Anne: A Novel

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"Yes," she answered; "Mrs. Heathcote used those words. But it was in the following connection. When we had said good-by, and I had promised to come again after the funeral, she went with me toward the door. 'If he had lived,' she said, 'one of us must have died.' Then she paused an instant, and her voice sank. 'Changed or died,' she added. 'And as we are not the kind of women who change, it would have ended in the wearing out of the life of one of us—the one who loved the most. And people would have called it by some other name, and that would have been the end. But now it is he who has been taken, and—oh! I can not bear it—I can not, can not bear it!'"

She repeated these words of Helen's with such realistic power that tears came to many eyes. Rachel Bannert for the first time veiled her face. All the feeling in her, such as it was, was concentrated upon Heathcote, and Helen's bitter cry of grief, repeated by Anne, had been the secret cry of her own heart every minute since danger first menaced him.

Anne's words had produced a sensation; still, they were but her unsupported words.

But now something else was brought forward; proof which, so far as it went, at least, was tangible. Anne was testifying that, before she went away, Helen had taken from her own neck a locket and given it to her as a token of renewed affection; and the locket was produced. The defense would prove by Bagshot herself that this locket on its chain was round her mistress's neck on the morning of that day, and Mrs. Heathcote must therefore have removed it herself and given it to the present witness, since the latter could hardly have taken it from her by force without being overheard, the door being so very conveniently ajar.

And now the next proof was produced, the hurried note written to Anne by Helen, after the tidings of her husband's safety had been received. After the writing had been identified as Helen's, the note was read.

"Dear Anne,—Ward is safe. It was a mistake. I have just received a dispatch. He is wounded, but not dangerously, and I write this on my way to the train, for I am going to him; that is, if I can get through. All is different now. I trust you. But I love him too much not to try and make him love me the most, if I possibly can.

Helen."

This was evidence clear and decided. It was no longer Anne's word, but Helen's own. Whatever else the listeners continued to believe, they must give up the idea that the wife and this young girl had parted in anger and hate; for if the locket as proof could be evaded, the note could not.

But this was not all. An excitement more marked than any save that produced when Anne acknowledged the confession arose in the court-room when the lawyers for the defense announced that they would now bring forward a second letter—a letter written by Mrs. Heathcote to the witness in the inn at Timloesville on the evening of her death—her last letter, what might be called her last utterance on earth. It had been shown that Mrs. Heathcote was seen writing; it would be proved that a letter was given to a colored lad employed in the hotel soon after Captain Heathcote left the room, and that this lad ran across the street to the post-office and dropped it into the mail-box. Not being able to read, he had not made out the address.

When the handwriting of this letter also had been identified, it was, amid eager attention, read aloud. The feeling was as if the dead wife herself were speaking to them from the grave.