This Man's Wife Part 86

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 att.i.tude had a despicable, cringing, trampled-down look that now seemed to pa.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e 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 coa.r.s.e 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, coa.r.s.e-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 pa.s.sionate 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 a.s.signed servants."

"a.s.signed 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--"