He had never heard of the ‘enthusiasm of humanity’—the expression was not in fashion in his day, and, if it had been, I doubt whether he would have understood it; for he was only an Australian stock-rider, a ‘Sydney cornstalk’ born, who had never read a book in his life except the Bible, and perhaps not very much of that, and was more familiar with bush craft and horsemanship than with abstract principles of any sort. Yet, if actions prove anything, the thing which that famous phrase has come to stand for was not altogether unknown to him.
It was in Van Diemen’s Land—we hadn’t heard of Tasmania in those days—that I made Jack Hepburn’s acquaintance. At that time he was in the employ of my friend Allardyce on the Emu Plains, and had been so for about two years—the only free stockman on the run. Allardyce—himself one of the finest fellows that ever stepped—had unbounded confidence in him, and looked to him as a sort of sheet-anchor in the midst of the endless troubles and annoyances arising out of a supply of convict labour. He was a tough, muscular, black-bearded fellow, a trifle over six feet, and fairly good-looking; active in his movements, but slow and very sparing of his speech, and not particularly remarkable for anything unless it were his scrupulous honesty and strict truthfulness.
I had left the colony when the incident happened which I am about to relate. I heard various accounts of it afterwards, and the substance of them, as nearly as I can give it, is pretty much as follows.
There were four of them up in the bush at the hut known as ‘Dicey’s’, one clear January evening. Dicey, the hut-keeper—a grizzled old sinner, popularly reported to have been one of the first arrivals in Sydney, though I have reason to believe that this is incorrect—was busy cooking inside; Jack Hepburn sat on a stump a little way from the door, plaiting a new lash for his stock whip; and the other two—‘hands’ both of them, and of a pretty bad type—lounged in the doorway, chewing tobacco and carrying on a low growling conversation.
Now Jack was a good-natured, kindly fellow enough; but he never forgot the difference between himself and these men, and never allowed them to forget it; and, naturally enough, they detested him. No doubt this was scarcely Christian charity, but Jack was not a perfect character—very far from it—and, in justice to him, it must be remembered that, in spite of natural prejudices, in his own phrase ‘he never liked to be rough on a hand as wanted to behave himself decently,’ which, on the whole, was not the deepest desire of the two specimens before us. But even a worm will turn, and, though they doubtless fully deserved the curt contempt and lordly superciliousness with which he treated them, they didn’t like it.
All this by the way. Jack was not paying any particular attention to the dialogue going on in the doorway—it was not his habit to take an interest in the conversation of those gentlemen, which, it must be allowed, showed a certain monotony—when his ear was caught by a muchemphasised assertion as to the shooting of crows. He knew that, in their dialect, this word was applied to bronze-coloured and featherless bipeds oftener than to black and feathered ones; and he was well acquainted with the reckless disregard of life—not confined to convicts either—shown towards the unlucky natives of the island. It was a curious trait in Jack Hepburn’s character—considering the universal and deeply rooted prejudice of all colonial Englishmen—that his naturally strong sense of justice suffered no bias or abrogation where ‘black fellows’ were concerned. Perhaps his experience of convict whites and his sojourn among the wild tribes of the bush (I know his wanderings had been wide and adventurous before he settled on Allardyce’s run) had shaken his belief in the comparative worthlessness of the latter. However it may be accounted for—and I am not writing an analytic dissertation on his character; I am only telling his story—such was the fact. And he knew that there was a tribe of natives not very far off; he had seen their tracks in the bush that very day.
So he listened, without seeming to hear, while one of the two—a lowering, sullen-faced creature, with small eyes, a retreating forehead, and cruel jaw—gave a circumstantial statement of a wanton murder committed some months before. Facts of the kind may be found in plenty by those who care to read the cruel record.
Then he looked up and said in his quietest tones:
‘Hawk Williams, that might do well enough on the Tamar, but I tell you I won’t have it here.’
‘Hawk’ Williams gave a brutal laugh; the other man stared and whistled.
‘What —— call hev you got to meddle? Who the —— made you boss of this here consarn?’
‘Call or no call, I won’t—have it,’ said Jack Hepburn, giving a twist to the end of his whip-lash.
‘How’ll you stop it?’ sneered Williams. ‘There’s no law agin the killin’ of black crows, is there? Meredith on the Tamar was glad enough to have ’em picked off, and so will Allardyce be for that matter.’
‘I know better’n that,’ said Jack Hepburn, and finished his work reflectively, without lifting his eyes, for his soul was stirred within him. He knew that the man’s words were on the whole perfectly true—that he had no force of law or public opinion to back him; that he had no authority over these men to compel them to refrain from such a deed should they wish to do it; that Allardyce, who he felt sure would be on his side, was miles away at the station, and that he had heard Allardyce’s partner, Kearney, treat such things as the merest trifles. And, as he thought, the slowly smouldering fires of his disgust and indignation burnt through their embers and leapt up into words.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, slowly, looking full in ‘Hawk’ Williams’ evil face—‘I don’t know about the law and what folks think; but I do know this: that if I saw a chap doin’ as you said just now—firin’ on them poor helpless critters, women, kids, and all, for pure sport—I’d just shoot that fellow where he stood.’
‘I’d like to see you,’ laughed Hawk. ‘I always knew you were a mean-spirited cuss, but you’d never dare that. I’ve a good mind to try. Hallo!’
Jack Hepburn turned and followed the direction of his eye. His own, trained to the bush, at once detected the slight movement in the scrub, and knew what caused it. Williams had turned into the hut.
‘Look, Hawk!’ said Cass, the other convict, who had not as yet spoken, seeing him come out again with a loaded gun in his hand. ‘Sh! Over there!’
‘So it is,’ said Hawk, taking aim.
Jack Hepburn’s rifle lay beside him; he took it in his hand and stood up.
‘Hawk Williams, I give you fair warning. Put that thing down.’
‘Not for you, you cantin’ sneak. You darsn’t shoot a white man. That’s a hangin’ matter.’
‘I know it is. If you fire I’ll shoot you dead and swing for it.’
They both stood motionless, with guns cocked, Williams watching the edge of the scrub, Hepburn watching Williams. None of the natives ventured out into the open ground; they had learnt to be cautious in the neighbourhood of white men’s huts, and perhaps the bright eyes peering through the branches awhile ago had seen the shining gun-barrels. So perhaps five minutes passed, and then—it might have been a bough stirred by a puff of wind, or a kangaroo rat passing through the underbush; but something moved, and Hawk Williams fired into the scrub.
As the shot snapped there was a shriek, and a brown figure darted into the open, a good way farther off, but still within rifle range, and fled up the hill. Jack Hepburn still stood like a statue. Perhaps Williams thought he was hesitating; anyhow, he fired his second barrel. The brown figure dropped.
Then Jack Hepburn levelled the rifle that had never missed fire yet, and without speaking a word shot Hawk Williams through the heart.
He had taken the dead man up and laid him in his bed-place inside the hut, unhelped by the others, who seemed struck dumb with consternation and perplexity. Old Dicey, the cooler of the two, was fairly puzzled as he vainly searched his memory for a parallel case. Both kept outside the door, stealing uneasy glances every now and then at the silent man who sat, with his head in his hands, beside what had been Hawk Williams, as though they thought he might suddenly rise and kill them too. But he never moved, and as the dusk stole up and the air grew damp and chilly, they were fain to turn in and seek their blankets.
Only once he looked up.
‘Mates,’ he said, ‘when does Allardyce come round? Is it to-morrow?’
It was a point of etiquette with him to mark his status as a free man by never speaking of ‘Mr Allardyce’, as they were obliged to do—within hearing of the authorities.
They looked at each other and muttered ‘Yes.’
‘All right,’ he answered, then returned to his brooding watch, and so they found him still seated when they awoke in the morning.
He stayed about the hut all day. ‘You chaps might think I wanted to cut an’ run,’ he remarked, ‘and I want to be on hand when he comes. You can tell him what you please.’
It was afternoon when Allardyce arrived. He must have met with Cass on the way and heard something already, for he galloped up in frantic haste and threw himself from his horse, crying ‘Hepburn, what’s this?’
‘It’s quite true, sir,’ said Jack, quietly. ‘Come along,’ and he led the way into the hut.
Old Dicey met them in the doorway with a high-pitched and voluble story about a quarrel in which Hawk Williams had not been to blame; but Allardyce pushed past him and stood with Hepburn beside the dead man.
‘I shot him, sir, you may see, and I’ll show you why. I gave him fair warning, and I told him I was ready to take the consequences. Will you come this way?’
They went down the hill together and into the scrub, and Jack parted the branches and showed him a copper-coloured corpse lying there on its face, the limbs twisted and hands clenched in the terrible death agony, and the hole where the bullet had torn its jagged course from back to breast.
‘I shot him straight,’ said Jack, as if to himself. ‘He didn’t have to suffer like that.’
But Duncan Allardyce turned his white face away and leaned his hand heavily on Jack’s shoulder.
‘That’s not all,’ said Jack, looking at him narrowly. ‘But—’
‘Go on,’ said Allardyce.
They went on to a spot where there was an opossum-skin rug spread out on the grass; and Jack Hepburn lifted it up and showed a dead woman—a slight-limbed creature scarcely more than a girl—with a child in her arms.
‘There!’ he said, hoarsely. ‘He knew that; he could see it well enough from where we stood. And if it were to do over again I’d do it. And if it’s hanging—why, I’ll hang.’
Duncan Allardyce turned to him and took both his hands.
‘God help us both, Jack!’ he cried. ‘I think you’re right.’
It was a hanging matter. The trial created rather a sensation at the time, and it ended as might have been expected, seeing that the counsel Allardyce engaged failed to establish the plea of lunacy, the only extenuating circumstance the court would have admitted. Kearney was not inclined to ruin himself in trying to save a fool who would meddle with what was no business of his. He and Allardyce quarrelled and parted over that affair, and the latter spent his money alone and to no purpose. He was with Jack Hepburn the night before he died. They had always liked each other, but those last few weeks had drawn them together strangely, and they parted as dearest friends do.
The time was nearly gone. They had sat side by side, silent, holding each other’s hands—how the consciousness of the fast-slipping minutes strikes those dumb who have so much to say!—for the last time; then at last Allardyce said:
‘Is anything troubling you, Jack?’
He looked at him with sad, perplexed eyes, and spoke slowly and hesitatingly:
‘Maybe—I don’t know whether it was wrong; I don’t want to say it wasn’t.’ He laid his head down on Allardyce’s shoulder and went on in a hoarse, hurried whisper: ‘Parson says I can’t get to heaven if I don’t repent—and I—I can’t say I’m—sorry for a thing—when I know I’d do it again—if it happened so…and I wouldn’t like to get in by telling a lie—if such a thing could be. I…oh! I don’t know how to tell you what I mean…and that chap just riles me…and I don’t want to feel angry with anyone…’
‘I think I know,’ said Allardyce, and his voice was very low and gentle. ‘Dear old lad, I’m not good; I can’t talk to you as—as one ought; but I understand what you are feeling. Don’t you mind what he tells you. God is just, and He understands, if no one else can. Go straight to Him, and ask Him, if you were wrong, to give you grace to see it…though, as He hears me—I believe you did a right and noble thing…’ His voice choked with the sob in his throat, but the loving clasp of his arms said all that words could not.
‘He said I had no right…’
‘Don’t you believe it! God is greater and juster than he! Oh, Jack, my boy!’
‘There, they’re coming. You’ll have to go.’
‘Good-night—good-bye. Kiss me—there! good-bye! Don’t forget I’m—thinking of you to the last.’
‘Don’t fret yourself about me—don’t! Good-bye, Allardyce. God bless you!’
The key turned in the lock and the door swung on its hinges, letting in a broad band of light from the turnkey’s lamp.
‘Time’s up, sir.’
I do not judge him; I have only told his story.