A vagrant wife

by Florence Warden

But she little thought how shrewd a guess she had made.

In a wistful and restless state of mind she went back to the apartments in which her husband had found her. What few friends she had began to find her out in the course of the next few days, and to call upon her and insist upon her coming to see them and receive congratulations upon her success in “Nathalie.”

This recognition of her talent was very pleasant; but it just missed being the supreme joy she had expected it to be; and, in searching for the reason of this slight disappointment, it occurred to her that there was one person who ought to have hastened forward with the rest of her acquaintance to offer her the natural matter-of-course homage of a few complimentary words upon the hit she had made in the new piece. This person was Aubrey Cooke.

She had not seen him since that unlucky meeting with her husband; and, though, in the few bright busy days she had passed with Harry, she had had little time for unpleasant reflections of any kind, she had by no means forgotten the friend whose visits and amusing talk had been the one compensation for the dullness of her home-life in London before Harry’s inopportune appearance.

Why did he not come to see her again, and give her an opportunity of explaining her silence concerning her marriage? He had let fall no word, since the day of her arrival in town, when she had laughed off his sentiment, to let her think that it mattered to him whether she was under any engagement or not. Was he irretrievably offended? If he felt wounded by her want of confidence, was it not her duty to seek him out herself and offer some apology, rather than lose a friend by proud silence?

Annie felt so entirely heart-free that no further scruple about Harry’s jealousy deterred her from taking such a step. Since her husband disapproved of it, she would tell Aubrey herself that she must not receive him so often; and, now that her other friends and acquaintances were flocking round her, she felt that she was not so entirely dependent upon him for companionship. So she wrote a note to him, as she had often done before, asking him to meet her at the “Stores,” and help her with her shopping. She did not expect an answer, for these little civilly entreating notes he always took as commands, and she knew he would look upon it as an appointment. So, when she arrived at the “Stores” the next day, she was not at all surprised, or in any way agitated to find him there waiting for her.

But she had been but very few minutes in his society before she noticed that there was a change in his manner toward her. She had been much relieved to see that, when they first met, there was no offended dignity in his manner, no coldness in his tone; but now she began to perceive that there was even unnecessary tenderness in his voice when he spoke to her, and that he drew her hand through his arm with a gentle pressure which he had never attempted before, and when he asked her to have some strawberries, he called her “darling.” The next moment he saw that he had gone too far, and turned off his unlucky speech very cleverly; but Annie felt frightened, and, while he gave her no further loophole for offense, she was constrained in her manner and dismissed him as soon as she could.

She knew what she had done, that the discovery of her deceit about her marriage had changed Aubrey Cooke’s estimate of her, and that he had received this last note, written, as he must have found out, after the departure of her husband, in a very different spirit from the frank camaraderie with which he had responded to her former appeals to him to come and help her with her marketing. She knew that she had deserved this severe wound to her self-respect, and she went home miserable and ashamed.

But this difficulty was not yet over. At the theater a beautiful bouquet was brought to her with a note—a lover-like note—from Aubrey. She tore up the note, and gave the flowers to the dresser. But on the following night she received another bouquet, another note; and on the third night, this attention having been again repeated, she got a little teased by one of her fellow-actors, who knew Aubrey and had seen other bouquets of his and other notes.

She went home mad with shame and anger, and wrote Aubrey a curt note, asking him to call upon her; and when the next day the time she had appointed came and she heard his well-known tread upon the stairs, she felt that her whole frame was shaking violently, and that she would have hard work to receive him with calmness.