BEGGARS ON HORSEBACK
I
With the Merryman girls economy was a fine art. Money was spent by them to preserve the family traditions. Nothing else counted. Everything was sacrificed to the gods of yesterday.
Little Anne Merryman had shivered all her short life in the bleakness of this domestic ideal.
"Why can't I have butter on my bread?" she had demanded in her long-legged schoolgirl days, when she had worn her fair hair in a fat braid down her back.
The answers had never been satisfying. Well-bred people might, Amy indicated, go without butter. Their income was not elastic, and there were things more important.
"What things? Amy, I'm so hungry I could eat a house."
It was these expressions of Anne's about food which shocked Amy and Ethel.
"I'd sell my soul for a slice of roast beef."
"Anne!"
"Well, I would!"
"I—I don't see how you can be so ordinary, Anne."
"Ordinary" in the lexicon of Amy and Ethel meant "plebeian." No one in the Merryman family had ever been so ordinary as Anne. Hitherto the Merrymans had been content to warm themselves by the fires of their own complacency, to feed themselves on past splendors; for the Merrymans were as old as Norman rule in England. They had come to America with grants from the king, they had family portraits and family silver and family diamonds, and now in this generation of orphaned girls, two of them at least were fighting the last battles of family pride. The fortunes of the Merrymans had declined, and Amy and Ethel, with their backs, as it were, to the wall, were making a final stand.
"We must have evening clothes, we must entertain our friends, we must pay for the family pew"; this was their nervous litany. The Merrymans had always dressed and entertained and worshiped properly; hence it was for lace or tulle or velvet, as the case might be, that their money went. It went, too, for the very elegant and exclusive little dinners to which, on rare occasions, their friends were bidden; and it went for the high place in the synagogue from which they prayed their pharisaical prayers.
"We thank thee, Lord, that we are not as others," prayed Amy and Ethel fervently.
But Anne prayed no such prayers. She wanted to be like other people. She wanted to eat and drink with the multitude, she wanted a warm, warm heart, a groaning board. She wanted snugness and coziness and comfort. And she grew up loving these things, and hating the pale walls of their old house in Georgetown, the family portraits, the made-over dinner gowns that her sisters wore, her own made-over party frocks.
"Can't I have a new one, Amy?"
"It's Ethel's turn."
So it was when Anne went to a certain diplomatic reception in a made-over satin slip, hidden by a cloud of snowy tulle, that Murray Flint first waked to the fact of her loveliness.
He had waked ten years earlier to the loveliness of Amy, and five years later to the beauty of Ethel.
And now here was Anne!
"She's different though," he told old Molly Winchell; "more spiritual than the others."
It was Anne's thinness which deceived him. It was an attractive thinness. She was pale, with red lips, and the fat fair braids had given way to a shining knot. She wore the family pearls, and the effect was, as Murray had said, spiritual. Anne had the look, indeed, of one who sees heavenly visions.
Amy had never had that look. She was dark and vivid. If at thirty the vividness was emphasized by artificial means the fault lay in Amy's sacrifice to her social ideals, She needed the butter which she denied herself. She needed cream, and eggs, and her doctor had told her so. And Amy had kept the knowledge to herself.
Ethel, eating as little as Amy—or even less—had escaped, miraculously, attenuation. At twenty she had been a plump little beauty. She was still plump. Her neck in her low-cut gown was lovely. Her figure was not fashionable, and she lacked Amy's look of race.
"They are all charming," Molly Winchell said. "Why don't you marry one of them, Murray?"
"Marriage," said Murray, "would spoil it."
"Spoil what?"
Murray turned on her his fine dark eyes. "They are such darlings—the three of them."
"You Turk!" Molly surveyed him over the top of her sapphire feather fan. "So that's it, is it? You want them all."
Murray thought vaguely it was something like that. For ten years he had had Amy and Ethel—Amy at twenty, fire and flame, Ethel at fifteen, with bronze locks and lovely color. In those years Anne had promised little in the way of beauty or charm. She had read voraciously, curled up in chairs or on rugs, and had waked now and then to his presence and a hot argument.
"Why don't you like Dickens, Murray?"
"Oh, his people, Anne—clowns."
"They're not!"
"Boors; beggars." He made a gesture of distaste.
"They're darlings—Mark Tapley and Ruth Pinch. Murray, if I had a beefsteak I'd make a beefsteak pie."
There was more of pathos in this than Murray imagined. There had been no beef on the Merryman table for many moons.
"Murray, did you ever eat tripe?"
"My dear child"
"It sounds dee-licious when Toby Veck has it on a cold morning. And there's the cricket on the hearth and the teakettle singing. I'd love to hear a kettle sing like that, Murray; wouldn't you?"
But Murray wouldn't. He had the same kind of mind as Amy and Ethel. He did not like robust and hearty things or robust and hearty people. He wore a corset to keep his hips small, and stood up at teas and receptions with an almost military carriage. Of course he had to sit down at dinners, but he sat very straight. He, too, had family portraits and family silver, and he lived scrupulously up to them. His fortunes, unlike the Merrymans', had not declined. He had money enough and to spare. He could have made Amy or Ethel very comfortable if he had married either of them. But he had not wanted to marry. There had been a time when he had liked to think of Amy as presiding over his table. She would have fitted in perfectly with the old portraits and old silver and the family diamonds. Then Ethel had come along. She had not fitted in with the diamonds and portraits and silver, but she had stirred his pulses.
"Anywhere else but in Georgetown," old Molly Winchell was saying, "those girls would have been snapped up long ago. It's a poor matrimonial market."
Murray was complacently aware that he was geographically the only eligible man on the Merryman horizon. Unless Amy and Ethel could marry with distinction they would not marry at all. It was not lack of attraction which kept them single, but lack of suitors in their own set.
And now here was Anne, with Ethel's loveliness and Amy's look of race. There was also that look of angelic detachment from the things of earth.
So Murray's eyes rested on Anne with great content as she came and sat beside Molly Winchell.
Other eyes rested on her—Amy's with quick jealousy. "So now it's Anne," she said to herself as she perceived Murray's preoccupation. Five years ago she had said, "Now it's Ethel," as she had seen him turn to the fresher beauty. Before that she had dreamed of herself as loving and beloved. It had been hard to shut her eyes to that vision.
Yet—better Anne than an outsider. Amy had a fierce sense of proprietorship in Murray. If she gave him to Ethel, to Anne, he would be still in a sense hers. With Anne or Ethel she would share his future, partake of his present.
A third pair of eyes surveyed Anne with interest as she sat by Molly.
"Corking kid," said the owner of the eyes to himself.
His name was Maxwell Sears. He was not in the least like Murray Flint. He was from the Middle West, he was red-blooded, and he cared nothing for the past. He held it as a rather negligible honor that he had a Declaration-signing ancestor. The important things to Maxwell were that he was representing his district in Congress; that he was still young enough to carry his college ideals into politics, and that he had just invested a small portion of the fortune which his father had left him in a model stock farm in Illinois.
For the rest, he was big, broad-shouldered, clean-minded. Now and then he looked up at the stars, and what he saw there swayed him level with the men about him. Because of the stars he called no man a fool, except such as deemed himself wiser than the rest. Because he believed in the people they believed in him. It was that which had elected him. It was that which would elect him again.
"Corking kid," said Maxwell Sears, with his smiling eyes on Anne.
II
In the course of the evening Maxwell managed an introduction. He found Anne quaint and charming. That she was reading Dickens amused him. He had thought that no one read Dickens in these days. How did it happen?
She said that she had discovered him for herself—many years ago.
How many years?
Well, to be explicit, ten. She had been eleven when she had found a new world in the fat little books. They had a lot of old books. She loved them all. But Dickens more than any. Didn't he?
He did. "His heart beat with the heart of the common people. It was that which made him great."
"Murray hates him."
"Who is Murray?"
Anne pondered. "Well, he's a family friend. We girls were brought up on him."
"Brought up on him?"
"Yes. Anything Murray likes we are expected to like. If he doesn't like things we don't."
"Oh."
"He's over there by Mrs. Winchell."
Maxwell looked and knew the type. "But you don't agree about Dickens?"
"No. And Amy says that Murray's wiser than I. But I'm not sure. Amy thinks that all men are wiser than women."
Maxwell chuckled. Anne was refreshing. She was far from modern in her modes of thought. She was—he hunted for the word and found it—mid-Victorian in her attitude of mind.
He wondered what Winifred Reed would think of her. Winifred lived in Chicago. She was athletic and intellectual. She wrote tabloid dramas, drove her own car, dressed smartly, and took a great interest in Maxwell's career. She wrote to him once a week, and he always answered her letters. Now and then she failed to write, and he missed her letters and told her so. It was altogether a pleasant friendship.
She hated the idea of Maxwell's farm. She thought it a backward step. "Are you going to spend the precious years ahead of you in the company of cows?"
"There'll be pigs too, Winifred; and chickens. And, of course, my horses."
"You belong in a world of men. It's the secret of your success that men like you."
"My cows like me—and there's great comfort after the stress of a stormy session in the reposefulness of a pig."
"I wish you'd be serious."
"I am serious. Perhaps it's a throwback, Winifred. There is farmer blood in my veins."
It was something deeper than that. It was his virile joy in fundamentals. He loved his golden-eared Guernseys and his black Berkshires and his White Wyandottes—not because of their choiceness but because they were cows and pigs and chickens; and he kept a pair of pussy cats, half a dozen dogs, and as many horses, because man primitively had made friends of the dumb brutes upon whom the ease and safety of his life depended.
There was, rather strangely, something about Anne which fitted in with this atavistic idea. She was, more than Winifred, a hearthstone woman. A man might carry her over his threshold and find her when he came home o' nights. It was hard to visualize Winifred as waiting or watching or welcoming. She was always going somewhere with an air of having important things to do, and coming back with an air of having done them. Maxwell felt that these important things were not connected in any way with domestic matters. One did not, indeed, expect domesticity of Winifred.
Thus Anne, drawing upon him by mysterious forces, drew him also by her beauty and a certain wistfulness in her eyes. He had once had a dog, Amber Witch, whose eyes had held always a wistful question. He had tried to answer it. She had grown old on his hearth, yet always to the end of her eyes had asked. He hoped now that in some celestial hunting ground she had found an answer to that subtle need.
He told Anne about Amber Witch. "I have one of her puppies on my farm."
She was much interested. "I've never had a dog; or a cat."
He had, he said, a big pair of tabbies who slept in the hay and came up to the dairy when the milk was strained. There were two blue porcelain dishes for their sacred use. There was, he said, milk and to spare. He grew eloquent as he told of the number of quarts daily. He bragged of his butter. His cheeses had won prizes at county fairs. As for chickens—they had fresh eggs and broilers without end. He had his own hives, too, white-clover honey. And his housekeeper made hot biscuit. In a month or two there'd be asparagus and strawberries. Say! Yes, he was eloquent.
Anne was hungry. There had been a meagre dinner that evening. The other girls had not seemed to care. But Anne had cared.
"I'm starved," she had said as she had surveyed the table. "Let's pawn the spoons and have one square meal."
"Anne!"
"Oh, we're beggars on horseback"—bitterly—"and I hate it."
It was her moment of rebellion against the tyranny of tradition. Amy had had such a moment years ago when her mother had taken her away from school. Amy had a brilliant mind, and she had loved study, but her mother had brought her to see that there was no money for college. "You'd better have a year or two in society, Amy. And this craze for higher education is rather middle-class."
Ethel's rebellion had come when she had wanted to marry a round-faced chap who lived across the street. They had played together from childhood. His people were pleasant folks but lacked social background. So Ethel's romance had been nipped in the bud. The round-faced chap had married another girl. And now Amy at thirty and Ethel at twenty-five were crystallizing into something rather hard and brilliant, as Anne would perhaps crystallize if something didn't happen.
The something which happened was Maxwell Sears. Anne listened to the things he said about his farm and felt that they couldn't be true.
"It sounds like a fairy tale."
"It isn't. And it's all tremendously interesting."
He looked very much alive as he said it, and Anne felt the thrill of his energy and enthusiasm. Murray was never enthusiastic; neither were Amy and Ethel. They were all indeed a bit petrified.
Before he left her Maxwell asked Anne if he could call. He came promptly two nights later and brought with him a bunch of violets and a box of chocolates. Anne pinned the violets in the front of the gray frock that gave her the look of a cloistered nun, and ate up the chocolates.
Amy was shocked. "Anne, you positively gobbled"
"I didn't."
"Well, you ate a pound at least."
Anne protested. Maxwell had eaten a lot, and Ethel and Amy had eaten a few, and Murray had come in.
"You remember, Amy, Murray came in."
"He didn't touch one, Anne. He never eats chocolates."
"He's afraid of getting fat."
"Anne!"
"He is. When he takes me out to lunch he thinks of himself, not of me. The last time we had grapefruit and broiled mushrooms and lettuce; and I wanted chops."
Maxwell had been glad to see Anne eat the chocolates. She had seemed as happy as a child, and he had liked that. There was nothing childish about Winifred. She had been always grown-up and competent and helpful. He felt that he owed Winifred a great deal. They were not engaged, but he rather hoped that some day they might marry. Of course that would depend upon Winifred. She would probably make him give up the farm and he would hate that. But a man might give up a farm for a woman like Winifred and still have more than he deserved.
It will be seen that Maxwell was modest, especially where women were concerned. The complacency of Murray Flint, weighing Amy against Ethel and Ethel against Amy and Anne against both, would have seemed infamous to Maxwell. He felt that it was only by the grace of God that any woman gave herself to any man. He had a sense of honor which was founded on decency rather than on convention. He had also a sense of high romance which belonged more fittingly to the fifteenth than to the twentieth century. He was not, however, aware of it. He looked upon himself as a plain and practical chap who had a few things to work out politically before he settled down to the serious business of farming. Of course if he married Winifred he wouldn't settle down to the farm, but he would settle down to something.
In the meantime here was Anne, reading Dickens, eating chocolates, and leaning over the rail of the House Gallery to listen to his speeches.
It was rather wonderful to have her there. She wore a gray cape with a chinchilla collar made out of Amy's old muff. A straight sailor hat of rough straw came well down over her forehead and showed fluffs of shining hair at the sides. Her little gray-gloved hands clasped the violets he had given her. Above the violets her eyes were a deeper blue.
She came always alone. "Amy doesn't know," she had told him frankly; "she wouldn't let me, come if she did."
"Why not?"
"I am supposed to be chaperoned."
"My dear child, I told you to bring either or both of your sisters."
"I don't want them. They would spoil it."
"How?"
She tried to explain. He and she could see things in the old Capitol that Amy and Ethel couldn't.
He laughed, but knew it true. Anne's imagination met his in a rather remarkable fashion. When they walked through Statuary Hall they saw not Fulton and Père Marquette and Carroll of Carrollton; they saw, rather, a thousand ships issuing forth on the steam of a teakettle; they saw civilization following a black-frocked prophet; they saw aristocracy raising its voice in the interest of democracy.
As for the mysterious whispering echo, they repudiated all talk of acoustics. It was for them an eerie thing, like the laughter of elves or the shriek of a banshee.
"Don't say every-day things to me," Anne had instructed Maxwell when he had first placed her behind a mottled marble pillar before leaving for the spot where he could speak to her by this unique wireless.
There came to her, therefore, a part of a famous speech; the murmured words flung back by that strange sounding board rang like a bell:
"Give me liberty or give me death!"
She emerged from her corner, starry-eyed. "It was as if I heard him say it."
"Perhaps it was he, and I was only a mouthpiece."
"I should think they'd like to come back. Will you come?"
He laughed. "Who knows? I'll come if you are here."
To have brought a third into these adventures would have robbed them of charm. Knowing this he argued that the child was safe with him. Why worry?
They always lunched together before he took her up to the Members' Gallery, and went himself to the floor of the House. He let her order what she pleased and liked The definite way in which she did it. They had usually, chops and peas, or steak, and ice-cream at the end.
III
Then suddenly things stopped. The reason that they stopped was Murray. He saw Anne one day in the House Gallery and asked Amy about it.
"How did she happen to be up there alone?"
Amy asked Anne. Anne told the truth.
"I've had lunch three times with Mr. Sears, and I've listened to his speeches. It's something about the League of Nations. He believes in it, but thinks we've got to be careful about tying ourselves up."
Amy did not care in the least what Maxwell Sears believed. The thing that worried her was Murray. She wanted him to approve of Anne. If Amy had thought in a less limited circle she might have worked the thing out that if Maxwell married Anne it would narrow Murray's choice down to herself and Ethel. But there was always that vague fear of some outside siren who would capture Murray. If he had Anne, he would then be safely in the family.
She realized, in the days following the revelation of the clandestine meetings with Maxwell, that Murray was depending upon her to see that Anne's affections did not stray into forbidden paths. He said as much one afternoon when he found Amy alone in an atmosphere of old portraits, old books, old bronzes. She sat in a Jacobean chair and poured tea for him. The massive lines of the chair made her proportions seem wraithlike. Her white face with its fixed spots of red was a high light among the shadows.
"Where's Anne?"
"She and Ethel have gone to the matinée with Molly Winchell."
"Why didn't you go?"
"Molly never takes but two of us and, of course, this is Anne's first winter out. I have to step back—and let her have her chance."
He chose to be gallant. "You are always lovely, Amy."
His compliment fell cold. Amy felt old and tired. She had a pain in her side. It had been getting very bad of late, and she coughed at night. She had been to her doctor, and again he had emphasized the need of a change of climate and of nourishing food. Amy had come away unconvinced.
She would have a chance in July when she and her sisters would go to the Eastern Shore for their annual visit to their Aunt Elizabeth. As for different food, she ate enough—all the doctors in the world couldn't make her spend any more money on the table.
Murray stood up very straight by the mantelpiece, under the portrait of one of the Merryman great-grandfathers in a bag wig, and talked of Anne:
"I believe I am falling in love with her, Amy."
Amy's heart said, "It has come at last." Her brain said, "He has discovered it because of Maxwell Sears." Her lips said, "I don't wonder. She's a dear child, Murray."
"She's beautiful."
Murray swayed up a little on his toes. It made him seem thinner and taller. He could see himself reflected in the long mirror on the opposite wall. He liked the reflection of the thin tall man.
"She's beautiful, Amy. I am going to ask her to marry me. I can't have some other fellow running off with her. She belongs to Georgetown."
He seemed to think that settled it. The pain in Amy's side was sharper. She felt that she couldn't quite stand seeing Murray happy with Anne. "She's—she's such a child." Her voice shook.
"Well," said Murray, glancing at the tall thin man in the mirror, "of course she is young. But Maxwell Sears is coming here a lot. Is he in love with her?"
"I'm not sure. She amuses him. She isn't in love with him or with anybody."
"Not even with me?" Murray laughed a little. "But we can remedy that, can't we, Amy? But you might hint at what I'm expecting of her. I don't want to startle her." He came and sat down beside her. "You are always a great dear about doing things for me."
The pain stabbed her like a knife. "I'll do my best."
She had a nervous feeling that she must keep Murray from talking to her like that. She rang for hot water, and their one maid, Charlotte, brought it in a Sheffield jug. Then Ethel and Anne and Molly Winchell arrived, and once more Murray stood up, tall and self-conscious as he stole side glances at himself in the mirror.
Maxwell Sears had brought the three women home. He had a fashion of following up Anne's engagements and putting his car at her disposal. When Amy had vetoed any more adventures at the Capitol he had conceded good-naturedly that she was right. After that he had always included Amy or Ethel in his invitations.
"They are very pretty dragons," he had written to Winifred, "and little Anne is like a princess shut in a tower."
Winifred, reading the letter, had brooded upon it. "He's falling in love. A child like that—she'll spoil his future."
Congress was having night sessions. "If I could only have you up there," Maxwell had said to Anne as he had driven her home from the matinée, with old Molly and Ethel on the back seat. "I should steal you if I dared."
"Please dare."
"Do you mean it?"
"Yes. To-night. Ethel and Amy are going to a Colonial Dames meeting with Molly Winchell. I never go. I hate ancestors."
"I shouldn't let you do it," he hesitated, "but ghosts walk after dark in the Capitol corridors."
"I know," she nodded. "Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln."
"Yes. Then you'll come?"
"Of course."
It was the thought of her rendezvous with him that lighted her eyes when she talked to Murray. But Murray did not know. So he swayed up on his toes and glanced in the glass and was glad of his thinness and tallness.
Maxwell came for Anne promptly. "You must get me back by ten," she told him. "I have a key, and Charlotte's out."
It was a night of nights, never to be forgotten. Maxwell did not take Anne into the Gallery. He had not brought her there to hear speeches or to be conspicuous in the glare of lights. He led her through shadowy corridors—up wide dim stairways.
At one turn he touched her arm. "Look!" he whispered.
"What?"
"Lafayette passed us—on the stairs."
It was a great game! On the east front Columbus spoke to them of ships that sailed toward the sunset; in the Rotunda they kept a tryst with William Penn; from the west-front portico they saw a city beautiful—the streets under the moon were rivers of light—the great monument reached like the soul of Washington toward the stars!
Out there in the moonlight Maxwell spoke of another great soul, gone of late to join a glorious company.
"It was he who taught me that life is an adventure."
"Greatheart?"
"Yes."
"You loved him too?"
"Yes."
Anne caught her breath. "To think of him dead—to think of them all—dead."
Maxwell looked down at her. "They live somewhere. You believe that, don't you?"
"Yes."
He was silent for a moment; then he laid his hand lightly on her shoulder. "I feel to-night as if they pressed close."
Oh, it was a rare game to meet great souls in odd corners! They could scarcely tear themselves away. But he got her home before her sisters arrived, and Anne went to bed soberly, and lay long awake, thinking it out. She had never before had such a playmate. In all these years she had starved for other things than food.
IV
In due time Congress adjourned, but Maxwell did not go home. He continued to see Anne. Amy was at last driven to her duty by Murray. She could not forbid Maxwell the house. There was nothing to do but talk to Anne.
Having made up her mind she sought Anne's room at once. Anne, in a cheap cotton kimono, was braiding her hair for the night. The sleeves of the kimono were short and showed her thin white arms. Amy had on a blanket wrapper. Her hair was in metal curlers. She looked old and tired, and now and then she coughed.
Anne got into bed and drew the covers up to her chin. "I'm so cold, I believe there are icicles on my eyebrows. Amy, my idea of heaven is a place where it is as hot as—Hades."
"I don't see where you get such ideas. Ethel and I don't talk that way. We don't even think that way, Anne."
"Maybe when I am as old as you" Anne began, and was startled at the look on Amy's face.
"I'm not old!" Amy said passionately. "Anne, I haven't lived at all, and I'm only thirty."
Anne stared at her. "Oh, my darling, I didn't mean"
"Of course you didn't. And it was silly of me to say such a thing. Anne, I'm cold. I'm going to sit on the foot of your bed and wrap up while I talk to you."
Anne's bed had four pineapple posts and a pink canopy. The governor of a state had slept in that bed for years. He was one of the Merryman grandfathers. Amy could have bought mountains of food for the price of that bed. But she would have starved rather than sell it.
Anne under the pink canopy was like a rose—a white rose with a faint flush. The color in Amy's cheeks was fixed and hard. Yet even with her oldness and tiredness and metal curlers she had the look of race which attracted Murray.
"Anne," she said, "Murray and I had a long talk about you the other day."
"Murray always talks—long." Anne was yawning.
"Please be serious, Anne. He wants to marry you."
"Marry me!" incredulously. "I thought it was you; or Ethel."
"Well, it isn't," wearily. "And it's a great opportunity—for you, Anne."
"Opportunity for what?"
Amy had a sense of the futility of trying to explain.
"There aren't many men like him."
"Fortunately."
"Anne, how can you? He's really paying you a great compliment."
"Why didn't he ask me himself?"
"He didn't want to startle you. You're so young. Murray has extreme fineness of feeling."
Anne tilted her chin. "I don't see what he finds in me."
"You're young"—with a tinge of bitterness—"and he says you are beautiful."
Anne threw off the covers and set her bare feet on the floor. "Beautiful!" she scoffed, but went to the mirror. "I'm thin," she meditated, "but I've got nice hair."
"We all have nice hair," said Amy; "but you've got Ethel's complexion and my figure."
"I don't think I want to be loved for my complexion." Anne turned suddenly and faced her sister. "Or my figure. I'd rather be loved for my mind."
"Men don't love women for their minds," said Amy wearily. "You'll learn that when you have lived as long as I have. Get back into bed, Anne. You'll freeze."
But Anne, shivering in the cotton kimono, argued the question hotly: "I should think Murray would want to marry someone with congenial tastes. He hates everything that I like."
"He'll make an excellent husband. You ought to be happy to know that he—cares."
She began to cough—a racking cough that left her exhausted.
Anne, bending over her, said, "Why, Amy, are you sick?"
"I'm—I'm rather wretched, Anne."
"Are you taking anything for your cough?"
"Yes."
"You ought to have a doctor."
"I have had one."
"What did he say?"
Amy put her off. "I'll feel better in the morning, Anne. Don't worry." Again the cough tore her. Anne flew to Ethel.
"See what you can do for her. There is blood on her handkerchief! I am going to call a doctor."
The doctor, arriving, checked the cough. Later he told Anne that Amy must have a change and strengthening food.
"At once. She's in a very serious state. I've told her, but she won't listen."
In the days that followed Anne arraigned herself hotly. "I've been a selfish pig—eating up everything—and Amy needed it."
In this state of mind she fasted—and was famished.
Maxwell, noting her paleness, demanded, "What's the matter? Aren't you well?"
She wanted to cry out, "I'm hungry." But she, too, had her pride.
"Amy's ill."
He got it out of her finally. "The doctor is much worried about her. He says she needs a change."
"You need it too."
She needed food, but she couldn't tell him that. The state of their exchequer was alarming. It had been revealed to her since Amy's illness that there was really nothing coming in until the next quarter.
"Why didn't you let Charlotte go, Ethel?"
"We've always had a maid. What would people think?"
"And because of what people think, Amy is to starve?"
"Anne, how can you?"
"Well, it comes to that. She needs things; and we don't need Charlotte."
But when they spoke to Amy of sending Charlotte away she was feverishly excited. "There's nobody to do the work."
"I can do it," said Anne.
"We Merrymans have never worked," Amy began to cry. "I'd rather die," she said, "than have people think we are—poor."
V
Maxwell was a man of action. When he saw Anne pale he sought a remedy. "Look here, why can't you and your sisters come out to my farm?"
Anne, remembering certain things—broilers and fresh eggs—was thrilled by the invitation. "I'd love it! But Amy won't accept."
"Why not?"
"She's terribly stiff."
He laughed. "Perhaps I can talk her over."
Amy, lying on her couch, very weary, facing a shadowy future, felt his magnetism as he talked to her. It was as if life spoke through his lips. Murray had sat there beside her only an hour before. He had brought her roses but he had brought no hope.
Fear had for weeks kept Amy company. Through her nights and days it had stalked, a pale spectre. And now Maxwell was saying: "You'll be well in a month. Of course you'll come! There's room for half a dozen. You three won't half fill the house."
It was decided, however, that Ethel must stay in town. Amy had a nervous feeling that with the house closed Murray might slip away from them.
Old Molly Winchell, summing up the situation, said to Murray: "Of course Anne will marry Maxwell Sears. There's nothing like propinquity."
Murray, startled, admitted the danger. "It would be an awful thing for Anne."
"Why?"
"He's rather a bounder."
Old Molly Winchell hit him on the arm with her fan. Her eyes twinkled maliciously. "He's nothing of the sort, and you know it. You're jealous, Murray."
Murray's jealousy was, quite uniquely, not founded on any great depth of love for Anne. His appropriation of the three sisters had been a pretty and pleasant pastime. When he had finally decided upon Anne as the pivotal center of his universe he had contemplated a future in which the other sisters also figured—especially Amy. He had, indeed, not thought of a world without Amy.
Her illness had troubled him, but not greatly. Things had always come to him as he had wanted them, and he was quite sure that if Anne was to be the flame to light his future, Providence would permit Amy to be, as it were, the keeper of the light.
He felt it necessary to warn Anne: "Don't fall in love with Sears."
"Don't be silly, Murray."
"Is it silly to say that I love you, Anne?"
They were alone in the old library, with its books and bronzes and bag-wigged ancestors. And Murray sat down beside Anne and took her hand in his and said, "I love you, Anne."
It was a proposal which was not to be treated lightly. In spite of herself, Anne was flattered. Murray had always loomed on her horizon as something of a bore but none the less a person of importance.
She caught her breath quickly. "Please, Murray"—her blushes were bewitching—"I'm too young to think about such things. And I'm not in love with anybody."
Murray raised her hand to his lips. "Keep yourself for me, little Anne." He rose and stood looking down at her. "You're a very charming child," he said. "Do you know it?"
Anne, gazing at herself in the glass later, wondered if it were true. It was nice of Murray to say it. But she was not in the least in love with Murray. He was too old. And Maxwell was too old. Anne's dreams of romance had to do with glorified youth. She wanted a young Romeo shouting his passion to the stars!
She packed her bag, however, in high anticipation. Maxwell was a splendid playmate, and she thought of his farm as flowing with milk and honey!
Maxwell wrote to Winifred that he was coming home and bringing guests.
"Run down and meet them. Anne's a corking kid."
Winifred knew what had happened. Some girl had got hold of Maxwell. It was always the way with men like that—big men; they were credulous creatures where women were concerned, and it would make such a difference to Maxwell's future if he married the wrong woman.
She decided to go down as soon as she could. She felt that she ought to hurry, but there were things that held her. And so it happened that before she reached the farm Maxwell had asked Anne to marry him. There had been a cool evening when the scent of lilacs had washed in great waves through the open windows. Amy had gone to bed and he and Anne had dined alone with the flare of candles between them, and the rest of the room in pleasant shadow. And then their coffee had been served, and Aunt Mittie, his housekeeper, had asked if there was anything else, and had withdrawn, and he had risen and had walked round to Anne's place and had laid his hands on her shoulders.
"Little Anne," he had said, "I should like to see you here always."
"Here?"
"As my wife."
"Oh!"
She had had a rapturous week at the farm. She had never known anything like it. Aunt Elizabeth, of the Eastern Shore, lived in a sleepy town, and Anne's other brief vacations had been spent in more or less fashionable resorts. But here was a paradise of plenty; the big wide house, the spreading barns, the opulent garden, the rolling fields, the enchanting creatures who were sheltered by the barns and fed by the fields, and who in return gave payment of yellow cream and warm white eggs, and who lowed at night and cackled in the morning, and whose days were measured by the rising and the setting of the sun.
She loved it all—the purring pussies, the companionable pups, the steady, faithful older dogs, the lambs in the pasture, the good things to eat.
She was glowing with gratitude, and Maxwell was asking insistently, "Won't you, Anne?"
She had never been so happy, and he was the source of her happiness. Against this background of vivid life the thought of Murray was a pale memory.
So her wistful eyes met Maxwell's. "It would be lovely—to live here—always."
Later, when she had started up-stairs with her candle, he had kissed her, leaning over the rail to watch her as she went up, and Anne had gone to sleep tremulous with the thought that her future would lie here in this great house with this fine and kindly man.
Winifred, coming down at last, found that she had come too late. Maxwell told her as they motored up from the station.
"Wish me happiness, Win. I am going to marry little Anne."
It did not enter his head for a moment that the woman by his side loved him. He had thought that if she ever married him it would be a sort of concession on her part, a sacrifice to her interest in his future. He had a feeling that she would be glad if such a sacrifice were not demanded.
But Winifred was not glad. "You are sure you are making no mistake, Max?"
"Wait till you see her."
Winifred waited and saw. "She's not in the least in love with him. She likes the warm nest she has fallen into. And she'll spoil his future. He'll settle down here, and he belongs to the world."
He belonged at least to his constituency.
"I've got to make a speech," he told the three women one morning, "in a town twenty miles away. If you girls would like the ride you can motor over with me. You needn't listen to my speech if you don't want to."
Amy and Winifred said that of course they wanted to listen. Anne smiled happily and said nothing. She was, of course, glad to go, but Maxwell's speeches were to her the abstract things of life; the concrete things at this moment were the delicious dinner which was before her and the fact that in the barn, curled up in the hay, was a new family of kittens—little tabbies like their adoring mother.
"Isn't it a lovely world?" she had said to her lover as she had sat in the loft with the cuddly cats in her lap.
"Yes."
He knew that it was not all lovely, that somewhere there were lean and hungry kittens and lean and hungry folks—but why remind her at such a moment?
VI
On the way over Anne sat with Winifred. She had insisted that Amy should have the front seat with Max. Amy was much better. Life had begun to flow into her veins like wine. She had written to Murray: "It is as if a miracle had happened."
Winifred, on the back seat, talked to Anne. She had a great deal to say about Maxwell's future. "I am sorry he bought the farm."
"Oh, not really." Anne's attention strayed. She had one of the puppies in her lap. He kept peeping out from between the folds of her cape with his bright eyes. "Isn't he a darling, Winifred?"
"He ought to sell it." Winifred liked dogs, but at this moment she wanted Anne's attention. "He ought to sell the farm. He has a great future before him. Everybody says it. He simply must not settle down."
"Oh, well, he won't," said Anne easily.
"He will if you let him."
"If I let him?"
"If he thinks you like it."
There was a deep flush on Winifred's cheeks. She was really a very handsome girl, with bright brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a small brown hat and a sable collar. The collar was open and showed her strong white throat.
"If he thinks you like it," she repeated, "he will stay; and he belongs to the world; nobody must hold him back. He's the biggest man in his party to-day. There is no limit to his powers."
Anne stared at her. "Of course there isn't." She wondered why Winifred seemed so terribly in earnest about it. She pulled the puppy's ears. "But I should hate to have him sell the farm."
Winifred settled back with a sharp sigh and gazed at the long gray road ahead of her. She gazed indeed into a rather blank future. Her talents would be, she felt, to some extent wasted. If Max rose to greater heights of fame it would be because of his own unaided efforts. This child would be no help to him.
The speech Max made to his constituents was not cool and clear-cut like the speeches which Anne had heard him make to his colleagues in the House. He spoke now with warmth and persuasiveness. Anne, sitting in the big car on the edge of the crowd, found herself listening intently. She was aware, as he went on, of a new Max. The mass of men who had gathered were largely foreigners who knew little of the real meanings of democracy. Max was telling them what it meant to be a good American. He told it simply, but he was in dead earnest. Anne felt that this earnestness was the secret of his power. He wanted men to be good Americans, he wanted them to know the privileges they might enjoy in a free country, and he was telling them how to keep it free-not by violence and mob rule but by remembering their obligations as citizens. He told them that they must be always on the side of law and order, that they must fight injustice not with the bomb and the red flag but with their votes.
"Vote for the man you trust, and not for the man who inflames your passions. Your vote is a sacred thing; when you sell it you dishonor yourself. Respect yourself, and you'll respect the country that has made a man of you."
The response was immediate, the applause tumultuous. After his speech they crowded about him. They knew him for their friend. But they knew him for more than that. He asked nothing of their manhood but the best. He preached honesty and practiced it.
Yet as he climbed into the car Anne had little to say to him. Winifred, leaning forward, was emphatic in her praise:
"You have no right to bury yourself, Max."
"My dear girl, I'm not dead yet." He was a bit impatient. He had hoped for a word from Anne. But she sat silent, pulling the puppy's ears.
"He's asleep," she said finally as she caught the inquiry in her lover's eyes. "He's tired out, poor darling."
She seemed indifferent, but she was not. She had been much stirred. She had a strange feeling that something had happened to her while she had listened to Maxwell's speech. Some string had broken and her romance was out of tune.
She lay awake for a long time that night, thinking it over. She grew hot with the thought of the limitations of her previous conception of her lover. She had considered him a sort of background for the pleasant things he could do for her. She had fitted him to the measure of the boxes of candy that he had brought her, the luncheons in the House restaurant, the bountiful hospitality of the farm. How lightly she had looked down on him as he had stood below her on the stairs with her candle in his hand. How casually she had accepted his kiss. She had a sudden feeling that she must not let him kiss her again!
Early in the morning she went into Amy's room. "Amy," she said, "how soon do you think we can go to Aunt Elizabeth's?"
"Aunt Elizabeth's? Why, Anne?"
"I want to leave here."
"To leave here?" Amy sat up. Even in the bright light of the morning her face looked young. Good food and fresh air had done much for her. It had been quite heavenly, too, to let care slip away, to have no thought of what she should eat or what she should drink or what she should wear. "To leave here? I thought you loved it, Anne."
"I've got to get away. I'm not going to marry Maxwell, Amy."
"Anne! What made you change your mind?"
"I can't tell you. Please don't ask me. But I wish you would write to Aunt Elizabeth."
"I had a letter from her yesterday. She says we can come at any time. But—have you told Max?"
"Not yet."
"Has he done anything?"
"No. It's just—that I can't marry him. Don't ask me, Amy." She broke down in a storm of tears.
Amy, soothing her, wondered if after all Anne cared for Murray Flint. It was, she felt, the only solution possible. Surely a girl would not throw away a chance to marry a man like Maxwell Sears for nothing.
For Amy had learned in the days that she had spent at the farm that Maxwell Sears was a man to reckon with. She was very grateful for what he had done for her, and she had been glad of Anne's engagement. Murray would perhaps be disappointed, but there would still be herself and Ethel.
It was not easy to explain things to Maxwell.
"Why are you going now?" he demanded, and was impatient when they told him that Aunt Elizabeth expected them. "I don't understand it at all. It upsets all of my plans for you, Anne."
That night when he brought Anne's candle she was not on the stairs. Winifred and Amy had gone up.
"Anne! Anne!" he called softly.
She came to the top rail and leaned over. "I'm going to bed in the dark. There's a wonderful moon."
"Come down—for a minute."
"No."
"Then I'll come up," masterfully.
He mounted the stairs two at a time; but when he reached the landing the door was shut!
In the morning he asked her about it. "Why, dearest?
"Max dear, I can't marry you." "Nonsense!" His voice was sharp. He laid his hands heavily on her shoulders. "Why not? Look at me, Anne. Why not?"
"I'm not going to marry—anybody."
That was all he could get out of her. He pleaded, raged, and grew at last white and still with anger. "You might at least tell me your reasons."
She said that she would write. Perhaps she could say it better on paper. And she was very, very sorry, but she couldn't.
Winifred knew that something was up, but made no comment. Amy, carrying out their program of departure, had a sense of regret.
After all, it had been a lovely life, and there were worse things than being a sister to Maxwell Sears. Her voice broke a little as she tried to thank him on their last morning.
He wrung her hand. "Say a good word for me with Anne. I don't know what's the matter with her."
Neither did Amy. And if she was Maxwell's advocate how could she be Murray's? She flushed a little.
"Anne's such a child."
He remembered how he had called her a corking kid. She was more than that to him now. She stood in the doorway in her gray sailor hat and gray cape.
"Anne," he said, "you must have a last bunch of pansies from the garden. Come out and help me pick them."
In the garden he asked, "Are you going to kiss me good-bye?"
"No, Max. Please"
"Then it's 'God bless you, dearest.'"
He forgot the pansies and they went back to where the car waited.
VII
Anne's letter, written from the Eastern Shore, was a long and childish screed. "We have always been beggars on horseback," she said. "Of course you couldn't know that, Max. We have gone without bread so that we could be grand and elegant. We have gone without fire so that we could buy our satin gowns for fashionable functions. We went without butter for a year so that Amy could entertain the Strangeways, whom she had met years ago in Europe. I wouldn't dare tell you what that dinner cost us, but we had a cabinet member or two, and the British Ambassador.
"You wondered why I liked Dickens. Well, I read him so that I could get a good meal by proxy. I used to gloat over the feasts at Wardle's, and Mr. Stiggins' hot toast. And when I met you you gave me—everything. Murray Flint thinks that because I am thin and pale I am all spirit, and I'm afraid you have the same idea. You didn't dream, did you, that I was pale because I hadn't had enough to eat? And when you told me that you wanted me to be your wife I looked ahead and saw the good food and the roaring fires, and I didn't think of anything else. I honestly didn't think of you for a moment, Max.
"There were days, though, when you meant more to me than just that. When we played at the Capitol—that night when we met Lafayette on the stairs! Nobody had ever played with me. But after we went to the farm I was smothered in ease. And I loved it. And I didn't love you. You were just—the man who gave me things. Do you see what I mean? And when you kissed me on the stairs it was as if I were being kissed by a nice old Santa Claus.
"Everybody saw it but you. I am sure Amy knew—and Winifred Reed. You—you ought to marry Winifred, Max. Perhaps you will. You won't want me after you read this letter. And Winifred is splendid.
"It was your speech to the men that waked me. I saw how big you were, and I just—shriveled up.
"And you mustn't worry about me. I am not hungry any more. I feel as if I should never want anything to eat. Perhaps it is because I am older and haven't a growing appetite. And I am not any of the things you thought me. And of course you would be disappointed, and it wouldn't be fair."
Having posted this, Anne had other things to do. She wrote mysterious letters, and finally came into a room where her sisters and Aunt Elizabeth were sewing, with an important-looking paper in her hand.
"I am going to work, Amy."
"To work!"
"Yes."
Amy and Ethel and Aunt Elizabeth wore white frocks, and looked very cool and feminine and high-bred. Aunt Elizabeth had a nose like Amy's and the same look of race.
It was Aunt Elizabeth who said in her commanding voice: "What are you talking about, Anne?"
"I am going to work in the War Risk Bureau, Aunt Elizabeth. I wrote to two senators, and they helped me."
No woman of the Merryman family had ever worked in an office.
Anne faced a storm of disapproval, but she stood there slim and defiant, and stated her reasons.
"We need money. I don't see how we can get through a winter like the last. I can't keep my self-respect if we go on living as we did last winter."
"Haven't you any pride, Anne?"
"I have self-respect."
She left the room a conqueror. After she had gone the three women talked about her. They did not say it openly, but they felt that there was really an ordinary streak in Anne. Otherwise she would not have wanted to work in an office.
There was, however, nothing to be done. Anne was twenty-one. She was to get a hundred dollars a month. In spite of herself, Amy felt a throb of the heart as she thought of what that hundred dollars would mean to them.
Murray Flint was much perturbed when he heard of Anne's decision. He wrote to her that of course she knew that there was no reason why she should go into an office—his home and hearthstone were hers. She wrote back that she should never marry! After that, Murray felt, with Amy and Ethel and Aunt Elizabeth, that there was an ordinary streak in Anne!
When he arrived in August at Aunt Elizabeth's he was astonished at the change in Amy. She looked really very young as she came to meet him, and Aunt Elizabeth's house was a perfect setting for her charms. Murray was very fond of Aunt Elizabeth's house. It was an ancient, stately edifice, and within there were the gold-framed portraits of men and women with noses like Amy's and Aunt Elizabeth's.
Murray had missed Amy very much and he told her so.
"It was a point of honor for me to ask Anne again. But when I thought I was going to lose you I learned that my life would be empty without you."
He really believed what he was telling her. If Amy did not believe it she made no sign. She was getting much more than she expected, and she accepted him graciously and elegantly, as became a daughter of the Merrymans.
It was when he told Anne of his engagement to Amy that Murray again offered her a home. "There will always be a place for Amy's sisters, Anne."
"You are very good, Murray—but I can't."
She had said the same thing to Maxwell, who had come hot-footed to tell her that her letter had made no difference in his feeling for her.
"How could you think it, Anne? My darling, you are making a mountain of a molehill!"
She had been tremulous but firm. "I've got to have my—self-respect, Max."
Because he understood men he understood her. And when he had left her he had said to himself with long-drawn breath, "She's a corking kid."
And this time there had been no laughter in his eyes.
All that winter Anne worked, a little striving creature, with her head held high!
Maxwell was in town, for Congress had convened. But he had not come to see her. Now and then when there was a night session she went up to the House and sat far back in the Gallery, where, unperceived, she could listen to her lover's voice. Then she would steal away, a little ghost, down the shadowy stairway; but there were no games now with Lafayette!
Amy and Murray were to be married in June. They had enjoyed a dignified and leisurely engagement, and Amy had bloomed in the sunshine of Murray's approbation. Anne's salary had helped a great deal in getting the trousseau together. Most of the salary, indeed, had been spent for that. The table was, as usual, meagre, but Anne had not seemed to care.
She was therefore rather white and thin when, on the day that Congress adjourned, Maxwell came out to Georgetown to see her. It had been a long session, and it was spring.
There were white lilacs in a great blue jar in the Merryman library, and through the long window a glimpse of a thin little moon in a faint green sky.
As he looked at Anne, Maxwell felt a lump in his throat. She had given him her hand and had smiled at him. "How are the kittens?" she had asked in an effort to be gay.
He did not answer her question. He went, rather, directly to the point. "Anne, why wouldn't you kiss me on that last night?"
She flushed to the roots of her hair. "It—it was because I loved you, Max."
"I thought so. But you had to prove it to yourself?"
"Yes."
"Anne, that's why I've let you alone all winter—so that you might prove it. But—I can't go on. It has been an awful winter for me, Anne."
It had been an awful winter for her. But she had come out of it knowing herself. And even when at last his arms were about her and he was telling her that he would never let her go, she had a plea to make:
"Don't let me live too softly, Max. Life isn't a feather bed You belong to the world. I must go with you toward the big things. But now and then we'll run back to the farm."
"What do I care where we run, so that we run—together!"