CHAPTER XV.
The news of her husband’s illness had fallen like a knell on Annie’s ears; for in a moment she saw that the bright vision of pleasure and satisfied ambition which Aubrey’s words about a London engagement in the same theater with him had called up could not be indulged in, except at the sacrifice of an unmistakable duty. It was her husband who lay ill, neglected and solitary. For one moment she tried to stifle conscience by saying to herself that she did not know where he was; but then she felt ashamed of the flimsy excuse, for she could not doubt that he was at Garstone Grange. Aubrey had said that it was on Wednesday night that the accident had happened to him, and it was on Wednesday night that she herself had seen and even touched him in the streets of Beckham. She must go to him, and at once, before Aubrey could guess her secret, before she herself, in an unguarded moment, should let him know how much this separation would cost her. She dared not trust herself to think what a great part of the fact of his being engaged at the same theater had had in her joy at the prospect of playing again in London; it was a dangerous subject, and she shunned it instinctively. She tried to keep her thoughts fixed on this one simple idea—she must go to Garstone, nurse her husband through his illness, bear his brutal temper and thankless snubs as best she might, and then slip back quietly into her free stage life once more, taking her chance of getting a town engagement.
So, on the morning after her talk with Aubrey, she got the manager to cancel the rest of her engagement, and, having packed her trunk the night before, she left for Beckham within an hour of his releasing her. She looked restlessly and eagerly from the windows of the cab as she drove to the station “to see if any of the company were about.” At last she caught sight of Aubrey Cooke going down a street, with his back to the cab, therefore so that he could not see her; and after that she looked out no more, but sat with burning cheeks and her eyes fixed on the front seat of the cab, all curiosity and interest gone out of her.
She got to Beckham at three o’clock in the afternoon, and drove straight to the Grange, which she reached before the dark November day had closed. To her surprise, the man-servant who opened the door recognized her at once.
To her questions he replied that Mr. Harold was being nursed by the housekeeper, that Lady Braithwaite and Mr. Stephen were abroad, Sir George was in town, Mr. Wilfred in Leicestershire, and Mr. William somewhere—he did not know where—“studying.”
Annie then asked to see the housekeeper, and learned from her that Harry’s accident was indeed as serious as Aubrey Cooke’s words had implied. He had slipped as he was getting into the dog-cart, one night after supping with some friends in Beckham—Annie happened to know something about those friends—and the wheel had passed over him and broken his left arm, besides inflicting other less serious injuries; he had not yet quite recovered from another illness, and had been disregarding his doctor’s orders. After being taken to a surgeon by the gentleman who was with him, to have his arm set, he had insisted on being driven back home to the Grange at five o’clock in the morning. The housekeeper continued that he had then, contrary to the advice she had ventured to give him, insisted upon drinking brandy in the billiard-room; that she had waited about, not daring to go in and speak to him again, until she heard a fall and a groan, and, running in, had found that he had fallen and again displaced his broken arm. She had got him to bed with the help of the men-servants and sent for the doctor; but no skill could prevent inflammation of the wounded limb, and he was now lying in a high fever and could recognize no one.
“I would strongly advise you not to see him, ma’am, until he is quieter. He is very violent, and he uses dreadful language.”
“I don’t suppose he says anything worse than what I have heard him say when he was in full possession of his senses, Mrs. Stanley,” said Annie, quietly. “It is not fair that all the care of nursing my husband should fall upon you; so, if you please, I will go to him now.”
Mrs. Stanley led the way to the room to which they had carried him—not his own, but a larger and more convenient one. She drew the arm of the young wife through her own as they entered, for Annie had grown very white and was shaking from head to foot when her husband’s voice, speaking disjointedly to an imaginary listener, met her ear. She recovered her self-command before venturing to look at him; but, however strong her emotion might have been, it would not have affected him. He took no notice of her presence; his wide-open eyes did not even see her.
Annie did not give way again; but from that hour she took her place by his bedside alternately with Mrs. Stanley, listening to idle babblings of his useless vicious life, to invectives against the carelessness of grooms, the meanness of his brother George, the “airs Sue gave herself.” But there was never one word of herself; she had passed out of his life; been forgotten, as if those few months of their married life had never been. Only once did he refer to her, and that was not to Annie, his wife, but to Miss Lane of Garstone Grange.