George Fenn - This Man's Wife

“Miss Luttrell!” he exclaimed.

“Mr Bayle!” she cried, forbearing to smile as she saw his confusion. “I heard the noise and wondered what it could be.”

“I – I met your father,” he said, hastily adjusting the light; “he asked me to open the frames. A tiresome slug – ”

“It was very kind of you,” she said, holding out her hand and pressing his in her frank, warm grasp, and full of eagerness to set him at his ease. “Papa will be so pleased that you have caught one of his enemies.”

“Thank you,” he said uneasily; “it is very kind of you.” – “I’m the most unlucky wretch under the sun, always making myself ridiculous before her,” he added to himself.

“Kind of me? No, of you, to come and take all that trouble.” – “Poor fellow!” she thought, “he fancies that I am going to laugh at him.” – “I’ve been so busy, Mr Bayle: I’ve copied out the whole of that duet. When are you coming in to try it over?”

“Do you wish me to try it with you?” he said rather coldly.

“Why, of course. There are no end of pretty little passages solo for the flute. We must have a good long practice together before we play in public.”

“You’re very kind and patient with me,” he said, as he gazed at the sweet calm face by his side.

“Nonsense,” she cried. “I’m cutting a few flowers for Miss Heathery; she is the most grateful recipient of a present of this kind that I know.”

They were walking back towards the house as she spoke, and from time to time Millicent stopped to snip off some flower, or to ask her companion to reach one that grew on high.

In a few minutes she had set him quite at his ease and they were talking quietly about their life, their neighbours, about his endeavours to improve the place; and yet all the time there seemed to him to be an undercurrent in his life, flowing beneath that surface talk. The garden was seen through a medium that tinted everything with joy; the air he breathed was perfumed and intoxicating; the few bird-notes that came from time to time sounded more sweetly than he had ever heard them before; and, hardly able to realise it himself, life – existence, seemed one sweetly calm, and yet paradoxically troubled delight.

His heart was beating fast, and there was a strange sense of oppression as he loosed the reins of his imagination for a moment; but the next, as he turned to gaze at the innocent, happy, unruffled face, so healthful and sweet, with the limpid grey eyes ready to meet his own so frankly, the calm came, and he felt that he could ask no greater joy than to live that peaceful life for ever at her side.

It would be hard to tell how it happened. They strolled about the garden till Millicent laughingly said that it would be like trespassing on her father’s carte blanche to cut more flowers, and then they went through the open French window into the drawing-room, where he sat near her, as if intoxicated by the sweetness of her voice, while she talked to him in unrestrained freedom of her happy, contented life, and bade him not to think he need be ceremonious there.

Yes, it would be hard to tell how it happened. There was one grand stillness without, as if the ardent sunshine had drunk up all sound but the dull, heavy throb of his heart, and the music of that sweet voice which now lulled him to a sense of delicious repose, now made every nerve and vein tingle with a joy he had never before known.

It had been a mystery to him in his student life. Books had been his world, and ambition to win a scholarly fame his care. Now it had by degrees dawned upon him that there was another, a greater love than that, transcending it so that all that had gone before seemed pitiful and small. He had met her, her voice would be part of his life from henceforth, and at last – how it came about he could not have told – he was standing at her side, holding her hands firmly in his own, and saying in low and eager tones that trembled with emotion:

“Millicent, I love you – my love – my love!”

For a few moments Millicent Luttrell stood motionless, gazing wonderingly at her companion as he bent down over her hands and pressed his lips upon them.

Then, snatching them away, her soft creamy face turned to scarlet with indignation, but only for this to fade as she met his eyes, and read there the earnest look he gave her, and his act from that moment ceased to be the insult she thought at first.

“Miss Luttrell!” he said.

“Hush! don’t speak to me,” she cried.

He took a step forward, but she waved him back, and for a few moments sobbed passionately, struggling hard the while to master her emotion.

“Have I offended you?” he panted. “Dear Millicent, listen to me. What have I done?”

“Hush!” she cried. “It is all a terrible mistake. What have I done?”

There was a pause, and the deep silence seemed to be filled now with strange noises. There was a painful throbbing of the heart, a singing in the ears, and life was all changed as Millicent at last mastered her emotion, and her voice seemed to come to the listener softened and full of pity as if spoken by one upon some far-off shore, so calm, so grave and slow, so impassionately the words fell upon his ear.

Such simple words, and yet to him like the death-knell of all his hope in life.

“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”

He looked piteously in the handsome pale young face before him, his heart sinking, and a feeling of misery, such as he had never before known, chilling him so that he strove in vain to speak.

The words were not cruel, they were not marked with scorn or contempt. There was no coquetry – no hope. They were spoken in a voice full of gentle sympathy, and there was tender pity in every tone, and yet they chilled him to the heart.

“Oh, Mr Bayle, I am so sorry!”

It needed no look to endorse those words, and yet it was there, beaming upon him from those sweet, frank eyes that had filled again with tears which she did not passionately dash aside, but which brimmed and softly dropped upon the hands she clasped across her breast.

He saw plainly enough that it had all been a dream, his dream of love and joy; that he had been too young to read a woman’s heart aright, and that he had taken her little frank kindnesses as responses to his love; and he needed no explanations, for the tones in which she uttered those words crushed him, till as he stood before her in those painful moments, he realised that the deathblow to all his hopes had come.

He sank back in his chair as she stood before him, gazing up at her in so boyish and piteous a manner that she spoke again.

“Indeed, indeed, Mr Bayle, I thought our intimacy so pleasant, I was so happy with you.”

“Then I may hope,” he cried passionately. “Millicent, dear Millicent, all my life has been spent in study; I have read so little, I never thought of love till I saw you, but it has grown upon me till I can think only of you – your words, the tones of your voice, your face, all are with me always, with me now. Millicent, dear Millicent, it is a man’s first true love, and you could give me hope.”

“Oh, hush! hush!” she said gently, as she held out her hand to him, which he seized and covered with his kisses, till she withdrew it firmly, and shook her head. “I am more pained than I can say,” she said softly. “I tell you I never thought of such a thing as this.”

“But you will,” he said, “Millicent, my love!”

“Mr Bayle,” she said, with some attempt at firmness, “if I have ever by my thoughtlessness made you think I cared for you, otherwise than as a very great friend, forgive me.”

“A friend!” he cried bitterly.