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MISTRESS ANNE
BY
TEMPLE BAILEY
AUTHOR OF
CONTRARY MARY, ETC.
FRONTISPIECE BY
F. VAUX WILSON
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
[Illustration: SHE SHOWED HIM HER SCHOOL]
COPYRIGHT
1917 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
_Made in U. S. A._
Mistress Anne
_To_
P. V. B.
_who sees the sunsets_
Contents
I. IN WHICH THINGS ARE SAID OF DIOGENES
AND OF A LADY WITH A LANTERN 11
II. IN WHICH A PRINCESS SERVING FINDS THAT THE
MOTTO OF KINGS IS MEANINGLESS 21
III. IN WHICH THE CROWN PRINCE ENTERS UPON HIS
OWN 36
IV. IN WHICH THREE KINGS COME TO CROSSROADS 51
V. IN WHICH PEGGY TAKES THE CENTER OF THE
STAGE 62
VI. IN WHICH A GRAY PLUSH PUSSY CAT SUPPLIES
A THEME 77
VII. IN WHICH GEOFFREY WRITES OF SOLDIERS AND
THEIR SOULS 91
VIII. IN WHICH A GREEN-EYED MONSTER GRIPS EVE 111
IX. IN WHICH ANNE, PASSING A SHOP, TURNS IN 136
X. IN WHICH A BLIND BEGGAR AND A BUTTERFLY GO
TO A BALL 149
XI. IN WHICH BRINSLEY SPEAKS OF THE WAY TO WIN A
WOMAN 160
XII. IN WHICH EVE USURPS AN ANCIENT MASCULINE
PRIVILEGE 178
XIII. IN WHICH GEOFFREY PLAYS CAVE MAN 196
XIV. IN WHICH THERE IS MUCH SAID OF MARRIAGE AND
OF GIVING IN MARRIAGE 210
XV. IN WHICH ANNE ASKS AND JIMMIE ANSWERS 226
XVI. IN WHICH PAN PIPES TO THE STARS 239
XVII. IN WHICH FEAR WALKS IN A STORM 256
XVIII. IN WHICH WE HEAR ONCE MORE OF A SANDALWOOD
FAN 274
XIX. IN WHICH CHRISTMAS COMES TO CROSSROADS 284
XX. IN WHICH A DRESDEN-CHINA SHEPHERDESS AND A
COUNTRY MOUSE MEET ON COMMON GROUND 298
XXI. IN WHICH ST. MICHAEL HEARS A CALL 314
XXII. IN WHICH ANNE WEIGHS THE PEOPLE OF TWO
WORLDS 333
XXIII. IN WHICH RICHARD RIDES ALONE 347
XXIV. IN WHICH ST. MICHAEL FINDS LOVE IN A
GARDEN 361
Mistress Anne
CHAPTER I
_In Which Things Are Said of Diogenes and of a Lady With a Lantern._
THE second day of the New Year came on Saturday. The holiday atmosphere
had thus been extended over the week-end. The Christmas wreaths still
hung in the windows, and there had been an added day of feasting.
Holidays always brought people from town who ate with sharp appetites.
It was mostly men who came, men who fished and men who hunted. In the
long low house by the river one found good meals and good beds, warm
fires in winter and a wide porch in summer. There were few luxuries, but
it pleased certain wise Old Gentlemen to take their sport simply, and to
take pride in the simplicity. They considered the magnificence of modern
camps and clubs vulgar, and as savoring somewhat of riches newly
acquired; and they experienced an almost aesthetic satisfaction in the
contrast between the rough cleanliness of certain little lodges along the
Chesapeake and its tributary tide-water streams, and the elegance of the
Charles Street mansions which they had, for the moment, left behind.
It was these Old Gentlemen who, in khaki and tweed, each in its proper
season, came to Peter Bower's, and ate the food which Peter's wife cooked
for them. They went out in the morning fresh and radiant, and returned at
night, tired but still radiant, to sit by the fire or on the porch, and,
in jovial content, to tell of the delights of earlier days and of what
sport had been before the invasion of the Philistines.
They knew much of gastronomic lore, these Old Gentlemen, and they liked
to talk of things to eat. But they spoke of other things, and now and
then they fell into soft silences when a sunset was upon them or a night
of stars.
And they could tell stories! Stories backed by sparkling wit and a nice
sense of discrimination. On winter nights or on holiday afternoons like
this, as, gathered around the fire they grew mildly convivial, the sound
of their laughter would rise to Anne Warfield's room under the eaves; she
would push back the papers which held her to her desk, and wish with a
sigh that the laughter were that of young men, and that she might be
among them.
To-day, however, she was not at her desk. She was taking down the
decorations which had made the little room bright during the brief
holiday. To-morrow she would go back to school and to the forty children
whom she taught. Life would again stretch out before her, dull and
uneventful. The New Year would hold for her no meaning that the old year
had not held.
It had snowed all of the night before, and from her window she could see
the river, slate-gray against the whiteness. Out-of-doors it was very
cold, but her own room was hot with the heat of the little round stove.
With her holly wreaths in her arms, she stood uncertain in front of it.
She had thought to burn the holly, but it had seemed to her, all at once,
that to end thus the vividness of berry and of leaf would be desecration.
Surely they deserved to die out in that clear cold world in which they
had been born and bred!
It was a fanciful thought, but she yielded to it. Besides, there was
Diogenes! She must make sure of his warmth and comfort before night
closed in.
She put on her red scarf and cap and, with the wreaths in her arms, she
went down-stairs. The Old Gentlemen were in the front room and she had to
pass through. They rose to a man. She liked the courtliness, and gave in
return her lovely smile and a little bow.
They gazed after her with frank admiration. "Who is she?" asked one who
was not old, and who, slim and dark and with a black ribbon for his
eye-glasses, seemed a stranger in this circle.
"The new teacher of the Crossroads school. There wasn't any place for her
to board but this. So they took her in."
"Pretty girl."
The Old Gentlemen agreed, but they did not discuss her charms at length.
They belonged to a generation which preferred not to speak in a crowd of
a woman's attractions. One of them remarked, however, that he envied her
the good fortune of feasting all the year round at Peter Bower's table.
Anne, trudging through the snow with the wreaths in her arms, would have
laughed mockingly if she had heard them. It was not food that she wanted,
not the game and oysters and fish over which these old gourmands gloated.
What she wanted was the nectar and ambrosia of life, the color and
glow--the companionship of young things like herself!
Of course there were the school children and there was Peggy. But to the
children and Peggy she was a grown-up creature. Loving her, they still
made her feel age's immeasurable distance, as she had felt her own
distance from the Old Gentlemen.
It was Peggy, who, wound in her mother's knitted white shawl until she
looked like a dingy snowball, bounced from the kitchen to meet her.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
The young teacher laughed. "Peggy," she said, "if you will never tell,
you may come with me."
"Where?" demanded Peggy.
"Across the road and into the woods and down to the river."
"What are you carrying the wreaths for?"
"Wait and see."
The road which they crossed was the railroad. Over the iron rails the
trains thundered from one big city to another, with a river to cross just
before they reached Peter Bower's. Very few of the trains stopped at
Peter's, and it was this neglect of theirs, and the consequent isolation,
which constituted the charm of Bower's for town-tired folk. Yet Anne
Warfield always wished that some palatial express might tarry for a
moment to take her aboard, and whirl her on to the world of flashing
lights, of sky-scraping towers and streaming crowds.
"What are you going to do with the wreaths?" Peggy was still demanding as
they entered upon the frozen silence of the pine woods.
"I am going down as close as I can to the water's edge, and I am going to
fling them out as far as I can into the river. And perhaps the river will
carry them down to the sea, and the sea will say, 'Whence came you?' and
the wreaths will whisper, 'We came from the forest to die on your breast,
the river brought us, and the winds sang to us, and above us the sky
smiled. And now we are ready to die, for we have seen life and its
loveliness. It would have been dreadful if we had come to our end in the
ashes of a little round stove.'"
Peggy stared, open-eyed. She had missed the application, but she liked
the story.
"Let me throw one of them," she said.
"You couldn't throw them far enough, dear heart. But you shall count,
'one, two, three' for me. And when you say 'three' I'll throw one of them
away, and then you must count again, and I will throw the others."
So Peggy, quite entranced by the importance of her office, took her part
in the ceremony, and Anne Warfield stood on top of the snowy bank above
the river, and cast upon its tumbling surface the bright burden which it
was to carry to the sea.
It was at this moment that there crossed the bridge the only train from
the north which stopped by day at Peter Bower's. The passengers looking
out saw, far below them, sullen stream, somber woods, and a girl in a gay
red scarf. They saw, too, a dingy white dot of a child who danced up and
down. When the train stopped a few minutes later at Bower's, six of the
passengers stepped from it, three men and three women, a smartly-dressed,
cosmopolitan group, quite evidently indifferent to the glances which
followed them.
Anne and Peggy had no eyes for the new arrivals. If they noticed the
train at all, it was merely to give it a slurring thought, as bringing
more Old Gentlemen who would eat and be merry, then hurry back again to
town. As for themselves, having finished the business of the moment,
they had yet to look after Diogenes.
Diogenes was a drake. He lived a somewhat cloistered life in the stable
which had been made over into a garage. He had wandered in one morning
soon after Anne had come to teach in the school. Peter had suggested that
he be killed and eaten. But Anne, lonely in her new quarters, had
appreciated the forlornness of the old drake and had adopted him. She had
named him Diogenes because he had an air of searching always for
something which could not be found. Once when a flock of wild ducks had
flown overhead, Diogenes had listened, and, as their faint cries had come
down to him, he had stretched his wings as if he, too, would fly. But his
fat body had held him, and so still chained to earth, he waddled within
the limits of his narrow domain.
In a cozy corner of the garage there was plenty of straw and a blanket to
keep off draughts. Mrs. Bower had declared such luxury unsettling. But
Anne had laughed at her. "Why should pleasant things hurt us?" she had
asked, and Mrs. Bower had shaken her head.
"If you had seen the old men who come here and stuff, and die because
their livers are wrong, you'd know what I mean. Give him enough, but
don't pamper him."
In the face of this warning, however, Anne fed the old drake on tidbits,
and visited him at least once a day. He returned her favors by waiting
for her at the gate when it was not too cold and, preceding her to the
house, gave a sort of major-domo effect to her progress.
Entering the stable, they found a lantern lighting the gloom, and
Diogenes in a state of agitation. His solitude had been invaded by an
Irish setter--a lovely auburn-coated creature with melting eyes, who,
held by a leash, lay at length on Diogenes' straw with Diogenes' blanket
keeping off the cold.
The old drake from some remote fastness flung his protest to the four
winds!
"He's a new one." Peggy patted the dog, who rose to welcome them. "He
ought to be in the kennels. Somebody didn't know."
Somebody probably had not known, but had learned. For now the door
opened, and a young man came in. He was a big young man with fair hair,
and he had arrived on the train.
"I beg your pardon," he said, as he saw them, "but they told me I had put
my dog in the wrong place."
Peggy was important. "He belongs at the kennels. He's in Diogenes'
corner."
"Diogenes?"
The old drake, reassured by the sound of voices, showed himself for a
moment in the track of the lantern light.
"There he is," Peggy said, excitedly; "he lives in here by himself."
Anne had not spoken, but as she lifted the lantern from its nail and held
it high, Richard Brooks was aware that this was the same girl whom he had
glimpsed from the train. He had noted then her slenderness of outline,
the grace and freedom of her pose; at closer range he saw her delicate
smallness; the bloom on her cheek; the dusky softness of her hair; the
length of her lashes; the sapphire deeps of her eyes. Yet it was not
these charms which arrested his attention; it was, rather, a certain
swift thought of her as superior to her surroundings.
"Then it is Diogenes whose pardon I must beg," he said, his eyes
twinkling as the old drake took refuge behind Anne's skirts. "Toby, come
out of that. It's you for a cold kennel."
"It's not cold in the kennels," Peggy protested; "it is nice and warm,
and the food is fixed by Eric Brand."
"And where can I find Eric Brand?"
"He isn't here." It was Anne who answered him. "He is away for the New
Year. Peggy and I have been looking after the dogs."
She did not tell him that she had done it because she liked dogs, and not
because it was a part of her day's work. And he did not know that she
taught school. Hence, as he walked beside her toward the kennels, with
Peggy dancing on ahead with Toby, and with Diogenes left behind in full
possession, he thought of her, quite naturally, as the daughter of Peter
Bower.
It was an uproarious pack which greeted them. Every Old Gentleman owned a
dog, and there was Peter's Mamie, two or three eager-eyed pointers,
setters, hounds and Chesapeake Bay dogs. Old Mamie was nondescript, and
was shut up in the kennels to-night only because Eric was away. She was
eminently trustworthy, and usually ran at large.
Toby, given a box to himself, turned his melting eyes upon his master and
whined.
"He was sent to me just before I left New York," Richard explained. "I
fancy he is rather homesick. I am the only thing in sight that he knows."
"You might take him into the house," Anne said doubtfully, "only it is a
rule that if there are many dogs they all have to share alike and stay
out here. When there are only two or three they go into the sitting-room
with the men."
"He can lie down behind the stove in the kitchen," Peggy offered
hospitably. "Mamie does."
Richard shook his head. "Toby will have to learn with the rest of us that
life isn't always what we want it to be."
He was startled by the look which the girl with the lantern gave him.
"Why shouldn't it be as we want it?" she said, with sudden fire; "if I
were Providence, I'd make things pleasant, and you are playing Providence
to Toby. Why not let him have the comfort of the kitchen stove?"