CHAPTER XXIV
THE LOCK-UP
The sergeant had looked into the lock-up for the last time that night. He had made his last overture to the prisoner, had cursed and cuffed him for a sulky dog, and so taken leave of him for the night. Not a word had Erichsen uttered in all these hours. He had answered no question, replied to no taunt, nor yet once raised his eyes from the ground: there he sat, with a damp blanket about his torn body, and his rough yellow head between his hands. Food had been put before him, and remained there still. A pannikin of tea stood cold, and sour, and black with drowned flies, upon the ground. The flies were the worst of all his outward ills. But the shocking torments of a brain cruelly cleared by pain and weakness were worse than the flies.
And now he was alone for the night; the key had been turned in the padlock, and put in its place on the beam above; the sergeant’s bluster had died away, and the sergeant’s footsteps followed suit. Across the yard there came a laugh, an oath, a good-night ironically shouted, then a throwing-off of boots that jingled, and a shutting of doors. Now all was still, and in the lock-up the stillness was as unbroken as elsewhere. He never stirred but to shrug away a fly. The moon shone in through holes in the tin-lid roof, through crevices in the matchwood walls; and in the soft, sifted light he sat immovable. It was such a prison as a man of spirit could have broken with preposterous ease. But this one had no spirit left; he was no longer a man. His precious manhood had been beaten out of him like dust from a carpet. And the sense of that irrevocable loss bit deeper than the glutted flies.
Was it a horse outside against the brushwood fence? The sound was the first Tom seemed to have heard for many years. In his blackened brain it struck a first inappreciable spark of interest. He listened. Then came another and a nearer sound, as of something torn. He listened eagerly. What could it be? Minutes passed; there were no more sounds until the padlock was tried, and a hand went feeling for the key. Tom raised his head for the first time as the moon streamed in through the open door, when he perceived that it was Peggy’s bare feet, which had made no noise. With that he lowered his head again, for there was no place in it even for surprise. But unconsciously he gave a moan.
She went upon her knees beside him, and flung out her arms, but drew them back with a shiver from that loose-spread blanket. “Tom!” she whispered. “Speak to me, darlin’. It’s Peggy come to see how y’are.”
He never spoke, never looked up, nor gave any sign that he heard her words—unless it was that his bowed head hung more heavily than before.
“It’s Peggy O’Brine,” the girl pursued, with a sob in her throat. “Sure an’ ye’ve not forgotten Peggy the cook? It’s to comfort ye I’ve come, dearie, an’ haven’t I the right? Ah then, an’ wasn’t it all through me it was?”
The sob got loose, and she was wringing her hands and gazing at Tom through her tears as though her heart would break for him. In return he stared heavily at her, but shook his head as her meaning came home to him.
“Indeed an’ it was,” persisted Peggy. “Only for me you niver would have struck’m at all. An’ to think it was meself that warned ye in the beginning, an’ went an’ drove ye to it in the ind! If only you had let ’m strike me dead at his feet! It’d have been betther than that—an’ this!”
Still he looked at her without a word; and still there was no light, no life, no feeling in the look; but only dumb and dead despair.
“You thought I liked ’m!” exclaimed Peggy wildly. “They’ve been tellin’ ye their black lies in the huts. It’s little they know how it’s been between us from the shtart. I’ll tell ye this, Tom, betther a hundhred times be the man he’s a spite agin than the girrl he’s his wicked eye upon. That’s Mr. Nat for ye; an’ I hate ’m—I loathe ’m—’tis God’s truth I’m tellin’ ye. Tom, dear, he cot me out there last night—I niver wint out wid ’m. He cot me prowlin’ about, as he said, an’ that’s the truth, too, though he tould it. I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ o’ the two o’ yez. It’s well I knew he was up to some divil’s work at last. I’d seen’m talkin’—an’ what do you suppose he’s up to now?” asked Peggy, going off at a tangent. “What do you suppose he’s do’n’ at this moment? Lyin’ dhrunk on his bed—lyin’ ded dhrunk for the shame of ’t! You knocked ’m down. You knocked ’m down. He won’t get over ’t till his dyin’ day. Nobody ilse iver so much as lifted a han’ agin ’m on the farm. But glory be to God! you knocked ’m down!”
There was more than unthinking exultation in her tone; there was a very singular sort of pride also, and this as unthinking as the other, it was so ingenuous and plain. But Tom saw nothing with those dreadful eyes, and heard but little beyond her soothing brogue. And then she did think, and saw a mark on the blanket in a rod of moonlight (for she had shut the door), and cried out to God to forgive the most selfish woman in all the world.
She had thought of herself, and not of Tom. She had talked about herself, and not about Tom. In her selfishness she had forgotten what she had brought him; and a medicine-bottle of pilfered milk and rum was at his parched lips in an instant. She made him drink of it, and drink deep; and mutton sandwiches, deliciously cut and salted, she put between his teeth with her own fingers, bite after bite, as though he had been her infant. And all the time she was railing at herself for forgetting this and being the most selfish woman in the world; while he ate and drank from her tender hand and never said a word.
But when this was over he took that hand in his; and so they sat, as it seemed for hours, in a thin rain of filtered moonshine. Still his eyes were steadily downcast the whole time—thus they missed the happy tears in hers.
At last he spoke, and it was terrible, for she could not understand a word; then he coughed and tried again, and said, “God bless you, Peggy—only there isn’t one in New South Wales!” And that left them both silent, and the girl grieving openly, for almost as long again.
Then he said quite quietly:—
“You know I’ve been in the condemned cell, Peggy. But it was nothing to this. My God, it was nothing to this!”
Peggy pressed his hand.
“The condemned cell at Newgate,” he went on. “I was there up to the very last night, and heard the people taking their places to see me swing. Well, that night was nothing to this. And if they had hanged me in the morning it would have been nothing—nothing—it would have been nothing—”
The hoarse voice broke, sob after sob shook the tortured body, and the girl glowed with shame to find herself the useless witness of an agony so supreme. But his tears dried hers and bound their fount; it froze her heart to hear and see him. She was afraid to speak to him, to touch his hand. She withdrew a little, and her bare foot pressed a cold oasis on the warm ground; she stooped and picked up a coin.
“Ha!” cried Tom.
His voice was very bitter now, but under control in a moment.
“Where did it come from?” asked Peggy with the coin to a shining crevice.
“I am ashamed to tell you;” and he ground his teeth; “but you will never guess. From a greater brute than either of the Sullivans. He came to look at me just afterwards. I was steaming like a horse in this blanket, and he came and gloated over me, and flung me a farthing—a farthing!—the very beast who ordered me the lashes and pretended to be so kind.”
“A farth’n’!”
“Yes. God help him if ever I get his yellow throat between these ten fingers!” and they were clutching murderously in the air, and there was murder in every vibration of the husky voice.
“Sure, an’ it isn’t a farth’n’ it is at all.”
“What is it, then?”
“A sov’rin!”
And the soft Irish brogue was rich with honest satisfaction. She showed him the coin in triumph. He regarded it with a leaden eye.
“A sov’rin!” repeated Peggy, with enthusiasm. “Stick it in your pockut, an’ be grateful iver afther to Peggy’s bare fut!”
He shook his head.
“You won’t?”
Another shake.
“’Tis sinful pride I call it,” remonstrated the girl. “The kind man meant well—”
“The kind man!”
“An’ isn’t he?”
“I owe him a bit already,” replied Tom. “Let me settle that first.”
“But this he meant well, man; this is no farth’n’—”
“So much the worse. He thought to heal the wounds I owe him with a sovereign, did he? His conscience and my wounds! May they lie open, and sting and throb and tickle all at once, as they’re doing now, till I have my fingers at his throat!” The girl looked so frightened that he gulped at his passion, and said, “You keep it yourself, Peggy, like a good girl; you deserve a purse of them for all you’ve done for me this night. Why, what now?”
He sat alone in the lock-up; the girl had stolen swiftly out. In the unconscious egotism of his grief and shame, this simply puzzled him. So he sat in the moonbeams, blinking at the moon, until she returned and once more closed the door.
“All’s safe,” she told him cheerfully. “I heard the thraps snorin’ in their slape.”
“Had you heard something else?”
“I had not.”
“Then what was wrong?”
“Is it why I went out?” said Peggy, fixing him with an eye that was cheerful too. “To dhrop that sov’rin to the very bottom of their well; an’ it’s we will dhrop it, too, if you plase.”
Tom held out his hand.
“I’ve offended you, Peggy. God knows I didn’t mean to; but I’m capable of all that’s brutal to-night; you see what they’ve made of me already! Forgive me, Peggy. I’ll never forgive them. I’ll be even with every one of them, curse them! curse them! and then I’ll swing as I should have done a year ago. I’m sorry I didn’t keep that pound—to give it him back for his coffin!”
It was terrible to hear him; his voice was very low, and full of fresh tears that made it all sound worse. Peggy asked him what he meant to do.
He meant to die, but not of the lash—the rope; he meant to hang as he should have hung the year before. If only he had! If only he had! But at last he recognised the fate reserved for him by a Providence he blasphemed, so now he would meet it half-way. He was sorry he had not done so long ago. He was sorry he had not driven a knife through Nat in the very beginning; but it was never too late to kill and die; it was only too late to die with a whole skin; and again his sobs and blasphemies were horrible to hear. Yet Peggy listened patiently, and gradually soothed him with a tender, tolerant, womanly word here and there; so that at last he looked at her through his tears (for he was utterly unmanned) and asked her, out of pure curiosity, what he had done to make such an enemy of Mr. Nat.
Peggy resumed her cheerful manner.
“An’ don’t ye know?” said she, masking a trembling lip with a smile. “Is it no notion ye have at all?”
“None whatever.”
“Arrah, Tom, ’tis in love ye are entirely!”
At these words, which took him cruelly by surprise, he gave her a kind of wounded glare that was their confirmation, whereupon she forced a giggle, and asked him whom he supposed Nat had suspected him of being in love with.
Tom wearily gave it up.
“Be thinkin’ a minute,” said Peggy self-consciously.
“Not you, was it?”
Peggy nodded.
“But what nonsense!” he exclaimed.
“An’ it was all that,” said Peggy.
“I mean we never saw each other. And was that all he had against me?”
“No; there was a little more than that.”
She hesitated.
“What?” he asked.
“More of his nonsense then, for he thought I was as bad as you.”
“Idiot!”
“Idjut indeed,” said Peggy sadly.
“When we hadn’t exchanged a dozen words!”
Not a dozen? Not many dozens, perhaps; for up to to-night Peggy had them every one by heart. She was not so sure that she would be able to remember all they were saying now; she was not so sure that she should want to. But she steeled herself to answer cheerfully. And he guessed nothing then, for to speak of love was still to think of Claire; and to think of Claire was to pray that never, in this life or another, might she know or dream what had befallen him that day. But even with the prayer in his heart he remembered there was no God to hear it; and was retracing his steps in this blind alley of despair, when Peggy took his hand and flashed a suggestion before his mind.
Why should he go back to the farm at all—to be bullied and beaten to death or desperation in a cruel and unequal war? He told her in reply what he calmly proposed to do, and her blood ran cold to hear him; then common-sense came to her aid, and she showed him the folly (rather than the wickedness) of his diabolical plans. He listened sullenly, but said he could not answer for himself after this, and pretended to take less than he really did to the suggestion that he should run away there and then; according to Peggy, there was not another minute to lose.
Tom wanted to know where he was to run to, but he began feeling about for his shirt. Peggy found it for him, and noticed, with a pang of instinctive jealousy, as the blanket fell apart in his movements, a mysterious something that he wore next his breast like a scapula. It was sewn up in oiled silk, which glistened in the feeble light; and in the bitter intuition that this precious possession was a packet of true love’s letters, she made him ask his questions twice.
Peggy then told him he must run due east for the sea, for it was but thirty miles from there; and she had a good mind to run with him, since they were going to turn her into Government without fail. This she said with a laugh, but he made no answer. His face was drawn with pain at every movement; it reminded Peggy of some scraps of cotton-wool that she had brought for him to put next his lacerated skin; and a grateful look he gave her was her comfort and her hope, as she left him to fight his own battle with his shirt, and set herself to pulling down the brushwood fence. A breach was easily and not noisily made; and both moon and stars were still crisp in the sky when Tom painfully followed the girl’s lead, and the two plunged together into the open bush.
“Djue east,” repeated Peggy, stopping in the first thicket. “D’ye know the Southren Cross now? I’m afther misrememberin’ it meself.”
“Up yonder, Peggy. Those five.”
“An’ as like a cross as a han’-saw! But as ye know ’t ye can steer djue east by ’t, an’ djue east lies the say. If you’re wantin’ wather on the way, let the Southren Cross shine in your face an’ that’ll bring ye to the river. I heard ’em say so as I waited table.”
“I know, Peggy, I know. And when I get to the sea—if ever I do—well, at least my bones can sleep in it, instead of in this pestilent land!”
He stood eying her, eager to be gone, and yet reluctant to show ungrateful haste.
“An’ why would they?” cried Peggy. “It’s manny a convict has escaped on raf’s before ye, so why wouldn’t you? Only fetch up wid the say an’ there’s hope!”
“Then, Peggy, there’s no time to lose.” And his hand was out in an instant.
“Ah then, Tom, an’ must I be lavin’ ye?”
Her voice was altered.
“This is not the way to Castle Sullivan, Peggy; it’s the very opposite direction; and I’ve got you into trouble enough, goodness knows.”
Her lips parted as though more arguments were on her tongue; but it was upon his white face the moon was shining, and his eagerness to go, and go alone, was now transparent.
They have made you crule, Tom,” said Peggy, with a sudden sad dignity. “Good-bye. Go your ways. God bless you!”
“Cruel to you?” he said densely.
“Yes, crule to me! To me that brought ye mate and dhrink; to me that’d—”
“But what can I do?” he asked her in the same dull tone. “I am grateful to you with all the heart they’ve left me; but they tried their best to cut it out, and I believe they have. Make allowances for me, Peggy, and only tell me what I can do!”
“Take me wid ye, Tom,” she whispered.
“To the sea?”
“An’ further!”
“My dear, how can I? If they follow me alone I can fight them alone until I drop and die. With you I couldn’t.”
“An’ wouldn’t we dhrop and die together?”
And now there were tears in her voice that held his own tongue bound; and now a light in her eyes that shot a ray through his brain at last. He understood, and waited for his heart to bleed for her. When it would not, a great groan came from his soul.
“I can’t help it, Peggy,” he mumbled, in his shame; “it’s as you say! They’ve cut my heart out—cut it clean out, they have!—and a cruel brute is all I can ever be now. Forgive me, my girl—and let me go. Never think twice about me. I’m not worth it—a brute like me! Peggy—Peggy—”
He had tried, in his weakness, to put his arms about her, upon an impulse of pure sorrow and gratitude, that flickered within him like the last ember in a fire. And the convict girl had turned so fiercely that her black hair swept and stung his face, as she broke away from him once and for all. He saw her bare feet flashing in the moonlight; they fell too softly for his ears. But he heard her sobbing as she ran. And he pitied himself the more passionately for the little he found it in him to pity her.