thought her ungrateful andtreacherous. I thought she delivered me again into the bondage fromwhence I had escaped. I thought she had betrayed me--betrayed me to thevillain whose base life I saved for her sweet sake."

  "What do you mean?" asked North. "You never spoke to me of this."

  "No, I had vowed to bury the knowledge of it in my own breast--it wastoo bitter to speak."

  "Saved his life!"

  "Ay, and hers! I made the boat that carried her to freedom. I held herin my arms, and took the bread from my own lips to feed her!"

  "She cannot know this," said North in an undertone.

  "She has forgotten it, perhaps, for she was but a child. But you willremind her, will you not? You will do me justice in her eyes before Idie? You will get her forgiveness for me?"

  North could not explain why such an interview as the convict desired wasimpossible, and so he promised.

  "She is going away in the schooner," said he, concealing the fact of hisown departure. "I will see her before she goes, and tell her."

  "God bless you, sir," said poor Dawes. "Now pray with me"; and thewretched priest mechanically repeated one of the formulae his Churchprescribes.

  The next day he told his penitent that Mrs. Frere had forgiven him. Thiswas a lie. He had not seen her; but what should a lie be to him now?Lies were needful in the tortuous path he had undertaken to tread.Yet the deceit he was forced to practise cost him many a pang. He hadsuccumbed to his passion, and to win the love for which he yearned hadvoluntarily abandoned truth and honour; but standing thus alone withhis sin, he despised and hated himself. To deaden remorse and drownreflection, he had recourse to brandy, and though the fierce excitementof his hopes and fears steeled him against the stupefying action of theliquor, he was rendered by it incapable of calm reflection. In certainnervous conditions our mere physical powers are proof against theaction of alcohol, and though ten times more drunk than the toper, who,incoherently stammering, reels into the gutter, we can walk erectand talk with fluency. Indeed, in this artificial exaltation of thesensibilities, men often display a brilliant wit, and an acuteness ofcomprehension, calculated to delight their friends, and terrify theirphysicians. North had reached this condition of brain-drunkenness. Inplain terms, he was trembling on the verge of madness.

  The days passed swiftly, and Blunt's preparations for sea werecompleted. There were two stern cabins in the schooner, one of whichwas appropriated to Mrs. Frere, while the other was set apart for North.Maurice had not attempted to renew his overtures of friendship, and thechaplain had not spoken. Mindful of Sylvia's last words, he had resolvednot to meet her until fairly embarked upon the voya
ge which he intendedshould link their fortunes together. On the morning of the 19thDecember, Blunt declared himself ready to set sail, and in the afternoonthe two passengers came on board.

  Rufus Dawes, gazing from his window upon the schooner that lay outsidethe reef, thought nothing of the fact that, after the Commandant's boathad taken away the Commandant's wife another boat should put off withthe chaplain. It was quite natural that Mr. North should desire to bidhis friends farewell, and through the hot, still afternoon he watchedfor the returning boat, hoping that the chaplain would bring him somemessage from the woman whom he was never to see more on earth. The hourswore on, however, and no breath of wind ruffled the surface of the sea.The day was exceedingly close and sultry, heavy dun clouds hung on thehorizon, and it seemed probable that unless a thunder-storm should clearthe air before night, the calm would continue. Blunt, however, with atrue sailor's obstinacy in regard to weather, swore there would be abreeze, and held to his purpose of sailing. The hot afternoon passedaway in a sultry sunset, and it was not until the shades of evening hadbegun to fall that Rufus Dawes distinguished a boat detach itself fromthe sides of the schooner, and glide through the oily water to thejetty. The chaplain was returning, and in a few hours perhaps wouldbe with him, to bring him the message of comfort for which his soulthirsted. He stretched out his unshackled limbs, and throwing himselfupon his stretcher, fell to recalling the past--his boat-building, thenews of his fortune, his love, and his self-sacrifice.

  North, however, was not returning to bring to the prisoner a message ofcomfort, but he was returning on purpose to see him, nevertheless. Theunhappy man, torn by remorse and passion, had resolved upon a courseof action which seemed to him a penance for his crime of deceit. Hedetermined to confess to Dawes that the message he had brought waswholly fictitious, that he himself loved the wife of the Commandant,and that with her he was about to leave the island for ever. "I am nohypocrite," he thought, in his exaltation. "If I choose to sin, I willsin boldly; and this poor wretch, who looks up to me as an angel, shallknow me for my true self."

  The notion of thus destroying his own fame in the eyes of the man whomhe had taught to love him, was pleasant to his diseased imagination. Itwas the natural outcome of the morbid condition of mind into which hehad drifted, and he provided for the complete execution of his schemewith cunning born of the mischief working in his brain. It was desirablethat the fatal stroke should be dealt at the last possible instant; thathe should suddenly unveil his own infamy, and then depart, never to beseen again. To this end he had invented an excuse for returning to theshore at the latest possible moment. He had purposely left in his rooma dressing-bag--the sort of article one is likely to forget in the hurryof departure from one's house, and so certain to remember when the timecomes to finally prepare for settling in another. He had ingeniouslyextracted from Blunt the fact that "he didn't expect a wind before dark,but wanted all ship-shape and aboard", and then, just as darkness fell,discovered that it was imperative for him to go ashore. Blunt cursed,but, if the chaplain insisted upon going, there was no help for it.

  "There'll be a breeze in less than two hours," said he. "You've plentyof time, but if you're not back before the first puff, I'll sail withoutyou, as sure as you're born." North assured him of his punctuality."Don't wait for me, Captain, if I'm not here," said he with thelightness of tone which men use to mask anxiety. "I'd take him at hisword, Blunt," said the Commandant, who was affably waiting to take finalfarewell of his wife. "Give way there, men," he shouted to the crew,"and wait at the jetty. If Mr. North misses his ship through yourlaziness, you'll pay for it." So the boat set off, North laughinguproariously at the thought of being late. Frere observed with someastonishment that the chaplain wrapped himself in a boat cloak that layin the stern sheets. "Does the fellow want to smother himself in a nightlike this!" was his remark. The truth was that, though his hands andhead were burning, North's teeth chattered with cold. Perhaps this wasthe reason why, when landed and out of eyeshot of the crew, he produceda pocket-flask of rum and eagerly drank. The spirit gave him courage forthe ordeal to which he had condemned himself; and with steadied step,he reached the door of the old prison. To his surprise, Gimblett refusedhim admission!

  "But I have come direct from the Commandant," said North.

  "Got any order, sir?"

  "Order! No."

  "I can't let you in, your reverence," said Gimblett.

  "I want to see the prisoner Dawes. I have a special message for him. Ihave come ashore on purpose."

  "I am very sorry, sir--"

  "The ship will sail in two hours, man, and I shall miss her," saidNorth, indignant at being frustrated in his design. "Let me pass."

  "Upon my honour, sir, I daren't," said Gimblett, who was not without hisgood points. "You know what authority is, sir."

  North was in despair, but a bright thought struck him--a thought that,in his soberer moments, would never have entered his head--he would buyadmission. He produced the rum flask from beneath the sheltering cloak."Come, don't talk nonsense to me, Gimblett. You don't suppose I wouldcome here without authority. Here, take a pull at this, and let methrough." Gimblett's features relaxed into a smile. "Well, sir, Isuppose it's all right, if you say so," said he. And clutching the rumbottle with one hand, he opened the door of Dawes's cell with the other.

  North entered, and as the door closed behind him, the prisoner, who hadbeen lying apparently asleep upon his bed, leapt up, and made as thoughto catch him by the throat.