This Man's Wife. Fenn George Manville

the curate showed that he was no mean hand with the spade, and then the old man paused for a moment to scrape the adherent soil from the broad blade.

      “My master will be back soon,” he said; “and then there’ll be some lunch; and, oh! here they are.”

      The Reverend Christie Bayle had been so intent upon lifting that great spadeful of black earth without crumbling, that he had not heard the approaching footsteps, and from behind the yew hedge that sheltered them from the flower-garden, two ladies and a tall, handsome-looking man suddenly appeared, awaking the curate to the fact that he was in his shirt sleeves, digging, with his hat on a gooseberry-bush, his coat in an apple-tree, and his well-blackened boots covered with soil.

      He was already flushed with his exercise. He turned of a deeper red now, as he saw the pleasant-looking, elderly lady give her silvery-grey curls a shake, the younger lady gaze from one to the other as if astonished, and the tall, dark gentleman suppress a smile as he raised his eyebrows slightly, and seemed to be amused.

      The curate thrust his spade into the ground, bowed hurriedly, took a long step and snatched his hat from the gooseberry-bush, and began to hastily roll down his sleeves.

      “Oh, never mind them,” said his companion. “Adam was not ashamed of his arms. Here, my dears, this is our new curate, Mr Bayle, the first clergyman we’ve had who could use a spade. Mr Bayle – my wife, my daughter Millicent. Mr Hallam, from the bank.”

      The Reverend Christie Bayle’s face was covered with dew, and he longed to beat a retreat from the presence of the pleasant-faced elderly lady; to make that retreat a rout, as he met the large, earnest grey eyes of “my daughter Millicent,” and saw as if through a mist that she was fair to see – how fair in his agitation he could not tell; and lastly, to rally and form a stubborn front, as he bowed to the handsome, supercilious man, well-dressed, perfectly at his ease, and evidently enjoying the parson’s confusion.

      “We are very glad you have come to see us, Mr Bayle,” said the elderly lady, smiling, and shaking hands warmly. “Of course we knew you soon would. And so you’ve been helping Dr Luttrell.”

      “The doctor!” thought the visitor with a mental groan; “and I took him for the gardener!”

      Volume One – Chapter Two.

      Some Introductions and a Little Music

      The reception had been so simple and homely, that, once having secured his coat and donned it, the doctor’s volunteer assistant felt more at his ease. His disposition to retreat passed off, and, in despite of all refusal, he was almost compelled to enter the house, Mrs Luttrell taking possession of him to chat rather volubly about King’s Castor and the old vicar, while from time to time a few words passed with Millicent, at whom the visitor gazed almost in wonder.

      She was so different from the provincial young lady he had set up in his own mind as a type. Calm, almost grave in its aspect, her face was remarkable for its sweet, self-contained look of intelligence, and the new curate had not been many minutes in her society before he was aware that he was conversing with a woman as highly cultivated as she was beautiful.

      Her sweet, rich voice absolutely thrilled, while her quiet self-possession sent a pang through him, as he felt how young, how awkward, and wanting in confidence he must seem in her eyes, which met his with a frank, friendly look that was endorsed during conversation, as she easily and pleasantly helped him out of two or three verbal bogs into which he had floundered.

      After a walk through the garden, they had entered the house, where Mrs Luttrell had turned suddenly upon her visitor, to confuse him again by her sudden appeal.

      “Did you ever see such a straw hat as that, Mr Bayle?”

      “Oh, it’s an old favourite of papa’s, Mr Bayle,” interrupted Millicent, turning to smile at the elderly gentleman taking the dilapidated straw from his head to hang it upon one particular peg. “He would not enjoy the gardening so much without that.”

      The tall handsome man left at the end of a few minutes. Business was his excuse. He had met the ladies, and just walked down with them, he told the doctor.

      “But you’ll come in to-night, Mr Hallam? We shall expect you,” said Mrs Luttrell warmly.

      “Oh, of course!” said Millicent, as Mr Hallam, from the bank, involuntarily turned to her; and her manner was warm but not conscious.

      “I shall be here,” he said quietly; and after a quiet friendly leave-taking, Christie Bayle felt relieved, and as if he could be a little more at his ease.

      It was not a success though, and when he in turn rose to go, thinking dolefully about his dirty boots as compared with the speckless Wellingtons of the other visitor, and after feeling something like a throb of pleasure at being warmly pressed to step in without ceremony that evening, he walked to his apartments in the main street, irritated and wroth with himself, and more dissatisfied than he had ever before felt in his life.

      “I wish I had not come,” he said to himself. “I’m too young, and what’s worse, I feel so horribly young. That supercilious Mr Hallam was laughing at me; the old lady treated me as if I were a boy; and Miss Luttrell – ”

      He stopped thinking, for her tall graceful presence seemed before him, and he felt again the touch of her cool, soft, white hand.

      “Yes; she talked to me as if I were a boy, whom she wanted to cure of being shy. I am a boy, and it’s my own fault for not mixing more with men.”

      “Bah! What an idiot I was! I might have known it was not the gardener. He did not talk like a servant, but I blundered into the idea, and went on blindfold in my belief. What a ridiculous débût I made there, to be sure, where I wanted to make a good impression! How can I profess to teach people like that when they treat me as if I were a boy? I can never show my face there again.”

      He felt in despair, and his self-abasement grew more bitter as the day went on. It would be folly, he thought, to go to the doctor’s that evening; but, as the time drew near, he altered his mind, and at last, taking a small case from where it rested upon a bookshelf, he thrust it into his pocket and started, his teeth set, his nerves strung, and his whole being bent upon the determination to show these people that he was not the mere bashful boy they thought him.

      It was a deliciously soft, warm evening, and as he left the town behind with its few dim oil lamps, the lights that twinkled through the trees from the doctor’s drawing-room were like so many invitations to him to hurry his feet, and so full was his mind of one of the dwellers beneath the roof that, as he neared the gate, he was not surprised to hear Millicent’s voice, sweet, clear, and ringing. It hastened his steps. He did not know why, but it was as if attracting – positively magnetic. The next moment there was the low, deep-toned rich utterance of a man’s voice – a voice that he recognised at once as that of Mr Hallam, from the bank; and if this was magnetic, it was from the negative pole, for Christie Bayle stopped.

      He went on again, angry, he knew not why, and the next minute was being introduced on the lawn to a thin, careworn, middle-aged man, and a tall, bony, aquiline lady, as Mr and Mrs Trampleasure, Mrs Luttrell’s pleasant, sociable voice being drowned almost the next moment by that of the bony dame, who in tones resembling those emitted by a brazen instrument, said very slowly:

      “How do you do? I saw you last Sunday. Don’t you think it is getting too late to stop out on the grass?”

      “Yes, yes,” said Mrs Luttrell hastily, “the grass is growing damp. Milly, dear, take Mr Hallam into the drawing-room.”

      The pleasant flower-decked room, with its candles and old-fashioned oil lamp, seemed truly delightful to Christie Bayle, for the next hour. He was very young, and he was the new arrival in King’s Castor, and consequently felt flattered by the many attentions he received. The doctor was friendly, and disposed to be jocose with allusions to gardening. Mr Trampleasure, thin and languid, made his advances, but his questions were puzzling, as they related to rates of exchange and other monetary matters, regarding which the curate’s mind was a blank.

      “Not a well-informed young man, my dear,” said Mr Trampleasure to his wife; whereupon