Entering her own house, she found Keith, pale and dispirited, leaning with outstretched hands over the fire in an attitude unpleasantly suggestive of decrepitude and want. He looked up as Anna came in, and smiled faintly.
“I think I have taken a fresh cold,” he said hoarsely; “this climate is lovely half the year, but the other half—” and he left the sentence unfinished, coughing sharply.
Anna sat down by the hearth and removed her mud-sodden shoes, afterward hastening to prepare such scanty remedies for Keith as the cabin afforded. There was a dispensary down at the mill. She would go down for medicine as soon as she had made him comfortable. On the surface of her mind lay the habit of sympathy and care for her husband’s fragile health, but in the depth below was a sense she could not have formulated to herself of resentment at his lack of courage and fortitude. For Keith, although too finely courteous to share in the open murmuring of the people, was himself in the full swing of reaction from the comparative enthusiasm which he had felt six months ago. The fall weather had brought on ague, which, added to his chronic physical weakness, made him altogether wretched; and while he punctiliously avoided contributing to the public discontent, Anna perceived and understood perfectly his weariness with the enterprise. For the first time in their married life his patience and sweetness of temper failed; he had grown irritable, and fretted at small inconveniences in a way which chafed Anna’s hardier spirit indescribably.
“I am very sorry, Keith, you are so miserable to-day,” Anna said now, with half-mechanical commiseration. It chanced that, as she had come on her way home from the little conversation with Mrs. Hanson, a new sympathy had taken possession of her for the lonely man upon whom fell the full burden of all this reaction, but who bore it with such unflinching patience, albeit so silently. Almost inevitably, her mind being thus absorbed, the sympathy with Keith in his familiar ailments and complaints was rendered perfunctory for the time, and by comparison his weakness wore to her some complexion of unmanliness.
Perhaps Keith discerned a shade of coldness in her tone, and was stirred by it.
“I am sure I do not know,” he said with significant emphasis, “how long I can stand this condition of things. You must see, Anna, that I am losing ground from day to day. Look at my hands!” and he held out his left hand to her, clammy and cold, for all the yellow blaze, wasted and thin even to emaciation.
Anna took the hand in hers, and caressed it with womanly gentleness, murmuring that it was too bad, and something must be done; he certainly was not properly nourished.
“Why, Anna,” the poor fellow cried, warmed by her compassion, “I would give all my ‘incomes from dreamland,’ all the fine-spun theories of economic religion and social salvation that Gregory or any other idealist ever dreamed of, to be for just one day in our own dear old library, warmed all through, floor warm, walls warm—everything, you know; to see you, beautifully dressed again, at your own table, with its silver and damask; to have the service we always had; and once, just once, Anna—to have all the hot water I want for a bath!”
Anna smiled, but forebore to speak. The echo of Mrs. Hanson’s wail was almost too much for her, and yet she pitied and understood. Pioneers must be made of sterner stuff, that was all; men who, like Emerson’s genius, should “learn to eat their meals standing, and to relish the taste of fair water and black bread.” Were there such men? She knew one. She almost began to doubt if there were any more. A few moments later she brought Keith a tray containing tea and toast, served with such little elegance as was possible, and with the daintiness of shining linen and silver.
“We must find a way for you to spend the winter in a different climate,” she said, as she stood beside him. She spoke very kindly, but with the inward sense of concession as of the stronger to the weaker. “You certainly cannot remain here if this ague continues.”