by Ellen Wood
“You did not come over: you said you should,” faltered Anne.
“Ay. And I sprained my foot the day you left, and have had to nurse it. It is not strong yet. Bad luck, was it not? Bristow has been worse, too. Where are you going?”
“I must take these things up to papa and Mrs. Lewis. Please let me go.”
But, before he would release her hand, he suddenly bent his head and kissed her: once, twice.
“Pardon me, Anne, I could not help it; it is only a French greeting,” he whispered, as she escaped with her face rosy-red, and her heart beating time to its own sweet music.
“What a stay Mr. Angerstyne is making!” exclaimed Fanny Podd, who had run about to seek Miss Dinah, and found her making a new surplice for Tom.
“Well, we are glad to have him,” answered Miss Dinah, “and he has had a sprained ankle. We know now what is detaining him in Worcestershire. It seems that some old lady is lying ill at Malvern, and he can’t get away.”
“Some old lady lying ill at Malvern!” retorted Fanny, who liked to take Miss Dinah down when she could. “Why should that detain Mr. Angerstyne? Who is the old lady?”
“She is a relation of his: his great-aunt, I think. And I believe she is very fond of him, and won’t let him go to any distance. All these visits he makes to Malvern are to see her. She is very rich, and he will come in for her money.”
“I’m sure he’s rich enough without it; he does not want more money,” grumbled Fanny. “If the old lady would leave a little to those who need it, she might do some good.”
“She would have to be made of gold and diamonds if she left some to all who need it,” sighed Miss Dinah. “Mr. Angerstyne deserves to be rich, he is so liberal with his money. Many a costly dainty he causes us to send up to that poor sick Captain Bristow, letting him think it is all in the regular fare.”
“But I think it was fearfully sly of him never to tell us why he went so much to Malvern — only you must always put in a good word for everybody, Miss Dinah. I asked him one day what his attraction was, that he should be perpetually running over there, and he gravely answered me that he liked the Malvern air.”
Just for a few days, Dr. Lewis seemed to get a little better. Mrs. Lewis’s fascinations had returned to her, and she in a degree kept him alive. It might have been from goodness of heart, or it might have been that she did not like to neglect him before people just yet, but she was ever devising plans for his amusement — which of course included that of herself and of her daughters. Mr. Angerstyne had not been more lavish of money in coach hire than was Mrs. Lewis now. Carriages for the country and flys for the town — that was the order of the day. Anne was rarely invited to make one of the party: for her there never seemed room. What of that? — when by staying at home she had the society of Mr. Angerstyne.
Whilst they were driving everywhere, or taking their pleasure in the town, shopping and exhibiting their finery, of which they seemed to display a new stock perpetually, Anne was left at liberty to enjoy her dangerous happiness. Dangerous, if it should not come to anything: and he had not spoken yet. They would sit together over their German, Anne trying to beat it into him, and laughing with him at his mistakes. If she went out to walk, she presently found herself overtaken by Mr. Angerstyne: and they would linger in the mellow light of the soft autumn days, or in the early twilight. Whatever might come of it, there could be no question that for the time being she was living in the most intense happiness. And about a fortnight of this went on without interruption.
Then Dr. Lewis began to droop. One day when he was out he had another of those attacks in the carriage. It was very slight, Mrs. Lewis said when they got back again; he did not lose consciousness for more than three or four minutes. But he continued to be so weak and ill afterwards that a physician was called in — Dr. Malden. What he said was known only to the patient and his wife, for nobody else was admitted to the conference.
“I want to go home,” the doctor said to Anne the next morning, speaking in his usual querulous, faint tone, and as if his mind were half gone. “I’m sure I did not smell any paint the last time; it must have been her fancy. I want to go there to be quiet.”
“Well, papa, why don’t you say so?”
“But it’s of no use saying so: she won’t listen. I can’t stand the racket here, child, and the perpetual driving out: the wheels of the carriages shake my head. And look at the expense! It frightens me.”
Anne scarcely knew what to answer. She herself was powerless; and, so far as she believed, her father was; utterly so. Powerless in the hands of his new wife. Dr. Lewis glanced round the room as if to make sure there were no eavesdroppers, and went on in a whisper.
“I’m terrified, Anne. I am being ruined. All my ready-money’s gone; she has had it all; she made me draw it out of the bank. And there, in that drawer, are two rolls of bills; she brought them to me yesterday, and there’s nothing to pay them with.”
Anne’s heart fluttered. Was he only fancying these things in his decaying mind? Or, were they true?
“September has now come in, papa, and your quarter’s dividends will soon be due, you know. Do not worry yourself.”
“They have been forestalled,” he whispered. “She owed a lot of things before her marriage, and the people would have sued me had I not paid them. I wish we were back in France, child! I wish we had never left it!” And, but for one thing, Anne would have wished it, too.
One afternoon, when it was getting late, Anne went into High Street to buy some ribbon for her hair. Mrs. Lewis and her party had gone over to Croome, some one having given her an order to see the gardens there. Lake’s house was as busy as it could be, some fresh inmates of consequence being expected that evening; Anne had been helping Miss Dinah, and it was only at the last minute she could run out. In coming back, the ribbon bought, close to the college gates she heard steps behind her, and found her arm touched. It was by Mr. Angerstyne. For the past two days — nearly three — he had been absent at Malvern. The sight of him was as if the sun had shone.
“Oh! — is it you? — are you back again?” she cried, with as much quiet indifference as she could put on.
“I have just arrived. My aunt is better. And how are you, Anne?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“Need you go in yet? Let us take a short stroll. The afternoon is delightful.”
He called it afternoon, but it was getting on fast for evening: and he turned in at the college gates as he spoke. So they wound round St. Michael’s Churchyard and passed on to the Dark Alley, and so down the long flight of steps that leads from it, and on to the banks of the Severn.
“How are you all going on at Lake’s?” he asked presently, breaking the silence.
“Just as usual. To-day is a grand field-day,” Anne added gaily: “at least, this evening is to be one, and we are not to dine until seven o’clock.”
“Seven? So much the better. But why?”
“Some people of importance are coming — —”
Mr. Angerstyne’s laugh interrupted her. She laughed also.
“They are Miss Dinah’s words: ‘people of importance.’ They will arrive late, so the dinner-hour is put off.”
“Take care, Anne!”
A horse, towing a barge, was overtaking them. Mr. Angerstyne drew Anne out of the way, and the dinner and the new guests were forgotten.
It was almost dusk when they returned. The figures on the college tower were darkened, as they came through the large boat-house gateway: the old elm-trees, filled with their cawing rooks, looked weird in the dim twilight. Mr. Angerstyne did not turn to the Dark Alley again, but went straight up to the Green. He was talking of his estate in Essex. It was a topic often chosen by him; and Anne seemed to know the place quite well by this time.
“You would like the little stream that runs through the grounds,” he was observing. “It is not, of course, like the grand river we have just left, but it is pleasant to wander by, for it winds in and out in th
e most picturesque manner possible, and the banks are overshadowed by trees. Yes, Anne, you would like that.”
“Are you going through the cloisters? — is it not too late?” she interrupted, quite at a loss for something to say; not caring to answer that she should like to wander by the stream.
For he was crossing towards the little south cloister door: though onwards through the Green would have been their more direct road.
“Too late? No. Why should it be? You are not afraid of ghosts, are you?”
Anne laughed. But, lest she should be afraid of ghosts, he put her hand within his arm as they passed through the dark narrow passage beyond the postern; and so they marched arm-in-arm through the cloisters.
“To sit by that winding stream on a summer’s day listening to its murmurs, to the singing of the birds, the sweet sighing of the trees; or holding low converse with a cherished companion — yes, Anne, you would like that. It would just suit you, for you are of a silent and dreamy nature.”
There might not be much actual meaning in the words if you sat down to analyze them: but, to the inexperienced mind of Anne, they sounded very like plain speaking. At any rate, she took them to be an earnest that she should sometime sit by that stream with him — his wife. The dusky cloisters seemed to have suddenly filled themselves with refulgent light; the gravestones over which she was passing felt soft as the mossy glades of fairyland: ay, even that mysterious stone that bears on it the one terrible word “Miserrimus.” Heaven was above her, and heaven beneath: there was no longer any prosaic earth for Anne Lewis.
“Good-night to you, gentlefolks.”
The salutation was from the cloister porter; who, coming into close the gates, met them as they were nearing the west door. Not another word had passed until now: Mr. Angerstyne had fallen into silence. Anne could not have spoken to gain the world.
“Good-night to you, my man,” he answered.
Lake’s was in a bustle when they reached it. The luggage of the new people, who had just been shown to their chambers, was being taken in; the carriage containing Dr. and Mrs. Lewis was then just driving up. Anne felt alarmed as she caught sight of her father; he looked so very ill. Mr. Angerstyne, in his ready, kindly way, waited to help him down and give him his arm along the passage; he then ran up to his room, remarking that he had letters to write.
The people assembled for dinner in full fig, out of deference to the new-comers: who proved to be a Lady Knight, and a Mrs. and Miss Colter. Anne wore her pretty grey bridesmaid’s dress, and the ribbon, just bought, in her hair. At the very last moment, Mr. Angerstyne came down, his hands full of the letters he had been writing.
“Why, are you here?” exclaimed Lady Knight: who seemed to be a chatty, voluble woman. “I am surprised.”
Mr. Angerstyne, putting his letters on the side-table, until he could take them to the post, turned round at the address. A moment’s stare, half doubt, half astonishment, and he went forward to shake Lady Knight’s hand.
“What brings you here?” she asked.
“I have been here some little time. Old Miss Gibson is at Malvern, so I can’t go far away.”
There was no opportunity for more: dinner was waiting. Mr. Angerstyne and Anne sat side by side that evening; Lady Knight was opposite. Miss Dinah presided as usual, her best yellow cap perched on the top of her curls.
During an interval of silence between the general bustle and rattle of the dinner, for the two girls who waited (after their own fashion) had both run away with the fish to bring in the meat, Lady Knight looked across the table to put a question to Mr. Angerstyne.
“How is your wife?”
The silence dropped to a dead stillness. He appeared not to hear.
“How is your wife, Henry Angerstyne? Have you seen her lately?”
He could not pretend to be deaf any longer, and answered with angry curtness:
“No, I have not. She is all right, I suppose.”
By the way the whole table stared, you might have thought a bombshell had fallen. Miss Dinah sat with her mouth open in sheer amazement, and then spoke involuntarily.
“Are you really married, Mr. Angerstyne?”
“Of course he is married,” said Lady Knight, answering Miss Dinah. “All the world knows that. His wife is my cousin. I saw her at Lowestoft a few weeks ago, Henry. She was looking prettier than ever.”
“Ah, Mr. Angerstyne, how sly you were, not to tell us!” cried Mrs. Lewis, playfully shaking her fan at him. “You —— Oh, goodness me!”
A loud crash! Jenny the maid had dropped a hot vegetable dish on the floor, scattering the pieces and spilling the peas; and followed it up with a shriek and a scream. That took off the attention; and Mr. Angerstyne, coolly eating away at his bread, turned to make some passing remark to Anne.
But the words he would have said were left unspoken. No ghost ever seen, in cloisters or out of them, was whiter than she. Lips and fingers were alike trembling.
“You should be more careful!” he called to the maid in a tone of authority. “Ladies don’t care to be startled in this way.” Just as though Anne had turned white from the noise of the broken dish!
Well, it had been a dreadful revelation for her. All the sunshine of this world seemed to have gone out for ever; to have left nothing behind it but a misty darkness. Rallying her pride and her courage, she went on with her dinner, as the others did. Her head was throbbing, her brain on fire; her mind had turned to chaos. She heard them making arrangements for a picnic-party to the woods at Croome on the morrow; not in the least understanding what was said or planned.
“You did surprise us!” observed Mrs. Lewis to Lady Knight, when they were in the drawing-room after dinner, and Mr. Angerstyne had gone out to post his letters. “What could have been his motive for allowing us to think him a bachelor?”
“A dislike to mention her name,” replied Lady Knight, candidly. “That was it, I expect. He married her for her pretty face, and then found out what a goose she was. So they did not get on together. She goes her way, and he goes his; now and then they meet for a week or two, but it is not often.”
“What a very unsatisfactory state of things!” cried Miss Dinah, handing round the cups of coffee herself for fear of another upset. “Is it her fault or his?”
“Faults lie on both sides,” said Lady Knight, who had an abrupt way of speaking, and was as poor as a church mouse. “She has a fearfully affronting temper of her own; those women with dolls’ faces sometimes have; and he was not as forbearing as he might have been. Any way, that is the state of affairs between Mr. and Mrs. Angerstyne: and, apart from it, there’s no scandal or reproach attaching to either of them.”
Anne, sitting in a quiet corner, listened to all this mechanically. What mattered the details to her? the broad fact had been enough. The hum of conversation was going on all around; her father, looking somewhat the better for his dinner, was playing at backgammon with Tom Lake. She saw nothing, knew nothing, until Mr. Angerstyne dropped into the seat beside her.
“Shall you join this expedition to Croome to-morrow, Anne?”
Julia and Fanny were thumping over a duet, pedal down, and Anne barely caught the low-spoken words.
“I do not know,” she answered, after a brief pause. “My head aches.”
“I don’t much care about it myself; rather the opposite. I shall certainly not go if you don’t.”
Why! he was speaking to her just as though nothing had occurred! If anything could have added to her sense of shame and misery it was this. It sounded like an insult, arousing all the spirit she possessed; her whole nature rose in rebellion against his line of conduct.
“Why have you been talking to me these many weeks as you have been talking, Mr. Angerstyne?” she asked in her straightforward simplicity, turning her face to his.
“There has been no harm in it,” he answered.
“Harm!” she repeated, from her wrung heart. “Perhaps not to you. There has been at least no good in it.”
/> “If you only knew what an interval of pleasantness it has been for me, Anne! Almost deluding me into forgetting my odious chains and fetters?”
“Would a gentleman have so amused himself, Mr. Angerstyne?”
But she gave him no opportunity of reply. Rising from her seat, and drawing her slight form to its full height, she looked into his face steadily, knowing not perhaps how much of scorn and reproach her gaze betrayed, then crossed the room and sat down by her father. Once after that she caught his eye: caught the expression of sorrow, of repentance, of deep commiseration that shone in every line of his face — for she could not altogether hide the pain seated in her own. And later, amidst the bustle of the general good-nights, she found her hand pressed within his, and heard his whispered, contrite prayer —
“Forgive me, Anne: forgive me!”
She lay awake all night, resolving to be brave, to make no sign; praying Heaven to help her to bear the anguish of her sorely-stricken heart, not to let the blow quite kill her. It seemed to her that she must feel it henceforth during all her life.
And before the house was well up in the morning, a messenger arrived post-haste from Malvern to summon Mr. Angerstyne to his aunt’s dying bed. He told Miss Dinah, when he shook hands with her at parting, that she might as well send his traps after him, if she would be so kind, as he thought he might not be able to return to Worcester again.
And that was the ending of Anne Lewis’s love. Not a very uncommon ending, people say. But she had been hardly dealt by.
Part the Third.
The blinds of a house closely drawn, the snow drifting against the windows outside, and somebody lying dead upstairs, cannot be called a lively state of things. Mrs. Lewis and her daughters, Julia and Fanny Podd, sitting over the fire in the darkened dining-room at Maythorn Bank, were finding it just the contrary.
When Dr. Lewis, growing worse and worse during their sojourn at Lake’s boarding-house at Worcester the previous autumn, had one day plucked up courage to open his mind to his physician, telling him that he was pining for the quiet of his own little cottage home, and that the stir and racket at Lake’s was more than he could bear, Dr. Malden peremptorily told Mrs. Lewis that he must have his wish, and go. So she had to give in, and prepared to take him; though it went frightfully against the grain. That was in September, three months back; he had been getting weaker and more imbecile ever since, and now, just as Christmas was turned, he had sunk quietly away to his rest.