Volume Four—Chapter Five.
“You are my Wife.”
Stephen Crellock was fifty yards behind, with his horse completely blown, when Julia quickly slipped from her saddle, threw the rein over the hook at the door-post, and ran upstairs to the room where her mother loved to sit gazing over the beauties of the cove-marked estuary.
Mrs Hallam started up in alarm, and she had evidently been weeping.
“What is it, my child?” she cried, as Julia threw herself sobbing in her arms.
“That man—that man!” cried Julia. “Has he dared to insult you?” cried Mrs Hallam, with her eyes flashing, and her motherly indignation giving her the mien of an outraged queen.
“Yes—you—my father,” sobbed Julia; and in broken words she panted out the story of the ride.
Mrs Hallam had been indignant, and a strange shiver of horror had passed through her, as it seemed as she listened that she was going to hear in form of words the dread that had been growing in her mind for a long time past.
It was then at first with a sense of relief that she gathered from her child’s incoherent statement that Crellock had uttered few words of love. When, however, she thoroughly realised what had passed, and the charge that Crellock had made, it came with such a shock in its possibility, that her brain reeled.
“It is not true,” she cried, recovering herself quickly. “Julia, it is as false as the man who made it.”
“I knew—I knew it was, dear mother,” sobbed Julia. “My father shall drive him from the house.”
“Stay here,” said Mrs Hallam sternly. Then, more gently, “My child, you are flushed, and hot. There, there! we have been so happy lately. We must not let a petty accusation like this disturb us.”
“So happy, mother,” cried Julia piteously, “when our friends forsake us; and Mr Bayle is as good as forbidden the house?”
“Hush, my darling?” said Mrs Hallam agitatedly. “There, go to your room.”
She hurried Julia away, for she heard the trampling of the horses’ feet as they were led round to the stables, and then a familiar step upon the stairs.
“I was coming to speak to you,” she said as Hallam opened the door.
“And I was coming to you,” he said roughly. “What has that little idiot been saying to Crellock to put him in such a rage?”
“Sit down,” she said, pushing a chair towards him, and there was a look in her eyes he had never seen before.
“Well, there. Now be sharp. I don’t care to be bothered with trifles; I’ve had troubles enough. Has that champagne been put to cool?”
She looked, half wonderingly, in the heavy, sensual face, growing daily more flushed and changed.
“Come, go on,” he said, as if the look troubled him. “Now, then, what is it? Crellock is half mad. She has offended him horribly.”
“She has been defending her father’s honour,” said Mrs Hallam slowly.
“Defending my honour?” he said, smiling. “Ah!” Mrs Hallam clasped her hands, and a sigh full of the agony of her heart escaped her lips. The scales seemed to be falling from her eyes, but she wilfully closed them again in her passion of love and trust.
But it was in vain. Something seemed to be tearing these scales away—something seemed to be rending that thick veil of love, and the voices she had so long quelled were clamouring to be heard, and making her ears sing with the terrible tale they told.
She writhed in spirit. She denied it all as a calumny, but as she walked to and fro there the tiny voices in her soul seemed to be ringing out the destruction of her idol, and to her swimming eyes it seemed tottering to its fall.
“You are very strange,” he said roughly. “What’s the matter? I thought you were going to tell me about Julia and Steve.”
“I am,” she cried at last, as if mastering herself after some terrible spasm. “Robert, I have been told something to-day that makes me tremble.”
“Some news?” he said coolly.
“Yes, news—terrible news.”
“Let’s have it—if you like,” he said. “I don’t care. It don’t matter, unless it will do you good to tell it.”
Her face was wrung by the agony of her soul as she heard his callous words. The veil was being terribly rent now; and as her eyes saw more clearly, she tried in vain to close her mental sight; but no, she seemed forced to gaze now, and the idol that was tottering began to show that it was indeed of clay.
“Well, don’t look like that,” he said. “A man who has been transported is pretty well case-hardened. There is no worse trouble in life.”
“No worse?” she panted out in a quick, angry way, as words had never before left her lips; “not if he lost the love and trust of wife and child?”
“Well, that would be unpleasant,” he said coolly. “Perhaps the poor wretch would be able to get over it in time. What is your news?”
“I have heard you freshly accused to-day of that old crime, of which you were innocent.”
“Of which I was innocent, of course,” he said coolly. “Is that all?”
She did not answer for a few minutes, and then as he half rose impatiently, as if to go, she said excitedly: “That case I brought over, Robert.”
“Case?” he said with a slight start.
“From the old house.”
“Well—what about it?”
“Tell me at once, or I shall go mad. What did it contain?”
“Papers. I told you when I wrote.”
“That would set him free,” the voices in her heart insisted.
“Who has been setting you to ask about that, eh?” She did not reply.
“You did not keep faith with me,” he cried angrily. “You have been telling Sir Gordon, or that Bayle.”
“I told no one,” she said hoarsely.
“Hah!” he ejaculated with a sigh of relief.
“Stephen Crellock has told Julia what she—and I—declare is false.”
“Stephen Crellock is a fool,” he cried quickly. “Go and fetch Julia here. She must be talked to.”
“Robert! my husband,” cried Mrs Hallam, throwing herself upon her knees and catching his hands, “you do not speak out. Why do you not passionately say it is false? How dare he accuse you of such a crime! You do not speak!”
She gazed up at him wildly.
“What do you want me to say?” he cried angrily. “Do you think me mad, woman? Here, let’s have an end of all this nonsense. What does Crellock say?” She could not speak for a few minutes, so overladen was her heart; and when she did, the words were hoarse that fell upon his ears.
“He said—he told our simple, loving girl, whom I have taught to trust in and reverence her martyred father’s name; whose faith has been in your innocency of the crime for which you were sent here—the girl I taught to pray that your innocence might be proved—”
“Will you go on?” he cried brutally. “I’m sick of this. Now, what did he say?”
“That—Oh, Robert, my husband, I cannot say it! His words cannot be true!”
“Will you speak?” he cried. “Out with it at once! When will you grow to be a woman of the world, and stop this childishness? Now what did the chattering fool say?”
“That the box I brought over contained the proceeds of the bank robbery—money that you had hidden away.”
Millicent Hallam started up and gazed about her with a dazed look, as if she were startled by the words she heard—words that seemed to have come from other lips than hers; and then she pressed her hands to her heaving bosom as her husband spoke.
“Stephen Crellock must be getting tired of his leave,” he said coolly. “An idiot! He had better have kept his tongue between his teeth. How came he to be chattering about that? If he don’t mind—” He did not finish the sentence, and his wife’s eyes dilated as she gazed at him in a horrified way.
“You do not deny it!” she said at last. “You do not declare that this is all cruelly false!”
“No,” he said slowly, “I am not going to worry myself about his words. He can’t prove anything.”
“But it is a charge against your honour,” she cried; “against me. Robert! you will not let this go uncontradicted for an hour longer?”
“Stephen Crellock had better mind,” said Hallam, slowly and thoughtfully, as if he had not heard his wife.
“But, Robert—my husband! you will speak for your own sake—for your child’s sake—for mine?”
There was a growing intensity in the words, whose tones rose to one of passionate appeal.
He made an impatient motion that implied a negative, and she threw herself once more upon her knees at his feet.
“You will deny this atrocious charge?”
“If I am asked I shall deny it of course,” he said coolly; “but you don’t suppose I am going to talk about it without?”
“But—but—that man believes it to be true!”
“Well, let him.”
“Robert—dear Robert,” she cried, “you must not, you shall not treat it like that! It is as if you were indifferent to this dreadful statement.”
“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 snatched 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 hoarsely. “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.