CHAPTER XXIX
LIGHT AT LAST
The red-hot summer cooled gradually into lukewarm winter, with chilly nights, but the same fierce glare all day; and several men had had their chains struck off, and four had died in them, since Tom first felt the weight of his. But the vacant spaces on the shelves were never vacant very long. Those eighty suits of fetters were in continual use. And still the dual work went on, of chiselling the great road to a given level, and of degrading each newcomer to that of the worst man there before him; for there was no levelling-up in these iron-gangs, wherein mutual converse bred mutual debasement, until best and worst found common ground on the very bedrock of human infamy.
Tom for one, however, still stood out among the worst; and there was another newcomer whom the gang had nothing to teach, either of misery or of wickedness; indeed he laughed at the one and greatly increased the other.
This was an ancient felon known only as the First Fleeter: a wizened page of dreadful history, with not a tooth in his head, and but the one redeeming trait of incessant cheerfulness. He had arrived with the first fleet in 1788. He had sinned and suffered through those unspeakable early years, until the sense of suffering became as dead as the moral sense, and not a vestige of either remained to him now. But he would recount his crimes with grinning gums, and gloat over unforgotten agonies until there was a writhing man on every ledge but his own. He lay above Tom, who would listen to him by the hour.
According to his own account there was literally nothing this old man had not done or been done to in the early days; he was cannibal, murderer and worse, and his only regrets were for neglected chances of additional crimes. But his spirits never deserted him, and for a cruel man he was singularly good-natured. He had weak and cunning eyes, a perfectly bald head, displaying every criminal cavity and protuberance, and a million wrinkles which, like his mumbling gums, were never still. Yet it was better to hear his wicked laughter than the clanking irons of men who neither slept nor spoke; and the evils endured by the majors iron-gang, which the First Fleeter pooh-poohed with a quaint superiority, did seem less intolerable after one of his yarns.
“Bad rations?” he would croak, when the salt meat was rancid or the fresh meat strong. “Tell ’ee, there’s none on you knows what bad rations is. You should ha’ been at Toongabbie forty year ago; we never had no rations at all, except when a ship come into harbour. Toongabbie would ha’ learned ye! Many’s the time I’ve dragged timber all day, twenty or thirty on us yoked to the one tree like bullocks, and dined off of pounded grass and soup from a native dog. And glad to get it, tell ’ee; we wasn’t pampered and spoilt like you blokes—not at Toongabbie!”
Or perhaps some wretch was groaning from the scourger’s lash. The First Fleeter waxed especially eloquent on all such occasions.
“Call that a flogging?” he would quaver from his ledge. “One little fifty? If we’d had you at Toongabbie you’d know what fledging was. Five, six, an’ even eight bloomin’ hundred I’ve given an’ took. What do you think of that? There was no flies about them floggings, I tell ’ee; no, an’ there was no flies about the hangings either. I’ve seen a man took an’ strung up on the spot for prigging a handful of weevilly biscuits, I have. An’ all the time we was dyin’ by dozens of the bad food an’ the ’ard graft in the ’ot sun. Lord, how we did die! There was a big hole dug; we collected ’em every day an’ pitched ’em in. I mind seeing one man pitched in before the breath was out of ’im. ‘I ain’t dead,’ he says. ‘You will be by sundown,’ says the overseer, ‘an’ do you think we want you about the place till to-morrow, you selfish man?’ There wasn’t no flies about that overseer, either; it was him as killed three men in a fortnight, by overwork at the saw. They just dropped dead at their work. ‘Take it away,’ is all he says, ‘put it in the ground’; an’ you never heard nothing more. No, no,” the old monster would conclude, with his senile chuckle; “there wasn’t no flies about them old days in Toongabbie, I can tell ‘ee. I’d give a bit to have ’ad some o’ this feather-bed gang there; them as thinks they know what ’ardship is!”
The First Fleeter became less loquacious after a time, however, and much less severe upon the luxury of the major’s iron-gang. Honeybone’s shrewd eye was on him, and that of the First Fleeter began to droop and ruminate with a cunning preoccupation that made him quite silent on his ledge. At length, however, he took to leaning over and mumbling to Tom in the stillest hours. And when Tom listened, the old wretch mumbled to others, including Macbeth, who had soon followed his enemy from Castle Sullivan, and been well-nigh as refractory in the stockade. The Scot was in another den at nights, but the First Fleeter made and used his opportunities with characteristic craft. So now there was a new poison in the air, and the virus had come all the way from Toongabbie in the early days.
One of the last to be inoculated, and yet the one who perhaps took most kindly to the process, was a certain sleek, bullet-headed youth, who came to the stockade on a day in mid-winter. In the evening, as Tom was sitting at the mess-table, with bloodshot eyes downcast as usual, he heard his name in a voice he seemed to know.
“Well, Erichsen,” it said, “it’s a small world, ain’t it?”
Tom looked up, and saw the bullet-head nodding at him across the table; but so bloated and debauched was the low face that he was some moments in recognising his old companion of the condemned cell in Newgate.
“Don’t look at a pal like that,” continued Creasey, with a smirk; “you’ve altered worse nor me. No ill-feeling, I say? I was that glad—”
“Silence!” cried the non-commissioned officer on duty. “No talking at your meals, young man, unless you want what-for!”
As for Tom, he had nothing for the newcomer but a surly contempt which he took no trouble to conceal. Creasey, on the other hand, was studiously civil to him on grasping Tom’s reputation in the stockade; and secret circumstances threw them not a little together.
“That’s a biter,” young Butterfield contrived to say to Tom, in a day or two; “where did he know you before?”
“Newgate.”
“He hates you.”
“Let him.”
“I’m jealous he’ll squeak!”
“He might if he dare.”
“How do you know he dursn’t?”
“Too many in it; he’d be torn to little bits. See here, Butter!”
“Yes, Erichsen?”
“You’re to keep out of it.”
“Not unless you do,” said the lad firmly.
“Me! I’m in it up to the neck—and all the better—but you’re different. You’re younger, your time’s all but up, you’ve never had the lash, there’s a chance for you; so give me your word.”
The lad hesitated.
“For my sake!”
The lad gave in, but consoled himself by making up to Creasey, who slept in his hut, and was already deeply implicated in that which the other thus forswore.
All was in readiness; the excitement throughout the gang was intense though invisible; and Erichsen, Macbeth, and Creasey were even readier than their fellows (as behoved good ringleaders), when the unforeseen happened at the critical moment. The general failed them on the field of battle. The First Fleeter fell ill and was removed.
It had been coming on for weeks: the old man, who had made light of the iron-gang, was the first to succumb to its hourly hardships. He was older than he had thought; he had it still in him to blacken and corrode every heart in the gang with his own abundant poison, and that he did, but that was all. His irons became very silent all night long. One morning he tumbled at his work; the next, he was sent over to Maitland, unfettered and in a cart. The gang were at work at the time, and the last Tom saw of the First Fleeter, as he waved his cap in the cart, was his bald bad head and his unconquerable smile. Tom wondered whether the last had not in some degree balanced the first, and been doing a little good for a long time in a land that needed light hearts almost as much as pure ones. Still more he wondered how they would manage without him now.
Before nightfall, however, this departure was succeeded by an arrival as unforeseen. It was that of a curricle containing a solitary individual, who drove both up and down the line of ironed men, with the sunset-light first on one side of his swarthy, black-whiskered face, and then on the other. He was obviously and openly searching for some one among the eighty prisoners, and his failure to find his man was announced by a frown that had in it more of pain and apprehension than of mere annoyance. Meanwhile the major, who was still a comparatively active man, was bearing down upon the intruder with the help of his furled umbrella; and the gentleman in the curricle was very soon asked what the mischief he wanted there.
“Mischief, my good man?” replied a rich deep voice, a little overladen with superior scorn. “Nothing more mischievous, I take it, than a few words with the superintendent of this gang. Perhaps you will be so extremely condescending as to give him my card.”
“I am he,” said the major. “What can I do for you?”
“The honour of glancing at my card,” said the stranger, with a bow as elaborate as his scorn.
“Well, sir?”
“My name may be familiar to you.”
“Never heard it in my life,” replied the major bluntly. “However,” he added, as the other coloured terribly, “I live out of the world, Mr. Daintree, as you perceive.”
Tom was at work quite near, and he heard the name distinctly. He, too, had never heard it before. And yet he had some dim recollection of the face, so that he was watching it intently, and saw the flush with which Daintree very fussily produced a letter.
“That is your misfortune, sir,” Tom heard him retort; and the rap put the major in a good temper on the spot. He sang out for a wardsman to come and take charge of the gentleman’s horses.
“Nevertheless,” continued Daintree, “I take it that even you, sir, are acquainted with the name of the writer of the missive in my hand. I am the bearer, Major Honeybone,” with immense pomposity, “of a letter from my friend, his Excellency Sir George Gipps, the Governor of this Colony!”
“Never met him,” returned the major, with a twinkling eye. “It is my first acquaintance even with his handwriting.” Indeed his Excellency had been not many weeks installed; but it was years since the major had heard tones so rich and periods so round as those of his Excellency’s friend, whom he hereupon escorted with hospitality to his house.
Now in this poor hut, opposite that stockade full of felons, and in that desert place, the major kept a few dozens of admirable wine, and some boxes of excellent cigars. Two of these were alight, and the gentlemen had clinked glasses and taken a sip, before Major Honeybone would permit himself to open his Excellency’s letter. Hardly had he done so when he regretted both wine and cigars. He looked up suddenly, and in wrath, which, however, was somewhat disarmed by the eager light he thus surprised in the visitor’s strong and dusky face.
“What on earth do you want him for? I call this a most monstrous request,” said Major Honeybone; and the last sentence was meant to have come first, until Daintree’s look inverted them.
“Request?” said Daintree, raising his eyebrows slightly.
“Yes, sir, request!” cried the major. “Command, sir, is a thing I don’t take from a gentleman I’ve never had the honour of setting eyes on; and this is one that Sir Richard Bourke, sir, would sooner have died than give!”
Daintree pursed up his eyes. As it was only by patient exercise of two characteristic qualities that he had got the letter at all, so he now saw that he must trust to those two qualities to overcome this other masterful man. He must be diplomatic; he must have patience; he must pick his way where he could not force it; and it was very clear that there would be no forcing this Major Honeybone.
The letter authorised and begged the major to deliver and hand over Thomas Erichsen, Seahorse, then undergoing sentence in the major’s iron-gang, to the bearer, who particularly wished to have him for his assigned body-servant, and undertook to make himself thenceforward responsible for the said convict’s good behaviour. It was an irregular letter; no reason was given for granting such a favour at all. It did say, however, that Mr. Daintree would give his reasons; and with the letter in both hands, as though on the point of tearing it up, the major leant back in his chair and regarded the other with a prolonged and curious stare.
“What are your reasons?” he asked at length.
“He is an innocent man,” replied Daintree impressively.
“A convicted murderer, I understood.”
“Wrongly convicted. I followed his case. Did you?”
“No, sir,” said the major; “they give me quite enough work out here.”
“Well, I did follow it,” the visitor went on. “Between ourselves, Major Honeybone, I did a great deal more than that. The case interested me from the first. I knew something about this poor lad. That knowledge, together with the circumstances of the case, convinced me at the time that he was an innocent man.”
“He isn’t one now,” remarked Major Honeybone.
“I—I am not a pauper, sir,” proceeded Daintree with embarrassment. “I don’t want this to go any further; but you see, I knew something about the boy; and, in short, I found the money for his defence!”
“The dickens you did!” exclaimed the major. “Then you were a friend of his?”
“I am his friend, sir, though he has never seen me.”
“It was a noble thing to do—’pon my soul it was,” observed the major, very much impressed. “Quite quixotic, upon my soul!”
This open admiration hit Daintree in his weakest spot; he leant forward and quoted the irresistible figures in a sudden blaze of self-satisfaction.
“Lor’!” said the major. “You don’t say so. Gadzooks!”
“When I do a thing at all,” remarked Daintree with perfect truth, “I do it with all my heart. Either that or I leave it alone. So I need hardly tell you I didn’t stop short at Serjeant Culliford. No, sir, I went to Lord John Russell himself; it would be an affectation were I to conceal my impression that his lordship’s final decision was not uninfluenced by what I said.”
Major Honeybone was too used to lies not to know the truth when he chanced to hear it. He filled up both glasses and sucked thoughtfully at his cigar. Daintree watched him with an eager eye.
“So he owes his life to you?” said the major at last. “Well, sir, then it is my duty to tell you that he owes you the greatest conceivable grudge!”
Daintree sighed.
“I know what you mean,” said he. “I have heard much from the Principal Superintendent of convicts. I am only afraid I have more to hear from you.”
“Not a great deal,” said the major, shrugging his shoulders. “He has had four floggings here, and one before he came here; but that’s always the way. I have known convicts who have never had the lash, but very few who’ve only had it once. It has a bad effect; but what can you do? I may tell you, sir, now that I think we understand each other, you are not the only man interested in Erichsen. I take an interest in him myself; but there’s no doing anything with him; and there would be no doing anything with any of ’em if I didn’t come down on him as he will insist on deserving. I am sorry for him, I am sorry for you as his friend; but he’s the most dangerous man in my gang, and it would be a piece of madness to set him free. It would amount to that, you know; but Gipps can’t possibly push the matter any further after what I shall tell him; and no more must you, Mr. Daintree—you mustn’t indeed. Come, sir, I can’t say more. I am almost as sorry as you are. He’s a good sportsman!” cried old Honey bone, who was one himself. “I only wish he was hunting with the hounds instead of running with these confounded foxes of convicts!”
Daintree took all this meekly. The major was not a little softened; that was something, but he might be made softer yet. It seemed to Daintree that a sufficiently affecting interview between himself and Erichsen, with Major Honeybone looking on, might have that effect. He pictured the convict in tears upon his knees, he heard his grateful broken utterances. He foresaw moisture even in the major’s shrewd orbs; and he was prepared, if necessary, to go upon his own knees to crave the interview.
It was not necessary. Honeybone shrugged his shoulders, and left the room with Daintree sitting very still in his chair; he was not so still when the door shut, however. He sprang up and looked in a glass; he sat down again, wiping his forehead and his lips, and shrinking from what he courted, like a swain. He had taken deep note of Erichsen at his trial. That honest, fearless, guiltless gaze, he could see it still; yet he had sought it in vain half an hour since in the iron-gang.
A soldier entered with a lighted lamp. Daintree pushed back his chair a little, and was kept waiting no longer. Chains jingled outside, and in another moment the convict was ushered in by a sentry under arms, followed by the major, who shut the door.
“Was this necessary?” whispered Daintree, glancing at the fixed bayonet with a shudder.
“Quite,” replied the major aloud. “You don’t know your man.”
He did not indeed: the fearlessness remained, and that was all.
Daintree was speaking nervously, forcibly, with none of his habitual affectations, with little of his customary flow. He was saying he had taken an interest in the case at home in England, and had all along believed in the prisoner’s innocence. The prisoner stopped him at that word.
“There’s only one man living who thinks so,” said he. “I know now where I’ve seen you before. It was at my trial. You are the man.”
“What man?”
“The one that saved my life. My worst friend!”
The hoarse and surly voice stabbed Daintree to the heart. He saw Honeybone look at him, and recalled the major’s very similar words. He started up and offered Erichsen his hand.
“Take it away,” growled Tom. “Say what you want with me, for God’s sake!”
No; it was not Daintree’s ideal interview. As little did it resemble the meeting with his benefactor which Tom had once pictured, and even vainly solicited, but all so long ago—in that other life—that upon him the contrast was lost. All he still remembered was that he had once imagined himself indebted to this person for the blessed gift of life; all he now perceived was his mistake, and what a malignant curse that blessed gift had proved. Not that he resented it any more. He no longer resented anything in the world. Even this person’s kind, well-meant, emotional remarks moved him to no stronger feeling than one of slight impatience: nor was he listening when a look, an intonation, a pause, informed him that he had been asked a question.
“Say it again,” said Tom.
“I want you for my assigned servant,” repeated Daintree, disregarding both the decision and the presence of Major Honeybone, who sat there quite enjoying the prospect of further opposition. “I want to be your friend—to take you away from this ghastly place—to sponge the very memory of it out of your mind. The Governor agrees to it—I have his written leave. Will you come with me, Erichsen? Will you come? Will you come?”
“You’re very good,” said Tom. “I prefer to stop where I am.”
“What?” cried both gentlemen at once. The major looked personally aggrieved.
“I prefer the iron-gang.”
“To my house—my protection—my friendship?”
Horror and mortification were in the rich, strong tones, and in the flushed and swarthy face.
“I prefer the iron-gang,” repeated Tom; but his voice was weaker—he noticed it himself—and with the next breath was crying savagely that he would not go, that he would stop where he was, and who was Daintree to come interfering there? A lot he minded what the Governor or what fifty Governors said; there he was, and there he meant to stick; no power on earth should shift him out of that.
“Oh!” said the major. “No power, eh?”
“Short of a file of red-coats, which you can’t spare.”
“Sentry, remove that man!”
The rest of the gang were at supper. Tom clanked in and sat down with a rattle. He nodded to one or two desperate kindred spirits, half proudly, as much as to say, “All right, my lads; I’m not the man to desert his pals; I’m true game to those that are true game to me—I’m that if I’m nothing else.” Those indeed were the words in his heart; but nobody answered his nod, only some irons jingled, where Creasey had reached out under the table, and given Macbeth a kick.
As they were all shuffling out of the mess-shed, Butter took a pill of paper from his mouth and pressed it into Tom’s hand. Tom unrolled it on his ledge, and furtively read it while the sentry still stood with his lantern on the threshold.
These eleven words:—
“All up since fleater went Mac and Cresy mean to squeek.”
Hardly had he deciphered them when a wardsman thrust in his head and summoned Erichsen to the major’s quarters.
“They’ve been quick about it,” thought Tom, as another wardsman joined them on the way.
The major looked very stern and strong. Daintree was drawing on his gloves. Tom thought he recognised the little heap of clothes upon the floor; the trousers were blood-stained still.
“Now, sir!” cried the major with a glittering eye. “I think you said that no power on earth would shift you out of this? Off with those irons, men, and he shall see!”
Through the black window glowed the curricle lamps.