CHAPTER XXVII
I tire of shams, I rush to be.—Emerson.
Gertrude Ingraham was still unmarried, still pretty, still charming in her dainty, high-bred way.
Perhaps the thought crossed Keith Burgess’s mind as he joined her in her father’s library that evening, after their return from Gregory’s lecture, that she would have been, as a wife, a shade less exigeante than Anna.
Anna, shrinking from the small coin of discussion of so great themes, had gone directly to their room,—the room which had been Keith’s on his first visit to Burlington. Keith remained in the library to accept the refreshment which Gertrude had prepared for their return, and found the situation altogether pleasing. It was a rest to a sensitive, nervous man like himself to sit down with a pretty woman who had no startling theories of life and conduct; one who had always moved, and who would always choose to move, on the comfortable lines of convention, instead of seeking some other path for herself, rough and lonely.
Perhaps Keith lingered all the more willingly to-night because he perceived a rough and lonely path opening visibly before him, into which he must in all probability turn full soon.
“What did you think of Mr. Gregory?” asked Gertrude Ingraham over her tea-cups.
“He is a tremendous speaker,” said Keith, soberly; “I never heard a man who could mould an audience to his will as he does. You were not there to-night.”
“No, but I heard him before you and Mrs. Burgess came, night before last. I think he has the finest physique of any orator I ever heard. Don’t you think that is one source of his power? There is something absolutely majestic about him when he is speaking. He seems to overpower you—you must agree with him, whether you do or not.”
“Then do you accept this new doctrine of his, Miss Ingraham?”
“You mean that there should be no social distinctions, no aristocratic and privileged class, no wealth and no poverty, and all that? I do not know what he said to-night, you see, but that is the line on which he has been speaking.”
“Yes, that is what it all comes to.”
“Why, no, of course I don’t believe in it, when I get away from Mr. Gregory,” said Gertrude, laughing prettily; “because I really think he is going against the fundamental laws of God. There have always been rich people and poor people, and it was intended that there always should be, I think.”
“It does seem absolutely impracticable to carry out any such theory in actual life. Certainly it would be under existing conditions. It can only be done by radical, by revolutionary methods. Have you heard what Mr. Gregory is actually doing to illustrate his theory? Have you heard of Fraternia?”
Gertrude Ingraham lifted her chin with a roguish little movement and nodded with a charming smile.
“Yes, I have heard of Fraternia too! Isn’t it droll? That is why I didn’t go to-night, you see. I was afraid Mr. Gregory would get hold of me with that irresistible power of his, and then I should have to go and work in a cotton mill!” and with this Gertrude lifted her eyebrows with an expression of plaintive self-pity which Keith found very taking. “I’m afraid I shouldn’t like it,” she added archly; “it would be so new, and one’s hands would get so horrid!”
They laughed together, Keith naturally noting the delicacy of the small white hands which were manipulating the transparent china on the low table between them. Then Mrs. Ingraham and others coming into the room after them, Keith rose with graceful courtesy to serve them and to draw them into the conversation. But all the while Keith had a sense that he was turning against himself the sharpest weapons which could have been found, nothing being so instinctively dreaded by him as to put himself in an absurd situation, to awaken ridicule, even his own.
Just below the surface of his thought there lay two formidable facts, like sunk, threatening rocks seen darkly under smooth water. He knew that Anna would propose to him that they should throw themselves into Gregory’s enterprise, and become disciples of the new school; and he knew that having cut off hitherto, involuntarily or otherwise, each deepest desire of her soul for the service of others, he should not dare to thwart her in this. If she wished to do this thing, he must join her in it.
Keith had himself been deeply moved by Gregory. The old passion for sacrifice and self-devotion had stirred again within him. He felt the high courage, the generosity, the strong initiative of Gregory; he was thrilled at the sight of a man who could throw himself unreservedly into a difficult and dangerous crusade, simply for an ideal, with all to lose and nothing to gain. He too had once marched to that same music; his blood was stirred, and he felt something of the enthusiasm of his student years, rising warm within him. He perfectly understood the motions of Anna’s spirit, and shared in them, up to a certain point. This point was reached when he touched the limit set by his inborn and inherited conservatism, his constitutional preference for things as they were, and his quick dread of making himself absurd. And now, Gertrude Ingraham with her pretty mocking had suddenly put the whole thing before him in the light he dreaded most.
Anna was not thus divided in her mind, and could not have been. Something of the steadfast simplicity of her ancient German ancestry preserved her from this characteristically American form of sensitiveness. She could have adopted without hesitation, any outward forms, however out of conformity to usage, however grotesque in the eyes of others, if she had felt the inward call. Gregory’s stern and lofty utterances had come to her with full prophetic weight, and had left nothing in her to rise up in doubt or gainsaying.
In this mood Keith found her. She was standing, still fully dressed, before the chimney-piece, where he had sat one night and dreamed at once of her and Gertrude Ingraham. Her hands were clasped and hanging before her; her face was slightly pale, and her eyes strangely large and luminous. Standing before her, Keith took her clasped hands between his, and looked at her with a questioning smile.
“Well, dear,” he said, “what is it?”
“You know,” she answered softly. “Was it not to you what it was to me? Is it not the very chance we wish, to redeem our poor lost hopes of service?—to leave all the luxuries and privileges and advantages, and share the world’s sorrows? to become poor and humble as our Master was? to give what we have received? Oh, Keith, is it to be, or must another hope go by?”
As Anna thus cried out, the solemn appeal of her nature, austere, and yet full-charged with noble passion, breaking at last through the barriers which had long held it back, gave her an extraordinary spiritual grandeur. There was something of awe in the look with which her husband regarded her. Weapons of fear and doubt and cavil fell before that celestial sternness in her eyes,—a look we see sometimes in the innocent eyes of young children.
“It is to be, Anna. You shall have your way this time, my wife.”
The words were spoken reverently, with grave gentleness, and Keith’s own sweet courtesy. Was it Anna’s fault that she failed, in the exaltation of her mood, to catch the sadness in them?
Keith was hardly conscious of it himself. He was thinking, on an unspoken parallel, that he would rather be privileged to adore Anna Mallison in a moment like this, even though she led him in a rough and lonely path, than to dally with another woman in smoothness and ease.