CHAPTER XXXI
Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!He who smites the rock and spreads the water,Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,Even he, the minute makes immortal,Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.—Robert Browning.
Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!He who smites the rock and spreads the water,Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,Even he, the minute makes immortal,Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.—Robert Browning.
Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!He who smites the rock and spreads the water,Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,Even he, the minute makes immortal,Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.—Robert Browning.
Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!
He who smites the rock and spreads the water,
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
Even he, the minute makes immortal,
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.
—Robert Browning.
Relays of men had been at work in the woods clothing the steep banks of the ravine above Fraternia for three days, even while the rain was falling in torrents. It was absolutely necessary to secure the lumber while the river was of a depth to carry it down stream, and for a time all other work was in abeyance.
Gregory had worked steadily with the rest at the wood cutting, but Keith had told Anna the night before that on Saturday morning he would be obliged to go down to Spalding, the small town in the plain below the valley, on urgent business concerning notes which were coming due and must be extended if possible.
It was therefore with great surprise that Anna, as they approached the spot where the men were at work, heard Frieda exclaim:—
“There is the master himself; see, Sister Benigna!”
They had had a merry scramble up the gorge, but a hard one. The swollen stream had submerged the narrow path by which the ascent was commonly made, and it was only by finding the footholds cut out by the men with their axes in the earth of the dripping, slippery bank above, that Anna and her companion had beenable to make their way on. Holding their pails with one hand and clinging to overhanging branches or roots of ferns and laurel with the other, shaking the splashes of rain from the dripping leaves as they struck their faces, the two had scrambled breathlessly forward; and now, at length, the welcome sound of the axe greeted their ears, and they saw a little beyond, strewing the underbrush, the new chips and shining splinters of stripped bark which told that trees had recently been felled.
Anna had just stopped to exclaim:—
“How good it smells, Frieda,—such a wild, pure smell!” and was laughing at her own choice of adjectives, when Frieda had called her attention to John Gregory. He was standing at no great distance from them in the midst of the rapid, roaring creek where the water reached nearly to the tops of his high boots, and, with a strong pole in both hands, was directing the course of the logs, which were eddying wildly about him on the surface of the torrent, into the proper channel which should carry them down stream.
Frieda’s voice attracted his attention to their approach, and without pause he strode through the water, leaped up the bank and was promptly in the path, if it could be called such, before them, holding out both hands to relieve them of their burdens, and smiling a cordial greeting.
Anna’s cheeks wore a vivid flush.
“Then you did not go to Spalding?” she asked, seeking to quiet the confusion of her surprise and the immoderate beating of her heart. Frieda, she saw gratefully, was quite as excited; it was so unusual for Mr. Gregory to bestow attentions of this sort uponthem; it was not strange that one should be a little stirred.
“No,” he said, leading on in the now broadening path, “I found I could send a letter by Charley, and the men rather needed a long-legged fellow like myself up here this morning. But I see that my doing this has reacted unexpectedly upon you. Charley not being on hand to bring the dinner, our ladies have had to take his place,” and Gregory turned toward them as he spoke with regret and apology which were evidently sincere.
“Are you very tired?” he asked simply, looking at Frieda but speaking to Anna.
They both declared that it had been great fun and they were not in the least tired; and indeed the bright bloom of their cheeks, and the laughter in their eyes, and the elastic firmness of their steps were sufficient reassurance.
“I think, Mr. Gregory,” said Anna, quite at her ease now, “that Fraternia women can never know anything of that disease of civilization, nervous prostration. It will become extinct in one spot at least.”
“‘More honoured in the breach than the observance,’” quoted Gregory, “we shall hail its loss.”
Soon they reached a little clearing, where, the underbrush trampled down, the rugged steepness of the bank declining to a gentler slope, and the sun having found full entrance by reason of the removal of the larger trees, there was a possibility of finding a dry place to rest. Here they were soon joined by half a dozen men, several of whom had brought their dinner with them, and preparations were made for a fire to heat the coffee which filled one of the pails brought by Anna and Frieda. Theother was solidly packed with sweet, wholesome brown bread and butter and thick slices of meat.
The fat pine chips and splinters burned readily in spite of the all-pervading dampness, and the coffee-pail, suspended over this small camp-fire from a hastily improvised tripod, was soon sending up a deliciously fragrant steam.
The men treated the two women as if they had been foreign princesses, covering a great tree-trunk with their coats for a kind of throne for them, and serving them with coffee in tin cups with much flourish of mock ceremony. This part of the proceedings John Gregory watched from a little distance, leaning against a tree, a smile of quiet pleasure in his eyes. He refused the coffee for himself, drinking always and only water, but ate the bread and meat they handed him with hearty relish and a vast appetite.
By a sort of inevitable gravitation, almost before the meal was concluded, Frieda had strayed off into the woods with Matt Taylor, son of Anna’s neighbour, whose devotion to her was one of the especial interests for Fraternia folk that spring. A certain view from the crest of the hill beyond the little clearing was by no means to be missed. Then, one after the other, the men took up their axes and returned to their work; but John Gregory kept his place, and still stood leaning against the tree, facing Anna, the smouldering embers of the fire between.
He had been speaking on a subject in which all had been interested,—the prayer test advocated by Mr. Tyndall, which had attracted the attention of the scientific and religious world of that time. The men had gone away reluctantly, leaving the conversation tothese two. Heretofore Anna had hardly spoken, but now with deepening seriousness she said:—
“I feel the crude, incredible impertinence of such a test as this which Mr. Tyndall has proposed, and yet it brings up very keenly to me my own attitude for many years.”
Gregory looked a question, but did not speak, and Anna went on:—
“A good woman whom I once heard speak at Mrs. Ingraham’s in Burlington gave me an idea of prayer, quite new to me then, but which I at least partially accepted, and which has had its effect on my inner life ever since.”
“It was—?”
“That we were to pray to God for every small material interest of life, and were to expect definite, concrete, physical return. That if such was not our experience it was because we were not dwelling near God, and were out of harmony with him. This life of answered prayer and perfect demonstrable union which she described was called the ‘higher life.’”
“What was your own experience?”
“It has been a long experience of spiritual defeat. I prayed for years for every temporal need, asked for whatever I deeply desired, and—never—perhaps there was one exception, but hardly more—received an answer to my praying which I could fairly assume to be such.”
Anna’s face was profoundly sad, as she spoke, with the sense of the baffling disappointments of years.
“In the end what has been the effect on you?”
“I have ceased to pray at all, Mr. Gregory. I know that sounds very harsh, perhaps very wrong, but I lostthe expectation of a response, and the constant defeat and failure made me bitter and unbelieving. God seemed only to mock my prayers, not to fulfil. It seemed to me at last that I was dishonouring him by praying, and that waiting in silence and patience was shown to be my portion. Do you think that was sinful?”
Anna raised her eyes timidly to Gregory’s face with this question, and met the repose and steady confidence of it with a swift presentiment of comfort.
“No,” he answered; “I think you were simply struggling to release yourself from the meshes of the net which a mercenary conception of prayer cannot fail to throw over the soul. It was said of John Woolman, and a holier man never lived, that he offered no prayers for special personal favours. I believe the theory of prayer of your Burlington friend not only mistaken, but dangerous and misleading. Instead of such a habit of mind as she described being a ‘higher life,’ I should call it a lower one. The nearer the man comes to God, the less he prays, not the more, for definite objective things and externals; the more he rests on the great good will of God. Prayer was not designed for man to use to conform a reluctant God to his will, to get things given him, but to conform the man’s own blind and erring will to the divine. By this I do not mean to say that no prayers for temporal objects are granted. Many have been, but the soul that feeds itself on this conception of prayer as a system of practical demand and supply lives on husks.”
“But there are many promises?” Anna said with hesitation.
“Yes,” said Gregory, with the emphasis of sure conviction, crossing the space between them to standdirectly before her, forgetting all his usual scruples; “but you must interpret Scripture by Scripture, by the whole tendency and purpose, not by isolated mottoes which men like to drag out for spiritual decoration, breaking off short all their roots which reach down into the solid rock of universal Truth! Look at our Lord himself—did he ask for ‘ease and rest and joys’? It is only as we enter into his spirit that our prayers are answered, and that almost means that we shall cease to pray at all for personal benefits. He prayed, often, whole nights together, but was it that he might win his own cause with the people about him? Was it not rather for the multitudes upon whom he had compassion, and that God the Father should be made manifest in himself? Ah, Sister Benigna, few of us have sounded the depths of this great subject of prayer. It is one of the deepest things of God; and, believe me, it is not until we have cast out utterly the last shred of the notion of childish coaxing of God to do what will please us, that we can catch some small perception of its meaning. But let me say just one thing more: you are too young to count any prayer unanswered. At present you see in part and interpret God’s dealings only in part. At the end of life your interpretation will be larger, calmer than it is now. We ‘change the cruel prayers we made,’ and even here live to praise God that they are broken away ‘in his broad, loving will.’”
Anna sat in silence, her eyes downcast, slowly passing in review the nature of her own most ardent prayers and the deep anguish and doubt of their non-fulfilment. Not one, she saw, could bear the high test of likeness to the mind of Christ, not one but had its admixture of selfishness, not one but seemed poor and vain in thisnew light. A nobler conception of the relation of her soul to God seemed to dawn within her. She looked up then, and saw upon Gregory’s face that inner illumination which belongs to the religious genius. The look of it smote her eyes as if with white and dazzling light, and they fell as if it were impossible to bear it. Then she rose, and they stood for a moment alone and in silence, while a sense of measureless content overflowed Anna’s spirit, and for an instant made time and space and human relations as if they were not. So strong upon her was the sense of uplift from the contact with the spirit of Gregory. She hardly knew at first that the incredible had happened. John Gregory had taken her hand in his, with reverent gentleness, for some seconds. He was asking her if he had been able to help her in any wise, and asking it as if he cared very much. She said “yes,” quite simply, and turned to go. Frieda was coming back, and they were lingering over long. Slowly they descended the rugged path before them, for a strange trepidation had come over Anna,—a vague, new, disturbing joy.
CHAPTER XXXII
What went ye out into the wilderness for to see?... A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts.—St. Luke’s Gospel.
Instead of the masterly good humour, and sense of power, and fertility of resource in himself; instead of those strong and learned hands, those piercing and learned eyes, that supple body, and that mighty and prevailing heart, which the father had, whom nature loved and feared, whom snow and rain, water and land, beast and fish, seemed all to know and to serve, we have now a puny, protected person, guarded by walls and curtains, stoves and down-beds, coaches, and menservants and women-servants from the earth and the sky.—R. W. Emerson.
The spring passed in Fraternia, and the summer. Not again did John Gregory and Anna come into direct personal communication. They went indeed their several ways with a steadier avoidance of this than before, from an undefined, but instinctive, sense of danger. Nevertheless, the fact that they breathed the same air and shared the same lot in life sufficed to yield in the heart of each an unfailing spring of contentment; while now and again it would happen that Anna, in her schoolroom or cottage, and Gregory, at his work, lifting their eyes at a footstep or a shadow, would be aware that the other had drawn near and passed by, and contentment would give place to nameless joy.
The poetic impulse which Anna had inherited from both parents, but the expression of which had been stifled by the deadening of her high desires which life in Fulham had brought, now developed unchecked. Many influences promoted this development: her clear child-delight in the rich life of nature about her, the releaseof her long-cabined spiritual energy, and the stimulation of her powers of discernment and interpretation by contact with the strong intellectual power of Gregory.
Gregory was, in the simple system of life in Fraternia, at once prophet, priest, and king; and his most potent influence over the people was manifest in the Sunday services and in the evening lectures which, for lack of a church, were held in a large empty room on the upper floor of the cotton mill. Anna found in these sermons and lectures the strongest intellectual and spiritual food upon which she had ever fared, and throve apace, having good faculty of assimilation. The verses which she wrote at intervals from a sudden and almost irresistible impulsion were always, when completed, turned over to her husband. Proud and pleased at this new gift of Anna’s, it was Keith’s habit to take them straightway to Gregory. Anna never knew this. She knew, however, that her poetry found its way into print, and now and then, she found, into the hearts of sincere people. This was new food for unaffected gladness, and she was glad.
The summer, although its fierce continuous heat had been hard to bear, was yet the seasonpar excellencefor Fraternia, and peace and plenty reigned in the valley. But with the autumn came a change, gradual at first, but later strongly accented. The wholesome occupations of the spring and summer came, of necessity, to a standstill. There was now little vent for the energy and working force of the people, while the scant resources of the narrow valley offered nothing to counteract a dull ennui which settled like a palpable cloud upon them. It had been a bad year for all their crops; the cotton crop had been a total failure, and the mill was shut down.This threw nearly fifty of the little community into enforced idleness, and a smouldering resentment was bred by the discovery that there had never been a profit, but rather a sustained loss, on the output of the mill by reason of Gregory’s scruple against selling at any advance beyond the bare cost of production. This principle might have a fine and lofty sound from the lips of an orator, speaking on broad, general lines; but the hard business sense of average men and women rebelled against the concrete results of its application to their own isolated case.
“If other people did the same, it might work. For one manufactory alone to attempt it is simply commercial suicide,” they said to each other, and with justice.
It became known, moreover, throughout the community, that a heavy mortgage had been placed on the land, held by a rich cotton planter in South Carolina, and that a wide chasm yet intervened between their present condition and that of self-support. A more serious disappointment and a more immediate difficulty, however, lay in the inadequacy of their food products to the needs of the people, and the consequent demand for ready money wherewith to buy the necessities of life.
The fare, hitherto of the simplest, was gradually made coarser and less palatable, since better could not be. Winter was coming on; open-air life had become impossible; fierce winds coming down through the gorge swept the valley, and scattered the foliage of the forest, while a grey and sullen sky hung over, and every day brought chilly rains. There was some sickness, of a mild nature, but it emphasized the discomfort and inconveniences of the homes. The prospect for the coming months in Fraternia grew grim. The enthusiasmof novelty had tided the little community over the two preceding winters, but some stronger upholding must evidently now be interposed; for the people openly murmured, and began to say to each other sullenly, as once another company, “Were we brought out into this wilderness to die? As for this food, our soul loathes it.”
Keenly conscious of the criticism of which he was now the subject, Gregory withdrew proudly more and more within himself, and touched less and less familiarly the life of those about him. It was well known that he deprived himself of all better fare than coarse bread and the water from the spring, that he had unhesitatingly devoted his last dollar to the enterprise so near his heart, and the patience and courage of the man were unfailing. But what of that? It was his own enterprise, with which he must stand or fall. Why should he not risk everything and bear everything? For the rest it was different. They, too, had given their money, and they had left their ceiled houses and their goodly fleshpots and their pleasant social commerce to further his project! They at least expected Christian food!
Crossing the bridge from the library, on a raw afternoon late in November, Anna Burgess met a woman of her own age, a woman of cheerful, sensible temperament and habit, the wife of the architect, whom she had known in Burlington. The husband, George Hanson, had surrendered with unconditional devotion to Gregory’s teaching, and the wife, in loyal sympathy, although herself by no means an idealist, had gathered her little brood of children and a few household treasures together, and had come to Fraternia with him.
As she approached the bridge, Mrs. Hanson, holding up her wet skirts with both hands, cried to Anna:—
“Oh, how I hate this red mud! Don’t you? It seems to me I could stand it better if it were not this horrid colour. One can never get away from it, or lose sight of it.”
Anna, who thus far, with only a few others, still kept heart and courage unbroken through this gloomy season, replied cheerfully that she rather liked the colour.
Mrs. Hanson gave a mournful sigh.
“You like Fraternia anyway, don’t you, Sister Benigna? You always did?”
Anna smiled at thenaïvetéof the question, and assented.
“I must like what I have chosen above all other things.”
“Well, I confess I never did like it, and I never shall. Oh, it will do very well for a summer vacation if one could be sure of getting safe home at the end. But as for a life like this! and when it comes to bringing up children here!—” and Mrs. Hanson’s voice broke into a suppressed sob.
“I am sorry,” said Anna, gently.
“Oh, Sister Benigna!” cried the other, letting loose the floodgates of her tears, while they still stood on the bridge in the piercing rain, “I never was so homesick in my life! When I hear my children asking if they are not going home to see grandma pretty soon, it just breaks my heart. They have no appetite for this hard meat and coarse bread, and they look so white and thin, and plead so for a good old-fashioned turkey dinner! I have a little money of my own, and I would spend every cent of it for better food for them, but Mr. Hanson, he says that would be unjust to the rest who cannot have such things, and that all must share alike. Hesays it would cost a hundred dollars to give one such dinner as the children want to the whole village.”
“I suppose that is true,” said Anna, seriously; “and then it would only be harder to come back—”
“To prison fare,” Mrs. Hanson interjected with unconcealed bitterness. “Well, all I have to say is that, if this is coöperation, I’ve had all I want of it. As for ‘the brotherhood of man,’ I wish I may never hear of it again as long as I live! I believe we have some duties to ourselves.”
With this she passed slowly on, and Anna hastened homeward, a deep pang in her heart.
Entering her own house, she found Keith, pale and dispirited, leaning with outstretched hands over the fire in an attitude unpleasantly suggestive of decrepitude and want. He looked up as Anna came in, and smiled faintly.
“I think I have taken a fresh cold,” he said hoarsely; “this climate is lovely half the year, but the other half—” and he left the sentence unfinished, coughing sharply.
Anna sat down by the hearth and removed her mud-sodden shoes, afterward hastening to prepare such scanty remedies for Keith as the cabin afforded. There was a dispensary down at the mill. She would go down for medicine as soon as she had made him comfortable. On the surface of her mind lay the habit of sympathy and care for her husband’s fragile health, but in the depth below was a sense she could not have formulated to herself of resentment at his lack of courage and fortitude. For Keith, although too finely courteous to share in the open murmuring of the people, was himself in the full swing of reaction from the comparative enthusiasm which he had felt six months ago. The fall weatherhad brought on ague, which, added to his chronic physical weakness, made him altogether wretched; and while he punctiliously avoided contributing to the public discontent, Anna perceived and understood perfectly his weariness with the enterprise. For the first time in their married life his patience and sweetness of temper failed; he had grown irritable, and fretted at small inconveniences in a way which chafed Anna’s hardier spirit indescribably.
“I am very sorry, Keith, you are so miserable to-day,” Anna said now, with half-mechanical commiseration. It chanced that, as she had come on her way home from the little conversation with Mrs. Hanson, a new sympathy had taken possession of her for the lonely man upon whom fell the full burden of all this reaction, but who bore it with such unflinching patience, albeit so silently. Almost inevitably, her mind being thus absorbed, the sympathy with Keith in his familiar ailments and complaints was rendered perfunctory for the time, and by comparison his weakness wore to her some complexion of unmanliness.
Perhaps Keith discerned a shade of coldness in her tone, and was stirred by it.
“I am sure I do not know,” he said with significant emphasis, “how long I can stand this condition of things. You must see, Anna, that I am losing ground from day to day. Look at my hands!” and he held out his left hand to her, clammy and cold, for all the yellow blaze, wasted and thin even to emaciation.
Anna took the hand in hers, and caressed it with womanly gentleness, murmuring that it was too bad, and something must be done; he certainly was not properly nourished.
“Why, Anna,” the poor fellow cried, warmed by her compassion, “I would give all my ‘incomes from dreamland,’ all the fine-spun theories of economic religion and social salvation that Gregory or any other idealist ever dreamed of, to be for just one day in our own dear old library, warmed all through, floor warm, walls warm—everything, you know; to see you, beautifully dressed again, at your own table, with its silver and damask; to have the service we always had; and once, just once, Anna—to have all the hot water I want for a bath!”
Anna smiled, but forebore to speak. The echo of Mrs. Hanson’s wail was almost too much for her, and yet she pitied and understood. Pioneers must be made of sterner stuff, that was all; men who, like Emerson’s genius, should “learn to eat their meals standing, and to relish the taste of fair water and black bread.” Were there such men? She knew one. She almost began to doubt if there were any more. A few moments later she brought Keith a tray containing tea and toast, served with such little elegance as was possible, and with the daintiness of shining linen and silver.
“We must find a way for you to spend the winter in a different climate,” she said, as she stood beside him. She spoke very kindly, but with the inward sense of concession as of the stronger to the weaker. “You certainly cannot remain here if this ague continues.”
Keith watched her gratefully, as she prepared to go out again, sure of some effective help when her strong determination was enlisted. The last six months had revealed his wife to him as six years had not done before. As she was about leaving, he said thoughtfully:—
“Anna, I am not the only one to be anxious about.Perhaps you do not know it fully, but the whole scheme of Fraternia is on the edge of collapse.”
“How do you mean, dear?” she asked, alarmed.
“Through lack of funds. He says very little, but I can see that Gregory has practically reached the end of his resources and expectations.”
Anna’s face showed her great concern.
“I did not know it was so bad,” she answered. “Oh, Keith, would you not be willing to help out a little more? I know you have been wonderfully generous, but some one must come up to the point of real sacrifice and save the day. You could sell the Mill Street property, you know?” and the timid tone of her final question contrasted strangely with that in which she had begun speaking.
It was the expression of Keith’s face which had dashed Anna’s confidence. She had never seen him look so much like his mother as when he replied.
“No, my dear, I shall have to stand my ground,” he said, “and abide by the terms I first proposed. My mother’s estate is not to be sacrificed for this doubtful experiment. More than ever before I feel the problematic nature of Gregory’s scheme. We must provide for our own future as well as for his present crisis.”
It was hard, Anna felt, as she started out again alone into the wind and rain, not to reflect that, perhaps, the sooner the experiment proved a failure the better Keith would be satisfied. She struggled against a rising sense of anger which the separation of their interest from Gregory’s gave her, at the characteristic caution, the irritating prudence, the old familiar inflexibility, so like his mother. Keith’s decision chafed her all the more because something warned her, in her own despite, thathe was after all justified in it. But the contrast between his softness of yielding toward his own desires for luxury, and the hardness of his withholding from the bare needs of another, came just then into unfortunate juxtaposition.
The attitude of Keith toward Gregory was complex and peculiar. When in the immediate presence of this man he was brought under his personal influence to a degree which even Anna often found surprising. Gregory’s intensely masculine and forceful nature appeared to exert an almost irresistible control over the younger man so long as they were together. As soon, however, as Keith was removed from that immediate influence, he reverted at once to an attitude not only critical toward Gregory, but at times, and as if instinctively, antagonistic.
Anna went on her way down the valley to the cotton mill with a sore and heavy heart. On other days she could rejoice even in a leaden sky, in the muddy, sullen stream, in the stripped branches of the forest; but to-night, for twilight was falling now, all seemed clothed in that oppressive ugliness of Tennyson’s picture:—
“When the rotten woodland drips,And the leaf is stamped in clay.”
“When the rotten woodland drips,And the leaf is stamped in clay.”
“When the rotten woodland drips,And the leaf is stamped in clay.”
“When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamped in clay.”
Reaching the mill, dark and silent otherwise, she noted a light in Gregory’s office and the sound of voices, but the door was closed. She passed through the corridor to the small room beyond which was used as a dispensary. Pushing open the door she found the room empty; the young man whose charge it was seemed to have betaken himself otherwhere over early. However, Anna’s knowledge of drugs was not inconsiderable, andin this case she knew precisely what Keith needed and where to find it. So she proceeded without delay to place on the small polished counter which stretched across the narrow room, the necessary ingredients for a certain powder, and then carefully mixed these in the proportion called for by her simple prescription. While she was thus occupied she noticed with a sense of discomfort that the voices in the office, only divided from her now by a thin partition, grew louder and took on a disagreeable quality. Presently the door of the office was opened, and some one hastened from the building in evident impatience, leaving the door wide open. There was complete silence for a moment, and then Anna heard John Gregory speak. She could not fail to hear every word, although his voice was not raised, and its wonted quietness and courtesy were unchanged.
“You will bear me witness, nevertheless, Mr. Hanson,” he said, “that I never promised an easy life for those who came with me to Fraternia. I declared plainly that simplicity and poverty and roughness were to be accepted as necessary conditions.”
“That is all very well,” a voice replied, which Anna recognized as that of the Burlington architect, whose wife had evidently been working upon him; “but when simplicity means starvation for delicate women and children, and poverty begins to look like bankruptcy, the situation strikes me as pretty serious. All I have to say is,” and the man’s voice rose to a pitch of high excitement, “you are the dictator here, and you are responsible; you’ve got us into this scrape, Mr. Gregory, by working upon our emotions, and all that, and now you’ve got to get us out of it, somehow!” and with these words Anna heard the speaker leave theoffice with rapid steps, and a moment after the outer door of the mill closed upon him.
Anna had dropped the powders which she was dividing now into their papers, and had started to go to the door and close it that she might hear no more; but before she could do this a step in the corridor which she knew sent her back to her place with a beating heart, and in another instant John Gregory stood in the doorway.
Anna had never seen his face changed by any mental agitation, nor was it now, save for a touch of weariness and an unwonted pallor. There was a deep, sunk glow in his eyes, which, together with the careless sweep of the grey hair flung off his forehead, recalled with peculiar emphasis the leonine effect Anna had often noticed. The habitual grave composure of his manner was in no way disturbed; and although he could not have known of her presence in the dispensary, it did not seem to cause him surprise.
“Is some one ill at your house?” he asked with evident concern but characteristic abruptness. He was one of those few persons who do not find it necessary to explain what is self-evident.
“Mr. Burgess is not very well,” Anna replied, hesitating somewhat, unwilling to strike another dart into the soreness of his spirit, which she felt distinctly, for all his outward firmness.
“I fear,” Gregory said thoughtfully, “that Mr. Burgess ought not to remain in Fraternia this winter. I am very much afraid that his health will suffer. Both of you deserve a little change,” he continued, with a slight smile, the pathos of which Anna felt sharply. “Fraternia is not so pleasant at this time of year. Why do younot go North for a few months? You would come back to us in the spring—perhaps?”
The apparent carelessness which he wished to convey to this question contrasted strangely with the piercing anxiety of the look with which Gregory’s eyes searched Anna’s face. She understood the instinctive desire to forestall another attack, to take for granted an impending blow.
Quietly working at her powders, laughing a little, by sheer effort of will, since tears were near the surface, she replied:—
“I could not be spared, Mr. Gregory, this winter. I see you are a little disposed to undervalue my services. There are several cases of sickness now, and I am vain enough to think I am needed. Besides, you know, I love Fraternia. I do not want to go away from home.”
The minor arts of coquetry were all unknown and foreign to Anna, but the genius of her woman’s nature and intuition was thrown into the last sentence with full effect.
The strong spirit of Gregory, which could meet the assaults and buffets of reproach and detraction without shrinking, and which would have rejected express sympathy, was mastered for a minute by the delicate comprehension and implied fidelity of Anna’s words.
She knew better than to see the momentary suspicion of dimness in his eyes, or to note the silence which for a little space he did not care to break. When at last he spoke, it was to ask, in a wholly matter-of-fact manner:—
“Have I not heard that Mr. Burgess was a particularly successful public speaker?” Anna looked up quickly then.
“You may have heard it, for I am sure it is true,” she said. Another pause for reflection, and then Gregory said:—
“It is becoming urgently necessary that the purpose and future of Fraternia should be promoted by some one capable of going about, particularly in the cities, and presenting our aims publicly—before audiences of people.”
Anna had gathered up her powders now and put them in her pocket and stood ready to go but she stopped, and her face kindled with swift recognition and welcome of the thought in Gregory’s mind.
“And you have thought that Mr. Burgess might do this, and so still serve the cause and yet do it for a while under easier conditions?” she exclaimed. “Mr. Gregory, I cannot tell you how glad I should be if this plan could be carried out. I am really a little anxious about my husband. I am sure this would work well for every one, and it might solve several problems at once.”
He smiled, a little sadly, at her confident eagerness, said they must consider it seriously, and then stood aside to let her pass out and go home. It was not necessary for him to say, as he bade her good night, that he wished it were expedient for him to walk home with her. She understood his theory of what was wise for himself in such matters. She approved it. Nevertheless, she found it hard to leave him alone just then in the deserted mill. Half-way back she met Everett, plodding through the mud, with his hands in his pockets, and whistling, to keep his spirits up, she fancied.
“Be extra good to Mr. Gregory to-night,” she said, womanlike, unable to resist the longing to help, as he paused a moment.
“Why?” he asked, frowning; “have they been at him again?”
Anna nodded and passed on, afraid to say more.
“Fools!” he murmured between his teeth, and plunged on against the wind.
But Anna went home with a beatific vision to soothe her spirit, of Keith comfortable at last in a good hotel, with menus and waiters, bells and bathrooms, in an infinite series.
CHAPTER XXXIII
“Lo, fool,” he said, “ye talkFool’s treason; is the king thy brother fool?”Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill’d,“Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools!Conceits himself as God that he can makeFigs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milkFrom burning spurge, honey from hornet combs,And men from beasts—Long live the King of fools!”—Tennyson.
“Lo, fool,” he said, “ye talkFool’s treason; is the king thy brother fool?”Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill’d,“Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools!Conceits himself as God that he can makeFigs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milkFrom burning spurge, honey from hornet combs,And men from beasts—Long live the King of fools!”—Tennyson.
“Lo, fool,” he said, “ye talkFool’s treason; is the king thy brother fool?”Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill’d,“Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools!Conceits himself as God that he can makeFigs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milkFrom burning spurge, honey from hornet combs,And men from beasts—Long live the King of fools!”—Tennyson.
“Lo, fool,” he said, “ye talk
Fool’s treason; is the king thy brother fool?”
Then little Dagonet clapt his hands and shrill’d,
“Ay, ay, my brother fool, the king of fools!
Conceits himself as God that he can make
Figs out of thistles, silk from bristles, milk
From burning spurge, honey from hornet combs,
And men from beasts—Long live the King of fools!”
—Tennyson.
But yours the cold heart and the murderous tongue,The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.—The Rubaiyat.
But yours the cold heart and the murderous tongue,The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.—The Rubaiyat.
But yours the cold heart and the murderous tongue,The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.—The Rubaiyat.
But yours the cold heart and the murderous tongue,
The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,
The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,
And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.
—The Rubaiyat.
Everett had improvised a studio in a low loft over the bachelors’ quarters, contiguous to the cabin which he and Gregory shared.
It was necessary, he said, for him to get down to hard work now. That hedging and ditching nonsense was great sport for a man’s holidays, but he had no more time to play; he must paint. The work he had produced in Fulham had not been, often, especially salable or popular in its character, a certain mystic quality pervading it not readily understood by casual observers. All that, he declared, was now to be rigidly excluded from his painting; he should paint to sell—cheap, pretty things, picturesque, palpable. With this purpose he had set to work with a will, and by February had a few hundred dollars to turn over to the treasury as the fruitof his industry. His pictures were sold in the North through Keith Burgess as intermediary.
He was hard at work in the studio at nine o’clock on a night in February, laying in the outline for a bit of the valley which he declared he could paint now with his eyes shut, he had done it so often, having found it “a good seller,” when he heard Gregory’s step on the stairs. That the boy had just brought the mail up from Spalding Everett knew, having heard the horse galloping over the bridge, and stopping before the house.
Gregory came in now with several letters in his hand, one open. He did not speak at first, and Everett let him walk up and down the place undisturbed, seeing that he was peculiarly perplexed, probably by the open letter, which Everett noticed was in Keith Burgess’s handwriting. After a few moments he remarked slowly, but with an unusually incisive quality in his tone:—
“Burgess is a singularly prudent little man. Did it ever strike you so?”
“He has some capacity, however, for the opposite quality.” Everett threw out this remark with no manifestation of especial interest, and it seemed to pass unnoticed.
“Having it in his power,” Gregory continued, with the same incisive deliberation, “to extricate us from our whole present difficulty himself, with the utmost ease, he yet jogs about the country after a comfortable fashion, presenting the subject publicly as occasion offers, and sends me back such letters as this.”
Lifting the sheet in his hand, Gregory read from it:—
“I held a meeting last night in Grand Rapids, to which I have been working up carefully for over a week through the press, etc. The attendance was fair, andthe people listened well. I regret, however, to be obliged to report that the practical results of the meeting were not all that we could have wished—” and dropping the letter, Gregory added:—
“And so on, copiously, through nearly four pages of matchless ambiguity and polite phrases, which could all have been condensed to the usual sum total of his reports; thus far, nothing!”
“Still, Mr. Gregory, we must remember that he did pretty well for the first few weeks.”
“Yes,” said Gregory, nodding a short assent, “while he was covering the field which was ready for harvest—seeing the men already committed to the cause. We can evidently expect nothing more from him. What kind of a speaker is he, Everett?”
“Good, really very good as a special pleader. He had very fair success when he was missionary secretary.”
“I wonder at it,” murmured Gregory,—“a mild, prudent little man like that with his perpetual fears and scruples; I cannot fancy his ever letting himself go.”
Everett, unwontedly sober and silent, worked on. Gregory paced the room for a little while. He wanted to ask Everett how Keith’s marriage with a woman like Anna could ever have come about, but he could not bring himself to frame the question, and presently left the studio.
Hanging about the door below, Gregory found Barnabas Rosenblatt, apparently waiting to speak with him.
“Hello!” said Gregory, not unkindly, but shortly. “Do you want me?”
“Well, shust a minit, if Herr Gregory vas not too busy,” and the little Jew shuffled along by Gregory’s side until they reached the door of the cabin.
Gregory brought his visitor in and gave him a chair, then stirred up a smouldering fire and threw on a piece of pine, which, flaring up into a sudden blaze, made other light unnecessary. The reflection of the yellow flames played weirdly over the walls, and Barnabas seemed unable to withdraw his eyes from the picture above the chimney.
“Our lady,” he said simply, nodding across at Gregory, and closing his eyes impressively.
“Well, Barnabas, what is it you want?” asked his host.
“It’s our lady,” said Barnabas, sniffing quite vigorously; “das is it. How she fall off!” and he shook his head with a slow, mournful motion.
“Fall off what? I do not understand, Barnabas. You are speaking of Sister Benigna?” Gregory’s face changed.
“So—so—” and the little man nodded emphatically. “She’s got awful poor! Oh, my! Her bones comes right through zu next. My Kleine, she say our lady don’t eat notin’s, shust only leetle, leetle milk, an’ work, work, work, like a holy angel everywheres at one time, up an’ down the valley; sick folks an’ well folks, all derselbe. Light come all place she come!” and Barnabas relapsed into meditative silence, having found his vocabulary hard tested by this prolonged statement.
“Do you mean that Sister Benigna is sick?” asked Gregory, with slight sharpness.
“Ja, ja, Herr Gregory; she has went home sick heut’ abend from the sew class down to der mill. When she go, all go. Fraternia ohne Sister Benigna,” and the little man drew his shoulders quite up to his ears in a characteristic shrug strongly expressive of a thing unthinkable.
Gregory rose, Barnabas following his example.
“I will go over and inquire,” he said, taking his hat, and they left the house at once.
The night was cold, a light fall of snow lay over the valley, and the stars glittered from a frosty sky.
When they reached the neighbourhood of Anna’s cottage Gregory sent Barnabas up to the door, while he waited at a little distance. In a few moments Frieda, who now shared Anna’s cabin, joined him, while Barnabas, with the action of a waiting watch-dog, humble, and yet with a due sense of responsibility, hung about near by. Frieda’s account was reassuring, as far as immediate solicitude for Anna was concerned; she had come home ill from the afternoon sewing class, and had a chill, headache, and fever. She was resting now, and would doubtless be up again in a day or two.
“Nothing can keep her down, Mr. Gregory,” Frieda said in conclusion. “I am not frightened just now, but we all see plainly that Sister Benigna is killing herself by inches. She eats hardly anything, and yet works as if there were no limit to her strength. Sometimes I think she is just laying down her very life for us here in Fraternia, and we’re not worth it,” and with this Frieda’s voice broke a little, and without stopping to say more she hurried back.
Gregory bade Barnabas good night hastily, and then, instead of going home, he walked rapidly down the rough road to the mill, unlocked the door, and went into his office and sat down at his desk. His face had changed strangely; it had grown grey and his lips were tightly compressed. He sat long in motionless silence, thinking intensely. Although he had himself watched Anna with growing uneasiness, the suggestions ofFrieda and Barnabas came upon him with startling effect. He asked himself now with unsparing definiteness whether this was indeed the final turn of the wheel of torture on which he was bound, or whether he could wait for another. The conviction was upon him, stark and stern, that in the end he should yield and seek the one means of escape which was still open to him, and which he had been holding off with almost dogged resolution. He recalled the shaping of events in Anna’s life during the last few months, and his face softened.
Late in November, when Keith went North, she had accompanied him, having been sent for by her sister Lucia. Their mother, Gulielma Mallison, upon whom age and infirmity had increased heavily, had conceived a controlling desire to return to her childhood home, the Moravian town of Bethlehem, to end her days. Anna had visited Haran therefore, and had brought her mother back to her early home, establishing her there in the quiet Widows’ House in peace and satisfaction.
At Christmas, when she returned alone to Fraternia, Anna had seemed to bring with her a new infusion of active and aggressive force. Relieved of anxiety for Keith, whom she had left in good spirits, and from the constant ministration to his comfort, she was now wholly free to devote herself to the common good. With new and contagious ardour she had thrown herself therefore into the life of the discouraged little community, cheering the faint-hearted and rekindling the flagging purposes of the fickle. She taught the girls and women quaint fashions of embroidery and work on linen which she had learned from her mother, and inspired them with the ambition to earn something with their needles, thus dispelling their listlessness. She seemed at timesto possess in her own enthusiasm and courage sufficient motive power to energize them all; she worked and moved among them as if no less a task had been given her, and with a sweetness and sympathy that never failed.
All who watched her wondered at the power in her, and many who had murmured hitherto now declared themselves ashamed, and responded willingly. John Gregory marvelled more and more at the qualities of brilliant leadership which she now developed. Within him a voice, which he could not always silence, sometimes whispered that if such a nature as that which had been gradually revealed to him in Anna Burgess, in its plenitude of power and its greatness of purpose, could have been allied to his own, a movement far beyond what he had even dreamed of in Fraternia might have been possible.
But while a certain reënforcement of courage had followed Anna’s strong initiative, and while in some respects the domestic conditions of the people had been improved and their murmurings for the time partially silenced, the gravity of the situation and of the prospects for the future as Gregory saw them remained unchanged. Keith’s mission had proved unproductive, as the letter just received emphasized afresh. Gregory himself could not leave Fraternia at this juncture without manifest peril. Only his personal influence now availed to hold together many discordant elements which were very actively at work and arrayed against each other. From no quarter could he discern any hope of substantial support.
And now, last of all, she was laid low; worse, they told him she was laying down her life in her devotionto his cause—she, his one high-hearted, intrepid, dauntless ally! Bitterly Gregory said to himself that she who had freely left wealth and station was starving and working to her death to save him from defeat, and all in vain, unless—Should he calmly sit by and permit the sacrifice? Great of heart as she was, all her work could not avail, nor his, unless aid of another kind could be found, and that at once.
And it could be found; of that he had little doubt. To find it he must, indeed, make a certain compromise, but it was one which involved only himself, his own position,—perhaps, after all, only his own pride. Had he not himself preached against the subtle selfishness which underlies the passion for individual perfection? Did not the common good and the larger interests of his cause call for the sacrifice?
Gregory rose at last and went to the outer door of the mill. It was five o’clock of the February morning, and off to the east a faint yellowish light was climbing up the sky. The mill pond lay dead in its stillness below him; the water fell quietly, stilled with ice, over the dam; the valley stretched out white and cold; a mile below was the black belt of the forest, and beyond, the dim plain, with the stars shining over. It was pure and cold and pitiless. In sky or earth no sign of relenting, no suggestion of a gentler day. But Gregory was not looking for signs, or reckoning with omens, save the omen which had come unasked and taken up its abode in his mind. He was thinking, not of the scene before him, nor of the sleeping village behind, nor even of the outline of the future, nor of Anna in her pain and patience.
An old story was repeating itself within him of theancient king to whom the sibyl came bringing nine books, which, being offered, he rejected; and of how, in the end, it had been the fate of the king to desire the three which alone were left, and to obtain them at a threefold price.
Presently the door of the mill was closed, and Gregory returned to his desk. There was sternness in his face as he set about writing a letter, and self-disdain and humiliation; but he wrote on, and finished the letter, which he signed and sealed. Then, without further hesitation or pause, he crossed the road to the mill stables, brought out and saddled his own horse, a tall roan, fit to carry a man of his proportions, mounted it, and rode away down the valley toward Spalding. The letter which he chose to mail with his own hand was addressed to Senator Ingraham, and it stated briefly that the writer had come to the conclusion that his rejection of the generous gift offered him on a certain night known to them both was ill advised, and that if the same or any part of it were offered him now for the furtherance of his coöperative work, it would not be refused.
A week passed, and Anna, protesting that she was as well as ever, had returned to her regular round of cares. The only change in her appearance was a peculiar whiteness of the tints of her skin, such that her face at times seemed actually to emit light. The contrast of this whiteness of tint with the masses of her dull, dark hair and the large, clear eyes, full of the changing lights which lurk in hazel eyes, gave her at this time a startling beauty, startling because it suggested evanescence. Most marked, Fraternia people said, was this phase of Anna’s appearance on a night near the end of another week, when a large company was gathered in the hallover the mill for an entertainment. Anna had been much interested through the winter in a series of author’s evenings, and this chanced to be the occasion for the closing programme of the series. The subject was Lowell, and prose had been read and poetry declaimed; the changes rung on all,—humorous, pathetic, and patriotic. The little hall was full and the audience eager for the closing number, because it was to be given by Anna herself, who had a charming gift in rendering poetry.
She had chosen a number of passages from the “Commemoration Ode,” and as she stood on the platform with its dark crimson background and drapery, dressed, as she was habitually when indoors, in white, her eyes kindling as she spoke the noble words of the noblest American poem, the audience watched her face with an attention even closer than that with which they listened to her voice. This, indeed, showed a slight weakness, but the eloquence and energy of her spirit subdued it to a deeper pathos, while its impressiveness was most marked when she reached the close of the fifth strophe, every word of which to her meant John Gregory:—