Anne Part 67

"I will now tell you," she said, lifting her eyes to Dexter's face, "what really occurred and what really was said. As I stated before, upon seeing the announcement of her husband's death, I went to Helen. I wrote upon a slip of paper the line you have heard, and signed the name by which she always called me. As I had hoped, she consented to see me, and this woman, Bagshot, took me up stairs to her room. We were alone. Both doors were closed at first, I know; we supposed that they remained closed all the time. I knelt down by the low couch and took her in my arms. I kissed her, and stroked her hair. I could not cry; neither could she. I sorrowed over her in silence. For some time we did not speak. But after a while, with a long sigh, she said, 'Anne, I deceived him about the name in the marriage notice--Angelique; I let him think that it was you.' I said, 'It is of no consequence,' but she went on. She said that after that summer at Caryl's she had noticed a change in him, but that she did not think of me; she thought only of Rachel Bannert. But when he brought her the marriage notice, and asked if it were I, in an instant an entirely new suspicion leaped into her heart, roused by something in the tone of his voice: she always judged him by his voice. From that moment, she said, she had never been free from the jealous apprehension that he had loved me; and then, looking at me as she lay in my arms, she asked, 'But he never did, did he?'

"If I could have evaded her then, perhaps we should both have been spared all that followed, for we both suffered deeply. But I did not know how; I answered: 'He had fancies, Helen; I may have been one of them. But only for a short time. _You_ were his wife.' And then I asked her if her married life had not been happy.

"'Yes, yes,' she answered. 'I worshipped him.' And as she said this she began at last to sob, and the first tears she had shed flowed from her eyes, which had been so dulled and narrowed that they had looked dead.

But she had not been satisfied, and later she came back to the subject again. She did it suddenly; seizing my arm, and lifting herself up, she cried out quickly that first sentence overheard by Bagshot--'I shall never rest until you tell me all!' Then, in a beseeching tone, she added: 'Do not keep it from me. I know that he did not love me as I loved him; still, he loved me, and I--was content. What you have to tell, therefore, can not hurt me, for--I was content. Then speak, Anne, speak.'

"I tried to quiet her, but she clung to me entreatingly. 'Tell me--tell me all,' she begged. 'When they bring him home, and I see his still face lying in the coffin, I want to stand beside him with my hand upon his breast, and whisper that I know all, understand all, forgive all, if there were anything to forgive. Anne, he will be glad to hear that--yes, even in death; for I loved him--love him--with all my soul, and he must know it now, there where he has gone. With all my imperfections, my follies, my deceptions, I loved him--loved him--loved him.' She began to weep, and I too burst into tears. It seemed to _me_ also that he would be glad to hear that sentence of hers, that forgiveness. And so, judging her by myself, I did tell her all."

She paused, and her voice trembled, as though in another moment it would break into sobs.

"What did you tell her?" said Dexter. He was leaning back in his chair, his face divested of all expression save a rigid impartiality.

"Must I repeat it?"

"Of course, if I am to know all."

"I told her that at Caryl's we had been much together," she began, with downcast eyes; "that, after a while, he made himself seem much nearer to me by--by speaking of--by asking me about--sacred things--I mean a religious belief." (Here her listener's face showed a quick gleam of angry contempt, but she did not see it.) "Then, after this, one morning in the garden, when I was in great trouble, he--spoke to me--in another way. And when I went away from Caryl's he followed me, and we were together on a train during one day; mademoiselle was with us. At evening I left the train with mademoiselle: he did not know where we went. At this time I was engaged to Erastus p.r.o.nando. In August of the next summer I went to West Virginia to a.s.sist in the hospitals for a short time. Here, unexpectedly, I heard of him lying ill at a farm-house in the neighborhood; I did not even know that he was in the army. I went across the mountain to see if he were in good hands, and found him very ill; he did not know me. When the fever subsided, there were a few hours--during which there was a--deception, followed by a confession of the same, and separation. He was to go back to his wife, and he did go back to her. It was because I believed that he had so fully gone back to her--or rather that he had never left her, I having been but a pa.s.sing fancy--that I told Helen all. She suspected something; it was better that she should know the whole--should know how short-lived had been his interest in me, his forgetfulness of her. But instead of making this impression upon her, it roused in her a pa.s.sion of excitement. It was then that she exclaimed: 'You have robbed me of his love; I will never forgive you'--the second sentence overheard by that listening spy.

"'Helen,' I answered, 'he did not love me. Do you not see that? _I_ am the one humiliated. When I saw you with him at St. Lucien's Church, I knew that he loved you--probably had never loved any one save you.'

"I believed what I said. But this is what she answered: 'It is not true.

Since he saw you he has never loved me. I see it now. He married me from pity, no doubt thinking that I was near death. How many times he must have wished me dead indeed! I wonder that he has not murdered me.'

"This, also, Bagshot heard, for Helen had risen to her feet, and spoke in a high, strained voice, unlike her own. I put my arms round her and drew her down again. She struggled, but I would not let her go.

"'Helen,' I said, 'you are beside yourself. You were his wife, and you were happy. That one look I had in church showed me that you were.'

"She relapsed into stillness. After a while she looked up, and said, quietly, 'It is a good thing he is dead.'

"'Hush!' I answered; 'you do not know what you are saying.'

"'Yes, I do. It is a good thing that he is dead,' she repeated; 'for I should have found it out, and made his life a torment. And I should never have died; it would have determined me never to die. I should have lived on forever, an old, old woman, close to him always, so that he could not have _you_.'

"She seemed half mad; I think, at the moment, she was half mad, owing to the shock, and to the dumb grief which was consuming her.

"'It would have been a strange life we should have led,' she went on. 'I would not have left him even for a moment; he should have put on my shawl and carried me to and fro just the same, and I should have kissed him always when he went out and came in, as though we loved each other.

I know his nature. It is--O G.o.d! I mean it _was_--the kind I could have worked upon. He was generous, very tender to all women; he would have yielded to me always, so far as bearing silently all my torments to the last.'"

Here Dexter interrupted the speaker. "You will acknowledge _now_ what I said concerning her?"

"No," replied Anne; "Helen imagined it all. She could never have carried it out. She loved him too deeply."

Her eyes met his defiantly. The old feeling that he was an antagonist rose in her face for a moment, met by a corresponding retort in his.

Then they both dropped their glance, and she resumed her narrative.

"It was here that she cried out, 'Yes, he has borne it so far, and now he is dead. But if he were alive, I should have taunted him with it. Do you hear? I say I should have taunted him.' This also Bagshot overheard.

And then--" She paused.

"And then?" repeated Dexter, his eyes full upon her face.

"She grew calmer," said the girl, turning her face from him, and speaking for the first time hurriedly; "she even kissed me. 'You were always good and true,' she said. 'But it was easy to be good and true, if you did not love him.' I suppose she felt my heart throb suddenly (she was lying in my arms), for she sprang up, and wound her arms round my neck, bringing her eyes close to mine. _Did_ you love him? she asked.

'Tell me--tell me; it will do no harm now.'

"But I drew myself out of her grasp, although she clung to me. I crossed the room. She followed me. 'Tell me,' she whispered; 'I shall not mind it. Indeed, I wish that you _did_ love him, that you do love him, for then we would mourn for him together. I can be jealous of his love for you, but not of yours for him, poor child. Tell me, Anne; tell me. I long to know that you are miserable too.' She was leaning on me: in truth, she was too weak to stand alone. She clung to me in the old caressing way. 'Tell me,' she whispered. But I set my lips. Then, still clinging to me, her eyes fixed on mine, she said that I could not love; that I did not know what love meant; that I never would know, because my nature was too calm, too measured. She spoke other deriding words, which I will not repeat; and then--and then--I do not know how it came about, but I pushed her from me, with her whispering voice and shining eyes, and spoke out aloud (we were standing near that door) those words--those words which Bagshot has repeated."

"You said those words?"

"I did."

"Then you loved him?"

"Yes."

"Do you love him now?"

As Dexter asked this question his eyes were fixed upon her with a strange intentness. At first she met his gaze with the same absorbed expression unconscious of self which her face had worn from the beginning. Then a burning blush rose, spread itself over her forehead, and dyed even her throat before it faded. "You have no right to ask that," she said, returning to her narrative with haste, as though it were a refuge.

"After I had said those words, there was no more bitterness between us.

I think _then_ Helen forgave me. She asked me to come and live with her in her desolation. I answered that perhaps later I could come, but not then; and it was at this time that she said, not what Bagshot has reported, 'You can not conquer hate,' but, 'You can not conquer fate.'

And she added: 'We two _must_ be together, Anne; we are bound by a tie which can not be severed, even though we may wish it. You must bear with me, and I must suffer you. It is our fate.'

"Later, she grew more feverish; her strength was exhausted. But when at last I rose to go, she went with me to the door. 'If he had lived,' she said, 'one of us must have died.' Then her voice sank to a whisper.

'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 paused; her eyes were full of tears.

"Is that all?" said Dexter, coldly.

"That is all."

Then there was a silence.

"Do you not think it important?" she asked at last, with a new timidity in her voice.

"It will make an impression; it will be your word against Bagshot's. The point proved will be that instead of your having separated in anger, with words of bitterness and jealousy, you separated in peace, as friends. Her letter will be important, if it proves this."

"It does. I have also another--a little note telling me of her husband's safety, and dropped into a letter-box on her way to the train. And I have the locket she gave me on the day of our last interview. She took it from her own neck and clasped it round mine a moment before I left her."

"Did Bagshot know of the existence of this locket?"

"She must have known it. For Helen said she always wore it; and Bagshot dressed her daily."

"Will you let me see it? And the two letters also, if they are here?"

"They are up stairs. I will get them."

What he wished to find out was whether she wore the locket. She came back so soon that he said to himself she could not have had it on--there had not been time to remove it; besides, as he held it in his hand it was not warm. He read the two letters carefully. Then he took up the locket again and examined it. It was a costly trinket, set with diamonds; within was a miniature, a life-like picture of Helen's husband.

He looked at his rival silently. The man was in prison, charged with the highest crime in the catalogue of crimes, and Dexter believed him guilty. Yet it was, all the same, above all and through all, the face of his rival still--of his triumphant, successful rival.