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<h2> CHAPTER XX. THE STATEMENT OF FRANCIS RATTRAY </h2>
<p>In the year 1858 I received a bulky packet bearing the stamp of the
Argentine Republic, a realm in which, to the best of my belief, I had not
a solitary acquaintance. The superscription told me nothing. In my
relations with Rattray his handwriting had never come under my
observation. Judge then of my feelings when the first thing I read was his
signature at the foot of the last page.</p>
<p>For five years I had been uncertain whether he was alive or dead. I had
heard nothing of him from the night we parted in Kirby Hall. All I knew
was that he had escaped from England and the English police; his letter
gave no details of the incident. It was an astonishing letter; my breath
was taken on the first close page; at the foot of it the tears were in my
eyes. And all that part I must pass over without a word. I have never
shown it to man or woman. It is sacred between man and man.</p>
<p>But the letter possessed other points of interest—of almost
universal interest—to which no such scruples need apply; for it
cleared up certain features of the foregoing narrative which had long been
mysteries to all the world; and it gave me what I had tried in vain to
fathom all these years, some explanation, or rather history, of the young
Lancastrian's complicity with Joaquin Santos in the foul enterprise of the
Lady Jermyn. And these passages I shall reproduce word for word; partly
because of their intrinsic interest; partly for such new light as they day
throw on this or that phase of the foregoing narrative; and, lastly, out
of fairness to (I hope) the most gallant and most generous youth who ever
slipped upon the lower slopes of Avemus.</p>
<p>Wrote Rattray:</p>
<p>"You wondered how I could have thrown in my lot with such a man. You may
wonder still, for I never yet told living soul. I pretended I had joined
him of my own free will. That was not quite the case. The facts were as
follows:</p>
<p>"In my teens (as I think you know) I was at sea. I took my second mate's
certificate at twenty, and from that to twenty-four my voyages were far
between and on my own account. I had given way to our hereditary passion
for smuggling. I kept a 'yacht' in Morecambe Bay, and more French brandy
than I knew what to do with in my cellars. It was exciting for a time, but
the excitement did not last. In 1851 the gold fever broke out in
Australia. I shipped to Melbourne as third mate on a barque, and I
deserted for the diggings in the usual course. But I was never a
successful digger. I had little luck and less patience, and I have no
doubt that many a good haul has been taken out of claims previously
abandoned by me; for of one or two I had the mortification of hearing
while still in the Colony. I suppose I had not the temperament for the
work. Dust would not do for me—I must have nuggets. So from Bendigo
I drifted to the Ovens, and from the Ovens to Ballarat. But I did no more
good on one field than on another, and eventually, early in 1853, I cast
up in Melbourne again with the intention of shipping home in the first
vessel. But there were no crews for the homeward-bounders, and while
waiting for a ship my little stock of gold dust gave out. I became
destitute first—then desperate. Unluckily for me, the beginning of
'53 was the hey-day of Captain Melville, the notorious bushranger. He was
a young fellow of my own age. I determined to imitate his exploits. I
could make nothing out there from an honest life; rather than starve I
would lead a dishonest one. I had been born with lawless tendencies; from
smuggling to bushranging was an easy transition, and about the latter
there seemed to be a gallantry and romantic swagger which put it on the
higher plane of the two. But I was not born to be a bushranger either. I
failed at the very first attempt. I was outwitted by my first victim, a
thin old gentleman riding a cob at night on the Geelong road.</p>
<p>"'Why rob me?' said he. 'I have only ten pounds in my pocket, and the
punishment will be the same as though it were ten thousand.'</p>
<p>"'I want your cob,' said I (for I was on foot); 'I'm a starving Jack, and
as I can't get a ship I'm going to take to the bush.'</p>
<p>"He shrugged his shoulders.</p>
<p>"'To starve there?' said he. 'My friend, it is a poor sport, this
bushranging. I have looked into the matter on my own account. You not only
die like a dog, but you live like one too. It is not worth while. No crime
is worth while under five figures, my friend. A starving Jack, eh? Instead
of robbing me of ten pounds, why not join me and take ten thousand as your
share of our first robbery? A sailor is the very man I want!'</p>
<p>"I told him that what I wanted was his cob, and that it was no use his
trying to hoodwink me by pretending he was one of my sort, because I knew
very well that he was not; at which he shrugged again, and slowly
dismounted, after offering me his money, of which I took half. He shook
his head, telling me I was very foolish, and I was coolly mounting (for he
had never offered me the least resistance), with my pistols in my belt,
when suddenly I heard one cocked behind me.</p>
<p>"'Stop!' said he. 'It's my turn! Stop, or I shoot you dead!' The tables
were turned, and he had me at his mercy as completely as he had been at
mine. I made up my mind to being marched to the nearest police-station.
But nothing of the kind. I had misjudged my man as utterly as you
misjudged him a few months later aboard the Lady Jermyn. He took me to his
house on the outskirts of Melbourne, a weather-board bungalow, scantily
furnished, but comfortable enough. And there he seriously repeated the
proposal he had made me off-hand in the road. Only he put it a little
differently. Would I go to the hulks for attempting to rob him of five
pounds, or would I stay and help him commit a robbery, of which my share
alone would be ten or fifteen thousand? You know which I chose. You know
who this man was. I said I would join him. He made me swear it. And then
he told me what his enterprise was: there is no need for me to tell you;
nor indeed had it taken definite shape at this time. Suffice it that
Santos had wind that big consignments of Austrailian gold were shortly to
be shipped home to England; that he, like myself, had done nothing on the
diggings, where he had looked to make his fortune, and out of which he
meant to make it still.</p>
<p>"It was an extraordinary life that we led in the bungalow, I the guest, he
the host, and Eva the unsuspecting hostess and innocent daughter of the
house. Santos had failed on the fields, but he had succeeded in making
valuable friends in Melbourne. Men of position and of influence spent
their evenings on our veranda, among others the Melbourne agent for the
Lady Jermyn, the likeliest vessel then lying in the harbor, and the one to
which the first consignment of gold-dust would be entrusted if only a
skipper could be found to replace the deserter who took you out. Santos
made up his mind to find one. It took him weeks, but eventually he found
Captain Harris on Bendigo, and Captain Harris was his man. More than that
he was the man for the agent; and the Lady Jermyn was once more made ready
for sea.</p>
<p>"Now began the complications. Quite openly, Santos had bought the schooner
Spindrift, freighted her with wool, given me the command, and vowed that
he would go home in her rather than wait any longer for the Lady Jermyn.
At the last moment he appeared to change his mind, and I sailed alone as
many days as possible in advance of the ship, as had been intended from
the first; but it went sorely against the grain when the time came. I
would have given anything to have backed out of the enterprise. Honest I
might be no longer; I was honestly in love with Eva Denison. Yet to have
backed out would have been one way of losing her for ever. Besides, it was
not the first time I had run counter to the law, I who came of a lawless
stock; but it would be the first time I had deserted a comrade or broken
faith with one. I would do neither. In for a penny, in for a pound.</p>
<p>"But before my God I never meant it to turn out as it did; though I admit
and have always admitted that my moral responsibility is but little if any
the less on that account. Yet I was never a consenting party to wholesale
murder, whatever else I was. The night before I sailed, Santos and the
captain were aboard with me till the small hours. They promised me that
every soul should have every chance; that nothing but unforeseen accident
could prevent the boats from making Ascension again in a matter of hours;
that as long as the gig was supposed to be lost with all hands, nothing
else mattered. So they promised, and that Harris meant to keep his promise
I fully believe. That was not a wanton ruffian; but the other would spill
blood like water, as I told you at the hall, and as no man now knows
better than yourself. He was notorious even in Portuguese Africa on
account of his atrocious treatment of the blacks. It was a favorite boast
of his that he once poisoned a whole village; and that he himself tampered
with the Lady Jermyn's boats you can take my word, for I have heard him
describe how he left it to the last night, and struck the blows during the
applause at the concert on the quarter-deck. He said it might have come
out about the gold in the gig, during the fire. It was safer to run no
risks.</p>
<p>"The same thing came into play aboard the schooner. Never shall I forget
the horror of that voyage after Santos came aboard! I had a crew of eight
hands all told, and two he brought with him in the gig. Of course they
began talking about the gold; they would have their share or split when
they got ashore; and there was mutiny in the air, with the steward and the
quarter-master of the Lady Jermyn for ring-leaders. Santos nipped it in
the bud with a vengeance! He and Harris shot every man of them dead, and
two who were shot through the heart they washed and dressed and set adrift
to rot in the gig with false papers! God knows how we made Madeira; we
painted the old name out and a new name in, on the way; and we shipped a
Portuguese crew, not a man of whom could speak English. We shipped them
aboard the Duque de Mondejo's yacht Braganza; the schooner Spindrift had
disappeared from the face of the waters for ever. And with the men we took
in plenty of sour claret and cigarettes; and we paid them well; and the
Portuguese sailor is not inquisitive under such conditions.</p>
<p>"And now, honestly, I wished I had put a bullet through my head before
joining in this murderous conspiracy; but retreat was impossible, even if
I had been the man to draw back after going so far; and I had a still
stronger reason for standing by the others to the bitter end. I could not
leave our lady to these ruffians. On the other hand, neither could I take
her from them, for (as you know) she justly regarded me as the most
flagrant ruffian of them all. It was in me and through me that she was
deceived, insulted, humbled, and contaminated; that she should ever have
forgiven me for a moment is more than I can credit or fathom to this
hour... So there we were. She would not look at me. And I would not leave
her until death removed me. Santos had been kind enough to her hitherto;
he had been kind enough (I understand) to her mother before her. It was
only in the execution of his plans that he showed his Napoleonic disregard
for human life; and it was precisely herein that I began to fear for the
girl I still dared to love. She took up an attitude as dangerous to her
safety as to our own. She demanded to be set free when we came to land.
Her demand was refused. God forgive me, it had no bitterer opponent than
myself! And all we did was to harden her resolution; that mere child
threatened us to our faces, never shall I forget the scene! You know her
spirit: if we would not set her free, she would tell all when we landed.
And you remember how Santos used to shrug? That was all he did then. It
was enough for me who knew him. For days I never left them alone together.
Night after night I watched her cabin door. And she hated me the more for
never leaving her alone! I had to resign myself to that.</p>
<p>"The night we anchored in Falmouth Bay, thinking then of taking our gold
straight to the Bank of England, as eccentric lucky diggers—that
night I thought would be the last for one or other of us. He locked her in
her cabin. He posted himself outside on the settee. I sat watching him
across the table. Each had a hand in his pocket, each had a pistol in that
hand, and there we sat, with our four eyes locked, while Harris went
ashore for papers. He came back in great excitement. What with stopping at
Madeira, and calms, and the very few knots we could knock out of the
schooner at the best of times, we had made a seven or eight weeks' voyage
of it from Ascension—where, by the way, I had arrived only a couple
of days before the Lady Jermyn, though I had nearly a month's start of
her. Well, Harris came back in the highest state of excitement: and well
he might: the papers were full of you, and of the burning of the Lady
Jermyn!</p>
<p>"Now mark what happened. You know, of course, as well as I do; but I
wonder if you can even yet realize what it was to us! Our prisoner hears
that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and tells him he is welcome
to silence her, but it will do us ne good now, as you know that the ship
was wilfully burned, and with what object. It is the single blow she can
strike in self-defence; but a shrewder one could scarcely be imagined. She
had talked to you, at the very last; and by that time she did know the
truth. What more natural than that she should confide it to you? She had
had time to tell you enough to hang the lot of us; and you may imagine our
consternation on hearing that she had told you all she knew! From the
first we were never quite sure whether to believe it or not. That the
papers breathed no suspicion of foul play was neither here nor there.
Scotland Yard might have seen to that. Then we read of the morbid reserve
which was said to characterize all your utterances concerning the Lady
Jermyn. What were we to do? What we no longer dared to do was to take our
gold-dust straight to the Bank. What we did, you know.</p>
<p>"We ran round to Morecambe Bay, and landed the gold as we Rattrays had
landed lace and brandy from time immemorial. We left Eva in charge of Jane
Braithwaite, God only knows how much against my will, but we were in a
corner, it was life or death with us, and to find out how much you knew
was a first plain necessity. And the means we took were the only means in
our power; nor shall I say more to you on that subject than I said five
years ago in my poor old house. That is still the one part of the whole
conspiracy of which I myself am most ashamed.</p>
<p>"And now it only remains for me to tell you why I have written all this to
you, at such great length, so long after the event. My wife wished it. The
fact is that she wants you to think better of me than I deserve; and I—yes—I
confess that I should like you not to think quite as ill of me as you must
have done all these years. I was villain enough, but do not think I am
unpunished.</p>
<p>"I am an outlaw from my country. I am morally a transported felon. Only in
this no-man's land am I a free man; let me but step across the border and
I am worth a little fortune to the man who takes me. And we have had a
hard time here, though not so hard as I deserved; and the hardest part of
all..."</p>
<p>But you must guess the hardest part: for the letter ended as it began,
with sudden talk of his inner life, and tentative inquiry after mine. In
its entirety, as I say, I have never shown it to a soul; there was just a
little more that I read to my wife (who could not hear enough about his);
then I folded up the letter, and even she has never seen the passages to
which I allude.</p>
<p>And yet I am not one of those who hold that the previous romances of
married people should be taboo between them in after life. On the
contrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may be derived
from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and this is why we, in
our old age (or rather in mine), find a still unfailing topic in the story
of which Eva Denison was wayward heroine and Frank Rattray the nearest
approach to a hero. Sometimes these reminiscences lead to an argument; for
it has been the fate of my life to become attached to argumentative
persons. I suppose because I myself hate arguing. On the day that I
received Rattray's letter we had one of our warmest discussions. I could
repeat every word of it after forty years.</p>
<p>"A good man does not necessarily make a good husband," I innocently
remarked.</p>
<p>"Why do you say that?" asked my wife, who never would let a generalization
pass unchallenged.</p>
<p>"I was thinking of Rattray," said I. "The most tolerant of judges could
scarcely have described him as a good man five years ago. Yet I can see
that he has made an admirable husband. On the whole, and if you can't be
both, it is better to be the good husband!"</p>
<p>It was this point that we debated with so much ardor. My wife would take
the opposite side; that is her one grave fault. And I must introduce
personalities; that, of course, is among the least of mine. I compared
myself with Rattray, as a husband, and (with some sincerity) to my own
disparagement. I pointed out that he was an infinitely more fascinating
creature, which was no hard saying, for that epithet at least I have never
earned. And yet it was the word to sting my wife.</p>
<p>"Fascinating, perhaps!" said she. "Yes, that is the very word; but—fascination
is not love!"</p>
<p>And then I went to her, and stroked her hair (for she had hung her head in
deep distress), and kissed the tears from her eyes. And I swore that her
eyes were as lovely as Eva Denison's, that there seemed even more gold in
her glossy brown hair, that she was even younger to look at. And at the
last and craftiest compliment my own love looked at me through her tears,
as though some day or other she might forgive me.</p>
<p>"Then why did you want to give me up to him?" said she.</p>
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