Chapter 19

“To-night one of the others will really have to get the supper, and wash the dishes, and not be able to say she did it and I didn't, when I did,” Annie thought with unholy joy. She knew perfectly well that her viewpoint was not sanctified, but she felt that she must allow her soul to have its little witch-caper or she could not answer for the consequences. There might result spiritual atrophy, which would be much more disastrous than sin and repentance. It was either the continuance of her old life in her father's house, which was the ignominious and harmful one of the scapegoat, or this. She at last reveled in this. Here she was mistress. Here what she did, she did, and what she did not do remained undone. Here her silence was her invincible weapon. Here she was free.

The soft summer night enveloped her. The air was sweet with flowers and the grass which lay still unraked in her father's yard. A momentary feeling of impatience seized her; then she dismissed it, and peace came. What had she to do with that hay? Her father would be obliged to buy hay if it were not raked over and dried, but what of that? She had nothing to do with it.

She heard voices and soft laughter. A dark shadow passed along the street. Her heart quickened its beat. The shadow turned in at her father's gate. There was a babel of welcoming voices, of which Annie could not distinguish one articulate word. She sat leaning forward, her eyes intent upon the road. Then she heard the click of her father's gate and the dark, shadowy figure reappeared in the road. Annie knew who it was; she knew that Tom Reed was coming to see her. For a second, rapture seized her, then dismay. How well she knew her sisters-how very well! Not one of them would have given him the slightest inkling of the true situation. They would have told him, by the sweetest of insinuations, rather than by straight statements, that she had left her father's roof and come over here, but not one word would have been told him concerning her vow of silence. They would leave that for him to discover, to his amazement and anger.

Annie rose and fled. She closed the door, turned the key softly, and ran up-stairs in the dark. Kneeling before a window on the farther side from her old home, she watched with eager eyes the young man open the gate and come up the path between the old-fashioned shrubs. The clove-like fragrance of the pinks in the border came in her face. Annie watched Tom Reed disappear beneath the trellised hood of the door; then the bell tinkled through the house. It seemed to Annie that she heard it as she had never heard anything before. Every nerve in her body seemed urging her to rise and go down-stairs and admit this young man whom she loved. But her will, turned upon itself, kept her back. She could not rise and go down; something stronger than her own wish restrained her. She suffered horribly, but she remained. The bell tinkled again. There was a pause, then it sounded for the third time.

Annie leaned against the window, faint and trembling. It was rather horrible to continue such a fight between will and inclination, but she held out. She would not have been herself had she not done so. Then she saw Tom Reed's figure emerge from under the shadow of the door, pass down the path between the sweet-flowering shrubs, seeming to stir up the odor of the pinks as he did so. He started to go down the road; then Annie heard a loud, silvery call, with a harsh inflection, from her father's house. “Imogen is calling him back,” she thought.

Annie was out of the room, and, slipping softly down-stairs and out into the yard, crouched close to the fence overgrown with sweetbrier, its foundation hidden in the mallow, and there she listened. She wanted to know what Imogen and her other sisters were about to say to Tom Reed, and she meant to know. She heard every word. The distance was not great, and her sisters' voices carried far, in spite of their honeyed tones and efforts toward secrecy. By the time Tom had reached the gate of the parsonage they had all crowded down there, a fluttering assembly in their snowy summer muslins, like white doves. Annie heard Imogen first. Imogen was always the ringleader.

“Couldn't you find her?” asked Imogen.

“No. Rang three times,” replied Tom. He had a boyish voice, and his chagrin showed plainly in it. Annie knew just how he looked, how dear and big and foolish, with his handsome, bewildered face, blurting out to her sisters his disappointment, with innocent faith in their sympathy.

Then Annie heard Eliza speak in a small, sweet voice, which yet, to one who understood her, carried in it a sting of malice. “How very strange!” said Eliza.

Jane spoke next. She echoed Eliza, but her voice was more emphatic and seemed multiple, as echoes do. “Yes, very strange indeed,” said Jane.

“Dear Annie is really very singular lately. It has distressed us all, especially father,” said Susan, but deprecatingly.

Then Imogen spoke, and to the point. “Annie must be in that house,” said she. “She went in there, and she could not have gone out without our seeing her.”

Annie could fairly see the toss of Imogen's head as she spoke.

“What in thunder do you all mean?” asked Tom Reed, and there was a bluntness, almost a brutality, in his voice which was refreshing.

“I do not think such forcible language is becoming, especially at the parsonage,” said Jane.

Annie distinctly heard Tom Reed snort. “Hang it if I care whether it is becoming or not,” said he.

“You seem to forget that you are addressing ladies, sir,” said Jane.

“Don't forget it for a blessed minute,” returned Tom Reed. “Wish I could. You make it too evident that you are--ladies, with every word you speak, and all your beating about the bush. A man would blurt it out, and then I would know where I am at. Hang it if I know now. You all say that your sister is singular and that she distresses your father, and you”--addressing Imogen--“say that she must be in that house. You are the only one who does make a dab at speaking out; I will say that much for you. Now, if she is in that house, what in thunder is the matter?”

“I really cannot stay here and listen to such profane language,” said Jane, and she flitted up the path to the house like an enraged white moth. She had a fleecy white shawl over her head, and her pale outline was triangular.

“If she calls that profane, I pity her,” said Tom Reed. He had known the girls since they were children, and had never liked Jane. He continued, still addressing Imogen. “For Heaven's sake, if she is in that house, what is the matter?” said he. “Doesn't the bell ring? Yes, it does ring, though it is as cracked as the devil. I heard it. Has Annie gone deaf? Is she sick? Is she asleep? It is only eight o'clock. I don't believe she is asleep. Doesn't she want to see me? Is that the trouble? What have I done? Is she angry with me?”

Eliza spoke, smoothly and sweetly. “Dear Annie is singular,” said she.

“What the dickens do you mean by singular? I have known Annie ever since she was that high. It never struck me that she was any more singular than other girls, except she stood an awful lot of nagging without making a kick. Here you all say she is singular, as if you meant she was”--Tom hesitated a second--“crazy,” said he. “Now, I know that Annie is saner than any girl around here, and that simply does not go down. What do you all mean by singular?”

“Dear Annie may not be singular, but her actions are sometimes singular,” said Susan. “We all feel badly about this.”

“You mean her going over to her grandmother's house to live? I don't know whether I think that is anything but horse-sense. I have eyes in my head, and I have used them. Annie has worked like a dog here; I suppose she needed a rest.”

“We all do our share of the work,” said Eliza, calmly, “but we do it in a different way from dear Annie. She makes very hard work of work. She has not as much system as we could wish. She tires herself unnecessarily.”

“Yes, that is quite true,” assented Imogen. “Dear Annie gets very tired over the slightest tasks, whereas if she went a little more slowly and used more system the work would be accomplished well and with no fatigue. There are five of us to do the work here, and the house is very convenient.”

There was a silence. Tom Reed was bewildered. “But--doesn't she want to see me?” he asked, finally.

“Dear Annie takes very singular notions sometimes,” said Eliza, softly.

“If she took a notion not to go to the door when she heard the bell ring, she simply wouldn't,” said Imogen, whose bluntness of speech was, after all, a relief.

“Then you mean that you think she took a notion not to go to the door?” asked Tom, in a desperate tone.

“Dear Annie is very singular,” said Eliza, with such softness and deliberation that it was like a minor chord of music.

“Do you know of anything she has against me?” asked Tom of Imogen; but Eliza answered for her.

“Dear Annie is not in the habit of making confidantes of her sisters,” said she, “but we do know that she sometimes takes unwarranted dislikes.”

“Which time generally cures,” said Susan.

“Oh yes,” assented Eliza, “which time generally cures. She can have no reason whatever for avoiding you. You have always treated her well.”

“I have always meant to,” said Tom, so miserably and helplessly that Annie, listening, felt her heart go out to this young man, badgered by females, and she formed a sudden resolution.

“You have not seen very much of her, anyway,” said Imogen.

“I have always asked for her, but I understood she was busy,” said Tom, “and that was the reason why I saw her so seldom.”

“Oh,” said Eliza, “busy!” She said it with an indescribable tone.

“If,” supplemented Imogen, “there was system, there would be no need of any one of us being too busy to see our friends.”

“Then she has not been busy? She has not wanted to see me?” said Tom. “I think I understand at last. I have been a fool not to before. You girls have broken it to me as well as you could. Much obliged, I am sure. Good night.”

“Won't you come in?” asked Imogen.

“We might have some music,” said Eliza.

“And there is an orange cake, and I will make coffee,” said Susan.

Annie reflected rapidly how she herself had made that orange cake, and what queer coffee Susan would be apt to concoct.

“No, thank you,” said Tom Reed, briskly. “I will drop in another evening. Think I must go home now. I have some important letters. Good night, all.”

Annie made a soft rush to the gate, crouching low that her sisters might not see her. They flocked into the house with irascible murmurings, like scolding birds, while Annie stole across the grass, which had begun to glisten with silver wheels of dew. She held her skirts closely wrapped around her, and stepped through a gap in the shrubs beside the walk, then sped swiftly to the gate. She reached it just as Tom Reed was passing with a quick stride.

“Tom,” said Annie, and the young man stopped short.

He looked in her direction, but she stood close to a great snowball-bush, and her dress was green muslin, and he did not see her. Thinking that he had been mistaken, he started on, when she called again, and this time she stepped apart from the bush and her voice sounded clear as a flute.

“Tom,” she said. “Stop a minute, please.”

Tom stopped and came close to her. In the dim light she could see that his face was all aglow, like a child's, with delight and surprise.

“Is that you, Annie?” he said.

“Yes. I want to speak to you, please.”

“I have been here before, and I rang the bell three times. Then you were out, although your sisters thought not.”

“No, I was in the house.”

“You did not hear the bell?”

“Yes, I heard it every time.”

“Then why--?”

“Come into the house with me and I will tell you; at least I will tell you all I can.”

Annie led the way and the young man followed. He stood in the dark entry while Annie lit the parlor lamp. The room was on the farther side of the house from the parsonage.

“Come in and sit down,” said Annie. Then the young man stepped into a room which was pretty in spite of itself. There was an old Brussels carpet with an enormous rose pattern. The haircloth furniture gave out gleams like black diamonds under the light of the lamp. In a corner stood a what-not piled with branches of white coral and shells. Annie's grandfather had been a sea-captain, and many of his spoils were in the house. Possibly Annie's own occupation of it was due to an adventurous strain inherited from him. Perhaps the same impulse which led him to voyage to foreign shores had led her to voyage across a green yard to the next house.

Tom Reed sat down on the sofa. Annie sat in a rocking-chair near by. At her side was a Chinese teapoy, a nest of lacquer tables, and on it stood a small, squat idol. Annie's grandmother had been taken to task by her son-in-law, the Reverend Silas, for harboring a heathen idol, but she had only laughed,

“Guess as long as I don't keep heathen to bow down before him, he can't do much harm,” she had said.

Now the grotesque face of the thing seemed to stare at the two Occidental lovers with the strange, calm sarcasm of the Orient, but they had no eyes or thought for it.

“Why didn't you come to the door if you heard the bell ring?” asked Tom Reed, gazing at Annie, slender as a blade of grass in her clinging green gown.

“Because I was not able to break my will then. I had to break it to go out in the yard and ask you to come in, but when the bell rang I hadn't got to the point where I could break it.”

“What on earth do you mean, Annie?”

Annie laughed. “I don't wonder you ask,” she said, “and the worst of it is I can't half answer you. I wonder how much, or rather how little explanation will content you?”

Tom Reed gazed at her with the eyes of a man who might love a woman and have infinite patience with her, relegating his lack of understanding of her woman's nature to the background, as a thing of no consequence.

“Mighty little will do for me,” he said, “mighty little, Annie dear, if you will only tell a fellow you love him.”

Annie looked at him, and her thin, sweet face seemed to have a luminous quality, like a crescent moon. Her look was enough.

“Then you do?” said Tom Reed.

“You have never needed to ask,” said Annie. “You knew.”

“I haven't been so sure as you think,” said Tom. “Suppose you come over here and sit beside me. You look miles away.”

Annie laughed and blushed, but she obeyed. She sat beside Tom and let him put his arm around her. She sat up straight, by force of her instinctive maidenliness, but she kissed him back when he kissed her.

“I haven't been so sure,” repeated Tom. “Annie darling, why have I been unable to see more of you? I have fairly haunted your house, and seen the whole lot of your sisters, especially Imogen, but somehow or other you have been as slippery as an eel. I have always asked for you, but you were always out or busy.”

“I have been very busy,” said Annie, evasively. She loved this young man with all her heart, but she had an enduring loyalty to her own flesh and blood.

Tom was very literal. “Say, Annie,” he blurted out, “I begin to think you have had to do most of the work over there. Now, haven't you? Own up.”

Annie laughed sweetly. She was so happy that no sense of injury could possibly rankle within her. “Oh, well,” she said, lightly. “Perhaps. I don't know. I guess housekeeping comes rather easier to me than to the others. I like it, you know, and work is always easier when one likes it. The other girls don't take to it so naturally, and they get very tired, and it has seemed often that I was the one who could hurry the work through and not mind.”

“I wonder if you will stick up for me the way you do for your sisters when you are my wife?” said Tom, with a burst of love and admiration. Then he added: “Of course you are going to be my wife, Annie? You know what this means?”

“If you think I will make you as good a wife as you can find,” said Annie.

“As good a wife! Annie, do you really know what you are?”

“Just an ordinary girl, with no special talent for anything.”

“You are the most wonderful girl that ever walked the earth,” exclaimed Tom. “And as for talent, you have the best talent in the whole world; you can love people who are not worthy to tie your shoestrings, and think you are looking up when in reality you are looking down. That is what I call the best talent in the whole world for a woman.” Tom Reed was becoming almost subtle.

Annie only laughed happily again. “Well, you will have to wait and find out,” said she.

“I suppose,” said Tom, “that you came over here because you were tired out, this hot weather. I think you were sensible, but I don't think you ought to be here alone.”

“I am not alone,” replied Annie. “I have poor little Effie Hempstead with me.”

“That deaf-and-dumb child? I should think this heathen god would be about as much company.”

“Why, Tom, she is human, if she is deaf and dumb.”

Tom eyed her shrewdly. “What did you mean when you said you had broken your will?” he inquired.

“My will not to speak for a while,” said Annie, faintly.

“Not to speak--to any one?”

Annie nodded.

“Then you have broken your resolution by speaking to me?”

Annie nodded again.

“But why shouldn't you speak? I don't understand.”

“I wondered how little I could say, and have you satisfied,” Annie replied, sadly.

Tom tightened his arm around her. “You precious little soul,” he said. “I am satisfied. I know you have some good reason for not wanting to speak, but I am plaguey glad you spoke to me, for I should have been pretty well cast down if you hadn't, and to-morrow I have to go away.”

Annie leaned toward him. “Go away!”

“Yes; I have to go to California about that confounded Ames will case. And I don't know exactly where, on the Pacific coast, the parties I have to interview may be, and I may have to be away weeks, possibly months. Annie darling, it did seem to me a cruel state of things to have to go so far, and leave you here, living in such a queer fashion, and not know how you felt. Lord! but I'm glad you had sense enough to call me, Annie.”

“I couldn't let you go by, when it came to it, and Tom--”

“What, dear?”

“I did an awful mean thing: something I never was guilty of before. I--listened.”

“Well, I don't see what harm it did. You didn't hear much to your or your sisters' disadvantage, that I can remember. They kept calling you 'dear.'”

“Yes,” said Annie, quickly. Again, such was her love and thankfulness that a great wave of love and forgiveness for her sisters swept over her. Annie had a nature compounded of depths of sweetness; nobody could be mistaken with regard to that. What they did mistake was the possibility of even sweetness being at bay at times, and remaining there.

“You don't mean to speak to anybody else?” asked Tom.

“Not for a year, if I can avoid it without making comment which might hurt father.”

“Why, dear?”

“That is what I cannot tell you,” replied Annie, looking into his face with a troubled smile.

Tom looked at her in a puzzled way, then he kissed her.

“Oh, well, dear,” he said, “it is all right. I know perfectly well you 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.