'It must have been that and your resemblance to my mother impressed me. I
was impressed without consciousness of the reason.'
'Miss Woodrow noticed the resemblance, and when I heard your name and
your age I thought it very likely that you were my brother. When I saw
you that night in the shanty I was almost convinced. These satisfied me.'
He indicated the scattered articles upon the table.
Jim made no demonstration; he sat with his eyes fixed upon the miniature,
still dazed by the blow. There was something in his had--something he
wished to know, but his ideas were all out of control. The thought
centred with a shock.
'Good God, no!' he cried, clutching Ryder with a nerveless hand. 'They
hanged my brother!'
Ryder's face was perfectly bloodless; it looked cold. He shook his head
slowly.
'I was condemned to be hanged. They altered it to transportation for
life.'
'But they all believed--'
'Mother must have known. It would have made little difference. The horror
of it was a little greater than the horror of hanging. It probably gave
her no comfort.'
'She died of it all.' Jim spoke without volition. 'Yes,' responded Ryder
dully. 'She was the kind of woman who would. I was transported, and for
all those years I lived in hell.'
'For murder!' said Jim sharply.
Ryder shook his head again. His voice was quite even. 'I did no murder.
There was no murder done.'
'The body--what of the body?'
'There was none. The man for whose murder I was condemned still lives.
Stony is the man!'
'Stony!' Jim peered into the other's face again. 'Stony!' he cried. 'It's
not possible. You are lying. It's utterly incredible. Stony! Then this
explains?' He did not doubt even while the words of unbelief were on his
lips.
'This explains. My coming upon you that night in the Black Forest was not
so extraordinary as it seemed. I was following you both. I had been to
Melbourne on Stony's track, having caught a glimpse of him one night at
Ballarat. I ascertained that he had started for Forest Creek. Meanwhile
Mrs. Macdougal and Miss Woodrow had told me of you. It was reasonable to
assume that you also had started for the field everybody was talking of.
At our first meeting I did not see you: I was too deeply interested in
Mr. Stony.'
'Stony was not the name.'
'Stony is an assumed name. Cannon is his real name--Peter Cannon.'
'That is the name. But I cannot understand. My head fails me. I am
utterly bewildered!'
'You'll hear Stony's story? He is in his tent.'
'Not now. You have overwhelmed: me. For God's sake, give me time to
straighten things out!'
Jim sat in silence for some minutes, but the excitement lingered. He
drifted into questions, and plied the other like a cross-examining lawyer
eager to trap a witness; but Ryder knew every detail of the family
history. He told Jim of a birthmark on his own body. He described the
furnishing of the home in Chisley much as it remained within Jim's
memory.
'You have not mentioned our sister,' he said.
'She killed herself.' Jim spoke with blunt brutality. He had no energy
for equivocation.
Ryder accepted this piece of news in the spirit of a man steeled to the
keenest strokes of Fate.
'She was a beautiful girl,' he said. 'I remember I loved her dearly.'
'You speak as if it were fifty years ago.'
'I have been in hell since, I tell you.'
Jim looked closely into his brother's face again, but it baffled him; it
betrayed no more feeling than a stone.
'Why have you divulged this now?' he asked.
'You forced it from me. I did not expect you to return. I saw you playing
cards at the shanty. But it is as well. I should have told you later.'
'There is something behind?'
'Much; but till you have heard Stony tell his part I shall say no more.
And for the present let this be our secret.'
'Burton may come in at any moment.'
'Good-night, then.'
'No; I'll go with you. I cannot face Mike in this condition. He would
think me mad.'
'To Stony's tent?'
'If you like. In Heaven's name, man, why are you so cold? Why am I like a
stunned brute? We are brothers. We may shake hands.'
Ryder made no advance. 'Better hear the story out,' he said.
It was a two-mile walk from where Jim and Mike were now camped to Stony's
tent, and the hour was midnight. The two men walked in silence, Jim with
his head bowed, racked with nervous excitement, his mind running from
point to point, grasping nothing wholly, seeing nothing clearly, the
other erect and calm. When the tent was reached Ryder entered
unceremoniously, and, striking a match, looked about him for a candle.
There was a slush-lamp on a box by the bunk, and this he lit. Jim saw
Stony start up in bed, and stare at the intruder with a look of mortal
terror.
'I have brought you a visitor,' said Ryder.
The apprehension faded from the hatter's face when he Jim.
'A nice hour!' he grumbled.
'I have not studied your convenience,' answered Ryder. 'Here is the man
to whom you are to tell the story of Richard Done and Peter Cannon. Tell
it briefly, as you told it to me.'
Ryder seated himself on a block near the tent entrance, his back half
turned to the others, and neither spoke nor moved throughout the
narration. Stony looked from one to the other, and then commenced his
story. He told it in a monotonous voice, with a dull face and eyes heavy
with drink.
'We were always enemies, Dick Done and I--enemies as boys at school at
Chisley, fighting over everything, picking at each other from morn till
night. As young chaps we remained enemies. It seemed as if God or the
devil had sent us to plague each other. Our enmity grew with us. In
manhood we were as bitter as death. Then the woman came. We both wanted
her. It was just natural of us to get set on the same girl. She liked
him--she didn't care a snap of her fingers for me; but I didn't give up.
I followed her, plagued her, persecuted her, and hated Done worse than
poison. With all my soul I hated him! Of course, we quarrelled over her,
and Done went so far as to talk of killing. He didn't mean it, perhaps,
but it told against him later. One bright night I came on him and her
sitting on Harry's Crag. 'Twasn't an accident. I'd been told they'd gone
down to the sea, and I followed. I interfered, furious at heart, but
making a show of civility, knowing that would madden him. He was soon up
in arms. He tried to drive me off, struck me. I used my stick, and we
fought there and then--fought like madmen on the cliff edge, two hundred
feet above the sea. The girl, frightened almost to death, ran away. Done
got my stick from me, and we fought with our hands. He could beat me at
that game, and at length struck me a blow that stunned me; then he left
me lying there, and went after the girl.'
Stony paused for a moment, and, drawing a bottle from the back of his
bunk, took a long drink. Then his eyes wandered to Ryder again, and he
went on:
'When I came to I was alone. I crept a little further from the edge of
the cliff, and lay down again. I was pretty badly knocked about; my nose
was bleeding freely. Presently, moving my hand, I struck a knife--his
knife! It was closed. I opened it, looking at the long blade. The idea
had already formed in my mind. I smeared the blade with blood, and
dropped the knife, open as it was, over the cliff, being careful that it
should fall on the ledge about twenty feet below. Then I smeared blood
upon the brink, tore a scrap from my coat, and left it there, throwing
the coat with the hat into the sea. I was never seen in Chisley again. I
walked all that night. In London I read of the arrest of Done on a charge
of murder. They had found my hat and my coat and the knife. The girl had
told her story. Done was condemned to death; and then I stowed away in an
Australian boat, and was allowed to work my passage out I thought Richard
Done had been hanged till I saw him that night at the camp in the Bush.
The man sitting there is Richard Done.'
Stony fell back upon his grimy pillow again, and was silent; his eyes
were fixed upon Ryder, but at that moment he had more to fear from Jim,
who looked down upon him, fierce with disgust, his fingers itching to be
at the thin neck of the brute.
'Let us get out of this!' he gasped.
'Have you no questions to ask?' said Ryder quietly.
'None, none! And when I think of what this dog has brought upon me and
mine I feel murderous.'
Ryder left the tent without another word, and Jim followed him. As they
walked away, Done was stirred with deep sympathy for his companion.
Ryder's reiteration of the words, 'I have been in hell!' recurred to him.
He felt that there were years of suffering and a fathomless hatred behind
the phrase, and his blood ran hotly.
'I wonder you have not killed that man!' he blurted after a few minutes'
silence. 'I regret ever having raised a hand to prevent it.'
'I needed him,' answered Ryder.
'You intend to establish your innocence?'
For the first time that night a smile moved Ryder's stark lips--a hard,
mirthless smile.
'No,' he said; 'where's the use?'
'How is it you are free?' asked Jim with surprise. This view had not
occurred to him before.
They were standing between the stunted and twisted gums. The Bush here
was spare and dwarfed, and the moonlight shone clearly upon Ryder's face.
'I am an escaped convict!' he replied
A bitter curse leapt from Done's tongue. He felt himself bound to this
man by a common wrong, a wrong that had clouded with misery the greater
part of their two lives.
'You may be retaken,' he said.
'I may, but I do not think it likely.'
At that moment recollection flashed upon Jim. He recalled the adventure
with Long Aleck in the Bourke Street bar, and the robbery of Brigalow,
the gold-buyer, at Diamond Gully. His hand was upon Ryder again: he gazed
at him with a new apprehension.
'Sit,' he said. Ryder seated himself on a stump by the side of the young
man, and Jim continued:
'You say Miss Woodrow noticed a strong resemblance between us. Others
have remarked it.'
'I am not surprised. There is no difference in our faces but that which
years have made.'
'It was in Melbourne on the night of my arrival. I was attacked in a bar
by a man who mistook me for Solo.'
The brothers looked into each other's eyes for some little time, Jim
anxiously, Ryder with no appearance of concern in his strong, handsome
face.
'I am the man they call Solo.'
'Solo the robber!' Instinctively Jim had moved back from the other, but
Ryder took no notice of the action.
'My boy,' he said, 'there are two kinds of men--the active criminal and
the passive. I am fairly active.'
'But the blind folly of it--here, where fortunes are made so easily!'
'Are they? You have had a bit of luck. There are thousands on the rushes
who do not make tucker. In any case I could not afford to place myself
directly under the supervision of the troopers. Not that I had any weak
desire to earn an honest living, by the way.'
'What are you hoping for? Where is it all leading?' Jim felt an emotion
of despair.
'Perhaps you would rather hear no more to-night.'
'I must hear all. For God's sake, speak!'
'I have been in hell. For fifteen years I remained in the convict
prisons. It might have been fifteen centuries, an eternity. Everything
beyond is so distant that my youth seems a mere dot in the perspective.'
Ryder was talking in a clear, even, unemotional voice.
'I cannot hope to give you anything approaching a true idea of the horror
of that life. I know I can only faintly comprehend it myself now. Taken
from happiness, a comparative boy, I was plunged into a state of absolute
torment, an existence of brutalizing labour, ceaseless cruelty, and
blackest infamy. I herded with men who had degenerated from criminals
into brutes under the influence of the infamous system. Those fifteen
years served to burn out of me most of the fine emotions and sentiments
on which civilized men pride themselves, and then, during the blackest
year of all, a wild craving to preserve something of humanity arose
within me. That was my salvation. I had always before me the hope of
escape. I fought now cease to retain some qualities of clean manhood,
that I might appear amongst fellow as a man, and not like one of the
lowering monsters by whom I was surrounded--men upon whose every feature
and limb were stamped the repulsive brands of the lag. During that first
period I maintained an attitude of fierce revolt, then, recognising my
helplessness, I brought cunning into play, and practised dissimulation
night and day. This saved me in some measure, but the ghastly life
continued year after year, and I was thirty-eight before a reasonable
chance of escape presented itself. My plans had been perfected, and when
the opportunity came I seized it, with the resolution of a man for whom
there was only one alternative to liberty--death.'
Jim never took his eyes from Ryder's; he sat as if fascinated by the
ivory-pale face of his companion.
'I had one friend in Hobart Town, a freed convict named Wainewright. He
provided me with the clothes of a gentleman. The beard I wore, and which
has since served me as a disguise in my many enterprises, was given to me
in the first place by Wainewright. To perfect that beard and destroy
every semblance of artificiality, I had worked at it for three years in
the cunning, patient way old prisoners toil at such a task. Wainewright
helped me to get to the mainland, and I was safe, with a forged
ticket-of-leave in my pocket in case the marks of the chains should be
discovered by prying official eyes.'
'Did you make any effort to live honestly?' asked Jim.
'Almost my first action on reaching the neighbour hood of Melbourne was
to bail-up a prominent resident, whom I robbed. That act afforded me
absolute joy. He was a decent, orderly citizen, a pillar of the State, a
powerful upholder of the law. No robbery I have since committed has given
me quite the same delight. I stole then because I needed money. I rob now
because I am a keen sportsman, and that is the particular sport I affect.
Possibly you would not appreciate the pleasure of the game; you have not
had the humbug of the world eaten out of your heart with live flame.
Having wilfully exposed itself to me, and translated my respect for it
into a magnificent hatred, society cannot reasonably expect to find me
docile. I prey upon society.'
'It will avenge itself.'
'True, it may. Robbery under arms is a hanging matter, but I have
graduated in a marvellous school for cunning, and have perfect
confidence.'
'Yet you place yourself in my hands. What can the ties of blood count for
between us two? For as long as I can remember I've thought of you only as
something evil hovering over the door, silencing the home, darkening
life.'
'I counted on finding in you a mind not wholly at variance with my own.
What those two women told me gave me some insight into your character. I
perceived that at least the flame had scorched the bloom from your soul.'
'Here I am a new man. I have known happiness, I have tasted love, and
made friends with good men. Here I can live!'
Ryder looked at him closely. 'You must tell me of your life,' he said--'
the life in Chisley after my supposed hanging. No, no; not now. Go to
your tent and sleep.'
'Sleep! I shall not sleep.'
'Think over what I have told you.'
'There is more behind?' 'There may be.'
'You think I will join you?'
'In my present career? No. For the time being, let us say no more. I need
not ask you to be silent. Meet me here to-morrow night at nine. While you
are thinking, bear always in mind the fact that Peter Cannon is there
'--he pointed in the direction of Stony's tent--' a living man.
Good-night.'
The reminder was well timed; pity stirred warmly in Jim's heart again,
and he offered his hand.
'So long,' he said, dropping into the vernacular of mateship.
Ryder took his hand with no demonstration of emotion. 'So long,' he
replied.