Anna went on her way down the valley to the cotton mill with a sore and heavy heart. On other days she could rejoice even in a leaden sky, in the muddy, sullen stream, in the stripped branches of the forest; but to-night, for twilight was falling now, all seemed clothed in that oppressive ugliness of Tennyson’s picture:—
“When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamped in clay.”
Reaching the mill, dark and silent otherwise, she noted a light in Gregory’s office and the sound of voices, but the door was closed. She passed through the corridor to the small room beyond which was used as a dispensary. Pushing open the door she found the room empty; the young man whose charge it was seemed to have betaken himself otherwhere over early. However, Anna’s knowledge of drugs was not inconsiderable, and in this case she knew precisely what Keith needed and where to find it. So she proceeded without delay to place on the small polished counter which stretched across the narrow room, the necessary ingredients for a certain powder, and then carefully mixed these in the proportion called for by her simple prescription. While she was thus occupied she noticed with a sense of discomfort that the voices in the office, only divided from her now by a thin partition, grew louder and took on a disagreeable quality. Presently the door of the office was opened, and some one hastened from the building in evident impatience, leaving the door wide open. There was complete silence for a moment, and then Anna heard John Gregory speak. She could not fail to hear every word, although his voice was not raised, and its wonted quietness and courtesy were unchanged.
“You will bear me witness, nevertheless, Mr. Hanson,” he said, “that I never promised an easy life for those who came with me to Fraternia. I declared plainly that simplicity and poverty and roughness were to be accepted as necessary conditions.”
“That is all very well,” a voice replied, which Anna recognized as that of the Burlington architect, whose wife had evidently been working upon him; “but when simplicity means starvation for delicate women and children, and poverty begins to look like bankruptcy, the situation strikes me as pretty serious. All I have to say is,” and the man’s voice rose to a pitch of high excitement, “you are the dictator here, and you are responsible; you’ve got us into this scrape, Mr. Gregory, by working upon our emotions, and all that, and now you’ve got to get us out of it, somehow!” and with these words Anna heard the speaker leave the office with rapid steps, and a moment after the outer door of the mill closed upon him.
Anna had dropped the powders which she was dividing now into their papers, and had started to go to the door and close it that she might hear no more; but before she could do this a step in the corridor which she knew sent her back to her place with a beating heart, and in another instant John Gregory stood in the doorway.
Anna had never seen his face changed by any mental agitation, nor was it now, save for a touch of weariness and an unwonted pallor. There was a deep, sunk glow in his eyes, which, together with the careless sweep of the grey hair flung off his forehead, recalled with peculiar emphasis the leonine effect Anna had often noticed. The habitual grave composure of his manner was in no way disturbed; and although he could not have known of her presence in the dispensary, it did not seem to cause him surprise.
“Is some one ill at your house?” he asked with evident concern but characteristic abruptness. He was one of those few persons who do not find it necessary to explain what is self-evident.
“Mr. Burgess is not very well,” Anna replied, hesitating somewhat, unwilling to strike another dart into the soreness of his spirit, which she felt distinctly, for all his outward firmness.