not notice the look of anxiety on his face, for she was too much
taken up with looking out of the taxi window. Soon she was asking
questions: “What is that building? that street? that monument?” and
was astonished that neither Richard nor his friend could tell her.
She would have liked to spend hours driving about Paris, feeling Mr.
Grandison’s gaze fixed upon her, and aware of the slight flush on her
own cheek, but suddenly they rattled over a bridge and had turned into
a narrow lane.
“I have taken a room for you here,” said Richard as they drew up. “You
get your breakfast in your room, and an evening meal for about four
shillings a day. I took it for a week. I suppose you will be staying a
week in Paris.”
“I shall be staying for ever,” answered Anne.
Grandison gave a short, loud laugh. “I like the way you said that,” he
exclaimed, handing her suit-case out of the cab.
A sleepy-looking man had opened the hotel door, and was taking her
luggage.
“We’ll call for you this evening, and take you out to dinner if that
would suit you,” said Richard; and the next moment the taxi began to
move off and she found herself alone.
“I shall like Mr. Grandison,” she said as she followed the doorkeeper
upstairs, and the excitement of looking at her room was mingled with
the excitement of imagining that in a few days she would be laughing
with the handsome man who had met her, and that he would lose his
surliness and his shyness as they walked through Paris side by side.
By the time she had finished unpacking she felt tired, and she lay
down on the bed to rest. She could not sleep, and an hour later, when
she looked out of the window and saw that the sunlight, which had
greeted her on her arrival, had given place to driving rain. She had no
umbrella, nor mackintosh, so she could not go out, and she felt shy and
uncomfortable as she walked through the passages of the hotel. When she
tried to speak to the chambermaid she found that she had forgotten her
few words of French, but at last the day passed by and she was called
from her room to find Mr. Grandison waiting for her in the hall.
“Richard sent me: he will meet us in the restaurant,” he said. They got
into a cab, for it was still raining, and drove in silence until Anne,
looking out of the window, asked what street they were in. “I don’t
know,” answered the young man. “There are so many streets in Paris. But
it is quite easy to find one’s way about.”
Anne would have liked to ask him about his sister, but she lacked the
courage and nothing more was said. The restaurant to which they had
driven was like a hundred others which they had passed on the way,
and appeared indistinguishable from the restaurants on either side of
it; each with basket-work chairs heaped upside down on the little iron
tables outside, with an awning flapping in the wind, and “Brasserie”
written in gigantic letters along the front. It was still raining, but
when they had passed through the doors they found the room was crowded.
Richard was waiting for them at a corner table, and they sat down. Soon
food was brought them, and Richard began to speak about the restaurant,
but Anne hardly took in his words and forgot to help herself from the
little dishes, for she was charmed by the scene before her: the small
tables, each with its merry party, men laughing hastily before filling
their mouths with soup, swallowing it, and then laughing again as they
tore the long rolls of bread to pieces with their fingers.
But Richard was pressing Anne to help herself, handing her the little
dishes and filling her glass with yellow wine, then turning and
speaking to Grandison about some play of Ibsen’s which was being acted
at a theatre in Paris. Anne’s pleasure was increased by knowing that
Richard and his friend were talking of a play which she had read, and
that she could share in the discussion if she chose, but her attention
wandered once more, and she was the first to notice a girl who came
towards them threading her way between the tables, followed by a fat
man with a square red beard, who stopped to speak to some acquaintances
who hailed him as he passed. But the girl came on and held out a cool
brown hand for Anne to shake.
“Mademoiselle Lariboisière--always called Ginette,” said Richard.
Ginette was beautiful, very beautiful, and Anne wondered how the
mistake had arisen which had made her expect Ginette to be Mr.
Grandison’s sister. Instead of that she was a Frenchwoman with a lean
brown face like a mask and dark hazel eyes with black lashes.
“If I were only like Ginette,” she thought, a wish that recurred for
many days afterwards whenever she was in her company, never guessing
that the French girl was saying to herself: “If I were only like this
English girl of Richard’s!”
Ginette sat down opposite them without appearing surprised that Richard
and Gerald should go on talking in English and pay no attention to her,
interrupting each other, laughing at one moment and becoming almost
angry in the next. But though they were talking in English, Anne did
not listen either; she gazed across the table at Ginette, wishing that
she could speak to her and get to know her. At last the meal was over,
the dishes were cleared away and soon they were joined by the fat man,
in spite of all appearances an American.
Anne found that he was kissing her hand, and a drop of soup from his
beard was smeared over her fingers. Her face showed her disgust as she
jumped up from her seat, and without speaking to the American, who had
drawn a chair near her, she went over to Ginette. But Ginette did not
understand English, and after one or two halting sentences Anne fell
into silence.
The group round the table was joined by several people, and each
newcomer shook hands all round the table before sitting down. Anne
had never shaken hands so often in her life, but there was no more
hand-kissing and there were no more beards. A Chinaman seated himself
beside Ginette, and they spoke so slowly that Anne was able to
follow their conversation; and she was astonished that she had heard
everything they said on the lips of English curates at tea parties
in English parsonages. After a little while Grandison came and sat
beside her and poured her out a glass of something warm, perfumed and
sticky; it seemed the most delicious liquid that she had ever tasted.
Conversation flowed on all sides of her, but she sat quiet, saying
nothing and looking at the pink face and the fair hair of Richard’s
friend and then at the Chinaman, who was talking so quietly and so
tediously about the fatigues of railway journeys to Ginette, both of
them indifferent to the shouting, excited group clustered round Richard
and the red-bearded American. Anne did not gather what the subject
of their argument was and she felt no desire to do anything. An hour
passed and then another hour, and once Grandison called to the waiter,
who refilled her little glass with the liqueur. It was enough for her
to know that she was in Paris, and that this was her welcome. The
voices, the faces, the Chinaman and Ginette melted into a dream full
of colour and of movement and shot through with music; her head nodded
and when Grandison touched her on the shoulder she smiled at him and
realized that she was very tired.
“I want to go to bed,” she said. “Will you please tell me the address
of my hotel?”
“I’ll see you home,” he said. “Richard is set now; he will stay here
for hours.”
It had stopped raining, and they walked. The streets gleamed, and they
turned into a great open place filled with trees and people sauntering
under them. Men in groups were talking and laughing, pretty girls and
painted women flashed their golden teeth as they passed by.
“How beautiful a town is,” Anne said, almost unconscious that she was
speaking aloud. “But I shall never be at home in one. The stones of the
streets frighten me. I love the garden where:
Stumbling on melons as I pass
Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass,
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade.”
She paused for a moment, stumbled with sleepiness and took Grandison’s
arm.
“The crowd here is so thick,” she continued. “The faces search one’s
face, the eyes meet one’s eyes, yet they all seem to be looking for
someone they can never find.”
They walked on slowly for some way in silence, but at last she spoke
again.
“I believe everyone here is pursuing a dream, just as I pursued a dream
walking under the elms at home; they speak to each other and pass on,
but they never know each other. Man is always alone. They speak to each
other, their eyes meet and sparkle; they smile and take each other
by the arm: all in a dream. Here am I walking beside you, both of us
are dreaming, unable to awake or to speak to each other.” There was
a pause; Grandison did not contradict what she had said, and then she
murmured, more to herself than to him: “I am utterly alone, but so is
everybody else.”
They continued walking for a long way through deserted streets. Anne
was feeling depressed by her train of thought, and Grandison was
silent, but when at last they reached the Rue de Beaune she felt as if
he had spoken and she had understood.
They shook hands, he looked into her eyes, cleared his throat as if he
were going to speak, swallowed something, but then turned away without
a word.
“I was wrong,” Anne said, feeling her heart filled once more with hope.
“There is patience and nobility and honesty and faithfulness in the
world.” As she dropped asleep it seemed to her that these qualities
were inseparable from blue eyes and fair hair and fresh, blunt
features.
THIRTEEN: PARIS
Next day, when she got up, Anne said to herself that she must see
Richard at once to discuss her plans with him. But the beauty of the
day tempted her to explore Paris. The morning was spent happily in
looking into the windows of the shops in the Rue de Rivoli and in
buying herself an umbrella; then she lunched alone, thinking that
it would be better to reach the studio in the afternoon. But it was
already late before she found Montmartre, and when at last she had
mounted the staircase and had rung the bell she was prepared for
Richard to be out.
“A day wasted,” she said to herself, but in her heart she felt that it
had been well spent, wishing that she could spend another day and then
another in wandering about Paris. In the evening she had dinner at her
hotel, and then went out once more to see the town by night.
“I can never get lost in Paris so long as I can find the river, for if
I follow the river sooner or later I must come to the Pont Royal, and
from there it is but a step to my hotel.” She walked along the quays
for some little way, but the Place de la Concorde tempted her with its
wide expanse, and presently she found herself under the trees of the
Champs Elysées. The clouds parted and the moonlight shone through the
young leaves, a few dark figures moved in the shadows, and a band of
young men passed her humming a foxtrot. Anne stopped for a moment and
waved her arms with a sense of freedom and then strode rapidly up the
hill.
At the Étoile she turned to the left down an avenue, which she guessed
would bring her to the river, and when she saw the moonlight shining
over the water she cried aloud: “I am free. I can do what I like; I can
live how I like. I may never see Richard or his friend or anyone I have
ever met, again. I have no friends in the world. Nobody can interfere
now with my happy life!” And suddenly, as she gazed over the water,
Anne remembered how she had wept in her bedroom on the morning when
the ploughmen had come. “No need for tears now that the accursed chain
is broken. Who would guess, meeting me here, that I was the vicar’s
daughter with no hope of escaping from the parish? I am still alone,
absolutely alone, but I care nothing for that because I am free. I
am free!” she repeated in a loud voice which startled her, but there
was no one near her, and she set off along the bank of the river.
“I shall never go back!” she said, drawing herself up proudly, then,
looking at the water, she wished that she could bathe, and her gaiety
and irresponsibility were such that she was almost on the point of
undressing beneath a lamp-post and plunging in. She recollected in time
that she would be saved by a French policeman, and walked on laughing
as she pictured to herself the explanations that she would offer next
morning in the police-court in her broken French.
“Richard would never forgive me if I dragged him to a police-court,”
she said, and her thoughts went back to her father. “Strange how blind
I was, thinking that he needed me when he welcomed my going. But, who
knows? he may be missing me now.” She turned back when she had reached
St. Cloud and retraced her footsteps easily; in less than an hour she
had reached the Pont Royal.
“I have done something that no respectable girl should do,” she said as
she went up to her room. “I have run the risk of being spoken to in the
street. Apparently I am not attractive enough to be in any danger from
the vicious,” she added as she looked in the glass, but she was pleased
with what she saw there and fell asleep at once.
There was a letter from Richard waiting for her asking her to luncheon
the following day, and when the time came Anne was overjoyed to see a
familiar face once more, though she had been repeating to herself the
words she had spoken by the river.
The door of the studio was opened by Ginette, who held out a cool hand.
As the girl turned to lead her in, Anne looked at the dark head with
the short black hairs cropped close to the brown neck and such envy
filled her at the sight that she nearly burst into tears. To be cool
and dark and brown, to live in a studio with two men, to talk French,
such were the hopeless ambitions which filled her heart. Grandison got
up from his chair as she came in but he said nothing, only bowed and
sat down again with his eyes on her face. Richard was washing his hands
in the corner. “Don’t come near me, Anne, I am covered with paint,” he
called out, but his voice sounded friendly as though he were glad to
see her.
Ginette laid her hand on her shoulder:
“You are very beautiful,” she brought out laboriously. She had been
practising the phrase all the morning, and the unexpected words set
Anne blushing with pleasure. “Richard has said much of you but not that
you are beautiful. He is bad.”
Anne’s blush was a blush of happiness, and she caught the French girl
by the hand and pressed it. Ginette laughed and raised her eyebrows,
and would have spoken if they had not been startled by Grandison, who
ordered them to sit down to luncheon.
“I have brought some of the drawings I did for fashion plates to show
you,” said Anne, but Richard did not refer to them when the meal was
over; he seemed more interested in Dry Coulter than in Paris, and began
to speak of the village while his companions sat in silence.
“I have heard from Rachel: she is very excited as she is going to
be chosen Queen of the May. You know May-day is even more of an
institution than Plough Monday,” he said, turning towards Grandison.
“It is celebrated more pleasantly in an English village than in Paris.”
And Richard began to describe how five little girls were chosen, of
whom Rachel would be the leader, to go from house to house carrying an
arbour of flowers and singing whatever songs they happened to know.
“The arbour is made of cowslips and may, with a few of the early purple
orchids,” said Anne, calling up the memory of May-day a year ago. “It
was raining when they came to the vicarage and they wore yellow ribbons
and sang ‘Ta ra ra Boom de ay.’ I opened the door and they went on
singing without paying any attention to the sixpence I held out to
them.”
“That sixpence went to the chapel Sunday School Treat,” said Richard.
“Paganism has been made respectable.”
“What will Rachel wear as the May Queen?”
“She speaks of a wreath of pansies if there are enough of them out to
make it; her companions will have chaplets of forget-me-nots, and they
will carry the bower while she carries an armful of tulips. She did not
speak of her dress, but of course it will be a white one, and they will
wear black worsted stockings and solid little hobnailed boots laced
high up the leg.”
“Rachel doesn’t worry about her boots,” said Anne at once, and her
thoughts flew back to Mr. Yockney, then she looked round the studio
thinking that the rent was paid out of the grocer’s shop at home. “I
think Rachel’s perfectly happy. I think all your family are,” she said.
“So they ought to be,” said Richard, laughing. “See what a good son
I am. I give my father an object in life, which is more than any of
you do. He is very happy and proud of me. In the old days of course,”
Richard went on, “the first of May was a great affair, with a maypole
set up and a Jack of the Green. The May Queen was not a little girl in
those days. You would have been chosen instead of Rachel and, having
been kissed by all the boys in the village, you would have got rid of
your obsession about never getting to know anyone.”
Anne blushed uncomfortably, and looked at Grandison, who must, she
thought, have repeated what she had said while he was seeing her home.
“An obsession about never getting to know anyone!” and she wondered if
Richard had summed her up for ever in these unkind words.
“I expect the maze was laid out on a May-day,” said Richard, “and the
monument is nothing more than a stone maypole, or something with the
same signification.”
“I can tell you about the monument,” said Anne. “It commemorates the
restoration of Charles II, and was put up by a young man of nineteen,
who must have come back from France with the King and recovered his
sequestered estate:--a small enough one, I should guess, and the Old
Hall. I suppose the maze might have been cut on a May-day, and no doubt
they had a maypole on the green again: they had been put down under
the Commonwealth, but I doubt if there were many to dance. All the
better people had served in Cromwell’s regiments. Except in Huntingdon
itself, they were all Puritans.”
“Then we must imagine your young cavalier setting up a maypole on the
green and dancing with gypsy girls and all the riff-raff he could
assemble, while the village people held aloof under the elm trees round
the edges of the green and prayed for a thunderstorm,” said Richard.
“There were oak trees in those days, not elms,” said Anne.
“How do you know that?” he asked her sharply.
She knew positively, but she had forgotten how she knew and, as she
repeated that she was sure, she felt that she must seem very stupid to
Mr. Grandison.
“Well, he danced in a scarlet coat with lace ruffles, which he
had brought back from France, with the gipsy girls in their rags,
and Maggie Pattle joined in for the sake of the beer, but all the
respectable tenants stood under the oak trees looking glum and hating
him. But how do you explain that the monument is still standing and
that, though it is the most striking thing in the village, nobody ever
looks at it or knows anything about it? If one asks a question they
just shake their heads and change the conversation.”
“The young cavalier lived to be eighty-eight,” answered Anne. “It is
natural that nobody would dare disturb his maze while he was living,
or to pull down the stone column sculptured with his arms. All the
Puritans were dead before he was, and the significance of the monument
was forgotten by 1729.”
“But the civil war isn’t forgotten,” said Richard.
“I have often heard a villager say when someone has got into trouble
for poaching hares: ‘We want another of the Cromwells in this country.
There were no game laws in Nolly’s time.’”
“I expect there is a tradition that the maze represents something out
of harmony with the village: they have ignored it for so long that they
have forgotten everything except that it is something which ought to be
ignored,” said Anne.
Richard agreed with her, and an hour passed before she remembered the
drawings she had brought to show him.
“Leave them for me to look at,” said Richard, but she would not be
put off. As she untied the portfolio she felt that her fingers were
trembling, and she became confused as she explained that she knew her
drawings were not fashionable: she had done them at Dry Coulter in
ignorance of what the latest fashions might be, thinking that they
would serve as specimens to show her workmanship. Instead of explaining
this clearly, what she said was something very silly, but Richard did
not smile at her absurdity, and there was an absolute silence as she
laid the first of the drawings on the table, propping it up against a
wine bottle.
For a long while Richard Sotheby stood wrinkling his nose and Gerald
and Ginette stood silent.
“And the next,” said Richard sharply, but, going to the portfolio
himself, he turned over the other drawings rapidly. There was a silence
again as he carefully fastened the clasp of the portfolio, and then
turned and walked a few steps away. Suddenly, however, he began to
speak, and the words fell so rapidly that Anne could scarcely follow
them.
“Dress designers are very stupid people,” he began. “Don’t be
discouraged when I advise you not to show these actual drawings.
In order to create an impression you must first obtain a thorough
knowledge of the mode. There is just as much fashion in the drawings of
dresses as in the dresses themselves. What would have been all right
last year or the year before is quite out of date now.” And he began to
explain very rapidly what these changes in styles of drawing had been.
He was interrupted suddenly by Ginette. Anne could not follow her
words, but she noticed Grandison nod his head vigorously and say:
“An excellent idea,” while an expression of exasperation came over
Richard’s white face.
When he turned to Anne she felt a sudden conviction that her drawings
were bad and that Richard was concealing his opinion of them.
“Ginette is of the opinion that you are the right figure, and that you
have acquired, Heaven knows how, the right appearance for a mannequin.
She wants to introduce you to a man she knows who works in one of the
wholesale houses. I think that you would dislike such a life and would
soon wish that you were back in England. But don’t despair about your
drawings,” he added, almost shouting the last words.
Anne took up her portfolio, turning Ginette’s advice over in her mind.
“How should I get a job as a mannequin?” she asked, but an argument
had broken out between Richard and Ginette and her question went
for some time unanswered. At last he turned from the French girl in
exasperation, and she repeated her question.
“Ginette will let you know,” he said. “Come to tea to-morrow at five
o’clock.” The tone of the invitation was so cross that Anne said
good-bye at once. Grandison had scarcely spoken a word during the
discussion, but as she left the room he made a gesture as if he would
speak, but he said nothing.
“What have I done to upset them all so much?” she asked herself as
she hurried down the stairs, but she could find no answer. Richard’s
words had been encouraging, yet she was tempted to tear up her wretched
drawings then and there.
“Yes, my fashion plates are hopeless,” she said to herself, but she
found it hard to understand why Richard should have been so exasperated
by Ginette’s suggestion. “If my drawings are no good I must find some
other way of earning my living. Richard would keep me in a fool’s
paradise until my money is exhausted.”
Her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and she
heard a voice calling her. It was Richard.
“I meant to ask you: if you are short of money, let me lend you ten
pounds. You must have time to look about you.”
Anne stared at him in surprise. He was very white; out of breath with
running and his words came with an effort, but his tone was still one
of exasperation.
“Thank you,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “Thank you, I have
still seventeen pounds.”
“Well, later on,” answered Richard. “Whenever you want a loan, come
to me. While one has money it is one’s duty to share it. That is what
Grandison and I believe, and after all you and I come from the same
village.”
After saying this he turned round and walked back, quietly cursing her
existence.
FOURTEEN: A REMOVAL