Chapter 10

ANNA AND SANDERSON AGAIN MEET.

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd Nor hell a fury like a woman scorn'd."--_Congreve_.

"And who be you, with those big brown eyes, sitting on the Bartlett's porch working that butter as if you've been used to handling butter all your life? No city girl, I'm sure." Anna had been at the Squire's for a week when the above query was put to her.

The voice was high and rasping. The whole sentence was delivered without breath or pause, as if it was one long word. The speaker might have been the old maid as portrayed in the illustrated weekly. Nothing was lacking--corkscrew curls, prunella boots, cameo brooch and chain, a gown of the antiquated Redingote type, trimmed with many small ruffles and punctuated, irrelevantly, with immovable buttons.

"I am Anna Moore."

"Know as much now as I ever did," snapped the interlocutor.

"I have come to work for Mrs. Bartlett, to help her about the house."

"Land sakes. Bartlett's keeping help! How stylish they're getting."

"Yes, Marthy, we are progressing," said Kate, coming out of the house. "Anna, this is our friend, Miss Marthy Perkins."

The village gossip's confusion was but momentary. "Do you know, Kate, I just came over a-purpose to see if you'd come. What kind of clothes are they wearing in Boston? Are shirtwaists going to have tucked backs or plain? I am going to make over my gray alpaca, and I wouldn't put the scissors into it till I seen you."

"Come upstairs, Marthy, and I'll show you my new shirtwaists."

"Land sakes," said the spinster, bridling. "I would be delighted, but you know how I can't move without that Seth Holcomb a-taggin' after me; it's just awful the way I am persecuted. I do wish I'd get old and then there'll be an end of it." She held out a pair of mittens, vintage of 1812, to Kate, appealingly.

Seth Holcomb stumped in sight as she concluded; he had been Martha's faithful admirer these twenty years, but she would never reward him; her hopes of younger and less rheumatic game seemed to spring eternal.

During the few days that Anna had made one of the Squire's family she went about with deep thankfulness in her heart; she had been given the chance to work, to earn her bread by these good people. Who could tell--as time went on perhaps they would grow fond of her, learn to regard her as one of themselves--it was so much better than being so utterly alone.

Her energy never flagged, she did her share of the work with the light hand of experience that delighted the old housekeeper. It was so good to feel a roof over her head, and to feel that she was earning her right to it.

Supper had been cooked, the table laid and everything was in readiness for the family meal, but the old clock wanted five minutes of the hour; the girl came out into the glowing sunset to draw a pail of water from the old well, but paused to enjoy the scene. Purple, gold and crimson was the mantle of the departing day; and all her crushed and hopeless youth rose, cheered by its glory.

"Thank God," she murmured fervently, "at last I have found a refuge. I am beginning life again. The shadow of the old one will rest on me forever, but time and work, the cure for every grief, will cure me."

Her eyes had been turned toward the west, where the day was going out in such a riot of splendor, and she had not noticed the man who entered the gate and was making his way toward her, flicking his boots with his riding crop as he walked.

She turned suddenly at the sound of steps on the gravel; in the gathering darkness neither could see nor recognize the other till they were face to face.

The woman's face blanched, she stifled an exclamation of horror and stared at him.

"You! you here!"

It was Lennox Sanderson, and the sight of him, so suddenly, in this out-of-the-way place, made her reel, almost fainting against the well-curb.

He grabbed her arm and shook her roughly, and said, "What are you doing here, in this place?"

"I am trying to earn my living. Go, go," she whispered.

"Do you think I came here after you?" he sneered. "I've come to see the Squire." All the selfishness and cowardice latent in Sanderson's character were reflected in his face, at that moment, destroying its natural symmetry, disfiguring it with tell-tale lines, and showing him at his par value--a weak, contemptible libertine, brought to bay.

This meeting with his victim after all these long months of silence, in this remote place, deprived him, momentarily, of his customary poise and equilibrium. Why was she here? Would she denounce him to these people? What effect would it have? were some of the questions that whirled through his brain as they stood together in the gathering twilight.

But the shrinking look in her eyes allayed his fears. He read terror in every line of her quivering figure, and in the frantic way she clung to the well-curb to increase the space between them. She, with the right to accuse, unconsciously took the attitude of supplication. The man knew he had nothing to fear, and laid his plans accordingly.

"I don't believe you've come here to look for work," he said, stooping over the crouching figure. "You've come here to make trouble--to hound the life out of me."

"My hope in coming here was that I might never see you again. What could I want of you, Lennox Sanderson?"

The measured contempt of her tones was not without its effect. He winced perceptibly, but his coarse instincts rallied to his help and again he began to bully:

"Spare me the usual hard-luck story of the deceived young woman trying to make an honest living. If you insist on drudging, it's your own fault. I offered to take care of you and provide for your future, but you received my offers of assistance with a 'Villain-take-your-gold' style, that I was not prepared to accept. If, as you say, you never wish to see me again, what is simpler than to go away?"

His cold-blooded indifference, his utter withdrawal from the calamity he had brought upon her, his airy suggestion that she should go because it suited his pleasure to remain, maddened Anna. The blood rushed to her pale cheeks and there came her old conquering beauty with it. She eyed him with equal defiance.

"I shall not go, because it does not suit me." And then wavering a little at the thought of her wretched experience--"I had too much trouble finding a place where an honest home is offered for honest work, to leave this one for your whim. No, I shall not go."

They heard footsteps moving about the house. A lamp shone out from the dining-room window. The Squire's voice, inquiring for Kate, came across to them on the still summer air. They looked into each other's pale, determined faces. Which would yield? It was the old struggle between the sexes--a struggle old as earth, unsettled as chaos.

Which should yield? The man who had sinned much, or the woman who had loved much?

Sanderson employed all the force of his brutality to frighten Anna into yielding. "See here," and he caught her arm in no uncertain grasp. "You've got to go. You can't stay here in the same place with me. If money is what you want, you shall have it; but you've got to go. Do you understand? _Go_!"

He had emphasized his words by tightening the grip on her arm, and the pain of it well nigh made her cry out. He relaxed his hold just as Hi Holler came out on the porch, seized the supper horn and blew it furiously. The Squire came down and looked amazed at the smartly dressed young city man talking to Anna.

"Squire," she said, taking the initiative, "this gentleman is inquiring for you."

On hearing the Squire's footsteps, Sanderson turned to him with all the cordiality at his command, and, slapping him on the back, said: "Hello, Squire, I've just ridden over to talk to you about your prize Jersey heifer." The Squire had only met Sanderson once or twice before, and that was prior to Kate's visit to Boston; but he knew all about the young man who had become his neighbor.

Lennox Sanderson was a lucky fellow, and while waiting impatiently for his father to start him in life, his uncle, the judge, died and mentioned no one but Lennox Sanderson in his will.

The Squire had known the late Judge Sanderson, the "big man" of the county, very well, and lost no time in cultivating the acquaintance of the judge's nephew, who had fallen heir to the fine property the judge had accumulated, no small part of which was the handsome "country seat" of the judge in the neighborhood.

That is how this fine young city man happened to drop in on the Squire so unceremoniously. He had learned of Kate's return from Boston and was hastening to pay his respects to the pretty girl. To say he was astounded to find Anna on the spot is putting it mildly. He believed she had learned of his good fortune and had followed him, to make disagreeable exactions. It put him in a rage and it cost him a strong effort to conceal it before the Squire.

"Walk right in," said the Squire, beaming with hospitality. Sanderson entered and the girl found herself alone in the twilight. Anna sat on the bench by the well-curb and faced despair. She was physically so weak from her long and recent illness that the unexpected interview with Sanderson left her faint and exhausted. The momentary flare up of her righteous indignation at Sanderson's outrageous proposition that she should go away had sapped her strength and she made ready to meet one of the great crises of life with nerveless, trembling body and a mind incapable of action.

She pressed her throbbing head on the cool stones of the well-curb and prayed for light. What could she do--where could she go? Her fate rose up before her like a great stone prison wall at which she beat with naked bleeding hand and the stones still stood in all their mightiness.

How could she cope with such heartless cruelty as that of Sanderson? All that she had asked for was an honest roof in return for honest toil. And there are so few such, thought the helpless girl, remembering with awful vividness her efforts to find work and the pitfalls and barriers that had been put in her way, often in the guise of friendly interest.

She could not go out and face it all over again. It was so bleak--so bleak. There seemed to be no place in the great world that she could fill, no one stood in need of her help, no one required her services. They had no faith in her story that she was looking for work and had no home.

"What, a good-looking young girl like you! What, no home? No, no; we don't need you," or the other frightful alternative.

And yet she must go. Sanderson was right. She could not stay where he was. She must go. But where?

She could hear his voice in the dining-room, entertaining them all with his inimitable gift of story-telling. And then, their laughter--peal on peal of it--and his voice cutting in, with its well-bred modulation: "Yes, I thought it was a pretty good story myself, even if the joke was on me." And again their laughter and applause. She had no weapons with which to fight such cold-blooded selfishness. To stay meant eternal torture. She saw herself forced to face his complacent sneer day after day and death on the roadside seemed preferable.

She tried to face the situation in all its pitiful reality, but the injustice of it cried out for vengeance and she could not think. She could only bury her throbbing temples in her hands and murmur over and over again: "It is all wrong."

David found her thus, as he made his way to the house from the barn, where he had been detained later than the others. When he saw her forlorn little figure huddled by the well-curb in an attitude of absolute dejection, he could not go on without saying some word of comfort.

"Miss Anna," he said very gently, "I hope you are not going to be homesick with us."

She lifted a pale, tear-stained face, on which the lines of suffering were written far in advance of her years.

"It does not matter, Mr. David," she answered him, "I am going away."

"No, no, you are not going to do anything of the kind," he said gently; "the work seems hard today because it is new, but in a day or two you will become accustomed to it, and to us. We may seem a bit hard and unsympathetic; I can see you are not used to our ways of living, and looking at things, but we are sincere, and we want you to stay with us; indeed, we do."

She gave him a wealth of gratitude from her beautiful brown eyes. "It is not that I find the place hard, Mr. David. Every one has been so kind to me that I would be glad to stay, but--but----"

He did not press her for her reason. "You have been ill, I believe you said?"

"Yes, very ill indeed, and there are not many who would give work to a delicate girl. Oh, I am sorry to go----" She broke off wildly, and the tears filled her eyes.

"Miss Anna, when one is ill, it's hard to know what is best. Don't make up your mind just yet. Stay for a few days and give us a trial, and just call on me when you want a bucket of water or anything else that taxes your strength."

She tried to answer him but could not. They were the first words of real kindness, after all these months of sorrow and loneliness, and they broke down the icy barrier that seemed to have enclosed her heart. She bent her head and wept silently.

"There, there, little woman," he said, patting her shoulder when he would have given anything to put his arm around her and offer her the devotion of his life. But Dave had a good bit of hard common sense under his hat, and he knew that such a declaration would only hasten her departure and the wise young man continued to be brotherly, to urge her to stay for his mother's sake, and because it was so hard for a young woman to find the proper kind of a home, and really she was not a good judge of what was best for her.

And Anna, whose storm-swept soul was so weary of beating against the rocks, listened and made up her mind to enjoy the wholesome companionship of these good people, for a little while at least.