As she stepped from the train into the roar of the city, Anne
straightened her shoulders and smiled:
"Perhaps I'll get to love the racket as much as Belle does."
She let herself into the flat and went noiselessly up the stairs to the
hall. In the front room her father was talking to Rogie. She could not
catch the words but she heard the baby's crow of delight and gripped
the balustrade to keep from surprising the old man too suddenly.
The kitchen was empty but Hilda was on the porch picking dead leaves
from a geranium. The kettle was boiling and a bottle of malted milk
stood beside the inevitable wad of crochet on the table. Very softly
Anne closed the door and waited. In another moment the kettle boiled
over and Hilda turned. At the sight of Anne, she stepped back, stared,
and then came with a little rush and took Anne in her arms. When she
stood away at last, her eyes were full of happy tears, but she said
gayly:
"I believe you just love to startle people nearly out of their skins.
Well, you certainly did give me a turn. I suppose it was the dog that
howled all night, but when I saw you there--for a minute--I almost
thought----"
"It was my ghost. Moms Mitchell! You are superstitious."
"No, I'm not. Not a bit. I never held with those old sayings but it did
give me a start." She still held Anne's hand and stroked it, reluctant
to relinquish the comfort of reality.
"Do I look like a ghost?"
"You certainly do not. My, but you're a different girl altogether. Papa
will be surprised."
Anne laughed. "If my appearance has the same effect on him as it had on
you, you'd better prepare him. Did he hear the dog too?"
"Go on with you. I don't believe those things. No, I don't think he
did. Papa sleeps fine now. He's better a lot too. He got down onto the
landing yesterday and sat in the sun for an hour."
"Papa! Got down those stairs to the landing! He must be improved."
"He is," Hilda said with subdued pride. "Papa's changed in the last two
months, Annie. He's different--in a great many ways. He's more like he
was--at first--before you children were born. You won't know papa in
some ways."
"Hardly, if he's like he was before I was born. Perhaps we'll have to
be introduced."
Hilda smiled, but Anne saw under the amusement a kind of glad
possession and knew that a new link had been forged between her father
and mother. For an instant, loneliness touched her and she wondered
what these months had done to Roger. She had changed. Her mother and
father had changed. Had Roger changed too?
"I'm dying to see Rogie. Shall I go in or do you want to tell papa
first?"
"I'll just give him a hint. You wait here. He always has his milk in
the kitchen and I usually have tea with him. Good gracious, I forgot
all about the tea."
"I'll make it. You run along and hint. If I don't see Rogie in a minute
I'll be howling like that dog myself."
As she made the tea Anne's hands shook with excitement. It was all so
strange, filled with a vibrant livingness it had never had before. In
a few moments, she heard them coming along the hall, the tap of her
father's canes, his shuffling step, Hilda's gleeful laugh, as they
stopped just outside the kitchen door.
"No, I'm not joking, papa, we've got company to tea. I can't help it if
you didn't hear them come. No, it's not Charlotte and I'm not going to
tell you who it is."
"You can't fool me. When your eyes shine like that it's something good.
Do you know, I wouldn't be surprised to see Annie come in most any day."
"Now--how--on earth--did you----"
James laughed. "We've been married more than thirty years and you never
put one over on me yet."
He turned the knob and came shuffling into the kitchen. Hilda followed
with Rogie. Anne had a passing flash of her father, thin and gray, but
with a happy twinkle in his eyes; Hilda smiling behind him and Rogie
clinging tightly to her neck, before her eyes filled with tears and
they all blurred together.
Leaning unsteadily on one cane, James Mitchell put his arm round her.
"She tried to fool me, Annie, but I smelled the rat. I knew you'd get
lonely and come running back when we didn't expect you."
Anne tried to smile. "But you did expect me. You're not surprised a
bit." Over his shoulder she was watching Rogie in hungry fear that he
was not going to recognize her. If Rogie cried and shrank away----But
he didn't. He was only making quite sure before he gave a gurgle of
delight and began wriggling in Hilda's grasp. James Mitchell's arm
dropped and Anne was beside Hilda with Rogie tight in her hold.
"Grown some, hasn't he?" James demanded as he stumbled to the chair
beside the stove. "Not bad nurses, the old folks, eh?"
"He's grown an inch," Anne declared, hugging him to her. "And my
gracious, he's heavy!"
"Weighs a ton when he's been on the same spot in your lap ten minutes.
Only he don't often stay ten minutes in the same spot. He's a lively
youngster, Anne. Got a lot more pep than you ever had at his age. He
must take after----" James broke off and looked at Hilda.
"Yes, he's more like Roger," Anne finished. There was no reason to
avoid Roger's name.
There was a short silence, filled by her father sipping the malted milk
and her mother pouring out the tea. Then Anne said:
"Has Roger seen him often?"
Hilda and James looked at each other in a new habit of consultation.
"No, dear. Belle thought it would be just as well to wait until you
could arrange things as you wanted."
"I'm sorry. There's no reason he shouldn't see him. I never intended
keeping him all to myself. He's Roger's, too."
Again Hilda and James consulted on a problem they had evidently
discussed often. Their glances reached a decision and James said:
"Annie, do you suppose that things between you and Roger could
be patched up? Me and mother have talked about it quite a lot. I
don't hold with Roger--I never did," there was a touch of the old
intolerance which a look from Hilda softened and James went on. "But
he's young and there's this to be said for him--the rubbish he believes
in is in the air. It's like an epidemic. But there's no reason he
shouldn't outgrow it. You can do a lot."
Anne sat holding Rogie and fingering her teaspoon absently.
"I don't want him to outgrow it, papa. I don't want him to be anything
but himself."
"No, of course you don't," Hilda broke in with the familiar manner
of smoothing a family difference that had once annoyed Anne. But now
it did not annoy her. She would have to face, once at least, this
discussion of herself and Roger and she might as well do it now.
Besides, it clarified her own thought to talk patiently in this way.
"Roger was one kind of person," she went on, "and I was another. Roger
saw things--in--in sweeps while I saw them in spots."
The definition was exact to Anne but her father and mother looked
bewildered.
"I mean that we really both want the same thing, only we wanted to get
it differently. I think--it's harder for two people to agree in their
methods--than in their aims. If Roger had been a Jew and I had been a
Catholic----"
"Why, Anne!" Hilda was so horrified, that amusement touched Anne's very
earnest wish to get this thing perfectly straight to them.
"I'm only supposing, moms, making the wildest example I can think of."
"Well, it's certainly wild enough."
"But, if we had been, it might have been easier than it was. I mean
that--in some ways we would have been so very far apart that it would
have been useless to try and meet in those ways at all. But Roger and
I weren't far apart. We both wanted the same thing--a beautiful world,
but we tried to find this beauty in different places and there are no
different places. There's only one Beauty everywhere."
"What in the name of Heavens ARE you talking about, Annie?"
Anne began to feel a little helpless but persisted.
"I mean that nearly all the fuss and noise in the world comes from
people quarreling about the way to get things, because, nearly
everybody wants the same thing really when you get right down to
it. They only quarrel about their own pet way of getting it. Roger
thinks that if he can make the whole world happy in a lump, then every
individual will be happy. And I thought that if every individual was
happy then the whole world would be happy. We----"
"I don't know what you're trying to get at, Annie, and I don't believe
you do yourself," her father interrupted, but so kindly that Anne
forgave his not understanding. After all, she had not understood
herself, before the mountains, and it was not clear in detail yet. "I
suppose it's something very modern and educated. But common sense is a
lot older than education and these up-to-date folderols. When a man and
a woman's married they can't expect to agree about everything. Me and
mamma never had scarce an idea in common, did we, ma?"
"No. We never agreed about things. I never knew any married folks that
did. But it doesn't make much difference if you don't talk about them.
As long as you keep still, things go pretty smooth. I guess our home
was as comfortable as most homes."
"But I don't want it to be as comfortable as most homes. Most homes are
terrible places and I want a real home or none at all."
"Well, I must say, I think there's something to be said for Roger,"
Hilda conceded. "Do you think a home all by yourself is going to be a
'real home'?"
Anne's throat tightened and she could not answer.
"That's all rubbish, Anne. Nothing we could say would have kept you
from marrying him and I guess he was just the same as he is now.
Besides, you'll find it's a different thing working now you've got
Rogie than it was before when you were a girl."
"Let's not talk about it, mamma. I wouldn't live with Roger just to be
supported, not if I had a dozen children."
"I wish to heaven you had, Anne; nothing else will ever get a mite of
real common sense into your head. Oh, well, it's no good talking, I
suppose. You can't put old heads on young shoulders."
Anne nibbled at her lip and said nothing. She and Hilda finished their
tea and James his malted milk. When he had put aside the cup he turned
to her again.
"You'll stay with us for a while, Annie?"
"No--I don't think I will, not more than a few days anyhow. I'm going
to begin looking for a job to-morrow and I'm sure to find one within a
day or two. Then I'll take rooms where Rogie can be looked after and
moms will get a rest. It made an awful lot of extra work having him
here all that time. He----"
"Now see here, Anne, you needn't use Rogie as an excuse. I don't
need a rest and he hasn't been a bit of extra work. You always were
an independent thing." Hilda's impatience ended in a laugh and James
smiled with her.
"All right, we'll let it go at that. Anyhow, to-morrow morning at eight
o'clock, off I go job-hunting."
Anne joined the laugh a little uncertainly. The new life was so very
near.