"A slave had long worn a chain upon his ankle. By the order of his
master it was removed. 'Why dost thou spring aloft and sing, O
slave? Surely the sun is as fierce and thy burden as heavy as
before.' The slave replied: 'Ten times the sun and the burden would
seem light, now that the chain is removed.'"--_From the Arabic._
Miss Lois's letter was a wail:
"MY POOR DEAR OUTRAGED CHILD,--What _can_ I say to you? There is no use
in trying to _prepare_ you for it, since you would never _conceive_ such
_double-dyed_ blackness of heart! Tita has _run away_. She slipped off
clandestinely, and they think she has followed _Rast_, who left
yesterday on his way back to St. Louis and the West. Père Michaux has
followed _her_, saying that if he found them together he should, acting
as Tita's guardian, insist upon a _marriage_ before he returned! He
feels himself responsible for _Tita_, he says, and paid no attention
when I asked him if no one was to be responsible for _you_! My poor
child, it seems that I have been blind all along; I never _dreamed_ of
what was going on. The little minx deceived me completely. I thought her
so much improved, so studious, while all the time she was meeting
Erastus, or planning to meet him, with a skill far beyond _my_
comprehension. All last summer, they tell me, she was with him
constantly; those daily journeys to Père Michaux's island were for that
purpose, while I supposed they were for prayers. What _Erastus_ thought
or meant, no one seems to know; but they all combined in declaring that
the child (child no longer!) was deeply in love with him, and that
everybody saw it save _me_. My New England blood could not, I am proud
to say, grasp it! You know, my poor darling, the opinion I have _always_
had concerning Tita's mother, who slyly and artfully inveigled your
honored father into a _trap_. Tita has therefore but followed in her
mother's footsteps.
"That Erastus has ever _cared_, or cares now in the least, for her, save
as a plaything, I will _never_ believe. But Père Michaux is like a
_mule_ for stubbornness, as you know, and I fear he will marry them in
_any_ case. He did not seem to think of _you_ at all, and when I said,
'Anne will _die_ of grief!' he only smiled--yes, _smiled_--and Frenchly
shrugged his shoulders! My poor child, I have but little hope, because
if he appeals to Erastus's _honor_, what can the boy do? He is the soul
of honor.
"I can hardly write, my brain has been so overturned. To think that
_Tita_ should have outwitted us all at her age, and gained her point
over everything, over you and over Rast--poor, poor Rast, who will be so
_miserably_ sacrificed! I will write again to-morrow; but if Père
Michaux carries out his strange _Jesuitical_ design, you will hear from
him probably before you can hear again from me. Bear up, my dearest
Anne. I acknowledge that, so far, I have found it difficult to see the
Divine purpose in this, unless indeed it be to inform us that we are all
but cinders and ashes; which, however, I for one have long known."
Mrs. Bryden's letter:
"DEAR ANNE,--I feel drawn toward you more closely since the illness and
death of our dear Dr. Gaston, who loved you so tenderly, and talked so
much of you during his last days with us. It is but a short time since I
wrote to you, giving some of the messages he left, and telling of his
peaceful departure; but now I feel that I must write again upon a
subject which is painful, yet one upon which you should have, I think,
all the correct details immediately. Miss Hinsdale is no doubt writing
to you also; but she does not know all. She has not perceived, as we
have, the gradual approaches to this catastrophe--I can call it by no
other name.
"When you went away, your half-sister was a child. With what has seemed
lightning rapidity she has grown to womanhood, and for months it has
been plainly evident that she was striving in every way to gain and hold
the attention of Erastus Pronando. He lingered here almost all summer,
as you will remember; Tita followed him everywhere. Miss Hinsdale,
absorbed in the cares of housekeeping, knew nothing of it; but daily, on
one pretext or another, they were together. Whether Erastus was
interested I have no means of knowing; but that Tita is now extremely
pretty in a certain style, and that she was absorbed in him, we could
all see. It was not our affair; yet we might have felt called upon to
make it ours if it had not been for Père Michaux. He was her constant
guardian.
"Erastus went away yesterday in advance of the mail-train. He bade us
all good-by, and I am positive that he had no plan, not even a suspicion
of what was to follow. We have a new mail-carrier this winter, Denis
being confined to his cabin with rheumatism. Tita must have slipped away
unperceived, and joined this man at dusk on the ice a mile or two below
the island; her track was found this morning. Erastus expected to join
the mail-train to-day, and she knew it, of course; the probability is,
therefore, that they are now together. It seems hardly credible that so
young a head could have arranged its plans so deftly; yet it is
certainly true that, even if Rast wished to bring her back, he could not
do so immediately, not until the up-train passed them. Père Michaux
started after them this morning, travelling in his own sledge. He thinks
(it is better that you should know it, Anne) that Erastus _is_ fond of
Tita, and that only his engagement to you has held him back. Now that
the step has been taken, he has no real doubt but that Rast himself will
wish to marry her, and without delay.
"All this will seem very strange to you, my dear child; but I trust it
will not be so hard a blow as Miss Hinsdale apprehends. Père Michaux
told me this morning in so many words: 'Anne has never loved the boy
with anything more than the affection of childhood. It will be for her a
release.' He was convinced of this, and went off on his journey with
what looked very much like gladness. I hope, with all my heart, that he
is right." Then, with a few more words of kindly friendship, the letter
ended.
The other envelope bore the rude pen-and-ink postmark of a Northwestern
lumber settlement, where travellers coming down, from the North in the
winter over the ice and snow met the pioneer railway, which had pushed
its track to that point before the blockade of the cold began.
Tita's letter:
"DEEREST SISTER,--You will not I am sure blaime your little Tita for
following the impulse of her _hart_. Since you were hear I have grown up
and it is the truth that Rast has loved me for _yeers_ of his own accord
and because he could not help it--deerest sister who can. But he never
ment to break his word to you and he tryed not to but was devowered by
his love for me and you will forgive him deerest sister will you not
since there is no more hope for you as we were married by Père Michaux
an hour ago who approved of all and has hartily given us his
bennydiction. Since my spiritual directeur has no reproche you will not
have enny I am sure and remain your loving sister,
ANGÉLIQUE PRONANDO."
"P. S. We go to Chicago to-day. Enny money for _close_ for me could be
sent to the Illinois Hotel, where my deerest husband says we are to
stay.
A. P."
Père Michaux's letter:
"DEAR ANNE,--It is not often that I speak so bluntly as I shall speak
now. In marrying, this morning, your half-sister Angélique to Erastus
Pronando I feel that I have done you a great service. You did not love
him with the real love of a nature like yours--the love that will
certainly come to you some day; perhaps has already come. I have always
known this, and, in accordance with it, did all I could to prevent the
engagement originally. I failed; but this day's work has made up for the
failure.
"Angélique has grown into a woman. She is also very beautiful, after a
peculiar fashion of her own. All the strength of her nature, such as it
is, is concentrated upon the young man who is now her husband. From
childhood she has loved him; she was bitterly jealous of you even before
you went away. I have been aware of this, but until lately I was not
sure of Rast. Her increasing beauty, however, added to her intense
absorbed interest in him, has conquered. Seeing this, I have watched
with satisfaction the events of the past summer, and have even assisted
somewhat (and with a clear conscience) in their development.
"Erastus, even if you had loved him, Anne, could not have made you
happy. And neither would you have made him happy; for he is
quick-witted, and he would have inevitably, and in spite of all your
tender humility, my child, discovered your intellectual superiority, and
in time would have angrily resented it. For he is vain; his nature is
light; he needs adulation in order to feel contented. On the other hand,
he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and to Tita will be a demi-god
always. The faults that would have been death to you, she will never
see. She is therefore the fit wife for him.
"You will ask, Does he love her? I answer, Yes. When he came back to the
island, and found her so different, the same elfish little creature, but
now strangely pretty, openly fond of him, following him everywhere, with
the words of a child but the eyes of a woman, he was at first surprised,
then annoyed, then amused, interested, and finally fascinated. He
struggled against it. I give him the due of justice--he did struggle.
But Tita was always _there_. He went away hurriedly at the last, and if
it had not been for Dr. Gaston's illness and his own recall to the
island, it might not have gone farther. Tita understood this as well as
I did; she made the most of her time. Still, I am quite sure that he had
no suspicion she intended to follow him; the plan was all her own. She
did follow him. And I followed her. I caught up with them that very day
at sunset, and an hour ago I married them. If you have not already
forgiven me, Anne, you will do so some day. I have no fear. I can wait.
I shall go on with them as far as Chicago, and then, after a day or two,
I shall return to the island. Do not be disturbed by anything Miss Lois
may write. She has been blindly mistaken from the beginning. In truth,
there is a vein of obstinate weakness on some subjects in that otherwise
estimable woman, for which I have always been at a loss to account."
Ah, wise old priest, there are some things too deep for even you to
know!
Rast's letter was short. It touched Anne more than any of the others:
"What must you think of me, Annet? Forgive me, and forget me. I _did_
try. But would you have cared for a man who had to try? When I think of
you I scorn myself. But she is the sweetest, dearest, most winning
little creature the world ever saw; and my only excuse is that--I love
her.
E. P."
These few lines, in which the young husband made out no case for
himself, sought no shield in the little bride's own rashness, but simply
avowed his love, and took all the responsibility upon himself, pleased
the elder sister. It was manly. She was glad that Tita had a defender.
She had read these last letters standing in the centre of her room,
Jeanne-Armande anxiously watching her from the open door. The
Frenchwoman had poured out a glass of water, and had it in readiness:
she thought that perhaps Anne was going to faint. With no distinct idea
of what had happened, she had lived in a riot of conjecture for two
days.
But instead of fainting, Anne, holding the letters in her hand, turned
and looked at her.
"Well, dear, will you go to bed?" she said, solicitously.
"Why should I go to bed?"
"I thought perhaps you had heard--had heard bad news."
"On the contrary," replied Anne, slowly and gravely, "I am afraid,
mademoiselle, that the news is good--even very good."
For her heart had flown out of its cage and upward as a freed bird darts
up in the sky. The bond, on her side at least, was gone; she was free.
_Now_ she would live a life of self-abnegation and labor, but without
inward thralldom. Women had lived such lives before she was born, women
would live such lives after she was dead. She would be one of the
sisterhood, and coveting nothing of the actual joy of love, she would
cherish only the ideal, an altar-light within, burning forever. The
cares of each day were as nothing now: she was free, free!
In her exaltation she did not recognize as wrong the opposite course she
had intended to follow before the lightning fell, namely, uniting
herself to one man while so deeply loving another. She was of so humble
and unconscious a spirit regarding herself that it had not seemed to her
that the inner feelings of her heart would be of consequence to Rast, so
long as she was the obedient, devoted, faithful wife she was determined
with all her soul to be. For she had not that imaginative egotism which
so many women possess, which makes them spend their lives in illusion,
weaving round their every thought and word an importance which no one
else can discern. According to these women, there are a thousand
innocent acts which "he" (lover or husband) "would not for an instant
allow," although to the world at large "he" appears indifferent enough.
They go through long turmoil, from which they emerge triumphantly,
founded upon some hidden jealousy which "he" is supposed to feel, so
well hidden generally, and so entirely supposed, that persons with less
imagination never observe it. But after all, smile as we may, it is only
those who are in most respects happy and fortunate wives who can so
entertain themselves. For cold unkindness, or a harsh and brutal word,
will rend this filmy fabric of imagination immediately, never to be
rewoven again.
Anne wrote to Rast, repeating the contents of the old letter, which had
been doomed never to reach him. She asked him to return the wanderer
unopened when it was forwarded to him from the island; there was a depth
of feeling in it which it was not necessary now that he should see. She
told him that her own avowal should lift from him all the weight of
wrong-doing; she had first gone astray. "We were always like brother and
sister, Rast; I see it now. It is far better as it is."
A few days later Père Michaux wrote again, and inclosed a picture of
Tita. The elder sister gazed at it curiously. This was not Tita; and yet
those were her eyes, and that the old well-remembered mutinous
expression still lurking about the little mouth. Puzzled, she took it
to mademoiselle. "It is my little sister," she said. "Do you think it
pretty?"
Jeanne-Armande put on her spectacles, and held it frowningly at
different distances from her eyes.
"It is odd," she said at last. "Ye--es, it is pretty too. But, for a
child's face, remarkable."
"She is not a child."
"Not a child?"
"No; she is married," replied Anne, smiling.
Mademoiselle pursed up her lips, and examined the picture with one eye
closed. "After all," she said, "I can believe it. The _eyes_ are
mature."
The little bride was represented standing; she leaned against a pillar
nonchalantly, and outlined on a light background, the extreme smallness
of her figure was clearly shown. Her eyes were half veiled by their
large drooping lids and long lashes; her little oval face looked small,
like that of a child. Her dress was long, and swept over the floor with
the richness of silk: evidently Père Michaux had not stinted the lavish
little hands when they made their first purchase of a full-grown woman's
attire. For the priest had taken upon himself this outlay; the "money
for close," of which Tita had written, was provided from his purse. He
wrote to Anne that as he was partly responsible for the wedding, he was
also responsible for the trousseau; and he returned the money which with
great difficulty the elder sister had sent.
"She must be very small," said mademoiselle, musingly, as they still
studied the picture.
"She is; she has the most slender little face I ever saw."
[Illustration: "MISS LOIS SIGHED DEEPLY."]
Tita's head was thrown back as she leaned against the pillar; there was
a half-smile on her delicate lips; her thick hair was still braided
childishly in two long braids which hung over her shoulders and down on
the silken skirt behind; in her small ears were odd long hoops of gold,
which Père Michaux had given her, selecting them himself on account of
their adaptation to her half-Oriental, half-elfin beauty. Her cheeks
showed no color; there were brown shadows under her eyes. On her
slender brown hand shone the wedding ring. The picture was well
executed, and had been carefully tinted under Père Michaux's eye: the
old priest knew that it was Rast's best excuse.
Now that Anne was freed, he felt no animosity toward the young husband;
on the contrary, he wished to advance his interests in every way that he
could. Tita was a selfish little creature, yet she adored her husband.
She would have killed herself for him at any moment. But first she would
have killed him.
He saw them start for the far West, and then he returned northward to
his island home. Miss Lois, disheartened by all that had happened,
busied herself in taking care of the boys dumbly, and often shook her
head at the fire when sitting alone with her knitting. She never opened
the old piano now, and she was less stringent with her Indian servants;
she would even have given up quietly her perennial alphabet teaching if
Père Michaux had not discovered the intention, and quizzically approved
it, whereat, of course, she was obliged to go on. In truth, the old man
did this purposely, having noticed the change in his old antagonist. He
fell into the habit of coming to the church-house more frequently--to
teach the boys, he said. He did teach the little rascals, and taught
them well, but he also talked to Miss Lois. The original founders of the
church-house would have been well astonished could they have risen from
their graves and beheld the old priest and the New England woman sitting
on opposite sides of the fire in the neat shining room, which still
retained its Puritan air in spite of years, the boys, and Episcopal
apostasy.
Regarding Rast's conduct, Miss Lois maintained a grim silence. The
foundations of her faith in life had been shaken; but how could she,
supposed to be a sternly practical person, confess it to the
world--confess that she had dreamed like a girl over this broken
betrothal?
"Do you not see how much happier, freer, she is?" the priest would say,
after reading one of Anne's letters. "The very tone betrays it."
Miss Lois sighed deeply, and poked the fire.
"Pooh! pooh! Do you want her to be _un_happy?" said the old man.
"Suppose that it had been the other way? Why not rejoice as I do over
her cheerfulness?"
"Why not indeed?" thought Miss Lois. But that stubborn old heart of hers
would not let her.
The priest had sent to her also one of the pictures of Tita. One day,
after his return, he asked for it. She answered that it was gone.
"Where?"
"Into the fire."
"She cannot forgive," he thought, glancing cautiously at the set face
opposite.
But it was not Tita whom she could not forgive; it was the young mother,
dead long years before.
The winter moved on. Anne had taken off her engagement ring, and now
wore in its place a ring given by her school-girl adorers, who had
requested permission in a formal note to present one to their goddess.
As she had refused gems, they had selected the most costly plain gold
circlet they could find in Weston, spending a long and happy Saturday in
the quest. "But it is a wedding ring," said the jeweller.
But why should brides have all the heavy gold? the school-girls wished
to know. Other persons could wear plain gold rings also if they pleased.
So they bought the circlet and presented it to Anne with beating hearts
and cheeks flushed with pleasure, humbly requesting in return, for each
a lock of her hair. Then ensued a second purchase of lockets for this
hair: it was well that their extravagant little purses were well filled.
To the school-girls the ring meant one thing, to Anne another; she
mentally made it a token of the life she intended to lead. Free herself,
he was not free; Helen loved him. Probably, also, he had already
forgotten his fancy for the lonely girl whom he had seen during those
few weeks at Caryl's. She would live her life out as faithfully as she
could, thankful above all things for her freedom. Surely strength would
be given her to do this. The ring was like the marriage ring of a nun,
the token of a vow of patience and humility. During all these long
months she had known no more, heard no more, of her companions of that
summer than as though they had never existed. The newspapers of Weston
and the country at large were not concerned about the opinions and
movements of the unimportant little circle left behind at Caryl's. Their
columns had contained burning words; but they were words relating to the
great questions which were agitating the land from the Penobscot to the
Rio Grande. Once, in a stray number of the _Home Journal_, she found the
following paragraph: "Miss Katharine Vanhorn is in Italy at present. It
is understood that Miss Vanhorn contemplates an extended tour, and will
not return to this country for several years. Her Hudson River residence
and her house in the city are both closed." Anne no longer hoped for any
softening of that hard nature; yet the chance lines hurt her, and gave
her a forsaken feeling all day.