It was Tessie Lawless!
'Lance! oh, Lance!' she cried in tones so full of anguish that the warders forbore to interfere, and the coach passengers listened in sympathetic wonder. 'Is this what they have brought you to? Oh, wicked wicked girl! Worse and more wicked man! For I know now how they plotted to destroy you. Your blood will be on our heads. Surely we must suffer for this if there's a God. Where are they taking you to? Oh, God! have mercy!'
The driver having inquired tersely into the occasion of the disturbance, and having gathered that a girl had recognised a friend or relation in the prisoner, lighted a fresh cigar and let his horses out adown the incline with the remark that accidents would happen, but a good-looking girl like her had no call to fret; she might have her pick of twenty new sweethearts long before this one had served his time. Women would go on like that, he supposed though, to the end of the world.
The public, as represented by the twenty inside passengers, did not exhibit undue surprise or other emotion. Some of the women whispered 'poor thing—fine young fellow too—pity he's gone wrong,' and so on. The men kept mostly mute, though not unsympathetic. They were not unused to seeing tragedies acted in everyday life in those unconventional days of the early goldfields. The passions had lacked hiding-places such as are furnished by a highly-civilised community.
The crowded goldfields camp more nearly represented 'board ship' than the provincial life pure and simple, and things were done and said, necessarily coram publico, which in more conventional communities would have been wholly suppressed or excited inconvenient remark.
Therefore, after a vain attempt to persuade poor Tessie to moderate her feelings, Lance was fain to yield to the contagion of her grief. Weakened in mind and body by his late sufferings, softened by the tenderness of her every tone, and touched by the first kind words he had heard since his imprisonment, he was fain, though hating himself for the weakness, to weep for company. As the tears streamed down the convict's grief-worn countenance—tears which he vainly strived to hide with his manacled hands—every heart was touched, and those emotions of our common humanity which ennoble the species were deeply stirred. Murmurs of 'Poor things,' 'Poor girl,' 'Hard lines,' etc., were heard. Even the warders, though unused to the melting mood, were raised from out of their ordinary groove of total indifference to human suffering not provided for by the gaol regulations. After a short colloquy the one nearest to Tessie motioned to the girl to exchange seats, an offer which she thankfully accepted.
There was no dereliction of duty involved in this charity, which was heartily and unanimously endorsed by their public. Relaxation of discipline was necessarily permitted in the case of escort of prisoners from one part of the country to another. Such a task was generally looked upon in the light of a holiday by warders or police troopers. It involved change of air and scene, higher pay for a time, and with various perquisites and indulgences. All that was required of them was to deliver over their charge safely to the authorities. That being the result, they were allowed a certain latitude with regard to the means. If the prisoner thereby escaped, their punishment was exemplary. It often happened, however, that the prisoner, being a fair sort of fellow (as prisoners go), was conversed and generally associated with on terms of equality. Of course proper security was exacted. A single trooper, camping out through a stretch of thinly-inhabited pastoral country, has been compelled to handcuff himself to the prisoner nightly for his better safeguarding. But these formalities apart, much cheerful companionship has ere now been enjoyed between the (official) 'wolf and hound.'
Hence, as the first warder observed in a gruff whisper, 'they had no call to bother their heads if the poor chap's girl wanted a yarn with him. It was the last one as he'd see for a spell, unless he fell across a mermaid.' Here the speaker, who had been a ship's carpenter once, growled a hoarse rumbling laugh. 'Let him have his bit o' luck for once. He'd got stiffish times to come, or else they'd heard wrong.'
So Tessie, sitting on the right side of Lance—there being no one to the left of him at the coach-window—leaning her head on his shoulder, commenced to whisper in his ear. The friendly warder studiously gazed at the fast-flying landscape, as if it possessed peculiarly picturesque effects. The second man almost turned his back upon Lance in his anxiety to be out of the reach of confidential communications, while Tessie's murmuring voice, instinct with more than womanly tenderness, sounded in the ear—ay, in the heart of the captive, so lately sullenly despairing of God and man—like the voice of an angel from heaven.
'You may think me immodest, Lance,' she said—'I may call you that now, may I not?—but I don't care. There are times when a woman must follow her own heart, and this is one of them. I would tell you what I feel now if there were hundreds looking on. I cannot help it; and what does my poor life matter? When I think of what you were when I first saw you! full of health, hope, and spirits, with a smile for every one, and under compliment to no living man, I felt as if my heart would burst when I saw you—saw you—as you are!'