CHAPTER XXII
One by one thou dost gather the scattered families out of the earthly light into the heavenly glory, from the distractions and strife and weariness of time to the peace of eternity. We thank thee for the labours and the joys of these mortal years. We thank thee for our deep sense of the mysteries that lie beyond our dust.—Rufus Ellis.
By Thy Rod and Thy Staff comfort us.
—Christina Rossetti.
Two days later, in response to a note from Pierce Everett, Anna went to the studio. He wrote that John Gregory had passed through Fulham and had left the picture, in which she might still feel some lingering interest.
Anna left Keith and his mother diligently occupied in their daily task of arranging and copying Keith’s European letters and journals, interspersing them with careful and copious notes from Baedeker. From this laborious undertaking, which absorbed mother and son in mutual and sympathetic devotion, Anna was self-excluded, simply because she found the letters of merely passing interest, but not of marked or lasting value and concern. Madam Burgess confessed that she could think of no occupation more graceful or becoming a young wife than this of putting in permanent form the beautiful and instructive correspondence of her beloved husband, and she found a new cause for disapproval in Anna’s indifference to the work. In her own heart Anna hid a great protest against the substitution of puerile and unproductive work like this, for the serious altruistic endeavour to which she still felt that she and Keith were both inwardly pledged. But this was an old issue, and one, indeed, to-day almost forgotten before her passionate grief concerning Mally, buried yesterday, and the promise to her which might not be fulfilled. The pitiful cry of Mally’s baby seemed to sound continually in her ears.
But another, even deeper, consciousness was that of the condemnation, brief, sharp, conclusive, of herself by John Gregory. She believed now that his judgment of her and of the line along which she was developing was in a measure just—but what then? It had suddenly become definitely declared in Anna’s thought, with no further shading or disguise, that a life of worldly ease, of self and sense-pleasing, of fashionable charity and conventional religion and of intellectual stagnation, was the only life which could be lived in harmony with the spirit of her home. Her soul lay that day in the calm which often falls upon strong natures when profound passions and powers are gathering in upheaval just below the surface. To conform, or to revolt, or to lead the wretched life of spiritual discord which seeks to avoid alike conformity and freedom, were the hard alternatives before Anna, as she thought, that day.
Pierce Everett, meeting her at the door of his studio, was startled by the pallor and sadness of her face, like that of her earlier years, but forebore to question her. He had expected to see her in the joyous bloom of his last view of her; he had looked for her to fulfil his prophecy.
The light tone of badinage and compliment with which he had involuntarily started to receive her fell from him now as impossible, seeing her face, and in almost utter silence he led her across the room and pointed to the picture of the Girlhood of Mary.
After a few moments Anna said simply, without turning to Everett, her eyes still on the picture:—