Anne Part 17

Pere Michaux saw his charge to bed, and went to bed himself in an adjoining room. He slept soundly; but at the first peep of dawn his charge was gone--gone to meet Anne on the heights, as agreed between them the night before.

O wise Pere Michaux!

The sun was not yet above the horizon, but Anne was there. The youth took her hands in his, and looked at her earnestly. He was half surprised himself at what he had done, and he looked at her again to see how it had happened. All his life from earliest childhood she had been his dearest companion and friend; but now she was his betrothed wife, would she be in any way different? The sun came up, and showed that she was just the same--calm, clear-eyed, and sweet-voiced. What more could he ask?

"_Do_ you love me, Annet?" he said more than once, looking at her as though she ought to be some new and only half-comprehended person.

"You know I do," she answered. Then, as he asked again, "Why do you ask me?" she said. "Has not my whole life shown it?"

"Yes," he answered, growing more calm. "I believe you _have_ loved me all your life, Annet."

"I have," replied the girl.

He kissed her gently. "I shall always be kind to you," he said. Then, with a half-sigh, "You will like to live here?"

"It is my home, Rast. However, other places will not seem strange after I have seen the great city. For of course I must go to New York, just the same, to learn to be a teacher, and help the children: we may be separated for years."

"Oh no; I shall be able to take care of you all before long," said Rast, grandly. "As soon as I have been through college I shall look about and decide upon something. Would you like me to be a lawyer? Or a surgeon?

Then there is always the army. Or we might have a farm."

"There is only Frobisher's."

"Oh, you mean here on the island? Well, Frobisher's would do. We could repair the old house, and have a pony-cart, and drive in to town." Here the steamer sounded its first whistle. That meant that it would start in half an hour. Rast left the future and his plans in mid-air, and took Anne in his arms with real emotion. "Good-by, dear, good-by," he said.

"Do not grieve, or allow yourself to be lonely. I shall see you soon in some way, even if I have to go to New York for the purpose. Remember that you are my betrothed wife now. That thought will comfort you."

"Yes," said Anne, her sincere eyes meeting his. Then she clung to him for a few moments, sobbing. "You must go away, and I must go away," she said, amid her tears: "nothing is the same any more. Father is dead, and the whole world will be between us. Nothing is the same any more.

Nothing is the same."

"Distance is nothing nowadays," said the youth, soothing her; "I can reach you in almost no time, Annet."

"Yes, but nothing is the same any more; nothing ever will be the same ever again," she sobbed, oppressed for the first time in her life by the vague uncertainties of the future.

"Oh yes, it will," said her companion, decidedly. "I will come back here if you wish it so much, and you shall come back, and we will live here on this same old island all our lives. A man has but to choose his home, you know."

Anne looked somewhat comforted. Yet only part of her responded to his words; she still felt that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

She could not bring back her father; she could not bring back their long happy childhood. The door was closed behind them, and they must now go out into the wide world.

The second whistle sounded--another fifteen minutes gone. They ran down the steep path together, meeting Miss Lois on her way up, a green woollen hood on her head as a protection against the morning air.

"You will want a ring, my dears," she said, breathlessly, as she kissed them--"an engagement ring; it is the custom, and fortunately I have one for you."

With a mixture of smiles and tears of delight and excitement, she took from a little box an old-fashioned ring, and handed it to Rast.

"It was your mother's, dear," she said to Anne; "your father gave it to me as a memento of her when you were a baby. It is most fit that you should wear it."

Rast examined the slender little circlet without much admiration. It was a hoop of very small rubies placed close together, with as little gold visible as was possible. "I meant to give Annet a diamond," he said, with the tone of a young duke.

"Oh no, Rast," exclaimed the girl.

"But take this for the present," urged the old maid. "You must not let her go from you without one; it would be a bad sign. Put it on yourself, Rast; I want to see you do it."

Rast slipped the circlet into its place on Anne's finger, and then, with a little flourish which became him well, he uncovered his head, bent his knee, and raised the hand to his lips.

"But you have put it on the right hand," said Miss Lois, in dismay.

"It does not make any difference," said Rast. "And besides, I like the right hand; it means more."

Rast did not admire the old-fashioned ring, but to Anne it was both beautiful and sacred. She gazed at it with a lovely light in her eyes, and an earnest thoughtfulness. Any one could see how gravely she regarded the little ceremony.

When they came back to the house, Dr. Gaston was already there, and Pere Michaux was limping up the path from the gate. He caught sight of Rast and Anne together. "Check!" he said to himself. "So much for being a stupid old man. Outwitted yesterday by a rolling stone, and to-day by your own inconceivable dullness. And you gave away your watch--did you?--to prevent what has happened! The girl has probably bound herself formally, and now you will have her conscience against you as well as all the rest. Bah!"

But while thinking this, he came forward and greeted them all happily and cheerfully, whereas the old chaplain, who really had no especial objection to the engagement, was cross and silent, and hardly greeted anybody. He knew that he was ill-tempered, and wondered why he should be. "Anything unexpected is apt to disturb the mind," he remarked, apologetically, to the priest, taking out his handkerchief and rubbing his forehead violently, as if to restore equanimity by counter-circulation. But however cross or quiet the others might be, Miss Lois beamed for all; she shed forth radiance like Roman candles even at that early hour, when the air was still chill and the sky gray with mist. The boys came down stairs with their clothes half on, and then Rast said good-by, and hurried down to the pier, and they all stood together on the old piazza, and watched the steamer back out into the stream, turn round, and start westward, the point of the island soon hiding it from view. Then Dr. Gaston took his unaccountable ill temper homeward, Pere Michaux set sail for the hermitage, Anne sat down to sew, and only Miss Lois let every-day life take care of itself, and cried on.

"I know there will be no more storms," she said; "it isn't that. But it is everything that has happened, Anne dear: the engagement, and the romance of it all!"

t.i.ta now entered: she had not appeared before. She required that fresh coffee should be prepared for her, and she obtained it. For the Irish soldier's wife was almost as much afraid of her as the boys were. She glanced at Miss Lois's happy tears, at Anne's ruby ring, at the general disorder.

"And all this for a mere boy!" she said, superbly.

Miss Lois stopped crying from sheer astonishment. "And pray, may I ask, what are you?" she demanded.

"A girl; and about on a line with the boy referred to," replied Miss t.i.ta, composedly. "Anne is much too old."

The boys gave a laugh of scorn. t.i.ta turned and looked at them, and they took to the woods for the day. Miss Lois cried no more, but began to sew; there was a vague dread in her heart as to what the winter would be with t.i.ta in the church-house. "If I could only cut off her hair!" she thought, with a remembrance of Samson. "Never was such hair seen on any child before."

As t.i.ta sat on her low bench, the two long thick braids of her black hair certainly did touch the floor; and most New England women, who, whether from the nipping climate or their Roundhead origin, have, as a cla.s.s, rather scanty locks, would have agreed with Miss Lois that "such a mane" was unnatural on a girl of that age--indeed, intolerable.

Amid much sewing, planning, and busy labor, time flew on. Dr. Gaston did not pretend to do anything else now save come down early in the morning to the Agency, and remain nearly all day, sitting in an arm-chair, sometimes with a book before him, but hardly turning a page. His dear young pupil, his almost child, was going away. He tried not to think how lonely he should be without her. Pere Michaux came frequently; he spoke to t.i.ta with a new severity, and often with a slight shade of sarcasm in his voice. "Are you not a little too severe with her?" asked Miss Lois one day, really fearing lest t.i.ta, in revenge, might go out on some dark night and set fire to the house.

"He is my priest, isn't he, and not yours? He shall order me to do what he pleases, and I shall do it," answered the small person whom she had intended to defend.

And now every day more and more beautiful grew the hues on the trees; it was a last intensity of color before the long, cold, dead-white winter.

All the maple and oak leaves were now scarlet, orange, or crimson, each hue vivid; they died in a glory to which no tropical leaf ever attains.

The air was warm, hazy, and still--the true air of Indian summer; and as if to justify the term, the Indians on the mainland and islands were busy bringing potatoes and game to the village to sell, fishing, cutting wood, and begging, full of a tardy activity before the approach of winter. Anne watched them crossing in their canoes, and landing on the beach, and when occasionally the submissive, gentle-eyed squaws, carrying their little pappooses, came to the kitchen door to beg, she herself went out to see them, and bade the servant give them something.

They were Chippewas, dark-skinned and silent, wearing short calico skirts, and a blanket drawn over their heads. Patient and uncomplaining by nature, they performed almost all the labor on their small farms, cooked for their lords and masters, and took care of the children, as their share of the duties of life, the husbands being warriors, and above common toil. Anne knew some of these Chippewa women personally, and could talk to them in their own tongue; but it was not old acquaintance which made her go out and see them now. It was the feeling that they belonged to the island, to the life which she must soon leave behind. She felt herself clinging to everything--to the trees, to the white cliffs, to the very sunshine--like a person dragged along against his will, who catches at every straw.

The day came at last; the eastern-bound steamer was at the pier; Anne must go. Dr. Gaston's eyes were wet; with choked utterance he gave her his benediction. Miss Lois was depressed; but her depression had little opportunity to make itself felt, on account of the clamor and wild behavior of the boys, which demanded her constant attention. The clamor, however, was not so alarming as the velvety goodness of t.i.ta. What could the child be planning? The poor old maid sighed, as she asked herself this question, over the life that lay before her. But twenty such lives would not wear out Lois Hinsdale. Pere Michaux was in excellent spirits, and kept them all in order. He calmed the boys, encouraged Anne, cheered the old chaplain and Miss Lois, led them all down the street and on board the boat, then back on the pier again, where they could see Anne standing on the high deck above them. He shook the boys when they howled in their grief too loudly, and as the steamer moved out into the stream he gave his arm to Miss Lois, who, for the moment forgetting everything save that the dear little baby whom she had loved so long was going away, burst into convulsive tears. t.i.ta sat on the edge of the pier, and watched the boat silently. She did not speak or wave her handkerchief; she shed no tears. But long after the others had gone home, when the steamer was a mere speck low down on the eastern horizon, she sat there still.

Yes, Anne was gone.

And now that she was gone, it was astonishing to see what a void was left. No one had especially valued or praised her while she was there; she was a matter of course. But now that she was absent, the whole life of the village seemed changed. There was no one to lead the music on Sundays, standing by the organ and singing clearly, and Miss Lois's playing seemed now doubly dull and mechanical. There was no one going up to the fort at a certain hour every morning, pa.s.sing the windows where the fort ladies sat, with books under her arm. There was no one working in the Agency garden; no one coming with a quick step into the butcher's little shop to see what he had, and consult him, not without hidden anxiety, as to the possibility of a rise in prices. There was no one sewing on the piazza, or going out to find the boys, or sailing over to the hermitage with the four black-eyed children, who plainly enough needed even more holy instruction than they obtained. They all knew everything she did, and all her ways. And as it was a small community, they missed her sadly. The old Agency, too, seemed to become suddenly dilapidated, almost ruinous; the boys were undeniably rascals, and t.i.ta "a little minx." Miss Lois was without doubt a dogmatic old maid, and the chaplain not what he used to be, poor old man--fast breaking up.

Only Pere Michaux bore the test unaltered. But then he had not leaned upon this young girl as the others had leaned--the house and garden, the chaplain as well as the children: the strong young nature had in one way supported them all.

Meanwhile the girl herself was journeying down the lake. She stood at the stern, watching the island grow distant, grow purple, grow lower and lower on the surface of the water, until at last it disappeared; then she covered her face and wept. After this, like one who leaves the vanished past behind him, and resolutely faces the future, she went forward to the bow and took her seat there. Night came on; she remained on deck through the evening: it seemed less lonely there than among the pa.s.sengers in the cabin. She knew the captain; and she had been especially placed in his charge, also, by Pere Michaux, as far as one of the lower-lake ports, where she was to be met by a priest and taken to the eastern-bound train. The captain, a weather-beaten man, past middle age, came after a while and sat down near her.

"What is that red light over the sh.o.r.e-line?" said Anne to her taciturn companion, who sat and smoked near by, protecting her paternally by his presence, but having apparently few words, and those husky, at his command.

"Fire in the woods."