This Man's Wife
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Yes; in and out – there it went, showing how busy the creature had been during the night, and the task was to find where it had gone to rest and sleep for the day, ready to come forth refreshed for another mischievous nocturnal prowl.
“Now where can that fellow have hidden himself?” said the follower of the trail, peering about and taking off his hat and standing it on the next light. “One of those great grey fellows, I’ll be bound. Ah, to be sure! Come out, sir.”
The tale-telling trail ended where a seed-pan stood containing some young Brussels sprouts which had attained a goodly size, and upon these the enemy had supped heartily, crawling down afterwards to sleep off the effects beneath the pan.
It was rather difficult to reach that pan, for the edge of the frame was waist-high; but it had to be done, and the slug raked out with a bit of stick.
That was it! No, it was not; the hunter could not quite reach, and had to wriggle himself a little more over and then try.
The search was earnest and successful, the depredator dying an ignominious death, crushed with a piece of potsherd against the seed-pan, and then being buried at once beneath the soil, but to a looker-on the effect was grotesque.
There was a looker-on here, advancing slowly along the path with a bunch of flowers in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other. In fact, that peculiar squeak given by the frame had attracted Millicent’s attention, at a time when she believed every one to be away.
As she approached, she became conscious of the hind quarters of a man clothed in that dark mixture that used to be popularly known as “pepper-and-salt,” standing up out of one of the cucumber-frames, and executing movements as if he were practising diving in a dry bath. Suddenly the legs subsided and sank down. Next they rose again, and kicked about, the rest of the man still remaining hidden in the frame, and then at last there was a rapid retrograde motion, and Christie Bayle emerged, hot, dishevelled, but triumphant for a moment, then scarlet with confusion and annoyance as he hastily caught up his hat, clapped it on, but hurriedly took it off and bowed.
“Miss Luttrell!” he exclaimed.
“Mr Bayle!” she cried, forbearing to smile as she saw his confusion. “I heard the noise and wondered what it could be.”
“I – I met your father,” he said, hastily adjusting the light; “he asked me to open the frames. A tiresome slug – ”
“It was very kind of you,” she said, holding out her hand and pressing his in her frank, warm grasp, and full of eagerness to set him at his ease. “Papa will be so pleased that you have caught one of his enemies.”
“Thank you,” he said uneasily; “it is very kind of you.” – “I’m the most unlucky wretch under the sun, always making myself ridiculous before her,” he added to himself.
“Kind of me? No, of you, to come and take all that trouble.” – “Poor fellow!” she thought, “he fancies that I am going to laugh at him.” – “I’ve been so busy, Mr Bayle: I’ve copied out the whole of that duet. When are you coming in to try it over?”
“Do you wish me to try it with you?” he said rather coldly.
“Why, of course. There are no end of pretty little passages solo for the flute. We must have a good long practice together before we play in public.”
“You’re very kind and patient with me,” he said, as he gazed at the sweet calm face by his side.
“Nonsense,” she cried. “I’m cutting a few flowers for Miss Heathery; she is the most grateful recipient of a present of this kind that I know.”
They were walking back towards the house as she spoke, and from time to time Millicent stopped to snip off some flower, or to ask her companion to reach one that grew on high.
In a few minutes she had set him quite at his ease and they were talking quietly about their life, their neighbours, about his endeavours to improve the place; and yet all the time there seemed to him to be an undercurrent in his life, flowing beneath that surface talk. The garden was seen through a medium that tinted everything with joy; the air he breathed was perfumed and intoxicating; the few bird-notes that came from time to time sounded more sweetly than he had ever heard them before; and, hardly able to realise it himself, life – existence, seemed one sweetly calm, and yet paradoxically troubled delight.
His heart was beating fast, and there was a strange sense of oppression as he loosed the reins of his imagination for a moment; but the next, as he turned to gaze at the innocent, happy, unruffled face, so healthful and sweet, with the limpid grey eyes ready to meet his own so frankly, the calm came, and he felt that he could ask no greater joy than to live that peaceful life for ever at her side.
It would be hard to tell how it happened. They strolled about the garden till Millicent laughingly said that it would be like trespassing on her father’s carte blanche to cut more flowers, and then they went through the open French window into the drawing-room, where he sat near her, as if intoxicated by the sweetness of her voice, while she talked to him in unrestrained freedom of her happy, contented life, and bade him not to think he need be ceremonious there.
Yes, it would be hard to tell how it happened. There was one grand stillness without, as if the ardent sunshine had drunk up all sound but the dull, heavy throb of his heart, and the music of that sweet voice which now lulled him to a sense of delicious repose, now made every nerve and vein tingle with a joy he had never before known.
It had been a mystery to him in his student life. Books had been his world, and ambition to win a scholarly fame his care. Now it had by degrees dawned upon him that there was another, a greater love than that, transcending it so that all that had gone before seemed pitiful and small. He had met her, her voice would be part of his life from henceforth, and at last – how it came about he could not have told – he was standing at her side, holding her hands firmly in his own, and saying in low and eager tones that trembled with emotion:
“Millicent, I love you – my love – my love!”
For a few moments Millicent Luttrell stood motionless, gazing wonderingly at her companion as he bent down over her hands and pressed his lips upon them.
Then, snatching them away, her soft creamy face turned to scarlet with indignation, but only for this to fade as she met his eyes, and read there the earnest look he gave her, and his act from that moment ceased to be the insult she thought at first.
“Miss Luttrell!” he said.
“Hush! don’t speak to me,” she cried.
He took a step forward, but she waved him back, and for a few moments sobbed passionately, struggling hard the while to master her emotion.
“Have I offended you?” he panted. “Dear Millicent, listen to me. What have I done?”
“Hush!” she cried. “It is all a terrible mistake. What have I done?”
There was a pause, and the deep silence seemed to be filled now with strange noises. There was a painful throbbing of the heart, a singing in the ears, and life was all changed as Millicent at last mastered her emotion, and her voice seemed to come to the listener softened and full of pity as if spoken by one upon some far-off shore, so calm, so grave and slow, so impassionately the words fell upon his ear.
Such simple words, and yet to him like the death-knell of all his hope in life.
Volume One – Chapter Eight.
Crossed in Love
“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”
He looked piteously in the handsome pale young face before him, his heart sinking, and a feeling of misery, such as he had never before known, chilling him so that he strove in vain to speak.
The words were not cruel, they were not marked with scorn or contempt. There was no coquetry – no hope. They were spoken in a voice full of gentle sympathy, and there was tender pity in every tone, and yet they chilled him to the heart.
“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”
It needed no look to endorse those words, and yet it was there, beaming upon him from those sweet, frank eyes that had filled again with tears which she did not passionately dash aside, but which brimmed and softly dropped upon the hands she clasped across her breast.
He saw plainly enough that it had all been a dream, his dream of love and joy; that he had been too young to read a woman’s heart aright, and that he had taken her little frank kindnesses as responses to his love; and he needed no explanations, for the tones in which she uttered those words crushed him, till as he stood before her in those painful moments, he realised that the deathblow to all his hopes had come.
He sank back in his chair as she stood before him, gazing up at her in so boyish and piteous a manner that she spoke again.
“Indeed, indeed, Mr Bayle, I thought our intimacy so pleasant, I was so happy with you.”
“Then I may hope,” he cried passionately. “Millicent, dear Millicent, all my life has been spent in study; I have read so little, I never thought of love till I saw you, but it has grown upon me till I can think only of you – your words, the tones of your voice, your face, all are with me always, with me now. Millicent, dear Millicent, it is a man’s first true love, and you could give me hope.”
“Oh, hush! hush!” she said gently, as she held out her hand to him, which he seized and covered with his kisses, till she withdrew it firmly, and shook her head. “I am more pained than I can say,” she said softly. “I tell you I never thought of such a thing as this.”
“But you will,” he said, “Millicent, my love!”
“Mr Bayle,” she said, with some attempt at firmness, “if I have ever by my thoughtlessness made you think I cared for you, otherwise than as a very great friend, forgive me.”
“A friend!” he cried bitterly.
“Yes, as a friend. Is friendship so slight a thing that you speak of it like that?”
“Yes,” he cried; “at a time like this, when I ask for bread and you give me a stone.”
“Oh, hush!” she said again softly; and there was a sad smile through her tears. “I should be cruel if I did not speak to you plainly and firmly. Mr Bayle, what you ask is impossible.”
“You despise me,” he cried passionately, “because I am so boyish – so young.”
“No,” she said gently, as she laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Let me speak to you as an elder sister might.”
“A sister!” he cried angrily.
“Yes, as a sister,” replied Millicent gently. “Christie Bayle, it was those very things in you that attracted me first. I never had a brother; but you, with your frank and free-hearted youthfulness, your genuine freshness of nature, seemed so brotherly, that my life for the past few months has been brighter than ever. Our reading, our painting, our music – Oh, why did you dash all these happy times away?”
“Because I am not a boy,” he cried angrily; “because I am a man – a man who loves you. Millicent, will you not give me hope?”
There was a pause, during which she stood gazing right over his head as he still sat there with outstretched hands, which he at last dropped with a gesture of despair.
“No,” she said at last; “I cannot give you hope. It is impossible.”
“Then you love some one else,” he cried with boyish anger. “Oh, it is cruel. You led me on to love you, and now, in your coquettish triumph, you throw me aside for some other plaything of the hour.”
Millicent’s brow contracted, and a half-angry look came into her eyes.
“This talk to me of brotherly feeling and of being a sister, is it to mock me? It is as I thought,” he cried passionately, “as I have heard, with you handsome women; you who delight in giving pain, in trifling with a weak, foolish fellow’s heart, so that you may bring him to your feet.”
“Christie – ”
“No,” he raged, as he started to his feet, “don’t speak to me like that. I will not be led on again. Enjoy your triumph, but let it be made bitter by the knowledge that you have wrecked my life.”
“Oh, hush! hush! hush!” she said softly. “You are not yourself, Christie Bayle, or you would not speak to me like this. You know that you are charging me with that which is not true. How can you be so cruel?”
“Cruel? It is you,” he cried passionately. “But, there, it is all over. I shall leave here at once. I wish I had never seen the town.”
“Christie,” she said gently, “listen to me. Be yourself and go home, and think over all this. I cannot give you what you ask. Come, be wise and manly over this disappointment. Go away for a week, and then come back to me, and let our pleasant old friendship be resumed. You give me pain, indeed you do, by this outburst. It is so unlike you.”
“Unlike me? Yes, you have nearly driven me mad.”
“No, no. No, no,” she said tenderly. “Be calm. Indeed and indeed, I have felt as warm and affectionate to you of late as a sister could feel for a brother. I have felt so pleased to see how you were winning your way here amongst the people; and when I have heard a light or contemptuous utterance about you, it has made me angry and ready to speak in your defence.”
“Yes, I know,” he cried; “and it is this that taught me that you must care for me – must love me.”
“Cannot a woman esteem and be attached to a youth without loving him?”
“Youth! There! You treat me as if I were a boy,” he cried angrily. “Can I help seeming so young?”
“No,” she said, taking his hand, “But you are in heart and ways very, very young, Christie Bayle. Am I to tell you again that it was this brought about our intimacy, for I found you so fresh in your young manliness, so different to the gentlemen I have been accustomed to? Come: forget all this. Let us be friends.”
“Friends? No, it is impossible,” he cried bitterly. “I know I am boyish and weak, and that is why you hold me in such contempt.”
“Contempt? Oh, no!”
“But, some day,” he pleaded, “I’ll wait – any time – ”
“No, no, no,” she said flushing, “it is impossible.”
“Then,” he raged as he started up, “I am right. You love some one else. Who is it? I will know.”
“Mr Bayle!”
There was a calm queenly dignity in her look and words that checked his rage; and she saw it as he sank into the nearest chair, his face bent down upon his hands, and his shoulders heaving with the emotion that escaped now and then in a hoarse sob.
“Poor boy!” she said to herself as the indignation he had roused gave way to pity.
“Christie Bayle,” she said aloud, as she approached him once more, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” he cried hoarsely as he sprang up; and she started back, half frightened at his wild, haggard face. “I might have known,” he panted. “Heaven forgive you! Good-bye – good-bye for ever!” Before Millicent could speak he had reached the door, and the next minute she heard his hurried steps as he went down the street.
Volume One – Chapter Nine.
The Scales Fall from Sir Gordon’s Eyes
Millicent stood listening till the steps had died away, and then sat down at the writing-table.
“Poor boy!” she said softly, as she passed her hand over her eyes, “I am so sorry.”
She laid down the pen, and ran over her conduct – all that she had said and done since her first meeting with the curate; but ended by shaking her head, and declaring to herself that she could find nothing in her behaviour to call for blame.
“No,” she said, rising from the table, after writing a few lines which she tore up, “I must not write to him; the wound must be left to time.”
A double knock announced a visitor, and directly after Thisbe King, the maid, ushered in Sir Gordon, who, in addition to his customary dress, wore – what was very unusual for him – a flower in his button-hole, which, with a great show of ceremony, he detached, and presented to Millicent before taking his seat.
As a rule he was full of chatty conversation, but, to Millicent’s surprise, he remained perfectly silent, gazing straight before him through the window.
“Is anything the matter, Sir Gordon?” said Millicent at last. “Papa is out, but he will not be long.” These words roused him, and he smiled at her gravely.
“No, my dear Miss Luttrell,” he said, “nothing is wrong; but at my time of life, when a man has anything particular to say, he weighs it well – he brings a good deal of thought to bear. I was trying to do this now.”
“But mamma is out too,” said Millicent.
“Yes, I know,” he replied, “and therefore I came on to speak to you.”
“Sir Gordon!”
“My dear Miss Luttrell – there, I have known you so long that I may call you my dear child – I think you believe in me?”
“Believe in you, Sir Gordon?”
“Yes, that I have the instincts, I hope, of a gentleman; that I am your father’s very good friend; and that I reverence his child.”
“Oh yes, Sir Gordon,” said Millicent, placing her hand in his, as he extended it towards her.
“That is well, then,” he said; and there was another pause, during which he gazed thoughtfully at the hand he held for a few moments, and then raised it to his lips and allowed it afterwards to glide away.
Millicent flushed slightly, for, in spite of herself, the thought of her visitor’s object began to dawn upon her, though she refused to believe it at first.
“Let me see,” he said at last, “time slides away so fast. You must be three-and-twenty now.”
“I thought a lady’s age was a secret, Sir Gordon,” said Millicent smiling.
“To weak, vain women, yes, my child; but your mind is too clear and candid for such subterfuges as that. Twenty-three! Compared with that, I am quite an old man.”
Millicent’s colour began to deepen, but she made a brave effort to be calm, mastered her emotion, and sat listening to the strange wooing that had commenced.
“I am going to speak very plainly,” her visitor said, gazing wistfully in her eyes, “and to tell you, Millicent, that for the past five years I have been your humble suitor.”
“Sir Gordon!”
“Hush! hush! On the strength of our old friendship hear me out, my child. I will not say a word that shall wilfully give you pain; I only ask for a hearing.”
Millicent sank back in her chair, clasped her hands, and let them rest in her lap, for she was too agitated to speak. The events of an hour or two before had unhinged her.
“For five years I have been nursing this idea in my breast,” he continued, “one day determining to speak, and then telling myself that I was weak and foolish, that the thing was impossible; and then, as you know, I have gone away for months together in my yacht. I will tell you what I have said to myself: ‘You are getting well on in life; she is young and beautiful. The match would not be right. Some day she will form an attachment for some man suited to her. Take your pleasure in seeing the woman you love happier than you could ever make her.’”
This was a revelation to Millicent, whose lips parted, and whose troubled eyes were fixed upon the speaker.
“The years went on, my child,” continued Sir Gordon, “and I kept fancying that the man had come, and that the test of my love for you was to be tried. I was willing to suffer – for your sake – to see you happy; and though I was ready to offer you wealth, title, and the tender affection of an elderly man, I put it aside, striving to do my duty.”
“Sir Gordon, I never knew of all this.”
“Knew!” he said, with a smile, “no: I never let you know. Well, my child, not to distress you too much, I have waited; and, as you knew, I have seen your admirers flitting about you, one by one, all these years; and I confess it, with a sense of delight I dare not dwell upon, I have found that not one of these butterflies has succeeded in winning our little flower. She has always been heart-whole and – There, I dare not say all I would. At last, with a pang that I felt that I must suffer, I saw, as I believed, that the right man had come, in the person of our friend, Christie Bayle. It has been agony to me, though I have hidden it beneath a calm face, I hope, and I have fought on as I saw your intimacy increase. For, I said to myself, it is right. He is well-to-do; he is young and handsome; he is true and manly; he is all that her lover should be; and, with a sigh, I have sat down telling myself that I was content, and, to prove myself, I have made him my friend. Millicent Luttrell, he is a true-hearted, noble fellow, and he loves you.”
Millicent half rose, but sank back in her chair, and her face grew calm once more.
“I am no spy upon your actions or upon those of Christie Bayle, my child; but I know that he has been to you this morning; that he has asked you to be his wife, and that you have refused him.”
“Has Mr Bayle been so wanting in delicacy,” said Millicent, with a flush of anger, “that he has told you this?”
“No, no. Pray do not think thus of him. He is too noble – too manly a fellow to be guilty of such a weakness. There are things, though, which a man cannot conceal from a jealous lover’s eyes, and this was one.”
“Jealous – lover!” faltered Millicent.
“Yes,” he said; “old as I am, my child, I must declare myself as your lover. This last rejection has given me hopes that may be wild – hopes which prompted me to speak as I do now.”
“Sir Gordon!” cried Millicent, rising from her seat; but he followed her example and took her hand.
“You will listen to me, my child, patiently,” he said in low earnest tones; “I must speak now. I know the difference in our ages; no one better; but if the devotion of my life, the constant effort to make you happy can bring the reward I ask, you shall not repent it. I know that some women would be tempted by the title and by my wealth, but I will not even think it of you. I know, too, that some would, in their coquetry, rejoice in bringing such a one as I to their feet, and then laugh at him for his pains. I fear nothing of the kind from you, Millicent, for I know your sweet, candid nature. But tell me first, do you love Christie Bayle?”
“As a sister might love a younger brother, who seemed to need her guiding hand,” said Millicent calmly. “Ah!”
It was a long sigh full of relief; and then taking her hand once more, Sir Gordon said softly:
“Millicent, my child, will you be my wife?”
The look of pain and sorrow in her eyes gave him his answer before her lips parted to speak, and he dropped the hand and stood there with the carefully-got-up look of youthfulness or early manhood seeming to fade from him. In a few minutes he appeared to have aged twenty years; his brow grew full of lines, his eyes seemed sunken, and there was a hollowness of cheek that had been absent before.
He stretched out his hand to the table, and slowly sat down, bending forward till his arms rested upon his knees and his hands hung down nerveless between.
“You need not speak, child,” he said sadly. “It has all been one of my mistakes. I see! I see!”
“Sir Gordon, indeed, indeed I do feel honoured!”
“No, no! hush, hush!” he said gently. “It is only natural. It was very weak and foolish of me to ask you; but when this love blinds a man, he says and does foolish things that he repents when his eyes are open. Mine are open now – yes,” he said, with a sad smile, “wide open; I can see it all. But,” he added quickly as he rose, “you are not angry with me, my dear?”
“Angry? Sir Gordon!”
“No: you are not,” he said, taking her hand and patting it softly. “Is it not strange that I could see you so clearly and well, and yet be so blind to myself? Ah, well, it is over now. I suppose no man is perfect, but in my conceit I did not think I could have been so weak. If I had not seen Bayle this morning and realised what had taken place, I should not have let my vanity get the better of me as I did.”
“All this is very, very painful to me, Sir Gordon.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said quickly. “Come, then, this is our little secret, my child. You will keep it – the secret of my mistake? I do love you very much, but you have taught me what it is. I am getting old and not so keen of wits as I was once upon a time. I thought it was man’s love for woman; but you are right, my dear, it is the love that a tender father might bear his child.”
He took her unresistingly in his arms, and kissed her forehead reverently before turning away, to walk to the window and stand gazing out blindly, till a firm step with loudly creaking boots was heard approaching, when Sir Gordon slowly drew away back into the room.
Then the gate clanged, the bell rang, and a change came over Sir Gordon as Millicent ran to the drawing-room door.