Part 50 (1/2)

But instead of fainting, Anne, holding the letters in her hand, turned and looked at her.

”Well, dear, will you go to bed?” she said, solicitously.

”Why should I go to bed?”

”I thought perhaps you had heard--had heard bad news.”

”On the contrary,” replied Anne, slowly and gravely, ”I am afraid, mademoiselle, that the news is good--even very good.”

For her heart had flown out of its cage and upward as a freed bird darts up in the sky. The bond, on her side at least, was gone; she was free.

_Now_ she would live a life of self-abnegation and labor, but without inward thralldom. Women had lived such lives before she was born, women would live such lives after she was dead. She would be one of the sisterhood, and coveting nothing of the actual joy of love, she would cherish only the ideal, an altar-light within, burning forever. The cares of each day were as nothing now: she was free, free!

In her exaltation she did not recognize as wrong the opposite course she had intended to follow before the lightning fell, namely, uniting herself to one man while so deeply loving another. She was of so humble and unconscious a spirit regarding herself that it had not seemed to her that the inner feelings of her heart would be of consequence to Rast, so long as she was the obedient, devoted, faithful wife she was determined with all her soul to be. For she had not that imaginative egotism which so many women possess, which makes them spend their lives in illusion, weaving round their every thought and word an importance which no one else can discern. According to these women, there are a thousand innocent acts which ”he” (lover or husband) ”would not for an instant allow,” although to the world at large ”he” appears indifferent enough.

They go through long turmoil, from which they emerge triumphantly, founded upon some hidden jealousy which ”he” is supposed to feel, so well hidden generally, and so entirely supposed, that persons with less imagination never observe it. But after all, smile as we may, it is only those who are in most respects happy and fortunate wives who can so entertain themselves. For cold unkindness, or a harsh and brutal word, will rend this filmy fabric of imagination immediately, never to be rewoven again.

Anne wrote to Rast, repeating the contents of the old letter, which had been doomed never to reach him. She asked him to return the wanderer unopened when it was forwarded to him from the island; there was a depth of feeling in it which it was not necessary now that he should see. She told him that her own avowal should lift from him all the weight of wrong-doing; she had first gone astray. ”We were always like brother and sister, Rast; I see it now. It is far better as it is.”

A few days later Pere Michaux wrote again, and inclosed a picture of t.i.ta. The elder sister gazed at it curiously. This was not t.i.ta; and yet those were her eyes, and that the old well-remembered mutinous expression still lurking about the little mouth. Puzzled, she took it to mademoiselle. ”It is my little sister,” she said. ”Do you think it pretty?”

Jeanne-Armande put on her spectacles, and held it frowningly at different distances from her eyes.

”It is odd,” she said at last. ”Ye--es, it is pretty too. But, for a child's face, remarkable.”

”She is not a child.”

”Not a child?”

”No; she is married,” replied Anne, smiling.

Mademoiselle pursed up her lips, and examined the picture with one eye closed. ”After all,” she said, ”I can believe it. The _eyes_ are mature.”

The little bride was represented standing; she leaned against a pillar nonchalantly, and outlined on a light background, the extreme smallness of her figure was clearly shown. Her eyes were half veiled by their large drooping lids and long lashes; her little oval face looked small, like that of a child. Her dress was long, and swept over the floor with the richness of silk: evidently Pere Michaux had not stinted the lavish little hands when they made their first purchase of a full-grown woman's attire. For the priest had taken upon himself this outlay; the ”money for close,” of which t.i.ta had written, was provided from his purse. He wrote to Anne that as he was partly responsible for the wedding, he was also responsible for the trousseau; and he returned the money which with great difficulty the elder sister had sent.

”She must be very small,” said mademoiselle, musingly, as they still studied the picture.

”She is; she has the most slender little face I ever saw.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”MISS LOIS SIGHED DEEPLY.”]

t.i.ta's head was thrown back as she leaned against the pillar; there was a half-smile on her delicate lips; her thick hair was still braided childishly in two long braids which hung over her shoulders and down on the silken skirt behind; in her small ears were odd long hoops of gold, which Pere Michaux had given her, selecting them himself on account of their adaptation to her half-Oriental, half-elfin beauty. Her cheeks showed no color; there were brown shadows under her eyes. On her slender brown hand shone the wedding ring. The picture was well executed, and had been carefully tinted under Pere Michaux's eye: the old priest knew that it was Rast's best excuse.

Now that Anne was freed, he felt no animosity toward the young husband; on the contrary, he wished to advance his interests in every way that he could. t.i.ta was a selfish little creature, yet she adored her husband.

She would have killed herself for him at any moment. But first she would have killed him.

He saw them start for the far West, and then he returned northward to his island home. Miss Lois, disheartened by all that had happened, busied herself in taking care of the boys dumbly, and often shook her head at the fire when sitting alone with her knitting. She never opened the old piano now, and she was less stringent with her Indian servants; she would even have given up quietly her perennial alphabet teaching if Pere Michaux had not discovered the intention, and quizzically approved it, whereat, of course, she was obliged to go on. In truth, the old man did this purposely, having noticed the change in his old antagonist. He fell into the habit of coming to the church-house more frequently--to teach the boys, he said. He did teach the little rascals, and taught them well, but he also talked to Miss Lois. The original founders of the church-house would have been well astonished could they have risen from their graves and beheld the old priest and the New England woman sitting on opposite sides of the fire in the neat s.h.i.+ning room, which still retained its Puritan air in spite of years, the boys, and Episcopal apostasy.

Regarding Rast's conduct, Miss Lois maintained a grim silence. The foundations of her faith in life had been shaken; but how could she, supposed to be a sternly practical person, confess it to the world--confess that she had dreamed like a girl over this broken betrothal?

”Do you not see how much happier, freer, she is?” the priest would say, after reading one of Anne's letters. ”The very tone betrays it.”