Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine

"No, they were not the chief ingredients certainly. I doubt if they had anything to say to it." "A feeling of wider philanthropy perhaps, more in the Don Quixote line?" "No, Miss Lefroy. It is of no use; you can not thus lay light finger on the crotchets of man's 'most sovereign reason;' do not try." "Well, I--I don't mind much, so long as you don't think I--I was trying to--" She stops, blushing furiously. "Trying to what?" "Nothing, nothing." "I'll not let you leave the room until you finish that sentence," he says decisively. "You are a tyrant! Trying--trying to catch you--there! Oh, why will you make me say such things?" "Trying to catch me!" he exclaims vehemently. "Good gracious, child! how could I imagine such a thing?" "Oh, I don't know, I'm sure!" she answers, floundering helplessly under the half-amused, half-bitter expression of his dark face. "They say all men are conceited, no matter what they're like, and--and Ellen Higgins says that--that a great many of the Kelvick girls had their eyes on you, but that--that Miss Challice made--made the running too hot for--Oh, what am I saying--what am I saying? Mr. Armstrong, don't mind me; I'm a light-headed fool--a regular fool! Bob always said I hadn't an ounce of ballast, and I haven't--I haven't! Let me go, let me go!" "If I let you go like this, how do I know I shall ever get you back again?" "You said you would give me until to-morrow to decide--you know you did." "I repent of my promise, then. I'd rather know now, if you please." "But I can't decide in such a hurry. You, as a business man, ought to know it's ill-judged to rush at decisions in such--" "I'm not in my office now, and don't feel at all like a business man; it's of no use appealing to me as such, Miss Lefroy. Listen, while I tell you a crisp anecdote that may help to throw light on the crotchets of my character." "It's very late. I must go; auntie will be--" "One soft spring day I was sitting in a room alone with a young lady--" Addie stops unconsciously, interested in spite of herself. "A young lady whom I knew very slightly, and in whom I had hitherto taken not the faintest interest." "Yes?" "Until she happened to hand me a cup of tea--" "Oh!" "And the fancy suddenly struck me that I should like to marry that girl; and, before I had finished my cup, my mind was made up--I determined she should be my wife. That's all." "That's all, is it?" says Addie, drawing a long breath. "I--I don't like your story much. You were determined, were you? And do you always get what you determine on?" "I don't want to boast; but I've been rather lucky up to the present." "And, if the thing--the person is determined the other way, what then?" "What then? You know every Britisher has a bit of the bull in him, and enjoys his fight, and you have heard also that flowers out of reach--nearly out of reach--smell the sweetest." "Oh, there speaks the man all over! You've one touch of nature with my boys, at any rate, Mr. Armstrong--anything well out of reach has the most attraction for them. Bob always gathers his fruit from the ridge of the wall, and Hal would climb the tallest elm in the grove to rob a nest, and yet never lay hand on that of the thrush that builds every year in the gloire de Dijon under the window." "Well, my limbs are not as supple as they were twenty years ago. I wonder shall I have to climb very high for the nest I want?" Addie looks down and makes no reply. They have now reached the brougham, into which he assists her carefully, placing his stout ash by her side. "Better keep it for a day or two, Miss Lefroy--you may find it serviceable; and remember the doctor's instruction." He busies himself for a few moments propping up her foot with shawls and cushions, and then, as the horse is about to start, says in a low voice, looking up in her face entreatingly-- "I would try to make you happy." "You are very kind," says poor Addie for the fourth and last time that day; and then the horse plunges forward, and she is off. CHAPTER VI. "What will they say? What will they do?" thinks Addie, with shuddering presentiment as she is being driven along the high-road to Nutsford. "And how can I tell them about it? Oh, the worst part of all is before me now! How can I tell them about it--how can I tell them? If I only knew how they'd take it--could only guess! But I can't--I can't! Aunt Jo will be pleased, I think. She will say it's an intervention of Providence, the turning of the tide, perhaps; but Aunt Jo is old, and can't feel like the young--and then of course she's not a Lefroy. That's the great point--she's not a Lefroy. Perhaps Bob will never speak to me again for letting him say so much to me as he did; perhaps Pauline will disown me too, if she hears Bob is so proud, so resentful, so tetchy about the family prestige! It may be an awful blow to him, poor darling--and he going away, too, full of sorrow and trouble already! Wouldn't it be better if I said nothing at all about it until he had left? But then--then--I've got only until to-morrow, and I've promised an answer. Oh, dear! oh, dear! what am I to do? Why did I go clambering up into that wretched tree, like the shameful tomboy that I am? Why didn't I study quietly at home as the aunt suggested--why, why? Good gracious, the farm already! How that horse flies! Perhaps they'll guess, they'll suspect something, when they see me in his brougham? And Hal is so vulgar, so exasperating when he begins to chaff, and Lottie asks such dreadful, dreadful questions!" She peers forth anxiously before venturing to descend, and, to her great relief, sees that so far the coast is clear. Neither of the boys is about. Hal is not at his usual noonday pastime of shying stones at the pump, or worrying the donkey in the stubble-field. Bob is not, as is his wont, leaning against the hay-rick, smoking away in sullen gloom his last hours on shore. She hobbles up the little garden path and pushes open the farm-house door. A dismal wailing sound issues from the stuffy, low-roofed parlor to the right, sacred to the family gentility. "Oh, dear, dear, the aunt is at it again--worse than ever!" thinks Addie ruefully. "She's an awful spendthrift in tears, poor soul! At the rate she has been weeping for the last three months, she really must cry herself dry soon!" At that moment the door opens, and the old lady half stumbles out, looking so utterly limp and woe-begone that her niece's heart sinks with the fear of some fresh disaster. "Oh, what is it, aunt? Has--has anything else happened? The boys?" "My dear, my dear, we'd best give it up--throw up our hands and have done with the struggle at once; it's of no use, of no use! I can hold out no longer." "Oh, what has happened? Tell me--tell me!" "Pauline is home again. She came back half an hour ago." "Pauline back!" echoes Addie, aghast. "Wouldn't they--wouldn't they keep her?" "She ran away from them." After a moment's pause, Addie enters, and sees the young culprit, with crimson cheeks and streaming eyes, standing in the center of the room, the boys glaring at her in furious bitterness. "Pauline!" "Yes, that's my name; and here I am," the young lady answers, in a shrill taunting voice. "What have you to say to me, Adelaide? I've just been receiving the greetings of my brothers and aunt, and am ready to receive yours now. Open fire, my dear; I'm prepared for any charge. Don't be afraid." But Addie says nothing--simply sinks into a chair, feeling that the waters are closing round her on every side. "Oh, Addie, Addie!" exclaims Pauline, disarmed by her mute dejection, "don't be too hard on me, for I couldn't help it--oh, I couldn't help it! You don't know, you can't conceive what a life I've led since I left you--it was unbearable!" "You've had good food to eat, a soft bed to lie on, warm walls to shelter you, servants to wait on you," says Robert, with a fierce sneer, "which is more than the rest of us have in prospect--more than I shall enjoy for many a long day, Heaven knows!" "More than I shall have in the charity-school they're trying to get me into," adds Hal, moodily. "More than your sister will have as a nursery governess in a grocer's family," says Aunt Jo, with dreary emphasis. "No, no, it isn't--it isn't!" bursts in Pauline passionately. "I'd rather be cabin-boy on board a coal-barge, I'd rather starve at a charity-school, I'd rather teach all the young grocers in England, I'd rather be--be maid-of-all-work in a--a lunatic asylum than go on living with Aunt Selina. Oh, you don't know what it was--what I had to put up with! The very first evening I arrived she began nag, nag, nagging at me, and she has kept it up ever since; her voice is dinning in my ears even now; it haunted me every night in my sleep. Nothing I did, nothing I said, was right. I was clumsy, awkward, uncouth, boisterous, stupid. I could not enter a room, move a chair, or lift a book without making her shiver and the admiral swear. I knew nothing, I could do nothing, not even read the 'Naval Intelligence' without stumbling at every second word. Five times running," continues the girl, with quivering lip, "she has made me walk across the room, shut and open the door, her own maid watching me, until--until I felt inclined to slam it with a force to bring her warm walls about her wretched head. You don't know what it was!" Nobody makes reply. She looks round at the sullen averted faces, and then bursts out again-- "I wish I hadn't come back to you--you hard-hearted, unfeeling, cruel--I wish--I wish I had thrown myself into the lake at the back of the park, as I ran out one night to do in my anger and pain. But I didn't, because--because I thought of you all and how sorry you'd be. I wish I had now; it would have been better." Robert shrugs his shoulders and flings a half-consumed cigarette into the grate. "Better!" he repeats, with a callous laugh. "I won't gainsay you, Polly. I think it would be better still if we made a family-party of the dive--just plunge in in silence together, we five Lefroys. It could be done poetically enough even in the old mill-pond behind the grove. You girls could twine lilies in your hair, Ophelia-wise, and afterward we would haunt the old place, five cold slimy ghosts, and drive the vitriol-man back to the smoke whence he sprung." "Bob, Bob, don't say such dreadful things! You frighten the life out of me!" screams Lottie, clinging to her aunt. "Bob, you're a--a wretch, and I wish I was dead!" cries Pauline, flinging herself across the table in a storm of sobs. Then Addie rises and speaks for the first time, her arm around her sister's heaving shoulders. "Don't fret, Polly, don't fret. Never mind them; you'll live at Nutsgrove with me. I'll give you a home, dear." "Addie!" "I'm quite serious, Pauline--I mean what I say." Adelaide's voice is very steady and grave, and there is a tone in it that arrests the stormy attention of the family. "Mr. Armstrong asked me this afternoon to marry him." "Eh? What did you say?" "Kindly repeat that statement, Addie, will you?" She looks into her brother's startled face, and complies with mechanical firmness, as if she were saying a lesson. "Mr. Armstrong of Kelvick asked me this afternoon to marry him. I fell from a tree and hurt my foot in the grove, and he found me there, and drove me on to the house, where he asked me to marry him. He said that, if I would, he'd settle Nutsgrove on me altogether, that I might have the girls to live with me always, and that he'd help on you boys as well as he could in the world." "And what did you say?" comes in trembling eager chorus.