Annette was not of those who adhere to a rigid truthfulness on all occasions.
She stroked her aunt"s hand.
"It was borne in on me at Teneriffe, after I was ill there, how selfish I had been," she said, and her voice trembled. "I ought never to have left you all. If only I had not left you all! Then I should not be--I shouldn"t have--but I was selfish to the core. And my eyes were only opened too late."
"No, my dear, not too late. Just in the nick of time, at the very moment we needed you most, after dear Cathie"s death. You don"t know what a comfort you have been to us."
"Too late for Aunt Cathie," said Annette hoa.r.s.ely. "Poor, kind, tired Aunt Cathie, who came to me in my room the last night and asked me not to leave her, told me she needed my help. But my mind was absolutely set on going. I cried, and told her that later on I would come back and take care of her, but that I must go. Self in her rainbow veil beckoned and--and I followed. If Aunt Cathie was the stepping-stone which groaned beneath my feet, what of that? What did I care? I pa.s.sed over it, I trampled on it without a thought."
The subdued pa.s.sion in Annette"s voice stirred anew the vague trouble in Aunt Maria"s mind.
For a moment her own view of life, even her heroine"s puny and universally admired repentance, tottered, dwindled. For a brief moment she saw that the writer of _The Magnet_ made a great demand on his reader, and that Annette had pa.s.sionately responded to it. For a moment Mr. Stirling"s gentle, ruthless voice seemed to overthrow her whole position, to show her to herself as petty and trivial. For a moment she even doubted whether _Crooks and Coronets_ had really effected the great change she perceived in Annette, and the doubt disheartened her still more. She withdrew resolutely into the stronghold of her success, and rose slowly to her feet.
"Well," she said, "it"s time to go to bed. Close the shutters, Annette.
It"s very natural you should be impressed by _The Magnet_. I should have been at your age. Young people are always attracted by eloquence. But as one gets older I find one instinctively prefers plainer language, as one prefers plainer clothes, less word-painting, and more spiritual teaching."
It was already late, but Annette sat up still later writing a long letter to Mrs. Stoddart.
CHAPTER XX
"Yourself are with yourself the sole consortress In that unleaguerable fortress; It knows you not for portress."
FRANCIS THOMPSON.
I have often envied Lesage"s stratagem in which he makes Le diable boiteux transport his patron to a high point in the city, and then obligingly remove roof after roof from the houses spread out beneath his eyes, revealing with a sublime disregard for edification what is going on in each of them in turn. That is just what I should like to do with you, Reader, transport you to the top of, shall we say, the low church tower of Riff, and take off one red roof after another of the cl.u.s.tering houses beneath us. But I should not choose midnight, as Lesage did, but tea-time for my visitation, and then if you appeared bored, I would quickly whisk off another roof.
We might look in at Roger"s cottage near the church first of all, and see what he is doing.
On this particular afternoon, some three weeks after his conversation with Annette under the apple tree, I am sorry to record that he was doing nothing. That was a pity, for there was a great deal waiting to be done. July and a new quarter were at hand. Several new leases had to be looked over, the death of one of his farmers had brought up the old hateful business of right of heriot, the accounts of the Aldeburgh house property were in at last and must be checked. There was plenty to do, but nevertheless Roger was sitting in his office-room, with his elbow on his last labour-sheet, and his chin in his hand. He, usually so careful, had actually blotted the names of half a dozen labourers. His housekeeper, the stoutest woman in Riff, sister to the late Mr.
Nicholls, had put his tea near him half an hour before. Mr. Nicholls"
spinster sister was always called "Mrs. Nicholls." But it was the wedded Mrs. Nicholls who had obtained the situation of Roger"s housekeeper by sheer determination for the unwedded lady of the same name, and when Roger had faintly demurred at the size of his housekeeper designate, had informed him sternly that "she was stout only in appearance."
It was a pity he had let his tea grow cold, and had left his plate of thick, rectangular bread-and-b.u.t.ter untouched.
Roger was a person who hated thought, and he was thinking, and the process was fatiguing to him. He had for years "hustled" along like a st.u.r.dy pony on the rounds of his monotonous life, and had been fairly well satisfied with it till now. But lately the thoughts which would have been invading a more imaginative man for a long time past had at last reached him, had filtered down through the stiff clay of the upper crust of his mind.
Was he going on _for ever_ keeping another man"s property a.s.siduously together, doing two men"s work for one man"s pay? When his uncle made him his agent he lived in the house at Hulver, and his horses were kept for him, and the two hundred a year was a generous allowance. But d.i.c.k had not increased it when he succeeded. He had given him the cottage, which was in use as an estate office, rent free, but nothing else. Roger had not liked to say anything at first, even when his work increased, and later on d.i.c.k had not been "to be got at." And the years were pa.s.sing, and Roger was thirty-five. He ought to be marrying if he was ever going to marry at all. Of course, if d.i.c.k were in a state of health to be appealed to at close quarters--he never answered letters--he would probably act generously. He had always been open-handed. But d.i.c.k, poor beggar, was dead already as far as any use he could be to himself or others.
Roger shuddered at the recollection of the shapeless, prostrate figure, with the stout, vacant face, and the fat hand, that had once been so delicate and supple, which they had wanted to guide to do it knew not what.
Roger could not see that he had any future. But then he had not had any for years past, so why was he thinking about that now? Annette was the reason. Till Annette came to Riff he had always vaguely supposed that he and Janey would "make a match of it" some day. Janey was the only person he really knew. I do not mean to imply for a moment that Roger in his pink coat at the Lowshire Hunt Ball was not a popular partner. He was. And in times past he had been shyly and faintly attracted by more than one of his pretty neighbours. But he was fond of Janey. And now that his uncle was dead, Janey was, perhaps, the only person left for whom he had a rooted attachment. But it seemed there were disturbing women who could inspire feelings quite different from the affection and compa.s.sion he felt for his cousin. Annette was one of them. Roger resented the difference, and then dwelt upon it. He distrusted Annette"s parentage. "Take a bird out of a good nest." That was his idea of a suitable marriage. Never in his wildest moments would he have thought of marrying a woman whose father was a Frenchman, much less a Frenchman who kept a public-house. He wasn"t thinking of such a thing now--at least, he told himself he wasn"t. But he had been deeply chagrined at Annette"s mention of her father all the same, so deeply that he had not repeated the odious fact even to Janey, the recipient of all the loose matter in his mind.
How kind Annette had been to poor Janey during these last weeks! Janey had unaccountably and dumbly hung back at first, but Annette was not to be denied. Roger, with his elbow on his labour-sheet, saw that whatever her father might be, the least he could do would be to ride up to Riff at an early date and thank her.
It is only a step from Roger"s cottage to the Dower House.
All was silent there. Janey and Harry had gone up to Hulver to sail his boat after tea, and the house was deserted. Tommy, the gardener"s boy, the only person to whom Harry had confided his marriage, was clipping the edges of the newly-mown gra.s.s beneath Lady Louisa"s window.
And Lady Louisa herself?
She lay motionless with fixed eyes, while the nurse, her daughter-in-law, read a novel near the open window.
She knew what had happened. She remembered everything. Her hearing and sight were as clear as ever. But she could make no sign of understanding or recognition. A low, guttural sound she could sometimes make, but not always, and the effort was so enormous that she could hardly induce herself to make it. At first she had talked unceasingly, unable to remember that the words which were so clear to herself had no sound for those bending over her, trying to understand what she wished. Janey and the doctor had encouraged her, had comforted her, had made countless experiments in order to establish means of communication with her, but without avail.
"Would you like me to read, mother? See, I am holding your hand. Press it ever so little, and I shall know you would like a little reading."
No faintest pressure.
"Don"t trouble to answer, mother, but if you would like to see Roger for a few minutes, shut your eyes."
The eyes remained open, fixed. Lady Louisa tried to shut them, but she could not.
"Now I am going to hold up these large letters one after another. If there is something you wish me to do, spell it to me. Make a sound when I reach the right letter. I begin with A. Now we come to B. Here is C."
But after many fruitless attempts Janey gave up the letters. Her mother groaned at intervals, but when the letters were written down they did not make sense. No bridge could span the gulf. At last the doctor advised Janey to give up trying to span it.
"Leave her in peace," he said in Lady Louisa"s hearing, that acute hearing which was as intact as her eyesight.
So Lady Louisa was left in peace.
She saw the reins and whip which she had held so tightly slip out of her hands. She who had imposed her will on others all her life could impose it no longer. She was tended by a traitor whom she hated, yet she was unable to denounce her, to rid herself of her daily, hourly presence.
A wood pigeon cooed tranquilly in the cedar, and Lady Louisa groaned.
The nurse put down her book, and came and stood beside the bed. The two enemies looked at each other, the younger woman boldly meeting the impotent hatred of her patient"s eyes.
"It"s no use, milady," she said, replacing a little cushion under her elbow. "You"re down, and I"m up, and you"ve got to make up your mind to it. Harry told me you"d got it out of him. Are you any the happier for knowing I"m your daughter-in-law? I"d meant to spare you that. It was that as brought on the stroke. Very clever you were to wheedle it out of Harry, but it didn"t do you much good. You"d turn me out without a character if you could, wouldn"t you? But you can"t. And listen to me.
You won"t ever be any better, or I shouldn"t talk like this. I dare say I"m pretty bad, but I"d never say there wasn"t a chance while there was the least little sc.r.a.p of one left. But there isn"t, not one sc.r.a.p. It"s all over with your high and mighty ways, and riding rough-shod over everybody, and poor Miss Manvers. It"s no use crying. You"ve made others cry often enough. Now it"s your turn. And don"t go and think I"m going to be cruel to you because you"ve been cruel to others. I"m not. I"m sorry enough for you, lying there like a log, eating your heart out. I"m going to make you as comfortable as ever I can, and to do my duty by you. And when you"re gone I"m going to make Harry happier than he"s ever been under your thumb. So now you understand."
Lady Louisa understood. Her eyes, terrible, fierce as a wounded panther"s, filled with tears. She made no other sign.
The nurse wiped them away.
CHAPTER XXI
"The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it."--GEORGE ELIOT.
The Vicarage is within a stone"s throw of the Dower House. On this particular afternoon Mr. and Miss Black were solemnly seated opposite each other at tea, and Mr. Black was ruefully reflecting, as he often did at meal-times, on his sister"s incapacity as a housekeeper.
We sometimes read in the biographies of eminent men how trains and boats always eluded those distinguished personages, in spite of their pathetic eagerness to overtake them; how their luggage and purses and important papers fled from them; how their empty chairs too frequently represented them on state occasions.