Dear Annie/Part 1
A STORY IN TWO PARTS—PART I
ANNIE HEMPSTEAD lived on a large family canvas, being the oldest of six children. There was only one boy. The mother was long since dead. If one can imagine the Hempstead family, the head of which was the Rev. Silas, pastor of the Orthodox Church in Lynn Corners, as being the subject of a mild study in village history, the high light would probably fall upon Imogen, the youngest daughter. As for Annie, she would apparently supply only a part of the background.
The afternoon is afternoon in late July, Annie was out in the front yard of the parsonage, assisting her brother Benny to rake hay. Benny had not cut it. Annie had hired a man, although the Hempsteads could not afford to hire a man, but she had said to Benny, “Benny, you can rake the hay and get it into the barn if Jim Mullins cuts it, can't you?” And Benny had smiled and nodded acquiescence. Benny Hempstead always smiled and nodded acquiescence, but there was in him the strange persistency of a willow bough, the persistency of pliability, which is the most unconquerable of all. Benny swayed gracefully in response to the wishes of others, but always he remained in his own inadequate attitude toward life.
Now he was raking to as little purpose as he could and rake at all. The clover-tops, the timothy grass, and the buttercups moved before his rake in a faint foam of gold and green and rose, but his sister Annie raised whirlwinds with hers. The Hempstead yard was large and deep, and had two great squares given over to wild growths on either side of the gravel walk, which was bordered with shrubs, flowering in their turn, like a class of children at school saying their lessons. The spring shrubs had all spelled out their floral but recitations, of course, but great clumps of peonies were spreading wide skirts of gigantic bloom, like dancers curtsying low on the stage of summer, and shafts of green-white Yucca lilies and Japan lilies and clove-pinks still remained in their school of bloom.
Benny often stood still, wiped his forehead, leaned on his rake, and inhaled the bouquet of sweet scents, but Annie raked with never-ceasing energy. Annie was small and slender and wiry, and moved with angular grace, her thin, peaked elbows showing beneath the sleeves of her pink gingham dress, her thin knees out lining beneath the folds of the skirt. Her neck was long, her shoulder-blades troubled the back of her blouse at every movement. She was a creature full of ostentatious joints, but the joints were delicate and rhythmical and charming. Annie had a charming face, too. It was thin and sunburnt, but still charming, with a sweet, eager, intent-to-please outlook upon life. This last was the real attitude of Annie's mind; it was, in fact, Annie. She was intent to please from her toes to the crown of her brown head. She radiated good-will and loving-kindness as fervently as a lily in the border radiated perfume.
It was very warm, and the northwest sky had a threatening mountain of clouds. Occasionally Annie glanced at it and raked the faster, and thought complacently of the water-proof covers in the little barn. This hay was valuable for the Reverend Silas's horse.
Two of the front windows of the house ere filled with girls' heads, and the regular swaying movement of white-clad arms, sewing. The girls sat in the house because it was so sunny on the piazza in the afternoon. There were four girls in the sitting-room, all making finery for themselves. On the other side of the front door one of the two windows was blank; in the other was visible a nodding gray head, that of Annie's father taking his afternoon nap.
Everything was still except the girls' tongues, an occasional burst of laughter, and the crackling shrill of locusts. Nothing had passed on the dusty road since Benny and Annie had begun their work. Lynn Corners was nothing more than a hamlet. It was even seldom that an automobile got astray there, being diverted from the little city of Anderson, six miles away, by turning to the left instead of the right.
Benny stopped again and wiped his forehead, all pink and beaded with sweat. He was a pretty young man, pretty as a girl, although large. He glanced furtively at Annie, then he went with a padding glide, like a big cat, to the piazza and settled down. He leaned his head against a post, closed his eyes, and inhaled the sweetness of flowers alive and dying, of new-mown hay. Annie glanced at him, and an angelic look came over her face. At that moment the sweetness of her nature seemed actually visible.
“He is tired, poor boy!” she thought. She also thought that probably Benny felt the heat more because he was stout. Then she raked faster and faster. She fairly flew over the yard, raking the severed grass and flowers into heaps. The air grew more sultry. The sun was not yet clouded, but the northwest darker and rumbled ominously.
The girls in the sitting-room continued to chatter and sew. One of them might have come out to help this little sister toiling alone, but Annie did not think of that. She raked with the uncomplaining sweetness of an angel until the storm burst. The rain came down in solid drops, and the sky was a clamoring flame. Annie made one motion toward the barn, but there was no use. The hay was not half cocked. There was no sense in running for covers. Benny was up and lumbering into the house, and her sisters were shutting windows and crying out to her. Annie deserted her post and fled before the wind, her pink skirts lashing her heels, her hair dripping.
When she entered the sitting-room her sisters, Imogen, Eliza, Jane, and Susan were all there; also her father, Silas, tall and gaunt and gray. To the Hempsteads a thunder-storm partook of the the nature of a religious ceremony. The family gathered together, and it was understood that they were all offering prayer and recognizing God as present on the wings of the tempest. In reality they were all very nervous in thunder-storms, with the exception of Annie. She always sent up a little silent petition that her sisters, brother and father, and the horse, dog and cat, might escape danger, although she had never been sure that she was not wicked in including the dog and cat. She was surer about the horse, because he was the means by which her father made pastoral calls upon hs distant sheep. Then afterward she just sat with the others, and waited until the storm was over and it was time to open the windows and see if the roof had leaked. To-day, however, she was intent upon the hay. In a lull of the tempest she spoke.
“It is a pity,” she said, “that I was not able to get the hay cocked and the covers on.”
Then Imogen turned large, sarcastic blue eyes upon her. Imogen was considered a beauty, pink and white, golden-haired, and dimpled, with a curious calculating hardness of character and a sharp tongue, at variance with her appearance that people doubted the evidence of their senses.
“If,” said Imogen, “you had only made Benny work instead of encouraging him to dawdle, and finally to stop altogether, and if you had gone out directly after dinner, the hay would have been raked up and covered.”
Nothing could have exceeded the calm and instructive superiority of Imogen's tone. A mass of soft white fabric lay upon her lap, although she had removed scissors and needle and thimble to a safe distance. She tilted her chin with a royal air. When the storm lulled she had stopped praying.
Imogen's sisters echoed her and joined in the attack upon Annie. “Yes,” said Jane. “If you had only started earlier, Annie. I told Eliza when you went out in the yard that it looked like a shower.”
Eliza nodded energetically.
“It was foolish to start so late,” said Susan, with a calm air of wisdom only a shade less exasperating than Imogen's.
“And you always encourage Benny so in being lazy.” said Eliza.
Then the Reverend Silas joined in. “You should have more sense of responsibility toward your brother, your only brother, Annie,” he said, in his deep pulpit voice.
“It was after two o'clock when you went out,” said Imogen.
“And all you had to do was the dinner dishes, and there were very few to-day,” said Jane.
Then Annie turned with a quick, cat-like motion. Her eyes blazed under her brown toss of hair. She gesticulated with her little, nervous hands. Her voice was as sweet and intense as a reed, and withal piercing with anger.
“It was not half past one when I went out,” said she, “and there was a whole sinkful of dishes.”
“It was after two. I looked at the clock,” said Imogen.
“It was not.”
“And there were very few dishes,” said Jane.
“A whole sinkful,” said Annie, tense with wrath.
“You always are rather late about starting,” said Susan.
“I am not! I was not! I washed the dishes, and swept the kitchen, and blacked the stove, and cleaned the silver.”
“I swept the kitchen,” said Imogen, severely. “Annie, I am surprised at you.”
“And you know I cleaned the silver yesterday,” said Jane
Annie gave a gasp and looked from one to the other.
“You know you did not sweep the kitchen,” said Imogen
Annie's father gazed at her severely. “My dear,” he said, “how long must I try to correct you of this habit of making false statements?”
“Dear Annie does not realize that they are false statements, father,” said Jane. Jane was not pretty, but she gave the effect of a long, sweet stanza of some fine poetess. She was very tall and slender and large-eyed, and wore always a serious smile. She was attired in a purple muslin gown, cut V-shaped at the throat, and, always, a black velvet ribbon with a little gold locket attached. The locket contained a coil of hair. Jane had been engaged to a young minister, now dead three years, and he had given her the locket.
Jane doubt had mourned for her lover, but she had a covert pleasure in the romance of her situation. She was a year younger than Annie, and she had loved and and lost, and so had achieved a sentimental distinction. Imogen always had admirers. As Eliza had been courted at intervals half-heartedly by a widower, and Susan had had but a few fleeting chances. But Jane was the only one who had been really definite in her heart affairs. As for Annie, nobody ever thought of her in such a connection. It was supposed that Annie had no thought of marriage, that she was foreordained to remain unwed and keep house for her father and Benny.
When Jane said that dear Annie did not realize that she made false statements, she voiced an opinion of the family before which Annie was always absolutely helpless. Defence meant counter-accusation. Annie could not accuse her family. She glanced from one to the other. In her blue eves were still sparks of wrath, but she said nothing. She felt, as always, speechless, when affairs reached such a juncture. She began, in spite of her good sense, to feel guiltily responsible for everything—for the spoiling of the hay, even for the thunder-storm. What was more, she even wished to feel guiltily responsible. Anything was better than to be sure her sisters were not speaking the truth, that her father was blaming her unjustly.
Benny, who sat hunched upon himself with the effect of one set of bones and muscles leaning upon others for support, was the only one who spoke for her, and even he spoke to little purpose.
“One of you other girls,” said he, in a thick sweet voice, “might have come out and helped Annie; then she could have got the hay in.”
They all turned on him.
“It is all very well for you to talk,” said Imogen. “I saw you myself quit raking hay and sit down on the piazza.”
“Yes,” assented Jane, nodding violently. “I saw you, too.”
“You have no sense of your responsibility, Benjamin, and your sister Annie abets you in evading it,” said Silas Hempstead, with dignity.
“Benny feels the heat,” said Annie.
“Father is entirely right,” said Eliza. Benjamin has no sense of responsibility, and it's mainly owing to Annie.”
“But dear Annie does not realize it,” said Jane.
Benny got up lumberingly and left the room. He loved his sister Annie, but he hated the mild simmer of feminine rancor, to which even his father's presence failed to add a masculine flavor. Benny was always leaving the room, and allowing his sisters “to fight it out.”
Just after he left there was a tremendous peal of thunder and a blue flash and they all prayed again, except Annie. Annie was occupied in her own perplexities of life, and not at all afraid. She wondered, as she had wondered many times before if she could possibly be in the wrong, if she were spoiling Benny, if she said and did things without knowing that she did so, or the contrary. Then suddenly she tightened her mouth. She knew. This sweet-tempered, anxious-ease Annie was entirely sane, she had unusual self poise She knew that she knew what she did and said, and what she did not do or say, and a strange comprehension of her family overwhelmed her. Her sisters were truthful: she would not admit anything else, even to herself; but they confused desires and impulses with accomplishment. They had done so all their lives, some from intense egotism, some possibly from slight twists in their mental organisms. As for her father, he had simply rather a weak character and was swayed by the majority. Annie, as she sat there among the praying group, made the same excuse for her sisters that they made for her. “They don't realize it,” she said to herself.
When the storm finally ceased she hurried up-stairs and opened the windows, letting in the rain-fresh air. Then she got supper, while her sisters resumed their needlework. A curious conviction seized her, as she was hurrying about the kitchen, that in probability some if not all of her sisters considered that they were getting the supper. Possibility Jane had reflected that she ought to get supper, then had taken another stitch in her work, and had not known fairly that her impulse of duty had not been carried out. Imogen, presumably was sewing with the serene consciousness that, since she was herself, it followed as a matter of course that she was performing all the tasks of the house.
While Annie was making an omelet Benny came out into the kitchen and stood regarding her, hands in pockets, making, as usual, one set of muscles rest upon another. His face was full of the utmost good nature, but it also convicted him of too much sloth to obey its commands.
“Say, Annie, what on earth makes them all pick on you so?” he observed.
“Hush, Benny! They don't mean to.They don't know it.”
“But say, Annie you must know that they tell whoppers. You did sweep the kitchen.”
“Hush, Benny! Imogen really thinks she swept it.”
“Imogen always thinks she has done everything she ought to do, whether she has done it or not,” said Benny with unusual astuteness. “Why don't you up and tell her she lies, Annie?”
“She doesn't really lie,” said Annie.
“She does lie, even if she doesn't know it,” said Benny, “and what is more, she ought to be made to know it. Say, Annie, it strikes me that you are doing the same by the girls that they accuse you of doing by me. Aren't you encouraging them in evil ways?”
Annie turned and started and stared at him.
Benny nodded. “I can't see any difference,” he said. “There isn't a day but one of the girls thinks she has done something you have done, or hasn't done something you ought to have done, and they blame you all the time, when you don't deserve it, and you let them, and they don't know it, and I don't think myself that they know they tell whoppers; but they ought to know. Strikes me you are just spoiling the whole lot, father thrown in, Annie. You are a dear, just as they say, but you are too much of a dear to be good for them.”
Annie stared.
“You are letting that omelet burn,” said Benny. “Say, Annie, I will go out and turn that hay in the morning. I know I don't amount to much, but I ain't a girl, anyhow, and I haven't got a cross-eyed soul. That's what ails a lot of girls. They mean all right, but their souls have been cross-eyed ever since they came into the world, and it's just such girls as you who ought to get them straightened out. You know what has happened to-day. Well, here's what happened yesterday. I don't tell tales, but you ought to know this, for I believe Tom Reed has his eye on you, in spite of Imogen's being such a beauty, and Susan's having manners like silk, and Eliza's giving everybody the impression that she is too good for this earth, and Jane's trying to make everybody think she is a sweet martyr, without a thought for mortal man, when that is only her way of trying to catch one. You know Tom Reed was here last evening?”
Annie nodded. Her face turned scarlet, then pathetically pale. She bent over her omelet, carefully lifting it around the edges.
“Well,” Benny went on, “I know he came to see you, and Imogen went to the door and ushered him into the parlor, and I was out on the piazza, and she didn't know it, but I heard her tell him that she thought you had gone out. She hinted, too, that George Wells had taken you to the concert in the town hall. He did ask you, didn't he?”
“Yes.”
“Well, spoke in this way.” Benny lowered his voice and imitated Imogen to the life. “'Yes, we are all well, thank you. Father is busy, of course; Jane has run over to Mrs. Jacob's for a pattern; Eliza is writing letters; and Susan is somewhere about the house. Annie—well, Annie—George Wells asked her to go to the concert—I rather—' Then,” said Benny in his natural voice, “Imogen stopped, and she could say truthfully that she didn't lie, but anybody would have thought from what she said that you had gone to the concert with George Wells.”
“Did Tom inquire for me?” asked Annie, in a low voice.
“Didn't have a chance. Imogen got ahead of him.”
“Oh, well, then it doesn't matter. I dare say he did come to see Imogen.”
“He didn't” said Benny, stoutly. “And that isn't all. Say, Annie—”
“What?”
“Are you going to marry George Wells? It is none of my business, but are you?”
Annie laughed a little, although her face was still pale. She had folded the omelet, and was carefully watching it.
“You need not worry about that, Benny dear,” she said.
“Then what right have the girls to tell so many people the nice things they hear you say about him?”
Annie removed the omelet skilfully from the pan to a hot plate, which she set on the range shelf, and turned to her brother.
“What nice things do they hear me say?”
“That he is so handsome; that he has such a good disposition; that he is the very best young man in the place; that you should think every girl would be head over heels in love with him; that every word he speaks is so bright and clever.”
Annie looked at her brother.
“I don't believe you ever said one of those things,” remarked Benny.
Annie continued to look at him.
“Did you?”
“Benny dear, I am not going to tell you.”
“You won't say you never did, because that would be putting your sisters in the wrong and admitting that they tell lies. Annie, you are a dear, but I do think you are doing wrong and spoiling them as much as they say you are spoiling me.”
“Perhaps I am,” said Annie. There was a strange, tragic expression on her keen, pretty little face. She looked as if her mind was contemplating strenuous action which was changing her very features. She had covered the finished omelet and was now cooking another.
“I wish you would see if everybody is in the house and ready, Benny,” said she. “When this omelet is done they must come right away, or nothing will be fit to eat. And, Benny dear, if you don't mind, please get the butter and the cream-pitcher out of the ice-chest. I have everything else on the table.”
“There is another thing,” said Benny. “I don't go about telling tales, but I do think it is time you knew. The girls tell everybody that you like to do the house-work so much that they don't dare interfere. And it isn't so. They may have taught themselves to think it is so, but it isn't You would like a little time for fancy-work and reading as well as they do.”
“Please get the cream and butter, and see if they are all in the house,” said Annie. She spoke as usual, but the strange expression remained in her face. It was still there when the family were all gathered at the table and she was serving the puffy omelet. Jane noticed it first
“What makes you look so odd, Annie?” said she
“I don't know how I look odd,” replied Annie.
They all gazed at her then, her father with some anxiety. “You don't look yourself,” he said. “You are feeling well, aren't you, Annie?”
“Quite well, thank you, father.”
But right after the omelet was served and the tea poured Annie rose.
“Where are you going, Annie?” asked Imogen, in her sarcastic voice.
“To my room, or perhaps out in the orchard.”
“It will be sopping wet out there after the shower,” said Eliza. “Are you crazy, Annie?”
“I have on my black skirt, and I will wear rubbers,” said Annie, quietly. “I want some fresh air.”
“I should think you had enough fresh air. You were outdoors all the afternoon, while we were cooped up in the house,” said Jane.
“Don't you feel well, Annie?” her father asked again, a golden bit of omelet poised on his fork, as she was leaving the room.
“Quite well, father dear.”
“But you are eating no supper.”
“I have always heard that people who cook don't need so much to eat,” said Imogen. “They say the essence of the food soaks in through the pores.”
“I am quite well,” Annie repeated as the door closed behind her.
“Dear Annie! She is always doing odd things like this,” remarked Jane.
“Yes, she is, things that one cannot account for, but Annie is a dear,” said Susan.
“I hope she is well,” said Annie's father.
“Oh, she is well enough. Don't worry, father,” said Imogen. “Dear Annie is always doing the unexpected. She is always doing the unexpected. She looks very well.”
“Yes, dear Annie is quite stout, for her,” said Jane.
“I think she is thinner than I have ever seen her, and the rest of you look like like stuffed geese,” said Benny, rudely.
Imogen turned upon him in dignified wrath. “Benny, you insult your sisters,” said she. “Father, you should really tell Benny that he should bridle his tongue a little.”
“You ought to bridle yours, every one of you,” retorted Benny. “You girls nag poor Annie every single minute. You let her do all the work, then you pick at her for it.”
There was a chorus of treble voices. “We nag dear Annie! We pick at dear Annie! We make her do everything! Father, you should remonstrate with Benjamin. You know how we all love dear Annie!”
“Benjamin,” began Silas Hempstead, but Benny, with a smothered exclamation, was up and out of the room.
Benny quite frankly disliked his sisters, with the exception of Annie. For his father he had a sort of respectful tolerance. He could not see why he should have anything else. His father had never done anything for him except to admonish him. His scanty revenue for his support and college expenses came from his maternal grandmother, who had been a woman of parts, and who had openly scorned her son-in-law.
IT WAS SUPPOSED THAT ANNIE HAD NO THOUGHT OF MARRIAGE
Grandmother Loomis had left a will occasioned much comment. By its terms she had provided sparsely but adequately for Benjamin's education and living until he should graduate; and her house with all her personal property, and the bulk of the sum from which she had derived her own income, fell to her granddaughter Annie. Annie had always been her Grandmother's favorite. There had been covert dismay when the contents of the will were made known, then one and all congratulated the beneficiary, and said abroad that they were glad dear Annie was so well provided for. It was intimated by Imogen and Eliza that probably dear Annie would not marry, and in that case Grandmother Loomis's bequest was so fortunate. She had probably taken that into consideration. Grandmother Loomis had now been dead four years, and her deserted home had been for rent, furnished, but it had remained vacant.
Annie soon came back from the orchard, after she had cleared away the supper and washed the dishes, she went up to her room, carefully rearranged her hair and changed her dress. Then she sat down beside a window and waited and watched, her pointed chin in a cup of one little thin hand, her soft muslin skirts circling around her, and the scent of queer old sachet emanating from a flowered ribbon of her grandmother's which she had tied around her waist. The ancient scent always clung to the ribbon, suggesting faintly as a dream the musk and roses and violets of some old summer-time.
Annie sat there and gazed out on the front yard, which was silvered over with moonlight. Annie's four sisters sat all there. They had spread a rug over damp grass and brought out chairs. There were five chairs, although there only four girls. Annie gazed over the yard and down the street. She heard the chatter of the girls, which was inconsequent and absent, as if their minds were on other things than their conversation. Then suddenly she saw a small gleam far down the street, evidently that of a cigar, and also a dark moving figure. Then there ensued a subdued wrangle in the yard. Imogen insisted that her sisters should go into the house. They resisted, Eliza the most vehemently. Imogen was arrogant and compelling. Finally she drove them all into the house except Eliza, who wavered upon the threshold of yielding. Imogen was obliged to speak very softly lest the approaching man hear, but Annie in the window above her, heard every word.
“You know he is coming to see me,” said Imogen, passionately. “You know—you know, Eliza, and yet every single time he comes, here are you, spying and listening.”
“He comes to see Annie, I believe,” said Eliza, in her stubborn voice, which yet had indecision in it.
“He never asks for her.”
“He never has a chance. We all tell him, the minute he comes in, that she is out. But now I am going to stay, anyway.”
“Stay if you want to. You are all a jealous lot. If you girls can't have a beau yourselves, you begrudge one to me. I never saw such a house as this for a man to come courting in.”
“I will stay,” said Eliza, and this time her voice was wholly firm. “There is no use in my going, anyway, for the others are coming back.”
It was true. Back flitted Jane and Susan, and by that time Tom Reed had reached the gate, and his cigar was going out in a shower of sparks on the gravel walk, and all four sisters were greeting him, and urging upon his acceptance the fifth chair. Annie, watching, saw that the young man seemed to hesitate, Then her heart leaped and she heard him speak quite plainly, with a note of defiance and irritation, albeit with embarrassment.
“Is Miss Annie in?” asked Tom Reed.
Imogen answered first, and her harsh voice was honey-sweet.
“I fear dear Annie is out,” she said. “She will be so sorry to miss you.”
Annie, at her window, made a sudden, passionate motion, then she sat still and listened. She argued fiercely that she was right in so doing. She felt that the time had come when she must know, for the sake of her own individuality, just what she had to deal with in the natures of her own kith and kin. Dear Annie had turned in her groove of sweetness and gentle yielding, as all must turn who have any strength of character underneath the sweetness and gentleness. Therefore Annie, at her window above, listened.
At first she heard little that bore upon herself, for the conversation was desultory, about the weather and general village topics. Then Annie heard her own name. She was “dear Annie” as usual. She listened, fairly faint with amazement. What she heard from the quartette of treble voices down there in the moonlight seemed almost like a fairy-tale. The sisters did not violently incriminate her. They were too astute for that. They told half-truths. They told truths which were as shadows of the real facts, and yet not to be contradicted. They built up between them a story marvellously consistent unless prearranged and that Annie did not think possible. George Wells figured in the tale and there were various hints and pauses concerning herself and her own character in daily life, and not one item could be flatly denied, even if the girl could have gone down there and, standing in the midst of that moonlight group, given her sisters the lie.
Everything which they told, the whole structure of falsehood, had beams and rafters of truth. Annie felt he helpless before it all. To her fancy, her sisters and Tom Reed seemed actually sitting in a fairy building whose substance was utter falsehood, and yet which could not be utterly denied. An awful sense of isolation possessed her. So these were her own sisters whom she had loved as a matter of the simplest nature, whom she had admired, whom she had served.
She made no allowance, since she herself was perfectly normal, for the motive which underlay it all. She could not comprehend the strife of the women over the one man. Tom Reed was in reality the one desirable man in the village. Annie knew, or thought she knew, that Tom Reed had it in mind to love her, and she innocently had it in mind to love him. She thought of a home of her own and his with delight. She thought of it as she thought of the roses coming into bloom in June, and she thought of it as she thought of the every-day happenings of life—cooking, setting rooms in order, washing dishes. However there was something else to reckon with, and that Annie instinctively knew. She had been long-suffering, and her long-suffering was now regarded as endless. She had cast her pearls, and they had been trampled. She had turned the other cheek and it had been promptly slapped. It was entirely true that Annie's sisters were not worthy of her, that they had taken advantage of her kindness and gentleness, and had mistaken them for weakness, to be despised. She did not understand them nor they her. They were, on the whole, better than she thought. But with her there was a stern limit of endurance. Something whiter and hotter than mere wrath was in the girl's soul as she sat there and listened to the building of that structure of essential falsehood about herself.
She waited until Tom Reed had gone. He did not stay long. Then she went down-stairs with flying feet, and stood among them in the moonlight. Her father had come out of the study, and Benny had just been entering the gate as Tom Reed left. Then dear Annie spoke. She really spoke for the first time in her life, and there was something dreadful about it all. A sweet nature is always rather dreadful when it turns and strikes, and Annie struck with the whole force of a nature with a foundation of steel. She left nothing unsaid. She defended herself and she accused her sisters as if before a judge. Then came her ultimatum.
“To-morrow morning I am going over to Grandmother Loomis's house, and I am going to live there a whole year,” she declared, in a slow, steady voice. “As you know, I have enough to live on, and—in order that no word of mine can be garbled and twisted as it has been to-night, I speak not at all. Everything which I have to communicate shall be written in black and white, and signed with my own name, and black and white cannot lie.”
It was Jane who spoke first. “What will people say?” she whimpered, feebly.
“From what I have heard you all say to-night, whatever you make them,” retorted Annie—the Annie who had turned.
Jane gasped. Silas Hempstead stood staring, quite dumb before the sudden problem. Imogen alone seemed to have any command whatever of the situation.
“May I inquire what the butcher and grocer are going to think, no matter what your own sisters think and say, when you give your orders in writing?" she inquired, achieving a jolt from tragedy to the commonplace.
“That is my concern,” replied Annie, yet she recognized the difficulty of that phase of the situation. It is just such trifling matters which detract from the dignity of extreme attitudes toward existence. Annie had taken an extreme attitude, yet here were the butcher and the grocer to reckon with. How could she communicate with them in writing without appearing absurd to the verge of insanity? Yet even that difficulty had a solution.
Annie thought it out after she had gone to bed that night. She had been imperturbable with her sisters, who had finally come in a body to make entreaties, although not apologies or retractions. There was a stiff-necked strain in the Hempstead family, and apologies and retractions were bitterer cuds for them to chew than for most. She had been imperturbable with her father, who had quoted Scripture and prayed at her during family worship. She had been imperturbable even with Benny, who had whispered to her: “Say, Annie, I don't blame you, but it will be a hell of a time without you. Can't you stick it out?”
But she had had a struggle before her own vision of the butcher and the grocer, and their amazement when she ceased to speak to them. Then she settled that with a sudden leap of inspiration. It sounded too apropos to be life, but there was a little deaf and dumb girl, a faraway relative of the Hempsteads, who lived with her aunt Felicia in Anderson. She was a great trial to her aunt Felicia, who was a widow and well-to-do, and liked the elegancies and normalities of life. This unfortunate little Effie Hempstead could not be placed in a charitable institution on account of the name she bore. Aunt Felicia considered it her worldly duty to care for her, but it was a trial.
Annie would take Effie off Aunt Felicia's hands, and no comment would be excited by a deaf and dumb girl carrying written messages to the tradesmen, since she obviously could not give them orally. The only comment would be on Annie's conduct in holding herself aloof from her family and the village people generally.
The next morning, when Annie went away, there was an excited conclave among the sisters.
“She means to do it,” said Susan, and she wept.
Imogen's handsome face looked hard and set. “Let her if she wants to,” said she.
“Only think what people will say!” wailed Jane,
Imogen tossed her head. “I shall have something to say myself,” she returned. “I shall say how much we all regret that dear Annie has such a difficult disposition that she felt she could not live with her own family, and must be alone.”
“But,” said Jane, blunt in her distress, “will they believe it?”
“Why will they not believe it, pray?”
“Why, I am afraid people have the impression that dear Annie has—” Jane hesitated.
“What?” asked Imogen, coldly. She looked very handsome that morning. Not a waved golden hair was out of place on her carefully brushed head. She wore the neatest of blue linen skirts and blouses, with a linen collar and white tie. There was something hard but compelling about her blond beauty.
“I am afraid,” said Jane, “that people have a sort of general impression that dear Annie has perhaps as sweet a disposition as any of us, perhaps sweeter.”
“Nobody says that dear Annie has not a sweet disposition,” said Imogen, taking a careful stitch in her embroidery. “But a sweet disposition is very often extremely difficult for other people. It constantly puts them in the wrong. I am well aware of the fact that dear Annie does a great deal for all of us, but it is sometimes irritating. Of course it is quite certain that she must have a feeling of superiority because of it, and she should not have it.”
Sometimes Eliza made illuminating speeches. “I suppose it follows, then,” said she, with slight irony, “that only an angel can have a very sweet disposition without offending others.”
But Imogen was not in the least nonplussed. She finished her line of thought. “And with all her sweet disposition,” said, she, “nobody can deny that dear Annie is peculiar, and peculiarity always makes people difficult for other people. Of course it is horribly peculiar what she is proposing to do now. That in itself will be enough to convince people that dear Annie must he difficult. Only a difficult person could do such a strange thing.”
“Who is going to get up and get breakfast in the morning, and wash the dishes?” inquired Jane, irrelevantly.
“All I ever want for breakfast is a bit of fruit, a roll, and an egg. besides my coffee," said Imogen, with her imperious air.
“Somebody has to prepare' it.”
“That is a mere nothing,” said Imogen, and she took another stitch.
After a little, Jane and Eliza went by themselves and discussed the problem.
“It is quite evident that Imogen means to do nothing,” said Jane.
“And also that she will justify herself by the theory that there is nothing to be done,” said Eliza.
“Oh, well,” said Jane. “I will got up and get breakfast, of course. I once contemplated the prospect of doing it the rest of my life.”
Eliza assented. “I can understand that it will not be so hard for you,” she said, “and although I myself always aspired to higher things than preparing breakfasts, still, you did not, and it is true that you would probably have had it to do if poor Benny had lived, for he was not one to ever have a very large salary.”
“There are better things than large salaries,” said Jane, and her face looked sadly reminiscent. After all, the distinction of being the only one who had been on the brink of preparing matrimonial breakfasts was much. She felt that it would make early rising and early work endurable to her, although she was not an active young woman.
“I will get a dish-mop and wash the dishes,” said Eliza. “I can manage to have an instructive book propped open on the kitchen table, and keep my mind upon higher things as I do such menial tasks.”
Then Susan stood in the doorway, a tall figure gracefully swaying sidewise, long-throated and prominent-eyed. She was the least attractive-looking of any of the sisters, but her manners were so charming, and she was so perfectly the lady, that it made up for any lack of beauty.
“I will dust,” said Susan, in a lovely voice, and as she spoke she involuntarily bent and swirled her limp muslins in such a way that she fairly suggested a moral duster. There was the making of an actress in Susan. Nobody had ever been able to decide what her true individual self was. Quite unconsciously, like a chameleon, she took upon herself the characteristics of even inanimate things. Just now she was a duster, and a wonderfully creditable duster.
“Who,” said Jane, “is going to sweep? Dear Annie has always done that.”
“I am not strong enough to sweep. I am very sorry,” said Susan, who remained a duster, and did not become a broom.
“If we have system,” said Eliza, “vaguely, "the work ought not to be so very hard.”
“Of course not,” said Imogen. She had come in and seated herself. Her three sisters eyed her, but she embroidered imperturbably. The same thought was in the minds of all. Obviously Imogen was the very one to take the task of sweeping upon herself. That hard, compact, young body of hers suggested strenuous household work. Embroidery did not seem to be her rôle at all.
But Imogen had no intention of sweeping. Indeed, the very imagining of such tasks in connection with herself was beyond her. She did not even dream that her sisters expected it of her.
“I suppose,” said Jane, “that we might be able to engage Mrs. Moss to come in once a week and do the sweeping.”
“It would cost considerable,” said Susan.
“But it has to be done.”
“I should think it might be managed, with system, if you did not hire anybody,” said Imogen, calmly.
“You talk of system as if it were a suction cleaner,” said Eliza, with a dash of asperity. Sometimes she reflected how she would have hated Imogen had she not been her sister.
“System is invaluable,” said Imogen. She looked away from her embroidery to the white stretch of country road, arched over with elms, and her beautiful eyes had an expression as if they sighted system, the justified settler of all problems.