This Man's Wife Part 25

He frowned again, looking uneasily at the child, and resuming the tapping upon the table with his thin, white fingers.

The window looking out on the market place was before them, quiet, sunny, and with only two people visible, Mrs Pinet, watering her row of flowers with a jug, and the half of old Gemp, as he leaned out of his doorway, and looked in turn up the street and down.

All at once a firm, quick step was heard, and the child leaped from her father's knee.

"Here's Mr Bayle! Here's Mr Bayle!" she cried, clapping her hands, and, bounding to the window, she sprang upon a chair, to press her face sidewise to the pane, to watch for him who came, and then to begin tapping on the gla.s.s, and kissing her hands as Christie Bayle, a firm, broad-shouldered man, nodded and smiled, and went by.

Julia leaped from the chair to run out of the room, leaving Robert Hallam clutching the edge of the table, with his brow wrinkled, and an angry frown upon his countenance, as he ground his teeth together, and listened to the opening of the front door, and the mingling of the curate's frank, deep voice with the silvery prattle of his child.

"Ha, little one!" And then there was the sound of kisses, as Hallam heard the rustle of what seemed, through the closed door, to be Christie Bayle taking the child by the waist and lifting her up to throw her arms about his neck.

"You're late!" she cried; and the very tone of her voice seemed changed, as she spoke eagerly.

"No, no, five minutes early; and I must go up the town first now."

"Oh!" cried the child.

"I shall not be long. How is mamma?"

"Mamma isn't well," said the child. "She has been crying so."

"Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ my darling!" said Bayle softly. "You should not whisper secrets."

"Is that a secret, Mr Bayle?"

"Yes; mamma's secret, and my Julia must be mamma's well-trusted little girl."

"Please, Mr Bayle, I'm so sorry, and I won't do so any more. Are you cross with me?"

"My darling!" he cried pa.s.sionately, "as if any one could be cross with you! There, get your books ready, and I'll soon be back."

"No, no, not this morning, Mr Bayle; not books. Take me for a walk, and teach me about the flowers."

"After lessons, then. There, run away."

Hallam rose from his chair, with his lips drawn slightly from his teeth, as he heard Bayle's retiring steps. Then the front door was banged loudly; he heard his child clap her hands, and then the quick fall of her feet as she skipped across the hall, and bounded up the stairs.

He took a few strides up and down the room, but stopped short as the door opened again, and, handsomer than ever, but with a graver, more womanly beauty, heightened by a pensive, troubled look in her eyes and about the corners of her mouth, Millicent Hallam glided in.

Her face lit up with a smile as she crossed to Hallam, and laid her white hand upon his arm.

"Don't think me unkind for going away, dear," she said softly. "Have you quite done?"

"Yes," he said shortly. "There, don't stop me; I'm late."

"Are you going to the bank, dear?"

"Of course I am. Where do you suppose I'm going?"

"I only thought, dear, that--"

"Then don't _only think_ for the sake of saying foolish things."

She laid her other hand upon his arm, and smiled in his face.

"Don't let these money matters trouble you so, Robert," she said. "What does it matter whether we are rich or poor?"

"Oh, not in the least!" he cried sarcastically. "You don't want any money, of course?"

"I do, dear, terribly," she said sadly. "I have been asked a great deal lately for payments of bills; and if you could let me have some this morning--"

"Then I cannot; it's impossible. There, wait a few days and the crisis will be over, and you can clear off."

"And you will not speculate again, dear?" she said eagerly.

"Oh, no, of course not," he rejoined, with the touch of sarcasm in his voice.

"We should be so much happier, dear, on your salary. I would make it plenty for us; and then, Robert, you would be so much more at peace."

"How can I be at peace?" he cried savagely, "when, just as I am hara.s.sed with monetary cares--which you cannot understand--I find my home, instead of a place of rest, a place of torment?"

"Robert!" she said, in a tone of tender reproach.

"People here I don't want to see; servants pestering me for money, when I have given you ample for our household expenses; and my own child set against me, ready to shrink from me, and look upon me as some domestic ogre!"

"Robert, dear, pray do not talk like this."

"I am driven to it," he cried fiercely; "the child detests me!"

"Oh no, no, no," she whispered, placing her arm round his neck.

"And rushes to that fellow Bayle as if she had been taught to look upon him as everybody."

"Nay, nay," she said softly; and there was a tender smile upon her lip, a look of loving pity in her eye. "Julie likes Mr Bayle, for he pets her, and plays with her as if he were her companion."

"And I am shunned."

"Oh, no, dear, you frighten poor Julie sometimes when you are in one of your stern, thoughtful moods."

"My stern, thoughtful moods! Pshaw!"

"Yes," she said tenderly; "your stern, thoughtful moods. The child cannot understand them as I do, dear husband. She thinks of suns.h.i.+ne and play. How can she read the depth of the father's love--of the man who is so foolishly ambitious to win fortune for his child? Robert-- husband--my own, would it not be better to set all these strivings for wealth aside, and go back to the simple, peaceful days again?"

"You do not understand these things," he said harshly. "There, let me go. I ought to have been at the bank an hour ago, but I could not get a wink of sleep all the early part of the night."

"I know, dear. It was three o'clock when you went to sleep."

"How did you know?"