CHAPTER X.

ANNA AND SANDERSON AGAIN MEET.

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turn'd Nor h.e.l.l a fury like a woman scorn'd."--_Congreve_.

"And who be you, with those big brown eyes, sitting on the Bartlett's porch working that b.u.t.ter as if you've been used to handling b.u.t.ter all your life? No city girl, I'm sure." Anna had been at the Squire's for a week when the above query was put to her.

The voice was high and rasping. The whole sentence was delivered without breath or pause, as if it was one long word. The speaker might have been the old maid as portrayed in the ill.u.s.trated weekly. Nothing was lacking--corkscrew curls, prunella boots, cameo brooch and chain, a gown of the antiquated Redingote type, trimmed with many small ruffles and punctuated, irrelevantly, with immovable b.u.t.tons.

"I am Anna Moore."

"Know as much now as I ever did," snapped the interlocutor.

"I have come to work for Mrs. Bartlett, to help her about the house."

"Land sakes. Bartlett's keeping help! How stylish they're getting."

"Yes, Marthy, we are progressing," said Kate, coming out of the house.

"Anna, this is our friend, Miss Marthy Perkins."

The village gossip's confusion was but momentary. "Do you know, Kate, I just came over a-purpose to see if you'd come. What kind of clothes are they wearing in Boston? Are shirtwaists going to have tucked backs or plain? I am going to make over my gray alpaca, and I wouldn't put the scissors into it till I seen you."

"Come upstairs, Marthy, and I'll show you my new shirtwaists."

"Land sakes," said the spinster, bridling. "I would be delighted, but you know how I can't move without that Seth Holcomb a-taggin' after me; it's just awful the way I am persecuted. I do wish I'd get old and then there'll be an end of it." She held out a pair of mittens, vintage of 1812, to Kate, appealingly.

Seth Holcomb stumped in sight as she concluded; he had been Martha's faithful admirer these twenty years, but she would never reward him; her hopes of younger and less rheumatic game seemed to spring eternal.

During the few days that Anna had made one of the Squire's family she went about with deep thankfulness in her heart; she had been given the chance to work, to earn her bread by these good people. Who could tell--as time went on perhaps they would grow fond of her, learn to regard her as one of themselves--it was so much better than being so utterly alone.

Her energy never flagged, she did her share of the work with the light hand of experience that delighted the old housekeeper. It was so good to feel a roof over her head, and to feel that she was earning her right to it.

Supper had been cooked, the table laid and everything was in readiness for the family meal, but the old clock wanted five minutes of the hour; the girl came out into the glowing sunset to draw a pail of water from the old well, but paused to enjoy the scene. Purple, gold and crimson was the mantle of the departing day; and all her crushed and hopeless youth rose, cheered by its glory.

"Thank G.o.d," she murmured fervently, "at last I have found a refuge. I am beginning life again. The shadow of the old one will rest on me forever, but time and work, the cure for every grief, will cure me."

Her eyes had been turned toward the west, where the day was going out in such a riot of splendor, and she had not noticed the man who entered the gate and was making his way toward her, flicking his boots with his riding crop as he walked.

She turned suddenly at the sound of steps on the gravel; in the gathering darkness neither could see nor recognize the other till they were face to face.

The woman's face blanched, she stifled an exclamation of horror and stared at him.

"You! you here!"

It was Lennox Sanderson, and the sight of him, so suddenly, in this out-of-the-way place, made her reel, almost fainting against the well-curb.

He grabbed her arm and shook her roughly, and said, "What are you doing here, in this place?"

"I am trying to earn my living. Go, go," she whispered.

"Do you think I came here after you?" he sneered. "I've come to see the Squire." All the selfishness and cowardice latent in Sanderson's character were reflected in his face, at that moment, destroying its natural symmetry, disfiguring it with tell-tale lines, and showing him at his par value--a weak, contemptible libertine, brought to bay.

This meeting with his victim after all these long months of silence, in this remote place, deprived him, momentarily, of his customary poise and equilibrium. Why was she here? Would she denounce him to these people? What effect would it have? were some of the questions that whirled through his brain as they stood together in the gathering twilight.

But the shrinking look in her eyes allayed his fears. He read terror in every line of her quivering figure, and in the frantic way she clung to the well-curb to increase the s.p.a.ce between them. She, with the right to accuse, unconsciously took the att.i.tude of supplication. The man knew he had nothing to fear, and laid his plans accordingly.

"I don't believe you've come here to look for work," he said, stooping over the crouching figure. "You've come here to make trouble--to hound the life out of me."

"My hope in coming here was that I might never see you again. What could I want of you, Lennox Sanderson?"

The measured contempt of her tones was not without its effect. He winced perceptibly, but his coa.r.s.e instincts rallied to his help and again he began to bully:

"Spare me the usual hard-luck story of the deceived young woman trying to make an honest living. If you insist on drudging, it's your own fault. I offered to take care of you and provide for your future, but you received my offers of a.s.sistance with a 'Villain-take-your-gold'

style, that I was not prepared to accept. If, as you say, you never wish to see me again, what is simpler than to go away?"

His cold-blooded indifference, his utter withdrawal from the calamity he had brought upon her, his airy suggestion that she should go because it suited his pleasure to remain, maddened Anna. The blood rushed to her pale cheeks and there came her old conquering beauty with it. She eyed him with equal defiance.

"I shall not go, because it does not suit me." And then wavering a little at the thought of her wretched experience--"I had too much trouble finding a place where an honest home is offered for honest work, to leave this one for your whim. No, I shall not go."

They heard footsteps moving about the house. A lamp shone out from the dining-room window. The Squire's voice, inquiring for Kate, came across to them on the still summer air. They looked into each other's pale, determined faces. Which would yield? It was the old struggle between the s.e.xes--a struggle old as earth, unsettled as chaos.

Which should yield? The man who had sinned much, or the woman who had loved much?

Sanderson employed all the force of his brutality to frighten Anna into yielding. "See here," and he caught her arm in no uncertain grasp.

"You've got to go. You can't stay here in the same place with me. If money is what you want, you shall have it; but you've got to go. Do you understand? _Go_!"

He had emphasized his words by tightening the grip on her arm, and the pain of it well nigh made her cry out. He relaxed his hold just as Hi Holler came out on the porch, seized the supper horn and blew it furiously. The Squire came down and looked amazed at the smartly dressed young city man talking to Anna.

"Squire," she said, taking the initiative, "this gentleman is inquiring for you."

On hearing the Squire's footsteps, Sanderson turned to him with all the cordiality at his command, and, slapping him on the back, said: "h.e.l.lo, Squire, I've just ridden over to talk to you about your prize Jersey heifer." The Squire had only met Sanderson once or twice before, and that was prior to Kate's visit to Boston; but he knew all about the young man who had become his neighbor.

Lennox Sanderson was a lucky fellow, and while waiting impatiently for his father to start him in life, his uncle, the judge, died and mentioned no one but Lennox Sanderson in his will.

The Squire had known the late Judge Sanderson, the "big man" of the county, very well, and lost no time in cultivating the acquaintance of the judge's nephew, who had fallen heir to the fine property the judge had acc.u.mulated, no small part of which was the handsome "country seat"

of the judge in the neighborhood.

That is how this fine young city man happened to drop in on the Squire so unceremoniously. He had learned of Kate's return from Boston and was hastening to pay his respects to the pretty girl. To say he was astounded to find Anna on the spot is putting it mildly. He believed she had learned of his good fortune and had followed him, to make disagreeable exactions. It put him in a rage and it cost him a strong effort to conceal it before the Squire.

"Walk right in," said the Squire, beaming with hospitality. Sanderson entered and the girl found herself alone in the twilight. Anna sat on the bench by the well-curb and faced despair. She was physically so weak from her long and recent illness that the unexpected interview with Sanderson left her faint and exhausted. The momentary flare up of her righteous indignation at Sanderson's outrageous proposition that she should go away had sapped her strength and she made ready to meet one of the great crises of life with nerveless, trembling body and a mind incapable of action.

She pressed her throbbing head on the cool stones of the well-curb and prayed for light. What could she do--where could she go? Her fate rose up before her like a great stone prison wall at which she beat with naked bleeding hand and the stones still stood in all their mightiness.