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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "A Vagrant Wife," Florence Warden crafts a poignant exploration of love, betrayal, and the quest for identity within the confines of Victorian society. The narrative unfolds through vivid imagery and rich character development, revealing the struggles of a woman caught between societal expectations and personal desires. Warden deftly employs an engaging prose style marked by introspective dialogue and nuanced depictions of emotional turmoil, situating her work within the realistic novel tradition that sought to depict the complexities of everyday life. Florence Warden, a prominent figure in the late 19th century literary scene, drew upon her own experiences and observations of women'Äôs roles in society. Her background as a well-traveled and independent woman afforded her a unique perspective, which she infused into her work. As a novelist and playwright, Warden's insights into the female psyche and the societal constraints of her time resonate deeply in "A Vagrant Wife," highlighting both her personal convictions and her immersion in the socio-political dialogues of her era. For readers interested in the intricacies of gender dynamics and the evolution of the female narrative in literature, "A Vagrant Wife" is a compelling read. Warden's skillful storytelling, paired with her keen social commentary, offers a rich tapestry of human experience that invites reflection and discussion. This novel not only captivates the reader but also sheds light on the timeless challenges faced by women striving for autonomy in a restrictive society. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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A vagrant wife
Table of Contents
A vagrant wife
CHAPTER I.
The country town of Beckham was astir. It was a cloudy, changeful May afternoon, and the white-capped country lasses who were alighting from all sorts of strange vehicles at the churchyard gate had to hold up their clean cotton frocks with what untutored grace they might, as they trod the worn, wet flagstones that led up to the church door. Three or four hundred lads and lasses of Beckham and the neighborhood were collecting at the sound of the church-bells for the bishop to lay his hands on their empty heads and confirm them in the faith in which they were baptized.
The big bare building filled quickly, the vicar on Sunday never gathered such a congregation. The candidates filled the two middle aisles, the girls occupying the whole of one and the front benches of the other, the boys the rest. The latter looked shame-faced, the former self-conscious but content.
Long before the bishop’s appearance the church was full in every part, for it was a pretty sight even to those who had no personal interest in any of the candidates.
When from time to time the sun burst through the swift-flying clouds and shone through the long windows full upon the young faces crowned with the demure little white caps, women whispered to each other softly that it looked like heaven. There were thoughts not unworthy of this simile in some of the young minds, especially in those of the girls; others, while trying to fix their thoughts—as they had been told to do—upon the Catechism, could not help wishing they could renounce the pomps and vanities in white cashmere with pretty frills of lace at throat and wrists, like Miss Mainwaring of Garstone Vicarage, who looked so like a picture of some fair-haired saint, as she sat with her starry blue eyes fixed steadily on the communion table in front of her, that it was impossible to guess that she was thinking more of her new ivory-bound church-service than of the ceremony she was about to go through. She and the girl by her side attracted more attention than any others. There were a few of their class present, but of types as commonplace and faces as vacuous as those of the village-girls.
Betty Mainwaring was sixteen. Her fresh young face was sweet and silly, charming by the look of modest purity which passed so easily under the tulle cap and veil for the expression of pious devotion; but in truth Betty’s very innocence, and the fact that she had passed her whole life in an atmosphere of the simplest, strictest religion, had made it impossible for her to concentrate much earnest thought upon this important step in the Christian life. She had read through the devotional works prescribed for her as attentively as she could, and had accepted all the formulas and dogmas of the Church with the unshrinking faith of the most complete ignorance of their meaning. She had been taught that confirmation[1] is one of the most serious events of life, and she believed it and let the fact rest, while her innocent thoughts wandered to a consideration of the backs of the row of girls in front of her, and to the reflection how strange it seemed to be confirmed with one’s own governess.
For the girl beside her, with the passionate dark eyes and set, serious face, only eighteen herself, and already carrying on her young shoulders the responsibility of directing the minds of girls of her own age, was Miss Lane, who taught “advanced” English, French, German, Italian, music, and singing to the two grown-up Misses Mainwaring, and the earlier stages of the same to their two younger sisters and their seven-year-old brother. To her life was a serious hard-working affair enough, and her tardy confirmation an event of quite desperate importance, involving much doubt and anxious self-examining. She had even thought of asking the vicar, her pupils’ father, for a private interview, of laying bare the bewildered state of her mind, and of asking him whether he thought her fit for confirmation. The papers on the subject which he had given her to read had proved but dry bones to the eager, earnest girl; but she had a strong conviction that confession would procure little more. The Reverend John Mainwaring’s religion was not of the hysterical, but of the independent sort; and the girl felt that all he could do would be to throw her back on prayer and her own conscience for an answer to her doubts. What was certain was that he would unhesitatingly have pronounced the conscientious little worker, striving hard to live up to an ideal standard of excellence in her dull profession, as fitter for confirmation than almost any member of his flock.
So she sat by her pupil’s side, with downcast eyes and mind fixed on the service she was about to hear, curiously conscious at the same time—being keenly alive to outward things and not without a young girl’s vanity—of the interest her pretty, modest appearance was exciting.
But, just before the entrance of the bishop, three persons came in to whom all eyes turned at once, and there was almost a murmur of admiration even in the hush of the sacred building at sight of the girl who, at the foot of the middle aisle, stopped for her mother and brother to take off the long white mantle which was wrapped round her, and then followed the Reverend John Mainwaring up the aisle to the seat he had kept for her in the pew with his own daughter and the governess, Annie Lane.
Lilian Braithwaite came of a handsome race. Tall, with a well-molded figure, gray eyes, brown hair, and complexion rich enough in its tints to promise something more lovely still when a season or two in town should have toned down its coloring, she gave promise of beauty distinguished enough to hold its own amongst the fairest women she might meet. The plain white cashmere which looked so simple on Betty Mainwaring had quite a different effect upon her handsome figure, and the tulle headdress, half cap, half veil, which she wore in common with the other candidates of her own class, had as much of the veil and as little of the cap about it as possible. Already, at seventeen, she walked through the crowd of admiring faces with a bearing which showed more of the dignity of an acknowledged beauty than of the modesty of a young girl. She smiled at the young governess good-humoredly enough, however, and would even have entered into a whispered conversation, with scornfully critical remarks upon the rest of the candidates, if Miss Lane had not received her overtures shyly and with all the primness of her profession. Miss Braithwaite, who was not easily repulsed, gave a little amused shrug of the shoulders, and said, in a loud whisper:
“Are you afraid the vicar is looking at you?”
And then she met his rather uneasy glance in her own direction with a bland smile.
It had been rather a difficult matter for him to bring himself to believe that Miss Braithwaite was in all respects fit for confirmation; but, as no scruple had ever entered her own head, and as, moreover, she was technically prepared for the rite, being able to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Catechism with perfect fluency, he had no choice but to bring her to the bishop with the rest of the candidates.
When the service was over, and she rejoined her mother and brother, a young man with a rather handsome face, but deformed and resting on crutches, came up to her and stood silently by while her brother wrapped her again in the long, white mantle she had come in.
“You here, Stephen! How did you come? The doctor said you were not to go out until your cough was better,” said Miss Braithwaite, in a voice scarcely as low as it ought to have been.
“I wanted to see you—all in white like a bride, making all the other girls look ugly and clumsy,” whispered the cripple, with his face flushing; “so I got Thompson to get the pony-carriage ready, and followed you as fast as I could.”
Stephen Lawler’s contempt for the appearance of the rest of the candidates was not shared by his cousin, Harry Braithwaite, who turned to watch one of the girls admiringly, and whispered:
“I say, Lilian, how awfully fetching little ‘Miss Prim’ looks in that get-up!” “Little Miss Prim” was Annie Lane, the governess.
“Yes, she is a pretty girl,” answered his sister, who was handsome enough to be able to afford to acknowledge beauty in others.
Meanwhile the crowd was surging toward the door, and Harry Braithwaite kept his mother and sister as near the Vicarage party as he could. At the church door they discovered that a heavy shower of rain was coming down, and Mrs. Mainwaring was lamenting piteously that her husband, who had come on the box of the brougham[2] beside the coachman, would lose his voice entirely if he were to return in the same way through the rain. Harry Braithwaite whispered a few words into his mother’s ear, and, raising his hat, stepped forward and placed a seat in their own carriage at the disposal of the vicar’s wife, in his mother’s name.
“If Miss Lane will come with us, there will be lots of room in the brougham for you and your two daughters and the vicar too,” said he.
And before Mrs. Mainwaring could say more than “Oh, thank you, but,” he had severed Miss Lane from her pupils and was escorting her under an umbrella to the big Braithwaite barouche.
Mrs. Mainwaring looked uneasy; her two daughters, Joan and Betty, looked displeased.
“I am sure papa will not approve of that arrangement, mamma,” said Joan, the eldest of the family, who had come to see her sister confirmed.
“Well, what could I do, Joan? He meant to be good-natured; and it would not do for the wife of the vicar of the parish to show any prejudice. Of course I should not have allowed you or Betty to go, but with Miss Lane it is different; she can take care of herself.”
“I should think so!” said Joan, sharply.
And then the vicar came up, and his wife hurried him into the brougham, saying there was plenty of room; and it was not until they were on the point of stating that she confessed, in answer to his inquiries, that Miss Lane was going home in the Braithwaites’ carriage.
“That was Master Harry’s doing, I suppose?” said the vicar, with a very grave face.
“It was all done so quickly, it was impossible for me to stop him,” said his wife, deprecatingly. “You know you would not have minded if it had been anybody else’s carriage; and, if they are rather a wild set, we cannot reform them by holding aloof from them. And it is not as if I had let one of the girls go,” said she, hurriedly, lowering her voice.
“But you have let ‘one of the girls’ go. Miss Lane is only a few months older than Joan,” he answered, more gravely than ever.
And she, being a wise woman, dropped the conversation, to take it up again when they two should be alone together.
This little incident and the discussion it had caused disturbed the peace of all the occupants of the carriage. The vicar was annoyed that a member of his household should be thrown into such very uncongenial and perhaps dangerous society on the very day of her confirmation. His wife was uneasy on account of his annoyance. Joan and Betty were somewhat agitated, too; but they gave no vent to their feelings except in a little soft-toned wrangle about the amount of space each was authorized to take on the rather small front seat of the brougham. When the Braithwaite carriage passed them they became suddenly silent, both gazing eagerly out until it had passed out of sight. They had time to see the portly Lady Braithwaite and her handsome daughter leaning back comfortably on one seat, while Miss Lane and Harry Braithwaite sat opposite; he was talking to her, and did not notice the brougham.
When the Vicarage was reached, a group of children rushed to the hall door to criticise their elder sister in her white gown, and the missing governess.
“Hasn’t Miss Lane come back yet?” asked Mrs. Mainwaring, rather anxiously. “Their carriage passed us a long time ago,” she added, when the children had shaken their heads in surprise.
“She will stay at the Grange to tea, of course, mamma,” said Joan, acidly.
And again Mrs. Mainwaring, with a glance at her husband, dropped the subject.
The Grange was a sort of an ogre’s castle to the simple lady, and not quite without reason. There is in most quiet country neighborhoods a house with this sort of reputation, where there lives a wicked man who does not come regularly to church, and who goes to bed and gets up again at unorthodox hours, and whose guests do the same and worse things besides; where there is a tribe of servants who find it difficult to obtain places in the neighborhood on leaving; and where, above all, there is a family of healthy, high-spirited, ill-disciplined children, rough girls and rougher boys, who grow up with a bad name, which becomes steadily worse as the wild lads grow into manhood, and the girls, without any one’s saying that there is any “harm in them,” acquire the stigma of being “fast.” The Grange was more worthy of its bad reputation than most homes of the same type. Sir George Braithwaite, the present owner, had in his youth on several occasions narrowly escaped appearing in the London police courts; he had sobered down somewhat on coming into the baronetcy; but in four wild sons, whose doings were the scandal of the neighborhood, he saw the follies of his own youth repeated and developed.
When, two years before, the Reverend John Mainwaring became Vicar of Garstone, the inmates of the Grange had made advances to the new-comers, had petted the pretty Betty and invited the elder boys to fish and shoot during the holidays. But the vicar and his wife soon took alarm, and, while striving to maintain an appearance of perfect good-will, discouraged the intimacy between the younger members of the families, until the proud Braithwaites, seeing at last through the civil excuses and regrets, drew back suddenly and held themselves as far aloof as Mrs. Mainwaring could wish. The intimacy thus abruptly checked had never been renewed, and, although the members of the two families greeted each other without apparent ill-will when by chance they met, there was no cordiality on either side—the Grange laughed at the Vicarage as “slow,” the Vicarage shuddered at the Grange as “fast.”
The interest the latter took in the prim little Vicarage girls and their brothers had died out long since, while, on the other hand, the “wild Braithwaites” had an ever-increased secret attraction for the clergyman’s family. Joan and Betty were more constrained than usual when accident brought them face to face with any of the handsome Braithwaite boys, and they both in their hearts sat in judgment upon their parents, and thought that a policy of conciliation would be a much more Christian way of treating the scapegraces. And each of these demure and somewhat stiff maidens began, as she left the schoolroom, to think she saw signs of redeeming grace in one of the Grange lads, and to feel that she would like to have a hand in his reform.
So that, when Miss Lane—who, however prim and staid her manner might be, was undeniably a very pretty girl—was carried off before their eyes by one of their wicked neighbors, and taken to the interesting Grange, feelings which their simple-minded mother never dreamed of mingled with the indignation Joan expressed. Betty was silent, but inclined to be tearful.
The Mainwarings were a somewhat stolid race, and meals at which no stranger was present were very solemn feasts indeed. On this occasion tea-time was passed in dead silence—even Marian and Bertram, the two youngest, scarcely dared kick each other under the table. When they all rose, a tear was rolling down Betty’s fair cheek. Her mother caressed her anxiously, fearing that the excitement of the solemn vows she had made that day had proved too much for her. Betty gave way.
“Oh, how that Miss Lane must be enjoying herself at the Grange!” she cried bitterly.
CHAPTER II.
Meanwhile the Braithwaite carriage had reached the Grange, and, Miss Lane’s timid remonstrances having been overcome, it had been arranged that she was to stay to dine there, and a boy was sent to the Vicarage with a message to that effect. 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. But he saw too much of those eyelashes and not enough of the eyes they shaded—only a swift, shy look as she answered any question of his, and then they fell again or turned to his sister, who chattered on fast about the ceremony they had just passed through, and the people who had been in the church.
Harry himself was less talkative than usual; he could not think of anything to say worthy the attention of this beautiful, brave girl with the soft voice and steady, brown eyes. He became impatient at last, snubbed his sister for being a magpie, and told her gruffly to “shut up,” when she made an angry reply. He was glad when they reached the Grange and the ladies went up-stairs; then he strolled into the stable-yard and met his eldest brother George.
“Who was that in the carriage?”
“Only little Miss Lane, the Mainwarings’ governess.”
“Eh? Oh, that was why you came home with the family-party! What is she like?”
“Like? Oh, like—a governess! Stiff, prim—won’t talk, or can’t talk. Awful mistake for her to have such a pretty face; it’s thrown away on a girl like that.”
“Perhaps she’ll talk by and by. I think life at the Vicarage doesn’t encourage liveliness much. Where is she now?”
“Up-stairs with mamma and Lil. I say, she’s my discovery; I brought her here, and I won’t have you monopolizing her. I’ve seen you staring at her in church, and wrinkling up your ugly face with annoyance because she wouldn’t look at you; but——”
“My dear boy, you shall have undisturbed possession of your prize, as far as I am concerned. I don’t look for my goddesses in the Sunday-school. I admire your wisdom, though, all the same. She can do you no possible harm, and will give you some excellent advice as a reward for your attentions.”
“Hope she’ll give you a snub as a reward for yours!” said Harry, with a heartiness which went beyond brotherly pleasantry.
Both faces were darkening into frowns when the dinner-bell rang. When they entered the dining-room, as they did together a few minutes later, they found little Miss Lane completely engrossed by their youngest brother, a great overgrown lad of fifteen or sixteen, whose usual shyness with women had been overcome in a quarter of an hour’s tête-à-tête with the governess in the drawing-room. He had placed her in the seat between his own and his father’s; but, before he had had time to sit down, George dropped quietly into the chair he was holding.
“That’s my place,” said he roughly.
“Mine for to-night, dear William,” answered his elder brother coolly, bending his handsome face close to that of the girl by his side. “This is a pleasure I have long wished for, Miss Lane,” he said, in the tender tones of the experienced flirt.
She looked at him shyly, laughed and blushed.
“It is very unkind of you to laugh. Don’t you believe me?”
“Not quite, I think.”
“Somebody has been poisoning your mind against me already, I see,” he said, with mock fierceness. “You would not pay any attention to what the juvenile William might say. It must have been Harry. It was Harry, was it not?”
“Which is ‘Harry’?”
“Harry is the grumpy-looking one over there—the one who came back in the carriage with you. He would give the world at this moment to pitch me out of the window.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. It is his nasty temper.”
“He wouldn’t find it so easy, I should think.”
“No. We should be always pitching each other out of the window if we were not so well matched; as it is, when any of us are excited beyond endurance, we pitch the child out.”
“The child?”
“Yes—that great gawky boy who thought he was going to have all your conversation to himself by putting you between himself and my father. He hasn’t come to his full strength yet. We can still do great execution upon him if we take him unawares.”
The talk continued chiefly on his side until the general conversation turned upon racing, and he hastened, with an eager interest which no woman could excite in him, to join in the argument that was going forward. When he again glanced at the girl by his side, she was looking puzzled and rather prim.
“Our talk about horses and betting shocks you, I see,” he laughed. “You think it very wicked.”
“No, indeed, I don’t. But I am not used to it. It is so new to me, at least, since I have been a governess.”
“Since you have been a governess? Well, that can’t be very long. And did you hear talk like ours before?”
“Not—quite like yours; but I have heard gentlemen talk about racing and theaters, and—things like that, at home, before my father died.”
“Is that long ago?”
“No”—rather tremulously.
“Are you happy at the Vicarage?”
“Oh, yes, they are very kind to me!”
“So that now any conversation that is not serious surprises and distresses you?”
“Oh, no; I like it!”
“You like our profane conversation? Then why were you looking so prim just now? When I turned to you, you looked so solemn and severe, that the first words that occurred to me froze on my lips. I hadn’t a word to say.”
“That was because I can’t talk about horses.”
The little governess plucked up spirit enough to fire this shot under cover of the rising of the ladies, and George Braithwaite followed the small retreating figure with his eyes with more interest than he had yet felt in her. In the talk with his father and brothers which now went on unrestrainedly upon their favorite topics, Harry found occasion to disagree with his eldest brother upon every point. George bore this with a good-humor he seldom showed except when he wished to be irritating. The younger was already almost at boiling-point when they left the dining-room, where it had been unanimously decided that Miss Lane was very pretty, but had no spirit, no “go,” and that the Vicarage had crushed all the youth out of everything about her but her face.
George and Harry left the dining-room, the former by the door, the latter by the French window; and they entered the drawing-room at the same moment. Their mother and sister were at the piano looking for a missing song, but the demure little figure in white was not in the room. George merely asked if either of them had seen his cigar-case; but Harry burst out:
“Where’s Miss Lane?”
“Oh, the child has taken her off somewhere to play with him!” said Lilian. “You all seem very much excited about the governess,” she added rather contemptuously.
But Harry left the room. Miss Lane was prim, certainly, and had nothing to say for herself; but she was very pretty, and, moreover, he felt bound to show George that he was not to have it all his own way, as he had seemed at dinner to think he was doing.
He searched the billiard-room, the morning-room, opened the windows, and looked out on to the lawn. At last he thought he heard the sound of laughter up-stairs, and, mounting the staircase in a few bounds, he was led by the excited cries of “the child!”—“Take care!”—“Well done!”—“Caught, by Jove!”—and by girlish laughter and the scuffling of feet toward the picture-gallery. On the inner side of the door by which he entered it hung a heavy curtain; he pulled it aside just far enough to peep through into the long half-lighted gallery.
There stood the grave, sedate, prematurely old governess of half an hour before panting with laughter and exertion in the pause after a game of shuttlecock. There was no mistaking the fact; for she still held the battledoor[3] in one hand while she rallied William on his clumsiness.
“If you try to catch it so, you must miss it, and perhaps lose your balance, besides exhibiting yourself in an extremely ungraceful attitude;” and she threw out her arms in laughing imitation of him in the act of saving himself from a fall. “Now try again. Are you ready?”
“Yes, I should think so! You sha’n’t laugh at me this time!”
The game began again. The shuttlecock was tossed from the one to the other amid cries and more laughter, both combatants being nimble, quick of eye and hand, and as much excited as if their very lives depended on the keeping up of the flimsy thing of leather and feathers. Harry’s own breath came and went as fast as theirs as he watched, not the game, but the graceful, active little player in white, whose movements in the abandon of the game had a fascination such as no famous dancer he had ever seen had exercised upon him; and when, as, once more pausing, the shuttlecock fell to the ground, she stood panting under the soft light of a Chinese lantern, her cheeks flushed, her dark eyes sparkling, her beautiful brown hair shining as her head moved, and her lips parted with smiles, the blood mounted to his face, and he watched her, with all the passionate admiration of his twenty years in his heart and in his eyes. He dared not move; he would not for the world have broken the charm by letting her know that the game had a spectator.
A minute later the shuttlecock was flying again. Opposite to the door where Harry was standing hidden was another door; and, as, with her eyes fixed upon the toy in the air above her head, Miss Lane tripped backward against the curtain, her foot caught in its folds, she stumbled, and might have fallen, had not an arm from behind the curtain caught and saved her. It was George’s. He had taken up his position just as his brother had taken his a few minutes later, at the opposite door.
Quick as thought, Miss Lane had shrunk at the touch of the unexpected hand into the shell of demure propriety she generally wore.
She showed not even surprise, only a little shame and confusion.
“Thank you. I am much obliged to you,” said she, modestly, without raising her eyes, extricating herself gently from the obliging arm. “I—I caught the curtain with my foot.”
“Are you sure you have not twisted your ankle?” asked George, bending down over her with great solicitude.
“Quite, thank you.”
George bowed his handsome head still lower, and murmured mischievously.
“Now I see why I couldn’t amuse you at dinner. It was because I can’t talk about shuttlecocks!”
She colored, but made no answer, except by a mischievous smile as she raised her eyes to his face. Harry came out from behind his curtain.
“Will you come and have a game at billiards, Miss Lane? I’ll teach you.”
“I can play a little; but I musn’t now, thank you. I must go back to the Vicarage.”
“How anxious you are to get away from us!” said George.
“Oh, indeed, it is not that! I haven’t been so happy for, oh, I don’t know how long, as I have been here to-day!”
“Then why are you in such a hurry to get away?”
“I am not in a hurry; it is because I must go,” said she, the almost child-like gayety quite gone out of her voice, which remained sweet, but low and grave; “besides, I—I ought not to have enjoyed myself so much. I had forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?” said George, kindly.
“To-day—my confirmation. It was wrong, very wrong of me! Such an example for my pupil Betty, too!”
George could not help smiling.
“I don’t think your bad example would do much harm to Betty, Miss Lane. I dare say she wishes she had a chance of spending her evening in the same way.”
“I am afraid she does,” said the governess, simply.
Then, hearing the voices of Lady Braithwaite and her daughter outside, she went out to meet them, followed by “the child,” and leaving the two elder brothers face to face.
“Charming little creature! That dash of the prig leaves her a delicious spice of novelty,” said George, lighting a cigar, and seeming not to notice his brother’s frowns.
“I thought ‘you didn’t choose your goddesses out of the Sunday-school’? I thought I ‘was to have undisturbed enjoyment of my discovery, as far as you were concerned’?”
“And so you might have had, if you had had the wit to forestall me. The pleasure of her society was absolutely forced upon me, for I could not leave a defenseless woman to be bored to death all through dinner by William and Sir George.”
“Where are you going?” asked the other, sharply, for George had his hand upon the door.
“To the stables, if you have no objection.”
“You are not going to see Miss Lane home?” shouted Harry.
“By Jove, I never thought of it! But it would be a good action to save the poor little woman from a tête-à-tête with such a cub.”
In his delight at tormenting his fiery-tempered brother, George had gone a little too far. As he lounged against the doorway, a sudden blow had sent him reeling back into the gallery, the door was slammed, and his brother was at the other end of the corridor before he could say a word. Harry met his sister in the corridor.
“Where’s Miss Lane?”
“Why? What do you want with Miss Lane?”
“Never mind. Where is she?”
But his sister was in a teasing mood. She had more than George’s cruelty in her disposition, and, being a girl, she could give it freer rein. She delighted in watching the excited working of Harry’s face as she evaded his questions.
“My dear boy, I am not Miss Lane’s guardian-angel. You should ask ‘the child’ where she is.”
“For Heaven’s sake, don’t torment me so! You met her outside the picture-gallery a few minutes ago, and took her away with you.”
“Oh, so I did! But you see I’ve dropped her somewhere.”
Harry seized her arm and shook it roughly. But the action only roused the girl’s spirit from idle teasing to hot defiance.
“Do you think you can make me tell you? If you were to kill me, I wouldn’t tell you unless I chose!”—and she shook herself free with a violence which sent him staggering a few paces.
He changed his tactics.
“Don’t be silly, Lil. You know I didn’t mean to hurt you; and, if we did come to blows, you would be just as likely to hurt me. But do tell me where Miss Lane is.”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone! Alone?”
“No. Stephen has gone with her; and it was I who sent him,” said she, defiantly.
“Oh, to annoy me, I suppose?”
“Partly, perhaps—you and George. I thought there had been quite fuss enough made about the little governess, and I thought that Stephen, being a cripple, and, therefore, not quite so rough as you, would make her a safer escort.”
Without a word in answer, Harry gave her a sharp box on the ear, and swung himself into the hall over the balusters, dashed into the garden, and plunging into a shrubbery to a short cut to the road, came out scratched and breathless a few yards behind Miss Lane and Stephen.
“You had better go in, Stephen, or you’ll make your cold worse. I’ll see Miss Lane safely home,” said he, abruptly.
A hot flush came over the cripple’s face.
“You’ve grown very considerate for me—for once,” he said, bitterly. “Did Lilian send you?”
“No; it would have been better for her if she had.”
“What have you done to her?” cried Stephen, anxiously.
“I’ve only boxed her ears for impertinence,” said Harry, haughtily.
“You brute! How dared you? I wish George had seen you.”
“George was lying on his back in the picture-gallery, where I left him.”
A sharp cry escaped the lips of the little governess.
“What! You have hurt your brother—perhaps killed him!”
“I haven’t hurt him, Miss Lane,” said Harry, with an uncomfortable blush. “I shouldn’t have touched him if he hadn’t wanted to prevent my seeing you home. You will let me now, won’t you?” said he, with sudden gentleness.
“Thank you. Mr. Lawler has offered to take me,” answered she, freezingly.
“But Mr. Lawler has a bad cold, and ought not to be out at night.”
“Then I will go home alone.”
Harry turned white with rage. The handsome lad was not used to snubs from women of any class, when he took the trouble to pay them any attention. Stephen’s eyes gleamed maliciously.
“You won’t send me back? The air won’t hurt me in the least; I am out in it every night,” said he, eagerly.
She could not refuse the cripple, and, bowing very coldly to Harry, she went on with Stephen toward the Vicarage.
It was always a terrible ordeal to the sensitive little Southron[4] to shake four cold hands and smile “good-night” up into four cold faces when, the day’s work over, she could run through the garden to the cottage built in one corner of it, where she lived with an old servant of the family to wait upon her. But to-night it was far more terrible than it had ever been before. One degree more of frost in the manner of papa, mamma, eldest girl, and second girl made her feel that her sin, in letting herself be carried off by those worldlings, and possibly enjoying their godless society, was grievous indeed. But they never guessed the pain they were inflicting. Nay, they meant to be rather kind about it; and Mrs. Mainwaring asked, not without veiled curiosity:
“Well, did you enjoy yourself at the Grange? I suppose they were very kind to you?”
“Oh, yes, very kind.”
“You had a beautiful dinner, didn’t you?” asked Betty, who was rather a gourmand.
“Yes, very nice,” answered Miss Lane, who had indeed not been insensible to the difference between the cookery of the Grange and that of the Vicarage.
“Did they all get tipsy?” asked Bertram, aged seven, very shyly.
“Oh, no! What makes you ask that, Bertram?”
“Ben said they did,” whispered he, sheepishly withdrawing—Ben was the coachman, with a dash of gardener.
“Did you think them nice?” asked Joan, inquisitorially.
“They were all very kind; but, oh, they quarrel dreadfully!”
“You wouldn’t like to be governess there, I suppose?”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Mainwaring!” answered Miss Lane, fervently and sincerely.
Yet, when she was once more alone, trying faithfully to banish outward thoughts and prepare herself for her prayers, the admiration, the warm kindliness of the wrong-headed Braithwaites would rush in and contrast itself with the logical conduct of the Mainwarings, who hung about her when she was in high spirits and neglected her when she was unhappy and unwell.
“I do hope he is not hurt!” was her last thought.
CHAPTER III.
Meanwhile Stephen Lawler had returned to the Grange, happy in the favor pretty Miss Lane had accorded him at the expense of Harry, whom he hated with a hatred which, if unreasonable, was not without excuse. He joined his cousins in the billiard-room, where a hot quarrel between George and Harry was only just kept from blazing forth afresh by the presence of their father, the only power on earth which could keep in check the ungovernable passions of his unruly brood. Stephen glanced from one to the other of the two angry, flushed faces, and rolled the spot-ball along the table in an idle manner, through which the least glimpse of the conqueror showed. George laughed unpleasantly.
“Stephen looks happy.”
“He’s the fox who carried off the lamb while the lion and tiger were fighting about it,” said Wilfred, the second son, quoting from Æsop’s fables rather at random.
“Was she kind, Stephen?” asked George, mockingly.
“Very kind—much kinder than she was to you.”
“That goes without saying, my dear fellow,” answered George, with a cruel patronage in his tone which made the cripple wince.
“All women don’t worship brutes! I wouldn’t enter the lists with you for your Molly and Sukey; but ladies are different.”
“Different from what? From Molly and Sukey, or from Miss Lane, the governess?”
“Ah, you can look down upon ‘Miss Lane, the governess,’ since she calls you a brute!”
“When did she call me a brute? It’s a lie!” said George, sharply.
“It’s not a lie! She said you and Harry were both brutes; and, by Jove, she was right!”
George raised his fist, but dropped it with an ostentatious self-restraint.
“You are a privileged person,” said he, coolly.
Stephen sprung forward and struck him in the face; but George remained as irritatingly quiet as ever.
“But you shouldn’t presume upon your advantages. You can tell lies as other gentlemen may not do, and you can strike a man without getting struck back; but you can’t expect to hold your own with a woman against me, or even Harry. It’s absurd!”
“What do you mean by ‘even Harry?’” asked the third brother, savagely.
“What I mean by it in this case is that, by a little careful management you might have got the tête-à-tête[5] you wanted with pretty Miss Lane, but that, if I had stepped in, not all the management in the world would have availed you to get what you wanted.”
“You think yourself irresistible?”
“No, I don’t. But I think I know more about women than you do; and I’m not quite such a cub as to think I can impress a woman favorably by merely staring across the dinner-table at her and insulting everybody who is civil to her.”
Harry grew red at this home-thrust.
“And I suppose you think you have impressed her very favorably by drawling compliments into her ear one minute and turning your back to her the next?”
“That’s all his science,” said Wilfred, who had been drinking more than the rest, but who had as much wit when he was tipsy as his brothers had when they were sober.
“Well, haven’t we exhausted the little governess?” asked George, yawning.
“Yes; let us talk of the Duchess of Shoreditch,” proposed Wilfred, mimicking him.
“Oh, y-e-s, we will!” said Harry, following his example rather clumsily. “You might have condescended to see a duchess home yourself, perhaps?”
“To the man of principle all women are duchesses,” answered Wilfred, who was becoming tiresome.
“My dear Wilfred, what do you know about the man of principle?” asked his eldest brother, with a look which recalled to the sententious one various occasions on which his morality had given way rather suddenly. “All women are not duchesses; and I would rather see a governess home on a moonlit evening than a duchess, for the simple reason that I should get better paid for my trouble.”
“Not by Miss Lane!” cried Harry, starting up, his face aflame.
George did not answer.
“Not by Miss Lane!” said Harry again, in a louder voice. “Answer, you—conceited liar!”
“It is of no use to continue the discussion if you only lose your temper and throw your manners to the winds——”
“Harry’s manners!” chuckled Wilfred; but nobody took any notice of him.
“Say what you mean then, or by——”
“I only mean that I should have neglected my opportunities, and put a cruel slight upon a very pretty girl, if I had not got a kiss when I wished her good-night.”
“She would never have spoken to you again if you had done such a thing. She would have boxed your ears——”
“She would have done nothing of the kind. Your experience being confined to barmaids, who very naturally resent your rough overtures in the free-and-easy manner you describe, you cannot tell how a woman of more refinement accepts the homage due to her charms when it is properly offered.”
“I think this is blackguard talk,” said Wilfred; but the time had long gone past for him to get a hearing.
“You think she would have let you kiss her willingly?” said Harry, not so loudly as before, but with his whole frame quivering with restless excitement.
“I don’t wish to be boastful, but I think it most likely.”
“It’s a——”
Stephen shook his cousin’s arm.
“Let him prove it, Harry; let him prove it.”
But Harry shrunk from that. He was as thoughtless and unprincipled as the rest of them; but he was not blasé. He was only twenty; and some instincts of chivalry and respect for the beautiful girl whose name was being bandied about so freely made him hesitate.
“He knows better than to agree to that!” sneered George.
“Why don’t you try to be beforehand with him?” suggested Stephen.
“I will, by Jove!” said Harry, stung and excited past all scruples. “We’ll see if my rough overtures may not be more to her taste than your what-do-you-call-it homage. I bet Fire King to a five-pound note I’ll have a kiss from her to-morrow.”
“Willingly, mind?”
“Willingly.”
“Done, then! But how am I to be sure you have won fairly if you come and claim it?”
“You will have my word.”
There was a general laugh. There are some families, as lawless as the Braithwaites, in which truth is part of their code, and a lie held to be beneath a gentleman; but the Braithwaites, while fiercely proud of their birth, considered that it placed them above obligations, and that the title “gentleman,” descended to them from their fathers, was a sort of inherited, inalienable fortune which required no effort of theirs to support or to increase.
However, Harry having refused to let the bet hold except on this condition, it was resolved to trust him, George having fully made up his mind to supplement his brother’s account of the interview by the evidence of his own eyes.
The next morning, at breakfast time, when the wine was gone out of his head and his temper was cooler, Harry was a little ashamed of his bet, for to increase his compunction came the very strongest doubts as to his power to win it. However, when George asked with a sneer whether he did not wish the bet were off, his brother answered fiercely that he never made bets which he did not intend to keep. So George only shrugged his shoulders, told him he was a fool, and walked off to the stable-yard, already looking upon his brother’s favorite horse, Fire King, as his own by right, although he did not expect to enter into possession without a struggle. In spite of his ostentatiously cynical speeches the night before, his own respect for the demure girl-governess stood higher than he wished to have it believed, and he thought it extremely unlikely that his younger brother, who was still at the stage of being alternately boisterous and shy with women, would even risk a meeting with Miss Lane.
But Harry, nerved by the danger of losing Fire King, had strung himself up to do great things. Fate favored him.
It was Saturday; and on that day the vicar’s children always had a half holiday, and their governess was free to spend the afternoon as she liked. When it was fine she generally used her liberty to enjoy her one chance in the week of a walk by herself, and with a book—some solidly instructive book in her hand, just to justify her ramble to herself and relieve her conscience of the reproach of “wasting her time.” So on this Saturday afternoon she had strolled out with a sketch-book and a small camp-stool, and, after wandering through the fields alongside the hedges, watching the young rabbits playing about their holes, gathering a few late primroses, singing to herself all the while very happily, she opened her camp-stool in the corner of a field where there was a pond half surrounded by trees, seated herself, and began to draw.
On the other side of the pond, divided from it by a stretch of uneven grass-covered ground, ran a private road, and beyond that was a thick plantation from which, unknown to her, Harry had for some time been watching the governess; and further along the road were some stables and outbuildings, in the shelter of which his brother George had been for some time watching Harry.
Miss Lane set to work with the dry enthusiasm of the conscientious amateur, and was soon too much absorbed in calculating distances and making little dots on the paper with her pencil to notice Harry, until, by making a long circuit through the plantation, across the road and along the edge of the field she was in, he came through the long grass to her side. Filled with the guilty consciousness of the enterprise he had in hand, he was half sheepish, half bold, and Miss Lane’s greeting, which was a rather cold little bow and a complete ignoring of his proffered hand, did not help him to recover his self-possession.
“You are drawing, I see,” he remarked, rather huskily.
“Yes,” said she. Then, as there was a pause which her companion evidently did not know how to fill, she added, glancing first at her paper, and then at the pond in front of her, “It doesn’t look much like it yet, does it?”
“I dare say it will look more like when it is finished.”
“No, it won’t,” said Miss Lane, candidly; “that is the worst of it. I can’t draw, though I really do try very hard.”
“Then why do you give yourself all the trouble of trying?”
Harry felt that his share in the talk was not in the style he had intended, but her rather stiff simplicity of manner disconcerted him.
“It is an excuse for coming out of doors.”
“An excuse? I never want one. I only want excuses for not coming home. I hate houses—they are so beastly stuffy; don’t you think so?”
He felt he was getting further and further from the lover-like manner which was to overcome Miss Lane; but he could not help it. She considered a little before answering.
“I like houses too—some houses, I wonder you don’t like yours. I think it is one of the nicest I have ever been in.”
“Do you? Do you like it better than the Vicarage?”
“Oh, yes! The Vicarage is only a place to eat and drink and sleep in!” she said, scornfully. “As for the drawing-room, everything in it is an insult to one’s eyes.”
“I suppose you mean that it is not artistic,” said Harry. “But it isn’t the furniture that insults me; it is the people. I feel as if I were in church, or as if I had had a bucket of cold water over me when I didn’t expect it, directly I get inside the house.”
“Oh, don’t say that! They are all very kind.”
“Then you like the Vicarage people better than the Grange people?”
“I did not say that. But I know them better.”
“Oh, yes; I remember! You said we were a set of brutes.”
He felt that this was worse and worse; he was getting positively rude.
“I have never said anything of the kind, Mr. Braithwaite,” said she, coldly.
“Didn’t you tell Stephen that George and I were brutes?”
“I did say it was brutal to box your sister’s ears and knock your brother down just because they contradicted you; and I think so,” said Miss Lane, quietly.
“But it was about you. It was because they wouldn’t tell me where you were, and wouldn’t let me see you home.”
“That doesn’t make any difference.”
This answer was a blow. Miss Lane was the first woman who had ever excited in him any but the most fleeting admiration. He looked upon women as a nuisance in the hunting-field and a positive danger at a battue[6], pretty things whose society at any sort of gathering gave one more trouble than it was worth, and who ought accordingly to feel deeply grateful for any admiration that might be cast to them. Of course this applied only to his equals; with women of a lower rank he was at his ease; and it was a current prophecy that he would be a bachelor till he was forty-five, and then marry his cook. So he looked down at Miss Lane in amazement without speaking, when she thus candidly stated that his admiration “didn’t make any difference.”
“Then you hate me, I see,” said he, at last, deeply hurt and offended.
“Hate you? No; indeed I don’t, Mr. Braithwaite!” she answered, rising.
It had only just dawned upon her that his unusually restless manner and his flushed face were the result of anything but his natural awkwardness, and she was anxious to cut the interview short, for fear any of the Mainwarings should pass—they would perhaps not even believe she had met him by accident.
“Then why do you want to run away from me? I may be a brute; but I won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, no; I am not afraid of that!” said she, her face breaking into the bright, child-like smile that made her so charming to him. “But it is really time for me to go in.”
She held out her hand; but he did not seem to see it. He was positively shaking with nervousness, preparing for a bold stroke.
“Won’t you shake hands, or have I offended you too deeply?” she asked, with simple, smiling coquetry.
Harry jerked his head suddenly down to her upturned face, and kissed her. George, who was observing this scene, watched for the girl’s start, listened for the scream.
But there was neither. She remained quite still, without a sound but a short, quick sob that George was too far off to hear, and he could only see that she bent her head, without being able to catch the expression of her face. He watched a moment longer, then, with a curious look of cynical surprise, turned and sauntered back to the Grange.
But Harry was near enough to know better. He saw the color leave her cheeks and her very lips, and he knew that his impertinence had made her dumb and still with horror. Then the tears began to gather in her eyes; she stooped to feel blindly for the book she had dropped, then turned her back upon him without a word.
In a moment he was mad with remorse.
“Miss Lane!” said he huskily; but she took no notice, and began to walk away.
All his better instincts were aroused, and moved him to words less boorish than usual.
“Miss Lane,” he repeated, “I would give my right hand to undo my impertinence or to make you forget it! Upon my soul, you cannot hate me for it as much as I hate myself! Won’t you—won’t you just look at me? Only just let me see you look again as you looked before—even if you don’t speak. Good heavens, you look like stone!”
But she shook her head without looking up.
“Go away, please,” was all she said, in a voice from which the bright ring had gone.
Harry was sobbing himself.
