Page:Mysteries of Melbourne Life.djvu/70

66 ton to witness the great race of the year, the Melbourne Cup. But a few years ago he remembered so well how he had been the gayest of the gay "on the road," driving his pair with some fair one by his side, the admired of many. The vision of that scene came to him with all the strength of a returned memory the crowds on the hill, the gay lawn, the flat covered with people, the horses drawn out in long array, the sweep past the grand stand, the cries of the assembled multitude as the horses passed the abbatoirs and began to extend themselves, the maddening excitement as they rushed up the straight neck to neck, and the final burst of cheering as the winner flashed by the judge's box. Wearied with imagining the scene he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. He did not awake until the sound of the returning vehicles disturbed the air, the rush and scurry of a thousand hoofs and a thousand wheels, the great din of the return from the races. But he took little interest in anything now. He felt himself sinking, his breath was growing weaker, and he felt unable to move. It seemed as if a lethargy had come over him which rendered him incapable of thinking or feeling. A lethargy? It was death.

As in a dream he heard the revelry of the city, now full of life and light, but the hum came to him only like the lullaby of a mother putting her babe to sleep. It was all fading from him; he felt his grasp on the rock of life loosening and the waves of the ocean of death bearing him away—

Two persons stood at his bedside, and he heard their conversation as if he heard it not.

"He has been going all day," said a voice he knew to be the surgeon's, "I wonder he has lived so long, for I never saw such a wreck. He must die to-night."

"How is it his deposition was not taken?" asked the other in a voice so full of sympathy that it woke the slumbering feelings of the dying. O! the pleasure that fills the departing soul when a voice of sympathy is heard. He knew the voice, too; it was the full, deep tones of Harry Robertson. Slabang opened his eyes and looked up into the handsome, pitying face that was gazing into his. Oh, this was joy unspeakable! A friend had at last come—one who would grasp his hand as he passed into the dark river. The poor dying creature held out his hand, and Harry grasped it.

"I am dying, Harry," said he, so faintly that his auditors could hardly hear him. "I would like to tell you all I know about Bell."

"Send for a magistrate at once," said Harry, and one of the warders rushed away.

During his absence Harry sat by the bedside and spoke to Slabang words full of the deepest meaning. The poor fellow listened as in a dream, but he grasped Harry's hand with all the strength he had left, and his eyes never left Harry's. He wished his last look to be into the eyes of one who felt for him, who understood his sufferings.

The magistrate came, and having arranged everything, Mabang proceeded with his narrative, which was taken down in legal phraseology, but we give it in his own language:—

"You know, Harry, that I loved Bella Dawson. For a time I thought to wrong her, as I did not contemplate asking her to be my wife, our worldly positions being so different. But I discovered that she was too virtuous to listen to my proposals, and although I attempted to forget her I found that my heart was hers irrevocably. Her gentle, modest ways, her true womanliness, and her irreproachable purity, enchained my soul to such a degree that after vainly trying to dissociate myself from her I was compelled to accept my fate, and resolved to marry Bella. But I had delayed too long. While I was hesitating, that wretch Hugh Hanlon met her, and the poor girl surrendered herself heart and soul to him. I never saw such an infatuation. She loved him with all her heart and all her soul. O, that such a love had bees mine! O, that she had loved me as she did him! it would have saved me and rescued me out of the abyss into which I was just then falling. It was the blow I sustained when I discovered I was not loved by the only one for whom I cared, and that she loved another, which destroyed me. I was maddened and desperate. You know what followed, Harry. When I had fallen to the lowest I again found my darling, but ah I how changed. Poor thing, her story was a sad one. Take down my words carefully, for I desire to remove a blot from the memory of one who has been traduced. Harry, poor Bella was married to Hugh Hanlon. He tried, as I did, to undermine her virtue, but found it too strong for even his fascinations, and you know what they were. How she could have withstood one she loved so I do not understand; but he married her, beyond the