Millicent Hallam had found that all her husband had said was correct.
There was no difficulty at all in the matter, and few questions were
asked, for the Government was only too glad to get convicts drafted off
as assigned servants to all who applied, and so long as no complaints
were made of their behaviour, the prisoners to whom passes were given
remained free of the colony.
In many cases they led the lives of slaves to the settlers, and found
that they had exchanged the rod for the scorpion; but they bore all for
the sake of the comparative freedom, and even preferred life at some
up-country station, where a slight offence was punished with the lash,
to returning to the chain-gang and the prison, or the heavy work of
making roads.
The cat was the cure for all ills in those days, when almost any one was
appointed magistrate of his district. A., the holder of so many
assigned men, would be a justice, and one of his men would offend. In
that case, he would send him over to B., the magistrate of the next
district. B. would also be a squatter and holder of assigned convict
servants. There would be a short examination; A's man would be well
flogged and sent back. In due time B. would require the same service
performed, and would send an offender over to A. to have him punished in
turn.
In the growing town, assigned servants were employed in a variety of
ways; and it was common enough for relatives of the convicts to apply
and have husband, son, or brother assigned to them, the
ticket-of-leave-man finding no difficulty there on account of being a
jail-bird, where many of the most prosperous traders and squatters had
once worn the prison garb.
Robert Hallam was soon released, and at the end of a very short time
Stephen Crellock followed; the pair becoming ostensibly butler and
coachman to a wealthy lady who had settled in Sydney--but servants only
in the Government books; for, unquestioned, Hallam at once took up his
position as master of the house, and, to his wife's horror, Crellock,
directly he was released, came and took possession of the room set apart
for him as Hallam's oldest friend.
A strange state of society perhaps, but it is a mere matter of history;
such proceedings were frequent in the days when Botany Bay was the depot
for the social sinners of our land.
All the same though, poor Botany Bay, with its abundant specimens of
Austral growth that delighted the naturalists of the early expedition,
never did become a penal settlement. It was selected, and the first
convict-ship went there to form the great prison; but the place was
unsuitable, and Port Jackson, the site of Sydney, proved so vastly
superior that the expedition went on there at once.
At home, in England, though, Botany Bay was spoken of always as the
convicts' home, and the term embraced the whole of the penal
settlements, including Norfolk Island, that horror of our laws, and Van
Diemen's Land.
Opportunity had served just after Hallam was released, and had taken up
his residence in simple lodgings which Mrs Hallam, with Bayle's help,
had secured, for one of the best villas that had been built in the
place--an attractive wooden bungalow, with broad verandahs and lovely
garden sloping down towards the harbour--was to let.
Millicent Hallam had looked at her husband in alarm when he bade her
take it; but he placed the money laughingly in her hands for furnishing;
and, obeying him as if in a dream, the house was taken and handsomely
fitted. Servants were engaged, horses bought, and the convicts
commenced a life of luxurious ease.
The sealing business, he said with a laugh, was only carried on at
certain times of the year, but it was a most paying affair, and he bade
Mrs Hallam have no care about money matters.
For the first six months Hallam rarely stirred out of the house by day,
contenting himself with a walk about the extensive grounds in an
evening; but he made up for this abstinence from society by pampering
his appetites in every way.
It was as if, these having been kept in strict subjection for so many
years, he was now determined to give them full rein; and, consequently,
he who had been summoned at early morn by the prison bell, breakfasted
luxuriously in bed, and did not rise till midday, when his first
question was about the preparations for dinner--that being the important
business of his life.
His dinner was a feast at which good wine in sufficient abundance played
a part, and over this he and Crellock would sit for hours, only to leave
it and the dining-room for spirits and cigars in the verandah, where
they stayed till bed-time.
Robert Hallam came into the house a pallid, wasted man, with sunken
cheeks and eyes, closely-cropped hair and shorn beard; the villainous
prison look was in his gaze and the furtive shrinking way of his stoop.
His aspect was so horrible that when Millicent Hallam took him to her
breast, she prayed for mental blindness that she might not see the
change, while Julia's eyes were always full of a wondering horror that
she was ever fighting to suppress.
At the end of four months, Robert Hallam was completely transformed; his
cheeks were filled out, and were rapidly assuming the flushed appearance
of the habitual drunkard's; his eyes had lost their cavernous aspect,
and half the lines had disappeared, while his grizzled hair was of a
respectable length, and his face was becoming clothed by a great black
beard dashed with grey.
In six months, portly, florid and well-dressed, he was unrecognisable
for the man who had been released from the great prison, and no longer
confined himself to the house.
Stephen Crellock had changed in a more marked manner than his prison
friend. Considerably his junior, the convict life had not seemed to
affect him, so that when six months of his freedom had passed, he looked
the bluff, bearded squatter in the full pride of his manhood, bronzed by
the sun, and with a dash and freedom of manner that he knew how to
restrain when he was in the presence of his old companion's wife and
child, for he could not conceal from himself the fact that Mrs Hallam
disliked his presence and resented his being there.
At first, in her eagerness to respond to Hallam's slightest wish, in the
proud joy she felt in the change that was coming over his personal
appearance, and which with the boastfulness of a young wife she pointed
out to Julia, she made no objection to Crellock's presence.
"Poor fellow! he has suffered horribly," Hallam said. "He deserves a
holiday."
How she had watched all this gradual change, and how she crushed down
the little voices that now and then strove in her heart to make
themselves heard!
"No, no, no," she said to them as it were half laughing, "there is
nothing but what I ought to have pictured."
Then one day she found herself forced to make apology to Julia.
"You have hurt him, my darling, by your coldness," she said tenderly.
"Julie, my own, he complains to me. What have you done?"
"Tried, dear mother--oh, so hard. I did not know I had been cold."
"Then you will try more, my child," said Mrs Hallam, caressing Julia
tenderly, and with a bright, loving look in her eyes. "I have never
spoken like this before. It seemed terrible to me to have to make what
seems like an apology for our own, but think, dearest. He parted from
us a gentleman--to be taken from his home and plunged into a life of
horror, such as--no, no, no," she cried, "I will not speak of it. I
will only say that just as his face will change, so will all that
terrible corrosion of the prison life in his manner drop away, and in a
few months he will be again all that you have pictured. Julie, he is
your father."
Julia flung herself, sobbing passionately, into her mother's arms, and
in a burst of self-reproach vowed that she would do everything to make
her father love her as she did him.
Bravely did the two women set themselves to the task of blinding their
eyes with love, passing over the coarse actions and speech of the idol
they had set up, yielding eagerly to his slightest whim, obeying every
caprice, and, while at times something was almost too hard to bear,
Millicent Hallam whispered encouragement to her child.
"Think, my own, think," she said lovingly. "It is not his fault. Think
of what he has suffered, and let us pray and thank Him that he has
survived, for us to win back to all that we could wish."
There were times when despair looked blankly from Millicent Hallam's
eyes as she saw the months glide by and her husband surely and slowly
sinking into sensuality. But she roused herself to greater exertions,
and was his veriest slave. Once only did she try by kindly resistance
to make the stand she told herself she should have made when Crellock
was first brought into the house.
It was when he had been out about six months, and Crellock, after a long
debauch with Hallam and two or three chosen spirits from the town, had
sunk in a brutal sleep upon the floor of the handsomely-furnished
dining-room. The visitors had gone; they had dined there, Sir Gordon
being of the party, and Mrs Hallam had smilingly done the honours of
the table as their hostess, though sick at heart at the turn the
conversation had taken before her child, who looked anxious and pale,
while Sir Gordon had sat there very silent and grim of aspect. He had
been the first to go, and had taken her hand in the drawing-room, as if
about to speak, but had only looked at her, sighed, and gone away
without a word.
"I must speak!" she had said. "Heaven help me! I must speak! This
cannot go on!"
As soon as she could, she had hurried Julia to bed, and then sat and
waited till the last visitor had gone, when she walked into the
dining-room, where Hallam sat smoking, _heavy_ with drink, but perfectly
collected, scowling down at Crellock where he lay.
That look sent a thrill of joy through Millicent Hallam. He was
evidently angry with Crellock, and disgusted with the wretched drinking
scene that had taken place--one of many such scenes as would have
excited comment now, but the early settlers were ready enough to smile
at eccentricities like this.
"Robert--my husband! may I speak to you?"
"Speak, my dear? Of course," he said, smiling. "Why didn't you come in
as soon as that old curmudgeon had gone? Have a glass of wine now.
Nonsense!--I wish it. You must pitch over a lot of that
standoffish-ness with my friends. Julia, too--the girl sits and looks
at people as glum as if she had no sense." Mrs Hallam compressed her
lips, laid her hand upon her husband's shoulder, yielding herself to him
as he threw an arm round her waist, but stood pointing to where Crellock
lay breathing stertorously, and every now and then muttering in his
sleep.
"What are you pointing at?" said Hallam. "Steve? Yes, the pig! Why
can't he take his wine like a gentleman, and not like a brute?"
"Robert, dear," she said tenderly, "you love me very dearly?"
"Love you, my pet! why, how could a man love wife better?"
"And our Julia--our child?"
"Why, of course. What questions!"
"Will you do something to please me--to please us both?"
"Will I? Say what you want--another carriage--diamonds--a yacht like
old Bourne's?"
"No, no, no, dearest; we have everything if we have your love, and my
dear husband glides from the past misery into a life of happiness."
"Well, I think we are doing pretty well," he said with a laugh that sent
a shudder through the suffering woman; he was so changed.
"I want to speak to you about Mr Crellock."
"Well, what about him? Make haste; it's getting late, and I'm tired."
"Robert, we have made a mistake in having this man here."
Hallam seemed perfectly sober, and he frowned.
"_I_ would not mind if you wished him to be here, love," she said, with
her voice sounding sweetly pure and entreating; "but he is not a
suitable companion for our Julia."
"Stop there," said Hallam, sharply.
"No, no, darling; let me speak--this time," said Mrs Hallam,
entreatingly. "I know it was out of the genuine goodness and pity of
your heart that you opened your door to him. Now you have done all you
need, let him go."
Hallam shook his head.
"Think of the past, and the terrible troubles he brought upon you."
"Oh, no! that was all a mistake," said Hallam, quickly. "Poor brute! he
was as ill-treated as I was, and now you want him kicked out."
"No, no, dear; part from him kindly; but he was the cause of much of
your suffering."
"No, he was not," said Hallam, quickly. "That was all a mistake. Poor
Steve was always a good friend to me. He suffered along with me in that
cursed hole, and he shall have his share of the comfort now."
"No, no, do not say you wish him to stay."
"But I do say it," cried Hallam, angrily. "He is my best friend, and he
will stay. Hang it, woman, am I to be cursed with the presence of your
friends who sent me out here and not have the company of my own?"
"Robert!--husband!--don't speak to me like that."
"But I do speak to you like that. Here is that wretched old yachtsman
forcing his company upon me day after day, insisting upon coming to the
house, and reminding me by his presence who I am, and what I have been."
"Darling, Sir Gordon ignores the past, and is grieved, I know, at the
terrible mistake that brought you here. He wishes to show you this by
his kindness to us all."
"Let him keep his kindness till it is asked for," growled Hallam. "He
sits upon me like a nightmare. I don't feel that the place is my own
when he is here. As for Bayle, he has had the good sense to stay away
lately."
Mrs Hallam's eyes were full of despair as she listened.
"I hate Sir Gordon coming here. He and Bayle have between them made
that girl despise me, and look down upon me every time we speak, while I
am lavishing money upon her, and she has horses and carriage, jewels and
dress equal to any girl in the colony."
"Robert, dear, you are not saying all this from your heart."
"Indeed, but I am," he cried angrily.
"No, no! And Julie--she loves you dearly. It is for her sake I ask
this," and she pointed to Crellock where he lay.
"Let sleeping dogs lie," said Hallam, with a meaning laugh. "Poor
Steve! I don't like him, but he has been a faithful mate to me, and I'm
not going to turn round upon him now."
"But for Julie's sake!"
"I'm thinking about Julie, my dear," he said, nodding his head; "and as
for Steve--there, just you make yourself comfortable about him. There's
no harm in him; he is faithful as a dog to me, and if I behaved badly he
might bite."
"You need not be unkind to Mr Crellock if he has been what you say. I
only ask you for our child's sake to let him leave here."
"Impossible; he is my partner."
"Yes, you intimated that. In your business."
"Speculations," said Hallam quietly. "There, that will do."
"But, Robert--"
"That will do!" he roared fiercely. "Stephen Crellock must live here!
Do you hear--_must_! Now _go_ to bed."
"A woman's duty," she whispered softly, "is to obey," and she obeyed.
She obeyed, while another six months glided away, each month filling her
heart more and more with despair as she shunned her child's questioning
eyes and fought on, a harder battle every day, to keep herself in the
belief that the pure gold was still beneath the blackening tarnish, and
that her idol was not made of clay.
It was a terrible battle, for her eyes refused to be blinded longer by
the loving veil she cast over them. The appealing, half-wondering looks
of her child increased her suffering, while an idea, that filled her
with horror, was growing day by day, till it was assuming proportions
from which she shrank in dread.