“A man has a right to his wife’s earnings,” he said firmly.
“Well, I’ve got three dresses in the house to do; they’ll come to a good bit. It isn’t that I mind giving it. Alfred! there’s some one against the back of the shed.”
“It’s only the branches of the trees brushing against it,” he said. “I must go back—the old woman will be coming home.”
“Don’t go till it stops raining a bit,” she pleaded; “and put your arms tighter round me, I am not with you so often now. Aren’t you glad I am not an old woman?”
“Ugh!”—and he made a sound of disgust again. “Old women make me sick.”
“Well, you’ll be old long before I am,” she said, with a triumphant laugh. “My goodness! look at the rain.”
Aunt Anne went slowly along the narrow pathway, down into the valley, and up towards the larch and fir-trees again. Her strength was almost spent when she reached the garden. She bent her head beneath the downpour, and dragged herself, in such frightened haste as she could manage, to the house. She stopped for a moment beneath the verandah, as if to be sure that she was awake. She looked, half incredulously down at her wet and clinging clothes, and then into the darkness and distance. Beyond the trees and across the valley she knew that two people were saying their good-byes. She imagined their looks and words, and their caresses. It seemed as if the whole world were theirs—it had been pulled from under her feet to make a heaven for them. She was trembling with cold and fear, but she told herself that there was one thing left at which she must clutch a little longer—her self-control and dignity.
“I thought,” she said bewildered, and with the strange hunted look on her face, as she entered the cottage—“I thought God had forgiven me and sent him back, but it is all a mistake. Perhaps it is part of my punishment.” Everything looked strange to her; as if years had passed since she had gone out only an hour ago. She stood by the drawing-room door for a moment, looking in at the fire that had burned up and made a cheerful blaze, but she was afraid to go nearer to it. She felt like an outcast from everywhere; there was no place for her in the world, no one who wanted her, nothing left to do. And there was no love for her, and no forgetfulness; she had to bear pain—that alone was her portion. She wanted most of all to lie down and die, but death and love alike are often strangely difficult to those who need them most. She meandered into the kitchen, without any settled plan of what she was going to do.
“Jane,” she said, “the moment you have finished taking in the dinner, I want you to go upstairs and follow the directions I will give you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jane answered, with some astonishment when she had listened to them; “but do you mean to-night?”