This Man's Wife Part 97

"Because it is better to let it rest, madam, so let it be."

"No!" she cried, with a wave as it were of her old trust sweeping all before it; "I cannot let it rest. If you will not speak in your own defence, I must!"

"What do you mean?" he said hastily.

"That if for his child's sake, Robert Hallam will not defend himself against such a vile and cruel lie, his wife will!"

"What will you do?" he said, with an ugly sneer upon his lip.

"See this man myself, and force him to deny it--to declare that it is not true. My husband cannot sit down patiently with that charge flung against his wife's honour and his own."

Me sat gazing at her from beneath his thick eyebrows for a few minutes as she paced the room, agitated almost beyond bearing; and then he spoke in the most matter-of-fact way.

"You'll do nothing of the kind."

"Not speak?"

"No; I forbid it."

"Forbid it?"

"Yes. Do you suppose I want my leave stopped? Do you want to send me back to the gang who are chained like dogs?"

"Hush!" she cried, with a shudder; and she covered her face, as if to shut out some terrible sight. "Do you not feel that you are running risks by remaining silent?"

"I should run greater risks by having the matter talked about. That great fool, Steve, must be warned to be more cautious in what he says, for all our sakes."

"Robert!" in a tone of horror.

"There, there, wife, that will do! Let's talk it over without sentiment; I haven't a bit of romance left in me, my dear. Life out here has cleared it off. You may as well know the truth as at any future time. Bah! Let's throw away all this flimsy foolery. You've known it all along, only you've been too brave to show it."

"I--known the truth?" she faltered. "You believe this?"

"Yes," he said, without reading the horror and despair in her eyes; and the brutal callousness of his manner seemed to grow. "What's the use of shamming innocence? You knew what was in the box."

"I knew what my husband told me; that there were papers to prove his innocence," she replied.

"You knew that?"

"They were my husband's words; and in my wifely faith I said that they were true."

He looked at her mockingly.

"You play your part well, Millicent," he said; "but remember we are in Sydney, both twenty years older than when we first met at King's Castor.

Is it not time we talked like man and woman, and not, after all that we have gone through, like a sentimental boy and girl?"

"Robert!"

"There, that will do," he said. "You understand now why you must hold your tongue."

It was as if once more she had s.n.a.t.c.hed at the veil and thrust it over her eyes, to gaze at him in the old, old way, as if it were impossible to give up the faith to which she had clung for so many years.

"No," she said softly, "I cannot. Some things are too hard to understand, and this is one."

"Then I'll make you understand," he said, almost fiercely. "If another word is uttered about this it will go like wildfire. Some meddling fool in the Government service will take it up; everything will be seized, and I shall be sent back to the gang through you. Do you hear? through you!"

She stood now gazing at him with her eyes contracting. Her lips parted several times as if she were about to speak, and as if her brain were striving, indeed, to comprehend this thing that she had declared to be too hard. At last she spoke.

"You shall say," she cried hoa.r.s.ely. "Tell me what it was I brought over to you."

"What, again!" he cried. "Well, then, what I had saved up for the rainy day that I knew was coming. My fortune, that I have been waiting all these years to spend; notes that would change at any time; diamonds that would always fetch their price. You did not guess all this? You did not see through it all? Bah! I'm sick of this miserable mock sentiment and twaddle about innocence!"

She drew her breath hard.

"I had to fight the world when I was unlucky in my speculations, and the world got me down. Now my turn has come, and I can laugh at the world.

Let's have no more fooling. You have understood it all from the beginning, and have played your part well. Let me play mine in peace."

An angry reply rose to her lips, but it died away, and she caught at his hand.

"It is true, then?" she whispered.

"True? Yes, of course," he said brutally.

"That money, then? Robert, husband, it is not ours. You will give it up--everything?"

"Give it up!" he said, laughing. "Not a shilling. They hounded me down most cruelly!"

"For the sake of our old love, Robert," she whispered, as she clung to him. "Let us begin again, and I will work for you. Let us try, in a future of toil, to wash away this clinging disgrace. My husband, my husband! for the sake of our innocent child!"

"Give up what I have!" he cried. "Now that I have schemed till success is mine! Not a shilling if it were to save old Sir Gordon's life."

"But, Robert, for the sake of our child. I am your wife, and I will bear this blow; but let her go on believing in him whom I have taught her to love. Let the past be dead; begin a new life--repentance for that which has gone. Robert, my husband, I have loved you so dearly, and so long."

"Pish!" he cried, impatiently. "You don't know what you're saying.

Lead a new life--a life of repentance! I have had a fine preparation for it here. Why, I tell you they would turn a saint here into a fiend!

I sinned against their laws, and they sent me here, herded with hundreds, some of whom might have been brought to better lives; but it has been one long course of brutal treatment, and the lash. Hope was dead to us all, and we had to drag on our lives in misery and despair.

I tell you I've had to do with people who sought to make us demons, and you talk to me now of repentance for the past."

"Yes, and you shall repent!" she cried, wildly.

"Silence!" he said, fiercely. "You are my wife, and it is your duty to obey. Not a word of this to Julie. I will speak to her; and as to Crellock--oh, I can manage him."

He thrust her aside, and strode out of the room without another word, leaving her standing with her hands clasped together, gazing into vacancy, as if stunned by the blow that had fallen--as if the savage acceptance of the truth of the charges by her husband had robbed her of her reason.

During her long trial, whenever a shadowy doubt had crept into her sight, she had slain it. Always he had been her martyr, and she had been ready, in fierce resentment, to turn upon those who would have cast the slightest reflection upon his fame. He, the idol of her young life, her first love, had suffered through misfortune, through an ugly turn of fate, and she had gone on waiting for the day when he would be cleared.

In that spirit, she had crossed the wide ocean, bearing with her his freedom, as she believed; and now, after fighting a year against the terrible disillusions that had been showing Robert Hallam in his true light, the veil that she had so obstinately held was rent in twain, torn away for ever. By his own confession, the husband of her love was a despicable thief; and as she realised how she had been made his accomplice in bringing over the fruits of his theft, the blow seemed now greater than she could bear, the future one terrible void.

VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER SIX.