“But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and never yield,This shows, methinks, God’s planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old, heroic breeds,· · · · ·Fed from within with all the strength he needs.”
“But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and never yield,This shows, methinks, God’s planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old, heroic breeds,· · · · ·Fed from within with all the strength he needs.”
“But then to stand beside her,When craven churls deride her,To front a lie in arms and never yield,This shows, methinks, God’s planAnd measure of a stalwart man,Limbed like the old, heroic breeds,
“But then to stand beside her,
When craven churls deride her,
To front a lie in arms and never yield,
This shows, methinks, God’s plan
And measure of a stalwart man,
Limbed like the old, heroic breeds,
· · · · ·
· · · · ·
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.”
Fed from within with all the strength he needs.”
She was half-way through the lines when a striking and incomprehensible change passed over her. Hereyes dilated, then drooped, her breath almost forsook her, and her quiet hands clasped each other hard. She continued to speak, but her voice had lost its tone and timbre. Almost mechanically she kept on to the close of the part she had selected, but those who loved her feared to see her fall before the end. When she reached the room behind the stage, the faithful Frieda was waiting to receive her.
What had happened? Was it merely that Sister Benigna was still weak from her illness? As they broke up, these questions were repeatedly asked among the people. Some of them called attention to the fact that while she was speaking a stranger had tiptoed into the hall so noiselessly that only a few persons had been aware of his coming, but he was a man of so singular a physiognomy and an expression so repellent that a vague connection was felt to link Anna’s agitation with his appearance.
This man was Oliver Ingraham.
Anna, with Frieda, hurrying out of the mill alone into the blackness of the starless and stormy night, and turning homeward, heard steps approaching, heavy and hard. Some one passed them. Anna knew only by the great height and breadth of shoulder, dimly discerned through the dark, that it was Gregory. She stopped, and he turned, catching a glimpse of her white face.
“Mr. Gregory,” she said, “Oliver Ingraham is here. What can it mean?”
“Here already!” he cried almost harshly. “I have only this moment received a despatch!” and he hastened forward, as if he might yet interpose some obstacle to this most unwelcome arrival.
The words in the despatch, crumpled fiercely and thrust into Gregory’s pocket, were these:—
“My son will be the bearer of the funds required. Trust you will give him the opportunity he desires for study of social problems.
“Ingraham.”
“Ingraham.”
“Ingraham.”
“Ingraham.”
It was the first word of reply to his letter which Gregory had received, and it was a word which made him set hard his teeth and groan like a wounded lion.
“Perhaps it is fair,” he said to himself, as he crossed the bridge; “but Ingraham’s Nemesis as the price is a higher one than even I expected.”
Above, in the mill hall, Oliver was mingling with the people who were in the habit of remaining together for an hour of social interchange after the programme, on these occasions. He quickly found his old townsman, Mr. Hanson, who seemed more amazed than rejoiced to greet him in Fraternia.
“Stopped over, eh, to see our village?” he asked. “On your way North, I suppose?”
“Oh, no,” said Oliver, smiling complacently; “I have come straight from home. I have a commission for your czar from my father, and I rather look to throwing in my fortunes with you folks. I want to see how this experiment works; study it, you know, on all sides. If I like it, I guess I shall stay.”
“Oh, really,” said Hanson, a little aghast.
“How are you getting on, anyway?” proceeded Oliver, craftily. “Rose-colour washed off yet? Has it been pretty idyllic this winter? Say, I should think catering for a crowd up in this valley would be quite a job. Don’t get salads and ices every day, I take it.”
Hanson shook his head impatiently, longing to get away from the questioner.
“Well,” said Oliver, “I suppose by this time Gregory the Great has issued his edicts and made all the poor people rich, hasn’t he? and all the rich people poor? That seems to be the method of evening up. I don’t wonder the poor fellows like it. Should think they would.”
“You will know better about us when you have been here awhile, Mr. Ingraham.”
Oliver nodded cheerfully. “Oh, yes, of course. I am going to take notes, you see. Perhaps I’ll write it up by and by,” and he tapped the neat note-book which protruded from a pocket of his coat. “Are all the sinners saints by this time?” he added.
“Hardly.”
“Well, then, we’ll put it the other way,” said Oliver, with a peculiar significance in his high voice, “are the saints all sinners yet?” The malicious leer with which this question was accompanied seemed to turn it into a hateful insinuation, which Hanson, with all his half-suppressed discontent, resented hotly. He was about to make a hasty reply when Gregory came up and spoke to Oliver, to whom he held out his hand. His manner was as cold as could be with decent courtesy, and when Oliver had shaken his hand he passed his handkerchief over it with the impulse a man has after touching a slug or a snake.
Oliver noticed the gesture, and rubbed his long white hands together reflectively.
CHAPTER XXXIV
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shellCast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seenWhich had Life’s form and Love’s, but by my spellIs now a shaken shadow intolerable,Of ultimate things unuttered, the frail screen.Mark me, how still I am!—D. G. Rossetti.
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shellCast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seenWhich had Life’s form and Love’s, but by my spellIs now a shaken shadow intolerable,Of ultimate things unuttered, the frail screen.Mark me, how still I am!—D. G. Rossetti.
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shellCast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seenWhich had Life’s form and Love’s, but by my spellIs now a shaken shadow intolerable,Of ultimate things unuttered, the frail screen.Mark me, how still I am!—D. G. Rossetti.
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shell
Cast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;
Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
Which had Life’s form and Love’s, but by my spell
Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
Of ultimate things unuttered, the frail screen.
Mark me, how still I am!
—D. G. Rossetti.
It was mid-April and the afternoon of a day of perfect weather, of summer rather than spring.
The hills around Fraternia were covered now in sheets of flame-colour, white and rose, from the blossoming of the wild azalea and laurel. The air was laden with perfume and flooded with sunshine.
It was at the close of the afternoon school when Anna, a company of the children with her, started to climb the eastern hill which rose a little beyond the mill pond, to gather flowers.
Gregory, from the open window of his office in the mill, watched the pretty troop as they threaded their way up the steep path and were soon lost to sight in the woods. He heard them speak of Eagle Rock as the goal of their expedition,—a favourite point of view, less than a mile to walk, and nearly on the crest of the hills.
Anna was dressed in the coarse white cotton of Fraternia manufacture which was the usual dress of the girls and women of the village in the house and out in dry,warm weather, simply made, easily laundered, cleanly, and becoming. Her tall figure, the last to disappear up the woodland path, had attracted the eyes of another, as well as of John Gregory.
Oliver Ingraham, in these two months grown an all-too-familiar figure in Fraternia, finding his way stealthily and untiringly to every favourite nook and corner of the valley, had also watched the start from some lurking-place. It was half an hour later when Gregory noticed him sauntering casually along the foot of the hill, and with an air of indifference striking into the same path which Anna and the children had taken. Gregory watched him a moment fixedly, his eyebrows knit together, and he bit his lip with impatience and disgust. Of late Oliver had shown an ominous propensity to haunt Anna, whose dislike of his presence amounted well-nigh to terror. More than once Gregory’s watchful eyes, which never left Oliver’s movements long unnoted, had observed attempts on his part to follow or to overtake her, to seek her out and attach himself to her. Invariably Oliver found himself foiled in these attempts, although he had no means of attributing the interference to Gregory. Thus far the intervention had been accomplished almost unnoticeably, but none the less effectively.
The afternoon was a busy one for Gregory. The mill, no longer silent and deserted, was running now on full time; and, to the great satisfaction of a majority of the colonists, Gregory had withdrawn his scruples against selling the products of their manufacture at a reasonable profit. He was finding it easier and easier to compromise with his initial scruples. It had also become more imperative to try to meet, in so far aswas reasonable, the demands of the people, since already Fraternia had suffered serious defections. A number of substantial families had withdrawn earlier in the spring, among them the Hansons and the Taylors, who had taken the pretty Fräulein Frieda with them, to Anna’s great regret. Others talked of leaving, and, in spite of the greater financial easiness, criticism and jealousy were at work in the little company at first so united. The almost insuperable difficulties attending the experiment had now fully declared themselves.
However, there was plenty of work to do, which was a material relief. Gregory glanced now at the pile of papers before him on his desk, and then once more through the window at the figure of Oliver, receding up the hill. No, he could not run the risk of allowing him to overtake and annoy Anna. The work must wait. Taking his hat, he left the mill hastily; but, instead of choosing the path behind Oliver, Gregory turned and went up the valley a little distance, struck through behind the houses, crossed a bit of boggy ground which lay at the foot of the hill in this part of the valley, and so mounted the hill below Eagle Rock in a line to intercept Oliver before he could overtake Anna, if such were his purpose.
There was no path up this side of the hill, but Gregory found no trouble in striding through the deep underbrush which would have swamped the women and children completely. Soon he reached a point from which he commanded a sight of Eagle Rock, and a glance showed him the fluttering dresses of the children already on its summit. In another moment he dashed up on a sharp climb, for the hill was very steep at this point, and reached the path only a short distance fromthe base of the rock. He looked up, but no one was in sight; then down the path, and in a moment Oliver came into view walking much more rapidly than fifteen minutes before, when he had entered the woods. He slackened his pace as he caught sight of Gregory slowly approaching down the path, and sought to hide a very evident discomfiture with his evil smile.
“You got up here in pretty good time, didn’t you, Mr. Gregory?” he asked, as he reached him. “I saw you, seems to me, in your office when I came along. I’ve taken my time, you see. A beautiful day for a walk.”
Oliver’s small green-grey eyes twinkled wickedly as he spoke these apparently harmless words, for he saw, or felt, that beneath every one of them Gregory’s anger, roused at last, reached a higher pitch. Oliver perfectly understood what he was here for.
“I have a word to say to you,” said Gregory, stormily. “You will have to stop haunting the women and children, and annoying them with your attentions. I speak perfectly plainly, Mr. Ingraham; they are not agreeable and they must be stopped.”
“You rule with a rod of iron here, Gregory,” said Oliver, his long fingers twining together; “what you say goes. Still, you know, you might go a little too far.”
Gregory did not reply, but stood watching him as a lion might watch a reptile.
“I am willing to stay in Fraternia, under favourable conditions,” Oliver proceeded, with hideous cunning; “but I should think, as I am paying pretty well for my accommodations, I ought, at least, to get the liberty of the grounds. What do you say?”
“I say, Go, this minute, or I’ll throw you neck and crop down that bank,” said Gregory, with unmistakable sincerity, at which Oliver, suddenly cowed, and his weak legs trembling under him, faced about promptly and retreated down the path. He paused at a safe distance, while Gregory’s hands tingled to collar him, and called back, in a loud, confidential whisper:—
“You can have her all to yourself this time. That’s all right,” and with this he hurried off, his thin lips writhing in a malicious smile, and his hands clenched tightly and cruelly.
For a moment Gregory stood still in the path. A dark flush had mounted slowly even to his forehead. He was irresolute whether to follow and find Anna, or to return directly to the valley. Something in Oliver’s ugly taunt acted like a challenge upon him, it seemed, for, turning, and catching through the trees the glimmer of Anna’s white dress, he hastened on up the path.
He found her sitting on a mossy rock at the foot of the cliff, where there were trees and shade and a fair view of the valley, and the blue billowing sea of the mountain ranges beyond. Her strength and colour had returned with the out-door life of the spring, and she looked to-day the embodiment of radiant health. Greatly astonished at Gregory’s appearance, she yet welcomed it with unaffected gladness, starting to rise from her low seat with the impulses of social observance which she could not quite outgrow even in the wilderness; but he motioned to her to sit still. All around her the children had flung their branches of laurel and azalea, running off to gather more and bring her, and the delicate suffusion of colour made an exquisite background to the picture. The picture itself, Gregory thought,Everett ought to have painted for a Madonna; for in Anna’s lap leaned a sturdy, fair-haired boy, with a cherub face, a child of less than four years, his head thrust back against her shoulder as he looked out from that vantage ground with serene eyes at Gregory, while Anna held one round little hand in hers and looked down upon the child with all the wistful fondness of unfulfilled maternal love.
“Do not smile,” said Gregory, with affected sternness at last, as she glanced up from the child to him with a questioning smile, expecting some explanation for his presence here; “I have come this time to scold you.”
“O dear!” said Anna, with a gay little laugh of surprise. “My turn has come!”
“Yes, your turn has come,” he continued gravely. “Do you not know that when you come away on such long, lonely climbs as this, even with the children, you give us anxiety for you, and trouble? I have had to come all this distance to take care of you.”
Anna shook her head, much more puzzled than penitent.
“What is there to be troubled about?” she cried.
Gregory did not answer at once. He found it impossible to make mention of Oliver in her presence. He fixed his eyes on the little child, who was on his knees now, by Anna’s side, pouring out into her white dress a small handful of scarlet berries, and letting them run like jewels through his fingers, laughing to see them roll.
“Do you not know,” he began again, very slowly, “that we fear for your strength, for your endurance, upon which you will never, yourself, have mercy?”
Anna began to protest a little, her colour deepening at some vague change in his tone and manner.
“Do you not know,” he continued, not heeding her interruption, “that you are the very heart of our life, here in Fraternia? that we all turn to you for our inspiration, our hope, our ideal? Should we not guard you, since without you we all should fade and fail?”
Never before had Anna heard this cadence of tenderness in Gregory’s voice, nor in the voice of man or woman; the whole strength of his protecting manhood, of his high reverence and his strong heart, was in it, but there was something more. What was it? A tremor ran through Anna’s heart. Could she dare to know? She lifted her eyes at last to meet his look, and what she read was what she had never dreamed of, never feared nor hoped—the supreme human love which a man can know. Reading this, she did not fear nor faint nor draw her own look away, but rather her eyes met his, full of awe and solemn joy; for at last, in that moment, her own heart was revealed to itself.
“O Anna!—O Benigna!”
Gregory spoke at last, or rather it seemed as if the whole deep heart of the man breathed out its life on the syllables of those two names.
In the silence which followed Anna sat quite quiet in her place, the sun and the soft shadows of the young oak leaves playing over her face and figure. The child still tossed his red berries with ripples of gleeful laughter over the whiteness of her dress, and not far away could be heard the busy voices of the older children as they ruthlessly broke away the blossoms from their stems. And in the sun and shade and the stillness Anna sat,while wave after wave of incredible joy broke over her spirit. For the first time in her life she knew love, knowing it for what it was. She had not asked to know it, nor mourned that she had missed its full measure, nor dreamed that it could yet be hers; but it had come, not stayed by bonds nor stopped by vows. It was here! The man whose strong spirit, in its freedom and power, had cast its spell upon her mysteriously even before she had seen his face save in a dream, loved her, with eyes to look like that upon her and that mighty tenderness! Life was fulfilled. Let death come now. It was enough!
The moment, being supreme in its way, was not one to leave room for outward excitement, for flutter and trepidation. Anna rose now from her place with perfect calmness, and bent to take the little, laughing child by the hand, while she went to call the others together. Gregory had turned away slightly, and with his arms crossed over his breast was leaning hard against the rugged wall of the cliff, his head thrown back against it, his face set, his whole aspect as of some granite figure of heroic mould, carved there in relief. Anna heard a sound like a groan break from his lips, and turning back, with an irresistible impulse, laid her hand, light as a leaf, upon his arm.
From head to foot Gregory trembled then.
“Don’t,” he said sternly, under his breath.
“What is it?” asked Anna, confused at his sudden harshness.
“It is the end,” he said, with low distinctness and the emphasis of finality.
Then, only then, did Anna waken to perceive that what in that brief moment of joy she had taken forglory, was only shame and loss and undoing, unless smothered at the birth.
An inarticulate cry broke from her then, so poignant, although low, that the little child, pulling at her dress, began to cry piteously. She stooped to comfort him, gave him again the hand which she had laid on Gregory’s arm, then, turning, walked slowly away.
Gregory made no motion to detain her or to follow, but stood as she left him, braced against the rock. Anna gathered her little flock, and they hastened down the hill in a gay procession, with the waving branches of April bloom, and the merry voices of the children. Only Sister Benigna, as she walked among them, little Judith noticed, was white and still.
CHAPTER XXXV
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,And pettish cries awoke, and the wan dayWent glooming down in wet and weariness;But under her black brows a swarthy oneLaugh’d shrilly, crying: “Praise the patient saints,Our one white day of Innocence hath past,Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.”—Tennyson.
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,And pettish cries awoke, and the wan dayWent glooming down in wet and weariness;But under her black brows a swarthy oneLaugh’d shrilly, crying: “Praise the patient saints,Our one white day of Innocence hath past,Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.”—Tennyson.
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,And pettish cries awoke, and the wan dayWent glooming down in wet and weariness;But under her black brows a swarthy oneLaugh’d shrilly, crying: “Praise the patient saints,Our one white day of Innocence hath past,Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.”—Tennyson.
Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung,
And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day
Went glooming down in wet and weariness;
But under her black brows a swarthy one
Laugh’d shrilly, crying: “Praise the patient saints,
Our one white day of Innocence hath past,
Though somewhat draggled at the skirt. So be it.”
—Tennyson.
At nine o’clock that evening Barnabas Rosenblatt, working around the mill stables, was startled at the sudden appearance of Gregory, who passed him without speaking, as he went hurriedly into the stall and brought out his horse. The day had been followed by a night of brilliant moonlight, and Barnabas saw, as distinctly as if it had been day, that his face, usually firm and composed, was drawn and haggard to a degree. He started to speak to him, but an imperious gesture of Gregory silenced him. Without a word Barnabas therefore assisted him in saddling the horse, and then stood perplexed as he watched him gallop away down the valley in the moonlight.
Straight on through a narrow bridle-path which led by a short cut through the stretch of oak wood to the little hamlet of Spalding, Gregory galloped. He had reached the outskirts of the woods, and was in sight of the level meadows and the cluster of lights of the village beyond, when he suddenly perceived the figure of a man on foot approaching him from the direction of Spalding. A few steps more, and Gregory saw, with surprise andstrange perturbation, that it was Keith Burgess. He reined up his horse and stood motionless, until Keith had reached him, and called out a greeting as he stood in the path, looking a pigmy beside the Titanic proportions of the horse and rider. The moonlight showed Keith more thin and wan than ever. He had returned to Fraternia once before this spring, in March, but, after a week, had been glad to go back to Baltimore, with some rather vague commission. His return at this time was wholly unexpected, even by Anna.
Keith had long since come to stand to Gregory for something like a concrete embodiment of his many disappointments and vexations, by reason of his lukewarm participation in his own purposes, his ineffective labours, and his continual draft upon Anna’s sympathies. As Gregory looked down upon him, thrown at this moment so unexpectedly in his path, a singular hardness toward the man came upon him, for he was hard beset by passion; and while he meant to have no mercy upon himself, he was not in the mood to have mercy upon another man, least of all, perhaps, upon Keith.
“You are going back to Fraternia?” he asked coldly, his tone striking Keith with chill surprise. The latter assented as a matter of course.
There was a moment of silence; Keith felt something sinister in the nature of it.
“Why should you go back there?” Gregory asked now, with the same careless coldness; “you have no heart in Fraternia or its purposes.”
Keith was stirred, and answered pointedly:—
“I have at least a wife in Fraternia, Mr. Gregory.”
Gregory looked at him a moment with a measuring glance, noting his wasted and feeble appearance.
“I suppose you do need nursing,” he said slowly.
Keith Burgess turned ashy pale. Was this wanton injury? Did Gregory wish to insult him? What did it mean? Gregory did not know himself. He knew only that, in the agony of that night, for he had fully resolved himself to see Anna no more, the sight of Keith Burgess worked like madness in his brain.
“Mrs. Burgess,” he said now, with the deliberation of strongly suppressed excitement, “is more highly endowed for great issues than any person I have ever known. It is almost a pity that she should not have freedom to use her powers in the greater activities to which she is fitted.”
Each sentence, cruel with all the cruelty which the climax of pride and passion could inspire, pierced the heart of Keith like a shaft barbed with steel. He stepped backward and leaned against a tree, breathing hard. The occult, mysterious quality of the moment’s experience to him was that he saw himself, distinctly and as if by an inexorable necessity, turning away from Fraternia, and going back by the way which he had come.
Without another word, Gregory tightened his rein and galloped on, out through the wood’s edge and so down to the plain. He did not see, in the high excitement of the moment, the figure of a man lurking stealthily among the trees at no great distance from where Keith stood. When the sound of the horse’s hoofs had died away, this figure stepped softly out from its shelter and passed along the bridle-path, peering inquisitively in the face of Keith as he still stood where Gregory had left him. But neither did Keith observe him, nor care who he was, and so he went on his way toward Fraternia. He looked back once or twice. His lastlook showed him that Keith had gathered himself together and was walking slowly away, in the direction from which he had come.
Keith walked blindly on, not knowing why he went, nor where he went, like a man who has suffered a heavy blow upon his brain, and moves only automatically without thought or will. On the outskirts of the village, near the railroad, he passed a barn, rickety and disused, but there was old hay in a heap on the floor of it, it offered shelter, and shelter without the contact with others from which he shrunk as if he were in disgrace, and fleeing for his life. Accordingly Keith went into this place, drawing the broken door together as far as he could move it on its rusty hinges, threw himself on the heap of hay, and slept until five o’clock in the morning. The one passenger train of the day passing through Spalding eastward was due at five o’clock. Keith was wakened by the long whistle announcing its approach, and came dizzily out into the chill and wet of a miserable morning.
The train slowed down as it neared the place where he stood. He swung himself upon it with the brief but tense nervous energy of great exhaustion, sank into a vacant seat in the foul, unventilated car, and was carried on, whither he did not know or care.
Anna, coming back from the walk to Eagle Rock, had gone to her own house alone. Here she spent the earlier hours of the evening in the deepest travail of soul she had ever known. The purity and unworldliness of all her life, both the life of her girlhood and that with Keith, had served to keep far from her familiarity with possibilities of moral danger. She was as innocent of certain kinds of evil as a child, and the thought that atemptation to a guilty love could assault her would, until this day, have appeared to her incredible. And now, in the fierce struggle of this passion, the only one she had ever known, she knew herself not only capable of sin, but caught at last in its power.
Not that for a moment she dreamed of any compromise of outward fidelity; such a thought she rejected with horror as inconceivable either to herself or to Gregory, whom she firmly believed to be far stronger than she. But the flaw in faithfulness had come already, beyond recall, beyond repair. Her whole soul moved toward this man, who had so long secretly dominated her inner life, with a mighty and overwhelming tide.
Her relation to Keith had been that of gentlest consideration, kindliness, and affection. More it had never been; and to-night it seemed as powerless to stay the flood of passion as a wall of sand built on the shore of an infinite sea by the hands of a child.
So Anna thought, so she felt. She went to the door of her cabin with this thought mastering her, driven by restlessness, and longing to feel the coolness of the night air on her face. For a moment she stood in her open door, and saw mechanically that the moonlight was shed abroad in the valley; she heard the voices of the men across the river singing in a strong, sweet chorus.
Then, suddenly, as if the words had been spoken in her ear, the thought came to her, “But Keith needs me; he needs me now!”
What was it? She did not know. She never understood. The sense was strong upon her that Keith was near her; that he was in some danger, and needed her.
Without pause to consider what she did, Anna flewdown the river path and reached the mill breathless. The pond lay in the moonlight, motionless. The air did not stir. The mill was still and dark and deserted. The woods were dim with their night mystery. She looked down the valley, and up, and across the river, and everywhere was perfect peace, save in her own heart. Then in the silence she heard a step approaching from the direction of the woods below. She drew back hastily into the protection of the mill porch and waited for the steps to pass. Whoever it was paused for a little time above the mill, and Anna’s heart beat hard with a sense of dread and danger. Finally she heard the steps pass on, and when she returned to the road she recognized the unmistakable figure of the man now moving on in the unshadowed moonlight to the bridge above. It was Oliver Ingraham.
Slowly Anna returned to her own cottage, not daring to do otherwise, a heavy oppression on her heart.
Early in the morning, which was cold and rainy, Oliver was at her door, and she answered his summons herself, full of a vague, trembling anxiety. He scanned her face narrowly; it was careworn and hollow-eyed, for she had slept not at all.
In silence he handed her a letter, broken at the edges, and soiled with long carrying about. She glanced at the address. It was Keith’s, written by herself perhaps a month before; not a recent letter. She looked at Oliver in speechless perplexity.
“I found that lying on the ground down near Spalding last night,” he said, still eying her craftily, and with that hurried off, giving her not another word.
Anna went in, closed the door, and drew out the letter. It was unimportant, insignificant, simply anordinary letter of wifely affection and solicitude, but one which had evidently been much read, being worn on the folds. Who could have carried it save Keith himself? Had he, then, been really near her the night before? Was he really coming?
Anna knew already that it was for this she longed supremely.
Noon brought to Everett a special messenger with a letter from Gregory, who brought with him also the roan horse ridden the night before to the county town, C——, and evidently ridden fiercely. At C—— was the bank where Gregory transacted all his business. This letter stated, first of all, that he had suddenly reached the conclusion that it was important and imperative that he should go at once to England in the interests of the colony. He should not return to Fraternia before sailing. He wished to empower Everett to act in his place during his absence, which would not be for more than three months.
Various items of business were enumerated, and the letter closed with this remarkable statement: “The funds furnished by Mr. Ingraham of Burlington have been returned to him with the exception of the five thousand dollars already used, which I shall restore at my earliest opportunity. This removes the obligation from us of counting Mr. Oliver Ingraham as one of our number, and I beg that you will signify to him my conviction that his continued presence in Fraternia is impossible. Do not allow him to stay a day if you can help yourself, and keep him under your eye while he remains.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
I said farewell;I stepped across the cracking earth and knew’Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on,... Fate has carried me’Mid the thick arrows; I will keep my stand,Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breastTo pierce another: oh, ’tis written largeThe thing I have to do.—George Eliot.
I said farewell;I stepped across the cracking earth and knew’Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on,... Fate has carried me’Mid the thick arrows; I will keep my stand,Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breastTo pierce another: oh, ’tis written largeThe thing I have to do.—George Eliot.
I said farewell;I stepped across the cracking earth and knew’Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on,... Fate has carried me’Mid the thick arrows; I will keep my stand,Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breastTo pierce another: oh, ’tis written largeThe thing I have to do.—George Eliot.
I said farewell;
I stepped across the cracking earth and knew
’Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on,
... Fate has carried me
’Mid the thick arrows; I will keep my stand,
Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast
To pierce another: oh, ’tis written large
The thing I have to do.
—George Eliot.
The following morning Anna sent for Oliver. Word had reached her that he was about to leave Fraternia. In the depth of her present distress and perplexity a thought which “had no form, a suffering which had no tongue” had arisen. Gregory, she knew, had left the village hastily that night under stress of powerful emotion, perhaps in a condition of mental excitement exceeding his own control. It seemed to her possible that somewhere on the way from Fraternia to Spalding he might have encountered Keith. The letter brought by Oliver indicated, she was more and more convinced, that he had really been on his way to her. If this were true, some event had interposed, something had occurred to hinder his coming. What could it have been, supposing him to have been but two miles away, save some mysterious, unthinkable effect of an interview with Gregory, if such there had been? It was no longer possible, no longer justifiable, to await events. She must herself discover all that Oliver knew, even if the discovery were to mean despair.
Alone, in her own cabin, she received Oliver. If Keith had been in Fraternia, or John Gregory, it would not have been permitted; but her intense anxiety and suspense overbore her usual shrinking from contact with the man, and Everett yielded to her wish to see him alone.
Oliver entered the cabin, noting its simple appointments with his characteristic curiosity. Anna pointed to a chair which he took, although she herself remained standing. Her face was as white as her dress, her eyes deeply sunken, her manner sternly imperious.
“You are going away from Fraternia to-day?” she asked, with swift directness.
“Yes,” said Oliver, nodding with his peculiar smile; “this precious demigod or demagogue—whichever you please—of yours, your imperial Gregory, has issued a ukase against me, in short, has done me the honour to banish me from the matchless delights and privileges of Fraternia!” The last word was spoken with a slow emphasis of condensed contempt.
“There is something really a little queer about it,” Oliver continued, in a different tone. “I am on to most of what happened between my father and Gregory, but I’ve missed a link now somewhere. You see, the governor, in a fit of temporary aberration, offered Gregory a magnificent contribution for his socialist scheme down here; but Gregory was pretty high and lofty just then, and, ‘No, sir,’ said he—I heard him, though he and the governor don’t know it—‘No, sir, I couldn’t touch your money. I am just that fastidious.’ The governor had been confessing his sins to Gregory, the worse fool he! It seemed that his money had come to him in a way that might make some men squeamish, andGregory, oh, dear, no! he wouldn’t have touched those ill-gotten gains as he was feeling then—not with the tip of one finger.
“But the joke is,” Oliver went on, “that he had to come to it. Oh, yes; he got down on his marrow bones to the governor here about three months ago, and wrote to him that he had reconsidered the matter, and saw his mistake,” and Oliver gave a low chuckle; “so the governor had to come down with the lucre, more or less filthy as it was, and I don’t think he was quite so much in the mood for it either as he was at the first, to tell the truth. But he sent it all the same, and sent me with it, don’t you see? I came as the saviour of Fraternia, although I have never been so recognized. The whole town has been run the last month or two on Ingraham money, and it seems to have greased the wheels about as well as any other money, for all I see. But now comes the unexpected! Off goes Gregory to England, sends back the governor’s check, so I hear from Everett, and kindly writes me to take myself off. What brought him to that is what I don’t quite see through yet.”
“I have no doubt,” said Anna, concealing her dismay at Oliver’s malign disclosure with a manner of cold indifference, “that Mr. Gregory had good reasons for thinking it better for you to return to Burlington.”
“You’re right there,” retorted Oliver, quickly; “oh, yes, he had excellent reasons, the best of reasons. A man who knows too much is often inconvenient, you know.”
“Mr. Ingraham,” Anna asked hastily, apparently ignoring this insinuation although she trembled now from head to foot, “I am not interested in the businessrelations of your father and Mr. Gregory. It was not to hear of them I sent for you. You brought me a letter yesterday which I think must have been not long ago in my husband’s possession. I wish you to tell me if, on the night when you found this letter, that is the night before last, you saw my husband in the neighbourhood of Fraternia?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Oliver, as if it were quite a matter of course; “were you not expecting him?”
“Where did you see him?” The question came quick and sharp.
“Well,” said Oliver, reflectively, “you would like me to be exact, I suppose. Let me see, how shall I describe the place so that you will recall it—distinctly.”
There was a certain cold deliberation in the articulation of these words which gave them a sickening cruelty. They called up strange visions of dread and dismay to Anna’s tortured imagination.
“Speak more quickly,” she commanded, rather than asked, “the precise spot makes no difference.”
“It was near the edge of the woods, on the Spalding side, that I saw him first. The night was quite bright with moonlight, if you remember. I had taken a stroll down to Spalding myself for some of those little luxuries which Fraternia doesn’t furnish, and was on my way back when I first noticed Mr. Burgess. He was just striking into the path, there by that dead oak tree; you may remember it. I noticed it because it stood out so white in the moonlight, and it was just at the foot of it that I picked up that letter. I did not know that he had dropped it, nor whose it was until after I got home.”
“Undoubtedly false,” thought Anna; “you had nothad the chance to read it, that was all,” but she did not speak. Oliver too was silent, as if he had answered her question, and was done.
“Please go on.” Anna kept her patience and control still.
“Oh!” exclaimed Oliver, as if surprised, “you want to hear more, do you? All right. I guess likely I’m the only man that can tell you, being the only witness, in fact.”
“Witness of what?” Anna cried importunately.
“Well, that’s it. That’s what I’ve asked myself more than once since that night, and I rather guess as good a description as I could give would be to call it a kind of moral murder; a moral murder,” and Oliver repeated the phrase as if gratified by the acuteness of his perception in forming it.
He watched her face closely, and beginning to fear from the bluish shade which tinged her pallor that Anna would soon be released from his power to torture by unconsciousness, hastily took another line.
“Oh, you’ve nothing to worry about, Mrs. Burgess, nothing at all. That was just a little fancy of mine, just my metaphorical way of stating things. It was a very simple little incident, nothing which need affect a man unpleasantly in the least. It just happened, you see, that Gregory was galloping down the path toward Spalding, and he met your husband, and they had a little talk together,—a mere quiet conversation for a few moments,—and Mr. Burgess seemed to change his mind about going to Fraternia just then, and turned back toward the village. That was all. I watched him a little, to be sure he didn’t need any help, you know, afterward. Gregory galloped right along; he was goingto catch a train, I suppose, at C——, and that made him in something of a hurry, of course.”
“Why should my husband have needed help, Mr. Ingraham? Will you be good enough to explain yourself clearly, and in as few words as possible?” Anna spoke more calmly now, but her eyes were like coals of fire.
“Certainly, certainly. I cannot repeat Gregory’s language, not literally, but it seemed to cut Mr. Burgess up a good deal at the time,—at least I fancied so. That is what I meant by that little simile of mine awhile ago. He’s all over it now, of course. It was only a few words anyway. Just that Gregory said, in that short way he has once in awhile—Probably you’ve never heard him; he wouldn’t be apt to speak so to you,” and Oliver decorated the sentence with one of his most insinuating smiles.
“Mr. Gregory said—?” Anna asked, looking into his face with an unflinching directness, before which Oliver’s eyes wandered nervously.
“Why, he seemed surprised that Mr. Burgess should be coming back so soon, and he gave him to understand that a man like him, who was sick all the time, and not much of a Fraternian, either, was rather a drag on such a woman as you, don’t you see? and it might be fully as well if he should keep away and give you your freedom most of the time.”
“Did my husband make any reply that you heard?” asked Anna, huskily, this hideous distortion of unformulated traitor thoughts which had lurked in the background of her own consciousness confronting her now to her terror, and her heart doubly sick with the loathing of being forced to ask such information from such a source.
“He said you were at least his wife, I remember that. I guess that was about all. It struck me at the time that there was something in what he said, with all due respect for Gregory. He rules everything here, of course, though, I suppose,—even to the relations between husbands and wives.”
The last words were lost upon Anna.
“You may go now, if you please, Mr. Ingraham,” she said calmly. Her look and an unconscious gesture of dismissal were imperative, and Oliver, not daring to disobey, left the place without another word.
For two days Anna sat alone and in silence, waiting for the summons which she knew by a sure intuition must come.
Oliver’s story had been confirmed in so far that it had been learned that Keith had been seen in Spalding on the night of Gregory’s departure, and had been known to take an east-bound train on the following morning. Nothing further was discovered regarding his movements, and it was useless to try to follow and find him. Anna could only wait.
When the message came it was, as she had known it would be, urgent and ominous. Keith was in Raleigh; he was very ill; she must go at once.
Everything was ready, and with a strange composure and quietness as of one carrying out a line of action fully foreseen, Anna went on her journey, so like and yet so unlike that other journey to Keith which she had taken in her girlhood, ten years before. That had ended in their marriage. How would this end?
Reaching the city in the afternoon, Anna was driven with the haste she demanded to the address named in the message which had come, not from Keith himself,but from a physician. It was not that of a hotel, as she had expected, but of a boarding-house of very moderate pretensions in a quiet street. Even the small details of the place, in their cheap commonness, smote her heart. Was it in places like this that Keith had, after all, been living, instead of in the well-appointed hotels in which she had always fancied him?
The landlady, a kindly, careworn woman, plain of dress and of speech, received Anna with a mournful face, but forebore explanations, seeing that it was time rather for silence, and led her down a long corridor to the door of a dim and silent room.
There was a little stir as Anna stood in the open door; the physician came out and spoke to her, and she saw a nurse sitting quietly by a window. But Anna did not know that she saw or heard them; her sense took in only her husband, with eyes closed and the shadow of death upon his face, lying upon the strange bed in this place of strangers.
She was by his side and his hands were in hers, when presently he opened his eyes. Seeing her, a sudden light of clear recognition illuminated his face, a triumphant ray of joy and satisfaction. He tried to speak, but could not, but Anna felt the faint pressure of his hand.
Once more his lips moved, and Anna saw rather than heard the words:—
“Good-by, darling,” and with them the same look of ineffable love and peace. Then his eyes closed and he sank again into unconsciousness.
The physician, leaning over, said softly, “He will not rouse again. This was most unexpected. He has been unconscious since morning.”
The end came soon after midnight, unconsciousness falling into death without pain or struggle.
Of the days which followed Anna could never recall a distinct or coherent impression. Detached scenes and moments alone lived in her memory.
She knew that Everett was there and that they started for Fulham. Somewhere on the way Professor Ward met them, and Foster, the old family servant. Nothing seemed strange and nothing seemed natural; all passed to her as in a dream.
She was at Fulham; she remembered afterward that she sat in the library which Keith had longed for so, and his body lay beside her, below the mantelpiece where she had so often seen him lean. The old servants, hastily summoned for the occasion, went and came, and looked at her, she thought, with eyes of cold respect and mute reproach. Then Everett stood there, and she saw that tears were on his face as he looked upon his old friend, but she did not cry. Only when Everett turned toward her she said, very simply, with a motion of her hand which signified all that the place meant:—
“Keith gave his life—for me.” Then Everett had looked at her as if alarmed at what he saw in her face, and had gone out hastily and sent some woman to her, whom she did not want.
The incidents of the funeral seemed to pass by unnoticed. She remembered the moment at the grave when at last she fully realized that this was the end. Then she was at the Fulham railroad station, and Professor Ward had come to her on the train and had held her hands strongly in his, and had said with urgent emphasis:—
“You must always remember that Keith’s physician and all his old friends believe that his life was prolonged rather than shortened by your living in the South. Do not for a moment dwell on the opposite thought.”
She had felt her dry lips tremble then and her eyes grew dim, but she did not speak. The train had moved out soon, and she knew that kind eyes watched her, but she could not meet their look.
Of the journey down into the West to her mother that night she remembered nothing, save that the incessant jar of the train seemed to follow in a rhythmic endless repetition the familiar refrain of the old passion hymn,—