Anne: A Novel

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

Thus it happened that Miss Vanhorn saw Anne re-enter with the same escort who had taken her forth.

Another week passed, and another. Various scenes in the little dramas played by the different persons present followed each other with more or less notice, more or less success. One side of Dexter's nature was completely fascinated with Rachel Bannert—with her beauty, which a saint-worshipper would have denied, although why saintliness should be a matter of blonde hair remains undiscovered; with her dress and grace of manner; with her undoubted position in that narrow circle which he wished to enter even while condemning—perhaps merely to conquer it and turn away again. His rival with Rachel was Heathcote; he had discovered that. He was conscious that he detested Heathcote. While thus secretly interested in Rachel, he yet found time, however, to give a portion of each day to Anne; he did this partly from policy and partly from jealous annoyance. For here too he found the other man. Heathcote, in truth, seemed to be amusing himself in much the same way. If Dexter waltzed with Rachel, Heathcote offered his arm to Anne and took her out on the piazza; if Dexter walked with Anne there, Heathcote took Rachel into the rose-scented dusky garden. But Dexter had Miss Vanhorn's favor, if that was anything. She went to drive with him and took Anne; she allowed him to accompany them on their botanizing expeditions; she talked to him, and even listened to his descriptions of his life and adventures. In reality she cared no more for him than for a Choctaw; no more for his life than for that of Robinson Crusoe. But he was a rich man, and he would do for Anne, who was not a Vanhorn, but merely a Douglas. He had showed some liking for the girl; the affair should be encouraged and clinched. She, Katharine Vanhorn, would clinch it. He must be a very different man from the diagnosis she had made up of him if he did not yield to her clinching.

During these weeks, therefore, there had been many long conversations between Anne and Mr. Dexter; they had talked on many subjects appropriate to the occasion—Dexter was always appropriate. He had quoted pages of poetry, and he quoted well. He had, like Othello, related his adventures, and they were thrilling and true. Then, when more sure of her, he had turned the conversation upon herself. It is a fascinating subject—one's self! Anne touched it timidly here and there, but, never having had the habit or even the knowledge of self-analysis, she was more uncomfortable than pleased, after all, and inclined mentally to run away. She did not know herself whether she had more imagination than timidity, whether conscientiousness was more developed in her than ideality, or whether, if obliged to choose between saving the life of a brother or a husband, she would choose the former or the latter. Dexter had to drag her opinions of her own character from her almost by main strength. But he persisted. He had never known an imaginative young girl at the age when all things are problems to her who was not secretly, often openly, fascinated by a sympathetic research into her own timid little characteristics, opening like buds within her one by one. Dexter's theory was correct, his rule a good one probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred; only—Anne was the hundredth. She began to be afraid of him as he came toward her, kind, smiling, with his invisible air of success about him, ready for one of their long conversations. Yet certainly he was as pleasant a companion as a somewhat lonely young girl, isolated at a place like Caryl's, could wish for; at least that is what every one would have said.

During these weeks there had been no long talks with Heathcote. Miss Vanhorn did not ask him to accompany them to the woods; she did not utter to him the initiative word in passing which gives the opportunity. Still, there had been chance meetings and chance words, of course—five-minute strolls on the piazza, five-minute looks at the sunset or at the stars, in the pauses between the dances. But where Heathcote took a minute, Dexter had, if he chose, an hour.

Although in one way now so idle, Anne seemed to herself never to have been so busy before. Miss Vanhorn kept her at work upon plants through a large portion of each day, and required her to be promptly ready upon all other occasions. She barely found time to write to Miss Lois, who was spending the summer in a state betwixt anger and joy, veering one way by reason, the other by wrath, yet unable to refrain entirely from satisfaction over the new clothes for the children which Miss Vanhorn's money had enabled her to buy. The allowance was paid in advance; and it made Anne light-hearted whenever she thought, as she did daily, of the comforts it gave to those she loved. To Rast, Anne wrote in the early morning, her only free time. Rast was now on the island, but he was to go in a few days. This statement, continually repeated, like lawyers' notices of sales postponed from date to date, had lasted all summer, and still lasted. He had written to Anne as usual, until Miss Vanhorn, although without naming him, had tartly forbidden "so many letters." Then Anne asked him to write less frequently, and he obeyed. She, however, continued to write herself as before, describing her life at Caryl's, while he answered (as often as he was allowed), telling of his plans, and complaining that they were to be separated so long. But he was going to the far West, and there he should soon win a home for her. He counted the days till that happy time.

And then Anne would sit and dream of the island: she saw the old house, Rast, and the children, Miss Lois's thin, energetic face, the blue Straits, the white fort, and the little inclosure on the heights where were the two graves. She closed her eyes and heard their voices; she told them all she hoped. Only this one more winter, and then she could see them again, send them help, and perhaps have one of the children with her. And then, the year after— But here Miss Vanhorn's voice calling her name broke the vision, and with a sigh she returned to Caryl's again.

Helen's letters had ceased; but Anne jotted down a faithful record of the events of the days for her inspection when she came. Rumors varied at Caryl's respecting Mrs. Lorrington. Now her grandfather had died, and left her everything; and now he had miraculously recovered, and deeded his fortune to charitable institutions. Now he had existed without nourishment for weeks, and now he had the appetite of ten, and exhibited the capabilities of a second Methuselah. But in the mean time Helen was still absent. Under these circumstances, Anne, if she had been older, and desirous, might have collected voluminous expressions of opinion as to the qualities, beauty, and history, past and present, of the absent one from her dearest friends on earth. But the dearest friends on earth had not the habit of talking to this young girl as a companion and equal; to them she was simply that "sweet child," that "dear fresh-faced school-girl," to whom they confided only amiable platitudes. So Anne continued to hold fast undisturbed her belief in her beautiful Helen—that strong, grateful, reverent feeling which a young girl often cherishes for an older woman who is kind to her.

One still, hazy morning Miss Vanhorn announced her programme for the day. She intended to drive over to the county town, and Anne was to go with her six miles of the distance, and be left at a certain glen, where there was a country saw-mill. They had been there together several times, and had made acquaintance with the saw-miller, his wife, and his brood of white-headed children. The object of the present visit was a certain fern—the Camptosorus, or walking-leaf—which Miss Vanhorn had recently learned grew there, or at least had grown there within the memory of living botanists. That was enough. Anne was to search for the plant unflinchingly (the presence of the mill family being a sufficient protection) throughout the entire day, and be in waiting at the main-road crossing at sunset, when her grandaunt's carriage would stop on its return home. In order that there might be no mistake as to the time, she was allowed to wear one of Miss Vanhorn's watches. There were fourteen of them, all heirlooms, all either wildly too fast in their motions or hopelessly too slow, so that the gift was an embarrassing one. Anne knew that if she relied upon the one intrusted to her care, she would be obliged to spend about three hours at the crossing to allow for the variations in one direction or the other which might erratically attack it during the day. But her hope lay in the saw-miller's bright-faced little Yankee clock. At their early breakfast she prepared a lunch for herself in a small basket, and before Caryl's had fairly awakened, the old coupé rolled away from the door, bearing aunt and niece into the green country. When they reached the wooded hills at the end of the six miles, Anne descended with her basket, her digging trowel, and her tin plant case. She was to go over every inch of the saw-miller's ravine, and find that fern, living or dead. Miss Vanhorn said this, and she meant the plant; but it sounded as if she meant Anne. With renewed warnings as to care and diligence, she drove on, and Anne was left alone. It was ten o'clock, and a breathless August day. She hastened up the little path toward the saw-mill, glad to enter the wood and escape the heat of the sun. She now walked more slowly, and looked right and left for the fern; it was not there, probably, so near the light, but she had conscientiously determined to lose no inch of the allotted ground. Owing to this slow search, half an hour had passed when she reached the mill. She had perceived for some time that it was not in motion; there was no hum of the saw, no harsh cry of the rent boards: she said to herself that the miller was getting a great log in place on the little cart to be drawn up the tramway. But when she reached the spot, the miller was not there; the mill was closed, and only the peculiar fresh odor of the logs recently sawn asunder told that but a short time before the saw had been in motion. She went on to the door of the little house, and knocked; no one answered. Standing on tiptoe, she peeped in through the low window, and saw that the rooms were empty, and in that shining order that betokens the housewife's absence. Returning to the mill, she walked up the tramway; a bit of paper, for the information of chance customers, was pinned to the latch: "All hands gone to the sirkus. Home at sunset." She sat down, took off her straw hat, and considered what to do.

Three hundred and sixty-four days of that year Saw-miller Pike, his wife, his four children, and his hired man, one or all of them, were on that spot; their one absence chance decreed should be on this particular August Thursday when Anne Douglas came there to spend the day. She was not afraid; it was a quiet rural neighborhood without beggars or tramps. Her grandaunt would not return until sunset. She decided to look for the fern, and if she found it within an hour or two, to walk home, and send a boy back on horseback to wait for Miss Vanhorn. If she did not find it before afternoon, she would wait for the carriage, according to agreement. Hanging her basket and shawl on a tree branch near the mill, she entered the ravine, and was soon hidden in its green recesses. Up and down, up and down the steep rocky sides she climbed, her tin case swinging from her shoulder, her trowel in her belt; she neglected no spot, and her track, if it had been visible, would have shown itself almost as regular as the web of the geometric spider. Up and down, up and down, from the head of the ravine to its foot on one side: nothing. It seemed to her that she had seen the fronds and curled crosiers of a thousand ferns. Her eyes were tired, and she threw herself down on a mossy bank not far from the mill to rest a moment. There was no use in looking at the watch; still, she did it, and decided that it was either half past eleven or half past three. The remaining side of the ravine gazed at her steadily; she knew that she must clamber over every inch of those rocks also. She sighed, bathed her flushed cheeks in the brook, took down her hair, and braided it in two long school-girl braids, which hung down below her waist; then she tied her straw hat to a branch, pinned her neck-tie on the brim, took off her linen cuffs, and laid them within together with her gloves, and leaving the tin plant case and the trowel on the bank, started on her search. Up and down, up and down, peering into every cranny, standing on next to nothing, swinging herself from rock to rock; making acquaintance with several very unpleasant rock spiders, and hastily constructing bridges for them of small twigs, so that they could cross from her skirt to their home ledge in safety; finding a trickling spring, and drinking from it; now half way down the ravine, now three-quarters; and still no walking-leaf. She sat down on a jutting crag to take breath an instant, and watched a bird on a tree branch near by. He was one of those little brown songsters that sing as follows: