The next day Colonel Richardson went to Scotland, after taking a very
warm farewell of Annie, who, so far as she herself was concerned, was
extremely sorry for his departure. He was the only man to whom she
had spoken since her marriage who had tastes in common with her, and
whose views of life were not bounded by the stable, the kennel, and the
dinner-table. George had indeed shown himself to be ready to enter into
her feelings, but his sympathy she was afraid to encourage. It was true
that she had felt for him, from the first time he had talked to her at
the Grange dinner-table, a warmer sentiment than she had ever felt for
Harry or any other man; and, though since her marriage she had stifled
it without much difficulty, she could not but know his interest in her
remained strong. She felt, however, that since last night’s talk she
would have to be more careful as to her conduct, and combine prudence
with a little more graciousness. It did not prove so difficult, after
all.
That very afternoon she had gone into the library to amuse herself
among the old books that nobody else ever touched, but in whose very
presence she delighted; and she was perched upon the ladder that stood
there by which to reach the highest shelves, and had covered herself
with dust in her endeavors to get at the dingy-looking volume whose
only attraction lay in the fact that it was out of reach, when Sir
George came in. She was surprised to see him, as she had never seen any
of the brothers indulge in heavier reading than that which a sporting
paper afforded.
“What are you doing among my books?” he asked, with severity.
“I don’t wonder you are astonished to see any one reading them,” said
she, looking down saucily, with her dull discovery open in her hand.
“You think I don’t know how to read, I believe.”
“I am sure you couldn’t read this, at any rate. It is called ‘Extracts
from the Sermons of the Reverend Thomas Dobbs, late Vicar of Garstone,’
and it is dated 1844.”
“Why, no; I indulge in that only on very special occasions! I don’t
think much of your literary taste.”
“And I don’t think much of your library. I can’t find anything better.”
“Oh, nonsense! Here’s the ‘Life of Knox,’ and the ‘Works of Josephus,’
and ‘Fox’s Martyrs.’ I remember my mother cured us of the vice of
reading when we were youngsters by letting us have these entertaining
works to read on Sundays. Have you ever noticed, Annie, that careless
and irreligious parents are always very particular about what their
children read on Sunday?”
“But I am too old to be cured in that simple manner. Find me something
nicer, please.”
“Come down, then, and sit by the fire, and I’ll find you ‘Clarissa
Harlowe,’ or something else as light and frivolous.”
She came down and sat in the chair he drew on to the hearth-rug, while
he brought one book after another, and, after dusting it carefully,
placed it on her lap. Sometimes he would kneel by her side for a few
minutes to look over one with her, and listen to her remarks upon it;
and they got on so well together over this pastime that by the time the
light of the December afternoon had faded, and the red glow of the fire
was all they had to see by, the awkward barrier between them was quite
broken down, and a friendly intercourse between them begun, which was
to Annie merely a new pleasure, but which brought to the young baronet
a delight which he knew to be full of peril.
After that day she avoided him no longer, but treated him with gracious
gratitude for his kindness, which would have disarmed a man of better
principles.
Lilian’s coldness to her had grown into more open dislike since Colonel
Richardson’s fondness for music had kept him so long at her side on
the eve of his journey to Scotland. But the girl could not do much to
make her sister-in-law uncomfortable for fear of her eldest brother,
with whom she jealously felt Annie’s interest to be strong. Young Sir
George was a harder and somewhat colder man than his father had been,
and took the lead in the family of which he was now the head as much by
character as by position.
It was getting very near Christmas when the baronet told his sister
one day at luncheon that he wished to speak to her. They went into the
library together, had a long interview, and, when the girl came out,
her face was red and swollen with crying. She was very silent that
evening, and Stephen watched her in wistful wretchedness. He had not
been able to speak to her that afternoon; he could only guess at the
reason for her unhappiness, and he sat brooding sullenly over George’s
cruelty in bringing tears to those proud eyes, and longing to be with
her alone, that he might learn what her trouble was and comfort her. It
was late in the evening before he got an opportunity of speaking to her
in the morning-room, whither she had gone on the pretext of fetching
some work, knowing well that her cousin would follow her. She broke
into the subject at once.
“Mr. Falconer has proposed for me, and George insists on my accepting
him.”
Mr. Falconer was a rich gentleman of about forty, who had paid Lilian
marked attention for some time. Lilian affected to look down upon him
because his father had made his money in “cotton;” but the sneer was
absurd, as her admirer was a man scarcely less stalwart and handsome
than her own brothers, and as much their superior in intellect,
character, and feeling as it was possible for a man to be.
Stephen leaned on his crutches, trembling from head to foot at the
news. He had known very well, poor fellow, in spite of mad dreams after
an occasional moment of her fascinating kindness, that she could never
be his; but her marriage had been a horrible dread for the distant
future, and, now that it proved a not distant reality, his heart sunk
within him. She was touched by the utter prostration of this poor
cripple, who would, as she very well knew, have given his life at any
moment for her. She led him to a chair, and tried to cheer him with a
sort of regal tenderness. At last he said, his lips trembling:
“But George can’t force you to marry him, Lily.”
“Yes, he can, practically. The money that ought to have been mine, of
course, I shall never get from this spendthrift crew. George says it is
impossible that he can give me what my father intended me to have, that
the estate is so burdened that there may be a break-up before very
long, and I am half inclined to believe him. So I am portionless, and
ought to think myself lucky to get a husband at all, it seems.”
“But, Lilian, that is nonsense! You are the most beautiful girl in the
country; you will make a sensation in London, and marry a duke, if you
like. You are surely never going to let George do what he likes with
you, with your high spirit?”
The girl did not answer, but impulsively hid her face in her hands. A
light came into Stephen’s troubled eyes, and he shuddered as he looked
at her.
“Lily,” he whispered, “has George heard anything?”
“I think so,” she answered, without looking up. “He just hinted, in a
way that made me think he must have been prying into my affairs, that
it would be better for me to do as he wished. But, after all,” she
cried, in a different tone, raising her proud head from the table as
suddenly as she had cast it down, “I have done nothing wrong--nothing
to be ashamed of. It is not my fault if I am so hunted and teased and
mistrusted by my own family that I cannot see what friends I please,
but must correspond with them secretly. For I won’t give up my friends
at any one’s bidding!”
“But you saw him not long ago, and by your friends’ invitation,” said
Stephen, in a low voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think I didn’t know at the first moment of seeing you with
Colonel Richardson, that it was his letters I had been receiving for
you? Oh, Lilian--and he is married!”
“And what if he is?” asked the girl, quietly. “I like him well enough
to marry him if he were free; but I am not going to give up his
friendship just because Aunt Constantia and mamma and Annie insulted
him and me when I was in town by saying our acquaintance was improper.
I shall have what friends I please--now and always; and, if I am to
marry Mr. Falconer soon after Christmas, I will see Colonel Richardson
again before then.”
“Soon after Christmas!” echoed Stephen, in a low voice.
“So George says. And the sooner the better, for then I shall be free,”
said the girl, impatiently. “And now you must post a letter for me at
Beckham to-morrow--just one more--the last,” she added, coaxingly.
“To Colonel Richardson, under cover, as usual, I suppose?”
“Yes. And, as it is perhaps the very last service you will ever be able
to do me, I am sure you won’t tease about it, will you?”
“It is a very bad service I am doing you, Lily. If George were really
to find it out, I think he would kill me, and perhaps you.”
“Oh, the sense of honor is not so keen as you imagine in our family!”
sneered Lilian. “He would bully us both, and perhaps strike one of us;
but he wouldn’t risk hanging on your account or mine.”
“But what do you want to say to Colonel Richardson?”
“I want to tell him to come and say good-bye to me before he goes away,
for he has been ordered abroad. George won’t invite him here again, I
know; but I must see him, and I will.”
“But how can you----”
“He must come on Christmas Day, in the evening. You know how my
brothers will celebrate Christmas by drinking more than usual, and
then quarreling among themselves. They will soon give me an excuse for
leaving their society, and I will meet Colonel Richardson at the gate
at the bottom of the garden--the one that leads to the short cut to
Beckham.”
“You would risk that? Think what you are doing, Lilian. Colonel
Richardson would never consent to put your reputation in peril like
that.”
“He will put himself in peril too, with my wild brothers about; so
he’ll risk it. And I know how to make him come. I’ll tell him, if he
doesn’t come down here, I’ll come up to London to see him.”
“Lily, are you mad? I will not help you to do this.”
“Very well, then; I’ll risk it without your help--post my own letter,
receive the answer, and you may betray me to George if you dare. I
believe I am mad, I am so miserable!”
“And all for a man who doesn’t appreciate you, who likes Annie better
than you?”
“It is not true,” said she fiercely. “If I believed that, she should
not stay in the house a day longer--I would not rest until I got the
little hypocrite turned out! But it is not true--it is not true! Now,
will you desert me at the last just when I am so wretched, and have
nobody to help me?”
“I will serve you to the end, for good or for evil, as I have always
done, Lily; you know I live only for that. When you are gone, whether
Mr. Falconer marries you or somebody else, my wretched life will be
no good to me, and I don’t care how soon I lose it. No one will ever
worship you as I do, Lily, nor for so little thanks.”
But she soothed him with sweet words and kind eyes. She did indeed feel
the strength of his devotion, and, moreover, he was too useful an ally
not to be worth a few kind speeches.
So the letter was sent, and the answer came--and the secret was safe.
Since the regular hunting-season had begun, Harry’s neglect of his wife
had not only grown more open than ever, but had been supplemented by
sneers at her “refined tastes” and “poetry, prunes, prism” manners. She
could not tell the cause of this change, and went on quietly in her own
way, dutifully caring for his small comforts, and accepting his coarse
snubs with the same placid indifference with which she had formerly
taken his scanty thanks.
When Christmas Day arrived it was spent just as Lilian had predicted.
In the morning the ladies went to church, accompanied by Stephen and
William. As there was no hunting, and Lady Braithwaite had insisted
upon the grooms having a holiday, the other young men spent the
afternoon in the stable and the billiard-room, wrangling more than
usual. Wilfred had already remonstrated with George for teasing Harry.
“You are always saying things to put his back up now. What do you do it
for?” he asked.
“I don’t care a straw what he says!” cried Harry, sullenly, who was
flushed and excited long before the afternoon was over. “And, as for
my not being ‘a person of authority,’ as he calls it, I have as much
authority as anybody here.”
“Over whom or over what, pray?” said George, tauntingly. “I don’t say
you can’t manage a horse as well as--an hostler; but show me the man or
woman on whom your word or your opinion has the slightest effect.”
“Well, I like that!” burst out Harry, his face twitching with passion.
“Don’t I manage my own wife--doesn’t she obey me, and quickly, too? Do
you ever hear her contradict me or differ from my opinion? Answer me,
or, by Jove, I’ll make you!”
“Your wife doesn’t think your opinion worth differing from, and
she obeys you as the shortest way of getting rid of your presence.
Everybody knows that.”
“I say, George, do shut up!” broke in Wilfred. “Can’t you see you are
only irritating him against his poor little wife, who has quite enough
to put up with from him already? What on earth are you driving at?
Can’t make you out lately!”
“Don’t interfere with your infernal preaching!” shouted Harry. “So my
wife has enough to put up with from me already! Very well, she’ll have
more than enough, then, before long, if she doesn’t get rid of her
confoundedly cold tragedy-queen airs, I can tell her! I’ll show her
and you too if I’m not master of my own wife!” And Harry flung away the
cigar-end he had been biting, and swung himself out of the yard, unable
to control himself any longer.
Wilfred turned to his brother.
“Why the dickens did you badger the boy like that? He’ll only go and
let off his ill-temper on poor little Annie, and perhaps take to
proving his authority with his fists or his boots, the hulking bully!”
“Well, the sooner he does, and disgusts her thoroughly, and makes her
throw him over altogether, the better for her.”
Wilfred looked at his brother keenly.
“I say, George, you’re not playing square.”
“Yes, I am; you don’t know the game;” and the baronet lounged out of
the stable-yard with his hands in his pockets, but with teeth so firmly
set that he bit his cigar in two.
Dinner that evening began quietly enough. There was a lull in the
hostilities between the young men, Harry being sullen, Wilfred rather
sleepy, and George giving all his attention to Lilian, who was in her
most brilliant mood, talking, laughing, teasing her eldest brother, and
delighting him by her archness; only one person at the table noticed
how feverishly bright her eyes were, and the nervous play of her
delicate fingers when she was not speaking. For Stephen never took his
eyes off her; he drank scarcely anything and ate nothing. Annie was
pale to the lips, and the sound of Harry’s voice made her start. Only
Lady Braithwaite and William were quite their usual selves.
“So this is the last Christmas I am to spend as Miss Braithwaite!” said
Lilian. “I wonder how I shall like married life.”
“Ask Annie how she likes it,” suggested George.
The young wife did not look up; but all could see that a shiver passed
over her slight form. Harry made a restless movement on his chair.
“Confound her!” William, who sat next, heard him mutter; and the boy’s
blood took fire. Wiser than George or Wilfred in the interests of his
play-fellow, however, he said nothing, and clinched his hands together
under the table to keep himself from punching his brother’s head.
Such acts as that had not been unknown in past times at the Grange
dinner-table, and a repetition of them seemed perilously near.
When they at last came into the drawing-room after dinner, after
sitting an unusually long time over their wine, Annie was seated--it
almost seemed that she was hidden--in the shadow of one of the
window-curtains close to the conservatory. Lady Braithwaite was happily
dozing as usual, and Lilian was flitting about the room, more animated,
more restless than usual. She looked at her brothers searchingly
as they came in, they were all talking and laughing loudly and
discordantly. Stephen was the only one perfectly sober, and he, white
to the lips and silent, was more excited than they. He watched Lilian
with glistening eyes full of fear and anxiety.
She had scarcely listened to half a dozen sentences of her brothers
when she left them and crossed the room.
“Where are you going? We want you to play something.”
“I think you can amuse yourselves better without me to-night,” she
said, with playful insolence--“at least for the present. I’ll come down
presently, when I’ve finished my letter to Aunt Constantia, and give
you ‘John Peel.’”
She calculated upon their having found some other means of passing the
time long before they thought of her again; and, before they could stop
her, she had left the room. The little black figure in the shadow of
the curtain sprung up, and was at the door to follow her example, when
Harry’s voice thundered:
“Annie, stop where you are!”
But for once she took no notice, and she was turning the handle when he
sprung forward and stumbled over a footstool. George laughed. William
darted across the room to Annie, and, holding the door open, said:
“Go, dear--quick!”
But the power to do so had gone from the frightened woman’s limbs. She
hesitated. In that one moment Harry had recovered himself, and, just as
William was giving her a gentle little push, her husband reached them,
and, seizing Annie’s arm roughly, swung her round into the middle of
the room again.
There came a sullen imprecation from the lips of every other man in the
room, and William, with a howl of rage, felled his staggering brother
like an ox to the ground. Wilfred, sober for the moment, turned to the
wife, who had clasped her hands in fright as she saw her husband fall.
“Go, my child, go!” he said earnestly. “He isn’t hurt. For Heaven’s
sake, go before he gets up!”
They were all between her and the door now, swearing, fallen husband
and the rest. She turned, fled through the conservatory, and out into
the garden; she ran, ran--over the steeply-sloping lawn and down into
the shrubbery at the bottom, too much scared to stop herself. She
fancied she saw a tall, black figure among the trees in front of her,
and called “Lilian!”--but there was no answer. Then, having reached
the path that ran between the trees all around the garden she leaned
against a tree to get back her breath. The next minute she heard a
man’s footsteps coming hurriedly down the walk. Her excited fancy told
her it was her husband come to wreak his disappointed fury on her; she
tried to get behind a tree, but there was a wire fence which stopped
her. She crouched down on the ground with her face hidden, until the
footsteps came quite close and stopped.
“Don’t, don’t! I can’t bear any more!” she said, hoarsely.
But an arm was put round her very gently, and tried to raise her from
the ground.
“My darling, it is not your brutal husband. Don’t you know who it is?”
“Oh, George!” she cried, with a gasp of relief, as he raised her from
the ground.
She hung on his arm, quite still, except for a convulsive trembling
from time to time, for a few minutes, until her shaken sense began to
return; then she tried to stand alone.
“I am better now, thank you, George. But, oh, I was so frightened!”
“Lie still in my arms, my darling,” said he, his voice shaking.
He drew her more closely to him, and she could feel the quick beating
of his heart against hers.
“Let me go, George; I am quite well now. You frighten me too!” she
said, piteously, imploringly, trying to unlock his hands with her
slender fingers.
He held her more closely at once.
“I frighten you, Annie! I would not hurt a hair of your beautiful head
for the world. Oh, my darling, my darling, tell me you are better! Look
up at me, Annie.”
She raised her eyes timidly to his face, then dropped them again, as
his passionate gaze met hers.
“I am much better. Let me go, George, please. Won’t you do what I ask
you? I am tired; I want to go in--to bed. Oh, George, if you are really
sorry for me, let me go in, or I shall die out here in the cold!”
“You shall not die; you shall not be cold in my arms. Do you want to go
back to the husband who is waiting to bully you, perhaps to strike you,
away from the man who loves you with all his soul?”
Annie gathered all her strength and gave one ringing cry:
“Harry!”
The bare branches of the shrubbery-trees rustled and cracked as a
man sprung into the pathway and tore the trembling woman from the
unprepared George. She looked up.
“Thank Heaven! Colonel Richardson!”
George looked at him, too, dumb with surprise. But his eyes saw what
Annie’s did not. From the opposite side of the path Lilian’s handsome
eyes were flashing in the moonlight in jealous anger at the woman who
lay unconscious in Colonel Richardson’s arms.