This Man's Wife

Time after time the most intimate of their fellow-passengers approached, but there was that in the attitude of mother and daughter which commanded respect, and they drew away.

On glided the ship, nearer and nearer, with the houses and rough buildings of the settlement slowly coming into sight, while, as the sun flashed from the windows, and turned the sand that fringed the shore for the time to tawny gold, the hearts of mother and daughter seemed to go out, to leap the intervening distance, and pour forth their longings to him who, they felt, was watching the ship that bore to him all he held dear.

Golden changing to orange, to amber, to ruddy wine. Then one deep glow, and the river-like harbour for a few minutes as if of molten metal cooling into purple, into black, and then the placid surface glistening with fallen stars.

And as Julia pressed nearer to the trusting woman, who gazed straight before her at the lights that twinkled in the scattered houses of the port, she heard a sweet, rich voice murmur softly:

“Robert, husband – I have come!” And again, soft as the murmur of the tide upon the shore:

“My God, I thank thee! At last – at last!”

Volume Three – Chapter Nineteen.

A Strange Encounter

It had been hard work to persuade her, but Mrs Hallam had consented at last to rest quietly in the embryo hotel, while Bayle obtained the necessary passes for her and her daughter to see Hallam. This done, he took the papers and letters of recommendation he had brought and waited upon the governor.

There was a good deal of business going on, and Bayle was shown into a side room where a clerk was writing, and asked to sit down.

“Your turn will come in about an hour,” said the official who showed him in, and Bayle sat down to wait.

As he looked up, he saw that the clerk was watching him intently; and as their eyes met, he said in a low voice:

“May I ask if you came out in the Sea King?”

“Yes; I landed this morning.”

“Any good news, sir, from the old country?”

“Nothing particular; but I can let you have a paper or two, if you like.”

“Thank you, sir, I should be very glad; but I meant Ireland. You thought I meant England.”

“But you are not an Irishman?”

“Yes, sir. Have I forgotten my brogue?”

“I did not detect it.”

“Perhaps I’ve forgotten it,” said the man sadly, “as they seem to have forgotten me. Ten years make a good deal of difference.”

“Have you been out here ten years?”

“Yes, sir, more.”

“Do you know anything about the prisons?”

The clerk flushed, and then laughed bitterly.

“Oh, yes,” he said; “I know something about them.”

“And the prisoners?”

“Ye-es. Bah! what is the use of keeping it back? Of course I do, sir. I was sent out for the benefit of my country.”

“You?”

“Yes, sir; I am a lifer.”

Bayle gazed at the man in surprise.

“You look puzzled, sir,” he said. “Why, almost every other man out here is a convict.”

“But you have been pardoned?”

“Pardoned? No; I am only an assigned servant I can be sent back to the chain-gang at any time if I give offence. There, for heaven’s sake, sir, don’t look at me like that! If I offended against the laws, I have been bitterly punished.”

“You mistake my looks,” said Bayle gently; “they did not express my feelings to you, for they were those of sorrow.”

“Sorrow?” said the man, who spoke as if he were making a great effort to keep down his feelings. “Ay, sir, you would say that if you knew all I had endured. It has been enough to make a man into a fiend, herding with the wretches sent out here, and at any moment, at the caprice of some brutal warder or other official ordered the lash.”

Bayle drew his breath between his teeth hard.

“There, I beg your pardon, sir; but the sight of a face from over the sea, and a gentle word, sets all the old pangs stinging again. I’m better treated now. This governor is a very different man to the last.”

“Perhaps you may get a full pardon yet,” said Bayle; “your conduct has evidently been good.”

“No. There will be no pardon for me, sir. I was too great a criminal.”

“What – But I have no right to ask you,” said Bayle.

“Yes, ask me, sir. My offence? Well, like a number of other hot-headed young men, I thought to make myself a patriot and free Ireland. That was my crime.”

“Tell me,” said Bayle, after a time, “did you ever encounter a prisoner named Hallam?”

“Robert Hallam – tall, dark, handsome man?”

“Yes; that answers the description.”

“Sent over with a man named Crellock, for a bank robbery, was it not?”

“The same man. Where is he now?”

“He was up the country as a convict servant, shepherding; but I think he is back in the gangs again. Some of them are busy on the new road.”

“Was he – supposed to be innocent out here?”

“Innocent? No. It was having to herd with such scoundrels made our fate the more bitter. Such men as he and his mate – ”

“His mate?”

“Yes – the man Crellock – were never supposed to be very – ”

He ceased speaking, and began to write quickly, for a door was opened, and an attendant requested Bayle to follow him.

He was ushered into the presence of an officer, who apologised for the governor being deeply engaged, consequent upon the arrival of the ship with the draft of men. But the necessary passes were furnished, and Bayle left.

As he was passing out with the documents in his hand he came suddenly upon Captain Otway and the Lieutenant, both in uniform.

The Captain nodded in a friendly way and passed on; but Eaton stopped.

“One moment, Mr Bayle,” he said rather huskily. “I want you to answer a question.”

Bayle bowed, and then met his eyes calmly, and without a line in his countenance to betoken agitation.

“I – I want you to tell me – in confidence, Mr Bayle – why Mrs Hallam and her daughter have come out here?”

“I am not at liberty, Lieutenant Eaton, to explain to a stranger Mrs Hallam’s private affairs.”

“Then will you tell me this? Why have you come here to-day? But I can see. Those are passes to allow you to go beyond the convict lines?”

“They are,” said Bayle.

“That will do, sir,” said the young man with his lip quivering; and hurrying on he rejoined Captain Otway, who was standing awaiting his coming in the doorway, in front of which a sentry was passing up and down.

Bayle went back to the hotel, where Mrs Hallam was watching impatiently, and Julia with her, both dressed for going out.

“You have been so long,” cried the former; “but tell me – you have the passes?”

“Yes; they are here,” he said.

“Give them to me,” she cried, with feverish haste. “Come, Julia.”

“You cannot go alone, Mrs Hallam,” said Bayle in a remonstrant tone. “Try and restrain yourself. Then we will go on at once.”

She looked at him half angrily; but the look turned to one of appeal as she moved towards the door.

“But are you quite prepared?” he whispered. “Do you still hold to the intention of taking Julia?”

“Yes, yes,” she cried fiercely. “Christie Bayle, you cannot feel with me. Do you not realise that it is the husband and father waiting to see his wife and child?”

Bayle said no more then, but walked with them through the roughly marked out streets of the straggling port, towards the convict lines.

“I shall see you to the gates,” he said, “secure your admission, and then await your return.”

Mrs Hallam pressed his hand, and then as he glanced at Julia, he saw that she was trembling and deadly pale. The next minute, however, she had mastered her emotion, and they walked quickly on, Mrs Hallam with her head erect, and proud of mien, as she seemed in every movement to be wishing to impress upon her child that they should rather glory in their visit than feel shame. There was something almost triumphant in the look she directed at Bayle, a look which changed to angry reproach, as she saw his wrinkled brow and the trouble in his face.

Half-way to the prison gates there was a measured tramp of feet, and a quick, short order was given in familiar tones.

The next moment the head of a company of men came into sight; and Bayle recognised the faces. In the rear were Captain Otway and Lieutenant Eaton, both of whom saluted, Mrs Hallam acknowledging each bow with the dignity of a queen.

Bayle tried hard, but he could not help glancing at Julia, to see that she was deadly pale, but looking as erect and proud as her mother.

Captain Otway’s company were on their way to their barracks. They had just passed the prison gates; and it was next to impossible for Mrs Hallam and her daughter to be going anywhere but to the large building devoted to the convicts.

Bayle knew that the two officers must feel this as they saluted; and, in spite of himself, he could not forbear feeling a kind of gratification. For it seemed to him that henceforth a gulf would be placed between them, and the pleasant friendship of the voyage be at an end.

Mrs Hallam knew it, but she did not shrink, and her heart bounded as she saw the calm demeanour of her child.

The measured tramp of the soldiers’ feet was still heard, when a fresh party of men came into sight; and as he partly realised what was before him, Bayle stretched out his hand to arrest his companions.

“Come back,” he said quickly; “we will go on after these men have passed.”

“No,” said Mrs Hallam firmly, “we will go on now, Christie Bayle, do you fancy that we would shrink from anything at a time like this?”

“But for her sake,” whispered Bayle.

“She is my child, and we know our duty,” retorted Mrs Hallam proudly.

But her face was paler, and she darted a quick glance at Julia, whose eyes dilated, and whose grasp of her mother’s arm was closer, as from out of the advancing group came every now and then a shriek of pain, with sharp cries, yells, and a fierce volley of savage curses.

The party consisted of an old sergeant and three pensioners with fixed bayonets, one leading, two behind a party of eight men, in grotesque rough garments. Four of them walked in front, following the first guard, and behind them the other four carried a litter or stretcher, upon which, raised on a level with their shoulders, they bore a man, who was writhing in acute pain, and now cursing his bearers for going so fast, now directing his oaths against the authorities.

“It’ll be your turn next,” he yelled, as he threw an arm over the side of the stretcher. “Can’t you go slow? Ah, the cowards – the cowards!”

Here the man rolled out a fierce volley of imprecations, his voice sounding hoarse and strange; but his bearers, morose, pallid-looking men, with a savage, downcast look, paid no heed, tramping on, and the guard of pensioners taking it all as a matter of course.

At a glance the difference between them was most marked.

The pensioner guard had a smart, independent air, there, was an easy-going, cheery look in their brown faces; while in those of the men they guarded, and upon whom they would have been called to fire if there were an attempt to escape, there were deeply stamped in the hollow cheek, sunken eye, and graven lines, crime, misery, and degradation, and that savage recklessness that seems to lower man to a degree far beneath the beast of the jungle or wild. The closely-cropped hair, the shorn chins with the stubble of several days’ growth, and the fierce glare of the convicts’ overshadowed eyes as they caught sight of the two well-dressed ladies, sent a thrill through Bayle’s breast, and he would gladly have even now forced his companions to retreat, but it was impossible. For as they came up, the ruffian on the stretcher to which he was strapped, uttered an agonising cry of pain, and then yelled out the one word, “Water!”

Julia uttered a low sobbing cry, and, before Bayle or Mrs Hallam could realise her act, she had started forward and laid her hand upon the old sergeant’s arm, the tears streaming down her cheeks as she cried:

“Oh, sir, do you not hear him? Is there no water here?”

“Halt!” shouted the sergeant; and with military precision the cortège stopped. “Set him down, lads.” The convicts gave a half-turn and lowered the handles of the stretcher, retaining them for a moment, and then, in the same automatic way, placed their burden on the dusty earth. It was quickly and smoothly done, in silence, but the movement seemed to cause the man intense pain, and he writhed and cursed horribly at his bearers, ending by asking again for water.

“It isn’t far to the hospital, miss,” said the sergeant; “and he has had some once. Here, Jones, give me your canteen.”

One of the guard unslung his water-tin and handed it to Julia, who seized it eagerly, while the sergeant turned to Bayle and said in a quick whisper:

“Hadn’t you better get the ladies away, sir?”

By this time Julia was on her knees by the side of the stretcher, holding the canteen to the lips of the wretched man, who drank with avidity, rolling his starting eyes from side to side.

“Has there been a battle?” whispered Julia to the pensioner who had handed her the water-tin. “He is dreadfully wounded, is he not? Will he die?”

Julia’s quickly following questions were heard by the eight convicts, who were looking on with heavy, brutal curiosity, but not one glanced at his companions.

“Bless your heart, no, miss. A few days in horspital will put him right,” said the man, smiling.

“How can you be so cruel?” panted the girl indignantly. “Suppose you were lying there?”

“Well, I hope, miss,” said the man good-humouredly, “that if I had been blackguard enough to have my back scratched, I should not be such a cur as to howl like that.”

“Julia, my child, come away,” whispered Bayle, taking her hand and, trying to raise her as the sergeant looked on good-humouredly. “The man has been flogged for some offence. This is no place for you.”

“Hush!” she cried, as, drawing away her hand, she bent over the wretched man and wiped the great drops of perspiration from his forehead.

He ceased his restless writhing and gazed up at the sweet face bending over him with a look of wonder. Then his eyes dilated, and his lips parted. The next moment he had turned his eyes upon Mrs Hallam, who was bending over her child half-trying to raise her, but with a horrible fascination in her gaze, while a curious silence seemed to have fallen on the group – so curious, that when one of the convicts moved slightly, the clank of a ring he wore sounded strangely loud in the hot sunshine.

“By your leave, miss,” said the sergeant, not unkindly. “I daren’t stop. Fall in, my lads! Stretchers! Forward!”

As the man, who was perfectly silent now, was raised by the convicts to the level of their shoulders, he wrenched his head round that he might turn his distorted features, purple with their deep flush, and continue his wondering stare at Julia and Mrs Hallam.

Then the tramp and clank, tramp and clank went on, the guard raising each a hand to his forehead, and smiling at the group they left, while the old sergeant took off his cap, the sun shining down on a good manly English face, as he took a step towards Julia.

“I beg pardon, miss,” he said; “I’m only a rough old pensioner – but if you’d let me kiss your hand.”

Julia smiled in the sergeant’s brown face as she laid her white little hand in his, and he raised it with rugged reverence to his lips.

Then, saluting Mrs Hallam, he turned quickly to Bayle:

“I did say, sir, as this place was just about like – you know what; but I see we’ve got angels even here.”

He went off at the double after his men, twenty paces ahead, while Bayle, warned by Julia, had just time to catch Mrs Hallam as she reeled, and would have fallen.

“Mother, dear mother!” cried Julia. “This scene was too terrible for you.”

“No, no! I am better now,” said Mrs Hallam hoarsely. “Let us go on. Did you see?” she whispered, turning to Bayle.

“See?” he said reproachfully. “Yes; but I tried so hard to spare you this scene.”

“Yes; but it was to be,” she said in the same hoarse whisper, as, with one hand she held Julia from her, and spoke almost in her companion’s ear. “You did not know him,” she said. “I did; at once.”

“That man?”

“Yes.”

Then, after a painful pause, she added:

“It was Stephen Crellock.”

“Her husband’s associate and friend,” said Bayle, as he stood outside the prison gates waiting; for, after the presentation of the proper forms, Millicent Hallam and her child had been admitted by special permission to see the prisoner named upon their pass, and Christie Bayle remained without, seeing in imagination the meeting between husband, wife, and child, and as he waited, seated on a block of stone, his head went down upon his hands, and his spirit sank very low, for all was dark upon the life-path now ahead.

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?”