_Soundings_
Helen and Kit rode on through the verdant shade of Daphne Woods with
few words spoken between them. At times the brown accumulations of the
leaves of past springs deadened the sound of the horses’ feet, but
oftener their rhythm was distinctly beaten out on the perfectly kept
road.
“Riding at the same gait, in unison of hoofbeats.” Kit found himself
dwelling on the words as if they were an oracle’s prophecy and its
fulfilment.
Was it possible that Helen meant what she surely conveyed? Was it
possible that a nice girl would intentionally convey it?
Helen rode on pensively sweet and preoccupied. She rode somewhat in
advance of Kit; the honest boy thought that it was to hide her face. He
was right, but by inversion; Helen wanted Kit to see her back, which
she had been told was provocatively graceful on horseback. He felt,
as he had repeatedly felt in this visit of hers, that he did not know
her. The Helen of her exhortation to him he knew, keen-witted, worldly,
strong-willed, but this girl? Gentle, wistful, affectionate, dependent,
almost child-like in appeal for sympathy? This was another Helen; this
one might be as lovable as the other was dazzling. Suddenly she turned
to Kit, resting her hand on her saddle, swinging halfway around in it
to face him.
“Kit, you don’t understand women,” she said with a quaver in her voice.
“Perhaps I mean girls, _a_ girl, _this_ girl! Can’t you see
how one may be defeated in victory? How little it means to be pretty,
clever, rich, admired, when one is all alone? Father is a dear to me,
but he can’t play the game of politics for such high stakes as those he
is out for and have much time to spare for his girl. Well! I pretend a
lot, but I don’t mind my old pal’s knowing that I’m just plain girl,
and no goddess, not even an ambitious woman at heart. Daphne Woods
stirs in me everything that I fight down. It doesn’t do to let it poke
up its head to be fed when I can’t feed it! It’s too lovely in here,
too ideal to be good for me. Oh, Kit, take me home!”
Kit’s heart beat faster. Helen was intoxicating with her eyes downcast,
her voice low and vibrant. Her simple, direct appeal moved him by the
pathos of its revelation of sweetness where he had known only hardness;
of weakness where he had thought there was only self-reliant strength.
“Why, Nell, dear,” he cried, “I didn’t know you felt like this! Spring
in the woods always sets me off, too. Funny how all human beings are
casting about for something, they’re not sure just what. Nature gets
us going, doesn’t it? October is as bad as May, in another way. Yet it
is a sweet sorrow, don’t you think? Something like parting! Sure, I’ll
take you home. You’re probably tired, too. Lunch will be ready by the
time we get there.”
Helen swung back again in her saddle and turned Jack-of-Spades sharply.
Then she looked hard at Kit and laughed, her softened mood flung from
her.
“It’s hard telling, Christopher Carrington, whether you’re a bit
clever, or more than a bit stupid,” she said, and rode ahead of him,
Jack-of-Spades on a gallop, toward the end of the woods.
Kit went up to his room to get out of his riding clothes into his daily
attire. He was slow about it; considering hard, puzzled, interested,
confused in thought, clearer in impressions than he liked to admit.
“Well,” he ended his meditations, arousing himself with difficulty
to be aware of the knot of his tie, “it makes you feel like a yellow
dog to think it, but what am I to think? Looks as if Aunt Anne knew;
probably women always know. But why in thunder----? Nell is strictly
and within bounds of statement a winner. There are such a lot of
fellows--I never have altogether liked Nell; that is, I never fell for
her. Worldly women strike me about the way an angel stock broker would
hit you. But apparently I haven’t got her right. I suppose it’s hard
for mere man to know ’em, fathom ’em. A kaleidoscope is stable compared
to ’em! Nell isn’t so worldly after all. She’s capable of unambitious
attachments, it seems. I suppose nice ones are cut on the same pattern
in their general lines. They all want affection, children, the things
best worth while.”
Kit went downstairs feeling benignant. He was human, and though not
as conceited as most of his age and sex, there was no denying that he
found it pleasant to suspect that a clever, beautiful young creature
turned toward him, innocently betraying that she could love him. It
gave Kit a calm, uplifted, vague sense of pitiful but delightful things
enveloping him. It perturbed him, of course; what he should do about
it must be faced, but in the meantime there was no getting away from
the fact that he liked it. He was fine enough to attribute to Helen
the maternal instinct that led her from the plaudits of society toward
shadowy little hands, impatiently pat-a-caking for her to clasp them
and draw them forth into the world.
As Kit came down the stairs Helen’s pretty laughter rang out to him. It
was her old mocking laughter, but this time it did not, as usual, jar
on him. He knew that often she did not laugh; she had shown him this.
He did not suspect that she had been describing their ride to his aunt,
who found Helen as entertaining as a Shaw play, and touching lightly
and cleverly upon his failure to take the good things that the gods, or
rather the goddess, provided.
He paused at the hall table to take up and look over a pamphlet which
lay there, paying no attention to remarks which Miss Carrington was
making in train of Helen’s laugh.
But clear as a bell and perfectly heard, not only by Kit’s ears, but by
his brain, came Helen’s reply. Her voice was as modulated as always,
but it rang to an uncommon degree with the fervour of strong conviction
and determination, and with no small amount of contempt.
“No, indeed, dear Miss Carrington,” she said. “Not I! I cordially
dislike children. It used to be an admission of the lowest criminality
to say this, but any number of my generation feel as I do. Why should
I want children? Horrid, crude little animals at first, and later on
men and women who go off and leave one to get on as one can. Better
cultivate adults, select amusing friends, than to set up children and
waste one’s best years on a most improbable chance of getting something
out of it. I am free, strong, graceful, good-looking. Do you think for
one moment I’d lay all that down and be ugly, in order to have a thing
that I’d abominate to look at and positively would not handle? Poms or
pekes are more sensible, but I’ve no yearning for pets. As to someone
to come after me, inherit, all that idiocy, what do I care what happens
when I am dead? Ugh, horrible to be dead! Children would perpetually
remind you that they were posterity, and posterity is a _memento
mori_. No children for me, ever! Selah! I didn’t intend to wax
eloquent, Aunt Anne, but it always riles me to have anyone attribute to
me the maternal longing--like a cat, who really is a model mother; I
know none more devoted.”
Poor Kit! Grateful to his rubber heels, he turned and walked away.
He felt like an aviator whose engine had gone wrong above the clouds
diving down to the ground with dizzy speed.
Which was Helen? What was Helen? Could she be playing a part to Miss
Carrington? No; her voice was strained with sincerity, and why
should she play a part? Kit knew that his aunt’s devotion to the new
philosophies would not prevent the shock with which she would hear a
young, beautiful woman, endowed in every way to fulfil her rôle in
life, repudiate and denounce motherhood.
Then had Helen played a part with him? Much more likely.
He ate his luncheon almost in silence. At intervals he stole a glance
at Helen, saw her serene, exquisite; the charm of femininity and grace
in every motion of her slender hands, her willowy body. But the meaning
of her femininity was gone; only the shell of her beauty was left, if
those long, curling fingers would refuse to caress a baby’s cheek.
As soon as lunch was over Kit went toward the door.
“Going off, Kits?” asked Helen. “Not going to stay and be
pretty-behaved to me?”
“I’m going to the Berkleys’,” said Kit. “Sorry, but I’m going to the
Berkleys’.”
It was like him to make the statement baldly, not to invent an errand
to the Berkleys’. It had come to him as he spoke that this was where
he was going. The simple happiness of that household, its effortless
mutual enjoyment; the love for one another that permeated the
atmosphere of the house, rose up before him, and made Kit feel that it
was as necessary to get his perturbed mind cleared and cheered by the
Berkley family as it could be to find a spring if he were parched with
desert thirst.
“Going to play with little Anne?” inquired Helen.
“If she’ll let me! Nice kid!” said Kit, shortly, and was gone.
“Don’t mock Kit’s idols. He’s like most quiet and peaceable people;
when he’s offended he’s hard to placate, and when he’s disgusted he’s
not to be won back. Kit’s tremendously fond of his friends. But I
share his pleasure in that precocious innocent, with her delightful
combination of normal mischief with abnormal conscientiousness,” warned
Miss Carrington.
Kit found all the Berkleys at home, as he had hoped to, with the
addition of Joan Paul and her baby.
Little Anne saw him coming and ran shrieking joyously to haul him into
the house, as if he would be likely to escape her unless she put forth
her best strength.
“Here’s Kit! See, here’s Kit, Motherkins! Kit’s come!” she announced
needlessly as she towed him into the room.
Mrs. Berkley arose with her white sewing held in her left hand, and
gave her right hand cordially to the young man.
“Very glad to see you,” she said. “I’ve tried to make Anne remember
that you are Mr. Carrington, but she loves you too well to retain my
instructions.”
“Sure! Because I’m not! I’m Kit, eh, Anne? Your little purring kit, or
at least I purr when I see you!” said Kit.
“You’re lovely!” Little Anne sighed enthusiastically over his nonsense.
“Hallo, Mother Joan! Don’t break that baby! Aren’t you holding her
carelessly?” Kit demanded, shaking Joan’s hand and looking anxiously
at Barbara, held under her young mother’s left arm, her head in front
sticking up like a turtle’s, her heels kicking hard and fast on Joan’s
waist at the back.
“Can’t you trust me with her, Kit? I’m glad that you recognize how
precious she is, but, honestly, I like her myself and don’t want to
damage her,” laughed Joan, bringing her daughter right side up into her
arms and kissing her fat neck till the baby choked herself with giggles.
“Say, Joan, there’s something I want to be told. Set it down to my
scientific bent: investigation of socialism, or economics, or anything
statistical you please, but I do want to learn something: Does that
baby ever tire you?” Kit asked his question hesitantly.
“I should say she does, half to pieces,” said Joan, promptly. “I’m
sometimes tempted to try ether on her at night! You know those verses
of Mrs. Kilmer’s about keeping her children asleep? Maybe I don’t say
them!” Joan kissed Barbara again to punctuate her confession.
“But you don’t tire of her the way I mean, do you?” persisted Kit. “You
don’t ever feel as if she weren’t quite worth while, as if you’d rather
be free from the bother----”
“Christopher Carrington,” Joan sternly interrupted him, “one more word
and I’ll call the police and commit you as a dangerous ogre, not fit to
be at large. What in all this world makes you ask me that? As though
any woman worth her salt would feel that way to a little child, even if
it weren’t her own! And when it is----” Joan could end this sentence
only with more violent kisses in the neck and all over the face of the
ecstatically squirming Barbara. “Why, I only wish she were twins or
triplets! I’d like a houseful of the darlings, all sizes, sorts, and
colours! To be the mother of such a creature of God as this baby--Kit,
it’s the most awful, the most beautiful thing in the world! Why did you
ask me that? Whom have you heard talking like a monster, corrupting
your naturally good heart?”
“You’re a sharp little woman, though you don’t betray it always, Joan!”
Kit said with amused admiration. “I’m not corrupted; I only wondered
how you felt. All girls don’t like babies.”
Joan gave him a keen look.
“Avoid the kind that doesn’t,” she advised, tersely.
“First God made angels, then us, and He made everybody but Adam and Eve
a baby,” said little Anne, anxious as she always was to elevate the
conversation to a catechetical standard. “So it would be wicked not to
love babies when God made ’em for us to love, and then went and made
’em so darling that you have to love ’em. Herod didn’t, but he was a
fearfully wicked king. They were all boys, anyway.”
“And Barbara is a girl,” commented Kit. “I hope you don’t think boys
are less fit to live than girls, little Anne?”
“Well,” said little Anne, slowly, “Sister Gervase teaches the
middle-sized ones at my school, and she says boys pass through a
trying--I think she said ‛stage,’ but there aren’t any in Cleavedge;
there are buses in New York on Fifth Avenue, and I rode on top, but I
do think she said ‛stage.’ Sister says they have to be rather bad, but
that there’s lots of good mixed up with it, too. Anyway, she says, what
would we do if there weren’t any boys to grow up men, and that’s what I
think.”
“Do you?” said a gruff voice from the doorway, laden with pessimistic
contempt. “What I think is that no boy at your age ever talked
one-sixteenth part as much as you do, and if boys were more trying than
girls I’d pity ’em. But what’s more, I’d pity their families.” Peter
stalked into the room and threw down an armful of books, nodded to Kit,
and said with the air of one who had outlived emotion:
“I got your books changed at the library, Joan, but what you wanted was
out, except that history essay stuff Antony wanted. And the girl over
there sent something she hoped would suit you, but I don’t suppose it
will.”
“You poor dear Pete!” cried Joan. “You’re a trump to do this tiresome
errand! If they’re not right, never mind; I’ll take them back in the
baby’s carriage when I go out with her to-morrow. I’m sorry I didn’t do
that in the first place; I’ve no business to be such a nuisance!”
“You’re no nuisance; you never were, Joan,” said Peter, graciously. “If
I thought Anne would ever grow up to be a little like you it sure would
be a pleasant thought!”
“Now never mind about little Anne,” interposed Mrs. Berkley, seeing
little Anne getting ready for self-defence, at which she was only too
adept. “She’s a loving little girl who tries to correct her faults,
especially now.” Mrs. Berkley held up the thin white material on which
she was sewing. “You see, Peter, dear, you are too near Anne’s age to
remember how it feels to be that age; we understand it better from our
greater distance. But you are the best lad in the world, Peter the
Second, just as Anne is the dearest little girl.”
Mrs. Berkley, having contrived to suggest to Peter his extreme youth,
proceeded to rejoice the heart which adored her by beaming on him
affectionately that his vanity might not be too deeply wounded.
As Kit looked on and listened to this talk the disturbance of mind with
which he had set out faded away. They were not saying wise things that
could be quoted; they were not doing great deeds, unless it were both
wise and great thus to correct, guide, make happy. Kit felt that it
was. He was not an analyst; he instinctively felt much that he could
not formulate in words; he possessed a code for his own guidance that
he would have found difficult to write out for another. Now he began
to see by the steady light of inward vision recent events cast upon
the screen in their true proportions, the unconscious goodness of this
simple family, the standard by which he measured them.
“I’ve some money that my mother left me,” he said, aloud, as
unexpectedly to himself as to his audience.
Mrs. Berkley looked up, trying to mask her surprise.
“Have you, Kit? That’s nice, though it is not likely that you’ll need
more than the Carrington inheritance,” she said, in her motherly way.
“I didn’t mean to inflict upon you an item of such limited interest,”
said Kit. “I didn’t know I was going to say that; I thought aloud. You
know, Mrs. Berkley, that Aunt Anne loves me in a way that may easily
unlove me if I ever displease her.”
“Well put, Kit,” said Mrs. Berkley. “But do you think you are likely
to displease her? I’d be sorry to have you, not only for your own sake,
but because Miss Carrington is such a piteous, denuded person. It is
ghastly to think of her bleak horizon!”
“I don’t suppose many people pity Miss Anne Carrington,” said Kit.
“But you are right; she is denuded, with a bleak outlook. I don’t know
whether or not I’ll ever displease her, nor how hard it would hit her
if I did; I mean how much she’d resent what I wouldn’t do. But a fellow
can’t go too far, from a sense of duty.”
“Don’t you mean that a fellow can’t go too far, from a _mistaken_
sense of duty, but must go all the way for the sake of actual duty?”
suggested Mrs. Berkley. “You are mysterious, Kit, but we’ll always be
glad if you come to us when you want to thresh out your bothers.”
“I know!” cried little Anne with one of her flashes of unchildlike
perception. “Miss Carrington likes the splendid princess lady, who is
one of the proud step-sisters, better’n you do, Kit!”
Kit gasped. “Anne!” he cried. “What under the sun----?”
“Anne doesn’t realize as much as her remarks convey to others,”
interpolated the child’s mother. “Children of her sort are sensitive
to atmosphere, but they can’t gauge all that it envelops. You haven’t
asked what I am making, Kit, and that is a safe subject!”
“I ask now,” said Kit.
“A dress for me!” cried little Anne, forestalling her mother. “It is
for my First Communion. Mother is making it only straight and full
because she likes it simple, she says. These queer places with the
threads all pulled out aren’t wrong, Kit; they’re for hemstitching and
it’s lovely. Mother’s making it every bit by hand, by her hand. I’ll
pray for you that day, Kit; then you’ll be all right. Is anything not
all right now, dear Kit?”
“Everything is perfectly right, little Anne,” Kit answered, “but I
wouldn’t mind being prayed for by you, if you wouldn’t mind doing it.
Queer little Anne!”
He kissed her thin cheek, clasping the small eager face raised to him,
its great eyes searching his face as if they would read his soul.
“Everyone! Everyone in all this world that I love!” little Anne
solemnly assured him. “It will be on Corpus Christi, at the
nine-o’clock Mass, in the real church; not the basement. Kit, I shall
walk up the aisle all in white and have on a veil, and, and, Kit, I do
hope, _hope_ I shall not die before that! And Father is going to
give the flowers, and so is Antony. And we shall all be there, in the
church, all my own I love. Even Peter-two!”
“And I? Might I come?” asked Kit, hesitating whether he should ask the
privilege.
“Oh, goody, goody!” cried little Anne, instantly changed back into a
joyous little girl, and whirling madly about, clapping her hands. “Kit
can come, Kit can come! All K’s--no; all C’s--no; well, it sounds all
something alike, anyway! What a day it will be! Mother, Kit will come
to the church for me!”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Berkley. “Thank you, Kit, for loving my little
Anne. Must you go? Come again soon, dear Kit Carrington!”
Then all went out on the steps to see him off: Joan, with her baby on
her hip; Peter, dignified, but affectionate to Kit, whom he admired;
Mrs. Berkley, motherly and kind; little Anne clinging fondly to his
hand.
As he walked down the street he felt that he had learned the wisdom
that he had gone to seek.