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Produced by Al Haines | |
[Frontispiece: Miss Lillian Gish as Anna Moore. D. W. Griffith's | |
Production. 'Way Down East.] | |
'WAY DOWN EAST | |
A ROMANCE OF NEW ENGLAND LIFE | |
BY | |
JOSEPH R. GRISMER | |
Founded on the Very Successful Play of the | |
Same Title by | |
LOTTIE BLAIR PARKER | |
ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES FROM | |
D. W. GRIFFITH'S MAGNIFICENT | |
MOTION PICTURE PRODUCTION OF THE | |
ORIGINAL STORY AND STAGE PLAY | |
GROSSET & DUNLAP | |
PUBLISHERS -------------- NEW YORK | |
_Copyright, 1900_ | |
_By Joseph R. Grismer_ | |
_'Way Down East_ | |
TABLE OF CONTENTS | |
CHAPTER | |
I. All Hail to the Conquering Hero. | |
II. The Conquering Hero is Disposed to be Human. | |
III. Containing Some Reflections and the Entrance | |
of Mephistopheles. | |
IV. The Mock Marriage. | |
V. A Little Glimpse of the Garden of Eden. | |
VI. The Ways of Desolation. | |
VII. Mother and Daughter. | |
VIII. In Days of Waiting. | |
IX. On the Threshold of Shelter. | |
X. Anna and Sanderson Again Meet. | |
XI. Rustic Hospitality. | |
XII. Kate Brewster Holds Sanderson's Attention. | |
XIII. The Quality of Mercy. | |
XIV. The Village Gossip Sniffs Scandal. | |
XV. David Confesses his Love. | |
XVI. Alone in the Snow. | |
XVII. The Night in the Snowstorm. | |
ILLUSTRATIONS | |
Miss Lillian Gish as Anna Moore. . . . _Frontispiece_ | |
Martha Perkins and Maria Poole. | |
Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore's past life. | |
Lillian Gish and Burr McIntosh. | |
WAY DOWN EAST | |
CHAPTER I. | |
ALL HAIL TO THE CONQUERING HERO. | |
Methinks I feel this youth's perfections, | |
With an invisible and subtle stealth, | |
To creep in at mine eyes.--_Shakespeare_. | |
It had come at last, the day of days, for the two great American | |
universities; Harvard and Yale were going to play their annual game of | |
football and the railroad station of Springfield, Mass., momentarily | |
became more and more thronged with eager partisans of both sides of the | |
great athletic contest. | |
All the morning trains from New York, New Haven, Boston and the smaller | |
towns had been pouring their loads into Springfield. Hampden Park was | |
a sea of eager faces. The weather was fine and the waiting for the | |
football game only added to the enjoyment--the appetizer before the | |
feast. | |
The north side of the park was a crimson dotted mass full ten thousand | |
strong; the south side showed the same goodly number blue-bespeckled, | |
and equally confident. Little ripples of applause woke along the banks | |
as the familiar faces of old "grads" loomed up, then melted into the | |
vast throng. These, too, were men of international reputation who had | |
won their spurs in the great battles of life, and yet, who came back | |
year after year, to assist by applause in these mimic battles of their | |
_Alma Mater_. | |
But the real inspiration to the contestants, were the softer, sweeter | |
faces scattered among the more rugged ones like flowers growing among | |
the grain--the smiles, the mantling glow of round young cheeks, the | |
clapping of little hands--these were the things that made broken | |
collarbones, scratched faces, and bruised limbs but so many honors to | |
be contended for, votive offerings to be laid at the little feet of | |
these fair ones. | |
Mrs. Standish Tremont's party occupied, as usual, a prominent place on | |
the Harvard side. She was so great a factor in the social life at | |
Cambridge that no function could have been a complete success without | |
the stimulus of her presence. Personally, Mrs. Standish Tremont was | |
one of those women who never grow old; one would no more have thought | |
of hazarding a guess about her age than one would have made a similar | |
calculation about the Goddess of Liberty. She was perennially young, | |
perennially good-looking, and her entertainments were above reproach. | |
Some sour old "Grannies" in Boston, who had neither her wit, nor her | |
health, called her Venus Anno Domino, but they were jealous and cynical | |
and their testimony cannot be taken as reliable. | |
What if she had been splitting gloves applauding college games since | |
the fathers of to-day's contestants had fought and struggled for | |
similar honors in this very field. She applauded with such vim, and | |
she gave such delightful dinners afterward, that for the glory of old | |
Harvard it is to be hoped she will continue to applaud and entertain | |
the grandsons of to-day's victors, even as she had their sires. | |
It was said by the uncharitable that the secret of the lady's youth was | |
the fact that she always surrounded herself with young people, their | |
pleasure, interests, entertainments were hers; she never permitted | |
herself to be identified with older people. | |
To-day, besides several young men who had been out of college for a | |
year or two, she had her husband's two nieces, the Misses Tremont, | |
young women well known in Boston's inner circles, her own daughter, a | |
Mrs. Endicott, a widow, and a very beautiful young girl whom she | |
introduced as "My cousin, Miss Moore." | |
Miss Moore was the recipient of more attention than she could well | |
handle. Mrs. Tremont's cavaliers tried to inveigle her into betting | |
gloves and bon-bons; they reserved their wittiest replica for her, they | |
were her ardent allies in all the merry badinage with which their party | |
whiled away the time waiting for the game to begin. Miss Moore was | |
getting enough attention to turn the heads of three girls. | |
At least, that was what her chaperone concluded as she skilfully | |
concealed her dissatisfaction with a radiant smile. She liked girls to | |
achieve social success when they were under her wing--it was the next | |
best thing to scoring success on her own account. But, it was quite a | |
different matter to invite a poor relation half out of charity, half | |
out of pity, and then have her outshine one's own daughter, and one's | |
nieces--the latter being her particular proteges--girls whom she hoped | |
to assist toward brilliant establishments. The thought was a | |
disquieting one, the men of their party had been making idiots of | |
themselves over the girl ever since they left Boston; it was all very | |
well to be kind to one's poor kin--but charity began at home when there | |
were girls who had been out three seasons! What was it, that made the | |
men lose their heads like so many sheep? She adjusted her lorgnette | |
and again took an inventory of the girl's appearance. It was eminently | |
satisfactory even when viewed from the critical standard of Mrs. | |
Standish Tremont. A delicately oval face, with low smooth brow, from | |
which the night-black hair rippled in softly crested waves and clung | |
about the temples in tiny circling ringlets, delicate as the faintest | |
shading of a crayon pencil. Heavily fringed lids that lent mysterious | |
depths to the great brown eyes that were sorrowful beyond their years. | |
A mouth made for kisses--a perfect Cupid's bow; in color, the red of | |
the pomegranate--such was Anna Moore, the great lady's young kinswoman, | |
who was getting her first glimpse of the world this autumn afternoon. | |
"You were born to be a Harvard girl, Miss Moore, the crimson becomes | |
you go perfectly, that great bunch of Jacqueminots is just what you | |
need to bring out the color in your cheeks," said Arnold Lester, rather | |
an old beau, and one of Mrs. Endicott's devoted cavaliers. | |
"Miss Moore is making her roses pale with envy," gallantly answered | |
Robert Maynard. He had not been able to take his eyes from the girl's | |
face since he met her. | |
Anna looked down at her roses and smiled. Her gown and gloves were | |
black. The great fragrant bunch was the only suggestion of color that | |
she had worn for over a year. She was still in mourning for her | |
father, one of the first great financial magnates to go under in the | |
last Wall Street crash. His failure killed him, and the young daughter | |
and the invalid wife were left practically unprovided for. | |
Mrs. Tremont could hardly conceal her annoyance. She had met her young | |
cousin for the first time the preceding summer and taking a fancy to | |
her; she exacted a promise from the girl's mother that Anna should pay | |
her a visit the following autumn. But she reckoned without the girl's | |
beauty and the havoc it would make with her plans. The discussion as | |
to the roses outvieing Anna's cheeks in color was abruptly terminated | |
by a great cheer that rolled simultaneously along both sides of the | |
field as the two teams entered the lists. Cheer upon cheer went up, | |
swelled and grew in volume, only to be taken up again and again, till | |
the sound became one vast echoing roar without apparent end or | |
beginning. | |
From the moment the teams appeared, Anna Moore had no eyes or ears for | |
sights or sounds about her. Every muscle in her lithe young body was | |
strained to catch a glimpse of one familiar figure. She had little | |
difficulty in singling him out from the rest. He had stripped off his | |
sweater and stood with head well down, his great limbs tense, straining | |
for the word to spring. Anna's breath came quickly, as if she had been | |
running, the roses that he had sent her heaved with the tumult in her | |
breast. It seemed to her as if she must cry out with the delight of | |
seeing him again. | |
"Look, Grace," said Mrs. Standish Tremont, to the younger of her | |
nieces, "there is Lennox Sanderson." | |
"Play!" called the referee, and at the word the Harvard wedge shot | |
forward and crashed into the onrushing mass of blue-legged bodies. The | |
mimic war was on, and raged with all the excitement of real battle for | |
the next three-quarters of an hour; the center was pierced, the flanks | |
were turned, columns were formed and broken, weak spots were protected, | |
all the tactics of the science of arms was employed, and yet, neither | |
side could gain an advantage. | |
The last minutes of the first half of the game were spent | |
desperately--Kenneth, the terrible line breaker of Yale, made two | |
famous charges, Lennox Sanderson, the famous flying half-back, secured | |
Harvard a temporary advantage by a magnificently supported run. | |
"Time!" called the referee, and the first half of the game was over. | |
For fifteen minutes the combatants rested, then resumed their massing, | |
wedging and driving. Sanderson, who had not appeared to over-exert | |
himself during the first half of the game, gradually began to turn the | |
tide in favor of the crimson. After a decoy and a scrimmage, | |
Sanderson, with the ball wedged tightly under one arm, was seen flying | |
like a meteor, well covered by his supports. On he dashed at full | |
speed for the much-desired touch-line. The next minute he had reached | |
the goal and was buried under a pile of squirming bodies. | |
Then did the Harvard hosts burst into one mighty and prolonged cheer | |
that made the air tremble. Sanderson was the hero of the hour. | |
Gray-haired old men jumped up and shouted his name with that of the | |
university. It was one mad pandemonium of excitement, till the game | |
was won, and the crowd woke up amid the "Rah, Rahs, Harvard, Sanderson." | |
Anna's cheeks burned crimson. She clapped her hands to the final | |
destruction of her gloves. She patted the roses he had sent her. She | |
had never dreamed that life was so beautiful, so full of happiness. | |
She saw him again for just a moment, before they left the park. He | |
came up to speak to them, with the sweat and grime of battle still upon | |
him, his hair flying in the breeze. The crowds gave way for the hero; | |
women gave him their brightest smiles; men involuntarily straightened | |
their shoulders in tribute to his inches. | |
Years afterwards, it seemed to Anna, in looking back on the tragedy of | |
it all, that he had never looked so handsome, never been so absolutely | |
irresistible as on that autumn day when he had taken her hand and said: | |
"I couldn't help making that run with your eyes on me." | |
"And we shall see you at tea, on Saturday?" asked Mrs. Tremont. | |
"I shall be delighted," he answered: "thank you for persuading Miss | |
Moore to stay over for another week." Mrs. Tremont smiled, she could | |
smile if she were on the rack; but she assured herself that she was | |
done with poverty-stricken beauties till Grace and Maud were married, | |
at least. For years she had been planning a match between Grace and | |
Lennox Sanderson. | |
Anna and Sanderson exchanged looks. Robert Maynard bit his lips and | |
turned away. He realized that the dearest wish of his life was beyond | |
reach of it forever. "Ah, well," he murmured to himself--"who could | |
have a chance against Lennox Sanderson?" | |
CHAPTER II. | |
THE CONQUERING HERO IS DISPOSED TO BE HUMAN. | |
"Her lips are roses over-wash'd with dew, | |
Or like the purple of narcissus' flower; | |
No frost their fair, no wind doth waste their powers, | |
But by her breath her beauties do renew."--_Robert Greene_. | |
The dusk of an autumn afternoon was closing in on the well-filled | |
library of Mrs. Standish Tremont's Beacon street home. The last rays | |
of sunlight filtered softly through the rose silk curtains and blended | |
with the ruddy glow of fire-light. The atmosphere of this room was | |
more invitingly domestic than that of any other room in Mrs. Tremont's | |
somewhat bleakly luxurious home. | |
Perhaps it was the row upon row of books in their scarlet leather | |
bindings, perhaps it was the fine old collection of Dutch masterpieces, | |
portraying homely scenes from Dutch life, that robbed the air of the | |
chilling effect of the more formal rooms; but, whatever was the reason, | |
the fact remained that the library was the room in which to dream | |
dreams, appreciate comfort and be content. | |
At least so it seemed to Anna Moore, as she glanced from time to time | |
at the tiny French clock that silently ticked away the hours on the | |
high oaken mantel-piece. Anna had dressed for tea with more than usual | |
care on this particular Saturday afternoon. She wore a simply made | |
house gown of heavy white cloth, that hung in rich folds about her | |
exquisite figure, that might have seemed over-developed in a girl of | |
eighteen, were it not for the long slender throat and tapering waist of | |
more than usual slenderness. | |
The dark hair was coiled high on top of the shapely head, and a few | |
tendrils strayed about her neck and brow. She wore no ornaments--not | |
even the simplest pin. | |
She was curled up in a great leather chair, in front of the open fire, | |
playing with a white angora kitten, who climbed upon her shoulder and | |
generally conducted himself like a white ball of animated yarn. It was | |
too bad that there was no painter at hand to transfer to canvas so | |
lovely a picture as this girl in her white frock made, sitting by the | |
firelight in this mellow old room, playing with a white imp of a | |
kitten. It would have made an ideal study in white and scarlet. | |
How comfortable it all was; the book-lined walls, the repose and | |
dignity of this beautiful home, with its corps of well-trained servants | |
waiting to minister to one's lightest wants. The secure and sheltered | |
feeling that it gave appealed strongly to the girl, who but a little | |
while ago had enjoyed similar surroundings in her father's house. | |
And then, there had been that awful day when her father's wealth had | |
vanished into air like a burst bubble, and he had come home with a | |
white drawn face and gone to bed, never again to rise from it. | |
Anna did not mind the privations that followed on her own account, but | |
they were pitifully hard on her invalid mother, who had been used to | |
every comfort all her life. | |
After they had left New York, they had taken a little cottage in | |
Waltham, Mass., and it was here that Mrs. Standish Tremont had come to | |
call on her relatives in their grief and do what she could toward | |
lightening their burdens. Anna was worn out with the constant care of | |
her mother, and would only consent to go away for a rest, because the | |
doctor told her that her health was surely breaking under the strain, | |
and that if she did not go, there would be two invalids instead of one. | |
It was at Mrs. Tremont's that she had met Lennox Sanderson, and from | |
the first, both seemed to be under the influence of some subtle spell | |
that drew them together blindly, and without the consent of their | |
wills. Mrs. Tremont, who viewed the growing attraction of these two | |
young people with well-concealed alarm, watched every opportunity to | |
prevent their enjoying each other's society. It irritated her that one | |
of the wealthiest and most influential men in Harvard should take such | |
a fancy to her penniless young relative, instead of to Grace Tremont, | |
whom she had selected for his wife. | |
There were few things that Mrs. Tremont enjoyed so much as arranging | |
romances in everyday life. | |
"Pardon me, Miss Moore," said the butler, standing at her elbow, "but | |
there has been a telephone message from Mrs. Tremont, saying that she | |
and Mrs. Endicott have been detained, and will you be kind enough to | |
explain this to Mr. Sanderson." Anna never knew what the message cost | |
Mrs. Tremont. | |
A moment later, Sanderson's card was sent up; Anna rose to meet him | |
with swiftly beating heart. | |
"What perfect luck," he said. "How do I happen to find you alone? | |
Usually you have a regiment of people about you." | |
"Cousin Frances has just telephoned that she has been detained, and I | |
suppose I am to entertain you till her return." | |
"I shall be sufficiently entertained if I may have the pleasure of | |
looking at you." | |
"Till dinner time? You could never stand it." She laughed. | |
"It would be a pleasure till eternity." | |
"At any rate," said Anna, "I am not going to put you to the test. If | |
you will be good enough to ring for tea, I will give you a cup." | |
The butler brought in the tea. Anna lighted the spirit lamp with | |
pretty deftness, and proceeded to make tea. | |
"I could not have taken this, even from your hands last week, | |
Anna--pardon me, Miss Moore." | |
"And why not? Had you been taking pledges not to drink tea?" | |
"It seems to me as if I've been living on rare beef and whole wheat | |
bread ever since I can remember----" | |
"Oh, yes, I forgot about your being in training for the game, but you | |
did so magnificently, you ought not to mind it. Why, you made Harvard | |
win the game. We were all so proud of you." | |
"All! I don't care about 'all.' Were you proud of me?" | |
"Of course I was," she answered with the loveliest blush. | |
"Then it is amply repaid." | |
"Let me give you another cup of tea." | |
"No, thanks, I don't care about any more, but if you will let me talk | |
to you about something-- See here, Anna. Yes, I mean Anna. What | |
nonsense for us to attempt to keep up the Miss Moore and Mr. Sanderson | |
business. I used to scoff at love at first sight and say it was all | |
the idle fancy of the poets. Then I met you and remained to pray. | |
You've turned my world topsy-turvy. I can't think without you, and yet | |
it would be folly to tell this to my Governor, and ask his consent to | |
our marriage. He wants me to finish college, take the usual trip | |
around the world and then go into the firm. Besides, he wants me to | |
eventually marry a cousin of mine--a girl with a lot of money and with | |
about as much heart as would fit on the end of a pin." | |
She had followed this speech with almost painful attention. She bit | |
her lips till they were but a compressed line of coral. At last she | |
found words to say: | |
"We must not talk of these things, Mr. Sanderson. I have to go back | |
and care for my mother. She is an invalid and needs all my attention. | |
Bedsides, we are poor; desperately poor. I am here in your world, only | |
through the kindness of my cousin, Mrs. Tremont." | |
"It was your world till a year ago, Anna. I know all about your | |
father's failure, and how nobly you have done your part since then, and | |
it kills me to think of you, who ought to have everything, spending | |
your life--your youth--in that stupid little Waltham, doing the work of | |
a housemaid." | |
"I am very glad to do my part," she answered him bravely, but her eyes | |
were full of unshed tears. | |
"Anna, dearest, listen to me." He crossed over to where she sat and | |
took her hand. "Can't you have a little faith in me and do what I am | |
going to ask you? There is the situation exactly. My father won't | |
consent to our marriage, so there is no use trying to persuade him. | |
And here you are--a little girl who needs some one to take care of you | |
and help you take care of your mother, give her all the things that | |
mean so much to an invalid. Now, all this can be done, darling, if you | |
will only have faith in me. Marry me now secretly, before you go back | |
to Waltham. No one need know. And then the governor can be talked | |
around in time. My allowance will be ample to give you and your mother | |
all you need. Can't you see, darling?" | |
The color faded from her cheeks. She looked at him with eyes as | |
startled as a surprised fawn. | |
"O, Lennox, I would be afraid to do that." | |
"You would not be afraid, Anna, if you loved me." | |
It was so tempting to the weary young soul, who had already begun to | |
sink under the accumulated burdens of the past year, not for herself, | |
but for the sick mother, who complained unceasingly of the changed | |
conditions of their lives. The care and attention would mean so much | |
to her--and yet, what right had she to encourage this man to go against | |
the wishes of his father, to take advantage of his love for her? But | |
she was grateful to him, and there was a wealth of tenderness in the | |
eyes that she turned toward him. | |
"No, Lennox, I appreciate your generosity, but I do not think it would | |
be wise for either of us." | |
"Don't talk to me of generosity. Good God, Anna, can't you realize | |
what this separation means to me? I have no heart to go on with my | |
life away from you. If you are going to throw me over, I shall cut | |
college and go away." | |
She loved him all the better for his impatience. | |
"Anna," he said--the two dark heads were close together, the madness of | |
the impulse was too much for both. Their lips met in a first long | |
kiss. The man was to have his way. The kiss proved a more eloquent | |
argument than all his pleading. | |
"Say you will, Anna." | |
"Yes," she whispered. | |
And then they heard the street door open and close, and the voices of | |
Mrs. Tremont and her daughter, as they made their way to the library. | |
And the two young souls, who hovered on the brink of heaven, were | |
obliged to listen to the latest gossip of fashionable Boston. | |
CHAPTER III. | |
CONTAINING SOME REFLECTIONS AND THE ENTRANCE OF MEPHISTOPHELES. | |
"Not all that heralds rake from coffin'd clay, | |
Nor florid prose, nor horrid lies of rhyme, | |
Can blazon evil deeds, or consecrate a crime."--_Byron_. | |
Lennox Sanderson was stretched in his window-seat with a book, of | |
which, however, he knew nothing--not even the title--his mind being | |
occupied by other thoughts than reading at that particular time. | |
Did he dare do it? The audacity of the proceeding was sufficient to | |
make the iron will of even Lennox Sanderson waver. And yet, to lose | |
her! Such a contingency was not to be considered. His mind flew | |
backward and forward like a shuttle, he turned the leaves of his book; | |
he smoked, but no light came from within or without. | |
He glanced about the familiar objects in his sitting-room as one | |
unconsciously does when the mind is on the rack of anxiety, as if to | |
seek council from the mute things that make up so large a part of our | |
daily lives. | |
It was an ideal sitting-room for a college student, the luxury of the | |
appointments absolutely subservient to taste and simplicity. Heavy red | |
curtains divided the sitting-room from the bedroom beyond, and imparted | |
a degree of genial warmth to the atmosphere. Russian candlesticks of | |
highly polished brass stood about on the mantel-piece and book shelves. | |
Above the high oak wainscoting the walls were covered with dark red | |
paper, against which background brown photographs of famous paintings | |
showed to excellent advantage. They were reproductions of Botticelli, | |
Rembrant, Franz Hals and Velasquez hung with artistic irregularity. | |
Above the mantel-piece were curious old weapons, swords, matchetes, | |
flintlocks and carbines. A helmet and breastplate filled the space | |
between the two windows. Some dozen or more of pipe racks held the | |
young collegian's famous collection of pipes that told the history of | |
smoking from the introduction during the reign of Elizabeth, down to | |
the present day. | |
In taking a mental inventory of his household goods, Sanderson's eyes | |
fell on the photograph of a woman on the mantel-piece. He frowned. | |
What right had she there, when his mind was full of another? He walked | |
over to the picture and threw it into the fire. It was not the first | |
picture to know a similar fate after occupying that place of honor. | |
The blackened edges of the picture were whirling up the chimney, when | |
Sanderson's attention was arrested by a knock. | |
"Come in," he called, and a young man of about his own age entered. | |
Without being in the least ill-looking, there was something repellent | |
about the new comer. His eyes were shifty and too close together to be | |
trustworthy. Otherwise no fault could be found with his appearance. | |
"Well, Langdon, how are you?" his host asked, but there was no warmth | |
in his greeting. | |
"As well as a poor devil like me ever is," began Langdon obsequiously. | |
He sighed, looked about the comfortable room and finished with: "Lucky | |
dog." | |
Sanderson stood on no ceremony with his guest, who was a thoroughly | |
unscrupulous young man. Once or twice Langdon had helped Sanderson out | |
of scrapes that would have sent him home from college without his | |
degree, had they come to the ears of the faculty. In return for this | |
assistance, Sanderson had lent him large sums of money, which the owner | |
entertained no hopes of recovering. Sanderson tried to balance matters | |
by treating Langdon with scant ceremony when they were alone. | |
"Well, old man," began his host, "I do not flatter myself that I owe | |
this call to any personal charm. You dropped in to ease a little | |
financial embarrassment by the request of a loan--am I not right?" | |
"Right, as usual, Sandy, though I'd hardly call it a loan. You know I | |
was put to a devil of a lot of trouble about that Newton affair, and it | |
cost money to secure a shut mouth." | |
Sanderson frowned. "This is the fifth time I have had the pleasure of | |
settling for that Newton affair, Langdon. It seems to have become a | |
sort of continuous performance." | |
Langdon winced. | |
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Langdon. You owe me two thousand now, not | |
counting that poker debt. We'll call it square if you'll attend to a | |
little matter for me and I'll give you an extra thou. to make it worth | |
your while." | |
"You know I am always delighted to help you, Sandy." | |
"When I make it worth your while." | |
"Put it that way if you wish." | |
"Do you think that for once in your life you could look less like the | |
devil than you are naturally, and act the role of parson?" | |
"I might if I associate with you long enough. Saintly company might | |
change my expression." | |
"You won't have time to try. You've got to have your clerical look in | |
good working order by Friday. Incidently you are to marry me to the | |
prettiest girl in Massachusetts and keep your mouth closed." | |
As if to end the discussion, Sanderson strode over to his desk and | |
wrote out a check for a thousand dollars. He came back, waving it in | |
the air to dry the ink. | |
"Perhaps you will condescend to explain," Langdon said, as he pocketed | |
the check. | |
"Explanations are always bores, my dear boy. There is a little girl | |
who feels obliged to insist on formalities, not too many. She'll think | |
your acting as the parson the best joke in the world, but it would not | |
do to chaff her about it." | |
"Oh, I see," and Langdon's laugh was not pleasant. | |
"Exactly. You will have everything ready--white choker, black coat and | |
all the rest of it, and now, my dear boy, you've got to excuse me as | |
I've got a lot of work on hand." | |
They shook hands and Langdon's footsteps were soon echoing down the | |
corridor. | |
The foul insinuation that Sanderson had just made about Anna rankled in | |
his mind. He went to the sideboard and poured himself out a good stiff | |
drink. After that, his conscience did not trouble him. | |
The work on account of which he excused himself from Langdon's society, | |
was apparently not of the most pressing order, for Sanderson almost | |
immediately started for Boston, turning his steps towards Mrs. Standish | |
Tremont's. | |
"Mrs. Tremont was not at home," the man announced at the door, "and | |
Mrs. Endicott was confined to her room with a bad headache. Should he | |
take his card to Miss Moore?" | |
Sanderson assented, feeling that fate was with him. | |
"My darling," he said, as Anna came in a moment later, and folded her | |
close in a long embrace. She was paler than when he had last seen her | |
and there were dark rings under her eyes that hinted at long night | |
vigils. | |
"Lennox," she said, "do not think me weak, but I am terribly | |
frightened. It does not seem as if we were doing the right thing by | |
our friends." | |
"Goosey girl," he said, kissing her, "who was it that said no marriage | |
ever suited all parties unconcerned?" | |
She laughed. "I am thinking more of you Lennox, than of myself. | |
Suppose your father should not forgive you, cut you off without a cent, | |
and you should have to drudge all your life with mother and me on your | |
hands! Don't you think you would wish we had never met, or, at least, | |
that I had thought of these things?" | |
"Suppose the sky should fall, or the sun should go out, or that I could | |
stop loving you, or any of the impossible things that could not happen | |
once in a million years. Aren't you ashamed of yourself to doubt me in | |
this way? Answer me, miss," he said with mock ferocity. | |
For answer she laid her cheek against his.--"I am so happy, dear, that | |
I am almost afraid." | |
He pressed her tenderly. "And now, darling, for the | |
conspiracy--Cupid's conspiracy. You write to your mother to-night and | |
say that you will be home on Wednesday because you will. Then tell | |
Mrs. Tremont that you have had a wire from her saying you must go home | |
Friday (I'll see that you _do_ receive such a telegram), and leave | |
Friday morning by the 9:40. I will keep out of the way, because the | |
entire Tremont contingent will doubtless see you off. I will then meet | |
you at one of the stations near Boston. I can't tell you which, till I | |
hear from my friend, the Reverend John Langdon. He will have | |
everything arranged." | |
She looked at him with dilating eyes, her cheeks blanched with fear. | |
"Anna," he said, almost roughly, "if you have no confidence in me, I | |
will go out of your life forever." | |
"Yes, yes, I believe in you," she said. "It isn't that, but it is the | |
first thing I have ever kept from mother, and I would feel so much more | |
comfortable if she knew." | |
"Baby. An' so de ittle baby must tell its muvver ev'yting," he | |
mimicked her, till she felt ashamed of her good impulse--an impulse | |
which if she had yielded to, it would have saved her from all the | |
bitterness she was to know. | |
"And so you will do as I ask you, darling?" | |
"Yes." | |
"Do you promise?" | |
"Yes," and they sealed the bargain with a kiss. | |
"Dearest, I must be going. It would never do for Mrs. Tremont to see | |
us together. I should forget and call you pet names, and then you | |
would be sent supperless to bed, like the little girls in the story | |
books." | |
"I suppose you must go," she said, regretfully. | |
"It will not be for long," and with another kiss he left her. | |
CHAPTER IV. | |
THE MOCK MARRIAGE. | |
"Thus grief still treads upon the heel of pleasure, | |
Married in haste, we may repent at leisure."--_Congreve_. | |
It seemed to Anna when Friday came, that human experience had nothing | |
further to offer in the way of mental anguish and suspense. She had | |
thrashed out the question of her secret marriage to Sanderson till her | |
brain refused to work further, and there was in her mind only dread and | |
a haunting sense of loss. If she had only herself to consider, she | |
would not have hesitated a moment. But Sanderson, his father, and her | |
own mother were all involved. | |
Was she doing right by her mother? At times, the advantage to the | |
invalid accruing from this marriage seemed manifold. Again it seemed | |
to Anna but a senseless piece of folly, prompted by her own selfish | |
love for Sanderson. And so the days wore on until the eventful Friday | |
came, and Anna said good-bye to Mrs. Standish Tremont with livid cheeks | |
and tearful eyes. | |
"And do you feel so badly about going away, my dear?" said the great | |
lady, looking at those visible signs of distress and feeling not a | |
little flattered by her young cousin's show of affection. "We must | |
have you down soon again," and she patted Anna's cheek and hurried her | |
into the car, for Mrs. Tremont had a horror of scenes and signals | |
warned her that Anna was on the verge of tears. | |
The locomotive whistled, the cars gave a jolt, and Anna Moore was | |
launched on her tragic fate. She never knew how the time passed after | |
leaving Mrs. Tremont, till Sanderson joined her at the next station. | |
She felt as if her will power had deserted her, and she was dumbly | |
obeying the behests of some unseen relentless force. She looked at the | |
strange faces about her, hopelessly. Perhaps it was not too | |
late---perhaps some kind motherly woman would tell her if she were | |
doing right. But they all looked so strange and forbidding, and while | |
she turned the question over and over in her mind, the car stopped, the | |
brakeman called the station and Lennox Sanderson got on. | |
She turned to him in her utter perplexity, forgetting he was the cause | |
of it. | |
"My darling, how pale you are. Are you ill?" | |
"Not ill, but----" He would not let her finish, but reassured her by | |
the tenderest of looks, the warmest of hand clasps, and the terrified | |
girl began to lose the hunted feeling that she had. | |
They rode on for fully an hour. Sanderson was perfectly | |
self-possessed. He might have been married every day in the year, for | |
any difference it made in his demeanor. He was perfectly composed, | |
laughed and chatted as wittily as ever. In time, Anna partook of his | |
mood and laughed back. She felt as if a weight had been lifted off her | |
mind. At last they stopped at a little station called Whiteford. An | |
old-fashioned carriage was waiting for them; they entered it and the | |
driver, whipped up his horses. A drive of a half mile brought them to | |
an ideal white cottage surrounded by porches and hidden in a tangle of | |
vines. The door was opened for them by the Rev. John Langdon in person. | |
He seemed a preternaturally grave young man to Anna and his clerical | |
attire was above reproach. Any misgivings one might have had regarding | |
him on the score of his youth, were more than counterbalanced by his | |
almost supernatural gravity. | |
He apologized for the absence of his wife, saying she had been called | |
away suddenly, owing to the illness of her mother. His housekeeper and | |
gardener would act as witnesses. Sanderson hastily took Anna to one | |
side and said: "I forgot to tell you, darling, that I am going to be | |
married by my two first names only, George Lennox. It is just the | |
same, but if the Sanderson got into any of those country marriage | |
license papers, I should be afraid the governor would hear of | |
it--penalty of having a great name, you know," he concluded gayly. | |
"Thought I had better mention it, as it would not do to have you | |
surprised over your husband's name." | |
Again the feeling of dread completely over-powered her. She looked at | |
him with her great sorrowful eyes, as a trapped animal will sometimes | |
look at its captor, but she could not speak. Some terrible blight | |
seemed to have overgrown her brain, depriving her of speech and | |
willpower. | |
The witnesses entered. Anna was too agitated to notice that the Rev. | |
John Langdon's housekeeper was a very singular looking young woman for | |
her position. Her hair was conspicuously dark at the roots and | |
conspicuously light on the ends. Her face was hard and when she smiled | |
her mouth, assumed a wolfish expression. She was loudly dressed and | |
wore a profusion of jewelry--altogether a most remarkable looking woman | |
for the place she occupied. | |
The gardener had the appearance of having been suddenly wakened before | |
nature had had her full quota of sleep. He was blear-eyed and his | |
breath was more redolent of liquor than one might have expected in the | |
gardener of a parsonage. | |
The room in which the ceremony was to take place was the ordinary | |
cottage parlor, with crochet work on the chairs, and a profusion of | |
vases and bric-a-brac on the tables. The Rev. John Langdon requested | |
Anna and Sanderson to stand by a little marble table from which the | |
housekeeper brushed a profusion of knick-knacks. There was no Bible. | |
Anna was the first to notice the omission. This seemed to deprive the | |
young clergyman of his dignity. He looked confused, blushed, and | |
turning to the housekeeper told her to fetch the Bible. This seemed to | |
appeal to the housekeeper's sense of humor. She burst out laughing and | |
said something about looking for a needle in a haystack. Sanderson | |
turned on her furiously, and she left the room, looking sour, and | |
muttering indignantly. She returned, after what seemed an interminable | |
space of time, and the ceremony proceeded. | |
Anna did not recognize her own voice as she answered the responses. | |
Sanderson's was clear and ringing; his tones never faltered. When the | |
time came to put the ring on her finger, Anna's hand trembled so | |
violently that the ring fell to the floor and rolled away. Sanderson's | |
face turned pale. It seemed to him like a providential dispensation. | |
For some minutes, the assembled company joined in the hunt for the | |
ring. It was found at length by the yellow-haired housekeeper, who | |
returned it with her most wolfish grin. | |
"Trust Bertha Harris to find things!" said the clergyman. | |
The ceremony proceeded without further incident. The final words were | |
pronounced and Anna sank into a chair, relieved that it was over, | |
whether it was for better or for worse. | |
Sanderson hurried her into the carriage before the clergyman and the | |
witnesses could offer their congratulations. He pulled her away from | |
the yellow-haired housekeeper, who would have smothered her in an | |
embrace, and they departed without the customary handshake from the | |
officiating clergyman. | |
"You were not very cordial, dear," she said, as they rolled along | |
through the early winter landscape. | |
"Confound them all. I hated to see them near you"--and then, in answer | |
to her questioning gaze--"because I love you so much, darling. I hate | |
to see anyone touch you." | |
The trees were bare; the fields stretched away brown and flat, like the | |
folds of a shroud, and the sun was veiled by lowering clouds of gray. | |
It was not a cheerful day for a wedding. | |
"Lennox, did you remember that this is Friday? And I have on a black | |
dress." | |
"And now that Mrs. Lennox has settled the question of to wed or not to | |
wed, by wedding--behold, she is worrying herself about her frock and | |
the color of it, and the day of the week and everything else. Was | |
there ever such a dear little goose?" He pinched her cheek, and | |
she--she smiled up at him, her fears allayed. | |
"And why don't you ask where we are going, least curious of women?" | |
"I forgot; indeed I did." | |
"We are going to the White Rose Inn. Ideal name for a place in which | |
to spend one's honeymoon, isn't it?" | |
"Any place would be ideal with you Lennie," and she slipped her little | |
hand into his ruggeder palm. | |
At last the White Rose Inn was sighted; it was one of those modern | |
hostelries, built on an old English model. The windows were muslined, | |
the rooms were wainscoted in oak, the furniture was heavy and | |
cumbersome. Anna was delighted with everything she saw. Sanderson had | |
had their sitting-room filled with crimson roses, they were everywhere; | |
banked on the mantelpiece, on the tables and window-sills. Their | |
perfume was to Anna like the loving embrace of an old friend. | |
Jacqueminots had been so closely associated with her acquaintance with | |
Sanderson, in after years she could never endure their perfume and | |
their scarlet petals unnerved her, as the sight of blood does some | |
women. | |
A trim English maid came to assist "Mrs. Lennox," to unpack her things. | |
Lunch was waiting in the sitting-room. Sanderson gave minute orders | |
about the icing of his own particular brand of champagne, which he had | |
had sent from Boston. | |
Anna had recovered her good spirits. It seemed "such a jolly lark," as | |
her husband said. | |
"Sweetheart, your happiness," he said, and raised his glass to hers. | |
Her eyes sparkled like the champagne. The honeymoon at the White Rose | |
Tavern had begun very merrily. | |
CHAPTER V. | |
A LITTLE GLIMPSE OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN. | |
"The moon--the moon, so silver and cold, | |
Her fickle temper has oft been told, | |
Now shady--now bright and sunny-- | |
But of all the lunar things that change, | |
The one that shows most fickle and strange, | |
And takes the most eccentric range | |
Is the moon--so called--of honey."--_Hood_. | |
"My dear, will you kindly pour me a second cup of coffee? Not because | |
I really want it, you know, but entirely for the aesthetic pleasure of | |
seeing your pretty little hands pattering about the cups." | |
Lennox Sanderson, in a crimson velvet smoking jacket, was regarding | |
Anna with the most undisguised admiration from the other side of the | |
round table, that held their breakfast,--their first honeymoon | |
breakfast, as Anna supposed it to be. | |
"Anything to please my husband," she answered with a flitting blush. | |
"Your husband? Ah, say it again; it sounds awfully good from you." | |
"So you don't really care for any more coffee, but just want to see my | |
hands among the cups. How appreciative you are!" And there was a | |
mischievous twinkle in her eye as she began with great elaboration the | |
pantomimic representation of pouring a cup of coffee, adding sugar and | |
cream; and concluded by handing the empty cup to Sanderson. "It would | |
be such a pity to waste the coffee, Lennie, when you only wanted to see | |
my hands." | |
"If I am not going to have the coffee, I insist on both the hands," he | |
said, taking them and kissing them repeatedly. | |
"I suppose I'll have to give it to you on those terms," and she | |
proceeded to fill the cup in earnest this time. | |
"Let me see. How is it that you like it? One lump of sugar and quite | |
a bit of cream? And tea perfectly clear with nothing at all and toast | |
very crisp and dry. Dear me, how do women ever remember all their | |
husband's likes and dislikes? It's worse than learning a new | |
multiplication table over again," and the most adorable pucker | |
contracted her pretty brows. | |
"And yet, see how beautifully widows manage it, even taking the | |
thirty-third degree and here you are, complaining before you are | |
initiated, and kindly remember, Mrs. Lennox Sanderson, if I take but | |
one lump of sugar in my coffee, there are other ways of sweetening it." | |
Presumably he got it sweetened to his satisfaction, for the proprietor | |
of the "White Rose," who attended personally to the wants of "Mr. and | |
Mrs. Lennox" had to cough three times before he found it discreet to | |
enter and inquire if everything was satisfactory. | |
He bowed three times like a disjointed foot rule and then retired to | |
charge up the wear and tear to his backbone under the head of "special | |
attendance." | |
"H-m-m!" sighed Sanderson, as the door closed on the bowing form of the | |
proprietor, "that fellow's presence reminds me that we are not | |
absolutely alone in the world, and you had almost convinced me that we | |
were, darling, and that by special Providence, this grim old earth had | |
been turned into a second Garden of Eden for our benefit. Aren't you | |
going to kiss me and make me forget in earnest, this time?" | |
"I'm sure, Lennie, I infinitely prefer the 'White Rose Inn' with you, | |
to the Garden of Paradise with Adam." She not only granted the | |
request, but added an extra one for interest. | |
"You'll make me horribly vain, Anna, if you persist in preferring me to | |
Adam; but then I dare say, Eve would have preferred him and Paradise to | |
me and the 'White Rose.'" | |
"But, then, Eve's taste lacked discrimination. She had to take Adam or | |
become the first girl bachelor. With me there might have been | |
alternatives." | |
"There might have been others, to speak vulgarly?" | |
"Exactly." | |
"By Jove, Anna, I don't see how you ever did come to care for me!" The | |
laughter died out of his eyes, his face grew prefer naturally grave, he | |
strode over to the window and looked out on the desolate landscape. | |
For the first time he realized the gravity of his offense. His crime | |
against this girl, who had been guilty of nothing but loving him too | |
deeply stood out, stripped of its trappings of sentiment, in all its | |
foul selfishness. He would right the wrong, confess to her; but no, he | |
dare not, she was not the kind of woman to condone such an offense. | |
"Needles and pins, needles and pins, when a man's married his trouble | |
begins," quoted Anna gayly, slipping up behind him and, putting her | |
arms about his neck; "one would think the old nursery ballad was true, | |
to look at you, Lennox Sanderson. I never saw such a married-man | |
expression before in my life. You wanted to know why I fell in love | |
with you. I could not help it, because you are YOU." | |
She nestled her head in his shoulder and he forgot his scruples in the | |
sorcery of her presence. | |
"Darling," he said; taking her in his arms, with perhaps the most | |
genuine affection he ever felt for her, "I wish we could spend our | |
lives here in this quiet little place, and that there were no | |
troublesome relations or outside world demanding us." | |
"So do I, dear," she answered, "but it could not last; we are too | |
perfectly happy." | |
Neither spoke for some minutes. At that time he loved her as deeply as | |
it was possible for him to love anyone. Again the impulse came to tell | |
her, beg for forgiveness and make reparation. He was holding her in | |
his arms, considering. A moment more, and he would have given way to | |
the only unselfish impulse in his life. But again the knock, followed | |
by the discreet cough of the proprietor. And when he entered to tell | |
them that the horses were ready for their drive, "Mrs. Lennox" hastened | |
to put on her jacket and "Mr. Lennox" thanked his stars that he had not | |
spoken. | |
CHAPTER VI. | |
THE WAYS OF DESOLATION. | |
"Oh! colder than the wind that freezes | |
Founts, that but now in sunshine play'd, | |
Is that congealing pang which seizes | |
The trusting bosom when betray'd."--_Moore_. | |
Four months had elapsed since the honeymoon at the White Rose Tavern, | |
and Anna was living at Waltham with her mother who grew more fretful | |
and complaining every day. The marriage was still the secret of Anna | |
and Sanderson. The honeymoon at the White Rose had been prolonged to a | |
week, but no suspicion had entered the minds of Mrs. Moore or Mrs. | |
Standish Tremont, thanks to Sanderson's skill in sending fictitious | |
telegrams, aided by so skilled an accomplice as the "Rev." John Langdon. | |
Week after week, Anna had yielded to Sanderson's entreaties and kept | |
her marriage a secret from her mother. At first he had sent her | |
remittances of money with frequent regularity, but, lately, they had | |
begun to fall off, his letters were less frequent, shorter and more | |
reserved in tone, and the burden of it all was crushing the youth out | |
of the girl and breaking her spirit. She had grown to look like some | |
great sorrowful-eyed Madonna, and her beauty had in it more of the | |
spiritual quality of an angel than of a woman. As the spring came on, | |
and the days grew longer she looked like one on whom the hand of death | |
had been laid. | |
Her friends noticed this, but not her mother, who was so engrossed with | |
her own privations, that she had no time or inclination for anything | |
else. | |
"Anna, Anna, to think of our coming to this!" she would wail a dozen | |
times a day--or, "Anna, I can't stand it another minute," and she would | |
burst into paroxysms of grief, from which nothing could arouse her, and | |
utterly exhausted by her own emotions, which were chiefly regret and | |
self-pity, she would sink off to sleep. Anna had no difficulty in | |
accounting to her mother for the extra comforts with which Lennox | |
Sanderson's money supplied them. Mrs. Standish Tremont sometimes sent | |
checks and Mrs. Moore never bothered about the source, so long as the | |
luxuries were forthcoming. | |
"Is there no more Kumyss, Anna?" she asked one day. | |
"No, mother." | |
"Then why did you neglect to order it?" | |
The girl's face grew red. "There was no money to pay for it, mother. | |
I am so sorry." | |
"And does Frances Tremont neglect us in this way? When we were both | |
girls, it was quite the other way. My father practically adopted | |
Frances Tremont. She was married from our house. But you see, Anna, | |
she made a better marriage than I. Oh, why was your father so | |
reckless? I warned him not to speculate in the rash way he was | |
accustomed to doing, but he would never take my advice. If he had, we | |
would not be as we are now." And again the poor lady was overcome with | |
her own sorrows. | |
It was not Mrs. Tremont's check that had bought the last Kumyss. In | |
fact, Mrs. Tremont, after the manner of rich relations, troubled her | |
head but little about her poor ones. Sanderson had sent no money for | |
nearly a month, and Anna would have died sooner than have asked for it. | |
He had been to Waltham twice to see Anna, and once she had gone to meet | |
him at the White Rose Tavern. Mrs. Moore, wrapped in gloom at the loss | |
of her own luxury, had no interest in the young man who came down from | |
Boston to call on her daughter. | |
"You met him at Cousin Frances's, did you say? I don't see how you can | |
ask him here to this abominable little house. A girl should have good | |
surroundings, Anna. Nothing detracts from a girl's beauty so much as | |
cheap surroundings. Oh, my dear, if you had only been settled in life | |
before all this happened, I would not complain." And, as usual, there | |
were more tears. | |
But the wailings of her mother, over departed luxuries, and the poverty | |
of her surroundings were the lightest of Anna's griefs. At their last | |
meeting--she had gone to him in response to his request--Sanderson's | |
manner had struck dumb terror into the heart of the girl who had | |
sacrificed so much at his bidding. She had been very pale. The strain | |
of facing the terrible position in which she found herself, coupled | |
with her own failing health, had robbed her of the beautiful color he | |
had always so frankly admired. Her eyes were big and hollow looking, | |
and the deep black circles about them only added to her unearthly | |
appearance. There were drawn lines of pain about the mouth, that | |
robbed the Cupid's bow of half its beauty. | |
"My God, Anna!" he had said to her impatiently. "A man might as well | |
try to love a corpse as a woman who looks like that." He led her over | |
to a mirror, that she might see her wasted charms. There was no need | |
for her to look. She knew well enough, what was reflected there. | |
"You have no right to let yourself get like this. The only thing a | |
woman has is her looks, and it is a crime if she throws them away | |
worrying and fretting." | |
"But Lennox," she answered, desperately, "I have told you how matters | |
stand with me, and mother knows nothing--suspects nothing." And the | |
girl broke down and wept as if her heart would break. | |
"Anna, for Heaven's sake, do stop crying. I hate a scene worse than | |
anything in the world. When a woman cries, it means but one thing, and | |
that is that the man must give in--and in this particular instance I | |
can't give in. It would ruin me with the governor to acknowledge our | |
marriage." | |
The girl's tears froze at his brutal words. She looked about dazed and | |
hopeless. | |
Sanderson was standing by the window, drumming a tattoo on the pane. | |
He wheeled about, and said slowly, as if he were feeling his way: | |
"Anna, suppose I give you a sum of money and you go away till all this | |
business is over. You can tell your mother or not; just as you see | |
fit. As far as I am concerned, it would be impossible for me to | |
acknowledge our marriage as I have said before. If the governor found | |
it out, he would cut me off without a cent." | |
"But, Lennox, I cannot leave my mother. Her health grows worse daily, | |
and it would kill her." | |
"Then take her with you. She's got to know, sooner or later, I | |
suppose. Now, don't be a stupid little girl, and everything will turn | |
out well for us." He patted her cheek, but it was done perfunctorily, | |
and Anna knew there was no use in making a further appeal to him. | |
"Well, my dear," he said, "I have got to take that 4.30 train back to | |
Cambridge. Here is something for you, and let me know just as soon as | |
you make up your mind, when you intend to go and where. There is no | |
use in your staying in Waltham till those old cats begin to talk." | |
He put a roll of bills in her hand, kissed her and was gone, and Anna | |
turned her tottering steps homeward, sick at heart. She must tell her | |
mother, and the shock of it might kill her. She pressed her hands over | |
her burning eyes to blot out the hideous picture. Could cruel fate | |
offer bitterer dregs to young lips? | |
She stopped at the postoffice for mail. There was nothing but the | |
daily paper. She took it mechanically and turned into the little side | |
street on which they lived. | |
The old family servant, who still lived with them, met her at the door, | |
and told her that her mother had been sleeping quietly for more than an | |
hour. | |
"Good gracious, Miss Anna, but you do look ill. Just step into the | |
parlor and sit down for a minute, and I'll make you a cup of tea." | |
Anna suffered herself to be led into the little room, smiling | |
gratefully at the old servant as she assisted her to remove her hat and | |
jacket. She took up the paper mechanically and glanced through its | |
contents. Her eyes fell on the following item, which she followed with | |
hypnotic interest: "Harvard Student in Disgrace!" was the headline. | |
"John Langdon, a Harvard student, was arrested on the complaint of | |
Bertha Harris, a young woman, well known in Boston's gas-light circles, | |
yesterday evening. They had been dining together at a well-known chop | |
house, when the woman, who appeared to be slightly under the influence | |
of liquor, suddenly arose and declared that Langdon was trying to rob | |
her. | |
"Both were arrested on the charge of creating a disturbance. At the | |
State Street Police Station the woman said that Langdon had performed a | |
mock marriage for a fellow student some four months ago. She had acted | |
as a witness, for which service she was to receive $50. The money had | |
never been paid. She stated further that the young man, whom Langdon | |
is alleged to have married, is the son of a wealthy Boston banker, and | |
the young woman who was thus deceived is a young relative of one of | |
Boston's social leaders. | |
"Later Bertha Harris withdrew her charges, saying she was intoxicated | |
when she made them. The affair has created a profound sensation." | |
"Mock marriage!" The words whirled before the girl's eyes in letters | |
of fire. Bertha Harris! Yes, that was the name. It had struck her at | |
the time when Sanderson dropped the ring. Langdon had said "Bertha | |
Harris has found it." | |
The light of her reason seemed to be going out. From the blackness | |
that engulfed her, the words "mock marriage" rang in her ear like the | |
cry of the drowning. | |
"God, oh God!" she called and the pent up agony of her wrecked life was | |
in the cry. | |
They found her senseless a moment later, staring up at the ceiling with | |
glassy eyes, the crumpled paper crushed in her hand. | |
"She is dead," wailed her mother. The old servant wasted no time in | |
words. She lifted up the fragile form and laid it tenderly on the bed. | |
Then she raised the window and called to the first passerby to run for | |
the nearest doctor. | |
CHAPTER VII. | |
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER. | |
A mother's love--how sweet the name! | |
What is a mother's love? | |
--A noble, pure and tender flame, | |
Enkindled from above, | |
To bless a heart of earthly mould; | |
The warmest love that can grow cold; | |
That is a mother's love.--_James Montgomery_. | |
It took all the medical skill of which the doctor was capable, and the | |
best part of twenty-four hours of hard work to rouse Anna from the | |
death-like lethargy into which she had fallen. Toward morning she | |
opened her eyes and turning to her mother, said appealingly: | |
"Mother, you believe I am innocent, don't you?" | |
"Certainly, darling," Mrs. Moore replied, without knowing in the least | |
to what her daughter referred. The doctor, who was present at the | |
time, turned away. He knew more than the mother. It was one of those | |
tragedies of everyday life that meant for the woman the fleeing away | |
from old associations, like a guilty thing, long months of hiding, the | |
facing of death; and, if death was not to be, the beginning of life | |
over again branded with shame. And all this bitter injustice because | |
she had loved much and had faith in the man she loved. The doctor had | |
faced tragedies before in his professional life, but never had he felt | |
his duty so heavily laid upon him as when he begged Mrs. Moore for a | |
few minutes' private conversation in the gray dawn of that early | |
morning. | |
He felt that the life of his patient depended on his preparing her | |
mother for the worst. The girl, he knew, would probably confess all | |
during her convalescence, and the mother must be prepared, so that the | |
first burst of anguish would have expended itself before the girl | |
should have a chance to pour out the story of her misfortune. | |
"Tell me, doctor, is she going to die?" the mother asked, as she closed | |
the door of the little sitting-room and they were alone. The poor lady | |
had not thought of her own misfortunes since Anna's illness. The | |
selfishness of the woman of the world was completely obliterated by the | |
anxiety of the mother. | |
"No, she will not die, Mrs. Moore; that is, if you are able to control | |
your feelings sufficiently, after I have made a most distressing | |
disclosure, to give her the love and sympathy that only you can." | |
She looked at him with troubled eyes. "Why, doctor, what do you mean? | |
My daughter has always had my love and sympathy, and if of late I have | |
appeared somewhat engrossed by my own troubles, I assure you my | |
daughter is not likely to suffer from it during her illness." | |
"Her life depends on how you receive what I am going to tell you. | |
Should you upbraid her with her misfortune, or fail to stand by her as | |
only a mother can, I shall not answer for the consequences." Then he | |
told her Anna's secret. | |
The stricken woman did not cry out in her anguish, nor swoon away. She | |
raised a feebly protesting hand, as if to ward off a cruel blow; then | |
burying her face in her arms, she cowed before him. Not a sob shook | |
the frail, wasted figure. It was as if this most terrible misfortune | |
had dried up the well-springs of grief and robbed her of the blessed | |
gift of tears. The woman who in one brief year had lost everything | |
that life held dear to her--husband, home, wealth, position--everything | |
but this one child, could not believe the terrible sentence that had | |
been pronounced against her. Her Anna--her little girl! Why, she was | |
only a child! Oh, no, it could not be true. She never, never would | |
believe it. | |
Her brain whirled and seemed to stop. It refused to grasp so hideous a | |
proposition. The doctor was momentarily at a loss to know how to deal | |
with this terrible dry-eyed grief. The set look in her eyes, the | |
terrible calm of her demeanor were so much more alarming than the | |
wildest outpourings of grief would, have been. | |
"And this seizure, Mrs. Moore. Tell me exactly how it was brought | |
about," thinking to turn the current of her thoughts even for a moment. | |
She told him how Anna had gone out in the early afternoon, without | |
saying where she was going, and how she had returned to the house about | |
five o'clock, looking so pale and ill, that Hannah, an old family | |
servant who still lived with them, noticed it and begged her to sit | |
down while she went to fetch her a cup of tea. The maid left her | |
sitting by the fire-place reading a paper, and the next thing was the | |
terrible cry that brought them both. They found her lying on the floor | |
unconscious with the crumpled newspaper in her hand. | |
"See, here is the paper now, doctor," and he stooped to pick up the | |
crumpled sheet from which the girl had read her death warrant. | |
Together they went over it in the hope that it might furnish some clue. | |
Mrs. Moore's eyes were the first to fall on the fatal paragraph. She | |
read it through, then showed it to the doctor. | |
"That is undoubtedly the cause of the seizure," said the doctor. | |
"Oh, my poor, poor darling," moaned the mother, and the first tears | |
fell. | |
In the first bitterness of regret, Mrs. Moore imagined that in | |
selfishly abandoning herself to her own grief, she must have neglected | |
her daughter, and her remorse knew no bounds. Again and again she | |
bitterly denounced herself for giving way to sorrow that now seemed | |
light and trivial, compared to the black hopelessness of the present. | |
Anna's mind wandered in her delirium, and she would talk of her | |
marriage and beg Sanderson to let her tell her mother all. Then she | |
would fancy that she was again with Mrs. Tremont and she would go | |
through the pros and cons of the whole affair. Should she marry him | |
secretly, as he wished? Yes, it would be better for poor mama, who | |
needed so many comforts, but was it right? And then the passionate | |
appeal to Sanderson. Couldn't he realize her position?---- | |
"Yes, darling, it is all right. Mother understands," the heartbroken | |
woman would repeat over and over again, but the sick girl could not | |
hear. | |
And so the days wore on, till at last Anna's wandering mind turned back | |
to earth, and again took up the burden of living. There was nothing | |
for her to tell her mother. In her delirium she had told all, and the | |
mother was prepared to bravely face the worst for her daughter's sake. | |
The terrible blow brought mother and daughter closer together than they | |
had been for years. In their prosperity, the young girl had been busy | |
with her governess and instructors, while her mother had made a fine | |
art of her invalidism and spent the greater part of her time at health | |
resorts, baths and spas. | |
By mutual consent, they decided that it was better not to attempt to | |
seek redress from Sanderson. Anna's letters, written during her | |
convalescence, had remained unanswered, and any effort to force him, | |
either by persuasion or process of law, to right the terrible wrong he | |
had done, was equally repulsive to both mother and daughter. | |
Mrs. Standish Tremont was also equally out of the question, as a court | |
of final appeal. She had been so piqued with Anna for interfering with | |
her most cherished plans regarding Sanderson and Grace Tremont, that | |
Anna knew well enough that there would only be further humiliation in | |
seeking mercy from that quarter. | |
So mother and daughter prepared to face the inevitable alone. To this | |
end, Mrs. Moore sold the last of her jewelry. She had kept it, | |
thinking that Anna would perhaps marry some day and appreciate the | |
heirlooms; but such a contingent was no longer to be considered, and | |
the jewelry, and the last of the family silver, were sent to be sold, | |
together with every bit of furniture with which they could dispense, | |
and mother and daughter left the little cottage in Waltham, and went to | |
the town of Belden, New Hampshire,--a place so inconceivably remote, | |
that there was little chance of any of their former friends being able | |
to trace them, even if they should desire to do so. | |
As the summer days grew shorter, and the hour of Anna's ordeal grew | |
near, Mrs. Moore had but one prayer in her heart, and that was that her | |
life might be spared till her child's troubles were over. Since Anna's | |
illness in the early spring, she had utterly disregarded herself. No | |
complaint was heard to pass her lips. Her time was spent in one | |
unselfish effort to make her daughter's life less painful. But the | |
strain of it was telling, and she knew that life with her was but the | |
question of weeks, perhaps days. As her physical grasp grew weaker, | |
her mental hold increased proportionately, and she determined to live | |
till she had either closed her child's eyes in death, or left her with | |
something for which to struggle, as she herself was now struggling. | |
But the poor mother's last wish was not to be granted. In the | |
beginning of September, just when the earth was full of golden promise | |
of autumn, she felt herself going. She felt the icy hand of death at | |
her heart and the grim destroyer whispered in her ear: "Make ready." | |
Oh, the anguish of going just then, when she was needed so sorely by | |
her deceived and deserted child. | |
"Anna, darling," she called feebly, "I cannot be with you; I am | |
going--I have prayed to stay, but it was not to be. Your child will | |
comfort you, darling. There is nothing like a child's love, Anna, to | |
make a woman forget old sorrows--kiss me, dear----" She was gone. | |
And so Anna was to go down into the valley of the shadow of death | |
alone, and among strangers. | |
CHAPTER VIII. | |
IN DAYS OF WAITING. | |
"Bent o'er her babe, her eyes dissolved in dew, | |
The big drops mingled with the milk he drew | |
Gave the sad presage of his future years-- | |
The child of misery, baptized in tears."--_John Langhorne_. | |
The days of Anna's waiting lagged. She lost all count of time and | |
season. Each day was painfully like its predecessor, a period of time | |
to be gone through with, as best she could. She realized after her | |
mother's death what the gentle companionship had been to her, what a | |
prop the frail mother had become in her hour of need. For a great | |
change had come over the querulous invalid with the beginning of her | |
daughter's troubles, the grievances of the woman of the world were | |
forgotten in the anxiety of the mother, and never by look or word did | |
she chide her daughter, or make her affliction anything but easier to | |
bear by her gentle presence. | |
Anna, sunk in the stupor of her own grief, did not realize the comfort | |
of her mother's presence until it was too late. She shrank from the | |
strangers with whom they made their little home--a middle aged | |
shopkeeper and his wife, who had been glad enough to rent them two | |
unused rooms in their house at a low figure. They were not lacking in | |
sympathy for young "Mrs. Lennox," but their disposition to ask | |
questions made Anna shun them as she would have an infection. After | |
her mother's death, they tried harder than ever to be kind to her, but | |
the listless girl, who spent her days gazing at nothing, was hardly | |
aware of their comings and goings. | |
"If you would only try to eat a bit, my dear," said the corpulent Mrs. | |
Smith, bustling into Anna's room. "And land sakes, don't take on so. | |
There you set in that chair all day long. Just rouse yourself, my | |
dear; there ain't no trouble, however bad, but could be wuss." | |
To this dismal philosophy, Anna would return a wan smile, while she | |
felt her heart almost break within her. | |
"And, Mrs. Lennox, don't mind what I say to you. I am old enough to be | |
your grandmother, but if you have quarreled with any one, don't be too | |
spunky now about making up. Spunk is all right in its place, but its | |
place ain't at the bedside of a young woman who's got to face the trial | |
of her life. If you have quarreled with any one--your--your husband, | |
say, now is the time to make it up, since your ma is gone." | |
The old woman looked at her with a strange mixture of motherliness and | |
curiosity. As she said to her husband a dozen times a day, "her heart | |
just ached for that pore young thing upstairs," but this tender | |
solicitude did not prevent her ears from aching, at the same time, to | |
hear Anna's story. | |
"Thank you very much for your kind interest, Mrs. Smith; but really, | |
you must let me judge of my own affairs." There was a dignity about | |
the girl that brooked no further interference. | |
"That's right, my dear, and I wouldn't have thought of suggesting it, | |
but you do seem that young--well, I must be going down to put the | |
potatoes on for dinner. If you want anything, just ring your bell." | |
There was not the least resentment cherished by the corpulent Mrs. | |
Smith. The girl's answer confirmed her opinion from the first. "She | |
would not send for her husband, because there wasn't no husband to send | |
for." She mentioned her convictions to her husband and added she meant | |
to write to sister Eliza that very night. | |
"Sister Eliza has an uncommon light hand with babies and that pore | |
young thing'll be hard pushed to pay the doctor, let alone a nurse." | |
These essentially feminine details regarding the talents of Sister | |
Eliza, did not especially interest Smith, who continued his favorite | |
occupation--or rather, joint occupations, of whittling and | |
expectorating. Nevertheless, the letter to Sister Eliza was written, | |
and not a minute sooner than was necessary; for, the little soul that | |
was to bring with it forgetfulness for all the agony through which its | |
mother had lived during that awful year, came very soon after the | |
arrival of Sister Eliza. | |
Anna had felt in those days of waiting that she could never again be | |
happy; that for her "finis" had been written by the fates. But, as she | |
lay with the dark-haired baby on her breast, she found herself planning | |
for the little girl's future; even happy in the building of those | |
heavenly air-castles that young mothers never weary of building. She | |
felt the necessity of growing strong so that she could work early and | |
late, for baby must have everything, even if mother went without. | |
Sometimes a fleeting likeness to Sanderson would flit across the | |
child's face, and a spasm of pain would clutch at Anna's heart, but she | |
would forget it next moment in one of baby's most heavenly smiles. | |
She could think of him now without a shudder; even a lingering remnant | |
of tenderness would flare up in her heart when she remembered he was | |
the baby's father. Perhaps he would see the child sometime, and her | |
sweet baby ways would plead to him more eloquently than could all her | |
words to right the wrong he had done, and so the days slipped by and | |
the little mother was happy, after the long drawn out days of waiting | |
and misery. She would sing the baby to sleep in her low contralto | |
voice, and feel that it mattered not whether the world smiled or | |
frowned on her, so long as baby approved. | |
But this blessed state of affairs was not long to continue. Anna, as | |
she grew stronger, felt the necessity of seeking employment, but to | |
this the baby proved a formidable obstacle. No one would give a young | |
woman, hampered with a child, work. She would come back to the baby at | |
night worn out in mind and body, after a day of fruitless searching. | |
These long trips of the little mother, with the consequent long absence | |
and exhaustion on her return, did not improve the little one's health, | |
and almost before Anna realized it was ailing, the baby sickened and | |
died. It was her cruelest blow. For the child's sake she had taken up | |
her interest in life, made plans; and was ready to work her fingers to | |
the bone, but it was not to be and with the first falling of the clods | |
on the little coffin, Anna felt the last ray of hope extinguished from | |
her heart. | |
CHAPTER IX. | |
ON THE THRESHOLD OF SHELTER. | |
Alas! To-day I would give everything | |
To see a friend's face, or hear voice | |
That had the slightest tone of comfort in it.--_Longfellow_. | |
About two miles from the town of Belden, N. H., stands an irregular farm | |
house that looks more like two dwellings forced to pass as one. One part | |
of it is all gables, and tile, and chimney corners, and antiquity, and | |
the other is square, slated, and of the newest cut, outside and in. | |
The farm is the property of Squire Amasa Bartlett, a good type of the big | |
man of the small place. He was a contented and would have been a happy | |
man--or at least thought he would have been--if the dearest wish of his | |
life could have been realized. It was that his son, Dave, and his wife's | |
niece, Kate, should marry. Kate was an orphan and the Squire's ward. | |
She owned the adjoining land, that was farmed with the Squire's as one. | |
So that Cupid would not have come to them empty handed; but the young | |
people appeared to have little interest in each other apart from that | |
cousinly affection which young people who are brought together would in | |
all probability feel for each other. | |
Dave was a handsome, dark-eyed young man, whose silence passed with some | |
for sulkiness; but he was not sulky--only deep and thoughtful, and | |
perhaps a little more devoid of levity than becomes a young man of | |
twenty-five. He had great force of character--you might have seen that | |
from his grave brow, and felt it in his simple speech and manner, that | |
was absolutely free from affectation. | |
Dave was his mother's idol, but his utter lack of worldliness, his | |
inability to drive a shrewd bargain sometimes annoyed his father, who was | |
a just, but an undeniably hard man, who demanded a hundred cents for his | |
dollar every day in the year. | |
Kate, whom the family circle hoped would one day be David's wife, was all | |
blonde hair, blue eyes and high spirits, so that the little blind god, | |
aided by the Squire's strategy, propinquity and the universal law of the | |
attraction of opposites, should have had no difficulty in making these | |
young people fall in love--but Destiny, apparently, decided to make them | |
exceptions to all rules. | |
Kate was fond of going to Boston to visit a schoolmate, and the Squire, | |
who looked with small favor on these visits, was disposed to attribute | |
them to Dave's lack of ardor. | |
"Confound it, Looizy," he would say to his wife, "if Dave made it more | |
lively for Kate she would not be fer flying off to Boston every time she | |
got a chance." | |
And Mrs. Bartlett had no answer. Having a woman's doubtful gift of | |
intuition, she was afraid that the wedding would never take place, and | |
also having a woman's tact she never annoyed her husband by saying so. | |
Kate, who had been in Boston for two months, was coming home about the | |
middle of July, and a little flutter of preparation went all over the | |
farm. | |
Dave had said at breakfast that he regretted not being able to go to | |
Wakefield to meet Kate, but that he would be busy in the north field all | |
day. Hi Holler, the Bartlett chore boy, had been commissioned to go in | |
his stead, and Hi's toilet, in consequence, had occupied most of the | |
morning. | |
Mrs. Bartlett was churning in the shadow of the wide porch, the Squire | |
was mending a horse collar with wax thread, and fussing about the heat | |
and the slowness of Hi Holler, who was always punctually fifteen minutes | |
late for everything. | |
"Confound it, Looizy, what's keeping that boy; the train'll get in before | |
he's started. Here you, Hi, what's keeping you?" | |
The delinquent stood in the doorway, his broad face rippling with smiles; | |
he had spent time on his toilet, but he felt that the result justified it. | |
His high collar had already begun to succumb to the day, and the labor | |
involved in greasing his boots, which were much in evidence, owing to the | |
brevity of the white duck trousers that needed but one or two more | |
washings, with the accompanying process of shrinking, to convert them | |
into knickerbockers. Bear's grease had turned his ordinary curling brown | |
hair into a damp, shining mass that dripped in tiny rills, from time to | |
time, down on his coat collar, but Hi was happy. Beau Brummel, at the | |
height of his sartorial fame, never achieved a more self-satisfying | |
toilet. | |
The Squire adjusted his spectacles. "What are you dressing up like that | |
on a week day for, Hi? Off with you now; and if you ain't in time for | |
them cars you'll catch 'Hail Columbia' when you get back." | |
"Looizy," said the Squire, as soon as Hi was out of hearing, "why didn't | |
Dave go after Katie? Yes, I know about the hay. Hay is hay, but it | |
ought not to come first in a man's affections." | |
"You'd better let 'em alone, Amasy; if they're going to marry they will | |
without any help from us; love affairs don't seem to prosper much, when | |
old folks interfere." | |
"Looizy, it's my opinion that Dave's too shy to make up to women folks. | |
I don't think he'll even get up the courage to ask Kate to marry him." | |
"Well, I never saw the man yet who was too bashful to propose to the | |
right woman." And a great deal of decision went into the churning that | |
accompanied her words. | |
"Mebbe so, mebbe so," said the Squire. He felt that the vagaries of the | |
affections was too deep a subject for him. "Anyhow, Looizy, I don't want | |
no old maids and bachelors potterin' round this farm getting cranky | |
notions in their heads. Look at the professor. Why, a good woman would | |
have taken the nonsense out of him years ago." | |
Mrs. Bartlett did not have to go far to look at the professor. He was | |
flying about her front garden at that very moment in an apparently | |
distracted state, crouching, springing, hiding back of bushes and | |
reappearing with the startling swiftness of magic. The Bartletts were | |
quite used to these antics on the part of their well-paying summer | |
boarder. He was chasing butterflies--a manifestly insane proceeding, of | |
course, but if a man could afford to pay ten dollars a week for summer | |
board in the State of New Hampshire, he could afford to chase butterflies. | |
Professor Sterling was an old young man who had given up his life to | |
entomology; his collection of butterflies was more vital to him than any | |
living issue; the Bartletts regarded him as a mild order of lunatic, | |
whose madness might have taken a more dangerous form than making up long | |
names for every-day common bugs. | |
"Look at him, just look at him, Looizy, sweating himself a day like this, | |
over a common dusty miller. It beats all, and with his money." | |
"Well, it's a harmless amusement," said the kindly Louisa, "there's a | |
heap more harmful things that a man might chase than butterflies." | |
The stillness of the midsummer day was broken by the sound of far-off | |
singing. It came in full-toned volume across the fields, the high | |
soaring of women's voices blended with the deeper harmony of men. | |
"What's that?" said the Squire testily, looking in the direction of the | |
strawberry beds, from whence the singing came. | |
"It's only the berry-pickers, father," said David, coming through the | |
field gate and going over to the well for a drink. | |
"I wish they'd work more and sing less," said the Squire. "All this | |
singing business is too picturesque for me." | |
"They've about finished, father. I came for the money to pay them off." | |
It was characteristic of Dave to uphold the rights of the berry-pickers. | |
They were all friends of his, young men and women who sang in the village | |
choir and who went out among their neighbors' berry patches in summer, | |
and earned a little extra money in picking the fruit. The village | |
thought only the more of them for their thrift, and their singing at the | |
close of their work was generally regarded in the light of a favor. | |
Zeke, Sam, Cynthia and Amelia who formed the quartet, had all fine voices | |
and no social function for miles around Wakefield was complete without | |
their music. | |
The Squire said no more about the berry-pickers. Dave handed him a paper | |
on which the time of each berry-picker and the amount of his or her wage | |
was marked opposite. The Squire took it and adjusted his glasses with a | |
certain grimness--he was honest to the core, but few things came harder | |
to him than parting with money. | |
Dave and his mother at the churn exchanged a friendly wink. The | |
extracting of coin from the head of the house was no easy process. | |
Mother and son both enjoyed its accomplishment through an outside agency. | |
It was too hard a process in the home circle to be at all agreeable. | |
While the Squire was wrestling with his arithmetic, Dave noticed a | |
strange girl pass by the outer gate, pause, go on and then return. He | |
looked at her with deep interest. She was so pale and tired-looking it | |
seemed as if she had not strength enough left to walk to the house. Her | |
long lashes rested wearily on the pale cheeks. She lifted them with an | |
effort, and Dave found himself staring eagerly in a pair of great, | |
sorrowful brown eyes. | |
The girl came on unsteadily up the walk to where the Squire sat, thumbing | |
his account to the berry-pickers. "Well, girl, who are you?" he said, | |
not as unkindly as the words might imply. | |
The sound of her own voice, as she tried to answer his question, was like | |
the far-off droning of a river. It did not seem to belong to her. "My | |
name is Moore--Anna Moore--and I thought--I hoped perhaps you might be | |
good enough to give me work." The strange faces spun about her eyes. | |
She tottered and would have fallen if Dave had not caught her. | |
Dave, the silent, the slow of action, the cool-headed, seemed suddenly | |
bereft of his chilling serenity. "Here, mother, a chair; father, some | |
water, quick." He carried the swooning girl to the shadow of the porch | |
and fanned her tenderly with his broad-brimmed straw hat. | |
The old people hastened to do his bidding. Dave, excited and issuing | |
orders in that tone, was too unusual to be passed over lightly. | |
"What were you going to say, Miss Moore?" said the Squire as soon as the | |
brown eyes opened. | |
"I thought, perhaps, I might find something to do here--I'm looking for | |
work." | |
"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Bartlett, smoothing the dark curls, "you are | |
not fit to stand, let alone work." | |
"You could not earn your salt," was the Squire's less sympathetic way of | |
expressing the same sentiment. "Where is your home?" | |
"I have no home." She looked at them desperately, her dark eyes | |
appealing to one and the other, as if they were the jury that held her | |
life in the balance. Only one pair of eyes seemed to hold out any hope. | |
"If you would only try me I could soon prove to you that I am not | |
worthless." Unconsciously she held out her hand in entreaty. | |
"Here we are, here we are, all off for Boston!" The voice was Hi's. He | |
was just turning in at the field gate with Kate beside him. Kate, a | |
ravishing vision, in pink muslin; a smiling, contented vision of happy, | |
rosy girlhood, coming back to the home-nest, where a thousand welcomes | |
awaited her. | |
"Hello, every one!" she said, running in and kissing them in turn, "how | |
nice it is to be home." | |
They forgot the homeless stranger and her pleading for shelter in their | |
glad welcome to the daughter of the house. She had shrunk back into the | |
shadow. She had never felt the desolation, the utter loneliness of her | |
position so keenly before. | |
"Hurrah for Kate!" cried the Squire, and everyone took it up and gave | |
three cheers for Kate Brewster. | |
The wanderer withdrew into the deepest shadow of the porch, that her | |
alien presence might not mar the joyous home-coming of Kate Brewster. | |
There was no jealousy in her soul for the fair girl who had such a royal | |
welcome back to the home-nest. She would not have robbed her of it if | |
such a thing had been possible, but the sense of her own desolation | |
gripped at the heart like an iron band. | |
She waited like a mendicant to beg for the chance of earning her bread. | |
That was all she asked--the chance to work, to eat the bread of | |
independence, and yet she knew how slim the chance was. She had been | |
wandering about seeking employment all day, and no one would give it. | |
Only Dave had not forgotten the stranger is the joy of Kate's | |
home-coming. He had welcomed the flurry of excitement to say a few words | |
to his mother, his sworn ally in all the little domestic plots. | |
"Mother," he said, "do contrive to keep that girl. It would be nothing | |
short of murder to turn her out on the highway." | |
A pressure of the motherly hand assured Dave that he could rely on her | |
support. | |
"Well, well, Katie," said the Squire with his arm around his niece's | |
waist, "the old place has been lonely without you!" | |
"Uncle, who is that girl on the porch?" she asked in an undertone. | |
"That we don't know; says her name is Moore, and that she wants work. | |
Kind of sounds like a fairy story, don't it, Kate?" | |
"Poor thing, poor thing!" was Kate's only answer. | |
"Amasy," said Mrs. Bartlett, assuming all the courage of a rabbit about | |
to assert itself, "this family is bigger than it was with Kate home and | |
the professor here, and I am not getting younger--I want you to let me | |
keep this young woman to help me about the house." | |
The Squire set his jaw, always an ominous sign to his family. "I don't | |
like this takin' strangers, folks we know nothing about; it's mighty | |
suspicious to see a young woman tramping around the country, without a | |
home, looking for work. I don't like it." | |
The girl, who sat apart while these strangers considered taking her in, | |
as if she had been a friendless dog, arose, her eyes were full of unshed | |
tears, her voice quivered, but pride supported her. Turning to the | |
Squire, she said: | |
"You are suspicious because you are blest with both home and family. My | |
mother died a few months ago, I myself have been ill. I make this | |
explanation not because your kindness warrants it, sir, but because your | |
family would have been willing to take me on faith." She bowed her head | |
in the direction of Mrs. Bartlett and Dave. | |
"Well," the Squire interrupted, "you need not go away hungry, you can | |
stop here and eat your dinner, and then Hi Holler can take you in the | |
wagon to the place provided for such unfortunate cases, and where you'll | |
have food and shelter." | |
"The poor farm, do you mean?" the girl said, wildly; "no, no; if you will | |
not give me work I will not take your charity." | |
"Father!" exclaimed Dave and his mother together. | |
"Now, now," said Kate, going up to the Squire and putting her hands on | |
his shoulders, "it seems to me as if my uncle's been getting a little | |
hard while I've been away from home, and I don't think it has improved | |
him a bit. The uncle I left here had a heart as big as a house. What | |
has he done with it?" | |
Here the professor came to Kate's aid. "Squire," said he, "isn't it | |
written that 'If ye do it unto the least of these, ye do it unto me?'" | |
"Well, well," said the Squire, "when a man's family are against him, | |
there's only one thing for him to do if he wants any peace of mind, and | |
that is to come round to their way, and I ain't never goin' to have it | |
said I went agin the _Scripter_." He went over to Anna and took her | |
pale, thin hand in his great brown one. | |
"Well, little woman, they want you to stay, and I am not going to | |
interfere. I leave it to you that I won't live to regret it." | |
This time the tears splashed down the pale cheeks. "Dear sir, I thank | |
you, and I promise you shall never repent this kindness." Then turning | |
to the rest--"I thank you all. I can only repay you by doing my best." | |
"Well said, well said," and Kate gave her a sisterly pat on the shoulder. | |
Anna would not listen to Mrs. Bartlett's kind suggestion that she should | |
rest a little while. She went immediately to the house, removed her hat, | |
and returned completely enveloped in a big gingham apron that proved | |
wonderfully becoming to her dark beauty--or was it that the homeless, | |
hunted look had gone out of those sorrowful eyes? | |
And so Anna Moore had found a home at last, one in which she would have | |
to work early and late to retain a foothold--but still a home, and the | |
word rang in her ears like a soothing song, after the anguish of the last | |
year. Her youth and beauty, she had long since discovered, were only | |
barriers to the surroundings she sought. There had been many who offered | |
to help the friendless girl, but their offers were such that death seemed | |
preferable, by contrast, and Anna had gone from place to place, seeking | |
only the right to earn her bread, and yet, finding only temptation and | |
danger. | |
Dave, passing out to the barn, stopped for a moment to regard her, as she | |
sat on the lowest step of the porch, with her sleeves rolled above the | |
elbow, working a bowl of butter. He smiled at her encouragingly--it was | |
well that none of his family saw it. Such a smile from the shy, silent | |
Dave might have been a revelation to the home circle. | |
[Illustration: Martha Perkins and Maria Poole.] | |
CHAPTER X. | |
ANNA AND SANDERSON AGAIN MEET. | |
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd | |
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd."--_Congreve_. | |
"And who be you, with those big brown eyes, sitting on the Bartlett's | |
porch working that butter as if you've been used to handling butter all | |
your life? No city girl, I'm sure." Anna had been at the Squire's for | |
a week when the above query was put to her. | |
The voice was high and rasping. The whole sentence was delivered | |
without breath or pause, as if it was one long word. The speaker might | |
have been the old maid as portrayed in the illustrated weekly. Nothing | |
was lacking--corkscrew curls, prunella boots, cameo brooch and chain, a | |
gown of the antiquated Redingote type, trimmed with many small ruffles | |
and punctuated, irrelevantly, with immovable buttons. | |
"I am Anna Moore." | |
"Know as much now as I ever did," snapped the interlocutor. | |
"I have come to work for Mrs. Bartlett, to help her about the house." | |
"Land sakes. Bartlett's keeping help! How stylish they're getting." | |
"Yes, Marthy, we are progressing," said Kate, coming out of the house. | |
"Anna, this is our friend, Miss Marthy Perkins." | |
The village gossip's confusion was but momentary. "Do you know, Kate, | |
I just came over a-purpose to see if you'd come. What kind of clothes | |
are they wearing in Boston? Are shirtwaists going to have tucked backs | |
or plain? I am going to make over my gray alpaca, and I wouldn't put | |
the scissors into it till I seen you." | |
"Come upstairs, Marthy, and I'll show you my new shirtwaists." | |
"Land sakes," said the spinster, bridling. "I would be delighted, but | |
you know how I can't move without that Seth Holcomb a-taggin' after me; | |
it's just awful the way I am persecuted. I do wish I'd get old and | |
then there'll be an end of it." She held out a pair of mittens, | |
vintage of 1812, to Kate, appealingly. | |
Seth Holcomb stumped in sight as she concluded; he had been Martha's | |
faithful admirer these twenty years, but she would never reward him; | |
her hopes of younger and less rheumatic game seemed to spring eternal. | |
During the few days that Anna had made one of the Squire's family she | |
went about with deep thankfulness in her heart; she had been given the | |
chance to work, to earn her bread by these good people. Who could | |
tell--as time went on perhaps they would grow fond of her, learn to | |
regard her as one of themselves--it was so much better than being so | |
utterly alone. | |
Her energy never flagged, she did her share of the work with the light | |
hand of experience that delighted the old housekeeper. It was so good | |
to feel a roof over her head, and to feel that she was earning her | |
right to it. | |
Supper had been cooked, the table laid and everything was in readiness | |
for the family meal, but the old clock wanted five minutes of the hour; | |
the girl came out into the glowing sunset to draw a pail of water from | |
the old well, but paused to enjoy the scene. Purple, gold and crimson | |
was the mantle of the departing day; and all her crushed and hopeless | |
youth rose, cheered by its glory. | |
"Thank God," she murmured fervently, "at last I have found a refuge. I | |
am beginning life again. The shadow of the old one will rest on me | |
forever, but time and work, the cure for every grief, will cure me." | |
Her eyes had been turned toward the west, where the day was going out | |
in such a riot of splendor, and she had not noticed the man who entered | |
the gate and was making his way toward her, flicking his boots with his | |
riding crop as he walked. | |
She turned suddenly at the sound of steps on the gravel; in the | |
gathering darkness neither could see nor recognize the other till they | |
were face to face. | |
The woman's face blanched, she stifled an exclamation of horror and | |
stared at him. | |
"You! you here!" | |
It was Lennox Sanderson, and the sight of him, so suddenly, in this | |
out-of-the-way place, made her reel, almost fainting against the | |
well-curb. | |
He grabbed her arm and shook her roughly, and said, "What are you doing | |
here, in this place?" | |
"I am trying to earn my living. Go, go," she whispered. | |
"Do you think I came here after you?" he sneered. "I've come to see | |
the Squire." All the selfishness and cowardice latent in Sanderson's | |
character were reflected in his face, at that moment, destroying its | |
natural symmetry, disfiguring it with tell-tale lines, and showing him | |
at his par value--a weak, contemptible libertine, brought to bay. | |
This meeting with his victim after all these long months of silence, in | |
this remote place, deprived him, momentarily, of his customary poise | |
and equilibrium. Why was she here? Would she denounce him to these | |
people? What effect would it have? were some of the questions that | |
whirled through his brain as they stood together in the gathering | |
twilight. | |
But the shrinking look in her eyes allayed his fears. He read terror | |
in every line of her quivering figure, and in the frantic way she clung | |
to the well-curb to increase the space between them. She, with the | |
right to accuse, unconsciously took the attitude of supplication. The | |
man knew he had nothing to fear, and laid his plans accordingly. | |
"I don't believe you've come here to look for work," he said, stooping | |
over the crouching figure. "You've come here to make trouble--to hound | |
the life out of me." | |
"My hope in coming here was that I might never see you again. What | |
could I want of you, Lennox Sanderson?" | |
The measured contempt of her tones was not without its effect. He | |
winced perceptibly, but his coarse instincts rallied to his help and | |
again he began to bully: | |
"Spare me the usual hard-luck story of the deceived young woman trying | |
to make an honest living. If you insist on drudging, it's your own | |
fault. I offered to take care of you and provide for your future, but | |
you received my offers of assistance with a 'Villain-take-your-gold' | |
style, that I was not prepared to accept. If, as you say, you never | |
wish to see me again, what is simpler than to go away?" | |
His cold-blooded indifference, his utter withdrawal from the calamity | |
he had brought upon her, his airy suggestion that she should go because | |
it suited his pleasure to remain, maddened Anna. The blood rushed to | |
her pale cheeks and there came her old conquering beauty with it. She | |
eyed him with equal defiance. | |
"I shall not go, because it does not suit me." And then wavering a | |
little at the thought of her wretched experience--"I had too much | |
trouble finding a place where an honest home is offered for honest | |
work, to leave this one for your whim. No, I shall not go." | |
They heard footsteps moving about the house. A lamp shone out from the | |
dining-room window. The Squire's voice, inquiring for Kate, came | |
across to them on the still summer air. They looked into each other's | |
pale, determined faces. Which would yield? It was the old struggle | |
between the sexes--a struggle old as earth, unsettled as chaos. | |
Which should yield? The man who had sinned much, or the woman who had | |
loved much? | |
Sanderson employed all the force of his brutality to frighten Anna into | |
yielding. "See here," and he caught her arm in no uncertain grasp. | |
"You've got to go. You can't stay here in the same place with me. If | |
money is what you want, you shall have it; but you've got to go. Do | |
you understand? _Go_!" | |
He had emphasized his words by tightening the grip on her arm, and the | |
pain of it well nigh made her cry out. He relaxed his hold just as Hi | |
Holler came out on the porch, seized the supper horn and blew it | |
furiously. The Squire came down and looked amazed at the smartly | |
dressed young city man talking to Anna. | |
"Squire," she said, taking the initiative, "this gentleman is inquiring | |
for you." | |
On hearing the Squire's footsteps, Sanderson turned to him with all the | |
cordiality at his command, and, slapping him on the back, said: "Hello, | |
Squire, I've just ridden over to talk to you about your prize Jersey | |
heifer." The Squire had only met Sanderson once or twice before, and | |
that was prior to Kate's visit to Boston; but he knew all about the | |
young man who had become his neighbor. | |
Lennox Sanderson was a lucky fellow, and while waiting impatiently for | |
his father to start him in life, his uncle, the judge, died and | |
mentioned no one but Lennox Sanderson in his will. | |
The Squire had known the late Judge Sanderson, the "big man" of the | |
county, very well, and lost no time in cultivating the acquaintance of | |
the judge's nephew, who had fallen heir to the fine property the judge | |
had accumulated, no small part of which was the handsome "country seat" | |
of the judge in the neighborhood. | |
That is how this fine young city man happened to drop in on the Squire | |
so unceremoniously. He had learned of Kate's return from Boston and | |
was hastening to pay his respects to the pretty girl. To say he was | |
astounded to find Anna on the spot is putting it mildly. He believed | |
she had learned of his good fortune and had followed him, to make | |
disagreeable exactions. It put him in a rage and it cost him a strong | |
effort to conceal it before the Squire. | |
"Walk right in," said the Squire, beaming with hospitality. Sanderson | |
entered and the girl found herself alone in the twilight. Anna sat on | |
the bench by the well-curb and faced despair. She was physically so | |
weak from her long and recent illness that the unexpected interview | |
with Sanderson left her faint and exhausted. The momentary flare up of | |
her righteous indignation at Sanderson's outrageous proposition that | |
she should go away had sapped her strength and she made ready to meet | |
one of the great crises of life with nerveless, trembling body and a | |
mind incapable of action. | |
She pressed her throbbing head on the cool stones of the well-curb and | |
prayed for light. What could she do--where could she go? Her fate | |
rose up before her like a great stone prison wall at which she beat | |
with naked bleeding hand and the stones still stood in all their | |
mightiness. | |
How could she cope with such heartless cruelty as that of Sanderson? | |
All that she had asked for was an honest roof in return for honest | |
toil. And there are so few such, thought the helpless girl, | |
remembering with awful vividness her efforts to find work and the | |
pitfalls and barriers that had been put in her way, often in the guise | |
of friendly interest. | |
She could not go out and face it all over again. It was so bleak--so | |
bleak. There seemed to be no place in the great world that she could | |
fill, no one stood in need of her help, no one required her services. | |
They had no faith in her story that she was looking for work and had no | |
home. | |
"What, a good-looking young girl like you! What, no home? No, no; we | |
don't need you," or the other frightful alternative. | |
And yet she must go. Sanderson was right. She could not stay where he | |
was. She must go. But where? | |
She could hear his voice in the dining-room, entertaining them all with | |
his inimitable gift of story-telling. And then, their laughter--peal | |
on peal of it--and his voice cutting in, with its well-bred modulation: | |
"Yes, I thought it was a pretty good story myself, even if the joke was | |
on me." And again their laughter and applause. She had no weapons | |
with which to fight such cold-blooded selfishness. To stay meant | |
eternal torture. She saw herself forced to face his complacent sneer | |
day after day and death on the roadside seemed preferable. | |
She tried to face the situation in all its pitiful reality, but the | |
injustice of it cried out for vengeance and she could not think. She | |
could only bury her throbbing temples in her hands and murmur over and | |
over again: "It is all wrong." | |
David found her thus, as he made his way to the house from the barn, | |
where he had been detained later than the others. When he saw her | |
forlorn little figure huddled by the well-curb in an attitude of | |
absolute dejection, he could not go on without saying some word of | |
comfort. | |
"Miss Anna," he said very gently, "I hope you are not going to be | |
homesick with us." | |
She lifted a pale, tear-stained face, on which the lines of suffering | |
were written far in advance of her years. | |
"It does not matter, Mr. David," she answered him, "I am going away." | |
"No, no, you are not going to do anything of the kind," he said gently; | |
"the work seems hard today because it is new, but in a day or two you | |
will become accustomed to it, and to us. We may seem a bit hard and | |
unsympathetic; I can see you are not used to our ways of living, and | |
looking at things, but we are sincere, and we want you to stay with us; | |
indeed, we do." | |
She gave him a wealth of gratitude from her beautiful brown eyes. "It | |
is not that I find the place hard, Mr. David. Every one has been so | |
kind to me that I would be glad to stay, but--but----" | |
He did not press her for her reason. "You have been ill, I believe you | |
said?" | |
"Yes, very ill indeed, and there are not many who would give work to a | |
delicate girl. Oh, I am sorry to go----" She broke off wildly, and | |
the tears filled her eyes. | |
"Miss Anna, when one is ill, it's hard to know what is best. Don't | |
make up your mind just yet. Stay for a few days and give us a trial, | |
and just call on me when you want a bucket of water or anything else | |
that taxes your strength." | |
She tried to answer him but could not. They were the first words of | |
real kindness, after all these months of sorrow and loneliness, and | |
they broke down the icy barrier that seemed to have enclosed her heart. | |
She bent her head and wept silently. | |
"There, there, little woman," he said, patting her shoulder when he | |
would have given anything to put his arm around her and offer her the | |
devotion of his life. But Dave had a good bit of hard common sense | |
under his hat, and he knew that such a declaration would only hasten | |
her departure and the wise young man continued to be brotherly, to urge | |
her to stay for his mother's sake, and because it was so hard for a | |
young woman to find the proper kind of a home, and really she was not a | |
good judge of what was best for her. | |
And Anna, whose storm-swept soul was so weary of beating against the | |
rocks, listened and made up her mind to enjoy the wholesome | |
companionship of these good people, for a little while at least. | |
CHAPTER XI. | |
RUSTIC HOSPITALITY. | |
"Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned, | |
Where all the ruddy family around | |
Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, | |
Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale."--_Goldsmith_. | |
Sanderson's clothes, his manner, his slightly English accent, were all | |
so many items in a good letter of credit to those simple people. The | |
Squire was secretly proud at having a city man like young Sanderson for | |
a neighbor. It would unquestionably add tone to Wakefield society. | |
Kate regarded him with the frank admiration of a young woman who | |
appreciates a smart appearance, good manner, and the indefinable | |
something that goes to make up the ensemble of the man of the world. | |
He could say nothing, cleverly; he had little subtleties of manner that | |
put the other men she had met to poor advantage beside him. On the | |
night in question the Squire was giving a supper in honor of the | |
berry-pickers who had helped to gather in the crop the week before. | |
Afterwards, they would sing the sweet, homely songs that all the | |
village loved, and then troop home by moonlight to the accompaniment of | |
their own music. | |
"Well, Mr. Sanderson," said the Squire, "suppose you stay to supper | |
with us. See, we've lots of good company"--and he waved his hand, | |
indicating the different groups, "and we'll talk about the stock | |
afterwards." | |
He accepted their invitation to supper with flattering alacrity; they | |
were so good to take pity on a solitaire, and Mrs. Bartlett was such a | |
famous housekeeper; he had heard of her apple-pies in Boston. Dave | |
scented patronage in his "citified" air; he and other young men at the | |
table--young men who helped about the farm--resented everything about | |
the stranger from the self-satisfied poise of his head to the | |
aggressive gloss on his riding-boots. | |
"Why, Dave," said Kate to her cousin in an undertone, "you look | |
positively fierce. If I had a particle of vanity I should say you were | |
jealous." | |
"When I get jealous, Kate, it will be of a man, not of a tailor's sign." | |
"Say, Miss Kate," said Hi Holler, "they're a couple of old lengths of | |
stove-pipes out in the loft; I'm going to polish 'em up for leggins. | |
Darned if I let any city dude get ahead o' me." | |
"The green-eyed monster is driving you all crazy," laughed Kate, in | |
great good humor. "The girls don't seem to find any fault with him." | |
Cynthia and Amelia were both regarding him with admiring glances. | |
Dave turned away in some impatience. Involuntarily his eyes sought out | |
Anna Moore to see if she, too, was adding her quota of admiration to | |
the stranger's account. But Anna had no eyes or ears for anything but | |
the business of the moment, which was attending to the Squire's guests. | |
Evidently one woman could retain her senses in the presence of this | |
tailor's figure. Dave's admiration of Anna went up several points. | |
She slipped about as quietly as a spirit, removing and replacing dishes | |
with exquisite deftness. Even the Squire was forced to acknowledge | |
that she was a great acquisition to the household. She neither sought | |
to avoid nor to attract the attention of Sanderson; she waited on him | |
attentively and unobtrusively as she would have waited on any other | |
guest at the Squire's table. The Squire and Sanderson retired to the | |
porch to discuss the purchase of the stock, and Mrs. Bartlett and Anna | |
set to work to clear away the dishes. Kate excused herself from | |
assisting, as she had to assume the position as hostess and soon had | |
the church choir singing in its very best style. Song after song rang | |
out on the clear summer air. It was a treat not likely to be forgotten | |
soon by the listeners. All the members of the choir had what is known | |
as "natural talent," joined to which there was a very fair amount of | |
cultivation, and the result was music of a most pleasing type, music | |
that touches the heart--not a mere display Of vocal gymnastics. | |
Toward the close of the festivities, the sound of wheels was heard, and | |
the cracked voice of Rube Whipple, the town constable, urging his | |
ancient nag to greater speed, issued out of the darkness. Rube was | |
what is known as a "character." He had held the office, which on | |
account of being associated with him had become a sort of municipal | |
joke, in the earliest recollections of the oldest inhabitants. He | |
apparently got no older. For the past fifty years he had looked as if | |
he had been ready to totter into the grave at any moment, but he took | |
it out apparently, in attending to other people's funerals instead. | |
His voice was cracked, he walked with a limp, and his clothes, Hi | |
Holler said: "was the old suit Noah left in the ark." | |
The choir had just finished singing "Rock of Ages" as the constable | |
turned his venerable piece of horseflesh into the front yard. | |
"Well, well," he said, in a voice like a graphophone badly in need of | |
repair, "I might have knowed it was the choir kicking up all that | |
rumpus. Heard the row clear up to the postoffice, and thought I'd come | |
up to see if anyone was getting murdered." | |
"Thought you'd be on the spot for once, did you, Rube?" inquired Hi | |
Holler. "Well, seeing you're here, we might accommodate you, by | |
getting up a murder, or a row, or something. 'Twould be too bad to | |
have nothing happen, seeing you are on hand for once." | |
The choir joined heartily in the laugh on the constable, who waited | |
till it had subsided and then said: | |
"Well, what's the matter with jailing all of you for disturbing the | |
public peace. There's law for it--'disturbin' the public peace with | |
strange sounds at late and unusual hours of the night.'" | |
"All right, constable," said Cynthia, "I suppose you'll drive us to | |
jail in that rig o' yourn. I'd be willing to stay there six months for | |
the sake o' driving behind so spry a piece of horse-flesh as that." | |
"'Tain't the horseflesh she's after, constable, it's the driver. | |
Everyone 'round here knows how Cynthia dew admire you." | |
"Professional jealousy is what's at the bottom of this," declared Kate, | |
"the choir is jealous of Uncle Rube's reputation as a singer, and Uncle | |
Rube does not care for the choir's new-fangled methods of singing. | |
Rivalry! Rivalry! That's what the matter." | |
"That's right, Miss Kate," squeaked the constable, "they're jealous of | |
my singing. There ain't one of 'em, with all their scaling, and | |
do-re-mi-ing can touch me. If I turned professional to-day, I'd make | |
more'n all of 'em put together." | |
"That's cause they'd pay you to quit. Ha, ha," said Hi Holler. | |
And so the evening passed with the banter that invariably took place | |
when Rube was of the party. It was late when they left the Squire's, | |
the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as birds | |
on a summer morning. | |
David went out under the stars and smoked innumerable pipes, but they | |
did not give their customary solace to-night. There was an upheaval | |
going on in his well regulated mind. "Who was she? What was the | |
mystery about her? How did a girl like that come to be tramping about | |
the country looking for work?" Her manner of speaking, the very | |
intonations of her voice, her choice of words, all proclaimed her from | |
a different world from theirs. He had noticed her hands, white and | |
fragile, and her small delicate wrists. They did not belong to a | |
working woman. | |
And her eyes, that seemed to hold the sorrows of centuries in their | |
liquid depths. What was the mystery of it all? And that insolent city | |
chap! What a look he had given her. The memory of it made Dave's | |
hands come together as if he were strangling something. But it was all | |
too deep for him. The lights glimmered in the rooms upstairs. His | |
father walked to the outer gate to say good-night to Mr. Sanderson--and | |
he tried to justify the feeling of hatred he felt toward Sanderson, but | |
could not. The sound of a shutter being drawn in, caused him to look | |
up. Anna, leaned out in the moonlight for a moment before drawing in | |
the blind. Dave took off his hat--it was an unconscious act of | |
reverence. The next moment, the grave, shy countryman had smiled at | |
his sentimentality. The shutters closed and all was dark, but Dave | |
continued to think and smoke far into the night. | |
The days slipped by in pleasant and even tenor. The summer burned | |
itself out in a riot of glorious colors, the harvest was gathered in, | |
and the ripe apples fell from the trees--and there was a wail of coming | |
winter to the night wind. Anna Moore had made her place in the | |
Bartlett family. The Squire could not imagine how he ever got along | |
without her; she always thought of everyone's comfort and remembered | |
their little individual likes and dislikes, till the whole household | |
grew to depend on her. | |
But she never spoke of herself nor referred to her family, friends or | |
manner of living, before coming to the Bartlett farm. | |
When she had first come among them, her beauty had caused a little | |
ripple of excitement among the neighbors; the young men, in particular, | |
were all anxious to take her to husking bees and quilting parties, but | |
she always had some excellent excuse for not going, and while her | |
refusals were offered with the utmost kindness, there was a quiet | |
dignity about the girl that made any attempt at rustic playfulness or | |
familiarity impossible. | |
Sanderson came to the house from time to time, but Anna treated him | |
precisely as she would have treated any other young man who came to the | |
Squire's. She was the family "help," her duty stopped in announcing | |
the guests--or sometimes, and then she felt that fate had been | |
particularly cruel--in waiting on him at table. | |
Once or twice when Sanderson had found her alone, he had attempted to | |
speak to her. But she silenced him with a look that seat him away | |
cowering like a whipped cur. If he had any interest in any member of | |
the Squire's family, Anna did not notice it. He was an ugly scar on | |
her memory, and when not actually in his presence she tried to forget | |
that he lived. | |
CHAPTER XII. | |
KATE BREWSTER HOLDS SANDERSON'S ATTENTION. | |
"A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch | |
Incapable of pity, void and empty | |
From any dram of mercy."--_Shakespeare_. | |
It was perhaps owing to the fact that Anna strove hourly to eliminate | |
the memory of Lennox Sanderson from her life, that she remained wholly | |
unaware of that which every member of the Squire's household was | |
beginning to notice: namely, that Lennox Sanderson was becoming daily | |
more attentive to Kate Brewster. | |
She had more than once hazarded a guess on why a man of Sanderson's | |
tastes should care to remain in so quiet a neighborhood, but could | |
arrive at no solution of the case. In discussing him, she had heard | |
the Bartletts quote his reason, that he was studying practical farming, | |
and later on intended to take it up, on a large scale. When she had | |
first seen him at the Squire's, she had made up her mind that it would | |
be better for her to go away, but the memory of the homeless wanderings | |
she had endured after her mother's death, filled her with terror, and | |
after the first shock of seeing Sanderson, she concluded that it was | |
better to remain where she was, unless he should attempt to force his | |
society on her, in which case she would have to go, if she died by the | |
wayside. | |
Dave was coming across the fields late one autumn afternoon when he saw | |
Anna at the well, trying with all her small strength to draw up a | |
bucket of water. The well--one of the old-fashioned kind that worked | |
by a "sweep" and pole, at the end of which hung "the old oaken bucket" | |
which Anna drew up easily till the last few feet and then found it was | |
hard work. She had both hands on the iron bale of the bucket and was | |
panting a little, when a deep, gentle voice said in her ear: "Let go, | |
little woman, that's too heavy for you." And she felt the bucket taken | |
forcibly out of her hand. | |
"Never mind me, Mr. David," she said, giving way reluctantly. | |
"Always at some hard work or other," he said; "you won't quit till you | |
get laid up sick." | |
He filled the water-pail from the bucket for her, which she took up and | |
was about to go when he found courage to say: | |
"Won't you stay a minute, Anna, I want to talk to you. | |
"Anna, have you any relatives?" | |
"Not now." | |
"But have you no friends who knew you and loved you before you came to | |
us?" | |
"I want nothing of my friends, Mr. David, but their good will." | |
"Anna, why will you persist in cutting yourself off from the rest of | |
the world like this? You are too good, too womanly a girl, to lead | |
this colorless kind of an existence forever." | |
She looked at him pleadingly out of her beautiful eyes. "Mr. David, | |
you would not be intentionally cruel to me, I know, so don't speak to | |
me of these things. It only distresses _me_--and can do you no good." | |
"Forgive me, Anna, I would not hurt you for the world--but you must | |
know that I love you. Don't you think you could ever grow to care for | |
me?" | |
"Mr. David, I shall never marry any one. Do not ask me to explain, and | |
I beg of you, if you have a feeling of even ordinary kindness for me. | |
that you will never mention this subject to me again. You remember how | |
I promised your father that if he would let me make my home with you, | |
he should never live to regret it? Do you think that I intend to repay | |
the dearest wish of his heart in this way? Why, Mr. David, you are | |
engaged to marry Kate." She took up the water-pail to go. | |
"Kate's one of the best girls alive, but I feel toward her like a | |
brother. Besides, Anna, what have you been doing with those big brown | |
eyes of yours? Don't you see that Kate and Lennox Sanderson are head | |
over heels in love with each other?" | |
The pail of water slipped from Anna's hand and sent a flood over | |
David's boots. | |
"No, no--anything but that! You don't know what you are saying!" | |
Dave looked at her in absolute amazement. He had no chance to reply. | |
As if in answer to his remark, there came through the outer gate, Kate | |
and Sanderson arm in arm. They had been gathering golden-rod, and | |
their arms were full of the glory of autumn. | |
There was a certain assumption of proprietary right in the way that | |
Sanderson assisted Kate with the golden-rod that Anna recognized. She | |
knew it, and falseness of it burned through, her like so much corrosive | |
acid. She stood with the upturned pail at her feet, unable to recover | |
her composure, her bosom heaving high, her eyes dilating. She stood | |
there, wild as a startled panther, uncertain whether to fight or fly. | |
"You don't know what a good time we've been having," Kate called out. | |
"You see, Anna dear, I was right," David said to her. | |
But Anna did not answer. Sorrow had broken her on its wheel. Where | |
was the justice of it? Why should he go forth to seek his | |
happiness--and find it--and she cower in shame through all the years to | |
come? | |
Dave saw that she had forgotten his presence; she stood there in the | |
gathering night with wild, unseeing eyes. Memory had turned back the | |
hands of the clock till it pointed out that fatal hour on another | |
golden afternoon in autumn, and Sanderson, the hero of the hour, had | |
come to her with the marks of battle still upon him, and as the crowd | |
gave away for him, right and left, he had said: "I could not help | |
winning with your eyes on me." | |
Oh, the lying dishonor of it! It was not jealousy that prompted her, | |
for a moment, to go to Kate and tell her all. What right had such | |
vultures as he to be received, smiled upon, courted, caressed? If | |
there was justice on earth, his sin should have been branded on him, | |
that other women might take warning. | |
Dave knew that her thoughts had flown miles wide of him, and his | |
unselfishness told him that it would be kindness to go into the house | |
and leave her to herself, which he did with a heavy heart and many | |
misgivings. | |
Hi Holler had none of Dave's sensitiveness. He saw Anna standing by | |
the gate, and being a loquacious soul, who saw no advantage in silence, | |
if there was a fellow creature to talk to; he came up grinning: "Say, | |
Anna, I wonder if me and you was both thinkin' about the same thing--I | |
was thinkin' as I seen Sanderson and Kate passing that I certainly | |
would enjoy a piece o' weddin' cake, don't care whose it was." | |
"No, Hi," Anna said, being careful to restrain any bitterness of tone, | |
"I certainly was not wishing for a wedding cake." | |
"I certainly do like wedding cake, Anna, but then, I like everything to | |
eat. Some folks don't like one thing, some folks don't like another. | |
Difference between them an' me is, I like everything." | |
Anna laughed in spite of herself. | |
"Yes, since I like everything, and I like it all the time, why, I ain't | |
more than swallowed the last buckwheat for breakfast, than I am ready | |
for dinner. You don't s'pose I'm sick or anything, do you, Anna?" | |
"I don't think the symptoms sound alarming, Hi." | |
"Well, you take a load off my mind, Anna, cause I was getting scared | |
about myself." Seeing the empty water-pail, Hi refilled it and carried | |
it in the house for Anna. Dave was not the only one in that household | |
who was miserable, owing to Cupid's unaccountable antics. Professor | |
Sterling, the well-paying summer boarder, continued to remain with the | |
Bartletts, though summer, the happy season during which the rustic may | |
square his grudge with the city man within his gates, had long since | |
passed. | |
The professor had spared enough time from his bugs and beetles to | |
notice how blue Kate's eyes were, and how luxurious her hair; then he | |
had also, with some misgivings, regarded his own in the mirror, with | |
the unassuring result that his hair was thinning on top and his eyes | |
looked old through his gold-bowed spectacles. | |
The discovery did not meet with the indifference one might have | |
expected on the part of the conscientious entomologist. He fell even | |
to the depths of reading hair-restoring circulars and he spent | |
considerable time debating whether he should change his spectacles for | |
a pince-nez. | |
The spectacles, however, continued to do their work nobly for the | |
professor, not only assisting him to make his scientific observations | |
on the habits of a potato-bug in captivity, but showing him with far | |
more clearness that Kate Brewster and Lennox Sanderson contrived to | |
spend a great deal of time in each other's society, and that both | |
seemed to enjoy the time thus spent. | |
The professor went back to his beetles, but they palled. The most | |
gorgeous butterfly ever constructed had not one-tenth the charm for him | |
that was contained in a glance of Kate Brewster's eyes, or a glimpse of | |
her golden head as she flitted about the house. And so the autumn | |
waned. | |
CHAPTER XIII. | |
THE QUALITY OF MERCY | |
"Teach me to feel another's woe, | |
To hide the fault I see; | |
That mercy I to others show, | |
That mercy show to me."--_Pope_. | |
Sanderson, during his visits to the Bartlett farm--and they became more | |
frequent as time went on--would look at Anna with cold curiosity, not | |
unmixed with contempt, when by chance they happened to be alone for a | |
moment. But the girl never displayed by so much as the quiver of an | |
eye-lash that she had ever seen him before. | |
Had Lennox Sanderson been capable of fathoming Anna Moore, or even of | |
reading her present marble look or tone, he would have seen that he had | |
little to apprehend from her beyond contempt, a thing he would not in | |
the least have minded; but he was cunning, and like the cunning | |
shallow. So he began to formulate plans for making things even with | |
Anna--in other words, buying her off. | |
His admiration for Kate deepened in proportion as the square of that | |
young woman's reserve increased. She was not only the first woman who | |
refused to burn incense at his shrine, but also the first who frankly | |
admitted that she found him amusing. She mildly guyed his accent, his | |
manner of talking, his London clothes, his way of looking at things. | |
Never having lived near a university town, she escaped the traditional | |
hero worship. It was a new sensation for Sanderson, and eventually he | |
succumbed to it. | |
"You know, Miss Kate," he said one day, "you are positively the most | |
refreshing girl I have ever met. You don't know how much I love you." | |
Kate considered for a moment. There was a hint of patronage, it seemed | |
to her, in his compliment, that she did not care for. | |
"Oh, consider the debt cancelled, Mr. Sanderson. You have not found my | |
rustic simplicity any more refreshing than I have found your poster | |
waistcoats." | |
"Why do you persist is misunderstanding and hurting me?" | |
"I apologize to your waistcoats, Mr. Sanderson. I have long considered | |
them the substitute for your better nature." | |
"Better natures and that sort of thing have rather gone out of style, | |
haven't they?" | |
"They are always out of style with people who never had them." | |
"Is this quarreling, Kate, or making love?" | |
"Oh, let's make it quarreling, Mr. Sanderson. And now about that horse | |
you lent me. That's a vile bit you've got on him." And the | |
conversation turned to other things, as it always did when he tried to | |
be sentimental with Kate. Sometimes he thought it was not the girl, | |
but her resistance, that he admired so much. | |
Things in the Bartlett household were getting a bit uneasy. The Squire | |
chafed that his cherished project of Kate and Dave's marrying seemed no | |
nearer realization now than it had been two years ago. | |
Dave's equable temper vanished under the strain and uncertainty | |
regarding Anna Moore's silence and apparent indifference to him. He | |
would have believed her before all the world; her side of the story was | |
the only version for him; but Anna did not see fit to break her | |
silence. When he would approach her on the subject she would only say: | |
"Mr. David, your father employs me as a servant. I try to do my work | |
faithfully, but my past life concerns no one but myself." | |
And Dave, fearing that she might leave them, if he continued to force | |
his attentions on her, held his peace. The thought of losing even the | |
sight of her about the house wrung his heart. He could not bear to | |
contemplate the long winter days uncheered by her gentle presence. | |
It was nearly Thanksgiving. The first snow had come and covered up | |
everything that was bare and unsightly in the landscape with its | |
beautiful mantle of white, and Anna, sitting by the window, dropped the | |
stocking she was darning to press the bitter tears back to her eyes. | |
The snow had but one thought for her. She saw it falling, falling soft | |
and feathery on a baby's grave in the Episcopal Cemetery at Somerville. | |
She shivered; it was as if the flakes were falling on her own warm | |
flesh. | |
If she could but go to that little grave and lie down among the | |
feathery flakes and forget it all, it would be so much easier than this | |
eternal struggle to live. What had life in store for her? There was | |
the daily drudgery, years and years of it, and always the crushing | |
knowledge of injustice. | |
She knew how it would be. Scandal would track her down--put a price on | |
her head; these people who had given her a home would hear, and what | |
would all her months of faithful service avail? | |
"Is this true?" she already heard the Squire say in imagination, and | |
she should have to answer: "Yes"--and there would be the open door and | |
the finger pointing to her to go. | |
She heard the Squire's familiar step on the stair; unconsciously, she | |
crouched lower; had he come to tell her to go? | |
But the Squire came in whistling, a picture of homely contentment, | |
hands in pocket, smiling jovially. She knew there must be no telltale | |
tears on her cheeks, even if her heart was crying out in the cold and | |
snow. She knew the bitterness of being denied the comfort of tears. | |
It was but one of the hideous train of horrors that pursued a woman in | |
her position. | |
She forced them back and met the Squire with a smile that was all the | |
sweeter for the effort. | |
"Here's your chair, Squire, all ready waiting for you, and the only | |
thing you want to make you perfectly happy--is--guess?" She held out | |
his old corncob pipe, filled to perfection. | |
"I declare, Anna, you are just spoiling me, and some day you'll be | |
going off and getting married to some of these young fellows 'round | |
here, and where will I be then?" | |
"You need have no fears on that score," she said, struggling to | |
maintain a smile. | |
"Well, well, that's what girls always say, but I don't know what we'll | |
do without you. How long have you been with us, now?" | |
"Let me see," counting on her fingers: "just six months." | |
"So it is, my dear. Well, I hope it will be six years before you think | |
of leaving us. And, Anna, while we are talking, I like to say to you | |
that I have felt pretty mean more than once about the way I treated you | |
that first day you come." | |
"Pray, do not mention it, Squire. Your kindness since has quite made | |
me forget that you hesitated to take an utter stranger into your | |
household." | |
"That was it, my dear--an utter stranger--and you cannot really blame | |
me; here was Looizy and Kate and I was asked to take into the house | |
with them a young woman whom I had never set eyes on before; it seemed | |
to me a trifle risky, but you've proved that I was wrong, my dear, and | |
I'll admit it." | |
The girl dropped the stocking she was mending; her trembling hand | |
refused to support even the pretense of work. Outside the snow was | |
falling just as it was falling, perhaps, on the little grave where all | |
her youth and hope were buried. | |
The thought gave her courage to speak, though the pale lips struggled | |
pitifully to frame the words. | |
"Squire, suppose that when I came to you that day last June you had | |
been right--I am only saying this for the sake of argument, Squire--but | |
suppose that I had been a deceived girl, that I had come here to begin | |
all over again; to live down the injustice, the scandal and all the | |
other things that unfortunate woman have to live down, would you still | |
have felt the same?" | |
"Why, Anna, I never heard you talk like this before; of course I should | |
have felt the same; if a commandment is broke, it's broke; nothing can | |
alter that, can it?" | |
"But, Squire, is there no mercy, no chance held out to the woman who | |
has been unfortunate?" | |
"Anna, these arguments don't sound well from a proper behaving young | |
woman like you. I know it's the fashion nowadays for good women to | |
talk about mercy to their fallen sisters, but it's a mistake. When a | |
woman falls, she loses her right to respect, and that's the end of it." | |
She turned her face to the storm and the softly falling flakes were no | |
whiter than her face. | |
As Anna turned to leave the room on some pretext, she saw Kate coming | |
in with a huge bunch of Jacqueminot roses in her hand. Of course, | |
Sanderson had sent them. The perfume of them sickened Anna, as the | |
odor of a charnel house might have done. She tried to smile bravely | |
at Kate, who smiled back triumphantly as she went in to show her uncle | |
the flowers. But the sight of them was like the turning of a knife in | |
a festering wound. | |
Anna made her way to the kitchen. Dave was sitting there smoking. | |
Anna found strength and sustenance in his mere presence, though she did | |
not say a word to him, but he was such a faithful soul. Good, honest | |
Dave. | |
CHAPTER XIV. | |
THE VILLAGE GOSSIP SNIFFS SCANDAL. | |
"Flavia, most tender of her own good name, | |
Is rather careless of her sister's fame! | |
Her superfluity the poor supplies, | |
But if she touch a character it dies."--_Cowper_. | |
It was characteristic of Marthy Perkins and her continual pursuit of | |
pleasure, that she should wade through snowdrifts to Squire Bartlett's | |
and ask for a lift in his sleigh. The Squire's family were going to a | |
surprise party to be given to one of the neighbor's, and Marthy was as | |
determined about going as a debutante. | |
She came in, covered with snow, hooded, shawled and coated till she | |
resembled a huge cocoon. The Squire placed a big armchair for her near | |
the fire, and Marshy sat down, but not without disdaining Anna's offers | |
to remove her wraps. She sniffed at Anna--no other word will express | |
it--and savagely clutched her big old-fashioned muff when Anna would | |
have taken it from her to dry it of the snow. | |
The sleighbells jingled merrily as the different parties drove by, | |
singing, whistling, laughing, on their way to the party. The church | |
choir, snugly installed in "Doc" Wiggins' sleigh, stopped at the | |
Squire's to "thaw out," and try a step or two; Rube Whipple, the town | |
constable, giving them his famous song, "All Bound 'Round with a Woolen | |
String." | |
Rube was, as usual, the pivot around which the merry-making centered. | |
A few nights before, burglars had broken into the postoffice and | |
carried off the stamps, and the town constable was, as usual, the last | |
one to hear of it. On the night in question, he had spent the evening | |
at the corner grocery store with a couple of his old pals, the stove | |
answering the purpose of a rather large bulls-eye, at which they | |
expectorated, with conscientious regularity, from time to time. Seth | |
Holcomb, Marthy Perkins' faithful swain, had been of the corner grocery | |
party. | |
"Well, Constable, hear you and Seth helped keep the stove warm the | |
other night, while thieves walked off with the postoffice," Marthy | |
announced; "what I'd like to know is, how much bitters, rheumatism | |
bitters, you had during the evening?" | |
"Well, Marthy Perkins, you ought to be the last to throw it up to Seth | |
that he's obliged to spend his evenings round a corner grocery--that's | |
adding insult to injury." | |
"Insult to injury I reckon can stand, Rube; it's when you add Seth's | |
bitters that it staggers." | |
But Seth, who never minded Marthy's stings and jibes, only remarked: | |
"The recipy for them bitters was given to me by a blame good doctor." | |
"That cuts you out, Wiggins," the Squire said playfully. | |
"No, I don't care about standing father to Seth's bitters," "Doc" | |
Wiggins remarked, "but I've tasted worse stuff on a cold night." | |
"Oh, Seth ain't pertickler about the temperature, when he takes a dose | |
of bitters. Hot or cold, it's all the same to him," finished Marthy. | |
Seth took the opportunity to whisper to her: "You're going to sit next | |
to me in 'Doc' Wiggins' sleigh to-night, ain't you, Marthy?" | |
"Indeed I ain't," said the spinster, scornfully tossing her head, "my | |
place will have to be filled by the bitters-bottle; I am going with the | |
Squire and Mrs. Bartlett." | |
"Doc" Wiggins' party left in high good humor, the Squire and his party | |
promising to follow immediately. Anna ran upstairs to get Mrs. | |
Bartlett's bonnet and cloak, and Marthy, with a great air of mystery, | |
got up, and, carefully closing the door after the girl, turned to the | |
Squire and his wife with: | |
"I've come to tell you something about her." | |
"Something about Anna?" said the Squire indignantly. | |
"Oh, no, not about our Anna," protested Mrs. Bartlett: "Why, she is the | |
best kind of a girl; we are all devoted to her." | |
"That's just the saddest part of it, I says to myself when I heard. | |
How can I ever make up my mind to tell them pore, dear Bartletts, who | |
took her in, and has been treating her like one of their own family | |
ever since? It will come hard on, them, I sez, but that ought not to | |
deter me from my duty." | |
"Look here, Marthy," thundered the Squire, "if you've got anything to | |
say about that girl, out with it----" | |
"Well, land sake--you needn't be so touchy; she ain't kin to you, and | |
you might thank your lucky stars she ain't." | |
"Well, what is it, Marthy?" interposed Mrs. Bartlett. "Anna'll be down | |
in a minute." | |
"Well, you know, I have been sewin' down to Warren Center this last | |
week, and Maria Thomson, from Belden, was visiting there, and naturally | |
we all got to talking 'bout folks up this way, and that girl Anna | |
Moore's name was mentioned, and I'm blest if Maria Thomson didn't | |
recognize her from my description. | |
"I was telling them 'bout the way she came here last June, pale as a | |
ghost, and how she said her mother had just died and she'd been sick, | |
and they knew right off who she was." | |
Marthy loved few things as she did an interested audience. It was her | |
meat and drink. | |
"Well, she didn't call herself Moore in Belden, though that was her | |
mother's name--she called herself Lennox," Marthy grinned. "She was | |
one of those married ladies who forgot their wedding rings." | |
The Squire knit his brows and his jaws came together with a snap; there | |
were tears in Mrs. Bartlett's eyes. The gossip looked from one to the | |
other to see the impression her words were making. | |
It spurred her on to new efforts. She positively rolled the words | |
about in delight before she could utter them. | |
"Well, the girl's mother, who had been looking worried out of her skin, | |
took sick and died all of a sudden, and the girl took sick herself very | |
soon afterwards--and what do you think? A girl baby was born to Mrs. | |
Lennox, but her husband never came near her. Fortunately, the baby did | |
not live to embarrass her. It died, and she packed up and left Belden. | |
That's when she came here. | |
"And now," continued the village inquisitor, summing up her terrible | |
evidence, "what are we to think of a girl called Miss Moore in one town | |
and Mrs. Lennox in the other, with no sign of a wedding ring and no | |
sign of a husband? And what are we going to think of that baby? It | |
seems to me scandalous." And she leaned back in her chair and rocked | |
furiously. | |
[Illustration: Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore's past | |
life.] | |
The Squire brought his hand down or the table with terrible force, his | |
pleasant face, was distorted with rage and indignation. | |
"Just what I always said would come of taking in strange creatures that | |
we knew nothing about. Do you think that I will have a creature like | |
that in my house with my wife and my niece, polluting them with her | |
very presence?--out she goes this minute!" | |
He strode over to the door through which Anna had passed a few moments | |
before, he flung it open and was about to call when he felt his wife | |
cling frantically to his arm. | |
"Father, don't do anything in anger that you'll repent of later. How | |
do you know this is true? Look how well the girl has acted since she | |
has been here"--and in a lower voice, "you know that Marthy's given to | |
talking." | |
The hand on the knob relaxed, a kindly light replaced the anger in his | |
eyes. | |
"You are right, Looizy, what we've heard is only hearsay, I'll not say | |
a word to the girl till I know; but to-morrow I am going to Belden and | |
find out the whole story from beginning to end." | |
Kate and the professor came in laden with wraps, laughing and talking | |
in great glee. Kate was going to ride in the sleigh with the | |
professor, and the discovery of a new species of potato-bug could not | |
have delighted him more. He was in a most gallant mood, and concluding | |
that this was the opportunity for making himself agreeable, he | |
undertook to put on Kate's rubbers over her dainty dancing slippers. | |
Perhaps it was a glimpse of the cobwebby black silk stocking that | |
ensnared his wits, perhaps it was the delight of kneeling to Kate even | |
in this humble capacity. In either case, the result was equally | |
grotesque; Kate found her dainty feet neatly enclosed in the | |
professor's ungainly arctics, while he hopelessly contemplated her | |
overshoe and the size of his own foot. | |
Anna returned with Mrs. Bartlett's bonnet and cloak before the laugh at | |
the professor had subsided. She adjusted the cloak, tied Mrs. | |
Bartlett's bonnet strings with daughterly care and then turned to look | |
after the Squire's comfort, but he strode past her to the sleigh with | |
Marthy. Kate and the professor called on a cheery "Good-night," but | |
Mrs. Bartlett remained long enough to take the pretty, sorrowful face | |
in her hands and give it a sweet, motherly kiss. | |
When the jingling of the sleighbells died away across the snow, Hi | |
offered to read jokes to Anna from "Pickings from Puck," which he had | |
selected as a Christmas present from Kate, if she would consent to have | |
supper in the sitting-room, where it was warm and cosy. Anna began to | |
pop the corn, and Hi to read the jokes with more effort than he would | |
have expended on the sawing of a cord of wood. | |
He bit into an apple. An expression of perfect contentment illuminated | |
his countenance and in a voice husky with fruit began: "Oh, here is a | |
lovely one, Anna," and he declaimed, after the style usually employed | |
by students of the first reader. | |
"Weary Raggles: 'Say, Ragsy, w'y don't you ask 'em for something to eat | |
in dat house. Is you afraid of de dog?'" | |
"Ragsy Reagan: 'No, I a-i-n-t 'fraid of the dog, but me pants is frayed | |
of him.'" | |
"Ha, ha, ha--say, Anna, that's the funniest thing I ever did see. The | |
tramp wasn't frayed of him, but his pants was 'fraid of him. Gee, | |
ain't that a funny joke? And say, Anna, there's a picture with his | |
clothes all torn." | |
Hi was fairly convulsed; he read till the tears rolled down his cheeks. | |
"'Pickin's from Puck, the funniest book ever wrote.' Here's another, | |
Anna." | |
"'A p-o-o-r old man was sunstruck on Broadway this morning. His son | |
struck him for five dollars.'" Hi sat pondering over it for a full | |
minute, then he burst into a loud guffaw that continued so long and | |
uproariously that neither heard the continued rapping on the front door. | |
"Hi, some one is knocking on the front door. Do go and see who it is." | |
"O! let 'em knock, Anna; don't let's break up our party for strangers." | |
"Well, Hi, I'll have to go myself," and she laid down the corn-popper, | |
but the boy got up grumbling, lurched to the door and let in Lennox | |
Sanderson. | |
"'Tain't nobody at home, Mr. Sanderson," said Hi, inhospitably blocking | |
the way. Anna had crouched over the fire, as if to obliterate herself. | |
"Here, Hi, you take this and go out and hold my horse; he's mettlesome | |
as the deuce this cold weather. I want to get warm before I go to | |
Putnam's." | |
Hi put on his muffler, mits and cap--each with a favorite "swear word," | |
such as "ding it," "dum it," "darn it." Nevertheless he wisely | |
concluded to take the half dollar from him and save it for the spring | |
crop of circuses. | |
Anna started to leave the room, but Sanderson's peremptory "Stay here, | |
I've got to talk to you," detained her. | |
They looked into each other's faces--these two, who but a few short | |
months ago had been all in all to each other--and the dead fire was not | |
colder than their looks. | |
"Well, Anna," he said sneeringly, "what's your game? You've been | |
hanging about here ever since I came to the neighborhood. How much do | |
you want to go away?" | |
"Nothing that you could give me, Lennox Sanderson. My only wish is | |
that I might be spared the sight of you." | |
"Don't beat around the bush, Anna; is it money, or what? You are not | |
foolish enough to try to compel me to marry you?" | |
"Nothing could be further from my mind. I did think once of compelling | |
you to right the wrong you have done me, but that is past. It is | |
buried in the grave with my child." | |
"Then the child is dead?" He came over to the fireplace where she | |
stood, but she drew away from him. | |
"You have nothing to fear from me, Lennox Sanderson. The love I felt | |
once is dead, and I have no feeling for you now but contempt." | |
"You need not rub it in like that, Anna. I was perfectly willing to do | |
the square thing by you always, but you flared up, went away, and | |
Heaven only knew what became of you. It's bad enough to have things | |
made unpleasant for me in Boston on your account without having you | |
queering my plans here." | |
"Boston--I never told anyone in Boston." | |
"No, but that row got into the papers about Langdon and the Tremonts | |
cut me." | |
"Hush," said Anna, as a spasm of pain crossed her face: "I never wish | |
you to refer to my past life again." | |
"Indeed, Anna, I am only too anxious to do the right thing by you, even | |
now. If you will go away, I will give you what you want, if you don't | |
intend to interfere between Kate and me." | |
"Are you sure that Kate is in earnest? You know that the Squire | |
intends her to marry Dave." | |
"I shall have no difficulty in preventing that if you don't interfere." | |
She did not answer. She was again considering the same old question | |
that she had thrashed out a thousand times--should she tell Kate? How | |
would she take it? Would the tragedy of her life be regarded as a | |
little wild-oat sowing on the part of Sanderson and her own eternal | |
disgrace? | |
The man was in no humor for her silence. He grasped her roughly by the | |
arm, and his voice was raised loud in angry protest. "Tell me--do you, | |
or do you not intend to interfere?" | |
In the excitement of the moment neither heard the outer door open, and | |
neither heard David enter. He stood in his quiet way, looking from one | |
to the other. Sanderson's angry question died away in some foolish | |
commonplace, but David had heard and Anna and Sanderson knew it. | |
CHAPTER XV. | |
DAVID CONFESSES HIS LOVE. | |
"Come live with me and be my love; | |
And we will all the pleasures prove | |
That hills and valleys, dales and fields, | |
Woods, or steep mountains, yield."--_Marlowe_. | |
Sanderson, recovering his self-possession almost immediately, drawled | |
out: | |
"Glad to see you, Dave. Came over thinking I might be in time to go | |
over to Putnam's with your people. They had gone, so I stopped long | |
enough to get warm. I must be going now. Good-night, Miss--Miss"--(he | |
seemed, to have great difficulty in recalling the name) "Moore." | |
David paid no attention to him; his eyes were riveted on Anna, who had | |
changed color and was now like ivory flushing into life. She trembled | |
and fell to her knees, making a pretense of gathering up her knitting | |
that had fallen. | |
"What brought Sanderson here, Anna? Is he anything to you--are you | |
anything to him?" | |
She tried to assume a playful lightness, but it failed dismally. It | |
was all her pallid lips could do to frame the words: "Why, Mr. David, | |
what a curious question! What possible interest could the 'catch' of | |
the neighborhood have in your father's servant?" | |
The suggestion of flippancy that her words contained irritated the | |
grave, quiet man as few things could have done. He turned from her and | |
would have left the room, but she detained him. | |
"I am sorry I wounded you, Mr. David, but, indeed, you have no right to | |
ask." | |
"I know it, Anna, and you won't give me the right; but how dared that | |
cub Sanderson speak to you in that way?" He caught her hand, and | |
unconsciously wrung it till she cried out in pain. "Forgive me, dear, | |
I would not hurt you for the world; but that man's manner toward you | |
makes me wild." | |
She looked up at him from beneath her long, dark lashes; he thought her | |
eyes were like the glow of forest fires burning through brushwood. "We | |
will never think of him again, Mr. David. I assure you that I am no | |
more to Mr. Sanderson than he is to me, and that is--nothing." | |
"Thank you for those words, Anna. I cannot tell you how happy they | |
make me. But I do not understand you at all. Even a countryman like | |
me can see that you have never been used to our rough way of living; | |
you were never born to this kind of thing, and yet when that man | |
Sanderson looks at you or talks to you, there is always an undertone of | |
contempt in his look, his words." | |
She sank wearily into an armchair. It seemed to her that her limit of | |
endurance had been reached, but he, taking her silence for | |
acquiescence, lost no time in following up what he fondly hoped might | |
be an advantage. "I did not go to the Putnams to-night, Anna, because | |
you were not going, and there is no enjoyment for me when you are not | |
there." | |
"Mr. David, if you continue to talk to me like this I shall have to | |
leave this house." | |
"Tell me, Anna," he said so gravely that the woman beside him knew that | |
life and death were balanced with her words: "tell me, when you said | |
that day last autumn by the well that you never intended to marry, was | |
it just a girl's coquetry or was there some deeper reason for your | |
saying so?" | |
She could not face the love in those honest eyes and answer as her | |
conscience prompted. She was tired, so tired of the struggle, what | |
would she not have given to rest here in the shelter of this perfect | |
love and trust, but it was not for her. | |
"Mr. David," she said, looking straight before her with wide, unseeing | |
eyes; "I can be no man's wife." | |
He knew from the lines of suffering written deep on the pale young | |
face, that maiden coquetry had not inspired her to speak thus; but word | |
for word, it had been wrung from out of the depths of a troubled soul. | |
"Anna!" cried David, in mingled astonishment and pain. But Anna only | |
turned mutely toward him with an imploring look. She stretched out her | |
hands to him, as if trying to tell him more. But words failed her. | |
Her tears overcame her and she fled, sobbing, to her room. All the way | |
up the winding night of stairs, David could hear her anguished moans. | |
He would have followed her, but Hi burst into the room, stamping the | |
snow from his boots. He shoved in the front door as if he had been an | |
invading army. He unwound his muffler and cast it from him as if he | |
had a grudge against it, as he proceeded to deliver himself of his | |
wrongs. | |
"If there's any more visitors coming to the house to-night that wants | |
their horses held, they can do it themselves, for I am going to have my | |
supper." David made no reply, but went to his own room to brood over | |
the day's events. And so Anna was spared any further talk with David | |
that night; a circumstance for which she was devoutly thankful. | |
The next day the snow was deeper by a foot, but this did not deter the | |
Squire from making his proposed trip to Belden. He started immediately | |
after breakfast, prepared to sift matters to the bottom. | |
An air of tension and anxiety pervaded the household all that long, | |
miserable day. Anna was tortured with doubts. Should she slip away | |
quietly without telling, or should she make her humiliating confession | |
to Kate? Mrs. Bartlett, who knew the object of her husband's errand, | |
could not control her nerves. She knew intuitively "that something was | |
going to happen," as the good soul put it to herself. | |
Altogether it was one of those nerve-wracking days that come from time | |
to time in the best regulated households, apparently for no other | |
purpose but to prove the fact that a solitary existence is not | |
necessarily the most unhappy. | |
Mrs. Bartlett, for the first time in her life, was worried about Dave. | |
He was moody and morose, even to her, his sworn friend and ally, with | |
whom he had never had a word's difference. He had gone off that | |
morning shortly after the Squire left the house; and his mother, | |
watching him carefully at breakfast, noticed that he had shoved away | |
his plate with the food untasted. | |
A fatal symptom to the ever-watchful maternal eye. | |
Kate felt sulky because her aunt and uncle had been urging her to marry | |
Dave, and apparently Dave had no affection for her beyond that of a | |
cousin, the situation irritating her in the extreme. | |
"Aunt Louisa, what is the matter with every one?" she said, flouncing | |
into the kitchen. "Something seems to have jarred the family nerves. | |
Here is uncle off on some mysterious business, Dave goes off in the | |
snow in a tantrum, and you look as if you had just buried your last | |
friend." And the young lady left the room as suddenly as she entered | |
it. | |
"It does feel as if trouble was brewing," Mrs. Bartlett admitted to | |
Anna, with a gloomy shake of the head. "I'm getting that worried about | |
Dave, he's been away all day, and it's not usual for him to stay away | |
like this." Her voice broke a little, and she left the room hurriedly. | |
He came in almost immediately, stamping the snow from his boots and | |
looking twice as savage as when he went away. | |
"Mrs. Bartlett had been worrying about you all day, Mr. David," Anna | |
said as she turned from the dresser with her arms full of plates. | |
"And did you care, Anna, that I was not here?" He gave her the | |
appealing glance of a great mastiff who hopes for a friendly pat on the | |
head. | |
"My feelings on the subject can be of no interest to you," she answered | |
with chilling decision. | |
"All right," and he went to the hat-rack to get his muffler and cap, | |
preparatory to again facing the storm. | |
The snow had been falling steadily all day. Drifting almost to the | |
height of the kitchen window, it whirled about the house and beat | |
against the window panes with a muffled sound that was inexpressibly | |
dreary to the girl, who felt herself the center of all this pitiful | |
human contention. | |
"David, David; where have you been all day, and where are you going | |
now?" His mother looked at his gray, haggard face and tried to guess | |
his hidden trouble, the first he had ever kept from her. | |
"Mother, I am not a child, and you can't expect me to hang about the | |
stove like a cat, all my life." It was his first harsh word to her and | |
she shrank before it as if it had been a blow. David, her boy, to | |
speak to her like that! She turned quickly away to hide the tears, the | |
first she had ever shed on his account. | |
"Here, Anna," she said, struggling to recover her composure, "take this | |
bucket and get it filled for me, please." | |
The girl reached for her cloak that hung on a peg near the door. | |
"No, Anna, you shall not go out for water a night like this; it's not | |
the work for you to do." David had sprung forward and caught the | |
bucket from her hand and plunged with it into the storm. Kate's quick | |
eyes caught the expression of David's face--while Mrs. Bartlett only | |
heard his words. She gave Anna a searching look as she said: "So it is | |
you whom David loves." At last Kate understood the secret of Anna's | |
distracted face--and at last the mother understood the secret of her | |
boy's moodiness--he loved Anna. And her heart was filled with | |
bitterness and anger at the very thought; she had taken her boy, this | |
stranger, with whom the tongue of scandal was busy. The kindly, | |
gentle, old face lost all its sweetness; jealous anger filled it with | |
ugly lines. Turning to Anna she said: | |
"It would have been better for all of us if we had not taken you in | |
that day to break up our home with your mischief." | |
Anna was cut to the quick. "Oh, Mrs. Bartlett, please do not say that; | |
I will go away as soon as you like, but it is not with my consent that | |
David has these foolish fancies about me." | |
"And do you mean to say that you have never encouraged him," | |
indignantly demanded the irate mother, who with true feminine | |
inconsistency would not have her boy's affections go begging, even | |
while she scorned the object of it. | |
"Encouraged him? I have begged, entreated him to let me alone; I do | |
not want his love." | |
An angry sparrow defending her brood could not have been more | |
indignantly demonstrative than this gentle old lady. | |
"And isn't he good enough for you, Miss?" she asked in a voice that | |
shook with wrath. | |
"Dear Mrs. Bartlett, would you have me take his love and return it?" | |
"No, no; that would never do!" and the inconsistent old soul rocked | |
herself to and fro in an agony of despair. | |
Anna did not resent Mrs. Bartlett's indignation, unjust though it was; | |
she knew how blind good mothers could be when the happiness of their | |
children is at stake. She felt only pity for her and remembered only | |
her kindness. So slipping down on her knees beside the old lady's | |
chair, she took the toil-worn old hands in her own and said: | |
"Do not think hardly of me, Mrs. Bartlett. You have been so good--and | |
when I am gone, I want you to think of me with affection. I will go | |
away, and all this trouble will straighten itself out, and you will | |
forget that I ever caused you a moment's pain." | |
Dave came in with the bucket of water that had caused the little squall | |
and prevented his mother from replying, but the hard lines had relaxed | |
in the good old face. She was again "mother" whom they all knew and | |
loved. Sanderson followed close after David; he had just come from | |
Boston, he said, and inquired for Kate with a simple directness that | |
left no doubt as to whom he had come to see. | |
It is an indisputable law of the eternal feminine for all women to | |
flaunt a conquest in the face of the man who had declined their | |
affection. Kate was not in love with her cousin David, but she was | |
devoutly thankful to Providence that there was a Lennox Sanderson to | |
flaunt before him in the capacity of tame cat, and prove that he "was | |
not the only man in the world," as she put it to herself. | |
Therefore when Lennox Sanderson handed her a magnificent bunch of | |
Jacqueminot roses that he had brought her from Boston, Kate was not at | |
all backward in rewarding Sanderson with her graciousness. | |
"How beautiful they are, Mr. Sanderson; it was so good of you." | |
"You make me very happy by taking them," he answered with a wealth of | |
meaning. | |
Anna, who had gone to the storeroom for some apples, after her | |
reconciliation with Mrs. Bartlett, returned to find Sanderson talking | |
earnestly to Kate by the window. Kate held up the roses for Anna to | |
smell. "Aren't they lovely, Anna? There is nothing like roses for | |
taking the edge off a snowstorm." | |
Anna was forced to go through the farce of admiring them, while | |
Sanderson looked on with nicely concealed amusement. | |
"Well, what do you think of them, Anna?" said Kate, disappointed that | |
she made no comment. | |
"The best thing about roses, speaking generally, Miss Kate, is that | |
they fade quickly and do not embarrass one by outliving the little | |
affairs in which they have played a part." She returned Sanderson's | |
languid glance in a way that made him quail. | |
"That is quite true," said Kate, being in the humor for a little | |
cynicism. "What a pity that love letters can't be constructed on the | |
same principle." | |
Sanderson did not feel particularly at ease while these two young women | |
served and returned cynicism; he was accordingly much relieved when | |
Mrs. Bartlett and Anna both left the room, intent on the solemn | |
ceremony of opening a new supply of preserved peaches. | |
"Kate, did you mean what you just said to that girl?" Sanderson asked | |
when they were alone. | |
"What did I say? Oh, yes, about the love letters. Well, what | |
difference does it make whether I meant it or not?" | |
"It makes all the difference in the world to me, Kate." He read | |
refusal in the big blue eyes, and he made haste to plead his cause | |
before she could say anything. | |
"Don't answer yet, Kate; don't give me my life-sentence," he said | |
playfully, taking her hand. "Think it over; take as long as you like. | |
Hope with you is better than certainty with any other woman." | |
[Illustration: Lillian Gish and Burr McIntosh.] | |
Professor Sterling, who had been to a neighboring town on business for | |
the past two or three days, walked into the middle of this little | |
tableau in time to hear the last sentence. Kate and Sanderson had | |
failed to hear him, partly because he had neglected to remove his | |
overshoes, and partly because they were deeply engrossed with each | |
other. | |
Though his rival's declaration, which he had every reason to suppose | |
would be accepted, was the death blow to his hopes, yet he unselfishly | |
stepped out into the snow, waited five minutes by his watch--a liberal | |
allowance for an acceptance, he considered--and then rapped loud and | |
theatrically before entering a second time. Could unselfishness go | |
further? | |
Kate and Sanderson had no other opportunity for confidential talk that | |
evening. | |
They were barely seated about the supper table, when there came a | |
tremendous rapping at the door, and Marthy Perkins came in, half | |
frozen. For once her voluble tongue was silenced. She retailed no | |
gossip while submitting to the friendly ministrations of Mrs. Bartlett | |
and Anna, who chafed her hands, gave her hot tea and thawed her back to | |
life--and gossip. | |
"Is the Squire back yet?" asked Marthy with returning warmth. "Land | |
sakes, what can be keeping him? Heard him say last night that he | |
intended going away this morning, and thought he might have come back." | |
"With news?" naively asked Sanderson. | |
"Why, yes. I did think it was likely that he might have gathered up | |
something interesting, away a whole day." Every one laughed but Mrs. | |
Bartlett. She alone knew the object of her husband's quest. | |
"Your father's not likely to be back to-night--do you think so, Dave?" | |
she asked her son, more by way of drawing him out than in the hope of | |
getting any real information. | |
"No, I do not think it is likely, mother," he answered. | |
"Good land! and I nearly froze to death getting here!" Marthy said in | |
an aside to Mrs. Bartlett. "I tell you, Looizy, there is nothing like | |
suspense for wearing you out. I couldn't get a lick of sewing done | |
to-day, waiting for Amasy to get in with the news." | |
"Hallo! hallo! Let us in quick--here we are, me and the Squire--most | |
froze! Hallo, hallo"--The rest of Hi's remarks were a series of whoops. | |
Every one rose from the table, Mrs. Bartlett pale with apprehension. | |
Marthy flushed with delight. She was not to be balked of her prey. | |
The Squire was here with the news. | |
CHAPTER XVI. | |
ALONE IN THE SNOW. | |
"The cold winds swept the mountain-height, | |
And pathless was the dreary wild, | |
And mid the cheerless hours of night | |
A mother wandered with her child: | |
As through the drifting snows she pressed, | |
The babe was sleeping on her breast."--_Seba Smith_. | |
The head of the house was home from his mysterious errand, the real | |
object of which was unknown to all but Marthy and his wife. | |
Kate unwound his muffler and took his cap; his wife assured him that | |
she had been worried to death about him all day; the men inquired | |
solicitously about his journey--how had he stood the cold--and Anna | |
made ready his place at the table. But neither this domestic adulation | |
nor the atmosphere of warmth and affection awaiting him at his own | |
fireside served for a moment to turn him from the wanton brutality that | |
he was pleased to dignify by the name of duty. | |
Anna could not help feeling the "snub," and David, whose eyes always | |
followed Anna, saw it before the others. "Father," said he, "what's | |
the matter, you don't speak to Anna." | |
"I don't want to speak to her. I don't want to look at her. I don't | |
want anything to do with her," replied the Squire. Every one except | |
Martha and Mrs. Bartlett was startled by this blunt, almost brutal | |
outburst. | |
"I am glad you are all here, the more the better: Marthy, Professor, | |
Mr. Sanderson, glad to see you and all the home folks"--he had a word, | |
a nod, a pat on the back for every one but Anna, and though she sought | |
more than one opportunity to speak to him, he deliberately avoided her. | |
His wife, who knew all the varying weathers of his temper was using all | |
her small stock of diplomacy to get him to eat his supper. "When in | |
doubt about a man, feed him," had been Louisa Bartlett's unfailing rule | |
for the last thirty years. "Here, Amasy, sit down in your place that | |
Anna has fixed for you. You can talk after you've had your tea. Anna, | |
please make the Squire some fresh tea. I'm afraid this is a little | |
cool." | |
"She need not make my tea, now, or on any future occasion--her days of | |
service in my family are done for." And he hammered the table with his | |
clenched fist. | |
Anna closed her eyes; it had come at last; she had always known that it | |
was only a question of time. | |
The rest looked at the Squire dumbfounded. Ah, that is, but Marthy. | |
She was licking her lips in delightful anticipation--with much the same | |
expression as a cat would regard an uncaged canary. | |
"Why, father, what do you mean?" asked David in amazement. He had | |
heard no rumor of why his father had gone to Belden. | |
"Now, listen, all of you," and again he thundered on the table with his | |
fist. "Last summer I was persuaded, against my will, to take a strange | |
woman into my house. I found out to-day that my judgment then was | |
right. I have been imposed on--she is an imposter, an adventuress." | |
"Amasy, Amasy, don't be so hard on her," pleaded his wife. But the | |
Squire had the true huntsman's instinct--when he went out to hunt, he | |
went out to kill. | |
"The time has come," he continued, raising his voice and ignoring his | |
wife's pleading, "when this home is better without her." | |
Anna had already begun her preparation to go. She took her cloak down | |
from its peg and wrapped it about her without a word. | |
"Father, if Anna goes, I go with her," and David rose to his feet, the | |
very incarnation of wrath, and strode over to where Anna stood apart | |
from the rest. He put his arm about her protectingly, and stood there | |
defiant of them all. | |
"David, you must be mad. What, you, a son of mine, defy your father | |
here in the presence of your friends for that--adventuress?" | |
"Father, take back that word about Anna. A better woman never lived. | |
You--who call yourself a Christian--would you send away a friendless | |
girl a night like this? And for what reason? Because a few old cats | |
have been gossiping about her. It is unworthy of you, father; I would | |
not have believed it." | |
"So you have appointed yourself her champion, sir. No doubt she has | |
been trying her arts on you. Don't be a fool, David; stand aside, if | |
she wants to go, let her; women like her can look out for themselves; | |
let her go." | |
"Don't make me forget, sir, that you are my father. I refuse | |
absolutely to hear the woman I love spoken of in this way." | |
The rest looked on in painful silence; they seemed to be deprived of | |
the power of speech or action by the Squire's vehemence; the wind | |
howled about the house fitfully, and was still, then resumed its | |
wailing grief. | |
"And you stand there and defy me for that woman in the presence of | |
Kate, to whom you are as good as betrothed?" | |
"No, no; there is no question of an engagement between David and me, | |
and there never can be," said Kate, not knowing in the least what to | |
make of the turn that things had taken. | |
David continued to stand with his arm about Anna. He had heard the | |
Belden gossip--a wealthy young man from Boston had been attentive to | |
her, then left the place; jilted her, some said; been refused by her, | |
said others. It did not make a bit of difference to David which | |
version was true; he was ready to stand by Anna in the face of a | |
thousand gossips. This was just his father's brutal way of upholding | |
what he was pleased to term his authority. | |
"What do you know about her, David?" reiterated the Squire. "I heard | |
reports, but like you, I would not believe them till I had investigated | |
them fully. Ask her if she has not been the mother of an illegitimate | |
child, who is now buried in the Episcopal cemetery at Belden--ask her | |
if she was not known there under the name of Mrs. Lennox?" | |
"It is true," said the girl, raising her head, "that I was known as | |
Mrs. Lennox. It is true that I have a child buried in Belden----" | |
David's arm fell from her, he buried his face in his hands and groaned. | |
Anna opened the door, a whirling gust flared the lamps and drove a | |
skurrying cloud of snowflakes within, yet not one hand was raised to | |
detain her. She swayed uncertain for a moment on the threshold, then | |
turned to them: "You have hunted me down, you have found out that I | |
have been a mother, that I am without the protection of a husband's | |
name, and that was enough for you--your duty stopped at the scandal. | |
Why did you not find out that I was a young, inexperienced girl who was | |
betrayed by a mock marriage--that I thought myself an honorable | |
wife--why should your duty stop in hunting down a defenseless girl | |
while the man who ruined her life sits there, a welcome guest in your | |
house to-night?" | |
She was gone--David, who had been stunned by his father's words, ran | |
after her, but the whirling flakes had hidden every trace of her, and | |
the howling wind drove back his cry of "Anna, Anna! come back!" | |
Anna did not feel the cold after closing the door between her and the | |
Squire's family; the white flame of her wrath seemed to burn up the | |
blood in her veins, as she plunged through the snowdrifts, unconscious | |
of the cold and storm. She had no words in which to formulate her fury | |
at the indignity of her treatment. Her native sweetness, for the | |
moment, had been extinguished and she was but the incarnation of | |
wronged womanhood, crying aloud to high Heaven for justice. | |
The blood throbbed at her brain and the quickened circulation warmed | |
her till she loosened the cloak at her throat and wondered, in a dazed | |
sort of way, why she had put it on on such a stifling night. Then she | |
remembered the snow and eagerly uplifted her flushed cheeks that the | |
falling flakes might cool them. | |
But of the icy grip of the storm she was wholly unconscious. There was | |
a mad exhilaration in facing the wild elements on such a night, the | |
exertion of forcing through the storm chimed in with her mood; each | |
snowdrift through which she fought her way was so much cruel injustice | |
beaten down. She felt that she had the strength and courage to walk to | |
the end of the earth and she went on and on, never thinking of the | |
storm, or her destination, or where she would rest that night. Her | |
head felt light, as if she had been drinking wine, and more than once | |
she stopped to mop the perspiration from her forehead. How absurd for | |
the snow to fall on such a sultry night, and foolish of those people | |
who had turned her out to die, thinking it was cold--the thermometer | |
must be 100. She paused to get her breath; a blast of icy wind caught | |
her cape, and almost succeeded in robbing her of it, and the chill | |
wrestled with the fever that was consuming her, and she realized for | |
the first time that it was cold. | |
"Well, what next?" she asked herself, throwing back her head and | |
unconsciously assuming the attitude of a creature brought to bay but | |
still unconquered. | |
"What next?" She repeated it with the dull despair of one who has | |
nothing further to fear in the way of suffering. The Fates had spent | |
themselves on her, she no longer had the power to respond. Suppose she | |
should become lost in a snowdrift? "Well, what did it matter?" | |
Then came one of those unaccountable clearings of the mental vision | |
that nature seems to reserve for the final chapter. Her quickened | |
brain grasped the tragedy of her life as it never had before. She saw | |
it with impersonal eyes. Anna Moore was a stranger on whose case she | |
could sit with unbiased judgment. Her mind swung back to the football | |
game in the golden autumn eighteen months ago, and she heard the cheers | |
and saw the swarms of eager, upturned faces and the dots of blue and | |
crimson, like flowers, in a great waving field. What a panorama of | |
life, and force, and struggle it had been! How typical of life, and | |
the end--but no, the end was not yet; there must be some justice in | |
life, some law of compensation. God must hear at last! | |
The wind came tearing down from, the pine forest, surging through the | |
hills till it became a roar. Ah, it had sounded like that at the game. | |
They had called "Rah, Rah Sanderson" till they were hoarse, "Sanderson, | |
Rah! Sander-son! Rah! Rah!" The crackling forest seemed to have | |
gone mad with the echo of his name. It had become the keynote of the | |
wind. Rah! Rah! Sanderson! | |
"You can't escape him even in death" something seemed to whisper in her | |
ear. "Ha-ha, Sanderson, San-der-son." She put her hands to her ears | |
to shut out the hateful sound, but she heard it, like the wail of a | |
lost soul; this time faint and far off: Sander-son--San-der-son. It | |
was above her in the groaning, creaking branches of the trees, in the | |
falling snow, in the whipping wind, the mockery would not be stilled. | |
Ha, ha, ha, ha, howled the wind, then sinking to a sigh, | |
San-der-son--San-der-son. | |
The cold had begun to strike into the marrow. She moved as if her | |
limbs were weighted. There was a mist gathering before her eyes, and | |
she put up her hand and tried to brush it away, but it remained. She | |
felt as if she were carrying something heavy in her arms and as she | |
walked it grew heavier and heavier. To her wandering mind it took a | |
pitifully familiar shape. Ah, yes! She knew what it was now; it was | |
the baby, and she must not let it get cold. She must cover it with her | |
cape and press it close to her bosom to keep it warm, but it was so | |
far, so far, and it was getting heavier every moment. | |
And the wind continued to wail its dirge of "San-der-son, San-der-son." | |
She went through the motion of covering up the baby's head; she did not | |
want it to waken and hear that awful cry. She lifted up her empty arms | |
and lowered her head to soothe the imaginary baby with a kiss, and was | |
shocked to feel how cold its little cheek had grown. She hurried on | |
and on. She would beg the Squire to let his wife take it in for just a | |
minute, to warm it. She would not ask to come in herself, but the | |
baby--no one would be so cruel as to refuse her that. It would die out | |
here in the cold and the storm. It was so cruel, so hard to be | |
wandering about on a night like this with the baby. Her eyes began to | |
fill with tears, and her lower lip to quiver, but she plodded on, | |
sometimes gaining a few steps and then retracing them, but always with | |
the same instinct that had spurred her on to efforts beyond her | |
strength, and this done, she had no further concern for herself. Her | |
body especially, where the cape did not protect it against the blast, | |
was freezing, shivering, aching all over. A latent consciousness began | |
to dawn as the dread presence of death drew nearer; some intuitive | |
effort of preservation asserted itself, and she kept repeating over and | |
over: "I must not give up. I must not give up." | |
Presently the scene began to change, and the white formless world about | |
her began to assume definite shape. She had seen it all before, the | |
bare trees pointing their naked branches upward, the fringe of willows, | |
the smooth, glassy sheet of water that was partly frozen and partly | |
undulating toward the southern shore. The familiarity of it all began | |
to haunt her. Had she dreamed it--was she dreaming now? Perhaps it | |
was only a dream after all! Then, as if in a wave of clear thought, | |
she remembered it all. It was the lake, and she had been there with | |
the Sunday school children last summer on their picnic. | |
It came to her like a solution of all her troubles; it was so placid, | |
so still, so cold. A moment and all would be forgotten. She stood | |
with one foot on the creaking ice. It was but to walk a dozen steps to | |
the place where the ice was but a crash of crystal and that would end | |
it all. She was so weary of the eternal strife of things, she was so | |
glad to lay down the burden under which her back was bending to the | |
point of breaking. | |
And yet, there was the primitive instinct of self-preservation | |
combating her inclination, urging her on to make one more final effort. | |
Back and forth, through the snow about the lake she wandered; without | |
being able to decide. Her strength was fast ebbing. Which--which, | |
should it be? "God have mercy!" she cried, and fell unconscious. | |
CHAPTER XVII. | |
THE NIGHT IN THE SNOWSTORM. | |
"Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, | |
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, | |
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air | |
Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven."--_Emerson_. | |
All through that long, wild night David searched and shouted, to find | |
only snow and silence. | |
Through the darkness and the falling flakes he could not see more than | |
a foot ahead, and when he would stumble over a stone or the fallen | |
trunk of a tree, he would stoop down and search through the drifts with | |
his bare hands, thinking perhaps that she might have fallen, and not | |
finding her, he would again take up his fruitless search, while cold | |
fear gnawed at his heart. | |
At home in the warm farm house, sat the Squire who had done his duty. | |
The consciousness of having done it, however, did not fill him with | |
that cheerful glow of righteousness that is the reward of a good | |
conscience--on the contrary, he felt small. It might have been | |
imagination, but he felt, somehow, as if his wife and Kate were | |
shunning him. Once he had tried to take his wife's hand as she stood | |
with her face pressed to the window trying to see if she could make out | |
the dim outline of David returning with Anna, but she withdrew her hand | |
impatiently as she had never done in the thirty years of their married | |
life. Amasy's hardness was a thing no longer to be condoned. | |
Furthermore, when the clock had struck eleven and then twelve, and yet | |
no sign of David or Anna, the Squire had reached for his fur cap and | |
announced his intention of "going to look for 'em." But like the | |
proverbial worm, the wife of his bosom had turned, and with all the | |
determination of a white rabbit she announced: | |
"If I was you, Amasy, I'd stay to hum; seems as if you had made almost | |
enough trouble for one day." With the old habit of authority, strong | |
as ever, he looked at the worm, but there was a light in its eyes that | |
warned him as a danger signal. | |
They were alone together, the Squire and his wife, and each was alone | |
in sorrow, the yoke of severity she had bowed beneath for thirty years | |
uncomplainingly galled to-night. It had sent her boy out into the | |
storm--perhaps to his death. There was little love in her heart for | |
Amasy. | |
He tried to think that he had only done his duty, that David and Anna | |
would come back, and that, in the meantime, Louisa was less a comfort | |
to him, in his trouble, than she had ever been before. It was, of | |
course, his trouble; it never occurred to him that Louisa's heart might | |
have been breaking on its own account. | |
The Squire found that duty was a cold comforter as the wretched hours | |
wore on. | |
Sanderson had slunk from the house without a word immediately after | |
Anna's departure. In the general upheaval no one missed him, and when | |
they did it was too late for them to enjoy the comfort of shifting the | |
blame to his guilty shoulders. | |
The professor followed Kate with the mute sympathy of a faithful dog; | |
he did not dare attempt to comfort her. The sight of a woman in tears | |
unnerved him; he would not have dared to intrude on her grief; he could | |
only wait patiently for some circumstance to arise in which he could be | |
of assistance. In the meantime he did the only practical thing within | |
his power--he went about from time to time, poked the fires and put on | |
coal. | |
Marthy would have liked to discuss the iniquity of Lennox Sanderson | |
with any one--it was a subject on which she could have spent hours--but | |
no one seemed inclined to divert Marthy conversationally. In fact, her | |
popularity was not greater that night in the household than that of the | |
Squire. She spent her time in running from room to room, exclaiming | |
hysterically: | |
"Land sakes! Ain't it dreadful?" | |
The tension grew as time wore on without developments of any kind, the | |
waiting with the haunting fear of the worst grew harder to bear than | |
absolute calamity. | |
Toward five o'clock the Squire announced his intention of going out and | |
continuing the search, and this time no one objected. In fact, Mrs. | |
Bartlett, Kate and the professor insisted on accompanying him and | |
Marthy decided to go, too, not only that she might be able to say she | |
was on hand in case of interesting developments, but because she was | |
afraid to be left in the house alone. | |
* * * * * * | |
Toward morning, David, spent and haggard, wandered into a little | |
maple-sugar shed that belonged to one of the neighbors. Smoke was | |
coming out of the chimney, and David entered, hoping that Anna might | |
have found here a refuge. | |
He was quickly undeceived, however, for Lennox Sanderson stood by the | |
hearth warming his hands. The men glared at each other with the | |
instinctive fierceness of panthers. Not a word was spoken; each knew | |
that the language of fists could be the only medium of communication | |
between them; and each was anxious to have his say out. | |
The men faced each other in silence, the flickering glare of the | |
firelight painting grotesque expressions on their set faces. David's | |
greater bulk loomed unnaturally large in the uncertain light, while | |
every trained muscle of Sanderson's athletic body was on the alert. | |
It was the world old struggle between patrician and proletarian. | |
Sanderson was an all-round athlete and a boxer of no mean order. This | |
was not his first battle. His quick eye showed him from David's | |
awkward attitude, that his opponent was in no way his equal from a | |
scientific standpoint. He looked for the easy victory that science, | |
nine times out of ten, can wrest from unskilled brute force. | |
For, perhaps, half a minute the combatants stood thus. | |
Then, with lowered head and outstretched arms, David rushed in. | |
Sanderson side-stepped, avoiding the on-set. Before David could | |
recover himself, the other had sent his left fist crashing into the | |
country-man's face. | |
The blow was delivered with all the trained force the athlete possessed | |
and sent David reeling against the rough wall of the house. | |
Such a blow would have ended the fight then and there for an ordinary | |
man; but it only served to rouse David's sluggish blood to white heat. | |
Again he rushed. | |
This time he was more successful. | |
True, Sanderson partially succeeded in avoiding the sledge-hammer fist, | |
though it missed his head, it struck glancingly on the left shoulder. | |
numbing for the moment the whole arm. Sanderson countered as the blow | |
fell, by bringing his right arm up with all his force and striking | |
David on the face. He sank to his knees, like a wounded bull, but was | |
on his feet again before Sanderson could follow up his advantage. | |
David, heedless of the pain and fast flowing blood, rushed a third | |
time, catching Sanderson in a corner of the room whence he could not | |
escape. | |
In an instant, the two were locked in a death-like grip. | |
To and fro they reeled. No sound could be heard save the snapping of | |
brands on the hearth, the shuffle of moving feet and the short gasps of | |
struggling men. | |
In that terrible grasp, Sanderson's strength was as a child's. | |
He could not call into play any of the wrestling tricks that were his, | |
all he could do was to keep his feet and wait for the madman's strength | |
to expend itself. | |
The iron grip about his body seemed to slacken for a moment. He | |
wriggled free, and caught the fatal underhold. | |
By this new grip, he forced David's body backward till the larger man's | |
spine bade fair to snap. | |
David felt himself caught in a trap. Exerting all his giant strength | |
he forced one arm down between their close-locked bodies, and clasped | |
his other hand on Sanderson's face, pushing two fingers into his | |
eyeballs. | |
No man can endure this torture. Sanderson loosed his hold. David had | |
caught him by the right wrist and the left knee, stooping until his own | |
shoulders were under the other's thigh. Then, with this leverage, he | |
whirled Sanderson high in the air above his head and threw him with all | |
his force down upon the hearth. | |
A shower of sparks arose and the strong smell of burning clothes, as | |
Sanderson, stunned and helpless, lay across the blazing fire-place. | |
For a moment, David thought to leave his vanquished foe to his own | |
fate, then he turned back. What was the use? It could not right the | |
wrong he had done to Anna. He bent over Sanderson, extinguished the | |
fire, pulled the unconscious man to the open door and left him. | |
It came to David like an inspiration that he had not thought of the | |
lake; the ice was thin on the southern shore below where the river | |
emptied. Suppose she had gone there; suppose in her utter desolation | |
she had gone there to end it all? Imagination, quickened by suspense | |
and suffering, ran to meet calamity; already he was there and saw the | |
bare trees, bearing their burden of snow, and the placid surface, half | |
frozen over, and on the southern shore, that faintly rippled under its | |
skimming of ice, something dark floating. He saw the floating black | |
hair, and the dead eyes, open, as if in accusation of the grim | |
injustice of it all. | |
He hurried through the drifted snow, as fast as his spent strength | |
would permit, stumbling once or twice over some obstruction, and | |
covered the weary distance to the lake. | |
About a hundred yards from the lake Dave saw something that made his | |
heart knock against his ribs and his breath come short, as if he had | |
been running. It was Anna's gray cloak. It lay spread out on the snow | |
as if it had been discarded hastily; there were footprints of a woman's | |
shoes near by; some of them leading toward the lake, others away from | |
it, as if she might have come and her courage failed her at the last | |
moment. The cape had not the faintest trace of snow on its upturned | |
surface. It must, therefore, have been discarded lately, after the | |
snowstorm had ceased this morning. | |
Dave continued his search in an agony of apprehension. The sun faintly | |
struggled with the mass of gray cloud, revealing a world of white. He | |
had wandered in the direction of a clump of cedars, and remembered | |
pointing the place out to her in the autumn as the scene of some boyish | |
adventure, which to commemorate he had cut his name on one of the | |
trees. Association, more than any hope of finding her, led him to the | |
cedars--and she was there. She had fallen, apparently, from cold and | |
exhaustion. He bent down close to the white, still face that gave no | |
sign of life. He called her name, he kissed her, but there was no | |
response--it was too late. | |
Dave looked at the little figure prostrate in the snow, and despair for | |
a time deprived him of all thought. Then the lifelong habit of being | |
practical asserted itself. Unconsciousness from long exposure to cold, | |
he knew, resembled death, but warmth and care would often revive the | |
fluttering spark. If there was a chance in a thousand, Dave was | |
prepared to fight the world for it. | |
He lifted Anna tenderly and started back for the shed where he had | |
fought Sanderson. Frail as she was, it seemed to him, as he plunged | |
through the drifts, that his strength would never hold out till they | |
reached their destination. Inch by inch he struggled for every step of | |
the way, and the sweat dripped from him as if it had been August. But | |
he was more than rewarded, for once. She opened her eyes--she was not | |
dead. | |
He found them all at the shed--the Squire, his mother, Kate, the | |
professor and Marthy. There was no time for questions or speeches. | |
Every one bent with a will toward the common object of restoring Anna. | |
The professor ran for the doctor, the women chafed the icy hands and | |
feet and the Squire built up a roaring fire. Their efforts were | |
finally rewarded and the big brown eyes opened and turned inquiringly | |
from one to another. | |
"What has happened? Why are you all here?" she asked faintly; then | |
remembering, she wailed: "Oh, why did you bring me back? I went to the | |
lake, but it was so cold I could not throw myself in; then I walked | |
about till almost sunrise, and I was so tired that I laid down by the | |
cedars to sleep--why did you wake me?" | |
"Anna," said the Squire, "we want you to forgive us and come back as | |
our daughter," and he slipped her cold little hand in David's. "This | |
boy has been looking for you all night, Anna. I thought maybe he had | |
been taken from us to punish me for my hardness. But, thank God, you | |
are both safe." | |
"You will, Anna, won't you? and father will give us his blessing." She | |
smiled her assent. | |
"I say, Squire, if you are giving out blessings, don't pass by Kate and | |
me." | |
In the general kissing and congratulation that followed, Hi Holler | |
appeared. "Here's the sleigh, I thought maybe you'd all be ready for | |
breakfast. Hallo, Anna, so he found you! The station agent told me | |
that Mr. Sanderson left on the first train for Boston this morning. | |
Says he ain't never coming back." | |
"And a good thing he ain't," snapped Marthy Perkins--"after all the | |
trouble he's made." | |
THE END. | |
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of 'Way Down East, by Joseph R. Grismer | |
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