This Man's Wife. Fenn George Manville
and rose and fell in impassioned strains, and then gradually died off in a soft, sweet, final chord, that the subdued notes of the piano, wiry though they were, failed to spoil.
“You are not fond of music?” said Sir Gordon, making Bayle, who had been still sitting back rather stiffly, and with his eyes closed, start, as he replied:
“Who? I? Oh, yes, I love it!” he replied hastily.
“Young! young!” said Sir Gordon to himself as he rose and crossed the room to congratulate Millicent on her performance – Hallam giving way as he approached – saying to himself: “I’m beginning to wish we had not engaged him, good a man as he is.”
“Yes, I’m very fond of that duet,” said Millicent. “Excuse me, Sir Gordon, here’s Miss Heathery.”
She crossed to the door to welcome a lady in a very tight evening dress of cream satin – tight, that is, in the body – and pinched in by a broad sash at the waist, but the sleeves were like two cream-coloured spheres, whose open mouths hung down as if trying to swallow the long crinkly gloves that the wearer kept drawing above her pointed elbows, and which then slipped down.
It is a disrespectful comparison, but it was impossible to look at Miss Heathery’s face without thinking of a white rabbit. One of Nature’s paradoxical mysteries, no doubt, for it was not very white, nor were her eyes pink, and the sausage-shaped, brown curls on either side of her forehead, backed by a great shovel-like, tortoise-shell comb, in no wise resembled ears; but still the fact remained, and even Christie Bayle, on being introduced to the elderly bashful lady, thought of the rabbit, and actually blushed.
“You are just in time to sing, Miss Heathery,” said Millicent.
Miss Heathery could not; but there was a good deal of pressing, during which the lady’s eyes rolled round pleadingly from speaker to speaker, as if saying, “Press me a little more, and I will.”
“You must sing, my dear,” said Mrs Luttrell in a whisper. “Make haste, and then Millicent’s going to ask Mr Bayle, and you must play the accompaniment.” Miss Heathery said, “Oh, really!” and Sir Gordon completed the form by offering his arm, and leading the little lady to the piano, taking from her hands her reticule, made in pale blue satin to resemble a butterfly; after that her gloves.
Then, after a good deal of arrangement of large medical folios upon a chair to make Miss Heathery the proper height, she raised her shoulders, the left becoming a support to her head as she lifted her chin and gazed into one corner of the room.
Christie Bayle was a lover of natural history, and he said to himself, “How could I be so rude as to think she looked like a white rabbit? She is exactly like a bird.”
It was only that a change that had come over the lady, who was now wonderfully bird-like, and, what was quite to the point, like a bird about to sing.
She sang.
It was a tippity-tippity little tinkling song, quite in accordance with the wiry, zither-like piano, all about “dewy twilight lingers,” and harps “touched by fairy fingers,” and appeals to some one to “meet me there, love,” and so on.
The French say we are not a polite nation. We may not be as to some little bits of outer polish, but at heart we are, and never more so than at a social gathering, when some terrible execution has taken place under the name of music. It was so here, for, moved by the feeling that the poor little woman had done her best, and would have been deeply wounded had she not been asked to sing, all warmly thanked Miss Heathery; and directly after, Christie Bayle, with his ears still burning from the effects of the performance, found himself beside the fair singer, trying to talk of King’s Castor and its surroundings.
“I would rather not ask him, mamma dear,” said Millicent at the other side of the room.
“But you had better, my dear. I know he is musical, and he might feel slighted.”
“Oh, yes, he’s a good fellow, my dear; I like him,” said the doctor bluffly. “Ask him.”
With a curious shrinking sensation that seemed somehow vaguely connected with Mr Hallam from the bank, and his eagerness earlier in the evening, Millicent crossed to where Bayle was seated, and asked him if he would sing.
“Oh, no,” he said hastily, “I have no voice!”
“But we hear that you are musical, Mr Bayle,” said Millicent in her sweet, calm way.
“Oh, yes, I am. Yes, I am a little musical.”
“Pray sing then,” she said, now that she had taken the step, forgetting the diffident feeling; “we are very simple people here, and so glad to have a fresh recruit in our narrow ranks.”
“Yes, pray sing, Mr Bayle; we should be so charmed.”
“I – er – I really – ”
“Oh, but do, Mr Bayle,” said Miss Heathery again sweetly.
“I think you will oblige us, Mr Bayle,” said Millicent smiling; and as their eyes met, if the request had been to perform the act of Marcus Curtius on foot, and with a reasonable chance of finding water at the bottom to break the fall, Christie Bayle would have taken the plunge.
“Have you anything I know?” he said despairingly.
“I know,” cried Miss Heathery, with a sort of peck made in bird-like playfulness. “Mr Bayle can sing ‘They bid me forget thee.’”
“Full many a shaft at random sent, hits,” et cetera. This was a chance shot, and it struck home.
“I think – er – perhaps, I could sing that,” stammered Bayle, and then in a fit of desperation – “I’ll try.”
“I have it among my music, Millicent dear. May I play the accompaniment?”
Miss Heathery meant to look winning, but she made Bayle shiver.
“If you will be so good, Miss Heathery;” and the piece being found and spread out, Christie Bayle, perspiring far more profusely than when he was using the doctor’s spade, stood listening to the prelude, and then began to sing, wishing that the dead silence around had been broken up by a hurricane, or the loudest thunder that ever roared.
Truth to tell, it was a depressing performance of a melancholy song. Bayle’s voice was not bad, but his extreme nervousness paralysed him, and the accompaniment would have driven the best vocalist frantic.
It was a dismal failure, and when, in the midst of a pleasant little chorus of “Thank you’s” Christie Bayle left the piano, he felt as if he had disgraced himself for ever in the eyes of King’s Castor, above all in those of this sweetly calm and beautiful woman who seemed like some Muse of classic days come back to life.
Every one smiled kindly, and Mrs Luttrell came over, called him “my dear” in her motherly way, and thanked him again.
“Only want practice and confidence, sir,” said the doctor.
“Exactly,” said Sir Gordon; “practise, sir, and you’ll soon beat Hallam there.”
Bayle felt as if he would give anything to be able to retreat; and just then he caught Mrs Trampleasure’s eyes as she signalled him to come to her side.
“She told me she did not like music,” he said to himself; and he was yielding to his fate, and going to have the cup of his misery filled to the brim when he caught Hallam’s eye.
Hallam was by the chimney-piece, talking to Mr Trampleasure about bank matters; but that look seemed so full of triumphant contempt, that Bayle drew his breath as if in pain, and turned to reach the door.
“It was very kind of you to sing when I asked you, Mr Bayle,” said that sweet low voice that thrilled him; and he turned hastily, seeing again Hallam’s sneering look, or the glance that he so read.
“I cannot sing,” he replied with boyish petulance. “It was absurd to attempt it. I have only made myself ridiculous.”
“Pray do not say that,” said Millicent kindly. “You give me pain. I feel as if it is my fault, and