This Man's Wife Part 89

"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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.e; 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es, 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.

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 a.s.signed servants to all who applied, and so long as no complaints were made of their behaviour, the prisoners to whom pa.s.ses 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 a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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, a.s.signed 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 a.s.signed 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 depot 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 appet.i.tes 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 a.s.suming 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 pa.s.sed, 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.