Addie's Husband; or, Through clouds to sunshine
So to him the unusual position is unmarred by even shadow-clouds of
dead joys and by-gone pleasures. Addie's fresh flower face awakes no
ghost of fevered memory to taunt him with the sweets of lost youth.
"Here is your tea, Mr. Armstrong; you must tell me if it is right. I
don't know your tastes yet."
"It is delicious," he answers slowly, while a sudden thought strikes
his musing brain, flooding it with a stream of sunshine--a thought
he has never entertained before. What a pleasant thing it would be
to have a woman, a young, fresh-faced, gray-eyed woman like Miss
Lefroy, to sit by his fireside every night and hand him his tea, just
as she does that moment, with that quaint inimitable little air of
business-like patronage, of half-matronly, half-childish, yet wholly
graceful self-possession! Yes; how very pleasant it would be! He has a
house now, a rapidly-growing estate--he has a position of unimpeached
respectability, if not of aristocratic quality--he has a clear future,
a clean past, a goodly name at his banker's--why should he not take a
wife to himself at last, and create ties to dispel the gloom of coming
age--a wife just like Addie Lefroy--who would grace his hearth as
she does, who would refine and enliven with her graceful youth the
atmosphere of the heavily-draped room, which already he has begun to
find so still and wearisome after the bustling life outside his den at
the factory in Kelvick?
A wife just like Addie Lefroy--not one whit more elegant, more
beautiful, more fascinating, but just as she is--soft-faced,
irregular-featured, simple-mannered, gentle-voiced, yet with a
suggestion of hot-breathed, breezy youth about her every movement, her
every gesture. Yes; if ever he marries, it will be some one like her,
very like her--her exact counterpart, in fact; and where is he to find
that? That is the question. Rapidly, while he sips his tea, he runs his
eye, as he would down a stiff column of figures, over the many eligible
young ladies whose acquaintance he owns in his native town; but none
of them suits his prejudiced eye. One is too handsome, another too
tall, another too fashionable, another too affected--all of them are
everything that is not Addie Lefroy. Addie Lefroy, Addie Lefroy! Softly
he repeats her name again and again, as if the words themselves tickle
his palate and season his tea pleasantly, fragrantly. Addie Lefroy! How
the name suits her! It has a sort of liquid, swinging sound. If ever
she changes it, will she get another to suit her as well? For instance,
Addie--Addie--Arm--
With a start he "pulls himself together," and swallows a big lump of
cake that he loathes, which he hopes will act as a sort of break in the
dangerous current of his imagination.
Meanwhile Miss Addie, quite unconscious of the agreeable turmoil that
her presence is awaking in the breast of her massive middle-aged host,
sips her tea and munches cake in blissful unconcern.
"I suppose," she muses, with a little ruefulness, "if the boys and
Polly knew, they would think it awfully mean of me, feeding on the
enemy like this; but--but--I really can not help it--I'm half famished.
Perhaps, if they hadn't eaten anything from seven A.M. until five P.M.
but half a moldy apple, they wouldn't be so particular. I don't know
about Bob, though; I think his pride would stomach a longer fast than
that. I don't believe any strait of body would induce him to eat a crumb
under this roof now--and yet Mr. Armstrong hasn't behaved so badly. I
might have been lying in the wood but for him. Oh, dear, how horrible!
I've actually cleared the whole plate of toast alone! I--I hope he won't
notice; I'll shove the dish behind the urn. Yes; he can't see it there.
How did I do it? I never felt myself eating. That cake is delicious
too--better than any of Sally's. I feel so much better now; I suppose it
must have been hunger that helped me to go off in that ridiculous
fashion in the grove."
Her head sinks back pleasantly on the soft cushions; she looks out on
the sunny lawn and the timbered wealth she knows so well. Both the
windows are wide open, and a faint evening breeze brings to her couch
a breath of mignonette from a parterre outside, which her mother laid
out with her own hands when she came to Nutsgrove, a happy bride,
twenty-two years before. A thrush that has yearly built his nest in
the heart of the gloire de Dijon, the shining leaves of which are
fluttering against the casement, bursts into song. Addie closes her
eyes, and she is at home once more, living over again the sweet spring
evenings of her blissful neglected youth. Armstrong of Kelvick and his
trim purified apartments vanish into space; the notched and rickety
chairs are back again, the threadbare carpet with its sprays of dim
ghostly terns, the dusky curtains. Her work-box is standing in its old
place, she hears Pauline's light footsteps flying down the stairs, the
boys are calling the dogs
"With wild halloo and brutal noise"
away to "marshy joys" in the grove, and old Sally is hunting the
chickens out of the kitchen with a peculiar hooting noise that no
throat but her own can produce.
"Miss Lefroy, you have not answered my question yet. You were very fond
of Nutsgrove, were you not?"
She starts up, an angry crimson dyeing her face, to find her host
leaning forward, his keen hazel eyes fixed intently on hers. She
answers vehemently, passionately--
"No, I did not answer you, because I thought it was a senseless
question; but I will answer you now, if you insist. Were we fond of
Nutsgrove? We were--we were--we were! Will that satisfy you? What else
had we to be fond of? We had no father, no mother, no friends, no
outside amusements or pleasures, and we wanted nothing--nothing but
to be left here together. We were content--oh, yes! Even--even when
Polly and I began to grow up, we never longed to go away to London or
Paris, to fashionable places, or balls and parties, like other girls;
and the boys--they never asked to go to school or foreign parts, never
wanted to see the world, like other boys. The woods, the river, the
gardens, the dear old farm-yard, gave us all we wanted the whole year
round--summer, winter, autumn, spring. Fond of Nutsgrove? Ah, we were!
We loved every blade of grass, every mossy stone, every clump of earth;
every flower and every leaf of the trees was dearer to us than they
can be to you if you live here half a century. Now you are answered,
Mr. Armstrong, and very rudely and impertinently too; but--but I could
not help myself. I--I am very hot-tempered, and you should not have
persisted when you saw--when you saw--"
"I know, I know," he interrupts earnestly; "but, believe me, Miss
Lefroy, I did not persist out of idle curiosity or for the purpose of
giving you wanton pain. Will you bear with me yet a little longer, and
permit me to ask you another question, which--which may appear to you
even more impertinent than the first? I have a purpose--an extenuating
purpose in both. You are leaving this house very soon, are you not, to
become a governess--a nursery-governess if I have heard aright--in a
family of inferior position, and at a salary so mean as to exclude the
idea of helping your family, who are--are almost completely unprovided
for, thrown on the world without any visible means of support? Is my
information correct?"
"Your information is perfectly correct, Mr. Armstrong," Addie retorts,
springing to her feet, her eyes blazing; "but I fail to see your object
in forcing me to discuss such--"
With a gesture he silences her, motioning her back to her seat almost
impatiently.
"A moment more, if you please; then I shall have done. On your own
admission, therefore, I may conclude that your future prospects,
both personally and collectively, are not, to put it mildly, in a
flourishing condition, and that at present you see no glimmer of
improvement, no chance of reprieve from a life of servile drudgery, for
which you feel yourself totally unfitted, first of all from a strong
distaste to teaching, and secondly from the unconventional nature of
your early life and education."
She is too amazed to resent even by a gesture this extraordinary
speech. After a slight pause, he resumes, in the same low mechanical
voice, with a faint tinge of color in his swarthy cheek:
"Therefore, I presume to ask you, Miss Lefroy, if in these
circumstances you would deem it any improvement to your condition
to--to--marry me and live out your life at Nutsgrove?"
She looks at him with eyes wide open, staring stupidly, and blank white
face.
"To--to marry you? I--I don't understand. Are you joking, Mr.
Armstrong?"
"No, Miss Lefroy, I am not joking; on the contrary, I am very much in
earnest. Men mostly are, I believe, when they ask a woman to be their
wife."
"You ask me to--to be your wife?"
"Yes, I most assuredly do. If you consent, I will settle this place on
you unreservedly, so that, whatever happens to me, nobody will be able
to oust you from it again. Nutsgrove will belong to you, you alone, as
virtually as it belonged to your grandfather sixty years ago, before
an acre was mortgaged. Will you marry me, Miss Lefroy? Is the bribe
sufficient?" he asks sharply.
But poor Addie has no power to answer; she sits gazing into the
frowning, flushed face of her suitor with the same blank expression,
without a tinge of shyness, hesitation, or embarrassment in her
attitude, or flicker of color in her cheek. Armstrong feels as if he
would like to shake her.
"She looks at me as if I were not human, as if I were some strange
animal escaped from a menagerie. She's a woman, I'm a man; why should
I not ask her to marry me?" he thinks. "Well," he says aloud, with
an irritation he strives in vain to repress, "have you understood my
question, Miss Lefroy? Must I repeat it? No? Then will you kindly put
me out of pain--that is the correct term, I believe--as soon as you
can?"
"Oh!" pants Addie, waving her hands nervously, as if pushing him from
her. "Can't you give me a moment to breathe--to feel--to understand?"
"Certainly, if you wish it."
He walks to the window, steps out, and paces up and down the terrace,
smoking furiously.
Addie, left to herself, heaves a great sigh of relief, then glances
languidly round the room, and tries to realize her situation, to
understand that she can be mistress of the old place again, that she
need never yawn the dreary hours away in the Moggeridge school-room,
need never darn alien socks, help to tub peevish babies, never bow her
haughty young head to the yoke of uncongenial servitude, but spend her
days by the familiar fireside, rambling through the leafy grove and
mellow orchards, her own, her very own forever. A flood of sunshine
bathes the park in flickering glory; every leaf trembling with the
pulse of coming summer, every bird singing in the budding grove, every
gurgling ripple of the stream that feeds the marshy pond behind the
park, seems to whisper to the girl's troubled heart words of welcome
and entreaty, seems to sing in gladsome chorus, "Come back, Addie, come
back, come back; we miss you sorely!" At that moment a shadow falls
across her path, the song of the birds dies into a wordless twitter,
the glory of the evening fades, as the burly, massive form of the
vitriol-manufacturer stands between her and the sunset.
"To live with him alone here!" she thinks, with a shudder, while
the hot blood dyes her face and neck. "Oh, I couldn't--I couldn't!
He would spoil everything; he would take the beauty, the poetry out
of everything I love. I couldn't--I couldn't! Nobody would expect
it of me. The bribe is big, but not sufficient--not sufficient,
unless--unless--Oh, I wish I knew what to do--what to say to him!
If he would let me be his gover--I mean his housekeeper, his