In the Roaring Fifties, Edward Dyson [novels to read in english .txt] 📗

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.


XVI

BURTON found his mate gloomy and taciturn all next day, a condition so remarkable in Done that it gave Mike some little concern, but he made no comment; and Jim was too absorbed in the strange, new development in his life to discover his friend's uneasiness. Ryder's story brought Jim's youthful sufferings back to him with painful vividness; it awakened some animosities he had thought dead, and he recognised, though shrinking from the idea with actual terror, in Ryder's attitude towards his kind the frame of mind into which he was drifting when he broke away from Chisley and its associations. Remembering well his own heart up to the time when human interests and sympathies began to awaken kindred emotions within him, he understood that the resemblance between himself and his brother was as close on the moral side as it was on the physical, but with Ryder the demoralizing influences had worked their utmost. How like their sufferings had been! differing only in degree; but his own sufferings looked pale and fanciful now beside those of his brother. His afflictions were of the spirit only. He and Ryder were of a supersensitive race and every soul-pang he endured had been augmented a thousand times in his brother's case, and driven in by the prison cell, the leg-irons, the loathsome associations, the animalizing toil in the quarries--the lash! Jim had heard enough of the infamy of the system to understand, if not the worst, sufficient to make his skin creep at the thought of it. He realized to what state of heart and mind Ryder had been driven, knowing how he himself had developed under the stress of comparatively trivial wrongs, and the whole man ached with sympathy. It required a strong effort to restrain his inclination to tears, a weakness of the flesh he had surprised in himself before now.

And Ryder had suffered all this, knowing himself to be guiltless of the crime of which he was convicted. Stony was there in his tent. If Jim had known where to find his brother he would have gone to him in the morning, prompted by the generous affection that had sprung in his heart, feeling that Ryder might be won over by new friendships and new interests. It seemed to him that the wholesome effects worked in his case might be repeated in that of his brother, forgetting their disparity in years. The change had come to him while he was yet little more than a boy; Ryder was a man in middle life, and no longer capable of youth's saving enthusiasms.

Jim was early for the appointment, but Ryder was already at the rendezvous, seated on the log, smoking, and apparently deriving placid enjoyment from his cigar. The young man's greeting was warm, but the elder showed no emotion. If any liking for Jim existed in him it was carefully hidden away. Throughout their previous meeting he had borne himself with seriousness, as if something of importance to him were at stake; to-night he was in a wholly different humour, more like the man who had encountered Jim in Mary Kyley's bar.

'Are we to consider the relationship established?' he said.

'I am quite convinced,' answered Jim. 'I have not doubted it from the moment you declared yourself.'

'You are much too confiding, my boy. As an impostor I might have gathered all these details from the real Richard Done.'

'With what object?'

'Well, I have an object, an ulterior motive. I want you to share a large fortune with me.'

Jim laughed. 'You may pick up a large family of brothers on those terms,' he said.

'You will do. Is it a bargain?'

'What is this fortune? Where is it? How was it come by?'

'The fortune is mainly in virgin gold; it is in an untried alluvial field.'

'If the field is untried, how do you know the gold is in it?'

'I put it there.'

Jim looked at Ryder sharply. 'You have not answered one of my questions,' he said. 'How was the gold come by?'

'There's no objection on that score,' Ryder answered lightly. 'It was come by dishonestly, every grain of it.'

'To me that is a serious objection. I am an honest man, my instincts are all for fair dealing, and I believe, as a simple everyday working principle, honesty is the best policy.'

'Honesty is not a policy, my boy: it is a misfortune.'

'Why do you wish to share your loot with me?'

'Seventy or eighty thousand ounces of gold is not easily accounted for nor easily disposed of by a guest of the Queen who is on leave without a ticket that will bear the closest investigation. You could dispose of it safely enough.'

'And if I were asked to account for it?'

'That is provided for. I have discovered a field within a day's journey that nobody else knows of--that nobody else is likely to know of. You and I go there, we work it for a few months, and the gold I have mentioned is to be represented as the result of our labours if it becomes necessary to make explanations. A few thousand ounces in nuggets which might 'by some unhappy chance be recognised by previous owners we shall batter into slugs and reserve for sale in other lands.'

And then?'

'Then all that life in London and Paris means to men with great fortunes.' Ryder was smiling as he spoke. 'Then to seize and enjoy all that smug respectability is willing to give to the wealthy, and much that it is unwilling to give, but which it shall be our pleasure to take. Then to exact our revenge for all we have endured at the hands of society by making it in some measure the slave to minister to our needs and our desires. I positively tremble, my brother, when I think of the little mischief one man can work; but with money and ingenuity, combined with devotion to purpose, we may succeed in accomplishing quite a decent vengeance.'

'I have no desire for revenge upon society.'

'To be sure, you have not sat through the long black night in, a cold cell with the rats, a wet rag thrown over your lacerated back, the chains eating into your flesh like the nibbling of tiny teeth, thinking of the good people who rule England, sitting at their blazing fires or smiling round the laden tables.'

'No, thank God!'

'If you had you might appreciate the subtle delight of sinning against your enemies. I am going back to England to devote what arts I know, what cunning I have, and what attractions I can assume, to the gratification of the only passion left me. When I think of the fair daughters and the fair sons of the comfortable middle class, Jim, I have exquisite hopes.' Ryder rolled the cigar between his fingers, and smiled at his brother in a gentle, kindly way. 'If I can bring an honoured son of reputable parents to taste the joys of the hulks and feel the caresses of the leaded cat, I shall, I feel, be almost reconciled to my past. They talk of stopping transportation and abolishing the system. I never cease to pray that the system may be spared to us. If it is done away with before I have gratified the magnificent malice I have stored up in this breast, morsel by morsel, hoarding it with the greed of a miser, I am afraid I shall lose my faith in a just Providence.'

'This is simply hideous exclaimed Jim. 'But you are joking. You speak without bitterness.

'I speak without bitterness because I would not waste any jot of it. When my moments come (and