they hear you say about him?”
Annie removed the omelet skilfully from the pan to a hot plate, which
she set on the range shelf, and turned to her brother.
“What nice things do they hear me say?”
“That he is so handsome; that he has such a good position; that he is
the very best young man in the place; that you should think every girl
would be head over heels in love with him; that every word he speaks is
so bright and clever.”
Annie looked at her brother.
“I don't believe you ever said one of those things,” remarked Benny.
Annie continued to look at him.
“Did you?”
“Benny dear, I am not going to tell you.”
“You won't say you never did, because that would be putting your sisters
in the wrong and admitting that they tell lies. Annie, you are a dear,
but I do think you are doing wrong and spoiling them as much as they say
you are spoiling me.”
“Perhaps I am,” said Annie. There was a strange, tragic expression
on her keen, pretty little face. She looked as if her mind was
contemplating strenuous action which was changing her very features. She
had covered the finished omelet and was now cooking another.
“I wish you would see if everybody is in the house and ready, Benny,”
said she. “When this omelet is done they must come right away, or
nothing will be fit to eat. And, Benny dear, if you don't mind, please
get the butter and the cream-pitcher out of the ice-chest. I have
everything else on the table.”
“There is another thing,” said Benny. “I don't go about telling tales,
but I do think it is time you knew. The girls tell everybody that you
like to do the housework so much that they don't dare interfere. And
it isn't so. They may have taught themselves to think it is so, but it
isn't. You would like a little time for fancy-work and reading as well
as they do.”
“Please get the cream and butter, and see if they are all in the house,”
said Annie. She spoke as usual, but the strange expression remained in
her face. It was still there when the family were all gathered at the
table and she was serving the puffy omelet. Jane noticed it first.
“What makes you look so odd, Annie?” said she.
“I don't know how I look odd,” replied Annie.
They all gazed at her then, her father with some anxiety. “You don't
look yourself,” he said. “You are feeling well, aren't you, Annie?”
“Quite well, thank you, father.”
But after the omelet was served and the tea poured Annie rose.
“Where are you going, Annie?” asked Imogen, in her sarcastic voice.
“To my room, or perhaps out in the orchard.”
“It will be sopping wet out there after the shower,” said Eliza. “Are
you crazy, Annie?”
“I have on my black skirt, and I will wear rubbers,” said Annie,
quietly. “I want some fresh air.”
“I should think you had enough fresh air. You were outdoors all the
afternoon, while we were cooped up in the house,” said Jane.
“Don't you feel well, Annie?” her father asked again, a golden bit of
omelet poised on his fork, as she was leaving the room.
“Quite well, father dear.”
“But you are eating no supper.”
“I have always heard that people who cook don't need so much to eat,”
said Imogen. “They say the essence of the food soaks in through the
pores.”
“I am quite well,” Annie repeated, and the door closed behind her.
“Dear Annie! She is always doing odd things like this,” remarked Jane.
“Yes, she is, things that one cannot account for, but Annie is a dear,”
said Susan.
“I hope she is well,” said Annie's father.
“Oh, she is well enough. Don't worry, father,” said Imogen. “Dear Annie
is always doing the unexpected. She looks very well.”
“Yes, dear Annie is quite stout, for her,” said Jane.
“I think she is thinner than I have ever seen her, and the rest of you
look like stuffed geese,” said Benny, rudely.
Imogen turned upon him in dignified wrath. “Benny, you insult your
sisters,” said she. “Father, you should really tell Benny that he should
bridle his tongue a little.”
“You ought to bridle yours, every one of you,” retorted Benny. “You
girls nag poor Annie every single minute. You let her do all the work,
then you pick at her for it.”
There was a chorus of treble voices. “We nag dear Annie! We pick at dear
Annie! We make her do everything! Father, you should remonstrate with
Benjamin. You know how we all love dear Annie!”
“Benjamin,” began Silas Hempstead, but Benny, with a smothered
exclamation, was up and out of the room.
Benny quite frankly disliked his sisters, with the exception of Annie.
For his father he had a sort of respectful tolerance. He could not see
why he should have anything else. His father had never done anything
for him except to admonish him. His scanty revenue for his support and
college expenses came from his maternal grandmother, who had been a
woman of parts and who had openly scorned her son-in-law.
Grandmother Loomis had left a will which occasioned much comment. By its
terms she had provided sparsely but adequately for Benjamin's education
and living until he should graduate; and her house, with all her
personal property, and the bulk of the sum from which she had derived
her own income, fell to her granddaughter Annie. Annie had always
been her grandmother's favorite. There had been covert dismay when the
contents of the will were made known, then one and all had congratulated
the beneficiary, and said abroad that they were glad dear Annie was so
well provided for. It was intimated by Imogen and Eliza that probably
dear Annie would not marry, and in that case Grandmother Loomis's
bequest was so fortunate. She had probably taken that into
consideration. Grandmother Loomis had now been dead four years, and her
deserted home had been for rent, furnished, but it had remained vacant.
Annie soon came back from the orchard, and after she had cleared
away the supper-table and washed the dishes she went up to her room,
carefully rearranged her hair, and changed her dress. Then she sat down
beside a window and waited and watched, her pointed chin in a cup of one
little thin hand, her soft muslin skirts circling around her, and
the scent of queer old sachet emanating from a flowered ribbon of her
grandmother's which she had tied around her waist. The ancient scent
always clung to the ribbon, suggesting faintly as a dream the musk and
roses and violets of some old summer-time.
Annie sat there and gazed out on the front yard, which was silvered over
with moonlight. Annie's four sisters all sat out there. They had spread
a rug over the damp grass and brought out chairs. There were five
chairs, although there were only four girls. Annie gazed over the yard
and down the street. She heard the chatter of the girls, which was
inconsequent and absent, as if their minds were on other things than
their conversation. Then suddenly she saw a small red gleam far down the
street, evidently that of a cigar, and also a dark, moving figure. Then
there ensued a subdued wrangle in the yard. Imogen insisted that her
sisters should go into the house. They all resisted, Eliza the most
vehemently. Imogen was arrogant and compelling. Finally she drove them
all into the house except Eliza, who wavered upon the threshold of
yielding. Imogen was obliged to speak very softly lest the approaching
man hear, but Annie, in the window above her, heard every word.
“You know he is coming to see me,” said Imogen, passionately. “You
know--you know, Eliza, and yet every single time he comes, here are you
girls, spying and listening.”
“He comes to see Annie, I believe,” said Eliza, in her stubborn voice,
which yet had indecision in it.
“He never asks for her.”
“He never has a chance. We all tell him, the minute he comes in, that
she is out. But now I am going to stay, anyway.”
“Stay if you want to. You are all a jealous lot. If you girls can't have
a beau yourselves, you begrudge one to me. I never saw such a house as
this for a man to come courting in.”
“I will stay,” said Eliza, and this time her voice was wholly firm.
“There is no use in my going, anyway, for the others are coming back.”
It was true. Back flitted Jane and Susan, and by that time Tom Reed had
reached the gate, and his cigar was going out in a shower of sparks on
the gravel walk, and all four sisters were greeting him and urging upon
his acceptance the fifth chair. Annie, watching, saw that the young man
seemed to hesitate. Then her heart leaped and she heard him speak
quite plainly, with a note of defiance and irritation, albeit with
embarrassment.
“Is Miss Annie in?” asked Tom Reed.
Imogen answered first, and her harsh voice was honey-sweet.
“I fear dear Annie is out,” she said. “She will be so sorry to miss
you.”
Annie, at her window, made a sudden passionate motion, then she sat
still and listened. She argued fiercely that she was right in so doing.
She felt that the time had come when she must know, for the sake of her
own individuality, just what she had to deal with in the natures of her
own kith and kin. Dear Annie had turned in her groove of sweetness and
gentle yielding, as all must turn who have any strength of character
underneath the sweetness and gentleness. Therefore Annie, at her window
above, listened.
At first she heard little that bore upon herself, for the conversation
was desultory, about the weather and general village topics. Then Annie
heard her own name. She was “dear Annie,” as usual. She listened, fairly
faint with amazement. What she heard from that quartette of treble
voices down there in the moonlight seemed almost like a fairy-tale.
The sisters did not violently incriminate her. They were too astute for
that. They told half-truths. They told truths which were as shadows of
the real facts, and yet not to be contradicted. They built up between
them a story marvelously consistent, unless prearranged, and that Annie
did not think possible. George Wells figured in the tale, and there were
various hints and pauses concerning herself and her own character in
daily life, and not one item could be flatly denied, even if the girl
could have gone down there and, standing in the midst of that moonlit
group, given her sisters the lie.
Everything which they told, the whole structure of falsehood, had beams
and rafters of truth. Annie felt helpless before it all. To her fancy,
her sisters and Tom Reed seemed actually sitting in a fairy building
whose substance was utter falsehood, and yet which could not be utterly
denied. An awful sense of isolation possessed her. So these were her
own sisters, the sisters whom she had loved as a matter of the simplest
nature, whom she had admired, whom she had served.
She made no allowance, since she herself was perfectly normal, for the
motive which underlay it all. She could not comprehend the strife of the
women over the one man. Tom Reed was in reality the one desirable match
in the village. Annie knew, or thought she knew, that Tom Reed had it
in mind to love her, and she innocently had it in mind to love him. She
thought of a home of her own and his with delight. She thought of it as
she thought of the roses coming into bloom in June, and she thought of
it as she thought of the every-day happenings of life--cooking, setting
rooms in order, washing dishes. However, there was something else
to reckon with, and that Annie instinctively knew. She had been
long-suffering, and her long-suffering was now regarded as endless. She
had cast her pearls, and they had been trampled. She had turned her
other cheek, and it had been promptly slapped. It was entirely true
that Annie's sisters were not quite worthy of her, that they had taken
advantage of her kindness and gentleness, and had mistaken them for
weakness, to be despised. She did not understand them, nor they her.
They were, on the whole, better than she thought, but with her there was
a stern limit of endurance. Something whiter and hotter than mere wrath
was in the girl's soul as she sat there and listened to the building of
that structure of essential falsehood about herself.
She waited until Tom Reed had gone. He did not stay long. Then she went
down-stairs with flying feet, and stood among them in the moonlight. Her
father had come out of the study, and Benny had just been entering the
gate as Tom Reed left. Then dear Annie spoke. She really spoke for the
first time in her life, and there was something dreadful about it all.
A sweet nature is always rather dreadful when it turns and strikes,
and Annie struck with the whole force of a nature with a foundation of
steel. She left nothing unsaid. She defended herself and she accused her
sisters as if before a judge. Then came her ultimatum.
“To-morrow morning I am going over to Grandmother Loomis's house, and
I am going to live there a whole year,” she declared, in a slow, steady
voice. “As you know, I have enough to live on, and--in order that no
word of mine can be garbled and twisted as it has been to-night, I speak
not at all. Everything which I have to communicate shall be written in
black and white, and signed with my own name, and black and white cannot
lie.”
It was Jane who spoke first. “What will people say?” she whimpered,
feebly.
“From what I have heard you all say to-night, whatever you make them,”
retorted Annie--the Annie who had turned.
Jane gasped. Silas Hempstead stood staring, quite dumb before the
sudden problem. Imogen alone seemed to have any command whatever of the
situation.
“May I inquire what the butcher and grocer are going to think, no
matter what your own sisters think and say, when you give your orders
in writing?” she inquired, achieving a jolt from tragedy to the
commonplace.
“That is my concern,” replied Annie, yet she recognized the difficulty
of that phase of the situation. It is just such trifling matters which
detract from the dignity of extreme attitudes toward existence. Annie
had taken an extreme attitude, yet here were the butcher and the grocer
to reckon with. How could she communicate with them in writing without
appearing absurd to the verge of insanity? Yet even that difficulty had
a solution.
Annie thought it out after she had gone to bed that night. She had been
imperturbable with her sisters, who had finally come in a body to
make entreaties, although not apologies or retractions. There was
a stiff-necked strain in the Hempstead family, and apologies and
retractions were bitterer cuds for them to chew than for most. She had
been imperturbable with her father, who had quoted Scripture and prayed
at her during family worship. She had been imperturbable even with
Benny, who had whispered to her: “Say, Annie, I don't blame you, but it
will be a hell of a time without you. Can't you stick it out?”
But she had had a struggle before her own vision of the butcher and the
grocer, and their amazement when she ceased to speak to them. Then she
settled that with a sudden leap of inspiration. It sounded too apropos
to be life, but there was a little deaf-anddumb girl, a far-away
relative of the Hempsteads, who lived with her aunt Felicia in
Anderson. She was a great trial to her aunt Felicia, who was a widow
and well-to-do, and liked the elegancies and normalities of life. This
unfortunate little Effie Hempstead could not be placed in a charitable
institution on account of the name she bore. Aunt Felicia considered it
her worldly duty to care for her, but it was a trial.
Annie would take Effie off Aunt Felicia's hands, and no comment would
be excited by a deaf-anddumb girl carrying written messages to the
tradesmen, since she obviously could not give them orally. The only
comment would be on Annie's conduct in holding herself aloof from her
family and the village people generally.
The next morning, when Annie went away, there was an excited conclave
among the sisters.
“She means to do it,” said Susan, and she wept.
Imogen's handsome face looked hard and set. “Let her, if she wants to,”
said she.
“Only think what people will say!” wailed Jane.
Imogen tossed her head. “I shall have something to say myself,” she
returned. “I shall say how much we all regret that dear Annie has such
a difficult disposition that she felt she could not live with her own
family and must be alone.”
“But,” said Jane, blunt in her distress, “will they believe it?”
“Why will they not believe it, pray?”
“Why, I am afraid people have the impression that dear Annie has--” Jane
hesitated.
“What?” asked Imogen, coldly. She looked very handsome that morning. Not
a waved golden hair was out of place on her carefully brushed head. She
wore the neatest of blue linen skirts and blouses, with a linen collar
and white tie. There was something hard but compelling about her blond
beauty.
“I am afraid,” said Jane, “that people have a sort of general impression
that dear Annie has perhaps as sweet a disposition as any of us, perhaps
sweeter.”
“Nobody says that dear Annie has not a sweet disposition,” said Imogen,
taking a careful stitch in her embroidery. “But a sweet disposition is
very often extremely difficult for other people. It constantly puts them
in the wrong. I am well aware of the fact that dear Annie does a great
deal for all of us, but it is sometimes irritating. Of course it is
quite certain that she must have a feeling of superiority because of it,
and she should not have it.”
Sometimes Eliza made illuminating speeches. “I suppose it follows,
then,” said she, with slight irony, “that only an angel can have a very
sweet disposition without offending others.”
But Imogen was not in the least nonplussed. She finished her line of
thought. “And with all her sweet disposition,” said she, “nobody can
deny that dear Annie is peculiar, and peculiarity always makes people
difficult for other people. Of course it is horribly peculiar what she
is proposing to do now. That in itself will be enough to convince people
that dear Annie must be difficult. Only a difficult person could do such
a strange thing.”
“Who is going to get up and get breakfast in the morning, and wash the
dishes?” inquired Jane, irrelevantly.
“All I ever want for breakfast is a bit of fruit, a roll, and an egg,
besides my coffee,” said Imogen, with her imperious air.
“Somebody has to prepare it.”
“That is a mere nothing,” said Imogen, and she took another stitch.
After a little, Jane and Eliza went by themselves and discussed the
problem.
“It is quite evident that Imogen means to do nothing,” said Jane.
“And also that she will justify herself by the theory that there is
nothing to be done,” said Eliza.
“Oh, well,” said Jane, “I will get up and get breakfast, of course. I
once contemplated the prospect of doing it the rest of my life.”
Eliza assented. “I can understand that it will not be so hard for you,”
she said, “and although I myself always aspired to higher things than
preparing breakfasts, still, you did not, and it is true that you would
probably have had it to do if poor Henry had lived, for he was not one
to ever have a very large salary.”
“There are better things than large salaries,” said Jane, and her face
looked sadly reminiscent. After all, the distinction of being the only
one who had been on the brink of preparing matrimonial breakfasts was
much. She felt that it would make early rising and early work endurable
to her, although she was not an active young woman.
“I will get a dish-mop and wash the dishes,” said Eliza. “I can manage
to have an instructive book propped open on the kitchen table, and keep
my mind upon higher things as I do such menial tasks.”
Then Susan stood in the doorway, a tall figure gracefully swaying
sidewise, long-throated and prominent-eyed. She was the least
attractive-looking of any of the sisters, but her manners were so
charming, and she was so perfectly the lady, that it made up for any
lack of beauty.
“I will dust,” said Susan, in a lovely voice, and as she spoke she
involuntarily bent and swirled her limp muslins in such a way that she
fairly suggested a moral duster. There was the making of an actress in
Susan. Nobody had ever been able to decide what her true individual self
was. Quite unconsciously, like a chameleon, she took upon herself the
characteristics of even inanimate things. Just now she was a duster, and
a wonderfully creditable duster.
“Who,” said Jane, “is going to sweep? Dear Annie has always done that.”
“I am not strong enough to sweep. I am very sorry,” said Susan, who
remained a duster, and did not become a broom.
“If we have system,” said Eliza, vaguely, “the work ought not to be so
very hard.”
“Of course not,” said Imogen. She had come in and seated herself. Her
three sisters eyed her, but she embroidered imperturbably. The same
thought was in the minds of all. Obviously Imogen was the very one to
take the task of sweeping upon herself. That hard, compact, young body
of hers suggested strenuous household work. Embroidery did not seem to
be her role at all.
But Imogen had no intention of sweeping. Indeed, the very imagining of
such tasks in connection with herself was beyond her. She did not even
dream that her sisters expected it of her.
“I suppose,” said Jane, “that we might be able to engage Mrs. Moss to
come in once a week and do the sweeping.”
“It would cost considerable,” said Susan.
“But it has to be done.”
“I should think it might be managed, with system, if you did not hire
anybody,” said Imogen, calmly.
“You talk of system as if it were a suction cleaner,” said Eliza, with
a dash of asperity. Sometimes she reflected how she would have hated
Imogen had she not been her sister.
“System is invaluable,” said Imogen. She looked away from her embroidery
to the white stretch of country road, arched over with elms, and
her beautiful eyes had an expression as if they sighted system, the
justified settler of all problems.
Meantime, Annie Hempstead was traveling to Anderson in the jolting
trolley-car, and trying to settle her emotions and her outlook upon
life, which jolted worse than the car upon a strange new track. She
had not the slightest intention of giving up her plan, but she realized
within herself the sensations of a revolutionist. Who in her family,
for generations and generations, had ever taken the course which she was
taking? She was not exactly frightened--Annie had splendid courage when
once her blood was up--but she was conscious of a tumult and grind of
adjustment to a new level which made her nervous.
She reached the end of the car line, then walked about half a mile to
her Aunt Felicia Hempstead's house. It was a handsome house, after the
standard of nearly half a century ago. It had an opulent air, with
its swelling breasts of bay windows, through which showed fine lace
curtains; its dormer-windows, each with its carefully draped curtains;
its black-walnut front door, whose side-lights were screened with
medallioned lace. The house sat high on three terraces of velvet-like
grass, and was surmounted by stone steps in three instalments, each of
which was flanked by stone lions.
Annie mounted the three tiers of steps between the stone lions and rang
the front-door bell, which was polished so brightly that it winked
at her like a brazen eye. Almost directly the door was opened by an
immaculate, white-capped and white-aproned maid, and Annie was ushered
into the parlor. When Annie had been a little thing she had been
enamoured of and impressed by the splendor of this parlor. Now she had
doubts of it, in spite of the long, magnificent sweep of lace curtains,
the sheen of carefully kept upholstery, the gleam of alabaster
statuettes, and the even piles of gilt-edged books upon the polished
tables.
Soon Mrs. Felicia Hempstead entered, a tall, well-set-up woman, with
a handsome face and keen eyes. She wore her usual morning costume--a
breakfast sacque of black silk profusely trimmed with lace, and a black
silk skirt. She kissed Annie, with a slight peck of closely set lips,
for she liked her. Then she sat down opposite her and regarded her with
as much of a smile as her sternly set mouth could manage, and inquired
politely regarding her health and that of the family. When Annie
broached the subject of her call, the set calm of her face relaxed, and
she nodded.
“I know what your sisters are. You need not explain to me,” she said.
“But,” returned Annie, “I do not think they realize. It is only because
I--”