would do nothing in which you were not justified, and you have spoken to
me, anyway, and that is the main thing. I think if I had been obliged
to start to-morrow without a word from you I shouldn't have cared a hang
whether I ever came back or not. You are the only soul to hold me here;
you know that, darling.”
“Yes,” replied Annie.
“You are the only one,” repeated Tom, “but it seems to me this minute as
if you were a whole host, you dear little soul. But I don't quite like
to leave you here living alone, except for Effie.”
“Oh, I am within a stone's-throw of father's,” said Annie, lightly.
“I admit that. Still, you are alone. Annie, when are you going to marry
me?”
Annie regarded him with a clear, innocent look. She had lived such a
busy life that her mind was unfilmed by dreams. “Whenever you like,
after you come home,” said she.
“It can't be too soon for me. I want my wife and I want my home. What
will you do while I am gone, dear?”
Annie laughed. “Oh, I shall do what I have seen other girls do--get
ready to be married.”
“That means sewing, lots of hemming and tucking and stitching, doesn't
it?”
“Of course.”
“Girls are so funny,” said Tom. “Now imagine a man sitting right down
and sewing like mad on his collars and neckties and shirts the minute a
girl said she'd marry him!”
“Girls like it.”
“Well, I suppose they do,” said Tom, and he looked down at Annie from
a tender height of masculinity, and at the same time seemed to look up
from the valley of one who cannot understand the subtle and poetical
details in a woman's soul.
He did not stay long after that, for it was late. As he passed through
the gate, after a tender farewell, Annie watched him with shining eyes.
She was now to be all alone, but two things she had, her freedom and her
love, and they would suffice.
The next morning Silas Hempstead, urged by his daughters, walked
solemnly over to the next house, but he derived little satisfaction.
Annie did not absolutely refuse to speak. She had begun to realize that
carrying out her resolution to the extreme letter was impossible. But
she said as little as she could.
“I have come over here to live for the present. I am of age, and have a
right to consult my own wishes. My decision is unalterable.” Having said
this much, Annie closed her mouth and said no more. Silas argued and
pleaded. Annie sat placidly sewing beside one front window of the sunny
sittingroom. Effie, with a bit of fancy-work, sat at another. Finally
Silas went home defeated, with a last word, half condemnatory, half
placative. Silas was not the sort to stand firm against such feminine
strength as his daughter Annie's. However, he secretly held her dearer
than all his other children.
After her father had gone, Annie sat taking even stitch after even
stitch, but a few tears ran over her cheeks and fell upon the soft mass
of muslin. Effie watched with shrewd, speculative silence, like a pet
cat. Then suddenly she rose and went close to Annie, with her little
arms around her neck, and the poor dumb mouth repeating her little
speeches: “Thank you, I am very well, thank you, I am very well,” over
and over.
Annie kissed her fondly, and was aware of a sense of comfort and of love
for this poor little Effie. Still, after being nearly two months with
the child, she was relieved when Felicia Hempstead came, the first of
September, and wished to take Effie home with her. She had not gone to
Europe, after all, but to the mountains, and upon her return had missed
the little girl.
Effie went willingly enough, but Annie discovered that she too missed
her. Now loneliness had her fairly in its grip. She had a telephone
installed, and gave her orders over that. Sometimes the sound of a
human voice made her emotional to tears. Besides the voices over the
telephone, Annie had nobody, for Benny returned to college soon after
Effie left. Benny had been in the habit of coming in to see Annie, and
she had not had the heart to check him. She talked to him very little,
and knew that he was no telltale as far as she was concerned, although
he waxed most communicative with regard to the others. A few days before
he left he came over and begged her to return.
“I know the girls have nagged you till you are fairly worn out,” he
said. “I know they don't tell things straight, but I don't believe they
know it, and I don't see why you can't come home, and insist upon your
rights, and not work so hard.”
“If I come home now it will be as it was before,” said Annie.
“Can't you stand up for yourself and not have it the same?”
Annie shook her head.
“Seems as if you could,” said Benny. “I always thought a girl knew how
to manage other girls. It is rather awful the way things go now over
there. Father must be uncomfortable enough trying to eat the stuff they
set before him and living in such a dirty house.”
Annie winced. “Is it so very dirty?”
Benny whistled.
“Is the food so bad?”
Benny whistled again.
“You advised me--or it amounted to the same thing--to take this stand,”
said Annie.
“I know I did, but I didn't know how bad it would be. Guess I didn't
half appreciate you myself, Annie. Well, you must do as you think best,
but if you could look in over there your heart would ache.”
“My heart aches as it is,” said Annie, sadly.
Benny put an arm around her. “Poor girl!” he said. “It is a shame, but
you are going to marry Tom. You ought not to have the heartache.”
“Marriage isn't everything,” said Annie, “and my heart does ache, but--I
can't go back there, unless--I can't make it clear to you, Benny, but
it seems to me as if I couldn't go back there until the year is up, or
I shouldn't be myself, and it seems, too, as if I should not be doing
right by the girls. There are things more important even than doing
work for others. I have got it through my head that I can be dreadfully
selfish being unselfish.”
“Well, I suppose you are right,” admitted Benny with a sigh.
Then he kissed Annie and went away, and the blackness of loneliness
settled down upon her. She had wondered at first that none of the
village people came to see her, although she did not wish to talk to
them; then she no longer wondered. She heard, without hearing, just what
her sisters had said about her.
That was a long winter for Annie Hempstead. Letters did not come very
regularly from Tom Reed, for it was a season of heavy snowfalls and the
mails were often delayed. The letters were all that she had for comfort
and company. She had bought a canary-bird, adopted a stray kitten, and
filled her sunny windows with plants. She sat beside them and sewed, and
tried to be happy and content, but all the time there was a frightful
uncertainty deep down within her heart as to whether or not she was
doing right. She knew that her sisters were unworthy, and yet her love
and longing for them waxed greater and greater. As for her father, she
loved him as she had never loved him before. The struggle grew terrible.
Many a time she dressed herself in outdoor array and started to go
home, but something always held her back. It was a strange conflict
that endured through the winter months, the conflict of a loving,
self-effacing heart with its own instincts.
Toward the last of February her father came over at dusk. Annie ran to
the door, and he entered. He looked unkempt and dejected. He did not
say much, but sat down and looked about him with a half-angry,
half-discouraged air. Annie went out into the kitchen and broiled some
beefsteak, and creamed some potatoes, and made tea and toast. Then she
called him into the sitting-room, and he ate like one famished.
“Your sister Susan does the best she can,” he said, when he had
finished, “and lately Jane has been trying, but they don't seem to have
the knack. I don't want to urge you, Annie, but--”
“You know when I am married you will have to get on without me,” Annie
said, in a low voice.
“Yes, but in the mean time you might, if you were home, show Susan and
Jane.”
“Father,” said Annie, “you know if I came home now it would be just
the same as it was before. You know if I give in and break my word with
myself to stay away a year what they will think and do.”
“I suppose they might take advantage,” admitted Silas, heavily. “I fear
you have always given in to them too much for their own good.”
“Then I shall not give in now,” said Annie, and she shut her mouth
tightly.
There came a peal of the cracked door-bell, and Silas started with a
curious, guilty look. Annie regarded him sharply. “Who is it, father?”
“Well, I heard Imogen say to Eliza that she thought it was very foolish
for them all to stay over there and have the extra care and expense,
when you were here.”
“You mean that the girls--?”
“I think they did have a little idea that they might come here and make
you a little visit--”
Annie was at the front door with a bound. The key turned in the lock and
a bolt shot into place. Then she returned to her father, and her face
was very white.
“You did not lock your door against your own sisters?” he gasped.
“God forgive me, I did.”
The bell pealed again. Annie stood still, her mouth quivering in a
strange, rigid fashion. The curtains in the dining-room windows were
not drawn. Suddenly one window showed full of her sisters' faces. It was
Susan who spoke.
“Annie, you can't mean to lock us out?” Susan's face looked strange and
wild, peering in out of the dark. Imogen's handsome face towered over
her shoulder.
“We think it advisable to close our house and make you a visit,” she
said, quite distinctly through the glass.
Then Jane said, with an inaudible sob, “Dear Annie, you can't mean to
keep us out!”
Annie looked at them and said not a word. Their half-commanding,
half-imploring voices continued a while. Then the faces disappeared.
Annie turned to her father. “God knows if I have done right,” she said,
“but I am doing what you have taken me to account for not doing.”
“Yes, I know,” said Silas. He sat for a while silent. Then he rose,
kissed Annie--something he had seldom done--and went home. After he had
gone Annie sat down and cried. She did not go to bed that night. The cat
jumped up in her lap, and she was glad of that soft, purring comfort. It
seemed to her as if she had committed a great crime, and as if she
had suffered martyrdom. She loved her father and her sisters with such
intensity that her heart groaned with the weight of pure love. For the
time it seemed to her that she loved them more than the man whom she was
to marry. She sat there and held herself, as with chains of agony, from
rushing out into the night, home to them all, and breaking her vow.
It was never quite so bad after that night, for Annie compromised. She
baked bread and cake and pies, and carried them over after nightfall
and left them at her father's door. She even, later on, made a pot of
coffee, and hurried over with it in the dawn-light, always watching
behind a corner of a curtain until she saw an arm reached out for it.
All this comforted Annie, and, moreover, the time was drawing near when
she could go home.
Tom Reed had been delayed much longer than he expected. He would not be
home before early fall. They would not be married until November, and
she would have several months at home first.
At last the day came. Out in Silas Hempstead's front yard the grass
waved tall, dotted with disks of clover. Benny was home, and he had been
over to see Annie every day since his return. That morning when Annie
looked out of her window the first thing she saw was Benny waving a
scythe in awkward sweep among the grass and clover. An immense pity
seized her at the sight. She realized that he was doing this for her,
conquering his indolence. She almost sobbed.
“Dear, dear boy, he will cut himself,” she thought. Then she conquered
her own love and pity, even as her brother was conquering his sloth. She
understood clearly that it was better for Benny to go on with his task
even if he did cut himself.
The grass was laid low when she went home, and Benny stood, a conqueror
in a battle-field of summer, leaning on his scythe.
“Only look, Annie,” he cried out, like a child. “I have cut all the
grass.”
Annie wanted to hug him. Instead she laughed. “It was time to cut it,”
she said. Her tone was cool, but her eyes were adoring.
Benny laid down his scythe, took her by the arm, and led her into the
house. Silas and his other daughters were in the sitting-room, and the
room was so orderly it was painful. The ornaments on the mantel-shelf
stood as regularly as soldiers on parade, and it was the same with the
chairs. Even the cushions on the sofa were arranged with one corner
overlapping another. The curtains were drawn at exactly the same height
from the sill. The carpet looked as if swept threadbare.
Annie's first feeling was of worried astonishment; then her eye caught
a glimpse of Susan's kitchen apron tucked under a sofa pillow, and of
layers of dust on the table, and she felt relieved. After all, what she
had done had not completely changed the sisters, whom she loved, faults
and all. Annie realized how horrible it would have been to find her
loved ones completely changed, even for the better. They would have
seemed like strange, aloof angels to her.
They all welcomed her with a slight stiffness, yet with cordiality. Then
Silas made a little speech.
“Your father and your sisters are glad to welcome you home, dear Annie,”
he said, “and your sisters wish me to say for them that they realize
that possibly they may have underestimated your tasks and overestimated
their own. In short, they may not have been--”
Silas hesitated, and Benny finished. “What the girls want you to know,
Annie, is that they have found out they have been a parcel of pigs.”
“We fear we have been selfish without realizing it,” said Jane, and she
kissed Annie, as did Susan and Eliza. Imogen, looking very handsome
in her blue linen, with her embroidery in her hands, did not kiss her
sister. She was not given to demonstrations, but she smiled complacently
at her.
“We are all very glad to have dear Annie back, I am sure,” said she,
“and now that it is all over, we all feel that it has been for the best,
although it has seemed very singular, and made, I fear, considerable
talk. But, of course, when one person in a family insists upon taking
everything upon herself, it must result in making the others selfish.”
Annie did not hear one word that Imogen said. She was crying on Susan's
shoulder.
“Oh, I am so glad to be home,” she sobbed.
And they all stood gathered about her, rejoicing and fond of her, but
she was the one lover among them all who had been capable of hurting
them and hurting herself for love's sake.