Part 41 (2/2)

”Have you, or have you not, three brothers and one sister wholly dependent upon you?”

”I have.”

”Is it just or honorable to leave them longer to the charity of a woman who is poor herself, and not even a relative?”

”It is neither.”

”Have I, or have I not, a.s.sisted you, offered also to continue the pension which makes them comfortable?”

”You have.”

”Then,” said the old woman, still with her eyes closed, ”why persist in this idiotic stubbornness? In offending me, are you not aware that you are offending the only person on earth who can a.s.sist you? I make no promises as to the future; but I am an old woman now, one to whom you could at least be dutiful. There--I want no fine words. Show your fineness by obeying my wishes.”

”I will stay with _you_, grandaunt, willingly, gladly, gratefully, if you will take me away from this place.”

”No conditions,” said Miss Vanhorn. ”Come here; kneel down in front of me, so that I can look at you. Will you stay with me _here_, if I yield everything concerning Mr. Dexter?” She held her firmly, with her small keen eyes searching her face.

Anne was silent. Like the panorama which is said to pa.s.s before the eyes of the drowning man, the days and hours at Caryl's as they would be, must be, unrolled themselves before her. But there only followed the same desperate realization of the impossibility of remaining; the misery, the jealousy; worse than all, the self-doubt. The misery, the jealousy, she could perhaps bear, deep as they were. But what appalled her was this new doubt of herself, this new knowledge, that, in spite of all her determination, she might, if tried, yield to this love which had taken possession of her unawares, yield to certain words which he might speak, to certain tones of his voice, and thus become even more faithless to Rast, to Helen, and to herself, than she already was. If he would go away--but she knew that he would not. No, _she_ must go.

Consciousness came slowly back to her eyes, which had been meeting Miss Vanhorn's blankly.

”I can not stay,” she said.

Miss Vanhorn thrust her away violently. ”I am well paid for having had anything to do with Douglas blood,” she cried, her voice trembling with anger. ”Get back into the wilderness from whence you came! I will never hear your name on earth again.” She left the room.

In a few moments Bessmer appeared, her eyes reddened by tears, and announced that the wagon was waiting. It was at a side door. At this hour there was no one on the piazzas, and Anne's trunk was carried down, and she herself followed with Bessmer, without being seen by any one save the servants and old John Caryl.

”I am not to say anything to you, Miss Douglas, if you please, but just the ordinary things, if you please,” said Bessmer, as the wagon bore them away. ”You are to take the three o'clock train, and go--wherever you please, she said. I was to tell you.”

”Yes, Bessmer; do not be troubled. I know what to do. Will you tell grandaunt, when you return, that I beg her to forgive what has seemed obstinacy, but was only sad necessity. Can you remember it?”

”Yes, miss; only sad necessity,” repeated Bessmer, with dropping tears.

She was a meek woman, with a comfortable convexity of person, which, however, did not seem to give her confidence.

”I was not to know, miss, if you please, where you bought tickets to,”

she said, as the wagon stopped at the little station. ”I was to give you this, and then go right back.”

She handed Anne an envelope containing a fifty-dollar note. Anne looked at it a moment. ”I will not take this, I think; you can tell grandaunt that I have money enough for the present,” she said, returning it. She gave her hand kindly to the weeping maid, who was then driven away in the wagon, her sun-umbrella held askew over her respectable brown bonnet, her broad shoulders shaken with her sincere grief. A turn in the road soon hid even this poor friend of hers from view. Anne was alone.

The station-keeper was not there; his house was near by, but hidden by a grove of maples, and Anne, standing on the platform, seemed all alone, the two s.h.i.+ning rails stretching north and south having the peculiarly solitary aspect which a one-track railway always has among green fields, with no sign of life in sight. No train has pa.s.sed, or ever will pa.s.s.

It is all a dream. She walked to and fro. She could see into the waiting-room, which was adorned with three framed texts, and another placard not religiously intended, but referring, on the contrary, to steamboats, which might yet be so interpreted, namely, ”Take the Providence Line.” She noted the drearily ugly round stove, faded below to white, planted in a sand-filled box; she saw the bench, railed off into single seats by iron elbows, and remembered that during her journey eastward, two, if not three, of these places were generally filled with the packages of some solitary female of middle age, clad in half-mourning, who remained stonily un.o.bservant of the longing glances cast upon the s.p.a.ce she occupied. These thoughts came to her mechanically. When a decision has finally been made, and for the present nothing more can be done, the mind goes wandering off on trivial errands; the flight of a bird, the pa.s.sage of the fairy car of thistle-down, are sufficient to set it in motion. It seemed to her that she had been there a long time, when a step came through the grove: Hosea Plympton--or, as he was called in the neighborhood, Hosy Plim--was unlocking the station door. Anne bought her ticket, and had her trunk checked; she hoped to reach the half-house before midnight.

Hosy having attended to his official business with dignity, now came out to converse unofficially with his one pa.s.senger. ”From Caryl's, ain't you?”

”Yes,” replied Anne.

”Goin' to New York?”

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