THE ANNES

Books by Marion Ames Taggart

• At Aunt Anna’s
• Beth of Old Chilton
• Beth’s Old Home
• Beth’s Wonder-winter
• Betty Gaston the Seventh Girl
• Blissylvania Post-office
• By Branscome River
• Captain Sylvia
• Daddy’s Daughters
• Daughters of the Little Grey House
• Doctor’s Little Girl
• Elder Miss Ainsborough
• Friendly Little House and Other Stories
• Her Daughter Jean
• Hollyhock House
• In the Days of King Hal
• Jack Hildreth Among the Indians
• Jack Hildreth on the Nile
• Little Aunt
• Little Grey House
• Little Women Club
• Loyal Blue and Royal Scarlet
• Miss Lochinvar
• Miss Lochinvar’s Return
• Nancy and the Coggs Twins
• Nancy Porter’s Opportunity
• Nancy, the Doctor’s Little Partner
• Nut-brown Joan
• One Afternoon and Other Stories
• Pilgrim Maid, A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620
• Pussy-cat Town
• Six Girls and Betty
• Six Girls and Bob
• Six Girls and the Seventh One
• Six Girls and the Tea Room
• Six Girls Growing Older
• Six Girls Grown Up
• Sweet Nancy
• The Annes
• Three Girls and Especially One
• Treasure of Nugget Mountain
• Unraveling of a Tangle
• Winnetou
• Wyndham Girls

“Before she could gather herself together ... Anne felt little Anne’s arms clinging around her waist, and looked down into the shining eyes of the child.”

The ANNES

BY
MARION AMES TAGGART

FRONTISPIECE
BY
W. C. NIMS

GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

TO
ELIZABETH

CONTENTS

THE ANNES

CHAPTER I
Little Anne’s Calling

THE thin child on the floor was completely engrossed in her occupation, but she never gave fractional attention to anything. She rested on one elbow, her weight on her hip, one long, slender leg crooked under her, the other extended at length over the green carpet, the foot that ended it dropping in and out of its flat-soled pump as it see-sawed from heel to toe.

Suddenly the child sat up, raised her elfin face, pushed back her cropped dark hair from her dark, bright eyes with the back of a slender hand somewhat grimy on its knuckles.

“Mother, I know my vocation!” she announced.

Her pretty mother, as fair and placid as little Anne was dark and dynamic, bore this announcement calmly.

“You must have your hair bobbed again, Anne,” she said. “What made you think of vocations, dear? At seven there is time enough for that; few vocations are decided quite so early.”

“Yes, but I think it is nice to get it off your mind,” Anne said. “I’ve been thinking about it for years, ever since Joan used to talk about it, when she used to think maybe she ought to be a sister. And then Antony came along, and she married him as quick! I’d hate to wiggle around like that! So I’ve wondered a whole lot what my vocation was, and now I know.”

Anne paused for the question which her mother dutifully put to her:

“Do you, dear? What is it?”

“Putting things on their legs. This beetle needs it. He gets on his back and kicks and kicks! It would melt a heart of stone. I turn him over and he feels ever so much cheerfuller! He doesn’t stay right side up; he tips over again, but I think maybe it’s partly the carpet. Anyway, I’m right here to set him going again. Prob’ly if he was a bird he’d sing to me, but poor black beetles haven’t any voice. Crickets chirp, though; do you s’pose black beetles chirp when they are enjoying themselves together?”

Anne had dropped down again on her elbow, but she sat up again as a hope for black beetles awakened in her.

“I think not, Anne; I think they cannot voice their joy,” said Mrs. Berkley, gravely.

Anne sighed and lay out at full length on the floor.

“I s’pose not. But maybe they go singing in their hearts—— Why, Mother, that’s a hymn, isn’t it, mother? Is that a sin? I didn’t mean it; honest to goodness, I never meant that hymn! Is it a sin, Mother?”

Once more Anne was excitedly erect.

“You have been told many times, Anne, that you cannot do wrong unless you mean to, sin is choosing to do wrong when you know what is right,” said this conscientious mother. “How did your beetle happen to be in this room, Anne?”

“I brought him in, Mother,” answered the child. “I turned him over out of doors, but I wanted to sit down and watch him flop. I s’pose I do upset him a little weeny bit sometimes! It’s a great temptation, but then I’m right here to set him going again, and that’s my vocation.”

“It’s really a beautiful vocation, Anne,” said her mother. “To put someone on his feet and help him to walk, only I wouldn’t confine it altogether to black beetles.”

“People?” asked Anne. “Figuravely? Don’t you mean that to be—— What are those stories? You know! All-all glory, or something?”

“Allegories. And figuratively, Anne. Yes, dear. It would be a beautiful vocation to help people to walk, wouldn’t it? And it’s sure to be yours if you’re a good woman, as I pray you will be. One way or another all good women put people on their feet.”

Mrs. Berkley hastily got her needle where it could do no harm, for she saw what was coming.

Anne scrambled to her feet, leaving her beetle on his back, vainly imploring the ceiling with his many active legs. Big girl that she was she threw herself upon her mother’s lap, and hugged her hard.

“Like you, just for all the world, ’xactly like you, you most precious, beautiful motherkins, Barbara Berkley!” Anne choked herself in choking her mother. “You help everybody in this family on their feet, and you just lead ’em right along! I wonder where’d I’d be if ’twasn’t for you showing me lovely things? Just like black beetle allegories this minute! My father, Peter Berkley, wouldn’t be hardly anything if ’twasn’t for you! You know yourself he’d never in this world remember rubbers! And prob’ly he’d die of it. And Joan—well, what in the world do you s’pose she’d do with the baby if she didn’t ask you? And as to Peter-two——!” Words for once failed Anne. Her opinion of her obstreperous fourteen-year-old brother was luckily deprived of expression. He was surer of his own vocation than Anne was of hers; it was clear to him that his calling in life was to suppress Anne.

“Dear me, Anne-baby!” gasped Mrs. Berkley. “You have hugged me breathless and my hair is coming down! Not that I am not glad that you are satisfied with me as a mother, little Anne!”

“Satisfied? Doesn’t that mean sort of getting-along-with-it?” asked Anne, the student of words.

“Oh, no. It means that a thing exactly suits you in every way,” explained Mrs. Berkley.

“Your hair isn’t coming down; it’s only rather loose. It’s prettiest down, anyway; I’ll fix it,” said Anne. “Satisfied doesn’t sound like that when people say it; they say it in a getting-along tone. When Joan got that centrepiece from Antony’s Aunt Lil last Christmas she said: ‛Oh, well, of course I’m satisfied with it!’ Like that! ’Cause she per-fect-ly detests Renaissance lace. And don’t you remember Peter-two made that awful bad joke about it? He said it was re-nuisance. Nuisance, you know, mother! Don’t you see? Because Joan put it away to give someone else; that’s what made the re part of the joke: an over-again nuisance, Mother! Joan said it was a perfec’ly stupid joke; she said it was a pun. What makes me remember bad jokes, Mother? I keep remembering Peter’s worst ones. Joan said she was satisfied, but she means to give that centrepiece to someone else; Joan said to Mr. Richard Latham, because he was blind, but Joan didn’t mean it; Joan never means anything not kind, like that! Now your hair isn’t loose, lovely motherkins! I see Joan coming in the back way. She hasn’t brought Barbara—— Mercy me! I forgot my beetle and Joan’ll step on him, kersmash! Joan would never see a beetle; she goes along thinking of Antony Paul and Toots! I don’t blame her; that’s the loveliest baby I ever in all my lifetime saw! And I always did say Antony was ’most too good for Joan, if she is my sister. I never expected in all my lifetime to have a brother-in-law who was half as nice as Antony Paul—so there!”

“Oh, Anne!” sighed Mrs. Berkley, her conscientious motherhood weighing upon her. “My hair may not be loose, but what about your little red tongue, my dear? I am afraid that Peter is right, and that we spoil you, child!”

“Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother!” Anne earnestly reassured her. “You bring me up just right. You let me do about everything that isn’t wicked, only just a weeny bit kind of not like every little girl, but if I wanted a crime you wouldn’t let me have it, and you teach me noble things—catechism and everything!”

Mrs. Berkley laughed her soft inward, chuckling laugh, as she often did at Anne’s speeches.

“Such high-coloured words, little Anne! Fancy craving a crime!

“Joan, dear, the baby must have let you sleep last night. You look blooming, my daughter!”

Mrs. Berkley arose to take into her arms a pretty young creature, all soft tints like her mother—sweet, normal, and contented, not in any way suggesting sisterhood to little Anne.

“Oh, Mother, dearest,” Joan remonstrated in a voice that declared in its first note that it was made to sing lullabies, “as though Barbara were not always good now! For five months, since she passed her third month, she has let me sleep from eleven till two, and Antony and I love to have her waken before four because she is sweetest before dawn. Antony says the truly poetical time to see a baby is at dawn—provided you can get your eyes open to look! Antony is romantic; then he is ashamed of it and pokes fun at himself! Anne, you monkey, why don’t you come over to kiss me? And what have you in your hand?”

“It’s my beetle, Joan,” said Anne, complying with her sister’s request. “I am looking for a safe place for him, where he can get on his legs himself when I am gone. It ought to be something with kind of sticky walls. I don’t mean sticky-that-holds-you, but sticky-that-can-be-stuck-to; that kind. If you don’t mind, mother, dear, I’ll stand your prayer book, and the Imitation, and these other two little pious books around him, because they’re all bound in that soft leather, like gloves, that makes you crawl, and I want him to crawl. It won’t be sacredligious to use them, because it’s for charity, and bowls are dreadfully slippery.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Joan, staring, though she should have been accustomed to Anne.

“The beetle will be far happier out of doors, Anne,” said her mother. “He will not enjoy walls, even of soft leather. Better let him go and find another when you want to help a beetle on his legs. Anne has discovered her vocation, Joan: it is helping beetles to their legs when they are on their backs and can’t get up. I think that may quite easily prove to be a prophecy of her career!”

Joan laughed. “Heaven help the human beetle that wants to lie on his back if Anne gets after him later on! She would make him walk, possibly fly.”

Anne had obediently carried the beetle out of doors and put him down in the grass. He showed as lively pleasure in being released from her ministrations as many another object of philanthropy would show if a chance to get away were offered it. Anne watched it scuttle off and returned to her family somewhat cast down.

“He kept right side up all right, and went off just as fast!” she announced. “I don’t think he acted one bit attached to me. Maybe beetles aren’t. Maybe if you have a shell you don’t have a heart. That wasn’t slang, Mother! I didn’t say it! Peter-two told me he’d fine me if I said ‛have a heart,’ but I didn’t! Honest that wasn’t the same!”

“No, dear, it wasn’t. That was science, not slang,” Joan comforted her.

Anne went over and seated herself, cross-legged, in the deep window seat. She fell into one of her meditative moods in which she was lost to all around her. Active or contemplative, Anne was always at the nth degree of her temporary condition.

Mrs. Berkley and her older daughter dropped into the intimate talk of a mother and daughter who are also close friends, sharing their experiences of matronhood.

At first Anne listened, wistful, feeling a little pushed aside. Joan had been married less than two years. Anne could remember when she had been to her pretty sister an enviable combination of her discarded doll, her little sister, and the forerunner of the baby, though this Joan herself, still less Anne, had not understood.

This had been almost three years ago, before Antony Paul had come and decided Joan against a convent, while she was still discussing her vocation in terms which had imprinted themselves upon Anne’s memory. Anne had not been her sister’s chief interest since she was four, so it was not that which she missed as she sat in the window seat; it was her mother’s divided interest that the little girl grudged.

Anne’s dog, Cricket, an apprehensive, black-and-tan, bow-legged beagle, came to sit close to his little mistress, snuggling his head backward to beg for her hand. Anne pulled his soft ears and lost herself in ill-assorted thoughts. At last she aroused; Joan was saying:

“Mother, you don’t know men! Of course, there is Father; I must confess you know him perfectly. It takes perfect knowledge to manage a man as you manage him—and he never suspects it! Why, he even prefers to go your way after a step or two in the other direction! But you do that by being you, so sweet and gentle, and—and—well, always right, I suppose! But men are not like father; he is so reasonable! Now Antony is the dearest of dears, but I can’t say he is always reasonable. Sometimes I simply cannot make him see things as I do. Then I give in; it’s my duty. But I’m afraid there’s another side to it. I ought to make him see. Especially now that I have Barbara to train. Antony is so sweet I could get him to do anything if I cried, but that’s a mean trick! A woman to play on a man’s chivalry! I’ve got to study, strengthen my mind, you know! Men are much, much more childish than we are, mother, yet they are fearful to argue with; they’re so horribly logical. And of all things you can’t trust to bring you out in an argument where you expected to land, logic is the worst!”

Mrs. Berkley laughed her little amused laugh.

“It even leads you astray in the construction of a sentence apparently,” she said. “I never knew a young matron who did not think that her study of her husband had revealed depths no other woman had ever fathomed. But I assure you, Joan, men are far more alike than women are. I have no doubt that by and by Antony will be led by you, just as you think your father is led by me. But rest assured, my dear, I don’t lead your father by logic!”

Anne unwound herself and stretched her long, thin legs with a sigh.

“I shall never get married,” she said. “I shall not! And it cramps dreadfully to sit with your legs under you on such a hard seat. I see Miss Anne Dallas. She is going to the post office, I s’pose; she has a lot of letters and stuff. She’s going to mail them for Mr. Latham, most likely. She looks as nice! I think queer blue dresses are perfec’ly lovely. Kit Carrington has stopped her. He took off his hat most graceful. It’s the way they do in stories, old stories, when it was long ago, when they doff their hats. So did Kit Carrington. I never knew how it was till now, but that’s what he did: doffed it. Look, Mother. Like this.”

Anne stood up and swept an imaginary hat to her side with a splendid gesture, then let her head droop deferentially and struck a listening pose. Then she straightened her lithe body and turned upon her mother and sister an excited, glowing little face.

“Well, I never knew Kit was in love with Anne Dallas till now!” she cried.

“Anne!” her mother remonstrated. “I really will not allow you to be so impertinent. What a remark from a little girl like you! And Kit? You mean Mr. Carrington, I suppose? Mr. Christopher Carrington? And Miss Dallas? Do you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Anne, meekly. “I forgot. They all say Kit Carrington; he’s so nice. That’s the reason, I s’pose, and young of his age.”

“He must be as much as twenty-three or four,” observed Joan.

Then, inconsistently after her mother’s rebuke, after the manner of older people with a precocious child like Anne, she asked:

“What possessed you to say that Kit Carrington was in love with Anne Dallas, child?”

“I can see he is,” said little Anne, rejoicing in this opportunity to continue the subject. “He got all red and he’s looking at her about like Antony when you come in, Joan; this way.”

Anne thrust forward her head, wreathed her mobile lips into a chastened smile, and rolled her flashing dark eyes in what was meant for an adoring expression. She instinctively heightened her effect by clasping her hands, though Christopher Carrington had indulged in no gestures.

“Anne, really, I dislike this exceedingly,” began her mother, but her rebuke was spoiled by Joan’s flight to the window where she ensconced herself behind the curtains to verify Anne’s report.

Mrs. Berkley had a sense of humour that asserted itself at unsuitable times. She chuckled now.

“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, hast thou really espied Romance from thy window?” she murmured. “Sister Anne, is thy report true of what approaches? But, alas for your little sister Anne’s training, Joan! I can’t join you; they would see me! What do you make out, Joan?”

Joan waved her hand behind her back, signalling to her mother to let her have Sister Anne’s watch tower undisturbed for a few moments.

At last she turned away and came over to her mother, Anne with her; Anne had been frankly watching the conversation in the street, untrammelled by the handicap of adult years.

“Well, of course, Mother, one can’t be sure of such a thing from across the street, looking on at one chance meeting, but it does seem as though our Anne’s keen eyes were not far wrong,” Joan announced. “Kit has an air of profound admiration. I couldn’t say as to Anne Dallas; you can’t tell much about a girl. I wonder! They’ve gone on now, in opposite directions. What a handsome boy Kit is! So manly, carries himself so well! He has the nicest smile I ever saw—except Antony’s! I wonder, I do wonder!”

“Anne is a dear girl,” said Mrs. Berkley. “If it were so—poor Richard Latham!”

“Oh, Mother, you don’t think——” began Joan.

“Anne is a dear girl,” repeated her mother. “Do you suppose it is likely that a lonely, hungry-hearted man like Richard Latham, sitting in darkness all his days, could have such a girl as Anne beside him constantly, writing his poems at his dictation, reading to him in her soft, lovely voice, serving him in countless ways, and not learn to love her? I’ve been hoping it would be so. For why should not Anne Dallas love him? Blindness is rather attractive than forbidding to a girl as sweetly compassionate as Anne. And to take at his dictation his beautiful words, his exquisite fancies, to hear them first of all the world, to come to feel, to know, that you inspired most of them, to write them for him and be the medium through which the world knows them—can you imagine better food for love?”

“Well, now you say it,” admitted Joan, slowly. “But if this attractive Kit, full of charm, young, does come wooing—I wonder! Poor Mr. Latham, indeed!”

“Perhaps we should say poor Miss Anne Carrington?” suggested Mrs. Berkley. “Kit’s aunt would surely take the advent of Anne Dallas hard. She is inordinately proud of Kit, ambitious for him. She has intended him to marry Helen Abercrombie who is intemperately rich in her own right, and is the only child of ex-Governor Abercrombie. Miss Carrington had her here last summer, don’t you remember?”

“With her car and other paraphernalia; of course!” agreed Joan. “Since we are distributing pity, Motherums, we’d better shed some on Kit and Anne, if they are interested in each other, for Miss Carrington would certainly make the course of their true love run uncommonly rough! I must go home to my daughter. Isn’t it thrilling to think that we may have seen the curtain rise on an old-fashioned love drama, with a rival, a stern parent—an aunt comes to the same thing when she holds the hero’s inheritance—the princess whom the young lover should marry, everything properly cast! Anne, you witch-child, you are an uncanny elf! Good-bye, dear.”

Joan kissed her mother and her sister and was gone.

Anne stood scowling at the table cover, motionless for several minutes, unseeing, lost in thought.

“Anne, dear, what is it?” her mother aroused her.

“I was thinking this was the most Annest town I ever saw: Miss Anne Carrington, Anne Dallas, little Anne Berkley; prob’ly lots more,” she said. “When I’m confirmed I’m going to take Ursula for my new name, ’cause there isn’t one of them. Then you can call me that, so everybody’ll know me apart.”

“I can tell you apart, childie, this minute! Come here, little Anne, and let me rock you, though your legs are uncomfortably long for this low chair.” Mrs. Berkley held out her arms invitingly and Anne ran into them.

“Another thing I was thinking when you and Joan were talking about Mr. Latham and Ki—Mr. Carrington—all wanting to marry her. I think we’re not half sorry enough for all the trouble everybody makes God, all wanting the same thing and praying about it! It must be awful to have to say no to such lots of ’em! And He can’t say yes to more’n half when there’s two, just even, you see. It makes me feel sorry for Him. Is that a sin, Mother?” Anne lifted her head out of her mother’s shoulder and gazed at her with profoundly sad eyes.

Her mother kissed the lids down over those great dark eyes. Sometimes her heart ached with fear of this strange child’s future. Then again Anne was so reassuringly human that the pang of anxiety over her unearthliness was swallowed up in anxiety of the opposite sort.

So now Mrs. Berkley kissed down the lids over the meditative eyes and murmured comfortingly:

“Little Anne must remember that God knows best.”

Anne sprang to her feet with a whoop that made her mother gasp.

“Oh, yes, ’course!” she cried, swiftly disposing of theology for the moment. “I hear Peter-two coming in. He promised to bring me elder whistles for Cricket that’ll just about make him come, no matter where he is, and if Peter-two hasn’t done it—— Well, he’ll catch it!”

With which Anne rushed from the room. An instant later her mother’s fear as to her son’s safety—if she felt any—was set at rest by a whistle so shrill that it sent Cricket cowering under the sofa.

CHAPTER II
The Oldest Anne

CHRISTOPHER CARRINGTON threw the last third of his cigar into the fireplace and watched it as it tumbled over the back log. The back log made him think of his Aunt Anne, always there, always ready to be fired by smaller sticks. He had been restlessly touring the room for fifteen minutes, examining its ornaments, familiar to him from childhood, hardly conscious that he was handling bits of frail loveliness that his aunt never allowed other hands than her own to dust.

Miss Anne Carrington had watched Kit’s adventures without comment, in spite of the strain upon her nerves, eying him with keen suspicion, now and then, giving him furtive glances that saw everything as she turned the pages of her book.

She was a tall woman, and thin, her hair was white, but her light blue eyes were undimmed; her nose was long and decidedly arched; her lips were settled into something that looked like a mocking smile. She looked uncompromising, but not so much so as she was; she looked intelligent and clever, but not as clever as she was.

She sat in a straight chair, a dignified old model, with her feet resting on a small stool. At her side stood the table that held her reading lamp; it was laden with books in French and English. Many of them lay open, face down, for Miss Carrington kept her books to serve her, and did not weigh their welfare against her convenience.

Her nephew, Christopher, was not only her nearest of kin, but her only kin near enough to consider as such. He was so dear to her, and in him her ambition had so concentrated, that existence under her domain had not been easy to him since he had passed the years when she could gratify all his desires by buying him the best sport trappings, outfits, horses, and boats that a spoiled lad could own. This Miss Carrington had done, and yet Kit was so little spoiled by these luxuries that his will was in danger of running counter to his aunt’s ambition for him.

At last Miss Carrington laid her book across her knee and watched Kit’s movements, frankly inviting confidence. Becoming conscious of this, he brought himself up with his elbow on the mantel and, turning toward her, said in that big, cheery voice of his that the old lady never could hear without thrilling to it:

“I beg your pardon, Aunt Anne! Do I give you the willies doing the zoo-tiger act like this?”

“I don’t know their Christian name—though why jungle ways should have a Christian name I don’t see—but if irritated nerves are willies, then, yes, you give them to me,” said his aunt.

She spoke in a light, slightly acrid voice, her syllables articulated like Italian.

Kit laughed.

“Nice Aunt Anne!” he approved her, impersonally. “You always sit on a chap in a delightful way. I’ll be seated, thanks.”

He dropped into the deep chair on the right of the fireplace, stretching out to his great length. But Miss Carrington saw that he at once possessed himself of the tongs and began to open and shut them in a way as tiresome as his roaming had been.

Kit nervous? This hearty, athletic lad fidgeting? Miss Carrington wondered what was on his mind. Being clever she set out to discover indirectly. She had heard a suggestion that she loathed; it had come from Minerva, her maid, and Minerva, true to her name, was, as a rule, right.

Miss Carrington closed her book, first noting the page number, for she scorned bookmarks, laid it on the table, and picked up the latest number of a newspaper supplement devoted to book news.

“Here’s a discussion of Richard Latham’s verse and essays, Kit,” she said. “Quite well done, discriminating, yet laudatory. The reviewer—it’s not signed—considers him an artist who sends out nothing unworthy, who greatly rejoices those of fine perception, consequently the few, yet these to an extent that should compensate him for the smallness of his audience. Really it is praise worth having! I don’t know Richard Latham as I should. I sent Minerva off after I’d read this to buy everything he has published. Cleavedge had only one volume, the one I already owned! So I sent her again to telephone New York, to tell Brentano’s to send me Latham complete. That is the honour of a prophet in his own country!”

Kit smiled. His aunt would not have a telephone in her house, but she was constantly sending Minerva to telephone a message from the near-by drug store.

“And what of it?” Miss Carrington would defend herself. “Is sending Minerva seven times seventy trips a day equal to one’s being on the ragged edge, dreading to be called at any hour?”

Now Kit smiled at his aunt, as she awaited his reply, and said:

“I’m not up in Mr. Latham’s work myself, Aunt Anne. But then I’m far down in lots of poets.”

“We’ll hope you will come to them,” returned his aunt. “From this review it appears that we should be immensely proud of Latham; by and by, apparently, pilgrims will come to Cleavedge to pick leaves from the ivy on his wall. Has he a wall? And ivy? Someone, it seems, wrote Richard Latham lately to ask for the genesis of one of his poems, also ‛what he meant by’ a certain stanza. That is true greatness, Kit; to get inquiries as to the meaning of a poem! There is a letter published here, setting the anxious correspondent at rest. It speaks with authority for Mr. Latham, but is not written by him. It is not badly expressed, rather a nice letter. Signed A. D. I wonder what that stands for—when it isn’t Anno Domini?”

All this long talk about Richard Latham to lead up casually to this question! And so casually reached that Kit never suspected!

He blushed slightly, as Miss Carrington noted, but he answered with his jolly laugh:

“It stands for something that sounds a good deal the same, but is different enough, Aunt Anne. It stands for Anne Dallas, I suppose; she’s Richard Latham’s secretary.”

“Oh, does it? To be sure, he would have a secretary. Pity he is blind! And the secretary would be able to write a good letter. It’s not remarkable; clear, intelligent, a good letter. His secretary must need patience—and no other interests. I suppose he might be more likely to get that in a woman, but I should want a man. However, he can get a woman sufficiently trained for his requirements at a lower salary than a man’s. Anne Dallas, you said? Not a Cleavedge name. Where did he find her? I hope she doesn’t annoy him, but if she is ugly he can’t see it! It would be horrible to a poet to have an ugly woman under his beauty-loving eyes all day, week in, week out. I wonder—but of course you don’t know, you don’t visit Mr. Latham. She can’t be a Cleavedge woman, I should think?”

Miss Carrington talked on lightly, not overdoing her carelessness, but with a voice silvery and indifferent. She watched Kit as she talked and saw him redden, trying boyishly to appear at ease.

“She isn’t a Cleavedge girl; she came from Connecticut, Aunt Anne,” Kit said.

“That’s a state I like!” Miss Carrington approved, heartily. “It’s odd—kindly, too—the present fashion of calling unattached women girls. The letter sounded mature. I suppose it is because she is earning her living that you speak of her as a girl. Is she a widow? Didn’t—no; you didn’t call her Miss Dallas.”

“Good gracious, no; she isn’t a widow!” cried Kit, and instantly regretted his vehemence, for his aunt raised her eyebrows. “Miss Dallas is young; she is a girl, a girl with a lot of girlhood in her; the kind they used to call ‛maidenly,’ you know,” Kit continued.

“I suppose you are forced to speak of maidenly as an obsolete term, Kit, my dear, because what it stood for is out of fashion,” observed Miss Carrington. She had found out all that she wanted to know for this time and was too wise to pursue the subject.

“Of course I don’t for an instant mean that girls are at heart less maidenly. That is a quality necessary to every generation, if civilization is to continue. But the outward and visible sign of that special inward grace is not worn as it was. I confess to regretting it. I claim to be modern, but it really was in beautiful good taste. I suppose a few exceedingly well-bred girls will retain that efflorescence to the end of the chapter, but the present fashion gives such horrible scope to bad taste! I found Helen Abercrombie refreshing last summer when she visited us. There’s a well-bred girl!”

“But hardly maidenly,” Kit could not refrain from saying, though he knew that it was indiscreet. “Miss Abercrombie is a finished product, of course, but she’s too—too—— Oh, well, you know, Aunt Anne! You’re an analyst of the first water! Too finished a product and up-to-the-minute, too architectural to be maidenly.”

“Christopher,” said his aunt, “there is no use whatever in ostrich-talk between us when it comes to Helen Abercrombie! You know as well as I do what is my hope for you in regard to her. To beat about the bush is to talk as an ostrich is supposed to behave: you’d see my transparently covered outlines. In so many words, then, I want you to marry Helen. I’m glad that is said.” Miss Carrington threw herself against her chair back and looked steadily at Kit.

“Aunt!” Kit drew in his breath sharply, protesting.

“And guardian,” his aunt reminded him.

Kit flushed angrily; it was true that his prospects in life depended upon his aunt’s favour.

“It doesn’t seem decent to discuss it,” Kit said. “As if I’d nothing to do but decide to beckon Helen.”

“Between ourselves, Kit, I think Helen has already made the first signals,” said Miss Carrington. “The woman usually does; Thackeray and George Bernard Shaw are right. I should be sorry to see you giving yourself the airs of a conqueror, but as an honest working basis between us we may as well admit the truth that Helen is of the same mind as Barkis.”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Kit, helplessly. “I’m not in the least in love with her, Aunt Anne. I never could be.”

“No,” admitted Miss Carrington, judicially, “you are not. I think quite likely you never would be. I don’t recall asking you to be, my dear boy.”

Kit looked at her, his honest, rebellious young soul in his eyes.

“Christopher Carrington, listen to me with your intelligence, not merely with your ears,” began Miss Carrington, bracing herself to her task. “I rather like your feeling, which your silence announces more eloquently than words, as novelists say. Youth is the time for dreams. It is for its elders to see to it that the dreams do not become nightmares. I want, I urge you to marry Helen Abercrombie because she is preëminently suitable. She is of our class; she is handsome, highly accomplished, wealthy. She is a woman to help on a man’s career. Not only that, but she has it in her power to launch a man on his career. Her father was the best governor this state ever had. He will be nominated and reëlected this coming year. He is certain to have an important portfolio in a not-far-distant cabinet; it is more than likely that he will be his party’s presidential candidate next time. And that party is going in next time; heaven knows the country has had enough of the muddle of the past years at the other party’s hands! As Governor Abercrombie’s son-in-law you would be secure of a good diplomatic appointment. And there is nothing like such an experience to make a man, Kit! It would give you what nothing else could of dignity, of savoir faire. I will not allow you to turn aside from such opportunity. Then, if the not unlikely sequence follows, as President Abercrombie’s son-in-law——”

Miss Carrington shrugged her shoulders with an outward gesture of her open palms that ended her sentence for her eloquently, a trick that she had learned in her own long years abroad. A bright red spot burned in each cheek and her guarded eyes gleamed with the fire of ambition. Kit stared at her; she rarely revealed herself to this extent. He cried: “Aunt Anne, that’s all very fine, but would you have me marry a woman whom I did not love for ignoble, selfish motives?”

“Ignoble!” cried his aunt, sharply. “Do you call ambitions such as any manly man would leap toward, ignoble? Why, what else is there in life but its prizes? The bigger the better, but prizes at least. Selfish, yes! Who isn’t selfish? Children are frightened by words, not men. Of course you’re selfish. But if you enjoy beclouding your conscience tell yourself you’ll use your attainment unselfishly. You won’t, but many better, cleverer men than you, my little Christopher, befuddle themselves with pretty terms. In the meantime win, win, win your ends! Let me tell you, Kit, that there’s more sensible unselfishness in marrying for prudence than for romance: the result of that endures!”

Kit looked at his aunt with genuine pity. He knew that her ambition for him represented all that was in her of ideals, of love. A remembrance of Major Pendennis and young Arthur flitted across his mind; he pitied his aunt, but he feared lest one day he might pity himself.

“You don’t know, Aunt Anne,” he said, gently. “It must be frightful to be married to someone whom you can’t love. In the marriage you urge upon me there would be neither love nor respect; I should not love my wife, nor respect myself. You can’t realize it, Aunt Anne.”

“Bless the child!” cried Miss Carrington with a laugh. “Does he imagine himself at twenty-four wiser than a worldly old woman of sixty-eight? You mean that I can’t realize your bugaboo situation because I didn’t marry. But I was to marry once! Another woman stole my husband. There was excuse for her according to you, for I was going to marry him for ambition, and she loved him madly. I remained their friend, and I saw my vengeance. They were wretchedly unhappy, while I, with my ambition answering to his, would have crowned him.”

Miss Carrington arose and drew herself up to her full height, which was equal to Kit’s. Her narrow slipper of black silk, simply bound, without an ornament, dropped off as she arose. Kit sprang to put it on for her. She leaned on his shoulder and watched him fit the slipper on her foot. She was inordinately proud of her long, narrow feet, and never adorned their apparel.

“You see, my boy, I practise what I preach; I have ample space to stand in. Learn from the parable of the loose slipper and do not cramp your foundations.” She leaned forward to smile into Kit’s face, almost coquettishly.

“My fine lad,” she resumed, “gratify your aunt, who is almost your mother, and make your life what marriage with Helen Abercrombie will let you make it. Trust me, Kit, as a wise woman who knows her world. It will never do to face it wearing rose-coloured glasses. ‛Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,’ and it is my experience that you need not bother about the other part of your rendering. God is sure to take the things that are God’s Himself; you need not render them. They are vital things, too, my dear; your strength, your health, your youth, at last your life. Make sure of all that you can get; it is not too much.”

Kit stood with hanging head, her arm over his shoulders. He was distressed. Never had his aunt betrayed herself to him as now, and the vision of her destitution shocked his manhood, his ideals, his conscience. To have lived almost to her three score and ten, to be so clever, so strong, yet to have garnered no wheat, but only bright pebbles!

“Well, Kit,” Miss Carrington said, altering her tone and withdrawing her arm as she turned to leave him, “I’ll not ask for your answer now; in fact, I don’t want you to answer yet. But I beg you to remember that I implore you to marry Helen Abercrombie, and to marry soon. You are precisely the sort of boy who falls in love and makes a hopeless mess of his life from the loftiest plane of boundless idiocy. You were always quixotically lovable. I’m ready to admit that it is most charming in a boy, my dear, but it is fatal to a man. So listen to your doting aunt, and on your life do not disobey her! What are you going to do while I take my siesta?”

Kit felt, as his aunt meant him to feel it, the veiled threat in her warning, but he answered her question:

“I told young Peter Berkley that I’d give him my collection of postage stamps if he’d come around. I’m looking for him any minute.”

“That is nice little Mrs. Peter Berkley’s boy? The brother of my extraordinary namesake, little Anne? She is Methuselette on one side and an innocent baby on the other. I could greatly enjoy cultivating little Anne Berkley’s acquaintance,” said Miss Carrington. “I complained of difficulty in threading a needle the other day—it was the sewing afternoon at the hospital, an occasion which I grace, but hardly serve—and Mrs. Berkley had brought Anne to thread needles for us. That small elf changeling urged me to make a pilgrimage to Beaupré to get my sight restored, because, forsooth, my name being ‛Anne’ the good Saint Anne would be likely to help me! The mother is a remarkably nice, genuine person; pity she’s so devote!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” murmured Kit. “It seems to suit the Berkleys.”

“That’s true. And of course if one is going in for that sort of thing the only possible logic lies in the Old Way. I can see consistency in being Other Worldly, but to be unworldly, my boy, is, as I’ve been eloquently telling you, utter nonsense,” said Miss Carrington, graciously. “I’ll go up now and get Minerva to read me into a nap. Tell young Peter to come another time and bring that clever, queer little sister of his, will you? Anne Berkley and Anne Carrington are far enough apart in years and views to become cronies.”

Miss Carrington stepped back and gathered up an embroidered shawl of Chinese silk which had slipped into a tiny roll at the back of her chair. She hung it over her arm; its long fringe and heavily embroidered flowers brushed Kit’s hand as he held the door open for her to pass through it. He returned to the fireplace and leaned upon the mantel, waiting for young Peter with a heaviness of heart unlike himself.

“A pilgrimage to gain her sight!” thought Kit. “Little Anne’s advice was not half bad. She would not agree to all this; she is as untainted by the world as a blossom in an old-time garden!”

The smile that made his rugged young face so gentle showed that the “she” of this encomium was not little Anne Berkley.

CHAPTER III
The Quiet Room

CLEAVEDGE had received its name from the steep sides of the river which cleft its rocky bank formation. It may have been a misapprehension of a word—strangers spelt it “Cleavage” till they learned better—or the settlers who christened it may have meant to embody in the word the picturesque cleft edges of the cliffs. Cleavedge, with its misspelling, it remained through the growth of the village into a prosperous little city.

Richard Latham lived in a shady street not much disturbed by traffic. Several other streets ran in the same direction, leading more directly to wherever any one would be likely to go, so Latham Street was not greatly disturbed by footfalls, either. The street had been lately rechristened; Cleavedge was beginning to be aware of its celebrity.

In the beautifully proportioned living room of a house that entertained too few guests to require a drawing room the poet passed his days. It was a room built around with bookshelves uncrowded by furniture; its warm-tinted, drabbish walls hung with fine pictures and lighted by lovely gleams of colour in the pottery that occasionally broke the long stretches of the dull oiled wood of the bookcase tops. It was a man’s room, without curtains, or anything meaningless; a room of perfect beauty, inexpressibly soothing. It possessed a sort of visible silence, the silence of the woods; it was a place in which to think and to feel, rather than to act. At one end stood the piano which alone suggested sound, but to one who had heard Richard Latham play it emphasized the harmony.

At the desk, alone in the room, sat a young girl—Anne Dallas. Here she prepared her notes and carried them away to write them out where the clatter of a typewriter could not penetrate this room.

All soft browns was this Anne, hair, eyes, even the tint of her beautiful skin, warmly pale, clear, but of a shade that suggested a page that had lain under the sun’s rays.

Her hair covered her shapely head across the back from crown to neck, from ear to ear; she wore it parted and coiled in the only way its masses allowed her to treat it. There was no attempt at coquetry in the simplicity of her dress, yet no carefully thought out costume could have more perfectly adorned her, nor made her more harmonious to the room, for girl and room were each a foil to the other.

She wrote rapidly, happily humming to herself a slight air that did not get in the way of her thoughts; she smiled as she followed the balanced phrases in which Richard Latham had developed an idea that demanded the best of the language. It was said that Latham used English as no American now used it, that he was the master of a style that could not be taught.

He came into the room as Anne Dallas began another page of her copy.

She rose to greet him, but did not move toward him. She had learned that he liked to go about without anything to remind him of his misfortune. He knew every inch of this room perfectly, literally by heart, for he had himself designed it before he had been stricken. He often went straight to the right shelf and laid his hand upon the book that he wanted.

“Good morning, Miss Dallas,” he said. “‛Richard and Robin were two lazy men!’ I’ll warrant that’s what you were thinking, and that Richard had not cured himself of ‛lying in bed till the clock struck ten.’”

“More likely you were tramping before the clock struck five!” cried Anne.

“That’s nearer the mark than your rash judgment and condemnation of me by a text from Mother Goose!” said Richard Latham, throwing himself appreciatively into his comfortable chair. “I was out at six and I’m nicely tired, just enough tired to want to cut work. Besides, you extracted from me yesterday everything I have to say on every known subject! I shall have to wait to fill up from whatever the sources are that supply ideas. You’re a frightful person for getting a poor fellow going and keeping him at it till you’ve got all his brains down in funny little cabalistic signs. Then the next day you write out pages and swear the utterances that fill me with awe were hidden under those inky wriggles! I don’t believe it! You insist the inky-wriggles wisdom is mine. Stuff and nonsense! Why, I don’t know a fraction of what you say I dictate to you! It’s uncanny. The only thing that I don’t understand, and which gives a tint of colour to your statement, is that I’ve no brains left after one of those frightful days when you wind me up—like yesterday! It’s all curious. Still more so that by to-morrow you’ll wind me up again, and so on, da capo. But not to-day, Miss Thaumaturga! Not a bit of work shall you get out of me to-day, not the least preposition for you to set down in a dash or a dot!”

“Very well, Mr. Latham,” laughed Anne, resuming her seat and taking up her pen. “I have quite enough to do to write out what you gave me yesterday. It was a particularly productive day. You are right. Perhaps I shall ask you to listen to what I have when it is written. That will not be till well after lunch; shall you be ready then for me, do you think?”

“No,” said Richard Latham, promptly. “I shall not be. Please put down that pen, which I’m sure you’ve taken up, and put down with it all thought of work. Unless reading aloud is work? Is it hard for you to read to me? You always assure me that you don’t mind it, but I’m afraid you may. I don’t want to be troublesome. To-day I’d like to cut work and be read to. It is quite true that I’ve brain fag, and that you did wind me up to a frightful speed yesterday. I’m conscious that it is you who do it; I wonder how? It’s precisely as if you at once put into me and took out again what would never be in my brain if you didn’t do this. Are you the poet and not I, after all?”

“Hardly,” said Anne, smiling, with the woman’s instinct to mask the trouble that vaguely stirred in her, although this man could not see her face. “I am industrious, but not gifted. If I’ve any part in it, I suppose it is because you feel my delight in what you are creating, and that unconsciously urges you on. I suspect it’s no more than the simple thing we call genius, and that it takes it out of you to ride Pegasus.”

Richard Latham kept his blind eyes turned steadily toward her as if he could see her and would fathom the mystery. He shook his head. “That isn’t it,” he said, slowly. “There is something about you that makes me do my best, and more than my own best. I had other people before you came to help me, and it was a regular grind. No grind with you to start me off and hold me to it, you quiet wonder-worker! But you didn’t tell me; do you mind reading to me to-day? I don’t want to be troublesome.”

He repeated the words with a wistful note in his voice that made Anne spring to her feet and cross to a chair near him. She clasped her hands in her lap, her face sweet with pity. She could not endure it that this man, whose genius she followed breathlessly, should fear to burden others. It stabbed her to know that he never could escape this fear.

“Ah, Mr. Latham,” she said, and she did not know how her voice caressed him, nor how he at once leaped to meet the caress and shrank from that pitiful thing, pity, which may be akin to love, but which is to a lover but a bastard kin that usurps love’s throne, “don’t you know that the hours in which I read to you are delightful to me? Try to imagine what I get from them, with you to supplement what I read! I never tire reading, but——” Anne got no farther. Richard Latham started up with an exclamation, then dropped back into his chair.

“But you would read whether you like it or not, you started to say, then remembered that I might not want to hear it! You would serve me in any way that you could, out of your great, womanly compassion? I know it, oh, I know it, Anne Dallas! I am grateful; don’t think I’m not. It’s a big thing to have lavished upon me. I’m glad that at least you don’t think of your help to me as secretarial duty.”

“Oh, Mr. Latham, if you don’t want to be hurt, then don’t hurt me!” cried Anne, shrinking.

“Forgive me,” said Latham, humbly.

He bent forward and took her hand, not fumbling for it, knowing precisely where it lay, Anne noticed, wondering.

“That was a cowardly, contemptible speech! I believe I wanted to hurt you! There is a confession, and it amazes me as much as it can you that it is true. I told you that I was tired to-day; it’s nerves. Set it down to nerves, won’t you? That sounds like a sneaking plea for mercy, but I don’t mean it that way. You’d rather it were my nerves than myself that were unkind? It would be such a beastly thing to want to hurt you of all people! Confession deserves absolution when it is sincere and contrite, doesn’t it?”

“No. It makes it unnecessary,” said Anne, softly. She was glad that he could not see the tears in her eyes. Never before had this brave and gentle soul betrayed to her the effort that it cost him to be and to do without complaint all that he was and did.

“Kind little Shriver!” said Richard Latham, pressing the hand that held his tighter than Anne knew.

Then he laid it back beside its mate in her lap and arose, laughing.

“It will never do for me to be neurasthenic as well as blind,” he said, cheerfully. “I suspect I’m staying indoors too much; a man should go hay-making—when the sun shines! I’ll fetch the book I have in mind for to-day’s reading—unless you have something you’d prefer?”

He stepped quickly across the room, went to the poetry shelves, stooped, and took from the middle shelf a volume which he slapped on his left hand, brushed it across the top, and brought it to Anne.

“Suit you? Are you in the mood for it?” he asked.

It was Dante in the prose translation. Anne looked at it and smiled up at him.

“Just in the mood for it,” she said. “But I’d like to read the ‛Paradise’—or would you rather ‛begin at the beginning,’ as children say?”

“No, indeed, I’d rather hear ‛Paradise’ myself,” Richard Latham said, and resumed his chair, pulling his smoking table up to it.

“It’s your one secretarial fault, Miss Dallas: you are not a linguist. I’ve a fine old tooled copy of Dante, Italian. I’d like to teach you Italian. I lived over there a good while. Perhaps we may take up——”

He broke off sharply. “I beg your pardon, Miss Dallas; I’m delaying you.”

Anne opened the volume, once more hurt and puzzled. Richard Latham was always so equable, so friendly toward her that she could not understand this new mood. The tone of his last words relegated her to the unbridgable distance of his hired secretary.

Anne began to read at the third book, the “Paradise.” Her voice was troubled at first, but Richard smoked rapidly, apparently unconscious of it, he whose ear was ordinarily quick to hear a note of fatigue in her voice.

Anne loved beauty, and in a few moments she had forgotten herself in Dante’s vision; a little longer and she forgot her listener, which was far more. She read on and on until at last Richard put out his hand to check her.

“You are thirsty,” he said in the old gentle way to which Anne was accustomed. “And it is one o’clock. The sun is around on the other side; that means past noon. We shall not lunch till two to-day; I told Stetson to have a carriage here at three. We are going to have a real holiday, you and I. Stetson is of the party in case I feel like walking in unfamiliar places and need his arm. So put up your book and rest till luncheon.”

“How delightful, Mr. Latham!” cried Anne. “I rarely drive.”

“You are a little girl still, my helpful secretary! How old did you tell me you were?” Richard asked, well-pleased by her pleasure.

Anne arose and dropped a curtsy. Richard felt the motion of her swaying body and laughed at her.

“I am twenty-two, please, sir!” she said in a thin treble. “But I hope to be more.”

“Since you can’t be less?” Richard suggested. “Perhaps you can’t be more, either, in another sense? At least you are a good child, and I’m grateful to you. What nice times we have in this rather nice room which I made once upon a time and still enjoy almost as if I saw it! I’m glad that we have long days to ourselves and don’t suffer many interruptions. Yes, Stetson, want me?” he added as his man put his head into the doorway, knocking on the casement as he did so.

“Little Miss Berkley is here, sir, little Anne Berkley. And young Mr. Carrington—though for that matter the only Mr. Carrington—to see you, Mr. Latham,” he said.

“Bring them in here, Stetson,” said Richard Latham, rising and passing his hand over the back of his head which he had been indulging in a pleasant friction against the back of his chair.

“Please, Miss Dallas, am I too badly rumpled? Miss Anne Berkley is a critical though dear friend of mine.”

“No, not badly rumpled,” returned Anne. Her cheeks were red and her eyes had brightened at the announcement of these visitors.

Stetson returned with them. Little Anne was freshly, beautifully groomed. She precipitated herself upon Richard Latham with a cry of joy, as if she had not been sure of finding him unchanged.

“I’ve not seen you in ages, and I certainly am glad I came!” she cried.

“Thank you, my dear; I echo your sentiments, with the added interest of five times your years,” said Richard, shaking her hand, earnestly.

“No, you don’t love people better because you’re the oldest, do you?” Little Anne corrected him. Then she remembered her duty.

“I brought my friend Kit—Mr. Christopher Carrington, to see you.” She turned, but Kit was talking to Anne Dallas and for an instant little Anne stared, recalling what she had forgotten.

“Well, to think I never remembered!” she gasped. “This is him,” she added, her customary English deserting her under the stress of emotion.

“This is Kit, Mr. Latham. He thought he’d like to know you on account of your works, only I guess——”

She checked herself; Anne was a discreet child, and sympathetic.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Carrington,” said Richard Latham, heartily, using a verb that did not seem inappropriate to him. “I know your aunt, Miss Carrington. She is a clever woman, most interesting.”

“She is a wonder, is Aunt Anne,” agreed Kit. “She would have brought me here, but I met little Anne and availed myself of her friendly offices.”

“Even your aunt is not a better social sponsor than Miss Berkley,” said Richard Latham, bowing to little Anne. “The important thing is that you have come. I’ve an idea! We are going for a long, and, I hope, delightful drive into the country after lunch, which will be at two; Miss Dallas and I were going to take my man Stetson, because a blind man may easily need the help of a strong arm in exploring. I’m sure I can persuade little Anne to go. She’s fond of her namesake, Miss Dallas. What about it, Anne? Will you go if I telephone to your mother and get her consent?”

Little Anne clasped her hands upon her thin little chest.

“I think it would be so deliciously wonderful-joyful that I’d never, never forget it if Mother would say yes!” she cried, passionately.

“Bad as that, superlative little Anne?” laughed Richard.

“Mr. Carrington, if you will lunch with me and go on the drive, and would be so kind as to give me a hand over a stile, or whatever lay in my path, I’ll gladly drop Stetson out of the party. Will you do this?”

“You are awfully kind, Mr. Latham,” said Kit, gratefully. He glanced at Anne Dallas, but she did not meet his eyes. She was looking intently at Richard Latham, and it seemed to Kit that her expression was unhappy.

“I’m only too glad to go, thank you,” Kit went on. “I wonder if I may use your telephone? Aunt Anne will be expecting me to lunch. She won’t have a telephone in the house, but I can call the druggist and get him to send his boy around with a message. Aunt Anne has ways all her own!”

“I can imagine it. My telephone is in the hall; Miss Dallas will show you where. And will you call Mrs. Berkley, Miss Dallas, and get her consent to kidnapping her child?” Mr. Latham smiled at little Anne. Little Anne clasped her hands in her own dramatic gesture.

“Oh, dear, dear, dearest Miss Dallas, please let me call Mother myself! I don’t get many chances to telephone, and I love, just love to do it! And I want to tell mother my own self what a great, great thing has happened to me. You said a carriage, didn’t you, Mr. Latham? It’s pretty nearly always a car. I’m not quite, perfec’ly certain I ever’ve rode—roden—I mean ridden in a carriage. I’ve rode—ridden—in the grocer’s wagon, but I can’t remember a carriage. I’d love to tell mother. And with a real poet! Would you mind, Miss Anne Dallas, if I did it myself?”

“Bless your funny little heart, Anne, of course I shouldn’t mind!” cried Anne Dallas. “Come, both guests!”

Richard Latham, left behind, stood quietly waiting, unconsciously listening to the telephone jingle, to Kit’s strong voice, to little Anne’s excited piping.

Suddenly and unreasonably he felt old and alone. He was not old, but he was alone, and around him in the beautiful room that he had made, with its spacious calm, its books, its pictures, was complete darkness.

CHAPTER IV
Anne and Anne

MINERVA came cat-footed up the stairs and knocked at Miss Carrington’s sitting-room door.

Miss Carrington lowered her book, frowning impatiently.

“It’s maddening never to hear you coming, Minerva,” she said. “Luckily my nerves are equable. Now what do you want?”

“Merton sent his boy around with a message from Master Kit—Mr. Carrington. You are not to wait lunch for him; he is lunching out,” said Minerva.

“I wonder where?” murmured Miss Carrington, but she resumed her book as if the wonder were not keen.

“With Mr. Richard Latham, the poet.” Minerva had waited for the question and her eyes snapped with enjoyment at her answer.

“What!” cried Miss Carrington, erect in an instant. “Kit doesn’t know him.”

“It would seem that he must, now,” suggested Minerva. “He’s lunching there. There’s no mistake in the message, because Tommy didn’t merely say ‛Mr. Latham,’ nor ‛the poet,’ but ‛Mr. Richard Latham, the poet.’ That’s too much to get wrong.”

“It’s too much, whatever Merton’s boy said. How in the world did it happen?” Miss Carrington speculated. “I suppose the secretary asked him there for some reason——”

“The reason wouldn’t be hard to guess, Miss Carrington,” said Minerva, who knew how to ingratiate when she wished to. “Mr. Latham’s housekeeper, as you well know, is a friend of mine. She goes to Allen’s, the grocer’s, at this hour every day. To be sure he’s not our grocer, but the same brand of cocoa is the same brand wherever you buy it, provided the tin isn’t unsealed, and we haven’t enough cocoa for more’n two makings.”

“Well, Minerva, I don’t want to run short of cocoa,” said Miss Carrington, gravely. “You’ll find my change purse in the small right-hand drawer of my bureau. Don’t charge anything at Allen’s; I don’t like the place. I hope you won’t be long.”

“No longer than is necessary, Miss Carrington. Mrs. Lumley has to be given her head in talking around Robin Hood’s barn—provided I meet her. You can’t talk to her till she’s talked off to you whatever’s on her mind,” Minerva answered.

The sage Minerva had found Miss Carrington’s small worn tray purse, and now she took herself soundlessly away, with complete understanding between herself and her mistress as to what was expected of her.

Miss Carrington admitted her maid to intimacy though not to friendship; a lone woman must of necessity do so. No one else in her life had ever been so deeply within it as Minerva had grown to be during twenty years of service as Miss Carrington’s personal attendant, day and night, in sickness and in health.

Minerva held Miss Carrington at an estimate unlike her friends’ estimate of her; in some ways it was less, in some ways more, accurate.

She realized that Miss Carrington was clever, but she could not gauge her learning as her friends did. She had no way of knowing how witty, how accomplished her mistress was. On the other hand, no one else appreciated so fully her acumen, her efficiency.

With this appreciation, Minerva held her mistress stupid not to have achieved more. What was a maiden lady at nearly seventy, after all? Minerva’s dull sister had done better for herself; she had a husband, the rank of matron. Minerva discounted Miss Carrington’s fierce pride in being Miss Anne Carrington, of the original Cleavedge Carringtons—perhaps because it was too fierce?

Minerva knew her mistress’s faults even better than her friends did, but not the same faults. To her friends Miss Carrington was generous, unselfish, nobly, though faultily, scornful of these virtues in herself, too detached to practise them as virtues, just as she was too much engrossed in her pursuits to be lonely.

Minerva knew that she was not generous, though she lavished money; that she was bound on all sides by herself, for which self and through which self she saw all things, beyond which she never aspired. Minerva knew that she was so far from detachment that all her thoughts were chained to Anne Carrington, except when they reached out to Kit, who was but another form of her self-seeking.

Minerva knew that Miss Carrington’s temper was difficult, not less so that the restrictions which she put upon its vent made it fairly good-mannered. And, finally, Minerva knew that her mistress was neither indifferent to her reputation nor so happy in the use of her clever brain that she was not lonely. She knew that Miss Carrington was cruelly lonely; that her loneliness was growing inward, feeding, battening upon her; that her daily fight was against her fear of the dark, the dark that was within.

Minerva loved her mistress and detested her. Nothing could have induced her to leave her, nor to forego her daily anathemas of her. Miss Carrington depended upon Minerva and detested her; leaned upon the keenness of the judgments of her class; called her by word and act a fool; berated her sarcastically; walked on tip-toe for fear of her; told herself that she would not keep Minerva beyond the season then passing; would have deprived herself of all else to retain her.

It was a curious relation, a strange attitude, equally contradictory on both sides, but it was one common between two women who are rivetted together, whether as mistress and maid, friends or sisters, or even, not infrequently, mother and daughter.

Miss Carrington had ordered lunch hurried, and had finished it when Minerva returned. It had seemed to her an unreasonably long time that she was kept waiting; she greeted Minerva with the remark that she had been forever when she came in.

“It took as long as it took,” remarked Minerva, laying upon the table a small packet tied around its middle with a cotton string. “Cocoa is two cents more at Allen’s than it is at Boothby’s, but that’s only a postage stamp, and often and often there’s little news in a letter though it overweighs.” Minerva dearly loved sybilline utterances.

“Did you meet Mrs. Lumley and was she satisfactory?” Miss Carrington asked.

“As to satisfactory, she is a lump!” declared Minerva with scornful emphasis. “But she did speak of Mr. Kit’s being there, and I know all about it. It seems that little Anne Berkley brought him there with her. As though you didn’t know Mr. Latham! That little witch is a prime favourite of Mr. Latham’s and visits him a great deal; she’s everybody’s favourite, and she would amuse a blind man. And the child is very fond of Miss Dallas, the secretary. So Master Kit gets little Anne to take him there. And he is asked to lunch. And after lunch the party is going driving, with horses, mind you, like their own grandfathers.” Minerva was intensely scornful of this reversion. “Master Kit, the secretary, and the child, Mr. Latham, of course. And Stetson, who was going in case of being needed, is left, and Mr. Kit will be beside Mr. Latham, who likes to drive, but has to be watched and told which way, and all that. And they had a pleasant lunch party, laughing and talking. Mrs. Lumley heard little Anne’s voice a good deal, and they were laughing at her. So that’s as far as any one could tell you who wasn’t one of them. And I’m going to have my luncheon now, Miss Carrington, for chilled cream sauce, which I saw passing through, with cold potatoes, is not desirable. But cold they are, and often will be for me, I suppose, while I do for you.”

“After all, it tells me nothing, except that apparently Kit went there on his own initiative,” said Miss Carrington, rubbing her nose with manifest annoyance. “If the girl had invited him he would not have needed little Anne Berkley’s good offices. If I knew which way they had gone—it’s a good day for a drive.”

“Ah, to be sure; I asked that,” said the thorough Minerva, turning back. “I forgot to tell you. Mrs. Lumley said that little Anne went out to see her after lunch. She is very partial to the child, and Anne never forgets to visit her. She asked Anne where they were driving, and Anne laughed and said: ‛Out to the willow-ware china park.’ Now I ask you if that isn’t exactly like little Anne Berkley? She’s just so nonsensical. Mrs. Lumley says she’s no mortal idea where it can be, but that Mr. Latham and little Anne have all sorts of names for things and people, which they make great secrets. You could easily overtake them in the car, and they poking with horses, if you knew where a ‛willow-ware china park’ might be.”

Miss Carrington smiled.

“No wonder that little Anne and Mr. Latham enjoy each other if they make life as interesting as that!” she mused. “Let me think where it can be. Willow ware—a small bridge—why, of course, Minerva! It’s the park on the west side where they’ve bridged that tiny stream and put up a summer pagoda! Tell Noble to have the car around in ten minutes. I’ll not change my dress. You’ve been out and know what the weather is; get out the coat I need, and bring up that new veil; I left it in the library. Help me dress; first call Noble.”

Miss Carrington hastened upstairs and Minerva went out of the swinging door at the rear, outraged, but muttering:

“It’s as cold now as it can be; I suppose another half-hour won’t matter.”

Within fifteen minutes Miss Carrington was sitting back against the cushions of her car, seeing neither the lovely spring day nor Daniel Noble’s respectable mulberry-coloured back, so occupied was she with her plan.

There were several ways to reach the new park, and on the way thither Miss Carrington did not overtake the carriage for which she was watching. But as her car slowly wound around the pretty though unconvincing mazes of the carefully planned little park, she saw the carriage standing empty, except of a youth, evidently garnered on the spot, who was holding the horses. Three adult figures and a child were standing on the small bridge over the toy stream. It was so ludicrously like the old willow-ware pattern that Miss Carrington smiled at the resemblance, though she was sharply intent upon getting a first impression of the young woman of the group. She saw that the girl was not above medium height, that she was graceful, well-dressed, refined in bearing and gesture. As she raised her bent head and looked straight at the car, Miss Carrington saw a face so sweet, so full of charm that her heart sank.

“Mercy upon us, she’s one of those creatures whose really great prettiness is not equal to their intense femininity; her eyes are beautiful. She’s a permeating creature, and looks as affectionate as good—but not one bit stupid! Oh, poor Kit. That’s a rare type, hard to supplant. I’ve got to see to it that she doesn’t get as far as that,” thought this wise woman.

In the meantime, Miss Carrington was saluting Kit, who recognized her with anything but delight on his tell-tale face, she bade Noble drive on, but slowly. She kept in sight of the movements of the group on the bridge, and timed her return to it by another spur of the road just as the Latham party left it.

“My dear Mr. Latham!” Miss Carrington said, leaning over the side of her car to take the poet’s hand. “I am truly glad to meet you here. I’ve been wishing that I might ask you to come to me, but one fears to be intrusive. I know that the world is pursuing you, as you are retreating from it. I have a find in the book way that I should like to show you.”

“Thank you, Miss Carrington,” said Richard. “You are kind. And you are not to be reckoned one of the world which you imagine is hunting me down; you are my neighbour. I shall be grateful to be allowed to come to see the book, and you.”

He spoke with lovable deference, pitying her as a lonely old woman. Miss Carrington could not hide from his blind eyes and keen intuition that this was what she was.

“Kit, my dear, I am glad to find that you have met Mr. Latham; it was but the other day we were saying that you should know him, if he wouldn’t mind too much being bothered with a lad like you. Little namesake Anne, how do you do, my dear?” Miss Carrington graciously extended her greetings.

“I am quite well, thank you, Miss Carrington. You have two namesakes here now,” said little Anne.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Carrington! May I present to you Miss Dallas? As little Anne says, she is another namesake of yours, an Anne,” said Richard Latham.

“Delighted to meet you, my dear,” said Miss Carrington, graciously, so graciously that Kit’s experience gave him forebodings. “You must be the happy girl of whom I’ve heard, who helps Mr. Latham to enrich us all? And I read your clever explanation of his poem, ‛The Mole.’”

“I am glad that you see me as a happy girl, Miss Carrington. I am completely happy to be doing what I’m doing here,” said Anne Dallas.

“What a lovely voice!” Miss Carrington groaned inwardly. “There is no more dangerous gift!”

“Would it be rank selfishness, Mr. Latham, if I begged this modest girl, who ignores her usefulness to you, and so to us all, to take pity on my friendlessness to-day and go back in the car with me? I am alone. Would you be angry? And will you humour me, Miss Dallas? I drive alone so much that one would expect me to get used to it, but I never do.”

“I’d like to go with you, Miss Carrington,” said Anne Dallas, truthfully. “Solitude in a car is more solitary than a carriage with only one in it. I suppose because the horses are friendly. Mr. Latham doesn’t want me, do you?”

“I don’t need you, Miss Dallas,” Richard Latham smilingly corrected her. “Here is little Anne who will play Casabianca, won’t you, Anne?”

“Do you mean stick? That’s the boy ‛when all but him had fled,’ isn’t it?” asked little Anne. “’Course I will! That’s how I started, and I’d rather stick, if you please.”

“Come, then, Miss Dallas,” said Miss Carrington, and Kit sprang to open the car door, his silence unbroken. “You are also ‛little Anne,’ in comparison with me.”

Anne Dallas jumped into the car and curled down beside Kit’s aunt, surprised, but happy in the friendliness which she was too simple to mistrust. It was with a gloomy face that Kit watched them away, knowing how inadequate to gauge his aunt’s mind Anne Dallas’s honesty was, and fearing mischief from the old lady’s cordiality. He knew perfectly well that in some way his aunt had learned his whereabouts and had come to investigate.

“Now, my dear, tell me how you happen to be in Cleavedge,” said Miss Carrington, turning toward the supple young figure luxuriously nestling beside her. “You are not the sort of girl we are accustomed to here.”

“Don’t condemn me unheard!” laughed Anne, refusing to hear the delicate emphasis that implied a compliment in Miss Carrington’s words; Miss Carrington was sorry to find her able to fence.

“I wanted to do something, and Mr. Latham was kind enough to let me work for him. My home is near New York.”

“Are you alone in the world, such a pretty child as you?” Miss Carrington’s tone expressed sympathy.

“I have a few cousins; no one else,” said Anne. She looked up confidingly into the keen eyes above her. “The war was hard on me. No, not a personal grief; I lost no one, there was no one in it that I dearly loved,” she anticipated Miss Carrington’s question. “But it made me feel that everything I knew wasn’t so, and the bleakness——” She checked herself with a shudder. “But after that I saw that everything that I had known was a thousand times truer than I had thought it was. I suppose everyone went through that experience, but to each of us it was like being born, wasn’t it?”

“Ah!” murmured Miss Carrington, emphatically but discreetly. She had not known this melding with impersonal agony.

“Oh, yes, of course it was what we all felt,” Anne hastily disclaimed difference between herself and the rest of the world. “Then I wanted to do something in this burdened world, even though peace, of a sort, had come.”

“So you help a blind poet? How wonderfully beautiful,” said Miss Carrington, gently. “You are not half known; we all took you for his paid secretary.”

“Oh, so I am, I am!” cried Anne, distressed. “Did I convey anything else? Mr. Latham is not an object of charity. I am in his employ. But—well—I want to do my best for his work, and”—she laughed shyly, but with pretty mischief, that did not hide her pity for Richard—“I am only his eyeglasses, but I don’t want the glasses to pinch, you see?”

“I see,” assented Miss Carrington. “You mean, since someone must serve him in lieu of his lost eyes, you want to see to it that it is someone devoted to him. I still think it is wonderful. How did you hear of him, or he of you?”

“There was an artist here last summer who is Mr. Latham’s closest friend. He is a very good artist——”

“Edwin Wilberforce?” interrupted Miss Carrington. “Decidedly he is. I would not speak so temperately of him; he is a famous and great painter. Did he find you for his friend?”