CHAPTER XIX.
“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—ColonelRichardson.”
“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.