Chapter X: Part 10

"Ah," he sighed, as they walked slowly down the street.

"Gather your rosebuds while you may,
Old Time is still a-flying.

"You and I have never been rosebud gatherers, Christie Bayle. It will give us the better opportunity for watching those who are. Bayle, old friend, we must look out: there must be no handsome, plausible scoundrel to come and cull that fragrant little bloom--we must not have another sweet young life wrecked--like hers." He made a backward motion with his head towards the house they had left.

"Heaven forbid!" cried Bayle anxiously; and his countenance was full of wonder and dismay.

"You must look out, sir, look out," said Sir Gordon, thumping his cane.

"But she is a mere girl yet."

"Pish! man; tush! man. It is your mere girls who form these fancies. What have you been about?"

"About?" said Bayle. "About? I don't know. I have thought of such a thing as my little pupil forming an attachment, but it seemed to be a thing of the far-distant future."

Sir Gordon shook his head.

"There is nothing then now?"

"Oh, absurd! Why, she is only eighteen!"

"Eighteen!" said Gordon sharply; "and at eighteen girls are only cutting their teeth and wearing pinafores, eh? Go to: blind mole of a parson! Why, millions of them lose their hearts long before that. Come, come, man, wake up! A pretty watchman of that fair sweet tower you are, to have never so much as thought of the enemy, when already he may be making his approach." Bayle turned to him, looking half-bewildered, but the look passed off.

"No," he said firmly; "the enemy is not in sight yet, and you shall not have cause to speak to me again like, that."

"That's right, Bayle; that's right. Dear, dear," he sighed as they walked slowly towards the city, "how time does gallop on! It seems just one step from Millicent Luttrell's girlhood to that of her child. Yes, yes, yes: these young people increase, and grow so rapidly that they fill up the world and shoulder us old folk over the edge."

"Unless they have yachts," said Bayle, smiling. "Plenty of room at sea."

"Ah, to be sure; that reminds me. I have been at sea. Man, man, what an impostor you are."

"I!" exclaimed Bayle, looking round at his companion in a startled manner.

"To be sure. Poor lady! She has been confiding to me while you were chatting with little Julia about the piano."

Bayle gave an angry stamp.

"And your careful management of the remains of her husband's property."

Bayle knit his brow and increased his pace.

"No, no," cried Sir Gordon, snatching at and taking his arm. "No running away from unpleasant truths, Christie Bayle. You paid the counsel for Hallam's defence, did you not?"

Bayle nodded shortly, and uttered an angry ejaculation.

"And there was not a shilling left when Hallam was gone?"

No answer.

"Come, come, speak. I am going to have the truth, my friend: priesthood and deception must not go hand in hand. Now then, did Hallam have any money?"

"If he had it would have been handed over to Dixons' Bank," said Bayle sharply. "I should have seen it done."

"Hah! I thought so. Then look here, sir, you have been investing your money for the benefit of that poor woman and her child."

No answer.

"Christie Bayle: do you love that woman still?"

"Sir Gordon! No; I will not be angry. Yes; as a man might love a dear sister smitten by affliction; and her child as if she were my own."

"Hah! and you have had invested so much money--your own, for their benefit. Why have you done this?"

"I thought it was my duty towards the widow and fatherless in their affliction," said Bayle simply; and Sir Gordon turned and peered round in the brave, honest face at his side to find it slightly flushed, but ready to meet his gaze with fearless frankness.

"Ah," sighed Sir Gordon at last, "it was not fair."

"Not fair?" said Bayle wonderingly.

"No, sir. You might have let me do half."

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER THREE.

BY THE FIRE'S GLOW.

"Won't you have the lamp lit, Miss Millicent?"

"No, Thisbe, not yet," said Mrs Hallam, in a low, dreamy voice, and without a word the faithful follower of her mistress in trouble went softly out, closing the door, and leaving mother and daughter alone.

"She's got one of her fits on," mused Thisbe. "Ah, how it does come over me sometimes like a temptation--just about once a month ever since--to have one good go at her and tell her I told her so; that it was all what might be expected of wedding a handsome man. `Didn't I warn you?' I could say. `Didn't I tell you how it would be?' But no: I couldn't say a word to the poor dear, and her going on believing in the bad scamp as she does all these years. She's different to me. It's just for all the world like a temptation that comes over me, driving me like to speak, but I've kept my mouth shut all these years and I'm going to do it still."

Thisbe had reached her little brightly-kept kitchen, where she stood thoughtfully gazing at the fire, with one hand upon her hip, for some minutes.

Then a peculiar change came upon Thisbe's hard face. It seemed as if it had been washed over with something sweet, which softened it; then it suggested the idea that she was about to sneeze, and ended by a violent spasmodic twitch, quite a convulsion. Thisbe's body remained motionless, though her face was altered, and by degrees her eyes, after brightening and sparkling, grew suffused and dreamy, as she gazed straight before her and seemed to be thinking very deeply. Her countenance was free from the spasm now, and as the candle shone upon it, it brought prominently into notice the fact that in her love of cleanliness Thisbe was not so particular as she might have been in the process of rinsing; for the fact was patent that she rubbed herself profusely with soap, and left enough upon her face after her ablutions to produce the effect of an elastic varnish or glaze.

Everything was very still, the only sounds being the dull wooden tick of the Dutch clock, and the drowsy chirp of an asthmatic cricket, which seemed to have wedded itself somewhere in a crack behind the grate, and to be bemoaning its inability to get out; while the clock ticked hoarsely, as if its life were a burden, and it were heartily sick of having that existence renewed by a nightly pulling up of the two black iron sausages that hung some distance below its sallow face.

Suddenly Thisbe walked sharply to the fire, seized the poker, and cleared the bottom bar. This done she replaced the poker, and planted one foot upon the fender to warm, and one hand upon the mantel-piece with so much inadvertence that she knocked down the tinder-box, and had to pick the flint and steel from out of the ashes with the brightly polished tongs.

"I don't know what's come to me," she said sharply, as soon as the tinder-box was replaced. "Think of her holding fast to him all these years, and training up my bairn to believe in him as if he was a noble martyr! My word, it's a curious thing for a woman to be taken like that with a man, and no matter what he does, to be always believing him!"

Thisbe pursed up her lips, and twitched her toes up and down as they rested upon the fender, while she directed her conversation at the golden caverns of the fire.

"They say Gorringe the tailor used to beat his wife, but that woman always looked happy, and I've seen her smile on him as if there wasn't such another man in the world."

Just then the clock gave such a wheeze that Thisbe started and stared at it.

"Quite makes me nervous," she said, turning back to the fire. "What with the thinking and worry, and her keeping always in the same mind-- oh, my!"

She took her hand from the mantel-piece to clap it upon its fellow as a sudden thought struck her, which made her look aghast.

"If he did!" she said after a pause. "And yet she expects it some day. Oh, dear me! oh, dear me! what weak, foolish, trusting things women are! They take a fancy to a man, and then because you don't believe in him, too, it's hoity-toity and never forgive me. Well, poor soul! perhaps it's all for the best. It may comfort her in her troubles. I wonder what Tom Porter looks like now," she said suddenly, and then looked sharply and guiltily round to see if her words had been heard. "I declare I ought to be ashamed of myself," she said, and rushing at some work, she plumped herself down and began to stitch with all her might.

In the little parlour all was very quiet, save the occasional footstep in the street. The blind was not drawn down, and the faint light from outside mingled with the glow from the fire, which threw up the face of Julia Hallam, where she sat dreamily gazing at the embers, against the dark transparency, giving her the look of a painting by one of the Italian masters of the past.

At the old-fashioned square piano her mother was seated with her hands resting upon the keys which were silent. Farther distant from the fire her figure, graceful still, seemed melting into a darker transparency, one which grew deeper and deeper, till in the corner of the room and right and left of the fireplace the shadows seemed to be almost solid. Then the accustomed eye detected the various objects that furnished the room, melting, as it were, away.

Only on one spot did there seem a discordant note in the general harmony of the softly glowing scene, and that was where the rays from a newly-lighted street lamp shone straight upon the wall and across the picture of Robert Hallam, cutting it strangely asunder, and giving to the upper portion of the face a weird and almost ghastly look.

Thisbe's steps had died out and her kitchen door had closed, but the musings of the two women had been interrupted and did not go back to their former current.

All at once, soft as a memory of the bygone, the notes of the piano began to sound, and Julia changed her position, resting one arm upon the chair by her side and listening intently to a dreamy old melody that brought back to her the drawing-room in the old house at Castor--a handsomely-furnished, low-ceiled room with deep window-seat, on whose cushion she had often knelt to watch the passing vehicles while her mother played that very tune in the half light.

So dreamy, so softened, as if mingled there with a strange sadness. Now just as it was then, one of the vivid memories of childhood, Weber's "Last Waltz," an air so sweet, so full of melancholy, that it seems wondrous that our parents could have danced to its strains, till we recall the doleful minor music of minuet, coranto, and saraband. Dancing must have been a serious matter in those days.

Soft and sweet, chord after chord, each laden with its memory to Julia Hallam.

Her mother was playing that when her father came in hastily one night, and was so angry because there were no lights; that night when she stole away to Thisbe.

She was playing it too that afternoon when Grandmamma Luttrell came and was in such low spirits, and would not tell the reason why. Again, that night when she shrank away from her father, and he flung her hands from him, and said that angry word.

Memory after memory came back from the past as Millicent Hallam played softly on, making her child's face lustrous, eyes grow more dreamy, the curved neck bend lower, and the tears begin to gather, till, with quite a start, the young girl raised her head and saw the rays from the gas-lamp shining across the picture beyond her mother's dimly-seen profile.

Julia rose to cross to her mother's side, and knelt down to pass her arms round the shapely waist and there rest.

"Go on playing," she said softly. "Now tell me about poor papa."

The notes of the old melody seemed to have an additional strain of melancholy as they floated softly through the room, sometimes almost dying away, while after waiting a few minutes they formed the accompaniment to the sad story of Millicent Hallam's love and faith, told for the hundredth time to her daughter.

For Millicent talked on without a tremor in her voice, every word distinct and firm, and yet softly sweet and full of tenderness, as it seemed to her that she was telling the story of a martyr's sufferings to his child.

"And all these years, and we have heard so little," sighed Julia. "Poor papa! Poor father!"

The music ceased as she spoke, but went on again as she paused.

"Waiting, my child; waiting as I wait, and as my child waits, for the time when he will be declared free, and will take his place again among honourable men."

"But, mother," said Julia, "could not Mr Bayle or Sir Gordon have done more; petitioned the king, and pointed out this grievous wrong?"

"I could not ask Sir Gordon, my child. There were reasons why he could not act; but I did all that was possible year after year till, in my despair, I found that I must wait."

"How glad he must be of your letters!" said Julia suddenly.

Millicent Hallam sighed.

"I suppose he cannot write to us. Perhaps he feels that it would pain us. Mother, darling, was I an ill-conditioned, perverse child?"

"My Julia," said Mrs Hallam, turning to her and drawing her closely to her breast, "what a question! No. Why do you ask?"

"Because I seem just to recollect myself shrinking away from papa as if I were sulky or obstinate. It was as if I was afraid of him."

"Oh, no, no!" cried Mrs Hallam anxiously, "you were very young then, and your poor father was constrained, and troubled with many anxieties, which made him seem cold and distant. It was his great love for us, my child."

"Yes, dear mother, his great love for us--his misfortune."

"His misfortune," sighed Mrs Hallam.

"But some day--when he returns--oh, mother! how we will love him, and make him happy! How we will force him to forget the troubles of the past!"

"My darling!" whispered Mrs Hallam, pressing her fondly to her heart.

"Do you think papa had many enemies, then?"

"I used to think so, my child, but that feeling has passed away. I seem to see more clearly now that those who caused his condemnation were but the creatures of circumstances. It was the villain who seemed to be your father's evil genius caused all our woe. He made me shiver on the morning of our wedding, coming suddenly upon us as he did, as if he were angry with your father for being so happy."

"But could we not do something?" said Julia earnestly. "It seems to be so sad--year after year goes by, and we sit idle."

"Yes," said Mrs Hallam with a sob; "but that is all we can do, my child--sit and wait, sit and wait, but keeping the home ready for our darling when he comes--the home here--and in our hearts."

"He is always there, mother," said Julia in a low, sweet voice, "always. How I remember him, with his soft dark hair, and his dark eyes! I think I used to be a little afraid of him."

"Because he seemed stern, my child, that was all. You loved him very dearly."

"He shall see how I will love him when he returns, mother," she added after a pause. "Do you think he gives much thought to us?"

"Think, my darling? I know he prays day by day for the time when he may return. Ah!" she sighed to herself, "he reproached me once with teaching his child not to love him. He could not say so now."

"I wonder how long it will be?" said Julia thoughtfully. "Do you think he will be much changed?"

She glanced up at the picture.

"Changed, Julia?" said her mother, taking the sweet, earnest face between her hands, to shower down kisses upon it, kisses mingled with tears, "no, not in the least. It is twelve long years since, now; heaven only knows how long to me! Years when, but for you, my darling, I should have sunk beneath my burden. I think I should have gone mad. In all those years you have been the link to bind me to life--to make me hope and strive and wait, and now I feel sometimes as if the reward were coming, as if this long penance were at an end. My love! my husband! come to me! oh, come!"

She uttered these last words with so wild and hysterical a cry that Julia was alarmed.

"Mother," she whispered, "you are ill!"

"No, no, my child; it is only sometimes that I feel so deeply stirred. Your words about his being changed seemed to move me to the quick. He will not be changed; his hair will be grey, his face lined with the furrows of increasing age and care; but he himself--my dear husband, your loving father--will be at heart the same, and we shall welcome him back to a life of rest and peace."

"Yes, yes!" cried Julia, catching the infection of her mother's enthusiasm; "and it will be soon, will it not, mother--it will be soon?"

"Let us pray that it may, my child."

"But, mother, why do we not go to him?" Mrs Hallam shivered slightly. "We should have been near him all these years, and we might have seen him. Oh, mother! if it had been only once! Why did you not go?" She rose from her knees, as if moved by her excitement. "Why, I would have gone a hundred times as far!" she said excitedly. "No distance should have kept me from the husband that I loved."

"Julie! Julie! are you reproaching me?"

"Mother!" cried the girl, flinging herself upon her neck, "as if I could reproach you!"

"It would not be just, my child," said Mrs Hallam, caressing the soft dark head, "for I have tried so hard."

"Yes, yes, I know, dear; and I have known ever since I have been old enough to think."

"In every letter I have sent I have prayed for his leave to come out and join him--that I might be near him, for I dared not take the responsibility upon myself with you."

"Mother!"

"If I had been alone in the world, Julia, I should have gone years upon years ago; but I felt that I should be committing a breach of trust to take his young, tender child all those thousands of miles across the sea, to a land whose society is wild, and often lawless."

"And so you asked papa to give his consent?"

"Every time I wrote to him, Julia--letters full of trust in the future, letters filled with the hope I did not feel. I begged him to give me his consent that I might come."

"And he has not replied, mother?"

"Not yet, my child. Innocent and guilty alike have a long probation to pass through."

"But he might have written, dear."

"How do we know that, Julia?" said Mrs Hallam, with a shade of sternness in her voice. "I have studied the matter deeply from the reports and dispatches, and often the poor prisoners are sent far up the country as servants--almost slaves--to the settlers. In places sometimes where there are no fellow-creatures save the blacks for miles upon miles. No roads, Julia; no post; no means of communication."

"My poor father!" sighed Julia, sinking upon the carpet, half sitting, half kneeling, with her hands clasped upon her knees, and her gaze directed up at the dimly-seen picture on the wall.

"Yes, my child, I know all," said Mrs Hallam. "I know him and his pride. Think of a man like him, innocent, and yet condemned; dragged from his home like a common felon, and forced to herd with criminals of the lowest class. Is it not natural that his heart should rebel against society, and that he should proudly make his stand upon his innocency, and wait in silent suffering for the day when the law shall say: `Innocent and injured man, come back from the desert. You have been deeply wronged!'"

"Yes, dear mother. Poor father! But not one letter in all these years!"

"Julia, my child, you pain me," cried Mrs Hallam excitedly. "When you speak like that, your words seem to imply that he has had the power to send letter or message. He is your father--my husband. Child, you must learn to think of him with the same faith as I."

"Indeed I will, dear," cried Julia passionately; and then she started to her feet, for there was a quick, decided knock at the front door.

Mrs Hallam hurriedly tried to compose her features; and as Thisbe's step was heard in the passage she drew in her breath, gazed wildly at the picture, just as Julia drew down the blind and blotted it from her sight. Then the door was opened, and their visitor came in the centre of the glow shed by the passage light.

"Aha! In the dark!" cried Bayle in his cheery voice, as Thisbe opened the door. "How I wish I had been born a lady! I always envy you that pleasant hour you spend in the half light, gazing into the fire."

Julia echoed his laugh in a pleasant silvery trill, as she hastily lit the lamp, Bayle watching her as the argand wick gradually burned round, and she put on the glass chimney, the light throwing up her handsome young face against the gloom till she lifted the great dome-shaped globe, which emitted a musical sound before being placed over the lamp, and throwing Julia's countenance once more into the shade.

"What are you laughing at?" said Bayle.

"At the idea of our Mr Bayle being idle for an hour, sitting and thinking over the fire," said Julia playfully, to draw his attention from her mother's disturbed countenance.

The attempt was a failure, for Bayle saw clearly that something was wrong; that pain and suffering had been there before him; and he sighed as he asked himself what he could do more, in his unselfish way, to chase earthly cares from that quiet home.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER FOUR.

THE DREADED MESSAGE.

There was quite a change in the little house in the Clerkenwell Square. Life had been very calm and peaceful there for Julia, though she made no friends. Any advances made by neighbours were gravely and coldly repelled by Mrs Hallam.

Once, when she had felt injured by her mother's refusal of an invitation for her to some young people's party, and had raised her eyes reproachfully to her face, Mrs Hallam had taken her in her arms, kissing her tenderly.

"Not yet, my child; not yet," she whispered. "We must wait."

Julia coloured, and then turned pale, for she understood her mother's meaning. They stood aloof from ordinary society, and they possessed a secret.

But now, since Sir Gordon had been brought to the house by Christie Bayle, their life appeared to Julia to be changed. Her mother seemed less oppressed and sad during the evenings when Sir Gordon came, as he did now frequently. There was so much to listen to in the animated discussions between the banker and the clergyman; and as they discussed some political question with great animation, Julia leaned forward smiling and slightly flushed, as Bayle, with all the force of a powerful orator, delivered his opinions, that were, as a rule, more sentimental than sound, more full of heart than logic.

He would always end with a fine peroration, from the force of habit; and Julia would clap her hands while Mrs Hallam smiled.

"Wait a bit, my dear," Sir Gordon would say, nodding his head, "one story is good till the other is told."

Then, in the coolest and most matter-of-fact way, he would proceed to demolish Bayle's arguments one by one, battering them down till the structure crumbled into nothingness.

All this, too, was without effort. He simply drew logical conclusions, pointed out errors, showed what would be the consequences of following the clergyman's line of argument, and ended by giving Julia a little nod.

At the beginning the latter would feel annoyed, for her sympathies had all been with Bayle's plans; then some clever point would take her attention; her young reason would yield to the ingenuity of the highly-cultivated old man's attack; and finally she would mentally range herself upon his side, and reward him with plaudits from her little white hands, darting a triumphant look now at Bayle, as if saying, "There we have won!"

Highly good-tempered were all these encounters; and they were always followed by another harmony, that of music, Bayle playing, as of old, to Millicent's accompaniment; more often to that of her child.

It was a calm and peaceful little English home, that every day grew more attractive to the old club-lounger and lover of the sea.

He coloured slightly the first time Bayle came and found him there. The next time he nodded, as much as to say, "I thought I would run up." The next it seemed a matter of course that an easy-chair should be ready for him in one corner, where he took his place after pressing Mrs Hallam's hand warmly, and drawing Julia to him to kiss her as if she were his child.

There was a delicacy, a display of tender reverence, that disarmed all suspicion of there being an undercurrent at work. "He is one of my oldest friends," Mrs Hallam had said to herself; "he feels sympathy for me in my trouble, and he seems to love Julie with a father's love. Why should I estrange him? Why keep Julie from his society?"

It never entered into her mind that, by the sentence of the law, she was, as it were, a woman in the position of a widow, for her husband was socially dead. The seed of such an idea would have fallen upon utterly barren ground, and never have put forth germinating shoots.

No; there was the one thought ever present in her heart, that sooner or later her husband's innocence would be proclaimed, and then this terrible present would glide away, to be forgotten in the happiness to come.

Sir Gordon, with all his frank openness of manner, saw everything. The slightest word was weighed; each action was watched; and when he returned to his chambers in St James's--a tiny suite of very close and dark rooms, which Tom Porter treated as if they were the cabins of a yacht--he would cast up the observations he had made.

"Bayle means the widow," he said to himself, as he sat alone; "yes, he means the widow. She is a widow. Well, he is a young man, and I am-- well, an old fool."

Another night he was off upon the other tack.

"It's an insult to her," he said indignantly. "Bless her grand, true, sweet, innocent heart! She never thinks of him but as the good friend he is. She will never think of any one but that rascal. Good heavens! what a fate for her! What a woman to have won!"

The thought so moved him that he paced his little bed-room for some time uneasily.

"As for that fellow Bayle," he cried, "I see through him. He means to marry my sweet little flower Julie. Hah!"

He sat down smiling, as if there was a pleasant fragrance in the very thought of the fair young girl that refreshed him, and sent him into a dreamy state full of visions of youth and innocence.

"I don't blame him," he said, after a pause. "I should do the same if I were his age. Yes," he said firmly, and as if to crush down some offered opposition, "even if she be a convict's daughter. It is not her fault. We do not mark out our own paths."

Again, another night, and Sir Gordon arrested himself several times over in the act of spoiling his carefully-trimmed nails by nibbling them--a somewhat painful operation--with his false teeth.

"It's time I died; I honestly believe it's time I died," he said testily. "When a man has grown to an age in which he spends his days suspecting the motives of his fellow-creatures--hah! of his best friends--it's time he died, for every year he lives makes him worse-- gives him more to answer for."

"Poor Bayle!" he continued, shaking hands with himself, "he looks upon each of those two women as something holy."

"No," he mused, "that does not express it; there's something too fatherly, too brotherly. No, that's not it. Too friendly; I suppose that's it; but friendship seems such a weak, pitiful word to express his feelings towards them."

"Christie Bayle, my dear friend," he said aloud, as he rose and gazed straight before him, "I ask your pardon; and--heaven helping me--I'll never suspect you again."

The old man seemed to feel better after this; and throwing himself into an easy-chair, he smiled and looked wrinkled--as he had a way of looking in his dressing-room--and happy.

At first Sir Gordon had gone to the little house at Clerkenwell feeling out of his element, and with an uncomfortable sensation upon him that the neighbours--poor souls who were too much occupied with the solution of the problem of how to get a sufficiency of bread and meat to preserve life--were watching him.

After a second and third visit, this uneasiness wore off, and he found himself walking proudly up to the house, smiling at Thisbe, who only gave him a hard look in return, consequent upon his remark concerning Tom Porter.

Sometimes Christie Bayle would be there. As often not. But the chair was always ready for him, and Julia took his hat and stick.

It was generally after his dinner at the club that he found his way up there; and on these occasions Thisbe asked no questions. The moment she had closed the door and shown the visitor into the little parlour, she went downstairs and put on the kettle.

As a rule, precisely at nine, Thisbe took up the supper-tray with its simple contents; but on these evenings the supper-tray gave place to the tea-tray, and Sir Gordon sat for quite an hour sipping his tea and talking, Julia crossing now and then to fetch his cup.

One pleasant evening, when the chill of winter had passed away, and the few ragged trees in the square garden, washed less sooty than usual by the cold rains, were asserting that there was truth in the genial, soft breaths of air that came floating from the west, and that it really was spring, Mrs Hallam, Julia, and Sir Gordon were seated at tea in the little parlour with the window open, and the sound of the footsteps without coming in regular beats. From time to time Julia walked to the window to look out, turning her head aside to lay her cheek against the pane and gaze as far up the side of the square as she could, giving Sir Gordon a picture to watch of which he seemed never to tire, as he sat with half-closed eyes. Then the girl returned to seat herself at the piano and softly play a few notes.

"That must be he," she said, suddenly, and Sir Gordon's face twitched.

"No, my dear," said Mrs Hallam, quietly; "that is not his step."

Sir Gordon's hair seemed to move suddenly down towards his eyebrows, and his lips tightened, so did his eyelids, as he gave a sharp glance at mother and daughter. Then his conscience gave him a twinge, and he made a brave effort to master his unpleasant thoughts.

"Bayle is uncommonly late to-night, is he not?" he said.

"He is late like this sometimes," said Mrs Hallam. "He works very hard amongst the people, and attends parish meetings, where there may be long discussions."

"Humph, yes, so I suppose. I hope he does some good."

"Some good?" cried Julia excitedly. "Oh, you don't know how much!"

"And you do, I suppose," said Sir Gordon in rather a constrained tone of voice.

"Oh, not a hundredth part!" cried Julia naively, "Oh, Sir Gordon, I wish you were half so good a man!"

"Julia!" exclaimed Mrs Hallam.

"Upon my word, young--bless my soul! I!--tut, tut!--hush! hush! Mrs Hallam."

Sir Gordon began angrily, but his testiness was of a few moments' duration, and he laughed at first in a forced, half-irritable manner, then more heartily, and ended by becoming quite overcome with mirth, and wiping the tears from his eyes while mother and daughter exchanged glances.

"And here have I been deferential, and treating you, Miss Julie, like a grown-up young lady, while all the time you are only one of those innocent little maidens who say unpleasant truths before elderly people."

"Oh, Sir Gordon," cried Julia, colouring deeply, "I am so sorry!"

"Oh, sorrow is no good after such a charge as that!" said Sir Gordon with mock severity. "So you and your mamma have determined that I am a very wicked old man, eh?"

"Sir Gordon!" cried Julia, taking his hand. "Indeed, indeed, I only meant that Mr Bayle was the best and kindest of friends."

"While I was the most testy, exacting, and--"

"Indeed, no," cried Julia, with spirit; "and I will not have you condemn yourself. Next to Mr Bayle, mamma and I like you better than any one we know."

"Ah! well, here is Bayle," said Sir Gordon, as a knock was heard; and the curate appeared next minute in the doorway.

The lamp had been lit, and his face looked so serious and pale that Sir Gordon noticed the fact on the instant.

"Why, Bayle," he cried warmly, "how bad you look! Not ill?"

"Ill? No; oh, no!" he said quietly. "I have been detained by business."

Mrs Hallam looked at him anxiously, for beneath the calm there was ever a strange state of excitement waiting to break forth. For years she had been living in the expectation that the next day some important news would come from her husband. Letters she had very few, but the postman's knock made her turn pale and place her hand to her heart, to check its wild beatings, while the coming of a stranger to the house had before now completely unnerved her. It was but natural, then, that she should become agitated by Bayle's manner. A thousand--ten thousand things might have happened to disturb her old friend, but in her half-hysterical state she could find but one cause--her own troubles; and, starting up with her hand on her breast, she exclaimed:

"You have news for me!"

Christie Bayle had no more diplomatic power than a child, perhaps less than some; and he sank back in his chair, with his hand half-raised to his lips, gazing at her in a pained, appealing manner that excited her further.

"Yes," she cried, "you are keeping something back. You think I cannot bear it, but I can. Yes, I am strong. Have I not borne all this pain these twelve years? And do you think me a child that you treat me so? Speak, I say--speak!"

"My dear Mrs Hallam," began Sir Gordon soothingly.

"Hush, sir!" cried the trembling woman. "Let him speak. Mr Bayle, why do you torture me--you, my best friend? What have I done that you--ah! I see now. I--Julie--my child--he is dead!--he is dead!"

Julia had started to her side and caught her in her arms as she burst into a passionate wail, the first display of the wild despair in her heart that Bayle had seen for many years.

"No, no!" he cried, starting up and speaking with energy. "Mrs Hallam, you are wrong. He is alive and well."

Millicent Hallam threw up her hands, clasped them together, reeled, and would have fallen but for her child's sustaining arms. It was as if a sudden vertigo had seized her, but it passed as quickly as it came. Years of suffering had strengthened as well as weakened, and the woman's power of will was tremendous.

"I am better," she said in a hoarse, strangely altered voice. "Hush, Julie--I _can_ bear it," she cried imperiously. "Tell me all. You have heard of my husband?"

"Yes, Mrs Hallam, yes; but be calm and you shall know all."

"I am calm."

Christie Bayle felt the cold dew stand upon his brow as he faced the pale, stern face before him. It did not seem the Millicent Hallam he knew, but one at enmity with him for holding back from her that which was her very life.

"Why do you not speak?" she said angrily; and she took a step forward.

In a flash, as it were, Christie Bayle seemed to see into the future, and in that future he saw, as it were, the simple happy little home he had made for the woman he had once loved crumbling away into nothingness, the years of peace gone for ever, and a dark future of pain and misery usurping their place. The dew upon his brow grew heavier, and as Sir Gordon's eyes ranged from one to the other he could read that the anguish in the countenance of the man he had made his friend was as great as that suffered by the woman to whom, in the happy past, they had talked of love. He started as Bayle spoke; his voice sounded so calm and emotionless; at times it was slightly husky, but it gained strength as he went on, its effect being, as he took Mrs Hallam's hands to make her sink upon her knees at his feet her anger gone, and the calm of his spirit seeming to influence her own.

"I hesitated to speak," he said, "until I had prepared you for what I had to say."

"Prepared?" she cried. "What have all these terrible years been but my probation?"

"Yes, I know," said Bayle; "but still I hesitated. Yes," he said quickly, "I have heard from Mr Hallam. He has written to me--enclosing a letter for his wife." As he spoke he took the letter from his breast, and Mrs Hallam caught it, reading the direction with swimming eyes.

"Julie!" she panted, starting to her feet, "read--read it--quickly-- whisper, my child!"

She turned her back to the men, and held the unopened letter beneath the lamp.

Julia stretched out her hand to take the letter, but her mother drew it quickly back, with an alarmed look at her child, holding it tightly with both hands the next moment to the light; and Julia read through her tears in a low quick voice:

"Private and confidential.

"To Mrs Robert Hallam, formerly Miss Millicent Luttrell, of King's Castor, in the county of Lincoln.

"N.B.--If the lady to whom this letter is addressed be dead, it is to be returned unopened to--

"Robert Hallam,--

"9749,--

"Nulla Nulla Prison,--

"Port Jackson."

"Mrs Hallam," said Bayle in his calm, clear voice, "Sir Gordon and I are going. You would like to be alone. Could you bear to see us again--say to-night--in an hour or two?"

"Yes, yes," she cried, catching his hand; "you will come back. There! you see I am calm now. Dear friends, make some excuse for me if I seem half mad." Sir Gordon took the hand that Bayle dropped, and kissed it respectfully.

Bayle was holding Julia's.

"God protect you both, and give you counsel," he whispered, half speaking to himself. "Julie, you will help her now."

"Help her!" panted Julia. "Why, it is a time of joy, Mr Bayle; and you don't seem glad."

"Glad!" he said in a low voice, looking at her wistfully. "Heaven knows how I should rejoice if there were good news for both."

The next minute he and Sir Gordon were arm-in-arm walking about the square; for though Bayle had left the place intending to go to his own rooms, Mrs Hallam's house seemed to possess an attraction for them both, and they stayed within sight of the quiet little home.

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.