"Going out for a drive?"
"Yes, Mr Bayle; and it was of no use my speaking. No end of things to
see to; but the doctor would have me come with him."
"I think the doctor was quite right, Mrs Luttrell."
"There you are. You see, my dear? What did I tell you? Plants must
have air, mustn't they, Bayle?"
"Certainly."
"I wish you would not talk like that, my dear. I am not a plant."
"But you want air," cried the doctor, giving his whip a flick, and
making his sturdy cob jump.
"Oh! do be careful, my dear," cried Mrs Luttrell nervously as she
snatched at the whip.
"Oh, yes, I'll be careful. I say, Bayle, I wish you would look in as
you go by; I forgot to open the cucumber-frame, and the sun's coming out
strong. Just lift it about three inches."
"I will," said the curate; and the doctor drove on to see a patient
half-a-dozen miles away.
"Well, you often tell me I'm a very foolish woman, my dear," said Mrs
Luttrell, buttoning and unbuttoning the chaise-apron with uneasy
fingers, "but I should not have done such a thing as that."
"Thing as what?" cried the doctor.
"As to send a gentleman on to our house where Milly's all alone. It
doesn't seem prudent."
"What, not to ask a friend to look in and lift the cucumber-light?"
"But, with Milly all alone; and I never leave her without feeling that
something is going to happen."
"Pish! fudge! stuff!" cried the doctor. "I never did see such a woman
as you are. I declare you think of nothing but courting. You ought to
be ashamed of yourself at your time of life."
"Now, you ought not to speak like that, my dear. It's very wrong of
you, for it's not true. Of course I feel anxious about Millicent, as
every prudent woman should."
"Anxious! What is there to be anxious about? Such nonsense! Do you
think Bayle is a wolf in sheep's clothing?"
"No, of course I don't. Mr Bayle is a most amiable, likeable young
man, and I feel quite surprised how I've taken to him. I thought it
quite shocking at first when he came, he seemed so young; but I like him
now very much indeed."
"And yet you would not trust him to go to the house when we were away.
For shame, old lady! for shame!"
"I do wish you would not talk to me like that, my dear. I never know
whether you are in earnest or joking."
"Now, if it had been Hallam, you might have spoken.--Ah! Betsy, what
are you shying at?--Keep that apron fastened, will you? What are you
going to do?"
"I was only unfastening it ready--in case I had to jump out," faltered
Mrs Luttrell.
"Jump out! Why, mother! There, you are growing into quite a nervous
old woman. You stop indoors too much."
"But is there any danger, my dear?"
"Danger! Why, look for yourself. The mare saw a wheelbarrow, and she
was frightened. Don't be so silly."
"Well, I'll try not," said Mrs Luttrell, smoothing down the cloth fold
over the leather apron, but looking rather flushed and excited as the
cob trotted rapidly over the road. "You were saying, dear, something
about Mr Hallam."
"Yes. What of him?"
"Of course we should not have sent him to the house when Milly was
alone."
"Humph! I suppose not. I say, old lady, you're not planning
match-making to hook that good-looking cash-box, are you?"
"What, Mr Hallam, dear? Oh, don't talk like that."
"Humph!" ejaculated the doctor, making the whiplash whistle about the
cob's ears; "you are not very fond of him, then?"
"Well, no, dear, I can't say I am. He's very gentlemanly, and handsome,
and particular, but somehow--"
"Ah!" said the doctor, with a dry chuckle, "that's it--`somehow.'
That's the place where I stick. No, old lady, he won't do. I was a bit
afraid at first; but he seems to keep just the same: makes no advances.
He wouldn't do."
"Oh, dear me, no!" cried Mrs Luttrell, with quite a shudder.
"Why not?" said the doctor sharply; "don't you like him?"
"Perhaps it would not be just to say so," said Mrs Luttrell nervously,
"but I'm glad Milly does not seem to take to him."
"So am I. Curate would be far better, eh?"
"And you charge me with match-making, my dear! It is too bad."
"Ah! well, perhaps it is; but don't you think--eh?"
"No," said Mrs Luttrell, "I do not. Millicent is very friendly to Mr
Bayle, and looks upon him as a pleasant youth who has similar tastes to
her own. And certainly he is very nice and natural."
"And yet you object to his going to see the girl when we are out!
There, get along, Betsy; we shall never be there."
The whip whistled round the cob's head and the chaise turned down a
pleasant woody lane, just as Christie Bayle lifted the latch and entered
the doctor's garden.
It was very beautiful there in the bright morning sunshine; the velvet
turf so green and smooth, and the beds vying one with the other in
brightness. There was no one in the garden, and all seemed strangely
still at the house, with its open windows and flower-decked porch.
Bayle had been requested to look in and execute a commission for the
doctor, but all the same he felt guilty: and though he directed an eager
glance or two at the open windows, he turned, with his heart throbbing
heavily, to the end of the closely-clipped yew hedge, and passed round
into the kitchen-garden, and then up one walk and down another, to the
sunny-sheltered top, where the doctor grew his cucumbers, and broke down
with his melons every year.
There was a delicious scent from the cuttings of the lawn, which were
piled round the frame, fermenting and giving out heat: and as the curate
reached the glass lights, there was the interior hung with great
dewdrops, which began to coalesce and run off as he raised the ends of
the lights and looked in.
_Puff_! quite a wave of heated air, fragrant with the young growth of
the plants, all looking richly green and healthy, and with the golden,
starry blossoms peeping here and there.
Quite at home, Christie Bayle thrust in his arm and took out a little
block of wood cut like an old-fashioned gun-carriage or a set of steps,
and with this he propped up one light, so that the heat might escape and
the temperature fall.
This done he moved to the next, and thrust down the light, for he had
seen from the other side a glistening, irregular, iridescent streak,
which told of the track of an enemy, and this enemy had to be found.
That light uttered a loud plaintive squeak as it was thrust down, a
sound peculiar to the lights of cucumber-frames; and, leaning over the
edge, Bayle began to peer about among the broad prickly leaves.
Yes, there was the enemy's trail, and he must be found, for it would
have been cruel to the doctor to have left such a devouring creature
there.
In and out among the trailing stems, and over the soft black earth,
through which the delicate roots were peeping, were the dry glistening
marks, just as if someone had dipped a brush in a paint formed of pearl
shells dissolved in oil, and tried to imitate the veins in a block of
marble.
Yes; in and out--there it went, showing how busy the creature had been
during the night, and the task was to find where it had gone to rest and
sleep for the day, ready to come forth refreshed for another mischievous
nocturnal prowl.
"Now where can that fellow have hidden himself?" said the follower of
the trail, peering about and taking off his hat and standing it on the
next light. "One of those great grey fellows, I'll be bound. Ah, to be
sure! Come out, sir."
The tale-telling trail ended where a seed-pan stood containing some
young Brussels sprouts which had attained a goodly size, and upon these
the enemy had supped heartily, crawling down afterwards to sleep off the
effects beneath the pan.
It was rather difficult to reach that pan, for the edge of the frame was
waist-high; but it had to be done, and the slug raked out with a bit of
stick.
That was it! No, it was not; the hunter could not quite reach, and had
to wriggle himself a little more over and then try.
The search was earnest and successful, the depredator dying an
ignominious death, crushed with a piece of potsherd against the
seed-pan, and then being buried at once beneath the soil, but to a
looker-on the effect was grotesque.
There was a looker-on here, advancing slowly along the path with a bunch
of flowers in one hand, a pair of scissors in the other. In fact, that
peculiar squeak given by the frame had attracted Millicent's attention,
at a time when she believed every one to be away.
As she approached, she became conscious of the hind quarters of a man
clothed in that dark mixture that used to be popularly known as
"pepper-and-salt," standing up out of one of the cucumber-frames, and
executing movements as if he were practising diving in a dry bath.
Suddenly the legs subsided and sank down. Next they rose again, and
kicked about, the rest of the man still remaining hidden in the frame,
and then at last there was a rapid retrograde motion, and Christie Bayle
emerged, hot, dishevelled, but triumphant for a moment, then scarlet
with confusion and annoyance as he hastily caught up his hat, clapped it
on, but hurriedly took it off and bowed.
"Miss Luttrell!" he exclaimed.
"Mr Bayle!" she cried, forbearing to smile as she saw his confusion.
"I heard the noise and wondered what it could be."
"I--I met your father," he said, hastily adjusting the light; "he asked
me to open the frames. A tiresome slug--"
"It was very kind of you," she said, holding out her hand and pressing
his in her frank, warm grasp, and full of eagerness to set him at his
ease. "Papa will be so pleased that you have caught one of his
enemies."
"Thank you," he said uneasily; "it is very kind of you."--"I'm the most
unlucky wretch under the sun, always making myself ridiculous before
her," he added to himself.
"Kind of me? No, of you, to come and take all that trouble."--"Poor
fellow!" she thought, "he fancies that I am going to laugh at
him."--"I've been so busy, Mr Bayle: I've copied out the whole of that
duet. When are you coming in to try it over?"
"Do you wish me to try it with you?" he said rather coldly.
"Why, of course. There are no end of pretty little passages solo for
the flute. We must have a good long practice together before we play in
public."
"You're very kind and patient with me," he said, as he gazed at the
sweet calm face by his side.
"Nonsense," she cried. "I'm cutting a few flowers for Miss Heathery;
she is the most grateful recipient of a present of this kind that I
know."
They were walking back towards the house as she spoke, and from time to
time Millicent stopped to snip off some flower, or to ask her companion
to reach one that grew on high.
In a few minutes she had set him quite at his ease and they were talking
quietly about their life, their neighbours, about his endeavours to
improve the place; and yet all the time there seemed to him to be an
undercurrent in his life, flowing beneath that surface talk. The garden
was seen through a medium that tinted everything with joy; the air he
breathed was perfumed and intoxicating; the few bird-notes that came
from time to time sounded more sweetly than he had ever heard them
before; and, hardly able to realise it himself, life--existence, seemed
one sweetly calm, and yet paradoxically troubled delight.
His heart was beating fast, and there was a strange sense of oppression
as he loosed the reins of his imagination for a moment; but the next, as
he turned to gaze at the innocent, happy, unruffled face, so healthful
and sweet, with the limpid grey eyes ready to meet his own so frankly,
the calm came, and he felt that he could ask no greater joy than to live
that peaceful life for ever at her side.
It would be hard to tell how it happened. They strolled about the
garden till Millicent laughingly said that it would be like trespassing
on her father's _carte blanche_ to cut more flowers, and then they went
through the open French window into the drawing-room, where he sat near
her, as if intoxicated by the sweetness of her voice, while she talked
to him in unrestrained freedom of her happy, contented life, and bade
him not to think he need be ceremonious there.
Yes, it would be hard to tell how it happened. There was one grand
stillness without, as if the ardent sunshine had drunk up all sound but
the dull, heavy throb of his heart, and the music of that sweet voice
which now lulled him to a sense of delicious repose, now made every
nerve and vein tingle with a joy he had never before known.
It had been a mystery to him in his student life. Books had been his
world, and ambition to win a scholarly fame his care. Now it had by
degrees dawned upon him that there was another, a greater love than
that, transcending it so that all that had gone before seemed pitiful
and small. He had met her, her voice would be part of his life from
henceforth, and at last--how it came about he could not have told--he
was standing at her side, holding her hands firmly in his own, and
saying in low and eager tones that trembled with emotion:
"Millicent, I love you--my love--my love!"
For a few moments Millicent Luttrell stood motionless, gazing
wonderingly at her companion as he bent down over her hands and pressed
his lips upon them.
Then, snatching them away, her soft creamy face turned to scarlet with
indignation, but only for this to fade as she met his eyes, and read
there the earnest look he gave her, and his act from that moment ceased
to be the insult she thought at first.
"Miss Luttrell!" he said.
"Hush! don't speak to me," she cried.
He took a step forward, but she waved him back, and for a few moments
sobbed passionately, struggling hard the while to master her emotion.
"Have I offended you?" he panted. "Dear Millicent, listen to me. What
have I done?"
"Hush!" she cried. "It is all a terrible mistake. What have _I_ done?"
There was a pause, and the deep silence seemed to be filled now with
strange noises. There was a painful throbbing of the heart, a singing
in the ears, and life was all changed as Millicent at last mastered her
emotion, and her voice seemed to come to the listener softened and full
of pity as if spoken by one upon some far-off shore, so calm, so grave
and slow, so impassionately the words fell upon his ear.
Such simple words, and yet to him like the death-knell of all his hope
in life.