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 glass, 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."
"Hush! hush! 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 passionately, "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 harassed
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 sunshine
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?"
"The clock struck when you dropped off, dear. I did not speak for fear
of waking you."
She did not add that she, too, had been kept awake about money matters,
and wondering whether her husband would consent to live in a more simple
style in a smaller house.
"There, good-bye," he said, kissing her. "It is all coming right.
Don't talk to your father or mother about my affairs."
"Of course I should not, love," she replied; "such things are sacred."
"Yes, of course," he said hastily. "There, don't take any notice of
what I have said. I am worried--very much worried just now, but all
will come right soon." He kissed her hastily and hurried away, leaving
Millicent standing thoughtful and troubled till she heard another step
on the rough stones, when a calm expression seemed to come over her
troubled face, but only to be chased away by one more anxious as the
step halted at the door and the bell rang.
Meanwhile Julia had run upstairs to her own room, where, facing the
door, five very battered dolls sat in a row upon the drawers, at which
she dashed full of childish excitement, as if to continue some
interrupted game.
She stopped short, looked round, and then gave her little foot a stamp.
"How tiresome!" she cried pettishly. "It's that nasty, tiresome,
disagreeable old Thibs. I hate her, that I do, and--"
"Oh, you hate me, do you?" cried the object of her anger appearing in
the doorway. "Very well, it don't matter. I don't mind. You don't
care for anybody now but Mr Bayle."
The child rushed across the room to leap up and fling her arms round
Thisbe's neck, as that oddity stood there, quite unchanged: the same
obstinate, hard woman who had opposed Mrs Luttrell seven years before.
"Don't, don't, don't say such things, Thibs," cried the child, all
eagerness and excitement now, the very opposite of the timid, shrinking
girl in the breakfast-room a short time before; and as she spoke she
covered the hard face before her with kisses. "You know, you dear,
darling old Thibs, I love you. Oh, I do love you so very, very much."
"I know it's all shim-sham and pea-shucks," said Thisbe, grimly; but,
without moving her face, rather bending down to meet the kisses.
"No, you don't think anything of the kind, Thibs, and I won't have you
looking cross at me like papa."
"It's all sham, I tell you," said Thisbe again. "You never love me only
when you want anything."
"Oh! Thibs!" cried the girl with the tears gathering in her eyes; "how
can you say that?"
"Because I'm a nasty, hard, cankery, ugly, disagreeable old woman," said
Thisbe, clasping the child to her breast; "and it isn't true, and you're
my own precious sweet, that you are."
"And you took away my box out of the room, when I had to go down to
papa."
"But you can't have a nasty, great, dirty candle-box in your bedroom, my
dear."
"But I want it for a doll's house, and I'm going to line it with paper,
and--do, Thibs, do, do let me have it, please?"
"Oh, very well, I shall have to be getting the moon for you next. I
never see such a spoiled child."
"Make haste then, before Mr Bayle comes, to go on with my lessons.
Quick! quick! where is it?"
"In the lumber-room, of course. Where do you suppose it is?"
Thisbe led the way along a broad passage and up three or four stairs to
an old oak door, which creaked mournfully on its hinges as it was thrown
back, showing a long, sloped, ceiled room, half filled with
packing-cases and old fixtures that had been taken down when Hallam
hired the house, and had it somewhat modernised for their use.
It was a roomy place with a large fireplace that had apparently been
partially built up to allow of a small grate being set, while walls and
ceiling were covered with a small patterned paper, a few odd rolls and
pieces of which lay in a corner.
"I see it," cried Julia excitedly.
"No, no, no; let me get it," cried Thisbe. "Bless the bairn! why, she's
like a young goat. There, now, just see what you've done!"
The child had darted at the hinged deal box, stood up on one end against
the wall in the angle made by the great projecting fireplace, and in
dragging it away torn down a large piece of the wall paper.
"Oh, I couldn't help it, Thibs," cried the child panting. "I am so
sorry."
"So sorry, indeed!" cried Thisbe; "so sorry, indeed, won't mend walls.
Why, how wet it is!" she continued, kneeling down and smoothing out the
paper, and dabbing it back against the end of the great fireplace from
which it had been torn. "There's one of them old gutters got stopped up
and the rain soaks in through the roof, and wets this wall; it ought to
be seen to at once."
All this while making a ball of her apron, Thisbe, who was the
perfection of neatness, had been putting back the torn down corner of
paper, moistening it here and there, and ending by making it stick so
closely that the tear was only visible on a close inspection. This done
she rose and carried the box out, and into the child's bedroom, when
before the slightest advance had been made towards turning it into a
doll's house, there was the ring at the door, and Thisbe descended to
admit the curate, to whom Julia came bounding down.