Читать книгу The Annes - Marion Ames Taggart - Страница 3

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THE thin child on the floor was completely engrossed in her occupation, but she never gave fractional attention to anything. She rested on one elbow, her weight on her hip, one long, slender leg crooked under her, the other extended at length over the green carpet, the foot that ended it dropping in and out of its flat-soled pump as it see-sawed from heel to toe.

Suddenly the child sat up, raised her elfin face, pushed back her cropped dark hair from her dark, bright eyes with the back of a slender hand somewhat grimy on its knuckles.

“Mother, I know my vocation!” she announced.

Her pretty mother, as fair and placid as little Anne was dark and dynamic, bore this announcement calmly.

“You must have your hair bobbed again, Anne,” she said. “What made you think of vocations, dear? At seven there is time enough for that; few vocations are decided quite so early.”

“Yes, but I think it is nice to get it off your mind,” Anne said. “I’ve been thinking about it for years, ever since Joan used to talk about it, when she used to think maybe she ought to be a sister. And then Antony came along, and she married him as quick! I’d hate to wiggle around like that! So I’ve wondered a whole lot what my vocation was, and now I know.”

Anne paused for the question which her mother dutifully put to her:

“Do you, dear? What is it?”

“Putting things on their legs. This beetle needs it. He gets on his back and kicks and kicks! It would melt a heart of stone. I turn him over and he feels ever so much cheerfuller! He doesn’t stay right side up; he tips over again, but I think maybe it’s partly the carpet. Anyway, I’m right here to set him going again. Prob’ly if he was a bird he’d sing to me, but poor black beetles haven’t any voice. Crickets chirp, though; do you s’pose black beetles chirp when they are enjoying themselves together?”

Anne had dropped down again on her elbow, but she sat up again as a hope for black beetles awakened in her.

“I think not, Anne; I think they cannot voice their joy,” said Mrs. Berkley, gravely.

Anne sighed and lay out at full length on the floor.

“I s’pose not. But maybe they go singing in their hearts—— Why, Mother, that’s a hymn, isn’t it, mother? Is that a sin? I didn’t mean it; honest to goodness, I never meant that hymn! Is it a sin, Mother?”

Once more Anne was excitedly erect.

“You have been told many times, Anne, that you cannot do wrong unless you mean to, sin is choosing to do wrong when you know what is right,” said this conscientious mother. “How did your beetle happen to be in this room, Anne?”

“I brought him in, Mother,” answered the child. “I turned him over out of doors, but I wanted to sit down and watch him flop. I s’pose I do upset him a little weeny bit sometimes! It’s a great temptation, but then I’m right here to set him going again, and that’s my vocation.”

“It’s really a beautiful vocation, Anne,” said her mother. “To put someone on his feet and help him to walk, only I wouldn’t confine it altogether to black beetles.”

“People?” asked Anne. “Figuravely? Don’t you mean that to be—— What are those stories? You know! All-all glory, or something?”

“Allegories. And figuratively, Anne. Yes, dear. It would be a beautiful vocation to help people to walk, wouldn’t it? And it’s sure to be yours if you’re a good woman, as I pray you will be. One way or another all good women put people on their feet.”

Mrs. Berkley hastily got her needle where it could do no harm, for she saw what was coming.

Anne scrambled to her feet, leaving her beetle on his back, vainly imploring the ceiling with his many active legs. Big girl that she was she threw herself upon her mother’s lap, and hugged her hard.

“Like you, just for all the world, ’xactly like you, you most precious, beautiful motherkins, Barbara Berkley!” Anne choked herself in choking her mother. “You help everybody in this family on their feet, and you just lead ’em right along! I wonder where’d I’d be if ’twasn’t for you showing me lovely things? Just like black beetle allegories this minute! My father, Peter Berkley, wouldn’t be hardly anything if ’twasn’t for you! You know yourself he’d never in this world remember rubbers! And prob’ly he’d die of it. And Joan—well, what in the world do you s’pose she’d do with the baby if she didn’t ask you? And as to Peter-two——!” Words for once failed Anne. Her opinion of her obstreperous fourteen-year-old brother was luckily deprived of expression. He was surer of his own vocation than Anne was of hers; it was clear to him that his calling in life was to suppress Anne.

“Dear me, Anne-baby!” gasped Mrs. Berkley. “You have hugged me breathless and my hair is coming down! Not that I am not glad that you are satisfied with me as a mother, little Anne!”

“Satisfied? Doesn’t that mean sort of getting-along-with-it?” asked Anne, the student of words.

“Oh, no. It means that a thing exactly suits you in every way,” explained Mrs. Berkley.

“Your hair isn’t coming down; it’s only rather loose. It’s prettiest down, anyway; I’ll fix it,” said Anne. “Satisfied doesn’t sound like that when people say it; they say it in a getting-along tone. When Joan got that centrepiece from Antony’s Aunt Lil last Christmas she said: ‛Oh, well, of course I’m satisfied with it!’ Like that! ’Cause she per-fect-ly detests Renaissance lace. And don’t you remember Peter-two made that awful bad joke about it? He said it was re-nuisance. Nuisance, you know, mother! Don’t you see? Because Joan put it away to give someone else; that’s what made the re part of the joke: an over-again nuisance, Mother! Joan said it was a perfec’ly stupid joke; she said it was a pun. What makes me remember bad jokes, Mother? I keep remembering Peter’s worst ones. Joan said she was satisfied, but she means to give that centrepiece to someone else; Joan said to Mr. Richard Latham, because he was blind, but Joan didn’t mean it; Joan never means anything not kind, like that! Now your hair isn’t loose, lovely motherkins! I see Joan coming in the back way. She hasn’t brought Barbara—— Mercy me! I forgot my beetle and Joan’ll step on him, kersmash! Joan would never see a beetle; she goes along thinking of Antony Paul and Toots! I don’t blame her; that’s the loveliest baby I ever in all my lifetime saw! And I always did say Antony was ’most too good for Joan, if she is my sister. I never expected in all my lifetime to have a brother-in-law who was half as nice as Antony Paul—so there!”

“Oh, Anne!” sighed Mrs. Berkley, her conscientious motherhood weighing upon her. “My hair may not be loose, but what about your little red tongue, my dear? I am afraid that Peter is right, and that we spoil you, child!”

“Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother!” Anne earnestly reassured her. “You bring me up just right. You let me do about everything that isn’t wicked, only just a weeny bit kind of not like every little girl, but if I wanted a crime you wouldn’t let me have it, and you teach me noble things—catechism and everything!”

Mrs. Berkley laughed her soft inward, chuckling laugh, as she often did at Anne’s speeches.

“Such high-coloured words, little Anne! Fancy craving a crime!

“Joan, dear, the baby must have let you sleep last night. You look blooming, my daughter!”

Mrs. Berkley arose to take into her arms a pretty young creature, all soft tints like her mother—sweet, normal, and contented, not in any way suggesting sisterhood to little Anne.

“Oh, Mother, dearest,” Joan remonstrated in a voice that declared in its first note that it was made to sing lullabies, “as though Barbara were not always good now! For five months, since she passed her third month, she has let me sleep from eleven till two, and Antony and I love to have her waken before four because she is sweetest before dawn. Antony says the truly poetical time to see a baby is at dawn—provided you can get your eyes open to look! Antony is romantic; then he is ashamed of it and pokes fun at himself! Anne, you monkey, why don’t you come over to kiss me? And what have you in your hand?”

“It’s my beetle, Joan,” said Anne, complying with her sister’s request. “I am looking for a safe place for him, where he can get on his legs himself when I am gone. It ought to be something with kind of sticky walls. I don’t mean sticky-that-holds-you, but sticky-that-can-be-stuck-to; that kind. If you don’t mind, mother, dear, I’ll stand your prayer book, and the Imitation, and these other two little pious books around him, because they’re all bound in that soft leather, like gloves, that makes you crawl, and I want him to crawl. It won’t be sacredligious to use them, because it’s for charity, and bowls are dreadfully slippery.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Joan, staring, though she should have been accustomed to Anne.

“The beetle will be far happier out of doors, Anne,” said her mother. “He will not enjoy walls, even of soft leather. Better let him go and find another when you want to help a beetle on his legs. Anne has discovered her vocation, Joan: it is helping beetles to their legs when they are on their backs and can’t get up. I think that may quite easily prove to be a prophecy of her career!”

Joan laughed. “Heaven help the human beetle that wants to lie on his back if Anne gets after him later on! She would make him walk, possibly fly.”

Anne had obediently carried the beetle out of doors and put him down in the grass. He showed as lively pleasure in being released from her ministrations as many another object of philanthropy would show if a chance to get away were offered it. Anne watched it scuttle off and returned to her family somewhat cast down.

“He kept right side up all right, and went off just as fast!” she announced. “I don’t think he acted one bit attached to me. Maybe beetles aren’t. Maybe if you have a shell you don’t have a heart. That wasn’t slang, Mother! I didn’t say it! Peter-two told me he’d fine me if I said ‛have a heart,’ but I didn’t! Honest that wasn’t the same!”

“No, dear, it wasn’t. That was science, not slang,” Joan comforted her.

Anne went over and seated herself, cross-legged, in the deep window seat. She fell into one of her meditative moods in which she was lost to all around her. Active or contemplative, Anne was always at the nth degree of her temporary condition.

Mrs. Berkley and her older daughter dropped into the intimate talk of a mother and daughter who are also close friends, sharing their experiences of matronhood.

At first Anne listened, wistful, feeling a little pushed aside. Joan had been married less than two years. Anne could remember when she had been to her pretty sister an enviable combination of her discarded doll, her little sister, and the forerunner of the baby, though this Joan herself, still less Anne, had not understood.

This had been almost three years ago, before Antony Paul had come and decided Joan against a convent, while she was still discussing her vocation in terms which had imprinted themselves upon Anne’s memory. Anne had not been her sister’s chief interest since she was four, so it was not that which she missed as she sat in the window seat; it was her mother’s divided interest that the little girl grudged.

Anne’s dog, Cricket, an apprehensive, black-and-tan, bow-legged beagle, came to sit close to his little mistress, snuggling his head backward to beg for her hand. Anne pulled his soft ears and lost herself in ill-assorted thoughts. At last she aroused; Joan was saying:

“Mother, you don’t know men! Of course, there is Father; I must confess you know him perfectly. It takes perfect knowledge to manage a man as you manage him—and he never suspects it! Why, he even prefers to go your way after a step or two in the other direction! But you do that by being you, so sweet and gentle, and—and—well, always right, I suppose! But men are not like father; he is so reasonable! Now Antony is the dearest of dears, but I can’t say he is always reasonable. Sometimes I simply cannot make him see things as I do. Then I give in; it’s my duty. But I’m afraid there’s another side to it. I ought to make him see. Especially now that I have Barbara to train. Antony is so sweet I could get him to do anything if I cried, but that’s a mean trick! A woman to play on a man’s chivalry! I’ve got to study, strengthen my mind, you know! Men are much, much more childish than we are, mother, yet they are fearful to argue with; they’re so horribly logical. And of all things you can’t trust to bring you out in an argument where you expected to land, logic is the worst!”

Mrs. Berkley laughed her little amused laugh.

“It even leads you astray in the construction of a sentence apparently,” she said. “I never knew a young matron who did not think that her study of her husband had revealed depths no other woman had ever fathomed. But I assure you, Joan, men are far more alike than women are. I have no doubt that by and by Antony will be led by you, just as you think your father is led by me. But rest assured, my dear, I don’t lead your father by logic!”

Anne unwound herself and stretched her long, thin legs with a sigh.

“I shall never get married,” she said. “I shall not! And it cramps dreadfully to sit with your legs under you on such a hard seat. I see Miss Anne Dallas. She is going to the post office, I s’pose; she has a lot of letters and stuff. She’s going to mail them for Mr. Latham, most likely. She looks as nice! I think queer blue dresses are perfec’ly lovely. Kit Carrington has stopped her. He took off his hat most graceful. It’s the way they do in stories, old stories, when it was long ago, when they doff their hats. So did Kit Carrington. I never knew how it was till now, but that’s what he did: doffed it. Look, Mother. Like this.”

Anne stood up and swept an imaginary hat to her side with a splendid gesture, then let her head droop deferentially and struck a listening pose. Then she straightened her lithe body and turned upon her mother and sister an excited, glowing little face.

“Well, I never knew Kit was in love with Anne Dallas till now!” she cried.

“Anne!” her mother remonstrated. “I really will not allow you to be so impertinent. What a remark from a little girl like you! And Kit? You mean Mr. Carrington, I suppose? Mr. Christopher Carrington? And Miss Dallas? Do you?”

“Yes, Mother,” said Anne, meekly. “I forgot. They all say Kit Carrington; he’s so nice. That’s the reason, I s’pose, and young of his age.”

“He must be as much as twenty-three or four,” observed Joan.

Then, inconsistently after her mother’s rebuke, after the manner of older people with a precocious child like Anne, she asked:

“What possessed you to say that Kit Carrington was in love with Anne Dallas, child?”

“I can see he is,” said little Anne, rejoicing in this opportunity to continue the subject. “He got all red and he’s looking at her about like Antony when you come in, Joan; this way.”

Anne thrust forward her head, wreathed her mobile lips into a chastened smile, and rolled her flashing dark eyes in what was meant for an adoring expression. She instinctively heightened her effect by clasping her hands, though Christopher Carrington had indulged in no gestures.

“Anne, really, I dislike this exceedingly,” began her mother, but her rebuke was spoiled by Joan’s flight to the window where she ensconced herself behind the curtains to verify Anne’s report.

Mrs. Berkley had a sense of humour that asserted itself at unsuitable times. She chuckled now.

“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, hast thou really espied Romance from thy window?” she murmured. “Sister Anne, is thy report true of what approaches? But, alas for your little sister Anne’s training, Joan! I can’t join you; they would see me! What do you make out, Joan?”

Joan waved her hand behind her back, signalling to her mother to let her have Sister Anne’s watch tower undisturbed for a few moments.

At last she turned away and came over to her mother, Anne with her; Anne had been frankly watching the conversation in the street, untrammelled by the handicap of adult years.

“Well, of course, Mother, one can’t be sure of such a thing from across the street, looking on at one chance meeting, but it does seem as though our Anne’s keen eyes were not far wrong,” Joan announced. “Kit has an air of profound admiration. I couldn’t say as to Anne Dallas; you can’t tell much about a girl. I wonder! They’ve gone on now, in opposite directions. What a handsome boy Kit is! So manly, carries himself so well! He has the nicest smile I ever saw—except Antony’s! I wonder, I do wonder!”

“Anne is a dear girl,” said Mrs. Berkley. “If it were so—poor Richard Latham!”

“Oh, Mother, you don’t think——” began Joan.

“Anne is a dear girl,” repeated her mother. “Do you suppose it is likely that a lonely, hungry-hearted man like Richard Latham, sitting in darkness all his days, could have such a girl as Anne beside him constantly, writing his poems at his dictation, reading to him in her soft, lovely voice, serving him in countless ways, and not learn to love her? I’ve been hoping it would be so. For why should not Anne Dallas love him? Blindness is rather attractive than forbidding to a girl as sweetly compassionate as Anne. And to take at his dictation his beautiful words, his exquisite fancies, to hear them first of all the world, to come to feel, to know, that you inspired most of them, to write them for him and be the medium through which the world knows them—can you imagine better food for love?”

“Well, now you say it,” admitted Joan, slowly. “But if this attractive Kit, full of charm, young, does come wooing—I wonder! Poor Mr. Latham, indeed!”

“Perhaps we should say poor Miss Anne Carrington?” suggested Mrs. Berkley. “Kit’s aunt would surely take the advent of Anne Dallas hard. She is inordinately proud of Kit, ambitious for him. She has intended him to marry Helen Abercrombie who is intemperately rich in her own right, and is the only child of ex-Governor Abercrombie. Miss Carrington had her here last summer, don’t you remember?”

“With her car and other paraphernalia; of course!” agreed Joan. “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! Good-bye, dear.”

Joan kissed her mother and her sister and was gone.

Anne stood scowling at the table cover, motionless for several minutes, unseeing, lost in thought.

“Anne, dear, what is it?” her mother aroused her.

“I was thinking this was the most Annest town I ever saw: Miss Anne Carrington, Anne Dallas, little Anne Berkley; prob’ly lots more,” she said. “When I’m confirmed I’m going to take Ursula for my new name, ’cause there isn’t one of them. Then you can call me that, so everybody’ll know me apart.”

“I can tell you apart, childie, this minute! Come here, little Anne, and let me rock you, though your legs are uncomfortably long for this low chair.” Mrs. Berkley held out her arms invitingly and Anne ran into them.

“Another thing I was thinking when you and Joan were talking about Mr. Latham and Ki—Mr. Carrington—all wanting to marry her. I think we’re not half sorry enough for all the trouble everybody makes God, all wanting the same thing and praying about it! It must be awful to have to say no to such lots of ’em! And He can’t say yes to more’n half when there’s two, just even, you see. It makes me feel sorry for Him. Is that a sin, Mother?” Anne lifted her head out of her mother’s shoulder and gazed at her with profoundly sad eyes.

Her mother kissed the lids down over those great dark eyes. Sometimes her heart ached with fear of this strange child’s future. Then again Anne was so reassuringly human that the pang of anxiety over her unearthliness was swallowed up in anxiety of the opposite sort.

So now Mrs. Berkley kissed down the lids over the meditative eyes and murmured comfortingly:

“Little Anne must remember that God knows best.”

Anne sprang to her feet with a whoop that made her mother gasp.

“Oh, yes, ’course!” she cried, swiftly disposing of theology for the moment. “I hear Peter-two coming in. He promised to bring me elder whistles for Cricket that’ll just about make him come, no matter where he is, and if Peter-two hasn’t done it—— Well, he’ll catch it!”

With which Anne rushed from the room. An instant later her mother’s fear as to her son’s safety—if she felt any—was set at rest by a whistle so shrill that it sent Cricket cowering under the sofa.