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CHAPTER III

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At nine o’clock next morning Captain Lathom was breakfasting alone, Mrs. Lathom seldom rising until between ten and eleven o’clock. Russ sat beside his master’s chair, patiently waiting for him to finish, when he knew he could accompany him on his usual round of inspection.

The captain’s face wore a somewhat troubled expression, and as soon as the meal was over he rose wearily, and went on the verandah, where he paced to and fro for a quarter of an hour. Then catching sight of Helen, who was at work in the garden, he walked over to her.

“Good morning, Helen,” he said; “what are those plants you are covering over with bushes?”

“Young passion fruit, sir. There are only eight or nine, and I always shade them as soon as the sun begins to get too strong. I promised old Tim six of them to plant round the stables, where the soil is very rich and deep. When they grow up in a few years, they will cover the whole roof, and make the stables very cool.”

“A few years is a long time to look forward to,” said Lathom, with a good-natured smile. “By the way, Helen, you have not been at all well lately, I hear.”

She looked up astonished. “I am very well, sir, thank you. I am never ill.”

“Oh, Mrs. Lathom told me last night that she was sure you were far from well, but did not like to say so.”

Helen’s face flushed, but she made no answer.

“You see,” he went on, “this is a peculiar climate, and one must be a little careful, though I never imagined that there was anything wrong with you. Would you like to see Dr. Haldane? He is coming here to-day.”

“No, thank you, sir. I am quite well, indeed. I do not feel the heat like Mrs. Lathom. She has complained very much lately.”

Lathom nodded. Then he said, “She has had several fainting fits of late, she tells me. Why did you not let me know of this?”

Again the girl’s face flushed deeply, and she felt an almost irresistible desire to cry out, “It is false. She is deceiving you, and asked me to help her in her deceit.” But she bent her head, and said nothing.

“I am sorry you did not tell me,” went on Lathom gravely, “for I never imagined that there was really anything wrong with Mrs. Lathom’s health. Now I can see that there is, and as she thinks that she will get better in Sydney, I am sending her down there for a few months. You will, of course, accompany her. She tells me you are very anxious to go.”

“I should like to be near the sea again, sir, although I do not like Sydney.”

“Ah, yes; I remember now that you were very anxious to be assigned to Major Cartwright at Port Macquarie. Why did you wish to go there? It is a very pretty place, but the country round about still very unsettled. Do you know Major Cartwright’s family?”

“No, sir,” she replied, with such very evident constraint that, seeing his questions were causing her some distress, he pursued the subject no longer.

“Well, you must take good care of Mrs. Lathom, Helen. I have a great deal of confidence in you; you know that, do you not?”

“Thank you, sir. You do me great honour.”

The captain affected not to hear the low, murmured remark as he walked away towards the stables.

“Poor girl,” he said to himself; “I wonder what is her real story? And what on earth made her pass counterfeit money? There is no more of the criminal instinct in her than there is in me! An educated, refined girl like her descend to the practice of downright rascality! Absurd! And yet she was not only proved guilty, but admitted her guilt! Hang me if I can understand it.”

As he came to the stables his meditations were cut short by seeing old Tim conversing with a mounted man, whom he recognised as Dr. Haldane’s servant.

“Where is the doctor, Hawley?”

Hawley, a fine stalwart young man (formerly a private in a dragoon regiment) saluted, and handed Lathom a note. “He is coming, sir. I was just bringing this to the house, sir.”

Lathom opened the note, and read it, and in an instant an angry expression clouded his face, and something like an oath escaped his lips.

“Very well, Hawley. Put your horse in the paddock—the doctor will be staying here to-night.” Then he turned on his heel, and walked towards Lieutenant Willet’s quarters.

“What’s the matther wid the captain at all at all?” asked old Tim of the doctor’s servant.

Hawley’s sunburnt face relaxed into a smile. “Did you hear him swearing under his breath? Well, that is just the very thing that the doctor said—and a good deal more beside—when he got a note last night. ’Twas from the parson. He sent it to say that he had heard the doctor was going over to Waringa to see Captain Lathom, and that he would come with him. The fat-faced old hog dined and slept at our place last night, and the doctor was as grumpy as a bear. He gave me a note last night, and told me to start off at daylight with it for Captain Lathom. The captain don’t like the parson, I think.”

“Like him!” and old Tim’s withered features, as he spat on the ground, expressed the deepest contempt; “how cud a gintleman, born an’ bred, like a baste like him? Bad luck an’ an evil ind to all such flogging devils as the Riverend Joseph Marsbin. Sure an’ his name makes me mouth dirty when I spake it.” And again he spat on the ground.

“He’s got no liking for you Irishers, that’s certain,” said Hawley sympathetically. He was himself an emancipated convict, and therefore had no hesitation in speaking freely to the old man. Neither was there any love lost between the ex-dragoon and the clergyman, for the latter had an unpleasant way of letting even an emancipist know that he (the Rev. Joseph Marsbin) had an intimate knowledge of official documents concerning the names of prisoners and their offences, dating from the very earliest days of the colony. And there was nothing he liked better than to make use of his knowledge at very uncomfortable moments.

“May the curse av the wake, an’ the sufferin’ an’ the oppressed, lie on his wicked sowl whin he comes up for judgment,” said the old man fervently, as he clasped and raised his toil-stained hands to heaven. “Ah, God above, sind some punishment on earth to this cruel man before Ye sind him to hell. Punish him for that bloody day at Parramatta; smite him wid some tirrible afflictin’ disase; let his childhren’s childhren hate and despise his mimory; let the tares an’ the groans and the could sweat av those he has persecuted an’ murthered——”

“Stop, old man,” cried the ex-soldier, with a shudder; “don’t say any more, for God’s sake. You’ll put me off eatin’ breakfast, and I’m sharp set, I can tell you, after a thirty-mile ride.”

The old man’s excitement vanished at once.

“Sure an’ I was forgettin’ ye. Come along wid me to the house.”

Just as Mrs. Lathom entered the dining-room her husband strode up on to the verandah, with Russ at his heels.

“Ha, here you are, Ida. Look at this;” and he laid Dr. Haldane’s note on the table before her. She read it.

“Dear Lathom,—I am sorry to say that you will have to entertain two guests instead of one. Marsbin came here this evening and coolly informed me that having heard I was paying you a visit he had decided to come with me, ‘as it would be pleasant for us to travel in company.’ Hang the fellow.—Yours, George Haldane.”

Mrs. Lathom shrugged her shoulders. “Very annoying, Fred. I trust he will not stay long.”

“So do I, Ida. But I fear he will contrive to spend two or three days here, make as much mischief as he can in the settlement by his usual ill-timed interferences, and then say something ill-natured about me to the Governor.”

“Never mind, dear. We must try and be as gracious as we can to him,” said Mrs. Lathom, who knew that the reverend gentleman stood high in the opinion of the Home Office, and therefore might be of use to her in some way or another if she wanted his influence; “and, after all, I am told that he can be very companionable and unbend himself in a remarkable manner after dinner—to gentlemen.”

“I don’t like the man, Ida. In fact I detest him. He is a bigot; and has used his powers as a magistrate in a manner that cannot be too strongly condemned. He is more hated than any man I know of in the colony. The Governor, I may tell you—in confidence, Ida—does not like him, and has told me so. But the fellow has great influence at Home; and there is this to his credit—he really believes in what he preaches, and no one can accuse him of being a hypocrite.”

“Then why do you object to him so much, Fred? If he is no hypocrite, and ... and has so much influence with those at Home, surely he is a man whom it is worth your while to cultivate, and make a friend of, and surely in this horrible country we need friends, and——”

Lathom placed his hand tenderly on his wife’s shoulder.

“Ida, dear, you can hardly realise how very distasteful it is to me to be compelled by the exigencies of duty to receive this man as my guest. I said that he was a bigot. I should have added, a cruel and merciless one. The severity of the sentences he has helped to inflict upon unfortunate prisoners for the slightest misdemeanours are enough to sicken one not entirely devoid of humane feelings. I have often wondered, Ida, if he ever thinks of those sacred words, ‘Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy’! Oh, ’tis heartbreaking, saddening, deplorable beyond words that such things can be! A man who is supposed to teach the gospel of our Saviour——”

Mrs. Lathom shivered. “How strangely you talk, Fred. No one would think you were a soldier to hear you speak. And we must be civil and nice to Mr. Marsbin. He has great influence—and—and the convicts are dreadful characters.”

“Ah, Ida, you do not know how I pity them, especially the worst, the most vicious, the most degraded. The Governor, thank God, is a humane man, and though he may err at times by being over-lenient, ’tis a noble fault. Would that there were more men like him in the colony.”

“Mrs. Feilding says that Mr. Feilding thinks the Governor is making a great mistake in pampering and pardoning some of the convicts.”

Lathom made a gesture of contempt. “Feilding is like nearly all the civilian officials, my dear. He thinks that the convict system was created for the benefit of creatures like himself to fatten upon. God knows that some of the military men here are bad enough, but the civilian are worse. Feilding himself, in England, was only a vulgar little clerk to a pettifogging Old Bailey lawyer, and by some mischance was given an appointment here. As for Mrs. Feilding, she is but a shallow-brained chattering idiot, with no thought beyond dress, and an intense desire to hang on to the Governor’s coat-tails.”

Then the irate commandant of Waringa strode out to attend to some of the many duties which always demanded his attention, and of which he was never neglectful.

Helen Adair

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