ANNE halted, frightened by Richard’s face.
“Well, dear?” he said, and extended his hand.
She came on slowly, fear clutching her and a sense of guilt. When she reached the bench Richard lightly clasped the hand that she laid in his and drew her down beside him.
“Did you have a pleasant walk, dear?” he asked. He spoke quietly, but his voice was strained.
Anne did not speak and Richard turned toward her.
“Are you tired, brave little woman? And aren’t you going to tell me all about it?”
“Richard, what has happened?” cried Anne. “What can have happened since I left you so light-hearted, so happy, so boyish? Are you ill? You aren’t ill?”
“No, dear, but I grew old,” said Richard. “Tell me about it, Anne; don’t be afraid to trust me. Do you think I could blame you, sweet, or want anything but your dearest desire?”
“Oh, Richard, Richard, who has wounded you, what has happened?” cried Anne again. “Who has been here?”
“No one has been here but little Anne,” said Richard.
“Ah, little Anne!” She caught her breath. “There was nothing for me to tell you, Richard, dearest, but—what has she told you?”
“Little Anne’s perception, though limited by lack of full understanding, is truer than yours, dear. Little Anne had heard it said that it was not fair to me, so she came to put herknowledge into my hands, actuated by her extreme conscientiousness and without consulting her elders. So she acted directly and properly, as children will. It was true that it was not fair to me, dear Anne! But that little Anne came to me I might have gone on and made you wretched, you whom of all the world I most want to make happy! You see, dear girl, this was not fair to me; little Anne was right. I am not a dragon, devouring maidens, least of all this dear maid! And now aren’t you ready to tell me all about it? Tell me as if I were your brother. What did you say to Kit to-day? Did you promise him to come to me and tell me how dearly you loved him? He is a fine lad, dear!”
“Oh, Richard, Richard!” moaned Anne. “Oh, Richard, the lion-hearted!”
“Come, that’s better than to be a dragon, though the lion’s share is supposed to be formidable! Anne, dear, you, being you, do not need to be told that to love means to desire the good of the person beloved. When is Kit—— Did you promise Kit to tell me what might have been the sad story, but now is to be a happy one?” asked Richard.
“I told Kit that I would not see him again till he and I were cured of this unhappy love. It will be cured, Richard! Trust me; I shall love my husband and no one else!” Anne cried.
“Surely. You will not turn from Kit, your husband! Do you imagine that I think of you as fickle, playing with love, my dear?” said Richard.
“Not Kit, not Kit my husband; you, you, Richard!” cried Anne, wildly. “Kit saw it as I did. He couldn’t see it so at first, because he is undisciplined. It is natural to take what you want if you can snatch it. But he did see, and he willingly laid down his—no; he had no claim to lay down—he willingly admitted your claim. And he has said good-bye to me, Richard, and is gone, wholly, completely gone out of my life. Don’t say,don’t think I deceived you! How could I tell you? I knew you would send me away. And I want to stay. I’m going to marry you, Richard, best and most unselfish of men; you, not Kit Carrington; no one but you, only you!”
“Dear Anne,” began Richard with an effort that Anne was sobbing too hard to see, “you cannot marry me, my beloved, because I will not marry you! See to what shocking lengths you drive me! I am blind, indeed, for I did not for an instant suspect that you loved Kit. Thank heaven little Anne healed that form of blindness! I have often felt that you did not fully love me, dear, but I set down much of your reserve to your natural reticence, your innate shrinking from a lover’s arms. I knew that a great love, such as mine was for you, would rise at flood and break down such barriers, but, though I saw that you did not love me like that, I thought that you loved me so much that the tide of it would rise to its flood in you. I loved to think that I should write my name on this white page indelibly. I did not dream that you loved someone else. This justifies me, so forgive me, Anne, for the pain I stupidly caused you.”
“Richard, kill me if you must, but not with such words!” cried Anne, turning to hide her face in her hands on the back of the garden bench. “Will you not listen to me? I want to marry you. I want to marry you! And you were right; I shall love you best. Just as now I hold you higher than any one else, so I shall love you best. I have never for an instant thought of breaking my word to you. I had no more idea of Kit’s feeling for me than you had. Nor did I realize that I cared for him. It was a strange revelation of unsuspected feeling on both sides that overtook us. I have not listened to him, have not dallied with this madness. And Kit is honourable. He was tempted to take his own good, but he is a man. When he considered, he knew that it must be you, not he.He is gone, gone forever. Time will cure him. He has done right and I’ve no fear but that he will be happy. So let us try to put it out of our minds; let us pretend that we had an ugly dream. We are awake now; the dream is over. Richard, dearest Richard, forgive me! Can’t you forgive me and let the dream go by?”
“Anne, child, yes; the dream shall go by! But my dream, which was truly a dream; not your reality,” said Richard, gently taking her hands and drawing her head on his shoulder. “Cry here, faithful true Anne, for I am Richard, your brother. But never Richard, your husband! Nothing this world could offer me, nothing that you could say, would make me marry you, dearest of all women! Consider for a moment: you who are so honourable, so eager to uphold the honour of Kit, whom you love, would you have me marry one whom I knew loved and wanted someone else? Would you? It is beyond possibility. It is best for us both that we never again remotely approach to a suggestion that this might be possible. I tell you again what I have already told you: I am profoundly grateful to little Anne Berkley for averting the horrible tragedy, the dreadful mistake I came near making. Sooner or later I should have found you out, dear, and I’m not sure that I shouldn’t have died of it! So let us be thankful that I was one of little Anne’s beetles and that she set me on my feet to run away in time! Now it is all settled, dear one, and we are tired. I am going into the house. Don’t come just now, Anne.”
Richard arose unsteadily, at the end of his endurance, exhausted by his effort.
Anne looked up at him with the wet eyes of a chastised child.
“Mayn’t I work for you? Oh, I can’t! Oh, Richard, let me marry you and work for you!” she begged.
“The forbidden subject so soon!” Richard held up a rebuking hand. “There is no work; I shall not work for a long time. Theplay is done; your play that you made. Don’t you think we would better send for Wilberforce?”
“Oh, yes; surely he must come! Will you send for him, or shall I?” Anne cried, eagerly.
“I’ll telegraph him when I go into the house,” said Richard. “Go now, and try to rest, dear. It has been a cruel afternoon for you. Why not go to Joan Paul and get her to take you in? You should not be alone in a boarding-house. And, Anne, one last word! You spoke of forgiving you a few moments ago; surely you know that there is not the least thing to forgive? You have been so true, so fine, so kind that all my life I shall have you before my eyes, the ideal woman who quite simply, at any cost, does what is right, not what is pleasantest, easiest. That is rare, my child, in man or woman, and I’m grateful to have known you. And remember, Anne, the sooner I hear that you are happy, the sooner I shall throw off my sense of guilt for having been so dull as to accept your mercy upon a blind man.”
Richard bent and took Anne’s hands in his, laying them, palms upward, in his own hands. He kissed first one then the other cold little palm and closed the fingers over the kisses, as one plays with a child.
“That is your freedom, in your own hands, dear, and good-bye,” he said.
He went unsteadily up the path, stooping, then remembered, and straightened himself, throwing back his head. Anne watched him go, her hands upon her knees, her fingers still closed tight over the palms in which Richard had deposited his tender dismissal and farewell. When he had gone she sat for a few moments with bowed head and closed eyes. Then she, too, arose and left the lovely garden by its low side gate. She went miserably to her room on her return to the boarding-house. She threw herself on her bed and lay staring out of the window,disregarding the summons to dinner. There was but one definite thought in her mind. Now, whatever happened, she must never marry Kit. When he learned that Richard had refused to let her fulfil her promise to him, of course Kit would jubilantly come to carry her off. But Anne felt that for her and Kit to be happy when Richard was lonely and wretched would be past bearing. She was not capable of reasoning now; her very muscles seemed to ache with pity for Richard and with groundless self-reproach. She had no desire to summon Joan; she was one with little Anne in a desire to do penance.
Little Anne, like most children of her type, had a retroactive conscience; it was especially likely to bother her at night.
This night as bedtime approached she reflected that she had gone to see Mr. Latham without consulting her mother, and that she had told him something that her mother had forbidden her to mention to any one. To be sure the actuating cause of her going was an addition to the events of that morning when Anne and Kit had met in her home; the conversation at Joan’s had seemed to her to free her from the obligation of silence, had imposed an obligation to speak; but now, at night, the more she considered, the surer she became that it had been wrong to go to Mr. Latham to set him right without her mother’s consent. It was done past mending, to be sure, but little Anne was well-trained in the duty of confessing her faults. Therefore, as the summer dusk deepened, she crept into her mother’s arms and with heavy sighs told the story of her afternoon.
She had not been prepared for her mother’s extreme perturbation over the tale. Mrs. Berkley became tense with excitement and asked so many questions as to the effect of it upon Mr. Latham that after little Anne had described how gay she had found him; how tired and still he seemed when she had left him; all that he had said, exactly what little Anne had said to him, the child was too sleepy to feel properly contrite. Hermother told her that she had done wrong to take upon herself interference in older people’s affairs, especially to disobey her mother, but little Anne went to bed forgiven and made peaceful by her mother’s kiss. She fell asleep instantly, infolded by the sense of a world in which everything came right.
When little Anne was tucked away, Mrs. Berkley hastened to the telephone.
“Oh, Joan,” her husband heard her say, “do go right around to find Anne Dallas! Yes. I don’t know, I’msure! No, not ill. Well, I’m afraid so. Anne has been calling this afternoon. Can’t you guess? I’m afraid to tell you over the wire. Yes, that’s better; she’ll tell you. That’s right, dearie. Do hurry. Good-night; kiss the baby for me.”
Mrs. Berkley hung up and turned her perturbed face upon her laughing husband.
“Dea ex machinaagain?” he asked. “Takes some machine to stand up under our small daughter’s driving, Barbara! It’s my impression that the machine of this particular goddess is a high-geared racing car!”
Mr. Berkley’s tone expressed the father’s pride in a clever child, the father who leaves the guidance of that cleverness to the mother, and as to his share of it enjoys it as a comedy.
Joan hurried to Antony.
“Come, Tony,” she said. “Mother just called up; we’ve got to go around to Anne Dallas’s boarding place. Mother didn’t like to tell me what has happened—you know on this party line the receivers are positively restless when one talks!—but little Anne has been visiting. I’m sure it was Mr. Latham! I’d be willing to wager anything that she’s told him about Anne and Kit—as much as she knows, and no human being could state how much that was! I haven’t had a moment’s peace—when I recalled it—since Kit was here and little Anne had baby over in the corner while we talked. She looked soperfectly unconscious that I’m sure she was paying strict attention to what we said! Well, come on, Antony; Anne is in some sort of trouble.”
“Gracious, what it is to have young friends who are in love and a young sister who is a busybody!” Antony pretended to grumble, but he went readily enough.
Joan left her husband on the boarding-house piazza, where he sat in awkward silence among observant strangers, with Guard’s head between his knees, while Joan ran up to Anne’s room.
“Oh, Joan, how good to see you! Richard told me to call you, but I couldn’t,” cried Anne, rising on one elbow as Joan dropped down beside her and took the girl in her arms, instantly overwhelmed with pity as she saw the misery in Anne’s tear-stained face.
“That little Anne!” exclaimed Joan. “Tell me what happened. I think I know: little Anne has told Richard Latham our secret!”
“And he has been so heavenly good to me; so generous, tender, that there are no words for it, Joan,” Anne confirmed her. “I saw Kit this afternoon. We had parted forever, and when I came back from that walk there was Richard! He will not marry me, Joan! I begged him to marry me, and truly I could be peacefully content to marry him, but he will not listen to it. Oh, Joan, he is so lonely and so fine!”
“He is all of that! I already know it, and some time you will tell me how he proved it anew this afternoon. He couldn’t marry you, dear! It would be horrid to accept such a sacrifice, now that he knows. Try to trust that things will come out better than you fear. Little Anne is not usually disobedient. Perhaps she has been an instrument of Providence. Did you have any dinner? Ah, I knew it! You are coming to make me a visit, so get together what you need for the night. We’llcome around here in the morning and get what you need for as many weeks as you’ll stay. Baby will be such a comfort to you! I’ll let her come into your bed in the morning. She’s the sweetest thing in bed! Antony is downstairs, waiting for us, with Guard. Come, Anne, hurry! Antony hates to sit on a piazza, among boarding women! Where’s your kit—— Oh, Anne, please! I didn’t mean—I mean your bag! And a nightie and toothbrush, your brush and comb. You’ll be fed at my house.”
Joan fluttered about gathering up the articles she enumerated. Anne was swept along, powerless to resist the loving kindness that launched her out of her swamp of despairing lethargy into a tide of action that implied hope.
Antony behaved with the utmost decorum, not betraying that he saw anything unusual in Anne’s disfigured face nor in her unexpected visit. Guard thrust his nose into Anne’s hand; Joan held tight to her arm, all the while talking her friendly, inconsequent talk which had in it more method than was apparent on the surface. Better than any eloquence it expressed sympathy; what was more, it carried with it the conviction that life was not wholly sad, nor its troubles irremediable.
Joan herself got Anne a dainty meal of the sort that can be eaten after crying has worn out appetite and digestion. The tea was perfectly drawn and Anne felt better for it.
Joan let the girl peep at sleeping Barbara before she took her into the cool, restful guest chamber, and tucked her into bed. She laughed the while at herself, saying she was like little Anne, and loved to play house, but none the less she knew precisely what the lonely, discouraged girl needed. Then she traced a tiny cross on Anne’s forehead, kissed her, and said:
“Good-night. God bless you, dear! That’s what Motheralways said and did to us. I always knew that was why I slept so sweetly and so safe. Go to sleep at once, Anne, dear,” said Joan as she left her.
An hour later she was gratified to find, when she peeped in, that Anne was sleeping sweetly under her good-night blessing.
Antony was removing his collar when Joan come into their room. He smiled quizzically at her in the glass.
“Confess!” he said. “You love to have your friends in trouble so you can cosset them!”
“Oh, no. Shame on you, Antony Paul! But I do love to cosset them when they are in trouble, which is not the same thing in the least!” Joan defended herself. “This is not a little trouble. Mr. Latham must be desolate. Dear, splendid Mr. Latham! And how Anne can ever bring herself to be happy with Kit, knowing it, is beyond me.”
“I grant you all you like on the Latham side of it. He must be hard hit and it’s a bad matter, that’s sure. But as to Anne and Kit—poppycock, Madam Sentimentalia! The idea of an old matron like you talking such nonsense! What shall we give them, silver or glass? And here’s this to consider, Joan: As a matter of economy of unhappiness, there are two happy by this arrangement, one unhappy. I’m no end sorry about Latham, but that seems to economize pain. Perhaps his unhappiness is durable and deep enough to throw out my arithmetic. Well, however it works, we’ve no hand in it, though apparently my sister-in-law had!” Antony laughed, and added: “I’ve got to go back downstairs; I left my watch on the table.”
When Antony was going back for his forgotten watch Minerva was softly closing the door of Miss Carrington’s room.
“Miss Carrington, I have news for you,” she announced. “Mr. Latham’s engagement to Miss Dallas is broken.”
“Good heavens! Minerva, what makes you think so?” demanded Miss Carrington, swinging her feet to the floor and sitting erect on her couch.
“Iknowso,” Minerva corrected her. “I have been to the movies with Mrs. Lumley. This afternoon the Berkley child was there. Mr. Latham was hoity-toity when she came. He’s been that way lately, Mrs. Lumley says; tickled to death his play’s done, and happy over being engaged. Well, when little Anne left he sat alone on the garden bench for the longest time, looking about killed; just limp and half dead. Then in comes Miss Dallas and they talked. You could see from the house it was serious, Mrs. Lumley says. Then Miss Dallas cried on his shoulder and he treated her like she had a broken bone, or her last, final sickness on her. At last he kissed her hands; kind of like a deathbed scene, Mrs. Lumley said it was. She was in the dining room, but it has those magnesia blinds you can turn, so she saw it all plain. Then Mr. Latham came into the house, and after a little Miss Dallas went away. Mrs. Lumley didn’t see her go, because she went back into the pantry when Mr. Latham came in, and went on with her mayonnaise. Not that she needed to; he went right on up to his room. He didn’t come to dinner, nor would he let Stetson take up a tray; nothing but coffee later on. So it’s surely broken. Mrs. Lumley says there’s no more doubt of it than of the laws of the needs of Prussians. I thought you’d better know.”
“What can have happened? It sounds like a renunciation as you describe it,” murmured Miss Carrington. “Kit has been strange lately. He walked about last night for ages. I tapped on his door and begged him to go to bed, but he only put on slippers and still prowled; it was really worse, for the padded sound is more annoying than a louder one. To-night at dinner he was absolutely silent and colourless. I was going to ask what was wrong, but reflected that a boy hates to haveill-health noticed. He can’t endure Mr. Lanbury; he was dining here, but it was more than that. I do wonder——” Miss Carrington stopped.
“So did I, and so do I, Miss Carrington,” said Minerva. “It sort of looks—— Yet why? And you see little Anne Berkley comes into it there. Mr. Latham was gay till she came and what could she——?” Minerva talked with elisions.
“Kit goes to the Berkleys’ a great deal, and that child misses very little that happens, or is said where she is,” commented Miss Carrington. “Minerva, I hope and pray that engagement is not broken! If it is—no matter if Helen is lost to him, Kit shall not marry a nobody, without family, money, beauty—beyond considerable sweet prettiness! He shallnot!”
“As to that, Miss Carrington, it’s hard to say what will happen in a world like this where promises mean nothing, and there’s no principle. Once I, myself, had the promise of a real nice-mannered man, and gave my own to him, but here I am and have been these twenty years gone! One thing more Mrs. Lumley told me: She said Mr. Latham had telegraphed Mr. Wilberforce to come on as quick’s he conveniently could.”
“Mr. Wilberforce! It was he got that situation for Anne Dallas! It looks as though she might have seriously displeased Mr. Latham that he sends for the one responsible for her being there! Well, well, Minerva, I’m truly afraid that the engagement is broken.”
Miss Carrington arose with a long sigh to put herself into Minerva’s hands to be made ready for the night.
“Oh, there’s no mistake about it, Miss Carrington. Mrs. Lumley is a good deal of a lump, but when it comes to things like that, when she looks she sees, whether it’s behind blinds or close by. I thought you’d find comfort in Mr. Wilberforce’s coming, having the hope that Miss Dallas had done somethingshe’d better not have done. Otherwise, I’m free to confess, I think the chance of your holding back Mr. Kit is pretty slender.”
Minerva pulled her mistress’s shoulder snaps open viciously as she spoke. She was troubled by Miss Carrington’s recent failure in health, but she dearly liked to suggest that Kit might foil her.