"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.
Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore's past life.[Illustration: Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore's past life.]
Martha Perkins tells the story of Anna Moore's past life.[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.
"Come live with me and be my love;And we will all the pleasures proveThat 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."
Lillian Gish and Burr McIntosh.[Illustration: Lillian Gish and Burr McIntosh.]
Lillian Gish and Burr McIntosh.[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.
"The cold winds swept the mountain-height,And pathless was the dreary wild,And mid the cheerless hours of nightA 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.