# Saxe Holm's Stories/Whose Wife Was She?
### WHOSE WIFE WAS SHE?

I WAS on my knees before my chrysanthemum-bed, looking at each little round tight disk of a bud, and trying to believe that it would be a snowy flower in two weeks. In two weeks my cousin Annie Ware was to be married: if my white chrysanthemums would only understand and make haste! I was childish enough to tell them so; but the childishness came of love,—of my exceeding, my unutterable love for Annie Ware; if flowers have souls, the chrysanthemums understood me.
A sharp, quick roll of wheels startled me. I lifted my head. The wheels stopped at our gate; a hurried step came down the broad garden-path, and almost before I had had time to spring to my feet, Dr. Fearing had taken both my hands in his, had said,—"Annie Ware has the fever,"—had turned, had gone, had shut the garden gate, and the same sharp quick roll of wheels told that he was far on his way to the next sufferer.
I do not know how long I stood still in the garden. A miserable sullenness seemed to benumb my faculties. I repeated,—
"Annie Ware has the fever." Then I said,—
"Annie Ware cannot die; she is too young, too strong, and we love her so."
Then I said again,—
"Annie Ware has the fever," and all the time I seemed not to be thinking about her at all, but about the chrysanthemums, whose tops I still idly studied.
For weeks a malignant typhus fever had been slowly creeping about in the lower part of our village, in all the streets which had been under water in the spring freshet.
These streets were occupied chiefly by laboring people, either mill-operatives, or shopkeepers of the poorer class. It was part of the cruel "calamity" of their "poverty" that they could not afford to have homesteads on the high plateau, which lifted itself quite suddenly from the river meadow, and made our village a by-word of beauty all through New England.
Upon this plateau were laid out streets of great regularity, shaded by grand elms, many of which had been planted by hands that had handled the ropes of the Mayflower. Under the shade of these elms stood large old-fashioned houses, in that sort of sleepy dignity peculiar to old New England. We who lived in these houses were also sleepy and dignified. We knew that "under the hill," as it was called, lived many hundreds of men and women, who were stifled in summer for want of the breezes which swept across our heights, cold in winter because the wall of our plateau shut down upon them the icy airs from the frozen river, and cut off the afternoon sun. We were sorry for them, and we sent them cold meat and flannels sometimes; but their life was as remote from our life as if they never crossed our paths; it is not necessary to go into large cities to find sharp lines drawn between the well-to-do and the poverty-stricken. There are, in many small villages, "districts" separated from each other by as distinct a moral distance as divides Fifth Avenue from the Five Points.
And so it had come to pass that while for weeks this malignant fever had been creeping about on the river shore, we, in our clearer, purer air, had not felt even a dread of it. There had not been a single case of it west of the high water mark made by the terrible freshet of the previous spring. We sent brandy and wine and beef-tea into the poor, comfortless, grief-stricken houses; and we said at tea-time that it was strange, people would persist in living down under the bank: what could they expect? and besides, they were "so careless about drainage and ventilation."
Now, on the highest and loveliest spot, in the richest and most beautiful house, the sweetest and fairest girl of all our village lay ill of the deadly disease.
"Annie Ware has the fever." I wondered if some fiend were lurking by my side, who kept saying the words over and over in my ear. With that indescribable mixture of dulled and preternaturally sharpened sense which often marks the first moments of such distress, I walked slowly to my room, and in a short time had made all the necessary preparation for leaving home. I felt like a thief as I stole slowly down the stairs, with my travelling-bag in my hand. At the door I met my father.
"Hey-day, my darling, where now? Off to Annie's, as usual?"
He had not heard the tidings! Should I tell him? I might never see him again; only too well I knew the terrible danger into which I was going. But he might forbid me.
"Yes, off to Annie's," I said in a gay tone, and kissing him sprang down the steps.
I did not see my father again for eighteen days.
On the steps of my uncle's house I met old Jane, a colored woman who had nursed Annie Ware when she was a baby, and who lived now in a little cottage near by, from whose door-steps she could see Annie's window, and in whose garden she raised flowers of all sorts, solely for the pleasure of carrying them to Annie every day.
Jane's face was positively gray with sorrow and fear. She looked at me with a strange sort of unsympathizing hardness in her eyes. She had never loved me. I knew what she thought. She was saying to herself: "Why not this one instead of the other?"
"O auntie!" I said, "I would die for Annie; you know I would."
At this she melted. "O honey! don' ye say that. The Lord"—but she could say no more. She threw her apron up over her head and strode away.
The doors of the house stood open. I walked through room after room, and found no human being. At last, at the foot of the stairs in the back part of the house, I came upon all the servants huddled together in a cowering, weeping group. Flat on the floor, with his face to the wall, lay black Cæsar, the coachman. I put my hand on his shoulder. He jerked away impatiently.
"Yer jest lemme lone, will yer?" he said in a choking voice; then lifting up his head, and seeing it was I, he half sprang to his feet, with a look of shame and alarm, and involuntarily carrying his hand to his head, said:—
"O miss! who's gwine to think yer"—here he too broke down, and buried his face in his great hands.
I did not speak, but the little group instinctively opened to let me pass up the stairs. I had a vague consciousness that they said something as I turned into a little cross-hall which led to Annie's room; but without attending to their words I opened her door. The room was empty; the bed stripped of clothes; the windows wide open. I sank into a chair, and looked from side to side. I was too late, after all! That was why none of the servants dared speak to me. A little slipper of Annie's lay on the floor by the bed. I took it up and turned it over and over in my hands. Then I became conscious that my Aunt Ann was speaking to me,—was calling me by name, earnestly, repeatedly, with terror in her voice.
"My dear, dear child; Helen, Helen, Helen, she is not dead. She is in my room. Come and see for yourself."
I had seen my Aunt Ann every day for nineteen years,—I never knew her until that moment; I never saw her real face until that moment.
I followed her slowly through rooms and passageways till she reached her own chamber. The door was open; the room was very dark. On the threshold she paused, and whispered, "You must not be frightened, darling. She will not know you. She has not known any one for six hours."
I knelt down by the bed. In a few moments my eyes became used to the darkness, and I saw Annie's face lying motionless on the farther edge of the bed, turned to the wall. It was perfectly white except the lips, which were almost black, and were swollen and crusted over with the fearful fever. Her beautiful hair fell in tangled masses, and half covered her face.
"She seems to be lying very uncomfortably," said Aunt Ann, "but the doctor ordered that she should not be disturbed in any way."
I looked at my aunt's face and listened to her voice in bewilderment. The whole world had for years called her, and with apparent justice, "a hard and unsympathizing woman." No human being had ever seen a really free unconstrained smile on her face, or heard from her lips an impulsive word. When it was known that the genial, rollicking, open-hearted Henry Ware was to marry her, everybody shuddered. As years went on, everybody who sat by Henry Ware's fireside, and was kindled and made welcome by his undiminished and unconquerable cheeriness, felt at the same time chilled and paralyzed by the courteous, unexceptionable dignity of Mrs. Ware. Even I, having the freedom of a daughter in their house, and loving my uncle hardly less than I loved my father, had never once supposed that anybody could love Aunt Ann, or that she would permit it. I always felt a little terror when I saw Annie kiss her, or my uncle put his arm around her. My own loving, caressing, over-flowing mother had given me by inheritance, and had taught me by example, a type of love which knew no life without expression. And very well I knew that that sweet mother of mine, whom the whole town loved, and who herself loved the whole world, seemed always turned into stone by the simple presence of Aunt Ann.
And now Aunt Ann was sitting on the floor by my side, clinging to my hand, resting my head on her bosom, and, as I felt instantly and instinctively, revealing in her every tone, look, word, such intensity and passionateness of feeling as I had never in my whole life seen before. I saw then that she had always held me side by side with her own child in her heart, and that she knew the rare quality of the love I had for Annie.
"I ought not to have let you come here," she said, more as if speaking to herself than to me; "they, too, have but one."
"But, Aunt Ann, you could not have kept me out," I whispered.
"Yes, I knew that, my child," she replied; "but no one else would know it."
From that moment there was between my Aunt Ann and me a subtle bond which partook of all the holiest mysteries of love. There were both motherhood and the love of lovers in my love for Annie. Annie's mother felt them, and was willing to have her own motherhood added to and ministered to by them. From that moment I believe not even her husband seemed so near to her in her relation with her child as I.
I will not write out the record of the next two weeks. They seemed, as they passed, a thousand years; and yet, in looking back on them, they seem only like one terrible breathless night. My aunt and I alone did all that was done for Annie. There were whole days and whole nights during which she talked incessantly, sometimes with such subtle semblance of her own sweet self that we could hardly believe she did not know what she said; sometimes with such wild ravings that we shook in terror, and could not look at her nor at each other. There were other days and nights through which she lay in a sleep, which seemed no more like real sleep than the shrill voice of her ravings had seemed like her real voice. These were most fearful of all. Through all these days and nights, two men with white faces and folded arms walked up and down in the rooms below, or crouched on the thresholds of our doors, listening for sign or word from us. One was Annie's father, and the other was her lover, George Ware. He was her second cousin, fifteen years older than she, and had loved her since the day she was one year old, when at the ceremony of her christening, he, a proud shy boy of sixteen, had been allowed to carry her up-stairs with her sweet name resting fresh and new on her little dewy forehead. Ah, seldom does such love spring and grow and blaze on this earth as had warmed the very air around Annie from the moment of her birth. George Ware was a man of rare strength, as this love showed; and with just such faithfulness as his faithfulness to Annie, he had loved and cared for his mother, who had been for twenty years a widow. They lived on the outskirts of the town, in a small house almost buried in the heart of a pine wood. The wood was threaded in all directions by miles of narrow paths which shone in the shaded sunlight as if they were satin-floored. For nineteen years it had been George Ware's joy to roam these paths with his cousin Annie; first, the baby whom he drew in her wicker wagon; next, the wayward little child who walked with stumbling steps and clung to his finger; next, the gay school-girl who brought all her perplexities and all her joys to be confided to him under the pines; next, the shyer and more silent maiden who came less often, but lingered helplessly until twilight made the fragrant aisles solemn and dim as cloisters; at last, the radiant, the child-like woman, the promised wife!
No winter could set a barrier across these pine-wood paths. When the whole country about lay blocked and drifted, and half buried with snow, all these spicy foot-roads were kept clear and level, and ready for Annie's feet. Whole days of George Ware's strength went into the work and the joy of doing this. In open spaces where the snow had drifted deep, he wrought it into solid walls almost as high on either hand as Annie's head. In dark nooks, where the spreading pines and hemlocks lay low and wide, he tossed the snow into fantastic and weird masses on the right and left, and cleared great spaces where he knew the partridge-berry would be ready with a tiny scarlet glow to light up the spot.
This was George Ware's wooing. It never stepped into the glare, the contention of profaner air. It was not a seeking, a finding, a conquest; but a slow, sure growth of possession, which had as eternal foundation and seemed as eternally safe as the results of organic law.
George's picture hung in Annie's room, opposite the foot of her bed. Opposite the foot of the bed in her mother's room hung a large engraving of the Sistine Madonna. I fancied that in Annie's quieter moments her eyes rested with a troubled look upon this picture, and one day, when she was in a deep sleep, I exchanged the pictures. I felt as if even lifeless canvas which had George's face painted upon it, might work her good.
At last there came a night,—they said it was the fourteenth, but the words conveyed no meaning to me,—there came a night when Dr. Fearing, who had been sitting by Annie's bed for two hours, watching her every breath, sprang suddenly to his feet, and beckoned to my aunt and me to follow him into the next room. He shut the door, walked very swiftly up to us, looked first into her face then into mine; then felt her pulse, and then mine, and then turning to me, said,—
"It will have to be you." We looked at him in sudden terror. The tears were rolling down his wrinkled cheeks.
"What is it, William?" gasped Aunt Ann.
"It will have to be you," he went on, looking me in the face, and taking no notice of her question; "your pulse can be trusted. There has been a change. When Annie wakes out of this sleep she will know you. It may be in two hours, and it may not be for six. But if in that first moment she is alarmed, or agitated in any way, she will die."
"O William, let me stay. I will be calm," moaned my poor aunt.
Then I observed, for the first time, that she had called him "William." And then, for the first and last time, I heard Dr. Fearing call my Aunt Ann "darling," and I remembered in that instant that it had been said once in my hearing, that it was because of his love for Mrs. Henry Ware that Dr. William Fearing had lived and would die a lonely man.
"Darling," he said, and put one hand on her shoulder, "you would kill your child. I forbid you to cross the threshold of that room till I come back. You will thank me to-morrow. Can you not trust me, Ann?" and he looked down from his full height, this brave old man, into the face of the woman he had loved, with a look like the look of one who dies to save another. It was but for one second, and then he was again the physician, and turning to me, went on, "I have another patient to whom I must instantly go, and whom I may not be able to leave for hours. You can do all that I would do,—I believe,"—then he felt my pulse again, and nodding his head with a sort of grim professional satisfaction, which no amount of emotion could wholly divert from its delight in the steady nerves and undisturbed currents of a healthy body,—resumed, "You have but one thing to do: when she wakes, look perfectly composed; if she speaks, answer her in a perfectly natural voice; give her two drops of this medicine, and tell her to go to sleep again. If you do this, she will fall asleep at once. If you show the least agitation, she may die,—probably will!"—and Dr. Fearing was gone.
My aunt sat silently weeping. I kissed her without speaking, and went back to my chair by Annie's bed. I dropped the two drops of medicine into a spoon, and propped the spoon carefully on a little silver tray, so that I could reach it instantly. It was just three o'clock in the morning. Hour after hour passed. I could not hear Annie's breath. My own dinned in my ears like the whir of mills. A terror such as I can never describe took possession of me. What if I were to kill Annie? How could I look composed? speak naturally? What would she say? If I could but know and have my answer ready!
I firmly believe that the dawn of light saved my senses and Annie's life. When the first red beam shot through the blinds at the farther end of the room, tears came into my eyes. I felt as if angels were watching outside. A tiny sunbeam crept between the slats and fell on the carpet. It was no more than a hair's breadth, but it was companionship to me. Slowly, steadily it came towards me. I forgot all else in watching it. To this day I cannot see a slow-moving sunbeam on a crimson floor without a shudder. The clock struck six, seven, eight, nine. The bells rang for schools; the distant hum of the town began. Still there was no stir, no symptom of life, in the colorless face on the pillow. The sunbeam had crept nearly to my feet. Involuntarily I lifted my right foot and stretched it out to meet the golden messenger. Had I dared to move I should have knelt and reached my hand to it instead. Perhaps even the slight motion I did make, hastened Annie's waking, for at that instant she turned her head uneasily on the pillow and opened her eyes. I saw that she knew me. I wondered how I could have distrusted my own strength to meet her look. I smiled as if we were at play together, and said,—
"Good morning, dear."
She smiled languidly and said, "How came I in mamma's bed?"
I said, quietly, "Take this medicine, darling;" and almost before the drops had passed her lips her eyes closed, and she had fallen asleep again.
When Dr. Fearing came into the room at noon, he gave one swift, anxious glance at her face, and then fell on his knees and folded his face in his hands. I knew that Annie was safe.
Then he went into the next room, silently took Aunt Ann by the hand, and leading her back to Annie's bedside, pointed to the little beads of moisture on her forehead and said,—
"Saved!"
The revulsion was too much for the poor mother's heart. She sank to the floor. He lifted her in his arms and carried her out, and for the rest of that day my Aunt Ann, that "hard and unsympathizing woman," passed from one strange fainting-fit into another, until we were in almost as great fear for her life as we had been for Annie's.
At twilight Annie roused from her sleep again. She was perfectly tranquil, but too weak to lift even her little hand, which had grown so thin and so wrinkled that it looked like a wilted white flower lying on the white counterpane.
Hour by hour she gained strength under the powerful restoratives which were used, and still more from the wonderful elasticity of her temperament. From the very first day, however, an indefinable terror of misgiving seized me as often as I heard her voice or looked into her eyes. In vain I said to myself: "It is the weakness after such terrible illness;" "it is only natural." I felt in the bottom of my heart that it was more.
On the fourth day she said suddenly, looking up at the picture of George Ware,—
"Why! Why is Cousin George's picture in here? Where is the Madonna?"
I replied: "I moved it in here, dear, for you. I thought you would like it."
"No," she said, "I like the Madonna best: the dear little baby! Please carry George back into my room where he belongs."
My heart stood still with terror. She had never called George Ware her cousin since their engagement. She especially disliked any allusion to their relationship. This was her first mention of his name, and it was in all respects just what it would have been a year before. Dr. Fearing had forbidden us to allude to him, or to her wedding-day, or, in fact, to any subject calculated to arouse new trains of thought in her mind. I wondered afterward that we did not understand from the first how he had feared that her brain might not fully recover itself, as the rest of her exquisitely organized body seemed fast doing.
Day after day passed. Annie could sit up; could walk about her room; she gained in flesh and color and strength so rapidly that it was a marvel. She was gentle and gay and loving; her old rare, sweet self in every little way and trait and expression; not a look, not a smile, not a tone was wanting; but it was the Annie of last year, and not of this. She made no allusion to her wedding, the day for which had now passed. She did not ask for George. The whole year had dropped out of her memory; part of her brain was still diseased. No human touch could venture to deal with it without the risk of the most terrible consequences.
Dr. Fearing's face grew day by day more and more anxious; he was baffled; he was afraid. He consulted the most eminent physicians who had had experience in diseases of the brain. They all counseled patience, and advised against any attempt to hasten her recollections upon any point; they all had known similar cases, but never one so sharply defined or so painful as this. Still they were unanimous in advising that nothing should be said to startle her; that all must be trusted to time.
Through these terrible days George Ware was braver than any one else. His faith in the absoluteness of his hold on Annie was too great to be disturbed. He was by nature as patient as he was resolute. He had not wooed his wife for eighteen years to lose her now in any way except by death, he thought. He comforted us all.
"Do be brave, sweet mother of Annie," he used to say to my poor Aunt Ann; "all will be well. It is nothing to me to wait another year, after having waited all these. It is not even hard for me to go without seeing her, if that is best."
Nevertheless, his face grew thin and his eye heavy and his form bent, as week after week passed, and he came daily to the house, only to be told the same weary thing, that Annie had not asked for him. The physicians had said that it would be better that she should not see him until she had of her own accord mentioned his name. Her nerves were still in such a state that any surprise threw her into palpitation and alarm which did not pass off for hours. No human being could tell how great might be the shock of seeing his face; how much it might recall to her; and whether, if it recalled all, she could bear it. From the outset George believed the physicians were wrong in this; but he dared not urge his instinct against their knowledge; and he was patient of nature, and so the days went on, on, on; and there was no change except that Annie grew steadily better and our hearts grew steadily sicker and sicker until we almost looked back with longing on the days when we feared she would die. And yet in every respect, except the memory of her lover, Annie was the same as before. The closest scrutiny could discover no other change in her, except perhaps that she seemed even gayer than she used to seem, and a shade less tender, but this also was as she had been before she had promised to be George Ware's wife.
One morning George brought me a small bunch of lovely wild things from the pine woods, Tiarella leaves just tipped with claret color by the early frosts, sprays of Linnea, two or three tiny white maiden's hair ferns, all tied by a knot of patridge-berry vines thick-set with scarlet berries.
"Give these to Annie for me, will you, dear Helen?" he said, "and observe very carefully how she is affected by them."
I remembered that it was just one year ago that day, that he had asked her to be his wife, and I trembled to think of what hidden meanings I might be messenger in carrying her this silent token. But I too felt, as George did, that she was drifting farther and farther away from the memories we desired she should regain; and that no physician's knowledge could be so true as love's instinct; and I asked no counsel of any one, but went swiftly to Annie with the leaves in my hand.
"O you darling! How perfectly lovely," she exclaimed with a laugh of delight. "Why these must have come from George's woods. Have you been up there?"
"No, dear," I said, "George brought them for you, this morning."
"Oh, the good darling!" she exclaimed. "Is it decided about his going to India?"
I could not repress a little cry of anguish and terror. A year before, there had been a plan for his going out to India on a mercantile venture, which promised great profit. It had been given up, partly because his mother felt that she could not live without him, partly because he felt that he could not longer live without Annie.
"What is it, dear?" she said, in her softest, most sympathizing voice, with a little flush of alarm on her pale cheek; "what hurt you? are you ill? Oh, my poor Helen, you are all worn out with nursing me. I will nurse you presently."
"Only a little twinge of my old neuralgia, dear," I said faintly; "these autumn winds are setting it at work again."
She looked anxiously at me for a few seconds, and then began to untie the bunch of leaves, and spread out the long vines on the bed.
"Oh, if I only had some moss," she said.
I ran to the green-house and brought her handfuls of beautiful dripping mosses from the rocks in the fernery. She filled a saucer with them, putting the Tiarella leaves all round the rim, and winding the Linnea vines in and out as they grow in the woods. Then she leaned back on her pillows and began breaking the partridge-berry vines into short bits, each with a scarlet berry on it. These she set upright in the moss, changing and rearranging them so often that I wondered what could be her purpose, and leaned forward to see.
"No, no," she said playfully, pushing me back, "not till it is done."
Presently she said, "Now look!"
I looked and saw a perfect, beautifully formed G made by the scarlet berries on the green moss.
"There," she said, "I'll send that back to George, to show him that I have found him in the berries; or, no," she added, "we'll keep it till he comes to see me. The doctor said I could be carried down-stairs to-morrow, and then I shall begin to 'receive,'" and she laughed a gay little laugh, and sank back tired.
That moment stands out in my memory as the saddest, hardest one of all. I think at that moment hope died in my heart.
When I told George of this, and showed him the saucer of moss—for she had ordered it to be set on the drawing-room table, saying, "It is too pretty to stay up here with bottles and invalids,"—he buried his face in his hands for many minutes. When he lifted it, he looked me steadily in the eye, and said,—
"She has utterly forgotten this whole year. But I will win her again."
Then he knelt down and kissed every little leaf and berry which her hands had touched, and went away without speaking another word.
It was decided after this that it could do no harm for him to see her. Indeed, he now demanded it. His resolution was taken.
"You need not fear," he said to Dr. Fearing, "that I shall agitate her by approaching her as if she were my own. She is not my own. But she will be!"
We all sat with trembling hands and beating hearts as the hour approached at which we knew the experiment was to be made.
Annie had been carried down-stairs, and laid upon a lounge in the western bay-window of the library. The lounge was covered with dark green damask. Old Cæsar had so implored to be allowed to carry her down, that Annie had insisted that he should be gratified; and she went down as she had so often done in her childhood, with her soft white face lying close to his shining black one.
As he put her down, in her rose-colored wrapper, on the dark green damask, he knelt before her and burst out in spite of himself, into a sort of wild chant of thanksgiving; but as we entered the door he sprang up ashamed, and turning to Aunt Ann, said: "Beg pardon, missis, but this rose yere was too much pink rose for old Cæsar!"
It was "too much pink rose" for any human eyes to see unmoved. We all cried: and Annie herself shed a few tears, but finally helped us all by saying gayly,—
"You'll make me ill again if you all go on like this. I hate people that cry."
No stranger's eye would have detected the thousandth part of a second's pause which George Ware's feet made on the threshold of that room when his eyes first saw Annie. Before the second had ended he was simply the eager, glad, affectionate cousin, and had taken calmly and lovingly the child's kiss which Annie gave him as she had given it every day of her life.
We could not speak. My uncle tried to read his newspaper; my aunt's hands shook in their pretense of sewing; I threw myself on the floor at the foot of Annie's lounge and hid my face in its cushions.
But George Ware's brave voice went steadily on. Annie's sweet glad tones, weak and low, but still sweeter than any other tones I ever heard, chimed in and out like fairy bells from upper air. More than an hour passed. I do not know one word that we said.
Then George rose, saying: "I must not tire you, little Annie, so I am going now."
"Will you come, again to-morrow?" she asked as simply as a little child.
"Yes, dear, if you are not the worse for this," he replied, and kissed her forehead and walked very quickly away without looking back. I followed him instantly into the hall, for I had seen that in his face which had made me fear that, strong man as he was, he would fall. I found him sitting on the lowest step of the staircase, just outside the door.
"My God, Helen," he gasped, "it isn't only this last year she has forgotten. She has gone back five years."
"Oh no, dear George," I said; "you are mistaken. She remembers everything up to a year ago. You know she remembered about your going to India."
"That is nothing," he said impatiently. "You can't any of you, see what I mean, I suppose. But I tell you she has forgotten five years of me. She is to me just as she was when she was fourteen. Do you think I don't know the face and voice and touch of each day of my darling's life? oh, my God! my God!" and he sank down on the stair again in a silence which was worse than groans. I left him there and went back to Annie.
"How old Cousin George looks," she was saying, as I entered the room; "I didn't remember that he was so old. Why, he looks as old as you do, sweet papa. But then," reflectively, "after all, he is pretty old. He is fifteen years older than I am—and I am nineteen: thirty-four! that is old, is it not papa?" said she, half petulantly. "Why don't you speak, any of you?"
"You are getting too tired, my darling," said her father, "and now I shall carry you up-stairs."
After Annie was asleep, my Aunt Ann and I sat for hours in the library, going over and over and over, with weary hopelessness, all her words and looks, and trying to comfort each other. I think each knew the utter despair of the other's heart.
From this time George came and went with all his old familiarity: not a day passed without his seeing Annie, and planning something for her amusement or pleasure. Not a day passed without her showing in many ways that he made a large part of her life, was really a central interest in it. Even to us who knew the sad truth, and who looked on with intentness and anxiety hardly less than those with which we had watched her sick-bed weeks before—even to us it seemed many times as if all must be right. No stranger but would believe them lovers; not a servant in the house dreamed but that Miss Annie was still looking forward to her wedding. They had all been forbidden to allude to it, but they supposed it was only on account of her weakness and excitability.
But every day the shadow deepened on George Ware's face. I could see, though he would not admit it, that the same despair which filled my soul was settling down upon his. Dr. Fearing, too, who came and spent long evenings with us, and cautiously watched Annie's every tone and look, grew more and more uneasy. Dr. ——, one of the most distinguished physicians of the insane, in the country, was invited to spend a few days in the house. He was presented to Annie as an old friend of her father's, and won at once her whole confidence and regard. For four days he studied her case, and frankly owned himself baffled, and unable to suggest any measure except the patient waiting which was killing us all.
To tell this frail and excitable girl, who had more than once fainted at a sudden noise, that this man whom she regarded only as her loving cousin had been her promised husband—and that having been within two weeks of her wedding-day, she had now utterly forgotten it, and all connected with it—this would be too fearful a risk. It might deprive her forever of her reason.
Otherwise, she seemed in every respect, even in the smallest particular, herself. She recollected her music, her studies, her friends. She was anxious to resume her old life at all points. Every day she made allusions to old plans or incidents. She had forgotten absolutely nothing excepting the loverhood of her lover. Every day she grew stronger, and became more and more beautiful, There was a slight under-current of arch mischievousness and half petulance which she had never had before, and which, added to her sweet sympathetic atmosphere, made her indescribably charming. As she grew stronger she frolicked with every human being and every living thing. When the spring first opened and she could be out of doors, she seemed more like a divine mixture of Ariel and Puck than like a mortal maiden.
I found her one day lying at full length on the threshold of the greenhouse. Twenty great azaleas were in full bloom on the shelves—white, pink, crimson. She had gathered handfuls of the fallen blossoms, and was making her gray kitten, which was as intelligent and as well trained as a dog, jump into the air to catch them as she tossed them up. I sat down on the grass outside and watched her silently.
"Oh, you sober old Helen," she said, "you'll be an owl for a thousand years after you die! Why can't you caper a little? You don't know how nice it is."
Just then George came slowly walking down the garden path, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent forward, and his eyes fixed on the ground.
He did not see us. Annie exclaimed,—
"There's Cousin George, too! Look at him! Wouldn't you think he had just heard he was to be executed at twelve to-day! I don't see what ails everybody."
"George, George," she called, "come here. For how many years are you sentenced, dear, and how could you have been so silly as to be found out?" And then she burst into a peal of the most delicious laughter at his bewildered look.
"I don't know, darling, for how many years I am sentenced. We none of us know," he said, in a tone which was sadder than he meant it should be, and sobered her loving heart instantly. She sprang to her feet, and threw both her arms around his right arm, a pretty trick she had kept from her babyhood, and said,—
"Oh you dear, good darling, does anything really trouble you? How heartless I am. But you don't know how it feels to have been so awfully ill, and then to get well again. It makes one feel all body and no soul; but I have soul enough to love you all dearly, you know I have; and I won't have you troubled; tell me what it is this minute;" and she looked at him with tears in her eyes.
One wonders often if there be any limit to human endurance. If there be, who can say he has reached it? Each year we find that the thing which we thought had taken our last strength, has left us with strength enough to bear a harder thing. It seemed so with such scenes as this, in those sunny spring days when Annie Ware first went out into life again. Each day I said, "There can never be another moment quite so hard to meet as this!" and the next day there came a moment which made me forget the one which had gone before.
It was an ill fortune which just at this time made it imperatively necessary for George to go to the West for three months. He had no choice. His mother's whole property was at stake. No one but he could save it; it was not certain that he could. His last words to me were,—
"I trust more in you, Helen, than in any other human being. Keep my name constantly in her thought; write me everything which you would tell me if I were here."
It had become necessary now to tell the sad story of the result of Annie's illness to all those friends who would be likely to speak to her of her marriage. The whole town knew what shadow rested on our hearts; and yet, as week after week went by, and the gay, sweet, winning, beautiful girl moved about among people again in her old way, people began to say more and more that it was, after all, very foolish for Annie Ware's friends to be so distressed about her; stranger things had happened; she was evidently a perfectly well woman; and as for the marriage, they had never liked the match—George Ware was too old and too grave for her; and, besides, he was her second cousin.
Oh, the torture of the "ante-mortems" of beloved ones, at which we are all forced to assist! Yet it could not be wondered at, that in this case the whole heart of the community was alive with interest and speculation.
Annie Ware's sweet face had been known and loved in every house in our village. Her father was the richest, most influential man in the county, and the most benevolent. Many a man and woman had kissed Henry Ware's baby in her little wagon, for the sake of Henry Ware's good deeds to them or theirs. And while Mrs. Ware had always repelled persons by her haughty reticence, Annie, from the first day she could speak until now, had won all hearts by her sunny, open, sympathizing nature. No wonder that now, when they saw her again fresh, glad, beautiful, and looking stronger and in better health than she had ever done, they said that we were wrong, that Annie and Nature were right, and that all would be well!
This spring there came to our town a family of wealth and position who had for many years lived in Europe, and who had now returned to make America their home. They had taken a furnished house for a year, to make trial of our air, and also, perhaps, of the society, although rumor, with the usual jealousy, said that the Neals did not desire any intimacy with their neighbors. The grounds of the house which they had hired joined my uncle's, and my Aunt Ann, usually averse to making new acquaintances, had called upon them at once, and had welcomed them most warmly to her house. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Neal and two sons, Arthur and Edward. They were people of culture, and of wide experience; but they were not of fine organization nor of the highest breeding; and it will ever remain a mystery to me that there should have seemed to be, from the outset, an especial bond of intimacy between them and my uncle and aunt. I think it was partly the sense of relief with which they welcomed a new interest—a little break in the monotony of anxiety which had been for so many months corroding their very lives.
Almost before I knew that the Neals were accepted as familiar friends, I was startled one morning, while we were at breakfast, by the appearance of Annie on her pony, looking in at our dining-room window. She had a pretty way of riding up noiselessly on the green grass, and making her pony, which was tame as a Newfoundland dog, mount the stone steps, and tap with his nose on the panes of the long glass door till we opened it.
I never saw her so angelically beautiful as she was this morning. Her cheeks were flushed and her dark blue eyes sparkled like gems in the sun. Presently she said, hesitating a little,—
"Edward Neal is at the gate; may I bring him in? I told him he might come, but he said it was too like burglary;" and she cantered off again without waiting to hear my mother's permission.
All that morning Annie Ware and Edward Neal sat with me on our piazza. I looked and listened and watched like one in a dream, or under a spell. I foresaw, I foreknew what was to come; with the subtle insight of love, I saw all.
Never had I seen Annie so stirred into joyousness by George's presence as she seemed to be by this boy's. The two together overflowed in a sparkling current of gayety, which was irresistible. They seemed two divine children sent out on a mission to set the world at play. What Edward Neal's more sensuous and material nature lacked, was supplied by the finer, subtler quality of Annie's. From that first day I could never disguise from myself that they seemed, so far as mere physical life goes, the absolute counterparts of each other.
I need not dwell on this part of my story. When young hearts are drawing together, summer days speed on very swiftly. George Ware, alas! was kept at the West week after week, until it came to be month after month. My uncle and aunt seemed deliberately to shut their eyes to the drift of events. I think they were so thankful to watch Annie's bounding health and happiness, to hear glad voices and merry laughs echoing all day in their house, that they could not allow themselves to ask whether a new kernel of bitterness, of danger, lay at the core of all this fair seeming. As for the children, they did not know that they were loving each other as man and woman. Edward Neal was only twenty-one, Annie but nineteen, and both were singularly young and innocent of soul.
And so it came to be once more the early autumn; the maple leaves were beginning to be red, and my chrysanthemums had again set their tiny round disks of buds. Edward, and Annie had said no word of love to each other, but the whole town looked on them as lovers, and people began to reply impatiently and incredulously to our assurances that no engagement existed.
Early in October George came home, very unexpectedly, taking even his mother by surprise. He told me afterwards that he came at last as one warned of God. A presentiment of evil, against which he had struggled for weeks, finally so overwhelmed him that he set off for home without half an hour's delay. I found him, on the night after his arrival, sitting in his old place in the big arm-chair at the head of Annie's lounge; she still clung to some of her old invalid ways, and spent many evenings curled up like a half-shut pink rose on the green damask cushions. He looked worn and thin, but glad and eager, and was giving a lively account of his Western experiences when the library door opened, and coming in unannounced, with the freedom of one at home, Edward Neal entered.
"O Edward, here is Cousin George," exclaimed Annie, while a wave of rosy color spread over her face, and half rising, she took George's hand in hers as she leaned towards Edward.
"Oh, I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Ware," said Edward, with that indefinable tone of gentle respect which marks a very young man's recognition of one much older, whom he has been led to admire. "Annie has been talking to me about you all summer. I feel as if I knew you almost as well as she does. I'm heartily glad to see you."
A man of finer grain than Edward Neal would have known the whole truth in that first second, by the blank stern look which spread like a cloud over George Ware's face; but the open-hearted fellow only thought that he had perhaps seemed too familiar and went on,—
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Ware. It must appear strange to you that I took the liberty of being so glad; but you don't know how kindly I have been allowed to feel that your friends here would permit me to call all their friends mine," and he glanced lovingly and confidently at my aunt and uncle, who answered by such smiles as they rarely gave. Oh, no wonder they loved this genial, frank sunny boy, who had brought such light into their life.
In a moment George was his courteous self again, and began to express his pleasure at meeting Mr. Neal, but Annie interrupted him.
"Oh, now don't be tiresome; of course you are to be just as good friends with Edward as you are with me: sit down, Edward. He is telling us the most delicious stories. He is the dearest Cousin George in the world," she added, stroking his hand which she still kept in hers.
It gave Edward no more surprise to see her do this than it would have done to see her sit in her father's lap. Even I felt with a sudden pang that George Ware seemed at that moment to belong to another generation than Edward and Annie.
Edward seated himself on a low cricket at the foot of the lounge, and, looking up in George's face, said most winningly,—
"Please go on, Mr. Ware." Then he turned one full, sweet look of greeting and welcome upon Annie, who beamed back upon him with such a diffused smile as only the rarest faces have. Annie's smile was one of her greatest charms. It changed her whole face; the lips made but a small part of it; no mortal ever saw it without smiling in answer.
It was beyond George Ware's power long to endure this. Probably his instinct felt in both Edward's atmosphere and Annie's more than we did. He rose very soon and said to me, "If you are going home to-night, Helen, will you let me walk up with you? I have business in that part of the town; but I must go now. Perhaps that will hurry you too much?" he added, with a tone which was almost imploring.
I was only too glad to go. Our leave-taking was very short. A shade of indefinable trouble clouded every face but Edward's and Annie's.
George did not speak until we had left the house. Then he stopped short, took both my hands in his, with a grasp that both hurt and frightened me, and exclaimed,—
"How dared you keep this from me! How dared you!"
"O George," I said, "there was nothing to tell."
"Nothing to tell!" and his voice grew hoarse and loud. "Nothing to tell! Do you mean to say that you don't know, have not known that Annie loves that boy, that puppy?"
I trembled from head to foot. I could not speak. He went on:—
"And I trusted you so; O Helen, I can never forgive you."
I murmured, miserably, for I felt myself in that moment really guilty,—
"What makes you think she loves him?"
"You cannot deceive me, Helen," he replied. "Do not torture me and yourself by trying. Tell me now, how long this 'Edward' has been sitting by her lounge. Tell me all."
Then I told him all. It was not much. He had seen more that evening, and so had I, than had ever existed before. His presence had been the one element which had suddenly defined that which before had been hardly recognized.
He was very quiet after the first moment of bitterness, and asked me to forgive his impatient words. When he left me he said,—
"I cannot see clearly what I ought to do. Annie's happiness is my only aim. If this boy can create it, and I cannot—but he cannot: she was as utterly mine as it is possible for a woman to be. You none of you knew how utterly! Oh, my God, what shall I do!" and he walked away feebly and slowly like an old man of seventy.
The next day Aunt Ann sent for me to come to her. I found her in great distress. George had returned to the house after leaving me, and had had almost a stormy interview with my uncle. He insisted upon asking Annie at once to be his wife; making no reference to the past, but appearing at once as her suitor. My uncle could not forbid it, for he recognized George's right, and he sympathized in his suffering. But his terror was insupportable at the thought of having Annie agitated, and of the possible results which might follow. He implored George to wait at least a few weeks.
"What! and see that young lover at my wife's feet every night!" said George, fiercely. "No! I will risk all, lose all, if need be. I have been held back long enough," and he had gone directly from my uncle's room to Annie herself.
In a short time Annie had come to her mother in a perfect passion of weeping, and told her that Cousin George had asked her to be his wife; and that she had never dreamed of such a thing; and she thought he was very unkind to be so angry with her; how could she have supposed he cared for her in that way, when he had been like her elder brother all his life.
"Why, he seems almost as old as papa," said poor Annie, sobbing and crying, "and he ought to have known that I should not kiss him and put my arms around him if—if"—she could not explain; but she knew!
Annie had gone to her own room, ill. My aunt and I sat together in the library silently crying; we were wretched. "Oh, if George would only have waited," said Aunt Ann.
"I think it would have made no difference, aunty," said I.
"No, I am afraid not," replied she, and each knew that the other was thinking of Edward Neal.
George Ware left town the next day. He sent me a short note. He could not see any one, he said, and begged me to give a farewell kiss for him to "the sweet mother of my Annie. For mine she is, and will be in heaven, though she will be the wife of Edward Neal on earth."
When I next saw our Annie she was Edward Neal's promised bride. A severe fit of illness, the result of all these excitements, confined me to my room for three weeks after George's departure; and I knew only from Aunt Ann's lips the events which had followed upon it.
George Ware's presence on that first evening had brought revelation to Edward Neal as well as to all the other members of that circle. That very night he had told his parents that Annie would be his wife.
The next night, while poor George was swiftly borne away, Edward was sitting in my uncle's library, listening with a blanched cheek to the story of Annie's old engagement. My uncle's sense of honor would not let him withhold anything from the man seeking her for his wife. The pain soon passed by, when he was told that she had that very day refused her cousin, and betrayed almost resentment at his offer. Edward Neal had not a sufficiently subtle nature, nor acquaintance enough with psychological phenomena to be disturbed by any fears for the future. He dismissed it all as an inexplicable result of the disease, but a fixed fact, and a great and blessed fortune for him. My uncle, however, was less easily assured. He insisted upon delay, and upon consulting the same physicians who had studied Annie's case before. They all agreed that she was now a perfectly healthy and strong woman, and that to persist in any farther recognition of the old bond, after she had so intelligently and emphatically repudiated all thought of such a relation to her cousin, was absurd. Dr. Fearing alone was in doubt, He said little; but he shook his head and clasped his hands tight, and implored that at least the marriage should be deferred for a year.
Annie herself, however, refused to consent to this: of course no satisfactory reason could be alleged for any such delay; and she said as frankly as a little child, "Edward and I have loved each other almost from the very first; there is nothing for either of us to do in life but to make each other happy; and we shall not leave papa and mamma: so why should we wait?"
They were not married, however, until spring. The whole town stood by in speechless joy and delight when those two beautiful young beings came out from the village church man and wife. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The peculiar atmosphere of almost playful joyousness which they created whenever they appeared together was something which could not be described, but which diffused itself like sunlight.
We all tried resolutely to dismiss memory and misgiving from our hearts. They seemed disloyalty and sin. George Ware was in India. George Ware's mother was dead. The cottage among the pines was sold to strangers, and the glistening brown paths under the trees were neglected and unused.
Edward and Annie led the same gay child-like lives after their marriage that they had led before: they looked even younger and gayer and sunnier. When they dashed cantering through the river meadows, she with rosy cheeks and pale brown curls flying in the wind, and he with close crisp black hair, and the rich, dark, glowing skin of a Spaniard, the farming men turned and rested on their tools, and gazed till they were out of sight. Sometimes I asked myself wonderingly, "Are they ever still, and tender, and silent?" "Is this perpetual overflow the whole of love?" But it seemed treason to doubt in the presence of such merry gladness as shone in Annie's face, and in her husband's too. It was simply the incarnate triumph and joy of young life.
The summer went by; the chrysanthemums bloomed out white and full in my garden; the frosts came, and then the winter, and then Annie told me one day that before winter came again she would be a mother. She was a little sobered as she saw the intense look on my face.
"Why, darling, aren't you glad? I thought you would be almost as glad as I am myself?" Annie sometimes misunderstood me now.
"Glad! O Annie," was all I could say.
From that day I had but one thought, Annie's baby. Together we wrought all dainty marvels for its ward-robe; together we planned all possible events in its life: from the outset I felt as much motherhood to the precious little unseen one as Annie did. She used to say to me, often,—
"Darling, it will be half my baby, and half yours."
Annie was absolutely and gloriously well through the whole of those mysterious first months of maternity which are to so many women exhausting and painful. Every nerve of her body seemed strung and attuned to normal and perfect harmony. She was more beautiful than ever, stronger than ever, and so glad that she smiled perpetually without knowing it. For the first time since the old days, dear Dr. Fearing's face lost the anxious look with which his eyes always rested upon her. He was more at ease about her now.
Before light one Sunday morning in December, a messenger rang furiously at our bell. We had been looking for such tidings and were not alarmed. It was a fearful storm; wind and sleet and rain and darkness had attended the coming of Annie's little "Sunday child" into its human life.
"A boy—and Miss Annie's all right," old Cæsar said, with a voice almost as hoarse as the storm outside; and he was gone before we could ask a question farther.
In less than an hour I stood on the threshold of Annie's room. But I did not see her until noon. Then, as I crept softly into the dimly-lighted chamber, the whole scene so recalled her illness of two years before that my heart stood still with sudden horror, in spite of all my joy. Now, as then, I knelt silently at her bedside, and saw the sweet face lying white and still on the pillow.
She turned, and seeing me, smiled faintly, but did not speak.
At her first glance, a speechless terror seized me. This was my Annie! The woman who for two years had been smiling with my Annie's face had not been she! The room grew dark. I do not know what supernatural power came to my aid that I did not faint and fall.
Annie drew back the bed-clothes with a slow, feeble motion of her right hand, and pointed to the tiny little head nestled in her bosom. She smiled again, looked at me gently and steadily for a second, and then shut her eyes. Presently I saw that she was asleep; I stole into the next room and sat down with my face buried in my hands.
In a moment a light step aroused me. Aunt Ann stood before me, her pale face all aglow with delight.
"O Helen my darling! She is so well. Thank God! thank God!" and she threw her arms around me and burst into tears.
I felt like one turned to stone. Was I mad, or were they?
What had I seen in that one steady look of Annie's eyes? Was she really well? I felt as if she had already died!
Agonizingly I waited to see Dr. Fearing's face. He came in before tea, saw Annie for a few minutes, and came down-stairs rubbing his hands and singing in a low tone.
"I never saw anything like that child's beautiful elasticity in my life," he said. "We shall have her dancing down-stairs in a month."
The cloud was utterly lifted from all hearts except mine. My aunt and uncle looked at each other with swimming eyes. Edward tried to laugh and look gay, but broke down utterly, and took refuge in the library, where I found him lying on the floor, with his face buried in Annie's lounge.
I went home stupefied, bewildered. I could not sleep. A terror-stricken instinct told me that all was not right. But how should I know more than physician, mother, husband?
For ten days I saw my Annie every day for an hour. Her sweet, strange, gentle, steady look into my eyes when we first met always paralyzed me with fear, and yet I could not have told why. There was a fathomless serenity in her face which seemed to me super-human. She said very little. The doctor had forbidden her to talk. She slept the greater part of the time, but never allowed the baby to be moved from her arms while she was awake.
There was a divine ecstasy in her expression as she looked down into the little face; it never seemed like human motherhood.
One day Edward came to me and said,—
"Do you think Annie is so well as they say? I suppose they must know; but she looks to me as if she had died already, and it were only her glorified angel-body that lies in that bed?"
I could not speak to him. I knew then that he had seen the same thing that I had seen: if his strong, rather obtuse material nature had recognized it, what could so blind her mother and father and the doctor? I burst into tears and left him.
At the end of a week I saw a cloud on Dr. Fearing's face. As he left Annie's room one morning, he stopped me and said abruptly,—
"What does Annie talk about?"
"She hardly speaks at all," I said.
"Ah," he said. "Well, I have ordered her not to talk. But does she ask any questions?" he continued.
"No," I said; "not of me. She has not asked one."
I saw then that the same vague fear which was filling my heart was taking shape in his.
From that moment, he watched her hourly, with an anxiety which soon betrayed itself to my aunt.
"William, why does not Annie get stronger?" she said suddenly to him one day.
"I do not know why," he answered, with a solemn sadness and emphasis in his tone which was, as I think, he intended it to be, a partial revelation to her, and a warning. Aunt Ann staggered to a chair and looked at him without a word. He answered her look by one equally agonized and silent, and left the room.
The baby was now two weeks old. Annie was no stronger than on the day of his birth. She lay day and night in a tranquil state, smiling with inexpressible sweetness when she was spoken to, rarely speaking of her own accord, doing with gentle docility all she was told to do, but looking more and more like a transfigured saint. All the arch, joyous, playful look was gone; there was no added age in the look which had taken its place; neither any sorrow; but something ineffably solemn, rapt, removed from earth. Sometimes, when Edward came to her bedside, a great wave of pitying tenderness would sweep over her face, giving it such a heavenly look that he would fall on his knees.
"O Helen," he said once, after such a moment as this, "I shall go mad if Annie does not get well. I do not dare to kiss even her hand. I feel as if she never had been mine."
At last the day and the hour and the moment came which I had known would come. Annie spoke to me in a very gentle voice, and said,—
"Helen, darling, you know I am going to die?"
"Yes dear, I think so," I said, in as quiet a voice as hers.
"You know it is better that I should, darling?" she said with a trembling voice.
"Yes, dear, I know it," I replied.
She drew a long sigh of relief. "I am so glad, darling; I thought you knew it, but I could not be sure. I think no one else understands. I hope dear mamma will never suspect. You will not let her, if you can help it, the dear doctor will not tell her; he knows, though. Darling, I want you to have my baby. I think Edward will be willing. He is so young, he will be happy again before long; he will not miss him. You know we have always said it was partly your baby. Look at his eyes now, Helen," she said, turning the little face towards me, and into a full light.
I started. I had never till that moment seen in them a subtle resemblance to the eyes of George Ware. We had said that the baby had his mother's eyes—so he had; but there had always been a likeness between Annie's eyes and George's though hers were light-blue, and his of a blue so dark that it was often believed to be black. All the Wares had a very peculiar luminousness of the eye; it was so marked a family trait that it had passed into almost proverbial mention, in connection with the distinguished beauty of the family. "The Ware eye" was always recognizable, no matter what color it had taken from the admixture of other blood.
At that moment I saw, and I knew that Annie had seen, that the baby's eyes were not so much like her own as like the deeper, sadder, darker eyes of her cousin—brave, hopeless, dear George, who was toiling under the sun of India, making a fortune for he knew not whom.
We neither of us spoke; presently the little unconscious eyes closed in sweet sleep, and Annie went on, holding him close to her heart.
"You see, dear, poor mamma will not be able to bear seeing him after I die. Common mothers would love him for my sake. But mamma is not like other women. She will come very soon where I am, poor mamma; and then you will have to take papa home to your house, and papa will have comfort in little Henry. But he must be your baby, Helen. I shall speak to Edward about it soon."
She was not strong enough to talk long. She shed no tears, however, and looked as calm as if she were telling me of pleasant plans for a coming earthly summer. I also was perfectly calm, and felt strangely free from sorrow. Her absolute spirituality bore me up. It was as if I spoke with her in heaven, thousands of centuries after all human perplexities had passed away.
After this day she grew rapidly weaker. She had no pain. There was not a single physical symptom in her case which the science of medicine could name or meet. There was literally nothing to be done for her. Neither tonic nor stimulant produced the least effect. She was noiselessly sinking out of life, as very old people sometimes die, without a single jar, or shock, or struggle. Her beautiful serenity and entire freedom from suffering blinded Aunt Ann's eyes to the fact that she was dying. This was a great mercy, and we were all careful not by a word or look to rouse her to the truth. To all her mother's inquiries Annie invariably replied, "Better, dear mamma, better, only very weak," and Aunt Ann believed, until the very last, that the spring would make her well again.
Edward Neal's face during these weeks was like the face of a man lost in a trackless desert, seeking vainly for some sign of road to save his life. Sickness and death were as foreign to the young, vital, irrepressible currents of his life, as if he had been a bird or an antelope. But it was not now with him the mere bewildered grief of a sensuous animal nature, such as I should have anticipated that his grief would be. He dimly felt the truth, and was constantly terrified by it. He came into Annie's presence more and more reverently each day. He gazed speechlessly into her eyes, which rested on him always with angelic compassion and tenderness, but with no more look of human wifely thought than if he and she were kneeling side by side before God's white throne. Sometimes he dared not touch even so much as the hand on which his own wedding-ring rested. Sometimes he would kneel by the bedside and bury his face and weep like a little child. Then he would throw himself on his horse and gallop away and not come home until twilight, when he was always found on Annie's lounge in the library. One night when I went to him there he said, in a tone so solemn that the voice did not sound like his,—
"Helen, there is something I do not understand about Annie. Do people always seem so when they are going to die? I do not dare to ask her if she loves me. I feel just as much awe of her as if she had been in heaven. It seems sometimes as if I must be going mad, for I do not feel in the least as if she had ever been my wife."
"She never has, poor boy," I thought, but I only stroked his hair and said nothing; wondering in my heart at the certainty with which in all natures love knows how to define, conquer, reclaim his own.
The day before Annie died she asked for her jewel-case, and spent several hours in looking over its contents and telling me to whom they should be given. I observed that she seemed to be searching uneasily for something she could not find.
"What is it, dear?" I said. She hesitated for a second, and then replied,—
"Only a little ring I had when I was a girl."
"When you were a girl, my darling!" I exclaimed. She smiled gently and said,—
"I feel like an old woman now. Oh, here it is," she added, and held it out to me to open for her the tiny padlock-shaped locket which hung from it. It had become so tightly fastened together that it was with great difficulty I could open it. When I did so, I saw lying in the hollow a little ring of black hair, and I remembered that Annie had worn the ring when she was twelve years old.
She asked me to cut a few of the silky hairs from the baby's head, and then one little curl from her own, and laying them with the other, she shut the locket and asked for a piece of paper and pencil. She wrote one word with great difficulty, folded the ring in the paper, wrote another word on the outside, and laid it in a corner of the jewel-case. Then she sank back on the pillows, and slipping her left hand under her cheek said she was very tired, and almost instantly fell into a gentle sleep. She did not wake until twilight. I was to sleep on the lounge in her room that night, and when she woke I was preparing it.
"Darling," she said, "could you sleep as well in my big chair, which can be tipped back?"
"Certainly, sweet," I said; "but why?"
"Because that can be drawn up so much nearer me; it will be like sleeping together."
At nine o'clock the nurse brought the baby in and laid him in Annie's bosom, sound asleep. Annie would not let him lie anywhere else, and was so grieved at any remonstrance, that the doctor said she must be indulged in the desire. When she was awake and was not speaking to us, her eyes never left the baby's face.
She turned over, with her face to the chair in which I lay, and reached out her left hand towards me. I took it in mine, and so, with our hands clasped above the little sleeping baby, we said "good-night" to each other.
"I feel much better to-night than I have for some days, dear Helen," she said; "I should not wonder if we all three slept until morning."
Very soon I saw that she was asleep. I watched her face for a long time; it was perfectly colorless and very thin, and yet there was not a look of illness on it. The ineffable serenity, the holy peace, made it look like the face of one who had been transfigured, translated; who had not known and who never could know any death. I cannot account for the sweet calm which I felt through all these weeks. I shed no tears; I did not seem even to sorrow. I accepted all, as Annie herself accepted it, without wonder, without murmur. During the long hours of this last night I lived over every hour of her precious, beautiful life, as I had known and shared it, until the whole seemed to me one fragrant and perfect flower, ready to be gathered and worn in the bosom of angels. At last I fell asleep.
I was wakened by a low murmur from the baby, who stirred uneasily. Annie's hand was still locked in mine; as I sought to disengage it cautiously, I felt, with a sudden horror, that the fingers were lifeless. I sprang to my feet and bent over her; she did not breathe. Out of that sweet sleep her body had passed into another which would know no waking, and her soul had awakened free. Slowly I withdrew the little sleeping baby from her arms and carried it to the nurse. Then I went to Dr. Fearing's room; he had slept in the house for a week; I found him dressed, but asleep on a lounge. He had lain in this way, he told me, for four nights, expecting that each would be the last. When I touched him on the shoulder he opened his eyes, without surprise or alarm, and said,—
"Did she wake?"
"No," I replied, and that was all.
The day was just breaking: as the dark gray and red tints cleared and rolled away, and left a pale yellow sky, the morning star, which I could see from Annie's bedside, faded and melted in the pure ether. Even while I was looking at it it vanished, and I thought that, like it, Annie's bright soul, disappearing from my sight, had blended in Eternal Day.
This was four years ago. My Aunt Ann died, as Annie had said she would, in a very few months afterward. My uncle came, a broken and trembling man, to live with us, and Edward Neal gladly gave his little son into my hands, as Annie had desired. He went abroad immediately, finding it utterly impossible to bear the sight of the scenes of his lost happiness. He came back in two years, bringing a bright young wife with him, a sunny-haired English girl, who, he said, was so marvelously like Annie. She is like the Annie whom he knew!
Every day their baby boy is brought to our house to see his brother; but I think two children of one name never before looked so unlike.
My little Henry is the centre of his grandfather's life and of mine. He is a pensive child, and has never been strong; but his beauty and sweetness are such that we often tremble when we look in his face and remember Annie.
George Ware is still in India. Every ship brings brave sweet letters, and gifts for the baby. I sent him the little paper which I found in the corner of Annie's jewel-case, bearing his name. I knew that it was for him when I saw her feeble hands laying the baby's hair and hers together in the locket.
In November Annie's grave is snowy with white chrysanthemums. She loved them better than any other flowers, and I have made the little hillock almost into a thicket of them.
In George Ware's last letter he wrote:—
"When the baby is ten years old I shall come home. He will not need me till then; till then, he is better in your hands alone; after that I can help you."