“Now, dear,” he said, as they came near, “try to keep this thing a secret for the few days left us here. It is an intolerable bit of wickedness, possibly of malice, but this I do not believe. The more quiet we can keep it, the better my chance of discovering who has done it.”
“I will try; but Anne!”
“Oh, Anne, of course, and Rose perhaps. It is the men who must not know, and the boys.”
“That is easier. What shall you do about it, Archie? Who could have been so cruel?”
“Unusual crime,” he said, thoughtfully, “has commonly unusual causes. I do not as yet know what I shall do. And now, dear, let us not discuss it any more. And will you tell Anne, or shall I?”
“I would prefer to do it myself, Archie.”
As the sick animal knows by instinct what wild grasses it shall eat, this woman apprehended her need for a woman’s strength and sure community of feeling. She was as certain to fall back on Anne’s opinion or help in the end, or where she herself was honestly puzzled, as she was to resent her sister-in-law’s independent assertion of her right to have a say where the question was one as to which Mrs. Lyndsay thought that the title mother or wife was in itself a victorious defense of all decisions needed in either capacity.
In this present trouble it was a woman’s help she wanted. She had been for the first time in her life close to an hysterical attack. Without the forceful tonic of her husband’s call upon her self-command, the discipline of years would have been of no avail: she would have been entirely routed. As it was, there had been sad disorder in the ranks of the governing qualities of a being unused to yield to the lawlessness of unrestrained emotion. This nearness of defeat was more or less due to the preparative softening influences with which she came to say a silent farewell to her dead, and to the suddenness of the shock of horror and of insult.
None turned to Anne Lyndsay in vain. As Lyndsay and his wife approached the cabin, where, as usual, Anne was lying in her hammock, she saw at once that something had gone wrong. Her long walk was exacting the sad price of all physical exertion which took her beyond the limits of the most carefully measured exercise. She was in great pain, and, for a half hour, had been resolutely struggling to ignore it by forcing herself to give deliberate attention to a difficult passage in the second part of “Faust.” She dropped her dictionary as they came up, put a marker in the page she had been reading, and rose on one elbow.
“Go and talk to Anne,” said Lyndsay. “Is Rose still out, sister?”