ANNA AND JOHN.
He found her in a tasteful dressing 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 gaily, bending his knees in mock
homage before her. Then seating himself upon the sofa at her side, he
wound his arm around her and waited for her to speak.
“John,” and Anna’s voice was soft and pleading, “tell me more of that
young girl. Did you love her very much?”
“Love her! yes,” and John spoke excitedly while the flush deepened on
his cheek when Anna continued, “why didn’t you marry her then?”
“Why didn’t I? yes, why didn’t I?” and John started to his feet; then
resuming his seat again he continued, “why didn’t _you_ marry that
_Missionary_ who used to be here so much? 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. He objected to Charlie
because he was poor—because he was a missionary—because he was not an
Episcopalian, and because he loved me. He turned Charlie from the
house—he locked me in my room, lest I should get out to meet him, and
from that window I watched him going from my sight. I’ve never seen him
since, though I wrote to him once or twice, bidding him forget me and
marry some one else. He did marry another, but I’ve never quite believed
that he forgot me. I know, though, that as Hattie’s husband he would do
right and be true to her, for he was good, and when I was with him I was
better; but I’ve forgotten most all he taught me, and the way he pointed
out so clearly seems dark and hard to find, but I shall find it—yes,
Charlie, I shall find it out at last, so we may meet in Heaven.”
Anna was talking 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, 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 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. I said I
thought it would be best for you not to marry her, unless you were too
far committed; at least you might wait awhile, and when you started for
Europe so abruptly, I thought you had concluded to wait and see how
absence would affect you. Surely my note explained—I sent one in
mother’s letter.”
“It never reached me,” John said bitterly, 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. She wishes you to make a brilliant match, such as
she is sure you can, and if she has erred, it was from her love to you
and her wish for your success. A poor, unknown girl would only add to
our expenses, and not help you in the least, so it’s for the best that
you left her, though I’m sorry for the girl. Did she suffer much? What
was her name? I’ve never heard.”
John hesitated a moment and then answered, “I called her Lily, she was
so fair and pure.”
Anna was never in the least suspicious, or on the watch for quibbles,
but took all things for granted, so now she thought within herself,
“Lillian, most likely. What a sweet name it is.” Then she said aloud.
“You were not engaged to her outright, 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, for confession to
such as she might ease his burdened conscience, 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
Lilly were not engaged.”
“We were;” and rising to his feet John leaned his forehead upon the
marble mantel, which cooled its feverish throbbings. “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 knew 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 sobbed like a little child.
Had Anna been possessed of ordinary penetration, she would have guessed
that behind all this there was something yet untold, but she had
literally no penetration at all. In her nature there was no deceit, and
she never suspected it in others, until it became too palpable not to be
seen. Very caressingly her white hand smoothed the daintily perfumed
hair resting on her dress, and her own tears mingled with her wayward
brother’s as she thought, “His burden is greater than mine. I will help
him bear it if I can.”
“John,” she said at last, when the sobbing had ceased, “I do not think
you so much to blame as others, and you must not reproach yourself so
bitterly. You say 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; no broken
hearts, or weary hours of watching. We’ll try to meet her some day. You
did right to seek her out. 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, only twenty-six, 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.”
The Doctor did not reply to this but sat as if lost in painful thought,
until he heard the clock strike the hour of midnight.
“I did not think it was so late,” he exclaimed. “I must really leave you
now.”
Anna would not keep him longer, and with a kiss she sent him away,
herself holding the door a little ajar to see what effect the new carpet
would have upon him. It did not have any at first, so much was he
absorbed in thinking of _Lily_, but he noticed it at last, admiring its
pattern and having a pleasant consciousness that every thing in his room
was in keeping, from the handsome drapery which shaded the windows to
the marble hearth on which a fire was blazing. He could afford to have a
fire, and he sat enjoying it, thinking far different thoughts from Hugh
Worthington, who, in his scantily furnished room, sat, with a curl of
golden hair upon the stand beside him, and a well worn Bible in his
hand. Dr. Richards had no Bible of his own; he did not read it now—had
never read it much, but somehow his talk with Anna had carried him back
to the time when just to please his Lily he had said with her the Lord’s
Prayer, kneeling at her side with his arm around her girlish form. He
had not said it since, and he never would again, he thought. It was
sheer nonsense, asking not to be led into temptation, as if God
delighted to lead us there. It was just fit for weak women to believe,
though now that Lily was dead and gone he was glad that she had believed
it, and he felt that she was better off for having said those prayers
and acted up to what she said. “Poor Lily,” he kept repeating to
himself, while in his dreams that night 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!”