“Let me stay here! Don’t send me away!” were Harry’s first words, as
his wife led him to a chair and supported his head against her breast.
“Yes, yes, you shall stay. Oh, Harry, what have you done? You are
drenched to the skin and cold as ice! Where are you hurt? Is it only
here?”
She touched his forehead, from a cut in which the blood was still
flowing.
“That is all--I think,” said he, drowsily. “But I’m--cold.”
He was shivering violently. She rang the bell for assistance; but
it was too late to avert the consequences of that night’s work, and
before morning the fever was back upon him. It was impossible to
learn from him how it had happened. When his mind wandered, he talked
disconnectedly of herself, sometimes tenderly, sometimes angrily and
jealously, but always of her. Annie sat up by him all night, and in the
morning, with softened tread and pale, downcast, anxious face, Lilian
crept in. He did not know her--he did not know any one.
“Go and get some rest now, Annie; I will watch by him,” she whispered.
“Why, Lilian, you look as if you had sat up all night, too! What is the
matter with you?”
Lilian did not answer for a minute, but stood watching the restless
movements of her sick brother; and, when she turned again to Annie, her
proud gray eyes were full of tears.
“I may as well tell you now, for you are sure to learn it as soon as
poor Harry comes back to his senses--if he ever does.”
She paused, and the other listened curiously for her confession, for a
confession she felt sure it was that she had to hear.
She was right; for Lilian went on:
“Annie, you must not despise the poor fellow any more. He can act like
a man if he can’t speak like a professor. If it had not been for him, I
should have run away last night with--Colonel Richardson.”
“Oh, Lilian!”
“Don’t interrupt me,” went on the other hurriedly--“I may not
feel inclined for confession again. I was to meet him--Colonel
Richardson--at the lower gate. Well, Harry was there.”
“But how was that?”
“He thought it was you who were going off.”
“I!”
“Yes, yes, he did. I know whose doing that was. Stephen had guessed or
found out something, and not having the pluck to stop me himself, and
not wanting a general row, he got Harry to suppose it was you who were
going off with----”
“But Harry would never have believed that I----”
“Why not?” said Lilian, in a hard tone. “Have you returned his
affection for you so very warmly as to make it impossible for him to
think that you cared for any one but him? However, it is not for me
to reproach you, especially on the score of want of wifely devotion.
When he found it was I, Harry tried to drag me away; but I struggled to
escape from him, and told him not to interfere with me. He would not
let me go, and I told him----You will be shocked, Annie, but I loved
the man--I do now--and I was desperate. I asked Harry how he could be
sure he was not too late. And he looked me straight in the face very
steadily, so that I felt awfully ashamed of myself, and he said, ‘I may
not be in time to save your character, but at least I will save your
reputation.’ And for a moment I stood quite still, hesitating, while
he still held my arm. He had a revolver in his other hand. Before I
spoke again, Herbert--Colonel Richardson sprung forward, snatched the
revolver from him, and struck him in the face with it, while he tried
to pull me away. But Harry never let go, and that decided me. I told
Herbert he was a coward to strike a man hardly recovered from illness,
and that I would not go with him. Harry, poor fellow, could not have
kept me back then; I had to support him; and I led him back here, and
we slipped into the house; and he begged me to bring him to your door,
and go to my room, and no one should know anything about it, if I would
promise never to try to go off again. I didn’t promise--I hadn’t time;
but I never will, all the same. And, Annie, he is worth loving. Do
try to love him back! Oh, you would if you knew what it is to have a
husband who is a monument of all the virtues, but a monument in stone!”
And the wayward woman, who, with all her faults, had generous impulses,
laid her beautiful head on the bed and sobbed.
She insisted on sharing Annie’s duties as nurse; and, when Harry,
after being long in danger for his life, at last flickered back toward
convalescence, the first person he recognized at his bedside was his
sister. Her passionate nature, which in many respects resembled his,
had been deeply moved by what he had done for her, and still more
by the unexpectedly quiet and dignified way in which he had done it.
She had had time to see the depth of the social abyss into which her
proposed flight would have plunged her. Her long-standing preference
for Herbert Richardson she had not subdued--she felt that she could not
subdue it; but she had broken off even her correspondence with him at
Harry’s request.
Brother and sister drew near to each other, with far deeper mutual
affection than they had ever felt before, during Harry’s slow return to
health. They felt that they had much in common, both ardent, passionate
natures being tied to colder ones, who could not or would not respond
to their warmth with the entire abandonment they craved. There the
likeness in their positions ended, however, for Lilian had never even
tried to sound the depths in the heart of her middle-aged husband,
while every look, every touch that Harry bestowed on his wife told
wistfully of the longing he had felt to be master of her love as he was
already of her duty.
The gentleness and even the tenderness of her care of him now would
have satisfied any one less exacting. But fondness had made the young
fellow clear-sighted; and he knew, or thought he knew, that her heart
could give more than that, if he could only reach it.
Annie herself, who seemed in this matter to have exchanged wits with
her husband, growing duller of perception as he grew brighter, fancied
that his fondness for his sister had grown stronger than his fondness
for her, and, after a moment’s pique, she felt glad of it, as it
rendered an avowal she had to make all the easier.
It was on the first day after he had again joined the family circle
that she found an opportunity of speaking to him alone, and of telling
him, under a promise of secrecy, that George had told her he was in
serious difficulties, and feared that he would not be able to keep up
the establishment at the Grange much longer. Harry listened rather
indifferently. He had been so accustomed to hear of these difficulties,
not only since his brother had been the head of the family, but also
in his father’s lifetime, that, as it had never been his business
to find a way out of them, they had altogether ceased to excite any
emotion in him, beyond a faint wonder why people could not keep these
matters to themselves, without worrying other people about them, and an
injured feeling that the head of the family would want to cut down his
allowance.
“George is always in difficulties,” said he.
“Ah, but it is serious this time! We really must think about it.”
“Well, what does he want us to do? Sell matches or enlist? There is
nothing else for any of us.”
“Yes, there is, for one,” said Annie, cautiously, watching him. “Look
here, Harry: I’ve had an engagement offered me which will bring me in
so much money that, if I save, we might live upon it before long.”
“Who’s we?”
“You and I, of course.”
“And do you think I would live upon your money?”
“I think you would be very unreasonable not to do so, if I could make
enough to keep us. I don’t believe George will have enough for us all
much longer, and then----”
“Then it is I who should work, not you.”
“I think it is the one who has been used to it who should work, and
that, you know, is I,” she said, smiling.
But Harry did not smile back. He moved restlessly on his sofa.
“It is not like you to taunt me, Annie; yet--yet your words sting
somehow,” he said at last.
“Oh, Harry, you know I did not mean that! Don’t you see, Harry, dear,
you have been very ill, and won’t be strong for a long time after this
second attack; while I have done nothing but enjoy myself for more than
three months.”
“Yes, you have. You have been nursing me,” said he, tenderly.
“Ah, but that wasn’t work; that was pleasure, except when--when you
were so very ill this last time!” rejoined she gently. “And now I have
had an offer to play a part in London which would just suit me, and
might make me a name, and to have six guineas a week for it. And, if I
don’t take it, I may never have such a chance again!” she added, with
ill-concealed eagerness.
“I see,” said Harry, turning upon her sharply. “All this time that I
have been ill you have been plotting to get away from me as fast as
possible.”
“I will tell you what I did. I saw that a piece was to be played at the
Parthenon--a translation of a French piece--in which there was a part
I longed to play; so I wrote for that part, mentioning all that I have
done on the stage: and it so happened that they were in a difficulty
for an actress for that very part, and I got the offer yesterday, and
must send an answer to-day. I would not have gone for the world if
you had not been safely through your illness, and if Lilian had not
been with you; but, Harry, dear Harry, if you do really feel the least
gratitude for my coming back to take care of you, if you really feel
for me one spark of the fondness I seem to see in your looks, let me
go! You are not ambitious as I am--you have not had to toil and fret
at the impossibility of getting on, as I have; but, if you can even
picture to yourself how terrible it is to forego success when at last
it seems to be coming to you, you will let me go--you will let me
go--you will let me go!”
Her violent excitement had brought the tears to her eyes. As she knelt
beside the couch, her great, passionate dark eyes fixed upon his in
entreaty, the tears welled up in his eyes too as he snatched her into
his arms.
“I can refuse you nothing. Heaven forgive you--you will break my heart?”
A week later Annie’s trunks were packed for London. On the last day
before her departure from the Grange she took a long ramble by herself
through some of her favorite fields and lanes, where a mild March was
already bringing forth the signs of spring. She had promised to be
at the old church at four, to undertake for the village organist a
commission of getting him some music in London. She got there too soon,
however; so, having fortunately provided herself with the key, she went
in and up the winding-stair to the top of the old square tower. She had
a letter to read which she had had unopened in her pocket since the
morning; and, when she got at last on to the tower and had gazed for
a few minutes upon the wide expanse of country commanded by the hill
on which the church was built, had looked a little regretfully at the
budding trees and the river and the town of Beckham beyond, an ugly,
smoke-begrimed place indeed, but which bore a deceptive beauty when
seen from a distance on a sunny afternoon in a haze of its own smoke,
she drew out her letter, which was directed to “Miss Langton,” and tore
open the envelope.
She knew whom it was from--a young actress who had been with her at the
last theater Annie had played at in London, who had then played silent
“guests,” and parts too small even for Annie, but who had since been
promoted to the latter’s place. Annie had written to this girl, who
knew nothing of her marriage or of her private life, asking her to send
her the address of some cheap lodgings which she had once recommended.
The other had not only complied, but had, with the good nature so
strikingly characteristic of members of the theatrical profession,
undertaken to see the landlady and make terms with her about them. This
matter was now settled--the rooms taken; so this letter could not be
very important. So Annie thought. But she had not read the first two
pages before the color in her face deepened, and she read on to the
end with an intentness which only tidings of deepest interest could
have called forth. The passage which had fixed her attention was the
following:
“I met Cooke, who was here at the Piccadilly when you were, as I was
walking along the Strand a day or two ago. He is at the Regency now,
and the papers have cracked him up so in the part he is playing that I
wonder he condescended to talk to poor little me. He asked how we were
getting on at the Piccadilly, and I mentioned that you had been in the
country, but were coming back to London. He seemed very much interested
in you, which amused me, remembering as I did how much you always
disliked him, and how you used to mimic him for my amusement in the
dressing-room; however, I did not take him down by telling him that. Do
you remember how I used to stick up for him when you said he was fast?
Well, you were right, for they say the way he is carrying on with some
woman who has been acting in the country with him--West, I think her
name is--is something disgraceful, considering that he is engaged or
half engaged to that little fair girl who made such a hit in ‘Ophelia’
last year. He is trying to get this West into the Regency, I believe.”
This was the passage which had arrested Annie’s attention, which she
read through again and again with dry eyes, but with a bitter feeling
of disappointment and shame. Then she let the letter drop from her
fingers, and leaning against the flag-staff which rose from the top of
the tower, she burst into heartfelt sobbing. She had cheated herself
into believing that it was nothing but her ambition which impelled her
in her eagerness to go to London; but now in the revulsion of feeling
which suddenly made the thought of returning to town and her profession
unutterably hateful to her, she saw with unmistakable clearness what
the other and stronger motive had been which had made her enforced
idleness at the Grange so hard to bear. She was still sobbing when she
heard sounds behind her, and, looking round, saw her husband’s head as
he came slowly to the top of the stairs.
“What is the matter, Annie dear?” he asked anxiously.
“Harry, what made you come up all those steps? It is too tiring for
you,” said she, bending her head awkwardly to hide her tears.
“I saw you from the avenue, and I saw you were crying,” he answered,
as he mounted the last step and rested his hands on the low wall for
support--he was not strong enough for much exertion yet. “What were you
crying about, Annie? Not because you are going away, I know.”
She had turned away to wipe the tears from her face, and, as she turned
again toward him, she caught sight of her letter lying on the ground
between them. He saw it at the same moment, and, although she had the
presence of mind to pick it up very composedly, he at once came to the
conclusion that in it lay the cause of her distress.
“Who is that letter from?”
“From Miss Taylor, who has been writing to me about the apartments I am
going to have in town,” she said, as she put it into the pocket of her
mantle.
“Let me see it.”
She considered a minute while pretending to feel for it, and made up
her mind that it would be best to give it to him, as there was nothing
in it which was likely to have any meaning for him. So she handed him
the letter carelessly, and affected to be gazing admiringly on the
landscape while he read it. But Harry got on to the right track at once.
“This Cooke--is he the Aubrey Cook Lilian talks about?”
“Yes; he was acting at the Piccadilly when I was there.”
“He is a man in the habit of making love to every woman he meets?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. I did not know him well, and you see, as Miss
Taylor says, I never liked him.”
There was a pause, but he was not satisfied.
“He must be a low, vicious, unprincipled fellow!” said he suddenly,
keeping his eyes fixed steadily on his wife.
Annie winced.
“I suppose it is men like him who get the stage such a bad name?” he
went on.
Still she said nothing, but leaned over the low battlemented wall of
the tower, and kept her eyes steadily fixed on the smoke-hung town in
the distance.
“I hope there will be no such hounds in the theater you are going to,
Annie. If I thought you were going back to a place contaminated by the
presence of such an infamous scoundrel, I would not let you go!”
Annie turned her head very quietly.
“What has he done?” said she.
“Done! Haven’t you read that letter? Haven’t you heard that he is
engaged to one woman while he is hardly ever away from another--one of
the vilest of her sex? Perhaps you think nothing of that?”
“Well, you see,” said Annie very slowly, looking full into his angry
face, “I have known so many men do worse things than that.” After a
minute’s pause, which her husband did not attempt to fill, she went on,
“I have known married men who neglected, insulted, and even struck
their wives within the very first months of marriage, who gave what
little attention they had to spare for anything so contemptible as a
woman to the lowest of the sex--men who crushed the beauty out of their
young wives by brutal carelessness and cruelty, and who thought that
years of abandonment, and almost every wrong a man can do a woman,
were amply atoned for by a burst of capricious affection--affection so
selfish that it never lost an opportunity of wounding the object of it.”
Harry listened to this outburst without an interruption. His head
sunk and his chest heaved as she grew more excited; but when she had
finished, he raised his blue eyes to her face, and asked very quietly:
“How have I wounded you?”
Annie was not quite prepared for this. She answered, after a little
hesitation:
“By insulting the profession to which I belong--which has given me all
the happiness I have known since my marriage with you.”
“No,” said Harry, sharply. “By speaking candidly about one of its
members--that is how I have hurt you; and it was just to turn me off
from abusing him that you broke out with a catalogue of my faults,
which Heaven knows I don’t deny. I tell you again, I may be a brute and
a boor and anything else you like to make me out, but I’m not a fool;
and, when you tell me you dislike this Aubrey Cooke, I tell you you are
lying to me.”
Annie faced him again very quietly.
“I have not lied. I told you I disliked Aubrey Cooke when I was at the
Piccadilly. I tell you now that I have loved him since then, and that
now I hate him. Are you satisfied?”
The passion in her words was convincing, but Harry was not content. He
kept his gaze fixed on the frank eyes of his wife for a few moments,
then looked away with a heavy sigh, murmuring:
“Hate him! That’s no good. I’d rather you did not care one way or the
other.”
Annie was touched. She had fully expected a violent outbreak on her
husband’s part when he should hear her confession. She put her hand
softly on his sleeve.
“Harry, you need not be frightened indeed; I shall never care for him
again.”
But Harry, without even trying to detain her hand, shook his head.
“It is a very bad sign to hate a person,” said he. “I never hated any
person but you, and just see where it has landed me. What does it
matter if you don’t care for him, if you don’t care for me and won’t
stay with me! And as for the way you pitched in to me just now, do you
think I should let you go off if I didn’t feel I’d done you wrong in
the old time and wanted to make it up to you? And if you won’t let me
make it up to you by letting me love you, I must do it by letting you
go. It is true I have run after--after other people, but, Annie, I was
very young--wasn’t I?--and I didn’t know, I didn’t understand the charm
of a woman like you then. How could I? I wasn’t even a man myself, and
you were afraid of me. But, Annie, I do love you and appreciate you now
more than any actor who ever lived, and the thought of your going to be
stared at by every one who cares to pay to look at you is awful--awful!
And my darling, you are my wife, you know, and if you won’t love me
ever, I may as well go and cut my throat, for I--I--I----”
He broke off, fairly sobbing. Annie’s heart was moved, and she hung her
arms round him with one touch of the deeper tenderness of the woman he
had longed to rouse.
“Harry, Harry, I’ll come back, I’ll come back--at Christmas; that is
only nine months, and if you love me still then, I will never go away
from you again!”
He pressed her to his breast, and kissed her and blessed her; and as
the March afternoon began to wane they descended the ruinous stone
stairs of the old tower slowly together, she with her hands to his
shoulders following him step by step silently, but not unhappily. There
was hope in her husband’s heart, and it had affected her a little. The
mellow sounds of the organ were pealing through the church where the
organist was practicing as, at the bottom stair, Harry gave his wife
a last passionate kiss before they left the shadowy building for the
outer air.
And the next day Annie started for London.