ANNA AND JOHN
He found her in a tasteful gown, its heavy tassels almost sweeping the
floor, while her long, glossy hair, loosened from its confinement of
ribbon and comb, covered her neck and shoulders as she sat before the
fire always kindled in her room.
"How picturesque you look," he said, gayly.
"John," and Anna's voice was soft and pleasing, "was Charlie greatly
changed? Tell me, please."
"I was so young in the days when he came wooing that I hardly remember
how he used to look. I should not have known him, but my impression is
that he looks about as well as men of forty usually look."
"Not forty, John, only thirty-eight," Anna interposed.
"Well, thirty-eight, then. You remember his age remarkably well," John
said, laughingly, adding: "Did you once love him very much?"
"Yes," and Anna's voice faltered a little.
"Why didn't you marry him, then?"
John spoke excitedly, and the flush deepened on his cheek when Anna
answered meekly:
"Why didn't you marry that poor girl?"
"Why didn't I?" and John started to his feet; then he continued: "Anna,
I tell you there's a heap of wrong for somebody to answer for, but it is
not you, and it is not me--it's--it's mother!" and John whispered the
word, as if fearful lest the proud, overbearing woman should hear.
"You are mistaken," Anna replied, "for as far as Charlie was concerned
father had more to do with it than mother. I've never seen him since. He
did marry another, but I've never quite believed that he forgot me."
Anna was talking now more to herself than to John, and Charlie, could he
have seen her, would have said she was not far from the narrow way which
leadeth unto life. To John her white face, irradiated with gleams of the
soft firelight, was as the face of an angel, and for a time he kept
silence before her, then suddenly exclaimed:
"Anna, you are good, and so was she, so good, so pure, so artless, and
that made it hard to leave her, to give her up. Anna, do you know what
my mother wrote me? Listen, while I tell, then see if she is not to
blame. She cruelly reminded me that by my father's will all of us, save
you, were wholly dependent upon her, and said the moment I threw myself
away upon a low, vulgar, penniless girl, that moment she'd cast me off,
and I might earn my bread and hers as best I could. She said, too, my
sisters, Anna and all, sanctioned what she wrote, and your opinion had
more weight than all the rest."
"Oh, John, mother could not have so misconstrued my words. Surely my
note explained--I sent one in mother's letter."
"It never reached me," John said, while Anna sighed at this proof of her
mother's treachery.
Always conciliatory, however, she soon remarked:
"You are sole male heir to the Richards name. Mother's heart and pride
are bound up in you. A poor, unknown girl would only add to our
expenses, and not help you in the least. What was her name? I've never
heard."
John hesitated, then answered: "I called her Lily, she was so fair and
pure."
Anna was never in the least suspicious, but took all things for granted,
so now she thought within herself, "Lilian, most likely." Then she said:
"You were not engaged to her, were you?"
John started forward, and gazed into his sister's face with an
expression as if he wished she would question him more closely, but Anna
never dreamed of a secret, and seeing him hesitate, she said:
"You need not tell me unless you like. I only thought, maybe, you and
Lily were not engaged."
"We were. Anna, I'm a wretch--a miserable wretch, and have scarcely
known an hour's peace since I left her."
"Was there a scene?" Anna asked; and John replied:
"Worse than that. Worse for her. She did not know I was going till I was
gone. I wrote to her from Paris, for I could not meet her face and tell
her how mean I was. I've thought of her so much, and when I landed in
New York I went at once to find her, or at least to inquire, hoping
she'd forgotten me. The beldame who kept the place was not the same with
whom I had left Lily, but she know about her, and told me she died with
cholera last September. She and--oh, Lily, Lily--" and hiding his face
in Anna's lap, John Richards, whom we have only seen as a traveled
dandy, sobbed like a little child.
"John," she said at last, when the sobbing had ceased, "You say this
Lily was good. Do you mean she was a Christian, like Charlie?"
"Yes, if there ever was one. Why, she used to make a villain like me
kneel with her every night, and say the Lord's Prayer."
For an instant, a puzzling thought crossed Anna's brain as to the
circumstances which could have brought her brother every night to Lily's
side, but it passed away immediately as she rejoined:
"Then she is safe in heaven, and there are no tears there. We'll try to
meet her some day. You could not help her dying. She might have died had
she been your wife, so I'd try to think it happened for the best, and
you'll soon get to believing it did. That's my experience. You are young
yet, and life has much in store for you. You'll find some one to fill
Lily's place; some one whom we shall all think worthy of you, and
_we'll_ be so happy together."
She did not speak of Alice Johnson, but she thought of her. John, too,
thought of Alice Johnson, wondering how she would look to him who might
have married the daughter of a count. He had not told Anna of this, and
he was about preparing to leave her, when, changing the conversation,
she said:
"Did we ever write to you--no, we didn't--about that mysterious
stranger, that man who stopped for a day or two at the hotel, nearly two
years ago, and made so many inquiries about us and our place, pretending
he wanted to buy it in exchange for city property, and that some one had
told him it was for sale?"
"What man? Who was he?" John asked; and Anna replied:
"He called himself Bronson."
"Describe him," John said, settling back so that his face was partly
concealed in the shadow.
"Rather tall, firmly-knit figure, with what I imagine people mean when
they say a bullet-head, that is, a round, hard head, with keen gray
eyes, sandy mustache, and a scar or something on his right temple. Are
you cold?" and she turned quickly to her brother, who had shuddered
involuntarily at her description, for well he knew now who that man was.
But why had he come there? This John did not know, and as it was
necessary to appear natural, he answered to Anna's inquiry, that he
thought he had taken cold, as the cars were badly warmed.
"But, go on; tell me more of this Bronson. He heard our house was for
sale. How, pray?"
"From some one in New York; and the landlord suggested it might have
been you."
"It's false. I never told him so," and John spoke savagely.
"Then you did know him? What was he? We were half afraid of him, he
behaved so strangely," Anna said, looking wonderingly at her brother,
whose face alternately flushed and then grew pale.
Simple little Anna, how John blessed her in his heart for possessing so
little insight into the genuine springs of his character, for when he
answered:
"Of course I don't know him--I mean that I never told any one that
Terrace Hill was for sale."
She believed what he said, and very innocently continued:
"Had there been a trifle more of fun in my nature, I should, have teased
Eudora, by telling her he came here to see her or Asenath. He was very
curious for a sight of all of us."
"Did he come here--into the house?" John asked; and Anna replied:
"Why, yes. He was rather coarse-looking, to be sure, with marks of
dissipation, but very gentlemanly and even pleasing in his address."
Anna went on: "He was exceedingly polite--apologized for troubling me,
and then stated his business. I told him he must have been misinformed,
as we never dreamed of selling. He took his leave, looking back all the
way through the park, and evidently examining minutely the house and
grounds. Mother was so fidgety after it, declaring him a burglar, and
keeping a watch for several nights after his departure."
"Undoubtedly he was," said John. "A burglar, I dare say, and you were
fortunate, all of you, in not being stolen from your beds as you lay
sleeping."
"Oh, we keep our doors locked," was Anna's demure reply.
"Midnight, as I live!" he exclaimed, and was glad of an excuse for
retiring, as he wished now to be alone.
Anna had not asked him half what she had meant to ask concerning
Charlie, but she would not keep him longer, and with a kiss upon his
handsome brow she sent him away, herself holding the door a little ajar
and listening to see what effect the new carpet would have upon him. It
did not have any at first, so much was he absorbed in that man with the
scar upon his temple. Why had he come there, and why had it not been
told him before? His people were so stupid in their letters, never
telling what was sure to interest him most. But what good could it have
done had he known of the mysterious visit? None whatever--at least
nothing particular had resulted from it, he was sure.
"It must have been just after one of his sprees, when he is always more
than half befogged," he said to himself. "Possibly he was passing this
way and the insane idea seized him to stop and pretend to buy Terrace
Hill. The rascal!" and having thus satisfactorily settled it in his
mind, the doctor did look at Anna's carpet, admiring its pattern, and
having a kind of pleasant consciousness that everything was in keeping,
from the handsome drapery which shaded the windows to the marble hearth
on which a fire was blazing.
In Adah Hastings' dream that night there were visions of a little room
far up in a fourth story, where her fair head was pillowed again upon
the manly arm of one who listened while she chided him gently for his
long delay, and then told him of their Willie boy so much like him, as
the young mother thought.
In Dr. Richards' dreams, when at last he slept, there were visions of a
lonely grave in a secluded part of Greenwood, and he heard again the
startling words:
"Dead, both she and the child."
He did not know there was a child, and he staggered in his sleep, just
as he staggered down the creaking stairs, repeating to himself:
"Lily's child--Lily's child. May Lily's God forgive me."