Kit presented himself at breakfast with the marks of misery on his face. He was not used to unhappiness; aside from the actual pain, the discomfort of its friction hurt him, as a chain galls in addition to its weight. He did not know how to adjust himself to what had happened. He had the good sense to see that the only thing for him to do was to occupy himself with something that demanded genuine effort of body and mind.
“I’ve got to get at something that I can’t foozle over,” is the way he put it to himself.
He had amused himself so far through life successfully, but he instinctively realized that entertainment did not entertain, except when one’s light-heartedness might dispense with it.
Helen and Miss Carrington had made a compact to be unconscious of Kit’s depression. At breakfast Helen talked happily of inconsequent matters, not to Kit, yet not excluding him; she did not suggest his sharing any part of that day with her; instead, she announced plans for herself that excluded him. He was grateful for what he mistook for Helen’s unintentional mercy to him and rewarded her with a friendly smile as he left the dining room. He had added to his advice to himself while dressing the sane counsel not to show it if he felt sore, and not to be a grouch.
The first necessity upon him was to make an errand to Richard Latham’s house to see for himself. There were moments when he did not believe that what he had heard was true, yet at every moment he was surer that it was true.
He found work going on so briskly in the poet’s room that, like little Anne on an earlier day, he bestowed himself outside the window to wait. Anne waved her hand, the pen in it, to him, but Richard did not know that he was there.
Where he sat Kit could not help catching every movement that Richard made. They were not many: Richard sat with his head resting against the back of his chair, his voice flowing steadily on, rising and falling so expressively that, though he could not hear the words, Kit found its cadences dramatic, interesting. The poet’s slender hands moved ceaselessly, the long fingers rapidly opening, closing, pointing, erect or drooping, but otherwise he was motionless.
The look that passed over Richard’s face at intervals when he turned his blind eyes upon Anne; the tone with which he sometimes asked a question that Kit fancied was extraneous to the dictation, gradually destroyed whatever slight hope had lingered.
At last Richard straightened himself, and Anne began gathering up her papers, laying one upon another. Richard held out his hands with a smile that told Kit all that there was to tell. He saw Anne’s lips move, though her voice did not reach him, and Richard jumped up to hasten to the door.
“Why, Christopher Carrington!” Richard cried, boyishly. “What are you doing here? Come in, come in! Glad to see you.”