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Volume Three – Chapter Ten.
Kindly Acts

Tom Porter had a way of his own when he was puzzled as to his course, and that was to go to the door and keep a bright look-out; in other words, follow old Gemp’s example, and stare up and down the street until he had attained a correct idea as to which way he had better steer.

He had been looking thoughtfully out for about an hour on this particular night before he came to the conclusion that he knew the right way. But once determined, he entered, and, closing the door softly, he stopped for a minute to pull himself together, rearranging his necktie, pulling down his vest, and carefully fastening the top and bottom buttons, which had a rollicking habit of working themselves clear of their respective holes. His hair, too, required a little attention, being carefully smoothed with his fingers. This done, he moistened his hands, as if about to haul a rope, before going straight up to where his master was seated in front of the fire which the cool spring night made comfortable, who, as he sat there gazing very thoughtfully in between the bars, said:

“Well, Tom, what is it?”

“Been a-thinking, Sir Gordon – hard.”

“Well, what about?”

“’Bout you, Sir Gordon. It’s these here east winds getting into your bones again; as if I might be so bold – ”

“There, there, man, don’t stand hammering and stammering like that! You want to say something. Say it.”

“’Bout the east wind, Sir Gordon, and whether you wouldn’t think it as well to take a trip.”

“Yes, yes, man, I’m going on one – Mediterranean – in a few days,” said the old man dreamily.

“Glad to hear it, Sir Gordon; but, if I might make so bold, why not make a longer trip?”

“Not safe – yacht not big enough, my man. There, that will do: I want to think.”

“I mean aboard ship, Sir Gordon. Why shouldn’t we go as far as Australia? We’ve seen a deal of the world, Sir Gordon, but we haven’t been there.”

Tom Porter’s master gave him a peculiar look, and then nodded towards the door, when the man made a nautical bow, with a very apologetic smile, and backed out.

“Went a bit too nigh the rocks that time. It warn’t like me – but, lor! what a man will do when there’s a woman in the way!”

He had hardly settled himself in his pantry when the bell rang, and he went up, expecting a severe talking to.

“Means a wigging!” he said, as he went up slowly, to find Sir Gordon pacing the room.

Tom Porter did not know it, but his words had fallen just at that time when his master was pondering upon the possibility of such a trip, and, though he would not have owned to it, his man’s words had turned the balance.

“Pack up at once,” he said.

“Long cruise or short, Sir Gordon?”

“Long.”

“Ay, ay, Sir Gordon. Special dispatches, Sir Gordon?”

“No; longer cruise than usual, that’s all.”

“He’s going! I’d bet ten hundred thousand pounds he’s going!” said Tom Porter; “and I’m done for! She was a bit more easy last time we met; and I shall make a fool o’ myself – I know I shall!”

He stood in the middle of his pantry, turning his right and left hands into a pestle and mortar, and grinding something invisible therein. Then, after a long silence:

“Its fate, that’s about what it is!” said Tom Porter; “and that’s a current that you can’t fight agen.”

After which philosophical declaration he began to pack, working well on into what he called the morning watch, and long after Sir Gordon had been comfortably asleep.

The next day Tom Porter had orders to go with his master to the Admiralty, where he waited for about a couple of hours; and two days later he was on his way to Plymouth with the sea-chests, as he termed them, perfectly happy, and with his shore togs, as he called his livery, locked up in one of the presses in the chambers in St. James’s.

His sailing orders were brief, and he put into port at the chief hotel to wait for his master; and he waited. Meantime there had been the painful partings between those who loved, and who, in spite of hopeful words, felt that in all human probability the parting was final.

Through the interest of Sir Gordon, a passage had been obtained for Mrs Hallam and her daughter on board the Sea King, a fine ship, chartered by the Government to take out a large detachment of troops, as well as several important officials, bound to the Antipodes on the mission of trying to foster what promised to be one of our most important colonies.

“You will be more comfortable,” Sir Gordon said. “There will be ladies on board, and I will get you some introductions to them, as well as to the Governor at Port Jackson.”

Mrs Hallam gave Bayle a piteous look, as if asking him to intercede for her.

Bayle, however, seemed not to comprehend her look, and remained silent.

It was a painful task, but Millicent Hallam was accustomed to painful tasks, and, turning to Sir Gordon, she said, in a quiet, resigned way:

“You forget my position. I know how kindly all this is meant; but I must not be going out on false pretences. My fellow-passengers should not be deceived as to who and what I am. I may seem ungrateful to you, but it would have been far better for me to have gone out in some common ship.”

“My dear child,” cried Sir Gordon, wringing his hands, “don’t be unreasonable! Do you suppose the womenkind on board the Sea King are going to be so contemptible as to visit the sins of – My dear Bayle, you have more influence than I!” he cried hastily; “tell Mrs Hallam everything is settled, and she must go, and – there, there, we’ve had knots and tangles enough, don’t, pray, let us have any more!”

The old gentleman, who seemed terribly perplexed, turned away, but paused as he felt a little hand upon his arm.

“Don’t speak angrily to mamma,” whispered Julia; and the old man’s countenance became wholly sunny again.

“No, no,” he said; “but you two must leave matters to Mr Bayle and me. We are acting for the best, my child. You cannot conceive what it would have been to let you go out as your mother proposed. It was madness!”

“It is for Julie’s sake,” Mrs Hallam said to herself, when she consented to various little arrangements, though she shivered at the thought of being brought face to face with her fellow-passengers.

“Indeed, we are acting with all the foresight we can bring to bear,” Bayle said, in answer to another remonstrance made in the hurry and bustle of preparation.

“Yes,” she replied; “but you are doing too much. You make me tremble for the consequence.”

Bayle smiled, and bade her take comfort. He was present with her almost daily, to report little matters that he had arranged for her as to money and baggage. Since he had accompanied her and Julia back to town he had been indefatigable, working with the most cheery good-humour, and smiling as he reported the success of the furniture sale; how capitally he had managed about the little investments of the wreck of Mrs Hallam’s money; and how he had obtained letters of credit for her at the Colonial Bank.

Julia watched Bayle’s countenance day by day with a curious, wistful look, that would at times be pitiful, at other times full of resentment; and one day she turned to the doctor – the old gentleman and Mrs Luttrell having insisted upon coming to town, and following their child to Portsmouth, where they were to embark.

“I believe, grandpa,” she said half angrily, “that Mr Bayle is tired of us, and that he is glad to get us off his hands.”

“Nothing would ever tire Mr Bayle, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell reprovingly.

Julia turned to her quickly and put her arms round the old lady’s neck, the tears in her eyes brimming over.

“No; it was very unkind and ungenerous of me,” she said. “He has always been so good.”

In the midst of what was almost a wild excitement of preparation, mingled with fits of despondency, Millicent Hallam noticed this too, and found time to feel hurt.

“He is such an old friend,” she said to herself. “He has been like a brother; and it seems hard that he should appear to be less moved at our approaching farewell than Mr Thickens and his wife.”

For, instigated by the latter, Thickens had come up and followed them to Portsmouth.

“It would have about killed her, Mrs Hallam,” he said in confidence, as he sat chatting with her aside in the hotel room on the eve of their sailing. “But now a bit of business. I’ve been trying ever since I came to get a few words with you alone, only Sir Gordon and Mr Bayle were always in the way.”

“Business, Mr Thickens?”

“Yes, look here! I’m an actuary, you see, and money adviser, and that sort of thing. Now you are going out there on a long voyage, and you ought to be prepared for any little emergencies that may occur in a land that I find is not so barbarous as I thought, for I see they have a regular banking establishment there, and business regularly carried on in paper and bullion.”

Mrs Hallam looked at him wonderingly.

“Ah, I see you don’t understand me, so to be short,” he continued, “fact is I talked it over with, madam, and we settled it between us.”

“Settled what?” said Mrs Hallam, wonderingly.

“Well, the fact is, we’ve two hundred pounds fallen in. Been out on a good mortgage at five per cent, and just now I can’t place it anywhere at more than four, and that won’t do, you know, will it?”

“Of course it would not be so advantageous.”

“No, to be sure not, so we thought we’d ask you to take it at five. Money’s valuable out there. You could easily send us the dividend once a-year – ten pounds, you know, by credit note, and it would be useful to you, and doing your old friends a good turn. I hate to see money lying idle.”

Mrs Hallam glanced across the room to see that little Mrs Thickens was watching them anxiously, and she felt the tears rise in her eyes as she darted a grateful look back, before turning to dry, drab-looking Thickens, who now and then put his hand up to his ear, as if expecting to find a pen there.

“It is very good and very generous of you,” she said huskily, “and I can never be grateful enough for all this kindness. Believe me, I shall never forget it.”

“That’s right. I shall have it all arranged, so that you can draw at the Colonial Bank.”

“No, no,” cried Mrs Hallam with energy, “it is impossible. Besides, I have a sufficiency for our wants, ample for the present – the remains of my little property. Mr Bayle has managed it so well for me; my furniture brought in a nice little sum, and – ”

“Your what?” said Thickens in a puzzled tone.

“My property. You remember what I had when – ”

“When you were married? Why, my dear madam, you don’t think any of that was left?”

“Mr Thickens!”

“Ah, I see,” he cried with a good-humoured smile, for delicacy was not the forte of the bank clerk of the little country town. “Mr Bayle patched up that story. Why, my dear madam, when the crash came you hadn’t a halfpenny. Here, quick, my dear! Mrs Hallam has turned faint!”

“No, it is nothing,” she cried hastily. “I am better now, Mr Thickens. Go back to our friends, Julie – to grandma. It is past.”

“I – I’m afraid I’ve spoken too plainly,” said Thickens apologetically, as soon as they were alone once more. “I wish I’d held my tongue.”

“I am very glad that you spoke, Mr Thickens,” said Mrs Hallam in a low voice. “It was better that I should know.”

“Then you will let me lend you that money?” eagerly.

“No. It is impossible. I am deeper in obligations than I thought. Pray spare me by not saying more.”

“I want to do everything you wish,” said Thickens uneasily.

“Then say no word about what you have told me to any one.”

“Pooh! Mrs Hallam, as if I should. Money matters are always sacred with me. That comes of Mr Bayle banking in town. If he had trusted me with his money matters, I should never have spoken like this.”

Volume Three – Chapter Eleven.
Millicent Hallam Learns a Little more of the Truth

It was a painful evening that last. Every one was assuming to be light-hearted, and talking of the voyage as being pleasant, and hinting delicately at the possibility of seeing mother and daughter soon again, but all the while feeling that the farewells must in all probability be final.

Mr and Mrs Thickens retired early, for the latter whispered to her husband that she could bear it no longer.

“I feel, dear, as if it were a funeral, and we were being kept all this while standing by the open grave!”

“Hush!” whispered back Thickens; “it’s like prophesying evil.” And they hurriedly took leave.

Then Sir Gordon rose, saying that it was very late, and he, too, went, leaving mother and daughter exchanging glances, for the old man seemed cool and unruffled in an extraordinary degree.

Bayle remained a little longer, talking to Doctor and Mrs Luttrell, whose favourite attitudes all the evening had been seated on either side of Julia, each holding a hand.

“Good-night,” said Bayle at last, rising and shaking hands with Julia in a cheery, pleasant manner. “No sitting up. Take my advice and have a good rest, so as to be prepared for the sea demon. Eleven punctually, you know, to-morrow. Everything ready?”

“Yes, everything is ready,” replied Julia, looking at him with her eyes flashing and a feeling of anger at his cavalier manner forcing its way to the surface. It seemed so Cruel. Just at a time like that, when a few tender words of sympathy would have been like balm to the wounded spirit, he was as cool and indifferent as could be. She was right, she told herself. He really was tired of them.

Bayle evidently read her ingenuous young countenance and smiled, with the result that she darted an indignant glance at him, and then could not keep back her tears.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he said, taking her hand and holding it, speaking the while as if she were a child. “Tears, tears? Oh, nonsense! Why, these are not the days of Christopher Columbus. You are not going to sail away upon an unknown sea. It is a mere yachting trip, and every mile of the way is known. Come, come: cheer up. That’s nautical, you know, Julie. Good-night, my dear! good-night.”

He shook hands far more warmly and affectionately with the Doctor and Mrs Luttrell, hesitating for a moment or two, and even taking poor weeping Mrs Luttrell in his arms, and kissing her tenderly again and again.

“Good-night, good-night, my dear old friend,” he said. “You have been almost more than a mother to me. Good-night, good-night.”

The old lady sobbed upon his shoulder for some time, the doctor holding Bayle’s other hand, while Julia crossed to her mother, who was standing cold and statuesque near the door, and hid her face.

“Good-night and good-bye, my dear boy,” said Mrs Luttrell, as she raised her head; and looked up in his face. “And you always have seemed as if you were our son.”

Bayle’s lip quivered, and his face was for a moment convulsed, but he was calm again in a moment.

“To be sure, doctor,” he said. “I shall come down and see you again – some day. I want some gardening for a change. Good-night, good – ”

His last word was inaudible, as he hurried towards the door, where Mrs Hallam was awaiting him.

“Go back to your grandmother, Julie,” she said, in a low, stern voice. “Christie Bayle, I wish to speak to you.”

“To me? To-night?” he said hastily. “No: to-morrow. I am not myself now, and you need rest.”

“No,” she said, in the same deep voice; “to-night,” and she led the way into an inner room.

Julia made as if to follow, but stopped short, and stood watching till her mother and their old friend disappeared.

The room was lit only by the light that streamed in from the street lamp and a shop near the hotel, so that the faces of Millicent Hallam and Bayle were half in shadow as they stood opposite to each other.

Bayle was silent, for he had seen that Mrs Hallam was deeply moved. He had studied her face too many years not to be able to read its various changes; and now, on the eve of her departure, he knew that in spite of the apparent calmness of the surface a terrible storm of grief must be raging beneath, and feeling that perhaps she wished to say a few words of thanks to him, and while asking some attention towards the old people, she was about to take this opportunity to bid him farewell, he stood there in silence waiting for her to speak.

Twice over she essayed, but the words would not come. It was as if misery, indignation, and humiliation were contending in her breast, and each mood was uppermost when she opened her lips. How could she have been so unworldly – so blind all these years, as not to have seen that Christie Bayle had been impoverishing himself that she and her child might live?

As she thought this, she was moved to humility, and admiration of the gentleman who had hidden all this from them, always behaving with the greatest delicacy, and carefully hiding the part he had taken in her life.

“And I thought myself so experienced – so well taught by adversity,” she said to herself.

“Did you wish to ask me something, Mrs Hallam!” said Bayle, at last. “Is it some commission you wish me to undertake?”

“Stop a moment,” she said hoarsely. Then, as if by a tremendous effort over herself, she tried to steady her voice, and to speak indignantly, as she exclaimed:

“Christie Bayle, why have you humiliated me like this?”

He started, for he had not the remotest idea that she had learnt his secret.

“Humiliated you?” he said. “Oh, no, I could not have done that.”

“I have trusted you so well – looked upon you as a brother, and now at the eleventh hour of my home life, I find that even you have not deserved my trust.”

“Indeed!” he said, smiling. “What have I done?”

“What have you done?” she cried indignantly, her emotion begetting a kind of unreason, and making her bitter in her words. “What have I done in my misery and misfortune that you should take advantage of my position? That man to-night has told me all.”

“I hardly understand you,” he said gravely.

“Not understand? He has told me that when that terrible trouble came upon me, it did not come singly, and that I was left penniless to battle with the world. Is this true?”

Bayle refrained for a few moments before answering. “Is this wise?” he said at last. “For your own sake – for the sake of Julie, you have need of all your fortitude to bear up against a painful series of farewells. Why trouble about this trifle now?”

“Trifle!” she cried angrily. “Stop! Let me think.” She stood with her hands pressed to her forehead, as if struggling to drag something from the past – from out of the mist and turmoil of those terrible days and nights, when her brain seemed to have been on fire, and she lay almost at the point of death.

“Yes,” she cried, as if a flash had suddenly illumined her brain, “I see now. I know. Tell me: is what that man said true?”

He was slow to answer, but at last the words came, uttered sadly, and in a low voice:

“If he told you that at that terrible time you were left in distress, it is true.”

“I knew it,” she said, passionately. “Now tell me this – I will know. When my poor husband lay there helpless – in prison – yes, it all comes back clearly now – my illness seems to have covered it as with a mist, but I remember that there was powerful counsel engaged for his defence, and great efforts were made to save him. Who did this? I have kept it hidden away, not daring to drag these matters out into the light of the present, but I must know now. Who did this?”

He did not answer.

“Your silence convicts you,” she cried, angrily. “It was you.”

“Yes,” he said, quietly, “it was I.”

“Then we were left penniless, and it is to you we owe everything – for all these years?”

Again he was silent.

“Answer me,” she cried imperiously.

“Did I not acknowledge it before,” he said calmly. “Mrs Hallam, have I committed so grave a social crime, that you speak to me like this?”

“It was cruel – to me – to my child,” she cried, indignantly. “You have kept us in a false position all these years. Man, can you not understand the degradation and shame I felt when I was enlightened here only an hour ago?”

He stood there silent again for a few moments, before speaking; and then took her hand.

“If I have done wrong,” he said, “forgive me. When that blow fell, and in your position, all the past seemed to come back – that day when in my boyish vanity I – ”

“Oh! hush!” she cried.

“Nay, let me speak,” he said calmly. “I recalled that day when you bade me be friend and brother to you, and life seemed to be one blank despair. I remembered how I prayed for strength, and how that strength came, how I vowed that I would be friend and brother to you and yours; and when the time of tribulation came was my act so unbrotherly in your distress?”

She was silent.

“Millicent Hallam, do you think that I have not loved your child as tenderly as if she had been my own? Fate gave me money. Well, men, as a rule, spend their money in a way that affords them the most pleasure. I am only a weak man, and I have done the same.”

“You have kept yourself poor that we might live in idleness.”

“You are wrong,” he said, with a quiet laugh. “I was never richer than during these peaceful years – that have now come to an end,” he added sorrowfully; “and you would make me poor once more. There,” he continued, speaking quickly, “I confess all. Forgive me. I could not see you in want.”

“I should not have been in want,” she said proudly. “If I had known that it was necessary I should work, the toil would have come easily to my hands. I should have toiled on for my child’s sake, and waited patiently until my husband bade me come.”

“But you forgive me?” he said, in his old tone.

For answer she sank upon the floor at his feet, covering her face with her hands; and he heard her sobbing.

“Good-night,” he said at last. “I will send Julie.”

He bent down and laid his fingers softly upon her head for a moment, and was turning to go, but she caught at his hand and held it.

“A moment,” she cried; “best and truest friend. Forgive me, and mine – when we are divided, as we shall be – for life, try – pray for me – pray for him – and believe in him – as you do in me – my husband, Christie Bayle – my poor martyred husband.”

“And I am forgiven?” he said.

“Forgiven!”

She said no more, and he passed quickly into the room where Julia was anxiously awaiting his return.

“Doctor – Mrs Luttrell,” he said, “you must try and calm her, or she will not be able to undertake this journey. Julie, my child, try what you can do. Good-night. Good-night.”

As the door closed after him, Mrs Hallam walked back into the room looking calm and stern; but her face softened as Julia clung to her and then seated herself at her mother’s feet, the next hours passing so peacefully that it was impossible to believe that the time for parting was so near.