THE QUALITY OF MERCY
"Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me."--_Pope_.
Sanderson, during his visits to the Bartlett farm--and they became more
frequent as time went on--would look at Anna with cold curiosity, not
unmixed with contempt, when by chance they happened to be alone for a
moment. But the girl never displayed by so much as the quiver of an
eye-lash that she had ever seen him before.
Had Lennox Sanderson been capable of fathoming Anna Moore, or even of
reading her present marble look or tone, he would have seen that he had
little to apprehend from her beyond contempt, a thing he would not in
the least have minded; but he was cunning, and like the cunning
shallow. So he began to formulate plans for making things even with
Anna--in other words, buying her off.
His admiration for Kate deepened in proportion as the square of that
young woman's reserve increased. She was not only the first woman who
refused to burn incense at his shrine, but also the first who frankly
admitted that she found him amusing. She mildly guyed his accent, his
manner of talking, his London clothes, his way of looking at things.
Never having lived near a university town, she escaped the traditional
hero worship. It was a new sensation for Sanderson, and eventually he
succumbed to it.
"You know, Miss Kate," he said one day, "you are positively the most
refreshing girl I have ever met. You don't know how much I love you."
Kate considered for a moment. There was a hint of patronage, it seemed
to her, in his compliment, that she did not care for.
"Oh, consider the debt cancelled, Mr. Sanderson. You have not found my
rustic simplicity any more refreshing than I have found your poster
waistcoats."
"Why do you persist is misunderstanding and hurting me?"
"I apologize to your waistcoats, Mr. Sanderson. I have long considered
them the substitute for your better nature."
"Better natures and that sort of thing have rather gone out of style,
haven't they?"
"They are always out of style with people who never had them."
"Is this quarreling, Kate, or making love?"
"Oh, let's make it quarreling, Mr. Sanderson. And now about that horse
you lent me. That's a vile bit you've got on him." And the
conversation turned to other things, as it always did when he tried to
be sentimental with Kate. Sometimes he thought it was not the girl,
but her resistance, that he admired so much.
Things in the Bartlett household were getting a bit uneasy. The Squire
chafed that his cherished project of Kate and Dave's marrying seemed no
nearer realization now than it had been two years ago.
Dave's equable temper vanished under the strain and uncertainty
regarding Anna Moore's silence and apparent indifference to him. He
would have believed her before all the world; her side of the story was
the only version for him; but Anna did not see fit to break her
silence. When he would approach her on the subject she would only say:
"Mr. David, your father employs me as a servant. I try to do my work
faithfully, but my past life concerns no one but myself."
And Dave, fearing that she might leave them, if he continued to force
his attentions on her, held his peace. The thought of losing even the
sight of her about the house wrung his heart. He could not bear to
contemplate the long winter days uncheered by her gentle presence.
It was nearly Thanksgiving. The first snow had come and covered up
everything that was bare and unsightly in the landscape with its
beautiful mantle of white, and Anna, sitting by the window, dropped the
stocking she was darning to press the bitter tears back to her eyes.
The snow had but one thought for her. She saw it falling, falling soft
and feathery on a baby's grave in the Episcopal Cemetery at Somerville.
She shivered; it was as if the flakes were falling on her own warm
flesh.
If she could but go to that little grave and lie down among the
feathery flakes and forget it all, it would be so much easier than this
eternal struggle to live. What had life in store for her? There was
the daily drudgery, years and years of it, and always the crushing
knowledge of injustice.
She knew how it would be. Scandal would track her down--put a price on
her head; these people who had given her a home would hear, and what
would all her months of faithful service avail?
"Is this true?" she already heard the Squire say in imagination, and
she should have to answer: "Yes"--and there would be the open door and
the finger pointing to her to go.
She heard the Squire's familiar step on the stair; unconsciously, she
crouched lower; had he come to tell her to go?
But the Squire came in whistling, a picture of homely contentment,
hands in pocket, smiling jovially. She knew there must be no telltale
tears on her cheeks, even if her heart was crying out in the cold and
snow. She knew the bitterness of being denied the comfort of tears.
It was but one of the hideous train of horrors that pursued a woman in
her position.
She forced them back and met the Squire with a smile that was all the
sweeter for the effort.
"Here's your chair, Squire, all ready waiting for you, and the only
thing you want to make you perfectly happy--is--guess?" She held out
his old corncob pipe, filled to perfection.
"I declare, Anna, you are just spoiling me, and some day you'll be
going off and getting married to some of these young fellows 'round
here, and where will I be then?"
"You need have no fears on that score," she said, struggling to
maintain a smile.
"Well, well, that's what girls always say, but I don't know what we'll
do without you. How long have you been with us, now?"
"Let me see," counting on her fingers: "just six months."
"So it is, my dear. Well, I hope it will be six years before you think
of leaving us. And, Anna, while we are talking, I like to say to you
that I have felt pretty mean more than once about the way I treated you
that first day you come."
"Pray, do not mention it, Squire. Your kindness since has quite made
me forget that you hesitated to take an utter stranger into your
household."
"That was it, my dear--an utter stranger--and you cannot really blame
me; here was Looizy and Kate and I was asked to take into the house
with them a young woman whom I had never set eyes on before; it seemed
to me a trifle risky, but you've proved that I was wrong, my dear, and
I'll admit it."
The girl dropped the stocking she was mending; her trembling hand
refused to support even the pretense of work. Outside the snow was
falling just as it was falling, perhaps, on the little grave where all
her youth and hope were buried.
The thought gave her courage to speak, though the pale lips struggled
pitifully to frame the words.
"Squire, suppose that when I came to you that day last June you had
been right--I am only saying this for the sake of argument, Squire--but
suppose that I had been a deceived girl, that I had come here to begin
all over again; to live down the injustice, the scandal and all the
other things that unfortunate woman have to live down, would you still
have felt the same?"
"Why, Anna, I never heard you talk like this before; of course I should
have felt the same; if a commandment is broke, it's broke; nothing can
alter that, can it?"
"But, Squire, is there no mercy, no chance held out to the woman who
has been unfortunate?"
"Anna, these arguments don't sound well from a proper behaving young
woman like you. I know it's the fashion nowadays for good women to
talk about mercy to their fallen sisters, but it's a mistake. When a
woman falls, she loses her right to respect, and that's the end of it."
She turned her face to the storm and the softly falling flakes were no
whiter than her face.
As Anna turned to leave the room on some pretext, she saw Kate coming
in with a huge bunch of Jacqueminot roses in her hand. Of course,
Sanderson had sent them. The perfume of them sickened Anna, as the
odor of a charnel house might have done. She tried to smile bravely
at Kate, who smiled back triumphantly as she went in to show her uncle
the flowers. But the sight of them was like the turning of a knife in
a festering wound.
Anna made her way to the kitchen. Dave was sitting there smoking.
Anna found strength and sustenance in his mere presence, though she did
not say a word to him, but he was such a faithful soul. Good, honest
Dave.