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?”
“No. Nonsense! I shall have to stay out here; but it does not matter now. Only go and do as I tell you, and carefully, for you are only a woman in a strange place, and alone till you get me out.”
“Mr Bayle is here, and Sir Gordon—”
“Bayle!” cried Hallam, catching her wrist with a savage grip and staring in an angry way at the agitated face before him.
“Yes; he has been so helpful and true all through our trouble, and—”
“Curse Bayle!” he muttered. Then aloud, and in a fierce, impatient way: “Never mind that now, I shall have to go back to the gang directly, and I have not said half I want to say.”
“I will not speak again,” she said eagerly. “Tell me what to do.”
“Take house or apartments at once; behave as if you were well off—I tell you that you are; do all yourself, and send in an application to the authorities for two assigned servants.”
“Assigned servants?”
“Yes—convict servants,” said Hallam impatiently. “There! you must know. There are so many that the Government are glad to get the well-behaved convicts off their hands, and into the care of settlers who undertake their charge. You want two men, as you have settled here. You will have papers to sign, and give undertakings; but do it all boldly, and you will select two. They won’t ask you any questions about your taking up land, they are too glad to get rid of us. If they do ask anything, you can boldly say you want them for butler and coachman.”
“But, Robert, I do not understand.”
“Do as I tell you,” he said sharply. “You will select two men—myself and Stephen Crellock.”
“Yourself and Stephen Crellock?”
“Yes. Don’t look so bewildered, woman. It is the regular thing, and we shall be set at liberty.”
“At liberty?”
“Yes, to go anywhere in the colony. You are answerable to the Government for us.”
“But, Robert, you would come as—my servant?”
“Pooh! Only in name. So long as you claim us as your servants, that is all that is wanted. Plenty are freed on these terms, and once they are out, go and live with their families, like any one else.”
“This is done here?”
“To be sure it is. I tell you that once a man has been in the gangs here for a few years they are glad to get him off their hands, so as to leave room for others who are coming out. Why, Milly, they could not keep all who are sent away from England, and people are easier and more forgiving out here. Hundreds of those you see here were lags.”
“Lags?”
“Bah! how innocent you are. Well, convicts. Now, quick! they are coming. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“And you will do as I tell you?”
“Everything,” said Mrs Hallam.
“Of course you cannot make this a matter of secrecy. It does not matter who knows. But the tin case; remember that is for me alone.”
“But the authorities,” said Mrs Hallam; “they will know I am your wife.”
“The authorities will trouble nothing about it. I have a fairly good record, and they will be glad. As for Crellock—”
“That man!” gasped Mrs Hallam.
“Well?”
“We saw him—as we came.”
Hallam’s face puckered.
“Poor fellow,” he said hastily. “Ah, that was a specimen of the cruel treatment we receive. It was unfortunate. But we can’t talk about that. There they are. Remember!”
She pressed the coarse, hard hand that was holding hers as the door was thrown open, and without another word Hallam obeyed the sign made by the officer in the doorway, and, as the two women crept together, Julia receiving no further recognition, they saw him sink from his erect position, his head went down, his back rounded, and he went out.
Then the door shut loudly, and they stood listening, as the steps died away, save those of the sentries in the passage and beneath the window.
The silence, as they stood in that blank, cell-like room, was terrible; and when at last Julia spoke, her mother started and stared at her wildly from the confused rush of thought that was passing through her brain.
“Mother, is it some dreadful dream?”
Mrs Hallam’s lips parted, but no words came, and for the moment she seemed to be sharing her child’s mental shock, the terrible disillusioning to which she had been subjected.
The recovery was quick, though, as she drew a long breath.
“Dream? No, my child, it is real; and at last we can rescue him from his dreadful fate.”
Whatever thoughts she may have had that militated against her hopes she crushed down, forcing herself to see nothing but the result of a terrible persecution, and ready to be angered with herself for any doubts as to her duty.
In this spirit she followed the man who had led them in back to the gates, where Bayle was waiting; and as he gazed anxiously in the faces of the two women it was to see Julie’s scared, white, and ready to look appealingly in his, while Mrs Hallam’s was radiant and proud with the light of her true woman’s love and devotion to him she told herself it was her duty to obey.
That night mother and daughter, clasped in each other’s arms, knelt and prayed, the one for strength to carry out her duty, and restore Robert Hallam to his place in the world of men; the other for power to love the father whom she had crossed the great ocean to gain—the man who had seemed to be so little like the father of her dreams.