Volume Four—Chapter One.
In the New Land—The Situation.
“Look here, Bayle, this is about the maddest thing I ever knew. Will you have the goodness to tell me why we are stopping here?”
Bayle looked up from the book he was reading in the pleasant room that formed their home, one which Tom Porter had found no difficulty in fitting up in good cabin style.
A year had glided by since they landed, a year that Sir Gordon had passed in the most unsatisfactory way.
“Why are we stopping here?”
“Yes. Didn’t I speak plainly? Why are we stopping here? For goodness’ sake, Bayle, don’t you take to aggravating me by repeating my words! I’m irritable enough without that!”
“Nonsense, my dear old friend!” cried Bayle, rising.
“Hang it, man, don’t throw my age in my teeth! I can’t help being old!”
“May I live to be as old,” said Bayle, smiling, and laying his hand on Sir Gordon’s shoulder.
“Bah! don’t pray for that, man! Why should you want to live? To see all your pet schemes knocked on the head, and those you care for go to the bad, while your aches and pains increase, and you are gliding down the hill of life a wretched, selfish old man, unloved, uncared for. There, life is all a miserable mistake.”
“Uncared for, eh?” said Bayle. “Have you no friends?”
“Not one,” groaned the old man, writhing, as he felt a twinge in his back. “Oh, this bitter south wind! it’s worse than our north!”
“Shame! Why, Tom Porter watches you night and day. He would die for you.”
“So would a dog. The scoundrel only thinks of how much money I shall leave him when I go.”
Unheard by either, Tom Porter had entered the room, sailor fashion, barefoot, in the easy canvas suit he wore when yachting with his master. He had brought in a basin of broth of his own brewing, as he termed it—for Sir Gordon was unwell—a plate with a couple of slices of bread of his own toasting in the other hand, and he was holding the silver spoon from Sir Gordon’s travelling canteen beneath his chin.
He heard every word as he stood waiting respectfully to bring in his master’s “’levens,” as he called it; and, instead of getting the sherry from the cellaret, he began screwing up his hard face, and showing his emotion by working about his bare toes.
As Sir Gordon finished his bitter speech, Tom Porter took a step forward and threw the basin of mutton broth, basin, plate, and all, under the grate with a crash, and stalked towards the door.
“You scoundrel!” roared Sir Gordon. “You, Tom Porter, stop!”
“Be damned if I do!” growled the man. “There’s mutiny on, and I leave the ship.”
Bang!
The door was closed violently, and Sir Gordon looked helplessly up at Bayle.
“You see!”
“Yes,” said Bayle, “I see. Poor fellow! Why did you wound his feelings like that?”
“There!” cried Sir Gordon; “now you side with the scoundrel. Twenty-five years has he been with me, and look at my soup!”
Bayle laughed.
“Yes: that’s right: laugh at me. I’m getting old and weak. Laugh at me. I suppose the next thing will be that you will go off and leave me here in the lurch.”
“That is just my way, is it not?” said Bayle, smiling.
“Well, no,” grumbled Sir Gordon, “I suppose it is not. But then you are such a fool, Bayle. I haven’t patience with you!”
“I’m afraid I am a great trial to you.”
“You are—a terrible trial; every one’s a terrible trial—everything goes wrong. That blundering ass Tom Porter must even go and knock a hole in the Sylph on the rocks.”
“Yes, that was unfortunate,” said Bayle.
“Here: I shall go back. It’s of no use staying here. Everything I see aggravates me. Matters are getting worse with the Hallams. Let’s go home, Bayle.”
Christie Bayle stood looking straight before him for some time, and then shook his head softly.
“No: not yet,” he said at last.
“But I can’t go back without you, man; and it is of no use to stay. As I said before—Why am I stopping here?”
Bayle looked at him in his quiet, smiling way for some moments before replying.
“In the furtherance of your old scheme of unselfishness, and in the hope of doing good to the friends we love.”
“Oh, nonsense! Tush, man! Absurd! I wanted to be friends, and be helpful; but that’s all over now. See what is going on. Look at that girl. Next thing we hear will be that she is married to one of those two fellows.”
“I think if she accepted Lieutenant Eaton, and he married her, and took her away from this place, it would be the best thing that could happen.”
“Humph! I don’t!” muttered Sir Gordon. “Then look at Mrs Hallam.”
Bayle drew in his breath with a low hiss.
“It is horrible, man—it is horrible!” cried Sir Gordon excitedly. “Bayle, you know how I loved that woman twenty years ago? Well, it was impossible; it would have been May and December even then, for I’m a very old man, Bayle—older than you think. I was an old fool, perhaps, but it was my nature. I loved her very dearly. It was not to be; but the old love isn’t dead. Bayle, old fellow, if I had been a good man I should say that the old love was purified of its grosser parts, but that would not fit with me.”
“Why judge yourself so harshly?”
“Because I deserve it, man. Well, well, time went on, and when we met again, I can’t describe what I felt over that child. At times, when her pretty dark face had the look of that scoundrel Hallam in it, I hated her; but when her eyes lit up with that sweet, innocent smile, the tears used to come into mine, and I felt as if it was Millicent Luttrell a child again, and that it would have been the culmination of earthly happiness to have said, this is my darling child.”
“Yes,” said Bayle softly.
“I worshipped that girl, Bayle. It was for her sake I came over here to this horrible pandemonium, to watch over and be her guardian. I could not have stayed away. But I must go now. I can’t bear it; I can’t stand it any longer.”
“You will not go,” said Bayle slowly.
“Yes, I tell you, I must. It is horrible. I don’t think she is ungrateful, poor child; but she is being brutalised by companionship with that scoundrel’s set.”
“No, no! For heaven’s sake don’t say that!”
“I do say it,” cried the old man impetuously, “she and her mother too. How can they help it with such surroundings? The decent people will not go—only that Eaton and Mrs Otway. Bless the woman! I thought her a forward, shameless soldier’s wife, but she has the heart of a true lady, and keeps to the Hallams in spite of all.”
“It is very horrible,” said Bayle; “but we are helpless.”
“Helpless? Yes; if he would only kill himself with his wretched drink, or get made an end of somehow.”
“Hush!” said Bayle, rather sternly; “don’t talk like that.”
“Now you are beginning to bully me, Bayle,” cried the old man querulously. “Don’t you turn against me. I get insults enough at that scoundrel Hallam’s—enough to make my blood boil.”
“Yes, I know, I know,” said Bayle.
“And yet, old idiot that I am, I go there for the sake of these women, and bear it all—I, whom people call a gentleman, I go there and am civil to the scoundrel who robbed me, and put up with his insolence and his scowls. But I’m his master still. He dare not turn upon me. I can make him quail when I like. Bayle, old fellow,” he cried, with a satisfied chuckle, “how the scoundrel would like to give me a dose!”
Bayle sat down with his brow full of the lines of care.
“I’m not like you,” continued Sir Gordon, whom the relation of his troubles seemed to relieve, “I won’t be driven away. I think you were wrong.”
“No,” said Bayle quietly, “it was causing her pain. It was plain enough that in his sordid mind my presence was a greater injury than yours. He was wearing her life away, and I thought it better that our intimacy should grow less and less.”
“But, my boy, that’s where you were wrong. Bad as the scoundrel is, he could never have had a jealous thought of that saint—there, don’t call me irreverent—I say it again, that saint of a woman.”
“Oh, no, I can’t think that myself,” said Bayle, “but my presence was a standing reproach to him.”
“How could it be more than mine?”
“You are different. He always hated me from the first time we met at King’s Castor.”
“I believe he did,” said Sir Gordon warmly; “but see how he detests the sight of me.”
“Yes, but you expressed the feeling only a few minutes ago when you said you were still his master and you made him quail. My dear old friend, if I could ever have indulged in a hope that Robert Hallam had been unjustly punished, his behaviour towards you would have swept it away. It is always that of the conscience-stricken man—his unreasoning dislike of the one whom he has wronged.”
“Perhaps you are right, Bayle, perhaps you are right. But there was no doubt about his guilt—a scoundrel, and I am as sure as I am that I live, the rascal made a hoard somehow, and is living upon it now.”
“You think that? What about the sealing speculation?”
“Ah! he and Crellock have made some money by it, no doubt; but not enough to live as they do. I know that Hallam is spending my money and triumphing over me all the time, and I would not care if those women were free of him, but I’m afraid that will never be.”
Bayle remained silent.
“Do you think she believes in his innocence still?”
Bayle remained silent for a time, and then said slowly: “I believe that Millicent Hallam, even if she discovered his guilt, and could at last believe in it, would suffer in secret, and bear with him in the hope that he would repent.”
“And never leave him?”
“Never,” aid Bayle firmly, “unless under some terrible provocation, one so great that no woman could bear; and from that provocation, and the deathblow it would be to her, I pray heaven she may be spared.”
“Amen!” said Sir Gordon softly.
“Bayle,” he added, after a pause, “I am getting old and irritable; I feel every change. I called you a fool!”
“The irritable spirit of pain within—not you.”
“Ah! well,” said Sir Gordon, smiling, “you know me by heart now, my dear boy. I want to say something ivery serious to you. I never said it before, though I have thought about it ever since those happy evenings we spent at Clerkenwell.”
Bayle turned to him wonderingly.
“You will bear with me—I may hurt your feelings.”
“If you do I know you will heal them the next time we meet,” replied Bayle.
“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 passed 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 shore; 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 passed 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 shores, 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.