“He wants us to go to the Grange--not for my sake, though; but to get
you there; but he sha’n’t! I’d sweep a crossing rather than let you go
there! My generous brother--hang him!”
“To go to the Grange! To live there?”
“Yes; that is his way of fulfilling his promise to our father. He says
there are too many burdens on the estate for him to make me a suitable
allowance, unless we go and live there. But I wouldn’t let you go there
for the world!”
“But, Harry, I should be quite safe with you. You speak of your brother
as if he were a savage.”
“So he is. We are all a set of savages; and, being a savage myself, you
see, I know how to trust the rest. I tell you you shall not go; and, if
you try to persuade me, I shall think you don’t love me.”
He flung his arm round her, and looked up into her face with an air of
boyish authority which she did not attempt to resist, though it made
her smile. A few months of self-dependence had made her so much older,
so much wiser than this spoiled child who was her lord and master.
She knew he could not live long in defiance of his elder brother; she
knew he had no money of his own, and no capabilities of making any, or
that, if he had any capabilities, he had no intention of using them. He
had indeed most of the qualities necessary in a groom and some of those
wanted by a jockey; but, being a gentleman, though he could copy their
manners and share their tastes, he could follow their occupations only
as an amusement. He had given her money so recklessly at first that
she, though inclined to be extravagant, had, without saying anything to
him about it, put some by in case of an emergency; so that, when his
supplies to her stopped rather suddenly, she was able to go on paying
their weekly bills without running into debt. But this could not last
long; and she began to look out for some music-pupils, still without
saying anything to her husband, whose pride would have cried out at the
idea of his wife working for her living and his.
It was easy enough by this time to leave some hours in the day
unaccounted for. Harry had met some acquaintances in town and picked
up some others, and spent but little of his time with his wife, who,
he complained, did not take as much trouble to amuse him as at first,
and who could always amuse herself with a book--a most unaccountable
taste in his eyes, so that she could publish an advertisement, answer
others, go for the few replies she got to a neighboring stationer’s,
and give a lesson three times a week in Onslow Square without exciting
his suspicions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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