Quisque suos patimer manes.         
          AENEID, vi.

ANNETTE was soon absorbed into the household. Mrs. Folyat never could keep any information to herself, and Gertrude and Mary quickly made Annette feel that she was in disgrace and saddled her with their domestic duties. Mary devoted herself entirely to music, rehearsing for concerts, and practising with amateur quartettes, and Gertrude gave all her time to her betrothed. She met him every day at his office and walked home with him, unless they were going to the theatre. Then they would dine out, Bennett having gone without his mid-day meal in order to have money enough. They had the whole of Sunday together always. He would accompany her to early celebration at St. Paul’s, breakfast at Fern Square, go to St. Saviour’s morning and evening, and spend the afternoon in the Park, for she had given up her Sunday-school class.

Their engagement was not yet announced, and he had not told his family, nor had Gertrude met any of his relations. Bennett’s face had grown more and more melancholy, and Gertrude had not spoken to Minna for weeks because, whenever she brought her lover to the house, Minna persisted in singing:

    The pain that is all but a pleasure we’ll change

    For the pleasure that’s all but pain,

    And never, oh, never this heart will range

    From that old, old love again.

Annette thought Bennett very handsome, and she was greatly impressed by his silence and tragic mien. She [Pg 132]told herself that he must be enormously in love with Gertrude since his emotions weighed upon him so heavily, and she thought Minna odious for making fun of him. She was very happy herself. She liked doing the housework and being useful to the others, and though her mother and sister were rather tyrannical with her, she had discovered a warm corner in her father’s heart in which to take refuge. Indeed her return had made a great difference to Francis. He sought her company and talked intimately with her and teased her, and showed her a side of himself that was hidden from the others. He would take her for long walks, and to see the queer characters among his poor, and often he would ask her to sit with him in his study while he was working. Sometimes, instead of working he would read aloud to her—Fielding, or Sterne, or the poets, and he would make translations of Italian or French poems, or the odes of Horace for her, and he would tell her that she was being much more use to the world teaching him, who was old enough to learn, than wasting time and her employer’s money in pretending to instruct little girls.

Except with her father and occasionally with Serge Annette never went out and knew nothing of what was happening in the town, and had even no clear idea of its geography. She gave no thought to past or future, and was quite content to go on living in the tranquil present. She reverted to her childish belief that her father was the most wonderful man in the world, with Serge a good second, and if she could have spent her life in ministering to them both she would have been more than satisfied. She was rather afraid and shy of other women, but the helplessness of men appealed to her, and she loved repairing their garments, always so sadly in need of it, and she would darn socks that any other woman would have thrown away. Nobody praised her, and nobody took much account of what she did save only the one little servant, Ada, who adored her.

To Annette the most mysterious and awful person in the house was her brother Frederic. She could make nothing of him. He looked very pale and unwell, but [Pg 133]became peevish under any comment on his appearance, however sympathetic. He was for the most part very silent when he was at home, though that was not often, but suddenly he would break into the wildest spirits and chatter and talk nonsense and laugh a great deal, and make fun of his mother and then be very affectionate with her, and it would seem that of all her children Frederic had the most affection from his mother. He would flatter her and talk about the great riches he was going to make and the wonderful lady he was going to marry, the daughter of a rich client, of whose estate he would be appointed trustee—when he had his own office. That was always the proviso—when he had his own office, and Annette was given to understand that it would be very soon, and then if there was one man more important than any other in the town, that man would be Frederic. Mrs. Folyat would listen excitedly to all this and shake her ringlets, and say to him:

“My dear, my dear, you must look after the girls.”

“Of course,” Frederic would respond, “rich husbands all round.”

“But they must be gentlemen.”

“Gentlemen! Of course.”

And if Minna were there, she would say with honey and gall in her voice:

“Is Bennett Lawrie a gentleman?”

Mrs. Folyat would say, frigidly:

“He is very poor, but he is extremely well connected.”

Frederic would swagger a little, and say:

“After all, you know, it was I who brought him to the house.”

Then Minna:

“We all know that all Frederic’s friends are gentlemen—and ladies.”

It took Annette a little time to pick up the threads of all the family jokes and allusions, and to disentangle the personalities of the various outlying characters who were used for purposes of fun or bickering, or, occasionally, as a weapon to enforce silence. Not all of these personages came to the house, and some of them seemed only to have [Pg 134]a shadowy existence in the family consciousness. There were two or three mysterious and almost mythical young men associated with Minna. Mary’s personality seemed to be filled out with a vague widower of mature years, who made mincing machines and was said to propose to her once a fortnight, Gertrude was altogether submerged in Bennett Lawrie, while, whenever Frederic became too obstreperous or offensive it was enough to breathe the name “Annie” to reduce him to a laconic moroseness. This Annie was the more real of all these extra-familiar characters, and Annette was very curious about her. She kept cropping up at the most out of the way moments, as every member of the family found it necessary at one time or another to remind Frederic of her existence. She was never given any surname, nor, apparently, was it known where she lived or how, or what she was to Frederic, or Frederic to her. Annette associated her absurdly with Sister Anne in Bluebeard, and from that again jumped to the cloud which was no bigger than a man’s hand. For no reason at all she regarded Annie as a figure of disaster and was vaguely sorry for her and pitied her. Her pity became concrete one day when an accident brought her nearer to Annie and gave her the whole story.

The lining of Frederic’s office coat had worn to tatters. Going over his wardrobe Annette discovered this and took the coat into Serge’s room, which she used when Serge was away at the Art School, and began to mend it. When she had repaired the lining she turned out the pockets, and among other papers—a theatre programme, two pawn-tickets, and a race-card—came on a grubby blotted letter written on cheap notepaper in a large wavering scrawl. Rather idly at first, and with no qualms or scruples—(all families read all letters that come into their hands)—she read it. There was neither address nor date. It was very short.

    “DEAR FRED.—You must answer my letter, you must, you must. What am I to do? I can’t prevent mother finding out soon, and she can’t bear any more, she has [Pg 135]had so much to bear. I can’t tell her it’s you, but it’s the thinking I can’t stand when you don’t write to me. If you could only get me away somewhere, like you said you would. I’m just the same, but I can’t write like I used to. It’s the work in the house that’s so awful, with the lodgers being beastly. Dear Fred, do please write to your

    ANNIE.”

At first it conveyed nothing to Annette. She was conscious of suffering behind the words and rather stupidly fumbled about in her mind for what it was that Annie’s mother must find out soon. Abruptly she came to it and dropped the letter, and hot tears came to her eyes, tears of shame. She had never come face to face with this thing before, and it horrified her, but through the horror of it was the knowledge that Annie was wanting Frederic to write to her, and she thought that she must find Frederic at once and tell him. Then she remembered that she ought not to have read the letter, and she thrust it back into the pocket of the coat and hurried back with it into Frederic’s room. That done, she went downstairs, saying to herself:

“I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t know.”

With sudden self-criticism, half humorously, she added:

“But I do know, so it isn’t any good wishing. I mustn’t tell. I mustn’t tell.”

Her heart was fluttering as she entered the drawing-room, feeling that everybody must know the secret she had discovered. She was surprised to find her mother in her usual chair nodding over her book and Minna talking in the window-seat with a young gentleman, whom she introduced as Mr. Basil Haslam.

“Mr. Haslam is a friend of Serge’s,” said Minna, “and Mr. Haslam’s brother is a great friend of Frederic’s.”

“Perhaps he knows,” thought Annette.

But no. Basil Haslam bowed politely to Annette and took no further notice of her, and went on with his conversation with Minna. Annette went away and down [Pg 136]to her father’s study, and there she found Francis and Bennett Lawrie in earnest conclave. Did they know? They gave no sign. Francis was smoking, and tapping on the ground with his foot. Bennett was leaning forward and talking emphatically and waving his long hands rather wildly in the air.

“I can do it,” he said. “I know I can. I shall never do any good in business. I must lead men. I must move them, lift them up, show them the way to higher things.”

Annette stopped in the doorway, and said:

“Am I in the way?”

“Not at all,” returned Francis. “Come in. Mr. Lawrie is being very entertaining. We were discussing the possibility of his taking Orders.”

“That would be lovely,” said Annette.

Bennett turned to her.

“You think I could do it, don’t you?”

It was the first time he or any of the young men who came to the house had spoken to her directly, and Annette felt curiously grateful to him. She stammered:

“I . . . I’m sure you . . . you could.”

“It’s what I’ve wanted to do all my life, only I’ve always thought it impossible. You’ll laugh, I know, sir, but I used to preach sermons when I was a boy, just to myself in my bed-room, and I made a little altar when I was sixteen. I never dared talk about it at home. They always laughed at me. I never dared tell them what I wanted to do. They said I must go into an office when I was sixteen, and I went there. . . . You know we, Gertrude and I, thought you would take me as curate as soon as I was ordained, and then when I got a living we could be married.”

&............