CHAPTER VII.
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 thetête-à-têtein 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.”