The announcement that Colonel Richardson was married entirely changed
the aspect in which his attention to Lilian had appeared. Annie
understood now that she herself had been used to cover a friendship
which the girl’s relatives disapproved of, and the young wife’s heart
beat fast with excitement and dread of the scene she had to go through
when she next heard Lilian’s footstep outside her sitting-room door.
She was doubtful how to open the subject; but her companion soon paved
the way by asking if the colonel had brought a book from Mudie’s.
“He called; but I had told Lydia to say I was not at home.”
Lilian’s face instantly wore its haughtiest expression.
“You sent such a message as that to Colonel Richardson?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Her beautiful gray eyes were fixed in indignant astonishment on
her companion’s face.
“I have decided that I cannot receive his visits any longer.”
She was trembling. Lilian mistook this for a sign of fear.
“Do you not consider my introduction a sufficient assurance that a
gentleman is worthy of the honor of your acquaintance?”
“Not in this case,” said Annie, looking at her steadily.
“Explain what you mean.”
“Certainly. I have the strongest reason for believing that you
introduced Colonel Richardson to me and led me to think he was
unmarried, because your friends, who knew more about him than I,
disapproved of the acquaintance for you.”
Lilian rose quickly from her seat, and seemed to be attempting to quell
the smaller woman by her dignified appearance.
“You have insulted me grossly--shamefully! I suppose I have deserved it
for condescending so far to you as I have done.”
“You forget,” Annie said, simply, without any show of either timidity
or arrogance. “Two months ago you might have talked to me of
condescension, for I was then only Miss Lane, the governess. Now I am
Mrs. Harold Braithwaite, your brother’s wife, your equal, and your
superior--for the present--as a married woman.”
“My equal--my superior!”
“Yes; that is not a matter of argument, but of fact. You cannot suppose
for a moment that I wish to presume upon it. You made the first
advances toward friendship with me, when I was rather lonely here and
grateful for your society and that of the gentleman you introduced to
me. Now I know your friendship was offered only that I might innocently
help you to deceive your friends, and I am quite as ready to draw back
as you can be;” and her brown eyes met the brilliant gray ones steadily.
Lilian was defeated, though she would not own it.
“You have caught up the grand manner very quickly,” said she,
patronizingly.
Annie smiled; such a sneer could not hurt her. Lilian left the room
majestically; and it was only then that the features of her hostess
assumed an anxious look. Would this headstrong girl give up her
dangerous acquaintance simply because another difficulty had been put
in the way of it? It was not likely. She had known quite well that
Lilian, looking upon her only as a useful acquaintance, not as an ally,
would not listen to any entreaties or remonstrances from her; therefore
she had not tried any; but she almost reproached herself now for not
having made the attempt.
She did not say anything to her husband about this interview, as that
would have entailed the confession that she had refused to see his
friend, which would have drawn down a useless fury of reproaches upon
her own head.
She felt rather awkward therefore when Harry, after complaining and
wondering that the colonel did not call, brought him home in triumph
to dinner one evening, about a week after the scene with Lilian. He
was sharp-sighted enough to notice a slight constraint in his wife’s
greeting of their guest, a slight diffidence in that of the colonel.
While Harry dressed for dinner, the latter came nearer to Annie and
said, in a low voice:
“I am in a difficult position, Mrs. Braithwaite. I have had the
misfortune to offend you in some way; but, when your husband invited me
here this evening, and I hinted that I was afraid you would not care to
receive me, he would not listen to my objections, and insisted upon my
coming.”
“Pray do not think I wish to be discourteous,” said Annie, fearful of
being ungracious to a guest--one, too, whom she could not help liking.
“I am sure you do not, therefore I know I must have been guilty of
some most unintentional offense to be punished with the severe snub I
received last week. May I know what I have done?”
He was gently putting her in the wrong, and she felt uncomfortable and
inclined to be remorseful. It was Lilian who had introduced him, and
she herself had welcomed his visits. She answered deprecatingly:
“You have done nothing to offend me; it was on account of Lilian.”
The words might have been dictated by a feeling of jealousy; but the
tone in which they were spoken precluded that idea. Colonel Richardson
did not pretend to misunderstand her.
“I see,” he said, after a short pause. “But I think I have been rather
hardly dealt with. I am forced by circumstances to remain in town
when most of my friends have left it, and my wife, who is an invalid,
is staying at Bournemouth. At the house of a common friend I make
the acquaintance of a charming girl, whose relations, being in deep
mourning, receive few visitors. She, finding me rather forlorn and
friendless, offers to introduce me to her sister-in-law, an equally
charming lady. I accept the offer eagerly--trespass perhaps too much
upon the kindness of both ladies in coming whenever I have a chance to
see them, and am rightly punished when----”
“Oh, no, no--forgive me!” cried poor Annie, overwhelmed with remorse
at the apparent strength of the case against her. “I would not for
the world have risked wounding you but for Lilian. You know how harsh
the world is to such a beautiful young girl, and the pleasure we both
took in your society has been already misconstrued in her case and has
alarmed her friends. I have been very frank--perhaps too frank; but I
think it was better, was it not?” she added pleadingly.
Of course he forgave her readily enough; and Annie, who felt that her
husband would not be above listening at the keyhole, if he thought
anything interesting was going on on the other side of the door,
hastened to drop the confidential tone of their conversation.
Lilian being now offended without remedy, there was no reason to put
any further check upon Colonel Richardson’s visits. He did not call so
often as before; but Annie was most grateful for the breaks he afforded
in her monotonous life.
They spent most of hot August in London, for the most hopeless of
reasons that they could not afford to go away. Harry got a little
money--she did not know how, and was afraid to ask; but even he saw
that they must be careful with it. However, in the last days of the
month they got an invitation to go for a voyage in a yacht, and the
five weeks they spent in that way were the happiest Annie had ever
known.
There was only one other lady on board, the wife of the owner, and a
much older woman, so Annie was a little queen for the time and received
unlimited attention from every man but her husband, who showed however
to greater advantage in her eyes than he had ever done before, for he
knew how to manage a yacht as well as he knew how to manage a horse,
and was, in fact, the best sailor on board.
By the first of October they were again in London, Harry more sulky,
his wife more reserved than ever. This could not last long.
One morning at breakfast he threw a letter in a shame-faced sort of way
across to his wife. It was from George, and contained a renewal of his
offer to receive them at the Grange. The poor little wife had reason
to dread this arrangement now, for Lady Braithwaite and Lilian, both
of whom disliked her, the one for receiving Colonel Richardson and the
other for dismissing him, were at the old home at Garstone. She read
the letter and gave it back.
“Are you going to accept?” she asked simply.
“Well, I don’t see what else there is to be done,” he answered, without
looking at her. “It is only fair that he should help us, and perhaps it
is true that he can’t spare enough just now to give me my due and let
me go. We might go there for a month and try it. There would be some
shooting now and some hunting later on, at any rate. And you would be
more comfortable with Lil and mother than here by yourself, I’m sure.”
Annie did not try to undeceive him on that point. She saw, by the
eagerness with which he alluded to the country pleasures he was going
back to, that nothing she could say would alter his determination to
accept his brother’s offer. She had known it must come to this, so she
heard his decision quietly, and prepared with a heavy heart to go back
to Garstone, a place full of bitter memories to her, for it was there
she had been dismissed without a kind word by the cold Mainwarings, and
it was there she had met her husband, who was, she felt already, to be
a burden crushing down her life and robbing her of the career she had
been fond of picturing to herself. For Annie was too high-principled
a girl to try to undo her own act by leaving the three-months-wedded
husband who already neglected and, in fact, bored her. She was useful
to him in a way; he was a trifle more orderly in his mode of life since
his marriage; she wrote his letters or told him what to say and how to
spell the words. She did not care enough about him to put any irksome
restraint upon him, having seen early that her reproaches only made
him drink more and spend more of his time with his inferiors; but, on
the whole, her influence improved his habits somewhat. She said to
herself, with a bitter smile, that, by marrying, she had taken only a
rather harder situation as governess, with none of the comforts of home
and a precarious salary. She packed up her things, gloomily, for their
journey, and her heart sunk lower and lower as they neared its end.
Harry, on the contrary, grew more and more excited and light-hearted
as the train approached Beckham. His happiness at finding himself
again on the way to his beloved dogs and horses found vent in a burst
of affection. He bounced into the seat next to his wife at the last
stopping station but one, when, two passengers having got out, they
were left alone in the carriage. Then he treated her to a rough embrace.
“Aren’t you glad to have left that smoky hole behind you and come into
the air again--eh, Annie?”
But Annie was not, and a furtive tear told him so. He kissed her pretty
little face that the yachting trip had bronzed.
“Don’t cry, dear. Do you remember our last journey on this line, Annie,
when you were so frightened because I jumped in, and wanted me to get
out at the next station? And what a long time it was before I could
make you leave off crying! But you have nothing to cry about now, you
know, and I want you to look your best when we get to the station, that
everybody may say what a pretty little wife I’ve brought home.”
But there was nothing in this speech soothing to Annie, who looked
anything but her best when they did steam into Beckham station. Sir
George was on the platform to meet them, with a dog-cart waiting
outside, and Harry felt disgusted and angry with his wife, when
logically he should have felt glad, as he saw by his brother’s first
glance at her that he thought her appearance much changed for the
worse. George drove, and Annie sat beside him, while Harry got up
behind with the groom. She was not very entertaining to-day, though she
tried hard to be so; but there was something pathetic to George in her
attempts to be lively, and the very tones of her soft voice had a charm
in themselves to him, so that he was touched, and listened to her with
a quiet kindliness in his manner which made much greater impression
upon her than the compliments and tender tones he had used to her
before her marriage.
“I hope you don’t so very much mind having to come and live at the
Grange. We will all try to make you happy,” he took the opportunity of
saying when Harry’s voice, in hot argument with the groom, rose loudly
enough to drown the _tête-à-tête_ in front.
She looked up at him gratefully, with the too ready tears in her eyes.
“Thank you; I am sure you will,” she said, gently.
Words better left unsaid to the heartsore and neglected little wife
rose to his lips; but her straightforwardness and a lull in the
conversation at the back checked them--for the present.
She treasured up those few words of kindness and welcome, all the more
carefully that the greetings she received from the rest of the family
were cruelly cold. Lady Braithwaite and her daughter held out icy hands
to her; Stephen had evidently taken sides with them; Wilfred was kind,
but rather indifferent; and William, the youngest, was restrained by a
very needless fear of exciting Harry’s jealousy from showing the warmth
he really felt toward the sad-looking little lady who had made such a
delightful play-fellow.
The fatigue she felt after such a long journey excused her from talking
much. She sat very quiet during dinner, feeling scarcely awake, and
hardly catching the sense of the talk going on around her. Lilian
did not know very much about the odds for the great races which were
under discussion; but she liked to think she did, and joined in the
conversation confidently. Lady Braithwaite listened with interest
to the sort of squabbling laying down of the law on their favorite
subjects to which her sons had accustomed her for years.
Harry was rampant, rejoicing to find himself once more able to hold
his own in the talk around him; he drank more than usual, contradicted
everybody, and, as George quietly said, did his best to make his
unobtrusive presence felt.
Annie alone took no part in it all, but sat dreading the time when she
should have to accompany the other ladies into the drawing-room and be
at their mercy.
At last the moment came. She followed them quietly, receiving a parting
chill at the dining-room door from the steady way in which crippled
Stephen, who liked to show his activity by jumping up to open the door
for them, though he was not the nearest to it, looked on the ground,
and not at her, as she passed.
It was not so bad as she had expected, after all. Lilian had no
pettiness, and did not descend to small persecutions. She did not show
much cordiality, but hunted out all the newest songs from among the
music for Annie to try, and then left her to amuse herself. Annie was
grateful for this; it took her out of the range of Lady Braithwaite’s
disapproving eyes, and the occupation of trying new music kept her own
tears from falling. She could defend herself or even attack boldly in
argument or dispute, but this armed coldness took all the spirit out of
her; she could retreat behind her natural reserve and seem not to care,
but there followed a bitter reaction when she was alone.
It was a long time before the gentlemen came in to break the silence in
the drawing-room. Lady Braithwaite was dozing, Lilian was sitting on
the hearth-rug, playing with a retriever pup, Annie was softly trying
over songs at the piano at the other end. Sounds of high voices and
loud laughter came from time to time across the hall; at last they
heard the dining-room door open, and Harry’s voice above the rest in
tones of high excitement.
“I tell you I can prove it, I can prove it!” he was saying to George as
they two came in first; his face was flushed and his gait unsteady, and
his manner more dictatorial than ever.
“How can you prove it?” asked George, who might have been drinking as
much, but who showed it less.
“By a paper I’ve got somewhere. Annie,” said he to his wife, scarcely
turning toward where she sat at the piano, “where is that American
paper the colonel gave me, about the trotting-matches?”
“I packed it with your papers. I can find it if you want it.”
“Yes, yes, I want it. Then I’ll show you I was right,” said he,
triumphantly, to his brother. Annie had risen, and was crossing the
room to the door. George interposed.
“No, no, not to-night. Don’t you see she is tired? You can’t ask her to
ransack your portmanteau to-night for a paper of no importance. It will
do to-morrow.”
“No, it won’t do to-morrow,” said Harry, who was not in a state to
brook contradiction. “I say I will prove it to you now, to-night. It
is of importance, of great importance, very important! You said I was
wrong; I say I’m right, and I’ll prove it.”
Before the end of this speech, the last words of which were spoken
with halting gravity, Annie had left the room, gently insisting upon
passing George, who would still have tried to prevent her going. Harry,
luckily, did not see his brother’s good-natured attempt to save his
tired little wife a tedious search for an old newspaper. She went up
to their room; it was Harry’s old room, with a second little bed put
up in it. His portmanteau had been unstrapped. She turned out the
gas in trying to turn it up; so she opened the door and dragged the
portmanteau into the corridor, under the burner outside.
Fatigue had dulled her faculties, and it was a long time before she
found what she wanted. She was still searching when she heard heavy
footsteps behind her, and looking round from where she was on her
knees, she saw Wilfred leaning against the friendly wall.
“Let me help you,” said he; and he knelt down beside her, not without
difficulty.
She thanked him, though his assistance was not likely to prove valuable.
“Harry is a brute to you,” he said, solemnly.
“Oh, no; he is only a little thoughtless!”
“Yes, he is,” said Wilfred. “He is a brute, because he is a fool. But
he will have to treat you better now he has brought you home. We’ll see
to that.”
“Oh, I hope you won’t interfere; it would only make it a great deal
worse for me! He is not cruel to me, and I don’t mind his neglect.”
“I dare say you would rather have his neglect than his attention, and
I quite agree with you. And now you have three nice new brothers, who
will give you all the attention you want,” said he, looking at her
affectionately over the portmanteau, while he supported himself on his
elbows on the edge of it.
“Thank you; you won’t find me very exacting,” said she, turning over
some papers in search of the one she wanted.
But he would not go.
“You maybe as exacting as you like to me,” he continued, monotonously;
“I would do anything for you. You are a sweet, good little lady, and
you may take me to church if you like.”
She had at last found what she wanted, and rose quickly from her knees,
while Wilfred slowly followed her example. She had shut the portmanteau
and pushed it back into the room before he had had time to do more than
offer to do so.
As she shut the door and was going down-stairs, he put his hand gently
on her arm, and they went down-stairs together. In the hall he said,
gently:
“You need not think I am offended because you wouldn’t let me help
you,” and went off to the billiard-room.
Wilfred was the most notorious reprobate of the lot; but the instincts
of a gentleman showed oftener in him than in the others.
Annie went on to the drawing-room, where her husband, reproaching her
for being so long, seized the paper from her. But his hands and eyes
were too unsteady to find what he wanted, and she had to find and read
it out to him.
The passage, about the pace of a celebrated American trotting-mare,
proved Harry to be right, and he triumphed loudly, not thinking to
thank his wife for her trouble. Then he asked her to write to their
late lodging for a pipe and pair of spurs he had left behind, and
again she quietly left the room, and went into the study to do so.
This time it was William who interrupted her. He knocked softly at the
door, and came in rather shyly.
“I thought I’d show you where the pens and paper are,” said he; and he
collected the writing materials for her and hunted for a stamp while
she wrote.
Then, when she had directed the envelope, he put the stamp on and
brought his fist down upon it with an unnecessary thump.
“What is that for?”
“That’s to make it stick, of course.”
For the first time that evening Annie burst out laughing. The boy threw
his arms round her and gave her a sounding kiss.
“I’m so glad to hear you laugh again. You looked as if you would never
laugh any more. And I’m so glad you’re come, so jolly glad!”
She was laughing and crying together now, as she drew the boy’s face to
her and kissed his cheek.
“And I’m so glad you’re glad. We’ll have another game at shuttlecock
to-morrow.”
“Oh, no,” he said earnestly; “I’ve got something better than that for
you to-morrow. I’ve got a new terrier, the gamest you ever saw, and
we’ll have the most splendid rat-hunt you ever were at in your life.”