Joseph North
IMMEDIATELY AFTER his dinner Bony wrote a letter to Sergeant Morris in which he ordered the arrest of Dot and Dash on the charge of having murdered Luke Green, alias Marks. Also he gave precise instructions that the arrest was to be made without divulging his connection with it, and that the partners were expected at Windee on the following day, an opportune time and place. This letter he sent per one Warn, a blackfellow who owned a horse as well as a silent tongue.
It was the custom of Jeffrey Stanton to sit on the main veranda of Windee every evening after he had spoken per telephone to his overseer at Nullawil and his riders east of the range. Invariably his chair was placed in one position, which was midway between the drawing-room door and the fine-mesh-wire-screened front of the veranda. There he smoked his eternal cigarette and glanced through theWool Growers’ Gazette, or leaned back with closed eyes and a strangely softened face whilst Marion played the piano in the room behind him.
It was the only spell of relaxation he permitted himself. Seated alone on the veranda, listening to the piano, the old squatter was an entirely different being from the one who faced the world in his image during the day. Possibly none other than Marion knew of this unsuspected softening, unless it was Bony, who often, when the night was dark, stole through the wicket-gate and drew close to the outside of the wire screen, able to see within, but himself invisible.
At other times he had come to hear Marion play, and share with the Boss of Windee the witchery of her music. The evening he dispatched the order for the arrest of Dot and Dash he entered through the wicket-gate with his usual noiselessness, and with a further object than that of hearing good music.
After his conversation that afternoon with Marion, Bony considered it likely that she would act on his advice and seek the old man’s confidence that evening, selecting the psychological moment after she had been playing for some time.
When he arrived and sat himself down against the edge of the veranda the girl was playing something fromLohengrin. In his then position Bony’s head was above the level of the veranda floor, and he knew from experience of previous visits that no word spoken behind him would be unheard. Now and then he turned and looked in at the squatter revealed in his easy-chair in the subdued light of the scarlet-shaded standard lamp beside him. Beyond, the room where Marion played was more brilliantly lighted. He could see neither her nor the piano, but he knew that presently she would cease playing, come out and pass along the veranda, to return in a few minutes with a small tray containing cups of coffee. And then, whilst she and her father drank from the cups, they would talk of the affairs of the day in rare companionship.
It is to Bony’s credit that previously he never had stayed to eavesdrop on them. Unscrupulous though he was sometimes, ordinary spying was a thing he abhorred, but this night he considered the act excusable if thereby he might learn what lay behind Mrs Thomas’s threats, which so gravely upset Jeff Stanton, and in hardly less measure the woman who had always been kind to him. Once in possession of the facts lying behind the woman’s visit, he deemed it possible to render her in some way innocuous.
Sitting there in the darkness, listening to the piano, and idly watching the soft flicker of lightning in a cloud low on the horizon, he wondered what would follow the execution of his order to Sergeant Morris. When under arrest, would Dot and Dash confess to the acts he believed them to have committed and implicate the murderer of Marks? Or would they remain grimly silent, admitting only that one of them had found Marks’s money and hidden it, on the principle that finding justifies keeping?
These two men were eminently sane. Bony judged that beneath Dash’s grandiloquence and Dot’s peculiar humour there were tremendous still depths. He rather admired them for it, but he never lost sight of the fact that he was there to bring the murderer of Marks to justice, and the accomplices, before or after the fact, as well.
Of all this was Bony thinking when Marion rose from the piano and came out to the veranda. Jeff Stanton had been leaning back in his chair, his head resting on his clasped hands, his eyes closed. His expression that evening was one ofweariness, and for the first time Bony thought he looked much older than his actual age.
“Tired, Dad?” the girl asked gently.
“A little. I’ve had a worrying day,” he replied with a strained smile, adding, as though to emphasize that the cause of the worry was not Mrs Thomas: “Young Jeff is having trouble with a mob of wethers beyond Range Hut. He doesn’t expect to be able to get in for Christmas.”
“Oh, that’s too bad, Father. Couldn’t he be relieved?”
“Yes, he could be, but he was sent out to do the job, and he knows he’s expected to do it. I have been beginning to suspect lately that he is acquiring a liking for booze, and that is why I am giving him plenty to do at a fair distance from temptation. In any case, I think he would be ruffled if he was relieved when his mind was on his job.”
“You are right about that, Dad. It would annoy him. But I know nothing about the booze, and can’t believe it of him. He is not the type.”
Marion left then to bring the coffee, and Bony, with a twinge of conscience, squirmed in his comfortable seat and longed for a cigarette. The ensuing five minutes passed slowly, and he wondered if Warn had by then delivered his letter at the police-station, and whether Sergeant Morris had fallen out of his chair with astonishment. Then Marion returned and, giving the squatter a cup, sat beside him on the arm of his chair and at once opened the battle.
“It’s not only Jeff who is worrying you, Father,” she said softly. “It is that terrible woman who has upset the serenity of our lives. You’re nearly worried to death about her. Tell me-tell me all, and let me help.”
“Your knowing things wouldn’t help me,” he said gruffly, but, reaching out, took in his hands one of hers.
For a little while neither spoke. Then: “A thousand soldiers are better able to defend a fort than five hundred, Father. I know already just a little. I couldn’t help hearing the other evening you tell her repeatedly that you wouldn’t do something she wanted you to do. And you spoke so desperately.”
Jeff Stanton sat and silently stared straight at that part of the veranda netting beyond which sat Bony. His white brows almost met in a continuous line of shaggy hair. Yet his usually firm mouth drooped as though with senility. The girl slipped her coffee-cup on the table and covered his imprisoning hands with her free one.
“Father!” she said.
Stanton continued to stare with unseeing eyes.
“Dad!” she insisted.
Suddenly he raised his face and looked into her starry eyes, and, seeing the despair in his, she suddenly released her hands and, throwing her arms about his neck, pleaded:
“Let me share the trouble, dear. Whatdoes she want? What does she demand ofus?”
And then from his lips came the words, low but distinct: “She-wants-me-to-marry-her!”
“To marry her? You? To marryher?”
Stanton nodded. “I was to have married her years and years ago,” he said. And Bony knew that sitting there was Joseph North, hero of the affair of the “Stolen Bride”. The old man sighed, for indeed he looked old and frail sitting there in the pink light. “I’ll tell you, Marion,” he said slowly, “but when I’ve finishedremember- don’t forget to remember-that I am your father.”
Jeff Stanton prefaced his story with a short account of his life and circumstances in his early twenties. Then he went on to describe his courtship and his cruel jilting, and how he dressed with care and went out to the hotel horse-yards, where he saddled three of his horses, two with riding-saddles, one with a pack-saddle. He told how he led them to the store, and how he floored one man who asked him where he thought he was going in his best clothes.
With his pack-bags full and two old suits of dungarees rolled within four blankets, he described his thoughts whilst riding to his lost sweetheart’s home, and precisely what happened when he got there.
“She wouldn’t change her things, so I dragged her out of the house in her wedding rig,” he said slowly. “She wouldn’t mount the spare horse, and I told her that if she didn’t obey orders I wouldn’t waste a bullet on her, but I’d cut her throat. I would have done, too. I was mad, absolutely mad. I hated her, and yet I loved her. She was very pretty in her white dress, and her hair shone like gold beneath a gauzy kind of veil.
“She began to cry, but she must have seen her danger in my eyes, because she mounted the horse and we rode like lightning till it grew dark and we reached an empty hut and a well. The first thing I did after hobbling out the horses was to make her discard her wedding finery and put on one of the suits of dungarees. I burned the dress and her shoes as well, and gave her a pair of riding boots. She screamed and fought like a wild cat when I cut her hair short with a killing-knife. More than once I was tempted to slash her throat.
“I bent her to my will that night, and thrashed her in the morning because she refused to cook the breakfast whilst I was away bringing in the horses. She made no attempt to escape me, knowing I’d track her down. And after that she was more reasonable.
“For three days we rode westward, keeping well wide of station homesteads. The fourth day we rode north, and at noon reached a selector’s house occupied by an old school-pal of mine. He knew about the hold-up-a police party had ridden by the day before. I asked him to let me and my bride stay there in hiding, and he agreed. It was Fred who drove my three horses fifty miles towards home, where he left them to wander back bythemselves. Dressed as she was, no one would think Rosie was a woman, for I had run the clippers over her head to make the haircut a bit more professional. She kept house and did the cooking, and was obedient, and I came to ask myself if she really hated me or loved me. She was a mystery altogether.
“One day, Fred and I came home from mustering sheep and found five horses tethered outside the garden gate. As we rode up a policeman came out, and I knew I was done. But, instead of arresting me, he greeted us affably, and said he hoped my pal wouldn’t mind him and his mates having a snack, because the lad had been insistent. In the kitchen we found Rosie feeding four more troopers. She had on her old felt hat, and there were smears of soot all down one side of her face. The girl had deliberately done what she could to further her disguise. She was a peculiar girl.
“After that she seemed to hate me less and love me more. You see, she always had loved me, but she was influenced against her will by her people into marrying Thomas. Still, for all that, I no longer loved her. I smarted too much beneath the lash of ridicule, and my stupid pride was seared and burned.
“A baby was born, and I was doctor and nurse, because I was afraid to send her to Wilcannia. The baby only lived a week, and that I believe brought about the climax. Had the child lived, I would have stuck to Rosie through thick and thin. It affected her in that she suddenly took to complaining about everything and everlastingly nagging. One can stand most things, bar a nagging woman. Fred got tired of it. Short of gagging her there was no stopping her. She sort of let herself go, only half-dressed, and some days wouldn’t even wash her hands. The baby dying must have done it. She swore I killed it. In the end I decided I had had enough. I thanked Fred for what he had done for me, and I had paid him by working for him almost twelve months for nothing. I took Rosie back to Louth, timing to get there about midnight, and outside the hotel I left her, having first knocked up the licensee.
“I never saw her again until the other day. The man Marks was her brother. She found out about me years ago, seeing my photo in an illustrated paper. The brother was something of a blackguard even to his mother, and during a weak or drunken moment Rose Thomas told him of her abduction and all about me.
“Strangely enough, she had no desire to force herself upon me or seek revenge. She prospered in Sydney, but the brother saw a way to blackmail me, and he did so for nine years. When he last left Sydney he intended to clear out of the country, and called on me to make a final and big demand for money… Not hearing from him, his sister thought he had left Australia, and did not know until just recently that his assumed name was Marks.
“Now she is accusing me of having killed him. She said that for having killed him-of which, of course, she has no proof-she intends to force me to marry her and to disown you and your brother. If I refuse and have made no definite arrangements for the marriage by New Year’s Day, she intends to expose me as the abductor of the ‘Stolen Bride’.”
The even voice suddenly ceased. Marion continued to sit very still. When she spoke only her lips moved.
“Let her expose you, Dad, but marry her you shan’t!”
“I shall have to,” Stanton said wearily. “You see, before he died, my old friend, Fred, left a document, signed and witnessed, in which he describes helping me bury a dead baby. He did so apparently under duress himself, fearing exposure of his part. The woman’s brother told me that he had this paper. He showed me a copy of it, and it formed the basis of his power. Now Rose says that the copy was all he did have. She still has in her possession the original. If I don’t marry Rose Thomas I shall be cast down into the dust.”