This Man's Wife

Volume Four – Chapter Twenty.

Overheard

Sir Gordon Bourne looked ten years younger as he walked towards the cottage on the bluff. The hill was steep to climb, and the sun was torrid in its heat; but he forgot the discomfort and climbed higher and higher till he reached the rough fence that surrounded the grounds, and there stood, with his hat off, wiping his brow and gazing at the glorious prospect of sea and land.

“I feel almost like a good fairy this morning,” he said, with a laugh. “Ah! how beautiful it all is, and what a pity that such an Eden should be made the home of England’s worst.”

He opened the rough gate and entered the grounds, that were admirably kept by a couple of convict servants, watched over by Tom Porter, crossed a patch of lawn, and was about to go up to the house, but a pleasantly-placed rustic seat, beneath the shelter of a gum-tree, and nearly surrounded by Austral shrubs, emitting their curious aromatic scent in the hot sunshine, tempted him to rest; and in a few minutes, overcome by the exertions of the morning, his head bowed down upon his breast, and he dropped into a light doze.

He was aroused by voices – one low, deep, and earnest, the other low and deep, but silvery and sweet, and with a tender ring in it that brought up memories of a little, low-roofed drawing-room in the quiet Lincolnshire town; and a curious dimness came over the old man’s eyes.

The speakers were behind him, hidden by a veil of soft grey-green leaves; and as Sir Gordon involuntarily listened, one voice said in trembling tones:

“I dared not even look forward to such an end.”

“But ever since others began to set me thinking of such things, I have waited, for I used to say, some day he will ask me to be his wife.”

“And you loved me, Julie?”

“Loved you? Did you not know?”

“But like this?”

“Like this? Always; for when you came, all trouble seemed to go, and I felt that I was safe.”

The voices paused, and Sir Gordon sat up, leaning upon his stick and thinking aloud.

“Well, I have always hoped it would be so – no, not always; and now it seems as if he were going to rob me of a child.”

He sat gazing straight before him, seeing nothing of the soft blue sea and sky, nor the many shades of grey and green that rolled before his eyes, for they were filled with the face of Julia Hallam.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Why not? Ah, Bayle! Where is Julie?”

“With her mother now. Sir Gordon – ”

“Hush! I know. I’ve nought to say but this: God bless you both!”

Volume Four – Chapter Twenty One.

Rest

There had been some talk of a speedy return to the old country, but the doctor shook his head.

“Let her live her few hours in rest and peace,” he said. “It would be madness to attempt such a thing.” And so all thought of the journey home was set aside, and Mrs Hallam was borne up to the cottage.

In her weakness she had protested, but Sir Gordon had quietly said:

“Am I your father’s oldest friend?” And then: “Have I not a right to insist – for Julie’s sake?”

She yielded, and the cottage for the next few months became their home, Bayle going down into the town, spending much of his time amongst the convicts and seeing a good deal of the Otways.

“That’s how it’s going to be,” said Mrs Otway. “I always said so, Jack.”

“Nonsense! he’s old enough to be her father.”

“Perhaps so in years; but he’s about the youngest man in his ways I ever knew, while she is old and staid for her age.”

“Time proves all things,” said Captain Otway. “Phil won’t get her, that’s certain.”

“No; that’s all over, and he is not breaking his heart about her, in spite of all the fuss at first. Well, I’m glad for some things; I shall be able to look Lady Eaton in the face.”

“A task you would very well have fulfilled, even if he had married Julia Hallam. It would take a very big Lady Eaton to frighten you, my dear. Been up to see Mrs Hallam to-day?”

The lady nodded.

“No hope?”

“Not the slightest,” said Mrs Otway quietly. Then after a pause: “Jack,” she said, “do you know, I think it would be wrong to wish her to live. What has she to live for?”

“Child – her child’s husband – their children.”

Mrs Otway shook her head.

“No; I don’t think she would ever be happy again. Poor thing! if ever woman’s heart was broken, hers was. I don’t like going up to see her, but I feel obliged. There are so few women here whom one like her would care to see. Ah, it’s a sad case!”

“Does she seem to suffer much?”

“She does not seem to, but who knows what a quiet, patient creature will bear without making a sign?”

The months glided on, and still Millicent Hallam lingered as if loth to leave the beautiful world spread before her, and on which she loved to gaze.

She had half-expected it, but it was still a surprise when Julia whispered to her, as she sat beside her couch, that she was going to be the wife of Christie Bayle.

Mrs Hallam’s eyes dilated.

“He has asked you to be his wife?” she said, in her low, sweet voice.

“No, mother,” said Julia, as she laid her head beside her, and gazed dreamily before her; “I don’t think he asked me.”

“But, my child – you said – ”

“Yes, mother dear,” said Julia innocently, “I hardly know how it came about. It has always seemed to me that some day I should be his wife. Why, I have always loved him! How could I help it?”

Mrs Hallam laid her hand upon her child’s glossy hair, and closed her eyes, wondering in herself at the simple, truthful words she had heard. One moment she felt pained, and as if it ought not to be; the next, a flood of joy seemed to send a wave through her breast, as she thought of the days when Julia would be alone in the world, and in whose charge would she rather have left her than in that of Christie Bayle?

The battle went on at intervals for days; but at last it was at an end, and she lay back calmly as she said to herself:

“Yes, it is right. Now I can be at rest!”

Another month passed. Doctor Woodhouse came, as was his custom, more as a friend than from the belief that his knowledge could be of any avail. One particular morning he stopped to lunch, and went up again afterwards to see Mrs Hallam, staying some little time. He left Julia with her, and came down to where Sir Gordon was seated on the lawn with Bayle.

The latter started up, as he saw the doctor’s face, and his eyes asked him mutely for an explanation of his look.

The doctor answered him as mutely, while Sir Gordon saw it, and rose to stand agitatedly by his chair.

“Bayle,” he whispered; “I thought I was prepared, but now it has come it seems very hard to bear!”

Bayle glided away into the house, to go upstairs, meeting Thisbe on the way wringing her hands, and blinded with her tears.

“I couldn’t bear to stop, sir – I couldn’t bear to stop,” she whispered. “It’s come – it’s come at last.”

Bayle entered the room softly, steeling his heart to bear with her he loved some agonising scene. But he paused on the threshold, almost startled by the look of peace upon the wasted face, full in the bright Southern light.

Mrs Hallam smiled as she saw him there; and as he crossed the room and knelt by her side, she laid her hand in his, and feebly took Julia’s and placed them together.

“The rest is coming now,” she said.

Julia burst into a passion of weeping.

“Mother! Mother! If you could but live!” she sobbed.

“Live? No, my darling, no. I am so tired – so worn and weary. I should faint now by the way.”

She closed her eyes, smiling at them tenderly, and for the space of an hour they watched her sleeping peacefully and well.

And as Julia sat there with her hands clasped in Christie Bayle’s strong palms, a feeling of hopefulness and peace, to which she had long been a stranger, came into her heart. The doctor had once said that there might be a change for the better if his patient’s mind were at rest, and that rest seemed to have come at last.

The afternoon had passed away, and the fast-sinking sun had turned the clear sky to gold; and as the great orb of day descended to where a low bank of clouds lay upon the horizon, it seemed to glide quickly from their view. The room, but a few moments before lit up by the refulgent glow, darkened and became gloomy; but as the glorious light streamed up in myriad rays from behind the clouds, there was still a soft flush upon the sick woman’s face.

A wondrous stillness seemed to have come upon the watchers, for the hope that had been warm in Julia’s breast was now chilled as if by some unseen presence, and she turned her frightened eyes from her mother to Bayle, and back.

“Christie!” she cried suddenly.

“Hush!”

One softly-spoken, solemn-sounding word, as Christie Bayle held fast the hand of his affianced wife, and together they sank upon their knees.

The glowing purple clouds opened slowly, and once more as from the dazzling golden gates of the great city on the farther shore, a wondrous light streamed forth, filling the chamber and brightening the features of the dying woman.

The pain and agony of the past with their cruel lines had gone, and the beautiful countenance shone with that look of old that he who knelt there knew so well. But it was etherealised in its sweet calm, its restfulness, as the still, bright eyes gazed calmly and trustfully far out to sea.

Julia’s fingers tightened on her mother’s chilling hand, and she gazed with awe at the rapt look and gentle smile that flickered a few moments on the trembling lips.

Then, as the clouds closed in once more and the room grew dark, the passionate yearning cry of the young heart burst forth in that one word, “Mother?”

But there was no response – no word spoken, save that as they knelt there in the ever darkening room Christie Bayle’s lips parted to whisper, in tones so low, that they were like a sigh:

”‘Come unto Me all ye that are weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’”

Volume Four – Chapter Twenty Two.

The Doctor’s Garden

The place the same. Not a change visible in all those years. The old church with its mossed tiles and lichened walls; the familiar tones of the chiming clock that gave notice of the passing hours, and at the top of the market-place the old Bank – Dixons’ Bank, at whose door that drab-looking man stood talking for a few minutes – talking to Mr Trampleasure before going home to feed his fishes in the waning light, and then take Mrs Thickens up to the doctor’s house to spend the evening.

And that evening. The garden unchanged in the midst of change. The old golden glow coming through the clump of trees in the west beyond the row of cucumber-frames – those trees that Dr Luttrell told his wife he must cut down because they took off so much of the afternoon sun. But he had not cut them down. He would as soon have thought of lopping off his own right hand.

Everything in that garden and about and in that house seemed the same at the first glance, but there had been changes in King’s Castor in the course of years.

There was a stone, for instance, growing very much weather-stained, relating the virtues of one Daniel Gemp; and there was the same verse cut in the stone that had been sent round on the funeral cards with some pieces of sponge cake, one of which cards was framed in the parlour at Gorringe’s, his crony, who still cut up cloth as of old.

Mrs Pinet, too, had passed away, and the widow who now had the house, and let lodgings, painted her pots green instead of red, and robbed the dull old place of one bit of colour.

But the doctor’s garden was the same, and so thought Christie Bayle, as he stood in the gathering gloom six months after his return to England, and shortly after his acceptance of the vicarage of King’s Castor – at his old friend’s wish.

There were the old sweet scents of the dewy earth, that familiar one of the lately cut grass; there was the old hum of a beetle winging its way round and round one of the trees; and there before him were the open French windows, and the verandah, showing the lit-up drawing-room furniture, the old globe lamps, and the candles on the piano just the same.

Had he been asleep and dreamed? and was he still the boyish curate who fell in love and failed?

Yes; there was little Miss Heathery going to the piano and laying down the reticule bag, with the tail of her white handkerchief hanging out. And there was Thickens with his hands resting on his drab trousers; and there was the doctor, and little pleasant Mrs Luttrell, going from one to the other, and staying longest by, and unable to keep her trembling hands off that tall, dark, beautiful woman, who smiled down upon her in answer to each caress.

No change, and yet how changed! How near the bottom of the hill that little grey old man, and that rosy little white-haired woman! How querulous and thin sounded Mrs Thickens’s voice in her old trivial troubadour Heathery song! The years had gone, and in spite of its likeness to the past, what a void there was – absent faces!

No; that carefully dressed old gentleman was half behind the curtain, and he has risen to cross to the doctor, pausing to pat the tall, graceful woman on the arm, and nod at her affectionately by the way. There is another familiar face, too, that of Thisbe’s in a most wonderful cap, carrying in tea, to hand round, and Tom Porter obediently “following in his commodore’s wake,” his own words, and handing bread-and-butter, sugar and cream.

And still Christie Bayle gazes on, half expecting to see the tall, dark, handsome man who cast so deep a shadow across so many lives; but instead of that the graceful figure that is so like Millicent Hallam of the past, appears framed in the window to stand there gazing out into the dark garden.

Then she turns back sharply, to answer some remark made in the little drawing-room, and looks quickly out again with hands resting on the door.

It is very dark out there, and her eyes are accustomed to the light of the drawing-room; but in a minute or so she sees that which she sought, and half runs over the dewy lawn to where she is clasped in two strong arms.

“You truant!” she says playfully, as she nestles close to him. “Come in and sing; we want you to make the place complete. Why, what are you thinking about?”

“I was thinking of the past, Julie,” he says.

She looks up at him in the starlight; and he gazes down in her glistening eyes.

“The past? Let me think of it too. Are we not one?”

And as they stand together the little English interior before them seems to fade away, and the light they gaze upon to be the glowing sunshine of the far South, blazing down in all its glory upon the grassy grave and glistening stone that mark the resting-place of This Man’s Wife.