This Man's Wife

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.”