Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Having learnt that she was at home and alone, he followed the servant upstairs, and was presently in the shabby little drawing-room so well known to the officers of the 27th. Mrs. Harrington — to call her by the name which she had not yet formally resigned — rose from the chair in which she had been sitting by the fireside, and turned a curiously altered countenance towards her visitor. The Professor was at once struck by her extreme pallor, and by her air of weary despondency. To look at her, one would have thought that she had just sustained a crushing defeat, instead of having gained a victory.

  “You have seen Bob!” she began.

  “Ah!” sighed the Professor, speaking out his thoughts without ceremony, “I fear you have made a terrible mistake, both of you.”

  “Yes,” she answered, and said no more, though he waited some time for her to explain herself.

  “What made you do it?” he exclaimed at length. “You must have known that you were laying up an endless store of wretchedness for your husband and yourself; and I can hardly believe that you were influenced only by the motives that you mentioned when I was here last.”

  “There was one motive which I didn’t mention,” said Mrs. Harrington. “You hardly know enough about me to be amused by it; but I have no doubt that the regiment would consider it an exquisite joke if I were to assert that I had married Bob Annesley because I loved him. And yet it isn’t very odd that I should love him. He was crazily in love with me once; he was kind to me when no one else was kind; he treated me like a lady; while other men, who by way of being my friends, were insulting me, more or less directly, every day. Oh, I know what you are saying to yourself. You are saying that if I had really cared for him at all, I should not have married him against his will. But I thought I might reckon without his will — he has so little of it. That has always been Bob’s defect; and I don’t mind saying so, because it is the only defect that I have ever discovered in him. I believed that I could win him back, and that, when once we were married, he would forget his fancy for Miss Cecil, as he has forgotten other fancies before. Now that it is too late, I have found out that I was wrong. If I had known three weeks ago as much as I know now, I would have died a thousand times rather than have married him. He hates me, and I am rightly punished for my blindness and obstinacy.”

  She had spoken quietly at first, then with a good deal of excitement; but now her voice dropped to a whisper as she crouched down over the fire, muttering, “Yes, I am punished — I am punished!”

  The Professor frowned. He disliked melodrama, and had no great belief in a repentance which could be evidenced only by words. “Perhaps money and lands may afford you some consolation,” he observed rather cruelly.

  Mrs. Harrington did not notice the sneer. “Why did you go away and leave me alone with my temptation?” she cried suddenly. “You might have prevented this.”

  “I cannot flatter myself,” answered the Professor coldly, “that my influence with you would have been sufficiently strong for that.”

  “It was stronger than you think. I liked you; you had been kind to me, and I was ready to listen to you. I have not forgotten how you stood by me that day when Mrs. Cecil turned her back upon me; women in my position don’t forget such things. But you went away just when I most needed a friend, and so I allowed myself to be deceived by my vain hopes.”

  “If any words of mine could have caused you to think twice before you took this irrevocable step,” returned the Professor, “I can only regret most sincerely that business should have called me away at so important a moment; but there is little use in discussing what might have been. The only thing for you and your husband to do now is frankly to accept a situation from which you cannot escape.”

  “Unless by means of an over-dose of chloral,” suggested Mrs. Harrington, with a faint smile.

  The Professor got up. “Mrs. Harrington,” said he, “you may yet prove yourself an excellent wife and make your husband happy; but you can hardly expect to do this easily or immediately. And if I were you, I would not begin by making speeches which are silly if they are insincere, and wicked if they are not.”

  Thereupon he left the room without further leave-taking, while she, still bending over the fire, appeared unconscious alike of his rebuke and of his exit. The Professor, as he walked home, felt that he had been very severe, yet not unwarrantably so. “She is a foolish, theatrical woman,” he said to himself; “and I strongly suspect that all that exaggerated penitence was assumed for a purpose. Of course her chief object now will be to conciliate her mother-in-law, and she probably imagines that my report of her may carry some weight in that quarter. But she makes a mistake, because I shan’t report anything about her — good, bad, or indifferent. No more meddling with other people’s business for me!”

  VI.

  The Professor would undoubtedly have felt confirmed in the harsh judgment which he had passed upon Bob Annesley’s wife if he could have seen her at the meet on the following morning. Mrs. Harrington was a finished horsewoman, and never looked to so great advantage as in the saddle. Upon the present occasion she rode a fidgety chestnut mare, the property of Captain White, and the ease with which she managed her rather troublesome mount won her a great deal of admiration from the local members of the hunt. As for the officers of the 27th, they were too well accustomed to Polly Harrington’s dexterity to pay her any compliments on that score; but they clustered round her as usual, and smiled amiably at her smart sayings, and told her that she was in rare form that morning. Bob hovered in the background, looking woebegone.

  The neighborhood of Lichbury does not bear a very high character among hunting men, blank days being of by no means rare occurrence thereabouts, but there is always a fox at Lingham Gorse, and it was at Lingham Gorse that a fox was found on the particular morning with which we are concerned. The whole crowd got away together, and kept together for the first five minutes, going at racing speed across the short turf of the downs at the foot of which Lichbury stands. On this the northern side, the gradual slopes of these hills form as good and safe galloping ground as any one could wish for; but their southern face is very different, falling away in precipitous chalk quarries and sharp declivities unwelcome to timid riders, and it was after crossing the backbone of the ridge that the field began to scatter right and left, only a few adventurous spirits riding straight ahead and trusting in Providence.

  Among these was Mrs. Harrington. She was followed by Annesley and Captain White, the latter of whom was watching her headlong progress a little anxiously, and wishing, perhaps, that his chestnut mare were safe in her stable. It was not, however, any fear on the mare’s account that caused him to rein in suddenly and ejaculate “Good God!” About a furlong ahead, a row of posts and rails had come into view, immediately beyond which — as every one who knew the country was well aware — was a chalk cliff some two hundred feet in depth. It seemed incredible that any human being, whether familiar with the country or not, should ride at such a fence, for there was nothing but sky visible upon the other side of it; but Mrs. Harrington was making straight for it now, and it was the discovery that she was doing so that called forth Captain White’s exclamation. He raised his hand to his mouth and sent a warning shout after her, and Bob, who saw the danger at the same moment, shouted too; but Mrs. Harrington did not appear to hear either of them, and, indeed, it was already too late for warnings to be of any avail. For an instant horse and rider rose dark against the gray sky, then vanished; and to those who waited there, helpless and horror-struck, it seemed as if some minutes elapsed before the dull crash came which told them that poor Polly Harrington had taken her last leap.

  “Awful thing! — most shocking sight I ever saw in my life!” Captain White said, describing the catastrophe, some months afterwards, to an old brother officer. “But she must have been killed like a flash of lightning — there’s some comfort in that. And, though I wouldn’t say so to any one else, I can’t help thinking that the poor woman’s death was about the best thi
ng that could have happened. Fancy her having got Bob Annesley to marry her on the sly! Only shows what fools fellows are, eh? You’ve heard that he’s engaged to that pretty Miss Cecil now, haven’t you? It isn’t given out yet, of course, and I suppose they’ll have to let a year go by before they announce it formally; but everybody knows about it down in these parts.”

  Probably many less plain-spoken persons than Captain White agreed with him in thinking the unfortunate harpy’s death the best thing that could have happened; but it may be hoped that Bob Annesley was not consciously among the number. The suddenness and the ghastly nature of the calamity gave him a shock from which his elastic spirits took a long time to recover; but he began to be more cheerful again after meeting Canon Stanwick, and putting into words a dread which he had not liked to mention to other friends.

  “I say,” he asked hesitatingly, and keeping his eyes upon the ground, “do you believe — do you believe that — she did it on purpose?”

  The Professor evaded the question so cleverly that his interrogator quite imagined that he had answered it.

  “I do not think,” he said gravely, “that we have any right whatever to cast such an aspersion as that upon her memory.”

  ARCHDEACON HOLDEN’S TRIBULATION.

  She was so frail and small that the country squires who came in at the one stopping-place and left the train at the next, and talked of petty sessions and highway-boards in a strong slow way, like men with a tight grasp of a slippery subject, felt fatherly towards her; and so fair that their sons found out new and painful ways of sitting which hid dirty boots, and strange modes of propping their guns which employed hands suddenly gifted with a sense of over-abundance; and so dainty, yet withal bright of eye and lip, that a gentleman who got in one stage from Stirhampton, and knew her, was tormented by his fancy; which pictured her as a sparkling gem in its nest of jeweller’s satin. Altogether so frail and fair and dainty was this passenger; and yet in the flush of her young beauty and fearless nature, there was about her so imperious a charm that they all, though they might travel with her but three miles — it was a dreadful train — and exchange with her not three words, became her slaves. And the gentleman who knew her grovelled before her in spirit to an extent unbecoming in a man, much more in a clergyman and a curate.

  She was popular, too. For though she parted from him at the door of the carriage, she fell in almost at once with another who knew her. His business, as far as any save chatting with her was apparent, seemed to be about the book-stall. And after she had gone laughing from him, and the servant who met her — and was equally her slave with all the others, though he was more like a bishop and a father of the Church than they promised ever to be — had taken her luggage in charge, she met yet another, who blushed, and bowed, and smiled, and stammered before her after his kind. With him she was very merry until their roads diverged — if he had any road which was not of the nature of the last one’s business. And then she tripped on just as gayly with a very tall acquaintance — they were all of one sex — and after him with another, who took up the walking where his predecessor left off, just for all the world as if she were a royal letter, and they were those old Persian post-runners, who made so little of “parasangs,” and whose roads seemed always to be through “Paradises.” But this last one brought her to the rectory gates, and — much lamenting — left her.

  There was only Granny in the drawing-room when Dorothy ran upstairs. Granny, who was eighty-seven, and with a screen at her back and a wood-fire toasting her old toes, could tell wonderful tales of the great war. Who had heard “Clarissa” read aloud coram puellis, and at times shocked a mealy-mouthed generation by pure plain-speaking. She was the Archdeacon’s grandmother; but to Dorothy what relation she was, or whether she was any relation, not all Stirhampton could tell — though it spent itself in guessing, and dallied to some extent with a suggestion that she was Dorothy’s great-great aunt; not, however, committing itself to this, nor altogether breaking with a rival theory, that they were first cousins three times removed.

  Whatever she was, Dorothy hugged her a score of times, and the tiny old lady said, “God bless you, my dear,” half as many, and was going on to her full number, when the Archdeacon himself came in. He, too, smiled upon seeing the girl, and smoothed his ruffled brow, and tried to be as if the drawing-room — when he was in it — were all his world. For this was a part of the Archdeacon’s system, and he was of note through four dioceses as a man of system. So he patted the girl’s hair, and said kindly:

  “Well, my dear, I trust you have had a pleasant visit?”

  “Oh, charming! and yet I am so glad to be at home again! But, guardian, what is the matter?”

  The Archdeacon was vexed and pleased. Vexed that his attempt had not succeeded, and pleased that he could now tell his trouble. “The matter, my dear?” he said, taking a turn up and down the room; “why, I am greatly annoyed and put out. I never knew such a thing happen before.”

  Granny clasped her hands upon the arms of her chair in sudden excitement. “It isn’t overdrawn, George, is it?” she said, nervously.

  “Overdrawn!” he replied, cheerfully, “not at all.” There had been a time when he was not an archdeacon, or a rector, or even in orders, but only a hard-reading undergraduate, when Granny’s banking account had been with great difficulty kept above zero. Then it was her bugbear; now the family fortunes were as solidly substantial as the comfortable red brick rectory itself; but Granny found some difficulty in laying her bogey. “Not at all. Not so bad as that,” he said, cheerfully; “but very annoying, nevertheless. I was writing my Sunday evening sermon this afternoon — as I always do, you know, on Friday — when Whiteman came running in to me at five minutes after four, and said there was no one at the church to take the four o’clock service. Of course I had to break off and go. The congregation had to wait fully ten minutes. It is not so much the inroad upon my time, though that is not unimportant, as the lack of system, that I deplore. Maddy and Moser” — they were the married curates, and took charge of the two chapels of ease— “are, of course, engaged elsewhere; but surely one of the other five might have been here. It is a piece of gross carelessness on the part of some one.”

  Dorothy nodded and looked gravely into the teapot. “And I saw Mr. Gray on my way from the station!” she said.

  “Ah, just so. You did not meet any of the others?”

  “Yes, I think I did,” she replied, with a great show of candor. “Of course I saw Mr. Bigham by the Church Club and Mr. Brune in Wych Street.”

  “Brune is the culprit, I expect. I do not think it would be Charles Emerson’s fault, because he is unwell.”

  “Unwell!” cried the girl, impulsively. “Indeed, he is quite ill; I never saw any one look so bad.”

  “Oh! and where may you have seen him?” asked the Archdeacon, stopping suddenly in his promenade of the room, and facing her.

  Dorothy bit her tongue to punish it. There is nothing so dangerous as a half-confidence. It so often leads, will-he-nill-he, to a whole one. “He got into the train at Bromfield. He had walked out there,” she said, meekly. Surprisingly meekly for her.

  “Quite so. And may I ask whereabouts you met his brother?”

  “Met his brother?”

  “Yes, my dear,” said the Archdeacon, suavely. “Met his brother, Mr. Philip Emerson?”

  “Let me see,” murmured Dolly, with a vast pretence of considering, though her little ears were scarlet by this time. “Where did I meet Mr. Philip? Of course, I met him at the station. But however did you know?” she asked, with the utmost effrontery.

  “When one sheep, Dorothy, jumps over a gap, all the flock follow. Four of my curates being so busily engaged meeting my ward, I had little doubt but that the fifth was as well occupied.”

  Unseen by him, she made a face at Granny, who was understood to say that boys would be boys.

  “And sheep, sheep!” retorted the Archdeacon, with sharpness.

  “They did no
t tell me that they had come to meet me,” said Dolly, rebelliously. She did not like that proverb — or whatever it was — about sheep.

  The Archdeacon frowned. “No,” he said, severely, “but I do not doubt that you would have been better pleased with them if they had. Let me speak to you seriously, Dorothy. I cannot — I really cannot — have you distracting these young men in this way. I observed before you left several little matters of this kind — little laxities, and a want of energy and punctuality, on their part that were due, I fear, to your influence.”

  “Little laxities!” murmured she, “I never heard of such things.” But he put her aside with a grand wave of his hand.

  “I am not inclined to say it is altogether your fault. You cannot help your looks or your youth, but you can avoid being a hindrance instead of an assistance in the parish. I must not suffer,” — he was working himself into a well-regulated passion— “my arrangements to be disorganized even by you. I will not and I cannot say, were this to go on, what steps it might not be my duty, however painful, to take.”

  After uttering this tremendous threat the Archdeacon walked hastily across the room, and, turning, looked to see what effect it had had upon his ward. She was playing with her tea-spoon, tapping petulantly with her foot, reddening, and pouting, and glancing for sympathy at Granny; behaving altogether like a naughty school-girl under reproof. He took another turn, feeling that he did well — thoroughly well, to be angry; and looked again. She had risen, and was leaving the room. He could only see her back. I don’t know what it was — perhaps he could not tell himself — in the pose of her little head and her shoulders, or whether it was something quite outside her — which made him step after her, and touch her shoulder gently.