Marion Ames Taggart

“ 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. ”

“ Latham smiled at little Anne. Little Anne clasped her hands in her own dramatic gesture.
“Oh, dear, dear, dearest Miss Dallas, please let me call Mother myself! I don’t get many chances to telephone, and I love, just love to do it! And I want to tell mother my own self what a great, great thing has happened to me. You said a carriage, didn’t you, Mr. Latham? It’s pretty nearly always a car. I’m not quite, perfec’ly certain I ever’ve rode—roden—I mean ridden in a carriage. I’ve rode—ridden—in the grocer’s wagon, but I can’t remember a carriage. I’d love to tell mother. And with a real poet! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Kit said. “As if I’d nothing to do but decide to beckon Helen.”
“Between ourselves, Kit, I think Helen has already made the first signals,” said Miss Carrington. “The woman usually does; Thackeray and George Bernard Shaw are right. I should be sorry to see you giving yourself the airs of a conqueror, but as an honest working basis between us we may as well admit the truth that Helen is of the same mind as Barkis.”
“Oh, Lord!” groaned Kit, helplessly. “I’m not in the least in love with her, Aunt Anne. I never could be.” ”

“ It might end in sin were the woman not our Anne Dallas; I am not afraid that she, or Kit, would play with danger. The honour that made them fulfil the pledge to Mr. Latham would make them fight against the memory of each other after it was done. I certainly do not think that a hard battle, a tremendous sacrifice, suffering, are to be avoided at the cost of what our conscience says is wrong. The one point for Anne to establish is where her duty lies. That established, she must do it. I have faith to believe that doing it will bring her true happiness. ”

“ Since we are distributing pity, Motherums, we’d better shed some on Kit and Anne, if they are interested in each other, for Miss Carrington would certainly make the course of their true love run uncommonly rough! I must go home to my daughter. Isn’t it thrilling to think that we may have seen the curtain rise on an old-fashioned love drama, with a rival, a stern parent—an aunt comes to the same thing when she holds the hero’s inheritance—the princess whom the young lover should marry, everything properly cast! Anne, you witch-child, you are an uncanny elf! ”

“ You are a dear, humble-minded fellow; all truly great men are humble; they are simpler than women. There is nothing that you might not do, if you would see yourself as your friends see you. Let me inspire you to self-confidence! Let me feel that when you are a man honoured by others for your benefits to the world, your achievements—for I am sure, Kit, that you could be a power for good with your clear vision and your simple incorruptibility—let me feel that I kindled in you the desire that bore such fruit. ”

“ Carrington came here to do penance himself, à la St. Antony, and he has done it,” Helen said, and laughed; the laugh frightened little Anne. “Mr. Carrington has done penance, but he has also inflicted it upon another, which must be a joy to him. You don’t read the Bible in your Church, I’m told. If you did you would read with profit the story of Joseph. He was a righteous youth, also. I’ve no doubt he enjoyed Mrs. Potiphar’s discomfort, as a righteous person would. She deserved what she got. Wait till I screw up my hair, Kit. It’s hard on hair to practise the virtue of humility.” ”

“ That afternoon he spent in the woods, contentedly wandering, for some time sleeping on the moss; his vigil of the preceding night had made him drowsy. This time he had not forgotten to invite his old dog, Sirius, the English setter who had been his comrade for years, to bear him company. On his way to enjoy the silence which he craved, he had stopped at the Berkleys’ to get confirmation of the good news of the morning.
Mrs. Berkley had cried on his shoulder as if he had been Peter, grown taller, and as she had not cried when little Anne was in mortal danger. ”

“ Kit looked at her, his honest, rebellious young soul in his eyes.
“Christopher Carrington, listen to me with your intelligence, not merely with your ears,” began Miss Carrington, bracing herself to her task. “I rather like your feeling, which your silence announces more eloquently than words, as novelists say. Youth is the time for dreams. It is for its elders to see to it that the dreams do not become nightmares. I want, I urge you to marry Helen Abercrombie because she is preëminently suitable. She is of our class; she is handsome, highly accomplished, wealthy. ”

“ But she said pleasantly:
“Quite right, Kit! I can’t help feeling sorry that Richard Latham is going to miss complete intellectual companionship. No matter what nice things he says of her, of course we know that Miss Dallas is not his equal. However, she is a nice, trusty, sympathetic girl, and on the whole I am glad—since he can’t have such as Helen, for the good reason that there is none like her!—that he will be taken care of, and at least be secure of the self-sacrificing devotion that a blind man needs. It is hard to keep in mind that he is a blind man; not only a great poet.” ”

“ Now, as Antony looked at Kit, he saw that Helen was decidedly not the girl that Kit wanted. He said:
“Well, Kit, old man, as to the top of the heap being a better berth than the side, or maybe the foot, that would depend entirely on what suited your constitution, or whether you found more briars at the top, or farther down. I don’t think ambition as an end is worth what a man sacrifices for it. It’s a means, not an end; the part you play in the world. As to romance, to my mind it’s about the one real thing there is. ”

“ Frumpy folk can’t do anything for the keen old world; it knows a good thing when it sees it. You may be sure, Christopher, my son, that half the unworldliness is self-delusion. It is lazy-mindedness, or else an instinct that warns of unfitness for the world; that the person can’t play a part in it. He thinks he’s superior and renouncing; in reality, he’s inferior and thrown out.”
“Honest, Helen, that’s true!” cried Kit; he looked at Helen with cordial admiration. “I often wonder if I’m not too commonplace to amount to a whole lot, and so I think that I don’t want to make a splash. ”

“ Latham, if I begged this modest girl, who ignores her usefulness to you, and so to us all, to take pity on my friendlessness to-day and go back in the car with me? I am alone. Would you be angry? And will you humour me, Miss Dallas? I drive alone so much that one would expect me to get used to it, but I never do.”
“I’d like to go with you, Miss Carrington,” said Anne Dallas, truthfully. “Solitude in a car is more solitary than a carriage with only one in it. ”

“ Ah, well, dear Mrs. Berkley and Joan, there’s no way out! And I am a happy girl, even though I am a little bit unhappy, to have an opportunity to do what I can do in helping Richard. How often we’ve said that!”
“Too much protest implies a doubt, dear child,” said Mrs. Berkley. “But I’ve no doubt of your happiness; in one way or another it is coming to you. Little Anne has ordered tea for you. Come and drink it. Let us try to postpone further thought of our troubles. Don’t you think solutions come clearer and quicker when we don’t strive too hard for them?” ”

“ Latham, so it was arranged through him that I was to come, and here I am.”
“A most fortunate arrangement,” said Miss Carrington. “I never saw Richard Latham look so alive, so happy, so—— My dear, he is a charming man! I am a selfish woman; people who reach my age through years of solitude are likely to be, but to be so young, with your mind, your heart to devote to a life so highly endowed, yet so denied, is a lot that guardian angels might envy! Richard Latham can never again be pitied, having you.”
Anne straightened herself, her eyes widened with a startled look. ”

“ Richard laughed. “There is no rule, no precedent, because there is no old me! There’s not even English grammar left of my old self, you see! All the world is new. Do you know that this is Anne now?”
He held out his hands to Anne and she came over to him and laid her own hands into his. She was pale, her eyes cast down, her lips parted as if she were breathing quickly; Kit saw her breast rise and fall. He could not guess that Anne was wondering why she found her new part almost impossible to play. ”

“ Latham! You surely do deserve the best thing in the world. I know what it is, too, though I don’t use your label on it: she’s Miss Dallas, not Anne to me, but there’s only one best thing, anyway.”
“What a trump you are, Kit Carrington!” cried Richard, jumping up and seizing Kit’s hands delightedly. “Why, you’re a poet yourself! That had the ring of imagination and beauty! Sit down. You’re here to lunch, you know.” ”

“ Oh, Kit, take me home!”
Kit’s heart beat faster. Helen was intoxicating with her eyes downcast, her voice low and vibrant. Her simple, direct appeal moved him by the pathos of its revelation of sweetness where he had known only hardness; of weakness where he had thought there was only self-reliant strength.
“Why, Nell, dear,” he cried, “I didn’t know you felt like this! Spring in the woods always sets me off, too. Funny how all human beings are casting about for something, they’re not sure just what. ”

“ He is a nice boy; it is not my partiality that says it.”
“He is an uncommonly nice boy,” assented Anne so readily that her frankness left Miss Carrington uncertain whether it were indifference, or the most effectual disguise. “He did not introduce himself to Mr. Latham; little Anne Berkley brought him. Isn’t she a marvellous sprite? I never knew a child like her.”
“She is the other Cleavedge celebrity,” smiled Miss Carrington. “I hope we shall not spoil her. Kit is not a brilliant boy, but he has a good mind, and a still better heart.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is inconceivable that Helen could ever be a careless creature whose hair straggled or whose collars sagged. A boy doesn’t consider these matters which later set a man’s nerves on edge; they do more toward making marriage a failure than the affinity of which novelists talk—though I’m ready to concede that the affinity is likely to attend upon these subtle causes of estrangement. It is as easy to love the right woman as the wrong one, once you set your mind to it, Kit. So set your mind to loving Helen; she is preëminently the right woman for you. ”

“ When they returned to the piazza Kit found himself aroused, thinking fast, conscious of having enjoyed the past hour keenly, as a man must enjoy whatever puts him on his mettle.
“You’re a great girl, Helen Abercrombie!” he said with sincere admiration. “You will hold your own if ever you get that salon you dream of, or are launched on a sea wide enough and windy enough for you.”
“Helen is the peer of the most brilliant men. She will be a tower of strength to her associates,” said Miss Carrington, delighted to see that Kit was impressed. ”

“ Joan kissed Barbara again to punctuate her confession.
“But you don’t tire of her the way I mean, do you?” persisted Kit. “You don’t ever feel as if she weren’t quite worth while, as if you’d rather be free from the bother——”
“Christopher Carrington,” Joan sternly interrupted him, “one more word and I’ll call the police and commit you as a dangerous ogre, not fit to be at large. What in all this world makes you ask me that? As though any woman worth her salt would feel that way to a little child, even if it weren’t her own! ”

“ I’m sure I don’t see how you can bother her, Kit, for you are always so very dear, but I do certainly think you’d better run right away! It’ll make her sick to cry so. Just go right home, dear Kit, and you’d better say a prayer to St. Joseph, ’cause he’s the one for husbands. There, there, my poor darling, please try to feel better! Don’t cry! I know it’ll come all right. See how I didn’t die when I was so sick; often things turn out better’n you’d think! Anne, little Anne, will take care of you. Good-bye, dear Kit. ”