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.