Chapter Twelve.
Her Great Sin.
No one would have supposed that Annie Brooke, brought up so carefully by such an uncle as the Rev. Maurice Brooke, would so easily yield to one temptation after another. But it is one of the most surprising and true things in life that it is the first wrong-doing that counts. It is over the first wrong action that we struggle and hesitate. We shrink away then from the edge of the abyss, and if we do yield to temptation our consciences speak loudly.
But conscience is of so delicate a fibre, so sensitive an organisation, that if she is neglected her voice grows feeble. She ceases to reproach when reproach is useless, and so each fall, be it great or little, is felt less than the last.
A few months ago, even in her young life, Annie would not have believed it possible that she could have brought herself to open her uncle’s letter. Nevertheless, a mile out of Rashleigh she did so. Within the letter lay a cheque. It was an open cheque, payable to bearer and signed by the rector. The cheque was for twenty pounds. A bill of the butcher’s lay within. This bill amounted to twenty pounds. The rector, therefore, was sending Dawson, the well-known village butcher, a cheque for twenty pounds to pay the yearly account. It was the fashion at Rashleigh for the principal trades-people to be paid once a year. This twenty pounds, therefore, stood for the supply of meat of various sorts which was used at the Rectory during the year.
Twenty pounds! Annie looked at it. Her eyes shone. “Take this, and you are all right,” whispered a voice. “With this you can easily get off to London, and from there to Paris. All you want is money. Well, here is money. You must write to your uncle when you get to Paris, and confess to him then. He will forgive you. He will be shocked; but he will forgive you. Of course he will.”
Annie considered the whole position. “I have done a lot of uncomfortable things,” she thought. “I managed that affair of the essays, and I used poor Susan Martin’s poems for my purpose; and—and—I have got Mabel into no end of a scrape; it is my duty to see poor Mabel through. This thing is horrid! I know it is. I hate myself for doing it; but, after all, the money has been thrown in my way. Twenty pounds! I can buy some little articles of dress, too. Dawson will cash this for me; oh, of course he will. It does seem as if I were meant to do it; it is the only way out. Uncle Maurice is terrible when he takes, as it were, the bit between his teeth. Yes, I must do it; yes, I will. It is the only, only way.”
Before Annie and her pony had gone another quarter of a mile Dawson’s bill had been torn into hundreds of tiny fragments, which floated away on the summer breeze, and the open cheque in the old rector’s handwriting, with his signature at the bottom and his name endorsing it behind, was folded carefully up in Annie’s purse.
It was a pretty-looking girl—for excitement always added to Annie’s charms—who rode at last into the little village. She went straight to Dawson’s, sprang off her pony, and entered the shop.
Old Dawson, who had known her from her babyhood, welcomed her back with effusion.