“You must try and save him from further punishment,” said Sylvia next
day to Frere. “I did not mean to betray the poor creature, but I had
made myself nervous by reading that convict's story.”
“You shouldn't read such rubbish,” said Frere. “What's the use? I don't
suppose a word of it's true.”
“It must be true. I am sure it's true. Oh, Maurice, these are dreadful
men. I thought I knew all about convicts, but I had no idea that such
men as these were among them.”
“Thank God, you know very little,” said Maurice. “The servants you have
here are very different sort of fellows from Rex and Company.”
“Oh, Maurice, I am so tired of this place. It's wrong, perhaps, with
poor papa and all, but I do wish I was somewhere out of the sight of
chains. I don't know what has made me feel as I do.”
“Come to Sydney,” said Frere. “There are not so many convicts there. It
was arranged that we should go to Sydney, you know.”
“For our honeymoon? Yes,” said Sylvia, simply. “I know it was. But we
are not married yet.”
“That's easily done,” said Maurice.
“Oh, nonsense, sir! But I want to speak to you about this poor Dawes.
I don't think he meant any harm. It seems to me now that he was rather
going to ask for food or something, only I was so nervous. They won't
hang him, Maurice, will they?”
“No,” said Maurice. “I spoke to your father this morning. If the fellow
is tried for his life, you may have to give evidence, and so we came to
the conclusion that Port Arthur again, and heavy irons, will meet the
case. We gave him another life sentence this morning. That will make the
third he has had.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. I sent him down aboard the schooner at once. He ought to be
out of the river by this time.” “Maurice, I have a strange feeling about
that man.”
“Eh?” said Maurice.
“I seem to fear him, as if I knew some story about him, and yet didn't
know it.”
“That's not very clear,” said Maurice, forcing a laugh, “but don't
let's talk about him any more. We'll soon be far from Port Arthur and
everybody in it.”
“Maurice,” said she, caressingly, “I love you, dear. You'll always
protect me against these men, won't you?”
Maurice kissed her. “You have not got over your fright, Sylvia,” he
said. “I see I shall have to take a great deal of care of my wife.”
“Of course,” replied Sylvia.
And then the pair began to make love, or, rather, Maurice made it, and
Sylvia suffered him.
Suddenly her eye caught something. “What's that--there, on the ground by
the fountain?” They were near the spot where Dawes had been seized the
night before. A little stream ran through the garden, and a Triton--of
convict manufacture--blew his horn in the middle of a--convict
built--rockery. Under the lip of the fountain lay a small packet. Frere
picked it up. It was made of soiled yellow cloth, and stitched evidently
by a man's fingers. “It looks like a needle-case,” said he.
“Let me see. What a strange-looking thing! Yellow cloth, too. Why,
it must belong to a prisoner. Oh, Maurice, the man who was here last
night!”
“Ay,” says Maurice, turning over the packet, “it might have been his,
sure enough.”
“He seemed to fling something from him, I thought. Perhaps this is
it!” said she, peering over his arm, in delicate curiosity. Frere, with
something of a scowl on his brow, tore off the outer covering of the
mysterious packet, and displayed a second envelope, of grey cloth--the
“good-conduct” uniform. Beneath this was a piece, some three inches
square, of stained and discoloured merino, that had once been blue.
“Hullo!” says Frere. “Why, what's this?”
“It is a piece of a dress,” says Sylvia.
It was Rufus Dawes's talisman--a portion of the frock she had worn at
Macquarie Harbour, and which the unhappy convict had cherished as a
sacred relic for five weary years.
Frere flung it into the water. The running stream whirled it away. “Why
did you do that?” cried the girl, with a sudden pang of remorse for
which she could not account. The shred of cloth, caught by a weed,
lingered for an instant on the surface of the water. Almost at the same
moment, the pair, raising their eyes, saw the schooner which bore Rufus
Dawes back to bondage glide past the opening of the trees and disappear.
When they looked again for the strange relic of the desperado of Port
Arthur, it also had vanished.