CHAPTER XX.
The journey back to London was a very strange one to Annie; she never saw the landscape through which the train passed, she did not even remember the faces of her fellow-passengers afterward. Her mind was filled with fears for the future—for her own, for her husband’s, for Lilian’s, for George’s, for that of all the family at the Grange, and for Aubrey’s. She did hate him deeply, this man who had cheated her into making her look upon him as the most gentle, most courteous, brightest of companions and the most devoted of friends, when he was really nothing but a volatile, unprincipled flirt, who made love indifferently to her, or to a coarse woman like Miss West, or to a little giddy creature like the girl to whom Miss Taylor had said he was engaged. Perhaps Annie hardly dwelt enough, in her blame of Aubrey, on the question whether she herself had done right in concealing from him the fact that she was married, and whether, even supposing she had been free, as he imagined her to be, he would not have been justified in thinking no more of a lady who had dismissed him and disappeared without a word, and in transferring his attentions to women who would appreciate them more highly. But with all her blame was mingled sincere anxiety for him, and unselfish sorrow that he should have fallen into bad hands.
As for her own husband, she felt more kindly toward him now that she was away from the daily irritation of his presence, from the fear of his trivial jealousy, of his impossible demands. Their impossibility she could not question. She felt that she could never return, with the ardor which alone would content him, the passionate love she had inspired in a nature so different from her own, and, as it seemed to her, so antagonistic to it. The most that she could hope for was that, if his affection should indeed remain warm until next Christmas, when she had promised to return to him, the nine months of hard work upon the stage which she was about to commence would have wearied her into the semblance of contentment with a life so distasteful to her active mind as permanent idleness at the Grange with her uncongenial husband would be.
She had caught an earlier and faster train from Beckham than the one by which she had intended to travel, so that she arrived in London and drove to the house where Miss Taylor had taken apartments for her, two hours before the time at which the landlady expected her. The consequence was that the dirty servant who opened the door led her up to a dingy and cheerless sitting-room on the second floor, the grate of which was empty; and Annie’s heart sunk with a feeling of unutterable wretchedness and desolation as she sat shivering, with her mantle still round her, on the dusty little sofa, watching the dirty servant as she knelt on the hearth-rug and tried, for a long time in vain, to coax some spluttering, damp little sticks and a handful of slaty coals into a fire. When it was sufficiently ignited to smoke violently, she retired, satisfied, leaving Annie to cough and choke and shiver, and wish herself back again at the Grange.
It was all her own fault that she was catching cold in an uncomfortable lodging, instead of being well cared for in the midst of her husband’s family. The gratification of her ambition, which had brought her to this cheerless welcome, seemed an unsatisfactory sort of reward at this moment for the sacrifice she had made alike of comfort and duty—for self-reproach for her own hardness had been busy at Annie’s heart since she received her husband’s farewell kiss that morning.
At last, after emitting gusts of black blinding smoke, each one of which grew feebler than the last, the fire went out altogether; and Annie was reduced by this time to too spiritless a state to ring the bell and go through another ordeal of smoke and servant.
“I suppose they will come up at tea-time,” she thought, as she went listlessly into the bedroom and began to unpack.
Dusk was coming on when she heard a knock at the sitting-room door.
“Come in!” she called out from where she knelt by her trunks. Then she heard no more, and began to think she must have been mistaken, when the knock was repeated. “Come in!” she cried a second time; and then she heard the door open, and a man’s tread in the next room.
She rose from her knees, went in to the sitting-room, and found herself face to face with Aubrey Cooke, who was standing in his usual stooping attitude, looking paler and plainer than ever, with some parcels in his hands.
He was shy, nervous, and stood there without a word to say for himself. But the sight of a familiar face in this desolate, cheerless place had restored Annie in a moment to life and animation.
“Mr. Cooke!” she cried, as she went forward and shook hands with him. “How kind of you! How did you know I was coming? I am so very glad to see you!”
Her face had recovered its light, her eyes were sparkling with their old brightness. Aubrey got back his self-possession as he looked at her, and began slowly laying down his parcels upon the table and taking more from his pockets.
“Miss Taylor told me you were coming, and my unfailing instinct told me that, being a lady, you would have forgotten to have all the arrangements necessary for your comfort made before your arrival. Now you shall see whether I have forgotten how to do marketing. There is the twopenny cottage, there is the superior souchong, and there is the oleomargarine—the very best. And that is for you.”
He gave her a little box, which she opened and found to contain ferns and gardenias. She sat down and handled them lovingly, with the simple pleasure of a child, and, when she looked up, she found Aubrey raking out the coals of the extinct fire with a poker.
“Never mind; leave it alone. It is out; and, if I ring and make the girl light it again, she will only fill the room with smoke. I am not very cold.”
Indeed for the moment she had forgotten that she was cold; but she shivered now and then.
“But I am. Now you shall see what it is to have a universal genius about you. In ten minutes my art will produce from this gloomy heap of cinders——”
“A cloud of thick black smoke which will suffocate us both. Don’t be silly, Aubrey; do leave it alone!” said Annie, petulantly, condescending to struggle for the poker.
But he would not let it go; so she resigned herself to watching while he broke up the little fragile box which had held the flowers, took the paper off his other parcels, and set to work earnestly to make a fire.
“You will look just like a sweep when you have finished,” said Annie, with resignation.
“A little soap and water will remove all traces of the deed.”
“Oh, of course, if you like to play at maid-of-all-work!” said she, contemptuously. Her spirits were rising again to the level of the old days when she and he were on tour with the Comedy Company.
He rose superior to her scorn, for, after a little trouble and one or two more gusts of smoke, the fire began to burn up brightly.
“Now ring for a kettle, and let us make tea ourselves,” said he.
She rang, the tea-things were brought up, and in a few minutes Annie, refreshed and comforted, was listening to his account of his movements since they last met.
“I have created two characters, invented a new soup, written a book, cut it up myself in two papers, discovered my ideal woman two or three times, had two bad colds and one attack of neuralgia, lost fifteen pounds at cards, and narrowly escaped being married.”
“To one of the ideals?”
“Of course not. One never marries one’s ideal. No; this was to be the loveliest of her sex. Happily a man turned up at the last moment who had a prior claim to her hand, and I was saved.”
“Happy woman!”
“I see you don’t look at the case from my point of view, Miss Langton.”
“No; I take up the cause of my sex against you.”
“That is unkind. She treated me very cruelly, I assure you.”
“For which and for your consequent deliverance from the trammels of constancy you are very grateful.”
“Do you think I am inconstant, Miss Langton?” he asked, with sudden gravity.
“I am inclined to think so, certainly; but I look upon it as a very fortunate provision of nature,” said she, half laughing nervously.
“Then you are wrong. If I am inconstant it is by philosophy, and not by disposition. You know, when people have toothache very badly they sometimes hold things that burn in their mouths, so that the small, sharp new pain may make them forget for the moment the old dull one.”
“What a romantic simile!”
“So a man, when he has been badly treated by one woman whom he did care for, tries to find consolation—and does so find it very often—in flirtations with a dozen other women who have no power to make his heart throb faster, but who can make the time pass pleasantly enough.”
“I have heard that sort of excuse from inconstant people before, and I think it a very clever one.”
“And what excuse have you heard from the woman who was the cause of the inconstancy?”
Annie’s cheeks flushed as she still looked steadily at the fire. He was taking her to account for her treatment of himself. After a few moments’ hesitation she answered, in a light tone:
“You are talking too vaguely; put before me a clear case of a woman having done wrong to a man, which forced him to seek relief in inconstancy, and I will plead her cause and confound you.”
“Very well. Suppose that a man had admired and shown his admiration of a woman who had rather reserved manners to most people. Suppose that her reserve with him had gradually given way, until she allowed him to be her constant companion, treated him with at least the show of complete confidence, exchanged opinions freely with him on every subject, and allowed her apparent preference for his society to be taken for granted.”
“Did she allow him to make love to her?”
“No, she did something more dangerous; she allowed him to make love to every woman but her. He was too much in earnest to flirt with her, and she must have known it.”
“I think that is an absurd conclusion to come to, that the woman must have known he loved her because he didn’t tell her so. If women were to go by such a rule in all cases——”
“But listen. At last one day—or rather one November night—he did let her know in words that he loved her, and she—she made him think that his words agitated her.”
“Perhaps they did—perhaps they agitated her disagreeably. They must have done so, if she was unprepared for them as you have made out.”
“But later on she gave him an unmistakable proof that her liking and trust were as strong as ever. And then again she avoided him; and, when he insisted on an interview and an explanation, she put him off by telling him there was an obstacle between them, but still without telling what that obstacle was.”
“What did it matter what it was, as long as it was insurmountable? That was all that could concern him.”
“He ought to have been told what it was, so that at least he might not be left to think that it was merely an excuse to get rid of a man of whom she had grown tired. But she had another surprise in store for him; she disappeared without letting him know what had become of her.”
“And he has spent his time ever since in a vain and romantic pursuit of her?”
“Oh, dear, no! He went back to town, furnished a new set of chambers, and has grown more particular about his cooking.”
“And you hold him up as an object of sympathy? He is a man to whom an offer of sympathy would be an impertinence.”
“He does not want sympathy, but justice; and, if he cannot get that, he will have revenge—and melodramatic revenge, of course, but small, spiteful, mean, and modern!”
“I don’t think such a threat would frighten her from you.”
“You are trying to pique me.”
“I! Oh, no! What interest can I have in the matter?”
“Can you give me your assurance that you have none?”
The sudden intensity of his manner would have forced some show of emotion from Annie if shehad not been on her guard.
“I take an interest in the affairs of any friend who has shown me as much kindness as you have, Mr. Cooke,” said she, gravely, and with a little stiffness.
Aubrey was silent for a few minutes.
“Thank you!” he said, dryly, after clearing his throat two or three times.
Annie felt that the conversation had got to a difficult point, and, to avoid the awkwardness of the pause which followed, she rose. He rose too.
“I have intruded upon you too long, Miss Langton; you must want rest and quiet after your long journey,” said he, in a casual-visitor’s tone, which deceived Annie until she saw by the fading daylight that he was as pale as death, and that his lips were quivering.
“I cannot thank you enough for coming. I should have been so very dull here all alone on the first evening of my return, if it had not been for your charity,” said she, with as much vivacity as she could put into her tone and manner.
“It was my duty, you are in my ‘district.’ May I come again?” She hesitated.
“Don’t be unkind. I’ve been very good, haven’t I?” said he, softly.
“I think you had better not come again, Mr. Cooke. It is different in the country, you know; but here, in town, the least thing is noticed and talked about.”
“When do you play in ‘Nathalie’?”
“I think in a fortnight or three weeks.”
“It will be longer than that. In the meantime, you won’t be rehearsing every day, and on the off-days you will be frightfully dull—or won’t you?”
She turned away irresolutely.
“Let me come sometimes, and I won’t abuse the permission;” and she let him go without a definite answer.
It was quite true that she would be dull and miserable by herself; she felt that as soon as she heard his footsteps going down-stairs. She wanted to go to the door, call him back, and tell him to come again soon; she even crossed the room to do so, but she turned back and sunk into a chair, ashamed of the impulse, for she knew that there was danger in his society. She felt that her indignation against him had faded away, that his presence had soothed her weary, excited mind as the presence of no other person in the world could have done, and that, if she saw much more of him, she would inevitably come to depend upon his companionship as she had done when they were on tour together. It had been harmless, pleasant intercourse then; but Aubrey’s words on that November night had changed all that; and Annie knew she ought to have summoned courage to tell him that very afternoon what the nature of the obstacle between them was. But it was so much pleasanter and even easier to skate over the difficult matter of her sudden disappearance, and to avoid the “scene” which the tragedy-manner Aubrey had assumed when they approached this subject had threatened.
“I certainly did not encourage him to come,” said she to herself, with a twinge of conscience. “Of course it does not really matter whether he comes or not, except that Harry would make a silly fuss if he knew that anybody who was at all young or nice came to see me. But there is nothing really for him to be jealous about; and, after all, I cannot shut myself up quite like a nun just because my husband is ill-tempered.”
So, when Aubrey called two days afterward, and had the sense not to make any allusion to his love-grievances, she was very glad to see him, and flattered herself with the thought that he understood that there was no further question of a warmer sentiment than friendship between them. In this belief she was justified, for Aubrey had decided upon his line of conduct, and fell into the position of brotherly old friend in the most natural manner in the world.
After a few visits, during none of which did Aubrey recall, by word or look, his old love or its disappointment, she fell into her former perfectly open and unreserved manner with him, and felt unspeakably grateful to him for the good sense which had restored the old frank companionship between them. She grew happy again, attributed the change in her spirits to the prospect of her speedy reappearance on the stage, and wondered how she could have remained so long away from it. Under the influence of these brighter feelings she wrote an affectionate letter to her husband, with a little compunction at not having responded more warmly to his kindness when she was at the Grange.
Two days later, as Aubrey was leaving her sitting-room, where he had spent the greater part of the afternoon, after bringing her some books from Mudie’s, he met the servant coming up the stairs, followed by a tall, fair young man. Annie’s voice had just called out, “I shall expect you then!” and Aubrey had scarcely closed the door behind him, when the servant reached the top stair.
He stood on one side to let them pass, but the fair young man sent the servant down-stairs by a few words spoken in a low voice, and stood face to face with Aubrey just outside Miss Langton’s door.
“These are Miss Langton’s apartments, I believe?” said the stranger.
“Yes,” answered Aubrey, deciding, as he looked at the angry face and impatient movements of the man in front of him, that this was some bumpkin admirer of the clever young actress, who looked upon him as arival.
“And you are one of Miss Langton’s friends, I suppose?”
“I have the honor of being one of her oldest friends,” said Aubrey, coolly.
A deep flush spread over the face of the other man, who was evidently keeping himself in check by a strong effort of self-control.
“May I ask what your name is?” he asked, curtly.
“By what right do you ask such a question which cannot concern you?”
“That is my affair; and you need not make such a mystery about it, because I know who you are. Your name is Cooke—Aubrey Cooke!”
“Well, what then?”
“What then? Why, my name is Harold Braithwaite!”
But this announcement produced none of the effect he evidently expected. The pale, ugly young man still returned his look quite steadily, without expressing any sort of emotion.
“I dare say it is,” said he, simply—“why not?”
“Look here,” said thestranger, dropping his voice till it became a growl of passion. “I don’t want a scene here. You had better go.”
But Aubrey stood his ground very calmly.
“I am no more anxious for a scene than you are, I assure you. But, as you are a complete stranger to me, and can produce no authority for dismissing me, I must decline to move until I have given you a little piece of advice. Don’t venture to dismiss a lady’s friends without her authority——”
“I don’t use her authority; I use my own.”
“And you think that will be enough for me?”
“I think it ought to be.”
“Do you know who the lady is you are speaking about so confidently?”
“Yes. You know her as Miss Langton, the actress.”
“And you?”
“As Annie Braithwaite—my wife!”
Aubrey stood the shock well, but not too well for the other man to see that his announcement was a terrible surprise. This conversation had been carried on in low tones; but, as Harry raised his voice on his last words, Annie, in the sitting-room, had recognized it; and she opened the door and faced the two men, white and trembling.
“Harry!” said she, in a low voice.
“Is it true, then, that this man is your—husband?” asked Aubrey.
“Yes,” answered she, hanging her head, and without looking at him.
“I must apologize for my discourtesy,” said Aubrey, still white and shaking, turning, without another look at her, to Harry. “I had always understood that Mr. Braithwaite—was a short man;” and, raising his hat, he went down-stairs.