One morning at breakfast he threw a letter in a shame-faced sort of way across to his wife. It was from George, and contained a renewal of his offer to receive them at the Grange. The poor little wife had reason to dread this arrangement now, for Lady Braithwaite and Lilian, both of whom disliked her, the one for receiving Colonel Richardson and the other for dismissing him, were at the old home at Garstone. She read the letter and gave it back.
“Are you going to accept?” she asked simply.
“Well, I don’t see what else there is to be done,” he answered, without looking at her. “It is only fair that he should help us, and perhaps it is true that he can’t spare enough just now to give me my due and let me go. We might go there for a month and try it. There would be some shooting now and some hunting later on, at any rate. And you would be more comfortable with Lil and mother than here by yourself, I’m sure.”
Annie did not try to undeceive him on that point. She saw, by the eagerness with which he alluded to the country pleasures he was going back to, that nothing she could say would alter his determination to accept his brother’s offer. She had known it must come to this, so she heard his decision quietly, and prepared with a heavy heart to go back to Garstone, a place full of bitter memories to her, for it was there she had been dismissed without a kind word by the cold Mainwarings, and it was there she had met her husband, who was, she felt already, to be a burden crushing down her life and robbing her of the career she had been fond of picturing to herself. For Annie was too high-principled a girl to try to undo her own act by leaving the three-months-wedded husband who already neglected and, in fact, bored her. She was useful to him in a way; he was a trifle more orderly in his mode of life since his marriage; she wrote his letters or told him what to say and how to spell the words. She did not care enough about him to put any irksome restraint upon him, having seen early that her reproaches only made him drink more and spend more of his time with his inferiors; but, on the whole, her influence improved his habits somewhat. She said to herself, with a bitter smile, that, by marrying, she had taken only a rather harder situation as governess, with none of the comforts of home and a precarious salary. She packed up her things, gloomily, for their journey, and her heart sunk lower and lower as they neared its end.
Harry, on the contrary, grew more and more excited and light-hearted as the train approached Beckham. His happiness at finding himself again on the way to his beloved dogs and horses found vent in a burst of affection. He bounced into the seat next to his wife at the last stopping station but one, when, two passengers having got out, they were left alone in the carriage. Then he treated her to a rough embrace.
“Aren’t you glad to have left that smoky hole behind you and come into the air again—eh, Annie?”
But Annie was not, and a furtive tear told him so. He kissed her pretty little face that the yachting trip had bronzed.
“Don’t cry, dear. Do you remember our last journey on this line, Annie, when you were so frightened because I jumped in, and wanted me to get out at the next station? And what a long time it was before I could make you leave off crying! But you have nothing to cry about now, you know, and I want you to look your best when we get to the station, that everybody may say what a pretty little wife I’ve brought home.”
But there was nothing in this speech soothing to Annie, who looked anything but her best when they did steam into Beckham station. Sir George was on the platform to meet them, with a dog-cart waiting outside, and Harry felt disgusted and angry with his wife, when logically he should have felt glad, as he saw by his brother’s first glance at her that he thought her appearance much changed for the worse. George drove, and Annie sat beside him, while Harry got up behind with the groom. She was not very entertaining to-day, though she tried hard to be so; but there was something pathetic to George in her attempts to be lively, and the very tones of her soft voice had a charm in themselves to him, so that he was touched, and listened to her with a quiet kindliness in his manner which made much greater impression upon her than the compliments and tender tones he had used to her before her marriage.
“I hope you don’t so very much mind having to come and live at the Grange. We will all try to make you happy,” he took the opportunity of saying when Harry’s voice, in hot argument with the groom, rose loudly enough to drown the tête-à-tête in front.