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, and Gregory,
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
business relations 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 not had 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 going to 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,—
“Was ever grief like mine?”