CHAPTER X

_The Stray Page_

Richard Latham, his dictation over for the day, had gone with Stetson to the bank. He had been unusually silent, Anne Dallas had thought, absent-minded, and he looked pale, as if he had not rested well.

She had not asked him questions; more than most men he disliked to discuss his health, but it seemed to Anne, considering after he had gone, that Richard Latham was not himself.

She sat in the poet’s beautiful garden at work on some lace, the pillow on her knee. The fragrance of apple blossoms was on the warm breeze that brushed her face.

“‛Sumer is icumen in,’” thought Anne, skilfully catching her thread into a knot on her needle point. She felt more than usual pity for Richard, recalling his patient face, to know that he, of all men best fitted to dwell with enchanted eyes on summer’s loveliness, never again would see it.

“Miss Dallas! Miss Dallas! Miss Anne! Miss Anne Dallas! Anne! Anne!” shouted someone in such rapid-fire calling that reply was impossible. It could be but one person, and Anne Dallas looked up expectantly to see little Anne coming flying down the garden. Her long, thin legs, in their long, brown stockings, her brown, straight frock, her bobbed hair standing out around her head, all combined to give her the effect of a forked branch of a tree which had been snapped off and blown along the path by a higher wind than that which was actually blowing. Behind her ran the beagle, Cricket, his black-and-tan ears streaming backward, his tongue out, his eyes excitedly rolling, his breath visibly short. He did not venture with Anne into most of her explorations, but he had learned that the Latham garden was safe for timid bow-legged dogs, and hither he confidently came.

“What is it, Anne, dear?” asked Anne Dallas, guarding her work against little Anne’s imminent onslaught. “Glad to see you.”

“Guess what!” cried little Anne, throwing herself upon Anne. As she spoke she waved papers held together by a fastener.

“I never could guess!” declared Anne with conviction. “Are you appointed Queen of the Birds, or are you sentenced to exile in an ant hill, you little quicksilver creature?”

“Oh, you are nice!” panted little Anne, appreciatively. “This isn’t a--a--an appointing dockerment. What do you s’pose?”

Anne shook her head, and little Anne cried triumphantly:

“It’s these is; Peter’s!”

“These _is_? These _are_, Anne. And what are Peter’s? That isn’t English.”

Anne looked puzzled.

“That’s just what it is; his English class; he said so,” little Anne insisted. “Peter-two said he’d bet I couldn’t make him mad, a child like me! That’s when I got kind of mad with Peter-two, and I said so’d he be, and he said I couldn’t make him mad, ’cause I wasn’t ’nough importance. And he had his these is--these are--but, Miss Anne, I know, at least I pretty near know, Peter said these is--and he had to have it in school this morning, and I got it, and hid it, and here ’tis, and he’s gone without it, and I guess he will be good’n mad, won’t he?”

In spite of herself Anne laughed, then she arose to her duty.

“Anne, that is poor Peter’s thesis!” she cried. “Let me see it. Of course it is that! And you have sent Peter to school without it! Don’t you know, dear, that Peter will be reprimanded for his carelessness, and receive bad marks besides? You should not play tricks on Peter that will get him into trouble at school.”

Instantly little Anne dropped from her height of triumphant glee into depths of contrite shame.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Miss Anne, is it bad? And I’m preparing and trying to be good! I mustn’t do one least, littlest sin. Is it a sin, Miss Anne? Do you think it could be a mortal sin, or just venial? But I’ve no business to commit even the weeniest venial sin when I’m preparing! Not the weest, littlest one! Is it a mortal sin, Miss Anne?”

“Goodness, what a child!” sighed Anne. “Dear little Anne, I suppose I don’t know as much as I should about it, but if mortal means what it usually does, this isn’t a mortal sin. It seems to me a fault, not a sin, you small Mediæval Survival! It isn’t kind to vex Peter, and you ought not to get him into a scrape.”

“What’ll I do?” Little Anne looked profoundly downcast for a moment; then she cheered up. “It’s too late now to do anything,” she said in a relieved tone. “Peter’s school gets out at two and it’s ’most noon. I’ll tell him I’m sorry, and I’ll give him--give him--my new blank book. He’ll love it and it’ll be good for him to write these ises in, to remind him his little sister’s sorry--and how she _could_ make him mad, even if she is little!”

Anne grew more and more consoled as she looked longer at the brighter side of her fall.

“And I’ll ask my mother what kind of a sin it was; she knows all about every kind of sin. Should I say the Act of Contrition?”

Little Anne looked ready to fall on her knees and do penance with hearty enjoyment, and Anne said, hastily:

“Better ask your mother about that, too, dear. What a queer child you are!”

Then Anne’s changeable little face lost its elfin look of mingled regret and satisfaction, her eyes dilated and were raised, her lips quivered, a flush slowly spread to her hair; she clasped her thin, quick hands and said:

“Just to be good! Just to be so good that there never would be one stain on me and I’d never be mad, nor make Peter-two mad, but be a white, loving soul in the world!”

Anne looked at her, startled. She was accustomed to little Anne’s flights, her strange, unchildlike aspirations and depths of understanding, and her mercurial falls into human mischief. But there was on her small face now such a rapt look that Anne was conscious of awe that was partly fear. She laid her hand softly on the child’s hair and little Anne came down to earth without the loss of a moment.

“I found something,” she said. “Can Mr. Latham write?”

“Write? Do you mean---- Oh, you mean write as we do, with his own hand?” asked Anne, trying to adjust to this new topic. “Yes. He was not always blind; he lost his sight in an accident. He writes a tiny, tiny hand, hard to read, though every letter is clearly formed. He uses paper with raised lines, else his lines would run together. He does not often try to write; he writes to a few friends, to Mr. Wilberforce most. Why did you ask that, dear?”

“I found something,” repeated little Anne, “when I was looking for you. It was on the floor, upstairs in the hall. I went upstairs and I called you, but of course you didn’t hear out in the garden. I picked it up.”

Little Anne produced from the pocket in her skirt, of which she was inordinately proud, a sheet of paper, folded small. She spread it out on her knee and carefully smoothed it; Anne saw that it was an ordinary sheet of letter paper, unruled, covered with Richard Latham’s microscopic characters, running together in places, straggling apart in others, lines of irregular length, verses.

Anne hesitated a moment; she probably had already copied these verses, dictated to her by Richard. They could not be anything that he did not wish her to see. If it had been something in prose form she would not have looked at it, fearing it might be a letter not intended for her eyes, but verses written by him belonged to her official care.

“May I see, little Anne?” she asked, and took the paper.

She knew at once that these were not verses that she had ever copied. She read them with difficulty in deciphering them, with greater difficulty in controlling the terror, actual terror, which they inspired in her.

FOR ANNE

“_There is a song I must not sing Which sings itself the livelong day; There is a plea I must not bring Which ev’ry breath I draw must pray; There is a word past uttering The only word my tongue would say: Oh, sweetest, fairest, dearest, best, in silence I must go my way!_

_Oh, blinded eyes deprived of light; Oh, hunger that is never fed; Oh, love that yearns, denied the right To kiss a tress upon that head; Oh, broken life, creep far from sight To hide where pity makes thy bed For glory, fame, and wealth are stones to me, a beggar craving bread._”

“I love poetry,” hinted little Anne, but checked herself when she saw the elder Anne’s face.

It had turned quite white, tears stood in her dark eyes, her lips quivered.

“Oh, little Anne, what can it mean? Who is it? Why didn’t I have it to copy?” Anne murmured. “Oh, he mustn’t know we read it!”

“I didn’t,” said little Anne, reproachfully, and Anne kissed her, grateful that the child made her smile.

“Promise me on your honour, little Anne, that you will never speak to any one of having found these verses. Promise! And remember that a promise is a sacred thing, faithfully to be kept,” she said.

“I never in this world break my promises,” declared little Anne, proudly, but truthfully. “I promise! Not even Mother?”

“You may tell her that you found the verses, but that no one is to know it; you can say that you did not know what they were like,” Anne said, wisely deciding that this concession would be a safety valve to little Anne’s unimpeachable honour.

“Do you know where you found the paper, Anne? Then take it into the house, please, and lay it where it was, and come back to me. Hurry, little Anne! Oh, if Mr. Latham should come in before you did this!”

“He can’t find it on the floor, can he?” little Anne demurred.

“Then Stetson will. Don’t delay, dear; please be quick!” Anne fairly turned the child around by the shoulders and pushed her toward the house. Little Anne was speedy; she was back before Anne had time to worry over the likelihood of Richard’s coming, or Cricket to fall into utter despair at being abandoned by his small mistress.

“I think I’d better go home now,” announced little Anne on her return. “I heard the Angelus down at our church quite a long time ago, so it’s ’most my lunch time. You look kind of pale, Miss Anne, dear. Was that bad for me to pick up that paper? I thought it was only neat when it was lying around like that. Was that a sin? Like troubling Peter-two? It’s very, very awful hard to walk sinlessly in this world, isn’t it?”

“Oh, Anne, darling, of course it was only neat!” cried the girl, kissing little Anne heartily.

“Well, you can’t do sins unless you know they are wrong and just go ahead and mean to, but I kind of forget that; only when I recite it, you know,” said the thin theologian. “I’ve got to tell Peter ’was me took his these is, and nobody can tell what he’ll say to me! Mother won’t let him _do_ anything, but she’ll talk to me, and that’s worse. It’s the most fearfullest of all when mother’s sorry! But I’ve got to be willing to bear it, if I didn’t do right, and I can offer it up. Good-bye, darling Miss Anne. I hope I didn’t make you sick with that paper; you look sicky.”

“Not a bit, funny little Anne. Good-bye, and come soon again,” she said, cheerfully.

Little Anne looked worried, she went slowly toward her acknowledgment of wrong-doing and her penance, but she forgot all about it as new thoughts took possession of her. She flew at her customary speed down the street, Cricket breathlessly running after her.

To Anne’s inexpressible relief Richard Latham telephoned to her to say that he would lunch out, and that there would be nothing to keep her within doors that lovely afternoon.

She gladly availed herself of this chance to get away from the familiar beauty of the garden and adjust her perturbed mind to her dismaying discovery. She went down through the garden and let herself out by the small gate at its rear that opened on a path which led to a pretty bit of woods of which she was fond. It must be set down in honesty that before she went out Anne went upstairs, picked up the paper which little Anne had faithfully laid exactly where she had found it, and made a copy for herself of the two stanzas which had so stirred her. Then she, like the smaller Anne, put the paper on the floor and went away.

She walked swiftly to the spot in the woods which she had in mind in setting forth and dropped on the mossy sod to think. She was not a vain girl, not prone to believe herself admired, not consciously seeking admiration. She was singularly direct in mind and simple in motives. She accepted herself, the fact that she was pretty, that she had several accomplishments and was generally liked, as a pleasant thing, but not to be emphasized more than any other pleasant fact like sunshine, or good green grass.

In her silent way Anne held strongly to strong purposes in life; young as she was she “had found herself,” as it is expressively put nowadays. And the person who is thus balanced, who actually has “found herself,” is not likely to waste time looking for other things or people.

In her close intimacy with Richard Latham for almost a year, she had been flooded with a pity for him that was always at high tide within her. She admired him for his beauty of character as much as for his gifts of mind. His gentle courtesy, his sweetness, the modesty that persevered in spite of the plaudits that he received, had inspired in her a passion of affectionate pity for him that rather excluded than led to love for him. Of herself in connection with him--beyond her ability to be useful to him, to serve him in his work, to brighten his days--she had never thought. That his reliance on her, his appreciation of her personally, as well as of what she did, might mean love for her, had never till that day crossed her mind. He was to her a man removed from this possibility no less by his misfortune than by his genius.

Anne laid her head down on the moss and cried miserably. It was unbearable to think that she had brought pain into this afflicted life. True, it would be easy to assuage it. Yet not so easy. She did not love Richard. She held him as one of the dearest of her earthly ties, but she did not love him. She felt sure that if she were to try to make him happy, if she devoted her life to him, that he was far too sensitive not to feel the lack of the right sort of love in his wife; far too high-minded to be less than wretched at being the object of her immolation. A strong word, an absurd one to use in connection with marriage to Richard Latham, Anne knew that most people would say, yet to a girl like her any marriage without the love that marriage implies and demands would be immolation. She cried with all her might into the soft moss.

Presently Anne heard a footstep and raised her head to see Miss Carrington near her, standing looking down on her with sincere amazement, but also with carefully arranged sympathy in her face.

“I suppose there is no use in denying it, but don’t mind me, Miss Carrington. It’s only a bother that will probably prove more bearable than it looks in perspective; most things are less unendurable than you expect them to be when they come to close range,” Anne said, checking her tears.

“My dear child,” said Miss Carrington, coming over to put her arm gently around Anne with an intense desire to get at the cause of her emotion, “you are young, and I am at least elderly. You are alone in Cleavedge. Won’t you trust me, my dear, and tell me what is wrong? I can hold my tongue, I assure you, and I know what it is to be alone.”

“It isn’t myself only, Miss Carrington,” said Anne.

“How could it be? Did you ever hear of a human experience that was? My dear, it’s my opinion that we not only cannot be separated to ourselves in this world, but as a rule we should not have troubles if it weren’t for other people! Won’t you let me try to help?” Miss Carrington persisted.

Anne shook her head. “Thank you, nevertheless,” she said. “This is not the sort of thing that any one else can help, nor I, either, I’m afraid.”

“Let me guess!” Miss Carrington took Anne’s hands, cold from hard weeping, between her silky palms, the soft, cool, frail hands of an old gentlewoman. “Let me guess! At your age there can be but one cause of such violent weeping, so I can easily conjecture. You have just discovered what I have known all along, that Richard Latham loves you.” She hoped that this was a good guess and not that this weeping concerned Kit; she held Anne’s hands fast in spite of her attempts to pull them away, disregarding her protesting: “No, no, no!”

“Known all along?” Anne repeated her last words, startled out of her caution.

“Surely, my dear. My nephew and I have discussed it; we hope that it is true,” Miss Carrington assured her, stretching the small “we” to fit her need. “It frightens you? You are such a dear, maidenly, old-time girl that I suppose we must allow for your first shrinking when you learn that you are loved. Then, of course, it awes you to think that it is a poet, Richard Latham, who loves you, a poet and a blind poet! But, oh, my dear, my dear, how inappropriate are your tears! How blessed, how exalted you are! By his genius, certainly, but by his need of you more. A woman is blessed exactly in proportion to the need of her in those she loves. Mr. Latham not only loves you, as we all saw, devotedly, devoutly--that is the better word!--but he loves you with such complete dependence upon you that it is no exaggeration to say that, though he might not die if he lost you, he would in no real sense go on living if he were deprived of you. To be the life of such a man! To be his inspiration and his repose! Indeed I congratulate you, I would envy you were I not done with life. And I am sure from what I know of you that perfect happiness could not come to you except in the opportunity to devote yourself. You are not ambitious, like, for instance, the handsome girl who will be Kit’s wife. Of course her ambition will help Kit, who is going in for a career. It is a most satisfactory arrangement to me, but it would not do for you! I don’t mind admitting to you that Helen’s ideals are less fine than yours, but I am glad to have her marry Kit. Don’t think I’m underestimating Helen. And of course what has slipped out to you is in confidence; it is not to be made public yet. Dear child, dear little namesake, with all my heart I rejoice that Richard Latham has his compensation in you. We have all feared to conjecture what might happen to him if it were the wrong woman. I can’t say more of you than that you are supremely the right woman. I am deeply thankful. Never another tear, my child! You would have slain our poet if you had failed him; you don’t know how glad I am!”

Anne, exhausted from weeping, stunned and frightened by what she was hearing, made some feeble attempts to check this torrent of delight. She heard, with terror and a sense of being engulfed, that Richard Latham’s life was in her hands. It came upon her with overpowering force that if this were so clear to these sharp old eyes, there was no alternative before her but to marry him and do her best. She also heard with a numb ache that bewildered her that Kit was to marry Helen Abercrombie, who was so far removed from his simple kindliness, his goodness, his warmth of heart. This secret was for Anne to keep!

How strange a day of endings and beginnings!

Patiently Anne submitted to being kissed by Miss Carrington. She fancied there was an infusion of a salute to the bride in the embrace. Slowly she went back to her boarding place, weary in brain and body.