This Man's Wife Part 62

"But she is a mere girl yet."

"Pis.h.!.+ man; tus.h.!.+ 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 pa.s.sed 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

"And there was not a s.h.i.+lling 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 hoa.r.s.ely, 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 n.o.ble 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 rus.h.i.+ng at some work, she plumped herself down and began to st.i.tch 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.