page 131

Chapter XX.

On their withdrawal, Marsden first cast a keen glance in the direction whence the dog still continued to bark, and where I suppose, the camp, tent, or hut, was situated, though as yet screened from my view by the intervening bushes; then, mounting his horse, he briefly ordered me to do the same.

Feeling assured by his late conduct, that no foul play was intended on his part, I instantly complied with his order, first however, regaining my whip, and rode along by his side. For a few minutes he led the way, as if meaning to go towards Wentworth, then, suddenly turning round, and looking me sternly in the face, he enquired what errand had brought me there at that time of night. I told him as briefly as I could.

He looked keenly and suspiciously into my face as if doubting the truth of my account of myself.

“And your friend,” said he significantly, “have you seen them to-day?”

I told him that I had not as the steamer had passed several hours ere I had reached Wentworth.

He then pulled up his horse and again searched my countenance with his swift scrutinising glance, and then, as if satisfied, I saw a peculiar smile pass across his face, whilst his stern, suspicious manner now wholly gave place to a more sarcastic expression, such as I had frequently observed on his features, and that so well became their strongly cast expression.

“Well, sir,” said he in that tone, “you will now perhaps be able to realise the possible value that would be able to balk me of any fancy of mine that I lately hinted at, when expressing a desire to purchase that noble animal of yours.”

“I realise it now only too plainly, Mr. Marsden,” I replied; involuntarily addressing the bushranger by his former style of gentleman; “and also, that the horse is now within reach of your own terms,” I added glancing at his revolver.

“Nay, sir, let your fears be at rest on that head, it is no intention of mine now to follow up my advantage over you; this I have less desire now to do on account of the opportunity it gives me of marking my sense of the brave action I saw you perform on the day of the cattle mustering, when you saved you lovely girl's life from the charge of that ferocious bullock.”

Then again resuming his tone of sarcasm he added—“And now, sir, might I enquire what your opinion is of the sudden transformation you find in me? That there was something about me mysterious and unsatisfactory in your mind your chilling reserve sufficiently indicated; as for your lynx-eyed assistant, page 132 whose eyes could not keep off me, I was such a source of interest to him, that he thought me some kind of black sheep of whose particular breed he might not be quite assured was plain enough, when under my assumption of the wealthy squatter, he had the audacity to attempt to scent out the common horse-stealer.

“And now, sir, having thus so unexpectedly unravelled the mystery that has evidently been exercising your brain on my account, and having now found but a common bushranger after all, may I ask if it is your intention (in return for the Quixotic idea of humanity I just now displayed in saving you from the clutches of yonder desperadoes) to have such a malefactor as I am delivered over to justice by giving timely notice to the police of my whereabouts?”

“Mr. Marsden,” I replied firmly, “I am at present in your power, the power that a loaded revolver confers on a man able and willing to use it, over another armed with only a loaded whip handle, and so you can at your will prevent me from going where I can alarm any one, at least for the present. Yet, I assure you, were you now to release me to go where I wish, this much at least, in view of your evident influence over the affections of Miss Rolleston I should deem it my duty to do, and that is, to instantly write to her father my knowledge of your true character.”

“Nay, sir, that would be but chivalrous on your part, and your action would, I am assured, be the more exalted from the entire absence of any such grosser motive as self-interest in prompting it, in your entire unconsciousness in connection with it of the grand opportunity such an action would afford you of getting a dangerous rival in your affections out of your way. Yet still, for thus permitting you to return by no rougher means than the common bushranging expedient that my friends youder are so thoroughly familiar with—that is, tying you hand and foot to a tree and then leaving you on the slender chance of a passing traveller hearing your cooey, unless we choose to send back and release you—I say, for thus letting you go scot free, I should require only your word, as a gentleman, that you would allow twenty-four hours to elapse ere you communicate to any one what you have seen to-night.

“As for Mr. Rolleston,” said he, again resuming his sarcastic and almost mocking tone, “well, I presume the path of your duty is also that of honour. So, as long as the condition I have stipulated for is not infringed, by all means write and unveil my lawless character to the poor old gentleman. Be sure you put it on strong so as the more effectually to put him on his guard against any more daring advances that I might still persist in making towards his lovely daughter.

page 133

“As it happens that the mail leaves Wentworth for Swan Hill, up the Murray, to-morrow, your letter will not be delayed any time on the road; and delays, my dear sir, are proverbially dangerous, you know.

“Now, sir, what think you of me by this time?” he added suddenly, at the same time scrutinising my face narrowly to gather from it some indications of my feelings towards him or the influence upon me of his tone of sarcastic banter.

“I know not what to think of you, sir,” I answered gravely. “Outwardly you appear a man fashioned as I am myself, whilst judging by your conversation, you seem to be inwardly not unlike me, but moved with similar motions of right and wrong. You also know the certain consequences and ignominious punishment that must eventually overtake a lawless course such as you are now pursuing, and also the degradation of such a course in itself. Yet why, so unlike me, you can prefer leading such a life, and apparently glory in it, when with your education as a gentleman one would imagine that, whatever first occasioned your taking to it, you would at once make an effort to flee from it, I cannot understand. Most assuredly were such evil to befall me I should attempt to remedy it. Rather than go hand in hand with such villains as you now associate with, and rather than permit myself to be cheated into reconciliation with such a life by its false notions of glory, from the constant experience of hazard and escape associated with a life of crime, I should prefer the life of a hermit in the wilderness and to subsist on herbs. This much of myself I can say; but of you I can only say, Mr. Marsden, that now having discovered the true nature of your pursuits, you are a greater puzzle to me than ever.”

My words, if plain, were also feeling; for whatever had been the nature of the original crime that had forced him into his present state of lawlessness, I felt that in his nature there were still some magnanimous points, that I fain would have appealed to. Therefore, by stripping his mind, as I sought to do, of the false gloss with which he might endeavour to justify the life he was leading, in his own eyes, and thereby placing it in its plain revolting nakedness before him, I tried to move his better nature to a feeling of shame at his deeds, and to incite in him a desire to return to the path of honour that he had abandoned.

He looked at me steadily while I was speaking. Whether my words touched a better chord in his nature or not, I do not know; yet he certainly did not appear to think any the worse of me for my plainness of speech.

“Mr. Farquharson,” he replied, “you speak bluntly, and, as page 134 I believe you mean what you say, I respect you all the more for it; but, as for the drift of your words, which I am not so blind as to miss, in one sense, it is useless for the present, in another, it is what I am bent on accomplishing—to wit—my restoration to my proper position in society. But you and I have been formed in such entirely different moulds, that we must naturally view a matter like this from an entirely different standpoint and come to different conclusions. You are calm and steady, and content to plod away in your obscure groove as manager of a sheep station; you are, in fact, content to serve; I am fiery by temperament and naturally ambitious, and would calmly submit to subordination to no man. Therefore, what, viewed from your standpoint of conventional sobriety, appears to be a life of degradation, to me, with a natural antipathy to all conventional notions, is simply a life of daring independence. You referred to going hand in hand in crime with you brace of ruffians, but you must not think that such companionship as theirs is what I voluntarily choose; were it so, your terms of contempt would be but fittingly applied in my case; but, these men I but use as tools. Could I get tools of a better class, I would at once fling these from me; but none better being available, I simply have to make the best use I can of such as I can get, keeping a sharp look-out meanwhile, not to make the consequences of my work dangerous to myself, by the use of such bad instruments.

“And of myself, let me say only this now, that circumstances have combined to force Philip Marsden to lead the life of a hunted felon as you now see him, for such a life was none of his own deliberate choosing; but the legal meshes that would now confine him to a felon's life will yet, by the force of his own will, be burst asunder. This career I will yet forsake, though not,” said he scornfully, “for the hermit's life and herbal fare. Such a prospect might well agree with the milk and water spirit of some spiritless cur—yet it is strange,” said he checking himself, “you are no spiritless cur, yet you can calmly brook the idea of a man of daring adapting himself to a lot in life that would better befit the craven soul of some canting methodist.”

“Why should you consider courage to be a quality antagonistic to a life of sobriety and social order?”

“Don't I see the proofs of it everywhere, in the constant checks imposed by society and local polity? where are the road and trespass boards, and game laws, by which the free motions of decorous citizens are schooled and held bound like those of so many children? Your decorous, law-abiding man sees the board that warns off trespassers, and meekly goes two or three page 135 miles out of his way; whilst the man of spirit leaps the wall, and goes straight to his goal by the straightest route that leads there, in scorn of the legal menace—the decorous man goes to church on Sunday in superstitious fear of future damnation, the man of daring chooses to think for himself, and uses Sunday—like any other day—for his own supreme pleasure, and scoffs at superstitious consequences. What does all this argue, if not an inferior spirit and manliness in your law-abiding, canting hypocrite, to that of him who can boldly dare to place himself beyond the pale of all law, whether human or divine, in the regulation of his conduct?”

“Sir, having been a soldier you ought to be better up in proofs on this subject than you seem to be; for you must know, that the soldier who is most amenable to discipline in the camp, is the most reliable in action on the field.”

“A statement I utterly dispute; the reckless, dare-devil, happy-go-lucky man, who concerns himself with nothing about this world, and the imaginary one to come—except indeed to make the most of the one he is in—is far less likely to shirk the bayonet of an enemy, than your psalm-singing, straitlaced, crawling hypocrite, who is continually praying to the Lord to bring him out of the battle with a whole skin.”

“The facts of history completely belie your assertion; as, witness the actions of Gustavus Adolphus, and of Cromwell's ironsides; what soldiers ever transcended the deeds that they accomplished?”

“A set of fanatics, they are no rule to go by; as their superstition was wrought up into a frenzy by the hypocritical cunning of their leaders—just as that of the Saracens was by Mahomet, who accomplished even greater feats than did Cromwell's bigoted, canting psalm-singers.”

“Mr. Marsden, by reading history a little more impartially, you may find that Cromwell was much less of a fanatic, and a great deal more of a genuine man than he has generally had the credit for being; but leaving him alone, take such a case as Havelock in our own time: what say you to the example of fortitude and gallantry that that Christian warrior, and his Christian troops, so lately gave to the world?”

“Havelock I knew personally,” he replied thoughtfully, “and his courage as a soldier, and ability as an officer, were indeed undoubted; but, however, this discussion is getting too metaphysical and abstract for my taste. I will now leave you. You will find Mr. Fletcher's about a mile further on (we had been moving on during the chief part of this dialogue). Your honour and love of fair play will both engage you to observe the terms that I have stipulated for, to enable me to get a fair start page 136 from here, ere my friends the police are on my track; but I only ask for that brief term to place myself beyond all fears of their interruption. As I strike camp immediately on my return, parting now, my best desire is that you and I may never cross each other's paths again. Your sympathy is not likely to be with me in my present course, nor do I desire it, being quite willing to take all responsibility for my actions upon my own shoulders. I have your word on those terms? that is well. And now, good-bye, sir.”

Uttering these words, and without observing the conventional, but British usage, of emphasising his parting words with the offer of his hand, he abruptly turned his horse's head and galloped back towards his camp.

The inmates of Mr. Fletcher's house were on the point of retiring for the night when I arrived; for it was then considerably past eleven o'clock.

Mr. Fletcher, an unmarried man, received me hospitably; but after some light refreshment, I felt so little inclined—owing to my late adventure—for general conversation, that, pleading fatigue, I hastily retired to the bed assigned to me. This was not indeed for the sake of sleep, which I knew I should seek in vain, but for the opportunity I desired for quiet meditation on the night's events, and the nature of the engagement I had entered into with Marsden, together with the possible suspicion that such an engagement might expose me to in the eyes of the police. However, on this score, I troubled myself but little, as under the circumstances I could not in honour have done anything else.

But a greater weight oppressed me, and that was as to the advisability of at once riding to Mr. Rolleston's station, to put them on their guard against Marsden, lest he, reaching there before the arrival of my letter, might contrive to induce Rachel, by stratagem or force, to accompany him.

However, I recollected that the mail would reach Mr. Rolleston's station within a few hours of my arrival, as Mr. Rolleston's place could not be less than sixty miles distant from where I then was, and the idea of such a daring abduction occurring in the short interval between now and when my letter would reach there on the ensuing day was too improbable to be entertained. Yet there was something in the sarcastic and knowing expression in Marsden's face when he assented to my determination to write to Mr. Rolleston that disquieted me not a little. Apparently the best I could do in my peculiar position was to write two letters, one to Mrs. Campbell and the other to Mr. Rolleston. Thus, in the event of the latter being from home at post time, Mrs. Campbell would be in a page 137 position to put Miss Rolleston on her guard against Marsden. I disliked, however, the idea of writing on such a subject to Miss Rolleston herself.

I dozed off towards morning, but owing to my anxiety, I was awake again and up by six o'clock.

The next morning I asked and obtained permission of Mr. Fletcher for one of his men to ride with my letters to Wentworth to be in time for the mail. On this head, therefore, I was made easy.

On my return to our station, my first action was to make Lilly acquainted with all the incidents of my adventure. Though naturally surprised at the sudden discovery, he was indeed but little astonished at this verification of his own suspicions with regard to Marsden's true character, whilst he listened with strong interest, not unmixed with admiration, at Marsden's resolute manner with my would-be murderers and subsequent conversation with myself; for Lilly was an admirer of force of character even in a bushranger.

“It was lucky” he remarked, “that you happened to drop upon him as you did, before he had time to get the young lady away with him; and mark my words, it was only for that purpose that the daring villain came up here; and he was skulking about down there watching for a favourable opportunity, either to get Miss Rolleston to go with him quietly, or else to carry her off with him by force. But now she will be safe anyhow, for since you have discovered him, he will see his game is up in that direction, and so clear out of that neighbourhood, while your letter will put the strong-headed girl on her guard against him for the future. There was a wildness about that fellow's look that made me certain he was not jonick, and I just put the black fellows up to keep their eyes on the horses, and if he had tried any capers with them, I should have nabbed him at once. I knew that was Tyson's horse he was riding, and I guessed as he had just helped himself to him, for Tyson refused a lot of money for that horse, I heard when I was over that way last year, looking out for a young bull he wanted to sell”