Robbery under Arms Part 67

And how did the others get on, those that had their lives bound up with ours, so that we couldn't be hurt without their bleeding, almost in their hearts?--that is, mother's bled to death, at any rate; when she heard of Jim's death and my being taken it broke her heart clean; she never held her head up after. Aileen told me in her letter she used to nurse his baby and cry over him all day, talking about her dear boy Jim.

She was laid in the burying-ground at St. Kilda. As to Aileen, she had long vowed herself to the service of the Virgin. She knew that she was committing sin in pledging herself to an earthly love. She had been punished for her sin by the death of him she loved, and she had settled in her mind to go into the convent at Soubiaca, where she should be able to wear out her life in prayer for those of her blood who still lived, as well as for the souls of those who lay in the little burying-ground on the banks of the far Warrego.

Jeanie settled to stop in Melbourne. She had money enough to keep her comfortable, and her boy would be brought up in a different style from his father.

As for Gracey, she sent me a letter in which she said she was like the bird that could only sing one song. She would remain true to me in life and death. George was very kind, and would never allow any one to speak harshly of his former friends. We must wait and make the best of it.

So I was able, you see, to get bits of news even in a condemned cell, from time to time, about the outside world. I learned that Wall and Hulbert and Moran and another fellow were still at large, and following up their old game. Their time, like ours, was drawing short, though.

Well, this has been a thundering long yarn, hasn't it? All my whole life I seem to have lived over again. It didn't take so long in the telling; it's a month to-day since I began. And this life itself has reeled away so quick, it hardly seems a dozen years instead of seven-and-twenty since it began. It won't last much longer. Another week and it will be over. There's a fellow to be strung up before me, for murdering his wife. The scoundrel, I wonder how he feels?

I've had visitors too; some I never thought to see inside this gaol wall. One day who should come in but Mr. Falkland and his daughter.

There was a young gentleman with them that they told me was an English lord, a baronet, or something of that sort, and was to be married to Miss Falkland. She stood and looked at me with her big innocent eyes, so pitiful and kind-like. I could have thrown myself down at her feet.

Mr. Falkland talked away, and asked me about this and that. He seemed greatly interested. When I told him about the last fight, and of poor Jim being shot dead, and Starlight dying alongside the old horse, the tears came into Miss Falkland's eyes, and she cried for a bit, quite feeling and natural.

Mr. Falkland asked me all about the robbery at Mr. Knightley's, and took down a lot of things in his pocket-book. I wondered what he did that for.

When they said good-bye Mr. Falkland shook hands with me, and said 'he hoped to be able to do some good for me, but not to build anything on the strength of it.'

Then Miss Falkland came forward and held out her beautiful hand to me--to me, as sure as you live--like a regular thoroughbred angel, as she always was. It very nigh cooked me. I felt so queer and strange, I couldn't have spoken a word to save my life.

Sir George, or whatever his name was, didn't seem to fancy it over much, for he said--

'You colonists are strange people. Our friend here may think himself highly favoured.'

Miss Falkland turned towards him and held up her head, looking like a queen, as she was, and says she--

'If you had met me in the last place where I saw this man and his brother, you would not wonder at my avowing my grat.i.tude to both of them. I should despise myself if I did not. Poor Jim saved my life on one occasion, and on another, but far more dreadful day, he--but words, mere words, can never express my deep thankfulness for his n.o.ble conduct, and were he here now I would tell him so, and give him my hand, if all the world stood by.'

Sir George didn't say anything after that, and she swept out of the cell, followed by Mr. Falkland and him. It was just as well for him to keep a quiet tongue in his head. I expect she was a great heiress as well as a great beauty, and people of that sort, I've found, mostly get listened to when they speak. When the door shut I felt as if I'd seen the wings of an angel flit through it, and the prison grew darker and darker like the place of lost souls.

Chapter 51

One day I was told that a lady wanted to see me. When the door of the cell opened who should walk in but Aileen! I didn't look to have seen her. I didn't bother my head about who was coming. What did it matter, as I kept thinking, who came or who went for the week or two that was to pa.s.s before the day? Yes, the day, that Thursday, when poor d.i.c.k Marston would walk over the threshold of his cell, and never walk over one again.

The warder--him that stopped with me day and night--every man in the condemned cell has to be watched like that--stepped outside the door and left us together. We both looked at one another. She was dressed all in black, and her face was that pale I hardly knew her at first. Then she said, 'Oh, d.i.c.k--my poor d.i.c.k! is this the way we meet?' and flings herself into my arms. How she cried and sobbed, to be sure. The tears ran down her cheeks like rain, and every time the leg-irons rattled she shook and trembled as if her heart was breaking.

I tried to comfort her; it was no use.

'Let me cry on, d.i.c.k,' she said; 'I have not shed a tear since I first heard the news--the miserable truth that has crushed all our vain hopes and fancies; my heart has nearly burst for want of relief. This will do me good. To think--to think that this should be the end of all! But it is just! I cannot dare to doubt Heaven's mercy. What else could we expect, living as we all did--in sin--in mortal sin? I am punished rightly.'

She told me all about poor mother's death. She never held up her head after she heard of Jim's death. She never said a hard word about any one. It was G.o.d's will, she thought, and only for His mercy things might have gone worse. The only pleasure she had in her last days was in petting Jim's boy. He was a fine little chap, and had eyes like his father, poor old Jim! Then Aileen broke down altogether, and it was a while before she could speak again.

Jeanie was the same as she had been from the first, only so quiet they could hardly know how much she felt. She wouldn't leave the little cottage where she had been so happy with Jim, and liked to work in the chair opposite to where Jim used to sit and smoke his pipe in the evenings. Most of her friends lived in Melbourne, and she reckoned to stay there for the rest of her life.

As to father, they had never heard a word from him--hardly knew whether he was dead or alive. There was some kind of report that Warrigal had been seen making towards Nulla Mountain, looking very weak and miserable, on a knocked-up horse; but they did not know whether it was true or false.

Poor Aileen stopped till we were all locked up for the night. She seemed as if she couldn't bear to leave me. She had no more hope or tie in life, she said. I was the only one of her people she was likely to see again, and this was the last time--the last time.

'Oh, d.i.c.k! oh, my poor lost brother,' she said, 'how clearly I seem to see all things now. Why could we not do so before? I have had my sinful worldly dream of happiness, and death has ended it. When I heard of his death and Jim's my heart turned to stone. All the strength I have shall be given to religion from this out. I can ease my heart and mortify the flesh for the good of my soul. To G.o.d--to the Holy Virgin--who hears the sorrows of such as me, I can pray day and night for their souls'

welfare--for mine, for yours. And oh, d.i.c.k! think when that day, that dreadful day, comes that Aileen is praying for you--will pray for you till her own miserable life ends. And now good-bye; we shall meet on this earth no more. Pray--say that you will pray--pray now that we may meet in heaven.'

She half drew me to my knees. She knelt down herself on the cold stone floor of the cell; and I--well--I seemed to remember the old days when we were both children and used to kneel down by mother's bed, the three of us, Aileen in the middle and one of us boys on each side. The old time came back to me, and I cried like a child.

I wasn't ashamed of it; and when she stood up and said, 'Good-bye--good-bye, d.i.c.k,' I felt a sort of rus.h.i.+ng of the blood to my head, and all my wounds seemed as if they would break out again. I very near fell down, what with one thing and another. I sat myself down on my bed, and I hid my face in my hands. When I looked up she was gone.

After that, day after day went on and I scarcely kept count, until somehow I found out it was the last week. They partly told me on the Sunday. The parson--a good, straight, manly man he was--he had me told for fear I should go too close up to it, and not have time to prepare.

Prepare! How was a man like me to prepare? I'd done everything I'd a mind to for years and years. Some good things--some bad--mostly bad.

How was I to repent? Just to say I was sorry for them. I wasn't that particular sorry either--that was the worst of it. A deal of the old life was dashed good fun, and I'd not say, if I had the chance, that I wouldn't do just the same over again.

Sometimes I felt as if I ought to understand what the parson tried to hammer into my head; but I couldn't do anything but make a jumble of it. It came natural to me to do some things, and I did them. If I had stopped dead and bucked at father's wanting me and Jim to help duff those weaners, I really believe all might have come right. Jim said afterwards he'd made up his mind to have another try at getting me to join with George Storefield in that fencing job. After that we could have gone into the outside station work with him--just the thing that would have suited the pair of us; and what a grand finish we might have made of it if we ran a waiting race; and where were we now?--Jim dead, Aileen dead to the world, and me to be hanged on Thursday, poor mother dead and broken-hearted before her time. We couldn't have done worse. We might, we must have, done better.

I did repent in that sort of way of all we'd done since that first wrong turn. It's the wrong turn-off that makes a man lose his way; but as for the rest I had only a dull, heavy feeling that my time was come, and I must make the best of it, and meet it like a man.

So the day came. The last day! What a queer feeling it was when I lay down that night, that I should never want to sleep again, or try to do it. That I had seen the sun set--leastways the day grow dark--for the last time; the very last time.

Somehow I wasn't that much in fear of it as you might think; it was strange like, but made one pull himself together a bit. Thousands and millions of people had died in all sorts of ways and shapes since the beginning of the world. Why shouldn't I be able to go through with it like another?

I was a long time lying and thinking before I thought of sleeping. All the small, teeny bits of a man's life, as well as the big, seemed to come up before me as I lay there--the first things I could recollect at Rocky Flat; then the pony; mother a youngish woman; father always hard-looking, but so different from what he came to be afterwards.

Aileen a little girl, with her dark hair falling over her shoulders; then a grown woman, riding her own horse, and full of smiles and fun; then a pale, weeping woman all in black, looking like a mourner at a funeral. Jim too, and Starlight--now galloping along through the forest at night--laughing, drinking, enjoying themselves at Jonathan Barnes's, with the bright eyes of Bella and Maddie s.h.i.+ning with fun and devilment.

Then both of them lying dead at the flat by Murrynebone Creek--Starlight with the half-caste making his wild moan over him; Jim, quiet in death as in life, lying in the gra.s.s, looking as if he had slid off his horse in that hot weather to take a banje; and now, no get away, the rope--the hangman!

I must have gone to sleep, after all, for the sun was s.h.i.+ning into the cell when I stirred, and I could see the chains on my ankles that I had worn all these weary weeks. How could I sleep? but I had, for all that.

It was daylight; more than that--sunrise. I listened, and, sure enough, I heard two or three of the bush-birds calling. It reminded me of being a boy again, and listening to the birds at dawn just before it was time to get up. When I was a boy!--was I ever a boy? How long was it ago--and now--O my G.o.d, my G.o.d! That ever it should have come to this! What am I waiting for to hear now? The tread of men; the smith that knocks the irons off the limbs that are so soon to be as cold as the jangling chains. Yes! at last I hear their footsteps--here they come!

The warder, the blacksmith, the parson, the head gaoler, just as I expected. The smith begins to cut the rivets. Somehow they none of them look so solemn as I expected. Surely when a man is to be killed by law, choked to death in cold blood, people might look a bit serious. Mind you, I believe men ought to be hanged. I don't hold with any of that rot that them as commits murder shouldn't pay for it with their own lives.

It's the only way they can pay for it, and make sure they don't do it again. Some men can stand anything but the rope. Prison walls don't frighten them; but Jack Ketch does. They can't gammon him.

'Knock off his irons quick,' says Mr. Fairleigh, the parson; 'he will not want them again just yet.'

'I didn't think you would make a joke of that sort, sir,' says I. 'It's a little hard on a man, ain't it? But we may as well take it cheerful, too.'

'Tell him all, Mr. Strickland,' he says to the head gaoler. 'I see he can bear it now.'

'Prisoner Richard Marston,' says the gaoler, standing up before me, 'it becomes my duty to inform you that, owing to representations made in your favour by the Hon. Mr. Falkland, the Hon. Mr. Storefield, and other gentlemen who have interested themselves in your case, setting forth the facts that, although mixed up with criminals and known to be present when the escort and various other cases of robbery under arms have taken place, wherein life has been taken, there is no distinct evidence of your having personally taken life. On the other hand, in several instances, yourself, with the late James Marston and the deceased person known as Starlight, have aided in the protection of life and property.

The Governor and the Executive Council have therefore graciously been pleased to commute your sentence of death to that of fifteen years'

imprisonment.'