A Woman of Yesterday

by Caroline Atwater Mason

CHAPTER XXXIV

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;

I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;

Unto thine ear I hold the dead sea-shell

Cast up thy Life’s foam-fretted feet between;

Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen

Which had Life’s form and Love’s, but by my spell

Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,

Of ultimate things unuttered, the frail screen.

Mark me, how still I am!

—D. G. Rossetti.

It was mid-April and the afternoon of a day of perfect weather, of summer rather than spring.

The hills around Fraternia were covered now in sheets of flame-colour, white and rose, from the blossoming of the wild azalea and laurel. The air was laden with perfume and flooded with sunshine.

It was at the close of the afternoon school when Anna, a company of the children with her, started to climb the eastern hill which rose a little beyond the mill pond, to gather flowers.

Gregory, from the open window of his office in the mill, watched the pretty troop as they threaded their way up the steep path and were soon lost to sight in the woods. He heard them speak of Eagle Rock as the goal of their expedition,—a favourite point of view, less than a mile to walk, and nearly on the crest of the hills.

Anna was dressed in the coarse white cotton of Fraternia manufacture which was the usual dress of the girls and women of the village in the house and out in dry, warm weather, simply made, easily laundered, cleanly, and becoming. Her tall figure, the last to disappear up the woodland path, had attracted the eyes of another, as well as of John Gregory.

Oliver Ingraham, in these two months grown an all-too-familiar figure in Fraternia, finding his way stealthily and untiringly to every favourite nook and corner of the valley, had also watched the start from some lurking-place. It was half an hour later when Gregory noticed him sauntering casually along the foot of the hill, and with an air of indifference striking into the same path which Anna and the children had taken. Gregory watched him a moment fixedly, his eyebrows knit together, and he bit his lip with impatience and disgust. Of late Oliver had shown an ominous propensity to haunt Anna, whose dislike of his presence amounted well-nigh to terror. More than once Gregory’s watchful eyes, which never left Oliver’s movements long unnoted, had observed attempts on his part to follow or to overtake her, to seek her out and attach himself to her. Invariably Oliver found himself foiled in these attempts, although he had no means of attributing the interference to Gregory. Thus far the intervention had been accomplished almost unnoticeably, but none the less effectively.

The afternoon was a busy one for Gregory. The mill, no longer silent and deserted, was running now on full time; and, to the great satisfaction of a majority of the colonists, Gregory had withdrawn his scruples against selling the products of their manufacture at a reasonable profit. He was finding it easier and easier to compromise with his initial scruples. It had also become more imperative to try to meet, in so far as was reasonable, the demands of the people, since already Fraternia had suffered serious defections. A number of substantial families had withdrawn earlier in the spring, among them the Hansons and the Taylors, who had taken the pretty Fräulein Frieda with them, to Anna’s great regret. Others talked of leaving, and, in spite of the greater financial easiness, criticism and jealousy were at work in the little company at first so united. The almost insuperable difficulties attending the experiment had now fully declared themselves.

However, there was plenty of work to do, which was a material relief. Gregory glanced now at the pile of papers before him on his desk, and then once more through the window at the figure of Oliver, receding up the hill. No, he could not run the risk of allowing him to overtake and annoy Anna. The work must wait. Taking his hat, he left the mill hastily; but, instead of choosing the path behind Oliver, Gregory turned and went up the valley a little distance, struck through behind the houses, crossed a bit of boggy ground which lay at the foot of the hill in this part of the valley, and so mounted the hill below Eagle Rock in a line to intercept Oliver before he could overtake Anna, if such were his purpose.

There was no path up this side of the hill, but Gregory found no trouble in striding through the deep underbrush which would have swamped the women and children completely. Soon he reached a point from which he commanded a sight of Eagle Rock, and a glance showed him the fluttering dresses of the children already on its summit. In another moment he dashed up on a sharp climb, for the hill was very steep at this point, and reached the path only a short distance from the base of the rock. He looked up, but no one was in sight; then down the path, and in a moment Oliver came into view walking much more rapidly than fifteen minutes before, when he had entered the woods. He slackened his pace as he caught sight of Gregory slowly approaching down the path, and sought to hide a very evident discomfiture with his evil smile.

“You got up here in pretty good time, didn’t you, Mr. Gregory?” he asked, as he reached him. “I saw you, seems to me, in your office when I came along. I’ve taken my time, you see. A beautiful day for a walk.”

Oliver’s small green-grey eyes twinkled wickedly as he spoke these apparently harmless words, for he saw, or felt, that beneath every one of them Gregory’s anger, roused at last, reached a higher pitch. Oliver perfectly understood what he was here for.

“I have a word to say to you,” said Gregory, stormily. “You will have to stop haunting the women and children, and annoying them with your attentions. I speak perfectly plainly, Mr. Ingraham; they are not agreeable and they must be stopped.”

“You rule with a rod of iron here, Gregory,” said Oliver, his long fingers twining together; “what you say goes. Still, you know, you might go a little too far.”

Gregory did not reply, but stood watching him as a lion might watch a reptile.

“I am willing to stay in Fraternia, under favourable conditions,” Oliver proceeded, with hideous cunning; “but I should think, as I am paying pretty well for my accommodations, I ought, at least, to get the liberty of the grounds. What do you say?”

“I say, Go, this minute, or I’ll throw you neck and crop down that bank,” said Gregory, with unmistakable sincerity, at which Oliver, suddenly cowed, and his weak legs trembling under him, faced about promptly and retreated down the path. He paused at a safe distance, while Gregory’s hands tingled to collar him, and called back, in a loud, confidential whisper:—

“You can have her all to yourself this time. That’s all right,” and with this he hurried off, his thin lips writhing in a malicious smile, and his hands clenched tightly and cruelly.

For a moment Gregory stood still in the path. A dark flush had mounted slowly even to his forehead. He was irresolute whether to follow and find Anna, or to return directly to the valley. Something in Oliver’s ugly taunt acted like a challenge upon him, it seemed, for, turning, and catching through the trees the glimmer of Anna’s white dress, he hastened on up the path.

He found her sitting on a mossy rock at the foot of the cliff, where there were trees and shade and a fair view of the valley, and the blue billowing sea of the mountain ranges beyond. Her strength and colour had returned with the out-door life of the spring, and she looked to-day the embodiment of radiant health. Greatly astonished at Gregory’s appearance, she yet welcomed it with unaffected gladness, starting to rise from her low seat with the impulses of social observance which she could not quite outgrow even in the wilderness; but he motioned to her to sit still. All around her the children had flung their branches of laurel and azalea, running off to gather more and bring her, and the delicate suffusion of colour made an exquisite background to the picture. The picture itself, Gregory thought, Everett ought to have painted for a Madonna; for in Anna’s lap leaned a sturdy, fair-haired boy, with a cherub face, a child of less than four years, his head thrust back against her shoulder as he looked out from that vantage ground with serene eyes at Gregory, while Anna held one round little hand in hers and looked down upon the child with all the wistful fondness of unfulfilled maternal love.

“Do not smile,” said Gregory, with affected sternness at last, as she glanced up from the child to him with a questioning smile, expecting some explanation for his presence here; “I have come this time to scold you.”

“O dear!” said Anna, with a gay little laugh of surprise. “My turn has come!”

“Yes, your turn has come,” he continued gravely. “Do you not know that when you come away on such long, lonely climbs as this, even with the children, you give us anxiety for you, and trouble? I have had to come all this distance to take care of you.”

Anna shook her head, much more puzzled than penitent.

“What is there to be troubled about?” she cried.

Gregory did not answer at once. He found it impossible to make mention of Oliver in her presence. He fixed his eyes on the little child, who was on his knees now, by Anna’s side, pouring out into her white dress a small handful of scarlet berries, and letting them run like jewels through his fingers, laughing to see them roll.

“Do you not know,” he began again, very slowly, “that we fear for your strength, for your endurance, upon which you will never, yourself, have mercy?”

Anna began to protest a little, her colour deepening at some vague change in his tone and manner.

“Do you not know,” he continued, not heeding her interruption, “that you are the very heart of our life, here in Fraternia? that we all turn to you for our inspiration, our hope, our ideal? Should we not guard you, since without you we all should fade and fail?”

Never before had Anna heard this cadence of tenderness in Gregory’s voice, nor in the voice of man or woman; the whole strength of his protecting manhood, of his high reverence and his strong heart, was in it, but there was something more. What was it? A tremor ran through Anna’s heart. Could she dare to know? She lifted her eyes at last to meet his look, and what she read was what she had never dreamed of, never feared nor hoped—the supreme human love which a man can know. Reading this, she did not fear nor faint nor draw her own look away, but rather her eyes met his, full of awe and solemn joy; for at last, in that moment, her own heart was revealed to itself.

“O Anna!—O Benigna!”

Gregory spoke at last, or rather it seemed as if the whole deep heart of the man breathed out its life on the syllables of those two names.

In the silence which followed Anna sat quite quiet in her place, the sun and the soft shadows of the young oak leaves playing over her face and figure. The child still tossed his red berries with ripples of gleeful laughter over the whiteness of her dress, and not far away could be heard the busy voices of the older children as they ruthlessly broke away the blossoms from their stems. And in the sun and shade and the stillness Anna sat, while wave after wave of incredible joy broke over her spirit. For the first time in her life she knew love, knowing it for what it was. She had not asked to know it, nor mourned that she had missed its full measure, nor dreamed that it could yet be hers; but it had come, not stayed by bonds nor stopped by vows. It was here! The man whose strong spirit, in its freedom and power, had cast its spell upon her mysteriously even before she had seen his face save in a dream, loved her, with eyes to look like that upon her and that mighty tenderness! Life was fulfilled. Let death come now. It was enough!

The moment, being supreme in its way, was not one to leave room for outward excitement, for flutter and trepidation. Anna rose now from her place with perfect calmness, and bent to take the little, laughing child by the hand, while she went to call the others together. Gregory had turned away slightly, and with his arms crossed over his breast was leaning hard against the rugged wall of the cliff, his head thrown back against it, his face set, his whole aspect as of some granite figure of heroic mould, carved there in relief. Anna heard a sound like a groan break from his lips, and turning back, with an irresistible impulse, laid her hand, light as a leaf, upon his arm.

From head to foot Gregory trembled then.

“Don’t,” he said sternly, under his breath.

“What is it?” asked Anna, confused at his sudden harshness.

“It is the end,” he said, with low distinctness and the emphasis of finality.

Then, only then, did Anna waken to perceive that what in that brief moment of joy she had taken for glory, was only shame and loss and undoing, unless smothered at the birth.

An inarticulate cry broke from her then, so poignant, although low, that the little child, pulling at her dress, began to cry piteously. She stooped to comfort him, gave him again the hand which she had laid on Gregory’s arm, then, turning, walked slowly away.

Gregory made no motion to detain her or to follow, but stood as she left him, braced against the rock. Anna gathered her little flock, and they hastened down the hill in a gay procession, with the waving branches of April bloom, and the merry voices of the children. Only Sister Benigna, as she walked among them, little Judith noticed, was white and still.