Woman Of Yesterday

<h3 class='c001'>CHAPTER XXXVI</h3></div> <div class='lg-container-b c009'> <div class='linegroup'> <div class='group'> <div class='line in18'>I said farewell;</div> <div class='line'>I stepped across the cracking earth and knew</div> <div class='line'>’Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on,</div> <div class='line in10'>... Fate has carried me</div> <div class='line'>’Mid the thick arrows; I will keep my stand,</div> <div class='line'>Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast</div> <div class='line'>To pierce another: oh, ’tis written large</div> <div class='line in10'>The thing I have to do.</div> <div class='line in34'>—<span class='sc'>George Eliot.</span></div> </div></div> </div> <p class='c010'>The following morning Anna sent for Oliver. Word had reached her that he was about to leave Fraternia. In the depth of her present distress and perplexity a thought which “had no form, a suffering which had no tongue” had arisen. Gregory, she knew, had left the village hastily that night under stress of powerful emotion, perhaps in a condition of mental excitement exceeding his own control. It seemed to her possible that somewhere on the way from Fraternia to Spalding he might have encountered Keith. The letter brought by Oliver indicated, she was more and more convinced, that he had really been on his way to her. If this were true, some event had interposed, something had occurred to hinder his coming. What could it have been, supposing him to have been but two miles away, save some mysterious, unthinkable effect of an interview with Gregory, if such there had been? It was no longer possible, no longer justifiable, to await events. She must herself discover all that Oliver knew, even if the discovery were to mean despair.</p> <p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>Alone, in her own cabin, she received Oliver. If Keith had been in Fraternia, or John Gregory, it would not have been permitted; but her intense anxiety and suspense overbore her usual shrinking from contact with the man, and Everett yielded to her wish to see him alone.</p> <p class='c011'>Oliver entered the cabin, noting its simple appointments with his characteristic curiosity. Anna pointed to a chair which he took, although she herself remained standing. Her face was as white as her dress, her eyes deeply sunken, her manner sternly imperious.</p> <p class='c011'>“You are going away from Fraternia to-day?” she asked, with swift directness.</p> <p class='c011'>“Yes,” said Oliver, nodding with his peculiar smile; “this precious demigod or demagogue—whichever you please—of yours, your imperial Gregory, has issued a ukase against me, in short, has done me the honour to banish me from the matchless delights and privileges of Fraternia!” The last word was spoken with a slow emphasis of condensed contempt.</p> <p class='c011'>“There is something really a little queer about it,” Oliver continued, in a different tone. “I am on to most of what happened between my father and Gregory, but I’ve missed a link now somewhere. You see, the governor, in a fit of temporary aberration, offered Gregory a magnificent contribution for his socialist scheme down here; but Gregory was pretty high and lofty just then, and, ‘No, sir,’ said he—I heard him, though he and the governor don’t know it—‘No, sir, I couldn’t touch your money. I am just that fastidious.’ The governor had been confessing his sins to Gregory, the worse fool he! It seemed that his money had come to him in a way that might make some men squeamish, and <span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>Gregory, oh, dear, no! he wouldn’t have touched those ill-gotten gains as he was feeling then—not with the tip of one finger.</p> <p class='c011'>“But the joke is,” Oliver went on, “that he had to come to it. Oh, yes; he got down on his marrow bones to the governor here about three months ago, and wrote to him that he had reconsidered the matter, and saw his mistake,” and Oliver gave a low chuckle; “so the governor had to come down with the lucre, more or less filthy as it was, and I don’t think he was quite so much in the mood for it either as he was at the first, to tell the truth. But he sent it all the same, and sent me with it, don’t you see? I came as the saviour of Fraternia, although I have never been so recognized. The whole town has been run the last month or two on Ingraham money, and it seems to have greased the wheels about as well as any other money, for all I see. But now comes the unexpected! Off goes Gregory to England, sends back the governor’s check, so I hear from Everett, and kindly writes me to take myself off. What brought him to that is what I don’t quite see through yet.”</p> <p class='c011'>“I have no doubt,” said Anna, concealing her dismay at Oliver’s malign disclosure with a manner of cold indifference, “that Mr. Gregory had good reasons for thinking it better for you to return to Burlington.”</p> <p class='c011'>“You’re right there,” retorted Oliver, quickly; “oh, yes, he had excellent reasons, the best of reasons. A man who knows too much is often inconvenient, you know.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Mr. Ingraham,” Anna asked hastily, apparently ignoring this insinuation although she trembled now from head to foot, “I am not interested in the business <span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>relations of your father and Mr. Gregory. It was not to hear of them I sent for you. You brought me a letter yesterday which I think must have been not long ago in my husband’s possession. I wish you to tell me if, on the night when you found this letter, that is the night before last, you saw my husband in the neighbourhood of Fraternia?”</p> <p class='c011'>“Oh, yes,” replied Oliver, as if it were quite a matter of course; “were you not expecting him?”</p> <p class='c011'>“Where did you see him?” The question came quick and sharp.</p> <p class='c011'>“Well,” said Oliver, reflectively, “you would like me to be exact, I suppose. Let me see, how shall I describe the place so that you will recall it—distinctly.”</p> <p class='c011'>There was a certain cold deliberation in the articulation of these words which gave them a sickening cruelty. They called up strange visions of dread and dismay to Anna’s tortured imagination.</p> <p class='c011'>“Speak more quickly,” she commanded, rather than asked, “the precise spot makes no difference.”</p> <p class='c011'>“It was near the edge of the woods, on the Spalding side, that I saw him first. The night was quite bright with moonlight, if you remember. I had taken a stroll down to Spalding myself for some of those little luxuries which Fraternia doesn’t furnish, and was on my way back when I first noticed Mr. Burgess. He was just striking into the path, there by that dead oak tree; you may remember it. I noticed it because it stood out so white in the moonlight, and it was just at the foot of it that I picked up that letter. I did not know that he had dropped it, nor whose it was until after I got home.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Undoubtedly false,” thought Anna; “you had not <span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>had the chance to read it, that was all,” but she did not speak. Oliver too was silent, as if he had answered her question, and was done.</p> <p class='c011'>“Please go on.” Anna kept her patience and control still.</p> <p class='c011'>“Oh!” exclaimed Oliver, as if surprised, “you want to hear more, do you? All right. I guess likely I’m the only man that can tell you, being the only witness, in fact.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Witness of what?” Anna cried importunately.</p> <p class='c011'>“Well, that’s it. That’s what I’ve asked myself more than once since that night, and I rather guess as good a description as I could give would be to call it a kind of moral murder; a moral murder,” and Oliver repeated the phrase as if gratified by the acuteness of his perception in forming it.</p> <p class='c011'>He watched her face closely, and beginning to fear from the bluish shade which tinged her pallor that Anna would soon be released from his power to torture by unconsciousness, hastily took another line.</p> <p class='c011'>“Oh, you’ve nothing to worry about, Mrs. Burgess, nothing at all. That was just a little fancy of mine, just my metaphorical way of stating things. It was a very simple little incident, nothing which need affect a man unpleasantly in the least. It just happened, you see, that Gregory was galloping down the path toward Spalding, and he met your husband, and they had a little talk together,—a mere quiet conversation for a few moments,—and Mr. Burgess seemed to change his mind about going to Fraternia just then, and turned back toward the village. That was all. I watched him a little, to be sure he didn’t need any help, you know, afterward. Gregory galloped right along; he was going <span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>to catch a train, I suppose, at C——, and that made him in something of a hurry, of course.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Why should my husband have needed help, Mr. Ingraham? Will you be good enough to explain yourself clearly, and in as few words as possible?” Anna spoke more calmly now, but her eyes were like coals of fire.</p> <p class='c011'>“Certainly, certainly. I cannot repeat Gregory’s language, not literally, but it seemed to cut Mr. Burgess up a good deal at the time,—at least I fancied so. That is what I meant by that little simile of mine awhile ago. He’s all over it now, of course. It was only a few words anyway. Just that Gregory said, in that short way he has once in awhile—Probably you’ve never heard him; he wouldn’t be apt to speak so to you,” and Oliver decorated the sentence with one of his most insinuating smiles.</p> <p class='c011'>“Mr. Gregory said—?” Anna asked, looking into his face with an unflinching directness, before which Oliver’s eyes wandered nervously.</p> <p class='c011'>“Why, he seemed surprised that Mr. Burgess should be coming back so soon, and he gave him to understand that a man like him, who was sick all the time, and not much of a Fraternian, either, was rather a drag on such a woman as you, don’t you see? and it might be fully as well if he should keep away and give you your freedom most of the time.”</p> <p class='c011'>“Did my husband make any reply that you heard?” asked Anna, huskily, this hideous distortion of unformulated traitor thoughts which had lurked in the background of her own consciousness confronting her now to her terror, and her heart doubly sick with the loathing of being forced to ask such information from such a source.</p> <p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>“He said you were at least his wife, I remember that. I guess that was about all. It struck me at the time that there was something in what he said, with all due respect for Gregory. He rules everything here, of course, though, I suppose,—even to the relations between husbands and wives.”</p> <p class='c011'>The last words were lost upon Anna.</p> <p class='c011'>“You may go now, if you please, Mr. Ingraham,” she said calmly. Her look and an unconscious gesture of dismissal were imperative, and Oliver, not daring to disobey, left the place without another word.</p> <p class='c011'>For two days Anna sat alone and in silence, waiting for the summons which she knew by a sure intuition must come.</p> <p class='c011'>Oliver’s story had been confirmed in so far that it had been learned that Keith had been seen in Spalding on the night of Gregory’s departure, and had been known to take an east-bound train on the following morning. Nothing further was discovered regarding his movements, and it was useless to try to follow and find him. Anna could only wait.</p> <p class='c011'>When the message came it was, as she had known it would be, urgent and ominous. Keith was in Raleigh; he was very ill; she must go at once.</p> <p class='c011'>Everything was ready, and with a strange composure and quietness as of one carrying out a line of action fully foreseen, Anna went on her journey, so like and yet so unlike that other journey to Keith which she had taken in her girlhood, ten years before. That had ended in their marriage. How would this end?</p> <p class='c011'>Reaching the city in the afternoon, Anna was driven with the haste she demanded to the address named in the message which had come, not from Keith himself, <span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>but from a physician. It was not that of a hotel, as she had expected, but of a boarding-house of very moderate pretensions in a quiet street. Even the small details of the place, in their cheap commonness, smote her heart. Was it in places like this that Keith had, after all, been living, instead of in the well-appointed hotels in which she had always fancied him?</p> <p class='c011'>The landlady, a kindly, careworn woman, plain of dress and of speech, received Anna with a mournful face, but forebore explanations, seeing that it was time rather for silence, and led her down a long corridor to the door of a dim and silent room.</p> <p class='c011'>There was a little stir as Anna stood in the open door; the physician came out and spoke to her, and she saw a nurse sitting quietly by a window. But Anna did not know that she saw or heard them; her sense took in only her husband, with eyes closed and the shadow of death upon his face, lying upon the strange bed in this place of strangers.</p> <p class='c011'>She was by his side and his hands were in hers, when presently he opened his eyes. Seeing her, a sudden light of clear recognition illuminated his face, a triumphant ray of joy and satisfaction. He tried to speak, but could not, but Anna felt the faint pressure of his hand.</p> <p class='c011'>Once more his lips moved, and Anna saw rather than heard the words:—</p> <p class='c011'>“Good-by, darling,” and with them the same look of ineffable love and peace. Then his eyes closed and he sank again into unconsciousness.</p> <p class='c011'>The physician, leaning over, said softly, “He will not rouse again. This was most unexpected. He has been unconscious since morning.”</p> <p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>The end came soon after midnight, unconsciousness falling into death without pain or struggle.</p> <p class='c011'>Of the days which followed Anna could never recall a distinct or coherent impression. Detached scenes and moments alone lived in her memory.</p> <p class='c011'>She knew that Everett was there and that they started for Fulham. Somewhere on the way Professor Ward met them, and Foster, the old family servant. Nothing seemed strange and nothing seemed natural; all passed to her as in a dream.</p> <p class='c011'>She was at Fulham; she remembered afterward that she sat in the library which Keith had longed for so, and his body lay beside her, below the mantelpiece where she had so often seen him lean. The old servants, hastily summoned for the occasion, went and came, and looked at her, she thought, with eyes of cold respect and mute reproach. Then Everett stood there, and she saw that tears were on his face as he looked upon his old friend, but she did not cry. Only when Everett turned toward her she said, very simply, with a motion of her hand which signified all that the place meant:—</p> <p class='c011'>“Keith gave his life—for me.” Then Everett had looked at her as if alarmed at what he saw in her face, and had gone out hastily and sent some woman to her, whom she did not want.</p> <p class='c011'>The incidents of the funeral seemed to pass by unnoticed. She remembered the moment at the grave when at last she fully realized that this was the end. Then she was at the Fulham railroad station, and Professor Ward had come to her on the train and had held her hands strongly in his, and had said with urgent emphasis:—</p> <p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>“You must always remember that Keith’s physician and all his old friends believe that his life was prolonged rather than shortened by your living in the South. Do not for a moment dwell on the opposite thought.”</p> <p class='c011'>She had felt her dry lips tremble then and her eyes grew dim, but she did not speak. The train had moved out soon, and she knew that kind eyes watched her, but she could not meet their look.</p> <p class='c011'>Of the journey down into the West to her mother that night she remembered nothing, save that the incessant jar of the train seemed to follow in a rhythmic endless repetition the familiar refrain of the old passion hymn,—</p> <div class='lg-container-b c009'> <div class='linegroup'> <div class='group'> <div class='line'>“Was ever grief like mine?”</div> </div></div> </div> <div> <span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />