_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.