IT was a strange thing,
the like of which had never before happened to Anne. In her matter-of-fact,
orderly life mysterious impressions were rare. She tried to account for it
afterward by remembering that she had fallen asleep out-of-doors. And out-of-
doors, where there is the hot sun and the sea and the teeming earth and
tireless winds, there are perhaps great forces at work, both good and evil,
mighty creatures of God going to and fro, who do not enter into the strong
little boxes in which we cage ourselves. One of these, it may be, had made her
its sport for the time.
Anne when she fell
asleep was sitting on a veranda of the house nearest to the water. The wet
bright sea-air blew about her. She had some red roses in her hands, and she
crushed them up under her cheek to catch the perfume, thinking drowsily that
the colors of the roses and cheek were the same. For she had had great beauty
ever since she was a baby, and felt it as she did her blood from her feet to
her head, and triumphed and was happy in it. She had a wonderful voice too. She
was silent now, being nearly asleep. But the air was so cold and pure, and the
scent of the roses so strong in the sunshine, and she was so alive and
throbbing with youth and beauty, that it seemed to her that she was singing so
that all the world could hear, and that her voice rose--rose up and up into the
very sky.
Was that George whom
she saw through her half-shut eyes coming across the lawn? And Theresa with
him? She started, with a sharp wrench at her heart.
But what was Theresa to
George? Ugly, stupid, and older than he, a woman who had nothing to win
him--but money. She had not cheeks like rose leaves, nor youth, nor a voice
that could sing at heaven's gate. Anne curled herself, smiling, down to sleep
again. A soft warm touch fell on her lips.
"George!"
The blood stopped in
her veins; she trembled even in her sleep. A hand was laid on her arm.
"Bless grashus,
Mrs. Palmer! hyah's dat coal man wants he's money. I's bin huntin' you low an'
high, an' you's a-sleepin' out'n dohs!"
Anne staggered to her
feet.
"Mother,"
called a stout young man from the tan-bark path below, "I must catch this
train. Jenny will bring baby over for tea. I wish you would explain the dampers
in that kitchen range to her."
The wet air still blew
in straight from the hazy sea horizon; the crushed red roses lay on the floor.
But she--
There was a pier-glass
in the room beside her. Going up to it, she saw a stout woman of fifty with
grizzled hair and a big nose. Her cheeks were yellow.
She began to sing.
Nothing came from her mouth but a discordant yawp. She remembered that her
voice left her at eighteen, after she had that trouble with her larynx. She put
her trembling hand up to her lips.
George had never kissed
them. He had married Theresa more than thirty years ago. George Forbes was now
a famous author.
Her fingers still lay
upon her lips. "I thought that he--" she whispered, with a shudder of
shame through all of her stout old body. But below, underneath that, her soul
flamed with rapture. Something within her cried out, "I am here--Anne! I
am beautiful and young. If this old throat were different, my voice would ring
through earth and heaven."
"Mrs. Palmer, de
coal man--"
"Yes, I am coming,
Jane." She took her account-book from her orderly work-basket and went
down to the kitchen.
When she came back she
found her daughter Susan at work at the sewing-machine. Mrs. Palmer stopped
beside her, a wistful smile on her face. Susan was so young; she would
certainly take an interest in this thing which had moved her so deeply. Surely
some force outside of nature had been thrust into her life just now, and turned
it back to its beginnings!
"I fell asleep out
on the porch awhile ago, Susy," she said, "and I dreamed that I was
sixteen again. It was very vivid. I cannot even now shake off the impression
that I am young and beautiful and in love."
"Ah, yes! poor
dear papa!" Susy said, with a sigh, snipping her thread. She wished to say
something more, something appropriate and sympathetic, about this ancient love
of her parents; but it really seemed a little ridiculous, and besides she was
in a hurry to finish the ruffle. Jasper was coming up for tea.
Mrs. Palmer hesitated,
and then went on into her own room. She felt chilled and defeated. She had
thought Susy would take an interest, but-- Of course she could not explain to
her that it was not of her poor dear papa that she had dreamed. After all, was
it quite decent in a middle-aged respectable woman to have such a dream? Her
sallow jaws reddened as she shut herself in. She had been very foolish to tell
Susy about it at all.
Mrs. Nancy Palmer was
always uncomfortably in awe of the hard common-sense of her children. They were
both Palmers. When James was a baby, he had looked up one day from her breast,
with his calm attentive eyes, and she had quailed before them. "I never shall
be as old as he is already," she had thought. But as they grew up they
loved their mother dearly. Her passionate devotion to them would have touched
hearts of stone, and the Palmers were not at all stony-hearted, but kindly,
good-humored folk, like their father.
The neighborhood
respected Mrs. Palmer as a woman of masculine intellect because, after her
husband's death, she had managed the plantation with remarkable energy and
success. She had followed his exact, methodical habits in peach-growing and in
the house, had cleared the property of debt, and then had invested in Western
lands so shrewdly as to make herself and the children rich.
But James and Susan
were always secretly amused at the deference paid to their mother by the good
Delaware farmers. She was the dearest woman in the world, but as to a business
head--
All her peach crops,
her Dakota speculations, and the bank stock which was the solid fruit thereof
went for nothing as proofs to them of adult good sense. They were only dear
mamma's lucky hits. How could a woman have a practical head who grew so bored
with the pleasant church sociables, and refused absolutely to go to the
delightful Literary Circle? who would listen to a hand-organ with tears in her
eyes, and who had once actually gone all the way up to Philadelphia to hear an
Italian stroller named Salvini?
Neither of them could
understand such childish outbreaks. Give a Palmer a good peach farm, a
comfortable house, and half a dozen servants to worry him, and his lines of
life were full. Why should their mother be uneasy inside of these lines?
That she was uneasy
to-day, Susy soon perceived. A letter came from Pierce and Wall, her consignees
in Philadelphia; but Mrs. Palmer threw it down unopened, though she had shipped
three hundred crates of Morris Whites last Monday.
She was usually a most
careful house-keeper, keeping a sharp eye on the careless negroes, but she
disappeared for hours this afternoon, although Jasper Tyrrell was coming for
tea, and Jane was sure to make a greasy mess of the terrapin if left to
herself.
Jasper certainly had
paid marked atten- tion to Susy lately, but she knew that he was a cool,
prudent young fellow, who would look at the matter on every side before he
committed himself. The Tyrrells were an old, exclusive family, who would exact
perfection from a bride coming among them, from her theology to her tea
biscuit.
"A trifle less
than messy terrapin has often disgusted a man," thought Susy, her blue
eyes dim with impatience.
Just before sunset Mrs.
Palmer came up the road, her hands full of brilliant maple leaves. Susy hurried
to meet and kiss her--for the Palmers were a demonstrative family, who
expressed their affection by a perpetual petting and buzzing about each other.
The entire household would shudder with anxiety if a draught blew on mamma's
neck, and fall into an agony of apprehension if the baby had a cold in its
head. Mrs. Palmer, for some reason, found that this habit of incessant
watchfulness bored her just now.
"No, my shoes are
not damp, Susy. No, I did not need a shawl. I am not in my dotage, child, that
I cannot walk out without being wrapped up like an Esquimau. One would think I
was on the verge of the grave."
"Oh no, but you
are not young, darling mamma. You are just at the age when rheumatisms and
lumbagoes and such things set in if one is not careful. Where have you
been?"
"I took a walk in
the woods."
"Woods! No wonder
your shoulders are damp. Come in directly, dear. Four grains of quinine and a
hot lemonade going to bed. Walking in the woods! Really now that is something I
cannot understand"--smiling at her mother as though she were a very small
child indeed. "Now I can walk any distance to church, or to shop, or for
any reasonable motive, but to go wandering about in the swampy woods for no
earthly purpose--I'll press those leaves for you," checking herself.
"No; I do not like
to see pressed leaves and grasses about in vases. It is like making ornaments
of hair cut from a dead body. When summer is dead, let it die." She threw
down the leaves impatiently, and the wind whirled them away.
"How queer mamma
and the people of that generation are--so little self-control!" thought
Susy. "It is nearly time for Mr. Tyrrell to be here," she said aloud.
"Can Jane season the terrapin?"
"Oh, I suppose
so," said Mrs. Palmer, indifferently, taking up a book.
She was indifferent and
abstracted all evening. Peter clattered the dishes as he waited at the
supper-table, and the tea was lukewarm. Jasper was lukewarm too, silent and
critical.
James's wife, Jenny,
had come over for supper, and finding her mother-in-law so absent and
inattentive, poured forth her anecdotes of baby to Mr. Tyrrell. Jenny, like
most young mothers, gave forth inexhaustibly theories concerning the sleep,
diet, and digestion of infants. Jasper, bored and uneasy, shuffled in his
chair. He had always thought Mrs. Palmer was charming as a hostess, full of
tact, in fine touch with every one. Couldn't she see how this woman was
bedeviling him with her croup and her flannels? She was apparently blind and
deaf to it all.
Mrs. Palmer's vacant
eyes were turned out of the window. Susy glanced at her with indignation. Was
mamma deranged?
How petty the pursuits
of these children were! thought the older woman, regarding them. How cautious
and finical Tyrrell was from a height in his love-making! Susy too--six months
ago she had carefully inquired into Jasper's income.
Tea biscuit and flannels
and condensed milk! At seventeen her horizon had not been so cramped and shut
in. How wide and beautiful the world had been! Nature had known her and talked
to her, and in all music there had been a word for her, alone and apart. How
true she had been to her friends! how she had hated her enemies! how, when love
came to her--Mrs. Palmer felt a sudden chill shiver through her limbs. She sat
silent until they rose from table. Then she hurried to her own room. She did
not make a light. She told herself that she was absurdly nervous, and bathed
her face and wrists in cold water. But she could not strike a light. This
creature within her, this Anne, vivid and beautiful and loving, was she to face
the glass and see the old yellow- skinned woman?
She ought to think of
that old long-ago self as dead.
But it was not dead.
"If I had married
the man I loved," this something within her cried, "I should have had
my true life. He would have understood me."
How ridiculous and
wicked it all was!
"I was a loyal,
loving wife to Job Palmer," she told herself, resolutely lighting the lamp
and facing the stout figure in the glass with its puffy black silk gown.
"My life went down with his into the grave."
But there was a flash
in the gray pleading eyes which met her in the glass that gave her the lie.
They were Anne's eyes,
and Anne had never been Job Palmer's wife.
Mrs. Palmer did not go
down again that night. A wood fire blazed on her hearth, and she put on her
wrapper and drew her easy- chair in front of it, with the little table beside
her on which lay her Bible and prayer-book and a Kempis. This quiet hour was
usually the happiest of the day. James and Jenny always came in to kiss her
good-by, and Susy regularly crept in in her wrapper to read a chapter with her
mother and to tuck her snugly into bed.
But to-night she locked
her door. She wanted to be alone. She tried to read, but pushed the books away,
and turning out the light, threw herself upon the bed. Not a Kempis nor any
holy saint could follow her into the solitudes into which her soul had gone.
Could God Himself understand how intolerable this old clumsy body had grown to
her?
She remembered that
when she had been ill with nervous prostration two years ago she had in an hour
suddenly grown eighty years old. Now the blood of sixteen was in her veins. Why
should this soul within her thus dash her poor brain from verge to verge of its
narrow range of life?
The morbid fancies of
the night brought her by morning to an odd resolution. She would go away. Why
should she not go away? She had done her full duty to husband, children, and
property. Why should she not begin somewhere else, live out her own life? Why
should she not have her chance for the few years left? Music and art and the
companionship of thinkers and scholars. Mrs. Palmer's face grew pale as she
named these things so long forbidden to her.
It was now dawn. She
hastily put on a travelling dress, and placed a few necessary articles and her
check-book in a satchel.
"Carry this to the
station," she said to Peter, who, half asleep, was making up the fires.
"Gwine to
Philadelphy, Mis' Palmer? Does Miss Susy know?"
"No. Tell her I
have been suddenly called away."
As she walked to the
station she smiled to think how Susy would explain her sudden journey by the
letter from Pierce and Wall, and would look to find whether she had taken her
overshoes and chamois jacket. "I hate overshoes, and I would like to tear
that jacket into bits!" she thought as she took her seat in the car. She
was going to escape it all. She would no longer be happed and dosed and watched
like a decrepit old crone. She was an affectionate mother, but it actually did
not occur to her that she was leaving Susy and James and the baby. She was
possessed with a frenzy of delight in escaping. The train moved. She was free!
She could be herself now at last!
It could be easily
arranged. She would withdraw her certificates and government bonds from the
vaults of the trust company in Philadelphia. The children had their own property
secure.
Where should she go? To
Rome? Venice? No. There were so many Americans trotting about Europe. She must
be rid of them all. Now there was Egypt and the Nile. Or if another expedition
were going to Iceland? Up there in the awful North among the glaciers and
geysers, and sagas and Runic relics, one would be in another world, and forget
Morris Whites and church sociables and the wiggling village gossip.
"There are people
in this country who live in a high pure atmosphere of thought, who never descend
to gossip or money- making," she thought, remembering the lofty strains of
George Forbes's last poem: "If I had been his wife I too might have
thought great thoughts and lived a noble life."
She tried angrily to
thrust away this idea. She did not mean to be a traitor to her husband, whom
she had loved well and long.
But the passion of her
youth maddened her. Job had been a good commonplace man. But this other was a
Seer, a Dictator of thought to the world.
The train rolled into
Broad Street station. Mrs. Palmer went to the trust company and withdrew her
bonds. She never before had come up to the city alone. Susy always accompanied
her to "take care of dear mamma." Susy, who had provincial ideas as
to "what people in our position should do," always took her to the
most fashionable hotel, and ordered a dinner the cost of which weighed upon her
conscience for months afterward. Mrs. Palmer now went to a cheap little cafe in
a back street, and ate a chop with the keen delight of a runaway dog gnawing a
stolen bone. A cold rain began to fall, and she was damp and chilled when she
returned to the station.
Where should she go?
Italy--the Nile-- Heavens! there were the Crotons from Dover getting out of the
elevator! She must go somewhere at once to hide herself; afterward she could
decide on her course. A queue of people were at the ticket window. She placed
herself in line.
"Boston?"
said the agent.
She nodded. In five
minutes she was seated in a parlor car, and thundering across the bridge above
the great abattoir. She looked down on the cattle in their sheds. "I do
wonder if Peter will give Rosy her warm mash to-night?" she thought,
uneasily.
There were but three
seats occupied in the car. Two men and a lady entered together and sat near to
Mrs. Palmer, so that she could not but hear their talk, which at first ran upon
draughts.
"You might open
your window, Corvill," said one of the men, "if Mrs. Ames is not
afraid of neuralgia."
Corvill? Ames? Mrs.
Palmer half rose from her seat. Why, Corvill was the name of the great
figure-painter! She had an etching of his "Hagar." She never looked
into that woman's face without a wrench at her heart. All human pain and
longing spoke in it as they did in George Forbes's poems. Mrs. Ames, she had
heard, was chairman of the Woman's National Society for the Examination of
Prisons. Mrs. Palmer had read her expose of the abominations of the lessee
system--words burning with a fiery zeal for humanity. There had been a
symposium in Philadelphia of noted authors and artists this week.
No doubt these were two
of those famous folk. Mrs. Palmer drew nearer, feeling as if she were creeping
up to the base of Mount Olympus. This was what happened when one cut loose from
Morris Whites and terrapin and that weary Jane and Peter! The Immortals were
outside, and she had come into their company.
"Oh, open the
window!" said Mrs. Ames, who had a hoarse voice which came in bass gusts
and snorts out of a mouth mustached like a man's. "Let's have some air!
The sight of those emigrants huddled in the station nauseated me. Women and
babies all skin and bone and rags."
Now Mrs. Palmer had
just emptied her purse and almost cried over that wretched group. That sick
baby's cry would wring any woman's heart, she thought. Could it be that this
great philanthropist had pity only for the misery of the masses? But the man
who painted "Hagar" surely would be pitiful and tender?
"Sorry they
annoyed you," he was saying. "Some very good subjects among them. I
made two sketches," pulling out a note- book. "That half-starved
woman near the door--see?--eh? Fine slope in the chin and jaw. I wanted a dying
baby for my 'Exiles,' too. I caught the very effect I wanted. Sick child."
Mrs. Palmer turned her
revolving chair away. It was a trifling disappointment, but it hurt her. She
was in that strained, feverish mood when trifles hurt sharply. These were mere
hucksters of art and humanity. They did not belong to the high pure level on which
stood great interpreters of the truth--such, for instance, as George Forbes.
The little quake which always passed through her at this man's name was
increased by a shiver from the damp wind blowing upon her. She sneezed twice.
Mrs. Ames stared at her
insolently, and turned her back, fearing that she might be asked to put down
the window.
Mr. Corvill was talking
about the decoration of the car. "Not bad at all," he said.
"There is a great tenderness in the color of that ceiling, and just look
at the lines of the chairs! They are full of feeling."
Mrs. Palmer listened,
bewildered. But now they were looking at the landscape. If he found feeling in
the legs of a chair, what new meanings would he not discover in that vast
stretch of lonely marsh with the narrow black lagoons creeping across it?
"Nice
effect," said Mr. Corvill--"the gamboge on that barn against the
green. I find little worth using in the fall this year, however. Too much umber
in the coloring."
Could it be, she
thought, that these peo- ple had made a trade of art and humanity until they
had lost the perception of their highest meanings? But it could not be so with
authors.
"I should
think," continued Corvill, turning to the other man, "you could find
materiel for some verses in these flats. Ulalume, or The Land of Dolor.
Something in that line. Eh, Forbes?"
Forbes! Her breath
stopped. That fat hunched man with the greasy black whiskers and gaudy chain!
Yes, that was his voice; but had it always that tone of vulgar swagger?
"I've stopped
verse-writing," he said. "Poetry's a drug in the market. My infernal
publishers shut down on it five years ago."
He turned, and she then
saw his face--the thin hard lips, the calculating eye.
Was this man
"George"? Or had that George ever lived except in her fancy?
"Mr. Forbes."
She rose. The very life in her seemed to stop; her knees shook. But habit is
strong. She bowed as she named him, and stood there, smiling, the courteous,
thorough-bred old lady whose charm young Tyrrell had recognized. Some power in
the pathetic gray eyes brought Forbes to his feet.
"I think I knew
you long ago," she said. "If it is you--?"
"Forbes is my
name, ma'am. Lord bless me! you can't be-- Something familiar in your eyes. You
remind me of Judge Sinclair's daughter Fanny."
"Anne was my
name."
"Anne. To be sure.
I knew it was Nanny or Fanny. I ought to remember, for I was spoons on you
myself for a week or two. You know you were reckoned the best catch in the
county, eh? Sit down, ma'am, sit down; people of our weight aren't built for
standing."
"Is--your wife
with you?"
"You refer to the
first Mrs. Forbes--Theresa Stone? I have been married twice since her decease.
I am now a widower." He had put his hand to his mouth and coughed,
glancing at the crape on his hat. His breath crossed her face. It reeked of
heavy feeding and night orgies; for Forbes, though avaricious, had gross
appetites.
Suddenly Job Palmer
stood before her, with his fine clear-cut face and reasonable eyes. He knew
little outside of his farm perhaps; but how clean was his soul! How he had
loved her!
The car swayed
violently from side to side; the lamps went out. "Hello!" shouted
Forbes. "Something wrong! I'll get out of this!" rushing to the door.
She braced herself against her chair.
In the outside darkness
the rushing of steam was heard, and shrieks of women in mortal agony. A huge
weight fell on the car, crushing in the roof. Mrs. Palmer was jammed between
two beams, but unhurt. A heavy rain was falling.
"I shall not be
burned to death, at any rate," she thought, and then fortunately became
insensible.
In half an hour she was
cut out and laid on the bank, wet and half frozen, but with whole bones. She
tried to rise, but could not; every joint ached with rheumatism; her gown was
in tatters, the mud was deep under her, and the rain pelted down. She saw the
fire burning on her hearth at home, and the easy-chair in front of it, and the
Bibles and a Kempis.
Some men with lanterns
came up and bent over her.
"Great God,
mother!" one of them cried. It was James, who had been on the same train,
going to New York.
The next day she was
safely laid in her own bed. The fire was burning brightly, and Susy was keeping
guard that she might sleep. Jenny had just brought a delicious bowl of soup and
fed it to her, and baby had climbed up on the bed to hug her, and fallen asleep
there. She held him in her arm. James came in on tiptoe, and bent anxiously
over her. She saw them all through her half-shut eyes.
"My own--flesh of
my flesh!" she thought, and thanked God from her soul for the love that
held her warm and safe.
As she dozed, Susy and
James bent over her. "Where could she have been going?" said Susy.
"To New York; no
doubt to make a better contract than the one she has with Pierce and Wall--to
make a few more dollars for us. Poor dear unselfish soul. Don't worry her with
questions, Susy-- don't speak of it."
"No, I will not,
Jim," said Susy, wiping her eyes. "But if she only had taken her
chamois jacket!"
James himself, when his
mother was quite well, remarked one day, "We had a famous fellow-traveller
in that train to New York-- Forbes, the author."
"A most
disagreeable, underbred person!" said Mrs. Palmer, vehemently. "I
would not have you notice such people, James--a mere shopman of
literature!"
Susy married Jasper
Tyrrell that winter. They live in the homestead, and Mrs. Palmer has four or
five grandchildren about her now, whom she spoils to her heart's content. She
still dabbles a little in mining speculations; but since her accident on the
cars she is troubled with rheumatism, and leaves the management of the farm and
house to Jasper and Susy. She has a quiet, luxurious, happy life, being petted
like a baby by all of the Palmers. Yet sometimes in the midst of all this
comfort and sunshine a chance note of music or the sound of the restless wind
will bring an expression into her eyes which her children do not understand, as
if some creature unknown to them looked out of them.
At such times Mrs. Palmer
will think to herself, "Poor Anne!" as of somebody whom she once knew
that is dead.
Is she dead? she feebly
wonders; and if she is dead here, will she ever live again?