Florence Warden

“ She had begun to wonder whether he had forgotten all about it, or whether Harry had forbidden him to hold any further communication with her, when Stephen made his appearance in her sitting-room one afternoon, looking very haggard and unhappy.
“How ill you are looking, Stephen! You have not been taking proper care of yourself. Has Lady Braithwaite seen you lately, or Lilian?”
“Lilian wouldn’t care if she did,” he answered, sullenly. “All she cares for is herself and her own comfort; and, when that is secured, all the rest of the world may get on as it can.” ”

“ Annie laughed—not very heartily.
“I haven’t tried that plan, certainly. It wouldn’t do for such a little woman as I am; I think I am too small for him,” she added, as if this really had struck her suddenly as a grave objection.
Lilian burst out laughing.
“What an odd little creature you are! I have always heard that a little woman can make a big man as submissive as a dog, and rule him with a rod of iron, while he thinks all the time that he is the master. I am sure you would not condescend to obey Harry.” ”

“ And he had been so lost to all sense of decency as to use the same messenger to her and to Muriel West.
Annie was wiser now than she had been when she first came to London alone, after the few miserable months of wedded life which had ended in such a terrible fiasco at the Grange. Then she had given way to grieving in secret over the wreck of her life; but now, with the philosophy which comes of a riper knowledge of the world, she hid away her regrets as well as she could, and threw herself into the life around her, which presented many attractions to the rising young actress. ”

“ When she left them together, Harry jumped up from his chair and faced his cousin.
“What do you come tormenting me for with your humbugging stories about Annie and Richardson? She doesn’t care a straw for the fellow!”
“Doesn’t she? Oh, that’s all right!” said Stephen, meaningly.
“No; she only spoke to him out of civility,” said Harry, raising his voice, but looking anxiously at the other. “Here—what do you mean with your confounded shrugs and squirms? Look me straight in the face, and say out what you mean?”
The cripple was trembling and his face paling, but not with fear of his companion. ”

“ Stephen scarcely spoke to her. She soon found out that his admiration of Lilian, which she had noticed on her first visit to Garstone Grange, had grown into a mad passion which the object of it was not slow to make use of. He was her slave; she might snub him, torment him, hurt his sensitive feelings; nothing could change his devotion to her, which was very touching to Annie, who knew how hopeless his passion was, and that the handsome girl used her crippled lover only as a tool and a toy. For Lilian was a headstrong, willful girl, more difficult to manage than her mother and brothers guessed. ”

“ It is a scandal for a baronet to starve, you know. Why, you silly child, you are crying! Thank Heaven, Annie! I didn’t think you were so fond of me.”
“I’m not fond of you—I’m disgusted with you!” said Annie, fiercely, stiffening herself rigidly as he leaned toward her. “Why, do you know that even Harry shows more spirit than that?”
“What makes you say ‘even Harry?’” asked Sir George, quietly. “I could have told you long ago that Harry had pluck and spirit enough for six, in spite of his impossible manners and boorish conversation. If anybody buys back the Grange, it will be he.” ”

“ For already the sensitive woman felt that his caresses were growing careless; and she knew that no husband of a few weeks could have used the words Harry had used to-day to a woman for whom he cared deeply.
Harry had gone out; and for three long hours Annie knelt on the floor by the bed pondering what she should do with her life, and praying for help to show her where her duty lay. She came to a resolution strangely wise for so young a woman; and, when her husband returned, she was as nearly her usual bright self as she could manage to be. ”

“ Her passive hatred he had felt before, and had been able to afford to treat with indifference; she would see whether the active hatred into which his shameless neglect and ingratitude had turned her wistful affection would not make him feel some of the pangs he had caused her. Annie felt changed by that day’s discovery into a wicked woman, with no feelings of pity or pardon possible, who would stop at nothing in the madness of her misery. She sacrificed even her womanly dignity, in her wish to make the husband who had despised her love feel an added pang at the sight of her. ”

“ She was much touched by her sister-in-law’s kindness to George, who had dined with Mr. Falconer and herself the night before, and had represented Annie as the guardian angel of the family.
“Wilfred has come up to town, and he was with us too,” said Lilian. “And he talks of you just as well, and wants to come and see you, but he doesn’t dare. You are a good little thing, Annie, to keep so staid now when every one is talking about you, and when Harry has treated you so badly.” ”

“ Harry, who had gone to Beckham on horseback, and had sent his horse home and returned in the carriage to be near the pretty governess, was suffering from a certain sense of disappointment. Miss Lane proved even prettier on closer inspection than she had given promise at a distance of being. As he sat beside her in the carriage, he thought to himself that there was a beauty in the rich yet delicate tints of a brunette complexion which no lily fairness could vie with, and that the sweep of long, dark eyelashes over a girl’s cheeks was the loveliest thing in the world. ”

“ It was a bitter, unpleasant thought, even for a wife not sufficiently fond of her husband to be jealous. It was a humiliation which brought up in her mind the image of the one man who thought her charms superior to those of any other woman. She did not feel jealous, but insulted by the rude speech of her husband, who, after she had used every care, every charm at her command to fulfill her duty to him in sickness and in convalescence, rewarded her with a coarse taunt and an openly expressed intention of leaving her for the society of a girl of low birth and not unspotted name. ”

“ A train was about to start for the North. Still with caution, but attracted in spite of herself toward that train, which, as she knew, would stop at Beckham, Annie advanced until she was nearly opposite to the doors of the refreshment-room. They opened, and a young man came out. Annie stopped, with the color rushing to her face; for it was Harry. He looked so handsome in his light traveling-suit, with his overcoat hanging loosely over his arm, that she felt quite proud of him, and stood there with her eyes fixed upon him, half hoping that he would turn and see her. ”

“ Annie would not own that she had not enough of her husband’s company to mind it.
“I don’t want him to read when he is with me, and I haven’t asked him to spell much. And I like horses myself, though I don’t know much about them.”
“Well, your life is not so dull as mine, at any rate,” declared Lilian. “You are a married woman, and can go where you like and with whom you like; I wish I could,” she added, petulantly.
“But I have nowhere to go and no one to go with except, of course, Harry,” Annie added, hastily. ”

“ Annie was touched. She had fully expected a violent outbreak on her husband’s part when he should hear her confession. She put her hand softly on his sleeve.
“Harry, you need not be frightened indeed; I shall never care for him again.”
But Harry, without even trying to detain her hand, shook his head.
“It is a very bad sign to hate a person,” said he. “I never hated any person but you, and just see where it has landed me. What does it matter if you don’t care for him, if you don’t care for me and won’t stay with me! ”

“ They felt that they had much in common, both ardent, passionate natures being tied to colder ones, who could not or would not respond to their warmth with the entire abandonment they craved. There the likeness in their positions ended, however, for Lilian had never even tried to sound the depths in the heart of her middle-aged husband, while every look, every touch that Harry bestowed on his wife told wistfully of the longing he had felt to be master of her love as he was already of her duty. ”

“ William was dispatched by Annie to Beckham in the dog-cart to meet his eldest brother, and, when he was gone, Harry, who, under his wife’s care, was getting rapidly through his convalescence, fidgeted about the room, and at last knocked over a gypsy-table covered with trifles.
“All right, Harry; I’ll pick them up,” said Annie, hearing a muttered oath from her husband.
“What are you in such a hurry for? I do hate a woman to be in a hurry,” said he, testily, noticing unusual haste in his wife’s movements as she knelt on the floor gathering up the things his clumsiness had scattered. ”

“ Annie kept quite still, quite calm, while George induced the policeman to let them pass in; and, as soon as the door was opened, she slipped past her brother-in-law, who had not known she was so close, and flew first up the stairs, swiftly and silently as a bird.
“He has broken his word to me,” she thought in agony. “He has scattered all our happiness; and now——Oh, where is he? I dare not go in! Perhaps already they have led him away to—prison. Oh, Harry, Harry!”
She was standing outside the door of the sitting-room, which was shut. ”

“ This crime, which Harry had made light of, tore down the last shred of illusion from before the eyes of the wife of eighteen. She had made an awful mistake. Carried away by the passionate pleading of a headstrong boy at a time when she felt herself to be utterly friendless, and when his impulsive remorse had seemed to her to show a high and generous nature, she had bound herself by a tie which would last her life to an ignorant, uncouth, unprincipled lad who did not even love her. ”

“ You can’t meet my eyes, you shrink away from my touch! Is this the welcome a good wife gives to her husband? Annie, answer me! Did that man know you were married?”
“Harry, let me go! You are hurting me! I cannot answer you anything until you let me go. See the mark you have left upon my wrist! How can you be so brutal?”
“You are not going to put me off like that,” said Harry, firmly. “I know how you women will wriggle out of a subject you don’t like, if you can. ”

“ I am tired; I want to go in—to bed. Oh, George, if you are really sorry for me, let me go in, or I shall die out here in the cold!”
“You shall not die; you shall not be cold in my arms. Do you want to go back to the husband who is waiting to bully you, perhaps to strike you, away from the man who loves you with all his soul?”
Annie gathered all her strength and gave one ringing cry:
“Harry!”
The bare branches of the shrubbery-trees rustled and cracked as a man sprung into the pathway and tore the trembling woman from the unprepared George. She looked up.
“Thank Heaven! Colonel Richardson!” ”

“ Dusk was coming on when she heard a knock at the sitting-room door.
“Come in!” she called out from where she knelt by her trunks. Then she heard no more, and began to think she must have been mistaken, when the knock was repeated. “Come in!” she cried a second time; and then she heard the door open, and a man’s tread in the next room.
She rose from her knees, went in to the sitting-room, and found herself face to face with Aubrey Cooke, who was standing in his usual stooping attitude, looking paler and plainer than ever, with some parcels in his hands. ”

“ He entered with a very stern face and firm tread; but the sight of the cripple, lying half on the sofa, half on a chair, in a state of utter prostration of body and mind, made him pause. The other looked up at him without fear, without feeling of any kind.
“Do you know me?” asked Harry, abruptly.
“Yes; what do you want here?”
“I want an explanation. If you do not feel fit to give it to me now, I will come again. But I must have it, and the less delay the better.”
“Ask your wife, then. She has a better head than you, and understands without so much talking. ”

“ George looked at her in astonishment, for she spoke with bitter self-reproach and kept her eyes away from his.
“My dear Annie, you are reproaching yourself very unnecessarily. When Harry himself behaved to you like a coal-heaver, even he could scarcely be surprised that you preferred any society to his.”
“Not any society—I did not mean that.”
“No, but that of men of his own rank, but not quite of his manners,” said George, drawing his chair a little nearer to hers. ”

“ Annie hesitates, looking down at the fire with an expression which it is not easy to read.
She is startled by finding her husband’s hand laid quietly on her shoulder. He has overheard these last words of Lilian’s, notices his wife’s reluctance to answer, and leaves his seat to speak to her.
“Are you sorry you are not the wife of a great actor instead of a plain country gentleman, Annie?”
“No, not in the least; I never thought of such a thing.”
“Then why are you looking so thoughtful?”
“Any news of people one has known well and lost sight of sets one thinking.” ”

“ I’m not strong enough to walk steadily.”
“Oh, well, Harry, I’ve seen you walk just as unsteadily when you were quite well!” said Annie, dryly.
Harry snatched his arm from her, and fell into the nearest chair, flushing violently.
“Very well, ma’am; you call me a drunkard now! I shouldn’t have thought any woman would have the heart to make fun of a sick husband; but you don’t care for anything as long as you can laugh and scamper about the garden like a great tomboy with that infernal long-legged idiot William! ”

“ Meanwhile the quiet outdoor country life she led, always driving, or walking, or playing some game of their own invention with William, had rapidly restored to her beauty the bloom that unhappiness and ennui had begun to rob it of. George took the most notice of this improvement, and Harry the least. Yet even the latter was not quite insensible to the change for the better in his wife’s good looks, and told her one day, with rough good-humor, that married life seemed to agree with her, though she did not seem to appreciate what it had done for her. Annie answered with a rather ironical laugh. ”

“ One evening Harry came home from visiting his aunt and his mother with “a good joke” to tell his wife.
“Aunt Constantia and my mother have found a mare’s nest,” said he, with his usual elegance of speech. “They have discovered that the colonel is a most dangerous man, that he comes here not to see me, who can talk about horses and shooting and all the things he likes, but to make love to you and Lilian! Why, he never speaks to either of you if I’m here! He has too much sense to go dangling after any woman. I told my aunt I could look after my wife, and Lilian could look after herself. ”