“Well, the offence brings with it its own punishment, for here come the contents of the postman’s bag, and so a truce to our sage converse; and you, Miss Annie, must eat your breakfast in meditative silence.”
“Or in perusing what she likes better. Here, my little politician; your eyes are pleading, though your lips are silent,” said Lord Ennerdale, gaily throwing to her a packet of newspapers without opening them.
“You are much too young to be a politician; besides, I hate women to dabble in politics, so give me a better reason for being the first reader of all the papers, or you shall not have them,” interposed Lord St. Clair, keeping firm hold of the packet, which he had caught.
“On my honour, I never read a word of politics,” replied Annie, half playfully, half eagerly, but blushing deeply as she met Lord St. Clair’s penetrative glance. He relinquished them with a half sigh, and bent over his despatches. Silence ensued for several minutes, each seemingly engrossed with his occupation. Lady Emily was the first to move, and after carefully sorting and arranging the flowers Annie had brought her, was about to leave the room.
“Annie, my dear child! what is the matter?” she exclaimed, in a tone which electrified her father and brother, so utterly was it unlike her usually measured accents; and startled out of all stiffness and dignity, she was at the poor girl’s side in an instant. Annie’s cheek, lips, and brow were cold and colourless as marble, and there was such rigid agony imprinted on every feature, that Lady Emily well-nigh shuddered as she gazed. “Speak to me, Annie, love! What is it? Try and speak, dearest; do not look at me with such a gaze,” she continued, as Annie slowly raised her eyes, which were bloodshot and distended, and fixed them on her face; she evidently tried to speak, but only a gasping cry escaped, and that terrible agony was lost for a time in an unconsciousness so deep that it almost seemed of death.
Lord St. Clair stood paralysed, but then he snatched up the fatal paper, and one glance sufficed to tell him all, all that he had suspected, all that for his own happiness he had feared; but he could only think of Annie then, and perceiving how ineffectual were all the usual efforts to restore animation, he threw himself on horseback, and never rested till he had found and dragged back with him the medical attendant of the family, whose skill was finally successful. Annie woke from that blessed relief of insensibility to a consciousness of such fearful suffering, that as she lay in the perfect stillness enjoined by the physician, she felt as if her brain must reel, and fail beneath it. It was not alone the death of him she loved, that the idol of her young affections was lost to her for ever, but it was the horrid nature of his fate which had so appalled her. In the gallant defence of a royal fort he had been left almost alone, all his companions falling around him; severely wounded, and overpowered by numbers, he was taken by the Carlists, dragged to their camp, and twenty-four hours afterwards shot, with other ill-fated men, literally murdered in cold blood. Three times Annie’s eyes had glared on the paragraph, reading again and again the list of the unfortunate men who had thus perished, as if Reginald’s name could not be amongst them; alas! it was there, pre-eminent, from the courage, the youth, and the official rank of the bearer. And in that dreadful stillness the whole scene rose before her, vivid as reality—ghastly figures flitted before her; and then she saw Reginald as they parted; and then full of life and excitement in the field; and then covered with blood and wounds. She seemed to see him bound and kneeling for the fatal stroke, and the shot rung in her ears, clear, sharp, and strangely loud, till she could have shrieked from the bewildering agony: she tried to banish the vision, to escape its influence, but it gained strength, and force, and colouring, and before midnight Lady Emily watched in grief and awe beside the couch where her young cousin lay, and raved in the fearful delirium of a brain fever.
Many weeks elapsed ere Annie could again take her place amongst her family; alternate fever and exhaustion had so prostrated her that her life was more than once despaired of. Had she been aware who it was so constantly and gently tended her, teaching her voice to forget its coldness, her manners its reserve, to soothe and comfort those hours of agony, she would have felt that some simple “deeds indeed could never die;” and that to her own sweetness of temper, and forbearing and active kindness, she owed the blessings of a sympathy and tenderness almost equalling a mother’s. But it was long before she was conscious of anything, or even capable of rousing herself from the lethargic stupor which still lingered even when sense and strength returned. That she sought earnestly to appear the same as usual—to evince how gratefully she felt the kindness lavished on her—to return to her employments, was very evident; but it seemed as if bodily weakness prevented all mental exertion. She shrunk in anguish from the thought that she had betrayed her love, though by neither word nor hint did her companions ever allude to the immediate occasion of her illness.
“Would she but shed tears—but speak her grief,” exclaimed Lord St. Clair to his sister, one day, after vainly endeavouring to excite a smile, “she would suffer less then; but she has never wept since; and before, the most trifling emotion, even of pleasure, would draw tears. Could you but draw forth her confidence—but make her weep. Is there no possible way?”
“I fear none: she shrinks from the slightest approach to the subject. I feel as if I dared not speak poor Reginald’s name.”
Chance, however, did that for which even Lady Emily’s courage failed. Annie was reclining, one morning, in a favourite boudoir, her eyes languidly wandering over the beautiful landscape, which stretched from the window. When last she had noticed it, the trees were bending beneath the weight of their glorious summer dress, and the gayest and brightest flowers were flinging their lavish beauties on the banks of the small but picturesque lake. The scene was still lovely, but it had changed; the trees which still retained foliage were all in the “sere and yellow leaf,” the ground was strewed with fallen leaves, the flowers were all gone, and Nature herself seemed emblematical of the change in Annie’s heart. Lady Emily watched her some time in silence, and then gently drew her attention to some beautiful groups of flowers which she had lately arranged. Annie turned from the window with a heavy sigh, and bent over the flowers; while Lady Emily continued her employments without further notice. She forgot that amongst those groups there was the plant, to find which Annie had rambled over hill and dale that fatal morning. From its extreme rarity and beauty she had placed it alone upon the page; and as Annie gazed upon it, a rush of feeling of the bright, sweet memories which had thronged her mind during that solitary ramble came back upon her—the dreams of hope, and joy, and love—with the force, the intensity of actual presence; as if they might still be realized, and the intervening time had been but a dark and troubled blank. She pushed the flower from her, and her head sunk on her clasped hands.