CHAPTER VI.THE RESULT.
There was another patient for the village doctor, besides Mildred, at the cottage next morning. Indeed,hercase sank into insignificance when compared with that of the moaning, tossing, delirious Anna, who shrank away from Adam, begging him not to touch her, for she was not worthy.
They had found her just after sunrise, and sent for her mother, whose first thought was to take her home; but Anna resisted at once; she must stay there she said, and expiate her sin, in Adam’s house. Then, looking, into her mother’s face, she added with a smile,
“You know it was to have been mine in a week!”
Adam did not see the smile. He only heard the words, and his heart beat quickly as he thought it natural that Anna should wish to stay in what was to be her home.
The hot August sun came pouring into the small, low room she occupied, making it so uncomfortable, that Adam said she must be moved, and taking her in his arms he carried her down the stairs, and laid her upon the bridal bed, whose snowy drapery was scarcely whiter than was her face, save where the fever burned upon her fair skin. On the carpet where it had fallen he found the crumpled note. He knew it was her writing, and he looked curiously at the name upon it, while there stole over him a shadowy suspicion, as to the cause of Anna’s recent coldness.
“Herbert Dunallen!” He read the name with a shudder, and then thrust the note into his pocket until the young man came.
Oh, how he longed to read the note and know what his affianced bride had written to Dunallen; but not for the world would he have opened it, and Anna’s secret was safe, unless she betrayed it in her delirium, as she seemed likely to do.
A messenger had been dispatched to Castlewild, informing its young heir of Mildred Atherton’s mishap. In the room he called his library, Herbert sat, arranging his papers, and writing some directions for his head man of business.
“Something from Adam Floyd,” he exclaimed,as he tore open the envelope, “Oh, bother,” was all the comment he made, as he read the hastily written lines, which gave no hint of Anna’s sudden illness.
He was not in the least prepared for that, and the sudden paling of his cheek when, on his arrival at the cottage, he heard of it, did not escape the watchful Adam, who quietly handed him the note, explaining where he had found it, and then went back to Anna, in whose great blue eyes there was a look of fear whenever they met his—a look which added to the dull, heavy pain gnawing at his heart. He did not see Herbert when he read Anna’s note—did not hear his muttered curse at woman’s fickleness, but he saw the tiny fragments into which it was torn, flutter past the window where he sat by Anna’s side. One, a longer strip than the others, fell upon the window sill, and Adam picked it up, reading involuntarily the words “Your unhappy Anna.”
Down in the depths of Adam’s heart there was a sob, a moan of anguish as his fears were thus corroborated, but his face gave no token of the fierce pain within. It was just as calm as ever, when it turned again to Anna who was talking in her sleep, first of Herbert and then of Adam, begging him to forget that he ever knew the little girl called Anna Burroughs, or carried her over the rifts of snow tothe school-house under the hill. It seemed strange that she should grow sick so fast when yesterday she had been comparatively well, but the sudden cold she had taken the previous night, added to the strong excitement under which she had been laboring, combined to spend the energies of a constitution never strong, and the fever increased so rapidly that before the close of the second day more than one heart throbbed with fear as to what the end would be.
In spite of her lame ankle Mildred had managed to get into the sick-room, urging Herbert to accompany her, and feeling greatly shocked at his reply that “camphor and medicine were not to his taste.”
Herbert had not greeted his bride elect very lovingly, for to her untimely appearance he attributed Anna’s illness and decision. He could change the latter he knew, only give him the chance, but the former troubled him greatly. Anna might die, and then—Herbert Dunallen did not know what then, but bad as he was he would rather she should not die with all that sin against Adam unconfessed, and out in the beech woods where the night before he had planned with her their flight, and where after leaving Mildred he repaired, he laid his boyish head upon the summer grass andcried, partly as a childwould cry for the bauble denied, partly as an honest man might mourn for the loved one whose life he had helped to shorten.
Regularly each morning the black pony from Castlewild was tied at the cottage gate, while its owner made inquiry for Anna. He had discernment enough to see that from the first his visits were unwelcome to Adam Floyd, who he believed knew the contents of the note written him by Anna. But in this last he was mistaken. All Adam knew certainly was gathered from Anna’s delirious ravings, which came at last to be understood by Mildred, who in spite of Mrs. Judge Harcourt’s entreaties or those of her tall, handsome son, George Harcourt, just home from Harvard, persisted in staying at the cottage and ministering to Anna. For a time the soft black eyes of sweet Mildred Atherton were heavy with unshed tears, while the sorrow of a wounded, deceived heart was visible upon her face; but at length her true womanly sense of right rose above it all, and waking as if from a dream she saw how utterly unworthy even of her childish love was theboy man, whose society she shunned, until, irritated by her manner, he one day demanded an explanation of her coolness.
“You know, Herbert,” and Milly’s clear, innocent eyes looked steadily into his. “You know far better than I, all that has passed between you and Anna Burroughs. To me and her lover, noble Adam Floyd, it is known only in part, but you understand the whole, and I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that you are free from an engagement which never should have been made, and of which you are weary. I did love you so much Herbert, even though I knew that you were wayward. I loved you, and prayed for you, too, every morning and every night. I shall do that yet, wherever you are, but henceforth we are friends, and nothing more. Seek forgiveness, first of God, and then of Adam Floyd, whom you thought to wrong by wresting from him the little ewe-lamb, which was his all.”
Herbert looked up quickly. Wholly unversed in Scripture, theewe-lambwas Greek to him, but Mildred was too much in earnest for him to jest. She had never seemed so desirable as now, that he had lost her, and grasping her hand from which she was taking the engagement ring, he begged of her to wait, to consider, before she cast him off.
“I was mean with Anna, I know, and I meant to run away with her, but that is over now. Speak tome, Milly; I do not know you in this new character.”
Milly hardly knew herself, but with regard to Herbert she was firm, giving him no hope of ever recovering the love he had wantonly thrown away.
After that interview, the black pony stayed quietly in its stable at Castlewild, while Herbert shut himself up in his room, sometimes crying when he thought of Anna, sometimes swearing when he thought of Mildred, and ending every reverie with his pet words, “oh botheration.”
Each morning, however, a servant was sent to the cottage where, for weeks, Anna hovered between life and death, carefully tended by her mother and Mildred Atherton, and tenderly watched by Adam, who deported himself toward her as a fond parent would toward its erring but suffering child. There was no bitterness in Adam’s heart, nothing save love and pity for the white-faced girl, whom he held firmly in his arms, soothing her gently, while Mildred cut away the long, golden tresses, at which, in her wild moods, she clutched so angrily.
“Poor shorn lamb,” he whispered, while his tears, large and warm, dropped upon the wasted face he had not kissed since the night he and Mildredwatched with her and heard so much of the sad story.
But for the help which cometh only from on high, Adam’s heart would have broken, those long bright September days, when everything seemed to mock his woe. It was so different from what he had hoped when he built castles of the Autumn time, when Anna would be with him. She was there, it is true; there in the room he had calledours, but was as surely lost to him, he said, as if the bright-hued flowers were blossoming above her grave. She did not love him, else she had never purposed to deceive him, and he looked drearily forward to the time when he must again take up his solitary life, uncheered by one hope in the future.
She awoke to consciousness at last. It was in the grey dawn of the morning, when Adam was sitting by her, while her mother and Mildred rested in the adjoining room. Eagerly she seemed to be searching for something, and when Adam asked for what, she answered: “The note; I had it in my hand when I went to sleep.”
Bending over her, Adam said: “I found it; I gave it to him.”
There was a perceptible start, a flushing of Anna’s cheek and a frightened, half pleading lookin her eyes; but she asked no questions, and thinking she would rather not have him there, Adam went quietly out to her mother with the good news of Anna’s consciousness.
Days went by after that, days of slow convalescence; but now that he was no longer needed in the sick-room, Adam stayed away. Tokens of his thoughtful care, however, were visible everywhere, in the tasteful bouquets arranged each morning, just as he knew Anna liked them—in the luscious fruit and tempting delicacies procured by him for the weak invalid who at last asked Mildred to call him and leave them alone together.
At first there was much constraint on either side, but at last Anna burst out impetuously, “Oh, Adam, I do not know what I said in my delirium, or how much you know, and so I must tell you everything.”
Then, as rapidly as possible and without excusing herself in the least, she told her story and what she had intended to do.
For a moment Adam did not speak, and when he did it was to ask if Mildred had told her about Herbert. But his name had not been mentioned between the two girls and thus it devolved upon Adam to explain. Herbert had left the neighborhoodand gone abroad immediately after Anna’s convalescence was a settled thing.
“Perhaps he will soon come back,” Adam said, and Anna cried, “Oh, Adam, I never wish him to return, I know now that I never loved him as—I—oh, I wish I had died.”
“You were not prepared, and God spared you to us. We are very glad to have you back,” Adam said.
These were the first words he had spoken which had in them anything like his former manner, and Anna involuntarily stretched her hand toward him. He took it, and letting it rest on his broad, warm palm, smoothed it a little as he would have smoothed a little child’s, but what Anna longed to hear was not spoken, and in a tremor of pain she sobbed out,
“In mercy, speak to me once as you used to. Say that you forgive me, even though we never can be to each other again what we have been!”
“I do forgive you, Anna; and as for the rest I did not suppose you wished it.”
Raising herself up, Anna threw her arms impetuously around his neck, exclaiming,
“I do wish it, Adam. Don’t cast me off. Try me, and see if I am not worthy. I have sinned, butI have repented too. Never were you so dear to me! Oh, Adam, take me back!”
She was getting too much excited, and putting her arms from his neck, Adam laid her upon the pillow, and said to her gently,
“Anna, my faith in you has been shaken, but my love has never changed. You must not talk longer now. I’ll come again by and by, and meantime I’ll send Miss Atherton. She knows it all, both from Herbert and yourself. She is a noble girl. You can trust her.”
At Adam’s request Mildred went to Anna, and sitting down beside her, listened while Anna confessed the past, even to the particulars of her interview with Adam, and then added tearfully,
“Forgive me, and tell me what to do.”
“I should be an unworthy disciple of Him who said forgive, until seventy times seven, if I refused your request,” was Mildred’s reply, as she wound her arm around Anna’s neck, and imprinted upon Anna’s lips the kiss of pardon.
Then, as Anna could bear it, she unfolded her plan, which was that the invalid should return with her to her pleasant home at Rose Hill, staying there until she had fully tested the strength of her love for Adam, who, if she stood the test should comefor her himself. As a change of air and scene seemed desirable, Anna’s mother raised no serious objection to this arrangement, and so one October morning Adam Floyd held for a moment a little wasted hand in his while he said good-bye to its owner, who so long as he was in sight leaned from the carriage window to look at him standing there so lone and solitary, yet knowing it was better to part with her awhile, if he would have their future as bright as he had once fancied it would be.
Eight years have passed away, and on the broad piazza of Castlewild a sweet-faced woman stands, waiting impatiently the arrival of the carriage winding slowly up the hill, and which stops at last, while Mildred Atherton alights from it and ascends the steps to where Anna stands waiting for her. And Mildred, who for years has been abroad, and has but recently returned to America, has come to be for a few weeks her guest, and to see how Anna deports herself as the wife of Adam Floyd, and mistress of beautiful Castlewild.
There is a sad story connected with Anna’s being there at Castlewild, a story which only Mildred can tell, and in the dusky twilight of that first evening when Adam was away and the baby Milly asleep inits crib, she takes Anna’s hand in hers and tells her what Anna indeed knew before, but which seems far more real as it comes from Mildred’s lips, making the tears fall fast as she listens to it. Tells her how Providence directed her to the room in a Paris hotel, where a fellow countryman lay dying, alone and unattended save by a hired nurse. The sick room was on the same hall with her own, and in passing the door which was ajar, she was startled to hear a voice once familiar to her and which seemed to call her name. Five minutes later and she was sitting by Herbert Dunallen’s bedside and holding his burning hands in hers, while he told her how long he had lain there with the fever contracted in the south of France, and how at the moment she passed his door he was crying out in his anguish and desolation for the friends so far away, and had spoken her name, not knowing she was so near.
After that Milly was his constant attendant, and once when she sat by him he talked to her of the past and of Anna, who had been three years the wife of Adam Floyd.
“I am glad of it,” he said. “She is happier with him than she could have been with me. I am sorry that I ever came between them, it was more my fault than hers, and I have told Adam so. Iwrote him from Algiers and asked his forgiveness, and he answered my letter like the noble man he is. There is peace between us now, and I am glad. I have heard from him, or rather of him since, in a roundabout away. He lost his right arm in the war, and that will incapacitate him from his work. He can never use the hammer again. I do not suppose he has so very much money. Anna liked Castlewild. In fact I believe she cared more for that than for me, and I have given it to her;—have made my will to that effect. It is with my other papers, and Milly, when I am dead, you will see that Anna has her own. I did not think it would come quite so soon, for I am young to die. Not thirty yet, but it is better so, perhaps. You told me that you prayed for me every day, and the memory of that has stuck to me like a burr, till I have prayed for myself, more than once, when I was well, and often since shut up in this room which I shall never leave alive. Stay by me, Milly, to the last; it will not be long, and pray that if I am not right, God will make me so. Show me the way, Milly, I want to be good, I am sorry, oh, so sorry for it all.”
For a few days longer he lingered, and then one lovely autumnal morning, when Paris was lookingher brightest, he died, with Milly’s hand in his, and Milly’s tears upon his brow.
And so Castlewild came to Anna, who had been three years its mistress when Milly came to visit her, and on whose married life no shadow however small had fallen, except, indeed, the shadows which are common to the lives of all. When her husband came home from the war a cripple, as he told her with quivering lips, her tears fell like rain for him, because he was sorry, but for herself she did not care; he was left to her, and kissing him lovingly she promised to be his right arm and to work for him if necessary, even to building houses, if he would teach her how. But poverty never came to Adam Floyd and Anna, and probably never would have come, even if there had been no will which left them Castlewild. That was a great surprise, and at first Adam hesitated about going there. But Anna persuaded him at last, and there we leave them, perfectly happy in each other’s love, and both the better, perhaps, for the grief and pain which came to them in their youth.
THE ENDOFADAM FLOYD.
THE ENDOFADAM FLOYD.
THE END
OF
ADAM FLOYD.