The Annes

by Marion Ames Taggart

That afternoon he spent in the woods, contentedly wandering, for some time sleeping on the moss; his vigil of the preceding night had made him drowsy. This time he had not forgotten to invite his old dog, Sirius, the English setter who had been his comrade for years, to bear him company. On his way to enjoy the silence which he craved, he had stopped at the Berkleys’ to get confirmation of the good news of the morning.

Mrs. Berkley had cried on his shoulder as if he had been Peter, grown taller, and as she had not cried when little Anne was in mortal danger. Kit had patted her back and ended by kissing her with warmth in his heart: it seemed to him that at last his lonely boyhood had ended in his finding kindred.

All the while the permeating sense of Anne Dallas’ nearness, the fact that he loved her and that she knew it and that everything was all right, made at once the foundation and crown of this blessed day. He went on to the woods to brood over this sense of blessedness; not to think of it precisely, not at all to debate, nor demonstrate it, but to yield to its exquisite bliss.

Humility is the handmaid of perfect faith. Kit was not conceited, but he was sure of Anne’s love; he did not know why he felt sure of it, nor would he have said that there was any reason why she should love him, but he knew that she did, and he humbly gave himself up to the wondering joy of it.

“If you know a thing you know it,” Kit would have said, and that was all. He went whistling homeward as the loveliness of the sunshine of the last days of May began to be veiled with the poetical beauty of its westward lengthening.

He ate a dinner that was unromantically hearty, but which was flavoured with romance and elevated into the sacramental. It occurred to him that he should not always eat alone, nor at his aunt’s table; that one unspeakable day he should raise his eyes and see Anne sitting in her quiet loveliness opposite to him. It took his breath away to think that he should carve a thin slice of the breast for her and lay it on her plate, with a spoonful of the dressing; it was to be her second helping. His hand would brush hers and she would be sure to say, “Not so much, Kit, dear!”

He should watch her put smooth brown gravy, with dots of chopped things in it, over his potato, and should tell her, in the indifferent tone of blessed accustomedness, not to put any on the side of the plate which he had left for the cranberry jelly.

It was a fairy dream, though its terms, put into English, would have sounded prosaic enough, but of all miracles the most divine are the homely ones. Not least of these is the miracle that the radiant wings of youthful love can be folded close to brood upon a hearth. This was what Kit’s true instinct revealed to him, and moved and ecstatic over the vision of Anne, his wife, he ate, unconscious of what he was eating.

After dinner he went at once to the piazza and sat smoking slowly, watching the moon rise, sufficiently companioned in knowing that he was to see Anne on the morrow, so content in this strange, new conviction of the possession of her that he was satisfied to delay the joy of seeing her in the effulgence of this new light. As long as he knew it was but delayed! If he were not going to see her thus that would be another, a tragic matter!

Kit went to bed early and slept like a tired, happy boy, and arose early to begin another happy day; an endless succession of such days stretched out ahead of him, to that inconceivable day when Anne and he should be old.