style="font-size:15px;"> "Sir," said Annette, coloring indignantly, "I am a widow."
The doctor, she thought, looked at her oddly, but he asked no more questions.
When the sick man was getting better, and able to enjoy invalid's food, he observed one day, while he was taking some broth, that Annette was looking at him; he paused to look at her in return, and was struck with a new expression in her face, quite distinct from the merely passive sweetness which usually characterized it. She laid her little hand on his, which was now transparently thin, and said, "I am getting very wise; I have sold some of the books to make money – the doctor told me where; and I have looked into the shops where they sell caps and bonnets and pretty things, and I can do all that, and get more money to keep us. And when you are well enough to get up, we will go out and be married – shall we not? See! and la petite" (the baby had never been named anything else) "shall call you Papa – and then we shall never part."
Mr. Lyon trembled. This illness – something else, perhaps – had made a great change in Annette. A fortnight after that they were married. The day before he had ventured to ask her if she felt any difficulty about her religion, and if she would consent to have la petite baptized and brought up as a Protestant. She shook her head and said very simply —
"No: in France, in other days, I would have minded; but all is changed. I never was fond of religion, but I knew it was right. J'aimais les fleurs, les bals, la musique, et mon mari qui était beau. But all that is gone away. There is nothing of my religion in this country. But the good God must be here, for you are good; I leave all to you."
It was clear that Annette regarded her present life as a sort of death to the world – an existence on a remote island where she had been saved from wreck. She was too indolent mentally, too little interested, to acquaint herself with any secrets of the isle. The transient energy, the more vivid consciousness and sympathy which had been stirred in her during Mr. Lyon's illness, had soon subsided into the old apathy to everything except her child. She withered like a plant in strange air, and the three years of life that remained were but a slow and gentle death. Those three years were to Mr. Lyon a period of such self-suppression and life in another as few men know. Strange! that the passion for this woman, which he felt to have drawn him aside from the right as much as if he had broken the most solemn vows – for that only was right to him which he held the best and highest – the passion for a being who had no glimpse of his thoughts induced a more thorough renunciation than he had ever known in the time of his complete devotion to his ministerial career. He had no flattery now, either from himself or the world; he knew that he had fallen, and his world had forgotten him, or shook their heads at his memory. The only satisfaction he had was the satisfaction of his tenderness – which meant untiring work, untiring patience, untiring wakefulness even to the dumb signs of feeling in a creature whom he alone cared for.
The day of parting came, and he was left with little Esther as the one visible sign of that four years' break in his life. A year afterward he entered the ministry again, and lived with the utmost sparingness that Esther might be so educated as to be able to get her own bread in case of his death. Her probable facility in acquiring French naturally suggested his sending her to a French school, which would give her a special advantage as a teacher. It was a Protestant school, and French Protestantism had the high recommendation of being non-Prelatical. It was understood that Esther would contract no Papistical superstitions; and this was perfectly true; but she contracted, as we see, a good deal of non-Papistical vanity.
Mr. Lyon's reputation as a preacher and devoted pastor had revived; but some dissatisfaction beginning to be felt by his congregation at a certain laxity detected by them in his views as to the limits of salvation, which he had in one sermon even hinted might extend to unconscious recipients of mercy, he had found it desirable seven years ago to quit this ten years' pastorate and accept a call from the less important church in Malthouse Yard, Treby Magna.
This was Rufus Lyon's history, at that time unknown in its fullness to any human being besides himself. We can perhaps guess what memories they were that relaxed the stringency of his doctrine on the point of salvation. In the deepest of all senses his heart said —
"Though she be dead, yet let me think she lives,
And feed my mind, that dies for want of her."
CHAPTER VII
M.It was but yesterday you spoke him well —
You've changed your mind so soon?
N. Not I – 'tis he
That, changing to my thought, has changed my mind.
No man puts rotten apples in his pouch
Because their upper side looked fair to him.
Constancy in mistake is constant folly.
The news that the rich heir of the Transomes was actually come back, and had been seen at Treby, was carried to some one else who had more reasons for being interested in it than the Reverend Rufus Lyon was yet conscious of having. It was owing to this that at three o'clock, two days afterward, a carriage and pair, with coachman and footman in crimson and drab, passed through the lodge gates at Transome Court. Inside there was a hale, good-natured-looking man of sixty, whose hands rested on a knotted stick held between his knees; and a blue-eyed, well-featured lady, fat and middle-aged – a mountain of satin, lace, and exquisite muslin embroidery. They were not persons of a highly remarkable appearance, but to most Trebians they seemed absolutely unique, and likely to be known anywhere. If you had looked down upon them from the box of Sampson's coach, he would have said, after lifting his hat, "Sir Maximus and his lady – did you see?" thinking it needless to add the surname.
"We shall find her greatly elated, doubtless," Lady Debarry was saying. "She has been in the shade so long."
"Ah, poor thing!" said Sir Maximus. "A fine woman she was in her bloom. I remember the first county ball she attended we were all ready to fight for the sake of dancing with her. I always liked her from that time – I never swallowed the scandal about her myself."
"If we are to be intimate with her," said Lady Debarry, "I wish you would avoid making such allusions, Sir Maximus. I should not like Selina and Harriet to hear them."
"My dear, I should have forgotten all about the scandal, only you remind me of it sometimes," retorted the baronet, smiling and taking out his snuff-box.
"These sudden turns of fortune are often dangerous to an excitable constitution," said Lady Debarry, not choosing to notice her husband's epigram. "Poor Lady Alicia Methurst got heart-disease from a sudden piece of luck – the death of her uncle, you know. If Mrs. Transome was wise she would go to town – she can afford it now, and consult Dr. Truncheon. I should say myself he would order her digitalis: I have often guessed exactly what a prescription would be. But it certainly was one of her weak points to think she understood medicine better than other people."
"She's a healthy woman enough, surely: see how upright she is, and she rides about like a girl of twenty."
"She is so thin that she makes me shudder."
"Pooh! she's slim and active; women are not bid for by the pound."
"Pray don't be so coarse."
Sir Maximus laughed and showed his good teeth, which made his laughter very becoming. The carriage stopped, and they were soon ushered to Mrs. Transome's sitting-room, where she was working at her worsted embroidery. A little daily embroidery had been a constant element in Mrs. Transome's life; but that soothing occupation of taking stitches to produce what neither she nor any one else wanted, was then the resource of many a well-born and unhappy woman.
She received much warm congratulation
