She saw them ride across the paddock at sun-down—Laird, and the young Ensign Wall and his men of the 63rd. She was elate that she had triumphed over, avenged herself on, Laird; through her they came too late; Larry was well away in the ranges.
Mellis, in drink, had boasted at the inn that Larry was to be laid by the heels that night; no longer were the Heydons to work their will and their way through the district, now that Mr Laird was Police Magistrate. Colonel Arthur had picked his man well. Larry had been seen sneaking about Mellis’ house on the very night the sheep were stolen. Mr Laird would have the young rogue under lock and key by dark, and held for trial, and it would not be long before old Dick Heydon and his boys, one and all, were called to full account. Mr Laird had sworn this to Mellis as gentleman to gentleman.
Harris, the landlord, had told her this. Fortunately she had pulled up at the inn, thinking to find her brothers there, and to order them home! At Harris’ warning she had come galloping home, in wild anxiety for her brother, and in hot hate of Laird. She had sent Larry scurrying off for the ranges; Rod and Will had followed for safety, for Laird must have a wide choice of counts against them. Still, to her thinking, her brother had not stolen Mellis’ sheep. Larry was courting Mellis’ girl, and had met her on the night of the loss.
Laird! She had beaten Laird. She had no part in—she hated and feared—the Heydon law-breaking. But Laird!… Supercilious, pompous fool! Puppy!…Passing her by on the road without a bow in response to her nod and smile; pretending not to know her, not to remember the night of the 63rd’s ball in Hobart Town; and he, the little wisp of a man, presented to her, and claiming dance after dance, and presuming to make love to her, so that he had filled her mind for all the weeks thence to that meeting on the road. He had passed her by then without a word, being newly-appointed Police Magistrate for the district, and puffed up with arrogance and insolence; considering her, as old Heydon’s girl, not safe or fit for him to know!
She watched Laird and his men approach the house; they scattered to surround it; Laird dismounted at the gate and walked swiftly up through the neglected garden—a lean little man, white-faced, neat and precise in dress—in black coat, white breeches, high black boots and high black hat. He carried a switch in his gloved hand; he seemed unarmed. She heard him rap upon the door, and, no one answering, rap more loudly. She heard her father roaring her name; he was now deep in drink; the men and the women servants were in their huts. She must go down and meet Laird.
She glanced at herself in the mirror. Swiftly she smoothed her dark, disordered hair, and set in her ears the rings with coral pendants which had been her mother’s; the corals matched the redness of her lips. She had a regretful thought of her new muslin gown in preference to her dusty, tattered habit. She moved slowly down the stairs, heedless of her father’s snarling demand why, in the devil’s name, hadn’t she answered the knocking at the door? She moved as slowly through the hall, loosed the chain, and unlocked the door.
Laird stood against the redness of the sunset, white-faced and impassive. He bared his head at her sharp question: ‘Well, what is it? What do you want here?’
‘You are Miss Heydon, I think,’ he said quietly. ‘I want to see your father. The matter’s urgent. My name is Laird.’
She motioned to him to enter the hall; she went to the door to the right of her, and thrust it open. Old Richard Heydon lolled in his chair, at table. His face was flushed, his hair unkempt, his dress disordered, and his cravat loosened from the soiled and crumpling linen at his throat. A candle guttered from a silver stick; the tallow was spilled on stained mahogany; the curtains had been drawn heavily against sunglare. The room reeked of Jamaica rum, and was clouded with Brazilian tobacco-smoke.
Laird had followed her, and stood in the doorway—the mean, little, stilted figure. She noted with satirical amusement the contrast between the two men. Heydon lurched from his chair, striving with fuddled brain to assume the air of dignity and breeding which had belonged to him before the years of dissipation and destruction of all the standards of race and youth.
‘Mr Laird, I believe,’ he mumbled. ‘Why, sir, you honour me…Kate, my dear, a chair and a glass for Mr Laird.’
‘No, thank you,’ Laird said stiffly. ‘I’m not here as a guest. I have to tell you that I’m looking for your son Laurence. Where is he? If he’s at home, call him here…The house is surrounded by my men…’
Heydon, with instant change from sneer to snarling rage, roared out: ‘You dare to stand there and tell me—’
‘Mr Heydon, we’ll waive the question,’ Laird interrupted with a flash of his steel-blue eyes. ‘The charge is laid by your neighbour, Mellis. Sheep-stealing! Where is your son?’
‘Not in the house!’ old Heydon cried, with tipsy triumph. ‘And not where you’ll lay hands on him!’
‘I must direct search of the house.’
‘Oh, search! Search!’—reaching out his hand for the bottle. ‘But you’ll not find Larry. Hey, Kate—he’ll not find our Larry, will he? The lad’s well away from here?’
She said, not looking at Laird: ‘Mellis is a drunkard and a liar. He has lied to you. My brother had no part in the affair. He is not in the house, as my father’s told you…Search the house, if you insist; but you’ll only waste our time and your own.’
She was aware that Laird held his eyes averted from her, and that his lips were compressed; he appeared to listen with intentness. She faced him, and cried out with sudden passion: ‘Oh, call in your men, then! Search the house!’
He made no answer to her. Pointing his switch at the sodden, sagging figure at the table, he demanded: ‘Why has your son left the house, if he’s not guilty? Why hasn’t he stayed to face the charge? He’s clearly had a warning.’
‘Why’s he away?’ Heydon mumbled with tipsy triumph. ‘That’s his affair and mine, not yours! I know Mellis for a rascally perjurer, as I know you for one of Arthur’s pimps, Mister—Robert—Laird!’
Laird was impassive still; he swung round without a word; he went to the house door and cried sharply: ‘Wall!’—and young Wall appearing—‘Tell two of your men to search the house. Heydon says that his son’s away. He’s received warning, and he’s ridden off to the hills. But we’ll be sure!’—and, lowering his voice, he muttered to the lad apart.
Heydon sat sucking his pipe, and sinking, with a fresh draught of rum, into a half-stupor. With disgust Catherine Heydon stepped from the room, drawing aside contemptuously as two of Wall’s men entered the house. Laird had left the hall, but when she approached the doorway she saw him standing by the porch, and he would have drawn back into the hall. He turned instantly; she was conscious of his pallor, and of the glitter of his eyes.
‘I beg for a word with you, Miss Heydon.’
She stood gazing at him in silence—her hate of him expressed in burning eyes and in sneering lips.
He averted his eyes from her. He said, and his voice was hard and rasping: ‘A word and a warning, if you will! I’m here in this district with definite instructions from His Excellency.’
‘You are one of Arthur’s creatures!’ she sneered.
‘Name me as you wish. I am the Governor’s servant! His Excellency’s orders vitally affect your brothers—I exceed my duty in speaking to you and giving you this warning. The charge of the man Mellis is one of many for investigation. Your brothers are under grave suspicion. I say this—that whatever the result of my investigation, whether of this charge or of the succession of complaints made against your brothers, I’ll carry out my duties. Rigorously! Without care or concern except for duty.’
‘Why do you tell me this?’ she asked, her look intent upon him.
‘You have influence, I don’t doubt, over all your brothers. They are young men, and their lives may yet be of high value to the Colony, not merely thrown away.’
‘I ask you,’ she persisted, ‘why do you tell me this?’
His eyes met hers; she saw the flame of his eyes and the twisting of his lips.
‘Pray answer the question for yourself, Miss Heydon!’
The summer heat had endured beyond sundown. The breathless air was thick with the smoke of bush fires. The windows were open to the stifling night, yet the candles burned before the mirror with a steady flame.
Catherine saw the dim reflection of herself in the blurred dressing glass—black ringlets, pallor; the long coral pendants like drops of blood, the misty whiteness of her muslin gown. Her eyes were sombre, her mouth colorless and lined about. She was, she realised, the pale ghost of herself, through the strain of these months of terror, months of conflict.
The Mellis affair had brought new disaster on the Heydon family. Laird, with Ensign Wall and his men, had sought his quarry in the ranges; he had pressed hard upon the brothers; magistrate and military had fallen into an ambuscade. Young Wall, shot through the body, and lying in the town, was reported to be dying; Laird himself had been slightly wounded in the shoulder; two of the men had been killed. Laird had directed thence constant pursuit; new troops had been brought from Headquarters. The boys were driven from range to range, from hiding-place to hiding-place; their horsemanship and their knowledge of the country as yet outwitted Laird and the troops.
Catherine had not set eyes on her brothers all this time. Her father had met them from time to time at this or that point in the ranges, having roused himself from his drunkenness to succour his sons, carrying them stores and ammunition. He was persistent to his daughter that the boys had had no part in the attack on Laird and his soldiers; the three denied it; they were not alone on the ranges. The remnants of Brady’s gang were yet abroad; Wall and his fellows had been ambushed by these men.
All the Heydons’ misfortunes were due to Laird! Old Richard threatened a bitter reckoning.
Laird! Catherine had met Laird riding by the road to the town on several occasions. Always he had halted to greet her, his strange eyes burning as from cavernous depths, his face white and tormented, his speech harsh and broken. He had uttered no word of her brothers and his direction of the pursuit of them, pretending only concern for herself and sympathy with her in her anxiety; his speech confused, faltering, he would fall suddenly to silence and ride away.
She told herself that she hated him. She called him a madman; yet, in her secret thoughts, she felt no wonder at him, estimating and understanding. Realising the irony of it—this man, Police Magistrate for the district, compelled by duty to activity against the Heydon sons, and mad for Heydon’s girl! Fearing to be diverted by her from the path of duty. That was why he had ridden past without a sign of recognition on that first day. Remembering the night of dance, of sentiment and laughter in Hobart Town!
Irony! Her father’s degradation, drunkenness, had involved all of them—the boys, herself. Heydon—with this great house of his and all his acres—had been broken in spirit by her mother’s death, and had sought oblivion from the bottle. His name had become a byword in the Colony, the boys had grown up undisciplined, and lawless for sheer joy of a mad game, wild rides through the night, horsemanship, and cunning matched against the Governor’s men.
She was alone this night in the great house. The cottages were empty of the assigned servants: all had been withdrawn by the Governor’s order—a new count against Laird! But how should the drunken father of outlaws, and their sister, be allowed the charge of assigned servants?
Alone in the house! Heydon had been absorbed, mysterious, and busied in writing during the morning. He had ridden off at noon without explanation to her, and he had not returned.
She was roused from gloomy thoughts by the sudden moaning of the wind about the house, the banging of a shutter, and the fluttering of the candle flames. She rose from her chair, and went to the window, but looked on an impenetrable blackness absorbing bush and cleared land. The sky was wholly overcast; the puff of breeze had ceased, so that the night seemed breathless and soundless save for a distant stirring of the bush as the wind passed inland, and the low drumming of the seas to the east. She leaned from the window, listening intently, and feeling a drear foreboding, arisen, doubtless, from her realisation of her loneliness, as from the weeks of mental strain and terror for her brothers. If they were taken they would surely hang; and Laird was pledged to take them.
So, with relief, she heard at last afar the sounds of hoof-beats; a rider was coming swiftly. She assumed instantly that her father was returning; she took the candlestick, and hurried down the stair into the living-room. The old man would be worn out and famished; she must spread a supper for him.
She set the candles on the table. The windows were open, and the tattered curtains were flapping with new gusts, preluding the rush of the merciful sea breeze. To stay the wild flicker of the candle flame she hastened to draw the shutters and halfclose the windows, despite the heat. She took a cloth from the sideboard, spread it, and set bottle and glass and dishes. With the candlestick in her hand she hurried out to the kitchen. She carried in bread and meat and a jug of water.
The candles cast white flickers through the room—on the stained, lime-washed walls hung with sporting prints, the heavy furniture of mahogany, and the faded cushions and curtains. She had a bitter thought of the decay and disorder about her: the house was symbolic of her father’s life. He had come to Van Diemen’s Land in possession of considerable means and energy, early in Lieutenant-Governor Sorell’s time. He had prospered till his wife’s death, and had seemed likely to build up a great estate even in the young, disordered Colony. Now he was a drunkard; the sons of the fair, delicate wife were outlaws through him; the ruin of his life involved their lives in ruin.
She heard the hoof-beats sound up to the gate. She wondered not to hear Heydon cry out her name and ride about the house to the stable-yard, but to hear the gate swung open slowly, footsteps on the porch, and a rapping on the door. She snatched up a candle and hurried to the door, but, ere opening it, she cried out sharply: ‘Who’s there?’
She trembled to hear the answer—‘Laird!’—and hurriedly opened the door. He stood bare-headed; she saw in the flicker of the candle the whiteness of his face and the eagerness of his eyes. She whispered: ‘Come in, please!’—and she drew aside till he entered the hall. She closed the door then, and locked it. Silently she went before him into the living-room.
He threw down hat, gloves and riding-whip upon a chair. She saw no pistol at his belt. A black cloak swung open from his shoulders.
Facing him, she whispered, trembling: ‘Why do you come here, Mr Laird? Do you bring me…ill news? What is it, please?’
Seeming startled, colouring, and staring at her, he said sharply: ‘Did you not send for me?’
‘Send for you! What do you mean, sir?’—standing aghast before him, and having a sense still, despite her concentration on him and his answer, of the coming of the winds, like riders sweeping wildly to the house. ‘Why should I send for you?’
‘But your letter!’
‘I wrote no letter.’
‘Is this a joke, Miss Heydon?’ he asked. ‘A letter was handed to me this evening. It was signed with your name. It implored me to come hither to-night, for you needed help from me.’
Shuddering, she said: ‘And you…accepted this as coming from me!’
‘Miss Heydon,’ he answered, his eyes averted from her, ‘I hoped—that is, I believed—the letter to be from your hand. Who should have written the letter and signed it with your name?’
She did not speak; she stood staring at him still, wide-eyed and striving for control.
‘Who should have written a letter except you?’ he said harshly, and with white blazing wrath. ‘Is this a trick—a trap for me? Answer me!’
‘A trick!’ she whispered. ‘A trap! Yes, yes, I think—’
His lips were sneering; his eyes now bent on her were pitiless and accusing. ‘A trap baited by you—is that is? I should come alone to the house—alone, your letter said! Your brothers are here—is that it? Waiting for me! Where are they?’
She cried out: ‘I set no trap! I have no part in this! How dare you?’
Leaning towards her, he said swiftly: ‘When I was first appointed to this district—first was called on to administer justice in it, I feared you—for your influence on me, and your appeal to me. I feared you lest you should turn me from my sense of duty—justice; I feared knowing that to carry out the Governor’s orders and bring security to honest folk I must first move against your father and your brothers. I thought to do this—strove to put you out of my mind; all this while, striving, striving. I have known no peace, no rest of mind and heart, for you are more to me than duty, honour…And I have come hither this night—unattended this night—because you summoned me. Loving you!’
‘I wrote no letter. I would have written no such letter.’
‘Who wrote it, then?’
‘I do not know! One of my folk—one of them, beyond doubt. So as to have you here and retaliate on you. Go, please! Go now! Before they come!’
‘Yet, ere I go—’
‘Oh, in Heaven’s name, sir, don’t stay, don’t palter here! Go!’—and her voice rising to a shriek—‘Too late! Too late!’
The wind came crying all about the house; the candles leaped and flickered ghost-white on his pale face, on her pale face, and showed the gleaming of her tears. About and all about the house the sea-wind rolled; about and all about the house this beating, crying, wind; but hoof-beats sounded through the clamorous wind, and voices hoarse, triumphant!
He stood calm, resolute; his lips curved in a smile. She gasped with terror: ‘Come! The stairs! Hide in my room, while I hold them here; declare you are not here!’
‘But my horse! They saw my horse at the gate when they cried out!’
‘I’ll vow that, hearing them come, you slipped through the house and away. And while I keep them here, climb from the window; the gale will hide the sound…Too late! Ah, Heaven, too late!’—hearing the kitchen door crashing open, the mutter of voices, the tramp of feet in the hall. Grasping his hand and whispering: ‘You love me? Love me?’
‘Before Heaven!’
‘I’ll save you from them. Help me!’—and leaned against him. Instantly his arms were about her; so they stood, facing the grim figures crowding in the doorway—old Richard Heydon and his three sons. Heydon’s pistol covered Laird.
‘Hands up, Laird! Out of the way, Kate! Out of the way, I say!’
She cried out: ‘What does this mean? Father, what would you do?’
‘Settle our score with Laird. It’s a heavy one. I tell you to stand aside, Kate. You in his arms! You making love with him!’
‘You’ll not lay hands on him. You’ll not! Father, boys— for Heaven’s sake—Oh, for Heaven’s sake, listen! Listen! Larry, make them listen—make them! Can’t you see—can’t you understand—all of you?…Mr Laird thought the letter— your letter, father—was from me—and that I cared for him, as I do care. And as he cares for me. He’s asked me to marry him…Marry him! Do you hear me? Father, boys—you’re not going to hurt me—not going to break my heart?’
‘Is this true, Laird?’ Heydon muttered, lowering the pistol.
Laird, stepping forward, said coolly: ‘It is true. Your daughter has done me the honour to accept me. And more: I have information for you—affecting you all…Will you listen to me? There is no need for further strife among us—for any hostile action on your part against me, or on my part against you…Mellis’ daughter waited on me today. She gave me the reason for the lad Laurence’s presence at her father’s farm on the night of the loss…The miscreants who attacked us in the ranges and shot Wall and his men were taken last night, and brought down into the town this morning. Sheep-skins at their camp showed the Mellis brand…There is no definite charge, then, against any of you lads. There is no outlawry! Let me add this: I have erred grievously—I have been grievously misled—at the very start of my magistracy—in my injustice to you. I shall not err, I feel, in future interpretation of His Excellency’s instructions to me. The Governor plans only the restoration of order to the Colony, not the transformation of headstrong lads into outlaws…’
Smiling then—‘And I feel, naturally, that your activities— energies, knowledge of the bush—possibly widened these past weeks—will be of value in the service of the Crown, not ranged against it. I have wiped out—dismissed from mind— less definite charges. The past is the past; the future is your own…Is there an end, then, to strife among us?…There is! There will be a stronger tie!’
And, while the father and the brothers stood staring at him in silence, he turned smiling to Catherine. He grasped her hand; his eyes alight, touches of colour on the pallor of his cheeks.
He said: ‘I hold you to your promise—your pledge to me!…I’ll not release you, sweetheart, all my life…’