This Man's Wife Part 119

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 pa.s.sed. 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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.

"Hus.h.!.+"

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 sh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sing 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 cuc.u.mber-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 pa.s.sed 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 gra.s.s; 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-b.u.t.ter, 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?"