REVENGE IS SWEET
As the days wore on and Durham won his way back to health, he waited in
vain for a token from Mrs. Burke that the memory which persisted so
clearly was other than the figment of a dream.
Although she gave him every attention a sick man required, there was
neither look nor word from her to justify him in believing that the
memory was of an actual scene. For hours she would be with him, reading
to him, talking to him, meeting his glance freely and frankly; but never
was there the veriest hint of the emotion he had seen in her eyes on
that occasion.
Nor did he hear again the curious stifled cry which had seemed to ring
in his ears the night he arrived. He was constantly on the alert for it,
both by night and day, while he was confined to his room and later when
he was able to get out on to the verandah. But there was no repetition
of it, until at last he had perforce to accept the doctor's view and
regard it, as well as the other memory, as merely the vagaries of
delirium.
But if she gave him nothing whereon to feed the love he had for her,
that love did not diminish as the days passed. It took a deeper and
firmer hold upon him until he lived in a veritable Fool's Paradise,
giving no thought of the morrow, saving that it would be spent with her,
and forgetting even the task which had brought him to the district. The
outside world did not obtrude itself upon him, till the doctor declared
that only once more would he visit him. Then it came with a rush.
A dozen questions forced themselves upon his mind.
Since his arrival at Waroona Downs, no word had reached him from
Brennan, no mention had been made of the robberies. When, once or twice,
he had attempted to speak of them, Mrs. Burke told him the doctor's
orders were that he was not to be allowed to dwell upon anything likely
to disturb him, and she insisted on carrying out those orders. He had
always yielded, lest she put into execution the threat she made, to
leave him to the tender mercies of old Patsy for a whole day. But now
the injunction was removed, for the doctor himself had asked whether he
should tell Brennan to come out.
Durham awaited his arrival with impatience. Now that he allowed his mind
to revert to more prosaic matters than the object of his adoration, he
concluded that, as he had not been troubled with official detail,
someone else had been sent up to continue the investigation into the
mystery.
He ran over the names of the men most likely to be entrusted with the
work, speculating which one it was, and what course he had followed. He
hunted for the letter he had found the day he discovered the track
leading to the lake among the hills, and when he could not find it, he
inferred that after he had been struck down at Taloona, the two
marauders had searched him and had recovered what would have been
invaluable evidence against Eustace.
The excuse Mrs. Burke had put forward for refusing to discuss the matter
with him suggested she knew he had been superseded; the belief grew in
his mind that his successor had succeeded in either tracing the stolen
gold or securing the arrest of Eustace, and perhaps his companion also.
Mrs. Burke, knowing this, had declined to talk lest she revealed the
secret and gave him, as she would consider, cause for mental anxiety and
distress.
It was therefore a great surprise for him to learn from Brennan, as soon
as he came out, that no one had been sent up to take charge of the case;
that no arrest had been made, nor clue discovered; but that everything
had been allowed to remain as it was until such time as he was
sufficiently recovered to resume duty.
"They should not have done that," he exclaimed. "Look at the time
wasted."
"I understand the Bank wished it, sir," Brennan answered. "Mr. Wallace
told me as much. He said he and his directors were satisfied no one
could solve the riddle as you could, and head-quarters had been asked
not to put anyone else in charge, but to leave you with an absolutely
free hand."
"It is very good of them," Durham said. "But still--look at the chance
it has given the thieves to get away with the gold."
"They haven't gone, sir," Brennan said quietly.
"How do you know?"
"One of them was seen only last night," Brennan continued in a low tone.
"He was seen on the Taloona road, riding the white horse. That is what
puzzles me. How does he hide that horse? It's never been seen in any of
the paddocks for miles round, for everyone is on the watch for it. And a
man can't hide a white horse in a hollow log--it must run somewhere some
time."
"Where is Mrs. Eustace?"
"She's at Smart's cottage. She came in from Taloona yesterday. That's
what makes it strange, to my mind, this white horse and rider being seen
on the Taloona road the day she leaves the place."
"Where are the troopers--Conlon and his mate?"
"Went away three days ago, sir, on orders from head-quarters."
"And Mr. Dudgeon?"
"Oh, he's still at Taloona. They say he's pretty well right again,
except that he limps with a stick."
"I suppose his gold was taken?"
"Every atom of it, sir. We found the spot where it had been dug up under
the ashes of the house. But that doesn't seem to trouble him very much.
All he wants is to have the men who stuck up the place caught and
hanged."
"How did Mrs. Eustace come in?"
"Mr. Gale drove her in, sir. He's been to and fro most every day."
"But he didn't meet the man on the white horse?"
"Yes, sir. It was Mr. Gale who brought me word of it. He said he thought
it must be Eustace, and asked if he would be justified in shooting him
if he met him face to face. Mr. Harding asked the same thing."
"Of course, you told them no."
"Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I said it might be the best thing for
Mrs. Eustace, seeing what the conviction of her husband meant for her,
but that it might mean a charge of murder if it were done."
Durham sat silent for a time.
"Come out for me to-morrow, will you, Brennan?" he said presently. "I
can't wait for the doctor. This has got to be dealt with promptly,
unless we are to lose the game."
When Brennan had gone, Durham sat on the verandah alone. Now that he had
taken hold of the case again, all the fascination his work had for him
returned. He became so engrossed in the contemplation of the problem
that unnoticed the sun went down to leave the young crescent moon
shedding a fitful light over the silent bush. Unnoticed, also, were the
sound of footfalls as Mrs. Burke came out on to the verandah.
For a time she stood watching him. Had he turned quickly he might have
seen in her eyes something of the expression for which he had looked so
often. But reading the riddle of the robberies was too enthralling a
subject, and so he missed his opportunity, for when she crossed to the
hand-rail against which he was sitting, every suggestion of the
expression had gone from her face.
Standing where the moonlight fell upon her, she leaned against one of
the verandah posts without speaking. It was then he saw her, and from
within the shadow he feasted his eyes upon the beauty of her face and
form so clearly outlined against the soft-toned evening sky.
"Brennan has gone?" she asked, suddenly turning towards him.
"Yes. Brennan has gone. And this--this is my last evening here," he
answered in a low voice. "To-morrow I resume duty."
He waited for the remark he hoped she would make, but she merely looked
away over the silvery haze of the bush apparently unmoved, nay, even
uninterested in the announcement he had made.
"Don't you ever feel compassion for the poor creatures you are chasing
to their doom?" she asked presently.
"Why should there be compassion for them?" he asked in reply.
"Don't you ever feel it? Don't you ever stop to wonder if only they are
to blame?"
"I am merely concerned in what they have done. Until they have placed
themselves in antagonism to the laws of society, I have nothing to do
with them. When they violate the law, then I am bidden to track them
down so that they may be made to answer for the wrongs they may have
done. It would assist neither them nor myself were I to lose myself in
compassionate consideration of things I know nothing about."
"But surely--you must sometimes feel sorry for them--must pity them in
their misfortune?"
"There are too many who deserve pity, Mrs. Burke, for me to waste any of
mine on people who only injure others. All my pity and sympathy go to
the victimised, not to the victimisers."
"It seems so hard, so merciless, so hopeless," she said after a few
minutes' silence.
"Have you any compassion for those who stole your papers? Would you have
them escape capture and punishment, and so lose for ever all hopes of
recovering those papers?"
"I don't know."
There was a note of sadness in her voice, a note almost as unfamiliar as
the brevity of her reply.
"To what compassion is the man entitled who struck me down?"
"You don't know--you don't know what made him do it. He may have been
forced to do it for the sake of his companion, to save both of them."
"Save himself and his companion from what? From capture while committing
an outrage and a robbery. I do not see where any reason for compassion
comes in, Mrs. Burke."
"And you would show him none?"
"None," he answered fiercely. "I look upon that man, whoever and
wherever he may be, as a menace to mankind. He is unfit to be at large."
"If you saw him, you would shoot him?"
"If I saw him I should try and capture him and hand him over for trial."
"But if you could not capture him? If he were escaping from you?"
"Then I would shoot him--shoot him like a dog, and be satisfied I had
done my duty."
He stood up as he spoke and came into the moonlight, his face hard set,
his eyes gleaming.
She raised her hands and held them out towards him with so impetuous a
gesture that he drew back.
"I hope that you may never meet him--never--never," she said in a low
voice which vibrated with emotion.
"Why?"
Durham rapped out the question in a savage staccato.
"Because I--oh!" she exclaimed, as she shuddered. "It is so horrible to
think of, to think that you who--when you were delirious, Mr. Durham,
you used to talk--you used to say things so full of tenderness and
sympathy that I wondered--wondered whether you were then your real self
or whether your real self was the man you are now--hard, stern,
pitiless, relentless. It was because of that I asked you if you ever
felt compassion for those you chase to their doom. I would rather
remember you as the man I learned to know when you unconsciously
revealed to me your other nature. It is only as that I care to remember
you. But if you met that man and killed him--oh, how could I bear to
think of you as a murderer? It would kill me!"
"I should not be a murderer. I should be carrying out my duty--a duty I
hope I may never be called upon to perform, but one which I should not
shrink from performing if I were called on by circumstances to perform
it."
For a space there was another silence between them, until he remembered
she was standing.
"Will you not sit down?" he said quietly. "Let me bring you a chair.
This is my last night here," he said, when she had taken the chair he
brought. "Do not let us talk about that wretched side of life. I want,
before I go, to thank you for all the goodness and kindness you have
shown to me. You have been----"
She made an exclamation of impatience.
"You have nothing to thank me for, Mr. Durham. Surely there is nothing
deserving of thanks in doing what one could to relieve unmerited
suffering. I only had--compassion."
"It was more than compassion. It was the----"
"Now, please. You will only annoy me if you say any more about it. If
you had had a skilful nurse, you would have been cured long ago; it was
my foolish blundering which delayed you so long."
"Your blundering? If everybody would only blunder as you have, Mrs.
Burke, then there would----"
"You must not say that, Mr. Durham," she interrupted.
"But indeed I must," he answered softly. "You have not only brought me
back to health, but you have given me new life--something I never had
before--not until I met you. I want to tell you. I want----"
"No, no," she exclaimed, as she rose to her feet. "You must not talk
like that. You must not, really. I will not listen to you, I must not."
He lay back in his chair and she resumed her seat in silence.
"What news had Brennan?" she asked presently. "You see, I have not been
in the town since you came here," she went on. "One likes to know what
is going, especially when one is isolated. Has the new manager arrived
at the bank yet?"
"I think not, but I did not ask. Brennan would probably have mentioned
it though, if it were so."
"I must come in and see about engaging someone to get the place ready
for stock," she said. "The old man is not a scrap of use. In fact, I
wish he were back in Ireland. He has the usual Irish failing, Mr.
Durham. You know what that is. I'm always afraid that he will break out
if ever he gets into the town by himself."
"Drink?" Durham asked.
"Oh, something terrible. I don't think he has had any since you have
been up here, but one never knows. Any time I may find him helpless. It
makes me uneasy until I have someone else about the place. Sure you can
never say what a man like that will do. He might set the whole place on
fire over my head, and I should never know it till I was burned to death
perhaps."
"May I make inquiries for you to-morrow, when I get into town? Mr. Gale
may know----"
"Mr. Gale? Oh, he's a likely man to bother himself about my affairs now.
It was Mr. Gale stopped me from going to Taloona when I heard first
about your--accident. All he could talk about was the good Mrs. Eustace
was doing, and I said it was as well perhaps that Mr. Eustace was not at
home, seeing the interest all the men in the place were taking in his
lady. Sure now, is there any news of the creature--Mr. Eustace, I
mean--there's no need to ask about Mrs. Eustace. Has any trace at all
been found of the scoundrel?"
"I can't say, really," he answered slowly. "I shall know to-morrow. We
did not go into everything to-day. Brennan only reported certain matters
of official routine."
"Well, well. I should have thought he would have given you all the news
seeing how long you have been away, and knowing how anxious you would be
to have the latest tidings. Did he say at all how the old curmudgeon
was? Is Mrs. Eustace still dancing attendance on him, and making herself
a public martyr to cover up the tracks of her levanting husband?"
"I believe Mr. Dudgeon is practically well again--the doctor could have
told you about that."
"Oh, he did, but I wondered whether you had other news. Sure it's not
always a doctor's word that is worth considering. They lie almost as
well as lawyers--or the police."
"To whom you come for verification."
"Now, that's just like me, giving away my own private opinion of you
without the asking. But there! Did you ever hear the reason why the old
man hated so much to let me buy this place? The doctor was telling me.
He said the old man was never done telling him and Mrs. Eustace all
about it. It's the funniest story ever you heard. Do you know it?
"Sure I'll tell it to you," she went on, without heeding the absence of
any reply to her question. "The old man was once in love. You'd hardly
believe that, would you? But you never know. It's the most unlikely
people on this earth who are the most like to make fools of themselves
in that way. You and me and the rest of us, sure we're none of us safe,
though I will say I'd like to see the woman who could get the blind side
of one man I've met in these parts. Who he may be is no matter. But
about old Dudgeon. It's long since he was in love, you must know, but
when he was it was with a girl who was the daughter of the people who
owned this station, years and years ago, before you and I were born,
indeed. Well, the girl wouldn't have him, or preferred someone else,
which is about the same thing. Kitty Lambton was her name when he was
after her; it was a man named O'Guire she married to get away from the
old soured rascal, though he was young at the time, and mayhap a sour
young man at that. Would you say she was wrong? Would you?"
"I suppose every woman has a right to please herself in such a matter,"
he replied evasively.
"That's what I say, and it's what poor Kitty did, rest her soul, for she
is dead now, poor thing."
Her voice dropped to a softer tone suddenly, and she was silent for a
few seconds; but when she resumed her story the shrill tone, the tone
which irritated and hurt him, he knew not why, rang out again.
"But the old man would have none of it. He swore all the vengeance he
could think of against her and hers. He swore no woman should ever set
foot in this place again. He hounded the father and mother of that
unfortunate girl to their graves; he chased her and her husband from
pillar to post, robbing them, swindling them, betraying them until there
was no place on the face of the earth they could call their own, no, not
even a stick nor a shred. The devil was good to him--sure he always is
good to his own. Money came to him by the waggon-load, and ever did he
use it to hound those two unfortunates down, lower and lower until there
was no hope nor peace for them, and they wandered outcasts in the sight
of man and woman. And that's the man, that old double-dyed, heartless
scoundrel that you police flock to preserve and protect, while the likes
of Kitty and her husband are forced down and down and down to the lowest
dregs of life. Is that justice? Is that law? Is that right? Answer me
that now."
"Probably Mr. Dudgeon coloured his story a good deal when he told it:
old men usually do when they recount their youthful doings," he said
quietly. "But, in any case----"
She held out her hand impulsively.
"Wait a moment," she said. "Supposing he did. Supposing the tale is only
half true; but supposing that he did drive Kitty and her husband to the
gutter, and suppose they had children--do you think if those children
knew what that old scoundrel had done they would not be right to pay him
back in his own coin? Sure I'm glad I was able to make the old vagabond
eat his own words when I bought the place over his head. He's met one
woman in the world who has defied him. And do you know what? If I knew
where any of Kitty Lambton's children were at this moment--or her
husband, seeing she is dead, poor thing--at least, so the doctor
said--I'd go to them and say they could have the place free if only they
would go and taunt that old fiend and fling it in his face and hound him
down as he hounded down their parents."
"What good would that do either you or them?" he asked.
"Good?"
She sprang out of her chair and stood facing him.
"Don't you know what it is to hate?" she cried. "Is it only Irish blood
that can boil at rank injustice? Is it only Irish hearts which burn to
aid the oppressed and torture the oppressors as they tortured their poor
unfortunate victims? You said you would shoot the man who struck you
down, shoot him like a dog, if he were escaping your clutches. Don't you
think Kitty Lambton's children have as great, if not a greater right to
shoot that bloodless, heartless monster like a dog or a cat or any other
vermin, if they met him on this earth? I'd tell them to do it; I'd tell
them to do it if there were no other way to make his last hours more
full of misery and agony. That's what I'd do, the dirty old traitorous
villain that he is. Pah!"
She uttered the words with a tigerish pant as she swung on her heels and
strode away to the end of the verandah, where she stood for a moment
staring up at the sky, before she returned.
"It's the curse of the Irish to feel the wounds of others as keenly as
though they were one's own," she said, as she sat down again. "What
concern is it of mine whether the old fool hoards his money and drives
lost souls to perdition? I've no right to worry about other people's
troubles. Sure I have enough of my own. But it just maddened me to think
of it. Oh, it's the Irish hearts that suffer!"
The harsh vibrant tones had gone; the voice he heard was that of the
woman who had pleaded earlier in the evening for compassion for the men
who had injured her.
Impulsively he reached out his hand and touched hers.
"You must not," he said. "You must not heed such tales. You are too
warm-hearted. The sordid side of life is not for you. We who have to
come in contact with it, and know it in all its wretched squalor, know
only too well that rarely, if ever, can one of the high-pitched stories
of personal wrong be justified. The greater the criminal, the greater
the protestations of innocence and injustice. Do not be deceived. You,
who are so full of sympathy and gentleness, you who would not, by your
own hand, hurt the hair of a man's head, you----"
She sprang up.
"Don't!" she cried. "Don't! You must not--never--never--I told you I
would not have you speak to me of--I must not hear such things. I----"
He was by her side, his two hands clasping hers.
"Nora, I must. Darling, I love you. I cannot bear to see----"
She pushed him back, flinging her hands free from his grasp, to clasp
and press them to her bosom as though to still the great heaving gasps
which made it rise and fall in tumultuous spasms.
"Mr. Durham! You forget!"
Her voice fell like a whip-lash, cold, haughty, stern.
"I forbid you ever to speak to me so again. Good night."
She swept past him and entered the house, closing the door after her.
Hours passed before he could obtain control over his thoughts, before he
could face the blackness her rejection of his declaration had brought
upon him. Then he rose and stood staring blankly out over the sombre
mystery of the bush, long since bereft of the faint glimmer of the
new-born moon, veiled in shade, silent as the thin wisps of filmy mist
which floated in the still air along the course of Waroona Creek.
In the morning Mrs. Burke met him without a trace in her voice, face, or
manner of the resentful indignation she had shown on the previous night.
She talked, as she had talked on many a morning at the breakfast-table,
with an uninterrupted flow of chatter, inconsequential, airy, frivolous.
She met his eyes openly, frankly, without a glimmer to show she noticed
the lines which furrowed his face. Yet they were so marked that when
Brennan drove out for him later, he glanced at his superior officer with
apprehension.
"Do you think you are well enough to return to duty, sir?" he asked.
"You don't look half so well as you did yesterday, and you were not
looking too well then. If a few more days' rest----"
"Oh, I'm very fit, Brennan," Durham interrupted. "You had better turn
the horses out for an hour or so; Mrs. Burke insists on my waiting to
have lunch before I go."
Mrs. Burke came out to them as they stood talking.
"Oh, Brennan, did you see old Patsy in the town?" she exclaimed.
"Why, he was here this morning," Durham said.
"Excuse me, Mr. Durham, he was not. You remember what I told you last
night. I did not care to say then, but the old man was very strange in
his manner before dinner, and I believed he had had drink. I spoke to
him about it, and I have not seen him since."
"But--who got breakfast ready?" Durham asked sharply.
"I did myself, Mr. Durham."
"Oh, Mrs. Burke; why did you not tell me? I could have----"
"An Irish lady, Mr. Durham, does not ask her guests to do her
housework."
Durham turned away at the sting of her words and voice.
"Did you see the old man in the town, Brennan?" she asked.
"No, Mrs. Burke, he was not in town last night. I should have seen him."
"Oh, dear, then what can have happened to the creature? Sure I wish I
had left him behind me in Ireland."
"He may be about the place somewhere. Will I look for him?" Brennan
said.
"He's not about the house; I've looked everywhere," she answered.
"He might be in one of the outhouses or stables."
"I never thought of that," she exclaimed. "Maybe that's where he is. Oh,
the trouble of the wretched old fool! I'll pack him off back to
Ireland."
She went into the house and Durham turned to Brennan.
"Have you ever seen him in the town?" he asked.
"Oh, yes, sir. He comes in at night mostly and buys drink, but he never
stays. Soden told me yesterday the last time he came in he took away
half a gallon of rum with him. Maybe that's the cause of his
disappearance."
"We'll look for him," Durham said shortly.
In an outlying tool-shed they found him, stretched out on a tumbled heap
of old sacks and rubbish, the place reeking with the scent of rum and a
half-gallon jar lying on its side near him, empty.
"He's dead to the world for a day," Brennan said as he stood up after
bending over the old man and trying to rouse him. "He must have been
drinking steadily for days to get through that quantity and into this
state. What are we to do with him, sir?"
"If Mrs. Burke will give him in charge we will take him to the station
and lock him up, but we cannot take him otherwise. He's on her private
property."
"That settles it then," Brennan replied. "She's Irish, sir. You know
what that means."
His anticipation was correct. Mrs. Burke refused point-blank to allow
her helpless retainer to be touched. He could remain where he was, she
said, and she hoped the snakes and the lizards and the mosquitoes and
all the other fearsome things she could mention would come and devour
him--but the police were not going to touch him.
She was equally hostile when Durham suggested they should start off for
the town without giving her the trouble of preparing anything for them
to eat. In fact, he could not now open his lips to her that she did not
snap some biting retort at him.
"She'd set the dogs on you if she were in her own country, sir,"
Brennan remarked, when at last they drove away from the house with a
final envenomed shaft ringing in their ears. "I don't think the old man
is the only one who has a taste for the drink, if you ask me, sir."