Read Ebook: A vagrant wife by Warden Florence

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Ebook has 2083 lines and 92614 words, and 42 pages

"And by what right do you object to her being anywhere she pleases?"

"Pleases?"

"Yes. You swore to me two days ago that you did not know where Miss Lane lived. It was a lie!"

"It was not a lie. There is no such person as Miss Lane. This is Mrs. Harry Braithwaite, my wife!"

When Harry uttered the words "My wife!" his brother looked from one to the other for a few moments without a word; then, in a low, sullen voice, he said:

"You have tricked me and deceived me, both of you. It was very clever--very clever indeed, but hardly wise. I won't take up your time any longer now." Then, turning to Annie, he continued, "I am much obliged to you for your kind welcome. I must apologize for having brought down your husband's anger upon you; but, you see, you left me rather in the dark." Then to Harry--"You will hear from me in a day or two. Our father made me promise to provide for you, and I have a proposal to make which I don't think you will find ungenerous. Send me an answer as quickly as you can."

He shook his brother's hand and then Annie's and left the room. Harry turned to his wife, looking rather anxious.

"He is going to do something nasty, Annie--I am sure of it. I know George's manner when he is spiteful, and our chances look very bad, darling. No more Paris, no more pretty gowns, for the present, at any rate!"

But Annie did not answer. With trembling fingers she was pulling to pieces the flower which had fallen from her throat.

"Why, Annie, what is the matter? You look ill--you are crying!"

"I am not ill," said she, repulsing him. "I am heart-sick, miserable."

"But you mustn't give way like that, my darling. George will have to come round. He sha'n't make my wife spoil her pretty eyes."

"It is not George," she said, with fire. "Do you think I am such a coward as to mind not having pretty dresses? What was that he said about forgery?"

"Oh, nothing to make such a fuss about!" answered the young fellow sulkily. "I was hard up, I had no money for our wedding trip, and I couldn't help it. It wasn't as if I committed a crime, and copied somebody else's name, it was my own father's. I knew it would be all right, and so it was. He hushed it up directly, and said hardly anything about it."

"You call that nothing!" said Annie, raising her eyes wide with horror to his face.

"Of course I know it was wrong," replied he impatiently; "but there was nothing else to be done. I could not have married you without, or you would have had to pass your honeymoon in an attic."

"I would rather have passed it as a tramp on the high-road than as we did, if I had known."

"Well, you are an ungrateful little cat. When I thought of nothing but pleasing you and buying you pretty things from morning till night."

"Pretty things that were bought with stolen money!"

"How dare you say such thing to me?" he shouted. "Don't you know I'm your husband; and do you suppose I am not the best judge of my own conduct? Do you suppose I should ever do anything a gentleman need be ashamed of?"

"I think you have done a thing a beggar would be ashamed of."

"Thank you, thank you! You call me a beggar and you call me a thief. I shall be a murderer next, I suppose; and, by Jove, it would serve you right if I were. Haven't I behaved well to you? Didn't I come to London with you just to stop you from crying? And didn't I marry you when I knew very well that all my family would disapprove of it?"

"Oh, yes; you made a noble sacrifice. I am deeply grateful to you for throwing yourself away. It spoils the look of it a little, though, that your elder brother was willing to do so, too, if you hadn't been beforehand with him."

"You may say what you like; but it is a sacrifice of a man's liberty to marry at twenty. As for George, I believe you like him better than me all the time. Answer me--do you--did you ever care for him?" demanded he roughly.

"I shall not answer your insulting questions," said the young wife, in a very calm voice; and, as quickly as she could, she left the room. For she felt as if her heart were breaking; this sharp wrangle had made her almost hysterical, and she did not want to break down before the husband whom, for the time at least, she despised and all but hated.

Already during the few weeks of their wedded life, it had needed all the strength of his outbursts of demonstrative affection, all the bright contentment she felt at her release from schoolroom drudgery, to cloak the fact that they had not one taste, one sympathy in common; that their tempers were ill suited to each other, and the moral standard of the wife as different from that of the husband as light from darkness. 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. 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. Harry, of course, did not appreciate the struggle she had gone through before she could do this, but came to the conclusion that she saw how silly she had been to make such a fuss about a trifle which did not concern her, and thought it was time for him to show a little just indignation at finding his brother's arm round her.

But she stopped him with surprising promptness, as if his remarks were beneath argument. He began to bluster a little.

"Do you really doubt the propriety of my conduct?" she asked, coldly.

"Well, it is not a usual thing, is it, to find one's wife--er--er--like that?"

"Is it a usual thing for a wife to be requested by her husband to conceal the fact that she is married, especially from his relatives?"

"Why, no, of course not! And it doesn't matter now, you see, since I told my father all about it," said Harry, trying to speak more good-humoredly, since he saw by the steady look of his wife's eyes, as he had seen before in less serious discussions, that, if the argument went on he would get very much the worst of it.

So the peace was kept between them, though the warmth of their feelings for each other was getting rapidly less. An incident happened a few days later, however, which revived it for a time. George's promised proposal came, and Harry had scarcely read it before he was at his wife's feet, pressing his lips to her very dress with all the enthusiasm of a few weeks back.

"He wants us to go to the Grange--not for my sake, though; but to get you there; but he sha'n't! I'd sweep a crossing rather than let you go there! My generous brother--hang him!"

"To go to the Grange! To live there?"

"Yes; that is his way of fulfilling his promise to our father. He says there are too many burdens on the estate for him to make me a suitable allowance, unless we go and live there. But I wouldn't let you go there for the world!"

"But, Harry, I should be quite safe with you. You speak of your brother as if he were a savage."

"So he is. We are all a set of savages; and, being a savage myself, you see, I know how to trust the rest. I tell you you shall not go; and, if you try to persuade me, I shall think you don't love me."

He flung his arm round her, and looked up into her face with an air of boyish authority which she did not attempt to resist, though it made her smile. A few months of self-dependence had made her so much older, so much wiser than this spoiled child who was her lord and master.

She knew he could not live long in defiance of his elder brother; she knew he had no money of his own, and no capabilities of making any, or that, if he had any capabilities, he had no intention of using them. He had indeed most of the qualities necessary in a groom and some of those wanted by a jockey; but, being a gentleman, though he could copy their manners and share their tastes, he could follow their occupations only as an amusement. He had given her money so recklessly at first that she, though inclined to be extravagant, had, without saying anything to him about it, put some by in case of an emergency; so that, when his supplies to her stopped rather suddenly, she was able to go on paying their weekly bills without running into debt. But this could not last long; and she began to look out for some music-pupils, still without saying anything to her husband, whose pride would have cried out at the idea of his wife working for her living and his.

It was easy enough by this time to leave some hours in the day unaccounted for. Harry had met some acquaintances in town and picked up some others, and spent but little of his time with his wife, who, he complained, did not take as much trouble to amuse him as at first, and who could always amuse herself with a book--a most unaccountable taste in his eyes, so that she could publish an advertisement, answer others, go for the few replies she got to a neighboring stationer's, and give a lesson three times a week in Onslow Square without exciting his suspicions.

She knew that Lady Braithwaite and her daughter were now in town, staying with a sister of the former's at Lancaster Gate, but, as she would have thought nothing less likely than that they should take any notice of her, she stood for a moment in the doorway in silent astonishment when, coming into her sitting-room, after having given a music-lesson, she found Lilian, looking superbly handsome in her deep mourning, walking about examining the pictures and ornaments.

"I think you must be very comfortable here," said she, coming forward and kissing her, as if they had been affectionate friends of long standing.

Lilian's manners were charming when she chose, and she was at her best this afternoon--always queenly, but smiling and willing to be pleased with anything. She drew her tiny sister-in-law on to the sofa and sat down beside her. Annie, very glad of this visit, yet hardly daring to believe that Lilian could have heard of her marriage, scarcely knew what to say; but the other saved her the trouble of finding a remark.

"I wish we lived like this. These rooms are neither too large nor too small, while Aunt Constantia's big rooms are so big that you lose your way in them, and the small ones are so small that, if the door opens inside, it scrapes the opposite wall. I am supposed to be still a child, and therefore of no consequence; so I am put into a nice little cupboard, so compact that Jennings has to open the door and stand in the corridor to brush my hair."

Annie laughed at the picture of self-willed, spoiled Miss Braithwaite as a victim to neglect, and then asked after Lady Braithwaite.

"Oh, she is quite well, thank you, though of course she hasn't got over poor papa's death yet! You heard all about it from Harry, of course?"

"Yes," said Annie, wondering at the easy way in which her proud sister-in-law thus alluded to their new relationship. She was still more surprised when the other continued:

"It seems so strange to think of Harry as a married man! I suppose he will think I ought not to box his ears any longer now; but you will let me, won't you? I can't keep him in order in any other way; but I suppose you 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.

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