"Oh, the good darling!" she exclaimed. "Is it decided about his going to India?"
I could not repress a little cry of anguish and terror. A year before, there had been a plan for his going out to India on a mercantile venture, which promised great profit. It had been given up, partly because his mother felt that she could not live without him, partly because he felt that he could not longer live without Annie.
"What is it, dear?" she said, in her softest, most sympathizing voice, with a little flush of alarm on her pale cheek; "what hurt you? are you ill? Oh, my poor Helen, you are all worn out with nursing me. I will nurse you presently."
"Only a little twinge of my old neuralgia, dear," I said faintly; "these autumn winds are setting it at work again."
She looked anxiously at me for a few seconds, and then began to untie the bunch of leaves, and spread out the long vines on the bed.
"Oh, if I only had some moss," she said.
I ran to the green-house and brought her handfuls of beautiful dripping mosses from the rocks in the fernery. She filled a saucer with them, putting the Tiarella leaves all round the rim, and winding the Linnea vines in and out as they grow in the woods. Then she leaned back on her pillows and began breaking the partridge-berry vines into short bits, each with a scarlet berry on it. These she set upright in the moss, changing and rearranging them so often that I wondered what could be her purpose, and leaned forward to see.
"No, no," she said playfully, pushing me back, "not till it is done."
Presently she said, "Now look!"
I looked and saw a perfect, beautifully formed G made by the scarlet berries on the green moss.
"There," she said, "I"ll send that back to George, to show him that I have found him in the berries; or, no," she added, "we"ll keep it till he comes to see me. The doctor said I could be carried down-stairs to-morrow, and then I shall begin to "receive,"" and she laughed a gay little laugh, and sank back tired.
That moment stands out in my memory as the saddest, hardest one of all. I think at that moment hope died in my heart.
When I told George of this, and showed him the saucer of moss--for she had ordered it to be set on the drawing-room table, saying, "It is too pretty to stay up here with bottles and invalids,"--he buried his face in his hands for many minutes. When he lifted it, he looked me steadily in the eye, and said,--
"She has utterly forgotten this whole year. But I will win her again."
Then he knelt down and kissed every little leaf and berry which her hands had touched, and went away without speaking another word.
It was decided after this that it could do no harm for him to see her.
Indeed, he now demanded it. His resolution was taken.
"You need not fear," he said to Dr. Fearing, "that I shall agitate her by approaching her as if she were my own. She is not my own. But she will be!"
We all sat with trembling hands and beating hearts as the hour approached at which we knew the experiment was to be made.
Annie had been carried down-stairs, and laid upon a lounge in the western bay-window of the library. The lounge was covered with dark green damask.
Old Caesar had so implored to be allowed to carry her down, that Annie had insisted that he should be gratified; and she went down as she had so often done in her childhood, with her soft white face lying close to his shining black one.
As he put her down, in her rose-colored wrapper, on the dark green damask, he knelt before her and burst out in spite of himself, into a sort of wild chant of thanksgiving; but as we entered the door he sprang up ashamed, and turning to Aunt Ann, said: "Beg pardon, missis, but this rose yere was too much pink rose for old Caesar!"
It was "too much pink rose" for any human eyes to see unmoved. We all cried: and Annie herself shed a few tears, but finally helped us all by saying gayly,--
"You"ll make me ill again if you all go on like this. I hate people that cry."
No stranger"s eye would have detected the thousandth part of a second"s pause which George Ware"s feet made on the threshold of that room when his eyes first saw Annie. Before the second had ended he was simply the eager, glad, affectionate cousin, and had taken calmly and lovingly the child"s kiss which Annie gave him as she had given it every day of her life.
We could not speak. My uncle tried to read his newspaper; my aunt"s hands shook in their pretense of sewing; I threw myself on the floor at the foot of Annie"s lounge and hid my face in its cushions.
But George Ware"s brave voice went steadily on. Annie"s sweet glad tones, weak and low, but still sweeter than any other tones I ever heard, chimed in and out like fairy bells from upper air. More than an hour pa.s.sed. I do not know one word that we said.
Then George rose, saying: "I must not tire you, little Annie, so I am going now."
"Will you come, again to-morrow?" she asked as simply as a little child.
"Yes, dear, if you are not the worse for this," he replied, and kissed her forehead and walked very quickly away without looking back. I followed him instantly into the hall, for I had seen that in his face which had made me fear that, strong man as he was, he would fall. I found him sitting on the lowest step of the staircase, just outside the door.
"My G.o.d, Helen," he gasped, "it isn"t only this last year she has forgotten. She has gone back five years."
"Oh no, dear George," I said; "you are mistaken. She remembers everything up to a year ago. You know she remembered about your going to India."
"That is nothing," he said impatiently. "You can"t any of you, see what I mean, I suppose. But I tell you she has forgotten five years of me. She is to me just as she was when she was fourteen. Do you think I don"t know the face and voice and touch of each day of my darling"s life? oh, my G.o.d! my G.o.d!" and he sank down on the stair again in a silence which was worse than groans. I left him there and went back to Annie.
"How old Cousin George looks," she was saying, as I entered the room; "I didn"t remember that he was so old. Why, he looks as old as you do, sweet papa. But then," reflectively, "after all, he is pretty old. He is fifteen years older than I am--and I am nineteen: thirty-four! that is old, is it not papa?" said she, half petulantly. "Why don"t you speak, any of you?"
"You are getting too tired, my darling," said her father, "and now I shall carry you up-stairs."
After Annie was asleep, my Aunt Ann and I sat for hours in the library, going over and over and over, with weary hopelessness, all her words and looks, and trying to comfort each other. I think each knew the utter despair of the other"s heart.
From this time George came and went with all his old familiarity: not a day pa.s.sed without his seeing Annie, and planning something for her amus.e.m.e.nt or pleasure. Not a day pa.s.sed without her showing in many ways that he made a large part of her life, was really a central interest in it. Even to us who knew the sad truth, and who looked on with intentness and anxiety hardly less than those with which we had watched her sick-bed weeks before--even to us it seemed many times as if all must be right. No stranger but would believe them lovers; not a servant in the house dreamed but that Miss Annie was still looking forward to her wedding. They had all been forbidden to allude to it, but they supposed it was only on account of her weakness and excitability.
But every day the shadow deepened on George Ware"s face. I could see, though he would not admit it, that the same despair which filled my soul was settling down upon his. Dr. Fearing, too, who came and spent long evenings with us, and cautiously watched Annie"s every tone and look, grew more and more uneasy. Dr. ----, one of the most distinguished physicians of the insane, in the country, was invited to spend a few days in the house. He was presented to Annie as an old friend of her father"s, and won at once her whole confidence and regard. For four days he studied her case, and frankly owned himself baffled, and unable to suggest any measure except the patient waiting which was killing us all.
To tell this frail and excitable girl, who had more than once fainted at a sudden noise, that this man whom she regarded only as her loving cousin had been her promised husband--and that having been within two weeks of her wedding-day, she had now utterly forgotten it, and all connected with it--this would be too fearful a risk. It might deprive her forever of her reason.
Otherwise, she seemed in every respect, even in the smallest particular, herself. She recollected her music, her studies, her friends. She was anxious to resume her old life at all points. Every day she made allusions to old plans or incidents. She had forgotten absolutely nothing excepting the loverhood of her lover. Every day she grew stronger, and became more and more beautiful, There was a slight under-current of arch mischievousness and half petulance which she had never had before, and which, added to her sweet sympathetic atmosphere, made her indescribably charming. As she grew stronger she frolicked with every human being and every living thing. When the spring first opened and she could be out of doors, she seemed more like a divine mixture of Ariel and Puck than like a mortal maiden.
I found her one day lying at full length on the threshold of the greenhouse. Twenty great azaleas were in full bloom on the shelves--white, pink, crimson. She had gathered handfuls of the fallen blossoms, and was making her gray kitten, which was as intelligent and as well trained as a dog, jump into the air to catch them as she tossed them up. I sat down on the gra.s.s outside and watched her silently.
"Oh, you sober old Helen," she said, "you"ll be an owl for a thousand years after you die! Why can"t you caper a little? You don"t know how nice it is."
Just then George came slowly walking down the garden path, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent forward, and his eyes fixed on the ground.
He did not see us. Annie exclaimed,--
"There"s Cousin George, too! Look at him! Wouldn"t you think he had just heard he was to be executed at twelve to-day! I don"t see what ails everybody."
"George, George," she called, "come here. For how many years are you sentenced, dear, and how could you have been so silly as to be found out?"
And then she burst into a peal of the most delicious laughter at his bewildered look.
"I don"t know, darling, for how many years I am sentenced. We none of us know," he said, in a tone which was sadder than he meant it should be, and sobered her loving heart instantly. She sprang to her feet, and threw both her arms around his right arm, a pretty trick she had kept from her babyhood, and said,--
"Oh you dear, good darling, does anything really trouble you? How heartless I am. But you don"t know how it feels to have been so awfully ill, and then to get well again. It makes one feel all body and no soul; but I have soul enough to love you all dearly, you know I have; and I won"t have you troubled; tell me what it is this minute;" and she looked at him with tears in her eyes.
One wonders often if there be any limit to human endurance. If there be, who can say he has reached it? Each year we find that the thing which we thought had taken our last strength, has left us with strength enough to bear a harder thing. It seemed so with such scenes as this, in those sunny spring days when Annie Ware first went out into life again. Each day I said, "There can never be another moment quite so hard to meet as this!"
and the next day there came a moment which made me forget the one which had gone before.
It was an ill fortune which just at this time made it imperatively necessary for George to go to the West for three months. He had no choice.
His mother"s whole property was at stake. No one but he could save it; it was not certain that he could. His last words to me were,--