It May Be True Volume Iii Part 30

"Here I am!" she said, "Did you expect to see me? Did you think I should come to say good-bye?"

"How should I?" answered Amy, "I never knew you were going to-day, and I am sorry to see you cloaked for your journey."

"And so am I; but Tom would not rest quiet without me any longer, so dear, I must go; the pony chaise will be round directly, and yet I should have liked to have sat with you for an hour or so before leaving."

"Then why did you put off coming to see me until the last moment, Anne?"

"I did not know I was going until half an hour ago. How is that wretched Frances? Will you say I had not time to stay and see her; I should so hate--although, mind, I pity her with all my heart,--giving her a sisterly embrace."

"But," said Amy, "What occasion is there for such a warm farewell?"

"Ah! thereby hangs a tale. The fact is I don't wish to see Frances Strickland."

"Poor girl! She has suffered so much."

"I wonder you can find it in your heart to pity her; but you were always an angel of goodness."

"You are wrong, Anne," sighed Amy, "and I think you should go and see Miss Strickland."

"You are evidently in the dark, Amy; I thought Julia would have written to you, and told you, as--she has me,--that she has been so stupid, so foolish, as to engage herself to cousin Alfred, Frances' brother. Is it not tiresome of her?"

"But the marriage will scarcely affect you, Anne?"

"Oh, but it will, though; for I had made up my mind Julia would be an old maid; she always said she would, and come some day and look after my children, if I ever have any," said Anne, blushing; "for I am sure I should puzzle to know how to dress them, much less understand how to manage them. Mamma says Aunt Mary--Mrs. Strickland--is very angry about the marriage, so I really do think Julia ought to give it up."

"Why does your Aunt dislike it?"

"Because Julia is penniless and a n.o.body; meaning, I suppose, that Alfred should marry some high born girl, who would, I have no doubt, snub him in the end. But then it would be so nice for Aunt to say, 'My daughter-in-law, Lady so-and-so-that was,' or the Earl of _somebody_, my son's father-in-law. Instead of which she will only have to recall the plain and _poor_ Miss Bennet, that was. Fancy Alfred coming to stay with us in our nutsh.e.l.l!"

"I never thought Mr. Strickland gave himself airs," replied Amy.

"Nor does he. But it is disagreeable to see a man sitting over the fire all day; or in summer time basking lazily in the sun."

"But Julia will probably change all that laziness and inaction. She is full of life and work herself. I think _he_ has chosen well."

"Of course _he_ has; but I consider Julia to have sacrificed herself.

And now, do come down and see me off."

Amy put down her work and went.

"I shall see you again soon, Amy dear," said Anne, with tearful eyes, as together they stood on the terrace. "Tom has promised to drive me over some day next week, not entirely for his dear wife's sake though; but because he has taken a great interest in some dreadful sinner in this parish, and she as violent a liking to him. The old rector has given Tom permission to visit her whenever he likes, glad enough, I dare say, to be rid the trouble of it himself. Poor woman! she cannot live long--a breaking up of nature, or something of that sort; but Mrs. Archer knows more about it than I do."

"Anne! Anne! What are you talking about?" asked her husband, catching a word here and there, of her rambling speech. "Come! jump in, the pony is quite impatient to be off."

"And so is his master," laughed Anne; "we shall drive off in grand style, and then dilly-dally for half-an-hour, or more, at the turnpike, while he chats to his heart's content with Jane; that's the name of his new friend, dear. There, I really must say good-bye, or perhaps Tom may go without me." And almost smothering Amy with kisses she sprang down the steps and in another moment was seated by her husband, and they drove off.

A few hours after, Mrs. Elrington arrived at the Hall; but as she had truly said, long ago, it was pain and grief to her to look on Mrs.

Linchmore's face again; and she leant heavily on Mr. Linchmore's arm, as she pa.s.sed from the carriage.

She paused a moment, as he would have led her into the drawing-room to his wife; and pointing through the half-open door, said simply, "We meet as strangers."

And so they did--the once adopted daughter and fondly-loved mother; but it cost them _both_ an effort; for while Mrs. Elrington's hand trembled and shook like an aspen on the top of the stick with which she steadied her footsteps, Mr. Linchmore thought he had never seen his wife look more proudly beautiful and magnificent.

Anne's letter represented Amy as heart-broken, not only with the loss of her child, but sorrow stricken with the anxiety caused by the fresh trial of her husband's illness. Anne said not a word of the _living_ grief consuming her heart, but Mrs. Elrington had not been many days at Brampton ere she suspected it; that pale, sweet anxious face, so thin and care-worn, told its own tale, with the faltering, uncertain step; the mournful yet loving way with which she tended her husband now rapidly approaching convalescence. How she antic.i.p.ated his every wish.

Yet there was a hesitation, an uncertainty about it, all too evident to a watchful eye; it seemed as though with her anxiety to please, there was an evident fear of displeasing. Surely the wife needed the most care and tenderness now: the first she had, but the latter, where was that?

Where the nameless attentions and thousand loving words her husband might speak?

Mrs. Elrington saw with sorrow the coldness, and estrangement, that had crept between the two. Was that fair young wife so recently afflicted--so loving, so doubly bereaved at heart--to blame? or Robert?

Mrs. Elrington loved Amy, and could not sit silently by without risking something to mend matters, so one day, when she and Robert were alone, she spoke.

"I trust you are feeling stronger this morning, Mr. Vavasour?"

"Thank you. Yes, I am I believe, mending apace."

"I am glad of it, as I think your wife needs change, she is looking far from well; the sooner you take her home the better."

"Bertie's death was a bitter trial; and she felt it deeply."

"Bitter, indeed, it must have been, to have changed her so utterly. She is greatly altered since her marriage."

Robert Vavasour sighed.

"You are right," he replied. "I myself see the change, but without the power to remedy it now."

"How so?" she asked.

"You say altered since her marriage. It is true; for when Amy married she wilfully shut out from her heart all hopes of happiness."

"You speak in riddles, Mr. Vavasour, which I am totally unable to comprehend."

"I am a rich man, Mrs. Elrington, and that alone might have tempted many a girl, or led her to fancy she loved me."

Mrs. Elrington drew up her head proudly. "But not Amy Neville," she replied, "no amount of wealth would have tempted her to marry a man she did not care for."

"Care for," he repeated bitterly, "caring is not loving."

Mrs. Elrington had arrived at the bottom of the mystery now; he fancied Amy did not love him! Amy who was devoting herself to him day after day, never weary of, but only happy when she was in his sick room, nursing and tending him as few wives would, treated so coldly, giving him all the loving worship of her young heart; while he refused to believe in it, but gloomily hugged the morbid fancy to his heart that she loved him not.

Mrs. Elrington could have smiled at the delusion, if Amy's happiness had not been at stake; as it was she replied gravely, "You are mistaken, Mr. Vavasour, wilfully blind to what is openly apparent to all others who ever see you and your wife together. Why I verily believe Amy worships the very ground you stand on; but I fear no words of mine will convince you of the fact, while the indifference with which you are treating her is well-nigh breaking her heart."

No, Robert Vavasour was not convinced.

"She did not love me when she married me; her oath was false, she--" but no, his pride refused to allow him to tell of her love for another.

"I cannot listen to this," replied Mrs. Elrington, rising, "whatever her love may have been in the days you speak of, I am convinced Amy has never acted falsely towards you since you called her wife; neither do I believe there lives a man who _now_ claims or holds one thought of hers from you. I am an old woman, Mr. Vavasour, and have seen a great deal of sorrow, and one heart broken through the cruelty of another; let not your wife's be so taken from you, but believe in her, trust in her, watch over her as the apple of your eye, for indeed she needs and demands all your love and tenderness; crush not the love that is even now struggling in her heart, at your hardness and neglect, or take care lest you build up a wall that you will find it impossible hereafter to knock down, or when falling, will bury her you love beneath its ruins."

Robert's heart was strangely ill at ease and stirred by these words of Mrs. Elrington's. Perhaps he began to fear that even if his wife loved him not, he _had_ been unnecessarily hard and severe, and pitiless, very pitiless and unloving. Might he not yet succeed in winning her love--the only thing in the wide world that he coveted? But then again, the thought that she had loved another, had cruelly deceived him, when he had loved and trusted her so entirely, was gall and wormwood to him, and turned his heart, when he thought of it, to stone. No; even allowing that she might love him, he could never love her so pa.s.sionately again.

So Vavasour thought, and so men and women have thought, and will think again, as long as the world lasts, and yet, do what they will, the old love _will_ come again, with all its old intensity, overthrowing all their wise and determined resolutions.