"I knew you would make a fuss, Alma, because you don"t like Charlie, so we just took matters into our own hands. It was so much more romantic, too. I"d always said I"d never be married in any of your dull, commonplace ways. You might as well forgive me and be nice right off, Alma, because you"d have to do it anyway, in time. Well, you do look surprised!"
Alma accepted the situation with an apathy that amazed Anna. The truth was that Alma was stunned by a thought that had come to her even while Anna was speaking.
"Gilbert will find out about the letters now, and despise me."
Nothing else, not even the fact that Anna had married shiftless Charlie Moore, seemed worth while considering beside this. The fear and shame of it haunted her like a nightmare; she shrank every morning from the thought of all the mail that was coming that day, fearing that there would be an angry, puzzled letter from Gilbert. He must certainly soon hear of Anna"s marriage; he would see it in the home paper, other correspondents in Exeter would write him of it. Alma grew sick at heart thinking of the complications in front of her.
When Gilbert"s letter came she left it for a whole day before she could summon courage to open it. But it was a harmless epistle after all; he had not yet heard of Anna"s marriage. Alma had at first no thought of answering it, yet her fingers ached to do so. Now that Anna was gone, her loneliness was unbearable. She realized how much Gilbert"s letters had meant to her, even when written to another woman. She could bear her life well enough, she thought, if she only had his letters to look forward to.
No more letters came from Gilbert for six weeks. Then came one, alarmed at Anna"s silence, anxiously asking the reason for it; Gilbert had heard no word of the marriage. He was working in a remote district where newspapers seldom penetrated. He had no other correspondent in Exeter now; except his mother, and she, not knowing that he supposed himself engaged to Anna had forgotten to mention it.
Alma answered that letter. She told herself recklessly that she would keep on writing to him until he found out. She would lose his friendship anyhow, when that occurred, but meanwhile she would have the letters a little longer. She could not learn to live without them until she had to.
The correspondence slipped back into its old groove. The hara.s.sed look which Alma"s face had worn, and which Exeter people had attributed to worry over Anna, disappeared. She did not even feel lonely, and reproached herself for lack of proper feeling in missing Anna so little. Besides, to her horror and dismay, she detected in herself a strange undercurrent of relief at the thought that Gilbert could never marry Anna now! She could not understand it. Had not that marriage been her dearest wish for years? Why then should she feel this strange gladness at the impossibility of its fulfilment? Altogether, Alma feared that her condition of mind and morals must be sadly askew.
Perhaps, she thought mournfully, this perversion of proper feeling was her punishment for the deception she had practised. She had deliberately done evil that good might come, and now the very imaginations of her heart were stained by that evil. Alma cried herself to sleep many a night in her repentance, but she kept on writing to Gilbert, for all that.
The winter pa.s.sed, and the spring and summer waned, and Alma"s outward life flowed as smoothly as the currents of the seasons, broken only by vivid eruptions from Anna, who came over often from East Exeter, glorying in her young matronhood, "to cheer Alma up." Alma, so said Exeter people, was becoming unsociable and old maidish. She lost her liking for company, and seldom went anywhere among her neighbours. Her once frequent visits across the yard to chat with old Mrs. Murray became few and far between. She could not bear to hear the old lady talking about Gilbert, and she was afraid that some day she would be told that he was coming home. Gilbert"s home-coming was the nightmare dread that darkened poor Alma"s whole horizon.
One October day, two years after Gilbert"s departure, Alma, standing at her window in the reflected glow of a red maple outside, looked down the lane and saw him striding up it! She had had no warning of his coming. His last letter, dated three weeks back, had not hinted at it. Yet there he was--and with him Alma"s Nemesis.
She was very calm. Now that the worst had come, she felt quite strong to meet it. She would tell Gilbert the truth, and he would go away in anger and never forgive her, but she deserved it. As she went downstairs, the only thing that really worried her was the thought of the pain Gilbert would suffer when she told him of Anna"s faithlessness. She had seen his face as he pa.s.sed under her window, and it was the face of a blithe man who had not heard any evil tidings. It was left to her to tell him; surely, she thought apathetically, that was punishment enough for what she had done.
With her hand on the doork.n.o.b, she paused to wonder what she should say when he asked her why she had not told him of Anna"s marriage when it occurred--why she had still continued the deception when it had no longer an end to serve. Well, she would tell him the truth--that it was because she could not bear the thought of giving up writing to him. It was a humiliating thing to confess, but that did not matter--nothing mattered now. She opened the door.
Gilbert was standing on the big round door-stone under the red maple--a tall, handsome young fellow with a bronzed face and laughing eyes. His exile had improved him. Alma found time and ability to reflect that she had never known Gilbert was so fine-looking.
He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek in his frank delight at seeing her again. Alma coldly asked him in. Her face was still as pale as when she came downstairs, but a curious little spot of fiery red blossomed out where Gilbert"s lips had touched it.
Gilbert followed her into the sitting-room and looked about eagerly.
"When did you come home?" she said slowly. "I did not know you were expected."
"Got homesick, and just came! I wanted to surprise you all," he answered, laughing. "I arrived only a few minutes ago. Just took time to hug my mother, and here I am. Where"s Anna?"
The pent-up retribution of two years descended on Alma"s head in the last question of Gilbert"s. But she did not flinch. She stood straight before him, tall and fair and pale, with the red maple light streaming in through the open door behind her, staining her light house-dress and mellowing the golden sheen of her hair. Gilbert reflected that Alma Williams was really a very handsome girl. These two years had improved her. What splendid big grey eyes she had! He had always wished that Anna"s eyes had not been quite so black.
"Anna is not here," said Alma. "She is married."
"Married!"
Gilbert sat down suddenly on a chair and looked at Alma in bewilderment.
"She has been married for a year," said Alma steadily. "She married Charlie Moore of East Exeter, and has been living there ever since."
"Then," said Gilbert, laying hold of the one solid fact that loomed out of the mist of his confused understanding, "why did she keep on writing letters to me after she was married?"
"She never wrote to you at all. It was I that wrote the letters."
Gilbert looked at Alma doubtfully. Was she crazy? There was something odd about her, now that he noticed, as she stood rigidly there, with that queer red spot on her face, a strange fire in her eyes, and that weird reflection from the maple enveloping her like an immaterial flame.
"I don"t understand," he said helplessly.
Still standing there, Alma told the whole story, giving full explanations, but no excuses. She told it clearly and simply, for she had often pictured this scene to herself and thought out what she must say. Her memory worked automatically, and her tongue obeyed it promptly. To herself she seemed like a machine, talking mechanically, while her soul stood on one side and listened.
When she had finished there was a silence lasting perhaps ten seconds.
To Alma it seemed like hours. Would Gilbert overwhelm her with angry reproaches, or would he simply rise up and leave her in unutterable contempt? It was the most tragic moment of her life, and her whole personality was strung up to meet it and withstand it.
"Well, they were good letters, anyhow," said Gilbert finally; "interesting letters," he added, as if by way of a meditative afterthought.
It was so anti-climactic that Alma broke into an hysterical giggle, cut short by a sob. She dropped into a chair by the table and flung her hands over her face, laughing and sobbing softly to herself.
Gilbert rose and walked to the door, where he stood with his back to her until she regained her self-control. Then he turned and looked down at her quizzically.
Alma"s hands lay limply in her lap, and her eyes were cast down, with tears glistening on the long fair lashes. She felt his gaze on her.
"Can you ever forgive me, Gilbert?" she said humbly.
"I don"t know that there is much to forgive," he answered. "I have some explanations to make too and, since we"re at it, we might as well get them all over and have done with them. Two years ago I did honestly think I was in love with Anna--at least when I was round where she was. She had a taking way with her. But, somehow, even then, when I wasn"t with her she seemed to kind of grow dim and not count for so awful much after all. I used to wish she was more like you--quieter, you know, and not so sparkling. When I parted from her that last night before I went west, I did feel very bad, and she seemed very dear to me, but it was six weeks from that before her--your--letter came, and in that time she seemed to have faded out of my thoughts. Honestly, I wasn"t thinking much about her at all.
Then came the letter--and it was a splendid one, too. I had never thought that Anna could write a letter like that, and I was as pleased as Punch about it. The letters kept coming, and I kept on looking for them more and more all the time. I fell in love all over again--with the writer of those letters. I thought it was Anna, but since you wrote the letters, it must have been with you, Alma. I thought it was because she was growing more womanly that she could write such letters. That was why I came home. I wanted to get acquainted all over again, before she grew beyond me altogether--I wanted to find the real Anna the letters showed me. I--I--didn"t expect this. But I don"t care if Anna is married, so long as the girl who wrote those letters isn"t.
It"s you I love, Alma."
He bent down and put his arm about her, laying his cheek against hers.
The little red spot where his kiss had fallen was now quite drowned out in the colour that rushed over her face.
"If you"ll marry me, Alma, I"ll forgive you," he said.
A little smile escaped from the duress of Alma"s lips and twitched her dimples.
"I"m willing to do anything that will win your forgiveness, Gilbert,"
she said meekly.
Aunt Caroline"s Silk Dress
Patty came in from her walk to the post office with cheeks finely reddened by the crisp air. Carry surveyed her with pleasure. Of late Patty"s cheeks had been entirely too pale to please Carry, and Patty had not had a very good appet.i.te. Once or twice she had even complained of a headache. So Carry had sent her to the office for a walk that night, although the post office trip was usually Carry"s own special const.i.tutional, always very welcome to her after a weary day of sewing on other people"s pretty dresses.
Carry never sewed on pretty dresses for herself, for the simple reason that she never had any pretty dresses. Carry was twenty-two--and feeling forty, her last pretty dress had been when she was a girl of twelve, before her father had died. To be sure, there was the silk organdie Aunt Kathleen had sent her, but that was fit only for parties, and Carry never went to any parties.
"Did you get any mail, Patty?" she asked unexpectantly. There was never much mail for the Lea girls.
"Yes"m," said Patty briskly. "Here"s the _Weekly Advocate_, and a patent medicine almanac with all your dreams expounded, _and_ a letter for Miss Carry M. Lea. It"s postmarked Enfield, and has a suspiciously matrimonial look. I"m sure it"s an invitation to Chris Fairley"s wedding. Hurry up and see, Caddy."
Carry, with a little flush of excitement on her face, opened her letter. Sure enough, it contained an invitation "to be present at the marriage of Christine Fairley."