Anne: A Novel

In the mean time young Pronando was growing into manhood at the rate of a year in a month. His handsome face, fine bearing, generous ways, and incessant activity both of limb and brain gave him a leader's place among the Western students, who studied well, were careless in dress and manner, spent their money, according to the Western fashion, like princes, and had a peculiar dry humor of their own, delivered with lantern-jawed solemnity.

Young Pronando's preparation for college had been far better than that of most of his companions, owing to Dr. Gaston's care. The boy apprehended with great rapidity – apprehended perhaps more than he comprehended: he did not take the time to comprehend. He floated lightly down the stream of college life. His comrades liked him; the young Western professors, quick, unceremonious, practical men, were constantly running against little rocks which showed a better training than their own, and were therefore shy about finding fault with him; and the old president, an Eastern man, listened furtively to his Oxford pronunciation of Greek, and sighed in spite of himself and his large salary, hating the new bare white-painted flourishing institution over which he presided with a fresher hatred – the hatred of an exile. For there was not a tree on the college grounds: Young America always cuts down all his trees as a first step toward civilization; then, after an interregnum, when all the kings of the forest have been laid low, he sets out small saplings in whitewashed tree-boxes, and watches and tends them with fervor.

Rast learned rapidly – more things than one. The school for girls, which, singularly enough, in American towns, is always found flourishing close under the walls of a college, on the excellent and heroic principle, perhaps, of resisting temptation rather than fleeing from it, was situated here at convenient distance for a variety of strict rules on both sides, which gave interest and excitement to the day. Every morning Miss Corinna Haws and her sister girded themselves for the contest with fresh-rubbed spectacles and vigilance, and every morning the girls eluded them; that is, some of the girls, namely, Louise Ray and Kate and Fanny Meadows, cousins, rivals, and beauties of the Western river-country type, where the full life and languor of the South have fused somewhat the old inherited New England delicacy and fragile contours. These three young girls were all interested in handsome Rast in their fanciful, innocent, sentimental way. They glanced at him furtively in church on Sunday; they took walks of miles to catch a distant glimpse of him; but they would have run away like frightened fawns if he had approached nearer. They wrote notes which they never sent, but carried in their pockets for days; they had deep secrets to tell each other about how they had heard that somebody had told somebody else that the Juniors were going to play ball that afternoon in Payne's meadow, and that if they could only persuade Miss Miriam to go round by the hill, they could see them, and not so very far off either, only two wheat fields and the river between. Miss Miriam was the second Miss Haws, good-tempered and – near-sighted.

That the three girls were interested in one and the same person was part of the pleasure of the affair; each would have considered it a very dreary amusement to be interested all alone. The event of the summer, the comet of that season's sky, was an invitation to a small party in the town, where it was understood that young Pronando, with five or six of his companions, would be present. Miss Haws accepted occasional invitations for her pupils, marshalling them in a bevy, herself robed in pea-green silk, like an ancient mermaid: she said that it gave them dignity. It did. The stern dignity and silence almost solemn displayed by Rast's three worshippers when they found themselves actually in the same room with him were something preternatural. They moved stiffly, as if their elbows and ankles were out of joint; they spoke to each other cautiously in the lowest whispers, with their under jaws rigid, and a difficulty with their labials; they moved their eyes carefully everywhere save toward the point where he was standing, yet knew exactly where he was every moment of the time. When he approached the quadrille which was formed in one corner by Miss Haws's young ladies, dancing virginally by themselves, they squeezed each others' hands convulsively when they passed in "ladies' chain," in token of the great fact that he was looking on. When, after the dance, they walked up and down in the hall, arm in arm, they trod upon each other's slippers as sympathetic perception of the intensity of his presence on the stairs. What an evening! How crowded full of emotions! Yet the outward appearance was simply that of three shy, awkward girls in white muslin, keeping close together, and as far as possible from a handsome, gay-hearted, fast-talking youth who never once noticed them. O the imaginative, happy, shy fancies of foolish school-girls! It is a question whether the real love which comes later ever yields that wild, fairy-like romance which these early attachments exhale; the very element of reality weights it down, and makes it less heavenly fair.

At the end of the summer Rast had acquired a deep experience in life (so he thought), a downy little golden mustache, and a better opinion of himself than ever. The world is very kind to a handsome boy of frank and spirited bearing, one who looks as though he intended to mount and ride to victory. The proud vigor of such a youth is pleasant to tired eyes; he is so sure he will succeed! And most persons older, although knowing the world better and not so sure, give him as he passes a smile and friendly word, and wish him godspeed. It is not quite fair, perhaps, to other youths of equal merit but another bearing, yet Nature orders it so. The handsome, strong, confident boy who looks her in the face with daring courage wins from her always a fine starting-place in the race of life, which seems to advance him far beyond his companions. Seems; but the end is far away.

Rast did not return to the island during the summer vacation; Dr. Gaston wished him to continue his studies with a tutor, and as the little college town was now radiant with a mild summer gayety, the young man was willing to remain. He wrote to Anne frequently, giving abstracts of his life, lists of little events like statistics in a report. He did this regularly, and omitted nothing, for the letters were his conscience. When they were once written and sent, however, off he went to new pleasures. It must be added as well that he always sought the post-office eagerly for Anne's replies, and placed them in his pocket with satisfaction. They were sometimes unread, or half read, for days, awaiting a convenient season, but they were there.

Anne's letters were long, they were pleasant, they were never exciting – the very kind to keep; like friends who last a lifetime, but who never give us one quickened pulse. Alone in his room, or stretched on the grass under a tree, reading them, Rast felt himself strongly carried back to his old life on the island, and he did not resist the feeling. His plans for the future were as yet vague, but Anne was always a part of his dream.

But this youth lived so vigorously and fully and happily in the present that there was not much time for the future and for dreams. He seldom thought. What other people thought, he felt.

CHAPTER VI

"Into the Silent Land!Ah! who shall lead us thither?Clouds in the evening sky more darkly gather,And shattered wrecks lie thicker on the strand.Who leads us with a gentle handThither, O thither,Into the Silent Land?"O Land, O Land,For all the broken-hearted,The mildest herald by our fate allottedBeckons, and with inverted torch doth standTo lead us with a gentle handTo the land of the great Departed —Into the Silent Land!"– Longfellow. From the German.

Early in September William Douglas failed suddenly. From taciturnity he sank into silence, from quiet into lethargy. He rose in the morning, but after that effort he became like a breathing statue, and sat all day in his arm-chair without stirring or noticing anything. If they brought him food he ate it, but he did not speak or answer their questions by motion or gesture. The fort surgeon was puzzled; it was evidently not paralysis. He was a new-comer on the island, and he asked many questions as to the past. Anne sincerely, Miss Lois resolutely, denied that there had ever been any trouble with the brain; Dr. Gaston drummed on the table, and answered sharply that all men of intellect were more or less mad. But the towns-people smiled, and tapped their foreheads significantly; and the new surgeon had noticed in the course of his experience that, with time for observation, the towns-people are generally right. So he gave a few medicines, ordered a generous diet, and looking about him for some friend of the family who could be trusted, selected at last Père Michaux. For Miss Lois would not treat him even civilly, bristling when he approached like a hedge-hog; and with her frank eyes meeting his, he found it impossible to speak to Anne. But he told Père Michaux the true state of his patient, and asked him to break the tidings to the family.

"He can not live long," he said.

"Is it so?" said Père Michaux. "God's will be done. Poor Anne!"

"An odd lot of children he has in that ramshackle old house of his," continued the surgeon. "Two sets, I should say."

"Yes; the second wife was a French girl."

"With Indian blood?"

"Yes."

"I thought so. Who is to have charge of them? The boys will take to the woods, I suppose, but that little Tita is an odd specimen. She would make quite a sensation in New York a few years later."

"May she never reach there!" said the old priest, fervently.

"Well, perhaps you are right. But who is to have the child?"

"Her sister will take charge of her."

"Miss Anne? Yes, she will do her best, of course; she is a fine, frank young Saxon. But I doubt if she understands that elfish little creature."

"She understands her better than we do," said the priest, with some heat.

"Ah? You know best, of course; I speak merely as an outsider," answered the new surgeon, going off about his business.

Père Michaux decided that he would tell Anne herself. He went to the house for the purpose, and called her out on the old piazza. But when she stood before him, her violet eyes meeting his without a suspicion of the tidings he brought, his heart failed him suddenly. He comprehended for the first time what it would be to her, and, making some chance inquiry, he asked to see Miss Lois, and turned away. Anne went in, and Miss Lois came out. The contrast between the priest and the New England woman was more marked than usual as they stood there facing each other on the old piazza, he less composed than he ordinarily was on account of what he had to tell. But it never occurred to him for a moment that Miss Lois would falter. Why should she? He told her. She sank down at his feet as though she had fallen there and died.

Alarmed, he bent over her, and in the twilight saw that she was not dead; her features were working strangely; her hands were clinched over her breast; her faded eyes stared at him behind the spectacles as though he were miles away. He tried to raise her. She struck at him almost fiercely. "Let me alone," she said, in a muffled voice. Then, still lying where she fell, she threw up her arms and wailed once or twice, not loudly, but with a struggling, inarticulate sound, as a person cries out in sleep. Poor old Lois! it was the last wail of her love. But even then she did not recognize it. Nor did the priest. Pale, with uncertain steps and shaking hands, yet tearless, the stricken woman raised herself by the aid of the bench, crossed the piazza, went down the path and into the street, Père Michaux's eyes following her in bewilderment. She was evidently going home, and her prim, angular shape looked strangely bare and uncovered in the lack of bonnet and shawl, for through all the years she had lived on the island she had never once been seen in the open air without them. The precision of her bonnet strings was a matter of conscience. The priest went away also. And thus it happened that Anne was not told at all.

When, late in the evening, Miss Lois returned, grayly pale, but quiet, as she entered the hall a cry met her ears and rang through the house. It had come sooner than any one expected. The sword of sorrow, which sooner or later must pierce all loving hearts, had entered Anne Douglas's breast. Her father was dead.

He had died suddenly, peacefully and without pain, passing away in sleep. Anne was with him, and Tita, jealously watchful to the last. No one else was in the room at the moment. Père Michaux, coming in, had been the first to perceive the change.

Tita drew away quickly to a distant corner, and kneeling down where she could still see everything that went on, began repeating prayers; but Anne, with a wild cry, threw herself down beside her dead, sobbing, holding his hand, and calling his name again and again. She would not believe that he was gone.

Ah, well, many of us know the sorrow. A daughter's love for a kind father is a peculiarly dependent, clinging affection; it is mixed with the careless happiness of childhood, which can never come again. Into the father's grave the daughter, sometimes a gray-haired woman, lays away forever the little pet names and memories which to all the rest of the world are but foolishness. Even though happy in her woman's lot, she weeps convulsively here for a while with a sorrow that nothing can comfort; no other love so protecting and unselfish will ever be hers again.

Anne was crushed by her grief; it seemed to those who watched her that she revealed a new nature in her sorrow. Dr. Gaston and Père Michaux spoke of it to each other, but could find little to say to the girl herself; she had, as it were, drifted beyond their reach, far out on an unknown sea. They prayed for her, and went silently away, only to come back within the hour and meet again on the threshold, recognizing each other's errand. They were troubled by the change in this young creature, upon whom they had all, in a certain way, depended. Singularly enough, Miss Lois did not seem to appreciate Anne's condition: she was suffering too deeply herself. The whole of her repressed nature was in revolt. But faithful to the unconscious secret of her life, she still thought the wild pain of her heart was "sorrow for a friend."

She went about as usual, attending to household tasks for both homes. She was unchanged, yet totally changed. There was a new tension about her mouth, and an unwonted silence, but her hands were as busy as ever. Days had passed after the funeral before she began to perceive, even slightly, the broken condition of Anne. The girl herself was the first to come back to the present, in the necessity for asking one of those sad questions which often raise their heads as soon as the coffin is borne away. "Miss Lois, there are bills to be paid, and I have no money. Do you know anything of our real income?"

The old habits of the elder woman stirred a little; but she answered, vaguely, "No."

"We must look through dear papa's papers," said Anne, her voice breaking as she spoke the name. "He received few letters, none at all lately; whatever he had, then, must be here."

Miss Lois assented, still silently, and the two began their task. Anne, with a quivering lip, unlocked her father's desk. William Douglas had not been a relic-loving man. He had lived, he had loved; but memory was sufficient for him; he needed no tokens. So, amid a hundred mementos of nature, they found nothing personal, not even a likeness of Anne's mother, or lock of her curling brown hair. And amid a mass of miscellaneous papers, writings on every philosophic and imaginative subject, they found but one relating to money – some figures jotted down, with a date affixed, the sum far from large, the date three years before. Below, a later line was added, as if (for the whole was vague) so much had gone, and this was the remainder; the date of this last line was eight months back.

"Perhaps this is it," said Anne; "perhaps this is what he had."

"I'm sure I don't know," said Miss Lois, mechanically.

They went on with the search, and at last came to a package tied in brown paper, which contained money; opening it, they counted the contents.

"Three hundred and ten dollars and eighty-five cents," said Anne.

Miss Lois took a pen and made a calculation, still with the manner of a machine. "That is about what would be left by this time, at the rate of the sums you have had, supposing the memorandum is what you think it is," she said, rubbing her forehead with a shadowy imitation of her old habit.

"It is a large sum," said Anne.

Nothing more was found. It appeared, therefore, that the five children of William Douglas were left alone in the world with exactly three hundred and ten dollars and eighty-five cents.

Dr. Gaston and Père Michaux learned the result that day; the story spread through the village and up to the fort. "I never heard anything so extraordinary in my life," said Mrs. Cromer. "That a man like Dr. Douglas should have gone on for the last four or five years deliberately living on his capital, seeing it go dollar by dollar, without making one effort to save it, or to earn an income – a father with children! I shall always believe, after this, that the villagers were right, and that his mind was affected."

The chaplain stopped these comments gruffly, and the fort ladies forgave him on account of the tremor in his voice. He left them, and went across to his little book-clogged cottage with the first indications of age showing in his gait.

"It is a blow to him; he is very fond of Anne, and hoped everything for her," said Mrs. Bryden. "I presume he would adopt her if he could; but there are the other children."

"They might go to their mother's relatives, I should think," said Mrs. Rankin.

"They could, but Anne will not allow it. You will see."

"I suppose our good chaplain has nothing to bequeath, even if he should adopt Anne?"

"No, he has no property, and has saved nothing from his little salary; it has all gone into books," answered the colonel's wife.

Another week passed. By that time Dr. Gaston and Père Michaux together had brought the reality clearly before Anne's eyes; for the girl had heretofore held such small sums of money in her hands at any one time that the amount found in the desk had seemed to her large. Père Michaux began the small list of resources by proposing that the four children should go at once to their uncle, their mother's brother, who was willing to receive them and give them a home, such as it was, among his own brood of black-eyed little ones. Anne decidedly refused. Dr. Gaston then asked her to come to him, and be his dear daughter as long as he lived.

"I must not come with them, and I can not come without them," was Anne's reply.

There remained Miss Lois. But she seemed entirely unconscious of any pressing necessity for haste in regard to the affairs of the little household, coming and going as usual, but without words; while people round her, with that virtuous readiness as to the duties of their neighbors which is so helpful in a wicked world, said loudly and frequently that she was the nearest friend, and ought to do – Here followed a variety of suggestions, which amounted in the aggregate to everything. At last, as often happens, it was an outside voice that brought the truth before her.

"And what are you thinking of doing, dear Miss Lois, for the five poor orphans?" asked the second Miss Macdougall while paying a visit of general condolence at the church-house.

"Why, what should I do?" said Miss Lois, with a faint remembrance of her old vigilant pride. "They want nothing."

"They want nothing! And not one hundred dollars apiece for them in the wide world!" exclaimed Miss Jean.

"Surely you're joking, my dear. Here's Dr. Gaston wishing to take Anne, as is most kind and natural; but she will not leave those children. Although why they should not go back to the stratum from which they came is a mystery to me. She can never make anything of them: mark my words."

Miss Jean paused; but whether Miss Lois marked her words or not, she made no response, but sat gazing straight at the wall. Miss Jean, however, knew her duty, and did it like a heroine of old. "We thought, perhaps, dear Miss Lois, that you would like to take them for a time," she said, "seeing that Anne has proved herself so obstinate as to the other arrangements proposed. The village has thought so generally, and I am not the one to hide it from you, having been taught by my lamented parent to honor and abide by veracity the most precise. We could all help you a little in clothing them for the present, and we will contribute to their support a fish now and then, a bag of meal, a barrel of potatoes, which we would do gladly – right gladly, I do assure you. For no one likes to think of Dr. Douglas's children being on the town."

The homely phrase roused Miss Lois at last. "What in the world are you talking about, Jean Macdougall?" she exclaimed, in wrath. "On the town! Are you clean daft? On the town, indeed! Clear out of my house this moment, you lying, evil-speaking woman!"

The second Miss Macdougall rose in majesty, and drew her black silk visite round her. "Of whom ye are speaking, Miss Hinsdale, I knaw not," she said, growing Scotch in her anger; "but I believe ye hae lost your wits. I tak' my departure freely, and not as sent by one who has strangely forgotten the demeanor of a leddy."

With hands folded, she swept toward the door, all the flowers on her dignified bonnet swaying perceptibly. Pausing on the threshold, she added, "As a gude Christian, and a keeper of my word, I still say, Miss Hinsdale, in spite of insults, that in the matter of a fish or two, or a barrel of potatoes now and then, ye can count upon the Macdougalls."

Left alone, Miss Lois put on her shawl and bonnet with feverish haste, and went over to the Agency. Anne was in the sitting-room, and the children were with her.

"Anne, of course you and the children are coming to live with me whenever you think it best to leave this house," said Miss Lois, appearing on the threshold like an excited ghost in spectacles. "You never thought or planned anything else, I hope?"

"No," said Anne, frankly, "I did not – at least for the present. I knew you would help us, Miss Lois, although you did not speak."

"Speak! was there any need of speaking?" said the elder woman, bursting into a few dry, harsh sobs. "You are all I have in the world, Anne. How could you mistrust me?"

"I did not," said Anne.

And then the two women kissed each other, and it was all understood without further words. And thus, through the intervention of the second Miss Macdougall (who found herself ill rewarded for her pains), Lois Hinsdale came out from the watch-chamber of her dead to real life again, took up her burden, and went on.

Anne now unfolded her plans, for she had been obliged to invent plans: necessity forced her forward. "We must all come to you for a time, dear Miss Lois; but I am young and strong, and I can work. I wish to educate the boys as father would have wished them educated. Do you ask what I can do? I think – that is, I hope – that I can teach." Then, in a lower voice, she added, "I promised father that I would do all I could for the children, and I shall keep my promise."

Miss Lois's eyes filled with tears. But the effect of the loving emotion was only to redden the lids, and make the orbs beneath look smaller and more unbeautiful than before.

For to be born into life with small, inexpressive eyes is like being born dumb. One may have a heart full of feeling, but the world will not believe it. Pass on, then, Martha, with your pale little orbs; leave the feeling to Beatrice with her deep brown glance, to Agnes with her pure blue gaze, to Isabel with hers of passionate splendor. The world does not believe you have any especial feelings, poor Martha. Then do not have them, if you can help it – and pass on.

"I have been thinking deeply," continued Anne, "and I have consulted Dr. Gaston. He says that I have a good education, but probably an old-fashioned one; at least the fort ladies told him that it would be so considered. It seems that what I need is a 'polish of modern accomplishments.' That is what he called it. Now, to obtain a teacher's place, I must have this, and I can not obtain it here." She paused; and then, like one who rides forward on a solitary charge, added, "I am going to write to Miss Vanhorn."