Volume Three—Chapter Five.
The Wife Speaks.
Sir Gordon was the first to break the silence, and his voice trembled with passion and excitement.
“The villain!” he said in an angry whisper. “How dare he write to her! She suffered, but it was a calm and patient suffering, softened by time. Now he has torn open the wound to make it bleed afresh, and it will never heal again.”
“I have lived in an agonising dread of this night for the past ten years,” said Bayle hoarsely.
“You?”
“Yes: I. Does it seem strange? I have seen her gradually growing more restful and happy in the love of her child. I have gone on loving that child as if she were my own. Was it not reasonable that I should dread the hour when that man might come and claim them once again?”
“But they are not his now,” cried Sir Gordon. “The man is socially dead.”
“To us and to the law,” said Bayle; “but is the husband of her young love dead to the heart of such a woman as Millicent Hallam?”
“Luttrell, man; Luttrell,” cried Sir Gordon excitedly; “don’t utter his accursed name!”
“As Millicent Hallam,” said Bayle gravely. “She is his wife. She will never change.”
“She must be made to change,” cried Sir Gordon, whose excitement and anger were in strong contrast to the calm, patient suffering of the man upon whose arm he hung heavily as they tramped on round and round the circular railings within the square. “It is monstrous that he should be allowed to disturb her peace, Bayle. Look here! Did you say that letter came enclosed to you?”
“Yes.”
“Then—then you were a fool, man—a fool! You call yourself her friend—the friend of that sweet girl?”
“Their truest, best friend, I hope.”
“You call yourself my friend,” continued Sir Gordon, in the same angry, unreasoning way, “and yet you give them that letter? You should have sent it back to the scoundrel, marked dead. They are dead to him. Bayle, you were a fool.”
“Do you think so?” he said smiling, and looking round at his companion. “My dear sir, is your Christianity at so low an ebb that you speak those words?”
“Now you are beginning to preach, sir, to excuse yourself.”
“No,” replied Bayle quietly. “I was only about to say, suppose these long years of suffering for his crime have changed the man; are we to say there is to be no ray of hope in his darkened life?”
“I can’t argue with you, Bayle,” cried Sir Gordon. “Forgive me. I grow old and easily excited. I called you a fool: I was the fool. It was misplaced. You are not very angry with me?”
“My dear old friend!”
“My dear boy!”
Sir Gordon’s voice sounded strange, and something wonderfully like a sob was heard. Then, for some time they paced on round and round the square, glancing at the illumined window-blind, both longing to be back in the pleasant little room.
And now the same feeling that had troubled Bayle seemed to have made its way into Sir Gordon’s breast. The little home, with its tokens of feminine taste and traces of mother and daughter everywhere, had grown to be so delightful an oasis in his desert life that he looked with dismay at the chance of losing it for ever.
He knew nothing yet, but that home seemed to be gliding away. He had not heard the letter read, but a strange horror of what it might contain made him shudder for what he knew; and as the future began to paint terrors without end, he suddenly nipped the arm of his silent, thoughtful companion.
“There! there!” he said, “we are thinking about ourselves, man.”
“No,” said Bayle, in a deep, sad voice, “I was thinking about them.”
“It’s my belief,” said Sir Gordon, half angrily, “that you have gone on all these years past thinking about them. But come! We must act. Tell me about the letter. Do you say he wrote to you?”
“Yes.”
“But why to you? He must have hated you with all his heart.”
“I believe he did,” replied Bayle. “Even my love for his child was a grievance to him.”
“And yet he wrote to you, enclosing the letter to his wife.”
“I suppose he felt that I should not forsake them in their distress; and that whatever changes might have taken place my whereabouts would be known—a clergyman being easily traced. See!”
He took another letter from his pocket, and stopped beneath a gas-lamp.
“No, no, I cannot read it by this light; tell me what he says,” exclaimed Sir Gordon.
“The letter is directed to me at King’s Castor, and above the direction Hallam has written, ‘If Rev. Christie Bayle has left King’s Castor, the postal authorities are requested to find his address from the Clerical Directory.’ The people at Castor of course knew my address, and sent it on.”
“Yes, I see. Well, well, what does he say?”
Bayle read, in a calm, clear voice, the following letter:
“Prison, Nulla Nulla,—
“Port Jackson, Australia,—
“December 9th, 18—.
“Sir,—
“You and I were never friends, and in my trouble perhaps you were harder on me than you need have been. But I always believed you to be a true gentleman, and that you liked my wife and child. I can trust no one else but a clergyman, being a convict; but your profession must make you ready, like our chaplain here, to hear all our troubles, so I write to ask you to help me by placing the letter enclosed in my wife’s hands, and in none other’s. It is for her sight alone.
“I cannot offer to reward you for doing me this service, but I ask you to do a good turn to a suffering man, who has gone through a deal since you saw him.
“Please mark: the letter is to be given to my wife alone, or to my child. If they are both dead, the letter is to be sent back to me unopened, as I tell you it contains private matters, only relating to my wife and me.
“I am, Reverend Sir,—
“Your obedient, humble servant,—
“Robert Hallam, 9749.
“To the Rev. Christie Bayle,—
“Curate of King’s Castor.”
“Why, the fellow seems to have grown vulgarised and coarse in style. That is not the sort of letter our old manager would have written.”
“The handwriting is greatly changed too.”
“Of course it is his?”
“Oh, yes; there is no doubt about it. The change is natural, if the life the poor wretches lead out there be as bad as I have heard.”
“Hah! I don’t suppose they find them feather beds, Bayle.”
“If half I know be true,” said Bayle indignantly, “the place is a horror. It is a scandal to our country and our boasted Christianity!”
“What, Botany Bay?”
“The whole region of the penal settlement.”
“There, there, Bayle! you are too easy, man! You infect me. I shall begin to repent of my share in sending that fellow out of the country. Let’s get back. We must have been out here an hour.”
“An hour and a half,” said Bayle, looking at his watch. “Yes; we will ask if they can see us to-night. We will not press it if they prefer to be alone.”
Thisbe must have been in the passage, the door was opened so quickly. Her face was harder than ever, and her moustache, by the light of the candle upon the bracket, looked like a dark line drawn by a smutty finger. There was a defiant look, too, in her eyes; but it was evident that she had been crying, as she ushered the friends into the room where Mrs Hallam was sittings with Julia kneeling at her feet and resting her arms upon her mother’s knees.
Both rose as Bayle and Sir Gordon entered.
“We only wish to say good-night,” said the latter apologetically.
“I have been expecting you both for some time,” said Mrs Hallam calmly; but it was plain to her friends that she was fighting hard to master her emotion.
Sir Gordon signed to Bayle to speak, but the latter remained closed of lip, and the silence became most painful.
Julia looked wistfully at her mother, whose face was transfigured by the joy that illumined it once more, though it had no reflection in her child’s face, which was rendered sad by the traces of the tears that she had lately shed.
“Your husband is well?” said Bayle at last, for Mrs Hallam was looking at him reproachfully.
“Yes, oh yes, he is quite well,” she said proudly; and something of her old feeling seemed to come back, for the eyes that looked from Sir Gordon to Bayle gave a defiant flash.
“Well?” she said impatiently, as if weary of waiting to be questioned.
“Do you wish your friends to know the contents of your husband’s letter?”
“Yes!” she cried; “all that is not of a private nature.”
Bayle paused again. Then his lips parted, but no words came; and Sir Gordon saw that there was a tender, yearning look in his eyes, a pitying expression in his face.
Then he seemed to recover himself. He moistened his feverish lips, and said in a low, pained voice:
“Then the term of his imprisonment is over? He is coming back?”
“My poor husband was sentenced to exile for life,” said Mrs Hallam, with her head erect, as if she were defending the reputation of a patriot.
“But he has received pardon?”
“No. The world is still unjust.”
Sir Gordon met her eyes full of reproach; but as she gazed at him her features softened, and she took a step forward and caught his hand.
“Forgive my bitterness,” she said quickly. “It was all a grievous error. Only, now that this message has come from beyond the seas,”—she unconsciously adopted the language used a short time before—“the old wound seems to be opened and to bleed afresh.”
Bayle had uttered a sigh of relief at her words respecting the injustice of the world, and he waited till Mrs Hallam turned to him again.
“I wish to be plain—to speak as I should at another time, but I am too agitated, too much overcome with the great joy that has fallen to me at last—the joy for which I have prayed so long. At times it seems a dream—as if I were mocked by one of the visions that have haunted my nights; but I know it is true. I have his words here—here!”
She snatched the letter from her breast, her eyes sparkling and a feverish flush coming into her face, while, as she stood there in the softened light shed by the lamp, her lips apart, and a glint of her white teeth just seen, it seemed to both Bayle and Sir Gordon that the Millicent Luttrell of the old days was before them. Even the tones of her voice had lost their harshness, and sounded mellow and round.
They stood wondering and rapt, noticing the transformation, the animated way; the eager excitement, as of one longing to take action, after an enforced sealing up of every energy; and as they stood before her half-stunned in thought, she seemed to gather the force they lost, and mentally towered above them in her words.
“You ask me of his letter,” she said at last, half bitterly, but again fighting this bitterness down. “I will tell you what he says to me and to his child.”
“Yes,” said Bayle, almost mechanically; and in the same half-stunned way he looked from her to Julia, who stood with her hands clasped and hanging before her, wistful, troubled, and evidently in pain.
“Yes, Mrs Hallam,” said Sir Gordon, for she had sought his eyes as she released those of Bayle, “tell me what he says.”
She paused with the letter in her hands, holding it pressed against her bosom. Then raising it slowly, she placed it against her lips, and remained silent for what seemed an interminable time.
At last she spoke, and there was a strange solemnity in her words as she said in less deep tones:
“It is the voice of the husband and father away beyond, the wild seas—there on the other side of the wide world, speaking to the wife and child he loves, and its essence is, ‘I am weary of waiting—wife—child—I bid you come.’”
As she spoke, Bayle felt his legs tremble, and he involuntarily caught at a chair, tilting it forward and resting upon its back till, as she said the last words, he spasmodically snatched his hands from the chair, which fell with a heavy crash into the grate.
It was not noticed by any there, only by Thisbe, who ran to the door in alarm, as Bayle was speaking excitedly.
“No, no. It is impossible. You could not go!”
“My husband tells me,” continued Mrs Hallam, gazing now at Sir Gordon, who seemed to shrink and grow older of aspect than before—“that after such a long probation as his the Government have some compassion towards the poor exiles in their charge; that they extend certain privileges to them, and ameliorate their sufferings; that his wife and child would be allowed to see him, and that under certain restrictions he would be free so long as he did not attempt to leave the colony.”
“It is too horrible!” groaned Sir Gordon to himself, as in imagination he saw the horrors of the penal settlement, and this gently-nurtured woman and her child landed there.
“I say it is impossible,” said Bayle again; and there were firmness and anger combined in his tones. “Mrs Hallam, you must not think of it.”
“Not think of it?” she said sternly.
“For your own sake: no.”
“You say this to me, Christie Bayle?”
“Yes, to you; and if I must bring forward a stronger argument—for your child’s sake you must not go.”
A look that was half joy, half grief, flashed from Julia’s eyes; and Mrs Hallam looked to her, and took her hand firmly in her own.
“Will you tell me why, Mr Bayle?” she said sternly.
“I could not. I dare not,” he said firmly. “Believe me, though, when I tell you this. As your friend—as Julia’s protector, almost foster-father—knowing what I do, I have mastered everything possible, from the Government minutes and despatches, respecting the penal settlement out there. It is no place for two tender women. Mrs Hallam, it is impossible for you to go.”
“Again I ask you why?” said Mrs Hallam sternly.
“I cannot—I dare not paint to you what you would have to go through,” said Bayle almost fiercely.
“Mrs Hallam,” said Sir Gordon, coming to his aid; “what he says is right. Believe me too. You cannot: you must not go.”
There was a pause for a few moments, and then Mrs Hallam drew her child more closely to her side.
“You dare not paint the horrors that await us there, Christie Bayle,” she then said in a softened tone. “There is no need. The recital would fall on barren ground. The horrors suffered by the husband and father, his wife and child will gladly dare.”
“You cannot. You shall not. For God’s sake pause!”
“When my husband bids me come? Christie Bayle, you do not know me yet,” she said softly.
“But, Mrs Hallam—Millicent, my child!” cried Sir Gordon imploringly.
“I cannot listen to your appeals,” she said in a piteous tone, and with the tears at last gushing from her aching eyes.
“Ah,” cried Bayle excitedly, “she is giving way. Millicent Luttrell, for your own, for your child’s sake, you will stay.”
She rose up proudly once more.
“Millicent Hallam and her child will go.”
Sir Gordon made an imploring movement.
“It is to obtain his release, Julie, my child!” said Mrs Hallam in a tender voice, “the release of our long-suffering martyr. What say you? He calls to us from beyond the seas to come and help him, what must we do?”
Again there was a painful silence in that room, every breath seemed to be held till Julia said, in a low, dreamy voice:
“Mother, we must go.”
As she ended, a faint sigh escaped her lips, and she sank as if insensible upon her mother’s breast.
“Yes,” cried Millicent Hallam, gazing straight before her, “were the world a hundred times as wide.”