crushed, stole toward home close in the shelter of the fence. She was
returning entirely alone, as the leader of a lost cause nearly always
returns, if he return at all. One by one her followers had dropped away,
one disappearing here in a back yard, another vanishing there in a
wood-lot, till all were gone. Desertion is the bitter hemlock of defeat
that the vanquished are always forced to drink. The board was still off
the fence at its farthest corner; Merica had squeezed through the hole
on her flamboyant departure, so that Miss Judy might not see her and
prevent her going; and she now dragged herself through it again on her
downcast coming back, and thus reached the coveted shelter of her own
domain and was able to hide her diminished head wholly unobserved by her
unsuspicious, gentle little mistress.
"Merica's very quiet this morning. I haven't heard her stirring," Miss
Judy said to Miss Sophia, as they sat placidly side by side in their
little rocking-chairs--swaying gently--as they so loved to sit. They
were talking, too, with that inexhaustible interest in one another's
conversation which made their lifelong companionship the beautiful and
perfect thing it was.
"Perhaps the poor creature is distressed over the falling down of the
bower. She seemed to be real fond of it. And how strange to think there
could have been such a violent storm without a drop of rain or our
hearing the wind. I thought at first that we might have the bean-poles
set up again, but the poles are broken and the vines are actually torn
up by the roots. Oh, yes,--going back to what we were discussing before
I happened to think of the bower,--I am sure that you are quite right in
thinking that Doris's character has developed very rapidly of late. Her
ideals really appear surprisingly well formed for so young a girl. And,
as you say, there could hardly be anything unsettling now in her reading
about the troubles that poor Becky went through. It can hardly do the
dear child any harm now even to read about the mistakes which poor Becky
made. For you know, sister Sophia, Becky was really good-hearted. You
remember that Amelia might have gone sorrowing all her life, but for
Becky's being so kind-hearted."
Miss Judy pleaded as though Miss Sophia was some keen and merciless
critic from whose stern justice she strove gently to save the innocently
erring.
"Just so, sister Judy," responded Miss Sophia, so promptly, so firmly,
so comprehensively, so conclusively, that Miss Judy beamed at her,
positively radiant with admiration, and sighed a deep sigh of relief and
satisfaction at having the long and sorely vexing question thus
thoroughly disposed of at last.
XX
THE CONFLICT BETWEEN FAITH AND LOVE
About that time of the year an aspect of great, glowing beauty and a
feeling of deep, sweet peace always comes to this beautiful, pastoral
country.
The long, warm days are then of the rarest gold, and the short, cool
nights are of the purest silver. The ripened grain has been garnered,
and its golden sheaves no longer tent the rich, broad lands. The tall,
tasselling corn now flows free in rippling, murmuring, ever widening
silvery seas. The ocean of the vast tobacco fields rolls and rolls its
mighty billows of deepening green into the darkening purple haze of the
misty horizon. The wooded hillsides are now very still, and dark blue
shadows linger all day among the trees--which stir scarcely a
leaf--waiting to creep down toward the village at nightfall to meet the
snow-white mist loitering over the resting meadows. The birds, too, are
resting, half asleep in the heart of the ancient wood; they sing more
seldom and their songs are sweeter and softer and come forth touched
with a tender melancholy. The very shrilling of the crickets in the long
grass sounds less shrill, and seems to rise and fall with the waves of
heat. The butterflies, clustering on the commonest wayside weeds like
tropical flowers, hardly move their dazzling wings of yellow and white,
waving them as languorously as a flower unfurls its petals. And then--in
those radiant days--the thistledown also softly spreads its pinions of
gossamer silver, and, borne on the breath of the south breeze, it wings
its weightless way over all the snow-masses of the elder bloom, and
burnishes its lacelike whiteness into the luminous border of the veil
which the midsummer heaven lends to the midsummer earth.
The honeysuckle over Tom Watson's window was thinning under the heat and
bronzing under the drouth. Its leaves, green-yellow, drifted languidly
down to the browning grass of the neglected lawn. So that there was
scarcely a cool shadow left to shield the wretchedness of the stricken
man, sitting day after day in the spot to which destiny had chained him;
or one to cover the sadness of the wife, keeping her hopeless vigil by
his side, in open view for every passer-by to see. It was a sight to
wring any heart, and the Oldfield people were always kind to one another
and always helpful--as simple, poor people are everywhere. But in this
sad case there seemed no way to help, nothing that any one could do. No
one might penetrate the dumb horror of the sick man's awful gaze,
straining all the desolate day through, as long as the light lasted,
toward some unseen and unreachable thing, as a wild creature strains
dumbly at its chain. No one could pass the silence of Anne's reserve to
share, to lessen, or even completely to comprehend the conflict
ceaselessly waging within the high, narrow walls of her spirit.
Up to the beginning of this strife Anne's heart and soul had gone more
nearly abreast, more evenly side by side, than most women's hearts and
souls are able to go through life. The one nearly always goes before the
other in every true woman's breast. And the path of Anne's spirit was
very narrow, much narrower than that in which most women tread; so that,
at this last steep pass, there was not room for both to go together, and
thus her heart and her soul were forced to strive, the one with the
other, for the right of way. There was never a moment's doubt in Anne's
single, simple, and most strenuous mind as to which should lead. Now, as
always, the road between right and wrong lay straight, clear, and open
before her feet. There never was the slightest danger of her wandering
or wavering. But oh, the agonized wringing of her heart, the almost
unendurable travail of her soul--in this death struggle for her
husband's salvation! And yet she suffered the anguish unflinchingly, her
very love forbidding her conscience to yield, to barter the hope of the
life everlasting for the relief of a few broken years. And every day the
conflict grew fiercer as her husband's growing strength increased his
piteously powerless resistance to restraint, and fed the flame of his
desire for cards, now as strong as any ruling passion ever was in death.
Impassive as Anne was by nature, she used sometimes to wonder if she
would be able to bear it any longer and live. Her heart was breaking,
her soul was almost at bay, so desperate was the strife between the two.
It is one of life's cruel ironies that the deepest feeling must often
find trivial and even absurd expression. In poor Anne's first blind
casting about for something to divert her husband's thoughts, in her
first futile trying to remember what he used to like,--and she had known
very little of his tastes in the days of his strength,--the recollection
of seeing him read the county newspaper, which was published weekly in a
neighboring town, came suddenly out of the mists of her memory. She sent
for the paper and tried to read it to him, beginning at the top line of
the first column and going straight through to the last line on the last
page, fearing lest she might miss the article which he most wanted to
hear. But Anne was not a good reader, and a clouded mind and a racked
body do not make a patient listener. Tom gave no sign and he did not try
to speak; but Anne saw his miserable, unresting eyes wander away to the
far-off purpled hills, beyond which lay the free, bright world; and his
thoughts--but who dare wonder whither his thoughts wandered?
After the failure in the reading of the newspaper, Anne turned to books.
There were no new books in Oldfield, had poor Anne known the new from
the old, and there were few of any kind. Miss Judy had more than any one
else, and she was eager in offering all that had belonged to her father,
as well as the handful of more recent ones gathered by her own simple
tastes; and these last she urged upon Anne as being lighter and more
cheerful, and consequently more suited to the cheering of an invalid.
She was quite sure, so she said, smiling to hearten Anne, that Tom would
like to hear about Becky; he had always liked lively, good-hearted
people--like himself. But Anne instinctively chose the major's books
instead, shrinking from all lightness as unsuited to her husband's need,
and believing, as a woman of her type usually believes, that a man is
most interested in what she herself least understands.
When the reading of the dry old books had failed even more completely,
if possible, than the reading of the newspaper, Anne tried to talk to
her husband; and that was the hardest of all. She had always been a
silent woman, well named "still-tongued"; and now that her sad heart lay
in her bosom like lead, she found less and less to say, so that this
last attempt was the most complete and the saddest of her many repeated
defeats. It was then, when at the end of her own resources, that she
held to Sidney's hand, and asked with her appealing eyes for the help
which she knew not how to beg with her lips. After this Sidney went
every day to see Tom, and told him, as amusingly as she could tell
anything, of everything that was going on, no matter whether he listened
or not. And she also sent Doris, who went often (taking Miss Judy's
guitar at that little lady's suggestion) to sing to the invalid, and who
was careful to choose her gayest songs and to play nothing less cheerful
than the Spanish fandango; and it really seemed, once in a while, as if
a light came into the sick man's darkened gaze as it rested upon the
girl as she tinkled the old guitar, with the broad blue ribbon falling
around her beautiful shoulders.
The whole village was, in truth, unwearying in its kindness all the long
days, through all those long months; but there were, nevertheless, the
lonely hours of the endless nights to be passed alone, when the
desperate husband and the despairing wife dumbly faced the appalling
future,--a burning, unlighted, empty desert,--stretching perhaps through
many terrible years. And even then Anne stood firm, with her sad, steady
eyes ever on the white heights which she saw beyond the black gulf,
wherein she strove perpetually with the powers of darkness for her
husband's soul.
She never left him now for a moment, night or day, except when there was
preaching in her own church and her faith required the "breaking of
bread"; and at rare long intervals to go to prayer-meeting, when she
felt her strength failing and hoped to find in the prayers of others new
strength for her own ceaseless petitions. One night of midsummer, when
the bell began to ring for prayer-meeting, she felt that she must go.
She accordingly arose--reluctantly as she always left him--and went into
the bedroom and put on her quakerish bonnet. Then she came back and
stood before her husband, seeking wistfully to do something more for his
comfort before leaving him, as she never forgot to try to do. She turned
the cushions at his back to make them softer, and moved the pillows
behind his head so that it might rest easier, and straightened the cover
over his powerless knees. These poor things, which she always did, were
all that she ever could do. She would return soon, as soon as she could,
she said, as she always said, bending down to press her pale lips to his
scarred forehead. At the gate she stopped and lingered, looking back, as
she always looked, sorely loath still to leave him even for an hour of
uplifting prayer.
Night was near. The last red gold of the sunset had paled from the
highest, farthest hilltop, where the graveyard lay. The tombstones--the
new white ones that stood so straight, the older gray ones that leaned,
the oldest brown ones that had fallen--all were dim now in the soft
glory of the afterglow, as many of the cold, hard things of this world
are softened by the tender light from the world above. The dusk was
already creeping down the darkling arches of the wooded hillsides. Mists
were already arising from the low-lying meadows, trailing long white
cloud-fleeces, all starred with fireflies, thus making a new heaven of
the old earth.
Through the gloaming and the stillness Anne's lonely figure went
steadily, swiftly onward toward the church. Lynn Gordon noted the tense
paleness and the strange exaltation of her still face, when he met and
passed her on the big road, faint as the light was, and the sight of it
touched him, though his own mind was lightly at peace and his own heart
was over-flowing with thoughtless happiness. The impression of suffering
that her face had given him was still in his mind when he drew near the
window beside which the sick man sat, and because of it, or some other
motive that he did not stop to fathom, he suddenly stood still, and
after a hesitating pause, and a longing glance toward the silver
poplars, he opened the gate and crossed the yard and went to the window
to speak to Tom Watson. Nothing was farther from his thoughts than any
intent of going into the house--as he told the doctor afterwards when
speaking of what followed.
"It was like mesmerism. I have not the vaguest idea of how it really
happened. His awful eyes drew me, when I didn't want to go. They dragged
me into that house as if a giant hand had been laid upon my collar. The
first thing that I knew the negro boy who waits on Watson had set out a
table and put the lamp on it, and had laid a pack of cards between him
and me." The young man shuddered at the recollection. "I hope I may
never again see anything like that poor wretch's face when his palsied
hands first touched the cards which I dealt him. I tried to remind
myself that there couldn't be any harm in such a game and that there
might be some good. But to see such a passion as his for gambling
looking out of a dead man's face is a sight which I hope never to look
upon again."
The lamplight shone far down the big road that night, and Anne saw it
almost as soon as she left the meeting-house on her lonely way home. At
the sight her heavy heart seemed to leap as if it would escape from its
cell of pain; and then, faint with deadly fear, it seemed to fall back
as though it could never beat again. Too near to fainting to stand, she
sat down on the roadside, and remained without moving for a long time.
She was all alone in the darkness, no one else was going her way; and no
one passed along the deserted thoroughfare. She knew at once what the
streaming lamplight meant; and she tried to think what was best to do,
now that the worst was come. She arose tremblingly at last, when she had
rallied strength enough, and she went on feebly through the still
blackness of the night, like a woman suddenly stricken with great age.
She did not know that she was weeping, and the great, slow, heavy tears
of the rarely moved fell unheeded down her white cheeks. The gate was
open, as Lynn Gordon had left it, and she entered the yard noiselessly,
passing the window like an unseen shadow and with an averted face. On
the steps at the back of the house she sank down almost prone and lay
motionless, hardly conscious, she knew not for how long. The heavy tears
still fell silently and unnoticed, as the hardest rain falls without
storm. She was trying to think, but she could not; she could do nothing
but pray. And she prayed--praying as one having great faith does pray
when a tidal wave from life's troubled sea sweeps over a stranded soul.
For Anne's faith stood, even now, firm as a mighty rock anchored to the
foundations of the earth. And through all the darkness and turmoil of
this supreme spiritual stress a single ray of white light shone steadily
as a beacon to her tossed spirit. The abomination had not come through
any weakness of hers; her faith had not yielded to her love.
* * * * *
The next perfect day had worn slowly to another glorious sunset when
Anne went again down the big road, but this time toward the Gordon
place. Lynn saw her coming, and he arose from his seat on the porch,
where he chanced to be sitting alone with his cigar, and went to meet
her, thinking how foolish it was for him to be smitten at the first
sight of her by a sense of guilt and a painful conviction of having done
her an injury. He tried to throw off the feeling with a smile, as he
stood holding open the gate for her to enter.
There was no answering smile on Anne's pale face, yet its perfect
calmness and the steadiness of her clear gaze reassured him somewhat.
Her voice also was quite calm and steady when she said that she could
not come in to see his grandmother, as he invited her to do; and after a
momentary hesitation added that she had come solely to give him a
message from her husband--one that she could not send by any one else.
"Tom has sent me to ask if you will play cards with him again to-night,"
she said deliberately, in a curiously level tone, as if weighing every
word, and with her clear eyes fixed with singular intensity on the young
man's face.
"Why--of course I will--I'll be delighted to," Lynn responded eagerly,
with much relief. He had not expected her to say anything of this kind.
"But, my dear Mrs. Watson, you needn't have taken the trouble to come
all this distance yourself to ask me. I should have come willingly, no
matter who had brought the request. Mr. Watson had only to tell me when
he wished me to come."
"That is why I came. I wanted to make sure that you would come just the
same, whether I asked you or not," said Anne, still looking at him with
her luminous clearness of gaze, the white light behind her eyes shining
high and bright.
"Certainly," he replied quickly, made uneasy by her look, though he knew
not why and did not in the least understand what was in the mind of this
quiet woman of few words.
She stood silent for a moment, so frail, so pale, under the gloom of the
low, dark boughs of the cypress tree, that she seemed more spirit than
flesh. Then she silently turned away her clear eyes, in which sorrow lay
heavy as stones at the bottom of a still crystal pool. She stood for a
moment silently looking far over the shadowed fields, above which the
white banners of mist were already afloat on the evening breeze. Her
inscrutable gaze then wandered toward the cloud mountains towering in
the west, their snowy summits rifted by rivers of molten gold, and
flooding the peaceful earth with unearthly beauty.
"Until I knew whether anything that I could say or do would make any
difference--about your coming--I could not see my way," she said,
turning back, her strange eyes again looking straight into his perplexed
eyes. "Now that you have told me, I must do what is right--as nearly as
I can."
"I don't understand," faltered the young man. "Would you like me to come
with you now--at once? I am quite ready."
"I can't let you--or any one--do for my husband what I am not willing to
do for him myself. I can't ask another to commit sin for him in my
stead. If it must be done, it is _I_ who must do it--not any one else."
She spoke calmly, but with infinite sadness, and her pale face turned a
shade paler, if it could be paler than it had been when she first
appeared beneath the gloomy cypress boughs.
The young man was startled, bewildered, touched. He no longer felt like
smiling at Anne's taking the matter seriously; there was no longer
anything absurd in her attitude. His impulsive heart, always quick to
see and to respond to the real, the fine, and the high, filled now with
a sudden rush of sympathy for this quiet woman with the white face and
the spare speech, for all her narrow mind and her stern faith.
"But, my dear madam, you don't know how to play cards, do you?" he
protested confusedly, at a loss what to say or to do.
"No," said Anne, with an involuntary movement of shrinking. "But I
thought--I can't see my way. It is the first time. I don't seem to be
able to tell right from wrong. But I thought that if--if you would teach
me--that is if it wouldn't be wrong for me to ask you--even to do that!"
"How could it be wrong?" he said gently. "I have never thought that
there was any harm in card-playing merely for amusement. I will gladly
teach you what I know, which isn't a great deal, nor hard to learn."
"The path is dark before my feet. I can only stumble on till the light
be given," murmured Anne, as if thinking aloud, even as though she were
praying.
"Let's go now," said Lynn, taking a sudden resolution. "If you are not
yet satisfied, we can talk it all over as we walk along."
Anne assented silently; they passed out from beneath the shadow of the
cypress tree and went on their way up the deserted, darkened big road,
but neither found another word to say. The light of the lamp, awaiting
the game on the sick man's table, already shone far to meet them, and
when its beams fell on Anne's face Lynn turned his eyes away.
But she did not falter; she led the way through the gate and straight
into the room where that awful, dumb figure sat, striving to shuffle the
cards with its poor palsied hands, and with the gambler's terrible
eagerness flaming in his eyes. Anne laid off her bonnet, and without
speaking took the player's place opposite her husband.
Lynn was as silent as Anne herself, but he quietly placed himself,
standing, beside her, thinking as he did this and glanced at her that
the look of exaltation on Anne's white, still face must have been the
look that the martyrs wore when they entered the arena to confront the
wild beasts. He felt awed by the solemnity of the scene. He hardly dared
move or speak, it so weighed upon him, but he explained the rules and
the terms of the game as simply and as briefly as he could. He never
forgot the sudden dilation of Anne's eyes and the dimness that followed,
as though the white light behind them had suddenly flared high before
going out, when he first put the cards in her hands and the game began.
"You must draw--you draw to a straight flush. Mr. Watson stands pat,"
said Lynn, in a hushed tone, feeling as if he were desecrating some holy
place--starting at the sound of his own voice as though it sounded
through a cathedral.
"I draw to a straight flush. Mr. Watson stands pat," repeated Anne's
pale lips, as a pious soul in extremity might murmur a Latin prayer
which it did not understand.
"Now you raise him," prompted Lynn.
"Now I raise you," echoed Anne.
"Ah, he calls you and takes the pot."
"He calls me and takes the pot."
Thus begun, the game went on by surer degrees through the terrible hours
of the horrible night, till a later bedtime than Tom Watson had known
since he had ceased to be the keeper of his own time. The next morning
it was resumed as soon as breakfast was over, and continued day after
day and night after night. The teacher wearied after the first day,
though he came oftener than he might have been expected to come, since
he was young and happy, and there were other and pleasanter things
drawing him away. But Anne learned fast--faster, perhaps, than she had
ever learned anything else. There are few things that the slowest-witted
woman cannot learn when her whole heart and soul hang upon the learning.
It was therefore not long before she could play alone, after a fashion,
and from that time on she played ceaselessly through every waking
moment, stopping only for the meals that neither husband nor wife could
eat. So that every morning Anne sat down to the card-table, silently
imploring pardon for the sin which she was about to commit; every night
she lay wearily down on her sleepless bed, praying for forgiveness for
the sin which she had committed during the day. And always Anne played
with the unaltered belief--firm as her belief in the plan of
salvation--that she staked on every game the relief of her husband's
body against the saving of his soul.
XXI
WHAT OLDFIELD THOUGHT AND SAID
Thus it was that all the peace and beauty of those glorious midsummer
days brought neither rest nor pleasure to Anne.