| Quisque suos patimer manes. | ||
| AENEID, vi. | ||
ANNETTE was soon absorbed into the household. Mrs. Folyat never could keep any information to herself, and Gertrude and Mary quickly made Annette feel that she was in disgrace and saddled her with their domestic duties. Mary devoted herself entirely to music, rehearsing for concerts, and practising with amateur quartettes, and Gertrude gave all her time to her betrothed. She met him every day at his office and walked home with him, unless they were going to the theatre. Then they would dine out, Bennett having gone without his mid-day meal in order to have money enough. They had the whole of Sunday together always. He would accompany her to early celebration at St. Paul’s, breakfast at Fern Square, go to St. Saviour’s morning and evening, and spend the afternoon in the Park, for she had given up her Sunday-school class.
Their engagement was not yet announced, and he had not told his family, nor had Gertrude met any of his relations. Bennett’s face had grown more and more melancholy, and Gertrude had not spoken to Minna for weeks because, whenever she brought her lover to the house, Minna persisted in singing:
The pain that is all but a pleasure we’ll change
For the pleasure that’s all but pain,
And never, oh, never this heart will range
From that old, old love again.
Annette thought Bennett very handsome, and she was greatly impressed by his silence and tragic mien. She told herself that he must be enormously in love with Gertrude since his emotions weighed upon him so heavily, and she thought Minna odious for making fun of him. She was very happy herself. She liked doing the housework and being useful to the others, and though her mother and sister were rather tyrannical with her, she had discovered a warm corner in her father’s heart in which to take refuge. Indeed her return had made a great difference to Francis. He sought her company and talked intimately with her and teased her, and showed her a side of himself that was hidden from the others. He would take her for long walks, and to see the queer characters among his poor, and often he would ask her to sit with him in his study while he was working. Sometimes, instead of working he would read aloud to her—Fielding, or Sterne, or the poets, and he would make translations of Italian or French poems, or the odes of Horace for her, and he would tell her that she was being much more use to the world teaching him, who was old enough to learn, than wasting time and her employer’s money in pretending to instruct little girls.
Except with her father and occasionally with Serge Annette never went out and knew nothing of what was happening in the town, and had even no clear idea of its geography. She gave no thought to past or future, and was quite content to go on living in the tranquil present. She reverted to her childish belief that her father was the most wonderful man in the world, with Serge a good second, and if she could have spent her life in ministering to them both she would have been more than satisfied. She was rather afraid and shy of other women, but the helplessness of men appealed to her, and she loved repairing their garments, always so sadly in need of it, and she would darn socks that any other woman would have thrown away. Nobody praised her, and nobody took much account of what she did save only the one little servant, Ada, who adored her.
To Annette the most mysterious and awful person in the house was her brother Frederic. She could make nothing of him. He looked very pale and unwell, but became peevish under any comment on his appearance, however sympathetic. He was for the most part very silent when he was at home, though that was not often, but suddenly he would break into the wildest spirits and chatter and talk nonsense and laugh a great deal, and make fun of his mother and then be very affectionate with her, and it would seem that of all her children Frederic had the most affection from his mother. He would flatter her and talk about the great riches he was going to make and the wonderful lady he was going to marry, the daughter of a rich client, of whose estate he would be appointed trustee—when he had his own office. That was always the proviso—when he had his own office, and Annette was given to understand that it would be very soon, and then if there was one man more important than any other in the town, that man would be Frederic. Mrs. Folyat would listen excitedly to all this and shake her ringlets, and say to him:
“My dear, my dear, you must look after the girls.”
“Of course,” Frederic would respond, “rich husbands all round.”
“But they must be gentlemen.”