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
[Illustration: “_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
CHAPTER PAGE
I. LITTLE ANNE’S CALLING 1
II. THE OLDEST ANNE 13
III. THE QUIET ROOM 23
IV. ANNE AND ANNE 33
V. SMALL FURTHERING BREEZES 45
VI. “THE FACE THAT LIT THE FIRES,” ETC. 56
VII. THE POET’S CORNER 68
VIII. CANDOUR 81
IX. SOUNDINGS 93
X. THE STRAY PAGE 104
XI. PENITENTIAL 115
XII. MAKING ALIVE 127
XIII. THE ILL WIND 139
XIV. ADJUSTMENT 150
XV. OPPORTUNITY 162
XVI. REVELATION 174
XVII. HONOUR 187
XVIII. MADE IN HEAVEN 199
XIX. THE END OF THE PLAY 210
XX. RICHARD 222
XXI. WILBERFORCE, THE PAINTER 235
XXII. EXITS AND ENTRANCES 248
XXIII. THE FALL OF THE CURTAIN 261
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.