Volume Two—Chapter One.
The Thorny Way—Millicent Hallam’s Home.
“How dare you! Be off! Go to your mistress. Don’t pester me, woman.”
“Didn’t know it were pestering you, sir, to ask for my rights. Two years doo, and it’s time it was paid.”
“Ask your mistress, I tell you. Here, Julia.”
A dark-haired, thoughtful-looking child of about six years old loosened her grasp of Thisbe King’s dress, and crossed the room slowly towards where Robert Hallam sat, newspaper in hand, by his half-finished breakfast.
“Here, Julia!” was uttered with no unkindly intent; but the call was like a command—an imperious command, such as would be given to a dog.
The child was nearly close to him when he gave the paper a sharp rustle, and she sprang back.
“Pish!” he exclaimed, laughing unpleasantly, “what a silly little girl you are! Did you think I was going to strike you?”
“N-no, papa,” said the child nervously.
“Then why did you flinch away? Are you afraid of me?”
The child looked at him intently for a few moments, and then said softly:
“I don’t know.”
“Here, Thisbe,” said Hallam, frowning, “I’ll see to that. You can go now. Leave Miss Julia here.”
“Mayn’t I go with Thisbe, papa?” said the child eagerly.
“No; stay with me. I want to talk to you. Come here.”
The child’s countenance fell, and she sidled towards Hallam, looking wistfully the while at Thisbe, who left the room reluctantly and closed the door.
As soon as they were alone Hallam threw down the paper, and drew the child upon his knee, stroking her beautiful, long, dark hair, and held his face towards her.
“Well,” he said sharply, “haven’t you a kiss for papa?”
The child kissed him on both cheeks quickly, and then sat still and watched him.
“That’s better,” he said smiling. “Little girls always get rewards when they are good. Now I shall buy you a new doll for that.”
The child’s eyes brightened.
“Have you got plenty of money, papa?” she said quickly.
“Well, I don’t know about plenty,” he said with a curious laugh, as he glanced round the handsomely-furnished room, “but enough for that.”
“Will you give me some?”
“Money is not good for little girls,” said Hallam, smiling.
“But I’m not little now,” said the child quietly. “Mamma says I’m quite a companion to her, and she doesn’t know what she would do without me.”
“Indeed!” said Hallam sarcastically. “Well, suppose I give you some money, what shall you buy—a doll?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got five dolls now,” she said, counting on her little pink fingers, “mamma, papa, Thisbe, and me, and Mr Bayle.”
Hallam ground out an ejaculation, making the child start from him in alarm.
“Sit still, little one,” he said hastily. “Why, what’s the matter? Here, what would you do with the money?”
“Give it to mamma to pay Thisbe. Mamma was crying about wanting some money yesterday for grand-mamma.”
“Did your grandmother come and ask mamma for money yesterday?”
“Yes; she said grandpapa was so ill and worried that she did not know what to do.”
Hallam rose from his seat, setting down the child, and began walking quickly about the room, while the girl, after watching him for a few moments in silence, began to edge her way slowly towards the door, as if to escape.
She had nearly reached it when Hallam noticed her, and, catching her by the wrist, led her back to his chair, and reseated himself.
“Look here, Julia,” he said sharply, “I will not have you behave like this. Does your mother teach you to keep away from me because I seem so cross?” he added with a laugh that was not pleasant.
“No,” said the child, shaking her head; “she said I was to be very fond of you, because you were my dear papa.”
“Well, and are you?”
“Yes,” said the child, nodding, “I think so;” and she looked wistfully in his face.
“That’s right; and now be a good girl, and you shall have a pony to ride, and everything you like to ask for.”
“And money to give to poor mamma?”
“Silence!” cried Hallam harshly, and the child shrank away, and covered her face with her hands. “Don’t do that! Take down your hands. What have you to cry for now?”
The child dropped her hands in a frightened manner, and looked at him with her large dark eyes, that seemed to be watching for a blow, her face twitching slightly, but there were no tears.
“Any one would think I was a regular brute to the child,” he muttered, scowling at her involuntarily, and then sitting very thoughtful and quiet, holding her on his knee, while he thrust back the breakfast things, and tapped the table. At last, turning to her with a smile, “Have a cup of coffee, Julie?” he said.
She shook her head. “I had my breakfast with mamma ever so long since.”
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.