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Volume Three – Chapter Twenty.
In the Convict Barracks
“Be firm, my darling,” whispered Mrs Hallam; and as they followed their guide, hand in hand, Julia seemed to take strength and fortitude from the proud, pale face, and eyes bright with matronly love and hope.
“Mother!”
Only that word, but it was enough. Millicent Hallam was satisfied, for she read in the tone and in the look that accompanied it the fact that her teaching had not been in vain, and that she had come to meet her martyr husband with the love of wife and child.
The officer who showed them into a bare room, with its grated windows, glanced at them curiously before leaving: and then they had to wait through, what seemed to them, an age of agony, listening to the slow, regular tramp of a couple of sentries, one seeming to be in a passage close at hand, the other beneath the window of the room where they were seated upon a rough bench.
“Courage! my child,” said Mrs Hallam, looking at Julia with a smile; and then it was the latter who had to start up and support her, for there was the distant sound of feet, and Mrs Hallam’s face contracted as from some terrible spasm, and she swayed heavily sidewise.
“Heaven give me strength!” she groaned; and then, clinging together, the suffering women watched the door as the heavy tramp came nearer, and with it a strange hollow, echoing sound.
As Julia watched the door the remembrance of the stern, handsome face of her childhood seemed to come up from the past – that face with the profusion of well-tended, wavy black hair, brushed back from the high, white forehead; the bright, piercing eyes that were shaded by long, heavy lashes; the closely-shaven lips and chin, and the thick, dark whiskers – the face of the portrait in their little London home. And it seemed to her that she would see it again directly, that the old sternness would have given place to a smile of welcome, and as her heart beat fast her eyes filled with tears, and she was gazing through a mist that dimmed her sight.
The door was thrown open; the tramp of the footsteps ceased, and as the door was abruptly closed, mother and daughter remained unmoved, clinging more tightly together, staring wildly through their tear-blinded eyes at the gaunt convict standing there with face that seemed to have been stamped in the mould of the poor wretch’s they had so lately seen: closely-cropped grey hair, stubbly, silvered beard, and face drawn in a half-derisive smile.
“Well!” he said, in a strange, hoarse voice that was brutal in its tones; and a sound issued from his throat that bore some resemblance to a laugh. “Am I so changed?”
“Robert! husband!”
The words rang through the cell-like room like the cry of some stricken life, and Millicent Hallam threw herself upon the convict’s breast.
He bent over her as he held her tightly, and placed his mouth to her ear, while the beautiful quivering lips were turned towards his in their agony of longing for his welcoming kiss.
“Hush! Listen!” he said, and he gave her a sharp shake. “Have you brought the tin case?”
She nodded as she clung to him, clasping him more tightly to her heaving breast.
“You’ve got it safely?”
She nodded quickly again.
“Where is it?”
She breathed hard, and attempted to speak, but it was some time before she could utter the expected words.
“Why don’t you speak?” he said in a rough whisper. “You have it safe?”
She nodded again.
“Where?”
“It – it is at – the hotel,” panted Mrs Hallam.
“Quite safe?”
“Yes.”
“Unopened?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God!”
His manner seemed to change, his eyes brightened, and his brutalised countenance altogether looked less repellent, as he uttered those words. As he stood there at first, his head hung, as it were, forward from between his shoulders, and his whole attitude had a despicable, cringing, trampled-down look that now seemed to pass away. He filled out and drew himself up; his eyes brightened as if hope had been borne to him by the coming of wife and child. It was no longer the same man, so it seemed to Julia as she stood aloof, trembling and waiting for him to speak to her.
“Good girl! good wife!” said Hallam, in a low voice; and with some show of affection he kissed the quivering woman, who, as she clasped him to her heart and grew to him once more, saw nothing of the change, but closed her eyes mentally and really, the longing of years satisfied, everything forgotten, even the presence of Julia, in the great joy of being united once again.
“There!” he said suddenly; “that must do now. There is only a short time, and I have lots to say, my gal.”
Millicent Hallam’s eyes opened, and she quite started back from her love romance to reality, his words sounded so harsh, his language was so coarse and strange; but she smiled again directly, a happy, joyous smile, as nestling within her husband’s left arm, she laid her cheek upon the coarse woollen convict garb, and clinging there sent with a flash from her humid eyes a loving invitation to her child.
She did not speak, but her action was eloquent as words, and bade the trembling girl take the place she had half-vacated, the share she offered – the strong right arm, and the half of her husband’s breast.
Julia read and knew, and in an instant she too was clinging to the convict, looking piteously in his scarred, brutalised countenance, with eyes that strove so hard to be full of love, but which gazed through no medium of romance. Strive how she would, all seemed so hideously real – this hard, coarse-looking, rough-voiced man was not the father she had been taught to reverence and love; and it was with a heart full of misery and despair that she gazed at him with her lips quivering, and then burst into a wild fit of sobbing as she buried her face in his breast.
“There, there, don’t cry,” he said almost impatiently; and there was no working of the face, nothing to indicate that he was moved by the passionate love of his faithful wife, or the agony of the beautiful girl whose sobs shook his breast. “Time’s precious now. Wait till I get out of this place. You go and sit down, Julie. By jingo!” he continued, with a look of admiration as he held her off at arm’s length, “what a handsome gal you’ve grown! No sweetheart yet, I hope?”
Julia shrank from him with scarlet face, and as he loosed her hand she shrank back to the rough seat, with her eyes troubled, and her hands trembling.
“Now, Milly, my gal,” said Hallam, drawing his wife’s arm through his, and leading her beneath the window as he spoke in a low voice once more, “you have that case safe and unopened?”
“Yes.”
“Then look here! Business. I must be rough and plain. You have brought me my freedom.”
“Robert!”
Only that word, but so full of frantic joy.
“Quiet, and listen. You will do exactly as I tell you?”
“Yes. Can you doubt?”
“No. Now look here. You will take a good house at once, the best you can. If you can’t get one – they’re very scarce – the hotel will do. Stay there, and behave as if you were well off – as you are.”
“Robert, I have nothing,” she gasped.
“Yes, you have,” he said with a laugh. “I have; and we are one.”
“You have? Money?”
“Of course. Do you suppose a man is at work out here for a dozen years without making some? There! don’t you worry about that: you’re new. You’ll find plenty of men, who came out as convicts, rich men now with land of their own. But we are wasting time. You have brought out my freedom.”
“Your pardon?”
“No. Nonsense! I shall have to stay out here; but it does not matter now. Only go and do as I tell you, and carefully, for you are only a woman in a strange place, and alone till you get me out.”
“Mr Bayle is here, and Sir Gordon – ”
“Bayle!” cried Hallam, catching her wrist with a savage grip and staring in an angry way at the agitated face before him.
“Yes; he has been so helpful and true all through our trouble, and – ”
“Curse Bayle!” he muttered. Then aloud, and in a fierce, impatient way: “Never mind that now, I shall have to go back to the gang directly, and I have not said half I want to say.”
“I will not speak again,” she said eagerly. “Tell me what to do.”
“Take house or apartments at once; behave as if you were well off – I tell you that you are; do all yourself, and send in an application to the authorities for two assigned servants.”
“Assigned servants?”
“Yes – convict servants,” said Hallam impatiently. “There! you must know. There are so many that the Government are glad to get the well-behaved convicts off their hands, and into the care of settlers who undertake their charge. You want two men, as you have settled here. You will have papers to sign, and give undertakings; but do it all boldly, and you will select two. They won’t ask you any questions about your taking up land, they are too glad to get rid of us. If they do ask anything, you can boldly say you want them for butler and coachman.”
“But, Robert, I do not understand.”
“Do as I tell you,” he said sharply. “You will select two men – myself and Stephen Crellock.”
“Yourself and Stephen Crellock?”
“Yes. Don’t look so bewildered, woman. It is the regular thing, and we shall be set at liberty.”
“At liberty?”
“Yes, to go anywhere in the colony. You are answerable to the Government for us.”
“But, Robert, you would come as – my servant?”
“Pooh! Only in name. So long as you claim us as your servants, that is all that is wanted. Plenty are freed on these terms, and once they are out, go and live with their families, like any one else.”
“This is done here?”
“To be sure it is. I tell you that once a man has been in the gangs here for a few years they are glad to get him off their hands, so as to leave room for others who are coming out. Why, Milly, they could not keep all who are sent away from England, and people are easier and more forgiving out here. Hundreds of those you see here were lags.”
“Lags?”
“Bah! how innocent you are. Well, convicts. Now, quick! they are coming. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you will do as I tell you?”
“Everything,” said Mrs Hallam.
“Of course you cannot make this a matter of secrecy. It does not matter who knows. But the tin case; remember that is for me alone.”
“But the authorities,” said Mrs Hallam; “they will know I am your wife.”
“The authorities will trouble nothing about it. I have a fairly good record, and they will be glad. As for Crellock – ”
“That man!” gasped Mrs Hallam.
“Well?”
“We saw him – as we came.”
Hallam’s face puckered.
“Poor fellow,” he said hastily. “Ah, that was a specimen of the cruel treatment we receive. It was unfortunate. But we can’t talk about that. There they are. Remember!”
She pressed the coarse, hard hand that was holding hers as the door was thrown open, and without another word Hallam obeyed the sign made by the officer in the doorway, and, as the two women crept together, Julia receiving no further recognition, they saw him sink from his erect position, his head went down, his back rounded, and he went out.
Then the door shut loudly, and they stood listening, as the steps died away, save those of the sentries in the passage and beneath the window.
The silence, as they stood in that blank, cell-like room, was terrible; and when at last Julia spoke, her mother started and stared at her wildly from the confused rush of thought that was passing through her brain.
“Mother, is it some dreadful dream?”
Mrs Hallam’s lips parted, but no words came, and for the moment she seemed to be sharing her child’s mental shock, the terrible disillusioning to which she had been subjected.
The recovery was quick, though, as she drew a long breath.
“Dream? No, my child, it is real; and at last we can rescue him from his dreadful fate.”
Whatever thoughts she may have had that militated against her hopes she crushed down, forcing herself to see nothing but the result of a terrible persecution, and ready to be angered with herself for any doubts as to her duty.
In this spirit she followed the man who had led them in back to the gates, where Bayle was waiting; and as he gazed anxiously in the faces of the two women it was to see Julie’s scared, white, and ready to look appealingly in his, while Mrs Hallam’s was radiant and proud with the light of her true woman’s love and devotion to him she told herself it was her duty to obey.
That night mother and daughter, clasped in each other’s arms, knelt and prayed, the one for strength to carry out her duty, and restore Robert Hallam to his place in the world of men; the other for power to love the father whom she had crossed the great ocean to gain – the man who had seemed to be so little like the father of her dreams.
Volume Four – Chapter One.
In the New Land – The Situation
“Look here, Bayle, this is about the maddest thing I ever knew. Will you have the goodness to tell me why we are stopping here?”
Bayle looked up from the book he was reading in the pleasant room that formed their home, one which Tom Porter had found no difficulty in fitting up in good cabin style.
A year had glided by since they landed, a year that Sir Gordon had passed in the most unsatisfactory way.
“Why are we stopping here?”
“Yes. Didn’t I speak plainly? Why are we stopping here? For goodness’ sake, Bayle, don’t you take to aggravating me by repeating my words! I’m irritable enough without that!”
“Nonsense, my dear old friend!” cried Bayle, rising.
“Hang it, man, don’t throw my age in my teeth! I can’t help being old!”
“May I live to be as old,” said Bayle, smiling, and laying his hand on Sir Gordon’s shoulder.
“Bah! don’t pray for that, man! Why should you want to live? To see all your pet schemes knocked on the head, and those you care for go to the bad, while your aches and pains increase, and you are gliding down the hill of life a wretched, selfish old man, unloved, uncared for. There, life is all a miserable mistake.”
“Uncared for, eh?” said Bayle. “Have you no friends?”
“Not one,” groaned the old man, writhing, as he felt a twinge in his back. “Oh, this bitter south wind! it’s worse than our north!”
“Shame! Why, Tom Porter watches you night and day. He would die for you.”
“So would a dog. The scoundrel only thinks of how much money I shall leave him when I go.”
Unheard by either, Tom Porter had entered the room, sailor fashion, barefoot, in the easy canvas suit he wore when yachting with his master. He had brought in a basin of broth of his own brewing, as he termed it – for Sir Gordon was unwell – a plate with a couple of slices of bread of his own toasting in the other hand, and he was holding the silver spoon from Sir Gordon’s travelling canteen beneath his chin.
He heard every word as he stood waiting respectfully to bring in his master’s “’levens,” as he called it; and, instead of getting the sherry from the cellaret, he began screwing up his hard face, and showing his emotion by working about his bare toes.
As Sir Gordon finished his bitter speech, Tom Porter took a step forward and threw the basin of mutton broth, basin, plate, and all, under the grate with a crash, and stalked towards the door.
“You scoundrel!” roared Sir Gordon. “You, Tom Porter, stop!”
“Be damned if I do!” growled the man. “There’s mutiny on, and I leave the ship.”
Bang!
The door was closed violently, and Sir Gordon looked helplessly up at Bayle.
“You see!”
“Yes,” said Bayle, “I see. Poor fellow! Why did you wound his feelings like that?”
“There!” cried Sir Gordon; “now you side with the scoundrel. Twenty-five years has he been with me, and look at my soup!”
Bayle laughed.
“Yes: that’s right: laugh at me. I’m getting old and weak. Laugh at me. I suppose the next thing will be that you will go off and leave me here in the lurch.”
“That is just my way, is it not?” said Bayle, smiling.
“Well, no,” grumbled Sir Gordon, “I suppose it is not. But then you are such a fool, Bayle. I haven’t patience with you!”
“I’m afraid I am a great trial to you.”
“You are – a terrible trial; every one’s a terrible trial – everything goes wrong. That blundering ass Tom Porter must even go and knock a hole in the Sylph on the rocks.”
“Yes, that was unfortunate,” said Bayle.
“Here: I shall go back. It’s of no use staying here. Everything I see aggravates me. Matters are getting worse with the Hallams. Let’s go home, Bayle.”
Christie Bayle stood looking straight before him for some time, and then shook his head softly.
“No: not yet,” he said at last.
“But I can’t go back without you, man; and it is of no use to stay. As I said before – Why am I stopping here?”
Bayle looked at him in his quiet, smiling way for some moments before replying.
“In the furtherance of your old scheme of unselfishness, and in the hope of doing good to the friends we love.”
“Oh, nonsense! Tush, man! Absurd! I wanted to be friends, and be helpful; but that’s all over now. See what is going on. Look at that girl. Next thing we hear will be that she is married to one of those two fellows.”
“I think if she accepted Lieutenant Eaton, and he married her, and took her away from this place, it would be the best thing that could happen.”
“Humph! I don’t!” muttered Sir Gordon. “Then look at Mrs Hallam.”
Bayle drew in his breath with a low hiss.
“It is horrible, man – it is horrible!” cried Sir Gordon excitedly. “Bayle, you know how I loved that woman twenty years ago? Well, it was impossible; it would have been May and December even then, for I’m a very old man, Bayle – older than you think. I was an old fool, perhaps, but it was my nature. I loved her very dearly. It was not to be; but the old love isn’t dead. Bayle, old fellow, if I had been a good man I should say that the old love was purified of its grosser parts, but that would not fit with me.”
“Why judge yourself so harshly?”
“Because I deserve it, man. Well, well, time went on, and when we met again, I can’t describe what I felt over that child. At times, when her pretty dark face had the look of that scoundrel Hallam in it, I hated her; but when her eyes lit up with that sweet, innocent smile, the tears used to come into mine, and I felt as if it was Millicent Luttrell a child again, and that it would have been the culmination of earthly happiness to have said, this is my darling child.”
“Yes,” said Bayle softly.
“I worshipped that girl, Bayle. It was for her sake I came over here to this horrible pandemonium, to watch over and be her guardian. I could not have stayed away. But I must go now. I can’t bear it; I can’t stand it any longer.”
“You will not go,” said Bayle slowly.
“Yes, I tell you, I must. It is horrible. I don’t think she is ungrateful, poor child; but she is being brutalised by companionship with that scoundrel’s set.”
“No, no! For heaven’s sake don’t say that!”
“I do say it,” cried the old man impetuously, “she and her mother too. How can they help it with such surroundings? The decent people will not go – only that Eaton and Mrs Otway. Bless the woman! I thought her a forward, shameless soldier’s wife, but she has the heart of a true lady, and keeps to the Hallams in spite of all.”
“It is very horrible,” said Bayle; “but we are helpless.”
“Helpless? Yes; if he would only kill himself with his wretched drink, or get made an end of somehow.”
“Hush!” said Bayle, rather sternly; “don’t talk like that.”
“Now you are beginning to bully me, Bayle,” cried the old man querulously. “Don’t you turn against me. I get insults enough at that scoundrel Hallam’s – enough to make my blood boil.”
“Yes, I know, I know,” said Bayle.
“And yet, old idiot that I am, I go there for the sake of these women, and bear it all – I, whom people call a gentleman, I go there and am civil to the scoundrel who robbed me, and put up with his insolence and his scowls. But I’m his master still. He dare not turn upon me. I can make him quail when I like. Bayle, old fellow,” he cried, with a satisfied chuckle, “how the scoundrel would like to give me a dose!”
Bayle sat down with his brow full of the lines of care.
“I’m not like you,” continued Sir Gordon, whom the relation of his troubles seemed to relieve, “I won’t be driven away. I think you were wrong.”
“No,” said Bayle quietly, “it was causing her pain. It was plain enough that in his sordid mind my presence was a greater injury than yours. He was wearing her life away, and I thought it better that our intimacy should grow less and less.”
“But, my boy, that’s where you were wrong. Bad as the scoundrel is, he could never have had a jealous thought of that saint – there, don’t call me irreverent – I say it again, that saint of a woman.”
“Oh, no, I can’t think that myself,” said Bayle, “but my presence was a standing reproach to him.”
“How could it be more than mine?”
“You are different. He always hated me from the first time we met at King’s Castor.”
“I believe he did,” said Sir Gordon warmly; “but see how he detests the sight of me.”
“Yes, but you expressed the feeling only a few minutes ago when you said you were still his master and you made him quail. My dear old friend, if I could ever have indulged in a hope that Robert Hallam had been unjustly punished, his behaviour towards you would have swept it away. It is always that of the conscience-stricken man – his unreasoning dislike of the one whom he has wronged.”
“Perhaps you are right, Bayle, perhaps you are right. But there was no doubt about his guilt – a scoundrel, and I am as sure as I am that I live, the rascal made a hoard somehow, and is living upon it now.”
“You think that? What about the sealing speculation?”
“Ah! he and Crellock have made some money by it, no doubt; but not enough to live as they do. I know that Hallam is spending my money and triumphing over me all the time, and I would not care if those women were free of him, but I’m afraid that will never be.”
Bayle remained silent.
“Do you think she believes in his innocence still?”
Bayle remained silent for a time, and then said slowly: “I believe that Millicent Hallam, even if she discovered his guilt, and could at last believe in it, would suffer in secret, and bear with him in the hope that he would repent.”
“And never leave him?”
“Never,” aid Bayle firmly, “unless under some terrible provocation, one so great that no woman could bear; and from that provocation, and the deathblow it would be to her, I pray heaven she may be spared.”
“Amen!” said Sir Gordon softly.
“Bayle,” he added, after a pause, “I am getting old and irritable; I feel every change. I called you a fool!”
“The irritable spirit of pain within – not you.”
“Ah! well,” said Sir Gordon, smiling, “you know me by heart now, my dear boy. I want to say something ivery serious to you. I never said it before, though I have thought about it ever since those happy evenings we spent at Clerkenwell.”
Bayle turned to him wonderingly.
“You will bear with me – I may hurt your feelings.”
“If you do I know you will heal them the next time we meet,” replied Bayle.
“Well, then, tell me this. When I first began visiting at Mrs Hallam’s house there in London, had you not the full intention of some day asking Julie to be your wife?”
Christie Bayle turned his manly, sincere countenance full upon his old friend, and said, in a deep, low voice, broken by emotion:
“Such a thought had never entered my mind.”
“Never?”
“Never, on my word as a man.”
“You tell me that you have never loved Julie Hallam save as a father might love his child?”
Bayle shook his head slowly, and a piteous look came into his eyes.
“No,” he said softly, “I cannot.”
“Then you do love her?” cried the old man joyfully. “Now we shall get out of the wood. Why, my dear boy – ”
“Hush!” said Bayle sadly, “I first learned what was in my heart when our voyage was half over.”
“And you saw her chatting with that dandy young officer. Oh! pooh, pooh! that is nothing. She does not care for him.”
Bayle shook his head again.
“Why, my dear boy, you must end all this.”
“You forget,” said Bayle sadly. “History is repeating itself. Remember your own affair.”
“Ah! but I was an old man; you are young.”
“Young!” said Bayle sadly. “No, I was always her old teacher; and she loves this man.”
“I cannot think it,” cried Sir Gordon, “and what is more, Hallam has outrageous plans of his own – look there.”
There were the sounds of horses’ feet on the newly-made Government road that passed the house Sir Gordon had chosen on account of its leading down on one side to where lay his lugger, in which he spent half his time cruising among the islands, and in fine weather out and along the Pacific shore; on the other side to the eastward of the huge billows that rolled in with their heavy thunderous roar.
As Bayle looked up, he saw Julia in a plain grey riding habit, mounted on a handsome mare, cantering up with a well-dressed, bluff-looking, middle-aged man by her side. He, too, was well mounted, and as Julia checked her mare to walk by Sir Gordon’s cottage, the man drew rein and watched her closely. She bent forward, scanning the windows anxiously, but seeing no one, for the occupants of the room were by the fire as they passed on, and Bayle turned to Sir Gordon with an angry look in his eyes.
“Oh no! Impossible!” he exclaimed.
“There’s nothing impossible out here in this horrible penal place,” cried Sir Gordon, in a voice full of agitation.
“No,” said Bayle, whose face cleared, and he smiled; “it is not even impossible that my old friend will go on enjoying his cruises about these glorious shores, and that the mutiny – Shall I call in Tom Porter?”
“Well, yes; I suppose you must,” said Sir Gordon with a grim smile.
Bayle went to the door, and Tom Porter answered the call with an “Ay, ay, sir,” and came padding over the floor with his bare feet like a man-o’-war’s-man on a holy-stoned deck.
“Sir Gordon wants to speak to you, Porter,” said Bayle, making as if to go.
“No, no, Bayle! don’t go and leave me with this scoundrelly mutineer. He’ll murder me. There, Tom Porter,” he continued, “I’m an irritable old fool, and I’m very sorry, and I beg your pardon; but you ought to know better than to take offence.”
Tom Porter, for answer, trotted out of the room to return at the end of a few moments with another basin of soup and two slices of toast already made.
