"Whatwill they say? What will they do?" thinks Addie, with shuddering presentiment as she is being driven along the high-road to Nutsford. "And how can I tell them about it? Oh, the worst part of all is before me now! How can I tell them about it—how can I tell them? If I only knew how they'd take it—could only guess! But I can't—I can't! Aunt Jo will be pleased, I think. She will say it's an intervention of Providence, the turning of the tide, perhaps; but Aunt Jo is old, and can't feel like the young—and then of course she's not a Lefroy. That's the great point—she's not a Lefroy. Perhaps Bob will never speak to me again for letting him say so much to me ashe did; perhaps Pauline will disown me too, if she hears Bob is so proud, so resentful, so tetchy about the family prestige! It may be an awful blow to him, poor darling—and he going away, too, full of sorrow and trouble already! Wouldn't it be better if I said nothing at all about it until he had left? But then—then—I've got only until to-morrow, and I've promised an answer. Oh, dear! oh, dear! what am I to do? Why did I go clambering up into that wretched tree, like the shameful tomboy that I am? Why didn't I study quietly at home as the aunt suggested—why, why? Good gracious, the farm already! How that horse flies! Perhaps they'll guess, they'll suspect something, when they see me in his brougham? And Hal is so vulgar, so exasperating when he begins to chaff, and Lottie asks such dreadful, dreadful questions!"
She peers forth anxiously before venturing to descend, and, to her great relief, sees that so far the coast is clear. Neither of the boys is about. Hal is not at his usual noonday pastime of shying stones at the pump, or worrying the donkey in the stubble-field. Bob is not, as is his wont, leaning against the hay-rick, smoking away in sullen gloom his last hours on shore. She hobbles up the little garden path and pushes open the farm-house door.
A dismal wailing sound issues from the stuffy, low-roofed parlor to the right, sacred to the family gentility.
"Oh, dear, dear, the aunt is at it again—worse than ever!" thinks Addie ruefully. "She's an awful spendthrift in tears, poor soul! At the rate she has been weeping for the last three months, she really must cry herself dry soon!"
At that moment the door opens, and the old lady half stumbles out, looking so utterly limp and woe-begone that her niece's heart sinks with the fear of some fresh disaster.
"Oh, what is it, aunt? Has—has anything else happened? The boys?"
"My dear, my dear, we'd best give it up—throw up our hands and have done with the struggle at once; it's of no use, of no use! I can hold out no longer."
"Oh, what has happened? Tell me—tell me!"
"Pauline is home again. She came back half an hour ago."
"Pauline back!" echoes Addie, aghast. "Wouldn't they—wouldn't they keep her?"
"She ran away from them."
After a moment's pause, Addie enters, and sees the young culprit, with crimson cheeks and streaming eyes, standing in the center of the room, the boys glaring at her in furious bitterness.
"Pauline!"
"Yes, that's my name; and here I am," the young lady answers, in a shrill taunting voice. "What have you to say to me, Adelaide? I've just been receiving the greetings of my brothers and aunt, and am ready to receive yours now. Open fire, my dear; I'm prepared for any charge. Don't be afraid."
But Addie says nothing—simply sinks into a chair, feeling that the waters are closing round her on every side.
"Oh, Addie, Addie!" exclaims Pauline, disarmed by her mute dejection, "don't be too hard on me, for I couldn't help it—oh, Icouldn't help it! You don't know, you can't conceive what a life I've led since I left you—it was unbearable!"
"You've had good food to eat, a soft bed to lie on, warm walls to shelter you, servants to wait on you," says Robert, with a fierce sneer, "which is more than the rest of us have in prospect—more than I shall enjoy for many a long day, Heaven knows!"
"More than I shall have in the charity-school they're trying to get me into," adds Hal, moodily.
"More than your sister will have as a nursery governess in a grocer's family," says Aunt Jo, with dreary emphasis.
"No, no, it isn't—it isn't!" bursts in Pauline passionately. "I'd rather be cabin-boy on board a coal-barge, I'd rather starve at a charity-school, I'd rather teach all the young grocers in England, I'd rather be—be maid-of-all-work in a—a lunatic asylum than go on living with Aunt Selina. Oh, you don't know what it was—what I had to put up with! The very first evening I arrived she began nag, nag, nagging at me, and she has kept it up ever since; her voice is dinning in my ears even now; it haunted me every night in my sleep. Nothing I did, nothing I said, was right. I was clumsy, awkward, uncouth, boisterous, stupid. I could not enter a room, move a chair, or lift a book without making her shiver and the admiral swear. I knew nothing, I could do nothing, not even read the 'Naval Intelligence' without stumbling at every second word. Five times running," continues the girl, with quivering lip, "she has made me walk across the room, shut and open the door, her own maid watching me, until—until I felt inclined to slam it with a force to bring her warm walls about her wretched head. You don't know what it was!"
Nobody makes reply. She looks round at the sullen averted faces, and then bursts out again—
"I wish I hadn't come back to you—you hard-hearted, unfeeling, cruel—I wish—I wish I had thrown myself into the lake at the back of the park, as I ran out one night to do in my anger and pain. But I didn't, because—because I thought of you all and how sorry you'd be. I wish I had now; it would have been better."
Robert shrugs his shoulders and flings a half-consumed cigarette into the grate.
"Better!" he repeats, with a callous laugh. "I won't gainsay you, Polly. I think it would be better still if we made a family-party of the dive—just plunge in in silence together, we five Lefroys. It could be done poetically enough even in the old mill-pond behind the grove. You girls could twine lilies in your hair, Ophelia-wise, and afterward we would haunt the old place, five cold slimy ghosts, and drive the vitriol-man back to the smoke whence he sprung."
"Bob, Bob, don't say such dreadful things! You frighten the life out of me!" screams Lottie, clinging to her aunt.
"Bob, you're a—a wretch, and I wish I was dead!" cries Pauline, flinging herself across the table in a storm of sobs.
Then Addie rises and speaks for the first time, her arm around her sister's heaving shoulders.
"Don't fret, Polly, don't fret. Never mind them; you'll live at Nutsgrove with me. I'll give you a home, dear."
"Addie!"
"I'm quite serious, Pauline—I mean what I say."
Adelaide's voice is very steady and grave, and there is a tone in it that arrests the stormy attention of the family.
"Mr. Armstrong asked me this afternoon to marry him."
"Eh? What did you say?"
"Kindly repeat that statement, Addie, will you?"
She looks into her brother's startled face, and complies with mechanical firmness, as if she were saying a lesson.
"Mr. Armstrong of Kelvick asked me this afternoon to marry him. I fell from a tree and hurt my foot in the grove, and he found me there, and drove me on to the house, where he asked me to marry him. He said that, if I would, he'd settle Nutsgrove on me altogether, that I might have the girls to live with me always, and that he'd help on you boys as well as he could in the world."
"And what did you say?" comes in trembling eager chorus.
"I said nothing particular—neither 'Yes' nor 'No.' I said I wanted time to consider and consult with you all."
"Thank Heaven, thank Heaven!" Miss Darcy's quivering voice breaks the silence as she half staggers with arms outstretched toward her niece. "And I had begun to doubt—to question Providence! I am rebuked now—I am rebuked now. Addie, my dearest, you have made me a happy old woman to-night!"
"I knew you would be pleased—would wish me to—to accept him," says Addie softly, a little impressed by her heartfelt emotion; "it was the others I felt doubtful about—whose opinion I wanted."
She looks round at the flushed faces of her brothers and sisters; but, of the four, three, though evidently eager to give their opinions, are afraid to open their mouths until "Robert the Magnificent," the recognized head of the family, arbiter of its ethics and manners, has first given tongue.
He walks round slowly from the fireplace, lays his hand heavily upon his sister's shoulder, and then says, in a tone crisp, terse, Napoleonic—
"Marry him! Shut your eyes, my girl, and swallow him as if he were a pill."
"Oh, Robert, I—I couldn't do that! One could swallow anything but a husband. A husband is always there; he can't be swallowed."
"Yes, he can. You don't understand those things, child. After the first gulp, you won't notice him; one husband is much the same as another, after a bit. It's his surroundings, not his personality, that will affect your life and your happiness; and they are good—the best of their kind."
"Oh, Bob, Bob, I never thought you would take it like this!" breaks in Addie, half crying.
"Addie, child, my first thought is your welfare; all selfish emotions, all inward stings must subside before that consideration. You'll not get another chance like this; and we Lefroys must e'en bow our haughty heads and swim with the tide. We're not prepared to pull against it; we should only sink in the struggle. Marry him, Addie, my dear. It will be as I have said, a bit of a wrench at first, but you'll soon get over it, and you will always have yourfamily to fall back upon. We shall be always there, never you fear, to stand by you—to brush him up for you, to—"
"Oh, yes, yes," bursts in an eager impassioned chorus, "we'll stand by you, Addie, darling!"
"We'll brush him up for you!"
"We'll tone him down; you'll see—you'll see!"
"Marry him—marry him, dear! Never mind his vulgarity."
"Never mind the vitriol or the chemical ma—"
"Or the grocer's van, or anything. You'll have us and the old place back again. What does anything else signify? Marry him, marry him, Addie!"
Poor Addie, overwhelmed by the vigor and unanimity of the verdict against her, so different from what she has expected, turns from one to another, and then whimpers pathetically—
"It's all very fine you talking like that; but—but, if you were in my place, how would you feel? I don't believe you'd marry him, Pauline, not for all—"
"Wouldn't I, just?" breaks in Pauline stoutly. "Why, I'd marry him if he were three times as old and as plain and as common as he is! Marry him? Why I'd marry an Irish invincible, I'd marry the hangman himself, in the circumstances! His age is another score in your favor, Addie; he's a man pretty well on in life, I should say."
"Only thirty-seven," she puts in moodily.
"Well, thirty-seven is a good age—nearly double your own, child; and a man like him, who has had such a hard life of it, who has been scraping up sixpences since he was four years old, is sure to break up early—he can't stand the strain much after his prime. The chances are ten to one you'll be a free woman before you're thirty. Think of that, my dear!"
"Oh, yes, think of that, Addie! Think of yourself as a lovely—well, not exactly lovely, but extremely nice young widow, with lots of money, living at Nutsgrove, and we all around you, happy as the day is long! Oh, wouldn't it be too awfully lovely!"
Addie shakes her head, wipes her eyes slowly, and tries to smile. Pauline kisses her wet cheek coaxingly, Robert pats her plump shoulder. There is a moment's soothing silence, broken by Lottie, who has also crept up to her side, asking in an eager whisper—
"Addie, tell us what he said—what he did. Is he awfully in love, like Guy was in the 'Heir of Redcliffe,' you know? Did he try to—"
"Lottie, Lottie," Addie answers angrily, with flaming cheeks, "what silly, what absurd questions you do ask! I never met a child like you."
"I don't see how I am so idiotic," she rejoins aggrievedly. "Why should Mr. Armstrong want to marry you unless he were in love with you, I'd like to know?"
"Why?" repeats Robert loftily. "I think the reason ought to be patent even to your immature comprehension, Lottie."
Addie looks at him with an expression of sudden interest.
"Bob, do you know I'm afraid I'm quite as dull as Lottie—for—for—I don't see his reason for wishing to marry me. What is it?"
"He is marrying you for your position, of course. What other reason could he have?"
"My position? Oh!"
"Yes, your position. He has money, he has lands, he wishes to found a family and sink the manufacturer in the squire; therefore, like all of his class, he looks about him for a wife who will bring breeding, ancestry, position as a dowry, the only means by which he can creep into county society. His eye naturally falls on you, the eldest daughter of the House of Lefroy; he seeks to reinstate you as mistress of your forefathers' acres. And what follows this move? Why, without an effort on his part, without one introductory cringe, the gates of county society are swung open to him through you, and his end effected. By Jove, now that I come to think of it, it's a jolly smart move on his part! I didn't give him credit for such clear-sightedness; he's a sharp fellow, and no mistake. Good thing for you, Addie—you'll have me at hand to look after your settlements. I'll keep a sharp eye on him!"
"So that is his reason, his motive!" thinks Addie, with contemptuous bitterness. "Of course it is a much more likely solution than—than that airy nonsense about the cup of tea. I wonder how a man, a big middle-aged man like him can be so full of littleness, of meanness, and—and—hypocrisy!"
"Yes," resumes Bob, with cynical fluency, "that is his little game; and his next move will be to gently push the family cognomen from behind the scenes and bring our identity to the fore. He'll begin after a year or two by tacking 'Lefroy' on to 'Armstrong;' you'll be 'Mrs. Lefroy Armstrong of Nutsgrove,' my dear; then a hyphen will be smuggled in; after that you'll become 'Mrs. Armstrong-Lefroy of Nutsgrove;' and, by Jove, before your son and heir reaches maturity probably, he'll be as clean a Lefroy, at least in name, as would have been his poor disinherited uncle but for the irony of fate. You must call him 'Robert,' after me, Addie."
But this generous speech has not the soothing effect intended, for Addie, with red, angry face, starts to her feet and shakes off her clinging family passionately.
"How do you know I shall ever marry him at all? I never said I would; and I'm sure I won't now—I'm sure I won't. I might have done so before—before, when I didn't understand; but, now that you have shown me what he is, I won't be the staff to prop his mean snobbishness. Let him get pedigree and breeding somewhere else; he shall not buy them from me, big as his price is!"
Dismay appalls the family at this unexpected turn of affairs; the unfortunate orator and elucidator stands staring with open mouth, not able to produce a protesting sound. Aunt Jo it is who briskly and successfully comes to the rescue. She has taken no part in the discussion, but has sat at the window apart in a soothing daydream, her heart singing a canticle of joy that the days of her bondage are at last closing in—sat, living through in happy prospective the coming year, established once more in her neat, comfortable little house, where the day worked itself out from sunrise to sunset with the soothing regularity of clock-work, where the voice of insulting tradesmen never penetrated, where all was peace, neatness, comfortable economy, and respectability.
"Robert, Pauline, Henry," she cries sharply, roused by Addie's disastrous wrath, "what are you tormenting the poor child about, talking of things you do not in the least understand? Don't you see that she is perfectly worn out with exhaustion and excitement and the pain of her foot. Come to bed, child, come to bed; you're not in a state to be up. I'll make you a nice hot drink that will send you to sleep at once. Here's your stick. What a grand one it is! Where did you get it? From Mr. Armstrong? Well, it's like himself, strong, reliable, and stout-limbed."
"Howdoes your ankle feel this morning?"
"Better—much better, thank you. In a day or two it will be quite strong again."
Miss Lefroy is seated in a moldy old summer-house at a corner of the farm-house garden, shelling a dish of peas, little Emma Higgins, her landlady's youngest but two, helping her with zealous dirty fingers. Unable any longer to bear the horsehair hardness of the parlor sofa and the stuffiness of the house, she has escaped hither, heedless of her aunt's protestations.
Mr. Armstrong stands leaning against the rotting woodwork, supporting a starved clematis-stalk, making the whole building creak and quiver with the weight of his brawny shoulders.
"Mr. Armstrong, spare us!" laughs Addie nervously. "We're two such miserable little specimens of the Philistine, Emmy and I—we're scarcely worth destruction."
"I don't know about that. If measles or croup had carried off Delilah when she was as young and harmless-looking as you, Miss Lefroy, why, Samson might have died in his bed. May I enter? There are no scissors on the premises?"
"No; your beard is quite safe; you may enter if you like."
"I went to the farm first, and your aunt directed me here," he says, taking a seat beside her on the stone slab.
"I got tired of the house—it was so close. The smell of the laborers' dinner toward midday is very strong everywhere; it flavors even the sweetbrier outside the parlor window; so I came here."
"Yes, it was a good move."
A silence follows; Addie wildly racks her brain for a sensible remark, but finds not one. He, resting his arm on the table, for some moments contentedly watches the movement of her slim brown fingers.
"Miss Lefroy, you are throwing the pods into the dish and the peas on the ground. Is that—"
"So I am, so I am!" she answers petulantly. "But I can't do anything when I'm—I'm watched like—that. Mr. Armstrong"—with sudden desperate bluntness—"you have come for your answer, have you not? Well, I have consulted them all, and they think it ought to be 'Yes.'"
"Then you will marry me, Miss Lefroy?"
"I suppose so."
He takes her unresisting hand and holds it in a strong cool clasp,while every nerve in her body tingles with the impulse to snatch it rudely from him; but she resists it, and merely says, panting a little—
"I must go in now with the peas."
"Oh, not yet! There is time enough surely!"
"No; they are wanted for early dinner, and take a great deal of boiling."
"Where's little Emmy? Gone off! Then I will take them in myself and bring you out some cushions and footstools; your ankle is not at all properly supported. I wonder your brothers or sisters did not look after you better!"
As soon as he disappears Addie hobbles out eagerly, and looks around. Spying Lottie prowling among the gooseberry bushes she hails her imperatively.
"Lottie, come here at once! Where are the others?"
"Mooning about. Auntie gave orders that no one, on any account, was to disturb you and Mr. Armstrong in the summer-house. She said I was not even to peep through the cabbage-plot at the back. I wonder why? Is it because he may want to kiss you?"
"Go and tell them all, all—to come to the arbor at once, and to stay with me the whole time that Mr. Armstrong is here; do you hear? Tell them—tell aunt, too—that, if they don't, I'll send him about his business as sure as my name's Addie Lefroy! Go quickly, miss; I'm in earnest. Let them come back before him now, or else—"
Lottie obeys, duly impressed by her sister's determined manner, and, when the happy suitor returns, laden with footstools and cushions, prepared for a long morning'stête-à-têtewith his love, he finds the rickety bower in possession of the whole family, who linger by him all the morning, favoring him with their views, and opinions of things in general, favoring him also with diffuse reminiscences of personal biography, and systematically intercepting the faintest exchange of word, or even look, with his sweet-voiced betrothed.
He bears it with tolerable patience for an hour or so, and then relapses into moody taciturnity, thus leaving the burden of entertainment on the able shoulders of "Robert the Magnificent," who fancies that the brilliancy and aristocratic flavor of his conversation are creating a most favorable, in fact, overpowering effect on his plebeian guest, little deeming, honest lad, that the said guest at the time is inwardly voting his future brother-in-law one of the most insufferably flippant young prigs and bores it has ever been his misfortune to meet. At last, unable to stand it any more he takes an irritated turn round the garden, where he is immediately joined by the two younger Lefroys.
"Are you fond of gooseberries, Mr. Armstrong?" begins Lottie, whose voice has not had fair play in the arbor. "Would you like me to pick you some?—though they are wretched in this garden—little sour hard balls scarcely worth picking."
"They're splendid up at Nutsgrove," he answers eagerly, struck with a happy thought—"splendid, large, soft, sweet, and yellow. Suppose you all trot up there now—Robert, Pauline, Hal, and you, and have a good morning's feed—eh?"
"Oh, it would be delicious! You'd come with us, too, wouldn't you?"
"Well—ah, no; I would remain with your sister and aunt—keep them company until you come back."
"Would you? Oh, dear, then we can't go."
"Why not, pray?"
"Because Addie made us all promise faithfully, while you were away with the peas, that we would remain and help her to entertain you whenever you came, and never to leave her. She has no conversational powers, she says; but Rob and Polly have a lot—haven't they? And they have promised, so have Hal and I too. It's an awful pity, isn't, it? I—I wish you'd come with us; I know Addie wouldn't mind a bit. She's very hot-tempered, you know—worse than any of us—but awfully good-natured, and not a scrap huffy, like Bob and Poll."
Armstrong takes no notice of the suggestion, but walks straight back to the arbor and bids the attached family farewell.
They stand in a group watching his tall massive figure stalking down the path.
"How big he looks in this bit of a garden—regularly dwarfs the old shrubs into plants!"
"Yes, he's what Sally would call a fine figure of a man. Well, Addie, you'll have quantity, if you don't have qua—"
"I say, Addie," bursts in Bob, excitedly, "did you ask him about my ship?"
"No, Robert, of course not."
"You didn't? And yet you know I have to sail on Saturday, and leave here to-morrow afternoon. Quick, quick; run and ask him about it now!"
"What am I to ask him?"
"What? Why, hang it, there's a question! Ask him if I may write and throw up the whole thing, of course."
"Oh, Bob, Bob," cries the poor little maid, coloring and shrinking. "I—I couldn't ask him yet; I couldn't begin so soon—the very first day!"
"What?" cries Bob, with angry bitterness. "Then you'll actually let me sail in the beastly rotten old tub to-morrow, and live the life of a water-rat for the next six months—perhaps never see me again—rather than say one word that would save me? Oh, I never heard of such confounded selfishness in all my life! I never imagined that any one calling herself a sister could behave so!"
"Oh, Addie, Addie, don't be so hard, so selfish!"
"Don't send away poor Bob like that. Go after him—go after him, quick!"
"But my foot—my foot—I can scarcely walk! I should never catch him now," she pleads.
"Yes, you could—here's your stick; he has stopped to light his cigar at the gate. Go!"
Thus urged, she limps painfully after him, calling his name, but he does not hear her, and the distance between them increases. She is about to give up the pursuit in despair, when he stops a second time to caress a tawny mongrel that has wriggled itself fawningly between his legs; then her voice is borne to him on the light summerbreeze. He turns and advances quickly to meet her, with a glad smile and outstretched hands.
"Have you come to say good-by to me, Addie?"
"Yes—no—yes," she answers breathlessly, unconsciously clinging to him to steady her shaking knees. "It's—it's—about Robert. Need he—must he join his ship on Saturday?"
He looks thoroughly bewildered.
"Need he join what ship—where? I don't understand."
"Oh, don't you remember? I told you about it yesterday—such a dreadful service—no salary—articles for three years—cargo of salt to China!"
"Yes, yes, to be sure; I remember. He does not care for his appointment. Tell him he may write to cancel it at once; I'll make it right at head-quarters for him; and then we must find him a more suitable berth on shore."
"Oh, thank you, thank you! How very kind you are!"
She is about to move away; but he lays his hand on her shoulder.
"Wait a moment; you're not half rested. You—you will try to like me a little, won't you, Addie?"
"Oh, yes!" she answers fervently, her shining eyes looking straight into his. "I will begin at once, and try as hard as ever I can to like you, Mr. Armstrong; you are so very kind!"
With a laugh that is half a sigh his hands drop and he turns away.
"I'm a fool, a fool—a blind, besotted fool!" he says to himself a little later. "I wish I could throw it all up; I wish I had the strength of mind. It won't do—it won't do! I shall live to reap in remorse and sorrow what I've sown in doubt and weakness—something tells me I shall. Well, well, so be it, so be it! I must go through with it now to the end, come what may."
Addie somewhat sulkily imparts the good news to her family, and then goes up to her room, locks the door, and lifts from the bottom of her trunk her cracked old papier-mâché desk, from which she takes a photograph wrapped in tissue paper, with the remains of a gloire de Dijon rose that was nipped from the parent-stem one soft June night three years before and fastened near her throat by warm boyish fingers—cousinly, not brotherly fingers. She scatters its loose stained petals out of the window, and then takes a long look at the picture of her soldier-cousin, Edward Lefroy, who spent a month at Nutsgrove the last time the colonel visited his home.
It is a bright laughing young face, fair and unbearded, as different in form, color, and expression from the face of her present lover as it possibly can be. The difference seems to strike the girl with painful reality, for tears fall from her downcast eye and drop upon the smiling features.
"Oh, Ted, Ted, did you mean anything on that day when you were rushing away? It was all so quick, so hurried, when the order came for you to rejoin, that I had not time to think, to understand. Did you mean anything in that hot farewell whisper, 'Good-by, good-by, little woman; we're as poor as a pair of church-mice now, but, should I come back for you one day with a lac of rupees, you'll be ready for me, won't you, Addie darling?' That was three yearsago, Ted, three years ago—and never a word from you since! I'm a goose to think of you now—I know I am; something tells me you've whispered the same to half a score of girls since; but, Teddy, if you did mean anything, come back for me now, before it's too late, before it's too late!"
"Addie, Addie, dinner is up, and there's a batter-pudding! Come down quick!"
"Coming!" she shouts; and then, carefully wiping the precious cardboard, she opens the well-thumbed family album. "I needn't destroy you, poor Ted; but you must leave my old desk now, and spend the rest of your days with the family"—placing him opposite to a simpering crinolined relative leaning against a pillar, with a basket of flowers in her hand. "Good-by, good-by, dear boy; I've watered your grave for the last time! And now for batter-pudding and a breaking heart!" she adds, with a light, half-contemptuous, half-wistful laugh, as she runs down-stairs.
The next morning, when Miss Lefroy appears at breakfast, she finds the parlor heavy with the breath of roses; eagerly she inhales their delightful fragrance.
"Aren't they lovely?" cries Lottie. "Did you ever see such a basketful? They are all for you, Addie, with 'T. A.'s compliments.' And look at the dishes of cherries and strawberries! Bob has been at them already—has polished off a couple of pounds. If you don't be quick, you'll not have any left. Fall to, Addie, fall to!"
But Addie turns away her head, and declares that she does not care for fruit so early in the day; and presently she even finds fault with the flowers—they are too much for the small close room—they give her a headache. She goes forth to the clover field opening out from the yard, and stretches herself at full length on the fresh sward to while away the long morning hours, her idle mind no longer troubled by the irregularities of French grammar, or the habits and manners of ancient Babylonia.
"Addie, Mr. Armstrong is in the parlor with Aunt Jo. Will you go in to him, or are we to bring him out here?"
"I'll go in to him; you're all there, aren't you?"
"Oh, yes. Don't you fear; we're all there, and we mean to stop."
"All right then; I'll follow you in presently," says Addie; and then, after a minute or two, she moves toward the house, muttering to herself as she does so, "'Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, policeman, plowboy, gentleman—' Oh, you wretches, you mocking little wretches, you shameful little fibbers, can you not tell me the truth even now? I'm to marry a gentleman still, am I? Oh, Ted, Ted, does it mean that you are coming across the sea to me—now—now, at the eleventh hour? I wish I knew!"
Mr. Armstrong does not stay long this afternoon, having business of importance at Kelvick. He waits to drink a cup of tea poured out by his love's nimble hands; and so, during a lucky moment, while the family are engaged in a light skirmish, he manages to slipunperceived a hoop of diamonds on her unwilling finger, and then he takes his leave.
After this they are not troubled very much with his society. About two or three times a week he looks in for half an hour to enjoy a peep at his future wife, whom he always finds enshrined in a circle of her devoted family, a circle which, after the first unsuccessful attempt, he does not try to rout. Miss Darcy is the only member with whom he is able to enjoy the favor of an uninterruptedtête-à-tête; and one morning toward the end of June, after being closeted with her for a couple of hours, it is decided to their mutual satisfaction that the sooner Miss Lefroy becomes Mrs. Armstrong the better for herself and all those interested in her.
This conclusion is delicately conveyed to the young person, who has not a tangible objection to raise, not a single plea to urge for delay, particularly as Aunt Jo skillfully cuts the ground from under her feet by complaints of her failing health and her longing for the restoring air of Leamington, which would be sure to set her up again at once, she feels.
Addie's marriage is settled to take place during the second week in August, a little over two months from the day of her betrothal; and the reign of bustle begins by an immediate migration from the undignified shelter of Sallymount Farm to Laburnum Lodge, just outside Nutsford, the residence of Mrs. Doctor Macartney, who has gone to the seaside for a couple of months with her family, and who was quite ready, for a smart pecuniary consideration, to let her neatly appointed house even to the reckless Lefroys for the time being.
Addie hotly opposed the change at first, but, as usual, was overruled by the family, backed by Aunt Jo.
"We can't afford it—you know we can't!" she pleaded earnestly. "You told me not a fortnight ago that you had only seven pounds ten to finish the quarter; therefore how can we afford to take Laburnum Lodge, Aunt Jo?"
"We must manage it somehow, child," Miss Darcy answered, with a slight blush. "Don't trouble your head about it any more, for the thing must be done. It would be too unseemly to have you married from Steve Higgins's farm, your sisters and brothers quite agree with me; and—and—Mr. Armstrong wishes it besides—so there is nothing more to be said about it."
It was the same with hertrousseau. In vain she protested, objected, revolted, against each article of attire added daily to her miserable wardrobe—against dresses, bonnets, mantles, against shoes, gloves, umbrellas, underclothes; it was all of no use. Aunt Jo and Pauline went on ordering and suggesting just as if she had not spoken. It seemed to the pained, bewildered girl that she was in the hands of every tradesman and tradeswoman in the town of Kelvick, and, after a couple of hours' shamefaced agony, she used to escape from Madame Armine's smooth wily fingers and approving exclamations in a state of impatient revolt that strangely puzzled that experienced lady. "Oh, it is unbearable," she would cry, "to be lodged, fed, clothed by him thus—unbearable to think that every pound of meat that comes to the table is paid for by him, as well as the dress, the stockings, the shoes, the gloves I shall wear standingbeside him at the altar! It is unbearable to think he is paying for me before I am purchased! How can they stand it, all of them? How can Robert, whom I thought so haughty, so proud, so sensitive, take it as he does? They must know—of course they must know—and yet don't seem to mind."
At other times a mad impulse would urge her to take up the finery that was fast filling the house, and fling it at Mr. Armstrong's feet, refusing to be further suffocated by his benefits; but luckily the opportunity failed for the uncomfortable feat, as Armstrong was called away on business of importance to the North of England just a fortnight before his wedding-day, and did not reappear at Laburnum Lodge until all her boxes were safely corded and standing in a row in the hall, labeled in Robert's round schoolboy hand—"Mrs. Armstrong, Charing Cross, London."
Itis just a week before the wedding-morning. Aunt Jo and Pauline are discussing the bill of fare for the breakfast; Addie is lying on a sofa by the open window, languidly reading the newspaper.
"You have quite made up your mind then, Addie?" asks the elder lady. "You won't have any one at the ceremony but just our immediate circle—not even your Aunt and Uncle Beecher?"
"Quite!" answers Addie sharply. "I'll have no one but you and the boys, Polly and Lottie—not another soul. I'll be married in my traveling-dress, not in the whitebrochéat all; and no one is to be let into the church. The doors are to be locked when we have entered."
"It will be a Quakerish kind of festival, certainly," says Pauline regretfully. "If ever I get married, I'll make a little more noise than that. And I suppose Mr. Armstrong will have none of his friends or relatives either?"
"No."
"Heigh-ho! I think you might have let some one in, just to temper the chill of the first family breaking-up—Teddy Lefroy, for instance. How he'd stir us up! And I'm sure he'd come, if you'd ask him, Addie."
The newspaper drops from her hands; she turns quickly, with flushed cheeks.
"Teddy Lefroy? What do you mean, Polly? How could I ask him? He's in India."
"No, he isn't; he came home about a month ago for a year at the depot. I heard it when I was at Aunt Selina's, but forgot to tell you until now."
"Where is he—in England?"
"No, somewhere in Ireland, near Kilkenny. I forget the name of the place."
"I wonder," says Addie, after a short pause, "if he has heard of my intended marriage?"
"Can't say, I'm sure," answers Pauline, carelessly. "Oh, yes, though, I should think the chances are that he has, for there was apretty brisk correspondence going on between him and the admiral while I was at Greystones! You know he's the old gentleman's godson; and I suspect Master Teddy had been dipping pretty freely and asking assistance, to judge by the expression of the godpapa's benign countenance while reading his letters. Poor Teddy, he's a regular Lefroy in that way; his purse was a perfect sieve. Do you remember, Addie, the presents he used to bring us from Kelvick—the blue silk handkerchief he brought you, which Hal upset the pot of blackberry jam over? How mad you were, to be sure! How you did pinch and cuff the poor child until the tears ran down his face! It seems but yesterday. Dear Ted, how bright and bonny he was, to be sure! I wish he'd come and see us while you are away, Addie; and I wish you were not going in for such a tremendous honeymoon—a whole month! How shall we get on without you, love? Oh, dear, I hope you'll miss us awfully! I hope Mr. Armstrong will get tired of you, and send you home to us before the time is half gone."
Every morning and evening for the rest of that eventful week Addie, with straining eyes and quickly-beating heart, watches the postman; but he never brings her what she wants, never brings her a line of congratulation, renunciation, reproach, or regret from the neighborhood of Kilkenny.
Her wedding-morning comes cloudless and sunny. She is married uneventfully, with the quivering rays from the stained-glass windows erected to the memory of René, Comte le Froi, and his wife Clothilde,A.D.1562, bathing her pale emotionless face in purpling golden light. And then she signs her maiden name—Adelaide Josephine Lefroy—for the last time on earth.
The breakfast is tearless, but a little strained, remarkable only for an able and grandiloquent speech from Robert, which is however somewhat marred at the close by the arrival of a costume from Madame Armine at the eleventh hour, which entails the reopening of trunks and much excitement and fuss.
Miss Darcy follows the bride up to her room, where she finds her gazing blankly out of the window alone. She steals behind her and puts her arms round her neck.
"Heaven bless you, my child, and give you every joy, every happiness in the new life that lies before you!"
"Thank you, auntie darling; thank you also for your goodness to me, and for all you have ever done and suffered for me and mine. I think I never felt it, never understood it, until now," she adds, breaking down a little at last. "But I'll never forget—never! You have been the dearest, the truest friend we have ever had, and one day you will meet with your reward."
"Not truer, my dear," Miss Darcy answers gravely, "than the friend, generous, strong, and unselfish, into whose hands Heaven put you but a few hours ago. You have a good husband, Addie, a truly good husband, my dear—one whom you can respect, honor, and obey all the days of your life. I am leaving you in his hands without a shadow of doubt, a twinge of apprehension. He may not have the outward polish, the surface-attraction of those born in the purple; but he is nevertheless a gentleman at heart—a gentleman in the true sense of the word, liberal, large-minded, incapable of amean or ignoble act or thought. You feel that you believe me, don't you, dear, don't you?" she repeats, peering anxiously into the girl's wistful weary face.
"Yes—oh, yes!" Addie answers in a whisper. "I think I do, auntie, I think I do."
For during the last month the theory of Mr. Armstrong's motive in matrimony so unluckily broached by the keen-sighted Robert, and which had awakened her active contempt, daily lost hold of her mind. She had but little opportunity of studying his character, or even of ascertaining the bent of his sympathies and tastes: nevertheless she was forced to acknowledge to herself that, low-born as he undoubtedly was, Armstrong of Kelvick was not a snob, that, though he respected rank and its many attributes of power, he did not love a lord with the servile fondness of the British tradesman, and that the end and aim of his existence were not to have the gates of county society flung open to him—nor was that the motive which had urged him to marry her.
"I could not tell you before, dear," resumes Aunt Jo softly, drawing her niece to a chair beside her—"but now that you are a wife it is different—what your husband has done for you and yours. I can not even now tell you how delicate, how unobtrusively generous, he has been in all his dealings with our unfortunate affairs."
"I know, I know—at least I half guessed it all."
"I had a long conversation with him last night, Addie, after you had all gone to bed, and he then told me the arrangements he had made for the children's futures. Will you listen to them now, or would you rather hear of them from him?"
"From you, from you!"
"Well, to begin with Robert. He is taking him into his own office to learn the elements of business; and, though I dare say the dear boy will be more of a hinderance than assistance there at present, yet he is giving him a fair salary to start with, and is establishing him in the household of his head-clerk, a most respectable married man, where he will have all the comforts of home. Hal he is sending to Dr. Jellett's at St. Anne's, the best school in the county; and the girls, who are to live with you, are to have the advantages of first-class governesses and masters from Kelvick. And that is not all, Addie. See this piece of crumpled paper he thrust into my hands when he was going. It is a check for four hundred pounds—half of it to defray little debts and personal expenses I've been put to in our late stress, and to help me to start comfortably in my old home; the other half, Addie, to pay off old bills that we Lefroys have owed in the place for years—bills of your heartless father's, child—to coach-builders, wine-merchants, tobacconists, and others, of which he must have heard. And, oh, Addie, if you had seen how shamefaced and confused he was when he was trying to explain what he meant, you'd have thought he was the guilty party, not that other who—who broke my poor sister's heart before she was thirty, and abandoned you for a—"
Addie moved away quickly, and pressed her hot cheek to the cool pane of the window, and a sudden light breaks over her clouded sky, showing her a purpose, an aim with which she can ennoble andsweeten the years of coming life, make it of value to herself and to others.
"I will be a good wife to him," she whispers warmly. "I will try to pay him back the debt we owe him. I will brighten his home, and make it a happy one for him; I will never let him regret the day he married me and mine; I will be gentle, loving, companionable, always striving to please; I will curb my awful temper, put a check on my impetuous tongue. He will never guess, never suspect that I am not perfectly happy and contented, never know that I don't care for him as I might have cared for another—another not half as good, as noble, as generous, or as true as he is. Oh, why can't I—why can't I? How perverse and hard-hearted I am! But it won't matter; he'll never know—never! He'll never see me without a smile on my lips and cheerfulness in my eyes. I'll be a good wife to you, Tom, I will! Oh, help me, dear Heaven!"
Thehoneymoon is a fortnight old.
Mrs. Armstrong, in a pale silk of grayish blue, with ruffles of creamy lace at throat and wrists, and sparkling diamonds in her pretty pink ears, is languidly toying with a bunch of muscatel grapes, listening to the grateful plash of the waves breaking on the pebbly shore below.
The room in which she sits is a charming one, delicately yet luxuriously furnished, bright with hothouse flowers, with big French windows opening on to a canopied balcony overhanging the restless waters of St. George's Channel. Her husband is leaning back in his chair, sipping his post-prandial claret in blissful enjoyment.
"Headache all gone, Addie?" he asks, breaking a pleasant drowsy silence.
She turns her smiling face to him with a slight start.
"Headache? Had I a headache, Tom? Oh, I remember! That was this morning—ages ago—after bathing! Fancy your remembering all that time!"
"Well, I hope I am not such a callous wretch as to forget my wife's ailments, even after the long 'ages' of a summer morning."
"That is a real pretty speech, as Miss Tucker, on the flat below us, would say. I'll treasure it in my memory, Tom, and recall it to you, say, this day five years."
"You'll find it in tune, my dear. I'm not afraid."
She shakes her head doubtfully.
"Impossible! Even though your spirit was willing, the boys would have corrupted you long before. Fancy Bob or Hal inquiring after a headache six hours old! Listen to the music; how sweet it sounds!"
"Like a turn on the pier, dear?"
She assents gladly, and trips off to array herself, returning almost at once with a chip-hat and light lace-scarf thrown round her shoulders.
"Addie, you're not going out in that flimsy garment at this hour of the night—quite a sharp wind rising too! Go and put on something warmer."
"But I'm quite warm, Tom. Why, I have been out in the bitterest east wind, with snow on the ground and with a bad sore throat, not more heavily clad than this!"
"Well, my dear, that is an experience you may boast of, but which you will not practically repeat. Go, like a good girl, and put on that white woolly thing I saw in your wardrobe this morning."
She complies sweetly, but when out of sight, petulantly pulls the wrap from its shell, muttering—
"Well, I hope this will satisfy him. Why it's first cousin to a blanket! I shall be suffocated. Oh, dear!"
They sally forth and stroll slowly through the fashionable crowd, Addie's feet keeping time to a swinging gavotte, while she furtively eyes some dozen couples whose demeanor and gay attire incline her to suspect that they are in the same interesting position as herself and Tom.
After a time they leave the crowd and walk to the end of the pier, which they have all to themselves. They clamber over the moonlit rocks and stand arm in arm looking across the rippling waters, the music reaching them mellowed by distance into divinely soothing harmony.
It is an hour, a moment to put poetry into the breasts of the Smallweed family.
Armstrong feels its influence. He bends his dark face over his wife's, and asks sentimentally—
"Are you happy, Addie?"
"Oh, yes—yes!" she whispers back, with sparkling eyes. "Why should I not be? You are so very k—"
He blocks the sentence with a kiss.
"You need not have been in such a hurry," she laughs. "How do you know I was going to say that, after all? There are lots of other adjectives beginning with a 'k,' besides 'kind.' Let me see—'kantankerous,' for instance—"
"Hem! When I was at school, 'cantankerous' began with a 'c,' Mistress Addie."
"Oh, dear! I won't try repartee again, no matter how grievous the assault. Tom, what a valuable governess you robbed the Moggeridges of! You owe them compensation, sir."
A faint breeze brings to them a few bars of one of the sweetest, saddest love-songs ever written. Addie's voice drops; she says, scarcely above her breath—
"And you, Tom—are you happy too?"
"Happier, dear, than I ever thought I could be, even in my wildest dreams of matrimonial bliss. I've had you only a fortnight, little wife, and yet I don't know how I did without you during all the past years, or what life would be to me it you went from me now."
"I have no immediate intention of going," she remarks, rubbing her soft cheek against his coat-sleeve.
"No, you're bound for life now, thank Heaven!" he says fervently. "And, when I think of the many times I have been within an ace of losing you, child, of throwing the whole thing up and letting you go, I rejoice in possessing the gift of pig-headedness, and—"
"You were within an ace of giving me up! When, Tom? I never knew."
"Scores of times. I thought I could not make you happy, or myself either. I shrunk from the risk."
"Why? What risk?"
"We were so different, you see, Addie—there was such a gulf between us, not only of years, but of experience, of habit, of thought and mode of life. My past had been so rough, so lonely, so self-sufficing. And then—then, you did not like me, Addie; I saw that plainly enough. You used to shrink if I tried to come near you; and the way you hedged yourself in with those blessed boys was disconcerting, to say the least of it."
"I saw you did not like it," she says, with a low laugh.
"Not like it! By Jove, if you could have guessed the many times my fingers have itched to close on the shapely throat of that brother of yours, my dear, you would—"
"Poor Bob!"—a little anxiously. "You must not bear him ill-will, Tom; he's off his guard now. You see, I did not understand you then—did not know how to talk to you; you looked so big—so out of my world. But now it is all different." Then, after a short pause—"And so you think I can make you happy, husband—you don't regret it? You won't find us too much for you at Nutsgrove? For we're—we're not a comfortable family to live with, Tom! Oh, indeed we're not! Poor Aunt Jo had an awful time of it with us, and the Beechers found Pauline very trying at Greystones. Then I have a shocking temper; and Lottie, poor child, is dreadful when her questioning mood is on. Now don't be ridiculous, Tom, for I'm quite serious."
"I like Lottie," he says, smiling; "she's persevering, to be sure, but quite without guile. Pauline I think I can put up with too. Your temper, sweetheart, may be a bit of a trial; but fortunately I've a broad back, and a constitution, physical and mental, of granite."
"You'll want it, I suspect. But tell me, Tom, something about your early life. Had you no father or mother that you remember?"
"No; my mother died when I was an infant, and my father left me on the parish and went to America."
"How very strange—both our fathers behaving in much the same way! I think fathers are rather a mistake in families, Tom."
He laughs.
"So I began life unembarrassed by family connections—a—a—foundling, in fact—you don't mind, do you, Addie? And for the thirty-seven years of my life I've lived alone, entirely for myself—worked for myself, struggled for myself, dreamed for myself, built castles in the air to be inhabited by myself alone. A despicable state of existence, wasn't it? I blush when I look back on it now."
"You were not unhappy?"
"No, because I did not know any better. I could not go back to it now; you have broken the charm of egotism and sordid ambition. Oh, sweetheart, you cannot imagine how strange and refreshing it is to shake off the monotony of self at last, to be absorbed in another night and day, to forget one's separate existence, to feel that life before one will be full to overflowing of goodly promise, unfading blossom! It is like stepping back from the blightful shade of a late autumn night into the glory of a fresh spring morning. Ah, youcannot follow me there, little one! You have not been baptized in selfishness as I have been; and, though you like me well enough not to shrink from the future which is to me a vista of undimmed sunshine, yet I am not to you what you are to me, Addie; I doubt sorely if I can ever be."
"Hush!" she says, quickly, with a shudder she cannot repress, "It is no good discussing such matters now. You cannot expect me to follow you in your pretty simile, because I am only passing from spring into summer, and so I do not know what autumn may be like—it will come in time. You like my youth, don't you? You would not have me older? I am young in years, in experience, and in feeling. I cannot help that. I do not know much; but I know that I like you, Tom. I know that; I know too that you are good and stanch and true—ah, twice too good for me!" she adds, with a dry sob that startles him and makes him drift into a more cheerful channel as quickly as he can, into which she follows him with evident relief.
"And so, Tom," she asks, presently, "you have no relatives that you know of, except that old Mrs. Murphy who sent me that lovely patchwork quilt as a wedding present? And she is—"
"Only a third or fourth cousin on my mother's side."
"And have you lived all your life at Kelvick?"
"No, dear. I have been half over the world, knocking about east and west since I was twelve years old."
"Fancy that! I never knew. Your life must have been an interesting one."
"Hardly. It was not exactly commonplace; but it certainly wasn't picturesque in any of its phases. I went to Australia when I was quite a lad—worked my way before the mast, and made a little money out there. I came home, and the demon of invention got hold of me. I conceived some wondrous piece of agricultural mechanism which was to make my name and my fortune, over which I spent every farthing I had scraped together. Well, it proved to be a mere worthless abortion, and the discovery was a smart blow to my conceit and my energy. I lost heart for a time, went to the States, where I joined the Confederate Army, fought for two years—it was the time of the struggle for emancipation—and, when it was over, I steered further west, to California, where I did fairly at mining."
"Why, you have been a Jack-of-all-trades, Tom—sailor, soldier, inventor, miner, manufacturer—what else?"
"That's the whole list. I found at last that liquid-manufacturing paid the best; so I stuck to it. Vitriol gave me my decisive lift. Now, Addie, I will not allow that disdainful little sniff, for vitriol lies very close to my bosom just now. Vitriol bought me Nutsgrove, and Nutsgrove bought me you, and you bought—"
"Armstrong of Kelvick, is that you in the flesh? What can have tempted you into the giddy haunts of fashion, so far from your savory chimney-pots, my dear fellow?"
"Like the man in the Scriptures, 'I married a wife.' Addie"—to his wife, who stands rather shyly in the background—"let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Henderson."
They leave the pier and walk to the hotel, remaining for a fewminutes talking under the porch; then the two men return to the pier for a smoke. Addie watches them disappear, hatching a little moonlit scamper on her own account to a solitary part of the shore, where she can plunge her free hands and hot face into the rippling water. Alas, woman proposes, but man disposes! She has just cleared the last step of the terrace, when she meets her husband face to face.
"Addie, I just ran back to see that you did not remain standing in that draught. Where are you going, child?"—and in an accent of intense surprise.
"Oh, nowhere in particular—at least, only to the edge of the sea for a moment!" she answers, a little hurriedly.
"To the shore at eleven o'clock at night, alone! You must have lost your senses, my dear. You must learn to understand that things of that sort cannot be done, and particularly in a place of this kind. Go up to your room at once, please, or you will grieve me very much."
For an instant she stands irresolute, trying to repress a wild instinct of rebellion, for there is a ring of authority in his voice which stirs the haughty Lefroy blood.
"I do not see what harm there is; I have been out at all hours of the night at home, and nobody said anything," she persists sullenly.
"It is of no use," he says almost sternly—at least it sounds so to her—"drawing parallels between your past life and your present; they are meaningless. If you wish to return to the shore, I will accompany you, and tell my friend not to wait for me."
"It is not necessary," she answers, in a low voice. "I am going in."
He follows her a few steps and lays his heavy hand on her shoulder.
"Addie darling, forgive me; I do not make allowance for your youth and the habits of your past life, and—and—I'm so accustomed to be obeyed, to command inferiors, that I—I forgot I was speaking to a lady, to one dearer to me than my life. Forgive me, sweetheart, forgive me!"
"Yes—oh, yes!" she says, slowly withdrawing herself from his detaining hand.
She walks listlessly up the stairs, stands panting heavily in her flower-scented room, looking to right and left with the quick, restless movement of an animal newly caged. She takes off her hat and cumbrous wrapping, removes the diamonds from her ears, the heavy gold bands from her fingers, and throws them from her; her arms drop to her sides. She remains thus, erect, motionless, rigid, for nearly half an hour, fighting against the sultry storm that sways her young soul; then she sinks quivering into a chair by the table, her head falls on her outstretched hands, and her passion finds vent in a storm of sobs and wild complaints.
At last she is alone; the longtête-à-têteis broken. A stranger's voice had broken the spell; she can be herself again—can wake Addie Lefroy from her maiden grave for a few short moments, and bid her live and suffer; she can throw the suffocating mask aside, let the hot tears rain from her weary eyes; the quick word, petulant, peevish, fall from her quivering lips—can be herself again, canseek to find the problem of her troubled life, can ask herself if it was a lie, a fraud, a base sequence of hypocrisy, or a glorious martyrdom, an heroic act of self-sacrifice. But nothing answers her, the problem remains unsolved, all before her is blurred with passion, misty with thunderous clouds that veil the transient gleams of a sunshine sweet and tender which she has dimly felt struggling to reach her path during the most trying fortnight of her life. But they do not touch her now; black night shrouds her everywhere.
"He is too good, too generous, too kind, too—too fond of me!" she wails, not conscious that her grief has found articulate sound. "His care, his affection, his watchfulness stifle me. I am not accustomed to them. It is like being transplanted to a hothouse after living all one's life on the top of a breezy hill. I feel I cannot breathe—that is it; I want breath, I want air. Only a fortnight, only a fortnight, and it must go on—I must keep it up to the end! Oh, it is too much—too much! I cannot bear it—I cannot bear it; it will kill me!"
Her voice sinks into a dry sob; there is a faint sound in the room, as if a door was being softly closed, a sound which rouses her with a start from her absorbed passion. She looks up quickly, and glances at the closed door leading into her husband's dressing-room. A horrible suspicion flashes across her mind, changing the heat of her blood to an icy chill. She passes noiselessly into the dressing-room; but there is no one there.
"An unnecessary alarm, a trick of the imagination!" she breathes with a sigh of relief.
The distraction has the effect of quieting her excited nerves, soothing the storm of her mind. She wipes her eyes briskly, tidies her hair, replaces her wedding-ring.
"I have been a fool! I wonder what set me off like that so suddenly! Such a strange feeling it was—as if I were choking; but I think it has done me good. I feel quite cool, light, and refreshed now, ready for a cup of tea."
She passes into her bedroom to replace her hat and wrap; then, drawing aside the blind, she peers out of the window, which is in the front of the hotel, facing the station.
"What a lovely night! No wonder one is tempted to remain out. Still he ought to be soon in now; it's past eleven some time, and I should like a cup—Oh, great Heaven!"
With a cry she falls back from the window, cowering, for at that moment forth from the gloom of the porch underneath, his brave head hanging low on his breast, her husband moves into the moonlight, where he stands motionless for a moment, then lifts his arms with a weary, bewildered gesture, and stumbles forward heavily toward the sleeping sea.
She knows that her sacrifice has been in vain, that she has blighted the prime of him who has enriched her and hers with his best, who has loved her more than his own life.