The Shadow of a Man

Moya took no notice of the word, nor yet of the request.

"Before I do any more for you," said she, "you must tell me the truth."

"I have!"

"Oh, no, you haven't: not the particular truth I want to know. I know it already. Still I mean to hear it from you. It's the truth on quite a different matter; that's what I want," said Moya, and stood over the poor devil as he desired, so that at last the sun was off him, though now he had Moya's eyes instead. "I – I wonder you can't guess – what I've guessed!" she added after a pause.

But she also wondered at something else, for in that pause the blood-stained face had grown ghastlier than before, and Moya could not understand it. The man was so sorely stricken that recapture must now be his liveliest hope: why then should he fear a discovery more or less? And it was quite a little thing that Moya thought she had discovered; a little thing to him, not to her; and she proceeded to treat it as such.

"You know you're not Captain Bovill at all," she told him, in the quiet voice of absolutely satisfied conviction.

"Who told you that?" he roared, half raising himself for the first time, and the fear and fury in his eyes were terrible to see.

"Nobody."

"Ah!"

"But I know it all the same. I've known it this last half-hour. And if I hadn't I should know it now. I see it – where I ought to have seen it from the first – in your face."

"You mean because my son's not the dead spit of his father? But he never was; he took after his mother; he'll tell you that himself."

"It's not what I meant," said Moya, "though it is through the man you call your son that I know he is nothing of the kind. His father may have been a criminal; he was something else first; he would not have left a woman to perish of thirst in the bush, a woman who had done him no harm – who only wished to befriend him – who was going to marry his son!"

There were no oaths to this; but the black eyes gleamed shrewdly in the blood-stained face, and the conical head wagged where it lay.

"You never were in the hulks, you see," said the convict; "else you'd know. No matter what a man goes in, they all come out alike, brute beasts every one. I'm all that, God help me! But I'm the man – I'm the man. Do you think he'd have held out a finger to me if I hadn't been?"

"I've no doubt you convinced him that you were."

"How can one man convince another that he's his father?"

"I don't know. I only know that you have done it."

"Why, he knew me at once!"

"Nonsense! He had never seen you before; he doesn't remember his father."

"Do you suppose he hasn't seen pictures, and heard plenty? No, no; all the rest's a true bill; but Captain Bovill I've lived, and Captain Bovill I'm going to die."

Moya looked at him closely. She could not help shuddering. He saw it, and the fear of death laid hold of him, even as he sweltered in the heat.

"With a lie on your lips?" said Moya, gravely.

"It's the truth!"

"You know it isn't. Own it, for your own sake! Who can tell how long I shall be gone?"

"You shan't go! You shan't go!" he snarled and whined at once. And he clutched vainly at her skirts, the effort leaving him pale as death, and in as dire an agony.

"I must," said Moya. "There's the horse; the saddle's quite near; you shall have all the help that I can bring you, with all the speed that's possible."

She moved away, and the ruthless sun played on every inch of him once more.

"I'm burning – burning!" he yelled. "Have I been in hell upon earth all these years to go to hell itself before I die? Move me, for Christ's sake! Only get me into the shade, and I'll confess – I'll confess!"

Moya tried; but it was terrible; he shrieked with agony, foaming at the mouth, and beating her off with feeble fists. So then she flung herself bodily on an infant hop-bush, and actually uprooted it. And with this and some mallee-branches she made a gunyah over him, though he said it stifled him, and complained bitterly to the end. At the end of all Moya knelt at his feet.

"Now keep your promise."

"What promise?" he asked with an oath, for Moya had been milder than her word.

"You said you would confess."

"Confess what?" he cried, a new terror in his eyes. "I'm not going to die! I don't feel like dying! I've no more to confess!"

"Oh, yes, you have – that you're not his father – nor yet Captain Bovill."

"But I tell you I am. Why – " and the pallid face lit up suddenly – "even the police know that, and you know that they know it!"

It was a random shot, but it made a visible mark, for in her instinctive certainty of the main fact Moya was only now reminded that Rigden himself had told her the same thing. Her discomfiture, however, was but momentary; she held obstinately to her intuition. The police might know it. She knew better than the police; and looking upon their quarry, and going over everything as she looked, came in a flash upon a fresh theory and a small fact in its support.

"Then they don't know who it is they're after!" cried Moya. "You're not even their man; his eyes were brown; it was in the description; but yours are the blackest I ever saw."

It was not a good point. He might well make light of it. But it was enough for Moya and her woman's instinct; or so she said, and honestly thought for the moment. She was less satisfied when she had caught the horse and still must hear the mangled man; for he railed at her, from the gunyah she had built him, to the very end. And to Moya it seemed that there was more of triumph than of terror in his tone.

XV

THE FACT OF THE MATTER

Sergeant Harkness had his barracks to himself. To be sure, the cell was occupied; but, contrary to the usual amenities of the wilderness, such as euchre and Christian names between the sergeant and the ordinary run of prisoners, with this one Harkness would have nothing to do. It was a personal matter between them: the capital charge had divided them less. Constable and tracker had meanwhile been called out on fresh business. That was in the middle of the day. Since then the coach had passed with the mail; and Harkness had been pacing his verandah throughout the sleepiest hour of the afternoon, only pausing to read and re-read one official communication, when Moya's habit fluttered into view towards four o'clock.

"Well, I'm dished!" exclaimed the sergeant. "And alone, too, after all!"

He hastened to meet her.

"Where on earth have you been, Miss Bethune? Do you know there's another search-party out, looking for you this time? My sub and the tracker were fetched this morning. I'd have gone myself only – " and he jerked a thumb towards a very small window at one end of the barracks.

"Mr. Rigden?" said Moya, lowering her voice.

"Yes."

"So you've got him still! I'm glad; but I don't want him to know I'm here. Stay – does he think I'm lost?"

"No. I thought it better not to tell him."

"That was both wise and kind of you, Sergeant Harkness! He must know nothing just yet. I want to speak to you first."

And she urged the dapple-grey, now flagging sorely, towards the other end of the building; but no face appeared at the little barred window; for Rigden was sound asleep in his cell.