The last time John Osgood saw Barbara Golding was on a certain summer
afternoon at the lonely Post, Telegraph, and Customs Station known as
Rahway, on the Queensland coast. It was at Rahway also that he first
and last saw Mr. Louis Bachelor. He had had excellent opportunities
for knowing Barbara Golding; for many years she had been governess (and
something more) to his sisters Janet, Agnes and Lorna. She had been
engaged in Sydney as governess simply, but Wandenong cattle station
was far up country, and she gradually came to perform the functions
of milliner and dressmaker, encouraged thereto by the family for her
unerring taste and skill. Her salary, however, had been proportionately
increased, and it did not decline when her office as governess became
practically a sinecure as her pupils passed beyond the sphere of the
schoolroom. Perhaps George Osgood, father of John Osgood, and owner of
Wandenong, did not make an allowance to Barbara Golding for her services
as counsellor and confidant of his family; but neither did he subtract
anything from her earnings in those infrequent years when she journeyed
alone to Sydney on those mysterious visits which so mightily puzzled
the good people of Wandenong. The boldest and most off-hand of them,
however, could never discover what Barbara Golding did not choose to
tell. She was slight, almost frail in form, and very gentle of manner;
but she also possessed that rare species of courtesy which, never
declining to fastidiousness nor lapsing into familiarity, checked all
curious intrusion, was it ever so insinuating; and the milliner and
dressmaker was not less self-poised and compelling of respect than the
governess and confidant.
In some particulars the case of Louis Bachelor was similar. Besides
being the Post, Telegraph, and Customs Officer, and Justice of the
Peace at Rahway, he was available and valuable to the Government as a
meteorologist. The Administration recognised this after a few years
of voluntary and earnest labour on Louis Bachelor’s part. It was not,
however, his predictions concerning floods or droughts that roused
this official appreciation, but the fulfilment of those predictions.
At length a yearly honorarium was sent to him, and then again, after
a dignified delay, there was forwarded to him a suggestion from the
Cabinet that he should come to Brisbane and take a more important
position. It was when this patronage was declined that the Premier
(dropping for a moment into that bushman’s jargon which came naturally
to him) said, irritably, that Louis Bachelor was a “old fossil who
didn’t know when he’d got his dover in the dough,” which, being
interpreted into the slang of the old world, means, his knife into the
official loaf. But the fossil went on as before, known by name to
the merest handful of people in the colony, though they all profited,
directly or indirectly, by his scientific services. He was as unknown
to the dwellers at Wandenong as they were to him, or he again to the
citizens of the moon.
It was the custom for Janet and Agnes Osgood to say that Barbara Golding
had a history. On every occasion the sentiment was uttered with that
fresh conviction in tone which made it appear to be born again. It
seemed to have especially pregnant force one evening after Janet had
been consulting Barbara on the mysteries of the garment in which she was
to be married to Druce Stephens, part owner of Booldal Station. “Aggie,”
remarked the coming bride, “Barbara’s face flushed up ever so pink when
I said to her that she seemed to know exactly what a trousseau ought
to be. I wonder! She is well-bred enough to have been anybody; and the
Bishop of Adelaide recommended her, you know.”
Soon after this Druce Stephens arrived at Wandenong and occupied the
attention of Janet until suppertime, when he startled the company by
the tale of his adventures on the previous evening with Roadmaster,
the mysterious bushranger, whose name was now in every man’s mouth; who
apparently worked with no confederates--a perilous proceeding, though it
reduced the chances of betrayal. Druce was about to camp on the plains
for the night, in preference to riding on to a miserable bush-tavern
a few miles away, when he was suddenly accosted in the scrub by a
gallant-looking fellow on horseback, who, from behind his mask, asked
him to give up what money he had about him, together with his watch and
ring. The request was emphasised by the presence of a revolver held
at an easy but suggestive angle. The disadvantage to the squatter was
obvious. He merely asked that he should be permitted to keep the ring,
as it had many associations, remarking at the same time that he would
be pleased to give an equivalent for it if the bushranger would come to
Wandenong. At the mention of Wandenong the highwayman asked his name.
On being told, he handed back the money, the watch, and the ring,
and politely requested a cigar, saying that the Osgoods merited
consideration at his hands, and that their friends were safe from
molestation. Then he added, with some grim humour, that if Druce had no
objection to spending an hour with Roadmaster over a fire and a billy of
tea, he would be glad of his company; for bushranging, according to his
system, was but dull work. The young squatter consented, and together
they sat for two hours, the highwayman, however, never removing his
mask. They talked of many things, and at last Druce ventured to ask
his companion about the death of Blood Finchley, the owner of Tarawan
sheep-run. At this Roadmaster became weary, and rose to leave; but as if
on second thought, he said that Finchley’s companion, whom he allowed to
go unrobbed and untouched, was both a coward and a liar; that the slain
man had fired thrice needlessly, and had wounded him in the neck (the
scar of which he showed) before he drew trigger. Druce then told him
that besides a posse of police, a number of squatters and bushmen had
banded to hunt him down, and advised him to make for the coast if he
could, and leave the country. At this Roadmaster laughed, and said that
his fancy was not sea-ward yet, though that might come; and then, with a
courteous wave of his hand, he jumped on his horse and rode away.
The Osgoods speculated curiously and futilely on Roadmaster’s identity,
as indeed the whole colony had done. And here it may be said that people
of any observation (though, of necessity, they were few, since Rahway
attracted only busy sugar-planters and their workmen) were used to speak
of Louis Bachelor as one who must certainly have a history. The person
most likely to have the power of inquisition into his affairs was his
faithful aboriginal servant, Gongi. But records and history were only
understood by Gongi when they were restricted to the number of heads
taken in tribal battle. At the same time he was a devoted slave to the
man who, at the risk of his own life, had rescued him from the murderous
spears of his aboriginal foes. That was a kind of record within Gongi’s
comprehension, from the contemplation of which he turned to speak of
Louis Bachelor as “That fellow budgery marmi b’longin’ to me,” which, in
civilised language, means “my good master.” Gongi often dilated on this
rescue, and he would, for purposes of illustration, take down from his
master’s wall an artillery officer’s sabre and show how his assailants
had been dispersed.
From the presence of this sword it was not unreasonably assumed that
Louis Bachelor had at some time been in the army. He was not, however,
communicative on this point, though he shrewdly commented on European
wars and rumours of wars when they occurred. He also held strenuous
opinions of the conduct of Government and the suppression of public
evils, based obviously upon military views of things.. For bushrangers
he would have a modern Tyburn, but this and other tragic suggestions
lacked conviction when confronted with his verdicts given as Justice of
the Peace. He pronounced judgments in a grand and airy fashion, but
as if he were speaking by a card, the Don Quixote whose mercy would be
vaster than his wrath. This was the impression he gave, to, John Osgood
on the day when the young squatter introduced himself to Rahway, where
he had come on a mission to its one official. The young man’s father
had a taste for many things; astronomy was his latest, and he had bought
from the Government a telescope which, excellent in its day, had been
superseded by others of later official purchase. He had brought it to
Wandenong, had built a home for it, and had got it into trouble. He
had then sent to Brisbane for assistance, and the astronomer of
the Government had referred him to the postmaster at Rahway,
“Prognosticator” of the meteorological column in The Courier, who
would be instructed to give Mr. Osgood every help, especially as the
occultation of Venus was near. Men do not send letters by post in a new
country when personal communication is possible, and John Osgood was
asked by his father to go to Rahway. When John wished for the name
of this rare official, the astronomer’s letter was handed over with a
sarcastic request that the name might be deciphered; but the son was not
more of an antiquary than his father, and he had to leave without it. He
rode to the coast, and there took a passing steamer to Rahway. From the
sea Rahway looked a tropical paradise. The bright green palisades of
mangrove on the right crowded down to the water’s edge; on the left was
the luxuriance of a tropical jungle; in the centre was an are of opal
shore fringed with cocoa-palms, and beyond the sea a handful of white
dwellings. Behind was a sweeping monotony of verdure stretching back
into the great valley of the Popri, and over all the heavy languor of
the South.
But the beauty was a delusion. When John Osgood’s small boat swept up
the sands on the white crest of a league-long roller, how different
was the scene! He saw a group of dilapidated huts, a tavern called The
Angel’s Rest, a blackfellow’s hut, and the bareness of three Government
offices, all built on piles, that the white ants should not humble them
suddenly to the dust; a fever-making mangrove swamp, black at the base
as the filthiest moat, and tenanted by reptiles; feeble palms, and a
sickly breath creeping from the jungle to mingle with the heavy scent of
the last consignment of augar from the Popri valley. It brought him to
a melancholy standstill, disturbed at last by Gongi touching him on
the arm and pointing towards the post-office. His language to Gongi was
strong; he called the place by names that were not polite; and even on
the threshold of the official domain said that the Devil would have his
last big muster there. But from that instant his glibness declined. The
squatters are the aristocracy of Australia, and rural postmasters are
not always considered eligible for a dinner-party at Government House;
but when Louis Bachelor came forward to meet his visitor the young
fellow’s fingers quickly caught his hat from his head, and an off-hand
greeting became a respectful salute.
At first the young man was awed by the presence of the grizzled
gentleman, and he struggled with his language to bring it up to the
classic level of the old meteorologist’s speech. Before they had spoken
a dozen words John Osgood said to himself: “What a quaint team he and
the Maid of Honour would make! It’s the same kind of thing in both, with
the difference of sex and circumstance.” The nature of his visitor’s
business pleased the old man, and infused his courtesy with warmth. Yes,
he would go to Wandenong with pleasure; the Government had communicated
with him about it; a substitute had been offered; he was quite willing
to take his first leave in four years; astronomy was a great subject, he
had a very good and obedient telescope of his own, though not nearly so
large as that at Wandenong; he would telegraph at once to Brisbane for
the substitute to be sent on the following day, and would be ready to
start in twenty-four hours. After visiting Wandenong he would go to
Brisbane for some scientific necessaries--and so on through smooth
parentheses of talk. Under all the bluntness of the Bush young Osgood
had a refinement which now found expression in an attempt to make
himself agreeable--not a difficult task, since, thanks to his father’s
tastes and a year or two at college, he had a smattering of physical
science. He soon won his way to the old man’s heart, and to his
laboratory, which had been developed through years of patience and
ingenious toil in this desolate spot.
Left alone that evening in Louis Bachelor’s sitting-room, John Osgood’s
eyes were caught by a portrait on the wall, the likeness of a beautiful
girl. Something about the face puzzled him. Where had he seen it? More
than a little of an artist, he began to reproduce the head on paper. He
put it in different poses; he added to it; he took away from it; he gave
it a child’s face, preserving the one striking expression; he made it
that of a woman--of an elderly, grave woman. Why, what was this? Barbara
Golding! He would not spoil the development of the drama, of which he
now held the fluttering prologue, by any blunt treatment; he would
touch this and that nerve gently to see what past connection there was
between:
“These dim blown birds beneath an alien sky.”
He mooned along in this fashion, a fashion in which his bushmen
friends would not have known him, until his host entered. Then, in that
auspicious moment when his own pipe and his companion’s cigarette were
being lighted, he said: “I’ve been amusing myself with drawing since you
left, sir, and I’ve produced this,” handing over the paper.
Louis Bachelor took the sketch, and, walking to the window for better
light, said: “Believe me, I have a profound respect for the artistic
talent. I myself once had--ah!” He sharply paused as he saw the
pencilled head, and stood looking fixedly at it. Presently he turned
slowly, came to the portrait on the wall, and compared it with that in
his hand. Then, with a troubled face, he said: “You have much talent,
but it is--it is too old--much too old--and very sorrowful.”
“I intended the face to show age and sorrow, Mr. Bachelor. Would not the
original of that have both?”
“She had sorrow--she had sorrow, but,” and he looked sadly at the sketch
again, “it is too old for her. Her face was very young--always very
young.”
“But has she not sorrow now, sir?” the other persisted gently.
The grey head was shaken sadly, and the unsteady voice meditatively
murmured: “Such beauty, such presence! I was but five-and-thirty then.”
There was a slight pause, and then, with his hand touching the young
man’s shoulder, Louis Bachelor continued: “You are young; you have a
good heart; I know men. You have the sympathy of the artist--why should
I not speak to you? I have been silent about it so long. You have
brought the past back, I know not how, so vividly! I dream here, I work
here; men come with merchandise and go again; they only bind my tongue;
I am not of them: but you are different, as it seems to me, and young.
God gave me a happy youth. My eyes were bright as yours, my heart as
fond. You love--is it not so? Ah, you smile and blush like an honest
man. Well, so much the more I can speak now. God gave me then strength
and honour and love--blessed be His name! And then He visited me with
sorrow, and, if I still mourn, I have peace, too, and a busy life.” Here
he looked at the sketch again.
“Then I was a soldier. She was my world. Ah, true, love is a great
thing--a great thing! She had a brother. They two with their mother were
alone in the world, and we were to be married. One day at Gibraltar I
received a letter from her saying that our marriage could not be; that
she was going away from England; that those lines were her farewell; and
that she commended me to the love of Heaven. Such a letter it was--so
saintly, so unhappy, so mysterious! When I could get leave I went to
England. She--they--had gone, and none knew whither; or, if any of her
friends knew, none would speak. I searched for her everywhere. At last I
came to Australia, and I am here, no longer searching, but waiting, for
there is that above us!” His lips moved as if in prayer. “And this is
all I have left of her, except memory,” he said, tenderly touching the
portrait.
Warmly, yet with discreet sympathy, the young man rejoined: “Sir, I
respect, and I hope I understand, your confidence.” Then, a little
nervously: “Might I ask her name?”
The reply was spoken to the portrait: “Barbara--Barbara Golding.”
With Louis Bachelor the young squatter approached Wandenong homestead in
some excitement. He had said no word to his companion about that Barbara
Golding who played such a gracious part in the home of the Osgoods. He
had arranged the movement of the story to his fancy, but would it occur
in all as he hoped? With an amiability that was almost malicious in its
adroit suggestiveness, though, to be sure, it was honest, he had induced
the soldier to talk of his past. His words naturally, and always,
radiated to the sun, whose image was now hidden, but for whose memory no
superscription on monument or cenotaph was needed. Now it was a scrap
of song, then a tale, and again a verse, by which the old soldier was
delicately worked upon, until at last, as they entered the paddocks of
Wandenong, stars and telescopes and even Governments had been forgotten
in the personal literature of sentiment.
Yet John Osgood was not quite at his ease. Now that it was at hand, he
rather shrank from the meeting of these ancient loves. Apart from all
else, he knew that no woman’s nerves are to be trusted. He hoped fortune
would so favour him that he could arrange for the meeting of the two
alone, or, at least, in his presence only. He had so far fostered this
possibility by arriving at the station at nightfall. What next? He
turned and looked at the soldier, a figure out of Hogarth, which even
dust and travel left unspoiled. It was certain that the two should meet
where John Osgood, squatter and romancer, should be prompter, orchestra,
and audience, and he alone. Vain lad!
When they drew rein the young man took his companion at once to his
own detached quarters known as the Barracks, and then proceeded to the
house. After greetings with his family he sought Barbara Golding, who
was in the schoolroom, piously employed, Agnes said, in putting the
final touches to Janet’s trousseau. He went across the square to the
schoolroom, and, looking through the window, saw that she was quite
alone. A few moments later he stood at the schoolroom door with Louis
Bachelor. With his hand on the latch he hesitated. Was it not fairer
to give some warning to either? Too late! He opened the door and they
entered. She was sewing, and a book lay open beside her, a faded, but
stately little figure whose very garments had an air. She rose, seeing
at first only John Osgood, who greeted her and then said: “Miss Golding,
I have brought you an old friend.”
Then he stepped back and the two were face to face. Barbara Golding’s
cheeks became pale, but she did not stir; the soldier, with an
exclamation of surprise half joyful, half pathetic, took a step forward,
and then became motionless also. Their eyes met and stayed intent. This
was not quite what the young man had expected. At length the soldier
bowed low, and the woman responded gravely. At this point Osgood
withdrew to stand guard at the door.
Barbara Golding’s eyes were dim with tears. The soldier gently said, “I
received--” and then paused. She raised her eyes to his. “I received a
letter from you five-and-twenty years ago.”
“Yes, five-and-twenty years ago.”
“I hope you cannot guess what pain it gave me.”
“Yes,” she answered faintly, “I can conceive it, from the pain it gave
to me.”
There was a pause, and then he stepped forward and, holding out his
hand, said: “Will you permit me?” He kissed her fingers courteously, and
she blushed. “I have waited,” he added, “for God to bring this to pass.”
She shook her head sadly, and her eyes sought his beseechingly, as
though he should spare her; but perhaps he could not see that.
“You spoke of a great obstacle then; has it been removed?”
“It is still between us,” she murmured.
“Is it likely ever to vanish?”
“I--I do not know.”
“You can not tell me what it is?”
“Oh, you will not ask me,” she pleaded.
He was silent a moment, then spoke. “Might I dare to hope, Barbara, that
you still regard me with--” he hesitated.
The fires of a modest valour fluttered in her cheeks, and she pieced out
his sentence: “With all my life’s esteem.” But she was a woman, and she
added: “But I am not young now, and I am very poor.”
“Barbara,” he said; “I am not rich and I am old; but you, you have not
changed; you are beautiful, as you always were.”
The moment was crucial. He stepped towards her, but her eyes held him
back. He hoped that she would speak, but she only smiled sadly. He
waited, but, in the waiting, hope faded, and he only said, at last, in a
voice of new resolve grown out of dead expectancy: “Your brother--is he
well?”
“I hope so,” she somewhat painfully replied. “Is he in Australia?”
“Yes. I have not seen him for years, but he is here.” As if a thought
had suddenly come to him, he stepped nearer, and made as if he would
speak; but the words halted on his lips, and he turned away again. She
glided to his side and touched his arm. “I am glad that you trust me,”
she faltered.
“There is no more that need be said,” he answered. And now, woman-like,
denying, she pitied, too. “If I ever can, shall--shall I send for you to
tell you all?” she murmured.
“You remember I told you that the world had but one place for me, and
that was by your side; that where you are, Barbara--”
“Hush, oh hush!” she interrupted gently. “Yes, I remember everything.”
“There is no power can alter what is come of Heaven,” he said, smiling
faintly.
She looked with limpid eyes upon him as he bowed over her hand, and she
spoke with a sweet calm: “God be with you, Louis.”
Strange as it may seem, John Osgood did not tell his sisters and his
family of this romance which he had brought to the vivid close of a
first act. He felt the more so because Louis Bachelor had said no word
about it, but had only pressed his hand again and again--that he was
somehow put upon his honour, and he thought it a fine thing to stand on
a platform of unspoken compact with this gentleman of a social school
unfamiliar to him; from which it may be seen that cattle-breeding and
bullock-driving need not make a man a boor. What his sisters guessed
when they found that Barbara Golding and the visitor were old friends is
another matter; but they could not pierce their brother’s reserve on the
point.
No one at Wandenong saw the parting between the two when Louis Bachelor,
his task with the telescope ended, left again for the coast; but indeed
it might have been seen by all men, so outwardly formal was it, even as
their brief conversations had been since they met again. But is it not
known by those who look closely upon the world that there is nothing so
tragic as the formal?
John Osgood accompanied his friend to the sea, but the name of Barbara
Golding was not mentioned, nor was any reference made to her until the
moment of parting. Then the elder man said: “Sir, your consideration
and delicacy of feeling have moved me, and touched her. We have not been
blind to your singular kindness of heart and courtesy, and--God bless
you, my friend!”
On his way back to Wandenong, Osgood heard exciting news of Roadmaster.
The word had been passed among the squatters who had united to avenge
Finchley’s death that the bushranger was to be shot on sight, that he
should not be left to the uncertainty of the law. The latest exploit of
the daring freebooter had been to stop on the plains two members of a
Royal Commission of Inquiry. He had relieved them of such money as was
in their pockets, and then had caused them to write sumptuous cheques on
their banks, payable to bearer. These he had cashed in the very teeth
of the law, and actually paused in the street to read a description of
himself posted on a telegraph-pole. “Inaccurate, quite inaccurate,” he
said to a by-stander as he drew his riding-whip slowly along it, and
then, mounting his horse, rode leisurely away into the plains. Had he
been followed it would have been seen that he directed his course to
that point in the horizon where Wandenong lay, and held to it.
It would not perhaps have been pleasant to Agnes Osgood had she known
that, as she hummed a song under a she-oak, a mile away from the
homestead, a man was watching her from a clump of scrub near by; a man
who, however gentlemanly his bearing, had a face where the devil of
despair had set his foot, and who carried in his pocket more than one
weapon of inhospitable suggestion. But the man intended no harm to her,
for, while she sang, something seemed to smooth away the active evil of
his countenance, and to dispel a threatening alertness that marked the
whole personality.
Three hours later this same man crouched by the drawing-room window
of the Wandenong homestead and looked in, listening to the same voice,
until Barbara Golding entered the room and took a seat near the piano,
with her face turned full towards him. Then he forgot the music and
looked long at the face, and at last rose, and stole silently to where
his horse was tied in the scrub. He mounted, and turning towards the
house muttered: “A little more of this, and good-bye to my nerves! But
it’s pleasant to have the taste of it in my mouth for a minute. How
would it look in Roadmaster’s biography, that a girl just out of school
brought the rain to his eyes?” He laughed a little bitterly, and then
went on: “Poor Barbara! She mustn’t know while I’m alive. Stretch out,
my nag; we’ve a long road to travel to-night.”
This was Edward Golding, the brother whom Barbara thought was still in
prison at Sydney under another name, serving a term of ten years for
manslaughter. If she had read the papers more carefully she would have
known that he had been released two years before his time was up. It
was eight years since she had seen him. Twice since then she had gone to
visit him, but he would not see her. Bad as he had been, his desire was
still strong that the family name should not be publicly reviled. At
his trial his real name had not been made known; and at his request his
sister sent him no letters. Going into gaol a reckless man he came out
a constitutional criminal; with the natural instinct for crime greater
than the instinct for morality. He turned bushranger for one day, to get
money to take him out of the country; but having once entered the lists
he left them no more, and, playing at deadly joust with the law, soon
became known as Roadmaster, the most noted bushranger since the days of
Captain Starlight.
It was forgery on the name of his father’s oldest friend that had driven
him from England. He had the choice of leaving his native land for ever
or going to prison, and he chose the former. The sorrow of the crime
killed his mother. From Adelaide, where he and Barbara had made their
new home, he wandered to the far interior and afterwards to Sydney;
then came his imprisonment on a charge of manslaughter, and now he was
free-but what a freedom!
With the name of Roadmaster often heard at Wandenong, Barbara Golding’s
heart had no warning instinct of who the bushranger was. She thought
only and continuously of the day when her brother should be released,
to begin the race of life again with her. She had yet to learn in what
manner they come to the finish who make a false start.
Louis Bachelor, again in his place Rahway, tried to drive away his
guesses at the truth by his beloved science. When sleep would not come
at night he rose and worked in his laboratory; and the sailors of many
a passing vessel saw the light of his lamp in the dim hours before dawn,
and spoke of fever in the port of Rahway. Nor did they speak without
reason; fever was preparing a victim for the sacrifice at Rahway, and
Louis Bachelor was fed with its poison till he grew haggard and weak.
One night he was sending his weather prognostications to Brisbane, when
a stranger entered from the shore. The old man did not at first look up,
and the other leisurely studied him as the sounder clicked its message.
When the key was closed the new-comer said: “Can you send a message to
Brisbane for me?”
“It is after hours; I cannot,” was the reply. “But you were just sending
one.”
“That was official,” and the elder man passed his hand wearily along his
forehead. He was very pale. The other drew the telegraph-forms towards
him and wrote on one, saying as he did so: “My business is important;”
then handing over what he had written, and, smiling ironically, added:
“Perhaps you will consider that official.”
Louis Bachelor took the paper and read as follows: “To the Colonial
Secretary, Brisbane. I am here tonight; to-morrow find me. Roadmaster.”
He read it twice before he fully comprehended it. Then he said, as if
awakening from a dream: “You are--”
“I am Roadmaster,” said the other.
But now the soldier and official in the other were awake. He drew
himself up, and appeared to measure his visitor as a swordsman would his
enemy. “What is your object in coming here?” he asked.
“For you to send that message if you choose. That you may arrest me
peaceably if you wish; or there are men at The Angel’s Rest and
a Chinaman or two here who might care for active service against
Roadmaster.” He laughed carelessly.
“Am I to understand that you give yourself up to me?”
“Yes, to you, Louis Bachelor, Justice of the Peace, to do what you will
with for this night,” was the reply. The soldier’s hands trembled,
but it was from imminent illness, not from fear or excitement. He came
slowly towards the bushranger who, smiling, said as he advanced: “Yes,
arrest me!”
Louis Bachelor raised his hand, as though to lay it on the shoulder of
the other; but something in the eyes of the highwayman stayed his hand.
“Proceed, Captain Louis Bachelor,” said Roadmaster in a changed tone.
The hand fell to the old man’s side. “Who are you?” he faintly
exclaimed. “I know you yet I cannot quite remember.”
More and more the voice and manner of the outlaw altered as he replied
with mocking bitterness: “I was Edward Golding, gentleman; I became
Edward Golding, forger; I am Roadmaster, convicted of manslaughter, and
bushranger.”
The old man’s state was painful to see. “You--you--that, Edward!” he
uttered brokenly.
“All that. Will you arrest me now?”
“I--cannot.”
The bushranger threw aside all bravado and irony, and said: “I knew you
could not. Why did I come? Listen--but first, will you shelter me here
to-night?”
The soldier’s honourable soul rose up against this thing, but he said
slowly at last: “If it is to save you from peril, yes.”
Roadmaster laughed a little and rejoined: “By God, sir, you’re a man!
But it isn’t likely that I’d accept it of you, is it? You’ve had it
rough enough, without my putting a rock in your swag that would spoil
you for the rest of the tramp. You see, I’ve even forgotten how to talk
like a gentleman. And now, sir, I want to show you, for Barbara’s sake,
my dirty logbook.”
Here he told the tale of his early sin and all that came of it. When he
had finished the story he spoke of Barbara again. “She didn’t want to
disgrace you, you understand,” he said. “You were at Wandenong; I know
that, never mind how. She’d marry you if I were out of the way. Well,
I’m going to be out of the way. I’m going to leave this country, and
she’s to think I’m dead, you see.”
At this point Louis Bachelor swayed, and would have fallen, but that the
bushranger’s arms were thrown round him and helped him to a chair. “I’m
afraid that I am ill,” he said; “call Gongi. Ah!” He had fainted.
The bushranger carried him to a bed, and summoned Gongi and the woman
from the tavern, and in another hour was riding away through the valley
of the Popri. Before thirty-six hours had passed a note was delivered to
a station-hand at Wandenong addressed to Barbara Golding, and signed by
the woman from The Angel’s Rest. Within another two days Barbara Golding
was at the bedside of Captain Louis Bachelor, battling with an enemy
that is so often stronger than love and always kinder than shame.
In his wanderings the sick man was ever with his youth and early
manhood, and again and again he uttered Barbara’s name in caressing or
entreaty; though it was the Barbara of far-off days that he invoked;
the present one he did not know. But the night in which the crisis,
the fortunate crisis, of the fever occurred, he talked of a great
flood coming from the North, and in his half-delirium bade them send to
headquarters, and mournfully muttered of drowned plantations and human
peril. Was this instinct and knowledge working through the disordered
fancies of fever? Or was it mere coincidence that the next day a great
storm and flood did sweep through the valley of the Popri, putting life
in danger and submerging plantations?
It was on this day that Roadmaster found himself at bay in the mangrove
swamp not far from the port of Rahway, where he had expected to find a
schooner to take him to the New Hebrides. It had been arranged for by
a well-paid colleague in crime; but the storm had delayed the schooner,
and the avenging squatters and bushmen were closing in on him at last.
There was flood behind him in the valley, a foodless swamp on the left
of him, open shore and jungle on the right, the swollen sea before him;
and the only avenue of escape closed by Blood Finchley’s friends. He had
been eluding his pursuers for days with little food and worse than no
sleep. He knew that he had played his last card and lost; but he had one
thing yet to do, that which even the vilest do, if they can, before
they pay the final penalty--to creep back for a moment into their honest
past, however dim and far away. With incredible skill he had passed
under the very rifles of his hunters, and now stood almost within the
stream of light which came from the window of the sick man’s room, where
his sister was. There was to be no more hiding, no more strategy. He
told Gongi and another that he was Roadmaster, and bade them say to his
pursuers, should they appear, that he would come to them upon the shore
when his visit to Louis Bachelor, whom he had known in other days, was
over, indicating the place at some distance from the house where they
would find him.
He entered the house. The noise of the opening door brought his sister
to the room.
At last she said: “Oh, Edward, you are free at last!”
“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?”