ANNA'S SECRET
I saw very little of Anna during the first few days of my stay at the
Pater's. Cleon had drawn a bad number and was therefore drafted on a
detachment of workmen engaged in mending roads--a work all disliked, and
as no one volunteered for it, it had to be apportioned by lot. Anna of
Ann felt the absence of Cleon because, although he was young, he had
attached himself to her and she had learned somewhat to depend on his
companionship. In the absence of Cleon, therefore, I often joined Anna
in her walks and became more and more charmed by her singleness of
purpose. She seemed indifferent to everything except her art, cared
nothing for Chairo and his principles, had little conviction as regards
the Demetrian cult, and absorbed herself altogether in the joy to be
derived from beauty, whether in nature or in man. The idea that there
was something in man different from nature had become so familiar to
this century that the confusion between them from which the philosophy
of our time was only just emerging seemed to her altogether impossible,
and it was a hope of hers one day to compose a group or monument in
which man with his faculty of subjugating the forces of nature to his
use would be contrasted with these forces, typified either by animals or
undeveloped human races. She had shown me several models upon which she
was at work to typify these forces; among them I remember one of a negro
kneeling, with wonder on his thick lips and a superb strength about his
loins; she had modelled also a lion crouching at the bidding of an
unseen hand; but I had seen no model of Conquering Man. In an abandoned
sugar house which she had arranged as a studio, however, were many
unfinished busts hidden away which she did not show to me or to others,
and there was a good deal of curiosity and some little chaff as to the
secret so carefully thus concealed by her.
One morning, however, that I had risen early, tempted by the bright sun
of an Indian summer, I started for a short stroll, and passing Anna's
studio was surprised to find a window open. Looking inside the window, I
saw Anna so absorbed on a clay bust that she had not heard my approach.
I watched her work in silence without appreciating that I had surprised
a secret, until moving a little I saw clearly that the bust on which she
was working was a portrait of Ariston. Even then I was not clear that
Anna had been hiding this portrait from us; it seemed perfectly natural
that she should be engaged upon it. But when she at last perceived me
she blushed scarlet and threw a cloth over it.
"You have seen it," she said reproachfully.
"Why not?" asked I. "It was only a portrait of Ariston."
"Was it so like him that you saw it at once?"
"Did you not mean it to be so?"
"No!" she exclaimed, almost with temper, "and I did not mean you to see
it."
I apologized to her and suggested that she should join me in my walk;
but she did not answer me at once; she moved about the studio as though
agitated by my discovery, moving things aimlessly, taking things up and
putting them down again. I stood at the window waiting for an answer,
for I did not wish to leave her in this disturbed condition. At last she
looked me full in the face and her mobile lips twitched with
ill-suppressed emotion. Had she known how little I suspected the cause
of her trouble she need not have been so moved; but she had been so
long fighting against her love for Ariston that she imagined the
discovery by me of the portrait had betrayed her secret.
"You won't tell any one you have seen it, will you?" she said at last
appealingly.
"Certainly not," answered I. "But why are you so anxious to keep it a
secret?"
She opened her eyes at this question and then burst out, with a sob in
her voice:
"I would not have them guess it for the world."
At last I understood: this bust was not a portrait of Ariston; it was a
study for her Conquering Man, and she could not keep out of it the
features of the one she loved.
"See," she said, pointing to the corner where the uncompleted busts were
hidden, "they all look like him; even when I tried to model a face
without a beard, expressly to escape this haunting thought, you can see
it--somewhere in the brow," and she moved her hand over the brow. "At
every attempt I make, something betrays me," and she sat down on a low
chair and buried her face in her hands.
I stood by her, not daring to intrude; and presently she got up sadly
and said:
"Yes, I shall go with you--anything to get away from it all"; and
taking her cap from a peg, closed the window, locked the door, and
joined me.
"I had half an idea," said I, as we moved toward the wood, "that you had
a fancy for Cleon."
Anna smiled. "Cleon is a sweet boy and I am very fond of him; I suppose
he thinks he is in love with me; but we are accustomed to these 'green
and salad' loves; indeed, we are taught not to discourage them. It is
good for a boy like Cleon to be in love with some one much older than
himself that he can never marry; it keeps him out of mischief and does
no one harm. One day he will reproach me and tell me I have encouraged
him; I have not, you know, not the slightest; but he will say I have,
and honestly think it for a few days; a little later he will get over it
and be a good friend of mine to the end of my days."
We had a walk in the wood that has remained in my memory as one of the
sweetest hours I spent at Tyringham. She soon accustomed herself to my
knowledge of her secret, and this created an intimacy between us that
was rare and pleasant.
At that early hour the woods were dark and fresh, and the light upon a
meadow we were approaching reminded me of a forgotten poet:
"I knew the flowers; I knew the leaves; I knew
The tearful glimmer of the languid dawn
On those long rank dark wood walks drenched with dew
Leading from lawn to lawn."
I quoted them to her and she responded to them; wanted to know the
poet's name and more of his work; and as the autumn mist lay heavy on
the lower pastures and the heavy fragrance of the autumn woods filled
the air, I repeated to her those other lines of his:
"The woods decay; the woods decay and fall,
The vapors weep their burthen to the ground;
Man comes and tills the earth and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only, cruel immortality consumes
Here at the Eastern limit of the day----"
She put a hand on my arm and stopped me:
"What is that again, 'Me only, cruel----'"
I repeated the line to her.
"What a subject," she said; "not for a Tithonus--no; what a thought to
work into my group!"
I saw her meaning: Man might subdue Nature to his use; what then? Was
he to be nevertheless forever consumed by immortality? Here was the
limit to his triumph; its shadow and reverse.
"What is the meaning of it all!" she said. "We are unhappy, do what we
may, and it is out of our very unhappiness that we find something that
replaces happiness--a sort of divine sorrow."
We had by this time traversed the wood and stood on a height which
commanded the now deserted colony buildings. The sun was well up on the
horizon; the birds hopping silently in the boughs, their spring and
summer songs over; but the torrent filled the air with its noisy music
as it dashed down the hillside, and beyond we saw it meandering in
peaceful curves among the meadows.
"It is very beautiful," she said. "After all, there is joy enough in
beauty, and it is no small thing"--she was looking absently over the
meadows as she repeated--"it is no small thing that we can by art add to
it."
"It is a mission of which you can well be proud," said I.
She looked at me and smiled gratefully.
As we returned I felt that she had shaken off some of the sorrow with
which she had started.