CHAPTER VII

_The Poet’s Corner_

In the quiet room, with the sunlight shaded, for the day was warm, Anne Dallas bent over her writing table, absorbed in her work. Richard Latham sat opposite her, dictating slowly, his head resting on his hand, his face turned toward her. If he could have seen one would have said that he was watching Anne, and even though his eyes were sightless the word was not unsuitable. He was so keenly conscious of her movements, and his sensitive mind was so intent upon her, that he perceived her almost as if he saw her.

Yet this vision of Anne helped rather than hindered the dictation of the lines of his play. That her permeation of his thoughts did not get in the way of his developing the imaginary people whom his brain was moving about like puppets, said as nothing else could say how one with him she was, how completely, how selflessly she answered to his need.

Richard Latham was writing a play. It was both comedy and tragedy, as most real dramas are; it was realism, yet idealized as are all lives which are worth living. It was that day reaching the end of its second act.

No one but Anne Dallas had yet heard a line of it. She took it from Richard’s lips as it formed in his poet’s mind, feeling that she was a part of something unspeakably great; it gave her at once a sense of utter isolation and at the same time a feeling that she was in the midst of crowding splendours which lay beyond the bounds of daily events and their actors.

Anne wondered while she waited for Richard to think out something that he wanted to express exactly, why it was she to whom this experience had fallen. Anne Dallas had not an undue opinion of Anne Dallas. She considered herself one of the majority of average people, not exceeding in face, mind, nor any way, hosts of girls correctly, but tamely, described as “nice girls.” Yet it was she and none of the others who was taking down this play to-day, these words and pictures and characters so beautiful that she felt sure that they would live on long after she had grown old and died.

It was after three, and the rule was that work stopped at three, but Richard was dictating the last lines of the second act. It was tense with emotion, complex in situation, and many of the loveliest lines so far in the play were in this scene. It had not occurred to the workers to think of time.

Anne Dallas looked up and saw little Anne Berkley coming up the walk. Her table was beside the window, and she signalled to the child to be quiet. Little Anne at once dropped down on the steps and began to fan herself with her hat, for she understood the ways of the poet from past experience, and knew that she must wait to be admitted.

At last Richard Latham triumphantly cried: “Curtain!” and fell back in his chair, suddenly realizing that he was tired.

“Will it do, Miss Dallas? Could you judge it as you wrote it?” Richard asked.

“Oh, no, not judge it! It does far too well. I could not judge it. It is supremely fine and beautiful; it sweeps one along with it, but I know that it is the best thing that you have done,” cried Anne.

“I don’t know; I’m afraid it isn’t much good,” said Richard, despondently. “Oh, Lord! To feel something surging against your brain, your lips, almost as if it literally pushed your ribs out, then to be tongue-tied, to feel you’ve played it false when it wanted to be born of you, that you’ve strangled it at birth, or brought it forth deformed!”

“If you could express all that you feel you would not feel enough to be greatly worth expressing. It is neither slain nor deformed, but to you the wings that bore it to you seem clipped. Perhaps they may be, since your conception of it must exceed words, but you have made the rush of those wings audible to others.”

Anne arose as she spoke and rang for tea. She was used to dealing with the poet’s reaction from the delight of creation; she understood it.

“How you help me!” Richard smiled at her and put out his hand; Anne’s skirt brushed it as she crossed the room.

“It’s a hard thing to feel one minute like a tower reaching to heaven, and the next like a toppled card house.”

“Yes, it’s hard, but it doesn’t really matter, because you know it’s only nervous reaction. It would matter if you took the tower or the card house seriously, especially the tower! But you never lose your perspective. It’s a great deal to be a perfectly sane great poet!” Anne laughed, and added, “Little Anne has been meekly sitting on the steps for some time. I signalled her to wait until you were finished. Shall I call her now?”

“Surely. Little Anne is as good a restorative as tea,” said Richard. The little girl came in on her summons with a flushed and happy face; she at once accepted Richard’s invitation to perch on the arm of his chair, though she first violently hugged Anne Dallas.

“I’ve been to instructions,” she replied to Richard’s question. “Yes, I am warm; I am very warm, I am so warm that I’m boiling hot, only I’m not to say that. It’s a pity. I think it’s one of the worst things that ain’t--are not--sickness, or dying, or op’rations, or something, that you can’t use strong words. I think it makes you hotter’n fury to be just about roasted and say you’re warm!”

Richard threw back his head and joined in Anne Dallas’s laughter.

“You often remind me of Margery Fleming, little Anne, and it seems that you share her love of strong language! I think myself it’s a useful safety valve. What instructions are you getting?”

“I don’t mean swearing, not blasphemy,” said little Anne, looking shocked by the idea. “I mean words that sort of rip and hit things. I wouldn’t swear, not for worlds! And I’m going to First Communion instructions.”

Little Anne bent her head as she said this and her thin, flashing, elfin face took on an awed look, awe that her voice expressed.

“At your age?” cried Richard. “Why, Anne, you are too young! When I knew about these things we did not join the church before we were fourteen.”

“I don’t have to join the Church, I’m in it,” said Anne, puzzled. “You’re old enough when you understand. And I do understand. Sister Annunciata says I understand enough to make me dreadful ’sponsible if I don’t try to be worthy. Though you can’t really be, you know. It’ll be next month, Corpus Christi; it comes early. Sister says it’s often later, but it has to come when Easter makes it. But it’s sure to be warm, she says. We’ll have white dresses and veils, all alike, so if a girl is kind of not able to get a fancy one, nobody’ll know which she is. Anyway, mother says pure white and quite simple is the way we ought to look. It is the happiest day of all my life. No matter what other day I have, presents, or parties, or--no matter what--that’s the happiest. How can I wait?”

She threw back her head and lifted toward heaven a rapt, ecstatic little face.

“Do you think it’s possible she will feel that is true? Isn’t it dangerous to tell her this? I’d be afraid of a disappointment and a disastrous after effect,” said Richard to Anne Dallas.

“Oh, no, I think not. Joan would tell us there was no danger. Little Anne’s faith is strong. She cannot understand how happy she is to be an innocent child, but later on she will look back to this day and realize that she was one, and that, in very truth, her First Communion day was the happiest one of her life,” said Anne, softly.

Little Anne jumped down from the arm of Richard’s chair and flew to take Anne Dallas around the neck in a tempestuous embrace.

“Don’t be sorry you are grown up, my darling,” she cried. “You’re not so very much grown up. And you are good! I love you. I’m going to pray for all my dear ones on my First Communion day. You’re one! Sister says Our Lord will love to give me what I ask for them. I’m going to ask to be kept a little girl inside me always. Some people are. It’s very hot--warm, isn’t it? And I see Kit Carrington coming along with a handsome, elegant lady. She’s _awfully_ handsome! They’re turning in here.”

“Do you mind being caught, Mr. Latham? Anne is right; they are coming here. You have time to escape,” suggested Anne Dallas.

“I don’t mind. I like Kit Carrington, and the magnificence of the lady as conveyed by little Anne ought to be enjoyable, even to a blind man. All right, Stetson. Ask them to come in here--or, no, show them into the garden; we’ll go there. It _is_ warm, little Anne!”

Richard Latham, Anne, and little Anne stepped out from one of the long French windows which gave on the garden from the dining room. Helen Abercrombie and Kit had already reached one of the curved benches beneath the elms which interlaced their sweeping boughs over the turf of the upper end of the fine old garden.

Helen was such a beautiful figure in her floating white gown, with her drooping, white-plumed hat shading her golden hair as she arose to meet her host that Anne Dallas, as well as little Anne, was dazzled. It seemed a pity that a poet should not be able to look upon such wondrous loveliness.

“Mr. Latham, I brought my aunt’s guest, Miss Abercrombie, to see you because--well, she wanted to come! Miss Abercrombie, Mr. Latham,” said Kit.

“Miss Carrington would have asked you to come to tea with us, she means to still but I did want to come! Kit is right, and I’ve no better excuse for intruding to add to his,” said Helen, her voice more than ever like a delicate harp blown upon by a breeze.

“Ought you apologize for kindness?” suggested Richard. “I am glad to show you my garden. Kit and Miss Dallas know each---- Oh, really, I beg your pardon!” Richard broke off with a shocked gesture. “Miss Dallas, Miss Abercrombie.”

Helen bowed. She possessed to perfection the art of grading her bows. This one conveyed to Anne exactly the intended impression of her claim to recognition for service rendered to the public, but not as a social equal.

Anne Dallas returned the salutation quietly. She did not miss its quality, but it did not disturb her. She would not have been a woman, a young woman at that, and not have been conscious to her finger tips of the regal beauty of the girl beside her. She did not know that the juxtaposition was planned by Helen to show Kit the contrast between them, but it made her feel like a dull little weed to know that her simple white gown and her smooth, dark hair were contrasting like homespun against the elegant clothing of the other girl and the radiant head held high above her.

“Kit Carrington will marry her!” thought Anne, ignoring the stab the thought dealt her. “Mr. Latham, at least, can’t see us together.” Fresh from the enthusiasm of her day’s work, she told herself that Kit did not count if she could hold her place in Richard Latham’s mind. But she had to remind herself of this.

“It’s not easy to talk to a poet. I have tried to before, but not to one great enough to make it matter how one talked,” said Helen, accepting Richard’s invitation to the bench under the elms.

“Talk to the man, and never mind the poet!” said Richard. “I am not merely a poet. Therefore I wish that I could see you, Miss Abercrombie!”

“Now I know how well you fill the rôle I’m to play to! I already had your measure on the poet side,” laughed Helen. “Who is the child that looks like a changeling? Your niece?”

“This is Miss Anne Berkley, my intimate friend, Miss Abercrombie, but I cannot claim kinship with her except in mind,” said Richard, gravely.

“How charming!” said Helen, carelessly. “How do you do, Miss Anne Berkley? Another Anne!”

“I am well, I thank you,” said little Anne. “There are many Annes in this place, but we don’t know them all, I s’pose. I didn’t like it long time ago, but I made an act of it, so I could bear my name, and now I like it.”

“What did you make of it?” cried Helen.

“Anne means an act of mortification. She has many curious bits of vernacular from the nuns who teach her; curious to others. That is one of them,” explained Anne Dallas.

“How interesting!” said Helen, by this time surfeited of little Anne and not intending to be drawn into conversation with Anne Dallas. Little Anne was quick to feel atmospheres. She flushed and said vehemently:

“The best of all lovely Annes, or anything, is Miss Anne Dallas!”

“Indeed that is true, little Anne, though you and I love each other so well,” said Richard Latham. “Miss Dallas stands between me and darkness; between me and silence, between me and inability to do my work, Miss Abercrombie.”

“What a beautiful thing to say, Mr. Latham! Miss Dallas must feel recompensed at this moment for all that she has done, all that she will do. Yet I can see how bad it would be for you not to have a good secretary.” Helen smiled toward Anne, and over her.

“It would, indeed. But I cannot say that it has ever occurred to me that Miss Dallas was a good secretary,” said Richard, slowly. “Are you too tired to walk about? Do gardens bore you?”

“Not such a garden as this one,” said Helen, graciously. “Please let Miss Dallas come with us. Kit will look after the little girl. I am sure that you are accustomed to Miss Dallas’s guidance.”

“That is another profoundly true remark, Miss Abercrombie,” said Richard. “You will show our best spots to Miss Abercrombie, in case I pass them, Miss Dallas?”

“Gladly,” said Anne, obeying Helen’s gesture to walk at her other hand. “But you know we think them all the best! This garden is one of Mr. Latham’s loveliest, though least-known, poems.”

Little Anne slipped her hand into Kit’s and held him back.

“Who is she?” she whispered.

“Like her?” asked Kit, interested in the reply.

Little Anne shook her head hard. “She is like all the things in fairy tales,” she said. “She’s like a cloth-of-gold, and a fairy princess, she’s so beau-ti-ful! But she’s something like Cinderella’s sisters at the ball. No, I don’t like her, not one bit. What does she want to do? Is she going to try to be Mr. Latham’s--you know! His writer? What do you call it?”

“Secretary? No, indeed, little Anne! Miss Abercrombie is a royal lady; not even a poet would she serve,” said Kit.

“Well, what makes her mean?” asked little Anne, candidly; she had used her keen young eyes and ears to some purpose. “Miss Anne’s ever’n’ ever so much nicer, and ever’n’ ever so much prettier, even if she isn’t, because she looks so kind of dear and sweet. I know she’s being not nice to my Anne, because when anybody isn’t nice to someone I love, and I don’t know what it is they’re doing, that makes me mad, and I remember my vocation.”

“Your vocation, you queer little Anne? What can you mean?” cried Kit.

“Putting beetles on their legs,” said the child promptly. “When they get on their backs and can’t get over, you know. It makes me feel like that. I do not like her one speck, so there! But I s’pose Sister Annunciata’d say I had to because I’m going to instructions. But ought you like everything, Kit? I think it’s fearful to be a saint!”

“Great Scott, little Anne, is that what you’re tackling? No wonder you find this sinful old world a puzzle!” Kit’s great roar of laughter made the others turn back.

“What has little Anne said now?” asked Anne Dallas with a look of such friendly understanding to Kit that Helen was annoyed.

“Don’t tell! Oh, don’t, please don’t tell!” begged little Anne.

“Surest thing you know I won’t tell!” Kit reassured her. “Not now. Sometime when I’m alone with Miss Dallas you won’t mind? Because she’d love to know what you said of her.”

“She knows! She knows we all love her to pieces!” cried little Anne, seizing Anne Dallas around the waist, to the inconvenience of Helen, who drew her skirt away.

“Is this child an orphan? Why doesn’t that Sister Something-or-Other teach her manners?” demanded Helen, indulging her temper at the expense of prudence.

“We find our little Anne’s manners most admirable. Her mother is Mrs. Berkley, and she is so lovely that no little girl could have a better model,” said Richard, patting little Anne’s cheek; it was as hot beneath his hand as he had known that it would be.

Little Anne swallowed hard several times and clasped her hands tight.

“Well, that was a _good_ act to offer up!” she said in a choked voice, and her friends had difficulty in restraining their smiles.

“When you are ready, Helen?” suggested Kit. “I suppose you have confided to Mr. Latham the secret that you were planning to tell him?”

“Not this time,” said Helen, recovering her smile. “Mr. Latham is coming to tea at your aunt’s; then I shall tell him, because there he will be at my mercy.”

“Are not men always at your mercy, Miss Abercrombie? Though I cannot see you, I have divined that,” said Richard, suavely.

“If you are walking our way, Miss Dallas, won’t you come with Miss Abercrombie and me?” Kit suggested.

Again Helen’s temper slipped its leash. She turned toward Anne, looking down on the girl who was a half head shorter than Helen.

“Oh, don’t you sleep in the house?” she said with so much insolence in the simple words that Richard flushed to his hair, and Kit found himself as hard put to it for self-control as little Anne had been in “making her act.”

“Miss Dallas does not sleep at her post; she boards near by, and all day and every day helps me in every way that her charity can devise,” said Richard. “Please do not go yet, Miss Dallas. I want your advice as to the next act, but more I want the honour of taking you home myself.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Latham,” said Kit, grasping his host’s hand so tight that he winced. “I’m proud and grateful that you let me come here. Good-bye, Miss Dallas. Come, little Anne; you’re going to be taken home by me. Helen? Are you ready?”

Helen made her adieux with her most charming grace, including Anne Dallas in her cordiality. She had allowed her temper to get away from her, but she had no mind to let it be the final impression which she left behind her. She was far too wise to stir men to championship of another girl, however her inferior in wit and beauty that girl might be.

Anne Dallas, with heightened colour, responded quietly to Helen’s farewell. She did not betray the slightest annoyance.

“She surpasses in breeding as she does in all other ways,” thought Richard, listening to Anne’s courteous replies, spoken in her soft alto voice.

“Good-bye, you darlingest! You very sweetest and darlingest!” cried little Anne, hugging Anne Dallas, and voicing what they all felt, though the feeling puzzled the child.

Kit left little Anne at her own door; she had walked in utter silence, holding his hand tight, while Helen chatted cheerfully, ignoring little Anne.

“What a queer, thin, dark, clever little creature!” exclaimed Helen after they had bade the child good-night. “Even bright children bore me. I don’t care for crudity in any form. I daresay your least Anne will make a clever woman.”

“Well, Nell, I can’t recall consulting you about little Anne,” said Kit, but so pleasantly that Helen could not resent it.

“Not about either Anne do you mean?” laughed Helen. “That little secretary person is a nice girl. Not particularly interesting, not particularly pretty, but interesting and pretty enough. It’s a mutually lucky thing that she is working for Richard Latham. If he marries her it will be quite well--and of course he is going to marry her. He is blind, so more beautiful women won’t make him repent it, and his wife will not be criticized as his wife would be if he weren’t blind. She would be entirely dutiful, and of course marriage to him will give her a position that she could not otherwise hope to attain. She doesn’t strike one as having connections.”

“Marry him! Anne Dallas!” cried Kit.

Helen glanced at him.

“Certainly. I should say that it was practically settled now,” she said. “Latham would be a step upward for most women, but no one would dream of opposing anything that he wanted. He really is pathetic, so gifted, so handsome, so polished--and so blind! I was not prepared to admire him as I do. It would be wicked to cross him in whatever he desired. I, for one, would not put a straw in the way of his marrying that mousey little secretary, even if I could, and though there are plenty of brilliant women who would gladly devote themselves to him.”

Kit did not speak. He walked on whistling behind his closed teeth.

Helen broke the silence:

“I’m afraid I was not quite pretty-behaved there, Kit! Spoiled children are so dreadful, and, till I discovered that the secretary was also the poet’s dream and to be Mrs. Latham, I hated meeting her; that’s the truth. I don’t mean to be a snob, but social equality is such utter nonsense that it ruffles my feathers. I was annoyed that I had to walk with that commonplace girl, and be shown the garden by her! That is, until I discovered her future standing. So I’m afraid I was a bit horrid. I’m sorry! And of course Miss Dallas is all right in her way.”

Helen leaned forward to smile into Kit’s face.

He threw his head back and away from her.

“Oh, damn--ascus!” he said.

Helen laughed blithely, and tucked her hand into his arm with high good humour.

“You needn’t convert your swear words on my account, Kit,” she said. “I might use one myself were occasion demanding it. If I was naughty, at least _I_ kept my temper, poor Kit! How about it? Did we all?”

“It’s a mighty poor thing to keep,” said Kit. “Get rid of it. Yes, you sure kept your temper, Nell! That’s the kind of temper I remember you had. You’ve kept it, all right!”

“What a horrid boy you are, Kit Carrington!” cried Helen, delighted, but pretending not to be. “I have not a bad temper; I never fly out. I dislike foolish, tiresome, annoying things, that’s all! I’ve an excellent temper to live with. My father says I’m the easiest woman to get on with he ever knew, and a man who has governed a whole state ought to be a judge of one little disposition! Come on, don’t sulk! It would be too stupid to bring an unpleasant atmosphere home with us into your aunt’s house.”

He looked at her; she was smiling, and was wonderfully handsome. Poor baited Kit, disturbed by Helen’s discovery and disgusted with the afternoon, sighed helplessly and gave in.

“You may be the easiest woman to get on with your father ever knew,” he said. “From what experienced people tell us that’s not a strong statement. It’s no fool of a job to handle any woman, they say, and I believe it!”