Aunt Anne, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Mrs. W. K. Clifford

“You should have done it in the shed. You ought not to keep me here in the rain. You know that.”

“No, I oughtn’t; you go on, dear”—there was sudden repentance in her voice. “Just kiss me and say you are fond of me again.” He leaned over her, and for a moment his eyes flashed, as he kissed her with a loathsome eagerness that left the woman’s heart more hungry than before.

“I am fond of you,” he said; “you know I am fond of you—when I see you. But I can’t come to Liphook to be dunned for money.”

“I always do the best I can to get things for you; and if I have plenty of work I’ll take care it’s more comfortable, if you’ll only come. There, go now, Alfred dear. I don’t want to keep you in the wet. It’s only that we have been married these four years, and, somehow, we never seem to have got any good of it yet.” She put her arms round his neck for a moment “I am awful fond of you,” she said, and turned away.

Something in her voice touched him; or it might have been that he was fonder of her than he supposed, for as he went by the pathway that poor Aunt Anne had hurried along, bowed down with insult and despair, only twenty minutes before, there was a less sullen expression than usual on his face. He thought of the clinging hands and tearful eyes, and the undisguised love written on her face, with something like satisfaction. He would settle down with her, once he possessed the money. He liked the idea of it; it would be good to be waited upon by her, to go abroad with her perhaps, to buy comfort and luxury, and to feel her hanging about him. He lingered in thought over her caresses; he remembered Aunt Anne’s and shuddered. He had said truly enough that he could not bear the latter much longer; toleration had grown to endurance, endurance to dislike, and dislike to loathing. He was sensible of even being beneath the same roof with her; her voice irritated him, her touch produced a feeling that was almost fear. Every step he made now towards the house that contained her was reluctant and almost shrinking. He could just bear life with her if she gave him good food and comfort and money he could not obtain elsewhere; but unless she gave him these things, which he counted worth any price that could be paid, he felt it would be impossible to stay with her longer. Warmth and idleness and comfort were gods to him; but his loathing for the poor soul who had struggled for months to give them to him was developing into horror. He waited, doggedly, day after day for Sir William Rammage’s death. When that happened he would seize the money that would be hers and, without mercy, leave her to her fate; he and Caroline could easily keep out of her reach. If she would not give him the money he would make life impossible for her to bear. He had not the least intention of murdering her, but in imagination he often put his hands round her throat, and all his fingers felt her life growing still beneath them. He resented everything she did: her voice, her footstep, her tender, wrinkled face; he felt as if her winking left eye were driving him mad—as if there were poison in her breath. He considered her life an offence against him, except as a means of giving him money. When once she had done that, when she had given him the thousands for which he had married her, he wanted her for ever out of his sight, and underground; he gloated in imagination over the deepness of the grave into which he would have her put, and the silence and darkness that would surround her.

He was at the bottom of the dip. He reflected, with triumph, that it was too late for any question of going to the station to meet the half-past six o’clock train. He thought of the rain that would fall upon her as she drove to the cottage. He wondered if she had left her cloak behind, and imagined the cold and pain she would suffer without it. He could see her in the open cart, bending her head and shoulders beneath the grey storm, carrying the bag that contained the dinner for him, and he imagined the bulging condition in which the bag would return. If she had not brought back all he considered necessary for his comfort, she would tremble to see him, and he would not spare her one single pang. He was among the firs and larches, within sight of the cottage windows. He hated to think that she was behind them—that almost immediately he would be in the same room with her, sitting opposite to her at table. He thought of himself as a martyr, and of her as a loathsome burden, a presence that had no right to be inflicted on him; one that he would be justified in using any means within his power to remove. His feeling for her had grown in intensity till it threatened to burst the bonds of reserve and silence in which he had wrapped himself. It was only with an effort that he could keep in all the lashing words that hatred could suggest. He went up the pathway, as slowly as she herself had done, and walked round the house under the verandah. Unknowingly, in putting the easy-chair back into its place, Aunt Anne had pushed aside a little bit of the dining-room curtain. He looked in and saw the table laid, the candles burning, and the bowl of primroses; they were a sign that she had returned, and had not returned empty-handed. He noticed that only one place was laid, and he wondered vaguely what it meant. He thought of Aunt Anne’s face, and a sickening feeling came over him. If it had only been a girl’s face to which he was going in, a young woman who would come to meet him, and put her arms round his neck, and call him endearing names, instead of the old woman, shrivelled and wrinkled, to whom in a moment or two he would have to submit himself? He went towards the front door, vaguely determining that he would make her miserable that night. He had a right to everything she could give, but she had no right to intrude herself upon his sight, and he would make her feel it.

There was a click at the gate. Some one had entered the garden from the road. He stopped. A boy came up to him through the darkness.

“Wimple? A telegram, sir. There is sixpence for porterage.” He felt in his pocket among the silver the woman had given him in the shed; he found a sixpence, and the boy departed. He opened the yellow envelope, and stood still for a moment, with the telegram in his hand. He guessed what it meant. He took a match from his pocket, struck a light, and, protecting it from the wind with his hat, read:

“Died at five o’clock from sudden attack.”

He screwed it up into a ball and put it carefully into his pocket. His feeling for Aunt Anne changed in a moment: he felt that for this one evening, at any rate, he would endure her—he would even be civil—since it was through her that he was about to gain all he wanted. He looked up at the cottage before he entered it with the almost pleasant feeling with which a prisoner sometimes looks at his cell before he departs into freedom. Aunt Anne was sitting by the drawing-room fire; he lingered by the doorway.