_Wilberforce, the Painter_
Bibiana, little Anne’s former nurse, answered the telephone call.
“This is Mr. Latham. May I speak to Miss Berkley?” said the voice at
the other end of the wire.
“Do you want Mrs. Paul, that was Miss Joan?” asked Bibiana.
“I want Miss Berkley, Miss Anne Berkley, please,” Richard insisted,
and Bibiana turned away with a grunt. “Just little Anne! Anne, come
and speak to Mr. Latham. He’s calling you,” she added to the child who
had fallen into the habit of loitering at hand when the telephone bell
rang, in the faint hope of getting a chance to talk over the wire.
“Mr. Latham wants me to come to see him!” cried little Anne after a
brief and, on her part, chuckling telephone conversation. “Please,
Mother dear, mayn’t I?”
“Why, yes. He must be lonely,” Mrs. Berkley hesitated. “But
don’t--well, there’s no use in trying to forestall your speeches, Anne!
I suppose you can’t do any more harm--or was it good? Run along, dear,
but first show me your hands and let me brush your hair.”
Neat and decorous, little Anne presented herself in the Latham Street
house. Richard looked ill, but he smiled at the child, welcoming her
warmly.
“It’s only a ceremonial call; we aren’t going to play anything, little
Anne,” he said. “Do you mind chatting? I felt the need of you, my
dear.”
Quick little Anne caught the note in his voice. She always stood in awe
of the poet, rarely was as perfectly at ease with him as with her other
adult friends, but now she ran to him and bestowed herself on the arm
of his chair and put her arm around his neck, her cheek on his head, as
if he were Peter in trouble.
“I think it’s most fun of anything to talk when people will talk
sensible and int’resting,” she said.
“I’ll try, Anne,” Richard said, weakly. “Do you think that by any
chance Anne in your case stands for Anomaly?”
“No, just Anne,” said little Anne. “When I’m confirmed I shall take
some splendid name for my second one. When I was small I used to
think I’d take Ursula, but now sometimes I think Emerentiana; it’s
so--so--nobody has it.”
“Poor Nobody!” said Richard, falling into his habit of playing with
little Anne. “Pretty hard on her to have that name! Where did you get
hold of it?”
“She was a little girl stoned to death for being a Christian, in the
catacombs,” explained Anne. “They pegged rocks at her, those pagans!
Don’t you think it must have been awful to have lived in those times?
Either you were a Christian and got killed, boiled in oil, and
everything; or else you weren’t, and were terribly wicked. And if you
weren’t a noble character you might wobble when you had to choose.”
Unexpectedly to himself, Richard laughed.
“You might, indeed, little Anne! And I was right to invite you to see
me. I thought you’d elevate me in mind and spirits! If you were older
wouldn’t you come here to help me with my work, read to me, and all
that?”
“Like--like to!” Little Anne corrected herself with no small adroitness
for a person of her age. “Do you suppose I could now? I’ve tried
Peter-two’s typewriter. It doesn’t go fast with one finger, my way,
and the letters get kind of snarled before each other and behind
each other; not the way they ought to stand in the word, but maybe
if I practised lots! I can read ’most anything that isn’t too queer
subjec’s; reading never bothers me dreadfully. Maybe you’d spell the
worst words?”
“I’ll wait for you, little Anne!” promised Richard. “I’ll have to have
somebody else here while I’m waiting, but when you’re older I’ll toss
her lightly out of the window and open the door for you, bowing deeply
while you enter to take command of my typewriter, my books, my work,
and me.”
“Well,” sighed little Anne, “I s’pose you have to wait! But I’ll be
eight in a little while and Mother says the older you grow the faster
the years whisk by. After my birthday Christmas is awf’ly long coming,
and it does seem a good while in winter before Easter, and the last
part of school’s kind of slow, but summer goes pretty fast. Maybe it
won’t seem so very, very long before I can help you?”
“It won’t!” Richard assured her. “Especially if you come here a great
deal in the meantime. Little Anne, is Miss Dallas with your sister?”
“Yes, she is,” little Anne admitted, hesitantly. “She’s right there.”
“Is she well?” asked Richard.
“Not so very exactly,” little Anne said, reluctantly. “But you can’t be
if you cry too much. It makes you feel as used up as anything to cry a
great deal, _I_ think.”
“Oh, it does! Is Anne crying a great deal, little Anne? Will you tell
her that I beg her to put me entirely out of her mind, and that I am
going on well?” cried Richard.
“Well, yes, I will,” little Anne said. “But I don’t think it will stop
her worrying over you. I heard her tell Joan that the poem I found just
hunted her--or something; she meant she kept thinking about it.”
“The poem you found? I don’t know it, little Anne. Where did you find
it? Why does it haunt her?” asked Richard.
“Upstairs in your hall, quite long ago; about Fourth of July time. A
poem you’d written yourself. It was sort of hard for Anne to read it.
She thought first she had to copy it; then she didn’t. She made me put
it back just ’xactly where I found it,” little Anne explained.
Richard gasped and fell back in his chair.
“That!” he exclaimed. “You found that and showed it to Anne! And it
was not long after that she came to me---- Ah, now I understand, now
I understand! That was how she knew! She tried so hard, dear little
soul, she tried so hard to make me happy! I never quite saw why she
acted as she did till now. Little Anne, little Anne, you have played
an important part in my life. You have endowed me and impoverished me.
I don’t see why it all had to be, but I’ve no doubt that I shall some
day. Now tell me something else: Do you know whether Kit Carrington
knows that Anne is with your sister, and that she will never marry me?
For she never will, little Anne!”
“Oh, I know that!” cried little Anne. “I don’t know whether Kit does or
not. Want me to tell him?”
Richard almost smiled; a gleam of amusement went over his unhappy face.
“Always ready to turn another beetle!” he said. “On the whole, yes,
little Anne. Tell him all that you know. It will be told in a better
way than if it were clearer. Anne will complete the story. And tell Kit
that I asked you to tell him. Tell him that I am anxious to hear that
Anne has stopped crying and is smiling at him. Tell him just that. And
that I send him my blessing--will you, dear?”
“Yes,” said little Anne. “I’ll tell him to-day. He’s been to our house
’bout twice each day since Anne’s been at Joan’s. Anne won’t let him
come there, nor she won’t send him one word, not even on the telephone
by me. Joan told her she’d shake her, maybe, ’cause what was the use of
being mis’ble every way? I’ll tell Kit, Mr. Latham. And, Mr. Latham,
there’s a quite tall, thin man coming in here. He’s got a bag. Maybe
he’s a Mormon mish’nary; they do come like that. This one doesn’t look
like one, though; he’s much nicer. He’s got a brown moustache, and a
flat, boxy thing, and a bag.”
“Wilberforce!” cried Richard, starting up so violently that he nearly
upset little Anne.
That did not halt him. Leaving little Anne to take care of her
equilibrium, he rushed into the hall, seized the newcomer by the lapel
of his coat and cried, joyously:
“Ted, dear old man, how did you make it so soon?”
“Message came just in time for me to make the last train that connected
to get me here to-day,” said Ted. “You look like the mischief, Dick!
What has happened that you sent for me in such urgent haste?”
“I’ll tell you the whole story later. It is Anne and I; that’s enough
for now. We’ve given it all up, Ted, fortunately,” said Richard.
“Fortunately? Well, you don’t look it! What’s Anne been doing? I know
she never went back on anything in her life. So what have you been
doing? Though that’s as fool a question as the other,” said Edwin
Wilberforce, frowning.
“Ted, I can’t talk about it now. Anne was only sorry for me, and
I discovered in time the cruel task she had put upon her blessed
little self. That’s all. Have you eaten? Stetson, Stetson, here’s Mr.
Wilberforce already! Order him a lunch, will you?” Richard called out
of the rear door in the hall. Then he brought his friend into his
library, taking his hat and bags, fussing over him with an affection
that eloquently told of the relation between the poet and the painter.
“Well, of all things! Where did you find the little girl? I never
heard of her,” exclaimed Ted, amazed by the apparition of little Anne
sitting stiffly, her hands clasped in her lap, her feet crossed at the
ankles, on the arm of Richard’s chair.
“This is Miss Anne Berkley, Mr. Wilberforce,” said Richard with a
gesture of courtly dignity for little Anne’s benefit. “She is an
intimate friend of mine who visits me often, with whom I play happily,
who will some day, she promises, when enough time has passed, come to
be eyes to me and help me to write poems and plays. She is a lady who
has a vocation which she herself discovered, and which proved to be
more significant as a prophecy than she foresaw. Her vocation, she one
day announced to her mother, is setting beetles on their feet when they
lie, helpless, on their backs. I have been one of her beetles, as I’ll
explain by and by. She goes to a convent school, and is in many ways
mediæval. She is one of a delightful family, Catholics of the right
sort. Anne is staying now with this little Anne’s lovable young matron
sister, Mrs. Antony Paul. And that is enough of the History of Queen
Anne the Less, isn’t it, little Anne?”
“It is quite a lot,” she agreed. “Shall I go home now? I’ll come again.”
“Would you mind shaking hands, Miss Little-Anne?” asked Edwin
Wilberforce, stooping from his great height to carry out his
suggestion. “I wish you would take me for another friend of yours. I
can play games and the jews’-harp! When you hear me play Wagner on the
jews’-harp you will be proud that you know me.”
Little Anne looked up at him with dancing eyes. She did not know
Wagner, but she did know the jews’-harp.
“I can play on blades of grass perfec’ly wonderful,” she said.
“You’ll do!” shouted Ted Wilberforce. “We’ll have duets. Say, Miss
Little-Anne, I’d like to paint you! Seated in a chair with a high,
carved back, clad in a long, straight green gown falling to your feet,
and having a nice little, tight little white yoke top with a band
around your throat; your hair straight and ribbonless on each side of
your thin little face, and in your hands, resting on your knees, a fine
old tooled “Book of Hours” which I own! I’d call the picture--call
it--The Mystic! That’s it! With that face and those eyes, visions just
beyond, eh, Dick?”
“You’ve got her,” agreed Richard. “Will you sit, little Anne?”
“Do you paint people?” inquired little Anne. “I thought you put cows in
your pictures. Mr. Latham has a lovely, still field with a cow in it;
he said you painted it.”
“_Still_ field! Fair for adjectives, eh, Dick?” cried Ted,
delighted. “I assure you, Miss Little-Anne, that I also paint
portraits. Will you sit to me?”
“I’d perfec’ly love it!” said little Anne. “But I never was pretty; I
was always dark and thin. I thought sitters were pretty. I have a niece
who is the prettiest child in all the world. She’s so fat and pink she
has to dimple. I never was a fas’nating child like Barbara, but if
you’d like to paint my picture I’d be so pleased I couldn’t say it. And
there’s one thing, I can sit as still!”
“Then that’s settled! And when you sit to me we shall chat all the
time, and possibly we shall let Mr. Latham come to help us talk.
I’m going to stay awhile; we’ll meet often, I hope. Good-bye, Miss
Little-Anne.”
Ted Wilberforce shook hands again with little Anne; plainly he had
capitulated to her at once.
Little Anne put her arms around Richard’s neck and kissed him hard.
“Good-bye, dear; I shall pray for you lots, for you’re really quite
pale,” she whispered.
“The dear little saintly old lady!” cried Ted, who had caught the
whisper and was watching little Anne away with amusement that was not
wholly amusement.
Miss Carrington on this morning had encountered Kit in a mood that
she did not recognize. She had spoken to him of the broken engagement
between Richard Latham and Anne Dallas. She found that Kit was prepared
to announce to her, not the accomplished fact, but his resolution that
his own engagement to Anne Dallas would soon follow this break.
“Do I know what caused this break between Miss Dallas and Mr. Latham?
Certainly I do, Aunt Anne. Mr. Latham learned that Miss Dallas and I
love each other. We had agreed that she must fulfil her promise to Mr.
Latham, but, naturally, he wouldn’t marry a girl who loved another man!
Like the honourable man that he is he renounced his own happiness for
hers. Anne won’t see me yet; she is miserably unhappy about Latham, but
she will see me, and it won’t be long before I introduce my wife to
you, Aunt Anne,” said Kit.
“I hope so, but you won’t introduce Anne Dallas to me as your wife,”
Miss Carrington had answered, instantly in a towering rage as she
recognized in Kit a determination that made him at once a man to be
reckoned with. At the same time her own, new physical weakness was more
perceptible as her temper rose.
“Christopher Carrington, I will not consent to your marriage to that
girl! Nothing against her personally, but she is fortuneless, nameless,
no family, no anything! Never!”
“Nonsense, Aunt Anne! Please don’t talk foolishly,” said Kit, and left
her almost choking in enraged surprise that Kit had dared to dismiss
her as ridiculous.
By the afternoon Miss Carrington had regained her self-command, and
with it her usual cunning. It was notorious that love was whetted by
opposition; she must try in some other way to circumvent Kit. She
discussed the situation with Helen Abercrombie, who heartlessly laughed
at her.
“Try everything you can think of, Miss Carrington! By all means see
Anne Dallas and convey to her the harm she’d do Kit if she married him
against your will; that you can punish him roundly. But it’s my candid
opinion that you would do yourself less harm lying down and reading a
problem novel, and just as much affect Kit’s silly determination. The
conclusion I’ve reached during this visit in regard to Kit is that he
knows his own mind,” Helen said.
Nevertheless, Miss Carrington summoned Minerva to array her in her
most impressive calling costume, and to order Noble to have the car
around at half-past four that she might solicitously inquire after Anne
Dallas’s welfare, having heard that she was not well.
“No kind of use in it, Miss Carrington,” Minerva remarked, getting down
to lace her mistress’s shoes. She did not specify what was useless, but
Miss Carrington was depressed by this identity of view on the part of
two such keen women as Helen and Minerva.
On the way to Antony Paul’s house Miss Carrington met Edwin Wilberforce
walking alone toward the station. She bade Noble stop, and greeted the
artist cordially.
“Delighted you are here, Mr. Wilberforce! I am anxious about Mr.
Latham. Won’t you get in?” she said.
“No, thanks. I’m going down to look up some canvases I sent ahead; they
ought to be here. I hope you are well, Miss Carrington?”
“Not altogether. I am too old to be bothered, and I am bothered.” Miss
Carrington spoke with an effect of involuntary frankness. “My foolish
nephew is troubling me, has fixed his silly will on a poor girl. Mr.
Latham also was attracted by her, and for him she would have been
excellent. He needs just her patient devotion; she is sweet and refined
in manner. But Kit has his name to make; Mr. Latham’s name would cover
his wife’s lack. I believe you recommended this girl to our poet.
She’s a nice little creature, but a penniless, nameless wife would be a
fatal mistake for Kit.”
Edwin Wilberforce was regarding the old lady with an expression that
she was too engrossed to see. When she paused he laughed and said:
“Oh, well, I’m prejudiced, but I think Wilberforce is not a bad name.”
Miss Carrington stared at the irrelevancy of this remark.
“But surely! Who could doubt it? Not only in itself, but when borne by
a famous artist! However, I really can’t see what that has to do with
Anne Dallas and my troubles.”
This time Wilberforce stared. Then he laughed, and said:
“Oh, don’t you? That’s rather good fun, Miss Carrington! But Dallas
is a good name, too, though if your nephew married Miss Dallas the
honourable name of Carrington would engulf it.”
He raised his hat and walked on, somewhat unceremoniously, leaving the
old lady to puzzle over his queer speech.
Miss Carrington was met by Joan with Barbara clinging unsteadily to her
skirt.
“Thank you, Miss Carrington; Miss Dallas is well, rather tired. She is
on the side piazza, in a steamer chair, having a beautiful time reading
and resting. Will you go there? It is cooler to-day than the front
piazza.”
Anne looked frail and sweet as Joan led Miss Carrington toward her. Her
face and gown were both colourless; her great dark eyes, her masses of
satin-smooth dark hair contrasted sharply with their setting.
“Oh, Miss Carrington!” Anne exclaimed, springing to her feet; she was
no longer pale.
“Dear little Miss Dallas, I hope that you are better?” said Miss
Carrington in her cool voice, with its clear-cut, Italian-like
articulation. “I am so extremely sorry about this disaster and for
you, enmeshed in it, that I have come to tell you so. Besides, my dear,
I want to know you better and I truly think it may be well for you to
know me.”
“I will not dispute the latter clause, Miss Carrington,” said
Anne, pulling forward a chair and motioning Miss Carrington into
her abandoned steamer chair. She smiled as she spoke, and Kit’s
aunt admitted to herself the charm of Anne’s face and manner,
the irresistible attraction of her voice. “You are kind to be so
sympathetic to me. I am unhappy. I am horrified to know that I have
given Mr. Latham pain.”
“Surely, you would be. It is most unfortunate. Don’t you think that
after a time, perhaps a long time, you will be able to convince him
that there is no obstacle between you?” suggested Miss Carrington. Anne
turned and looked at her intently.
“Why, no, Miss Carrington,” she said after a brief pause.
“Dear child, I must be frank with you.” Miss Carrington spoke gently as
if to soften her effect. “You fancy that you are fond of my boy; he is
quite sure that he is fond of you. Doubtless you are both right--for
the time being. But men do not die of love now any more than when
Polonius went to that reversed supper. Kit will get over his fancy,
sweet as you are, and so will you recover from yours, fine as the
boy is. As to that, even my partiality cannot see that Kit surpasses
Richard Latham! Though I sincerely admire you, I will never consent
to your marriage with Kit! He is to make his name in the world, as I
told you when I spoke of him to you several weeks ago. He has allowed
the marriage that I meant him to make to slip through his fingers. You
naughty, pretty child, I wonder what share you had in that? But there
are plenty of opportunities for a personable man like Kit to marry
advantageously. You have no money, no social position. Pardon me, Miss
Dallas, but we must deal with facts. It is my duty to see that Kit
gets one or both of these things in marrying. I applaud your sense in
refusing to see Kit since your engagement to Mr. Latham was broken.
Let me beg you to continue to refuse to see him! I am sure you are too
noble a girl to spoil his life. Whatever nonsense Kit talks about love
as a compensation for more solid, more enduring good, it is perfectly
true that if you married him you would spoil his life. I should alter
my plans for him, and he would have a pittance, whereas, if he pleases,
he will have wealth.”
Miss Carrington paused for a reply, but Anne, who had made no move to
interrupt her long discourse, still did not speak. She was paler than
she had been when Miss Carrington arrived, and she was at once wishing
that Joan would come to her rescue, and dreading that she might come
and speak her mind to this formidable old lady.
As Anne remained silent, Miss Carrington spoke again:
“I met Mr. Latham’s friend, Mr. Wilberforce----”
“Oh, has he come!” Anne interrupted her with a glad cry.
“Yes,” Miss Carrington showed surprise. “And knowing that he is Mr.
Latham’s close friend I said to him practically what I’ve said to you.
I think he agreed with my estimate of the value of a family name, for
he--somewhat irrelevantly--said that Wilberforce was a distinguished
name.”
Unexpectedly Anne laughed, much as Wilberforce had laughed.
“Did you say all this to him? Yes, the Wilberforces are all reverent to
their family,” she said, her eyes dancing.
Miss Carrington drew herself up; she did not intend that this young
person should find her amusing.
“One would infer from that remark your acquaintance with the
Wilberforce family,” she said.
Again Anne laughed.
“Yes, I know the Wilberforces rather intimately; my mother was one of
them. She and Edwin Wilberforce’s father were sister and brother,” she
said.
“What!” cried Miss Carrington, half rising.
“Dear Miss Carrington, don’t mind! I don’t, and it will only amuse Ted.
He and I have an indecorous sense of humour. Isn’t it funny, really? I
see dear old Ted coming down the street this minute,” cried Anne.
Miss Carrington rose fully this time and positively ran away. She was
not often placed, and by herself, at a disadvantage; she was not minded
to face two pairs of dark eyes dancing with that “indecorous sense of
humour.”
Ted Wilberforce ran up the steps as Miss Carrington drove away.
He gathered Anne into his arms, crying:
“Dear little white Nancy, what sort of mischief have you been up to?
Poor kid! Hard luck all around to be so sweet a thing that everyone
loves you! Don’t cry, little Coz! I won’t beat you if you have hit my
best friend hard and broken him all up; you couldn’t help it, Anne,
dear!”