CHAPTER XXXVI
SIDE-LIGHTS
“You won’t condescend?” said a scornful voice.
“Since you have made up your mind, why should I?”
“It is only your word that I ask: your solemn word to me that you are innocent.”
“If you don’t believe in me, what’s the use of giving you my solemn word? I can’t prove it, and never could; the evidence was too strong.”
“It would have been stronger still—”
The voice stopped short.
“Well?”
“If I had told them all you said to me—that very night—that very hour!”
The voice was no longer scornful. Even to Peggy it seemed to falter and to tremble with the pent-up agony of years. But Tom’s tone did not change.
“I know that,” he said bitterly. “I have always known that you had more reason than anybody in the world to think me guilty. Yet I would rather you had thought me innocent and let me die than saved my life to show me what you still think after all these months. My cup has been pretty full, but that’s the bitterest drop!”
“And still you won’t deny it,” persisted the girl. “I am ready to take your word—yet you will not give it.”
“What’s the use?” he asked. “What difference could it make—even supposing you believed me?”
“All the difference to me,” was the quick but low reply; “it would alter everything —everything. Can’t you see that it must?”
“No; it is too late to alter anything at all.”
Yet his voice shook in its turn.
“Too late? Too late?” cried the girl wildly. “Nothing is too late—if you are innocent. Speak, Tom! Why don’t you speak? Oh, Tom, it would alter all our lives … yet you will not speak!”
“Because I cannot!” he cried out. “Because I—I am not an innocent man. I am not—I am not—I am not! And now leave me; leave me, I say, for God’s sake! Never you pity me again!”
Almost from a shout his voice died down to a whisper; the last words were hardly audible outside. But they were followed by a silence so heavy that Peggy O’Brien heard herself breathing, and thought she must be heard within. And then came the sound of light, unsteady steps retreating; and nothing more; not another sound within.
The silence appalled Peggy. At last, when she could no longer bear it, she crept over the soft sand to the mouth of the shed, and peered round the corner. He was standing within as the other woman had left him—he had never stirred. His open hands were still extended in some unfinished gesture. A glimmer of sunshine glanced off the waters and pointed the cruel contrast between the lined face and the yellow hair thrown proudly back from it: the one so aged, the other so boyish. And his eyes—they seemed still to be pouring tenderness and strength upon the other woman—they never saw this one at all.
She stole away, loving him more than ever—but must not the other one too? She had seen the same look—had won it—but his crime made a difference to her. To Peggy it made none: she neither knew nor cared what it was, and there lay her slight advantage. It was too slight. She loved him, but so must the other. Her love lay near to hate; she would see if she could not push the other woman’s nearer yet.
She reached the house, and nobody was in the way. Lady Starkie was writing letters in the breakfast-room. Peggy was soon listening at the other woman’s door—listening to her sobs. She compressed her lips and nodded to herself with splendid confidence. At length there fell a silence, in which Peggy knocked and entered.
“I beg pardon, miss, but was Thomas not in the boat-shed? It’s sorry I am if I sent ye on a fool’s errand—savin’ your presence, miss!”
“No; he was there.”
“An’ did he refuse ye?”
“No—I—changed my mind.”
“Glory be to God, miss. ’Tis meself would let ’m know ’t if he gave any of his sauce to the masther’s lady. I’d have no more to do wid ’m at all!”
Claire turned pale.
“You would have no more to do with him?” said she very slowly. “I don’t understand you.”
“Sure, an’ how would you? He wouldn’t be afther tellin’ a lady like you.”
“Telling me what, my good girl?” She was trembling now.
“He came to the factory last week, miss; ye’ll niver guess why—to choose a wife!”
“A wife!”
“An’ it’s me he chose … you ask the masther when he comes back!”
The master came back in time for lunch. He found Claire on the verandah, with a white face and an angry eye, loudly declaring she felt another being.
Tom heard and saw her, and waited infamously for the first time. He could not understand it at all. She had left the boat-shed with a very different mien. What could she have found out since then? That he had purposely misled her for her own good? That was impossible. Yet he knew so well from her proud, averted face that Claire had discovered something fresh against him. Whatever that discovery might be, however, it was destined not to be her last that day.
They were still at luncheon when Peggy burst into the room.
“Nat Sullivan an’ the thraps!” she gasped. “It’s afther Tom they are, an’ I tould ’m he absconded last night. Oh, sir, say that same, for Ginger’s there too, an’ there’s the blood in their eyes!”
Here was a bombshell, from the least expected quarter, at the least expected time. Tom felt the blood rush to his face—draining his heart—but he stood his ground until Daintree ordered him out of the way of the windows. Claire sat motionless. Lady Starkie was less calm. But Daintree rose up from the table, with perfect but ostentatious sangfroid, and he patted Peggy on the back as a party of horsemen rode in front of the verandah.
“Quite right, my girl!” cried he. “They shall not lay a finger on him, never you fear. He has me at his back, and so have you.” With that he strutted through the French windows, flourishing his napkin and quite delighted at the prospect of a little simultaneous display of power, generosity and laudable cunning, before so select an audience.
“Sorry to trouble you, sir,” said a voice, “but I believe you have an assigned convict here of the name of Thomas Erichsen?”
“What name?” cried Lady Starkie.
“Hush, aunt!” whispered Claire.
“I have not,” said Daintree.
“You have not?” roared Nat Sullivan himself.
“I have not,” repeated Daintree blandly. “I had—but he has absconded from my service.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“Any notion where he went?”
“Not the least.”
“And you don’t much care, eh?”
“Not a bit. May I ask a question in my turn?”
“Surely, sir.”
“Do you want him for the Castle Sullivan business?”
“We do.”
“I thought so. I’ve heard the idea. But who will you get to swear to him as having been there?”
“This man here,” said Nat. And Tom, in the background, listened curiously; he was cool enough now, and his air shameless; it was assumed for Claire’s benefit.
“I’m not so sure,” said the voice of Ginger, in a rather dejected tone.
“You were sure enough in your cups!”
“That’s another thing.”
“Well,” said the constable, “he’s left this, anyhow. No use our wasting any more time here, Mr. Sullivan. Good morning, sir. I’m afraid he’s given us the slip again.”
“But not for long,” cried Nat. “I mean to catch him and to hang him yet!”
They had ridden away. Daintree had re-entered the room, puffed up and smiling. Tom also had a kind of smile, and Peggy was gazing at him with shining eyes, when Claire rose from the table and swept out of the room without a word.
Daintree looked at Lady Starkie in dismay, and hastily ordered the servants to withdraw. Her ladyship rose also.
“Can you wonder at it?” she cried.
“At what?”
“Your bride disliking to be waited on by convicts. And—and—did I understand that young man’s name was Erichsen?”
“Yes.”
“The murderer of Captain Blaydes?”
“No.”
“Who then?”
“His reputed murderer. He is an innocent man. You know I thought so at the time; you know, I believe, how I backed my opinion to the tune of several hundreds? I’m backing it still, Lady Starkie, I’m backing it still—that’s all.” It was not. He went on to tell of all that Erichsen had gone through, to his knowledge, in the settlement; how he was trying, in his small way, to make up to the poor fellow for the shocking injustice of his fate; and yet how even now the unlucky wretch went in danger of his neck, as Lady Starkie had seen for herself, and all for siding with some bushrangers under circumstances of extraordinary compulsion and provocation combined. Of all this James Daintree spoke so feelingly, and with such an obviously earnest purpose, that Lady Starkie was quite moved, and undertook to use her influence with Claire in the matter of the convict servants.
But it was of no avail.
Daintree drove the ladies into Sydney, and drove back alone late at night. Tom awaited him, and as they walked from the stables to the house, the master’s arm ran affectionately through that of the man.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “it grieves me more than I can say, but I cannot go against my young wife where there is apparent right upon her side. She will have no convicts in her house. You and I will be compelled to part.”
“It was bound to come,” was Tom’s reply. “I am only thankful it didn’t come before you gave me back a little of what I have lost. I shall be grateful to you till my dying hour!”
“Oh, but I’ve not done with you yet! I must have you out of this country by hook or crook—that I’m bent upon. That brute Sullivan is actually at the Pulteney. It seems his overseer never meant to split on you, for some reason; but he did so when drunk, and now the other holds him to it. Until we spirit you out of the country you’ll never be safe.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Tom. “I would rather stay where I am and take my chance.”
He was thinking of Daintree and his wife; even through his gratitude he was thinking of that darker side.