This Man's Wife

“Gently, gently, old lady!” said the doctor, tenderly kissing the wrinkled forehead that was raised towards him. “Well, heaven’s blessing be upon her, my dear, and may her love be as evergreen as ours.”

Mrs Luttrell rose and laid her head upon his shoulder, and stood there, with a happy, peaceful look upon her pleasant face, although it was still wet with tears.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she sighed; “and it would be so sad.”

“Ah, wife!” said the doctor, walking slowly up and down the room, with his arm about Mrs Luttrell’s waist, “it’s one of Nature’s mysteries. We can’t rule these things. Look at Milly. Some girls begin love-making at seventeen, ah, and before! and here she went calmly on to four-and-twenty untouched, and finding her pleasure in her books and music, and home-life.”

“As good and affectionate a girl as ever breathed!” cried Mrs Luttrell.

“Yes, my dear; and then comes the man, and he has but to hold up his finger and say ‘Come,’ and it is done.”

“But she might have had Sir Gordon, and he is rich, and then she would have been Lady Bourne!”

“He was too old, my dear, too old. She looked upon him like a child would look up to her father.”

“Well, then, Mr Bayle, the best of men, I’m sure; and he is well off too.”

“Too young, old lady, too young. I’ve watched them together hundreds of times. Milly always petted and patronised him, and treated him as if he were a younger brother, of whom she was very fond.”

“Heigho! Oh dear me!” sighed Mrs Luttrell. “But I don’t like him – this Mr Hallam. I never thought when Millicent was a baby that she would ever enter into an engagement like this. Can’t we break it off?”

The doctor shook his head. “I don’t like it, mother. Hallam is the last man I should have chosen for her; but we must make the best of it. He has won her; and she is not a child, but a calm, thoughtful woman.”

“Yes, that’s the worst of it,” sighed Mrs Luttrell; “she is so thoughtful and calm and dignified, that I never can look upon her now as my little girl. I always seem to be talking to a superior woman, whose judgment I must respect. But this is very sad!”

“There, there! we must not treat it like that, old lady. Perhaps we have grown to be old and prejudiced. I own I have.”

“Oh, no, no, my dear!”

“Yes, but I have. As soon as this seemed to be a certainty I began to try and find a hole in the fellow’s coat.”

“In Mr Hallam’s coat, love? Oh, you wouldn’t find that.”

“No,” said the doctor dryly, as he smiled down in the gentle old face, “not one. There, there! you must let it go! Now then, old lady, you must smile and look happy, here’s Milly coming down.”

Mrs Luttrell shook her head, and her wistful look seemed to say that she would never feel happy again; but as Millicent entered, in plain white satin, cut in the high-waisted, tight fashion of the period, and with a necklet of pearls for her only ornament, a look of pride and pleasure came into the mother’s face, and she darted a glance at her husband, which he caught and interpreted, “I will think only of her.”

“Oh, Milly!” she cried, “that necklace! what lovely pearls!”

“Robert’s present, dear. I was to wear them to-night. Are they not lovely?”

“Almost as lovely as their setting,” said the doctor to himself, as he kissed his child tenderly. “Why, Milly,” he said aloud, “you look as happy as a bird!”

She laid her cheek upon his breast, and remained silent for a few moments, with half-closed eyes. Then, raising her head, she kissed him lovingly.

“I am, father dear,” she said in a low voice, full of the calm and peaceful joy that filled her breast. “I am, father, I am, mother – so happy!” She paused, and then, laughing gently, added: “So happy I feel ready to cry.”

It was to be a quiet evening, to which a few friends were invited; but it was understood as being an open acknowledgment of Millicent’s engagement to Robert Hallam, and in this spirit the visitors came.

Miss Heathery generally arrived last at the social gatherings. It gave her entry more importance, and, at her time of life, she could not afford to dispense with adventitious aids. But there was the scent of matrimony in this little party, and she was dressed an hour too soon, and arrived first in the well-lit drawing-room.

“My darling!” she whispered, as she kissed Millicent.

That was all; but her voice and look were full of pity for the victim chosen for the next sacrifice, and she turned away towards the piano to get out her handkerchief, and drop a parting tear.

It was a big tear, one of so real and emotional a character that it brimmed over, fell on her cheekbone, and hopped into her reticule just as she was drawing open the top, and was lost in the depths within.

There was as much sorrow for herself as emotion on Millicent Luttrell’s behalf. Had not Millicent robbed her of the chance of an offer? Mr Hallam might never have proposed: but still he might.

Suddenly her heart throbbed, for the next guest arrived also unusually early, and as Thisbe held open the door for him to pass, hope told again her flattering tale to the tune that Sir Gordon might have known that she, Miss Heathery, was coming early, and had followed.

The hopeful feeling did not die at once, but it received a shock as Sir Gordon entered, looking very bright and young, to shake hands warmly with the doctor and Mrs Luttrell, to bow to Miss Heathery, and then turn to Millicent, who, in spite of her natural firmness, was a good deal agitated. She had nerved herself for these meetings, and striven to keep down their importance; but now the night had arrived, she was fain to confess that hers was a difficult task, to meet two rejected lovers, and bear herself easily before them with the husband of her choice. First there was Sir Gordon, from whom she was prepared for reproachful looks, and perhaps others marked by disappointment; while from Christie Bayle – ah, how would he behave towards her? He was so young that she trembled lest he should make himself ridiculous in his loving despair.

And now here was the first shock to be sustained, so, forcing herself to be calm, she advanced with extended hand.

“Oh,” whispered Sir Gordon, in tones that only reached Millicent’s ear, “too bad – too bad. Supplanted twice. But there, I accept my fate.” As he spoke he drew Millicent towards him, and kissed her forehead with tender reverence. “An old man’s kiss, my dear, to the child of his very dear friends. God bless you! May you be very happy with the man of your choice. May I?” He dropped her hand to draw from his breast a string of large single pearls, so regular and perfect a match that they must have cost a goodly sum. For answer Millicent turned pale as she bent towards him and he clasped the string about her neck. “There,” he said smiling, “I should have made a different choice if I had known.”

Millicent would have spoken, but her voice failed, and to add to her agony at that moment, Bayle came in, looking, as she saw at a glance, pale and somehow changed.

“He will do or say something absurd,” she said to herself as she bit her lip, and strove for composure. Then the blood seemed to rush to her heart and a pang shot through her as she realised more than if he had said a thousand things, how deeply her refusal had influenced his life.

Only four months since that day, when she had told him that they could be true friends, she speaking as an elder sister to one she looked upon as a boy. And now she felt ready to ask herself, who was this calm, grave man, who took her hand without hesitation, so perfectly at ease in his gentlemanly courtesy, and who had so thoroughly fallen into the place she had bidden him take?

“I see,” he said with a smile, “I shall not be out of order, my dear Miss Luttrell. Will you accept this little offering too?”

He was holding a brilliant diamond ring in his hand.

For answer Millicent drew her long glove from her soft, white hand, and he took it gravely, and, in the presence of all, slipped on the ring, bending over it afterwards to kiss that hand, with the chivalrous delicacy of some courtier of a bygone school, then, raising his eyes to hers, he said softly, “Millicent Luttrell, our friendship must never fail.”

Before she could say a word of thanks he had turned to speak to Mrs Luttrell, giving way to Sir Gordon Bourne, who began chatting to her pleasantly, while her eyes followed Christie Bayle’s easy gestures, as she wondered the while at the change in his manner, unable to realise the agony of soul that he had suffered in this his first great battle with self before he had obtained the mastery, wounded and changed, stepping at once, as it were, from boyhood to the position of a thoughtful man.

Hallam soon arrived, smiling and agreeable, and it was piteous to see Mrs Luttrell’s efforts to be very warm and friendly to him.

Millicent noticed it, and also that her father was quiet towards his son-in-law elect. She watched, too, the meeting between Hallam and Bayle, the former being as nearly offensive as his gentlemanly manner would allow; the latter warm, grave, and friendly.

“Has Bayle been unwell?” said Hallam the first time he was alone with Millicent.

“I have not heard,” she replied, glancing at the curate, and wondering more and more, as the evening went on, at the change.

Among others, the Trampleasures arrived, and to Miss Heathery’s grief, Mrs Trampleasure pretty well monopolised Bayle’s remarks, or else made him listen to her own.

“And what do you think of this engagement, Mr Bayle?” she said, in so audible a voice that he was afraid it would be overheard.

“They make a very handsome couple,” he replied.

“Ah, yes, handsome enough, I dare say; but good looks will not fill mouths. I wonder L. has allowed it. Mr Hallam is all very well, but he is, I may say, our servant, and if we, who are above him, find so much trouble to make both ends meet, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

“But Mr Hallam has a very good salary, I presume?”