Part 20

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."