VI
THE FATAL PARAGRAPH
A TRAGEDY
It is scarcely possible that many women have led a more dull, monotonous, miserable life than Annie Fleude; actual want, and the real nip of actual poverty, with some variety and excitement, would have been preferable! All her days since she left school—and she was now thirty—had been dedicated to querulous old people. Her uncle, a paralytic, who lived at Camberwell—in a gloomy, semi-detached house overlooking a damp garden—had engrossed the entire summer of her youth. Her stagnant existence had been narrowed to the routine of the household, and the only breaks she enjoyed were an occasional Sunday School Treat, a Magic Lantern Lecture, or a Summer Sale!
When Mr. Jonas Fleude died he left his niece thirty pounds a year, and figuratively handed her on to his sister, Mrs. Pyzer, a deaf old lady residing in the Midlands, and here, if possible, Annie’s case was worse—she had jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire!
The locality in which Mrs. Pyzer resided was neither town, village, nor country, but combined all the drawbacks, and none of the advantages, of the three. Battsbridge was a collection of houses near a cross-road in Flatshire. These had been built in the immediate vicinity of a once celebrated posting inn—a hostelry of no little importance in the old coaching days. It was situated on the great North Road—cautiously aloof from the temptations of a market town—capable of accommodating many guests, and its stables received one hundred and fifty horses. But time and the railway had brought changes, and diverted the traffic elsewhere. The stables fell into ruins, the inn was turned into six cottages, and the inn’s parasites alone remained!—four substantial detached houses of the Georgian period, red-faced, ugly, and close to the road, with little mean enclosures, flagged paths in front, and large straggling gardens at the rear. They were of different sizes and ages, but were all at the same side of the highway, facing north, and resembled substantial suburban residences which had ventured into the country—and gone astray!
Besides these houses, Battsbridge boasted a large forge and a tiny post-office—where sweets, tobacco, and stationery were sold. The parish church was two miles by road—and one mile across the fields and stiles. The nearest town and railway-station was four miles distant along a dreary, monotonous stretch of the great North Road. Here, at Idleford, a fine old county town, were shops, a market square, a town hall, two churches, and a considerable railway-station. It was one of Ann Fleude’s few relaxations to plod to this station, buy a paper or two from the tempting bookstall, watch the passengers depart and arrive, and witness the great Scotch expresses, with their huge green engines, thunder by. She often lingered for the best part of an hour (there was nothing attractive awaiting her at home), solaced herself with refreshment-room tea and buns, and boldly pretended that she was expecting the arrival of a friend! These expeditions to Idleford station were her gala days—think of it! Her aunt, Mrs. Pyzer, was ill-tempered, tyrannical, rheumatic, and deaf. Her two servants, ancient retainers, were elderly women settled in their ways; the rooms were low and dark, and held a perpetual atmosphere of mouldy hay. No sun ever entered them, and with the consent of Mrs. Pyzer and her servants—no air. The furniture dated from the epoch of the old lady’s marriage—when black horsehair and solid mahogany was the rage; the beds were four-posters, with bolsters and mattresses stuffed with rank and noisome feathers of fabulous age: the whole character of the house was to correspond—nothing young or modern was ever to be found within it. Its mistress objected to new-fangled ways, she disliked cut flowers, pet animals, or even birds, and lived apparently in a world of her own—the past.
Mrs. Pyzer did not appear till lunch-time, and then she was always accompanied by shawls, cushions, and her ear-trumpet. Her food consisted of mince and milk puddings; her drink was hot brandy and water. She subscribed to the parish magazine, a local weekly paper, and some missionary journals, but set her face sternly against novels, cards and callers. The oldest and (in her own opinion) most respected residence of Battsbridge, she believed that she had done a deed of remarkable benevolence in giving a home to her niece Annie, whom she looked upon as a mere child—but nevertheless expected her to share the tastes of a woman who was eighty-one last birthday.
Mr. Jones, the doctor, and his wife, resided at Battsbridge, also two faded old sisters, the Misses Horn-Finch, and in the largest and most important of the four houses dwelt the widow of a late rector, a certain Mrs. Brandon, who considered herself, like her abode, to be vastly superior to her neighbours. She owned the largest garden, also a thatched arbour, and a greenhouse, kept three maids, and was visited by the County; and it was to Mrs. Brandon that Annie Fleude looked for all her little pleasures. Now and then she lent her a book—a new novel—or invited her to tea, or took her out driving, when she hired a brougham from Idleford, and made a few calls (leaving Annie meanwhile sitting in the carriage). Annie was not acquainted with the resident gentry; indeed, it was no secret that her father had been a bankrupt auctioneer—though Mrs. Pyzer, his sister, had married far above her deserts, a retired Major from a West Indian regiment, and always spoke of herself as “a Military Lady.”
Annie’s days were all precisely alike—week after week—month after month—year after year. As soon as she had breakfasted, she dusted the drawing-room, did some sewing and mending, and watered the plants in the frame. They dined at three o’clock; when she had settled her aunt, told her all the news, and left her to doze, she went forth on the household messages, such as to a farm for eggs and butter, to a cottager for chickens, or for a solitary aimless walk along the country road; then came seven o’clock tea, a game of backgammon, a bowl of bread and milk, and to bed—and the next morning da capo.
Annie Fleude had endured this existence for three weary years, notwithstanding determined and desperate efforts to effect a release. She walked to church twice on Sundays, and in all weathers, and taught laboriously in the Sunday-school, until the announcement of the curate’s marriage—the wretch had been secretly engaged for years! Then there was the Rector, a hale, rosy-cheeked old gentleman of seventy—he was undoubtedly flattered by her profound interest in his sermons; he lent her books, she knitted him socks, accepted his invitation to tea, and to see his roses; all was going admirably, till some wicked interfering person sounded a note of alarm, and one of his married daughters appeared upon the scene—so that chance of escape was barred! There was a yearly subscription ball in Idleford. To this Miss Fleude went once, wearing a new black net gown, her hair beautifully dressed, and chaperoned by the doctor’s wife—but alas, she was a wallflower! No one noticed her, or “requested the pleasure of a dance,” except the young man from the station bookstall, and the chemist’s assistant.