“The degradation of that rests with me!” she exclaimed hastily, with a painful blush on her face. “I do not like to think nor speak of it, and I wish you would try to forget it. The time is come for me to tell mamma that I am not a child. Leave all to me. I never fail when I am roused, and I promise you, Lawrence, you shall not bear more than one other insult for my sake. And for the past, I charge you again, do not suffer any one to dictate to you what you should have done. Let them correct themselves, which will, perhaps, be sufficient to employ their time.”
She could see he was cheered, not much, but a little. He tossed his head back, and glanced about with an air of renewed courage and determination. But no thought for the heart that he had burdened with his pain and care entered his mind. She had given her help eagerly, glad to give, and he accepted it as a matter of course, and, having got what he wanted, went away with a careless good-night.
Annette went into the house, and soon the doors were locked. Mrs. Ferrier always went to bed early, and the servants usually followed her example.
Annette leaned from her window, and counted the city lights going out, and the noises sinking into silence. As it grew later, the sound of the Cocheco became fitfully audible, borne on the cool northwestern breeze, and presently grew steadier, till only one other sound, the pulse of a far-away steam-mill, was heard tossing on that spray-like murmur like a little ball on the water-column of a fountain.
Cool as it was, the room seemed close to her. She was restless, too, yet could not move about without being heard by her mother. So she opened her door, and crept softly down-stairs. The long drawing-room windows looking into the conservatory had been left open, and some of the sashes in the conservatory were still lowered from the top. A light and fragrant breeze came through, bringing a sound of rustling leaves. She stepped over the sill, and threw herself down on a sofa just outside. The large space was a relief from that cramped feeling that had brought her down-stairs. Besides, there was only glass between her and all out-doors. She saw the star-lighted skies, those languid stars of summer, soft as humid eyes, and the dark trees of the garden, and the faint outline of hills against the near southwestern horizon. The flowering plants showed like black shadows lurking about the bases of the pillars, and the pillars themselves appeared to stretch upward to the sky, and curl over in capitals of purple acanthus-leaves fringed with stars.
Annette rested her head on the sofa-cushions. The space and motion outside and the waving boughs and vines had a quieting effect; yet she was in that state of feverish wakefulness wherein one can be quiet only in a position from which it is possible to start at any moment.
Her life was changing in its hopes and aims, and she was in all the tumult of that revolution. The vague, sweet expectations and rosy hopes which are planted in the heart of every female infant, which spring up and bud in the maiden’s soul, which blossom or are nipped in the woman’s, as God shall will, were withered in hers, had withered long ago, and she was only now owning it to herself. There was to be no tender homage and care for her. No one was to take delight in her, to seek her for herself, to think anxiously lest she be grieved or hurt. Whatever pain might come to her in life, she must bear it in silence. To tell it where alone sympathy would be precious and helpful to her would be to bore her listener. Hers was the part to give, not to receive. Without a man’s strength and hardness, she was to take the man’s portion, support, cheer, encourage, and defend, and all without thanks.
An awful sense of isolation seized upon her. There had come to her that moment which comes to some, perhaps to most people, once in a life, when all the universe seems to withdraw, and the soul hangs desolate in the midst of space, the whole of creation alien. One shrinks from life then, and would gladly hide in death.
Annette was too sad and weary to cry out. She lay quiet, and looked at the tree-shadows. Some good thought crossed her mind, a whisper of her guardian angel, or an inspiration of the Comforter—“Fall down and pray to God for help!” it said; but found her insensible. A human love inexpressibly bitter and engrossing blunted her heart to all else. She mutely asked God to be merciful to her, but formed no other petition.
While she gazed without abstractedly, only half conscious of what she saw, a darker shadow appeared under a tree just visible past the angle of the house. What seemed to be a man’s form leaned forward partially into her view, drew something from a garden-chair under the tree, then disappeared. She was too much occupied by her own thoughts to be alarmed, and, moreover, was not in any danger. She only wondered a little what it might mean, and presently understood. Mr. Schöninger, coming from a long drive that afternoon, had brought a shawl over his arm, and she had noticed after he went away that it had been forgotten on the garden-chair where he had thrown it on entering. It might be that, returning home now, he had recollected, and come into the garden for it.