Captain Swift

Summary

A gilded secret, birthed beneath the chandeliers of Victorian respectability, is smuggled into the marshy fog of rural obscurity: Lady Staunton’s imperious gloved hand engineers the disappearance of her sister’s illegitimate son, Harold Gage, a living stain upon the family escutcheon. The child—renamed but never truly rechristened—is deposited with the grasping Marshalls, whose own blood-son carves a jagged signature of ownership into Harold’s flesh with a farm-scythe, a scar that will later read like a perverse family crest. Fleeing the acid drip of bastardy and brutality, the boy slips into the cargo-hold of an Australia-bound barque, exchanging one null identity for another amid bilge-water and rats. Starvation sculpts him into a wraith; bush-law forges him into myth. As „Captain Swift“ he becomes a copper-burnished whirlwind on horseback, relieving diggers of their nuggets with a politeness that borders on parody, yet balking at the final sacrament of murder. A single uncharacteristic act of mercy—sparing the obstinate George Gardner—plants the seed of his undoing. Guilt, that most colonial of parasites, gnaws; restitution is attempted under the borrowed name of a dead mate, William Wilding. Back in London’s gaslit labyrinth he rescues a runaway gig, is embraced by the very class that once spat him out, and finds himself dining beneath ancestral portraits that might easily have been his. Marshall the butler—his former tormentor turned lackey in white gloves—sniffs the air like a tracking hound; Stella Darbisher, dewy-eyed romantic, sniffs danger and swoons. Two bullets, two bodies, one unspoken name: the curtain drops on a crucifixion staged for the sole benefit of propriety, the chorus still humming the legend of a bandit who was, perhaps, only ever a frightened child clutching a counterfeit crown.

Synopsis

In order to avoid exposure attendant upon the birth of Harold Gage, the fatherless son of Constance, he, through arrangements made by Lady Staunton, the haughty sister of Constance, is placed under the care of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, who are paid to rear the boy as their own, cautioned against revealing to him or the outside world his true identity. Mrs. Marshall's real son, in the early years of his life, acquainted with the doubtful parentage of Harold, taunts him. The two engage in a boys' fight, Harold being severely cut on his left arm by a scythe in the hands of his young foster brother, the wound leaving an ugly scar. The lad, sensitive of the treatment of his foster brother, finally migrates to Australia as a stowaway, where, by reason of forced circumstances and his near starvation to death, become a bush-ranger. Because of the rapidity of his operations, and his ability to escape detection and arrest, he, as the unknown bushranger, received the sobriquet of "Capt. Swift." He attempts to hold up a traveler, George Gardner, who is willing to suffer death rather than part with his gold. "Capt. Swift," hesitating to take a human life, compels him to alight and rides away with the wayfarer's mount. Swift, after having robbed the Queensland bank, suffers remorse, and determines to reform. Under the name of William Wilding, being the name of his companion in Australia, who died of starvation and thirst on the desert, he returns to London, where, at an opportune moment, he saves James Seabrook. whose life is in jeopardy by reason of a runaway horse. "Capt. Swift," invited by Seabrook to his home, there meets Mrs. Seabrook, their daughter Mabel and their niece Stella Darbisher. Harry Seabrook. brother of Mabel, a whole-hearted but impetuous young man, takes immediate dislike to Swift, whereas Stella Darbisher, a girl of romantic disposition, admiring the brave spirit inherent in Swift, becomes strongly attached to him. Marshall, the foster brother of Swift, is now employed as butler in the home of the Seabrooks. At a gathering the conversation is directed toward the escapades of one, "Capt. Swift," in Australia, whose name had become almost a household word throughout England. In the course of conversation, George Gardner, who is a friend of the Seabrooks, having returned from Australia, calls at their home, and there identifies Wilding as the notorious "Capt. Swift," and is in turn recognized by Swift, but his identity is not revealed to the others. Mrs. Seabrook recognizes a strong similarity between the man Swift and her boy, given away in adoption to the Marshalls. Her fears are later justified, when, at a dramatic and tense moment, she proves the fact to him. Swift, however, in order not to stigmatize his mother, determines to leave the household of the Seabrooks. Stella Darbisher's infatuation for Swift has progressed to such a point as to cause a strong reciprocal feeling on his part for the girl. The rivalry of Harry Seabrook for the hand of Stella causes a violent quarrel between him and Swift, the consequences of which are avoided by the timely intervention of Gardner. Marshall, eavesdropping during a conversation between Swift and his mother, Mrs. Seabrook, learns of the identity of Swift, and further proves it by a scar on Swift's arm, the result of the wound inflicted by Marshall when the two were boys. With this knowledge Marshall attempts to blackmail Swift, and being repulsed, acquaints the police with his whereabouts. A detective from Australia has arrived in London to apprehend Swift, having traced his movements to that place. Gardner, strongly admiring the manhood of Swift, determining if possible to save him, warns him. Swift, cornered in the home of his mother, rather than suffer arrest, together with the attendant exposure, and the possible revelation of his real identity, and to save the girl he loves and his mother the disgrace that would necessarily follow, jumps out of a window, knowing that the possibility of escape is meager. Marshall, working in league with the detective, is hidden in the shrubbery, and seeing Swift, fires, mortally wounding him, at the same moment that the detective from a window above shoots, the cross shot which strikes Marshall, puts an end to him. The denouement ends without the identity of "Capt. Swift" being revealed to the others.