Three Lives | Page 7

unpleasant orders, not from herself but from Miss
Mary, large, docile, helpless Miss Mary Wadsmith who could never
think out any orders to give Anna from herself.
Anna's eyes grew slowly sharper, harder, and her lower teeth thrust a
little forward and pressing strongly up, framed always more slowly the
"Yes, Miss Jane," to the quick, "Oh Anna! Miss Mary says she wants
you to do it so!"
On the day of their migration, Miss Mary had been already put into the
carriage. "Oh, Anna!" cried little Jane running back into the house,
"Miss Mary says that you are to bring along the blue dressings out of
her room and mine." Anna's body stiffened, "We never use them in the

summer, Miss Jane," she said thickly. "Yes Anna, but Miss Mary thinks
it would be nice, and she told me to tell you not to forget, good-by!"
and the little girl skipped lightly down the steps into the carriage and
they drove away.
Anna stood still on the steps, her eyes hard and sharp and shining, and
her body and her face stiff with resentment. And then she went into the
house, giving the door a shattering slam.
Anna was very hard to live with in those next three days. Even Baby,
the new puppy, the pride of Anna's heart, a present from her friend the
widow, Mrs. Lehntman--even this pretty little black and tan felt the
heat of Anna's scorching flame. And Edgar, who had looked forward to
these days, to be for him filled full of freedom and of things to eat--he
could not rest a moment in Anna's bitter sight.
On the third day, Anna and Edgar went to the Wadsmith country home.
The blue dressings out of the two rooms remained behind.
All the way, Edgar sat in front with the colored man and drove. It was
an early spring day in the South. The fields and woods were heavy
from the soaking rains. The horses dragged the carriage slowly over the
long road, sticky with brown clay and rough with masses of stones
thrown here and there to be broken and trodden into place by passing
teams. Over and through the soaking earth was the feathery new spring
growth of little flowers, of young leaves and of ferns. The tree tops
were all bright with reds and yellows, with brilliant gleaming whites
and gorgeous greens. All the lower air was full of the damp haze rising
from heavy soaking water on the earth, mingled with a warm and
pleasant smell from the blue smoke of the spring fires in all the open
fields. And above all this was the clear, upper air, and the songs of
birds and the joy of sunshine and of lengthening days.
The languor and the stir, the warmth and weight and the strong feel of
life from the deep centres of the earth that comes always with the early,
soaking spring, when it is not answered with an active fervent joy,
gives always anger, irritation and unrest.

To Anna alone there in the carriage, drawing always nearer to the
struggle with her mistress, the warmth, the slowness, the jolting over
stones, the steaming from the horses, the cries of men and animals and
birds, and the new life all round about were simply maddening. "Baby!
if you don't lie still, I think I kill you. I can't stand it any more like
this."
At this time Anna, about twenty-seven years of age, was not yet all thin
and worn. The sharp bony edges and corners of her head and face were
still rounded out with flesh, but already the temper and the humor
showed sharply in her clean blue eyes, and the thinning was begun
about the lower jaw, that was so often strained with the upward
pressure of resolve.
To-day, alone there in the carriage, she was all stiff and yet all
trembling with the sore effort of decision and revolt.
As the carriage turned into the Wadsmith gate, little Jane ran out to see.
She just looked at Anna's face; she did not say a word about blue
dressings.
Anna got down from the carriage with little Baby in her arms. She took
out all the goods that she had brought and the carriage drove away.
Anna left everything on the porch, and went in to where Miss Mary
Wadsmith was sitting by the fire.
Miss Mary was sitting in a large armchair by the fire. All the nooks and
crannies of the chair were filled full of her soft and spreading body. She
was dressed in a black satin morning gown, the sleeves, great monster
things, were heavy with the mass of her soft flesh. She sat there always,
large, helpless, gentle. She had a fair, soft, regular, good-looking