Careless of herself and her own secret, in the burning desire
to be revenged upon Annie, Lilian sped back to the house, not
knowing that George had seen her, and found Harry with the rest
in the billiard-room, still quarreling hotly about the scene in
the drawing-room, of which she had not yet heard. Stephen had been
forbidden by her to leave the house that night, and he had been
tortured with anxiety on her account ever since he saw Annie go into
the conservatory, and then noticed a few minutes later that George had
also disappeared.
Lilian beckoned Harry imperiously out of the room.
“I have something important to say to you.”
Her wide, glistening eyes, panting bosom, and resolutely subdued
manner, checked his oaths at this interruption. He followed her into
the hall.
“George and Colonel Richardson are in the garden, in the copse at the
bottom, quarreling over your wife. I am sorry if I have startled you;
but I thought you had better know.”
“She is the blight of my life,” hissed out Harry, with a bitter
imprecation, trying to steady himself.
“Hadn’t you better do something more than stand here and abuse her?”
asked Lilian, dryly.
She turned in disgust from the infuriated lad, and went into the
drawing-room. He was on the point of following her, when Annie came
into the hall from the garden by another door. There was not a trace
of color in her face; she crept slowly, and it seemed to her drunken
husband guiltily, toward the staircase.
“Stop!” growled Harry. “You have something to say to me now. Where have
you been?”
“In the garden.”
“Whom were you with?”
“With George.”
“And Colonel Richardson?”
“Yes.”
She spoke wearily, all spirit seemed to have been taken out of her
by the scenes she had gone through since Harry’s first bullying that
afternoon.
“What were you doing there? Tell me at once.”
“I was doing nothing to be ashamed of; you know that perfectly well.
I will tell you all about it to-morrow. It would be of no use to try
to make you understand now,” said she, glancing up at his flushed face
with an involuntary shudder of disgust.
“You will tell me now, whether I understand or not--that is my
lookout,” returned he, doggedly. “I’ve had enough of your infernal airs
of superiority, and I mean to show you I’m master. You go about with
a long face, telling everybody you are too good for me, when all the
while----”
“Take care what you say!” she broke in, with sudden spirit.
“What were you doing in the garden, then?” thundered he. “What was
Colonel Richardson there for?”
She did not answer. It was not so much to shield Lilian as from fear of
another and worse quarrel between the brothers that she was silent; and
excitement, fatigue, and disgust were making her reckless.
“Do you intend to answer me or not?” asked Harry, laying a heavy hand
on her shoulder.
His touch made her defiant.
“Not now.”
He raised his hand and struck her. It was not really a severe blow; but
it was enough to throw the fragile little creature to the ground.
“You brute, you cruel, cowardly brute!” she cried, in a low, sobbing
voice, looking up at him with passionate dark eyes full of hatred, from
where she had fallen. “You may have killed your child!”--and her head
fell back upon the floor at his feet, while he stood still in stupid,
dumb bewilderment.
Only for a moment. The rough, drunken fellow was not heartless. When
his dim, dazed eyes saw clearly the white, senseless face at his feet,
and his dull ears began to admit a suggestion of her meaning, he flung
himself down beside her and gathered the unconscious woman into his
arms in a passion of loud, demonstrative remorse.
“I have killed her--I have killed her!” bemoaned to the group
of frightened people from the drawing-room, billiard-room, and
servants’-hall whom his cries brought quickly into the hall. “Heaven
forgive me, she is dead! My poor, pretty little wife! Oh, I am a brute,
a beast! Annie, Annie! She will never speak to me again!”--and the
slight frame he held in his arms and pressed to his convulsed and
swollen face shook with the violence of his sobs.
It was a genuine grief that prompted this outburst; but it was the
grief, not of a man, but of a child who in a fit of thoughtless anger
had taken the life of a pet dog or bird.
They took her from him with difficulty, assuring him that she had only
fainted; and George and Wilfred led him away, while the women tried to
restore her to consciousness. It was a long time before they succeeded;
then Lady Braithwaite came into the billiard-room where the young men
were.
“She must have a doctor. Somebody must ride to Beckham at once,” she
said.
“I will!” cried Harry, jumping up.
“Nonsense; you are not sober enough,” said George curtly. He was
bearing his share of remorse at the result of the day’s work.
But, before he had reached the door. Harry passed him with a rough push
and an oath. The shock had sobered the lad for the time; but he had
been drinking since to drown his remorse. However, he was so familiar
with the stable as to be able almost by instinct to find what he
wanted; he put saddle and bridle himself on to the fastest horse there,
and, once in the saddle, he was all right, for, drunk or sober, Harry
could ride.
He got back before the doctor, and ran, all breathless, heated, and
splashed, up the stairs to the door of the room, into which Annie had
been taken, knocked as softly as he could, and opened the door. She was
lying on the bed, and his mother and the housekeeper were with her.
They made gestures to him to go back; but he stood there, his face all
quivering with wistful anxiety.
“Only let me just say one word to her,” pleaded he, hoarsely. He was
panting still from the speed with which he had come.
Annie, who had been lying half-unconscious, opened her eyes and turned
to Lady Braithwaite with a low cry:
“Don’t let him come near me!” she whispered.
But Harry heard; and he slunk out of the room, stunned as no physical
blow could have stunned him.
Annie lay ill for weeks, and in all that time no messages, no
entreaties would induce her to see her husband. The only glimpses he
got of her were by stealth, when she was asleep. For the sweet hope of
being a mother, which had made her secretly, silently happy under all
his neglect, had now been taken from her, and she felt that it was his
brutality which had snatched away the one joy her wretched marriage had
brought her.
Lady Braithwaite tried to soothe her mind and induce her to forgive her
husband. But the submissive daughter-in-law was strong in her weakness;
and no persuasion on the part of the elder lady, who had now grown as
kind as she had formerly been cold, could extract more than:
“Tell him I forgive him; but don’t let me see him.”
She was so obstinate in this decision that, even when she was well
enough to be carried down-stairs, she refused to move from her room,
and the women about her knew that it was the dread of meeting her
husband which kept her a prisoner. So that Lady Braithwaite had to make
her way to Harry’s room one night, and persuade him to go away for
a time. It was a difficult task for a mother, for the lad’s passion
broke out vehemently in alternate fits against his wife and of fondness
for her. First he said he would go to the ends of the earth, if that
would do her any good, and the next minute he swore she was a hard,
ungrateful little vixen, and deserved to have her ears boxed.
However, at last Lady Braithwaite carried her point; and he agreed to
go away for a fortnight to some relatives of hers in Leicestershire--no
very great hardship, in truth, as the hunting-season was not yet over.
So one morning, before Annie was awake, he stole into her room with
elaborately clumsy movements expressive of his intention not to
make the least noise, all ready for his journey, except that he was
without his boots--he had left them outside the door for fear of their
creaking. He stood looking at her wistfully for a few minutes, and then
crept close to the bed and softly kissed her. She did not move or wake.
Then he took out of his pocket a letter, directed, rather quaintly, to
“Mrs. Harold Braithwaite, Garstone Grange, Lancashire.” He had first
written outside it simply, “Annie;” but then it had occurred to him
that the dignity of the offended husband required the full title. This
letter he tucked gently under her shoulder, as he did not want anybody
else to see it. Then, with another kiss and the murmur, “She doesn’t
deserve it--I’m blessed if she does!” he left the room.
When he got outside the door, he hesitated a moment.
“Wonder if it would hurt her to wake her? She might just say good-bye.
Oh, well, it is only for a fortnight!” and he put on his boots and went
down-stairs.
Only a fortnight--so he thought!
When Annie woke that morning, she found the letter. It was badly
written, strangely spelled, not punctuated at all, an authentic
uninspired document evidently:
“MY DEAR ANNIE,--I ought not to have to write to you at all as a
husband ought to see his wife whenever he likes and she ought to
think it a compliment but you are ill though I believe you are nearly
well now and I say no more. You don’t know how sorry I am about it
all or you would be kinder for I can not ride or sleep or do anything
hardly for thinking of you. Then all say I am silly to go on like
this just for a woman and I dare say they are right in the abstrackt
but they don’t know how much a man feels this sort of tretment until
they are married themselves which I hope they won’t be till they are
older than you and me for a man should not marry until five-and-twenty
I am sure of that now. I do not say that to reproach you for it was
not your fault, and it is nearly as bad for you as for me and it will
all be different in a fortnight when I come back for I will be very
gentle and kind to you and I want you to promise that you won’t say
any more about it nor throw it in my face afterward when you are angry
with me and that you won’t always be so dredfully quiet before people
as if you were afraid of me. I know I am not good enough for you and
everybody is always telling me so and it is not at all a pleasant
thing for a fellow and I think if you were a little less good it would
be better. I would as soon you gave me a slap in the face than obey me
in the way you do like a statue or a martyr which you are not. Don’t
think I want to say hard things to you for everybody will tell you
how wretched I have been and I will say a lot more to you when I see
you but now as the dog-cart is round and I have not had my breakfast
I will say good-by and if you are not awake I will put it under your
pillow. Your affectionate husband,
“HARRY.”
As Annie read this letter, it struck her for the first time that she
had not appreciated the extreme youthfulness of her husband, who was
much younger at twenty than she was on the eve of being nineteen. The
letter, in its boyish simplicity, amused and touched her; however, it
did not alter, but rather strengthened, a resolution which she had been
busily forming and developing during those quiet weeks of illness.
On the day following Harry’s departure for Leicestershire she was
led down-stairs, being strong enough to walk now, and enthroned in
the drawing-room as a special pet and sovereign. She was rather shy
with George at first; but he knew how to be so quietly kind as to
put her at her ease. William danced wild hornpipes of joy round her,
until they threatened to turn him out for being noisy, upon which he
instantly subsided, and fell into the opposite extreme of speaking only
in a thick whisper. All the rest were kind, Lilian rather ashamed of
herself, but grateful to Annie for not having mentioned her name to
indiscreet Harry on that eventful Christmas night.
George, after another stormy interview with his sister in the library,
in which she had been in a position to give him back taunt for taunt,
wisely agreed to bury all allusion to that night’s events, and merely
used the power they gave him to insist on her marrying Mr. Falconer
sooner than she wished. It had been a miserable business, that moonlit
scene in the copse, requiring hushing up all round, but especially on
Lilian’s account; so her eldest brother and Colonel Richardson had had
to content themselves with an exchange of hard words, and the latter
had returned to the station and the former to the house, each with an
uneasy consciousness that he had never appeared to less advantage in
his own eyes in his life.
By the time Annie came down-stairs for the first time, the preparations
for Lilian’s wedding were already in progress; and, when Annie
suggested to Lady Braithwaite that she thought she wanted change of
air, the latter offered to take her away to the seaside as soon as
Lilian was married, saying she could not leave home before. But Annie
thanked her, and said she would be well enough to travel by herself in
a day or two; and she wanted to go as soon as she could to her aunt’s,
she thought.
When George heard of it, he begged his sister-in-law to wait until
after the wedding, when he himself would take both her and his mother
to Southport. She thanked him, but without accepting or declining the
proposal.
On the very day before Harry’s expected return, however, George having
left home early in the morning for a day’s hunting, Annie came into the
morning-room--where Lady Braithwaite and her daughter were inspecting
some newly arrived wedding presents--dressed for a journey.
“I knew the obstinate little thing would go off by herself, after all,”
said Lilian, rather glad of her sister-in-law’s resolution.
The elder lady was completely taken by surprise.
“What about your luggage? You can’t go away without any,” she said.
“I packed it all last night, and ordered a cab from Beckham
yesterday--at least, it was I who sent the order. The cab is at the
door now.”
“But you can’t go off in that way; people would think it so strange!
Wait until after dinner, and I will take you.”
“Thank you. William is going to drive me. The dog-cart will be round in
a minute.”
This diverted Lady Braithwaite’s thoughts.
“That horrid dog-cart! You are going to let him take you in that! You
will certainly be thrown out and killed!”
“I am not afraid,” said Annie, smiling; and, hearing William’s voice
calling her from the hall, she bade them both good-bye and left the
room, they following her to the front door.
Her manner was very quiet and composed; but Lilian was not easily
deceived. She turned to her mother as the dog-cart disappeared down the
drive.
“She does not mean to come back, mamma,” she said, in a low voice.
And one of the servants standing at the back overheard and nodded to
another, whispering:
“I told you so.”
William was in high spirits at driving his dear Annie again; but she
was very silent, or talked without her usual brightness. He said
nothing; but he thought to himself, “If she is so sorry to go away,
she will be back all the sooner,” and, when, at the station, he had
taken her ticket--first-class, in spite of her directions--and found
her a comfortable carriage, he got in and flung his arms around her
affectionately, and told her he should count the days till she came
back. Then, to his sudden dismay, she burst into tears. The boy’s face
fell.
“Annie, what is the matter?” Then, in a mysterious voice, “You haven’t
cut away from Harry, have you?”
Annie nodded.
“Don’t tell any one at the Grange yet, William, there’s a dear, good
old boy. I will write and explain. But I’m glad you know. I couldn’t
bear it any longer. It was ruining both our lives; we never could have
agreed, and we shall both be happier apart.”
“But where are you going? What are you going to do? You are not going
to be a governess again, are you?”
“I don’t know. I am not sure of anything yet, only of this--that I
shall be all right, and nobody need be anxious about me.”
“But I shall be. Oh, Annie, don’t go! Let me go with you and see you
safely to your aunt’s. I have some money with me--George gave me my
allowance only this morning. Do let me go!”
“No, no; you must not think of such a thing,” said Annie, almost
laughing.
“And you were going to leave me just like the rest, without a word
about your not coming back! Oh, Annie, when we’ve been such chums!”
The boy’s reproachful face overcame Annie.
“Look here--I’ll tell you what I haven’t told anybody else, and don’t
mean to tell anybody else,” said she, affectionately; and she whispered
something into his ear.
“Oh, Annie!”
“Mind you are not to tell any one--ever. I have not even made you
promise, you see.”
“You needn’t be afraid. Your brother-in-law is a gentleman,” said
William, gravely.
The express by which she was going stopped twenty minutes at Beckham;
but now the guard was crying, “Take your seats!”--and William had to
jump out. He got up on the step outside to see as much as he could of
her at the very last, and said, in an important whisper:
“But I sha’n’t know where to write to you.”
“I will let you know. And mind, William, you are not to drink--at
least, not like the others!”
“All right; I won’t. I may smoke, mayn’t I?”
“Oh, yes, you may smoke, and you may ride and fish and shoot as much as
you like; only do try to read a little, and don’t swear quite so much
as Wilfred or Harry.”
“All right. You don’t mind my saying a big, big D---- when I get a bad
fall just before the finish?”
“N--o, I’ll pass that. Now get down; the train is going, and you will
be hurt.”
William jumped off, but dashed down the platform beside the moving
train a minute after, panting out, as he threw his purse into the
carriage:
“You must take it; I’ve taken out all I want, and you may want it. You
know I took first-class when you said second. Write.”
The last impression she carried away of her life at the Grange was the
memory of the big, handsome boy standing looking at the disappearing
train, with an expression on his face which threatened tears when he
should be out of sight of the busy crowd around him.
When Annie’s own tears had stopped, she picked up the boy’s purse,
which had fallen as he flung it, on to the opposite seat. It was a
handsome purse and pocket-book, given him by his mother; but it had
suffered from experiments made upon it with the various articles in
his tool-chest. He had begun a diary in it when it was new, which had
dwindled down to an occasional note of his transactions in rabbits.
There were other boyish documents, a cutting from the _Field_, _et
cetera_, and there was more than five pounds in money, a broken
scarf-pin, and two used foreign postage-stamps. She had no scruples
about accepting the money, which was a welcome addition to her not
very large store, and the pocket-book she put in her desk later as a
cherished _souvenir_ of the being she cared most about in the world.
The boy’s high spirits and frank pleasure in hers had won her from
the first, and the only things she regretted in her life at the
Grange were the walks and drives and barbaric sports of ratting and
mouse-bunting with him as a companion.
When she got to London, she went straight to a street she had been told
of, north of Oxford Street, well known for cheap lodgings. She took a
furnished bedroom at the top of a dingy house, and then next day she
returned to Euston Station to fetch her luggage, which she had left
at the parcels-office there, for fear of the extra expense of driving
about in a cab with it, in case she should have any difficulty in
finding a suitable lodging. She was on foot; and, as she entered the
station, a hansom passed her with a young man in it who quite startled
her by his likeness to Harry. The resemblance was so strong that she
stopped, half inclined to turn back and walk about for a little while,
in case it should be, indeed, her husband, so that he might have left
the station before she got there. But then she reasoned with herself
that Harry was in Leicestershire, and was expected at Garstone to-day,
even if he were not already there; so that she decided to go boldly
on. Another feeling impelled her forward--an unacknowledged hankering
for a last sight of her husband, or even for a look at the man who so
strongly resembled him.
Annie did not love her husband--she had never really loved him; and
since Christmas she almost hated him. But, now that she had left him
forever, and that too without any farewell, a natural inconsistency
prompted her to try to steal a last look at the handsome lad who had
been her lord and master.
So she went into the station, and, leaving her luggage for future
consideration, looked about cautiously for the man she had seen in
the hansom. He was not to be seen about the ticket offices, and,
growing bolder, she slipped in and out among the groups of people on
the platform. A train was about to start for the North. Still with
caution, but attracted in spite of herself toward that train, which, as
she knew, would stop at Beckham, Annie advanced until she was nearly
opposite to the doors of the refreshment-room. They opened, and a young
man came out. Annie stopped, with the color rushing to her face; for
it was Harry. He looked so handsome in his light traveling-suit, with
his overcoat hanging loosely over his arm, that she felt quite proud of
him, and stood there with her eyes fixed upon him, half hoping that he
would turn and see her.
But he did not, for he was gazing eagerly in the opposite direction--so
eagerly that he risked being left behind, as the carriage doors were
being closed. Annie’s eyes followed his, and found that the object of
his evident admiration was a showily-dressed woman with bold eyes and
impossibly yellow hair, who was tottering along the platform in boots
which had long slender pegs instead of heels.
With a sigh of disgust, Annie turned away. It was years before she saw
her husband again.