"The larger the nature the less susceptible to personal injury."
It was a few days later. Annette, leaning on Mrs. Stoddart's arm, had
made a pilgrimage as far as the low garden wall to look at the little
golden-brown calf on the other side tethered to a twisted shrub of
plumbago, the blue flowers of which spread themselves into a miniature
canopy over him. Now she was lying back, exhausted but triumphant, in
her long chair, with Mrs. Stoddart knitting beside her.
"I shall be walking up there to-morrow," she said audaciously, pointing
to the fantastic cactus-sprinkled volcanic hills rising steeply behind
the house on the northern side.
Mrs. Stoddart vouchsafed no reply. Annette, more tired than she would
allow, leaned back. Her eyes fell on the same view, which might have
been painted on a drop scene so fixed was it, so identical in colour and
light day after day. But to-day it proved itself genuine by the fact
that a large German steamer, not there yesterday, was moored in the bay,
so placed that it seemed to be impaled on the spike of the tallest
tower, and keeping up the illusion by making from time to time a
rumbling and unseemly noise as if in pain.
"You must own now that I am well," said Annette.
"Very nearly. You shall come up to the tomato-gardens to-morrow, and see
the Spanish women working in their white trousers."
"My head never aches now."
"That is a good thing."
"Has the time come when I may ask a few questions?"
Mrs. Stoddart hardly looked up from her knitting as she said
tranquilly--
"Yes, my child, if there is anything on your mind."
"I suppose Dick Le Geyt is--dead. I felt sure he was dying that last day
at Fontainebleau. It won't be any shock to me to know that he is dead."
"He is not dead."
A swift glance showed Mrs. Stoddart that Annette was greatly surprised.
"How is he?" she asked after a moment. "Did he really get well again? I
thought it was not possible."
"It was not."
"Then he is not riding again yet?"
"No. I am afraid he will never ride again."
"Then his back was really injured, after all?"
"Yes. It was spinal paralysis."
"He did enjoy life so," said Annette. "Poor Dick!"
"I made inquiries about him again a short time ago. He is not unhappy.
He knows nothing and nobody, and takes no notice. The brain was
affected, and it is only a question of time--a few months, a few years.
He does not suffer."
"For a long time I thought he and I had died together."
"You both all but died, Annette."
"Where is he now?"
"In his aunt's house in Paris. She came down before I left."
"I hope she seemed a kind woman."
"She seemed a silly one. She brought her own doctor and Mr. Le Geyt's
valet with her. She evidently distrusted the Fontainebleau doctor and
me. She paid him up and dismissed him at once, and she as good as
dismissed me."
"Perhaps," said Annette, "she thought you and the doctor were in
collusion with _me_. I suppose some lurid story, with me in the middle
of it, reached her at once."
"No doubt. The valet had evidently told her that his master had not gone
down to Fontainebleau alone. She arrived prepared for battle."
"And where was I all the time?"
"You were in the country, a few miles out of Fontainebleau, at a house
the doctor knew of. He helped me to move you there directly you became
unconscious. Until you fell ill you would not leave Mr. Le Geyt. It was
fortunate you were not there when his aunt arrived."
"I should not have cared."
"No. You were past caring about anything. You were not in your right
mind. But surely, Annette,"--Mrs. Stoddart spoke very slowly,--"you care
_now_?"
Annette evidently turned the question over in her mind, and then looked
doubtfully at her friend.
"I am grateful to you that I escaped the outside shame," she said. "But
that seems such a little thing beside the inside shame, that I could
have done as I did. I had been carefully brought up. I was what was
called _good_. And it was easy to me. I had never felt any temptation to
be otherwise, even in the irresponsible _milieu_ at father's, where
there was no morality to speak of. And yet--all in a minute--I could do
as--as I did, throw everything away which only just before I had guarded
with such passion. _He_ was bad, and father was bad. I see now that he
had sold me. But since I have been lying here I have come to see that I
was bad too. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other. There was
nothing to choose between the three of us. Poor Dick with his
unpremeditated escapade was snow-white compared to us, the one kindly
person in the sordid drama of lust and revenge."
"Where do I come in?" asked Mrs. Stoddart.
"As an unwise angel, I think, who snatched a brand from the burning."
"You are the first person who has had the advantage of my acquaintance
who has called me unwise," said Mrs. Stoddart, with the grim, benevolent
smile which Annette had learnt to love. "And now you have talked enough.
The whole island is taking its siesta. It is time you took yours."
Mrs. Stoddart thought long over Annette and her future that night. She
had made every effort, left no stone unturned at Fontainebleau, to save
the good name which the girl had so recklessly flung away. When Annette
succumbed, Mrs. Stoddart, quick to see whom she could trust, confided to
the doctor that Annette was not Mr. Le Geyt's wife and appealed to him
for help. He gravely replied that he already knew that fact, but did not
mention how during the making of the will it had come to his knowledge.
He helped her to remove Annette instantly to a private lodging kept by
an old servant of his. There was no luggage to remove. When Mr. Le
Geyt's aunt and her own doctor arrived late that night, together with
Mr. Le Geyt's valet, Annette had vanished into thin air. Only Mrs.
Stoddart was there, and the nurse to hand over the patient, and to
receive the cautious, suspicious thanks of Lady Jane Cranbrook, who
continually repeated that she could not understand the delay in sending
for her. It was, of course, instantly known in the hotel that the pretty
lady who had nursed Monsieur so devotedly was not his wife, and that she
had fled at the approach of his family. Mrs. Stoddart herself left very
early next morning, before Lady Jane was up, after paying Annette's
hotel-bill as well as her own. She had heard since through the nurse
that Mr. Le Geyt, after asking plaintively for Annette once or twice,
had relapsed into a state of semi-unconsciousness, in which he lay day
after day, week after week. It seemed as if his mind had made one last
effort, and then had finally given up a losing battle. The stars in
their courses had fought for Annette, and Mrs. Stoddart had given them
all the aid she could, with systematic perseverance and forethought.
She had obliged Annette to write to a friend in Paris as soon as she was
well enough, rather before she was well enough to hold a pen, telling
her she had been taken ill suddenly at Fontainebleau but was with a
friend, and asking her to pack her clothes for her and send them to her
at Melun. Later on, before embarking at Marseilles, she had made her
write a line to her father saying she was travelling with her friend
Mrs. Stoddart, and should not be returning to Paris for the present.
After a time, she made her resume communications with her aunts, and
inform them who she was travelling with and where she was. The aunts
wrote rather frigidly in return at first, but after a time became more
cordial, expressed themselves pleased that she was enjoying herself, and
opined that they had had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Stoddart's sister,
Lady Brandon. They were evidently delighted that she had left her
father, and even graciously vouchsafed fragments of information about
themselves. Aunt Maria had just brought out another book, _Crooks and
Coronets_, a copy of which found its way to Teneriffe. Aunt Harriet, the
invalid, had become a Christian Scientist. Aunt Catherine, the only
practical one of the family, had developed a weak heart. And they had
all decided to leave London, and were settling in a country farm in
Lowshire, where they had once spent a summer years before.
Mrs. Stoddart with infinite care had re-established all the links
between Annette's past life and her present one. The hiatus, which after
all had only occupied six days, was invisible. Her success had
apparently been complete.
"Only apparently," she said to herself. "Something may happen which I
cannot foresee. Mr. Le Geyt may get better, though they say he never
will; or at any rate he may get well enough to give her away, which he
would never do if he were in full possession of his faculties. Or that
French chamber-maid who was so endlessly kind may take service in
England, and run up against Annette; or the valet who, she says, did
not see her at the station, may have seen her after all, and may prove a
source of danger. Or, most likely of all, Annette may tell against
herself. She is quite capable of it."
Next day she said to Annette--
"Remember your reputation is my property. You threw it away, and I
picked it up off the dunghill. It belongs to me absolutely. Now promise
me on your oath that you will never say anything about this episode in
your past to anyone, to any living creature except one--the man you
marry."
"I would rather not promise that," said Annette. "I feel as if some time
or other I might have to say something. One never can tell."
Mrs. Stoddart cast at her a lightning glance in which love and
perplexity were about evenly mixed. This strange creature amused and
angered her, and constantly aroused in her opposite feelings at the same
moment. The careful Scotchwoman felt a certain kindly scorn for
Annette's want of self-protective prudence and her very slight
realization of the dangers Mrs. Stoddart had worked so hard to avert.
But mixed in with the scorn was a pinch of respect for something
unworldly in Annette, uncalculating of her own advantage. She was
apparently one of that tiny band who are not engrossed by the duty of
"looking after Number One."
Mrs. Stoddart, who was not easily nonplussed, decided to be wounded.
"You are hard to help, Annette," she said. "I do what I can for you, and
you often say how much it is, and yet you can tranquilly talk of all my
work being thrown away by some chance word of yours which you won't even
promise not to say."
Annette was startled.
"I had not meant that," she said humbly. "I will promise anything you
wish!"
"No, my dear, no," said Mrs. Stoddart, ashamed of her subterfuge and its
instant success. "I was unreasonable. Promise me instead that, except to
the man you are engaged to, you will never mention this subject to
anyone without my permission."
"I promise," said Annette.
And Mrs. Stoddart, who never kissed anyone if she could help it, kissed
her on the forehead.