Anne Part 23

"Do not be too sure of that. And take my advice--do not tell her."

Anne, however, paid no heed to this admonition; some things she did simply because she could not help doing them. She had intended to make her little confession immediately; but Miss Vanhorn gave her no opportunity. "That is enough talking," she said. "I have neuralgia in my eyebrow."

"But, grandaunt, I feel that I ought to tell you."

"Tell me nothing. Don't you know how to be silent? Set about learning, then. When I have neuralgia in my eyebrow, you are to speak only from necessity; when I have it in the eye itself, you are not to speak at all. Find me a caraway, and don't bungle."

She handed her velvet bag to Anne, and refitted the fingers of her yellow glove: evidently the young girl's duties were beginning.

Several days pa.s.sed, but the neuralgia always prevented the story. At last the eyebrow was released, and then Anne spoke. "I wish to tell you, grandaunt, before I come to you, that I am engaged--engaged to be married."

"Who cares?" said Miss Vanhorn. "To the man in the moon, I suppose; most school-girls are."

"No, to--"

"Draw up my shawl," interrupted the old woman. "_I_ do not care who it is. Why do you keep on telling me?"

"Because I did not wish to deceive you."

"Wait till I ask you not to deceive me. Who is the boy?"

"His name is Erastus p.r.o.nando," began Anne; "and--"

"p.r.o.nando?" cried Katharine Vanhorn, in a loud, bewildered voice--"p.r.o.nando? And his father's name?"

"John, I believe," said Anne, startled by the change in the old face.

"But he has been dead many years."

Old Katharine rose; her hands trembled, her eyes flashed. "You will give up this boy at once and forever," she said, violently, "or my compact with you is at an end."

"How can I, grandaunt? I have promised--"

"I believe I am mistress of my own actions; and in this affair I will have no sort of hesitation," continued the old woman, taking the words from Anne, and tapping a chair back angrily with her hand. "Decide now--this moment. Break this engagement, and my agreement remains.

Refuse to break it, and it falls. That is all."

"You are unjust and cruel," said the girl, roused by these arbitrary words.

Miss Vanhorn waved her hand for silence.

"If you will let me tell you, aunt--"

The old woman bounded forward suddenly, as if on springs, seized her niece by both shoulders, and shook her with all her strength. "There!"

she said, breathless. "_Will_ you stop talking! All I want is your answer--yes, or no."

The drawing-room of Madame Moreau had certainly never witnessed such a sight as this. One of its young ladies shaken--yes, absolutely shaken like a refractory child! The very chairs and tables seemed to tremble, and visibly hope that there was no one in the _salon des eleves_, behind.

Anne was more startled than hurt by her grandaunt's violence. "I am sorry to displease you," she said, slowly and very gravely; "but I can not break my engagement."

Without a word, Miss Vanhorn drew her shawl round her shoulders, pinned it, crossed the room, opened the door, and was gone. A moment later her carriage rolled away, and Anne, alone in the drawing-room, listened to the sound of the wheels growing fainter and fainter, with a chilly mixture of blank surprise, disappointment, and grief filling her heart.

"But it _was_ right that I should tell her," she said to herself as she went up stairs--"it _was_ right."

Right and wrong always presented themselves to her as black and white.

She knew no shading. She was wrong; there are grays. But, so far in her life, she had not been taught by sad experience to see them. "It _was_ right," she repeated to Helen, a little miserably, but still steadfastly.

"I am not so sure of that," replied Mrs. Lorrington. "You have lost a year's fixed income for those children, and a second winter here for yourself; and for what? For the sake of telling the dragon something which does not concern her, and which she did not wish to know."

"But it was true."

"Are we to go out with trumpets and tell everything we know, just because it is true? Is there not such a thing as egotistical truthfulness?"

"It makes no difference," said Anne, despairingly. "I had to tell her."

"You are stubborn, Crystal, and you see but one side of a question. But never fear; we will circ.u.mvent the dragon yet. I wonder, though, why she was so wrought up by the name p.r.o.nando? Perhaps Aunt Gretta will know."

Miss Teller did not know; but one of the husky-voiced old gentlemen who kept up the "barrier, sir, against modern innovation," remembered the particulars (musty and dusty now) of Kate Vanhorn's engagement to one of the p.r.o.nandos--the wild one who ran away. He was younger than she was, a handsome fellow (yes, yes, he remembered it all now), and "she was terribly cut up about it, and went abroad immediately." Abroad--great panacea for American woes! To what continent can those who live "abroad"

depart when trouble seizes _them_ in its pitiless claws?

Time is not so all-erasing as we think. Old Katharine Vanhorn, at seventy, heard from the young lips of her grandniece the name which had not been mentioned in her presence for nearly half a century--the name which still had power to rouse in her heart the old bitter feeling. For John p.r.o.nando had turned from her to an uneducated common girl--a market-gardener's daughter. The proud Kate Vanhorn resented the defection instantly; she broke the bond of her betrothal, and sailed for England before p.r.o.nando realized that she was offended. This idyl of the gardener's daughter was but one of his pa.s.sing amus.e.m.e.nts; and so he wrote to his black-browed G.o.ddess. But she replied that if he sought amus.e.m.e.nt of that kind during the short period of betrothal, he would seek it doubly after marriage, and _then_ it would not be so easy to sail for Europe. She considered that she had had an escape. p.r.o.nando, handsome, light-hearted, and careless, gave up his offended Juno without much heartache, and the episode of Phyllis being by this time finished, he strayed back to his Philadelphia home, to embroil himself as usual with his family, and, later, to follow out the course ordained for him by fate. Kate Vanhorn had other suitors; but the old wound never healed.

"Come and spend the summer with me," said Helen. "I trust I am as agreeable as the dragon."

"No; I must stay here. Even as it is, she is doing a great deal for me; I have no real claim upon her," replied Anne, trying not to give way to the loneliness that oppressed her.

"Only that of being her nearest living relative, and natural heir."

"I have not considered the question of inheritance," replied the island girl, proudly.

"I know you have not; yet it is there. Old ladies, however, instead of natural heirs, are apt to prefer unnatural ones--cold-blooded Societies, Organizations, and the endless Heathen. But I am in earnest about the summer, Crystal: spend it with me."

"You are always generous to me," said Anne, gratefully.

"No; I never was generous in my life. I do not know how to be generous.

But this is the way it is: I am rich; I want a companion; and I like _you_. Your voice supports mine perfectly, and is not in the least too loud--a thing I detest. Besides, we look well together. You are an excellent background for me; you make me look poetic; whereas most women make me look like a caricature of myself--of what I really am. As though a straw-bug should go out walking with a very attenuated gra.s.shopper.

Now if the straw-bug went out always with a plump young toad or wood-turtle, people might be found to admire even _his_ hair-like fineness of limb and yellow transparency, by force, you know, of contrast."

Anne laughed; but there was also a slight change of expression in her face.

"I can read you, Crystal," said Helen, laughing in her turn. "Old Katharine has already told you all those things--sweet old lady! She understands me so well! Come; call it selfishness or generosity, as you please; but accept."

"It is generosity, Helen; which, however, I must decline."

"It must be very inconvenient to be so conscientious," said Mrs.

Lorrington. "But mind, I do not give it up. What! lose so good a listener as you are? To whom, then, can I confide the latest particulars respecting the Poet, the Bishop, the Knight-errant, and the Haunted Man?"

"I like the Bishop," said Anne, smiling back at her friend. She had acquired the idea, without words, that Helen liked him also.

The story of Miss Vanhorn's change was, of course, related to Tante: Anne had great confidence both in the old Frenchwoman's kindness of heart and excellent judgment.