Kitabı oku: «This Man's Wife», sayfa 17
Volume Three – Chapter One.
After Twelve Years – Back from a Voyage
“Why, my dear Sir Gordon, I am glad to see you back again. You look brown and hearty, and not a day older.”
“Don’t – don’t shake quite so hard, my dear Bayle. I like it, but it hurts. Little gouty in that hand, you see.”
“Well, I’ll be careful. I am glad you came.”
“That’s right, that’s right. Come down to my club and dine, and we’ll have a long talk; and – er – don’t take any notice of the jokes if you hear any.”
“Jokes?”
“Ye-es. The men have a way there – the old fellows – of calling me ‘Laurel,’ and ‘Yew,’ and the ‘Evergreen.’ You see, I look well and robust for my age.”
“Not a bit, Sir Gordon. You certainly seem younger, though, than ever.”
“So do you, Bayle; so do you. Why, you must be – ”
“Forty-two, Sir Gordon. Getting an old man, you see.”
“Forty! Pooh! what’s that, Mr Bayle? Why, sir, I’m – Never mind. I’m not so young as I used to be. And so you think I look well, eh, Bayle?”
“Indeed you do, Sir Gordon; remarkably well.”
“Hah! That confounded Scott! Colonel Scott at the club set it about that I’d been away for two years so as to get myself cut down and have time to sprout up again, I looked so young. Bah, what does it matter? It’s the sea life, Bayle, keeps a man healthy and strong. I wish I could persuade you to come with me on one of my trips.”
“No, no! Keep away with your temptations. Too busy.”
“Nonsense, man! Fellow with your income grinding day after day as you do. But how young you do look! How is Mrs Hallam?”
“Remarkably well. I saw her yesterday.”
“And little Julie?”
“Little!” said Christie Bayle laughing frankly, and justifying Sir Gordon’s remarks about his youthful looks. “Really, I should like to be there when you call. You will be astonished.”
“What, has the child grown?”
“Child? Grown? Why, my dear sir, you will have to be presented to a beautiful young lady of eighteen, wonderfully like her mother in the old days.”
“Indeed! Hah! yes. Old days, Bayle. Yes, old days, indeed. The thought of them makes me feel how time has gone. Look young, eh? Bah! I’m an old fool, Bayle. Deal better if I had been born poor. You should see me when Tom Porter takes me to pieces, and puts me to bed of a night. Why, Bayle, I don’t mind telling you. Always were a good lad, and I liked you. I’m one of the most frightful impositions of my time. Wig, sir; confound it! sham teeth, sir, and they are horribly uncomfortable. Whiskers dyed, sir. The rest all tailor’s work. Feel ashamed of myself sometimes. At others I say to myself that it’s showing a bold front to the enemy. No, sir, not a bit of truth in me anywhere.”
“Except your heart,” said Bayle, smiling.
“Tchut! man, hold your tongue. Now about yourself. Why don’t you get a comfortable rectory somewhere, instead of plodding on in this hole?”
“Because I am more useful here.”
“Nonsense! Get a good West-end lectureship.”
“I prefer the North here.”
“My dear Christie Bayle, you are throwing yourself away. There, I can’t keep it back. Old Doctor Thomson is dead, and if you will come I have sufficient interest with the bishop, providing I bring forward a good man, to get him the living at King’s Castor.”
Christie Bayle shook his head sadly.
“No, Sir Gordon,” he said, with a curious, wistful look coming into his eyes. “That would be too painful – too full of sad memories.”
“Pooh! nonsense, man! You can’t be a curate all your life.”
“Why not? I do not want the payment of a better post in the Church.”
“Of course not; but come, say ‘Yes.’ As to memories, fudge! man, you have your memories everywhere. If you were out in Australia you’d have them, same as I dare say a friend of ours has. Let the past go.”
Bayle shook his head.
“I’m thinking of settling down yonder myself. Getting too old for sea-trips. If you’d come down, that would decide me.”
“No, no. It would never do. I could not leave town.”
“Ah, so you pretend, sir. I’ll be bound that, if you had a good motive, you’d be off anywhere, in spite of what you say.”
“Perhaps. Your motive is not strong enough.”
“What, not your own interest, man?”
“My dear Sir Gordon, no. What interest have I in myself? Why, I have been blessed by Providence with a good income and few wants, and for the past eighteen years I’ve been so busy thinking about other people, that I should feel guilty of a crime if I began to be selfish now.”
“You’re a queer fellow, Bayle, but you may alter your mind. I’ve made up mine that you shall have the old living at King’s Castor. I shan’t marry now, so I don’t want you for that; but, please God I don’t go down in some squall, I should like you to say ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ over the remains of a very selfish old man, for I sometimes think that it can’t be long first now.”
“My dear old friend,” said Bayle, shaking his hand warmly, “I pray that the day may be very far distant. When it does come, as it comes to us all, I shall be able to think that the selfishness of which you speak was mere outside show. Gordon Bourne, I seem to be a simple kind of man, but I think I have learned to read men’s hearts.”
The old man’s lip quivered a little, and he tried vainly to speak. Then, giving his stout ebony cane a stamp on the floor, he raised it, and shook it threateningly.
“Confound you, Bayle! I wish you were as poor as Job.”
“Why?”
“So that I might leave you all I’ve got. Perhaps I shall.”
“No, no, don’t do that,” said Bayle seriously, and his frank, handsome face looked troubled; “I have more than I want. But, come, tell me; you have been down to Castor, then?”
“Yes, I was there a week.”
“And how are they all?”
“Older, of course, but things seem about the same. Place like that does not change much.”
“But the people do.”
“Not they. By George! sir, one of the first men I saw as I limped down the street in a pair of confoundedly tight Hessians Hoby made for me – punish my poor corns horribly. What with them and the stiff cravats a gentleman is forced to wear, life is unendurable. Ah! you don’t study appearances at sea. Wish I could wear boots like those, Bayle.”
“You were saying that you saw somebody.”
“Ah, yes; to be sure, I trailed off about my boots. Why, I am getting into – lose leeway, sir. But I remember now. First man I saw was old Gemp, sitting like a figure-head outside his cottage. Regular old mummy; but he seemed to come to life as soon as he heard a step, and turned his eyes towards me, looking as inquisitive as a monkey. Poor old boy – almost paralysed, and has to be lifted in and out. I often wonder what was the use of such men as he.”
Christie Bayle’s broad shoulders gave a twitch, and he looked up in an amused manner.
“Ah, well, what was the use of me, if you like? Doctor looked well; so does the old lady. Said they were up here three months ago, and enjoyed their visit I say, Bayle, you’d better have the living. Mrs Hallam might be disposed to go down to the old home again, eh?”
A quiet, stern look, that made Christie Bayle appear ten years older, and changed him in aspect from one of thirty-five to nearer fifty, came over his face.
“No,” he said, “I am sure Mrs Hallam would never go back to Castor to live.”
“Humph! Well, you know best. I say, Bayle, does she want help? It is such a delicate matter to offer it to her, especially in our relative positions.”
“No, I am sure she does not,” said Bayle quickly; “you would hurt her feelings by the offer.”
Sir Gordon nodded, and sat gazing at one particular flower in the carpet of his host’s simply-furnished room, which he poked and scraped with his stick.
“How was Thickens?”
“Just the same; not altered a bit, unless it is to look more drab. Mrs Thickens – that woman’s an impostor, sir. She has grown younger since she married.”
“Yes, she astonished me,” said Bayle, smiling with satisfaction that his visitor had gone off dangerously painful ground, “plump, pleasant little body.”
“With fat filling up her creases and covering up her holes and corners!” cried Sir Gordon, interrupting. “Confound it all, sir, I could never get the fat to come and fill up my creases and furrows. I saw her standing there, feeding Thickens’s fish, smiling at them, and as happy as the day was long. Deal happier than when she was Miss Heathery. Everybody seems to be happy but me. I never am.”
“See the Trampleasures?” said Bayle.
“Oh, yes, saw them, and heard them, too. Regular ornament to the bank, Trampleasure. People believe in him, though. Talks to them, and asks the farmers in to lunch. If he were not there, they’d think Dixons’ was going. Poor old Dixon, how cut up he was over that Hallam business! It killed him, Bayle.”
“Think so?” said Bayle, with his brow wrinkling.
“Sure of it, sir. It was not the money he cared for; it was the principle of the thing. Dixons’ name had stood so high in the town and neighbourhood. There was a mystery, too, about the matter that was never cleared up.”
“Hadn’t we better change the subject, Sir Gordon?”
“No, sir,” said Bayle’s visitor curtly. “Garrulity is one of the privileges of old age. We old men don’t get many privileges; let me enjoy that. I like to gossip about old times to some one who understands them as you do. If you don’t like to hear me, say so, and I will go.”
“No, no, pray stay, and I’ll go down with you to the club.”
“Hah! That’s right. Well, as I was saying, there was a bit of mystery about that which worried poor old Dixon terribly. We never could make out what the scoundrel had done with the money. He and that other fellow, Crellock, could easily get rid of a good deal; but there was a large sum unaccounted for, I’m sure.”
There was a pause here, and Sir Gordon seemed to be hesitating about saying something that was on his mind.
“You wanted to tell me something,” said Bayle at last.
“Well, yes, I was going to say you see a deal of the widow, don’t you?”
“Widow? What widow? Oh, Mrs Richardson. Poor thing, yes; but how did you know I took an interest in her? Hah! there: you may give me ten pounds for her.”
“Mrs Richardson! Pooh! I mean Mrs Hallam.”
“Widow?”
“Well, yes; what else is she? Husband transported for life. The man is socially dead.”
“You do not know Mrs Hallam,” said Bayle gravely.
“Do you think she believes in him still?”
“With her whole heart. He is to her the injured man, a victim to a legal error, and she lives in the belief which she has taught her child, that some day her martyr’s reputation will be cleared, and that he will take his place among his fellow-men once more.”
“I wish I could think so too, for her sake,” said Sir Gordon, after a pause.
“Amen!”
“But, Bayle, you – you don’t ever think there was any mistake?”
“It is always painful to me to speak of a man whom I never could esteem.”
“But to me, man – to me.”
“For twelve years, Sir Gordon, I have had the face of that loving, trusting woman before me, steadfast in her faith in the husband she loves.”
“Loves?”
“As truly as on the day she took him first to her heart.”
“But do you think that she really still believes him innocent?”
“In her heart of hearts; and so does her child. And I say that this is the one painful part of our intimacy. It has been the cause of coldness and even distant treatment at times.”
“But she seemed to have exonerated you from all credit in his arrest.”
“Oh, yes, long ago. She attributes it to the accident of chance and the treachery of the scoundrel Crellock.”
“Who was only Hallam’s tool.”
“Exactly. But she forgives me, believing me her truest friend.”
“And rightly. The man who fought for her at the time of the – er – well, accident, Bayle, eh?”
“Shall we change the subject?” said Bayle coldly.
“No; I like to talk about poor Mrs Hallam, and I will call and see her soon.”
“But you will be careful,” said Bayle earnestly. “Of course your presence will bring back sad memories. Do not pain her by any allusion to Hallam.”
“I will take care. But look here, Bayle; you did come up here to be near them?”
“Certainly I did. Why, Sir Gordon, that child seemed to be part of my life, and when Mrs Hallam had that long illness the little thing came to me as if I were her father. She had always liked me, and that liking has grown.”
“You educated her?”
“Oh, I don’t know; I suppose so,” said Bayle, looking up with a frank, ingenuous smile. “We have always read together, and painted, and then there was the music of an evening. You must hear her sing!”
“Hah! I should like to, Bayle. Perhaps I shall. Don’t think me impertinent, but you see I am so much away in my yacht. Selfish old fellow, you know; want to live as long as I can, and I think I shall live longer if I go to sea than if I stroll idling about Castor or in London at my club. I’ve asked you a lot of questions. I suppose you have done all the teaching?”
“Oh, dear, no; her mother has had a large share in the child’s education.”
“Humph! when I called her child, I was snubbed.” Bayle laughed. “Well, I’ve grown to think of her as my child, and she looks upon me almost as she might upon her father.”
“Humph!” said Sir Gordon rather gruffly. “I half expected, every time I came back, to find you married, Bayle.”
“Find me married?” said Bayle, laughing. “My dear sir, I am less likely to marry than you. Confirmed old bachelor, and I am very happy – happier than I deserve to be.”
“Don’t cant, Bayle,” cried Sir Gordon peevishly. “I’ve always liked you because you never threw sentiments of that kind at me. Don’t begin now. Well, there, I must trot. You are going to dine with me?”
“Yes; I’ve promised.”
“Ah,” said Sir Gordon, looking at Bayle almost enviously, “you always were quite a boy. What a physique you have! Why, man, you don’t look thirty-five.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Sorry, man?”
“Well, then, I’m very glad.”
“Bah! There, put on your hat, and come down at once. I hate this part of London.”
“And I have grown to love it. ‘The mind is its own place.’ You know the rest.”
“Oh, yes, I know the rest,” said Sir Gordon gruffly. “Come along. Where can we get a coach?”
“I’ll show you,” said Bayle, taking his arm and leading him through two or three streets, to stop at last in a quiet, new-looking square close by St. John’s Street.
“Well, what’s the matter?” said Sir Gordon testily. “Nothing, I hope; only I must make a call here before I go down with you.”
“For goodness’ sake, make haste, then, man! My boots are torturing me!”
“Come in, then, and sit down,” said Bayle, smiling, as a stern-looking woman opened the door, and curtsied familiarly.
“I must either do that or sit upon the step,” said the old gentleman peevishly; and he followed Bayle into the passage, and then into the parlour, for he seemed quite at home.
Then a change came over Sir Gordon’s face, for Bayle said quietly:
“My dear Mrs Hallam, I have brought an old friend.”
Volume Three – Chapter Two.
A Peep behind the Clouds
The meeting was painful, for Millicent Hallam and Sir Gordon had never stood face to face since that day when he had himself opened the door for her on the occasion of her appeal to him on her husband’s behalf.
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Sir Gordon. “I did not know this.”
“It is a surprise, too, for me,” said Mrs Hallam, as she coloured slightly, and then turned pale; but in a moment or two she was calm and composed – a handsome, grave-looking lady, with unlined face, but with silvery streaks running through her abundant hair.
“You – you should have told me, Bayle,” said Sir Gordon testily.
“And spoilt my surprise,” said Bayle.
“I am very, very glad to see you, Sir Gordon,” said Mrs Hallam in a grave, sweet way, once more thoroughly mistress of her emotions. “Julie, my dear, you hardly recollect our visitor?”
“Yes, oh yes!” said a tall, graceful girl, coming forward to place her hand in Sir Gordon’s. “I seem to see you back as if through a mist; but – oh, yes, I remember!” She hesitated, and blushed, and laughed. “You one day – you brought me a great doll.”
Sir Gordon had taken both her hands, letting fall hat and stick. He tried to speak, but the words would not come. His lip quivered, his face twitched, and Julia felt his hands tremble, as she looked at him with naïve wonder, unable to comprehend his emotion.
He raised her hand as if to press it to his lips, but let it fall, and, drawing her towards him, kissed her tenderly on the brow, ending by retaining her hand in both of his.
“An old man’s kiss, my child,” he said, gazing at her wistfully. “You remind me so of one I loved – twenty years ago, my dear, and before you were born.” He looked round from one to the other, as if apologising for his emotion. “My dear Bayle,” he said at last, recovering himself, and speaking with chivalrous courtesy, “I am in your debt for introducing me to our young friend. Mrs Hallam, you will let me come and see you?”
Millicent hesitated, and there was a curious, haughty, defiant look in her eyes as she gazed at her visitor, as if at bay.
“I am sure Mrs Hallam will be glad to see a very dear old friend of mine,” said Bayle quietly; and as he spoke Mrs Hallam glanced at him. Her eyes softened, and she held out her hand to her visitor.
“Always glad to see you,” she said.
Sir Gordon smiled and looked pleased, as he glanced round the pretty, simply-furnished room, with tokens of the busy hands that adorned it on every side. Here was Julia’s drawing, there her embroidery; they were her flowers in the window; the bird that twittered so sweetly from its cage hung on the shutter, and the piano, were hers too. There was only one jarring note in the whole interior, and that was the portrait in oils of the handsome man, in the most prominent place in the room – a picture that at one corner was a little blistered, as if by fire, and whose eyes seemed to be watching the visitor wherever he turned.
There were many painful memories revived during that visit, but on the whole it was pleasant, and with the agony of the past softened by time, Millicent Hallam found herself speaking half reproachfully to Sir Gordon for not visiting her during all these years.
“Don’t blame me,” he said in reply; “I have always felt that there was a wish implied on your part that our acquaintance should cease, as being too painful for both.”
“Perhaps it was,” she said, with a sigh; “and I am to blame.”
“Let us share it, if there be any blame,” said Sir Gordon, smiling, “and amend our ways. You must remember, though, that I have always kept up my friendship with the doctor whenever I have been at home, and I have always heard of your well-beings or – ”
“Oh, yes!” said Mrs Hallam hastily, as if to check any allusion to assistance. “When I recovered from my serious illness I was anxious to leave Castor. I thought perhaps that my child’s education – in London – and Mr Bayle was very kind in helping me.”
“He is a good friend,” said Sir Gordon gravely.
“Friend!” cried Mrs Hallam, with her face full of animation, “he has been to me a brother. When I was in utter distress at that terrible time, he extricated my poor husband’s money affairs from the miserable tangle in which they were left, and by a wise management of the little remainder so invested it that there was a sufficiency for Julia and me to live on in this simple manner.”
“He did all this for you,” said Sir Gordon dryly.
“Yes, and would have placed his purse at my disposal, but that he saw how painful such an offer would have been.”
“Of course,” said Sir Gordon, “most painful.”
“I often fear that I did wrong in allowing him to leave Castor; but he has done so much good here that I tell myself all was for the best.”
And so the conversation rippled on, Julia sometimes being drawn in, and now and then Bayle throwing in a word; but on the whole simply looking on, an interested spectator, who was appealed to now and then as if he had been the brother of one, the uncle of the other.
At last Sir Gordon rose to go, taking quite a lingering farewell of Julia, at whom he gazed again in the same wistful manner.
“Good-bye,” he said, smiling tenderly at her, while holding her little hand in his. “I shall come again – soon – yes, soon; but not to bring you a doll.”
There was a jingle of a tiny bell as they closed the door, and the hard-faced woman had to squeeze by the visitors to get to the door, the passage was so small.
Sir Gordon stared hard, and then placed his large square glass to his eye.
“To be sure – yes. It’s you,” he said. “The old maid, Thisbe – ”
“Some people can’t help being old maids,” said that lady tartly, “and some wants to be, sir.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Sir Gordon with grave politeness. “You mistake me. I meant the maid who used to be with Doctor and Mrs Luttrell in the old times. To be sure, yes, and with Mrs Hallam afterwards.”
“Yes, Sir Gordon.”
“So you’ve kept to your mistress all through – I mean you have stayed.”
“Yes, sir, of course I have.”
“And been one of the truest and best of friends,” said Bayle, smiling.
Thisbe gave herself a jerk and glanced over her shoulder, as though to see if the way was clear for her escape – should she have to run and avoid this praise.
“Ah, yes,” said Sir Gordon, looking at her still very thoughtfully. “To be sure,” he continued, in quite dreamy tones, “I had almost forgotten. Tom Porter wants to marry you.”
“Then Tom Porter must – ”
“Tchut! tchut! tchut! woman; don’t talk like that. Make your hay while the sun shines. Good fellow, Tom. Obstinate, but solid, and careful. Come, Bayle.”
“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.”
