_Richard_
Anne halted, frightened by Richard’s face.
“Well, dear?” he said, and extended his hand.
She came on slowly, fear clutching her and a sense of guilt. When she
reached the bench Richard lightly clasped the hand that she laid in his
and drew her down beside him.
“Did you have a pleasant walk, dear?” he asked. He spoke quietly, but
his voice was strained.
Anne did not speak and Richard turned toward her.
“Are you tired, brave little woman? And aren’t you going to tell me all
about it?”
“Richard, what has happened?” cried Anne. “What can have happened since
I left you so light-hearted, so happy, so boyish? Are you ill? You
aren’t ill?”
“No, dear, but I grew old,” said Richard. “Tell me about it, Anne;
don’t be afraid to trust me. Do you think I could blame you, sweet, or
want anything but your dearest desire?”
“Oh, Richard, Richard, who has wounded you, what has happened?” cried
Anne again. “Who has been here?”
“No one has been here but little Anne,” said Richard.
“Ah, little Anne!” She caught her breath. “There was nothing for me to
tell you, Richard, dearest, but--what has she told you?”
“Little Anne’s perception, though limited by lack of full
understanding, is truer than yours, dear. Little Anne had heard it said
that it was not fair to me, so she came to put her knowledge into my
hands, actuated by her extreme conscientiousness and without consulting
her elders. So she acted directly and properly, as children will. It
was true that it was not fair to me, dear Anne! But that little Anne
came to me I might have gone on and made you wretched, you whom of
all the world I most want to make happy! You see, dear girl, this was
not fair to me; little Anne was right. I am not a dragon, devouring
maidens, least of all this dear maid! And now aren’t you ready to tell
me all about it? Tell me as if I were your brother. What did you say to
Kit to-day? Did you promise him to come to me and tell me how dearly
you loved him? He is a fine lad, dear!”
“Oh, Richard, Richard!” moaned Anne. “Oh, Richard, the lion-hearted!”
“Come, that’s better than to be a dragon, though the lion’s share is
supposed to be formidable! Anne, dear, you, being you, do not need to
be told that to love means to desire the good of the person beloved.
When is Kit---- Did you promise Kit to tell me what might have been the
sad story, but now is to be a happy one?” asked Richard.
“I told Kit that I would not see him again till he and I were cured of
this unhappy love. It will be cured, Richard! Trust me; I shall love my
husband and no one else!” Anne cried.
“Surely. You will not turn from Kit, your husband! Do you imagine that
I think of you as fickle, playing with love, my dear?” said Richard.
“Not Kit, not Kit my husband; you, you, Richard!” cried Anne, wildly.
“Kit saw it as I did. He couldn’t see it so at first, because he is
undisciplined. It is natural to take what you want if you can snatch
it. But he did see, and he willingly laid down his--no; he had no claim
to lay down--he willingly admitted your claim. And he has said good-bye
to me, Richard, and is gone, wholly, completely gone out of my life.
Don’t say, don’t think I deceived you! How could I tell you? I knew
you would send me away. And I want to stay. I’m going to marry you,
Richard, best and most unselfish of men; you, not Kit Carrington; no
one but you, only you!”
“Dear Anne,” began Richard with an effort that Anne was sobbing too
hard to see, “you cannot marry me, my beloved, because I will not marry
you! See to what shocking lengths you drive me! I am blind, indeed,
for I did not for an instant suspect that you loved Kit. Thank heaven
little Anne healed that form of blindness! I have often felt that you
did not fully love me, dear, but I set down much of your reserve to
your natural reticence, your innate shrinking from a lover’s arms. I
knew that a great love, such as mine was for you, would rise at flood
and break down such barriers, but, though I saw that you did not love
me like that, I thought that you loved me so much that the tide of it
would rise to its flood in you. I loved to think that I should write
my name on this white page indelibly. I did not dream that you loved
someone else. This justifies me, so forgive me, Anne, for the pain I
stupidly caused you.”
“Richard, kill me if you must, but not with such words!” cried Anne,
turning to hide her face in her hands on the back of the garden bench.
“Will you not listen to me? I want to marry you. I want to marry you!
And you were right; I shall love you best. Just as now I hold you
higher than any one else, so I shall love you best. I have never for an
instant thought of breaking my word to you. I had no more idea of Kit’s
feeling for me than you had. Nor did I realize that I cared for him.
It was a strange revelation of unsuspected feeling on both sides that
overtook us. I have not listened to him, have not dallied with this
madness. And Kit is honourable. He was tempted to take his own good,
but he is a man. When he considered, he knew that it must be you, not
he. He is gone, gone forever. Time will cure him. He has done right
and I’ve no fear but that he will be happy. So let us try to put it out
of our minds; let us pretend that we had an ugly dream. We are awake
now; the dream is over. Richard, dearest Richard, forgive me! Can’t you
forgive me and let the dream go by?”
“Anne, child, yes; the dream shall go by! But my dream, which was truly
a dream; not your reality,” said Richard, gently taking her hands and
drawing her head on his shoulder. “Cry here, faithful true Anne, for
I am Richard, your brother. But never Richard, your husband! Nothing
this world could offer me, nothing that you could say, would make me
marry you, dearest of all women! Consider for a moment: you who are so
honourable, so eager to uphold the honour of Kit, whom you love, would
you have me marry one whom I knew loved and wanted someone else? Would
you? It is beyond possibility. It is best for us both that we never
again remotely approach to a suggestion that this might be possible. I
tell you again what I have already told you: I am profoundly grateful
to little Anne Berkley for averting the horrible tragedy, the dreadful
mistake I came near making. Sooner or later I should have found you
out, dear, and I’m not sure that I shouldn’t have died of it! So let us
be thankful that I was one of little Anne’s beetles and that she set me
on my feet to run away in time! Now it is all settled, dear one, and we
are tired. I am going into the house. Don’t come just now, Anne.”
Richard arose unsteadily, at the end of his endurance, exhausted by his
effort.
Anne looked up at him with the wet eyes of a chastised child.
“Mayn’t I work for you? Oh, I can’t! Oh, Richard, let me marry you and
work for you!” she begged.
“The forbidden subject so soon!” Richard held up a rebuking hand.
“There is no work; I shall not work for a long time. The play is done;
your play that you made. Don’t you think we would better send for
Wilberforce?”
“Oh, yes; surely he must come! Will you send for him, or shall I?” Anne
cried, eagerly.
“I’ll telegraph him when I go into the house,” said Richard. “Go now,
and try to rest, dear. It has been a cruel afternoon for you. Why not
go to Joan Paul and get her to take you in? You should not be alone in
a boarding-house. And, Anne, one last word! You spoke of forgiving you
a few moments ago; surely you know that there is not the least thing
to forgive? You have been so true, so fine, so kind that all my life
I shall have you before my eyes, the ideal woman who quite simply, at
any cost, does what is right, not what is pleasantest, easiest. That is
rare, my child, in man or woman, and I’m grateful to have known you.
And remember, Anne, the sooner I hear that you are happy, the sooner I
shall throw off my sense of guilt for having been so dull as to accept
your mercy upon a blind man.”
Richard bent and took Anne’s hands in his, laying them, palms upward,
in his own hands. He kissed first one then the other cold little palm
and closed the fingers over the kisses, as one plays with a child.
“That is your freedom, in your own hands, dear, and good-bye,” he said.
He went unsteadily up the path, stooping, then remembered, and
straightened himself, throwing back his head. Anne watched him go, her
hands upon her knees, her fingers still closed tight over the palms in
which Richard had deposited his tender dismissal and farewell. When he
had gone she sat for a few moments with bowed head and closed eyes.
Then she, too, arose and left the lovely garden by its low side gate.
She went miserably to her room on her return to the boarding-house.
She threw herself on her bed and lay staring out of the window,
disregarding the summons to dinner. There was but one definite thought
in her mind. Now, whatever happened, she must never marry Kit. When he
learned that Richard had refused to let her fulfil her promise to him,
of course Kit would jubilantly come to carry her off. But Anne felt
that for her and Kit to be happy when Richard was lonely and wretched
would be past bearing. She was not capable of reasoning now; her very
muscles seemed to ache with pity for Richard and with groundless
self-reproach. She had no desire to summon Joan; she was one with
little Anne in a desire to do penance.
Little Anne, like most children of her type, had a retroactive
conscience; it was especially likely to bother her at night.
This night as bedtime approached she reflected that she had gone to see
Mr. Latham without consulting her mother, and that she had told him
something that her mother had forbidden her to mention to any one. To
be sure the actuating cause of her going was an addition to the events
of that morning when Anne and Kit had met in her home; the conversation
at Joan’s had seemed to her to free her from the obligation of silence,
had imposed an obligation to speak; but now, at night, the more she
considered, the surer she became that it had been wrong to go to Mr.
Latham to set him right without her mother’s consent. It was done past
mending, to be sure, but little Anne was well-trained in the duty of
confessing her faults. Therefore, as the summer dusk deepened, she
crept into her mother’s arms and with heavy sighs told the story of her
afternoon.
She had not been prepared for her mother’s extreme perturbation over
the tale. Mrs. Berkley became tense with excitement and asked so many
questions as to the effect of it upon Mr. Latham that after little Anne
had described how gay she had found him; how tired and still he seemed
when she had left him; all that he had said, exactly what little Anne
had said to him, the child was too sleepy to feel properly contrite.
Her mother told her that she had done wrong to take upon herself
interference in older people’s affairs, especially to disobey her
mother, but little Anne went to bed forgiven and made peaceful by her
mother’s kiss. She fell asleep instantly, infolded by the sense of a
world in which everything came right.
When little Anne was tucked away, Mrs. Berkley hastened to the
telephone.
“Oh, Joan,” her husband heard her say, “do go right around to find Anne
Dallas! Yes. I don’t know, I’m _sure_! No, not ill. Well, I’m
afraid so. Anne has been calling this afternoon. Can’t you guess? I’m
afraid to tell you over the wire. Yes, that’s better; she’ll tell you.
That’s right, dearie. Do hurry. Good-night; kiss the baby for me.”
Mrs. Berkley hung up and turned her perturbed face upon her laughing
husband.
“_Dea ex machina_ again?” he asked. “Takes some machine to stand
up under our small daughter’s driving, Barbara! It’s my impression that
the machine of this particular goddess is a high-geared racing car!”
Mr. Berkley’s tone expressed the father’s pride in a clever child, the
father who leaves the guidance of that cleverness to the mother, and as
to his share of it enjoys it as a comedy.
Joan hurried to Antony.
“Come, Tony,” she said. “Mother just called up; we’ve got to go around
to Anne Dallas’s boarding place. Mother didn’t like to tell me what
has happened--you know on this party line the receivers are positively
restless when one talks!--but little Anne has been visiting. I’m sure
it was Mr. Latham! I’d be willing to wager anything that she’s told
him about Anne and Kit--as much as she knows, and no human being
could state how much that was! I haven’t had a moment’s peace--when I
recalled it--since Kit was here and little Anne had baby over in the
corner while we talked. She looked so perfectly unconscious that I’m
sure she was paying strict attention to what we said! Well, come on,
Antony; Anne is in some sort of trouble.”
“Gracious, what it is to have young friends who are in love and a young
sister who is a busybody!” Antony pretended to grumble, but he went
readily enough.
Joan left her husband on the boarding-house piazza, where he sat in
awkward silence among observant strangers, with Guard’s head between
his knees, while Joan ran up to Anne’s room.
“Oh, Joan, how good to see you! Richard told me to call you, but I
couldn’t,” cried Anne, rising on one elbow as Joan dropped down beside
her and took the girl in her arms, instantly overwhelmed with pity as
she saw the misery in Anne’s tear-stained face.
“That little Anne!” exclaimed Joan. “Tell me what happened. I think I
know: little Anne has told Richard Latham our secret!”
“And he has been so heavenly good to me; so generous, tender, that
there are no words for it, Joan,” Anne confirmed her. “I saw Kit this
afternoon. We had parted forever, and when I came back from that walk
there was Richard! He will not marry me, Joan! I begged him to marry
me, and truly I could be peacefully content to marry him, but he will
not listen to it. Oh, Joan, he is so lonely and so fine!”
“He is all of that! I already know it, and some time you will tell me
how he proved it anew this afternoon. He couldn’t marry you, dear! It
would be horrid to accept such a sacrifice, now that he knows. Try
to trust that things will come out better than you fear. Little Anne
is not usually disobedient. Perhaps she has been an instrument of
Providence. Did you have any dinner? Ah, I knew it! You are coming to
make me a visit, so get together what you need for the night. We’ll
come around here in the morning and get what you need for as many weeks
as you’ll stay. Baby will be such a comfort to you! I’ll let her come
into your bed in the morning. She’s the sweetest thing in bed! Antony
is downstairs, waiting for us, with Guard. Come, Anne, hurry! Antony
hates to sit on a piazza, among boarding women! Where’s your kit----
Oh, Anne, please! I didn’t mean--I mean your bag! And a nightie and
toothbrush, your brush and comb. You’ll be fed at my house.”
Joan fluttered about gathering up the articles she enumerated. Anne
was swept along, powerless to resist the loving kindness that launched
her out of her swamp of despairing lethargy into a tide of action that
implied hope.
Antony behaved with the utmost decorum, not betraying that he saw
anything unusual in Anne’s disfigured face nor in her unexpected visit.
Guard thrust his nose into Anne’s hand; Joan held tight to her arm, all
the while talking her friendly, inconsequent talk which had in it more
method than was apparent on the surface. Better than any eloquence it
expressed sympathy; what was more, it carried with it the conviction
that life was not wholly sad, nor its troubles irremediable.
Joan herself got Anne a dainty meal of the sort that can be eaten after
crying has worn out appetite and digestion. The tea was perfectly drawn
and Anne felt better for it.
Joan let the girl peep at sleeping Barbara before she took her into
the cool, restful guest chamber, and tucked her into bed. She laughed
the while at herself, saying she was like little Anne, and loved to
play house, but none the less she knew precisely what the lonely,
discouraged girl needed. Then she traced a tiny cross on Anne’s
forehead, kissed her, and said:
“Good-night. God bless you, dear! That’s what Mother always said and
did to us. I always knew that was why I slept so sweetly and so safe.
Go to sleep at once, Anne, dear,” said Joan as she left her.
An hour later she was gratified to find, when she peeped in, that Anne
was sleeping sweetly under her good-night blessing.
Antony was removing his collar when Joan come into their room. He
smiled quizzically at her in the glass.
“Confess!” he said. “You love to have your friends in trouble so you
can cosset them!”
“Oh, no. Shame on you, Antony Paul! But I do love to cosset them when
they are in trouble, which is not the same thing in the least!” Joan
defended herself. “This is not a little trouble. Mr. Latham must be
desolate. Dear, splendid Mr. Latham! And how Anne can ever bring
herself to be happy with Kit, knowing it, is beyond me.”
“I grant you all you like on the Latham side of it. He must be hard hit
and it’s a bad matter, that’s sure. But as to Anne and Kit--poppycock,
Madam Sentimentalia! The idea of an old matron like you talking such
nonsense! What shall we give them, silver or glass? And here’s this to
consider, Joan: As a matter of economy of unhappiness, there are two
happy by this arrangement, one unhappy. I’m no end sorry about Latham,
but that seems to economize pain. Perhaps his unhappiness is durable
and deep enough to throw out my arithmetic. Well, however it works,
we’ve no hand in it, though apparently my sister-in-law had!” Antony
laughed, and added: “I’ve got to go back downstairs; I left my watch on
the table.”
* * * * *
When Antony was going back for his forgotten watch Minerva was softly
closing the door of Miss Carrington’s room.
“Miss Carrington, I have news for you,” she announced. “Mr. Latham’s
engagement to Miss Dallas is broken.”
“Good heavens! Minerva, what makes you think so?” demanded Miss
Carrington, swinging her feet to the floor and sitting erect on her
couch.
“I _know_ so,” Minerva corrected her. “I have been to the movies
with Mrs. Lumley. This afternoon the Berkley child was there. Mr.
Latham was hoity-toity when she came. He’s been that way lately, Mrs.
Lumley says; tickled to death his play’s done, and happy over being
engaged. Well, when little Anne left he sat alone on the garden bench
for the longest time, looking about killed; just limp and half dead.
Then in comes Miss Dallas and they talked. You could see from the
house it was serious, Mrs. Lumley says. Then Miss Dallas cried on his
shoulder and he treated her like she had a broken bone, or her last,
final sickness on her. At last he kissed her hands; kind of like a
deathbed scene, Mrs. Lumley said it was. She was in the dining room,
but it has those magnesia blinds you can turn, so she saw it all plain.
Then Mr. Latham came into the house, and after a little Miss Dallas
went away. Mrs. Lumley didn’t see her go, because she went back into
the pantry when Mr. Latham came in, and went on with her mayonnaise.
Not that she needed to; he went right on up to his room. He didn’t come
to dinner, nor would he let Stetson take up a tray; nothing but coffee
later on. So it’s surely broken. Mrs. Lumley says there’s no more doubt
of it than of the laws of the needs of Prussians. I thought you’d
better know.”
“What can have happened? It sounds like a renunciation as you describe
it,” murmured Miss Carrington. “Kit has been strange lately. He walked
about last night for ages. I tapped on his door and begged him to go
to bed, but he only put on slippers and still prowled; it was really
worse, for the padded sound is more annoying than a louder one.
To-night at dinner he was absolutely silent and colourless. I was
going to ask what was wrong, but reflected that a boy hates to have
ill-health noticed. He can’t endure Mr. Lanbury; he was dining here,
but it was more than that. I do wonder----” Miss Carrington stopped.
“So did I, and so do I, Miss Carrington,” said Minerva. “It sort of
looks---- Yet why? And you see little Anne Berkley comes into it there.
Mr. Latham was gay till she came and what could she----?” Minerva
talked with elisions.
“Kit goes to the Berkleys’ a great deal, and that child misses
very little that happens, or is said where she is,” commented Miss
Carrington. “Minerva, I hope and pray that engagement is not broken! If
it is--no matter if Helen is lost to him, Kit shall not marry a nobody,
without family, money, beauty--beyond considerable sweet prettiness! He
shall _not_!”
“As to that, Miss Carrington, it’s hard to say what will happen in a
world like this where promises mean nothing, and there’s no principle.
Once I, myself, had the promise of a real nice-mannered man, and gave
my own to him, but here I am and have been these twenty years gone! One
thing more Mrs. Lumley told me: She said Mr. Latham had telegraphed Mr.
Wilberforce to come on as quick’s he conveniently could.”
“Mr. Wilberforce! It was he got that situation for Anne Dallas! It
looks as though she might have seriously displeased Mr. Latham that he
sends for the one responsible for her being there! Well, well, Minerva,
I’m truly afraid that the engagement is broken.”
Miss Carrington arose with a long sigh to put herself into Minerva’s
hands to be made ready for the night.
“Oh, there’s no mistake about it, Miss Carrington. Mrs. Lumley is a
good deal of a lump, but when it comes to things like that, when she
looks she sees, whether it’s behind blinds or close by. I thought you’d
find comfort in Mr. Wilberforce’s coming, having the hope that Miss
Dallas had done something she’d better not have done. Otherwise, I’m
free to confess, I think the chance of your holding back Mr. Kit is
pretty slender.”
Minerva pulled her mistress’s shoulder snaps open viciously as she
spoke. She was troubled by Miss Carrington’s recent failure in health,
but she dearly liked to suggest that Kit might foil her.