The place the same. Not a change visible in all those years. The old
church with its mossed tiles and lichened walls; the familiar tones of
the chiming clock that gave notice of the passing hours, and at the top
of the market-place the old Bank--Dixons' Bank, at whose door that
drab-looking man stood talking for a few minutes--talking to Mr
Trampleasure before going home to feed his fishes in the waning light,
and then take Mrs Thickens up to the doctor's house to spend the
evening.
And that evening. The garden unchanged in the midst of change. The old
golden glow coming through the clump of trees in the west beyond the row
of cucumber-frames--those trees that Dr Luttrell told his wife he must
cut down because they took off so much of the afternoon sun. But he had
not cut them down. He would as soon have thought of lopping off his own
right hand.
Everything in that garden and about and in that house seemed the same at
the first glance, but there had been changes in King's Castor in the
course of years.
There was a stone, for instance, growing very much weather-stained,
relating the virtues of one Daniel Gemp; and there was the same verse
cut in the stone that had been sent round on the funeral cards with some
pieces of sponge cake, one of which cards was framed in the parlour at
Gorringe's, his crony, who still cut up cloth as of old.
Mrs Pinet, too, had passed away, and the widow who now had the house,
and let lodgings, painted her pots green instead of red, and robbed the
dull old place of one bit of colour.
But the doctor's garden was the same, and so thought Christie Bayle, as
he stood in the gathering gloom six months after his return to England,
and shortly after his acceptance of the vicarage of King's Castor--at
his old friend's wish.
There were the old sweet scents of the dewy earth, that familiar one of
the lately cut grass; there was the old hum of a beetle winging its way
round and round one of the trees; and there before him were the open
French windows, and the verandah, showing the lit-up drawing-room
furniture, the old globe lamps, and the candles on the piano just the
same.
Had he been asleep and dreamed? and was he still the boyish curate who
fell in love and failed?
Yes; there was little Miss Heathery going to the piano and laying down
the reticule bag, with the tail of her white handkerchief hanging out.
And there was Thickens with his hands resting on his drab trousers; and
there was the doctor, and little pleasant Mrs Luttrell, going from one
to the other, and staying longest by, and unable to keep her trembling
hands off that tall, dark, beautiful woman, who smiled down upon her in
answer to each caress.
No change, and yet how changed! How near the bottom of the hill that
little grey old man, and that rosy little white-haired woman! How
querulous and thin sounded Mrs Thickens's voice in her old trivial
troubadour Heathery song! The years had gone, and in spite of its
likeness to the past, what a void there was--absent faces!
No; that carefully dressed old gentleman was half behind the curtain,
and he has risen to cross to the doctor, pausing to pat the tall,
graceful woman on the arm, and nod at her affectionately by the way.
There is another familiar face, too, that of Thisbe's in a most
wonderful cap, carrying in tea, to hand round, and Tom Porter obediently
"following in his commodore's wake," his own words, and handing
bread-and-butter, sugar and cream.
And still Christie Bayle gazes on, half expecting to see the tall, dark,
handsome man who cast so deep a shadow across so many lives; but instead
of that the graceful figure that is so like Millicent Hallam of the
past, appears framed in the window to stand there gazing out into the
dark garden.
Then she turns back sharply, to answer some remark made in the little
drawing-room, and looks quickly out again with hands resting on the
door.
It is very dark out there, and her eyes are accustomed to the light of
the drawing-room; but in a minute or so she sees that which she sought,
and half runs over the dewy lawn to where she is clasped in two strong
arms.
"You truant!" she says playfully, as she nestles close to him. "Come in
and sing; we want you to make the place complete. Why, what are you
thinking about?"
"I was thinking of the past, Julie," he says.
She looks up at him in the starlight; and he gazes down in her
glistening eyes.
"The past? Let me think of it too. Are we not one?"
And as they stand together the little English interior before them seems
to fade away, and the light they gaze upon to be the glowing sunshine of
the far South, blazing down in all its glory upon the grassy grave and
glistening stone that mark the resting-place of This Man's Wife.
The End.