Anne: A Novel
Page 30
CHAPTER XXX.
"O eloquent and mightie Death! thou hast drawn together all the farre-stretched greatnesse, all the pride, crueltie, and ambition of men, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet!"--SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
A month passed. Anne saw nothing more, heard nothing more, but toiled onin her daily round. She taught and sang. She answered Miss Lois'sletters and those of Pere Michaux. There was no longer any danger inwriting to Weston, and she smiled sadly as she thought of the blind,self-important days when she had believed otherwise. She now wrote toher friends there, and letters came in return. Mrs. Barstow's pages werefilled with accounts of hospital work, for Donelson had been followed bythe great blood-shedding of Shiloh, and the West was dotted withbattle-fields.
She had allowed herself no newspapers, lest she should come upon hisname. But now she ordered one, and read it daily. What was it to hereven if she should come upon his name? She must learn to bear it, solong as they trod the same earth. And one day she did come upon it; butit was merely the two-line announcement that he had returned to thefront.
The great city had grown used to the war. There were few signs in itsbusy streets that a pall hung over the borders of the South. The musicteacher on her rounds saw nothing save now and then the ranks of aregiment passing through on its way to a train. Traffic went onunchanged; pleasure was rampant as ever. The shrill voice of the newsboycalling the details of the last battle was often the only reminder ofthe dread reality. May moved onward. The Scheffels began to make thoselittle excursions into the country so dear to the German heart; but theycould not persuade the honored Fraeulein to accompany them. For it wasnot the real country to which they went, but only that suburbanimitation of it which thrives in the neighborhood of New York, andAnne's heart was back on her island in the cool blue Northern straits.Miss Lois was now at home again, and her letters were like a breath oflife to the homesick girl. Little Andre was better, and Pere Michauxcame often to the church-house, and seemed glad to be with them again.With them again! If she could but be with them too!--stand on theheights among the beckoning larches, walk through the spicy aisles ofthe arbor vitae, sit under the gray old pines, listening to the wash ofthe cool blue water below, at rest, afar, afar from all this wearinessand sadness and pain!
During these days Stonewall Jackson was making one of his brilliantcampaigns in the Valley, the Valley of Virginia, the beautiful valley ofthe Shenandoah. On the last morning in May, while reading the war news,Anne found in one corner a little list of dead. And there, in smallletters, which grew to great size, and inscribed themselves on the wallsof the room, one succeeding the other like a horrible dream, was thename, Ward Heathcote. "Captain Ward Heathcote,---- New York Volunteers."She turned the sheet; it was repeated in the latest news column, andagain in a notice on the local page. "Captain Ward Heathcote,---- NewYork Volunteers, is reported among the slain," followed by those briefitems of birth, age, and general history which appall our eyes when wefirst behold them on the printed page, and realize that they are nowpublic property, since they belong only to the dead.
It was early. She was at home in the half-house. She rose, put on herbonnet and gloves, walked to the station, took the first train to thecity, and went to Helen.
She reached the house, and was denied entrance. Mrs. Heathcote could seeno one.
Was any one with her? Miss Teller?
Miss Teller, the man answered, was absent from the city; but atelegraphic dispatch had been sent, and she was on her way home. Therewas no relative at present with Mrs. Heathcote; friends she was not ableto see. And he looked with some curiosity at this plainly dressed youngperson, who stood there quite unconscious, apparently, of the atmosphereof his manner. And yet Mr. Simpson had a very well regulated manner,founded upon the best models--a manner which had never heretofore failedin its effect. With a preliminary cough, he began to close the door.
"Wait," said this young person, almost as though she had some authority.She drew forth a little note-book, tore out a leaf, wrote a line uponit, and handed him the improvised card. "Please take this to Mrs.Heathcote," she said. "I think she will see me."
See her--see _her_--when already members of the highest circles of thecity had been refused! With a slight smile of superior scorn, Simpsontook the little slip, and leaving the stranger on the steps, wentwithin, partially closing the door behind him. But in a few minutes hehastily returned, and with him was a sedate middle-aged woman, whom hecalled Mrs. Bagshot, and who, although quiet in manner, seemed decidedlyto outrank him.
"Will you come with me, if you please?" she said deferentially,addressing Anne. "Mrs. Heathcote would like to see you without delay."She led the way with a quiet unhurrying step up a broad stairway, andopened a door. In the darkened room, on a couch, a white form waslying. Bagshot withdrew, and Anne, crossing the floor, sank down on herknees beside the couch.
"Helen!" she said, in a broken voice; "oh, Helen! Helen!"
The white figure did not stir, save slowly to disengage one hand andhold it out. But Anne, leaning forward, tenderly lifted the slight formin her arms, and held it close to her breast.
"I could not help coming," she said. "Poor Helen! poor, poor Helen!"
She smoothed the fair hair away from the small face that lay still andwhite upon her shoulder, and at that moment she pitied the stricken wifeso intensely that she forgot the rival, or rather made herself one withher; for in death there is no rivalry, only a common grief. Helen didnot speak, but she moved closer to Anne, and Anne, holding her in herarms, bent over her, soothing her with loving words, as though she hadbeen a little child.
The stranger remained with Mrs. Heathcote nearly two hours. Then shewent away, and Simpson, opening the door for her, noticed that her veilwas closely drawn, so that her face was concealed. She went up thestreet to the end of the block, turned the corner, and disappeared. Hewas still standing on the steps, taking a breath of fresh air, hisportly person and solemn face expressing, according to his idea, adignified grief appropriate to the occasion and the distinction of thefamily he served--a family whose bereavements even were above the levelof ordinary sorrows, when his attention was attracted by the appearanceof a boy in uniform, bearing in his hand an orange-brown envelope. Inthe possibilities of that well-known hue of hope and dread he forgot forthe moment even his occupation of arranging in his own mind elegantformulas with which to answer the inquiries constantly made at the doorof the bereaved mansion. The boy ascended the steps; Bagshot, up stairs,with her hand on the knob of Mrs. Heathcote's door, saw him, and camedown. The dispatch was for her mistress; she carried it to her. The nextinstant a cry rang through the house. Captain Heathcote was safe.
The message was as follows:
* * * * *
"_To Mrs. Ward Heathcote:_
"My name given in list a mistake. Am here, wounded, but not dangerously.Will write.
W. H."
* * * * *
It was sent from Harper's Ferry. And two hours later, Mrs. Heathcote,accompanied by Bagshot, was on her way to Harper's Ferry.
It was a wild journey. If any man had possessed authority over Helen,she would never have been allowed to make it; but no man did possessauthority. Mrs. Heathcote, having money, courage, and a will of steel,asked advice from no one, did not even wait for Miss Teller, butdeparted according to a swift purpose of her own, accompanied only byBagshot, who was, however, an efficient person, self-possessed, calm,and accustomed to travelling. It was uncertain whether they would beable to reach Harper's Ferry, but this uncertainty did not deter Helen:she would go as far as she could. In her heart she was not without hopethat Mrs. Heathcote could relax the rules and military lines of even thestrictest general in the service. As to personal fear, she had none.
At Baltimore she was obliged to wait for an answer to the dispatch shehad sent on starting, and the answer was long in coming. To pass awaythe time, she ordered a carriage and d
rove about the city; many personsnoticed her, and remembered her fair, delicate, and impatient face,framed in its pale hair. At last the answer came. Captain Heathcote wasno longer at Harper's Ferry; he had been sent a short distance northwardto a town where there was a better hospital, and Mrs. Heathcote wasadvised to go round by the way of Harrisburg, a route easier and safer,if not in the end more direct as well.
She followed this advice, although against her will. She travellednorthward to Harrisburg, and then made a broad curve, and came southwardagain, within sight of the green hills later to be brought intounexpected and long-enduring fame--the hills around Gettysburg. But nowthe whole region was fair with summer, smiling and peaceful; the farmerswere at work, and the grain was growing. After some delays she reachedthe little town, with its barrack-like, white-washed hospital, where herhusband was installed under treatment for a wound in his right arm,which, at first appearing serious, had now begun to improve so rapidlythat the surgeon in charge decided that he could soon travel northward,and receive what further care he needed among the comforts of his ownhome.
At the end of five days, therefore, they started, attended only byBagshot, that useful woman possessing, in addition to her otherqualifications, both skill and experience as a nurse.
They started; but the journey was soon ended. On the 11th of June theworld of New York was startled, its upper circles hotly excited, and oneobscure young teacher in a little suburban home paralyzed, by the greatheadings in the morning newspapers. Mrs. Heathcote, wife of Captain WardHeathcote,---- New York Volunteers, while on her way homeward with herhusband, who was wounded in the Shenandoah Valley, had been foundmurdered in her room in the country inn at Timloesville, where they werepassing the night. And the evidence pointed so strongly toward CaptainHeathcote that he had been arrested upon suspicion.
The city journals appended to this brief dispatch whatever details theyknew regarding the personal history of the suspected man and his victim.Helen's beauty, the high position of both in society, and their largecircle of friends were spoken of; and in one account the wife's wealth,left by will unconditionally to her husband, was significantlymentioned. One of the larger journals, with the terrible and pitilessimpartiality of the great city dailies, added that if there had been aplan, some part of it had signally failed. "A man of the ability ofCaptain Heathcote would never have been caught otherwise in a web ofcircumstantial evidence so close that it convinced even the pastoralminds of the Timloesville officials. We do not wish, of course, toprejudge this case; but from the half-accounts which have reached us, itlooks as though this blunder, whatever it may have been, was but anotherproof of the eternal verity of the old saying, Murder will out."
It was the journal containing this sentence which Anne read. She hadheard the news of Heathcote's safety a few hours after her visit toHelen. Only a few days had passed, and now her eyes were staring at thehorrible words that Helen was dead, and that her murderer was her ownhusband.