Chapter 16

ALONE IN THE SNOW.

"The cold winds swept the mountain-height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child: As through the drifting snows she pressed, The babe was sleeping on her breast."--_Seba Smith_.

The head of the house was home from his mysterious errand, the real object of which was unknown to all but Marthy and his wife.

Kate unwound his muffler and took his cap; his wife assured him that she had been worried to death about him all day; the men inquired solicitously about his journey--how had he stood the cold--and Anna made ready his place at the table. But neither this domestic adulation nor the atmosphere of warmth and affection awaiting him at his own fireside served for a moment to turn him from the wanton brutality that he was pleased to dignify by the name of duty.

Anna could not help feeling the "snub," and David, whose eyes always followed Anna, saw it before the others. "Father," said he, "what's the matter, you don't speak to Anna."

"I don't want to speak to her. I don't want to look at her. I don't want anything to do with her," replied the Squire. Every one except Martha and Mrs. Bartlett was startled by this blunt, almost brutal outburst.

"I am glad you are all here, the more the better: Marthy, Professor, Mr. Sanderson, glad to see you and all the home folks"--he had a word, a nod, a pat on the back for every one but Anna, and though she sought more than one opportunity to speak to him, he deliberately avoided her.

His wife, who knew all the varying weathers of his temper was using all her small stock of diplomacy to get him to eat his supper. "When in doubt about a man, feed him," had been Louisa Bartlett's unfailing rule for the last thirty years. "Here, Amasy, sit down in your place that Anna has fixed for you. You can talk after you've had your tea. Anna, please make the Squire some fresh tea. I'm afraid this is a little cool."

"She need not make my tea, now, or on any future occasion--her days of service in my family are done for." And he hammered the table with his clenched fist.

Anna closed her eyes; it had come at last; she had always known that it was only a question of time.

The rest looked at the Squire dumbfounded. Ah, that is, but Marthy. She was licking her lips in delightful anticipation--with much the same expression as a cat would regard an uncaged canary.

"Why, father, what do you mean?" asked David in amazement. He had heard no rumor of why his father had gone to Belden.

"Now, listen, all of you," and again he thundered on the table with his fist. "Last summer I was persuaded, against my will, to take a strange woman into my house. I found out to-day that my judgment then was right. I have been imposed on--she is an imposter, an adventuress."

"Amasy, Amasy, don't be so hard on her," pleaded his wife. But the Squire had the true huntsman's instinct--when he went out to hunt, he went out to kill.

"The time has come," he continued, raising his voice and ignoring his wife's pleading, "when this home is better without her."

Anna had already begun her preparation to go. She took her cloak down from its peg and wrapped it about her without a word.

"Father, if Anna goes, I go with her," and David rose to his feet, the very incarnation of wrath, and strode over to where Anna stood apart from the rest. He put his arm about her protectingly, and stood there defiant of them all.

"David, you must be mad. What, you, a son of mine, defy your father here in the presence of your friends for that--adventuress?"

"Father, take back that word about Anna. A better woman never lived. You--who call yourself a Christian--would you send away a friendless girl a night like this? And for what reason? Because a few old cats have been gossiping about her. It is unworthy of you, father; I would not have believed it."

"So you have appointed yourself her champion, sir. No doubt she has been trying her arts on you. Don't be a fool, David; stand aside, if she wants to go, let her; women like her can look out for themselves; let her go."

"Don't make me forget, sir, that you are my father. I refuse absolutely to hear the woman I love spoken of in this way."

The rest looked on in painful silence; they seemed to be deprived of the power of speech or action by the Squire's vehemence; the wind howled about the house fitfully, and was still, then resumed its wailing grief.

"And you stand there and defy me for that woman in the presence of Kate, to whom you are as good as betrothed?"

"No, no; there is no question of an engagement between David and me, and there never can be," said Kate, not knowing in the least what to make of the turn that things had taken.

David continued to stand with his arm about Anna. He had heard the Belden gossip--a wealthy young man from Boston had been attentive to her, then left the place; jilted her, some said; been refused by her, said others. It did not make a bit of difference to David which version was true; he was ready to stand by Anna in the face of a thousand gossips. This was just his father's brutal way of upholding what he was pleased to term his authority.

"What do you know about her, David?" reiterated the Squire. "I heard reports, but like you, I would not believe them till I had investigated them fully. Ask her if she has not been the mother of an illegitimate child, who is now buried in the Episcopal cemetery at Belden--ask her if she was not known there under the name of Mrs. Lennox?"

"It is true," said the girl, raising her head, "that I was known as Mrs. Lennox. It is true that I have a child buried in Belden----"

David's arm fell from her, he buried his face in his hands and groaned. Anna opened the door, a whirling gust flared the lamps and drove a skurrying cloud of snowflakes within, yet not one hand was raised to detain her. She swayed uncertain for a moment on the threshold, then turned to them: "You have hunted me down, you have found out that I have been a mother, that I am without the protection of a husband's name, and that was enough for you--your duty stopped at the scandal. Why did you not find out that I was a young, inexperienced girl who was betrayed by a mock marriage--that I thought myself an honorable wife--why should your duty stop in hunting down a defenseless girl while the man who ruined her life sits there, a welcome guest in your house to-night?"

She was gone--David, who had been stunned by his father's words, ran after her, but the whirling flakes had hidden every trace of her, and the howling wind drove back his cry of "Anna, Anna! come back!"

Anna did not feel the cold after closing the door between her and the Squire's family; the white flame of her wrath seemed to burn up the blood in her veins, as she plunged through the snowdrifts, unconscious of the cold and storm. She had no words in which to formulate her fury at the indignity of her treatment. Her native sweetness, for the moment, had been extinguished and she was but the incarnation of wronged womanhood, crying aloud to high Heaven for justice.

The blood throbbed at her brain and the quickened circulation warmed her till she loosened the cloak at her throat and wondered, in a dazed sort of way, why she had put it on on such a stifling night. Then she remembered the snow and eagerly uplifted her flushed cheeks that the falling flakes might cool them.

But of the icy grip of the storm she was wholly unconscious. There was a mad exhilaration in facing the wild elements on such a night, the exertion of forcing through the storm chimed in with her mood; each snowdrift through which she fought her way was so much cruel injustice beaten down. She felt that she had the strength and courage to walk to the end of the earth and she went on and on, never thinking of the storm, or her destination, or where she would rest that night. Her head felt light, as if she had been drinking wine, and more than once she stopped to mop the perspiration from her forehead. How absurd for the snow to fall on such a sultry night, and foolish of those people who had turned her out to die, thinking it was cold--the thermometer must be 100. She paused to get her breath; a blast of icy wind caught her cape, and almost succeeded in robbing her of it, and the chill wrestled with the fever that was consuming her, and she realized for the first time that it was cold.

"Well, what next?" she asked herself, throwing back her head and unconsciously assuming the attitude of a creature brought to bay but still unconquered.

"What next?" She repeated it with the dull despair of one who has nothing further to fear in the way of suffering. The Fates had spent themselves on her, she no longer had the power to respond. Suppose she should become lost in a snowdrift? "Well, what did it matter?"

Then came one of those unaccountable clearings of the mental vision that nature seems to reserve for the final chapter. Her quickened brain grasped the tragedy of her life as it never had before. She saw it with impersonal eyes. Anna Moore was a stranger on whose case she could sit with unbiased judgment. Her mind swung back to the football game in the golden autumn eighteen months ago, and she heard the cheers and saw the swarms of eager, upturned faces and the dots of blue and crimson, like flowers, in a great waving field. What a panorama of life, and force, and struggle it had been! How typical of life, and the end--but no, the end was not yet; there must be some justice in life, some law of compensation. God must hear at last!

The wind came tearing down from, the pine forest, surging through the hills till it became a roar. Ah, it had sounded like that at the game. They had called "Rah, Rah Sanderson" till they were hoarse, "Sanderson, Rah! Sander-son! Rah! Rah!" The crackling forest seemed to have gone mad with the echo of his name. It had become the keynote of the wind. Rah! Rah! Sanderson!

"You can't escape him even in death" something seemed to whisper in her ear. "Ha-ha, Sanderson, San-der-son." She put her hands to her ears to shut out the hateful sound, but she heard it, like the wail of a lost soul; this time faint and far off: Sander-son--San-der-son. It was above her in the groaning, creaking branches of the trees, in the falling snow, in the whipping wind, the mockery would not be stilled.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, howled the wind, then sinking to a sigh, San-der-son--San-der-son.

The cold had begun to strike into the marrow. She moved as if her limbs were weighted. There was a mist gathering before her eyes, and she put up her hand and tried to brush it away, but it remained. She felt as if she were carrying something heavy in her arms and as she walked it grew heavier and heavier. To her wandering mind it took a pitifully familiar shape. Ah, yes! She knew what it was now; it was the baby, and she must not let it get cold. She must cover it with her cape and press it close to her bosom to keep it warm, but it was so far, so far, and it was getting heavier every moment.

And the wind continued to wail its dirge of "San-der-son, San-der-son." She went through the motion of covering up the baby's head; she did not want it to waken and hear that awful cry. She lifted up her empty arms and lowered her head to soothe the imaginary baby with a kiss, and was shocked to feel how cold its little cheek had grown. She hurried on and on. She would beg the Squire to let his wife take it in for just a minute, to warm it. She would not ask to come in herself, but the baby--no one would be so cruel as to refuse her that. It would die out here in the cold and the storm. It was so cruel, so hard to be wandering about on a night like this with the baby. Her eyes began to fill with tears, and her lower lip to quiver, but she plodded on, sometimes gaining a few steps and then retracing them, but always with the same instinct that had spurred her on to efforts beyond her strength, and this done, she had no further concern for herself. Her body especially, where the cape did not protect it against the blast, was freezing, shivering, aching all over. A latent consciousness began to dawn as the dread presence of death drew nearer; some intuitive effort of preservation asserted itself, and she kept repeating over and over: "I must not give up. I must not give up."

Presently the scene began to change, and the white formless world about her began to assume definite shape. She had seen it all before, the bare trees pointing their naked branches upward, the fringe of willows, the smooth, glassy sheet of water that was partly frozen and partly undulating toward the southern shore. The familiarity of it all began to haunt her. Had she dreamed it--was she dreaming now? Perhaps it was only a dream after all! Then, as if in a wave of clear thought, she remembered it all. It was the lake, and she had been there with the Sunday school children last summer on their picnic.

It came to her like a solution of all her troubles; it was so placid, so still, so cold. A moment and all would be forgotten. She stood with one foot on the creaking ice. It was but to walk a dozen steps to the place where the ice was but a crash of crystal and that would end it all. She was so weary of the eternal strife of things, she was so glad to lay down the burden under which her back was bending to the point of breaking.

And yet, there was the primitive instinct of self-preservation combating her inclination, urging her on to make one more final effort. Back and forth, through the snow about the lake she wandered; without being able to decide. Her strength was fast ebbing. Which--which, should it be? "God have mercy!" she cried, and fell unconscious.