How Tom Troubridge Kept Watch for the First Time.

Human affairs are subject to such an infinite variety of changes and complications, that any attempt to lay down particular rules for individual action, under peculiar circumstances, must prove a failure. Hence I consider proverbs, generally speaking, to be a failure, only used by weak-minded men, who have no opinion of their own. Thus, if you have a chance of selling your station at fifteen shillings, and buying in, close to a new gold-field on the same terms, where fat sheep are going to the butcher at from eighteen shillings to a pound, butter, eggs, and garden produce at famine prices, some dolt unsettles you, and renders you uncertain and miserable by saying that “rolling stone gathers no moss;” as if you wanted moss! Again, having worked harder than the Colonial Secretary all the week, and wishing to lie in bed till eleven o’clock on Sunday, a man comes into your room at half-past seven, on a hot morning, when your only chance is to sleep out an hour or so of the heat, and informs you that the “early bird gets the worms.” I had a partner, who bought in after Jim Stockbridge was killed, who was always flying this early bird, when he couldn’t sleep for musquitoes. I have got rid of him now; but for the two years he was with me, the dearest wish of my heart was that my tame magpie Joshua could have had a quiet two minutes with that early bird before any one was up to separate them. I rather fancy he would have been spoken of as “the late early bird” after that. In short, I consider proverbs as the refuge of weak minds.

The infinite sagacity of the above remarks cannot be questioned; their application may. I will proceed to give it. I have written down the above tirade nearly, as far as I can guess, a printed pageful (may be a little more, looking at it again), in order to call down the wrath of all wise men, if any such have done me the honour of getting so far in these volumes, on the most trashy and false proverb of the whole: “Coming events cast their shadows before.”

Now, they don’t, you know. They never did, and never will. I myself used to be a strong believer in pre(what’s the word? — prevarications, predestinations)— no — presentiments; until I found by experience that, although I was always having presentiments, nothing ever came of them. Sometimes somebody would walk over my grave, and give me a creeping in the back, which, as far as I can find out, proceeded from not having my braces properly buttoned behind. Sometimes I have heard the death-watch, produced by a small spider (may the deuce confound him!), not to mention many other presentiments and depressions of spirit, which I am now firmly persuaded proceed from indigestion. I am far from denying the possibility of a coincidence in point of time between a fit of indigestion and a domestic misfortune. I am far from denying the possibility of more remarkable coincidences than that. I have read in books, novels by the very best French authors, how a man, not heard of for twenty years, having, in point of fact, been absent during that time in the interior of Africa, may appear at Paris at a given moment, only in time to save a young lady from dishonour, and rescue a property of ten million francs. But these great writers of fiction don’t give us any warning whatever. The door is thrown heavily open, and he stalks up to the table where the will is lying, quite unexpectedly; stalks up always, or else strides. (How would it be, my dear Monsieur Dumas, if, in your next novel, he were to walk in, or run in, or hop in, or, say, come in on all-fours like a dog? — anything for a change, you know.) And these masters of fiction are right —“Coming events do not cast their shadows before.”

If they did, how could it happen that Mary Hawker sat there in her verandah at Toonarbin singing so pleasantly over her work? And why did her handsome, kindly face light up with such a radiant smile when she saw her son Charles come riding along under the shadow of the great trees only two days after Cecil Mayford had proposed to Alice, and had been refused?

He came out of the forest shadow with the westering sunlight upon his face, riding slowly. She, as she looked, was proud to see what a fine seat he had on his horse, and how healthy and handsome he looked.

He rode round to the back of the house, and she went through to meet him. There was a square court behind, round which the house, huts, and store formed a quadrangle, neat and bright, with white quartz gravel. Bythe-bye, there was a prospecting party who sank two or three shafts in the flat before the house last year; and I saw about eighteen pennyweights of gold which they took out. But it did not pay, and is abandoned. (This in passing, A PROPOS of the quartz.)

“Is Tom Troubridge come home, mother?” said he, as he leaned out of the saddle to kiss her.

“Not yet, my boy,” she said. “I am all alone. I should have had a dull week, but I knew you were enjoying yourself with your old friend at Garoopna. A great party there, I believe?”

“I am glad to get home, mother,” he said. “We were very jolly at first, but latterly Sam Buckley and Cecil Mayford have been looking at one another like cat and dog. Stay, though; let me be just; the fierce looks were all on Cecil Mayford’s side.”

“What was the matter?”

“Alice Brentwood was the matter, I rather suspect,” he said, getting off his horse. “Hold him for me, mother, while I take the saddle off.”

She did as requested. “And so they two are at loggerheads, eh, about Miss Brentwood? Of course. And what sort of a girl is she?”

“Oh, very pretty; deuced pretty, in fact. But there is one there takes my fancy better.”

“Who is she?”

“Ellen Mayford; the sweetest little mouse —— Dash it all; look at this horse’s back. That comes of that infernal flash military groom of Jim’s putting on the saddle without rubbing his back down. Where is the bluestone?”

She went in and got it for him as naturally as if it was her place to obey, and his to command. She always waited on him, as a matter of course, save when Tom Troubridge was with them, who was apt to rap out something awkward about Charles being a lazy young hound, and about his waiting on himself, whenever he saw Mary yielding to that sort of thing.

“I wonder when Tom will be back?” resumed Charles.

“I have been expecting him this last week; he may come any night. I hope he will not meet any of those horrid bushrangers.”

“Hope not either,” said Charles; “they would have to go a hundred or two of miles out of their way to make it likely. Driving rams is slow work; they may not be here for a week.”

“A nice price he has paid!”

“It will pay in the end, in the quality of the wool,” said Charles.

They sat in silence. A little after, Charles had turned his horse out, when at once, without preparation, he said to her —

“Mother, how long is it since my father died?”

She was very much startled. He had scarcely ever alluded to his father before; but she made shift to answer him quietly.

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen!” he said.

“Then he has been dead eighteen years. He died just as you were born. Never mention him, lad. He was a bad man, and by God’s mercy you are delivered from him.”

She rose and went into the house quite cheerfully. Why should she not? Why should not a handsome, still young, wealthy widow be cheerful? For she was a widow. For years after settling at Toonarbin, she had contrived, once in two or three years, to hear some news of her husband. After about ten years, she heard that he had been reconvicted, and sentenced to the chain-gang for life; and lastly, that he was dead. About his being sentenced for life, there was no doubt, for she had a piece of newspaper which told of his crime — and a frightful piece of villany it was — and after that, the report of his death was so probable that no one for an instant doubted its truth. Men did not live long in the chain-gang, in Van Diemen’s Land, in those days, brother. Men would knock out one another’s brains in order to get hung, and escape it. Men would cry aloud to the judge to hang them out of the way! It was the most terrible punishment known, for it was hopeless. Penal servitude for life, as it is now, gives the very faintest idea of what it used to be in old times. With a little trouble I could tell you the weight of iron carried by each man. I cannot exactly remember, but it would strike you as being incredible. They were chained two and two together (a horrible association), to lessen the chances of escape; there was no chance of mitigation for good conduct; there was hard mechanical, uninteresting work, out of doors in an inclement climate, in all weathers: what wonder if men died off like rotten sheep? And what wonder, too, if sometimes the slightest accident — such as a blow from an overseer, returned by a prisoner, produced a sudden rising, unpreconcerted, objectless, the result of which were half a dozen murdered men, as many lunatic women, and five or six stations lighting up the hill-side, night after night, while the whole available force of the colony was unable to stop the ruin for months?

But to the point. Mary was a widow. When she heard of her husband’s death, she had said to herself, “Thank God!” But when she had gone to her room, and was sat a-thinking, she seemed to have had another husband before she was bound up with that desperate, coining, forging George Hawker — another husband bearing the same name; but surely that handsome curly-headed young fellow, who used to wait for her so patiently in the orchard at Drumston, was not the same George Hawker as this desperate convict? She was glad the convict was dead and out of the way; there was no doubt of that; but she could still find a corner in her heart to be sorry for her poor old lover — her handsome old lover — ah me!

But that even was passed now, and George Hawker was as one who had never lived. Now on this evening we speak of, his memory came back just an instant, as she heard the boy speak of the father, but it was gone again directly. She called her servants, and was telling them to bring supper, when Charles looked suddenly in, and said — “Here they are!”

There they were, sure enough, putting the rams into the sheep-yard. Tom Troubridge, as upright, bravelooking a man as ever, and, thanks to bush-work, none the fatter. William Lee, one of our oldest acquaintances, was getting a little grizzled, but otherwise looked as broad and as strong as ever.

They rode into the yard, and Lee took the horses.

“Well, cousin,” said Tom; “I am glad to see you again.”

“You are welcome home, Tom; you have made good speed.”

Tom and Charles went into the house, and Mary was about following them, when Lee said, in so low a tone, that it did not reach the others — “Mrs. Hawker!”

She turned round and looked at him, she had welcomed him kindly when he came into the yard with Tom, and yet he stood still on horseback, holding Tom’s horse by the bridle. A stern, square-looking figure he was; and when she looked at his face, she was much troubled, at — she knew not what.

“Mrs. Hawker,” he said, “can you give me the favour of ten minutes’ conversation, alone this evening?”

“Surely, William, now!”

“Not now — my story is pretty long, and, what is more, ma’am, somebody may be listening, and what I have got to tell you must be told in no ear but your own.”

“You frighten me, Lee! You frighten me to death.”

“Don’t get frightened, Mrs. Hawker. Remember if anything comes about, that you have good friends about you; and, that I, William Lee, am not the worst of them.”

Lee went off with the horses, and Mary returned to the house. What mystery had this man to tell her, “that no one might hear but she”? — very strange and alarming! Was he drunk? — no, he was evidently quite sober; as she looked out once more, she could see him at the stable, cool and self-possessed, ordering the lads about: something very strange and terrifying to one who had such a dark blot in her life.

But she went in, and as she came near the parlour, she heard Charles and Tom roaring with laughter. As she opened the door she heard Tom saying: “And, by Jove, I sat there like a great snipe, face to face with him, as cool and unconcerned as you like. I took him for a flash overseer, sporting his salary, and I was as thick as you like with him. And ‘Matey,’ says I, (you see I was familiar, he seemed such a jolly sort of bird), ‘Matey, what station are you on?’ ‘Maraganoa,’ says he. ‘So,’ says I, ‘you’re rather young there, ain’t you? I was by there a fortnight ago.’ He saw he’d made a wrong move, and made it worse. ‘I mean,’ says he, ‘Maraganoa on the Clarence side.’ ‘Ah!’ says I, ‘in the Cedar country?’ ‘Precisely,’ says he. And there we sat drinking together, and I had no more notion of its being him than you would have had.”

She sat still listening to him, eating nothing. Lee’s words outside had, she knew not why, struck a chill into her heart, and as she listened to Tom’s story, although she could make nothing of it, she felt as though getting colder and colder. She shivered, although the night was hot. Through the open window she could hear all those thousand commingled indistinguishable sounds that make the night-life of the bush, with painful distinctness. She arose and went to the window.

The night was dark and profoundly still. The stars were overhead, though faintly seen through a haze; and beyond the narrow enclosures in front of the house, the great forest arose like a black wall. Tom and Charles went on talking inside, and yet, though their voices were loud, she was hardly conscious of hearing them, but found herself watching the high dark wood and listening to the sound of the frogs in the creek, and the rustle of a million crawling things, heard only in the deep stillness of night.

Deep in the forest somewhere, a bough cracked, and fell crashing, then all was silent again. Soon arose a wind, a partial wandering wind, which came slowly up, and, rousing the quivering leaves to life for a moment, passed away; then again a silence, deeper than ever, so that she could hear the cattle and horses feeding in the lower paddock, a quarter of a mile off; then a low wail in the wood, then two or three wild weird yells, as of a devil in torment, and a pretty white curlew skirled over the housetop to settle on the sheepwash dam.

The stillness was awful; it boded a storm, for behind the forest blazed up a sheet of lightning, showing the shape of each fantastic elevated bough. Then she turned round to the light, and said —

“My dear partner, I had a headache, and went to the window. What was the story you were telling Charles, just now? Who was the man you met in the publichouse, who seems to have frightened you so?”

“No less a man than Captain Touan, my dear cousin!” said Tom, leaning back with the air of a man who has made a point, and would be glad to hear “what you have to say to that, sir.”

“Touan?” repeated Mary. “Why, that’s the great bushranger, that is out to the north; is it not?”

“The same man, cousin! And there I sat hob and nob with him for half an hour in the ‘Lake George’ public-house. If Desborough had come in, he’d have hung me for being found in bad company. Ha! ha! ha!”

“My dear partner,” she said, “what a terrible escape! Suppose he had risen on you?”

“Why I’d have broken his back, cousin,” said Tom, “unless my right hand had forgot her cunning. He is a fine man of his weight: but, Lord, in a struggle for life and death, I could break his neck, and have one more claim on Heaven for doing so; for he is the most damnable villain that ever disgraced God’s earth, and that is the truth. That man, cousin, in one of his devil’s raids, tore a baby from its mother’s breast by the leg, dashed its brains out against a tree, and then — I daren’t tell a woman what happened.” [Note: Tom was confusing Touan with Michael Howe. The latter actually did commit this frightful atrocity; but I never heard that the former actually combined the two crimes in this way.]

“Tom! Tom!” said Mary, “how can you talk of such things?”

“To show you what we have to expect if he comes this way, cousin; that is all.”

“And is there any possibility of such a thing?” asked Mary.

“Why not? Why should he not pay us the compliment of looking round this way?”

“Why do they call him Touan, Tom?” asked Charles.

“Can’t, you see,” said Tom, “the Touan, the little grey flying squirrel, only begins to fly about at night, and slides down from his bough sudden and sharp. This fellow has made some of his most terrible raids at night, and so he got the name of Touan.”

“God deliver us from such monsters!” said Mary, and left the room.

She went into the kitchen. Lee sat there smoking. When she came in he rose, and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, touched his forehead and stood looking at her.

“Now then, old friend,” she said, “come here.”

He followed her out. She led the way swiftly, through the silent night, across the yard, over a small paddock, up to the sheep-yard beside the woolshed. There she turned shortly round, and, leaning on the fence, said abruptly —

“No one can hear us here, William Lee. Now, what have you to say?”

He seemed to hesitate a moment, and then began: “Mrs. Hawker, have I been a good servant to you?”

“Honest, faithful, kindly, active; who could have been a better servant than you, William Lee! A friend, and not a servant; God is my witness; now then?”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” he answered. “I did you a terrible injury once; I have often been sorry for it since I knew you, but it cannot be mended now.”

“Since you knew me?” she said. “Why, you have known me ever since I have been in the country, and you have never injured me since then, surely.”

“Ay, but at home,” he said. “In England. In Devonshire.”

“My God!”

“I was your husband’s companion in all his earlier villanies. I suggested them to him, and egged him on. And now, mind you, after twenty years, my punishment is coming.”

She could only say still, “My God!” while her throat was as dry as a kiln.

“Listen to what I have got to tell you now. Hear it all in order, and try to bear up, and use your common sense and courage. As I said before, you have good friends around you, and you at least are innocent.”

“Guilty! guilty!” she cried. “Guilty of my father’s death! Read me this horrible riddle, Lee.”

“Wait and listen,” said Lee, unable to forego, even in her terror, the great pleasure that all his class have of spinning a yarn, and using as many words as possible. “See here. We came by Lake George, you know, and heard everywhere accounts of a great gang of bushrangers being out. So we didn’t feel exactly comfortable, you see. We came by a bush public-house, and Mr. Troubridge stops, and says he, ‘Well, lad, suppose we yard these rams an hour, and take drink in the parlour?’ ‘All right,’ I says, with a wink, ‘but the tap for me, if you please. That’s my place, and I’d like to see if I can get any news of the whereabouts of the lads as are sticking up all round, because, if they’re one way, I’d as lief be another.’ ‘All right,’ says he. So in I goes, and sits down. There was nobody there but one man, drunk under the bench. And I has two noblers of brandy, and one of Old Tom; no, two Old Toms it was, and a brandy; when in comes an old chap as I knew for a lag in a minute. Well, he and I cottoned together, and found out that we had been prisoners together five-and-twenty years agone. And so I shouted for him, and he for me, and at last I says, ‘Butty,’ says I, ‘who are these chaps round here on the lay’ (meaning, Who are the bushrangers)? And he says, ‘Young ‘uns — no one as we know.’ And I says, ‘Not likely, matey; I’ve been on the square this twenty year.’ ‘Same here,’ says the old chap; ‘give us your flipper. And now,’ says he, ‘what sort of a cove is your boss’ (meaning Mr. Troubridge)? ‘One of the real right sort,’ says I. ‘Then see here,’ says he, ‘I’ll tell you something: the head man of that there gang is at this minute a-sitting yarning with your boss in the parlour.’ ‘The devil!’ says I. ‘Is so,’ says he, ‘and no flies.’ So I sings out, ‘Mr. Troubridge, those sheep will be out;’ and out he came running, and I whispers to him, ‘Mind the man you’re sitting with, and leave me to pay the score.’ So he goes back, and presently he sings out, ‘Will, have you got any money?’ And I says, ‘Yes, thirty shillings.’ ‘Then,’ says he, ‘pay for this, and come along.’ And thinks I, I’ll go in and have a look at this great new captain of bushrangers; so I goes to the parlour door, and now who do you think I saw?”

“I know,” she said. “It was that horrible villain they call Touan.”

“The same man,” he answered. “Do you know who he is?”

She found somehow breath to say, “How can I? How is it possible?”

“I will tell you,” said Lee. “There, sitting in front of Mr. Troubridge, hardly altered in all these long years, sat George Hawker, formerly of Drumston — your husband!”

She gave a low cry, and beat the hard rail with her head till it bled. Then, turning fiercely round, she said, in a voice hoarse and strangely altered —

“Have you anything more to tell me, you croaking raven?”

He had something more to tell, but he dared not speak now. So he said, “Nothing at present, but if laying down my life ——”

She did not wait to hear him, but, with her hands clasped above her head, she turned and walked swiftly towards the house. She could not cry, or sob, or rave; she could only say, “Let it fall on me, O God, on me!” over and over again.

Also, she was far too crushed and stunned to think precisely what it was she dreaded so. It seemed afterwards, as Frank Maberly told me, that she had an indefinable horror of Charles meeting his father, and of their coming to know one another. She half feared that her husband would appear and carry away her son with him, and even if he did not, the lad was reckless enough as it was, without being known and pointed at through the country as the son of Hawker the bushranger.

These were after-thoughts, however; at present she leaned giddily against the house-side, trying, in the wild hurrying night-rack of her thoughts, to distinguish some tiny star of hope, or even some glimmer of reason. Impossible! Nothing but swift, confused clouds everywhere, driving wildly on — whither?

But a desire came upon her to see her boy again, and compare his face to his father............