CHAPTER XIX

_The End of the Play_

Although Mrs. Berkley readily consented to little Anne’s seeing the first performance of Richard Latham’s play, and although this was an event to dream of by night and by day until its distant date, little Anne was not completely happy in its anticipation.

The play was so much one with Anne Dallas that they could not be recalled separately. It loomed above all else in little Anne’s mind that when the great night came Anne would be married. Everyone spoke impressively of being married. Little Anne absorbed the general attitude toward it and was deeply impressed by the fact that her dear Anne would be in the same box with her that first night of the play--she wondered what sort of a box it could possibly be--no longer her Anne, but married.

Twice little Anne had come upon Anne weeping her heart out as tempestuously as she had cried on the child’s shoulder. Anne was not happy; she was growing so thin and pale that Mrs. Berkley and Joan discussed it in little Anne’s hearing, though in terms intentionally, she thought, beyond her complete understanding.

Little Anne was too loving to be quite happy about the play if Anne were not happy, too; she had grasped the fact that this unhappiness was connected with the play and being married; evidently Anne dreaded the night when she would sit in that mysterious box that held several grown people, but which did not seem to strike any one as an unusual type of box.

Kit Carrington came often to the Berkley house these days, also to Joan’s. Little Anne found him in both houses the same; he was invariably a gloomy, dull Kit, from whom only she could extract anything like his old smile, and she but rarely.

Kit looked not only unhappy and ill, but little Anne thought that he looked chronically “mad,” and surely there could have been nothing less like her old Kit than “a grouch!” It was Peter who said that Kit had a steady grouch on, so little Anne knew that she must be right.

It was a melancholy state of things, and when she was not playing with Monica, or interested in something else, which was the greater part of the time, little Anne, like Miniver Cheevy, “thought, and thought and thought about it.”

One day Kit came to Joan’s when Anne was there. It was a Sunday afternoon, so Antony was at home. Kit stalked in with such a desperate air that little Anne told herself that he looked as if he was going to do something awful! He nearly kicked Guard, who had grown enormously, but had not outgrown his first adoration of Kit, and toward whom Kit held himself as sponsor because he had endorsed the dog in his infancy and advised his purchase. Kit did not kick the exuberant animal but he visibly refrained from doing so, and patted him instead. It was wonder enough for little Anne that he had felt like kicking. He hardly noticed the child--another alarming symptom.

Little Anne retired to a corner with Barbara, now capable of being led there, and played house with the baby in a one-sided fashion. But her ears were alert to catch a conversation in which she was forgotten.

“I’ve stood it to the last possible instant!” declared Kit, savagely. “Anne will not see me. She shall! Have I no rights?”

“Don’t you think, Kit, dear, she is afraid to see you?” Joan suggested. “If she will not marry you, isn’t it better to avoid unnecessary pain? Poor Anne shows that she already has all that she can endure.”

“Poor Anne has no right to be enduring it,” retorted Kit. “I will see her; I must! What do you say, Antony?”

“I say I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, and I don’t know how I’d play up if I were, but the right thing is to get out and not torture a girl who is trying to be square, who loves you all the time, good old Kit,” said Antony.

“Well, if you call that being square, I don’t,” declared Kit. “She’s got it all twisted. I don’t mean to torture her, you know well enough, except to talk it out once; we’ve got to! I never had a word with her except that one time when we found out how we both felt, and then what was it? We were taken off our feet; couldn’t talk! I want to put it up to her as temperately as I can. Then if she decides against me, all right; I go. And I mean to listen fairly to her arguments. But I don’t go till that is done. I realize that it’s hard to judge a question on which your own happiness hinges, but it doesn’t seem to me right to Latham for Anne to marry him. Putting me out of it, it doesn’t seem right to Latham. If he knew that Anne loved me, not him--wanted to marry me, not him--would he let her keep her promise to him? Of course he wouldn’t! So it doesn’t seem fair to him to go on with it. Maybe that’s sophistry; I’m sure I can’t tell! But I do know that I don’t feel as though I could go on living if Anne marries Latham.”

Kit’s head went down on his arms with a movement of such despair that little Anne was frightened.

So that was it! Anne didn’t want to marry Mr. Latham, not even to sit in the box! And she did want to marry Kit; and Kit would die if she married Mr. Latham. And Mr. Latham would not marry Anne if all this were as clear to him as it had suddenly become to little Anne. Kit had said that it was not fair to Mr. Latham; evidently someone was making a blunder. Here little Anne’s thoughts became cloudy. Could the blunderer be Anne? Well, this fact was clear: two of little Anne’s dearest friends were miserable, all because Mr. Latham did not know that they would far prefer to marry each other than to let Anne go to the play as the poet’s wife. Now that these points were radiantly clear to the child, it was equally clear that a simple mistake of this kind could and should be corrected.

“Do you think Anne will consent to see you, Kit?” Joan was asking when little Anne’s attention returned to the conversation.

“She has said that I might see her to-morrow afternoon,” said Kit. “I’m to go to walk with her; I told her that I must see her where there’d be no risk of interruption. I know it’s no use.”

“I’m sure of that, poor Kit!” agreed Joan. “Anne is not to be moved.”

“And she is dead right!” added Antony. “I’m bound to say I think she’s dead right, and no end of a trump to stick to her principles. I’m sorry enough, Kit, and it seems mean in me to be so happy with my little old lady here when you’re playing in such hard luck, but honour among thieves can’t be more binding than among honest folk. I took off my hat to Anne Dallas when the trouble began, and I’m bare-headed yet, figuratively speaking.”

“Easy enough to admire a martyrdom when you’re in heaven,” growled Kit.

Little Anne, so absorbed in the conversation, forgot Barbara, and the baby, still uncertain in her balance, lost it and struck her chin against a chair. Her wail aroused Joan to the presence of little Anne. As she rescued her child, more injured in feelings than in flesh, Joan glanced sharply at her small sister, wondering what she had heard and understood. Nothing could have been more blank of other interest than Barbara’s possible hurt than was the face that Anne turned up to her sister.

“We played house, Joan, and Babs was my child,” she said. “I don’t think she ’xactly understands, but she played nicely. She sort of tipped over, but not far. I don’t believe it hurt her badly.”

“You kept her so quiet that I forgot you both,” said Joan. “Did the time seem long to you, Anne?”

“Mercy, no! I was awf’ly interested,” said little Anne, truthfully. “Maybe I’ll be a Sister of Charity instead of a Carmelite; then I could have an asylum. Babies are so dear!”

And Joan dared ask no more lest she should hint what, after all, Anne might not have heard.

The next afternoon, strong in her righteous purpose, and, little-Anne-like, unassailed by doubt when she was convinced of her facts, little Anne set forth to visit Mr. Latham without taking any one, even her mother, into her confidence. She passed Anne, looking white and miserable, but with the light of determination in her eyes, as she turned into Latham Street.

“Kit is coming; I saw him ’way down the street,” volunteered little Anne. Then she ran on, leaving Anne to wonder at her apparent knowledge of the intended meeting.

“Well, small Anne!” cried Richard Latham as little Anne came running down the broad walk through the centre of his garden. “You surely are Anne, the well-come! I feel precisely like having a comrade of seven-most-eight! I’m half afraid you are too sedate for me, Miss Berkley! Do you think you can stoop to play with a poet who has finished his play and arranged for its production, and with a man who is too happy to be merely a man? Anne, have I slender, pointed ears? And do you chance to see pipes sticking out of my pocket?”

“Your ears are slender, but I think they are round at the top,” said little Anne, conscientiously examining them as Richard stooped to her. “And there aren’t any pipes. Don’t you smoke cigars, anyway?”

“Oh, not smoking pipes! I thought you, of all people, would know! I mean pipes like Pan’s. The fauns play on the sort I mean. Never mind; perhaps I am a man. Do you happen to have a string with you? No? Pity! What I really am is a rose-coloured air-balloon, and I’m liable to sail over the house-tops unless you tie a string to me and hold me fast. Have you the string, little Anne?”

Little Anne was laughing, yet her eyes were gravely puzzled.

“Must I tie you down?” she asked, not realizing that she had come to do this and more. “I have no string.”

“Then let us run a race up and down the broad path, and around the little paths on the right. Then up and down the middle again, and around the little paths on the left! I can run faster than you can, but, on the other hand, I can’t see you and you can see me, so it will be a fair game. If you catch me I pay a forfeit. I buy you a box of candy. If I catch you, you pay me a forfeit; you take the box of candy that I buy for you! I think that’s the best-arranged arrangement that all the aggregated arrangers ever arranged!” Richard laughed, triumphantly.

Little Anne danced up and down.

“I do think you are the funniest! And nicest!” she cried. “I should think you would make plays and poetry! I do love Kit dearly; he’s so nice you have to, but you think of the most things I ever! Why does Anne, Miss Anne, rather not marry you?”

Richard Latham’s hand stopped in mid-air on the way to pull down his hat in preparation for the race.

“Anne! What are you saying?” he exclaimed.

“Oh, never mind now; maybe we’d better race first, because we’ll be so warm we’ll need to sit down; then we could talk,” said little Anne, comfortably. “I came to tell you about it. Kit said if you knew you wouldn’t let her; he said it wasn’t fair to you. So I thought I’d tell you. Anne loves Kit, so does he--I mean they both do.”

Anne was getting frightened; Richard’s face was ghastly white.

“How can you, a child, know this?” Richard spoke with difficulty.

“Why, it was one morning at our house. They kind of looked at each other and began to say they loved each other such a lot, and Anne cried: ‛No, no, no. Richard!’ And Kit had to go away. She made him. And she cried terrible. And Kit says it’s wrong to marry you when she’d rather not, but she just will, and Antony says she’s a trump, but you can see Joan’s so sorry she can’t tell what a trump is. And Anne, you know, looks dreadful, white and thin---- Oh, I forgot!” Little Anne checked herself, shocked that an allusion to Mr. Latham’s blindness had escaped her. Of all things she most dreaded to say anything that might hurt Richard Latham. Richard put out a hand, gropingly. He found little Anne’s shoulder and held it tight. He swayed slightly as he turned to go up the garden, slowly, like an old man. He leaned on the frightened child who walked beside him, looking up at him with dilated eyes.

“I want to find the bench,” said Richard, whom little Anne had always seen going confidently about the garden.

Little Anne led him to the bench and Richard dropped on it heavily.

“Tell me again. I can’t understand. Anne, my Anne, loves Christopher Carrington? And he loves her, and they both know this? And she is marrying me because she thinks she must? It this what you are telling me? It can’t be true! You are only little Anne. You can’t know!”

Richard’s voice, faint at first, gathered strength as he spoke; it ended in a groan. Because this was little Anne, too young to imagine the story, too clear-brained to distort it, he knew that it was true. A thousand tiny proofs of it seemed to pierce his memory even as he denied it.

“Yes, I do know!” little Anne insisted, nodding her head hard. “I was there when they found out. They kept saying how s’prised they were. Kit wants to talk it over; that’s what he’s doing now, but Anne won’t ever change, Joan said. He couldn’t talk it over, ’cause Anne wouldn’t see him till now. He said you wouldn’t let her marry you if you knew she’d rather not; Kit said that. He said it wasn’t fair to you. So I came around to let you know. Won’t you let her marry you? Can’t she sit in the box that play night?” Richard Latham started up and fell back with a cry. His head dropped on the back of the garden bench; he was shaking.

“Go away, little Anne,” he said. “Go away. Go home. We’ll--we’ll race--sometime. I’ll remember--the candy. You win, little Anne! Go, dear, go!”

“Oh, wasn’t it right to come? Was it a sin to tell you? Was it a sin? I never did a sin that made any one sick when they were so well before! Was it a sin?” cried little Anne, terror-stricken by the result of her mission.

“It was--just right--little Anne! I’m--delighted--to know. But I’m a little--a little--surprised, you see. Please, go, dear little Anne!” Richard managed to say.

Little Anne went. At the gate she looked back. Richard Latham sat as she had left him. The garden looked more than usually beautiful, peaceful. Child as she was she felt the solemnity of the bowed figure of the blind poet, alone among his flowers.

In the meantime, Anne had gone on and had met Kit coming toward her down shady Latham Street. She had not given him her hand; he had turned and joined her with but the slightest murmur of greeting. They made no attempt to talk as they went out toward the river. Kit directed their course away from the spot to which he and Helen had walked on that recent afternoon. They came to a pretty place where the bank sloped down under willows, and where there was a bit of white, sandy beach.

“No use going farther, Anne,” said Kit, peremptorily. “I want to know what you mean to do about it? I have a right to know.”

“You already know,” said Anne, as sternly as he. “I have told you all that there is to say. In less than three months I shall marry Richard Latham. That sums up all that I could say to you, Kit.”

“But I love you! You have no idea how I want you, love you!” cried Kit.

“And that you’re not to say to me!” said Anne with a stern monotony of voice, with which she bridled her pain as she saw the change in Kit’s sunny face.

“It is easy for you. You don’t care, after all! I suppose women can’t love as a man does,” said Kit.

An expression of adoring love and pity flitted over Anne’s face. Then it was gone, and she said:

“There is no profit in that sort of recrimination, you know. The instrument for measuring and comparing mental suffering has not been invented. It is hard enough for me. Be satisfied of that! Do you want me to be miserable?”

Suddenly she let herself go, as if she deliberately threw away reserve.

“Kit,” she began, her voice deep with love and longing, “it is costing me so much that in simple mercy you must never again add to it by seeking me. After a while we will be friends--meet as friends. Always we shall be friends, even before we may safely meet. That is a great word were we not longing to speak another, greater word, that is forbidden us. I shall marry Richard and do my best to love him as a wife should, as any one who knew him would love him, one would think, best of all! Listen to me, dear: If you were a man who in sober, sane choice could want me to break my promise to this man, I should never have loved you. Shall we be selfish, Kit, cruel, false, trying to justify ourselves with pretty words? Kit, you are so dear to me that I want to help you to keep your honour bright! I should not have seen you to-day but that I knew in seeing you I could help you to see something far greater than I. I can’t cure your grief, Kit, your lonely longing, nor my own! For a time we must suffer. But I know we shall win out, because we are doing our best. I came to beg you to make the renunciation that is the true, manly course. I don’t want you to do right only because I stand by my word. Say to me--and mean it, Kit, because in compelling your will to this you will gain peace of mind--say to me: ‛Anne, keep your word to Richard Latham and God bless you! I would not have you make me happy by defrauding him.’ Tell me this, Kit; tell me you see it is right!”

Kit stood silent beside her, his head bowed, his hands clinching and relaxing. The tiny waves of the river’s slow flow lapped softly on the white sand; a sparrow emphasized the stillness with his lovely brief song.

“It is right, Anne,” poor Kit said at last.

“And”--Anne put out her hands to him almost as a mother would put out her hands to the child who feared to walk--“And I don’t want you to make me happy by defrauding Richard Latham. Marry him, Anne, Anne, Anne, my darling, marry him! And God bless and keep you, as He surely does!”

Kit threw back his head, holding both her hands crushed in his.

Anne’s face was alight with triumph; her eyes glowed and warmed Kit’s heart.

“I’ll be all right. This is right,” Kit said. “I’ve been crazed, Anne, but don’t worry over me; I’ll be all right, little Captain!”

“Oh, you blessed boy!” cried Anne in spite of herself.

Gently she disengaged her hands.

“It’s a lot to be able to think of each other in the way we now shall.”

“I’d better take you back again. Oh, Anne, I was ready with arguments that you never could have answered, and I haven’t spoken one of them! Isn’t there another side? Couldn’t you hear me, even yet? I don’t know what you did to me, but all my arguments seemed answered when you began to speak.”

“We’ve settled it, Kit, and I’m too tired to argue. I think you answered yourself as you went along, only you had not consciously heard the answers. You are no sophist, dear Kit! So when I spoke of duty it needed no more than the word. You had argued on the surface of your mind, but all the time your will stood true! I’m proud of you, dear Kit, and thankful that I did not love a man less fine than my husband is. I do love Richard, Kit; we both well may love him. I’m a little tired. Yes, please take me back,” Anne ended, abruptly.

“You are deadly white and you’re thinner, Anne,” said Kit, forgetting his pain in anxiety as he looked at the sweet, weary face beside him.

“Just tired; that’s all,” said Anne, smiling. “I haven’t slept much of late. I fancy we both find that night brings the enemy’s hardest attacks. You are thinner, too. Have you plans?”

“To go away soon, to New York, and go into business there,” said Kit, accepting her lead.

They talked quietly as they returned homeward, till just before they reached Latham Street, Kit stopped short.

“It can’t be good-bye so casually, Anne! Am I mad that I give you up like this, or have you put a spell upon me? I think I’m dreaming and must awaken. It’s like a nightmare in which you can’t move,” he said, hoarsely.

“It’s only good-night, Kit, but good-bye is its foundation. You will awake, my dear, quite well and strong, for the nightmare is over. Good-night, Kit, and with all my heart I pray God bless you. When you get home to think, remind yourself that you spared poor Anne all that you could, and be thankful that you are her comfort, and not the least, wee pain to her, as a tiny lack in you would be. Good-night, Kit! Dearest, good-night, Sir Christopher!”

Anne forced her drawn lips to smile as she paused for a moment at Richard’s garden gate.

Kit looked down on her without an attempt to smile back at her. They did not touch each other’s hands.

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned, and turned away.

Anne stood for an instant, her hand on the top of the gate. Then with a long, fluttering breath she groped for the latch, lifted it and entered the garden.

Before her on the bench, one arm thrown across its back, his head erect, pale, but quietly smiling toward her as his quick ear heard the click of the latch, sat Richard Latham waiting for her.