It was a painful evening that last. Every one was assuming to be
light-hearted, and talking of the voyage as being pleasant, and hinting
delicately at the possibility of seeing mother and daughter soon again,
but all the while feeling that the farewells must in all probability be
final.
Mr and Mrs Thickens retired early, for the latter whispered to her
husband that she could bear it no longer.
"I feel, dear, as if it were a funeral, and we were being kept all this
while standing by the open grave!"
"Hush!" whispered back Thickens; "it's like prophesying evil." And they
hurriedly took leave.
Then Sir Gordon rose, saying that it was very late, and he, too, went,
leaving mother and daughter exchanging glances, for the old man seemed
cool and unruffled in an extraordinary degree.
Bayle remained a little longer, talking to Doctor and Mrs Luttrell,
whose favourite attitudes all the evening had been seated on either side
of Julia, each holding a hand.
"Good-night," said Bayle at last, rising and shaking hands with Julia in
a cheery, pleasant manner. "No sitting up. Take my advice and have a
good rest, so as to be prepared for the sea demon. Eleven punctually,
you know, to-morrow. Everything ready?"
"Yes, everything is ready," replied Julia, looking at him with her eyes
flashing and a feeling of anger at his cavalier manner forcing its way
to the surface. It seemed so Cruel. Just at a time like that, when a
few tender words of sympathy would have been like balm to the wounded
spirit, he was as cool and indifferent as could be. She was right, she
told herself. He really was tired of them.
Bayle evidently read her ingenuous young countenance and smiled, with
the result that she darted an indignant glance at him, and then could
not keep back her tears.
"Oh, no, no, no," he said, taking her hand and holding it, speaking the
while as if she were a child. "Tears, tears? Oh, nonsense! Why, these
are not the days of Christopher Columbus. You are not going to sail
away upon an unknown sea. It is a mere yachting trip, and every mile of
the way is known. Come, come: cheer up. That's nautical, you know,
Julie. Good-night, my dear! good-night."
He shook hands far more warmly and affectionately with the Doctor and
Mrs Luttrell, hesitating for a moment or two, and even taking poor
weeping Mrs Luttrell in his arms, and kissing her tenderly again and
again.
"Good-night, good-night, my dear old friend," he said. "You have been
almost more than a mother to me. Good-night, good-night."
The old lady sobbed upon his shoulder for some time, the doctor holding
Bayle's other hand, while Julia crossed to her mother, who was standing
cold and statuesque near the door, and hid her face.
"Good-night and good-bye, my dear boy," said Mrs Luttrell, as she
raised her head; and looked up in his face. "And you always have seemed
as if you were our son."
Bayle's lip quivered, and his face was for a moment convulsed, but he
was calm again in a moment.
"To be sure, doctor," he said. "I shall come down and see you again--
some day. I want some gardening for a change. Good-night, good--"
His last word was inaudible, as he hurried towards the door, where Mrs
Hallam was awaiting him.
"Go back to your grandmother, Julie," she said, in a low, stern voice.
"Christie Bayle, I wish to speak to you."
"To me? To-night?" he said hastily. "No: to-morrow. I am not myself
now, and you need rest."
"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 impoverishing 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 hoarsely. 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 fortitude 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, passionately. "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! hush!" 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 passed quickly into the room where Julia was
anxiously awaiting his return.
"Doctor--Mrs Luttrell," he said, "you must try and calm her, or she
will not be able to undertake this journey. Julie, my child, try what
you can do. Good-night. Good-night."
As the door closed after him, Mrs Hallam walked back into the room
looking calm and stern; but her face softened as Julia clung to her and
then seated herself at her mother's feet, the next hours passing so
peacefully that it was impossible to believe that the time for parting
was so near.