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Woman Of Yesterday

<h3 class='c001'>CHAPTER XX</h3></div> That which has caused the miserable failure of all the efforts of natural religion is that its founders have not had the courage to lay hold upon the hearts of men, consenting to no partition. They have not understood the imperious desire for immolation which lies in the depths of every soul, and souls have taken their revenge in not heeding those too lukewarm lovers. <div class='c018'>—<cite>Life of St. Francis.</cite> Sabatier.</div> To be content to have while others have not, to be content to be right while others are bound and crushed with wrong, to be content to be saved apart from the common life, to seek heaven while our brothers are in hell, is deepest perdition and not salvation; it is the mark of Cain in a new form.—G. D. Herron. In the few years which followed her early married life, the cords of convention, slender, and strong as threads of silk, were wound closer and closer about Anna Burgess outwardly. As she grew older, Keith’s mother grew more immovable in her social creed, and ruled her family more rigidly. Anna might read and study, but if she would please her mother-in-law, it must be in the mildest of manners, and on strictly suitable and ladylike lines; religious biography was recommended, while all literature which conveyed a touch of freedom in thought, or a suggestion of a change in social conditions, was viewed with horror. Anna might also be charitable, but this too must be on strictly conventional lines. There were numerous benevolent organizations upheld by Fulham’s fashionable women; the name of Mrs. Keith Burgess might figure frequently on these,—to this there would be no opposition, but individual and sporadic work among the poor was uniformly discouraged. The family carriage 182was often sent into the slums of the city on errands of bestowal as from the wealthy to those “less favoured,” but when Anna would have liked the carriage to take her on social calls on equal terms, in respectable but unfashionable regions, she met with a cold disfavour and unyielding lack of compliance. Malvina Loveland, who had been married to the Rev. Frank Nichols, not long after Anna’s marriage, had come again within Anna’s horizon. Through Keith’s personal influence, exerted at Mr. Nichols’s request, a call had been extended to him to the pastorate of a church in Fulham. This church was not very large and not particularly prominent; furthermore, it was not in the “right” part of Fulham geographically, which was as distinctly limited as the social circle. The Nicholses, delighted to come to Fulham as a university town of some importance, and to a church far more promising of obvious success than the mission enterprise in which they had worked in Burlington, innocently rented a cosey modern house on a pleasant street which, had they but known it, distinctly stamped them as socially ineligible from the day of their arrival. Mally, dreaming of nothing of the kind, entered upon what she expected to be a somewhat brilliant life socially, into which she saw her husband and herself conducted easily and naturally by the Keith Burgesses. Anna had received her old friend with most affectionate cordiality, and had spent days of hard work in helping her to order her house, which, as there was a baby and but one servant, was not a small undertaking. Madam Burgess had submitted with patience to the long absences and the preoccupation of her daughter-in-law 183thus involved, and had even responded without demur to Anna’s timid request that they might have her old friends to dinner. This dinner closed the Nichols episode from the social point of view. The guests were full of cheerful and unfeigned admiration, eager to please, easy to be pleased, but their good will availed them nothing. Even Anna could not fail now to perceive poor Mally’s inherent provincialness, but had she been apparently to the manner born, it would have made no difference with Madam Burgess. The essential qualifications to entrance into her world being lacking, her punctilious and attentive courtesy for the occasion simply covered the inevitable and absolute finality of it. The Nicholses themselves, while by no means perceiving that the social career to which they had looked forward in Fulham was ended with this visit instead of begun, departed from the Burgess mansion with a vague sense of chill which all Anna’s efforts could not counteract. They were never invited there again. Madam Burgess had done her duty by her son’s wife’s early friends, and the incident, as far as she was concerned, was closed. Anna, burning with a desire to make up to Mally for the inevitable disappointment which she foresaw, and hotly, although silently, resenting the social narrowness which excluded all men and women whose lives had not been run in the one fixed mould, devoted herself personally to her old friend with double ardour. More than this she could not do. Mally wondered, as the months passed and they settled down to the undivided intercourse of their own obscure church and neighbourhood, that Anna made no attempt to introduce her into her own aristocratic 184circle. Over and over she bit back the question which would reach her lips, “Why?” Her heart fermented with bitterness and resentment, and her husband was taxed to the utmost to subdue and sweeten the tumult of her wounded feeling. Another year brought Mally another baby, greatly to her own dissatisfaction. Poor Anna, the great passion of motherhood within her still baffled and unfulfilled, poured out her soul upon mother and child in vicarious ecstasy, and went home to lie awake for many nights with her ceaseless, thwarted yearning for a child; and thus these two women each longed passionately for what the other, possessing, found a burden rather than a joy. As time went on, Anna, bound to a certain outward course of life alien to her natural bent, lived her own life just below the surface, a life like a flame burning beneath ice. All the master motives of her nature unapplied; all the initial motives with which life had begun, neutralized and made ineffective, she reached, five years of married life over, the point which in any human development is one of danger,—the point when great personal forces are dammed up by barriers of external circumstance, when the prime powers and passions are without adequate expression. Meanwhile Keith Burgess, his young enthusiasms having lost their first freshness, the limitations of physical weakness and suffering making themselves more and more felt, settled into a narrow routine of life and thought. As his physique gradually seemed to shrivel and his delicacy of form and feature to increase, a resemblance to his mother, scarcely observable in his younger manhood, became at times striking. His missionary activity passed from its original fresh ardour into a 185system of petty details, increasingly formal and perfunctory, even to Anna’s reluctant perception. Perhaps it was due to Keith’s protracted absences from home, perhaps partly to his physical exhaustion, which made him dull and unresponsive when with her, but Anna felt, against her own will, a growing divergence in thought and interest between them. He was delicately sympathetic, chivalrously attentive, to her in all outward ways; but when she longed with eager craving for his participation in the life of thought and purpose which was stirring the depths of her nature in secret, she found scant response. Driven inward thus at every point, Anna’s essential life centred itself more and more upon the new message of social brotherhood which she had found in the writings of John Gregory; and, unconsciously to herself, the ruling figure in her mind, as the symbol of the human power and freedom for which she longed, was his. The “counterfeit presentment” of this man in her dream had ruled her girlish imagination; and now his actual presence, though but once encountered, exercised an influence over her maturer life no less mysterious and no less profound. To this influence fresh strength was given by the relation, never-so-slight, which existed between them by reason of Gregory’s possession of the picture painted by Everett. How she was represented was still all unknown to her, still unasked; but must it not be that, owning this mysterious image of her face, his thoughts would sometimes turn to her? This thought stirred Anna with a thrill, half of joy, half of fear. An interruption in the routine of their Fulham life occurred after Keith had served the missionary society for a period of five years. An illness which manifested, 186as well as increased, his physical inability to continue in his difficult duties brought Keith and Anna to a sudden course of action. Keith resigned his official position, and, as soon as he was able to travel, they sailed for Europe for a year’s absence. This was a year of rapid development and of abounding happiness to Anna. Alone and unguarded in their life together for the first time since their marriage, the husband and wife grew together in new sympathy, and fed their spirits on the beauty and wonder of art and the majesty of nature in fond accord. The fulness and richness and complexity of the working of the human spirit throughout the ages were revealed to Anna; the grandeur and purity of dedicated lives of creeds unlike and even hostile to her own opened her eyes to a new and broader view of human and divine relations. Reverence, love, and sympathy began to usurp the place of dogma, division, and exclusion in her mental energies. She began to perceive that the righteous were not wholly righteous, nor the wicked wholly wicked. The old ground plan of the moral universe with which she had started in life looked now a mean and narrow thing. Larger hopes and a bolder faith awoke in her. And so in mind, and also in body, Anna grew joyously and freely; even her attitudes and motions expressed a new harmony, while suavity and grace of outline succeeded to the meagre and angular proportions of her youth. The return to Fulham came, when it could no longer be postponed, as an unwelcome period to their best year of life. Madam Burgess received her children with affectionate, albeit restrained, cordiality, and watched Anna with keen eyes on which no change, however slight, was lost. 187When mother and son were left alone on the night of the return, as on the night when Keith brought his wife home a bride, Madam Burgess spoke plainly and directly of Anna. She had never discussed her characteristics from that night until the present, but she felt that another epoch was reached, and a few remarks would be appropriate. “My son,” she said, “do you remember the night when you brought Anna home to this house as a bride?” “Perfectly, mother.” “So do I. I have been going back continually in thought to-night to that time. Without undue partiality, Keith, I think we are justified in a little self-congratulation. Anna has developed slowly, but she has now reached the first and best bloom of her maturity. You brought her here a shy, angular, country-bred, undeveloped girl, although I will not deny that she had distinction, even then; to-night you bring her again not only a distingué but a beautiful woman,—yes, Keith, I really mean it,—a beautiful woman, and with a certain charm about her which makes her capable of being a social leader, if she chooses to exert her power. I understand she has purchased some good gowns in Paris. I have about concluded to give a reception next month in honour of your return, if my health permits.” The reception, which Madam Burgess’s health was favoured to permit, proved to be as brilliant an event as social conditions in Fulham rendered possible. The fine old house was radiant with flowers and wax-lights, and the company which was gathered was the most distinguished which the little city could muster. In the midst of all the gay array stood Keith and Anna,—he 188with his small, slight figure, his scrupulously gentlemanly air, his thin, worn face and nervous manner; she tall and stately, with her characteristic repose illuminated by new springs of thought, perception, and feeling, full of swift and radiant response to each newcomer’s word, overflowing with the first fresh joy of her awakened social instinct. Professor Ward stood with Pierce Everett aside, and, watching Anna, said in a lowered voice:— “Mrs. Burgess is a woman now, through and through. Would you know her for the girl whom Keith brought here half a dozen years ago?” “I could not find my little maiden Mary in that queenly creature!” exclaimed Everett. “No; you were just in time with that mysterious disappearance of yours, bad luck to you that you made way with it, however you did!” “It has taken her a good while to accept the world’s standards and fit herself to the world’s groove, but Madam Burgess has been patient and diligent, and I think she has succeeded at last,” said Everett gravely; “she will run along all right after this.” “You think Mrs. Keith will live to sustain the family traditions hereafter, do you? And Keith, what is to become of him? He seems to have dropped off his missionary enthusiasm with singular facility.” “Precisely. You will have to create a nice little chair for him in the university now, to keep him in the correct line of his descent. By and by, you know, he will have the estate to administer. That will be something of an occupation.” “Then he probably will take to collecting things,” Ward added, “coins or autographs—” 189“Oh, come, Ward, you’re too bad,” laughed Everett. “You don’t know Keith Burgess as well as I do.” Later in the evening Anna was summoned from her guests to speak with some one who had called on an urgent matter which could not be put by until another time. The fine hall, as she passed along it, was alive with lights, fragrance, music, and airy gayety; her own elastic step, her exquisite dress, her joyous excitement in the first taste of social triumph which the evening was bringing to her, accorded well with the environment. For the first time in her life, Anna had seen that she was beautiful; had felt the potent charm of her own personality; had found that she could draw to herself the homage and admiration of her social world. These perceptions had not excited her unduly, but they had given her a new sense of herself, a strong exhilaration which expressed itself in the lustre of her eyes, the brightness of every tone and tint of her face, in the way she held her head, in the clear, thrilling cadence of her voice. Once again, after long dimness and confusion, life seemed about to declare itself to her, and the energies of her nature to find a free channel. At last she might move in the line of least resistance, and fill the place she was expected to fill, without further conflict or question. It looked a pleasant path that night, and submission a sweet and gracious thing. With a half smile still on her lips, and the spirit of the hour full upon her, Anna came to the house door and opened it upon the outer vestibule, where she had been told the messenger would await her. The man who stood there was John Gregory. 190Anna softly closed the door behind her, and looked up into his face. It wore a different aspect from that which she remembered, for it was stern and unsmiling, and more deeply grave and worn than she had seen it. But even more than before the person of the man seemed to overawe her with a sense of power and command. “Do you remember me, Mrs. Burgess?” he asked simply. “Yes.” “And I know you through my friend, through the picture he painted once of you. You must pardon my intruding upon you to-night. I could not do otherwise. I have a message for you, and I am here only for to-night.” Anna did not speak, but her eyes were fixed upon his in earnest question, as if in some mysterious way he held destiny in his hands. “No man could paint that picture from you now,” he proceeded slowly, gently, and yet with a kind of unflinching severity; “you had the vision then. You have lost it now. You saw God once. To-night you see the world. Once your heart ached for the sorrows of others; now it thrills with your own joys. You have given up great purposes, and are accepting small ones. I have been sent to say to you: keep the word of the kingdom and patience of Christ steadfast to the end, and hold that fast which was given that no man take your crown.” These words, spoken with the solemnity of a prophetic admonition, pierced Anna’s consciousness. A faint cry, as if in remonstrance, broke from her lips, but already Gregory had turned, and before she could speak she found herself alone. With strong control Anna returned, and mingled with 191her guests without perceptible change of manner. When, however, the last carriage had rolled down the street, and the house itself was dark and still, she escaped alone to her own room to live over and over again that strange summons and challenge of John Gregory. Now the sense of what he had said roused her to burning indignation and protest, and again to contrition. She knew that she was blameless and approved if tried by the standards of the people now about her, and they were the irreproachable, church-going people of Fulham. She was simply conforming to the demands of an orderly and balanced social life, and pleasing those most interested in her. But she also knew that, as tried by the standards of her father, and her own early convictions, in the social and intellectual ambitions which now animated her, she was learning to love “the world and the things of the world,” to know “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” The voice of her past spoke clearly through the voice of John Gregory and must be heard. The things which she had thought to put away forever in the solemn dedication of her girlhood had gradually returned, and silently established themselves in her life in the guise of duties, necessities, conformities to the wishes of others. But of late she had come to regard those early scruples almost as superstitious. Where lay the absolute right—the truth? the will of God concerning her? Why was life so hard? Why was it impossible to even know the good? What right had John Gregory to spoil, as he had spoiled, this latest development of life for her, and give her nothing in its place? She resented his interference, and yet felt that she should inevitably yield herself to its influence. <div> 192 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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