CHAPTER XXV

On Wednesday morning, Anne Lyndsay woke up with what her brother called one of the acute attacks of curiosity in regard to Mrs. Maybrook. They were subject to variations and accompaniments. She shared with her friend, Dr. North, the fancy for imagining what certain persons, real or unreal, would do under circumstances which she contrived for them. It was the byplay of a restless intellect. Lyndsay, who was in his professional work keenly logical, had at times no patience with Anne’s amusing nonsense. He labeled it “mental vagabondage” or “mind gossip.”

She was just now outside in her hammock, enjoying the wonderful weather of a Canadian river in mid-June. She was also busy considering Dorothy Maybrook in a variety of new social surroundings; as to what she would say or do in a drawing-room, or if of a sudden dropped into a seat at a Boston dinner-party, between Emerson and Wendell Holmes. And then she laughed aloud in her satisfaction at reseating her between Polonius and Mercutio.

“What amuses you?” said Lyndsay, as he came out of the cabin with his beloved “Marcus Aurelius,” a finger in between the leaves. “What, no book?”

321She related gaily her occupation.

“Upon my word, Anne, I am unable to conceive what pleasure you can take in such stuff.” He was in one of his severer moods, when to be merely logical was alone possible. As Anne said, it was pretty hard to switch Archie off on a siding. He had his own moods, gay or serious; but for the time they were despotic, and disabled him temporarily from entering into those of others.

“My dear Archie,” she returned, “you have no mental charity; at least, not of a morning. Now, if I were to ask you, to-night, to imagine Dorothy at dinner between George the Third and Edgar Poe, you would just as like as not assist my imagination with an added pair of wings, and—”

“Very likely,” he interrupted. “I suppose it is the result of long habit. I came out just now to ask you how this passage strikes you.”

She was at once all interest. “What is it, Archie?”

“‘Cast away opinion; thou art saved. Who, then, hinders thee from casting it away?’”

Anne laughed, “Try it,” she said. “Cast away opinions—have none, and you won’t be bothered with the need to trouble yourself with this old heathen’s. I agree with him. Opinions are like gowns: it is so nice to change them! I am all the time giving away mine, and it is delightful to see how ill they fit other folk.” She was, in reality, of all people, the most definite and clear as to her religion and her politics.

“I think you never can be serious, Anne. Nobody holds harder to their beliefs than you do. I can’t 322imagine what the old pagan meant. Saved from what? ‘Cast away opinion, and you are saved.’”

“It is the salvation of negation, Archie; pretty popular in some places. It is not my kind.”

“I shall get no help here,” said her brother. “You are no easier to eject from a mental mood than I am. I think I shall give it up and go a-fishing.”

“It is my changeless opinion that you are now on the track of reason. The first fish will answer you. He will be quite on the side of Marcus Aurelius, and wish he had not had a too definite opinion as to the desirability of closer relations with a dusty miller or Durham ranger. Get to thee fine opinions, but don’t act on them. Thus, thou shalt have the cool joy of theory, and escape the hot results of its practical application.”

“On my honor, Anne, you are quite intolerable at times.”

“I am to myself, old fellow. I wish aches were opinions. The Christian Science idiots say they are. I would like to exchange aches for opinions.”

“Are you not so well to-day?” he said, putting Aurelius in his coat-pocket. “You look much better.”

“I am far better than usual,” she returned, hastily repentant, as usual, of her admission of weakness or pain. “I am thinking of going over to see Dorothy this afternoon. It is a great enterprise for me, but I really cannot bide, as she says.”

“Why not?”

“My dear Archie, she took away ‘Macbeth’ to read, yesterday, and I must—I cannot wait. I want to know what she thinks of it.”

323“Indeed! She probably won’t think at all. She will very likely give up at the end of the first scene.”

“No, I don’t think it. After the witches? No! She told me you said something about Lady Macbeth; why or when, I do not know. It seems to have made her curious.”

“That is rather odd. Does she read much? I should not think it.”

“No, very little, and that is why I want to hear. The opinions of people who read too much are not often worth much. But what Dorothy concludes about Lady Macbeth ought to be entertaining, at least.”

“You can have a canoe, dear, and Tom, after lunch. Are you quite up to the walk?”

“My legs may give out, but my curiosity will not—I can assure you of that. I shall take Ned.”

“Very good, then. I am to go with Margaret up to the burying-ground. She wants to see that it is kept in decent order, and to have a better inclosure made.”

“Poor Margaret! We go away on Saturday—do we not?”

“Yes, about noon or later.”

“I suppose those Boston men will remain.”

“Yes, a week or two.”

After this she was silent, and her brother, leaning against the door-post, glanced listlessly down the river. She was seldom silent very long.

“Well, what is it, sister?” He rarely used the word of relationship.

“Have you thought at all, Archie, about—Rose and Mr. Carington?”

324“Why should I? Margaret has been pestering herself about the man. But Rose is a difficult young woman, Anne, and there have been so many matrimonial scares that now I don’t trouble myself any longer.”

“Circumstance is a mighty match-maker, Archie.”

“But Rose is not, as you know. I sometimes think she will never marry. She is twenty now.”

“Indeed! I think, Archie, I should like to have a dictionary of the reasons why women marry men.”

He laughed. “The reason is as old as Adam. They have no one else to marry.”

“Oh, he had no embarras de choix,” she cried. “Pity he had not. They are various, I fancy—I mean the honest causes of interest that lead on to love. I have always thought that Rose would be captured by character. In our every-day life it lacks chance of exhibition, but here, it is, or has been, different. That man is a strong, effective, decisive person. He has a good deal that is attractive, and that soft Southern way which our men lack. Moreover, he is very good-looking. If you don’t want it to be, take care: I think it is too late.”

“Anne!” Her sagacity was very rarely at fault. He knew it, and was somewhat alarmed. “But I can do nothing.”

“No. I do not know why you should. We know all about the man and his people. Rose is not a girl to act in haste.”

“Why, then, should we bother about it?” he said.

“We don’t: you will. And Margaret will fuss.”

“I am afraid so. Confound the men!”

325“If Margaret had confounded you with other men twenty-four years ago, this catastrophe would not have been imminent to-day. Let us hold her responsible.”

“You have made me very unhappy, Anne. I can’t jest about it.”

“Then I can. I think I like him. I wish I had married myself—I mean, somebody else. Old maids are married to themselves, and that is the reason why they have a bad time.”

“Do you?”

“Not a bit! Go a-fishing, and hold your tongue.”

Lyndsay uttered a malediction on things in general, and walked away.

Some time after lunch Anne called Ned, and went over the river with Tom, who thundered replies to her ever-varying range of questions about climate, lumber, trees, and men. A little later, Margaret and her husband, who had given up for her his evening sport, set out up-stream, and the twins were left to the Indian and a chance at the lower pool.

Anne and the boy climbed up the bank, and went away into the woodland. Several times, feeling tired, she sat down on a wayside stump or fallen tree. She had the peculiar trait of liking to be silent when afoot or when driving. As soon as she was at rest her tongue was apt to be set free, and she became, as usual, a delightful comrade.

Now she began to amuse herself by asking the lad in what age he would like to have lived, and was pleased that he chose the reign of Elizabeth. Then at last she talked about Dorothy, and of her life, its 326hardships, trials, and contentments with what she had, and, finally, of the woman’s interest in “Macbeth” and her own curiosity as to this. She had the art of interesting the young in matters usually thought to be out of their sphere of comprehension.

As she sat, Ned, who was quick to see, noticed that she became of a sudden silent, and, looking up, saw that her face was distorted for a moment, and that she had one hand pressed against her side. He rose, saying:

“What is the matter, Aunt Anne?”

“Nothing. Nothing much. I very often have pain, and sometimes it beats me.”

“I am sorry. Can’t I do something?”

“No, dear. It will be better presently. It is better now,” and she wiped her brow.

“Why do people have pain?”

“To keep them from eating green apples a second time.”

“That’s so, aunty; but you—why do you have pain?”

“Perhaps because my great-grandpapa would eat green apples. ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’”

“I don’t understand.”

“No! That is an enigma for more than you. I do not know why I have pain. Having it, I know what to do with it. I don’t know why Christ had pain. God might have willed to help us in other ways, but at least I know what to do with the story of that anguish. If he was, as we think, a perfect man, Ned, he must have suffered as only a man who was also 327more than man could suffer. As he chose his pain to be, and taught men how to use it, so must I in my small way.”

“And wouldn’t you choose, aunty, just to have no pain, if you could?”

“Get thee behind me, little Satan,” she laughed. “If I could make a world without pain, would I choose? I don’t know. My pain has been a bitter friend. Come,” and she rose. The boy, whose thoughts and questions were beyond his years, walked on in silence, now and then glancing at the woman’s face.

“Does no one know, Aunt Anne, why we must have pain?”

“Only one man knew, Ned, and he suffered and was silent.”

“It seems dreadful, Aunt Anne.”

“Perhaps it only seems: best to think that.”

At the cabin-door Dorothy came out smiling, the little, red pocket-copy of “Macbeth” in her hand.

“Now this is right good of you, Miss Anne,” she said. “Come in. Mrs. Lyndsay was telling me last week you like a cup of tea about sundown. It’s a bit early, but you might be tired. I’ve got the tea Mrs. Lyndsay sent me last year.”

“I would like a cup, Dorothy. How is Hiram? and the cows? and the chickens? and Sambo, the cat?”

“They’re all well—the whole family.”

She set the kettle on the fire, got some bread, cut it up, and set it with a supply of butter before Ned.

“No good in asking a boy if he is hungry.”

328Ned laughed. “Jack says it is no use for Dick to eat: he is just as hungry when he is done as he was at first.”

“‘It grows by what it feeds on, like the worm i’ the bud,’” said Anne to herself. “I’ll keep that quotation for Archie.” And then, aloud, “We old folks eat from habit. The only appetite I have left is for books, and— What good tea, Dorothy! Thanks! Yes, one cup more. My brother says you like coffee better. I sent to Montreal for a few things you might like. You will find among them a small bag of coffee. We think ours excellent.”

“And I was just last night a-wondering how I could get some right good coffee. It’s half chicory what we get; and here, in you walk, and I’ve got it easy as asking. I haven’t said I’m obliged to you, but I am. Fact is, Miss Anne, giving comes so natural to some folks—you might as well thank them for sneezing. I’m a bit that way myself. I do just think being thanked is the hardest part of giving. If the man in church was to say, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ every time I dropped a sixpence in his bag, he wouldn’t get another out of me soon.”

“I am much of your way of thinking,” said Anne. “But tell me, what about the book? How do you like it? And why did you want to read it?”

“Mr. Lyndsay happened to say some one was like that woman, Lady Macbeth. Guess I called her Mrs. Macbeth.”

“And who was the some one?”

Dorothy hesitated.

“I was telling him a little about Susie Colkett.”

329“Indeed!”

“Yes—she’s an evil-minded one.”

Anne had no suspicion of the seriousness of the story Dorothy had confided to Mr. Lyndsay, and was somewhat amused at the remoteness of the tragic comparison. She set the thing aside, and resolved to ask her brother what he meant. She was now instantly curious as to what effect the drama had had upon a woman like Dorothy.

“If Susan Colkett is as bad as Lady Macbeth, she must be an unpleasant neighbor.”

“There isn’t much to steal here,” said Dorothy, smiling and looking around her; “and I never did see the woman I was afraid of. As for Susie, she’s so bad, she’s—a fool. There wouldn’t be much harm in it if Joe wasn’t the worst fool of the two. She’ll be the losing of that man yet. Two fools can hatch a heap of mischief.”

“He isn’t much like Macbeth.”

“I don’t know that. You were asking about this book. I don’t read books much. I can find out people right soon; books—they puzzle me.”

“But you have read it?”

“Yes, I read it. I read it twice. I sort of set myself to believe it the second time. There’s a heap I didn’t understand.”

“And Lady Macbeth?”

“She was a queer one. All that howling and a-carrying on of the witch-women, it’s just nonsense. I got the idea those witches set it up to tell the man he was to be a king: that’s straight, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

330“’T isn’t wholesome to get notions; they stick like bur-ticks. I knew a girl down at Marysville, in Georgia, and an old black woman told her, for her fortune, she was to marry a thin man with heaps of money, and the fool was so awful took with this that she told her beau. He was a direful stout man. Well, when she wouldn’t have him, he went off and tried to starve himself thin; and the end was he fell away and died, and that girl, she never got another beau, fat or thin.”

Ned and his aunt laughed.

“Well, what else, Dorothy?”

“That’s about all I have to say. That Macbeth woman understood p’intin’ her man.”

“She did, indeed.”

“Sometimes Hiram gets tired of being p’inted. That’s how men are: they haven’t got the natural goodness of women. I wouldn’t give a cent for the woman that don’t know a man has got to be kept p’inted on to the narrow way. They’re awful easy got off the track—just like Hiram: he’ll stop to pick berries any time. You just take notice how Eve she p’inted Adam, and it’s been going on ever since, like it was natural. Maybe ’tis.”

Anne was enchanted.

“Shall I leave you the book?”

“No, I don’t want it. I couldn’t stand two of the kind. Susie Colkett’s enough. Have another cup?”

“No; and thank you for the roses, Dorothy.”

“I hadn’t but just six.”

“They were lovely.” And now Anne was still more certain how six roses came to be five.

331“I like them right well, Miss Anne. I don’t believe anybody likes them more than me. Seems like waste, next month, to see those wild roses so thick all along the river, and no one so much as to smell them. Seems just pure waste, like that precious ointment Mrs. Lyndsay and me were talking about the other day. That always did puzzle me, that story.”

“Does it?” said Anne. “Perhaps the flowers enjoy one another—who knows? And perhaps you and I and the rest of us are not all the beings of earth. Why should we think everything is meant only for us?”

“Sakes alive! Miss Anne, but you have got some queer notions. To think of folks you can’t see smelling around among the flowers! Suppose you was to bump heads when you were smelling of them. It gives me the creeps to think of it. Hope I’ll never run against one of them. Must you go? Well, I’m right sorry. When you and Mrs. Lyndsay and the rest go away, my old head will have a long rest.”

“Shall I send you some books?”

“No. I shouldn’t read them. I don’t set much store by books, without I have some one to talk to, and poor Hiram is as mum as a stone. That’s the worst of our long winter. Only last night I was reading the Bible,—I do read that, Miss Anne,—and I came upon where Christ wrote on the sand. I just said to myself I would wait about that till I saw you. I did want to talk it over right away.”

“And what is it you want to ask?”

“What do you suppose Christ wrote in the sand?”

“Who can tell that, Dorothy?”

332“But it must have meant— Why did he do it?”

“I suppose,” said Anne, thoughtfully, “that he wanted to let the woman think over what he had said. When you think of the eyes of Christ looking at you, Dorothy, you might understand.”

“I see, Miss Anne. That woman she felt awful bad, I guess, and he only wanted not to seem to take notice. I wouldn’t ha’ thought of that in a year, not if I stayed awake all night every night.”

“Why not write to me in the winter? I should like that.”

“Would you really? That would take the edge off the lonesomeness. If I didn’t say ‘oh!’ every now and then, of evenings when the green wood cracks and the sparks fly, I guess I’d go dumb before the birds come back.”

“Well, Dorothy, that is settled. I shall write first. Good-by!” And, with Edward, she moved slowly away through the broken cross-lights of the sunset glow.