_The Quiet Room_
Cleavedge had received its name from the steep sides of the river which
cleft its rocky bank formation. It may have been a misapprehension of
a word--strangers spelt it “Cleavage” till they learned better--or the
settlers who christened it may have meant to embody in the word the
picturesque cleft edges of the cliffs. Cleavedge, with its misspelling,
it remained through the growth of the village into a prosperous little
city.
Richard Latham lived in a shady street not much disturbed by traffic.
Several other streets ran in the same direction, leading more directly
to wherever any one would be likely to go, so Latham Street was not
greatly disturbed by footfalls, either. The street had been lately
rechristened; Cleavedge was beginning to be aware of its celebrity.
In the beautifully proportioned living room of a house that entertained
too few guests to require a drawing room the poet passed his days. It
was a room built around with bookshelves uncrowded by furniture; its
warm-tinted, drabbish walls hung with fine pictures and lighted by
lovely gleams of colour in the pottery that occasionally broke the long
stretches of the dull oiled wood of the bookcase tops. It was a man’s
room, without curtains, or anything meaningless; a room of perfect
beauty, inexpressibly soothing. It possessed a sort of visible silence,
the silence of the woods; it was a place in which to think and to feel,
rather than to act. At one end stood the piano which alone suggested
sound, but to one who had heard Richard Latham play it emphasized the
harmony.
At the desk, alone in the room, sat a young girl--Anne Dallas. Here she
prepared her notes and carried them away to write them out where the
clatter of a typewriter could not penetrate this room.
All soft browns was this Anne, hair, eyes, even the tint of her
beautiful skin, warmly pale, clear, but of a shade that suggested a page
that had lain under the sun’s rays.
Her hair covered her shapely head across the back from crown to neck,
from ear to ear; she wore it parted and coiled in the only way its
masses allowed her to treat it. There was no attempt at coquetry in the
simplicity of her dress, yet no carefully thought out costume could
have more perfectly adorned her, nor made her more harmonious to the
room, for girl and room were each a foil to the other.
She wrote rapidly, happily humming to herself a slight air that did not
get in the way of her thoughts; she smiled as she followed the balanced
phrases in which Richard Latham had developed an idea that demanded
the best of the language. It was said that Latham used English as no
American now used it, that he was the master of a style that could not
be taught.
He came into the room as Anne Dallas began another page of her copy.
She rose to greet him, but did not move toward him. She had learned
that he liked to go about without anything to remind him of his
misfortune. He knew every inch of this room perfectly, literally by
heart, for he had himself designed it before he had been stricken. He
often went straight to the right shelf and laid his hand upon the book
that he wanted.
“Good morning, Miss Dallas,” he said. “‛Richard and Robin were two lazy
men!’ I’ll warrant that’s what you were thinking, and that Richard had
not cured himself of ‛lying in bed till the clock struck ten.’”
“More likely you were tramping before the clock struck five!” cried
Anne.
“That’s nearer the mark than your rash judgment and condemnation of me
by a text from Mother Goose!” said Richard Latham, throwing himself
appreciatively into his comfortable chair. “I was out at six and I’m
nicely tired, just enough tired to want to cut work. Besides, you
extracted from me yesterday everything I have to say on every known
subject! I shall have to wait to fill up from whatever the sources are
that supply ideas. You’re a frightful person for getting a poor fellow
going and keeping him at it till you’ve got all his brains down in
funny little cabalistic signs. Then the next day you write out pages
and swear the utterances that fill me with awe were hidden under those
inky wriggles! I don’t believe it! You insist the inky-wriggles wisdom
is mine. Stuff and nonsense! Why, I don’t know a fraction of what
you say I dictate to you! It’s uncanny. The only thing that I don’t
understand, and which gives a tint of colour to your statement, is that
I’ve no brains left after one of those frightful days when you wind me
up--like yesterday! It’s all curious. Still more so that by to-morrow
you’ll wind me up again, and so on, _da capo_. But not to-day,
Miss Thaumaturga! Not a bit of work shall you get out of me to-day, not
the least preposition for you to set down in a dash or a dot!”
“Very well, Mr. Latham,” laughed Anne, resuming her seat and taking
up her pen. “I have quite enough to do to write out what you gave me
yesterday. It was a particularly productive day. You are right. Perhaps
I shall ask you to listen to what I have when it is written. That will
not be till well after lunch; shall you be ready then for me, do you
think?”
“No,” said Richard Latham, promptly. “I shall not be. Please put down
that pen, which I’m sure you’ve taken up, and put down with it all
thought of work. Unless reading aloud is work? Is it hard for you to
read to me? You always assure me that you don’t mind it, but I’m afraid
you may. I don’t want to be troublesome. To-day I’d like to cut work
and be read to. It is quite true that I’ve brain fag, and that you did
wind me up to a frightful speed yesterday. I’m conscious that it is
you who do it; I wonder how? It’s precisely as if you at once put into
me and took out again what would never be in my brain if you didn’t do
this. Are you the poet and not I, after all?”
“Hardly,” said Anne, smiling, with the woman’s instinct to mask the
trouble that vaguely stirred in her, although this man could not see
her face. “I am industrious, but not gifted. If I’ve any part in it, I
suppose it is because you feel my delight in what you are creating, and
that unconsciously urges you on. I suspect it’s no more than the simple
thing we call genius, and that it takes it out of you to ride Pegasus.”
Richard Latham kept his blind eyes turned steadily toward her as if he
could see her and would fathom the mystery. He shook his head. “That
isn’t it,” he said, slowly. “There is something about you that makes me
do my best, and more than my own best. I had other people before you
came to help me, and it was a regular grind. No grind with you to start
me off and hold me to it, you quiet wonder-worker! But you didn’t tell
me; do you mind reading to me to-day? I don’t want to be troublesome.”
He repeated the words with a wistful note in his voice that made Anne
spring to her feet and cross to a chair near him. She clasped her hands
in her lap, her face sweet with pity. She could not endure it that this
man, whose genius she followed breathlessly, should fear to burden
others. It stabbed her to know that he never could escape this fear.
“Ah, Mr. Latham,” she said, and she did not know how her voice caressed
him, nor how he at once leaped to meet the caress and shrank from that
pitiful thing, pity, which may be akin to love, but which is to a lover
but a bastard kin that usurps love’s throne, “don’t you know that the
hours in which I read to you are delightful to me? Try to imagine what
I get from them, with you to supplement what I read! I never tire
reading, but----” Anne got no farther. Richard Latham started up with
an exclamation, then dropped back into his chair.
“But you would read whether you like it or not, you started to say,
then remembered that I might not want to hear it! You would serve me in
any way that you could, out of your great, womanly compassion? I know
it, oh, I know it, Anne Dallas! I am grateful; don’t think I’m not.
It’s a big thing to have lavished upon me. I’m glad that at least you
don’t think of your help to me as secretarial duty.”
“Oh, Mr. Latham, if you don’t want to be hurt, then don’t hurt me!”
cried Anne, shrinking.
“Forgive me,” said Latham, humbly.
He bent forward and took her hand, not fumbling for it, knowing
precisely where it lay, Anne noticed, wondering.
“That was a cowardly, contemptible speech! I believe I wanted to hurt
you! There is a confession, and it amazes me as much as it can you
that it is true. I told you that I was tired to-day; it’s nerves. Set
it down to nerves, won’t you? That sounds like a sneaking plea for
mercy, but I don’t mean it that way. You’d rather it were my nerves
than myself that were unkind? It would be such a beastly thing to want
to hurt you of all people! Confession deserves absolution when it is
sincere and contrite, doesn’t it?”
“No. It makes it unnecessary,” said Anne, softly. She was glad that he
could not see the tears in her eyes. Never before had this brave and
gentle soul betrayed to her the effort that it cost him to be and to
do without complaint all that he was and did.
“Kind little Shriver!” said Richard Latham, pressing the hand that held
his tighter than Anne knew.
Then he laid it back beside its mate in her lap and arose, laughing.
“It will never do for me to be neurasthenic as well as blind,” he said,
cheerfully. “I suspect I’m staying indoors too much; a man should go
hay-making--when the sun shines! I’ll fetch the book I have in mind for
to-day’s reading--unless you have something you’d prefer?”
He stepped quickly across the room, went to the poetry shelves,
stooped, and took from the middle shelf a volume which he slapped on
his left hand, brushed it across the top, and brought it to Anne.
“Suit you? Are you in the mood for it?” he asked.
It was Dante in the prose translation. Anne looked at it and smiled up
at him.
“Just in the mood for it,” she said. “But I’d like to read the
‛Paradise’--or would you rather ‛begin at the beginning,’ as children
say?”
“No, indeed, I’d rather hear ‛Paradise’ myself,” Richard Latham said,
and resumed his chair, pulling his smoking table up to it.
“It’s your one secretarial fault, Miss Dallas: you are not a linguist.
I’ve a fine old tooled copy of Dante, Italian. I’d like to teach you
Italian. I lived over there a good while. Perhaps we may take up----”
He broke off sharply. “I beg your pardon, Miss Dallas; I’m delaying
you.”
Anne opened the volume, once more hurt and puzzled. Richard Latham was
always so equable, so friendly toward her that she could not understand
this new mood. The tone of his last words relegated her to the
unbridgable distance of his hired secretary.
Anne began to read at the third book, the “Paradise.” Her voice was
troubled at first, but Richard smoked rapidly, apparently unconscious
of it, he whose ear was ordinarily quick to hear a note of fatigue in
her voice.
Anne loved beauty, and in a few moments she had forgotten herself in
Dante’s vision; a little longer and she forgot her listener, which was
far more. She read on and on until at last Richard put out his hand to
check her.
“You are thirsty,” he said in the old gentle way to which Anne was
accustomed. “And it is one o’clock. The sun is around on the other
side; that means past noon. We shall not lunch till two to-day; I told
Stetson to have a carriage here at three. We are going to have a real
holiday, you and I. Stetson is of the party in case I feel like walking
in unfamiliar places and need his arm. So put up your book and rest
till luncheon.”
“How delightful, Mr. Latham!” cried Anne. “I rarely drive.”
“You are a little girl still, my helpful secretary! How old did you
tell me you were?” Richard asked, well-pleased by her pleasure.
Anne arose and dropped a curtsy. Richard felt the motion of her swaying
body and laughed at her.
“I am twenty-two, please, sir!” she said in a thin treble. “But I hope
to be more.”
“Since you can’t be less?” Richard suggested. “Perhaps you can’t be
more, either, in another sense? At least you are a good child, and
I’m grateful to you. What nice times we have in this rather nice room
which I made once upon a time and still enjoy almost as if I saw it!
I’m glad that we have long days to ourselves and don’t suffer many
interruptions. Yes, Stetson, want me?” he added as his man put his
head into the doorway, knocking on the casement as he did so.
“Little Miss Berkley is here, sir, little Anne Berkley. And young Mr.
Carrington--though for that matter the only Mr. Carrington--to see you,
Mr. Latham,” he said.
“Bring them in here, Stetson,” said Richard Latham, rising and passing
his hand over the back of his head which he had been indulging in a
pleasant friction against the back of his chair.
“Please, Miss Dallas, am I too badly rumpled? Miss Anne Berkley is a
critical though dear friend of mine.”
“No, not badly rumpled,” returned Anne. Her cheeks were red and her
eyes had brightened at the announcement of these visitors.
Stetson returned with them. Little Anne was freshly, beautifully
groomed. She precipitated herself upon Richard Latham with a cry of
joy, as if she had not been sure of finding him unchanged.
“I’ve not seen you in ages, and I certainly am glad I came!” she cried.
“Thank you, my dear; I echo your sentiments, with the added interest of
five times your years,” said Richard, shaking her hand, earnestly.
“No, you don’t love people better because you’re the oldest, do you?”
Little Anne corrected him. Then she remembered her duty.
“I brought my friend Kit--Mr. Christopher Carrington, to see you.” She
turned, but Kit was talking to Anne Dallas and for an instant little
Anne stared, recalling what she had forgotten.
“Well, to think I never remembered!” she gasped. “This is him,” she
added, her customary English deserting her under the stress of emotion.
“This is Kit, Mr. Latham. He thought he’d like to know you on account
of your works, only I guess----”
She checked herself; Anne was a discreet child, and sympathetic.
“Glad to see you, Mr. Carrington,” said Richard Latham, heartily, using
a verb that did not seem inappropriate to him. “I know your aunt, Miss
Carrington. She is a clever woman, most interesting.”
“She is a wonder, is Aunt Anne,” agreed Kit. “She would have brought me
here, but I met little Anne and availed myself of her friendly offices.”
“Even your aunt is not a better social sponsor than Miss Berkley,” said
Richard Latham, bowing to little Anne. “The important thing is that
you have come. I’ve an idea! We are going for a long, and, I hope,
delightful drive into the country after lunch, which will be at two;
Miss Dallas and I were going to take my man Stetson, because a blind
man may easily need the help of a strong arm in exploring. I’m sure
I can persuade little Anne to go. She’s fond of her namesake, Miss
Dallas. What about it, Anne? Will you go if I telephone to your mother
and get her consent?”
Little Anne clasped her hands upon her thin little chest.
“I think it would be so deliciously wonderful-joyful that I’d never,
never forget it if Mother would say yes!” she cried, passionately.
“Bad as that, superlative little Anne?” laughed Richard.
“Mr. Carrington, if you will lunch with me and go on the drive, and
would be so kind as to give me a hand over a stile, or whatever lay in
my path, I’ll gladly drop Stetson out of the party. Will you do this?”
“You are awfully kind, Mr. Latham,” said Kit, gratefully. He glanced at
Anne Dallas, but she did not meet his eyes. She was looking intently at
Richard Latham, and it seemed to Kit that her expression was unhappy.
“I’m only too glad to go, thank you,” Kit went on. “I wonder if I may
use your telephone? Aunt Anne will be expecting me to lunch. She won’t
have a telephone in the house, but I can call the druggist and get him
to send his boy around with a message. Aunt Anne has ways all her own!”
“I can imagine it. My telephone is in the hall; Miss Dallas will show
you where. And will you call Mrs. Berkley, Miss Dallas, and get her
consent to kidnapping her child?” Mr. Latham smiled at little Anne.
Little Anne clasped her hands in her own dramatic gesture.
“Oh, dear, dear, dearest Miss Dallas, please let me call Mother myself!
I don’t get many chances to telephone, and I love, just _love_
to do it! And I want to tell mother my own self what a great, great
thing has happened to me. You said a carriage, didn’t you, Mr. Latham?
It’s pretty nearly always a car. I’m not quite, perfec’ly certain I
ever’ve rode--roden--I mean ridden in a carriage. I’ve rode--ridden--in
the grocer’s wagon, but I can’t remember a carriage. I’d love to tell
mother. And with a real poet! Would you mind, Miss Anne Dallas, if I
did it myself?”
“Bless your funny little heart, Anne, of course I shouldn’t mind!”
cried Anne Dallas. “Come, both guests!”
Richard Latham, left behind, stood quietly waiting, unconsciously
listening to the telephone jingle, to Kit’s strong voice, to little
Anne’s excited piping.
Suddenly and unreasonably he felt old and alone. He was not old, but he
was alone, and around him in the beautiful room that he had made, with
its spacious calm, its books, its pictures, was complete darkness.