"Charteris" was engraved in large, raised letters upon the granite
coping over which Anne stepped to enter the trim burial-plot wherein her
dead lay.
The place to-day is one of the "points of interest" in Cedarwood.
Tourists, passing through Lichfield, visit it as inevitably as they do
the graves of the Presidents, the Southern generals and the many other
famous people which the old cemetery contains; and the negro hackmen of
Lichfield are already profuse in inaccurate information concerning its
occupant. In a phrase, the post card which pictures "E 9436--Grave of
John Charteris" is among the seven similar misinterpretations of
localities most frequently demanded in Lichfieldian drugstores and
news-stands.
Her victoria had paused a trifle farther up the hill, where two big
sycamores overhung the roadway. She came into the place alone, walking
quickly, for she was unwarrantably flustered by her late encounter. And
when she found, of all people, Rudolph Musgrave standing by her
husband's grave, as in a sort of puzzled and yet reverent meditation,
she was, and somehow as half-guiltily, assuring herself there was no
possible reason for the repugnance--nay, the rage,--which a mere
glimpse of trudging, painted and flamboyant Clarice Pendomer had
kindled. Yet it must be recorded that Anne had always detested Clarice.
Now Anne spoke, as the phrase runs, before she thought. "She came with
you!"
And he answered, as from the depths of an uncalled-for comprehension
which was distinctly irritating:
"Yes. And Harry, too, for that matter. Only our talk got somehow to be
not quite the sort it would be salutary for him to take an interest in.
So we told Harry to walk on slowly to the gate, and be sure not to do
any number of things he would never have thought of if we hadn't
suggested them. You know how people are with children----"
"Harry is--her boy?" Anne, being vexed, had almost added--"and yours?"
"Oh----! Say the _fons et origo_ of the Pendomer divorce case, poor
little chap. Yes, Harry is her boy."
Anne said, and again, as she perceived within the moment, a thought too
expeditiously: "I wish you wouldn't bring them here, Colonel Musgrave."
Indeed, it seemed to her flat desecration that Musgrave should have
brought his former mistress into this hallowed plot of ground. She did
not mind--illogically, perhaps--his bringing the child.
"Eh----? Oh, yes," said Colonel Musgrave. He was sensibly nettled. "You
wish 'Colonel Musgrave' wouldn't bring them here. But then, you see, we
had been to Patricia's grave. And we remembered how Jack stood by us
both when--when things bade fair to be even more unpleasant for Clarice
and myself than they actually were. You shouldn't, I think, grudge even
such moral reprobates the privilege of being properly appreciative of
what he did for both of us. Besides, you always come on Saturdays, you
know. We couldn't very well anticipate that you would be here this
afternoon."
So he had been at pains to spy upon her! Anne phrased it thus in her
soul, being irritated, and crisply answered:
"I am leaving Lichfield to-morrow. I had meant this to be my farewell to
them until October."
Colonel Musgrave had glanced toward the little headstone, with its
rather lengthy epitaph, which marked the resting-place of this woman's
only child; and then to the tall shaft whereon was engraved just "John
Charteris." The latter inscription was very characteristic of her
view-point, he reflected; and yet reasonable, too; as one might mention
a Hector or a Goethe, say, without being at pains to disclaim allusion
to the minor sharers of either name.
"Yes," he said. "Well, I shall not intrude."
"No--wait," she dissented.
Her voice was altered now, for there had come into it a marvelous
gentleness.
And Colonel Musgrave remained motionless. The whole world was
motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him.
Sunset was at hand. On one side was the high wooden fence which showed
the boundary of Cedarwood, and through its palings and above it, was
visible the broad, shallow river, comfortably colored, for the most
part, like _café au lait_, but flecked with many patches of foam and
flat iron-colored rocks and innumerable islets, some no bigger than a
billiard-table, but with even the tiniest boasting a tree or two. On the
other--westward--was a mounting vista of close-shaven turf, and many
copings, like magnified geometrical problems, and a host of stunted
growing things--with the staid verdancy of evergreens predominant--and a
multitude of candid shafts and slabs and crosses and dwarfed lambs and
meditant angels.
Some of these thronged memorials were tinged with violet, and others
were a-glitter like silver, just as the ordered trees shaded them or no
from the low sun. The disposition of all worldly affairs, the man dimly
knew, was very anciently prearranged by an illimitable and, upon the
whole, a kindly wisdom.
She was considering the change in him. Anne was recollecting that
Colonel Musgrave had somewhat pointedly avoided her since her widowhood.
He seemed almost a stranger nowadays.
And she could not recognize in the man any resemblance to the boy whom
she remembered--so long ago--excepting just his womanish mouth, which
was as in the old time very full and red and sensitive. And,
illogically enough, both this great change in him and this one feature
that had never changed annoyed her equally.
She was also worried by his odd tone of flippancy. It jarred, it
vaguely--for the phrase has no equivalent--"rubbed her the wrong way."
Here at a martyr's tomb it was hideously out-of-place, and yet she did
not see her way clear to rebuke. So she remained silent.
But Rudolph Musgrave was uncanny in some respects. For he said within
the moment, "I am not a bit like John Charteris, am I?"
"No," she answered, quietly. It had been her actual thought.
Anne stayed a tiny while quite motionless. Her eyes saw nothing
physical. It was the attitude, Colonel Musgrave reflected, of one who
listens to a far-off music and, incommunicably, you knew that the music
was of a martial sort. She was all in black, of course, very slim and
pure and beautiful. The great cluster of red roses, loosely held, was
like blood against the somber gown.
The widow of John Charteris, in fine, was a very different person from
that Anne Willoughby whom Rudolph Musgrave had loved so long and long
ago. This woman had tasted of tonic sorrows unknown to Rudolph Musgrave,
and had got consolation too, somehow, in far half-credible uplands
unvisited by him. But, he knew, she lived, and was so exquisite, mainly
by virtue of that delusion which he, of all men, had preserved; Anne
Charteris was of his creation, his masterpiece; and viewing her, he was
aware of great reverence and joy.
Anne was happy. It was for that he had played.
But aloud, "I am envious," Rudolph Musgrave declared. "He is the single
solitary man I ever knew whose widow was contented to be simply his
relict for ever and ever, amen. For you will always be just the woman
John Charteris loved, won't you? Yes, if you lived to be thirty-seven
years older than Methuselah, and every genius and potentate in the world
should come a-wooing in the meantime, it never would occur to you that
you could possibly be anything, even to an insane person, except his
relict. And he has been dead now all of three whole years! So I am
envious, just as we ordinary mortals can't help being of you both;
and--may I say it?--I am glad."