of you. Make yourself look pretty, Madge. Put on your nicest frock, and
do your hair the way he likes, high up, you know, with little fluffy
curls about. And make the room pretty, dear. I’ll order some flowers to
be sent round to-night. Lots of them, so you’ll have plenty to do to
arrange them. No more sitting by the fire and crying, mind! No looking
back. Only look forward.”
Madge held her tight. “Oh! you’ve given me so much courage!” she
exclaimed with a long sigh of relief. “You dearest of women. I’ll do
everything you tell me.”
XX
Outside, in the lighted street, Anne called a cab, and gave the address
of the nearest florist.
Her thoughts dwelt upon Madge, as the carriage rattled down the
boulevard.
“I’m scarcely sorry,” was the outcome of her grave reflection. “It
will make a woman of her. She needed a great shock, or a great sorrow
to take her out of herself, and make her realize what it would mean to
lose her husband.”
It was only while she was choosing flowers for her, that the part of
Madge’s confession which concerned herself, came back confusedly to her
mind. It gathered greater clearness as she drove towards her hotel, and
by the time she reached it, and was sitting by her bedroom fire after
dinner, she found herself wondering what would be the outcome of the
matter.
That she might be sure of Madge Dakin, her instinct satisfied her. Yet
the results of Madame Didier’s inquiries would in all probability,
from other sources, reach Dymfield. What then?
Anne’s thoughts flitted from Mrs. Carfax to Mrs. Willcox, the
solicitor’s wife, a lady who was interested in Church Missions, and
Rescue Homes for Fallen Women. The memory of Miss Goldie, a maiden lady
of substantial means, and views of life which even Dymfield considered
rigid, came to her, and forced a smile. She saw her sitting in the
front pew in church, her black bonnet with two purple pansies upon
it, tied tightly under her chin. She saw her angular elbows, under
the short mantle of black silk adorned with bugle trimming. She heard
her rasping voice, which seldom softened even for Anne, who as a rule
affected insensibly the voices of her neighbours.
She remembered Mr. Willcox, stiff, erect, lean-faced Mr. Willcox, loud
in his denunciation of the present age, which he considered lax and
immoral to the last degree.
She thought of the Vicar, with his blustering attempts at modernity,
and his violently expressed scorn of everything but muscular
Christianity and common sense.
Dymfield was the typical English village, with its types indigenous
to the soil, firmly rooted, impervious to criticism, profoundly
self-satisfied.
Dymfield for Anne would be impossible.
But Dymfield meant Fairholme Court, to which her heart was inextricably
linked. The garden that she had planted, the garden that was full of
fragrant memories of the blossoming time of her life. The bare idea of
leaving it sent a pang of desolation to her heart.
She got up and began to walk restlessly about the room.
The absurdity of such an outcome of malicious gossip, struck her with a
pathetic desire to laugh.
“After all these years! At my age,” she murmured.
She thought of her three years of happiness, the little space of time
which had opened like a flower in her grey life, and wondered pitifully
why any one should grudge it to her. But most of all, she shrank from
the thought that people should talk about it. It had been for so many
years her secret possession, the memory that had sweetened all her
later days.
It would be insupportable to know that her acquaintances were gossiping
about her. About her and René.
A painful flush rose to her face as she sat down again by the fire.
After her talk with Madge Dakin, her old life seemed too near. She
thought of the parting with René in the morning--the morning he left
her for his three days’ work at Fontainebleau.
The agony of making that parting a light one! She remembered that he
turned at the door, and came back to kiss her again. The sun was on his
hair, as he crossed the room.
Involuntarily to-night, twenty years after the words were spoken, Anne
put her hands over her ears, that she might not hear his voice. But
she knew what he had said. She remembered how, when he was gone, her
resolution wavered.
Without question he loved her still. Wasn’t it too soon? Might she not
stay a little longer? Just a little while longer? And then the _bonne_
had brought the letters of the second post, and among them there was
one for René in a handwriting she knew. Within the past month they had
been coming very often, these letters. Lately, every day.
She remembered how the sunshine had streamed upon the envelope at which
she sat staring, till at last she moved to make her preparations.
Then the long train journey, and the agony which feared to
betray itself in some insane fashion which might cause her to be
stopped--forcibly prevented from reaching her destination.
She wanted to shriek aloud, to rave and cry, like the madwoman she half
feared she might in fact have become.
Of the next few weeks she recalled nothing but a confused nightmare
impression of unfamiliar rooms, strange faces, strange voices. Of
people who for some mad reason were going about as usual, occupied with
the ordinary business of life; talking, laughing, eating and drinking,
unmoved, unconcerned.
One book on every hotel table drew her like a magnet. She would sit
down anywhere with a _Bradshaw_ before her, and at once, mechanically
plan her journey back to Paris.
Over and over again, she looked out trains, studied connections,
pictured the moment of her arrival.
It would be tea-time. The lamps just lit. René sitting by the
fire--René leaping to his feet to meet her.
Or it would be early morning. She would open his bedroom door softly....
And then the realization of her madness; more sleepless nights, fresh
strange hotels, new cities up and down whose streets she wandered
wondering why she should be there, why she should enter one building
rather than another, why the day never passed, and when the night
came, thinking would God that it were morning.
So terribly near seemed her past torture, that with all her strength
Anne tried to stem the flood of reminiscence.
Thank God, little Madge Dakin had never known, would never know, misery
such as hers! In the midst of her whirl of memories Anne gratefully
considered this.
With an effort at diversion, she tried to recall the names of the
cities in which she stayed, through which she had passed during the
first few months of her exile.
In vain. She had only a confused impression of scorching streets, of
palm trees against a hot blue sky; of seas hatefully, mockingly calm
and blue.
She was in Athens when the news of his death reached her, and with
it a packet of letters written during the first few weeks after her
departure. They were letters from René, never sent, because she had
left no address. Letters written in the frenzied hope that some day
soon he must hear from her.
It was then that she tasted her first moment of peace.
She remembered sitting in a little walled garden somewhere within the
city, and for the first time seeing that the blue sky overhead was
beautiful.
She noticed the broad leaves of a fig-tree clambering upon the wall
opposite, and listened to the dripping of a little stream which flowed
from a stone trough into a well whose mouth was fringed delicately
with ferns and wild flowers. And for the first time came to her a
premonition of the calm and peace, and even happiness of her later
years.
Her emotional life was over. No man as a lover would ever exist for her
again. But she had experienced the love for which she had been willing
to pay. She had paid, and some day she would be content.
René dead, had become hers once more--this time for ever.
Later in the year she met François at Antibes, and heard calmly, with
scarcely a stab of pain, what she was prepared to hear. She had been
right to go. But René had died before he ceased to love her.
Afterwards, her true wander years began. And then at last, the thought
of the house and the garden at Dymfield became dear to her, and she
went to them as a child goes home.
Anne let her mind dwell gratefully upon the quiet happy years she had
spent at Dymfield.
She thought of her work among her flowers, and the paradise of beauty
it had produced. She thought of the poorer village people whose lives
she knew, whose children she loved, to whom for years she had been a
friend. She remembered her little plans for their welfare, all the
pleasant trifles which made up the sum of her daily existence.
And as she mused, came a wondering recognition of the healing of time,
the passing of all violent emotion, whether of joy or of despair.
From some recess of her memory there sprang the words of an Eastern
sage, who as a motto true alike in times of sorrow and times of
delight, told his disciple to grave upon his signet ring, one
sentence--_This too will pass_.
XXI
Anne started for London next morning, intending to spend the night in
town, and devote the next day to her brother, and to Sylvia Carfax, to
whom she had not found time to write.
Early on Thursday morning she drove to Carlisle House.
The page boy who took her up in the lift, indicated a door at the end
of the corridor, and left her.
Anne knocked, and in response to a voice within, entered Sylvia’s
bedroom.
It was littered with cardboard boxes, open trunks, dresses, hats,
raiment of all sorts, and stumbling over the obstacles in her way,
Sylvia rushed towards her with a cry of joy.
Even before she kissed her, Anne had time to notice the worried look on
the girl’s face, which robbed it of its youthful prettiness.
“Oh!” she gasped. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come in time, and I didn’t
know _what_ to do, or how to get out of it. Oh! I’m so thankful to see
you, Miss Page. Sit down. Do sit down--if you can find a place,” she
added, trying to laugh.
Anne chose the bed as the only available spot.
“My dear child, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed. “You’re packing, I
suppose. Where are you going?”
“To--America,” returned Sylvia, with a gulp.
Anne looked at her, and drew her down beside her on the bed.
“Tell me all about it from the very beginning,” she said, with quiet
insistence.
“_Don’t_ be angry with me,” implored Sylvia, her lips trembling. “I
thought I’d been so clever to arrange it all myself, without saying a
word about it. But--but now I’m frightened. And my contract’s signed,
and I daren’t----”
“But what’s it all about? Tell me clearly, Sylvia.”
Sylvia made an effort to obey, and though lucidity was not the strong
part of her story, by the end of half an hour’s questioning and
explanation, Anne gathered that the girl had fallen into the hands of
the manager of a third-rate theatrical company. The man had tempted her
with the offer of a “star” part in a musical comedy, and she had signed
a contract with him for America.
“He said he would make my fortune,” she declared. “He praised my voice
so much, and told me I was wonderful, and that I should make a great
hit. But he made me promise not to tell any one I was going. He said
he wanted to have the credit of discovering me, and all that sort of
thing. I knew mother and father would be horrified, but I thought it
was too good a chance to lose, and that I’d risk their anger. Because,
if I turned out a success, and made a lot of money, they would be very
proud,” she added.
The instinctive knowledge of human nature shared by the pillars of the
Church, caused Anne despite her anxiety, a secret smile.
“I thought he was so kind,” Sylvia went on pitifully, “and he seemed
so nice at first, but lately he’s been different, and his manner has
been so funny. He--he looked at me in a horrid way yesterday,” she
confessed, “and held my hand tight, and when I tried to get away, he
laughed. But my contract’s signed,” she declared with a wail of despair
in her voice.
“Haven’t the principals of this place interfered?” Anne inquired. “The
matron, or whoever it is who’s supposed to look after you?”
“They think I’m going home,” confessed Sylvia in an abashed voice. “I
managed it so that they should think so.”
Anne rose, and with a terrified expression, the girl clung to her hand.
“Oh! Miss Page,” she gasped. “You’re not going? I’m to sail to-morrow
night, and----”
“Don’t be frightened, you silly little thing. Of course you won’t sail
to-morrow, nor any other night. Give me the address of this man.”
Sylvia falteringly repeated it.
Anne wrote it down, and stooped to kiss her.
“Unpack all those things, and put them tidy,” she said. “I haven’t
time to scold you now, but I’ll come back and do it thoroughly this
afternoon.”
The girl’s look of relief touched her, but she could scarcely repress
a smile as she turned at the door, to see her standing like a penitent
baby amongst all her finery.
“I wonder what I should have done with daughters?” she asked herself,
half humorously, as she stepped into a cab, outside.
The question was answered by a smile and a sigh that were almost
simultaneous.
Anne spent a busy morning. She went first to her solicitor, and after
an hour’s colloquy with him on the case of Sylvia Carfax, she drove on
to her brother’s house in Kensington. It stood in a highly respectable
square, and was one of the hundreds of dull substantial edifices which
came into existence during the mid-Victorian era.
Anne rang the bell, and stood waiting rather excitedly under the stucco
canopy supported by pillars.
Her present meeting with Hugh was divided from the last, by a period
of twenty years. It was odd to remember how little she knew of this
brother, her only near relative in the world. He would be much changed,
of course.
A sudden vivid recollection of the last time she had met him, swept
through her mind, as she stood waiting admittance. How desolate she
had been. How shy. How filled with the sense of being an outsider, a
forgotten guest, unbidden to the banquet of life!
The door opened, and it was Hugh himself who drew her over the
threshold, and welcomed her in the loud, kind voice she remembered.
“We’ve been waiting for you all the morning,” he declared, “and I
rushed down when I heard the bell. Come in and let me look at you! It’s
impossible to see anything in this wretched foggy atmosphere.”
With his arm still round her shoulder, he pushed open the door of a
large room on the right of the hall.
“Here she is, Alice!” he exclaimed, as his wife rose from a sofa near
the fire.
“Why Anne, what have you done to yourself?”
The words were uttered in amazement. Anne had slipped off her heavy
cloak, and stood laughing tremulously as she held her brother by both
hands, and noticed for the first time that his hair was white, and his
good-natured bronzed face lined and wrinkled. She turned from him to
greet her sister-in-law.
The slim little creature she remembered was a stout matron, whose hair
was just touched with grey.
Alice’s start of amazement as she gazed a moment before she kissed her,
was almost comic.
“Why, Anne, my dear, you’ve grown quite a beautiful woman!” declared
her brother, so simply that the tears sprang to Anne’s eyes.
“She’s grown younger, hasn’t she, Alice?” He looked at her with a
puzzled expression.
Anne laughed, and touched her hair. “But it’s your white hair that----
And yet I don’t know. It’s you altogether! I never saw such a change.
You---- She looks like a great lady in a French picture, doesn’t she,
Alice? Court of one of the French kings. Louis the Sixteenth, that
sort of thing.”
Anne laughed again. “My dear boy. You make me embarrassed. Don’t stare
at me so,” she begged.
The pink colour sprang into her cheeks, and the shy deprecating smile
of François’ portrait crept for a moment to her lips.
“I’m just Anne--twenty years older than when you last saw me.”
“Well--it’s magic. I give it up,” declared Hugh.
“Where are the boys?” she asked, turning with a quick, eager movement
to her sister-in-law. “I want to see my nephews.”
“They’re out to-day. I’m so sorry. They’ve gone to lunch with some
relations of mine. But you’ll see them this evening. I let them go
because I knew that you would want to talk to Hugh,” Alice answered.
“You’ll excuse me a little while, won’t you? I must speak to cook.”
Her voice--her tone of deference, marked Alice’s recognition of the
change in the woman she had once regarded as insignificant, a poor meek
creature to be treated with compassion and tolerance; and her husband’s
awkward laugh as she closed the door, was sufficient indication that
her altered attitude was not lost upon him.
“She can’t help fussing about the servants. Old habits, you know,” he
said, turning to his sister. “For years she did all the housework, and
she can’t give it up.”
“But you’ve finished with work now, haven’t you, dear?” Anne asked, as
she sat down beside her brother on the sofa.
“Thanks to you.” Hugh glanced at her gratefully.
“That money was just what I wanted, Anne. It made me. I only needed
capital to develop the farm, and it came just at the right moment. We
owe everything to your generosity, dear. And now we’re going to talk
business. You’ve put me off in every letter, but I must insist----”
Anne laid her hand quickly on his lips. “I won’t hear a word about
it!” she declared. “You’re not going to rob me of one of the greatest
delights of my life, Hugh? The power I once had to help my only
brother? You can’t be so unkind!”
Her tone of pained entreaty made him laugh. He kissed her again.
“You dear absurd woman! Why haven’t you married, Anne?” he exclaimed
suddenly. “Some man’s been robbed of a wonderful wife. It’s not fair of
you!”
She smiled. “Tell me about the boys,” she urged.
A maid entered to announce that lunch was served, and during the meal,
the boys and their prospects were the chief topic of conversation.
“Alice thinks them both geniuses, of course,” laughed her husband. “But
they’re only ordinary youths. I shall be quite satisfied if they can
just jog along.”
“Rupert has great talent,” his mother assured Anne. “Don’t listen to
Hugh. I’m sure he’ll make a splendid architect.”
“I’m sure he will,” she agreed sympathetically.
“You know we lost our little girl?” said Alice softly, when they
returned to the drawing-room.
Her voice suddenly drew Anne’s heart.
“The boys are dears, of course,” she added. “But I should love to have
had a daughter.”
Anne was silent a moment. Then with a sudden inspiration, she thought
of Sylvia.
“Where’s your luggage?” inquired Hugh. “Bless my soul, I’d forgotten
it! You’re going to stay with us, Anne, of course?”
“Your room is all ready,” Alice assured her rather timidly.
“I _was_ going back to-day, and coming to you later. But if I may send
for my things from the hotel, I should like to stay a little while.
There’s a child I know, a girl I must help out of a difficulty, and I
find it will take a little time.”
She told them Sylvia’s story, and noticed with satisfaction that Alice
seemed interested.
“Poor silly child!” she exclaimed. “She ought to be taken care of. She
ought to live in some nice family.”
Anne made a mental note, but at the moment said nothing.
XXII
Two or three days later, she was back at Fairholme Court.
Burks had been sent on to join the other servants, and by the time Anne
reached the house, everything was in its usual spotless order.
As she sat looking into the fire the afternoon following her return,
Anne felt that it was good to be home. She glanced round the charming
room, and experienced a thrill of pleasure. The fresh curtains at the
windows with their rose garlands, pleased her eye. The inlaid cabinets,
the tables, the dainty bookcases, shining and spotless from the maids’
energetic ministrations, reflected the firelight at every angle. The
pictures she loved seemed even more beautiful for her absence, and the
pots of lilies and hyacinths about the room filled the air with sweet
scent.
Anne looked from them to her books, as one glances from one loved
face to another. It was good to be home, and she felt happy, and at
rest. Painful misgivings had disappeared, and her mind was filled with
contented thoughts of her friends.
From Sylvia, inexpressibly relieved, she had just received a letter of
girlish effusion and gratitude.
It was in her hand as she sat smiling into the fire, glad to remember
the girl as she had yesterday seen her, pretty once more, gay, and full
of extravagantly noble resolutions for the future.
Madge Dakin, who with her husband had returned a few days previously,
she had already seen.
She looked thin and pale still, but Anne was satisfied to hear that
Harry was the dearest and best of men, and that she had never been so
much in love with any one in her life.
To-day Anne found the human comedy agreeable. A spectacle to be viewed
with a smile from which tears of pity and sympathy were not very far
removed. But the smile came first. She reflected that she must see the
Vicar, and she was making up her mind to leave the fireside for that
purpose, when the door opened, and he was announced.
She rose quickly with an exclamation of pleasure, and went to meet him.
He took her outstretched hand, but let it drop again immediately, and
glancing at him with half-defined surprise, she saw that he wore his
pulpit expression of slightly pompous gravity.
“Sit down,” begged Anne, cordially. “I was just coming up to see you.”
“Thank you,” said the Vicar, dropping heavily into the chair she
indicated.
“I saw Sylvia only yesterday. She sent many messages to you, and to her
mother.”
“Thank you,” repeated the Vicar. “It is distressing to me, but I am
constrained to say I’m sorry you saw her,” he added after a moment’s
hesitation.
Anne looked at him in silence, and Mr. Carfax cleared his throat.
“Miss Page,” he began, “I am here to speak on a very painful subject,
and I think the sooner I mention it the better.”
“Certainly,” said Anne, drawing herself back against the cushions of
her chair.
“I repeat, I am sorry you have seen my child, because in future, I say
it with great reluctance, I wish her acquaintance with you to cease.”
Anne still waited in silence, and again the Vicar cleared his throat.
It was difficult to talk with her eyes upon him, and his carefully
prepared speeches seemed a trifle ridiculous.
“I’d better tell you the history of this affair from the beginning,” he
broke out abruptly. “Shortly it is this. Some two or three weeks ago I
received a private letter from a lady whose name I will not mention----”
“Madame Didier,” interrupted Anne quietly.
The Vicar paused.
“Madame Didier, since you seem to know my correspondent. It was a
letter written to me as the vicar of the parish, begging me to warn Dr.
Dakin against your influence with his wife.”
Anne did not speak.
“Madame Didier gave reasons for this interference,” he went on after a
moment. “Reasons which seemed to me to be based on false and scandalous
charges. The letter, however, so intimately concerned my friend, that I
was compelled to show it to him. It was burnt in my presence, and such
was my implicit confidence in you that I wrote a strong, I may say a
threatening letter to the lady, forbidding her to circulate libellous
reports.”
“I am grateful to you,” Anne said.
The Vicar glanced at her.
“I have since regretted that letter,” he added deliberately.
“A fortnight ago, business called me to London, and I spent an evening
with my wife’s friends, the Lovells. Madame Didier, whose stay in
England has been protracted, was with her aunt. I did not know this
when I went to see the Lovells,” he added, “or I should naturally have
avoided the chance of an unpleasant encounter.
“However, in spite of my protestations, and my refusal to hear your
name spoken by her, the lady insisted, and to avoid entering upon
unpleasant details, I may say at once that she gave me incontrovertible
evidence as to the truth of her assertions.”
There was a pause which Anne did not break. She sat quite still,
looking into the fire.
“I need not say,” pursued the Vicar stiffly, “that though I was
constrained to offer an apology to Madame Didier for my somewhat
intemperate letter, I repeated my warning to her with regard to the
danger of spreading this story.”
“Thank you,” said Anne again.
The Vicar moved uncomfortably.