The next night, while poor George was swiftly borne away, Edward was sitting in my uncle"s library, listening with a blanched cheek to the story of Annie"s old engagement. My uncle"s sense of honor would not let him withhold anything from the man seeking her for his wife. The pain soon pa.s.sed by, when he was told that she had that very day refused her cousin, and betrayed almost resentment at his offer. Edward Neal had not a sufficiently subtle nature, nor acquaintance enough with psychological phenomena to be disturbed by any fears for the future. He dismissed it all as an inexplicable result of the disease, but a fixed fact, and a great and blessed fortune for him. My uncle, however, was less easily a.s.sured.
He insisted upon delay, and upon consulting the same physicians who had studied Annie"s case before. They all agreed that she was now a perfectly healthy and strong woman, and that to persist in any farther recognition of the old bond, after she had so intelligently and emphatically repudiated all thought of such a relation to her cousin, was absurd. Dr.
Fearing alone was in doubt, He said little; but he shook his head and clasped his hands tight, and implored that at least the marriage should be deferred for a year.
Annie herself, however, refused to consent to this: of course no satisfactory reason could be alleged for any such delay; and she said as frankly as a little child, "Edward and I have loved each other almost from the very first; there is nothing for either of us to do in life but to make each other happy; and we shall not leave papa and mamma: so why should we wait?"
They were not married, however, until spring. The whole town stood by in speechless joy and delight when those two beautiful young beings came out from the village church man and wife. It was a scene never to be forgotten. The peculiar atmosphere of almost playful joyousness which they created whenever they appeared together was something which could not be described, but which diffused itself like sunlight.
We all tried resolutely to dismiss memory and misgiving from our hearts.
They seemed disloyalty and sin. George Ware was in India. George Ware"s mother was dead. The cottage among the pines was sold to strangers, and the glistening brown paths under the trees were neglected and unused.
Edward and Annie led the same gay child-like lives after their marriage that they had led before: they looked even younger and gayer and sunnier.
When they dashed cantering through the river meadows, she with rosy cheeks and pale brown curls flying in the wind, and he with close crisp black hair, and the rich, dark, glowing skin of a Spaniard, the farming men turned and rested on their tools, and gazed till they were out of sight.
Sometimes I asked myself wonderingly, "Are they ever still, and tender, and silent?" "Is this perpetual overflow the whole of love?" But it seemed treason to doubt in the presence of such merry gladness as shone in Annie"s face, and in her husband"s too. It was simply the incarnate triumph and joy of young life.
The summer went by; the chrysanthemums bloomed out white and full in my garden; the frosts came, and then the winter, and then Annie told me one day that before winter came again she would be a mother. She was a little sobered as she saw the intense look on my face.
"Why, darling, aren"t you glad? I thought you would be almost as glad as I am myself?" Annie sometimes misunderstood me now.
"Glad! O Annie," was all I could say.
From that day I had but one thought, Annie"s baby. Together we wrought all dainty marvels for its ward-robe; together we planned all possible events in its life: from the outset I felt as much motherhood to the precious little unseen one as Annie did. She used to say to me, often,--
"Darling, it will be half my baby, and half yours."
Annie was absolutely and gloriously well through the whole of those mysterious first months of maternity which are to so many women exhausting and painful. Every nerve of her body seemed strung and attuned to normal and perfect harmony. She was more beautiful than ever, stronger than ever, and so glad that she smiled perpetually without knowing it. For the first time since the old days, dear Dr. Fearing"s face lost the anxious look with which his eyes always rested upon her. He was more at ease about her now.
Before light one Sunday morning in December, a messenger rang furiously at our bell. We had been looking for such tidings and were not alarmed. It was a fearful storm; wind and sleet and rain and darkness had attended the coming of Annie"s little "Sunday child" into its human life.
"A boy--and Miss Annie"s all right," old Caesar said, with a voice almost as hoa.r.s.e as the storm outside; and he was gone before we could ask a question farther.
In less than an hour I stood on the threshold of Annie"s room. But I did not see her until noon. Then, as I crept softly into the dimly-lighted chamber, the whole scene so recalled her illness of two years before that my heart stood still with sudden horror, in spite of all my joy. Now, as then, I knelt silently at her bedside, and saw the sweet face lying white and still on the pillow.
She turned, and seeing me, smiled faintly, but did not speak.
At her first glance, a speechless terror seized me. This was my Annie! The woman who for two years had been smiling with my Annie"s face had not been she! The room grew dark. I do not know what supernatural power came to my aid that I did not faint and fall.
Annie drew back the bed-clothes with a slow, feeble motion of her right hand, and pointed to the tiny little head nestled in her bosom. She smiled again, looked at me gently and steadily for a second, and then shut her eyes. Presently I saw that she was asleep; I stole into the next room and sat down with my face buried in my hands.
In a moment a light step aroused me. Aunt Ann stood before me, her pale face all aglow with delight.
"O Helen my darling! She is so well. Thank G.o.d! thank G.o.d!" and she threw her arms around me and burst into tears.
I felt like one turned to stone. Was I mad, or were they?
What had I seen in that one steady look of Annie"s eyes? Was she really well? I felt as if she had already died!
Agonizingly I waited to see Dr. Fearing"s face. He came in before tea, saw Annie for a few minutes, and came down-stairs rubbing his hands and singing in a low tone.
"I never saw anything like that child"s beautiful elasticity in my life,"
he said. "We shall have her dancing down-stairs in a month."
The cloud was utterly lifted from all hearts except mine. My aunt and uncle looked at each other with swimming eyes. Edward tried to laugh and look gay, but broke down utterly, and took refuge in the library, where I found him lying on the floor, with his face buried in Annie"s lounge.
I went home stupefied, bewildered. I could not sleep. A terror-stricken instinct told me that all was not right. But how should I know more than physician, mother, husband?
For ten days I saw my Annie every day for an hour. Her sweet, strange, gentle, steady look into my eyes when we first met always paralyzed me with fear, and yet I could not have told why. There was a fathomless serenity in her face which seemed to me super-human. She said very little. The doctor had forbidden her to talk. She slept the greater part of the time, but never allowed the baby to be moved from her arms while she was awake.
There was a divine ecstasy in her expression as she looked down into the little face; it never seemed like human motherhood.
One day Edward came to me and said,--
"Do you think Annie is so well as they say? I suppose they must know; but she looks to me as if she had died already, and it were only her glorified angel-body that lies in that bed?"
I could not speak to him. I knew then that he had seen the same thing that I had seen: if his strong, rather obtuse material nature had recognized it, what could so blind her mother and father and the doctor? I burst into tears and left him.
At the end of a week I saw a cloud on Dr. Fearing"s face. As he left Annie"s room one morning, he stopped me and said abruptly,--
"What does Annie talk about?"
"She hardly speaks at all," I said.
"Ah," he said. "Well, I have ordered her not to talk. But does she ask any questions?" he continued.
"No," I said; "not of me. She has not asked one."
I saw then that the same vague fear which was filling my heart was taking shape in his.
From that moment, he watched her hourly, with an anxiety which soon betrayed itself to my aunt.
"William, why does not Annie get stronger?" she said suddenly to him one day.
"I do not know why," he answered, with a solemn sadness and emphasis in his tone which was, as I think, he intended it to be, a partial revelation to her, and a warning. Aunt Ann staggered to a chair and looked at him without a word. He answered her look by one equally agonized and silent, and left the room.
The baby was now two weeks old. Annie was no stronger than on the day of his birth. She lay day and night in a tranquil state, smiling with inexpressible sweetness when she was spoken to, rarely speaking of her own accord, doing with gentle docility all she was told to do, but looking more and more like a transfigured saint. All the arch, joyous, playful look was gone; there was no added age in the look which had taken its place; neither any sorrow; but something ineffably solemn, rapt, removed from earth. Sometimes, when Edward came to her bedside, a great wave of pitying tenderness would sweep over her face, giving it such a heavenly look that he would fall on his knees.
"O Helen," he said once, after such a moment as this, "I shall go mad if Annie does not get well. I do not dare to kiss even her hand. I feel as if she never had been mine."
At last the day and the hour and the moment came which I had known would come. Annie spoke to me in a very gentle voice, and said,--
"Helen, darling, you know I am going to die?"
"Yes dear, I think so," I said, in as quiet a voice as hers.
"You know it is better that I should, darling?" she said with a trembling voice.
"Yes, dear, I know it," I replied.
She drew a long sigh of relief. "I am so glad, darling; I thought you knew it, but I could not be sure. I think no one else understands. I hope dear mamma will never suspect. You will not let her, if you can help it, the dear doctor will not tell her; he knows, though. Darling, I want you to have my baby. I think Edward will be willing. He is so young, he will be happy again before long; he will not miss him. You know we have always said it was partly your baby. Look at his eyes now, Helen," she said, turning the little face towards me, and into a full light.