Volume Three—Chapter Seven.
The Old Home.
Millicent Hallam was closely veiled as she descended from the coach at the inn-door, while Julia’s handsome young face was free for the knot of gossips of the little town to notice, as they clustered about as of old to see who came in the coach and who were going on.
A quiet, drab-looking man had just handed a basket to the guard and was turning away, when he caught sight of Julia’s face and stopped suddenly.
“Bless my soul, Mrs Hallam! Oh! I beg your pardon,” he stammered; “I thought—why, it must be Miss—and Mr Bayle, I—I really—I—”
He could not speak. The tears stood in his eyes, and he stood there shaking away at both of Christie Bayle’s hands for some moments before he became aware of Millicent Hallam’s presence.
“Only to think,” he cried; “but come along.”
“We are going up to the doctor’s,” said Bayle.
“Yes, yes, you shall; but pray come into my place—only for a minute. My wife will be so—so very pleased to see—Ah, my dear, how you have grown!”
James Thickens had become aware that his eccentric behaviour was exciting attention, so he hurried the visitors up to his house.
“Your people are quite well, Mrs Hallam,” he said, hardly noticing that there was a curious distance in her manner towards him. “They’re not expecting you, for the doctor was in the bank this morning, and he would have been sure to tell me.”
Mrs Hallam could not speak. She had felt so strengthened by tribulation, so hardened by trouble, that she had told herself that she could visit King’s Castor and her old home without emotion; but as she alighted from the coach, the sight of the place and their house brought back so vividly the troubles of the past, and her misery as Robert Hallam’s wife, that her knees trembled, and, but for Julia’s arm, she could hardly have gone on.
“Be brave,” whispered a voice at her ear as Thickens prattled on. “This is not like you.”
She darted a grateful look through her veil at Christie Bayle, almost wondering at the same time that he should have noticed her emotion. Once she glanced back towards their old house; and her heart gave a throb as she saw there was a painted board upon the front, which could only mean one thing—that it was to let.
All feeling of distance and coldness was chased away as Thickens opened the door and let them in to where a plump, pleasant-looking, little, elderly lady was sitting busily knitting, and so changed from the Miss Heathery they had all known that Bayle gazed at her wonderingly.
The plump little body started up excitedly and then dropped back in her chair, turning white and then red. She gasped and pressed her hands upon her sides, and then looked up helplessly.
“Why, don’t you know who it is?” cried Thickens with boisterous hospitality in his tones.
“Know? Yes, James, I know; but what a turn it has given me! My dear—my darling!—oh, I—I—I—I am so glad to see you again.”
The little woman had recovered herself and had caught Mrs Hallam to her breast, rocking her to and fro and clinging to her so affectionately that Millicent’s tears began to flow.
Bayle turned aside, moved by the warmth of the faithful little woman’s affection, when he felt a dig in his side from an elbow.
“Come and have a look at my gold fish, Mr Bayle,” said a husky voice; and with true delicacy Thickens hurried him out, and along his rose-path to where the gold and silver fish were basking in the spring afternoon sun. “Let them have their cry out together,” he whispered. “My little woman quite worships Mrs Hallam. There isn’t a day but she talks about her, and I’d promised to bring her up to town this summer to see her again.”
Meantime little Mrs Thickens had left Mrs Hallam, to make wet spots all over Julia’s cheeks as she kissed and fondled her.
“My beautiful darling,” she sobbed; “and grown so like—oh, so like—and—and—oh! if I had only known.”
The reception was so strange, the little lady’s ways so droll, that, in spite of the weariness of her journey and the trouble hanging over her young life, Julia had felt amused; but the next moment she was clinging to little Mrs Thickens, warmly returning her embrace and feeling a girlish delight in the affectionate caresses showered upon her by her mother’s simple old friend.
The stay was but short, for Millicent Hallam was trembling to see her old home and those she loved once more.
How little changed all seemed! A dozen years had worked no alterations. The old shops, the old houses, just the same.
Yes, there was one change; Mr Gemp sitting at his door, not standing, and with movement left apparently in one part only—his head, which turned towards them, with a fixed look, as they went down the street, and turned and followed them till they were out of sight.
“How I recollect it all!” whispered Julia, as she held her mother’s arm. “That old man who used to make Thisbe so cross. Walk more quickly, mamma, he is calling out our name to some one.”
It was true; and, as the words seemed to pursue them, Julia uttered an angry ejaculation, as she heard a sob escape from her mother’s breast.
“Hi! Gorringe, here’s that shack Hallam’s wife come down. Quick! dost ta hear?”
Bayle had stayed back with Thickens to allow his travelling companions to go to the cottage alone, or these words might not have been uttered.
And as they appeared to come hissing through the air, Millicent Hallam seemed to realise more and more how Bayle had been their protector, and how she had done wisely in fleeing from the little town, where every flaw in a man’s life was noted and remembered to the end.
“How dare he?” cried Julia indignantly; and her young eyes flashed. “Mother, we ought not to have come down here.”
“Hush, my child!” said Mrs Hallam softly; “who are we that we cannot bear patiently a few revolting words? If we were guilty, there would be a sting.”
The episode was forgotten as they passed out of the town, and along the pleasant road, nearer and nearer to the sweet old home. For Millicent Hallam’s breath came more quickly. She threw back her veil; her eyes brightened, and her pale cheeks flushed.
There it all was, unchanged. The great hedges, the yews, the shrubs, and the pleasant rose and creeper-covered cottage, with its glittering windows, and door beneath the rustic porch, open as if to give them welcome.
“Yes, yes, yes!” cried Julia eagerly, and her voice sounding full of excitement; “I am beginning to remember it all again so well. I know, yes—the gate fastening inside. I’ll undo it. Up this path, and grandpapa used to be there busy by his frames—round past the big green hedge, where grandmamma’s seat used to be, so that she could watch him while he was at work. And I used to run—and, oh! yes, yes, there! Grandpa! grandpa! here we are.”
Had the past twelve years dropped away? Millicent Hallam asked herself, as, seeing all dimly through a veil of tears, she heard Julia’s words, excited, broken, with all a child’s surging excitement and delight, as she ran from her side, across the smooth lawn to where that grey little old lady sat beneath the yew hedge, to swoop down upon her, folding her in one quick caress, and then, before she had recovered from her surprise, darting away, and off the path, over the newly-dug ground, to where that grey old gentleman dropped the hoe with which he was drawing a furrow for his summer marrowfats.
The twelve years had dropped from Julia’s mind for the time, and, a child once more, she was clinging to and kissing the old man, with whom she returned to where her mother was kneeling, locked in Mrs Luttrell’s arms.
“The dear, dear, dear old place!” cried Julia, with childlike ecstasy. “Grandpa, grandma, we’re come down to stay, and we must never leave you again.”
She stopped, trembling, her beautiful eyes dilated, and a feeling of chilling despair clutching at her heart, as her mother turned her ghastly face towards her, and her name seemed to float to her ears and away into the distance, in a cry that was like the wail of a stricken, desolate heart.
“Julia!”
“Mother, dearest mother, forgive me!” she cried, as she threw herself upon her breast, sobbing as if her heart would break. “I did not think: I had forgotten all.”