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Volume Four – Chapter Two.
Mrs Hallam’s Servant
Millicent Hallam had found that all her husband had said was correct. There was no difficulty at all in the matter, and few questions were asked, for the Government was only too glad to get convicts drafted off as assigned servants to all who applied, and so long as no complaints were made of their behaviour, the prisoners to whom passes were given remained free of the colony.
In many cases they led the lives of slaves to the settlers, and found that they had exchanged the rod for the scorpion; but they bore all for the sake of the comparative freedom, and even preferred life at some up-country station, where a slight offence was punished with the lash, to returning to the chain-gang and the prison, or the heavy work of making roads.
The cat was the cure for all ills in those days, when almost any one was appointed magistrate of his district. A., the holder of so many assigned men, would be a justice, and one of his men would offend. In that case, he would send him over to B., the magistrate of the next district. B. would also be a squatter and holder of assigned convict servants. There would be a short examination; A’s man would be well flogged and sent back. In due time B. would require the same service performed, and would send an offender over to A. to have him punished in turn.
In the growing town, assigned servants were employed in a variety of ways; and it was common enough for relatives of the convicts to apply and have husband, son, or brother assigned to them, the ticket-of-leave-man finding no difficulty there on account of being a jail-bird, where many of the most prosperous traders and squatters had once worn the prison garb.
Robert Hallam was soon released, and at the end of a very short time Stephen Crellock followed; the pair becoming ostensibly butler and coachman to a wealthy lady who had settled in Sydney – but servants only in the Government books; for, unquestioned, Hallam at once took up his position as master of the house, and, to his wife’s horror, Crellock, directly he was released, came and took possession of the room set apart for him as Hallam’s oldest friend.
A strange state of society perhaps, but it is a mere matter of history; such proceedings were frequent in the days when Botany Bay was the dépôt for the social sinners of our land.
All the same though, poor Botany Bay, with its abundant specimens of Austral growth that delighted the naturalists of the early expedition, never did become a penal settlement. It was selected, and the first convict-ship went there to form the great prison; but the place was unsuitable, and Port Jackson, the site of Sydney, proved so vastly superior that the expedition went on there at once.
At home, in England, though, Botany Bay was spoken of always as the convicts’ home, and the term embraced the whole of the penal settlements, including Norfolk Island, that horror of our laws, and Van Diemen’s Land.
Opportunity had served just after Hallam was released, and had taken up his residence in simple lodgings which Mrs Hallam, with Bayle’s help, had secured, for one of the best villas that had been built in the place – an attractive wooden bungalow, with broad verandahs and lovely garden sloping down towards the harbour – was to let.
Millicent Hallam had looked at her husband in alarm when he bade her take it; but he placed the money laughingly in her hands for furnishing; and, obeying him as if in a dream, the house was taken and handsomely fitted. Servants were engaged, horses bought, and the convicts commenced a life of luxurious ease.
The sealing business, he said with a laugh, was only carried on at certain times of the year, but it was a most paying affair, and he bade Mrs Hallam have no care about money matters.
For the first six months Hallam rarely stirred out of the house by day, contenting himself with a walk about the extensive grounds in an evening; but he made up for this abstinence from society by pampering his appetites in every way.
It was as if, these having been kept in strict subjection for so many years, he was now determined to give them full rein; and, consequently, he who had been summoned at early morn by the prison bell, breakfasted luxuriously in bed, and did not rise till midday, when his first question was about the preparations for dinner – that being the important business of his life.
His dinner was a feast at which good wine in sufficient abundance played a part, and over this he and Crellock would sit for hours, only to leave it and the dining-room for spirits and cigars in the verandah, where they stayed till bed-time.
Robert Hallam came into the house a pallid, wasted man, with sunken cheeks and eyes, closely-cropped hair and shorn beard; the villainous prison look was in his gaze and the furtive shrinking way of his stoop. His aspect was so horrible that when Millicent Hallam took him to her breast, she prayed for mental blindness that she might not see the change, while Julia’s eyes were always full of a wondering horror that she was ever fighting to suppress.
At the end of four months, Robert Hallam was completely transformed; his cheeks were filled out, and were rapidly assuming the flushed appearance of the habitual drunkard’s; his eyes had lost their cavernous aspect, and half the lines had disappeared, while his grizzled hair was of a respectable length, and his face was becoming clothed by a great black beard dashed with grey.
In six months, portly, florid and well-dressed, he was unrecognisable for the man who had been released from the great prison, and no longer confined himself to the house.
Stephen Crellock had changed in a more marked manner than his prison friend. Considerably his junior, the convict life had not seemed to affect him, so that when six months of his freedom had passed, he looked the bluff, bearded squatter in the full pride of his manhood, bronzed by the sun, and with a dash and freedom of manner that he knew how to restrain when he was in the presence of his old companion’s wife and child, for he could not conceal from himself the fact that Mrs Hallam disliked his presence and resented his being there.
At first, in her eagerness to respond to Hallam’s slightest wish, in the proud joy she felt in the change that was coming over his personal appearance, and which with the boastfulness of a young wife she pointed out to Julia, she made no objection to Crellock’s presence.
“Poor fellow! he has suffered horribly,” Hallam said. “He deserves a holiday.”
How she had watched all this gradual change, and how she crushed down the little voices that now and then strove in her heart to make themselves heard!
“No, no, no,” she said to them as it were half laughing, “there is nothing but what I ought to have pictured.”
Then one day she found herself forced to make apology to Julia.
“You have hurt him, my darling, by your coldness,” she said tenderly. “Julie, my own, he complains to me. What have you done?”
“Tried, dear mother – oh, so hard. I did not know I had been cold.”
“Then you will try more, my child,” said Mrs Hallam, caressing Julia tenderly, and with a bright, loving look in her eyes. “I have never spoken like this before. It seemed terrible to me to have to make what seems like an apology for our own, but think, dearest. He parted from us a gentleman – to be taken from his home and plunged into a life of horror, such as – no, no, no,” she cried, “I will not speak of it. I will only say that just as his face will change, so will all that terrible corrosion of the prison life in his manner drop away, and in a few months he will be again all that you have pictured. Julie, he is your father.”
Julia flung herself, sobbing passionately, into her mother’s arms, and in a burst of self-reproach vowed that she would do everything to make her father love her as she did him.
Bravely did the two women set themselves to the task of blinding their eyes with love, passing over the coarse actions and speech of the idol they had set up, yielding eagerly to his slightest whim, obeying every caprice, and, while at times something was almost too hard to bear, Millicent Hallam whispered encouragement to her child.
“Think, my own, think,” she said lovingly. “It is not his fault. Think of what he has suffered, and let us pray and thank Him that he has survived, for us to win back to all that we could wish.”
There were times when despair looked blankly from Millicent Hallam’s eyes as she saw the months glide by and her husband surely and slowly sinking into sensuality. But she roused herself to greater exertions, and was his veriest slave. Once only did she try by kindly resistance to make the stand she told herself she should have made when Crellock was first brought into the house.
It was when he had been out about six months, and Crellock, after a long debauch with Hallam and two or three chosen spirits from the town, had sunk in a brutal sleep upon the floor of the handsomely-furnished dining-room. The visitors had gone; they had dined there, Sir Gordon being of the party, and Mrs Hallam had smilingly done the honours of the table as their hostess, though sick at heart at the turn the conversation had taken before her child, who looked anxious and pale, while Sir Gordon had sat there very silent and grim of aspect. He had been the first to go, and had taken her hand in the drawing-room, as if about to speak, but had only looked at her, sighed, and gone away without a word.
“I must speak!” she had said. “Heaven help me! I must speak! This cannot go on!”
As soon as she could, she had hurried Julia to bed, and then sat and waited till the last visitor had gone, when she walked into the dining-room, where Hallam sat smoking, heavy with drink, but perfectly collected, scowling down at Crellock where he lay.
That look sent a thrill of joy through Millicent Hallam. He was evidently angry with Crellock, and disgusted with the wretched drinking scene that had taken place – one of many such scenes as would have excited comment now, but the early settlers were ready enough to smile at eccentricities like this.
“Robert – my husband! may I speak to you?”
“Speak, my dear? Of course,” he said, smiling. “Why didn’t you come in as soon as that old curmudgeon had gone? Have a glass of wine now. Nonsense! – I wish it. You must pitch over a lot of that standoffish-ness with my friends. Julia, too – the girl sits and looks at people as glum as if she had no sense.” Mrs Hallam compressed her lips, laid her hand upon her husband’s shoulder, yielding herself to him as he threw an arm round her waist, but stood pointing to where Crellock lay breathing stertorously, and every now and then muttering in his sleep.
“What are you pointing at?” said Hallam. “Steve? Yes, the pig! Why can’t he take his wine like a gentleman, and not like a brute?”
“Robert, dear,” she said tenderly, “you love me very dearly?”
“Love you, my pet! why, how could a man love wife better?”
“And our Julia – our child?”
“Why, of course. What questions!”
“Will you do something to please me – to please us both?”
“Will I? Say what you want – another carriage – diamonds – a yacht like old Bourne’s?”
“No, no, no, dearest; we have everything if we have your love, and my dear husband glides from the past misery into a life of happiness.”
“Well, I think we are doing pretty well,” he said with a laugh that sent a shudder through the suffering woman; he was so changed.
“I want to speak to you about Mr Crellock.”
“Well, what about him? Make haste; it’s getting late, and I’m tired.”
“Robert, we have made a mistake in having this man here.”
Hallam seemed perfectly sober, and he frowned.
“I would not mind if you wished him to be here, love,” she said, with her voice sounding sweetly pure and entreating; “but he is not a suitable companion for our Julia.”
“Stop there,” said Hallam, sharply.
“No, no, darling; let me speak – this time,” said Mrs Hallam, entreatingly. “I know it was out of the genuine goodness and pity of your heart that you opened your door to him. Now you have done all you need, let him go.”
Hallam shook his head.
“Think of the past, and the terrible troubles he brought upon you.”
“Oh, no! that was all a mistake,” said Hallam, quickly. “Poor brute! he was as ill-treated as I was, and now you want him kicked out.”
“No, no, dear; part from him kindly; but he was the cause of much of your suffering.”
“No, he was not,” said Hallam, quickly. “That was all a mistake. Poor Steve was always a good friend to me. He suffered along with me in that cursed hole, and he shall have his share of the comfort now.”
“No, no, do not say you wish him to stay.”
“But I do say it,” cried Hallam, angrily. “He is my best friend, and he will stay. Hang it, woman, am I to be cursed with the presence of your friends who sent me out here and not have the company of my own?”
“Robert! – husband! – don’t speak to me like that.”
“But I do speak to you like that. Here is that wretched old yachtsman forcing his company upon me day after day, insisting upon coming to the house, and reminding me by his presence who I am, and what I have been.”
“Darling, Sir Gordon ignores the past, and is grieved, I know, at the terrible mistake that brought you here. He wishes to show you this by his kindness to us all.”
“Let him keep his kindness till it is asked for,” growled Hallam. “He sits upon me like a nightmare. I don’t feel that the place is my own when he is here. As for Bayle, he has had the good sense to stay away lately.”
Mrs Hallam’s eyes were full of despair as she listened.
“I hate Sir Gordon coming here. He and Bayle have between them made that girl despise me, and look down upon me every time we speak, while I am lavishing money upon her, and she has horses and carriage, jewels and dress equal to any girl in the colony.”
“Robert, dear, you are not saying all this from your heart.”
“Indeed, but I am,” he cried angrily.
“No, no! And Julie – she loves you dearly. It is for her sake I ask this,” and she pointed to Crellock where he lay.
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” said Hallam, with a meaning laugh. “Poor Steve! I don’t like him, but he has been a faithful mate to me, and I’m not going to turn round upon him now.”
“But for Julie’s sake!”
“I’m thinking about Julie, my dear,” he said, nodding his head; “and as for Steve – there, just you make yourself comfortable about him. There’s no harm in him; he is faithful as a dog to me, and if I behaved badly he might bite.”
“You need not be unkind to Mr Crellock if he has been what you say. I only ask you for our child’s sake to let him leave here.”
“Impossible; he is my partner.”
“Yes, you intimated that. In your business.”
“Speculations,” said Hallam quietly. “There, that will do.”
“But, Robert – ”
“That will do!” he roared fiercely. “Stephen Crellock must live here! Do you hear —must! Now go to bed.”
“A woman’s duty,” she whispered softly, “is to obey,” and she obeyed.
She obeyed, while another six months glided away, each month filling her heart more and more with despair as she shunned her child’s questioning eyes and fought on, a harder battle every day, to keep herself in the belief that the pure gold was still beneath the blackening tarnish, and that her idol was not made of clay.
It was a terrible battle, for her eyes refused to be blinded longer by the loving veil she cast over them. The appealing, half-wondering looks of her child increased her suffering, while an idea, that filled her with horror, was growing day by day, till it was assuming proportions from which she shrank in dread.
Volume Four – Chapter Three.
Our Julia’s Lover
“What have we done, wifie, that we should be consigned to such quarters as these?” said Captain Otway one day with a sigh. “I don’t think I’m too particular, but when I entered His Majesty’s service I did not know that I should be expected to play gaoler to the occupants of the Government Pandemonium.”
“It is a beautiful place,” said Mrs Otway laconically. “It was till we came and spoiled it. It is one great horror, ’pon my soul; and it is degrading our men to set them such duty as this.”
“Be patient. These troubles cure themselves.”
“But they take such a long time over it,” said the Captain. “It would be more bearable if Phil had not turned goose.”
“Poor Phil!” said Mrs Otway, with a sigh.
“Poor Phil? Pooh! you spoil the lad! I can’t get him out for a bit of shooting or hunting or fishing. Old Sir Gordon would often give us a cruise in his boat, but no: Phil must sit moonstruck here. The fellow’s spoiled! Can’t you knock all that on the head?”
“I perhaps could, but it must be a matter of time,” said Mrs Otway, going steadily on with her work, and mending certain articles of attire.
“But he must be cured. It is impossible.”
“Yes,” sighed Mrs Otway, “so I tell him. I wish it were not.”
“My dear Mary – a convict’s daughter!”
“The poor girl was not consulted as to whose daughter she would like to be, Jack, and she is, without exception, the sweetest lassie I ever met.”
“Yes, she is nice,” said Otway. “Mother must have been nice too.”
“Is nice,” cried Mrs Otway, flushing. “I felt a little distant with her at first, but after what I have seen and know – by George, Jack, I do feel proud of our sex!”
“Humph!” ejaculated the Captain, with a smile at his wife’s bluff earnestness. “Yes, she’s a good woman; very ladylike, too. But that husband, that friend of his, Crellock! Poor creatures! it is ruining them.”
“Yes,” said Mrs Otway dryly. “That’s one of the misfortunes of marriage; we poor women are dragged down to the level of our husbands.”
“And when these husbands come out to convict settlements as gaolers they have to come with them, put up with all kinds of society, give up all their refinements, and make and mend their own dresses, and – ”
“Even do their own chores, as the Americans call it,” said Mrs Otway, looking up smiling. “It makes me look very miserable, doesn’t it, Jack?”
She stopped her work, went behind her husband’s chair, put her arms round his neck, and laid her cheek upon his head.
Neither spoke for a few minutes, but the Captain looked very contented and happy, and neither of them heard the step as Bayle came through the house, and out suddenly into the verandah.
“I beg your pardon!” he cried, drawing back.
“Ah, parson! Don’t go!” cried the Captain, as Mrs Otway started up, and, in spite of her ordinary aplomb, looked disturbed. “Bad habit of ours acquired since marriage. We don’t mind you.”
Mrs Otway held out her hand to their visitor.
“Why, it is nearly a fortnight since you have been to see us. We were just talking about your friends – the Hallams.”
“Have you been to see them lately?” said Bayle, eagerly.
“I was there yesterday. Quite well; but Mrs Hallam looks worried and ill. Julia is charming, only she too is not as I should like to see her.”
She watched Bayle keenly, and saw his countenance change as she spoke.
“I am very glad they are well,” he said.
“Yes, I know you are; but why don’t you go more often?”
He looked at her rather wistfully, and made no reply. “Look here, Mr Bayle,” she said, “I don’t think you mind my speaking plainly, now do you? Come, that’s frank.”
“I will be just as frank,” he replied, smiling. “I have always liked you because you do speak so plainly.”
“That’s kind of you to say so,” she replied. “Well, I will speak out. You see there are so few women in the colony.”
“Who are ladies,” said Bayle quietly.
“Look here,” said Otway, in a much ill-used tone, “am I expected to sit here and listen to my wife putting herself under the influence of the Church?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Jack!” said Mrs Otway sharply. “This is serious.”
“I’m dumb.”
“What I want to say, Mr Bayle, is this. Don’t you think you are making a mistake in staying away from your friends yonder?”
He sat without replying for some minutes.
“No,” he said slowly. “I did not give up my visits there till after I had weighed the matter very carefully.”
“But you seemed to come out with those two ladies as their guardian, and now, when they seem most to require your help and guidance, you leave them.”
“Have you heard anything? Is anything wrong?”
“I have heard nothing, but I have seen a great deal, because I persist in visiting, in spite of Mr Hallam’s objection to my presence.”
“I say, my dear, that man is always civil to you, I hope?” cried Otway sharply.
“My dear Jack, be quiet,” said Mrs Otway. “Of course he is. I visit there because I have good reasons for so doing.”
“Tell me,” said Bayle anxiously.
“I have seen a great deal,” continued Mrs Otway: “but it all comes to one point.” Bayle looked at her inquiringly. “That it is very dreadful for those two sweet, delicate women to have come out here to such a fate. The man is dreadful!”
“They will redeem him,” said Bayle huskily. “Poor wretch! he has had a terrible experience. This convict life is worse than capital punishment. We must be patient, Mrs Otway. The habits of a number of years are not got rid of in a few months. He will change.”
“Will he?” said Mrs Otway shortly.
“Yes; they will, as I said before, redeem him. The man has great natural love for his wife and child.”
“Do you think this?”
“Yes, yes!” he cried excitedly, as he got up and began to pace the verandah. “I stop away because my presence was like a standing reproach to him. The abstinence gives me intense pain, but my going tended to make them unhappy, and caused constraint, so I stop away.”
“And so you think that they will raise him to their standard, do you?” said Mrs Otway dryly.
“Yes, I do,” he cried fervently. “It is only a matter of time.”
“How can you be so self-deceiving?” she cried quickly. “He is dragging them down to his level.”
“Oh, hush!” cried Bayle passionately. Then mastering his emotion, he continued in his old, firm, quiet way: “No, no; you must not say that. He could not. It is impossible.”
“Yes. You are wrong there, Bel,” said the Captain. “Mrs Hallam is made of too good stuff.”
“I give in,” said Mrs Otway, nodding. “Yes, you two are right. He could not bring that sweet woman down to his level; but all this is very terrible. The man is giving himself up to a life of sensuality. Drinking and feasting with that companion of his. There is gambling going on too at night with friends of his own stamp. What a life this is for a refined lady and her child!”
Bayle spoke calmly, but he wiped the great drops of sweat from his brow.
“What can I do?” he said. “I am perfectly helpless.”
“I confess I don’t know,” said Mrs Otway, with a sigh. “Only you and Sir Gordon must be at hand to help them in any emergency.”
“Emergency! What do you mean?” anxiously.
“I don’t know what may occur. Who knows? Women are so weak,” sighed Mrs Otway; “once they place their faith in a man, they follow him to the end of the world.”
“That’s true, Bayle, old fellow – to convict stations, and become slaves,” said the Captain.
“Mr Bayle,” said Mrs Otway suddenly. “I am under a promise to my old friend, Lady Eaton, and I have done my best to oppose it all; but you have seen how deeply attached Phil Eaton has become to Miss Hallam?”
“Yes,” said Bayle slowly, and he was very pale now, “I have seen it.”
“He shall not marry her if I can prevent it, much as I love the girl, for it would be a terrible mésalliance; but he is desperately fond of her, and, as my husband here says, he has taken the bit in his teeth, and he will probably travel his own way.”
“Don’t you get fathering your coarse expressions on me,” growled the Captain; but no one heeded him.
“As I say, he shall not marry her if I can stop it; but suppose he should be determined, and could get the father’s consent, would you and Sir Gordon raise any opposition?”
“Lieutenant Eaton is an officer and a gentleman.”
“He is a true-hearted lad, Mr Bayle, and I love him dearly,” said Mrs Otway. “Only that he is fighting hard between love and duty he would have been carrying on the campaign by now; but you must allow Fort Robert Hallam is a terrible one to storm and garrison afterwards, for it has to be retained for life.”
“I understand your meaning,” said Bayle, speaking very slowly. “It is a terrible position for Mr Eaton to be in.”
“Should you oppose it?”
“I have no authority whatever,” said Bayle in the same low, dreamy tone. “If I had, I should never dream of opposing anything that was for Miss Hallam’s good.”
“And it would be, to get her away from such associations, Mr Bayle.”
“Lady Eaton! Lady Eaton!” said the Captain in warning.
“Hush, Jack! pray.”
“Yes,” said Bayle; “it would be for Miss Hallam’s benefit; but it would nearly break her mother’s heart.”
“She would have to make a sacrifice for the sake of the child.”
“Yes,” said Bayle softly. “Another sacrifice;” and then softly to himself, “how long? how long?”
He rose, and was gravely bidding his friends good-bye, when a sharp, quick step was heard, and Eaton came in, coloured like a girl on seeing Bayle, hesitated, and then held out his hand.
Bayle shook it warmly and left the verandah, Eaton walking with him to the gate.
“Jack,” said Mrs Otway softly, “it’s my belief that the parson loves Julia Hallam himself.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“And will he marry her?”
“No. I’m about sure that she is desperately fond of our boy, and the parson is too true a man to stand in the way.”
“Nonsense!” said the Captain. “Such men are not made now.”
“But they were when Christie Bayle was born,” she said, nodding her head quickly. “Yes,” she said, after a pause, as they heard Eaton’s returning steps; “it’s a knot, Jack.”
“Humph!” he replied. “For time to untie.”
