In Bad Company, and other stories - Rolf Boldrewood

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Donahue, fairly well turned out, and riding a horse 'fit to go for a man's life,' as he expressed it, started 'down river,' leaving Mrs. Bridget in a state of mind very different from that with which she ordinarily regarded her husband's absence from home 'on business,' always uncertain as to return and rarely satisfactory as to remuneration.

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      The inland town of Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales, historically celebrated as the dwelling-place of the Tichborne Claimant, where that lapsed scion of the aristocracy followed the indispensable but not socially eminent occupation of butcher, was, if not en fête, pardonably excited at the arrival of the Judge and officers of the Assize Court to be holden on the morrow.

      This traditional spectacle—almost as interesting as the Annual Race Meeting or the Agricultural Show—was afforded to the inhabitants at half-yearly intervals. The curiosity aroused by these unfamiliar personages, before whom were decided the issues of freedom or imprisonment, life or death, was concentrated and intense. The Judge who presided, the Bar, the Deputy Sheriff, the Crown Prosecutor, the Associate, were objects of admiration to the denizens of a city three hundred miles from a metropolis—chiefly ignorant of other than rural life, and to whom the ocean itself was almost unknown. To the jurymen, culled from the town dwellers and the surrounding farms, the summons to aid in the administration of justice was a memorable solemnity.

      The compulsory withdrawal from their ordinary avocations was fully compensated by urban pleasures, and doubtless aided their intelligent comprehension of the laws of the land.

      Among the townspeople a certain amount of social festivity was deemed appropriate to the occasion.

      It may therefore be imagined that among the young men and maidens the infrequent procession of the Judge's carriage, escorted by the Superintendent of Police and half-a-dozen troopers, well armed, mounted, and accurately turned out, created a thrill of pleasurable anticipation.

      These feelings were heightened by the fact that Wagga (as, for convenience, the thriving town on the Murrumbidgee River was chiefly designated) stood at the edge of a vast pastoral district, being also bounded by one of the finest agricultural regions of Australia.

      The cases to be tried at this sitting of the Court concerned as well the great pastoral interest as the army of labourers, to whom that interest paid in wages not less than ten millions sterling annually.

      Punctually as the Post-office clock struck ten, the Court House was filled, great anxiety being shown to behold the six prisoners, who were marched from the gaol and placed in the dock, a forbidding-looking, iron-railed enclosure with a narrow wooden seat. On this some promptly sat down, while others stood up and gazed around with a well-acted look of indifference. Bill Hardwick had never been in such a place before, and the thought of what Jenny's feelings would be if she had seen him there nearly broke his heart. He sat with his head covered with his hands—the picture of misery and despair. He knew that he was to be defended—indeed had been closely questioned long before the day of trial about his conduct on the eventful morning of the burning of the Dundonald.

      He had asserted his innocence in moving terms, such as even touched the heart of the solicitor, hardened as he was by long acquaintance with desperate criminals as well as cases where plaintiffs, witnesses, and defendants all seemed to be leagued in one striking exhibition of false swearing and prevarication calculated to defeat the ends of justice.

      'That's all right,' said the lawyer, 'and I believe every word you've said, Bill, and deuced hard lines it is—not that I believe defendants generally, on their oath or otherwise. But you're a different sort, and it's a monstrous thing that you should have to spend your hard-earned money on lawyers and witnesses to defend yourself from a false charge. But what we've got to look to, is to make the Judge and jury believe you. These d—d scoundrels that were on for burning the boat, saw you with a gun in your hand while the affair was going on, and will swear to that, back and edge. Your friend Stoate, who isn't here yet, but will be up in time for the trial, will clinch the nail, and he can bring the constable to back him up, who saw you holding a gun. He doesn't say more than that, but it goes to corroborate. The jury must go by sworn evidence. There's only your own statement, which won't weigh against deponents, who've apparently nothing to gain on the other side.'

      'It's all the spite of that hound Stoate,' cried out Bill passionately. 'He was crabbed for my belittling him in the Tandara shed. He's put those Unionists up to ruining me, and I'll break his neck when I get out, if I have to swing for it.'

      'No, you won't, Bill! If you get a sentence, which I hope you won't, when you come out you'll be so jolly glad to find yourself free, that you won't want to go back even for revenge. But never mind that for the present; we must look things in the face. It's a thousand pities you couldn't get some of those chaps that were driven into the hut along with you, by the Unionists, the first night. Any idea where they've gone? Know their names?'

      'They went down the river, I heard say. They're hundreds of miles away by this time. What's the use of knowing their names?'

      'That's my business. It's wonderful how people turn up sometimes. Come, out with their names—where they came from—all you know about them.'

      Thus adjured, Bill gave their names and a sketch of personal appearance, home address, and so on. 'All of them were natives, and some of them, when they were at home, which was not often, had selections in the same district.' This being done, Mr. Biddulph folded up the paper, and left Bill to his reflections, telling him that he could do nothing more for him at present, but to 'keep up his pecker,' and not to think the race was over till the numbers were up.

      This quasi-encouragement, however, availed him but little. 'He had lost his shearing cheque; and here was money,' he sadly thought, 'being spent like water, to prove him innocent of a crime for which he never should have been charged. His wife would be nearly killed with anxiety, besides being made aware that they could not now think of buying Donahue's or any other selection. How everything had gone wrong since he rode away from home that morning with Stoate (infernal, blasted traitor that he was!), and had been going from bad to worse ever since. It was against Jenny's advice that he joined the Union. She had a knack of being right, though she was not much of a talker. Another time—but when would that be?'

      So Bill—'a hunter of the hills,' more or less, as was the Prisoner of Chillon—had to pass the weary hours until the day of trial, and he could exchange the confinement of the gaol for the expansive scenery of the dock—restricted as to space, certainly, but having an outlook upon the world, and a sort of companionship in the crowd of spectators, lawyers, and witnesses, finishing up with the Judge.

      At this judicial potentate Bill looked long and wistfully. He had an idea that a Judge was a ruthless administrator of hard laws, with a fixed prejudice against working-men who presumed to do anything illegal, or in fact to trouble themselves about anything but their work and wages. However, he could not fail to see in this Judge a mild, serious, patient gentleman, showing greater anxiety to understand the facts of the case than to inflict sentences. Still, he was only partly reassured. Might he not be one of those benevolent-seeming ones—he had heard of such—who would talk sweetly to the prisoner, reminding him of the happy days of childhood, and his, perhaps, exemplary conduct when he used to attend Sunday School—trust that he intended to lead a new life, and then paralyse him with a ten years' sentence, hard labour, and two days' solitary in each month?

      He did not know what to expect. Wasn't there Pat Macarthy, who got three years for assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm (certainly he more than half killed the other man)? Well, his wife worked his farm, and slaved away the whole time, denying herself almost decent clothes to wear. At the end of his term, he came out to find her hopelessly insane; she had been taken to the Lunatic Asylum only the week before.

      Bill hardly thought that Jenny would go 'off her head,' in the popular sense. It was too level and well-balanced. But if he was sentenced to three or five years more of this infernal, hopeless, caged-in existence, he expected he would.

      The

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