Anne: A Novel

"And then there is the pain."

"Not for me."

"For me, then," she said, looking away from him across the net-work of tracks, and up the little village street ending in the blue side of the mountain. "Putting everything else aside, do you care nothing for my pain?"

"I can not help caring more for the things you put aside, since I happen to be one of them."

"You are selfish," she said, hotly. "I ask you to leave me; I tell you your presence pains me; and you will not go." She drew her arm from his, and turned toward the car. He lifted his hat, and went across to the dining-hall.

Mademoiselle was eating cold toast. She considered that toast retained its freshness longer than plain bread. Anne sat down beside her. She felt a hope that Heathcote would perhaps take the city-bound train after all. She heard the bell ring, and watched the passengers hasten forth from the dining-hall. The eastward-bound train was going – was gone; a golden space of sunshine and the empty rails were now where had been its noise and bell and steam.

"Our own passengers will soon be returning," said Jeanne-Armande, brushing away the crumbs, and looking at herself in the glass to see if the helmet was straight.

"May I sit here with you?" said Anne.

"Certainly, my dear. But Mr. Heathcote – will he not be disappointed?"

"No," replied the girl, dully. "I do not think he will care to talk to me this afternoon."

Jeanne-Armande said to herself that perhaps he would care to talk to some one else. But she made no comment.

The train moved on. An hour passed, and he did not appear. The Frenchwoman could not conceal her disappointment. "If he intended to leave the train at Centerville, I am surprised that he should not have returned to make us his farewells," she said, acidly.

"He is not always attentive to such things," said Anne.

"On the contrary. I have found him extremely attentive," retorted mademoiselle, veering again.

But at this stage Heathcote entered, and Anne's hope that he had left them was dashed to the ground. He noted the situation; and then he asked mademoiselle if she would not join him in the other seat for a while. The flattered Frenchwoman consented, and as he followed her he gave Anne a glance which said, "Check." And Anne felt that it was "check" indeed.

He had no intention of troubling her; he would give her time to grow tired.

But she was tired already.

At last, however, he did come. They were in plain sight now, people were sitting behind them; she could not childishly refuse to let him take the vacant place beside her. But at least, she thought, his words must be guarded, or people behind would make out what he said, even from the motion of his lips.

But Heathcote never cared for people.

"Dear," he said, bending toward her, "I am so glad to be with you again!" After all, he had managed to place himself so that by supporting his cheek with his hand, the people behind could not see his face at all, much less make out what he said.

Anne did not reply.

"Won't you even look at me? I must content myself, then, with your profile."

"You are ungenerous," she answered, in a tone as low as his own. "It will end in my feeling a contempt for you."

"And I – never felt so proud of myself in all my life before. For what am I doing? Throwing away all my fixed ideas of what life should be, for your sake, and glad to do it."

"Mr. Heathcote, will you never believe that I am in earnest?"

"I know very well that you are in earnest. But I shall be equally in earnest in breaking down the barriers between us. When that Western lover of yours is married to some one else, and Mrs. Lorrington likewise, then shall we not be free?"

"Helen will never marry any one else."

"Why do you not say that Mr. Pronando never will?"

"Because I am not sure," she answered, with sad humility.

"Are you going to tell him all that has happened?"

"Yes."

"And leave the decision to him?"

"Yes."

"You will put yourself in a false position, then. If you really intend to marry him, it would be safer to tell him nothing," said Heathcote, in an impartial tone. "No man likes to hear that sort of thing, even if his wife tells it herself. Though he may know she has loved some one else, he does not care to have it stated in words; he would rather leave it disembodied." Anne was looking at him; a sudden pain, which she did not have time to conceal, showed itself in her face as he spoke. "You darling child!" said Heathcote, laughing. "See how you look when I even speak of your marrying any one save me!"

She shrank back, feeling the justice of his inference. Her resolution remained unchanged; but she could not withstand entirely the personal power of his presence. She gazed at the afternoon sunshine striking the mountain-peaks, and asked herself how she could bear the long hours that still lay between her and the time of release – release from this narrow space where she must sit beside him, and feel the dangerous subtle influence of his voice and eyes. Then suddenly an idea came to her, like a door opening silently before a prisoner in a cell. She kept her face turned toward the window, while rapidly and with a beating heart she went over its possibilities. Yes, it could be done. It should be done. With inward excitement she tried to arrange the details.

Heathcote had fallen into silence; but he seemed quite content to sit there beside her without speaking. At last, having decided upon her course, and feeling nervously unable to endure his wordless presence longer, she began to talk of Caryl's, Miss Vanhorn, mademoiselle, the half-house – anything and everything which possessed no real importance, and did not bear upon the subject between them. He answered her in his brief fashion. If she wished to pad the dangerous edges of the day with a few safe conventionalities, he had no objection; women would be conventional on a raft in mid-ocean. The afternoon moved on toward sunset. He thought the contest was over, that although she might still make objection, at heart she had yielded; and he was not unwilling to rest. Why should they hurry? The whole of life was before them.

As night fell, they reached Stringhampton Junction, and the great engine stopped again. The passengers hastened hungrily into the little supper-room, and Heathcote urged mademoiselle to accompany him thither, and taste a cup of that compound found at railway stations called Japan tea. Jeanne-Armande looked half inclined to accept this invitation, but Anne, answering for both, said: "No; we have all we need in our basket. You can, however, if you will be so kind, send us some tea." This decision being in accordance with Jeanne-Armande's own rules, she did not like to contravene it, in spite of the satisfaction it would have given her to enter the supper-room with her decorous brown glove reposing upon such a coat sleeve. Heathcote bowed, and went out. Anne watched his figure entering the doorway of the brightly lighted supper-room, which was separated by a wide space from the waiting train. Then she turned.

"Mademoiselle," she said, her burning haste contrasting with her clear calm utterance of the moment before, "I beg you to leave this train with me without one instant's delay. The peace of my whole life depends upon it."

"What can you mean?" said the bewildered teacher.

"I can not explain now; I will, later. But if you have any regard for me, any compassion, come at once."

"But our bags, our – "

"I will take them all."

"And our trunks – they are checked through to Valley City. Will there be time to take them off?" said Jeanne-Armande, confusedly. Then, with more clearness, "But why should we go at all? I have no money to spend on freaks."

"This is Stringhampton Junction; we can cross here to the northern road, as you originally intended," explained Anne, rapidly. "All the additional expense I will pay. Dear mademoiselle, have pity on me, and come. Else I shall go alone."

The voice was eloquent; Jeanne-Armande rose. Anne hurried her through the almost empty car toward the rear door.

"But where are we going?"

"Out of the light," answered Anne.

They climbed down in the darkness on the other side of the train, and Anne led the way across the tracks at random, until they reached a safe country road-side beyond, and felt the soft grass under their feet.

"Where are we going?" said the Frenchwoman again, almost in tears. "Monsieur Heathcote – what will he think of us?"

"It is from him I am fleeing," replied Anne. "And now we must find the cross-road train. Do you know where it is?"

"It is, or should be, over there," said Jeanne-Armande, waving her umbrella tragically.

But she followed: the young girl had turned leader now.

They found the cross-road train, entered, and took their seats. And then Anne feverishly counted the seconds, expecting with each one to see Heathcote's face at the door. But the little branch train did not wait for supper; the few passengers were already in their places, and at last the bell rang, and the engine started northward, but so slowly that Anne found herself leaning forward, as though to hasten its speed. Then the wheels began to turn more rapidly – clank, clank, past the switches; rumble, rumble, over the bridge; by the dark line of the wood-pile; and then onward into the dark defiles of the mountains. They were away.

CHAPTER XXI

"How heavy do I journey on the wayWhen what I seek, my weary travel's end,Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,'Thus far the miles are measured from my friend.'"– Shakspeare's Sonnets.

In the mean time Ward Heathcote was in the supper-room. After selecting the best that the little country station afforded, and feeing a servant to take it across to the train, he sat down to eat a nondescript meal with some hunger.

The intelligent mulatto boy who carried the waiter consumed as many minutes as possible in his search for "the two ladies in that car, on the right-hand side opposite the fourth window," who, plainly, were not there. He had the fee in his pocket, there would not be another, and the two "suppers" were paid for. It was decidedly a case for delay. He waited, therefore, until the warning bell rang, and he was then encountered in hot haste hurrying to meet his patron, the waiter still balanced on his shoulder.

"No ladies there, sah. Looked everywhere fur 'em, sah."

There was no time for further parley. Heathcote hurried forward, and the train started. They must be there, of course; probably the cars had been changed or moved forward while the train was waiting. But although he went from end to end of the long file of carriages, he found no one. They were under full headway now; the great engine did not need gradual beginnings. He could not bring himself to ask questions of the passengers whose faces he remembered in the same car; they would open upon him a battery of curiosity in return. He went to the rear door, opened it, and looked out; the two grime-encircled eyes of a brakeman met his gravely. He stepped outside, closed the door, and entered into conversation with the eyes.

Yes, he seed two ladies get off; they come out this here end door, and climbed down on the wrong side. Seemed to be in a hurry. Didn't know where they went. Called after 'em that that warn't the way to the dining-room, and the young one said, "Thanks," but didn't say no more. Was they left behind? No, train didn't stop this side of Valley City; but the gentleman could telegraph back, and they could come on safe and sound in the morning express. 'Twarn't likely they'd gone north by the little branch road, was it? Branch connects at Stringhampton for the Northern Line.

But this suggestion made no impression upon Heathcote. Mademoiselle lived in Valley City; he had seen her tickets for Valley City. No, it was some unlooked-for mistake or accident. He gave the brakeman a dollar, and went back into the car. But everything was gone – bags, shawls, basket, cloak, bundle, and umbrella, all the miscellaneous possessions with which mademoiselle was accustomed to travel; there had been, then, deliberation enough to collect them all. He sat down perplexed, and gradually the certainty stole coldly over him that Anne had fled. It must be this.

For it was no freak of the Frenchwoman's; she had been too much pleased with his escort to forego it willingly. He was deeply hurt. And deeply surprised. Had he not followed her to ask her to be his wife? (This was not true, but for the moment he thought it was.) Was this a proper response?

Never before had he received such a rebuff, and after brooding over it an hour in the dismal car, it grew into an insult. His deeper feelings were aroused. Under his indolence he had a dominant pride, even arrogance of nature, which would have astonished many who thought they knew him. Whether his words had or had not been the result of impulse, now that they were spoken, they were worthy of at least respect. He grew more angry as the minutes passed, for he was so deeply hurt that he took refuge in anger. To be so thwarted and played upon – he, a man of the world – by a young girl; a young girl regarding whom, too, there had sprung up in his heart almost the only real faith of his life! He had believed in that face, had trusted those violet eyes, he did not know how unquestioningly until now. And then, feeling something very like moisture coming into his own eyes, he rose, angry over his weakness, went forward to the smoking car, lit a cigar, and savagely tried to think of other things. A pretty fool he was to be on a night train in the heart of Pennsylvania, going no one knew whither.

But, in spite of himself, his mind stole back to Anne. She was so different from the society women with whom he had always associated; she had so plainly loved him. Poor, remorseful, conscientious, struggling, faithful heart! Why had she fled from him? It did not occur to him that she was fleeing from herself.

He arrived at Valley City at eleven o'clock, and had the very room with gaudy carpet he had pictured to himself. The next morning, disgusted with everything and out of temper as he was, he yet so far postponed his return journey as to make inquiries concerning schools for girls – one in particular, in which a certain Mademoiselle Pitre had been teaching French and music for several years. The clerk thought it must be the "Young Ladies' Seminary." Heathcote took down the address of this establishment, ordered a carriage, and drove thither, inquiring at the door if Mademoiselle Pitre had arrived.

There was no such person there, the maid answered. No; he knew that she had not yet arrived. But when was she expected?

The maid (who admired the stranger) did not take it upon herself to deny his statement, but went away, and returned with the principal, Professor Adolphus Bittinger. Professor Bittinger was not acquainted with Mademoiselle Pitre. Their instructress in the French language was named Blanchard, and was already there. Heathcote then asked if there were any other young ladies' seminaries in Valley City, and was told (loftily) that there were not. No schools where French was taught? There might be, the professor thought, one or two small establishments for day scholars. The visitor wrote down the new addresses, and drove away to visit four day schools in succession, sending a ripple of curiosity down the benches, and exciting a flutter in the breasts of four French teachers, who came in person to answer the inquiries of monsieur. One of them, a veteran in the profession, who had spent her life in asking about the loaf made by the distant one-eyed relative of the baker, answered decidedly that there was no such person in Valley City. "Monsieur" was beginning to think so himself; but having now the fancy to exhaust all the possibilities, he visited the infant schools, and a private class, and at two o'clock returned to the hotel, having seen altogether about five hundred young Americans in frocks, from five years old to seventeen.

According to the statement of the little shop-keeper at Lancaster, mademoiselle had been teaching in Valley City for a number of years: there remained, then, the chance that she was in a private family as governess. Heathcote lingered in Valley City three days longer on this governess chance. He ate three more dinners in the comfortless dining-room, slept three more nights in the gaudy bedroom, and was at the railway station five times each day, to wit, at the hours when the trains arrived from the east. If they had waited at Stringhampton until he had had time to return to New York, they would be coming on now. But no one came. The fourth day opened with dull gray rain; the smoke of the manufactories hung over the valley like a pall. In the dining-room there was a sour odor of fresh paint, and from the window he could see only a line of hacks, the horses standing in the rain with drooping heads, while the drivers, in a row against an opposite wall, looked, in their long oil-skin coats, as though they were drawn up there in their black shrouds to be shot. In a fit of utter disgust he rang for his bill, ordered a carriage, and drove to the station: he would take the morning train for New York.

Yet when the carriage was dismissed, he let the express roll away without him, while he walked to and fro, waiting for an incoming train. The train was behind time; when it did come, there was no one among its passengers whom he had ever seen before. With an anathema upon his own folly, he took the day accommodation eastward. He would return to New York without any more senseless delays. And then at Stringhampton Junction he was the only person who alighted. His idea was to make inquiries there. He spent two hours of that afternoon in the rain, under a borrowed umbrella, and three alone in the waiting-room. No such persons as he described had been seen at Stringhampton, and as the settlement was small, and possessed of active curiosity, there remained no room for doubt. There was the chance that they had followed him to Valley City an hour later on a freight train with car attached, in which case he had missed them. And there was the other chance that they had gone northward by the branch road. But why should they go northward? They lived in Valley City, or near there; their tickets were marked "Valley City." The branch led to the Northern Line, by which one could reach Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, the wilderness, but not Valley City. The gentleman might go up as far as the Northern Line, and inquire of the station agent there, suggested the Stringhampton ticket-seller, who balanced a wooden tooth-pick in his mouth lightly, like a cigarette. But the gentleman, who had already been looking up the narrow line of wet rails under his umbrella for an hour, regarded the speaker menacingly, and turned away with the ironical comment in his own mind that the Northern Line and its station agent might be – what amounted to Calvinized – before he sought them.

The night express came thundering along at midnight. It bore away the visitor. Stringhampton saw him no more.

In the mean time Anne and her companion had ridden on during the night, and the younger woman had explained to the elder as well as she could the cause of her sudden action. "It was not right that I should hear or that he should speak such words."

"He had but little time in which to speak them," said Jeanne-Armande, stiffly. "He spent most of the day with me. But, in any case, why run away? Why could you not have repelled him quietly, and with the proper dignity of a lady, and yet remained where you were, comfortably, and allowed me to remain as well?"

"I could not," said Anne. Then, after a moment, "Dear mademoiselle," she added, "do not ask me any more questions. I have done wrong, and I have been very, very unhappy. It is over now, and with your help I hope to have a long winter of quiet and patient labor. I am grateful to you; you do not know how grateful. Save those far away on the island, you seem to me now the only friend I have on earth." Her voice broke.

Jeanne-Armande's better feelings were touched. "My poor child!" she said, pityingly.

And then Anne laid her head down upon the Frenchwoman's shoulder, and sobbed as if her heart would break.

They reached Weston the next day. The journey was ended.

Mademoiselle selected new lodgings, in a quarter which overlooked the lake. She never occupied the same rooms two seasons in succession, lest she should be regarded as "an old friend," and expected to make concessions accordingly. On the second day she called ceremoniously upon the principal of the school, sending in her old-fashioned glazed card, with her name engraved upon it, together with a minute "Paris" in one corner. To this important personage she formally presented her candidate, endowing her with so large a variety of brilliant qualities and accomplishments that the candidate was filled with astonishment, and came near denying them, had she not been prevented by the silent meaning pressure of a gaiter that divined her intention, and forbade the revelation. Fortunately an under-teacher was needed, and half an hour later Anne went away, definitely, although at a very small salary, engaged.

She went directly home, locked her door, took paper and pen, and began to write. "Dear Rast," she wrote. Then, with a flood of remorseful affection, "Dear, dear Rast." Her letter was a long one, without break or hesitation. She told him all save names, and asked him to forgive her. If he still loved her and wished her to be his wife, she was ready; in truth, she seemed almost to urge the marriage, that is, if he still loved her. When the letter was completed she went out and placed it in a letter-box with her own hands, coming home with a conscience more free. She had done what she could. The letter was sent to the island, where Rast still was when she had heard from him the last time before leaving Caryl's; for only seven days had passed since then. They seemed seven years.

A day later she wrote to Miss Lois, telling of Miss Vanhorn's action, her new home and change of position. She said nothing of her letter to Rast or the story it told; she left that to him to relate or not as he pleased. In all things he should be now her master.

When this second letter was sent, she asked herself whether she could write to Helen. But instantly the feeling came surging over her that she could not. In addition there was the necessity of keeping her new abode hidden. No one knew were mademoiselle was, and the younger woman had now the benefit of that carefully woven mystery. She was safe. She must not disturb that safety.

To one other person she felt that she must write, namely, Miss Vanhorn. Harsh as had been the treatment she had received, it came from her mother's aunt. She wrote, therefore, briefly, stating that she had obtained a teacher's place, but without saying where it was. This letter, inclosed in another envelope, was sent to a friend of Jeanne-Armande in Boston, and mailed from that city. Anne had written that a letter sent to the Boston address, which she inclosed, would be immediately forwarded to her. But no reply came. Old Katharine never forgave.

The school opened; the young teacher had a class of new scholars. To her also were given the little brothers who were allowed to mingle with the flock until they reached the age of eleven, when they were banished to rougher trials elsewhere; to these little boys she taught Latin grammar, and the various pursuits in the imperfect tense of those two well-known grammar worthies, Caius and Balbus. Jeanne-Armande had not failed to proclaim far and wide her candidate's qualifications as to vocal music. "A pupil of Belzini," she remarked, with a stately air, "was not often to be obtained so far inland." The principal, a clear-headed Western woman, with a keen sense of humor, perceived at once (although smiling at it) the value of the phrase. It was soon in circulation. And it was understood that at Christmas-time the pupil of Belzini, who was not often to be obtained so far inland, would assume charge of the music class, and lift it to a plane of Italian perfection hitherto unattained.

The autumn opened. Anne, walking on the lake shore at sunset, saw the vessels steal out from port one by one, and opening white sails, glide away in the breeze of evening silently as spirits. Then came the colored leaves. The town, even in its meanest streets, was now so beautiful that the wonder was that the people did not leave their houses, and live out-of-doors altogether, merely to gaze; every leaf was a flower, and brighter than the brightest blossom. Then came a wild storm, tearing the splendor from the branches in a single night; in the morning, November rain was falling, and all was desolate and bare. But after this, the last respite, came Indian summer.