Kitabı oku: «At Large», sayfa 8

"Committing another murder! By heaven, I wish I had had the chance!" muttered Miles.

"Then, if I'd started the hue and cry, it would have meant killing the golden goose – and most likely me with it. I thought of something better: I saw you drop down into the hold – there was too much risk in showing your money for a passage or trying for a fo'c'stle berth; the boat was to sail at daylight. I rushed to your wife and told her; but her cottage was three miles out of the town, worse luck to it! and when I got her to the quay, you were under way and nearly out of sight – half-an-hour late in sailing, and you'd have had a friend among the passengers!"

"And what then?"

"Why, then your wife was mad! I soothed her: she told me that she had some money, and I told her if she gave me some of it I might still catch you for her. I showed her how the mail from Sydney, by changing at Brindisi, would land one in England before the Queensland boat. I knew it was an off-chance whether you ever meant to reach England at all, or whether you'd succeed if you tried; but," said Pound, lowering his voice unaccountably, "I was keen to be quit of the country myself. Here was my chance, and I took it; your wife shelled out, and I lost no time."

The man ceased speaking, and looked sharply about him. His eyes were become thoroughly used to the darkness, so that he could see some distance all round with accuracy and ease; but they were eyes no less keen than quick; and so sure-sighted that one glance was at all times enough for them, and corroboration by a second a thing unthought of.

They were walking, more slowly now, on a soft mossy path, and nearing a small plantation, chiefly of pines and firs, half-a-mile from the avenues. This path, as it approaches the trees, has beside it several saplings shielded by tall triangular fences, which even in daylight would afford very fair cover for a man's body. Miles and Pound had passed close to half-a-dozen or more of these triangles.

"Well?" said Miles; for Pound remained silent.

"I am looking to see where you have brought me."

"I have brought you to the best place of all, this plantation," Miles answered, leaving the path and picking his way over the uneven ground until there were trees all round them. "Here we should be neither seen nor heard if we stayed till daybreak. Are you going on?"

But Pound was not to be hurried until he had picked out a spot to his liking still deeper in the plantation; far from shaking his sense of security, the trees seemed to afford him unexpected satisfaction. The place was dark and silent as the tomb, though the eastern wall of the park was but three hundred yards distant. Looking towards this wall in winter, a long, unbroken row of gaslights marks the road beyond; but in summer the foliage of the lining trees only reveals a casual glimmer, which adds by contrast to the solitude of this sombre, isolated, apparently uncared-for coppice.

"I reached London just before you," resumed Pound, narrowly watching the effect of every word. "I waited for your boat at the docks. There were others waiting. I had to take care – they were detectives."

Miles uttered an ejaculation.

"I watched them go on board; I watched them come back – without you. They were white with disappointment. Ned Ryan, those men would sell their souls to lay hands on you now!"

"Go on!" said Miles between his teeth.

"Well, I got drinking with the crew, and found you'd fallen overboard coming up Channel – so they thought; it happened in the night. But you've swum swollen rivers, before my eyes, stronger than I ever see man swim before or since, and I was suspicious. Ships get so near the land coming up Channel. I went away and made sure you were alive, if I could find you. At last, by good luck, I did find you."

"Where?"

"At the Exhibition. I took to loafing about the places you were sure to go to, sooner or later, as a swell, thinking yourself safe as the Bank. And that's where I found you – the swell all over, sure enough. You stopped till the end, and that's how I lost you in the crowd going out; but before that I got so close I heard what you were saying to your swell friends: how you'd bring 'em again, if they liked; what you'd missed that day, but must see then. So I knew where to wait about for you. But you took your time about coming again. Every day I was waiting and watching – starving. A shilling a day to let me into the ching – and place; a quid in reserve for when the time came; and pence for my meals. Do you think a trifle'll pay for all that? When you did turn up again yesterday, you may lay your life I never lost sight of you."

"I should have known you any time; why you went about in that rig – "

"I had no others. I heard fools whisper that I was a detective, moreover, and that made me feel safe."

"You followed me down here yesterday, did you? Then why do nothing till to-night?"

The fellow hesitated, and again peered rapidly into every corner of the night.

"Why did you wait?" repeated Miles impatiently.

An evil grin overspread the countenance of Jem Pound. He seemed to be dallying with his answer – rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue – as though loth to part with the source of so much private satisfaction. Miles perceived something of this, and, for the first time that night, felt powerless to measure the extent of his danger. Up to this point he had realised and calculated to a nicety the strength of the hold of this man over him, and he had flattered himself that it was weak in comparison with his own counter-grip; but now he suspected, nay felt, the nearness of another and a stronger hand.

"Answer, man," he cried, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in his voice, "before I force you! Why did you wait?"

"I went back," said Pound slowly, slipping his hand beneath his coat, and comfortably grasping the haft of his sheath-knife, "to report progress."

"To whom?"

"To – your wife!"

"What!"

"Your wife!"

"You are lying, my man," said Miles, with a forced laugh. "She never came to England."

"She didn't, didn't she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if you don't; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn't a hundred miles from you at this very instant!"

"Speak that lie again," cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering with passion and terror, "and I strike you dead where you stand! She is in Australia, and you know it!"

Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh tone:

"You fool! she is here!"

Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his side – poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the summer's night – stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!

A low voice full of tears whispered his name: "Ned, Ned!" and "Ned, Ned!" again and again.

He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern, cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed like lead; until suddenly – did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman so savagely?

By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in their associations as the angels of light and darkness.

Yet this poor woman, the wife, could only creep near him again – forgetting her repulse, since he was calm the next moment – and press his hand to her lips, so humbly that now he stood and bore it, and repeat brokenly:

"I have found him! Oh, thank God! Now at last I have found him!"

While husband and wife stood thus, silenced – one by love, the other by sensations of a very different kind – the third person watched them with an expression which slowly changed from blank surprise to mortification and dumb rage. At last he seemed unable to stand it any longer, for he sprang forward and whispered hoarsely in the woman's ear:

"What are you doing? Are you mad? What are we here for? What have we crossed the sea for? Get to work, you fool, or – "

"To work to bleed me, between you!" cried Ned Ryan, shaking himself again clear of the woman. "By heaven, you shall find me a stone!"

Elizabeth Ryan turned and faced her ally, and waved him back with a commanding gesture.

"No, Jem Pound," said she, in a voice as clear and true as a clarion, "it is time to tell the truth: I did not come to England for that! O Ned, Ned! I have used this man as my tool – can't you see? – to bring me to you. Ned, my husband, I am by your side; have you no word of welcome?"

She clung to him, with supplication in her white face and drooping, nerveless figure; and Pound looked on speechless. So he had been fooled by this smooth-tongued, fair-faced trash; and all his plans and schemes, and hungry longings and golden expectations, were to crumble into dust before treachery such as this! So, after all, he had been but a dupe – a ladder to be used and kicked aside! A burning desire came over him to plunge his knife into this false demon's heart, and end all.

But Ryan pushed back his wife a third time, gently but very firmly.

"Come, Liz," said he, coldly enough, yet with the edge off his voice and manner, "don't give us any of this. This was all over between us long ago. If it's money you want, name a sum; though I have little enough, you shall have what I can spare, for I swear to you I got away with my life and little else. But if it's sentiment, why, it's nonsense; and you know that well enough."

Elizabeth Ryan stood as one stabbed, who must fall the moment the blade is withdrawn from the wound; which office was promptly performed by one who missed few opportunities.

"Why, of course!" exclaimed Pound, with affected sympathy with the wife and indignation against the husband. "To be sure you see how the wind lies, missis?"

"What do you mean?" cried Elizabeth Ryan fiercely.

"Can't you see?" pursued Pound in the same tone, adding a strong dash of vulgar familiarity; "can't you see that you're out of the running, Liz, my lass? You may be Mrs. Ryan, but Mrs. Ryan is a widow; there's no Ned Ryan now. There's a Mr. Miles, an Australian gentleman, in his skin, and, mark me, there'll be a Mrs. – "

He stopped, for Liz Ryan turned on him so fiercely that it looked as though she was gathering herself to spring at his throat.

"You liar!" she shrieked. "Tell him, Ned! Give him the lie yourself! Quickly – speak, or I shall go mad!"

Her husband uttered no sound.

"He can't, you see," sneered Pound. "Why, if you'd only come in with me into the garden, you'd have seen the two together sweethearting in the starlight!"

"If I had," said Mrs. Ryan, trembling violently, "I pity both. But no, I don't believe it! O Ned! Ned! answer, unless you want to break my heart!"

"Well, well, what does it matter?" put in Pound hastily, speaking to her in a fatherly, protective tone, which hit the mark aimed at. "Liz, my dear, you and I have been good friends all this time; then why not let him go his ways? – after we've got our rights, I mean."

Ned Ryan glanced sharply from his wife to the man who had brought her from Australia; and then he spoke:

"My good woman, why not be frank? What's the use of acting a part to me? Anyway, it's a bit too thin this time. Only let me alone, and you two can go on – as you are. Come now, I don't think I'm hard on you; considering everything I might be a deal harder."

His wife sprang before him, her black eyes flashing, her whole frame quivering.

"Edward Ryan, you shall answer for these foul, cruel words before Him who knows them to be false. What do you think me, I wonder? That vile thing there – can't you see how I have used him? – he has been the bridge between me and you, yet you make him the barrier! Oh, you know me better than that, Ned Ryan! You know me for the woman who sacrificed all for you – who stood by you through thick and thin, and good and bad, while you would let her – who would not have forsaken you for twenty murders! – who loved you better than life – God help me!" cried the poor woman, wildly, "for I love you still!"

She rose the next moment, and continued in a low, hard, changed voice:

"But love and hate lie close together; take care, and do not make me hate you, for if you do I shall be pitiless as I have been pitiful, cruel as I have been fond. I, who have been ready all these years to shield you with my life – I shall be the first to betray you to the laws you have cheated, if you turn my love to hate. Ned! Ned! stop and think before it is too late!"

She pressed both hands upon her heart, as if to stay by main force its tumultuous beating. Her limbs tottered beneath her. Her face was like death. Her life's blood might have mingled with the torrent of her eloquence!

"You are beside yourself," said her husband, who had listened like a stone; "otherwise you would remember that tall talk never yet answered with me. And yet – yet I am sorry for you – so poor, so ragged, so thin – " His voice suddenly softened, and he felt with his hand in his pocket. "See here! take these twenty pounds. It's a big lump of all I have; but 'twill buy you a new dress and some good food, and make you decent for a bit, and if I had more to spare, upon my soul you should have it!"

Elizabeth Ryan snatched the notes from her husband's hand, crumpled them savagely, and flung them at his feet; with a wild sweep of her arm she tore off her bonnet, as though it nursed the fire within her brain, and coils of dark, disordered hair fell down about her shoulders. For one moment she stood glaring fixedly at her husband, and then fell heavily to the ground.

"She has fainted," said Miles, not without pity, and bending over her. "Bring her to, then lead her away. Take her back; she must not see me again."

Pound knelt down, and quietly pocketed the crumpled notes; then he raised the senseless head and fanned the ashy face, looking up meanwhile and saying:

"Meet me here to-morrow night at ten; I will come alone."

"For the last time, then."

"I am agreeable; but it will rest with you."

Miles drew away into the shadows. He waited, and presently he heard a faint, hollow, passionate voice calling his name:

"Ned Ryan! I will come back, Ned Ryan! Come back, never fear, and see you – see you alone! And if you are as hard then – as hard and cruel – Heaven help us both! – Heaven help us both!"

When Ned Ryan, alias Sundown, alias Miles, heard the footsteps fail in the distance and die on the still night air, a rapid change came over his face and bearing. Throughout the night he had lost his self-command seldom; his nerve never. But now the pallor of a corpse made his features ghastly, and a cold sweat burst forth in great beads upon his forehead. His limbs trembled, and he staggered.

By a violent effort he steadied his brain and straightened his body. In a few minutes he had well-nigh regained his normal calm. Then gradually his chest expanded, and his air became that of one who has climbed through desperate peril to the lofty heights and sweet breath of freedom. Nay, as he stood there, gazing hopefully skyward, with the dim light upon his strong handsome face, he might very well have been mistaken for a good man filled with dauntless ambition, borne aloft on the wings of noble yearning.

"After all, I am not lost!" The thoughts escaped in words from the fulness of his soul. "No, I am safe; he dares not betray me; she will not – because she loves me. Not another soul need ever know."

A new voice broke upon his ear:

"You are wrong; I know!"

His lowered gaze fell upon the motionless figure of Dick Edmonstone, who was standing quietly in front of him.

XIV
QUITS

For the second time that night Miles felt instinctively for his revolver, and for the second time in vain.

The younger man understood the movement.

"A shot would be heard in the road and at the lodge," said he quietly. "You'll only hasten matters by shooting me."

At once Miles perceived his advantage; his adversary believed him to be armed. Withdrawing his hand from the breast of his overcoat slowly, as though relinquishing a weapon in the act of drawing it, he answered:

"I believe you are right. But you are a cool hand!"

"Perhaps."

"I have only seen one other as cool – under fire."

"Indeed?"

"A fact. But I'll tell you where you come out even stronger."

"Do."

"In playing the spy. There you shine!"

"Hardly," said Dick dryly, and this time he added a word or two: "or I should have shown you up some time since."

The two men faced one another, fair and square, but their attitudes were not aggressive. Miles leant back against a tree with folded arms, and Dick stood with feet planted firmly and hands in his pockets. A combat of coolness was beginning. The combatants were a man in whom this quality was innate, and one who rose to it but rarely. In these circumstances it is strange that the self-possession of Dick was real to the core, whilst that of the imperturbable Miles was for once affected and skin-deep.

"Will you tell me," said Miles, "what you have heard? You may very possibly have drawn wrong inferences."

"I heard all," Dick answered.

"All is vague; why not be specific?"

"I heard that – well, that that woman was your wife."

Miles felt new hope within him. Suppose he had heard no more than that! And he had not heard anything more – the thing was self-evident – or he would not have spoken first of this – this circumstance which must be confessed "unpleasant," but should be explained away in five minutes; this – what more natural? – this consequence of an ancient peccadillo, this bagatelle in comparison with what he might have learned.

"My dear sir, it is nothing but an infernal lie!" he cried with eager confidence; "she never was anything of the kind. It is the old story: an anthill of boyish folly, a mountain of blackguardly extortion. Can't you see?"

"No, I can't," said Dick stolidly.

"Why, my good fellow, they have come over on purpose to bleed me – they said so. It's as plain as a pikestaff."

"That may be true, so far as the man is concerned."

"Don't you see that the woman is his accomplice? But now a word with you, my friend. These are my private affairs that you have had the impudence – "

"That was not all I heard," said Dick coldly.

Danger again – in the moment of apparent security.

"What else did you hear, then?" asked Miles, in a voice that was deep and faint at the same time.

"Who you are," replied Dick shortly. "Sundown the bushranger."

The words were pronounced with no particular emphasis; in fact, very much as though both sobriquet and calling were household words, and sufficiently familiar in all men's mouths. The bushranger heard them without sign or sound. Dick waited patiently for him to speak; but he waited long.

It was a strange interview between these two men, in the dead of this summer's night, in the heart of this public park. They were rivals in love; one had discovered the other to be not only an impostor, but a notorious felon; and they had met before under circumstances the most peculiar – a fact, however, of which only one of them was now aware. The night was at the zenith of its soft and delicate sweetness. A gentle breeze had arisen, and the tops of the slender firs were making circles against the sky, like the mastheads of a ship becalmed; and the stars were shining like a million pin-pricks in the purple cloak of light. At last Miles spoke, asking with assumed indifference what Dick intended to do.

"But let it pass; of course you will inform at once!"

"What else can I do?" demanded Dick, sternly.

Miles scrutinised his adversary attentively and speculated whether there was the least chance of frightening such a man. Then he again thrust his hand into the breast of his overcoat, and answered reflectively:

"You can die – this minute – if I choose."

Dick stood his ground without moving a muscle.

"Nonsense!" he said scornfully. "I have shown you that you can gain nothing by that."

Miles muttered a curse, and scowled at the ground, without, however, withdrawing his hand.

"The case stands thus," said Dick: "you have imposed on friends of mine, and I have found you – not a common humbug, as I thought all along – but quite a famous villain. Plainly speaking, a price is on your head."

Miles did not speak.

"And your life is in my hands."

Miles made no reply.

"The natural thing," Dick continued, "would have been to crawl away, when I heard who you were, and call the police. You see I have not done that."

Still not a word.

"Another, and perhaps fairer, way would be to give you a fair start from this spot and this minute, and not say a word for an hour or two, until people are about; the hare-and-hounds principle, in fact. But I don't mean to do that either."

Miles raised his eyes, and at last broke his silence.

"You are arbitrary," he sneered. "May I ask what is the special quality of torture you have reserved for me? I am interested to know."

"I shall name a condition," replied Dick firmly – "a single condition – on which, so far as I am concerned, you may impose on the public until some one else unmasks you."

"I don't believe you!"

"You have not heard my condition. I am in earnest."

"I wouldn't believe you on oath!"

"And why?"

"Because you owe me a grudge," said Miles, speaking rapidly – "because it is in your interest to see me go under."

"My condition provides for all that."

"Let me hear it, then."

"First tell me how you came to know the Bristos."

Miles gave Dick substantially the same story that he had already learned from Alice.

"Now listen to me," said Dick. "Instead of squatter you were bushranger. You had been in England a day or two instead of a month or two, and you had set foot in Sussex only; instead of masquerading as a fisherman you wore your own sailor's clothes, in which you swam ashore from your ship."

"Well guessed!" said Miles ironically.

"A cleverer thing was never done," Dick went on, his tone, for the moment, not wholly free from a trace of admiration. "Well, apart from that first set of lies, your first action in England was a good one. That is one claim on leniency. The account you have given me of it is quite true, for I heard the same thing from one whose lips, at least, are true!"

These last words forced their way out without his knowledge until he heard them.

"Ah!" said Miles.

An involuntary subdual of both voices might have been noticed here; it was but momentary, and it did not recur.

Dick Edmonstone took his hands from his pockets, drew nearer to Miles, slowly beat his left palm with his right fist, and said:

"My condition is simply this: you are to go near the Bristos no more."

If this touched any delicate springs in the heart of Miles, their workings did not appear in his face. He made no immediate reply; when it came, there was a half-amused ring in his speech:

"You mean to drive a hard bargain."

"I don't call it hard."

"All I possess is in that house. I cannot go far, as I stand; you might as well give me up at once."

"I see," said Dick musingly. "No; you are to have an excellent chance. I have no watch on me: have you? No? Well, it can't be more than one now, or two at the latest, and they keep up these dances till dawn – or they used to. Then perhaps you had better go back to the house now. Button-hole the Colonel; tell him you have had a messenger down from town – from your agent. You can surely add a London agent to your Queensland station and your house in Sydney! Well, affairs have gone wrong on this station of yours – drought, floods – anything you like; you have received an important wire; you are advised, in fact, to start back to Queensland at once. At any rate, you must pack up your traps and leave Graysbrooke first thing in the morning. You are very sorry to be called back so suddenly – they are sorrier still to lose you; but Australia and England are so close now, you are sure to be over again some day – and all the rest of it; but you are never to go near them again. Do you agree?"

"What is the alternative?"

"Escape from here dressed like that if you can! You will breakfast in gaol. At best you will be hunted for a week or two, and then taken miserably – there is no bush in England; whereas I offer you freedom with one restriction."

"I agree," said Miles, hoarsely.

"Very good. If you keep your word, Sundown the bushranger is at the bottom of the sea, for all I know; if you break it, Sundown the bushranger is a lost man. Now let us leave this place."

Dick led the way from the plantation, with his hands again deep in his pockets.

Miles followed, marvelling. Marvelling that he, who had terrorised half Australia, should be dictated to by this English whelp, and bear it meekly; wondering what it all meant. What, to begin with, was the meaning of this masterly plan for an honourable exit? which was, in fact, a continuation of his own falsehood. Why had not this young fellow – who had every reason to hate him, independently of to-night's discovery – quietly brought the police and watched him taken in cold blood? There would have been nothing underhand in that; it was, in fact, the only treatment that any criminal at large would expect at the hands of the average member of society – if he fell into those hands. Then why had not this been done? What tie or obligation could possibly exist between this young Edmonstone and Sundown the Australian bushranger?

The night was at its darkest when they reached the avenue; so dark that they crossed into the middle of the broad straight road, where the way was clearest. Straight in front of them burned the lamps of the gateway, like two yellow eyes staring through a monstrous crape mask. They seemed to be walking in a valley between two long, regular ranges of black mountains with curved and undulating tops – only that the mountains wavered in outline, and murmured from their midst under the light touch of the sweet mild breeze.

They walked on in silence, and watched the deep purple fading slowly but surely before their eyes, and the lights ahead growing pale and sickly.

Miles gave expression to the thought that puzzled him most:

"For the life of me, I can't make out why you are doing this" (he resented the bare notion of mercy, and showed it in his tone). "With you in my place and I in yours – "

Dick stopped in his walk, and stopped Miles also.

"Is it possible you do not know me?"

"I have known you nearly a month," Miles answered.

"Do you mean to say you don't remember seeing me before – before this last month?"

"Certainly, when first I met you, I seemed to remember your voice; but from what I was told about you I made sure I was mistaken."

"Didn't they tell you that at one time, out there I was hawking?"

"No. Why, now – "

"Stop a bit," said Dick, raising his hand. "Forget that you are here; forget you are in England. Instead of these chestnuts, you're in the mallee scrub. The night is far darker than this night has ever been: the place is a wilderness. You are lying in wait for a hawker's wagon. The hawkers drive up; you take them by surprise, and you're three to two. They are at your mercy. The younger one is a new chum from England – a mere boy. He has all the money of the concern in his pocket, and nothing to defend it with. He flings himself unarmed upon one of your gang, and, but for you, would be knifed for his pains. You save him by an inch; but you see what maddens him – you see he has the money. You take it from him. The money is all the world to him: he is mad: he wants to be killed outright. You only bind him to the wheel, taking from him all he has. So he thinks, and death is at his heart. But he finds that, instead of taking it all, you have left it all; you have been moved by compassion for the poor devil of a new chum! Well, first he cannot believe his eyes; then he is grateful; then senseless."

Miles scanned the young man's face in the breaking light. Yes, he remembered it now; it had worn this same passionate expression then. His own face reflected the aspect of the eastern sky; a ray was breaking in upon him, and shedding a new light on an old action, hidden away in a dark corner of his mind. A thing that had been a little thing until now seemed to expand in the sudden warmth of this new light. Miles felt an odd, unaccountable sensation, which, however, was not altogether outside his experience: he had felt it when he pulled Colonel Bristo from the sea, and in the moment of parting with his coat to a half-perishing tramp.

Dick continued:

"Stop a minute – hear the end. This new chum, fresh from 'home,' was successful. He made a fortune – of a sort. It might have been double what it is had he been in less of a hurry to get back to England." Dick sighed. "Whatever it is, it was built on that hundred which you took and restored: that was its nucleus. And therefore – as well as because you saved his life – this new chum, when no longer one, never forgot Sundown the bushranger; he nursed a feeling of gratitude towards him which was profound if, as he had been assured, illogical. Only a few hours ago he said, 'If he came within my power I should be inclined to give him a chance,' or something like that." Dick paused; then he added: "Now you know why you go free this morning."

Miles made no immediate remark. Bitter disappointment and hungry yearning were for the moment written clearly on his handsome, reckless face. At last he said:

"You may not believe me, but when you came to me – down there on the lawn – that's what I was swearing to myself; to begin afresh. And see what has come to me since then!" he added, with a harsh laugh.

"Just then," returned Dick, frankly, "I should have liked nothing better than to have seen you run in. I followed you out with as good a hate as one man can feel towards another. You never thought of my following you out here? Nor did I think of coming so far; by the bye, the – your wife made it difficult for me; she was following too. Yes, I hated you sufficiently; and I had suspected you from the first – but not for what you are; when I heard Jem Pound say your name I was staggered, my brain went reeling, I could scarcely keep from crying out."