"Yes, I am free at last," he quietly replied.
"I have always prayed for you, Edward, and for this."
"I know that, Barbara; but prayer cannot do anything, can it? You see,
though I was born a gentleman, I had a bad strain in me. I wonder if,
somewhere, generations back, there was a pirate or a gipsy in our
family." He had been going to say highwayman, but paused in time.
"I always intended to be good and always ended by being bad. I wanted to
be of the angels and play with the devils also. I liked saints--you are
a saint, Barbara--but I loved all sinners too. I hope when--when I die,
that the little bit of good that's in me will go where you are. For the
rest of me, it must be as it may."
"Don't speak like that, Edward, please, dear. Yes, you have been wicked,
but you have been punished, oh, those long, long years!"
"I've lost a great slice of life by both the stolen waters and the rod,
but I'm going to reform now, Barbara."
"You are going to reform? Oh, I knew you would! God has answered my
prayer." Her eyes lighted.
He did not speak at once, for his ears, keener than hers, were listening
to a confused sound of voices coming from the shore. At length he spoke
firmly: "Yes, I'm going to reform, but it's on one condition."
Her eyes mutely asked a question, and he replied: "That you marry him,"
pointing to the inner room, "if he lives."
"He will live, but I--I cannot tell him, Edward," she sadly said.
"He knows."
"He knows! Did you dare to tell him?" It was the lover, not the sister,
who spoke then.
"Yes. And he knows also that I'm going to reform--that I'm going away."
Her face was hid in her hand. "And I kept it from him five-and-twenty
years! . . . Where are you going, Edward?"
"To the Farewell Islands," he slowly replied.
And she, thinking he meant some island group in the Pacific, tearfully
inquired: "Are they far away?"
"Yes, very far away, my girl."
"But you will write to me or come to see me again--you will come to see
me again, sometimes, Edward?"
He paused. He knew not at first what to reply, but at length he said,
with a strangely determined flash of his dark eyes: "Yes, Barbara, I will
come to see you again--if I can." He stooped and kissed her. "Goodbye,
Barbara."
"But, Edward, must you go to-night?"
"Yes, I must go now. They are waiting for me. Good-bye."
She would have stayed him but he put her gently back, and she said
plaintively: "God keep you, Edward. Remember you said that you would
come again to me."
"I shall remember," he said quietly, and he was gone. Standing in the
light from the window of the sick man's room he wrote a line in Latin on
a slip of paper, begging of Louis Bachelor the mercy of silence, and gave
it to Gongi, who whispered that he was surrounded. This he knew; he had
not studied sounds in prison through the best years of his life for
nothing. He asked Gongi to give the note to his master when he was
better, and when it could be done unseen of any one. Then he turned and
walked coolly towards the shore.
A few minutes later he lay upon a heap of magnolia branches breathing his
life away. At the same moment of time that a rough but kindly hand
closed the eyes of the bushranger, the woman from The Angel's Rest and
Louis Bachelor saw the pale face of Roadmaster peer through the bedroom
window at Barbara Golding sitting in a chair asleep; and she started and
said through her half-wakefulness, looking at the window: "Where are you
going, Edward?"