“That’s true. And of course if one is going in for that sort of thing the only possible logic lies in the Old Way. I can see consistency in being Other Worldly, but to be unworldly, my boy, is, as I’ve been eloquently telling you, utter nonsense,” said Miss Carrington, graciously. “I’ll go up now and get Minerva to read me into a nap. Tell young Peter to come another time and bring that clever, queer little sister of his, will you? Anne Berkley and Anne Carrington are far enough apart in years and views to become cronies.”
Miss Carrington stepped back and gathered up an embroidered shawl of Chinese silk which had slipped into a tiny roll at the back of her chair. She hung it over her arm; its long fringe and heavily embroidered flowers brushed Kit’s hand as he held the door open for her to pass through it. He returned to the fireplace and leaned upon the mantel, waiting for young Peter with a heaviness of heart unlike himself.
“A pilgrimage to gain her sight!” thought Kit. “Little Anne’s advice was not half bad. She would not agree to all this; she is as untainted by the world as a blossom in an old-time garden!”
The smile that made his rugged young face so gentle showed that the “she” of this encomium was not little Anne Berkley.
CHAPTER III
The Quiet Room
CLEAVEDGE had received its name from the steep sides of the river which cleft its rocky bank formation. It may have been a misapprehension of a word—strangers spelt it “Cleavage” till they learned better—or the settlers who christened it may have meant to embody in the word the picturesque cleft edges of the cliffs. Cleavedge, with its misspelling, it remained through the growth of the village into a prosperous little city.
Richard Latham lived in a shady street not much disturbed by traffic. Several other streets ran in the same direction, leading more directly to wherever any one would be likely to go, so Latham Street was not greatly disturbed by footfalls, either. The street had been lately rechristened; Cleavedge was beginning to be aware of its celebrity.
In the beautifully proportioned living room of a house that entertained too few guests to require a drawing room the poet passed his days. It was a room built around with bookshelves uncrowded by furniture; its warm-tinted, drabbish walls hung with fine pictures and lighted by lovely gleams of colour in the pottery that occasionally broke the long stretches of the dull oiled wood of the bookcase tops. It was a man’s room, without curtains, or anything meaningless; a room of perfect beauty, inexpressibly soothing. It possessed a sort of visible silence, the silence of the woods; it was a place in which to think and to feel, rather than to act. At one end stood the piano which alone suggested sound, but to one who had heard Richard Latham play it emphasized the harmony.
At the desk, alone in the room, sat a young girl—Anne Dallas. Here she prepared her notes and carried them away to write them out where the clatter of a typewriter could not penetrate this room.