Woman Of Yesterday

<h3 class='c001'>CHAPTER XI</h3></div> <div class='lg-container-b c009'> <div class='linegroup'> <div class='group'> <div class='line'>The Moving Finger writes; and having writ,</div> <div class='line'>Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit</div> <div class='line in2'>Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,</div> <div class='line'>Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.</div> <div class='line in38'>—<span class='sc'>The Rubaiyat.</span></div> </div></div> </div> <p class='c010'>In a few moments after he had reached his room Keith Burgess heard a knock at his door. Opening it, he found a neat, white-capped maid who bore a tray; entering demurely, she placed it upon a small table, remarking that Mrs. Ingraham thought he would need refreshment. The tray held an exquisite china service for one person, a pot of chocolate, and delicate rolls and cakes.</p> <p class='c011'>“Miss Gertrude said I was to light your fire,” the maid said, proceeding to remove the fender and strike a match for the purpose.</p> <p class='c011'>“Very well,” replied Keith, walking to the other side of the room. The night air was sharp, and he liked the notion.</p> <p class='c011'>A moment later the maid withdrew, with the noiseless, unobtrusive step and movement of the well-trained servant, and Keith, when he turned, found the room already enlivened by the firelight. The table was drawn to a cosey corner on the hearth-rug, a deep cushioned easy-chair beside it. The fragrant steam of the hot chocolate rose invitingly, and as Keith threw himself with a long sigh of comfort into the chair, he detected another fragrance, and perceived, lying upon the plate, <span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>a single rose, and around the stem a slip of white paper. On the paper, Keith found a few words written: “You must let me thank you for the great uplift you have given me to-night. <span class='sc'>Gertrude Ingraham.”</span></p> <p class='c011'>The young man, rising, put the flower in a clean glass vase on his mantle, and the note in the inner compartment of his writing-case, touching both with careful gentleness. Then, returning to the fireside, he fell to drinking and eating with cordial satisfaction in all this creature comfort; but as he ate and drank and grew warm, he was thinking steadily.</p> <p class='c011'>He was not minded to flatter himself unduly, but what was he justified in inferring from Gertrude’s action and from other small signs which he had seen? Simply, that she liked him; honoured him above his due; probably idealized him; possibly, if he sought her deeper regard, might respond.</p> <p class='c011'>He liked her thoroughly. What man would not? She was very pretty, and her beauty was enhanced by faultless dress,—no small thing in itself. Her manners were charming, with the charm of a sweet nature, aided by the polish of high social intercourse; she had the thousand little nameless, flattering graces of the woman, who, old or young, instinctively knows how to put a man at his best. Furthermore, Keith was not insensible to the background against which this girl was set. The aristocratic, powerful family connection, the magnificent home, the wealth and grace and ease of life, the fine manners and habits of thought and conduct belonging to the Ingrahams, were not matters of naught to him. He liked all these things. What was more, he knew perfectly that there was no element of temptation in them to lead him from his chosen path of altruism; Mrs. Ingraham’s <span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>well-known missionary ardour and Gertrude’s delicate sympathy were guarantee for that. They understood perfectly that within six months he would depart for an exile of perhaps a lifetime, in an alien and uncongenial land, where he would work under conditions of life repulsive and depressing to the last degree. Nevertheless, he believed without vanity that Gertrude Ingraham, knowing all, foreseeing all, could care for him.</p> <p class='c011'>Keith Burgess had come, suddenly perhaps, but definitely, to the conclusion that he wanted a wife; and, furthermore, that he wanted a wife who would go out with him to India six months hence. Consequently, as he sat by the fire which Gertrude Ingraham had lighted for him, he pursued this line of thought with significant persistence.</p> <p class='c011'>A curious condition, however, attended his reflections. While he sat by Gertrude’s fire, tasted her dainty food, inhaled the fragrance of the rose she had sent him, and thought of her in all her beauty and grace, he did not <em>see</em> her. Instead of her figure, there stood constantly before the eye of his mind the tall, austere form of Anna Mallison, in the unsoftened simplicity of her manner and apparel, and in her passionless, unresponding repose. He thought of Gertrude Ingraham, but he saw Anna Mallison.</p> <p class='c011'>She had travelled the way that he had come. Outwardly there might be coldness between them, but inwardly there must be the profoundest basis of sympathy. The same master conviction had won and held their two souls. He could not have known her better, it seemed to him, had he known her all his life. The things which would have repelled another man were what drew him all the more to her. It was not the passion <span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>of love which had so suddenly awakened within him, but a mighty longing for what Keith Burgess had thus far gone through life without,—a true and satisfying sympathy with his religious life and its aspirations. A girl like Gertrude Ingraham might accept his religion and the shape it took, but it would be because she cared for him; a girl like Anna Mallison might, perhaps, accept him, but it would be because of his religion and the shape it had taken. At this crisis of his life the enthusiasm for his calling ruled him as no human love could, and by it all the issues of life must stand or fall.</p> <p class='c011'>Hours passed. The fire died out to a core of dull red embers, the single rose drooped on its stem, the tray of food stood despoiled and indifferent; the words of the small white paper were forgotten, and Keith Burgess, throwing himself upon his knees, prayed thus to God:—</p> <p class='c011'>“Oh, my Lord, if thou wilt grant me so great a good as to win her for my wife, if thou wilt bless me in seeking her, if it is according to thy will that our lives should be united, and that together we should carry the cross of Christ to the lost, grant me, O Lord, a sign. But if it be not thy will, make this, too, known to me. Thy will I seek, O my God, in this, in all things.”</p> <p class='c011'>Then, being wearied in brain and body, he slept heavily until morning.</p> <p class='c011'>When, just before the breakfast hour, Keith stepped into the hall, he paused a moment, hearing a step on the stairs above him leading from the third story rooms. He advanced slowly to the head of the next staircase, and not until he reached it did he see who it was descending from above. Then, lifting his eyes, he saw Anna Mallison.</p> <p class='c011'>Her presence in this house, at this hour, so surprising, <span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>so unlooked-for, so almost unnatural, since her home was elsewhere in the city—what did it mean? It was the sign he had craved. How else could he interpret it?</p> <p class='c011'>The blood rushed in sudden flow to his heart, leaving his face colourless.</p> <p class='c011'>Anna, not being surprised to meet him thus, was simply saying “Good morning,” and passing down the stairs. Keith put out his hand and stopped her going.</p> <p class='c011'>So marvellous did her presence seem to him that he forthwith spoke out with unconventional directness the thought in his mind.</p> <p class='c011'>“I think you do not know just what it means that you are here, in this house, this morning.”</p> <p class='c011'>Mally Loveland would have flashed some pert rejoinder to a comment like this; Gertrude Ingraham, in a similar situation, would have looked at Keith Burgess with pretty wonder and smiling question.</p> <p class='c011'>Anna Mallison, seeing the pallor and emotion of his face, and having become wonted to the supernatural interpretation of the small events of human life, only said gravely and without obvious surprise:—</p> <p class='c011'>“I do not, perhaps, know all that it means. I trust it means no trouble to any one—to you.”</p> <p class='c011'>“No,” he answered, a slight tremor in his voice; “I cannot believe that it does. You came under the divine leading, no matter how or why you seemed to yourself to come. You came as a sign. I had asked a sign of God. I did not dream of your presence in this house. Seeing you now, so unexpectedly, how can I doubt any further? It is the will of God.”</p> <p class='c011'>Anna looked straight into Keith’s face, a deep shadow of perplexity on her own, but she did not speak.</p> <p class='c011'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>He smiled slightly.</p> <p class='c011'>“You cannot understand, and no wonder, I am speaking to you as I have no right to—in the dark. It is for you to say whether, by and by, before I go to-morrow morning, I may explain my meaning and try to make clear to you what is so clear to me.”</p> <p class='c011'>It was Anna now who grew perturbed, for the significance of his words, although veiled, was manifest. She turned and descended the stairs without speaking, Keith Burgess following her in silence. She did not herself understand her own sharp recoil and dismay, but all the maiden instinct of defence was in alarm within her.</p> <p class='c011'>At the foot of the stairs they both paused for an instant, and Keith asked in a low voice:—</p> <p class='c011'>“Will you walk with me on these hills somewhere, alone, this afternoon at four o’clock?”</p> <p class='c011'>A sudden great sense of revolt arose in the girl’s heart, and broke in a faint sob upon her lips. She did not want to walk on the hills with him—with any man. She did not want to hear what he had to say. But he had said it was the will of God, their thus meeting. He had sought that awful, irrefragable will, and she had acted, it seemed, in obedience to it in coming to this house. What was she, to be found fighting against God?</p> <p class='c011'>She felt herself constrained to say yes.</p> <div> <span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />