The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans (And the mystery of M. Daunt), A Romance of Tasmania Hay, William (1875-1945) A digital text sponsored by Australian Literature Electronic Gateway University of Sydney Library Sydney 2001 http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit © University of Sydney Library. The texts and Images are not to be used for commercial purposes without permission Source Text: Prepared from the print edition by George Allen & Unwin London 1918 All quotation marks are retained as data. First Published: 1918 Australian Etexts 1810-1839 novels prose fiction The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans (And the mystery of M. Daunt), A Romance of Tasmania London George Allen & Unwin 1918 To M. in Memory of our ascent of Mount Arthur, Port Arthur, and discovery in the undergrowth of the iron arms of the Semaphore, whose wooden flag-poles, when lifted from the ground, fell back to earth in dusty fragments Contents Book I. HIGH WATER CHAP. PAGE I. TO PLAY THE GAME OUT 9 II. HIGH AND DRY 18 III. THE BRAVE FELLOWS 21 IV. SIR WILLIAM IS LATE 27 V. A ROUGH NIGHT FOR THE “SAILORS' BALL” 33 VI. FIDUS ACHATES 36 VII. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE BIRTHDAY BALL 44 VIII. LOVE AND DEATH 52 IX. A P.P.C. CARD 61 X. A PROUD MOMENT 69 XI. HE MAKES A GOOD-BYE 74 XII. NEARING THE END 82 XIII. CAPTAIN SHAXTON NUDGES DAUNT 90 XIV. HEANS'S TICKET-OF-LEAVE 95 XV. SHAXTON FORGETS THE CANISTER 99 BOOK II. NEAP TIDE I. THE PRISON ARTIST 113 II. WINE WITH MR. MAGRUDER 115 III. “MY ONCE DEAR FRIENDS THE HYDE-SHAXTONS” 122 IV. AN OLD HOUSE STAINED OF WEATHER AND MEMORIES—A REPUTATION AND A REMARK 132 V. ANOTHER BLACK STRING 146 VI. BLIND ABELIA SEES SOMETHING 153 VII. POISON 161 VIII. O'CRONE'S FETCH 173 IX. CAPTAIN COLLINS' ROOM 181 X. DISCOVERY OF A NEW AND AN OLD DOCUMENT 191 XI. NTO A VULGAR QUARREL—AN ALBUM LEAF—MISCHIEF IN THE WIND 209 XII. A LAST SHIFT—CARNT'S NEWS 220 XIII. SURRIDGE'S NARRATIVE 226 XIV. THE GREEN-ROOM 232 XV. HEANS SEARCHED 248 XVI. THE PAD OR FAIRPLAY 261 XVII. SIR WILLIAM BY HIS FIRE THAT NIGHT 274 XVIII. IN THE DEAD-WATER 295 XIX. WILD WORK 317 XX. MR. DAUNT'S CARELESSNESS 356 BOOK III. LOW WATER OF SPRING TIDES I. A VIGNETTE IN AN OLD KEEPSAKE 369 II. THE ABBEY IN THAT FAR COVE 379 III. SIR WILLIAM JOINS THE WANDERERS 387 IV. A PRINCESS OF THE TIERS 398 Book I High Water Chapter I To Play the Game Out WHEN Sir William Heans first reached Hobarton, Tasmania, he was placed in the Government Architect's office on the strength of having erected additions to the family home in Ireland. Thus he spent a good deal of time designing penitentiaries, riding, reporting himself at the prison, “punting,” and visiting among a few friends to whom he had brought letters. Indeed, when he first reached the island, on the strength of his family connections, he walked for a fine and chequered summer in quite exalted society. And it is of this prolific year—prolific of so much terror and good—that we have first to tell. A great deal had occurred before he met his friend Mr. Jarvis Carnt, also a prisoner. Not that he would have looked down on Mr. Carnt, if he had met him then; he always had a fine eye for a male acquaintance; but he was living a somewhat protected life for a gentleman prisoner (or “long- coater”) at that time, and being careful not to compromise his friends by frequenting the lower clubs, he had not come across Mr. Carnt. It is strange how the world will give a man a second chance—especially if he be a good-looking one. This perennial instance of man's patience is no more evident in our male clubs and criminal courts than in the cabinets of the women. Sir William Heans' crime—his sin—which we shall touch on most briefly hereafter, and the committing of which had pushed him from the places that he loved into exile and boredom in a wild island at the bottom of the world—his sin seemed like to have been forgiven him by certain of his new acquaintances, one of whom, in particular, was a woman. This had not arisen from a rumour which had arrived with him—it is said, his own opinion somewhat too freely expressed—that he had been as much the sinned upon as the sinner, nor yet altogether from the far more potent argument of his good health and handsome face. Captain Hyde-Shaxton and his wife, Matilda, had received him from the first with kindness, and even with warmth. The Captain, a man of forty-six, had some four years previous left a regiment and a young wife in India for a trip to Sydney, then in its first fashionable prime1 ; and afterwards, to his lasting glory, had voyaged thence to Hobarton, in the now famous Beagle, with Captain Fitzroy and Charles Darwin—whom he ever after elected to bring into his chuckling conversation as “young skins and bones.” Unlike Darwin, who could say even of Mount Wellington that it had “little picturesque beauty,” he fell in love with the island, and returned northward only to resign his commission and return with the young wife to Tasmania. Here, taking up land in the ranges near Flat Top Tier, the scenery and solitude had palled on both, and both had been glad when the restless busband had been given a small staff appointment in Hobarton, and moved into a secluded red brick house, facing down the bay over the shingles of the town. The influence of an aspiring woman for good and peace is incalculable. (What men rare Queen Elizabeth made, giving them something they could not but revere!) Not only in her casual acquaintances did she inspire trust, but even (as a certain Mr. Daunt put it) in her husband, he, in his large way, entrusting her with the financing of both their large establishments—a matter she carried out with her fine financial head, with only the rarest and most hugely forgiven of blunders. This woman with the dreadful name and the Bedouin husband—a man always with his mind's eye over the next mountain—this by no means extraordinary woman, by achieving something every once in a while without a tinge of self in it, drew soon a circle of hard-eyed people about her, whose smiling faces, if they did not become more natural, went away as determined as they came. It seemed her desire to steal rather than to aid, teach, or pass judgment. Her sweet face seldom smiled. It was high, small, bright, and shyly serious. She seemed taller than she was; would have been active if she had not been delicate; and was straight as a needle. You would see her talking with someone in her drawing-room, near a chandelier, with that fine antagonistic eye of hers wild and full of a strained yearning. Incidentally she was a beautiful woman—if not for exhibition purposes. She seemed to put it away from her as she talked, much as she would thrust back her hair—so golden. She admitted it, but it was not the fact apparently which she most wished to urge upon you. Even had it been it would have bothered but little the kind of women and men who sought her. They went there in homage—most of them—for some clever, invisible unselfishness in which they had caught her, and into which they could argue (clever as they were at scenting them) no slight to themselves or anyone else except herself and her private interests. The prisoner Carnt called her, in his wild, amusing way, “the carpet serpent.” We don't know whether he was referring to her selfless subtleties or what. It seems the convict never forgave her for once distinctly bowing to him from a fly—when walking with Sir William Heans—though, with what he curiously described as the remnants of compunction, he had not bowed in return. Carnt, by the way, was not at all a bad fellow. He had been a steward or land-agent in England. He drank seldom, but when he drank heavily, it is said he became a devil of selfish treachery and calculation. Heans, with his high black collarless stock, matchless claw-hammer, plaid breeks and hunting air, had received slight after slight on landing, and came at last, pale, proud, yet still on his dignity, to the Shaxtons' door. His health had really suffered on ship-board, and he had obtained a Government Pass to ride beyond the town bounds in four directions: the village of New Town, and five miles towards the ferry; Sandy Bay, but not more than two miles towards the Probation Station; and a gallop up the Storm Mountain track towards the Springs. On pain of the withdrawal of the pass, he was to call at no ale or dwellinghouse besides that known as “Muster-Master-Mason's Place” above the Cascades Prison: this being within sight of the courtyards. As Captain Shaxton's house was a mile outside the Boundary he had, of necessity, applied for a fresh pass giving permission, for one day, to leave the Mountain Road and break his ride at Pitt's Villa. He had obtained this on producing a familiar letter of introduction from an aunt, showing he was distantly related to this family, with the proviso that he would be within boundary before dusk.