AFTER Kit had left them Miss Carrington and Helen remained till late talking earnestly, with their chairs drawn close. Their voices rose and fell—the fall emphasized—in all the earnestness of an important discussion, but never did they rise to the point at which words were distinguishable at any distance.
Minerva passed in and out of the room behind them, and though its windows were open she heard nothing except a clear yet muffled murmur.
“She will know all about it,plus, but there is no reason why she should be gratified now,” said Miss Carrington, malice in her eye. At last, when the old clock on the stairway struck eleven, Miss Carrington rose.
“Well, Helen, it will be past midnight before we get our chapter read and are in bed,” she said. “Of course, my dear, you read your nightly chapter? I am sure I can’t predict. Men differ almost as much as other animals; in fact, I’m not sure that they don’t vary more—sorrel horses, black ones, maltese cats—it’s easy to generalize on their traits. I’ve never known Kit under these conditions; I can’t say how he’ll react. It’s notorious that widowers are easily consoled. Still, it is often easier to console a man for the loss of what he had than for what he missed. Death is supposed to soften the hard heart. Kit might easily be caught on the rebound; then, again, he may not rebound, but drop. You handle a racquet well; can you bat him? That’s the wrong term!”
“Serve him?” laughed Helen. “That’s the word, and a lovely word it is in this connection.”
“Well, I don’t know. My recollection is that you serve into another’s court, which is not to our liking in this case. I think I mean pick him up; you do that with racquets, don’t you? I don’t know why I should insist on a tennis term! The whole thing, Helen, is that you are to be nice to my boy, and wisely nice. You will slip along, pussy-footed, your hand on the leader. I believe, from my experience with youngsters, that Kit will learn to lean upon your satisfying comradeship. It can’t be more than a fancy for the Dallas girl. He was ready supplied with ideals and she stood convenient, as a sort of rack, to hang them on. That’s the explanation of most first love. No harm done, my dear! Except that it is keeping us up, and that is harmful to me at my age! Unless there’s something going on, and then tiny hours don’t harm me!”
The dauntless old lady laughed and went into the house, Helen following with her forgotten knitting bag.
Kit presented himself at breakfast with the marks of misery on his face. He was not used to unhappiness; aside from the actual pain, the discomfort of its friction hurt him, as a chain galls in addition to its weight. He did not know how to adjust himself to what had happened. He had the good sense to see that the only thing for him to do was to occupy himself with something that demanded genuine effort of body and mind.
“I’ve got to get at something that I can’t foozle over,” is the way he put it to himself.
He had amused himself so far through life successfully, but he instinctively realized that entertainment did not entertain, except when one’s light-heartedness might dispense with it.
Helen and Miss Carrington had made a compact to be unconscious of Kit’s depression. At breakfast Helen talked happily of inconsequent matters, not to Kit, yet not excluding him;she did not suggest his sharing any part of that day with her; instead, she announced plans for herself that excluded him. He was grateful for what he mistook for Helen’s unintentional mercy to him and rewarded her with a friendly smile as he left the dining room. He had added to his advice to himself while dressing the sane counsel not to show it if he felt sore, and not to be a grouch.
The first necessity upon him was to make an errand to Richard Latham’s house to see for himself. There were moments when he did not believe that what he had heard was true, yet at every moment he was surer that it was true.
He found work going on so briskly in the poet’s room that, like little Anne on an earlier day, he bestowed himself outside the window to wait. Anne waved her hand, the pen in it, to him, but Richard did not know that he was there.
Where he sat Kit could not help catching every movement that Richard made. They were not many: Richard sat with his head resting against the back of his chair, his voice flowing steadily on, rising and falling so expressively that, though he could not hear the words, Kit found its cadences dramatic, interesting. The poet’s slender hands moved ceaselessly, the long fingers rapidly opening, closing, pointing, erect or drooping, but otherwise he was motionless.
The look that passed over Richard’s face at intervals when he turned his blind eyes upon Anne; the tone with which he sometimes asked a question that Kit fancied was extraneous to the dictation, gradually destroyed whatever slight hope had lingered.
At last Richard straightened himself, and Anne began gathering up her papers, laying one upon another. Richard held out his hands with a smile that told Kit all that there was to tell. He saw Anne’s lips move, though her voice did not reach him, and Richard jumped up to hasten to the door.
“Why, Christopher Carrington!” Richard cried, boyishly.“What are you doing here? Come in, come in! Glad to see you.”
Kit let the poet shake his limp hand, though Kit’s tight grasp was famous.
“Good morning, Miss Dallas,” Kit said, and Anne greeted him with the sweet cordiality that had always been one of her chief charms.
“It was silly of me to wait,” Kit said, “but that’s a nice step to sit on! Now it’s too late for me to do more than say I’m going.”
“Oh, but we have more than that to say to you!” protested Richard. “We’ve had a great morning, Kit! We’ve done the third act. And it’s a great third act, if I do say it as shouldn’t! We’ve made our notes on it these past two days and to-day we’ve written it. I needn’t hesitate to say it’s great, either: Anne did it. She saved it from being a sad third act; she changed the play back to our first idea of it. I was going to spoil it!”
“You don’t as a rule,” Kit managed to say; he had had too much of the “we” to answer easily.
“There is no rule, Kit, my son!” Richard laughed. “There is no rule, no precedent, because there is no old me! There’s not even English grammar left of my old self, you see! All the world is new. Do you know that this isAnnenow?”
He held out his hands to Anne and she came over to him and laid her own hands into his. She was pale, her eyes cast down, her lips parted as if she were breathing quickly; Kit saw her breast rise and fall. He could not guess that Anne was wondering why she found her new part almost impossible to play. She had been thankful to find herself peacefully, unemotionally happy since she had made Richard ecstatically happy, but now the situation crushed her.
Kit made an attempt to answer, but Richard forestalled him.
“She was Anne all along, you are going to say? Indeed, she was not! She was my devoted, wise, unselfish little secretary, Miss Dallas! But now she is Anne. Don’t you see, Kit? We have made a happy end of the play. I didn’t know how; I should have spoiled it, but she saved it—and me! We made a happy end of the play, good old Kit!”
Anne raised her eyes and looked at Kit, gravely, steadily. Then she smiled at him. He had no idea of what that smile conveyed; for that matter Anne was equally in the dark. Kit threw back his head, pulled himself together as he had done on the football field more than once when the game demanded him and he was nearly finished. He smiled back at Anne and put out his hand, first to her, then to Richard.
“I had heard something about it,” he said, and his voice rang out cheerily. “I suppose, to be honest, that is why I came around to-day and why I waited; I wanted to know. Wish you all sorts of luck, Miss Dallas, and whatever good comes to you won’t be luck, you know, after all! Congratulations, Mr. Latham! You surely do deserve the best thing in the world. I know what it is, too, though I don’t use your label on it: she’s Miss Dallas, not Anne to me, but there’s only one best thing, anyway.”
“What a trump you are, Kit Carrington!” cried Richard, jumping up and seizing Kit’s hands delightedly. “Why, you’re a poet yourself! That had the ring of imagination and beauty! Sit down. You’re here to lunch, you know.”
“Sorry, but I’m not, thanks,” said Kit; he could not wait to escape. “I’m on my way to Paul’s, Antony Paul’s. Miss Abercrombie bought a white Angora kitten for little Anne to play with while she’s convalescing. I’m going to find out when it won’t be too exciting for her to have it. Good-bye. Thanks for telling me. I don’t wonder you made a big thing of the play, Mr. Latham. Good-bye, Miss Dallas.”
Kit hastened out of the door, thankful to get into the air, yet tortured in leaving Anne with her betrothed.
If he could have seen how gently Richard touched her hair and let her take the low Greek stool on which she sat to read to him; how tight he clasped his hands lest he forget and draw her to him where he hungered to have her, Kit would have been a little consoled.
Richard knew that Anne shrank from a caress. He loved her for it; it seemed to him part of that rare quality of soul for which he adored her.
It was too soon, he was still too new to the wonder of the happiness that had fallen upon him when he was schooling himself to do without it, to miss in Anne the warmth that would have glowed in her had she loved Richard as he loved her. Thus far Richard was content, and waited as a worshipper to become a lover.
Kit walked fast to the Berkleys’; he had decided to go there first. Very likely Joan was at her mother’s, admiring little Anne’s progress.
He found that he had been right. The first thing that he saw when he was admitted was the baby, standing beside a chair, her rings of hair exceedingly up-standing and tousled, waving one hand lightly, proudly, to show that she was balancing with but one little fist on the chair seat, yet that she did not disdain to salute a world of her inferiors. The inferiors present—Mrs. Berkley and Joan—made no claim to equality. With a delight that surpassed the baby’s, as if countless millions of human beings had not once stood alone for the first time, they waved their hands at Barbara in return, making sounds as rapturously inarticulate as hers. It ended in Joan’s swooping down on her, snatching her up, burying her face in Barbara’s tiny mound of a stomach and swaying her up and down, till baby and mother were gasping.
“Oh, Kit, forgive us, dear!” cried Mrs. Berkley. “You saw how Barbara stood? Isn’t it wonderful, the beginning of living? Think how far those little feet will carry her through the world and beyond the world! Anne is gaining every hour, thank you.”
Joan righted the baby, then her clothing, and set her down to her toys on a blanket on the floor, to which Barbara, who was the embodiment of health and hence of contentment, turned with the interest of an hour’s separation from them.
“Kit, nice boy, anything wrong?” asked Joan, seeing, now that the baby was settled and she looked well at Kit, that he was changed. Kit sat down on a chair that allowed him to rest an elbow on its arm and shade his face with his hand.
“Richard Latham is going to marry——”
“Anne Dallas!” cried Joan, and exchanged significant looks with her mother. “I was afraid of that; he’s so fine and she’s so sympathetic——”
“Joan!” warned Mrs. Berkley.
She shook her head hard at her daughter. She and Joan had long suspected that the interest growing up between Anne and Kit was stronger than either had gauged. It would never do to let him know that they feared that Anne loved Richard less than she should love the man whom she married.
Kit made no secret of his unhappiness to these two simple, sweet women.
“He’s the finest fellow I ever saw,” said Kit. “He’s all around fine. Always makes me think of the Round Table, those great old knightly chaps. She couldn’t find another like him short of—Camelot!” Poor Kit made a sorry attempt to laugh. “All the same, I’d rather she’d choose someone more ordinary, provided that I could nominate him.”
“I, myself, would have selected another sort of man for Anne,” said Joan, making up for her narrow escape from indiscretion byher most mature manner. “I’m sorry, Kit! Mother and I are both sorry, aren’t we, Mother?”
“I’m profoundly sorry if Kit minds,” said Mrs. Berkley, gently. “I think Kit means us to understand that he does mind. Anne is a dear girl; she is worth loving. But I’ve no doubt it will make you a nicer boy than ever to carry a cross, though we can’t endure seeing your young shoulders bend, dear Kit, and you are nice enough now, in all conscience! Little Anne will stand by! You will have lots of help, dear, and win through with benefit from the experience. Little Anne has been asking when she should see you. Would you like to see her?”
Mrs. Berkley rose and laid her arm over Kit’s shoulder as she would have over her Peter. Kit rested his head against her for a moment, and felt better.
“You know I lost two children between Joan and Peter, and one between Peter and Anne, Kit, so I know that denial is good for us. It taught me a great deal to relinquish the babies that I loved,” Mrs. Berkley said, softly.
“Oh, what a peach, what a dear, sweet, good, good woman you are!” Kit exclaimed, ashamed that he had seemed to complain of a loss that was but a denial of his hopes.
“Surest thing you know I want to see little Anne! I’ll go up, if I may? You don’t think I’ll be exciting and bring on fever? I wouldn’t consider myself that sort. And when may she have a kitten, Mrs. Berkley? Miss Abercrombie has bought her a white Angora that gets me, and I’m sure will make it necessary to put a strait waistcoat over little Anne’s gown!”
“Could anything be luckier?” Mrs. Berkley demanded of space. “Anne has begged me to get her a pet that may stay with her on the bed. She asked for a kitten, a puppy, a rabbit, or a small monkey, and she added that if I couldn’t find any of these beasties she’d try to love a white mouse, though the poor little heroine, longing for a comrade, shuddered as she said it!Her strong preference was for a kitten, an everyday kitten. I’m sure I don’tknowwhat will happen when she sees yours!”
“It’s the cream of creation!” declared Kit. “But it isn’t mine; it’s Miss Abercrombie’s. She didn’t want me to say so, but of course I should.” Again Joan glanced at her mother. They wondered if Helen was to solve Kit’s difficulty, after all.
“You are going to lunch with us,” said Mrs. Berkley, and Kit did not demur. “You shall see Anne after luncheon. You won’t mind the baby? We bring her to the table, in her high chair, inherited from Anne. She pounds, but otherwise behaves with decorum.”
“The baby and little Anne—but little Anne first in order, by your leave, Joan—seem to me the most desirable of comrades to-day,” said Kit.
Mrs. Berkley smiled on him and patted his shoulder. “Good boy and true instinct!” she approved him.
It was a happy little luncheon party. Kit felt unaccountably soothed and heartened. The sense of loss, the jealous pang of leaving Anne to Richard, were softened. They did not talk of great things, nor brilliantly, but Mrs. Berkley and Joan talked well; their subjects were interesting, and it seemed to Kit that they judged justly and expressed themselves with temperance.
“Balanced, wise women!” Kit thought, judging in his turn.
The baby did pound, it was true, but except for a frustrated attempt on the cream, and, later, on the rosily alluring strawberries, she behaved with propriety, admitting her premise that a spoon and a drum stick were made for like purpose.
“Why not let me cut around home and get that kitten? It won’t take me a half hour, and if you think little Anne’s reached the kitten stage of recovery I’d love to see her with it,” suggested Kit when luncheon was over and Joan offered to take him up to see little Anne.
“Won’t to-morrow do, as long as she isn’t told about it?” asked Joan. But seeing Kit’s disappointment, she added:
“Of course, if you don’t mind going, it would be dear of you to get it for her right away.”
Kit ran off, racing down the street like a boy, and Mrs. Berkley went up to make sure, mother-fashion, that the carefully tended little patient was ready for a caller.
“What’s up, Kit?” asked Helen as Kit assaulted the piazza where she sat.
“I’m allowed to give little Anne the kitten,” Kit explained. “I came after it, told them it was your gift, Nell. Would you care to go with me?” he added as an afterthought, unwelcome, but due.
“Yes, I would,” said Helen. “I won’t wear a hat, I’m ready.”
Kit fetched the kitten in its basket; he found that Minerva had allowed it to entwine itself around her affections and was loath to let it go. Helen and Kit took longer to cover the ground than Kit would have consumed alone. He tried to keep in mind that the kitten was due to Helen and not to regret her coming. She did not bother him with much talk, and when they reached the Berkleys’ she refused to go upstairs.
“No, indeed! I’ll stay here, happily, with a book and don’t you hurry! Get all the fun there is out of the child’s pleasure. I hope she will be pleased! I’m perfectly contented alone. Forget I’m here, but don’t forget to tell me just what the little girl does! It would be horrid in me to go up; she doesn’t know me,” Helen said with such friendliness that the Berkleys were charmed.
Kit followed Mrs. Berkley and Joan up to little Anne’s room and stood in the doorway. Little Anne was fingering paper dollies but her lack of interest in them was evident. She raised her eyes, which looked immense and as dark as night in her thin white face.
“Oh, Kit, my dear, dear,dearKit! You saved me, but I loved you hard before!” she cried.
“Well, little Anne, I’m glad enough to see you to eat you up!” cried Kit, sincerely.
He lifted her in his arms and she kissed him again and again.
“You are more splendid than I remembered,” little Anne sighed in profound contentment. “Doctor says I may get up in my wrapper half the day Sunday. But he says I can’t go to Mass yet, but it’s all right when you can’t honest-truth go! And then, sooner than you’d think, I’m to be dressed! And by the Fourth you wouldn’t know anything’d happened, ’cept I’ve got to look out and not catch cold. That’s what he says. I’m grateful, Kit, that I’m going to stay right here with everyone! I know lots of people in Heaven, nicer’n anybody, but, well, don’t you think you love those you know sort of closer? And I’ll have to be just’s good! Because I stayed here. And prob’ly I’ve got something to do, or I’d have died.”
“Just the same, little Anne!” Kit thought, but he said:
“It’s reason enough for letting you live that we all wanted you so badly, little Anne. Now, what have I here?”
“Window in the end!” cried little Anne, all excitement in an instant. “Alive? Oh, could it be a kitten, Kit?”
“It could be. It is!” said Kit.
He unstrapped the basket and took out the small white creature with the appealing face.
Little Anne fell back on her pillow, clasped her hands, and closed her eyes for an instant of intense feeling. Then she caught the kitten to her and kissed and kissed it in wordless rapture.
“Oh, God, I thank Thee for making kittens like powder puffs, and giving me one!” they heard her whisper as she held the kitten off, then clasped it to her breast, passionately.
Kit told her how Helen had brought it from the city to her, and she listened with dilated eyes.
“How wonderful! I shall love her now whether I can or not,” little Anne said.
“Thank her; oh, do thank her, and tell her the way I feel about it, though no one on earth can ’magine! Would you mind if I named her Kitca, for you, dear, dear Kit? Short for Kit Carrington? ’Cause you fished me out that day and brought this angel-thing here?”
“I should be honoured, little Anne! I must go now, or you’ll be tired. Good-bye, dear! Some day, when you’re able to hear it, I will tell you a story about Kit Carrington, and how he sat all night watching the stars, heavy-hearted, when little Anne was so ill,” he said, bending over the child to kiss her cheek.
Little Anne clasped her long, thin arms around his neck, and drew his ear to her lips, and whispered:
“You don’t look well yourself, my Kit, but when I get up I’ll look after you! Good-bye; and all the blessings of all the blessedest blessings be upon your rather tumbled head. ’Cause I have tumbled your hair, Kit, quite outrageous!”
Kit took Helen home feeling happier than he had thought that he could feel when the day had begun. He knew that his wound would throb again in the darkness of night, but little Anne and that peaceful household had helped him.
Behind her Helen left conflicting opinions. Mrs. Berkley was inclined to give her credit for her sweet consideration, but Joan was not sure of her. Again Helen walked with Kit in silence. She was affectionate in an unobtrusive way, like a kind sister. Kit, thinking her over as he dressed for dinner, was forced to acknowledge to himself that she could be very nice.