Notwithstanding Part 42

In later years Annette remembered little of the days that pa.s.sed while Roger was in France. They ought to have been terrible days, days of suspense and foreboding, but they were not. Her mind was at rest. It had long oppressed her that her two best friends, Roger and Janey, were in ignorance of certain facts about her which their friendship for her and their trust in her gave them a right to know. With a sinking of the heart, she said to herself, "They know now." But that was easier to bear than "They ought to know."

If she had hoped for a letter from Roger none came, but I hardly think she was so foolish as to hope it.

Janey had been to see her, had climbed up to her little attic, and had stretched out her arms to her. And Annette and she had held each other closely, and looked into each other's eyes, and kissed each other in silence. No word pa.s.sed between them, and then Janey had gone away again. The remembrance of that wordless embrace lay heavy on Janey's sore heart. Annette, pallid and worn, had blamed no one, had made no excuse for herself. How she had misjudged Annette!--she, her friend.

But if Annette felt relief about Roger and Janey, the thought of the aunts brought a pang with it, especially since Mrs. Stoddart's visit.

They had reached the state of nerves when the sweeps are an event, a broken window-cord an occasion for fort.i.tude, a patch of damp on the ceiling a disaster. They would be wounded to the quick in their pride and in their affection if any scandal attached to her name; for they had become fond of her since she had devoted herself to them. While she had been as a young girl a claim on their time and attention they had not cared much about her, but now she was indispensable to them, and she who formerly could do nothing right could now hardly do anything wrong. Oh!

why had she concealed anything from them in the first instance? Why had she allowed kind, clever Mrs. Stoddart to judge for her what was right when she ought to have followed her own instinct of telling them, before they had come to lean upon her? "Mrs. Stoddart only thought of me,"

Annette said to herself. "She never considered the aunts at all," which was about the truth.

Their whole happiness would be destroyed, the even tenor of their lives broken up. Aunt Maria often talked as if she had plumbed the greatest depths to which human nature can sink. Aunt Harriet had more than hinted that many dark and even improper problems had been unravelled in tears beside her couch. But Annette knew very well that these utterances were purely academic and had no connection with anything real, indicating only the anxious desire of middle age, half conscious that it is in a backwater, to impress on itself and others that--to use its own pathetic phrase--it is "keeping in touch with life."

The aunts must leave Riff, and quickly. Mrs. Stoddart was right. Annette realized that their lives could be reconstructed like other mechanisms: taken down like an iron building and put up elsewhere. They had struck no root in Riff as she herself had done. Aunt Harriet had always had a leaning towards Bournemouth. No doubt they could easily form there another little circle where they would be admired and appreciated. There must be the equivalent of Canon Wetherby wherever one went. Yes, they must leave Riff. Fortunately, both aunts had only consented, much against the grain, to live in the country on account of their sister's health; both lamented that they were cut off from congenial literary society; both frequently regretted the move. She would have no difficulty in persuading them to leave Riff, for already she had had to exercise a certain amount of persuasion to induce them to remain. She must prepare their minds without delay.

For once, Fortune favoured her.

Aunt Harriet did not come down to breakfast, and the meal was, in consequence, one of the pleasantest of the day, in spite of the fact that Aunt Maria was generally oppressed with the thought of the morning's work which was hanging over her. She was unhappy and irritable if she did not work, and pessimistic as to the quality of what she had written if she did work. But Aunt Harriet had a knack of occasionally trailing in untoileted in her dressing-gown, without her _toupee_, during breakfast, ostensibly in order to impart interesting items of news culled from her morning letters, but in reality to glean up any small sc.r.a.ps of information in the voluminous correspondence of her sister. She did so the morning after Mrs. Stoddart's visit, carrying in one hand her air-cushion, and with the other holding out a card to Aunt Maria, sitting bolt upright, neatly groomed, self-respecting, behind her silver teapot.

"Oh, Maria! See what we miss by living in the country."

Aunt Maria adjusted her pince-nez and inspected the card.

"Mission to the women of the Zambesi! H'm! H'm!"

"The Bishop will speak himself," almost wailed Aunt Harriet. "Don't you see it, Maria? 'Will address the meeting.' Our own dear Bishop!"

"If you are alluding to the Bishop of Booleywoggah, you never went to the previous meetings of the Society when we were in London."

"Could I help that?" said Aunt Harriet, much wounded. "Really, you sometimes speak, Maria, as if I had not a weak spine, and could move about as I liked. No one was more active than I was before I was struck down, and I suppost it is only natural that I should miss the _va et vient_, the movement, the clash of wits of London. I never have complained,--I never do complain,--but I'm completely buried here, and that's the truth."

"We came here on Catherine's account," said Aunt Maria. "No one regretted the move more than I did. Except Mr. Stirling, there is no one I really care to a.s.sociate with down here." "Why remain, then," said Annette, "if none of us like it?"

Both the aunts stared at her aghast.

"Leave Red Riff!" said Aunt Maria, as if it had been suggested that she should leave this planet altogether.

"Why, Annette," said Aunt Harriet, with dignity, "of course we should not think of doing such a selfish thing, now we have you to think of--at least, I speak for myself. You love the country. It suits you. You are not intellectual, not like us pa.s.sionately absorbed in the problems of the day. You have your little _milieu_, and your little innocent local interests--the choir, the Sunday school, your friends the Miss Blinketts, the Manvers, the Blacks. It would be too cruel to uproot you now, and I for one should never consent to it."

"Aren't you happy here, Annette, that you wish to move?" said Aunt Maria dryly.

It slid through Annette's mind that she understood why Aunt Maria complained that few of her friends had remained loyal to her. She looked straight in front of her. There was a perceptible pause before she spoke again.

"I have been happy here, but I should not like Red Riff as a permanency."

"Oh! my dear love," said Aunt Harriet, suddenly lurching from her chair and kneeling down beside Annette, while the little air-cushion ran with unusual vigour into the middle of the room, and then subsided with equal suddenness on the floor. "I feared this. I have seen it coming. Men are like that, even the clergy--I may say more especially the clergy. They know not what they do, or what a fragile thing a young girl's heart is.

But are you not giving way to despair too early in the day? Don't you agree with me, Maria? This may be only the night of sorrow. Joy may come in the morning."

Annette could not help smiling. She raised her aunt, retrieved the air-cushion, replaced her upon it, and said--

"You are making a mistake. I am not--interested in Mr. Black."

"I never thought for a moment you were," said Aunt Maria bluntly. "Mr.

Black is all very well--a most estimable person, I have no doubt. But I don't see why you are in such a hurry to leave Riff."

"You both want to go, and so do I. As we all three wish to go, why stay?"

"Personally, I am in no hurry to go till I have finished _The Silver Cross_," said Aunt Maria.

"No one misses the stimulus of cultivated society more than I do, but I always feel London life, with its large demands upon one, somewhat of a strain when I am composing. And the seclusion of the country is certainly conducive to work."

"And as for myself," said Aunt Harriet, with dignity, "I would not willingly place a great distance between myself and dear Cathie's grave." Aunt Maria and Annette winced. "And I'm sure I don't know who is wanting to leave Riff if it isn't you, Maria. Haven't I just said that I never do complain? Have I ever complained? And there is no doubt, delicate as I am, I _am_ the better for the country air." Aunt Harriet was subsiding into tears and a handkerchief. "Sea only nine miles off--crow flies--fresh cream, new-laid eggs, more colour--Canon Wetherby noticed it. He said, 'Some one's looking well.' And nearly a pound gained since last weighed. And now all this talk about leaving, and putting it on me as if it was my suggestion."

"It was mine," said Annette cheerfully, with the dreadful knowledge which is mercifully only the outcome of affection. "I retract it. After all, why should you both leave Riff if you like living here? Let us each go on our way, and do what suits us best. You must both stay, and I will go."

There was a dead silence. The two aunts looked aghast at Annette, and she saw, almost with shame, how entirely she had the whip hand. Their dependence on her was too complete.

"I don't understand this sudden change on your part," said Aunt Maria at last. "Is it only a preamble to the fact that you intend to leave us a second time?"

"Not if you live in London," said Annette firmly, "or--Bournemouth; but I don't care for the country all the year round, and I would prefer to move before the winter. I'm rather afraid of the effect the snow might have on me." Aunt Harriet looked terrified. "I believe it lies very deep, feet deep, all over Lowshire. Mrs. Stoddart has asked me to winter with her in London, so perhaps I had better write and tell her I will do so. And now I must go and order dinner."

She got up and left the room, leaving her two aunts staring as blankly at each other as after their sister's funeral.

"Maria," said Aunt Harriet in a hollow voice, "we have no knowledge of the effect of wide areas of snow upon my const.i.tution."

"And so that was what Mrs. Stoddart came over about yesterday?" said Aunt Maria. "She wants to get Annette away from us, and make her act as unpaid companion to her. I must say it is fairly barefaced. Annette's place is with us until she marries, and if it is necessary I shall inform Mrs. Stoddart of that fact. At the same time, I have had it in my mind for some time past that it might be advisable to shut up this house for the winter months and take one in London."

CHAPTER XLII

"There are seasons in human affairs when qualities, fit enough to conduct the common business of life, are feeble and useless, when men must trust to emotion for that safety which reason at such times can never give."--SYDNEY SMITH.

Annette had been waked early by two young swallows which had flown into her room, and had circled swiftly round it with sharp, ecstatic cries, and then had sped out again into the dawn.

She dressed, and went noiselessly into the garden, and then wandered into the long meadows that stretched in front of the house. The low slanting sunshine was piercing the mist which moved slowly along the ground, and curled up into the windless air like smoke. The dew was on everything. She wondered the blades of gra.s.s could each bear such a burden of it. Every spider's web in the hedgerow, and what numbers there seemed, all of a sudden had become a glistening silver-beaded pocket.

Surely no fly, however heedless, would fly therein. And everywhere the yellow tips of the groundsel had expanded into tiny white fluffy b.a.l.l.s of down, strewing the empty fields, floating with the floating mist.

But though it was early, the little world of Riff was astir. In the distance she could hear the throb of the mill, and close at hand across the lane two great yellow horses were solemnly pacing an empty clover-field, accompanied by much jingling of machinery and a boyish whistle. Men with long rakes were drawing the weeds into heaps, and wreaths of smoke mingled with the mist. The thin fires leaped and crackled, the pale flames hardly wavering in the still, sunny air.

Instinctively Annette's steps turned towards the sound of the mill. She crossed the ford by the white stepping-stones, dislodging a colony of ducks preening themselves upon the biggest stone, and followed the willow-edged stream to the mill.

There had been rain in the night, and the little Rieben chafed and girded against the mill-race.

She watched it, as a year ago she had watched the Seine chafe against its great stone bastions. The past rose before her at the sight and sound of the water, and the crinkling and circling of the eddies of yellow foam.

How unendurable her life had seemed to her on that day! And now to-day life was valueless. Once again it had been shattered like gla.s.s. She had been cast forth then. Now she was cast forth once more. She had made herself a little niche, crept into a crevice where she had thought no angel with a flaming sword would find her and drive her out. But she was being driven out once more into the wilderness. She had no abiding city anywhere.