Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Shortly afterwards he caught sight of Bob Annesley, clanking down the High Street in full war-paint and feathers, and crossed the road on purpose to say, “So Mrs. Harrington has gone away, I hear.”

  “Yes,” answered the young man gloomily; “but she is coming back, again.”

  The Professor passed on. He foresaw that there was going to be trouble, but he did not want to meet it halfway. “Time enough for that when the Cecils come home,” thought he as he regained his quiet dwelling, and dived once more into the dark recesses of the thirteenth century.

  The Cecils came home early in November; but Bob and Violet met no more in the Precincts, the excuse of lawn-tennis being, indeed, no longer available at that season. That they met elsewhere the Professor had ocular proof, for he saw them several times riding together; moreover, the Dean’s wife informed him that everybody said it was to be an engagement. The Professor held his peace, remembering one person who had said with some confidence that it would never be anything of the sort; and when that person reappeared suddenly upon the scene, it seemed clear that the tug of war was at hand. The first intimation of coming unpleasantness which reached the Professor took the form of a visit from Mr. Cecil, who said he wished to have his old friend’s candid opinion about young Annesley.

  “He has been a good deal up at my place of late; and though of course one is very glad to see him, and all that, one would like to know a little more of him. Mrs. Cecil will have it that he is ambitious of becoming our son-in-law. Well, that may or may not be so, and I don’t think it necessary to repeat to her all that I hear in the town about him and Mrs. Harrington; but I may confess to you, Stanwick, that I feel uneasy on Violet’s account. What do you think I ought to do?”

  “Ask him his intentions,” answered the Professor promptly.

  “Oh, my dear fellow, I can’t possibly do that. I would as soon bring an action for breach of promise against a man as ask him his intentions.”

  “Yet you want to know them, I suppose?”

  “That is quite another thing. One wants to know a great deal that one can’t ask about. I want to know who this Mrs. Harrington is, for instance, and what her intentions are.”

  “Well,” said the Professor, with a sigh, “I dare say I might be able to help you there. At all events, I’ll try.”

  He perceived that the time had come when he must have recourse to that direct appeal to the harpy which he had contemplated some months before. The necessity was grievous to him; but he faced it like the courageous old gentleman that he was, and having found out Mrs. Harrington’s address from the stationer in the market-place, set out to call upon her that same afternoon.

  Mrs. Harrington occupied lodgings on the first floor of a small house near the cavalry barracks. The dreary shabbiness of her little drawing-room was accentuated by some of those attempts at decoration with which a woman of scanty means and no taste commonly surrounds herself. The faded curtains were drawn back through loops of equally faded ribbon; the walls were adorned with a few staring chromo-lithographs; the mantelpiece and the rickety table had borders of blue satin and coffee-colored lace; the back of the piano was swathed in spotted muslin over blue calico, like a toilet-table, and upon it stood a leather screen for photographs, from which various heavily moustached warriors, in and out of uniform, gazed forth vacantly.

  These and other details were lost upon the Professor, who only wished to say his say and be gone. He had rehearsed the probable course of the interview beforehand, and was ready with a remark which should at once render the object of his errand unmistakable; but he had omitted to make allowance for the unforeseen, and therefore he was completely thrown out on discovering two long-legged officers seated beside Mrs. Harrington’s tea-table.

  It is safe to conclude that that lady was a good deal astonished when Canon Stanwick was announced, but she rose to the level of the occasion and introduced him immediately to her other visitors. “Canon Stanwick, Captain White — Mr. Brown. And now let me give you all some tea.”

  The Professor would have liked to say that he would call again some other time, but felt that he had not the requisite effrontery; so he sat down, took a cup of tea, and wished for the end. He was very awkward and confused, feeling sure that the two officers must be laughing at him; but in this he was mistaken. Those gentlemen, if not remarkable for intellect, had perfectly good manners, and would wait until they reached the barrack square before permitting themselves to burst into that hilarity which the notion of Polly Harrington closeted with a parson must naturally provoke. In the meantime, they did not do much towards lightening the labor of keeping up conversation. This duty fell chiefly upon Mrs. Harrington, who acquitted herself of it as creditably as any one could have done, and who established a claim upon the Professor’s gratitude by talking with as much propriety as if she had been herself a canoness. His preconceived idea was that propriety of language was about the last thing that could be expected from such ladies as Mrs. Harrington when, so to speak, in the regimental circle. Nevertheless, he did not find himself able to second her efforts towards promoting a general feeling of cordiality and the next quarter of an hour passed away very slowly. At length it flashed across Captain White that the old gentleman meant to sit him out, and as soon as he had made this brilliant discovery he rose with great deliberation, pulled down his waistcoat, pulled up his collar, and said he was sorry that he must be going now. Thereupon Mr. Brown went through precisely the same performance, and intimated a similar regret. Mrs. Harrington did not offer to detain them. She accompanied them to the door, talking as she went, kept them for a minute or two on the threshold while she arranged to ride with them to the meet on the following day, and then returned smiling, to hear what Canon Stanwick might have to say for himself.

  Now she knew as well as anybody to what she owed the honor of the Professor’s visit; but she did not see why she should make his path smooth for him. Therefore she smiled and held her tongue, while he, after some introductory commonplaces, managed to drag Bob Annesley’s name, without much rhyme or reason, into the current of his remarks.

  “A promising young fellow,” he said; “but, like other young fellows, he gives his friends some anxiety at times. His mother, poor thing, is feeling very uneasy about him just now.”

  “Mothers,” observed Mrs. Harrington, “generally do feel uneasy about their sons. That is because they have such a difficulty in realizing that their sons may be old enough to take care of themselves.”

  “But they can’t take care of themselves,” rejoined the Professor eagerly. “At least, he can’t take care of himself. His position, as no doubt you are aware, differs in some respects from that of his brother officers, and I think that if you or I were in his mother’s place, we should wish, as she does, that he should leave the army, live upon his property, and — and make a suitable marriage.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Harrington: “and why is his mother uneasy? — because he won’t leave the army, or because he won’t make a suitable marriage?”

  “Well, for both reasons, I believe. I think I mentioned to you some time ago that there was a talk of his marrying Violet Cecil, and I have since ascertained that his own feelings incline him towards a match which would give great satisfaction to all those who are interested in him; but unfortunately it appears that he is hampered by some previous entanglement with — with — —”

  “With an unsuitable person?” suggested Mrs. Harrington, still smiling.

  The Professor paused. He wanted to enlist Mrs. Harrington’s sympathies, and to arouse the generosity which he was convinced that she possessed. Under the circumstances, was it politic to begin by telling her that she was unsuitable? However, he reflected very sensibly that there would be no getting on at all unless that much were either said or implied; and he felt, besides, that he was already in so uncomfortable a predicament that nothing could very well make it worse. This gave him courage to reply, —

  “I fear we must pronounce her so. All other
considerations apart, the fact that he no longer wishes to make her his wife should be conclusive. He might feel — and I don’t say that he ought not to feel — bound in honor to her; but it seems to me that she is equally bound in honor to release him from his engagement.”

  “Oh, you think she is bound to release him?”

  “I do,” answered the Professor firmly. “Yes; I may say without any hesitation that that is what I think.”

  “I am not quite sure that I agree with you,” said Mrs. Harrington. “I can’t, of course, form any guess as to who the person to whom you allude may be; but let us put an entirely imaginary case, and see how it looks from the lady’s point of view. Because, you know, even unsuitable women have their point of view, and some of them might be disposed to think their happiness almost as important as Mrs. Annesley’s. Let us take the case of a woman with whom life has gone very hardly — a woman who was married young to a husband who ill-treated her, deserted her, and left her at his death with a mere pittance to live upon. Well, this imaginary woman is not very wise, let us say, although she has no great harm in her. She is fond of amusement, she likes riding, she likes dancing, and we won’t disguise that she likes flirting too. She has no near relations; so, instead of taking lodgings in a suburb of London, or hiring a cottage in the depths of the country, as no doubt she ought to do, she attaches herself to a cavalry regiment in which she has friends, and she rides her friends’ horses and dances at their balls, and has great fun for a time. Perhaps it serves her right that this way of going on causes her to be cut by all the ladies, wherever she betakes herself; perhaps she doesn’t care a straw for that at first, and perhaps she cares a great deal as she grows older. Perhaps she sees no way of escape from a kind of existence which she has learnt to hate, and perhaps that serves her right again. What do you think, Canon Stanwick?”

  The Professor’s honesty compelled him to reply, “I should not blame her for seizing any opportunity of escape from it that offered.”

  “Yet most people would blame her; she would have to make up her mind to that. We are supposing, you know, that Mr. Annesley is the way of escape that offers itself, and when this forlorn woman seizes him ecstatically she must expect his friends and relations to tear their hair and call her bad names. I dare say that would trouble her very little. After knocking about the world for so many years, she wouldn’t be over and above sensitive, and she would know perfectly well that, when once she was married and had plenty of money, everybody, including her husband’s relations, would be civil enough to her. But now, just as she is exulting in the prospect of peace and plenty, lo and behold! the miserable young man goes and falls in love with somebody else. What is she to do? You, in an off-hand sort of way, answer, ‘Oh, let him go free, of course;’ but I, on the side of the poor disappointed woman, venture to say that she should be guided by circumstances. Suppose she knew this good-natured Bob Annesley to be a man who couldn’t break his heart about anything or anybody if he tried ever so hard? Suppose she knew that she was quite as well able to make him happy as Miss Cecil? Mightn’t she in that case be justified in thinking a little bit about her own interests, and holding him to his promise?”

  “I can’t answer positively,” said the Professor, sighing. “Justification must depend entirely upon the standard by which we judge. All I know is, that if such a woman as you describe resolved to sacrifice her worldly prospects she would err upon the safe side.”

  “Such a woman as I describe would probably differ from you there,” observed Mrs. Harrington.

  “No!” exclaimed the Professor suddenly, bringing his stick down upon the floor with an emphatic thump. “You may say that, but I don’t believe it. I believe her to be a good-hearted and high-minded woman, in spite of all that she may have gone through. I believe that she has a conscience, and I believe that she will end by obeying it, no matter at what cost.”

  “You must know a great deal about her,” said Mrs. Harrington, raising her eyebrows. “Are you not forgetting that she is a purely imaginary person?”

  The Professor was about to reply, but what he was going to say will never be known, for at this inopportune juncture the door opened, and who should walk in but Bob Annesley himself! The three persons thus unexpectedly confronted with one another all lost their presence of mind a little, and the Professor could not afterwards have given any coherent account of what happened next, or of how long an interval elapsed before he found himself in the street again; but as he wended his way homewards, he astonished more than one passer-by by calling out in a loud, distinct voice, “She’ll let him go! mark my words, sir, she’ll let him go!” And when he had reached the privacy of his own study, he added confidentially, “And between ourselves, I’m not by any means sure that she isn’t worth a dozen of the other.”

  V.

  It is one thing to make a sudden and enthusiastic profession of faith in a prodigy, and it is quite another to reiterate that profession in cold blood the next morning. The Professor did not find himself able to accomplish the latter feat. Calmer reflection showed him that he had given Mrs. Harrington credit for the most extreme disinterestedness, not because of any single thing that she had said or done, but simply from an instinctive feeling that her nature was nobler than it appeared to be upon the surface. Now instinctive feelings do not ordinarily commend themselves as a sound foundation for faith or sober philosophers on the shady side of fifty; and the Professor, while maintaining the high opinion which he had formed of the harpy, wished that he had not been interrupted just when he was upon the point of asking her in plain terms whether she intended to marry Bob Annesley or not. It is possible that he might have called again and repaired the omission, had he not at this time found it necessary to consult certain authorities at the British Museum; and when once he was in town a variety of accidents detained him there. After that he had to go down to Oxford, so that, what with one thing and another, it was very nearly a month before he was in Lichbury again.

  Almost the first person whom he saw after his return was Bob Annesley, and Bob’s round face wore an air of such profound dejection that even a short-sighted and absent-minded man could not help noticing it.

  “All well here, I hope?” said the Professor interrogatively. “Have you seen our friends the Cecils lately?”

  Bob shook his head. “Never go there now.” He added, with something of an effort, “I shall never go there any more; I shall be out of this before long. Sent in my papers last week.”

  “What!” exclaimed the Professor, rather startled. And then, as they were near his door, “Come in,” he said, “and tell me all about it.”

  The young man obeyed listlessly. “You may as well be told all about it now,” he remarked; “everybody will have to know soon.”

  The Professor was greatly perturbed, feeling that he had been somehow to blame in absenting himself at a critical time. He did not ask for further explanations, but having preceded his young friend into the library, began at once: “This must not be allowed to go on, Annesley. I am sincerely sorry for Mrs. Harrington, but I can’t think it right that two people should be made miserable in order that she may be provided with a large income. I am disappointed in her, I confess. I had hoped — but no matter. Since she won’t break with you, you must break with her; and possibly some sort of compensation might be offered in a delicate manner — —”

  “I can’t break with her,” interrupted Bob quietly. “We were married three weeks ago.”

  The Professor’s consternation was too great to be expressed in any vehement fashion. He could only murmur under his breath, “Dear, dear! what a sad pity!”

  “There was no help for it,” said Bob. “I promised her ages ago that I would marry her if her husband died, and I couldn’t go back from my word when the time came.”

  “Her husband!” ejaculated the Professor. “This is worse than I thought. Do I understand you that she has had a husband alive all this time?”

  “Well, he died a month or two ago
— when she was away in the summer, you know. He had behaved awfully badly to her — deserted her soon after they were married. It was no fault of hers.”

  “It was certainly a fault of hers to receive another man’s addresses while she was still a married woman,” said the Professor severely.

  “Oh, well, if you like to call it so; but I suppose I was as much in the wrong as she was. Anyhow, I was bound to her. I told her about — about Violet, you know, but she didn’t seem to think that made much difference. So, you see, there was no getting out of it,” concluded Bob simply.

  “There is no getting out of it now,” remarked the Professor, with a rueful face; “and I don’t think you have improved matters by getting married in this hole-and-corner way. What was your object in doing that?”

  “She thought it would be better,” answered the young man indifferently; “and, as far as that goes, I agreed with her. It has saved us a good deal of bother with my people; besides which, I didn’t care to let all the fellows in the regiment hear about it before I left.”

  The Professor groaned. He saw that the only course open to him, or to any of Bob’s friends, was to make the best of a bad business; but for the moment he could think of nothing except what a very bad business it was, and after promising to keep the secret until it should be a secret no longer, he allowed the young man to depart without offering him a word of consolation. Why he should have felt moved, some hours later, to walk over to the lodgings which were still occupied by the bride, he would have been puzzled to explain. She could not undo what she had done, nor was there anything to be gained by upbraiding her. Perhaps it was rather a strong feeling of curiosity than anything else that led him to her door.