第 23 页

After tea Mrs. Douglas smiled benevolently and told John to take “dear Janet” out into the garden and get her some roses. “Miss Shirley will keep me company while you are out—won’t you?” she said plaintively. She settled down in her armchair with a sigh.

“I am a very frail old woman, Miss Shirley. For over twenty years I’ve been a great sufferer. For twenty long, weary years I’ve been dying by inches.”

“How painful!” said Anne, trying to be sympathetic and succeeding only in feeling idiotic.

“There have been scores of nights when they’ve thought I could never live to see the dawn,” went on Mrs. Douglas solemnly. “Nobody knows what I’ve gone through—nobody can know but myself. Well, it can’t last very much longer now. My weary pilgrimage will soon be over, Miss Shirley. It is a great comfort to me that John will have such a good wife to look after him when his mother is gone—a great comfort, Miss Shirley.”

“Janet is a lovely woman,” said Anne warmly.

“Lovely! A beautiful character,” assented Mrs. Douglas. “And a perfect housekeeper—something I never was. My health would not permit it, Miss Shirley. I am indeed thankful that John has made such a wise choice. I hope and believe that he will be happy. He is my only son, Miss Shirley, and his happiness lies very near my heart.”

“Of course,” said Anne stupidly. For the first time in her life she was stupid. Yet she could not imagine why. She seemed to have absolutely nothing to say to this sweet, smiling, angelic old lady who was patting her hand so kindly.

“Come and see me soon again, dear Janet,” said Mrs. Douglas lovingly, when they left. “You don’t come half often enough. But then I suppose John will be bringing you here to stay all the time one of these days.” Anne, happening to glance at John Douglas, as his mother spoke, gave a positive start of dismay. He looked as a tortured man might look when his tormentors gave the rack the last turn of possible endurance. She felt sure he must be ill and hurried poor blushing Janet away.

“Isn’t old Mrs. Douglas a sweet woman?” asked Janet, as they went down the road.

“M—m,” answered Anne absently. She was wondering why John Douglas had looked so.

“She’s been a terrible sufferer,” said Janet feelingly. “She takes terrible spells. It keeps John all worried up. He’s scared to leave home for fear his mother will take a spell and nobody there but the hired girl.”

Chapter XXXIII. “He Just Kept Coming and Coming”

Three days later Anne came home from school and found Janet crying. Tears and Janet seemed so incongruous that Anne was honestly alarmed.

“Oh, what is the matter?” she cried anxiously.

“I’m—I’m forty today,” sobbed Janet.

“Well, you were nearly that yesterday and it didn’t hurt,” comforted Anne, trying not to smile.

“But—but,” went on Janet with a big gulp, “John Douglas won’t ask me to marry him.”

“Oh, but he will,” said Anne lamely. “You must give him time, Janet

“Time!” said Janet with indescribable scorn. “He has had twenty years. How much time does he want?”

“Do you mean that John Douglas has been coming to see you for twenty years?”

“He has. And he has never so much as mentioned marriage to me. And I don’t believe he ever will now. I’ve never said a word to a mortal about it, but it seems to me I’ve just got to talk it out with some one at last or go crazy. John Douglas begun to go with me twenty years ago, before mother died. Well, he kept coming and coming, and after a spell I begun making quilts and things; but he never said anything about getting married, only just kept coming and coming. There wasn’t anything I could do. Mother died when we’d been going together for eight years. I thought he maybe would speak out then, seeing as I was left alone in the world. He was real kind and feeling, and did everything he could for me, but he never said marry. And that’s the way it has been going on ever since. People blame ME for it. They say I won’t marry him because his mother is so sickly and I don’t want the bother of waiting on her. Why, I’d LOVE to wait on John’s mother! But I let them think so. I’d rather they’d blame me than pity me! It’s so dreadful humiliating that John won’t ask me. And WHY won’t he? Seems to me if I only knew his reason I wouldn’t mind it so much.”

“Perhaps his mother doesn’t want him to marry anybody,” suggested Anne.

“Oh, she does. She’s told me time and again that she’d love to see John settled before her time comes. She’s always giving him hints—you heard her yourself the other day. I thought I’d ha’ gone through the floor.”

“It’s beyond me,” said Anne helplessly. She thought of Ludovic Speed. But the cases were not parallel. John Douglas was not a man of Ludovic’s type.

“You should show more spirit, Janet,” she went on resolutely. “Why didn’t you send him about his business long ago?”

“I couldn’t,” said poor Janet pathetically. “You see, Anne, I’ve always been awful fond of John. He might just as well keep coming as not, for there was never anybody else I’d want, so it didn’t matter.”

“But it might have made him speak out like a man,” urged Anne.

Janet shook her head.

“No, I guess not. I was afraid to try, anyway, for fear he’d think I meant it and just go. I suppose I’m a poor-spirited creature, but that is how I feel. And I can’t help it.”

“Oh, you COULD help it, Janet. It isn’t too late yet. Take a firm stand. Let that man know you are not going to endure his shillyshallying any longer. I’LL back you up.”

“I dunno,” said Janet hopelessly. “I dunno if I could ever get up enough spunk. Things have drifted so long. But I’ll think it over.”

Anne felt that she was disappointed in John Douglas. She had liked him so well, and she had not thought him the sort of man who would play fast and loose with a woman’s feelings for twenty years. He certainly should be taught a lesson, and Anne felt vindictively that she would enjoy seeing the process. Therefore she was delighted when Janet told her, as they were going to prayer-meeting the next night, that she meant to show some “sperrit.”

“I’ll let John Douglas see I’m not going to be trodden on any longer.”

“You are perfectly right,” said Anne emphatically.

When prayer-meeting was over John Douglas came up with his usual request. Janet looked frightened but resolute.

“No, thank you,” she said icily. “I know the road home pretty well alone. I ought to, seeing I’ve been traveling it for forty years. So you needn’t trouble yourself, MR. Douglas.”

Anne was looking at John Douglas; and, in that brilliant moonlight, she saw the last twist of the rack again. Without a word he turned and strode down the road.

“Stop! Stop!” Anne called wildly after him, not caring in the least for the other dumbfounded onlookers. “Mr. Douglas, stop! Come back.”

John Douglas stopped but he did not come back. Anne flew down the road, caught his arm and fairly dragged him back to Janet.

“You must come back,” she said imploringly. “It’s all a mistake, Mr. Douglas—all my fault. I made Janet do it. She didn’t want to—but it’s all right now, isn’t it, Janet?”

Without a word Janet took his arm and walked away. Anne followed them meekly home and slipped in by the back door.

“Well, you are a nice person to back me up,” said Janet sarcastically.

“I couldn’t help it, Janet,” said Anne repentantly. “I just felt as if I had stood by and seen murder done. I HAD to run after him.”

“Oh, I’m just as glad you did. When I saw John Douglas making off down that road I just felt as if every little bit of joy and happiness that was left in my life was going with him. It was an awful feeling.”

“Did he ask you why you did it?” asked Anne.

“No, he never said a word about it,” replied Janet dully.

Chapter XXXIV. John Douglas Speaks at Last

Anne was not without a feeble hope that something might come of it after all. But nothing did. John Douglas came and took Janet driving, and walked home from prayer-meeting with her, as he had been doing for twenty years, and as he seemed likely to do for twenty years more. The summer waned. Anne taught her school and wrote letters and studied a little. Her walks to and from school were pleasant. She always went by way of the swamp; it was a lovely place—a boggy soil, green with the greenest of mossy hillocks; a silvery brook meandered through it and spruces stood erectly, their boughs a-trail with gray-green mosses, their roots overgrown with all sorts of woodland lovelinesses.

Nevertheless, Anne found life in Valley Road a little monotonous. To be sure, there was one diverting incident.

She had not seen the lank, tow-headed Samuel of the peppermints since the evening of his call, save for chance meetings on the road. But one warm August night he appeared, and solemnly seated himself on the rustic bench by the porch. He wore his usual working habiliments, consisting of varipatched trousers, a blue jean shirt, out at the elbows, and a ragged straw hat. He was chewing a straw and he kept on chewing it while he looked solemnly at Anne. Anne laid her book aside with a sigh and took up her doily. Conversation with Sam was really out of the question.

After a long silence Sam suddenly spoke.

“I’m leaving over there,” he said abruptly, waving his straw in the direction of the neighboring house.

“Oh, are you?” said Anne politely.

“Yep.”

“And where are you going now?”

“Wall, I’ve been thinking some of gitting a place of my own. There’s one that’d suit me over at Millersville. But ef I rents it I’ll want a woman.”

“I suppose so,” said Anne vaguely.

“Yep.”

There was another long silence. Finally Sam removed his straw again and said,

“Will yeh hev me?”

“Wh—a—t!” gasped Anne.

“Will yeh hev me?”

“Do you mean—MARRY you?” queried poor Anne feebly.

“Yep.”

“Why, I’m hardly acquainted with you,” cried Anne indignantly.

“But yeh’d git acquainted with me after we was married,” said Sam.

Anne gathered up her poor dignity.

“Certainly I won’t marry you,” she said haughtily.

“Wall, yeh might do worse,” expostulated Sam. “I’m a good worker and I’ve got some money in the bank.”

“Don’t speak of this to me again. Whatever put such an idea into your head?” said Anne, her sense of humor getting the better of her wrath. It was such an absurd situation.

“Yeh’re a likely-looking girl and hev a right-smart way o’ stepping,” said Sam. “I don’t want no lazy woman. Think it over. I won’t change my mind yit awhile. Wall, I must be gitting. Gotter milk the cows.”

Anne’s illusions concerning proposals had suffered so much of late years that there were few of them left. So she could laugh wholeheartedly over this one, not feeling any secret sting. She mimicked poor Sam to Janet that night, and both of them laughed immoderately over his plunge into sentiment.

One afternoon, when Anne’s sojourn in Valley Road was drawing to a close, Alec Ward came driving down to “Wayside” in hot haste for Janet.

“They want you at the Douglas place quick,” he said. “I really believe old Mrs. Douglas is going to die at last, after pretending to do it for twenty years.”

Janet ran to get her hat. Anne asked if Mrs. Douglas was worse than usual.

“She’s not half as bad,” said Alec solemnly, “and that’s what makes me think it’s serious. Other times she’d be screaming and throwing herself all over the place. This time she’s lying still and mum. When Mrs. Douglas is mum she is pretty sick, you bet.”

“You don’t like old Mrs. Douglas?” said Anne curiously.

“I like cats as IS cats. I don’t like cats as is women,” was Alec’s cryptic reply.

Janet came home in the twilight.

“Mrs. Douglas is dead,” she said wearily. “She died soon after I got there. She just spoke to me once—‘I suppose you’ll marry John now?’ she said. It cut me to the heart, Anne. To think John’s own mother thought I wouldn’t marry him because of her! I couldn’t say a word either—there were other women there. I was thankful John had gone out.”

Janet began to cry drearily. But Anne brewed her a hot drink of ginger tea to her comforting. To be sure, Anne discovered later on that she had used white pepper instead of ginger; but Janet never knew the difference.

The evening after the funeral Janet and Anne were sitting on the front porch steps at sunset. The wind had fallen asleep in the pinelands and lurid sheets of heat-lightning flickered across the northern skies. Janet wore her ugly black dress and looked her very worst, her eyes and nose red from crying. They talked little, for Janet seemed faintly to resent Anne’s efforts to cheer her up. She plainly preferred to be miserable.

Suddenly the gate-latch clicked and John Douglas strode into the garden. He walked towards them straight over the geranium bed. Janet stood up. So did Anne. Anne was a tall girl and wore a white dress; but John Douglas did not see her.

“Janet,” he said, “will you marry me?”

The words burst out as if they had been wanting to be said for twenty years and MUST be uttered now, before anything else.

Janet’s face was so red from crying that it couldn’t turn any redder, so it turned a most unbecoming purple.

“Why didn’t you ask me before?” she said slowly.

“I couldn’t. She made me promise not to—mother made me promise not to. Nineteen years ago she took a terrible spell. We thought she couldn’t live through it. She implored me to promise not to ask you to marry me while she was alive. I didn’t want to promise such a thing, even though we all thought she couldn’t live very long—the doctor only gave her six months. But she begged it on her knees, sick and suffering. I had to promise.”

“What had your mother against me?” cried Janet.

“Nothing—nothing. She just didn’t want another woman—ANY woman—there while she was living. She said if I didn’t promise she’d die right there and I’d have killed her. So I promised. And she’s held me to that promise ever since, though I’ve gone on my knees to her in my turn to beg her to let me off.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this?” asked Janet chokingly. “If I’d only KNOWN! Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“She made me promise I wouldn’t tell a soul,” said John hoarsely. “She swore me to it on the Bible; Janet, I’d never have done it if I’d dreamed it was to be for so long. Janet, you’ll never know what I’ve suffered these nineteen years. I know I’ve made you suffer, too, but you’ll marry me for all, won’t you, Janet? Oh, Janet, won’t you? I’ve come as soon as I could to ask you.”

At this moment the stupefied Anne came to her senses and realized that she had no business to be there. She slipped away and did not see Janet until the next morning, when the latter told her the rest of the story.

“That cruel, relentless, deceitful old woman!” cried Anne.

“Hush—she’s dead,” said Janet solemnly. “If she wasn’t—but she IS. So we mustn’t speak evil of her. But I’m happy at last, Anne. And I wouldn’t have minded waiting so long a bit if I’d only known why.”

“When are you to be married?”