Anne Part 36

But Anne did not answer; she turned, as if to pa.s.s him.

"You shall not leave me," he said, barring the way. "Stay a moment, Anne; I promise not to keep you long. You will not? But you shall. Am _I_ nothing in all this? My feelings nothing? Let me tell you one thing: whatever Helen may have said, remember that it was all before I knew--_you_."

Anne's hands shook in his as he said this. "Let me go," she cried, with low, quick utterance; she dared not say more, lest her voice should break into sobs.

"I will not," said Heathcote, "until you hear me while I tell you that I have _not_ played a false part with you, Anne. I did begin it as an experiment, I confess that I did; but I have ended by being in earnest--at least to a certain degree. Helen does not know me entirely; one side of me she has never even suspected."

"Mrs. Lorrington has not spoken on the subject," murmured Anne, feeling compelled to set him right, but not looking up.

"Then what _has_ she said about me, that you should look as you do, my poor child?"

"You take too much upon yourself," replied the girl, with an effort to speak scornfully. "Why should you suppose we have talked of you?"

"I do not suppose it; I know it. I have not the heart to laugh at you, Anne: your white face hurts me like a sharp pain. Will you at least tell me that you do not believe I have been amusing myself at your expense--that you do not believe I have been insincere?"

"I am glad to think that you were not wholly insincere."

"And you will believe also that I like you--like you very, very much, with more than the ordinary liking?"

"That is nothing to me."

"Nothing to you? Look at me, Anne; you shall look once. Ah, my dear child, do you not see that I can not help loving you? And that you--love me also?" As he spoke he drew her close and looked down into her eyes, those startled violet eyes, that met his at last--for one half-moment.

Then she sprang from him, and burst into tears. "Leave me," she said, brokenly. "You are cruel."

"No; only human," answered Heathcote, not quite master of his words now.

"I have had your confession in that look, Anne, and you shall never regret it."

"I regret it already," she cried, pa.s.sionately; "I shall regret it all my life. Do you not comprehend? can you not understand? I am engaged--engaged to be married. I was engaged before we ever met."

"_You_ engaged, when I thought you hardly more than a child!" He had been dwelling only upon himself and his own course; possibilities on the other side had not occurred to him. They seldom do to much-admired men.

"I can not help what you thought me," replied Anne. At this moment they heard a step on the piazza; some one had come forth to try the morning air. Where they stood they were concealed, but from the garden walk they would be plainly visible.

"Leave me," she said, hurriedly.

"I will; I will cross the field, and approach the house by the road, so that you will be quite safe. But I shall see you again, Anne." He bent his head, and touched her hand with his lips, then sprang over the stone wall, and was gone, crossing the fields toward the distant turnpike.

Anne returned to the house, exchanging greetings as she pa.s.sed with the well-preserved jaunty old gentleman who was walking up and down the piazza twenty-five times before breakfast. She sought her own room, dressed herself anew, and then tapped at her grandaunt's door; the routine of the day had her in its iron grasp, and she was obliged to follow its law.

Mrs. Lorrington came in to breakfast like a queen: it was a royal progress. Miss Teller walked behind in amiable majesty, and gathered up the overflow; that is, she shook hands cordially with those who could not reach Helen, and smiled especially upon those whom Helen disliked.

Helen was robed in a soft white woollen material that clung closely about her; she had never seemed more slender. Her pale hair, wound round her small head, conveyed the idea that, unbound, it would fall to the hem of her dress. She wore no ornaments, not even a ring on her small fair hands. Her place was at some distance from Miss Vanhorn's table, but as soon as she was seated she bowed to Anne, and smiled with marked friendliness. Anne returned the salutation, and wondered that people did not cry out and ask her if she was dying. But life does not go out so easily as miserable young girls imagine.

"Eggs?" said the waiter.

She took one.

"I thought you did not like eggs," said Miss Vanhorn. She was in an ill-humor that morning because Bessmer had upset the plant-drying apparatus, composed of bricks and boards.

"Yes, thanks," said Anne, vaguely. Mr. Dexter was bowing good-morning to her at that moment, and she returned the salutation. Miss Vanhorn, observing this, withheld her intended rebuke for inattention. Dexter had bowed on his way across to Helen; he had finished his own breakfast, and now took a seat beside Miss Teller and Mrs. Lorrington. At this instant a servant entered bearing a basket of flowers, not the old-fas.h.i.+oned country flowers of Caryl's, but the superb cream-colored roses of the city, each on its long stalk, reposing on a bed of unmixed heliotrope, Helen's favorite flower. All eyes coveted the roses as they pa.s.sed, and watched to see their destination. They were presented to Mrs.

Lorrington.

Every one supposed that Dexter was the giver. The rich gift was like him, and perhaps also the time of its presentation. But the time was a mistake of the servant's; and was not Mrs. Lorrington bowing her thanks?--yes, she was bowing her thanks, with a little air of consciousness, yet with openness also, to Mr. Heathcote, who sat by himself at the end of the long room. He bowed gravely in return, thus acknowledging himself the sender.

"Well," said Miss Vanhorn, crossly, yet with a little shade of relief too in her voice, "of all systematic coquettes, Helen Lorrington is our worst. I suppose that we shall have no peace, now that she has come.

However, it will not last long."

"You will go away soon, then, grandaunt?" said Anne, eagerly.

Miss Vanhorn put up her eyegla.s.s; the tone had betrayed something. "No,"

she said, inspecting her niece coolly; "nothing of the sort. I shall remain through September, perhaps later."

Anne's heart sank. She would be obliged, then, to go through the ordeal.

She could eat nothing; a choking sensation had risen in her throat when Heathcote bowed to Helen, acknowledging the flowers. "May I go, grandaunt?" she said. "I do not feel well this morning."

"No; finish your breakfast like a Christian. I hate sensations. However, on second thoughts, you _may_ go," added the old woman, glancing at Dexter and Helen. "You may as well be re-arranging those specimens that Bessmer stupidly knocked down. But do not let me find the Lorrington in my parlor when I come up; do you hear?"

"Yes," said Anne, escaping. She ran up stairs to her own room, locked the door, and then stood pressing her hands upon her heart, crying out in a whisper: "Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do! How can I bear it!"

But she could not have even that moment unmolested: the day had begun, and its burdens she must bear. Bessmer knocked, and began at once tremulously about the injured plants through the closed door.

"Yes," said Anne, opening it, "I know about them. I came up to re-arrange them."

"It wouldenter been so bad, miss, if it hadenter been asters. But I never could make out asters; they all seem of a piece to me," said Bessmer, while Anne sorted the specimens, and replaced them within the drying-sheets. "Every fall there's the same time with 'em. I just dread asters, I do; not but what golden-rods is almost worse."

"Anne," said a voice in the hall.

Anne opened the door; it was Helen, with her roses.

"These are the Grand Llama's apartments, I suppose," she said, peeping in. "I will not enter; merely gaze over the sacred threshold. Come to my room, Crystal, for half an hour; I am going to drive at eleven."

"I must finish arranging these plants."

"Then come when you have finished. Do not fail; I shall wait for you."

And the white robe floated off down the dark sidling hall, as Miss Vanhorn's heavy foot made itself heard ascending the stairs. When Bessmer had gone to her breakfast, to collect what strength she could for another aster-day, Anne summoned her courage.

"Grandaunt, I would like to speak to you," she said.

"And I do not want to be spoken to; I have neuralgia in my cheek-bones."

"But I would like to tell you--"

"And I do not want to be told. You are always getting up sensations of one kind or another, which amount to nothing in the end. Be ready to drive to Updegraff's glen at eleven; that is all I have to say to you now." She went into the inner room, and closed the door.

"It does not make any difference," thought Anne, drearily; "I shall tell her at eleven."

Then, nerving herself for another kind of ordeal, she went slowly toward Helen's apartments.

But conventionality is a strong power: she pa.s.sed the first fifteen minutes of conversation without faltering.