Several hours later Miss Ogilvy, who was riding slowly along the road
after a call at Bath House, suddenly drew rein and stared at an
approaching picture. She had a pretty taste in art, had Miss Medora,
and had painted all her island friends. Never had she longed more than
at this moment for palette and brush. A tall supple figure was coming
down the white road between the palms and the cane fields, clad in
white, the bonnet hanging on the arm, the sun making a golden web on
the chestnut hair. Never had the Caribbean Sea looked as blue as this
girl's eyes. Even her cheeks were as pink as the flowers in her belt.
She seemed to float rather than walk, and about her head was a cloud
of blue butterflies. Miss Ogilvy had seen Anne striding many a
morning, and it was the ethereal gait that challenged her attention
as much as the beauty of the picture.
They were abreast in a moment, and although Miss Ogilvy prided herself
upon the correctness of her deportment, she cried out impulsively,
and with no formal greeting: "What, in heaven's name, dear Anne, has
happened? I never saw any one look so beautiful--so--happy!"
"I am going to marry Byam Warner," said Anne.
Miss Ogilvy turned pale. She had intended to scheme for this very
result, but confronted with the fact, her better nature prevailed, and
she faltered out,
"Oh--oh--it is too great a risk! No woman should go as far as
that. We are all willing to help him, but that you should be
sacrificed--you--you of all----"
"I am not sacrificing myself. Do you fancy I am so great a fool as
that? No--no--that is not the reason I shall marry him!"
"He certainly is a great poet and has improved vastly in appearance.
I never should have believed it to be possible." The inevitable was
working in Miss Ogilvy. "But Mrs. Nunn? All her friends? There will be
dreadful scenes. Oh Anne, dear, they will rush you off. They will
never permit it."
"My aunt controls nothing but my property, and not the interest of
that. If she refuses her consent I shall simply walk up to Fig Tree
Church and marry Mr. Warner."
Miss Ogilvy recovered herself completely. "You will do nothing of the
sort," she cried, warm with friendship and the prospect of figuring in
the most sensational episode Nevis had known this many a year. "Come
to me. Be my guest until the banns have been properly published, and
marry from Ogilvy Grange. Everything must be _de rigueur_, or I should
never forgive myself. And it would give me the greatest happiness,
dear Anne. Mama and papa do everything I wish, and papa is one of Mr.
Warner's father's oldest friends. Mrs. Nunn will not consent. So
promise that you will come to me."
"I am very grateful. I had not thought much about Aunt Emily's
opposition, but no doubt she will turn me out of Bath House. You may
see me at the Grange to-night."
"Send one of the grooms with a note as soon as you have had the
inevitable scene. I only hope the result will be that I send the coach
for you to-day. I do hope you'll be happy. Why shouldn't you? Byam
Warner would not be the first man to settle down in matrimony. But
can you stand living your life on Nevis."
"I should have wished to live here had I never met Byam Warner."
"Oh--well--you are not to be pitied. I shall paint you while you are
at the Grange, all in white--only in a smarter gown--in this setting,
and with those blue butterflies circling about your head. You cannot
imagine what a picture you made. What a pity I frightened them away.
Now, mind you write me at once."
She kissed her radiant friend with a sigh, doubting that even conquest
of Lord Hunsdon would make herself look like a goddess, and rode on.
Anne went her way, even more slowly than before. She was in no haste
to face Mrs. Nunn, and she would re-live the morning hours before
other mere mortals scattered those precious images in her mind. Warner
had taken her up to his hut concealed in a hollow of the mountain and
surrounded on all sides by the jungle, then, while she sat on the one
chair the establishment boasted, he had cooked their breakfast, a
palatable mess of rice and plantains, and the best of coffee. They
had consumed it with great merriment under a banana tree, then washed
the dishes in a brook. Afterward he had shaken down several young
cocoanuts and they had pledged themselves in the green wine. Then they
had returned to the shade and talked--what had they not talked about?
Anne opened the sealed book of the past five years of which he had
been the hero. He read it with amazement and delight, but contrite
that he had received no message from that turbulent young brain by the
North Sea. But he atoned by confessing that he had recognised her as
his own the moment he laid eyes on her, that she was all and more than
he had once modelled in the mists of his brain. He demanded every
detail of that long union, so imaginative and so real, and told Anne
that never before had a poet had the fortune to meet a woman who was a
locked fountain of poetry, yet who revealed the sparkling flood by a
method of her own with which no words could compete.
"And will you write my poems?" Anne had asked eagerly. But he had
drawn down a broad leaf between his face and hers. "I told you that I
was a poet no longer--merely a lover. To know absolute happiness in
two forms in this world you must take them in turn. I shall write no
more."
"Were you perfectly happy when you wrote?" asked Anne, a little
jealously.
"Perfectly."
"I can almost understand it."
"I can no more express it than I have ever been able to tell in verse
the half of what I blindly conceived."
"I should think that might have clouded your happiness."
"Yes--when a poem was revolving and seething in my distracted head.
Never tempt me to write, for while the thing is gestating I am a
brute, moody, irritable, unhappy. The whole poem seems to work itself
out remorselessly before I can put pen to paper, and at the same time
is enveloped in a mist. I catch glimpses like will-o'-the-wisps in a
fog bank, sudden visions of perfect form that seem to turn to grinning
masks. It is maddening! But when the great moment arrives and I am at
my desk I am the happiest man on earth."
By tacit consent the subject of the stimulants under which he had
always written was ignored, as well as the terrible chapter of his
life which it was her blessed fortune to close. They had discussed the
future, talked of practical things. He had told her that his house
could be put in order while they travelled among the islands, and that
he made quite enough to support her properly if they lived on Nevis.
She had three hundred a year and would have more did she consent to
let the manor for a longer term, and he had assured her that hers was
a fortune on Nevis outside of Bath House. They finally decided to
marry at once that he might show her the other islands before the
hurricane season began.
In spite of loitering Anne arrived at the hotel quite two hours before
luncheon, and after divesting herself of a frock that would send Mrs.
Nunn into hysterics if her news did not, she went to her aunt's room.
Mrs. Nunn, fresh from her sulphur bath, was reclining on a sofa in her
large cool room, where the jalousies were half closed, and dawdling
over _Godey's Lady's Book_, a fashion magazine printed in the United
States, which found great favour in her eyes.
"My dear Anne," she said languidly, "I suppose you breakfasted with
Miss Ogilvy. La! La! You are more burnt than ever. Your face is quite
red. And I would have you well bleached before the London season. Pray
sit down. It affects my nerves to see you wander about like that."
Anne took a chair facing her aunt. "I did not breakfast with Miss
Ogilvy. I have been talking to Mr. Warner all the morning."
"Heavens! what a waste of time, when you might have been talking to
Hunsdon in the morning-room. It was quite empty. Maria has Mr. Warner
in charge. I hope you have not been walking about with him. You know I
told you----"
"No one saw us. We talked up in one of the jungles."
"One of the jungles!" Mrs. Nunn sat up. "I never heard anything sound
so horrid. Do you tell me that you have the habit of sitting in
jungles--dear me--with young gentlemen! I forbid you to go out again
unattended."
"This was the first time."
"It assuredly will be the last."
"I think not. Mr. Warner has a hut in the jungle and I am going to
marry him."
"What--you----" And then as she met Anne's eyes she gave a piercing
scream, and her maid rushed in. "The sal volatile!" she gasped. "The
salts."
She fell back limp, and Anne, who was unaccustomed to the easy fainting
of fine ladies, was terrified and administered the restoratives. But
Mrs. Nunn may have been less time reviving than Anne fancied, for
when she finally opened her eyes they were very hard and her features
singularly composed.
"You may go, Claire," she said to the maid. "Return in an hour and
pack my boxes. We leave by the packet to-morrow. Now," she added,
turning to Anne, "I am prepared to talk to you. Only kindly remember,
if you have anything further of a startling nature to communicate,
that I am accustomed to less direct and brutal methods."
"I am sorry," said Anne humbly. Mrs. Nunn waved apology aside.
"Of course you know that I shall never give my consent. Are you
determined to marry without it?"
"Yes."
[Illustration: "'I never wish to see you again'"]
"Your father all over. It was his expression of inhuman obstinacy in
your eyes that gave me even more of a shock than your words. Many a
time I endeavoured to gain his consent to your visiting London where
you would have seen the world and been sensibly married by this
time. Never under my earlier tutelage would you have made a fool of
yourself. And you have used Hunsdon abominably ill."
"I have given him no encouragement whatever----"
"Do not argue. My nerves will not stand it. Now this much I have the
right to demand: You are of age, I cannot prevent your marrying this
outcast, but you owe it to me as well as to yourself to return to
London, be presented to Her Majesty, and do a London season----"
"I never expect to leave the West Indies again, unless to be sure, Mr.
Warner should feel obliged to go to London himself. If you sail
to-morrow I shall go to Medora Ogilvy----"
"You have planned it all out!" shrieked Mrs. Nunn. Anne hastily poured
out another dose of sal volatile.
"I met Medora on my way home. She fancied how you would take it and
offered me shelter."
"I am gratified that my sense of propriety is so well known. You can
go to her. I proclaim to the world that I wash my hands of the
disgraceful affair by leaving to-morrow. Great God! What a victory for
Maria Hunsdon. I believe she plotted it all along."
Then she plunged into worldly argument, abuse of Warner, awful
pictures of the future. Finally Anne rose.
"I don't wish to do your nerves a real injury, so I shall leave you
until you are calmer," she said.
"I never wish to see you again."