This Man's Wife Part 75

"No," she said, in the same deep voice; "to-night," and she led the way into an inner room.

Julia made as if to follow, but stopped short, and stood watching till her mother and their old friend disappeared.

The room was lit only by the light that streamed in from the street lamp and a shop near the hotel, so that the faces of Millicent Hallam and Bayle were half in shadow as they stood opposite to each other.

Bayle was silent, for he had seen that Mrs Hallam was deeply moved. He had studied her face too many years not to be able to read its various changes; and now, on the eve of her departure, he knew that in spite of the apparent calmness of the surface a terrible storm of grief must be raging beneath, and feeling that perhaps she wished to say a few words of thanks to him, and while asking some attention towards the old people, she was about to take this opportunity to bid him farewell, he stood there in silence waiting for her to speak.

Twice over she essayed, but the words would not come. It was as if misery, indignation, and humiliation were contending in her breast, and each mood was uppermost when she opened her lips. How could she have been so unworldly--so blind all these years, as not to have seen that Christie Bayle had been impoveris.h.i.+ng himself that she and her child might live?

As she thought this, she was moved to humility, and admiration of the gentleman who had hidden all this from them, always behaving with the greatest delicacy, and carefully hiding the part he had taken in her life.

"And I thought myself so experienced--so well taught by adversity," she said to herself.

"Did you wish to ask me something, Mrs Hallam!" said Bayle, at last.

"Is it some commission you wish me to undertake?"

"Stop a moment," she said hoa.r.s.ely. Then, as if by a tremendous effort over herself, she tried to steady her voice, and to speak indignantly, as she exclaimed:

"Christie Bayle, why have you humiliated me like this?"

He started, for he had not the remotest idea that she had learnt his secret.

"Humiliated you?" he said. "Oh, no, I could not have done that."

"I have trusted you so well--looked upon you as a brother, and now at the eleventh hour of my home life, I find that even you have not deserved my trust."

"Indeed!" he said, smiling. "What have I done?"

"What have you done?" she cried indignantly, her emotion begetting a kind of unreason, and making her bitter in her words. "What have I done in my misery and misfortune that you should take advantage of my position? That man to-night has told me all."

"I hardly understand you," he said gravely.

"Not understand? He has told me that when that terrible trouble came upon me, it did not come singly, and that I was left penniless to battle with the world. Is this true?"

Bayle refrained for a few moments before answering. "Is this wise?" he said at last. "For your own sake--for the sake of Julie, you have need of all your fort.i.tude to bear up against a painful series of farewells.

Why trouble about this trifle now?"

"Trifle!" she cried angrily. "Stop! Let me think." She stood with her hands pressed to her forehead, as if struggling to drag something from the past--from out of the mist and turmoil of those terrible days and nights, when her brain seemed to have been on fire, and she lay almost at the point of death.

"Yes," she cried, as if a flash had suddenly illumined her brain, "I see now. I know. Tell me: is what that man said true?"

He was slow to answer, but at last the words came, uttered sadly, and in a low voice:

"If he told you that at that terrible time you were left in distress, it is true."

"I knew it," she said, pa.s.sionately. "Now tell me this--I will know.

When my poor husband lay there helpless--in prison--yes, it all comes back clearly now--my illness seems to have covered it as with a mist, but I remember that there was powerful counsel engaged for his defence, and great efforts were made to save him. Who did this? I have kept it hidden away, not daring to drag these matters out into the light of the present, but I must know now. Who did this?"

He did not answer.

"Your silence convicts you," she cried, angrily. "It was you."

"Yes," he said, quietly, "it was I."

"Then we were left penniless, and it is to you we owe everything--for all these years?"

Again he was silent.

"Answer me," she cried imperiously.

"Did I not acknowledge it before," he said calmly. "Mrs Hallam, have I committed so grave a social crime, that you speak to me like this?"

"It was cruel--to me--to my child," she cried, indignantly. "You have kept us in a false position all these years. Man, can you not understand the degradation and shame I felt when I was enlightened here only an hour ago?"

He stood there silent again for a few moments, before speaking; and then took her hand.

"If I have done wrong," he said, "forgive me. When that blow fell, and in your position, all the past seemed to come back--that day when in my boyish vanity I--"

"Oh! hus.h.!.+" she cried.

"Nay, let me speak," he said calmly. "I recalled that day when you bade me be friend and brother to you, and life seemed to be one blank despair. I remembered how I prayed for strength, and how that strength came, how I vowed that I would be friend and brother to you and yours; and when the time of tribulation came was my act so unbrotherly in your distress?"

She was silent.

"Millicent Hallam, do you think that I have not loved your child as tenderly as if she had been my own? Fate gave me money. Well, men, as a rule, spend their money in a way that affords them the most pleasure.

I am only a weak man, and I have done the same."

"You have kept yourself poor that we might live in idleness."

"You are wrong," he said, with a quiet laugh. "I was never richer than during these peaceful years--that have now come to an end," he added sorrowfully; "and you would make me poor once more. There," he continued, speaking quickly, "I confess all. Forgive me. I could not see you in want."

"I should not have been in want," she said proudly. "If I had known that it was necessary I should work, the toil would have come easily to my hands. I should have toiled on for my child's sake, and waited patiently until my husband bade me come."

"But you forgive me?" he said, in his old tone.

For answer she sank upon the floor at his feet, covering her face with her hands; and he heard her sobbing.

"Good-night," he said at last. "I will send Julie."

He bent down and laid his fingers softly upon her head for a moment, and was turning to go, but she caught at his hand and held it.

"A moment," she cried; "best and truest friend. Forgive me, and mine-- when we are divided, as we shall be--for life, try--pray for me--pray for him--and believe in him--as you do in me--my husband, Christie Bayle--my poor martyred husband."

"And I am forgiven?" he said.

"Forgiven!"

She said no more, and he pa.s.sed quickly into the room where Julia was anxiously awaiting his return.