Part 10

“Ridiculous!” panted his wife. “You’re a perfect fool, Fred! I hope your aunt won’t leave her a farthing. It would serve her right. Fortunately we know that the place and everything is yours, otherwise I should leave no stone unturned to get rid of that young person.”

Anne was occupied next day with preparations for the removal of her friend to the nursing home in London decided upon by the doctors. Only the nurse accompanied her.

“No, my dear. I refuse to have you with me,” she said authoritatively to Anne. “What’s the use of dragging you to town when nurse does all I want? If they don’t kill me between them, you shall come up and see me afterwards. I shall want a little change from doctors and nurses then. Just now, you’d only be in the way.”

Anne drove with her to the station, and helped to arrange her comfortably in the invalid carriage.

“Good-bye, my dear,” she said rather faintly, as Anne bent over her. She kissed her, and with one of her rare caresses, gently patted her hand.

“You’re a good girl,” she added. “If I get well, it will only be for the pleasure of seeing you again. You’ve got quite pretty, Anne. I always had a weakness for pretty people. Tell the young man, what’s his name?--René, I’m sorry I didn’t see him.”

“He wanted to come to say good-bye,” murmured Anne, trying to control her voice.

Mrs. Burbage shook her head, and her eyes closed.

“I can’t talk to young people. I’m past it,” she whispered. “Good-bye, my dear. God bless you.”

The train moved slowly out of the station, leaving Anne on the platform, blind with tears.

She tried to remember that the London doctor thought the case by no means hopeless. In vain. She felt desolate and overwhelmed. She was alone--and her other friends were going too.

Resolutely Anne turned her mind from this last thought. She would not tell herself that it was because she dared not face it. They were going next morning; and in the afternoon they came to say good-bye.

Though late in the month, the day was fine and warm, and for the last time, tea was laid out of doors. Anne was very quiet and very pale.

Dacier and Thouret commiserated with her on the loss of her friend.

“But she’ll get well. It’s all right,” they assured her cheerfully.

François unobserved, watched her carefully.

René was also very silent, and François was grateful for the high spirits of the two boys. They insisted before leaving, that Anne should give them each a flower from her Shakespeare garden.

The flowers of middle summer filled the borders now.

“Here they are, all of them!” said François. “Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram and marigolds.”

“But none of you are middle-aged, so they are not for you,” Anne returned.

She picked a late rose for each of them, Dacier and Thouret receiving theirs with extravagant delight.

“It shall be buried with me,” Dacier exclaimed. “But not yet. I’ve got a few things to do first.”

François groaned. “When I think of the reams of execrable poems I’m doomed to read before that!” he exclaimed as they strolled under the yellowing trees. “Look here! We must really go. I’ve got all my canvases to pack, and so has René.”

“But it’s only au revoir,” declared Thouret. “Sweet Anne Page is coming to Paris. _C’est déjà une chose tout-à-fait entendue. Nous la menerons entendre Sara, et Mounet-Sully dans Hernani._”

“We shall have her with us before the winter sets in. And then we shall come back next year,” added Dacier.

“Good-bye,” returned Anne simply, shaking hands with each of them in turn.

She walked back into the house when they were gone, noticing minutely, trivial things such as a little stain on the paint in the hall; a flower that had fallen out of a jar on the window ledge.

An hour later--when it was nearly dark, René Dampierre found her in the rose garden.

She stood quite still when she saw him coming, and waited for him to speak.

“I came back,” he began, stammering a little. “The maid told me you were in the garden. I forgot this book. You lent it to me.”

He held it out to her as he spoke. It was a little volume of Herrick.

“Keep it,” Anne said. “It’s mine.”

Her voice was steady, but her hands were icy cold, and she was shivering.

He came close to her.

“May I? Then will you put my name in it, as well as yours? Here’s a pencil.”

She rested the book on the sundial, and bent low over it, perhaps because of the fading light.

“It’s too damp for you out here, in that thin dress,” he said in a low voice. “You’re shivering.” He touched her hand, and she shrank back against the sundial.

“Anne,” he said, still more softly, and his voice trembled. “Anne, I can’t say good-bye. Promise that you’ll come to Paris this winter. Promise! You will, won’t you?”

He took both her cold hands, and suddenly put them to his lips.

It was too dark to see her face, but he heard her catch her breath, and when she spoke, he scarcely recognized her voice.

“Good-bye, René. I want you to go now. Yes, I mean it. Please go.”

The words, so gently spoken that he knew he had not offended her, were full of the authority of a woman who expects to be obeyed. He hesitated a second, then bent his head again, and Anne felt him kiss the sleeve of her dress.

A moment later, she saw his tall figure pass like a darker shadow, through the shadows that hung round the gate in the wall. Long after all the light was gone, she stood where he had left her.

She knew why he had gone. Almost as though she had been present, she knew all the wisdom his friend François Fontenelle had that day been pouring into his ears. She pictured François’ cold ironical anger if he knew, or if he came to know, of this second farewell. Bitterest pang of all, she knew that he was right.

She stood clasping her hands together.

“It’s all too late--too late,” she kept repeating unconsciously, shivering from head to foot.

* * * * *

Anne’s prescience was not at fault. Late the same night, after the two younger men had gone to their rooms, Fontenelle sat in the parlour of the Falcon Inn, and discussed her with his friend.

“You’ve been a fool, my dear fellow,” he remarked in his dryest tone. “I warned you not to go back. Why couldn’t you let well alone?”

René sprang restlessly to his feet, and stood with his back to the fire which he had just lighted.

“You know well enough. Why do you ask absurd questions,” he returned irritably. “It’s no use talking. I know I’m a fool. But I can’t get her out of my head.”

François leant forward to tap his pipe against the brickwork of the fireplace.

“You must,” he said shortly. “It’s madness. This isn’t a case for fooling. It’s marriage--and suicide. If it were marriage _or_ suicide you would be a wise man to choose the latter alternative,” he added grimly.

René moved impatiently. “I know. I know. You needn’t rub it in. But--she’s adorable. I can’t forget her.”

François regarded him patiently. “My dear fellow,” he said after a moment, “you may think you’re in love, but do at least try to keep off arrant nonsense. You know as well as I do that you _will_ forget her. That two months after you get back, she’ll be an occasional sentimental memory, and that a year hence, you will never think of her at all.”

René laughed shortly. “You’re a detestable brute!” he exclaimed with the half wistful half amused smile of a spoilt child, which made part of his charm.

“And the worst of it is, you’re always right. I don’t want to marry her. I don’t want to marry any one. I’m not the man to marry. I’ve got work to do. You’re quite right. I was a fool to go back.”

“And I suppose there was a love scene, and a declaration of sorts?”

François’ voice was ironical, but there was anxiety under the light words.

“No.” He grew suddenly grave. “She asked me to go--and I went.”

There was a silence which lasted some minutes. The wood fire crackled, and the lamp illumined the comfortable room with its fifteenth-century beams overhead, its panelled walls and its red-covered sofa and chairs.

“Anne Page is not a woman to fool with,” said François at last. He was thinking of what she had once said, sitting in the sunshine of the garden. “_Then an artist ought to keep out of the way of any woman who cares. But he wouldn’t if she pleased him._”

The memory of the last words touched him.

“She’s not made for that sort of thing. It’s not decent. It’s not playing the game. Leave her alone, and she’ll forget.”

Even as he spoke, he wondered whether he spoke truth; but that was a question to be dismissed with a mental shrug.

“I dare say she’s got nothing to forget,” returned René gloomily. “I’ve no doubt she thinks I’m just a ridiculous young fool.”

François did not reply.

“Women are strange things,” pursued René presently. “They alter so. Anne has grown years younger,--and years older since we first saw her. She manages us now. Have you noticed?” He turned to the other man with a quick smile. “She couldn’t have done that at first. She was too shy, and--what’s the word?--diffident. And yet at first, did she seem a woman to fall in love with? I never thought of it. I believe we all looked upon her as an interesting creature, and thought ourselves rather fine fellows for discovering her beauty,--which perhaps doesn’t exist at all. She was something to paint, something to discuss----”

“Something to teach,” added François slowly.

He glanced at the clock. “Come along! Do you see the time? And we’ve got to start at seven to-morrow.”

He got up, and put his pipe in his pocket.

“The art of life, my dear young friend,” he remarked with burlesque sententiousness, as he turned out the lamp, “is to manage one’s episodes carefully. And to see that they remain episodes.”

René did not reply. He remained seated in the armchair, after the light was out, staring at the still leaping fire.

XIV

Three days after Mrs. Burbage went away, Anne received a telegram, summoning her at once to London. The hours spent in travelling, and reaching the nursing-home, passed like an uneasy nightmare, with a background of dread to be realized, and by the time she arrived at the house in Wimpole Street, her friend was unconscious.

She died a few minutes after Anne was admitted to her bedside.

Of the time that followed, Anne had no clear idea. She felt dazed and uncomprehending, and when by the end of the week, she found herself back again in the silent house at Dymfield, it was to wonder vaguely how she had arrived, and in what a solicitor’s letter which awaited her, could possibly concern her.

The writer, who signed himself William Chaplin, expressed his intention of calling upon her next day, on business.

Anne received him the following afternoon, standing before the fire in the library, very slim and tall in her black dress.

Instinctively she had taken refuge in this room, as the one place unconnected with Mrs. Burbage; the room that held no memories of her.

The grey-haired man who entered, shook hands with her rather impressively, and sat down, with the remark that she was no doubt acquainted with the contents of Mrs. Burbage’s will.

“No,” returned Anne, “except that I understood that everything was to go to Mr. Crosby, her nephew.”

The lawyer glanced at her rather sharply.

“The last will is in your favour,” he replied. “Everything is left to you unconditionally. This house--all my client’s property--her real and personal estate. Everything in short.”

Anne turned a shade paler. She did not understand, but she was aware that the little grey-haired man before her, was making what seemed to him at least, an important announcement.

At the end of half-an-hour’s conversation, she followed him to the door, still unable to grasp the significance of his words.

“The will, as I say, is most simple,” he remarked. “Everything is quite straightforward, and we ought to be able to get the whole thing through speedily. In the meantime, I congratulate you, Miss Page,” he added dryly. “Apart from the income, Fairholme Court is a most delightful residence.” He glanced about him. “Most delightful,” he added.

Anne shook hands with him, and went slowly back to the library.

Dinner was served as usual by the quiet maids, whose demeanour since the death of their mistress, had assumed an added shade of decorous gravity.

They liked Anne, and their manner towards her expressed a kindliness and sympathy for which she was grateful.

To-night, she scarcely noticed their solicitude, and the dishes they set before her were taken away almost untasted.

She wandered into the library again after her lonely meal, and began to pace the floor aimlessly.

From time to time, she took a book from one of the shelves, opened it, glanced at a page that was meaningless, and unconscious of her action, replaced the volume.

The dry monotonous voice of the lawyer, re-echoed in her brain. He was saying words which signified nothing.

“Your income will amount to between four and five thousand a year.”

Out of a mass of detail, it was only this she remembered, and at present it conveyed nothing to her mind.

She was conscious only of a feeling of loving gratitude that her friend had cared for her. Of what that care implied, in those first hours she realized nothing. She could only think of her last words at the station.

“If I get better, it will be for the pleasure of seeing you again.”

Her eyes filled with tears as she remembered them.

Gradually the hours wore on. The servants went to bed, and the house was silent. Mechanically Anne piled fresh logs on the fire, and at last conscious of exhaustion from her ceaseless pacing of the room, she sank into a chair, and held her hands to the blaze.

She was a rich woman now, the lawyer had said so.

What did that mean? With all her strength Anne tried to translate the statement into comprehensible terms.

First of all, it surely meant freedom from anxiety. No weary heart-breaking toil for a bare existence. No painful counting of hard-earned shillings.

Then,--for the first time Anne felt a definite thrill of pleasure,--it meant the power to help her brother. Hugh should be made happy if money could compass it.

And afterwards? Well, the realization of some of her day-dreams. She could travel. The wonderful material world need no longer be a mirage, a prospect viewed only by the eye of faith and imagination. She might become the possessor of many beautiful things. Pictures, books, furniture, dress. She would have the power to help people; to relieve misery; to do some tangible good. Money was a talisman to unlock some of the exquisite secrets of the world.

Anne paused. Her thoughts, clear at last, and swiftly moving, were suddenly arrested.

Her wealth might do all this, but there was one joy it could not buy, and missing this, all the rest, all the wonders it could work, seemed dust and ashes. Dead Sea fruit. The time for love was gone, and it had become the one impossible, unattainable desire of her whole being.

Missing it, she would miss the meaning of existence.

The pageant of the world might be revealed, but it would be seen under the grey skies of common day; for ever unillumined by the light that never was on land or sea.

Again in her heart there rose the fierce pain, the sickening hunger she had experienced when for the first time in her life, she had seen the eyes of happy lovers.

Swiftly in bitter mockery, her memory placed her once more in the rose-garden, where a week ago René had kissed her hands, and spoken to her in the shaken voice she had never heard from a man’s lips before.

If only she had been the girl to whom he ought to have been pleading! If only she had felt the right to say she loved him too. If only she had been the girl she longed to be, the wisdom of the wise would have seemed an idle song. She would have given him her love, freely, generously, without counting the cost, and the future might have taken care of itself.

But as it was----

Suddenly Anne rose to her feet. The colour surged up into her face; the warm blood raced through her body. She put her trembling fingers on the mantelpiece, to steady herself, and stood looking down into the fire.

As it was--why not?

She felt bewildered, dazed, giddy with the thought that had come to her, as emerging from a dark passage, one staggers in the glare of a brilliantly lighted room. Through the dazzling incoherency of her idea, she clung to one certainty.

If René was not in love with her as she understood love, he was at least drawn to her as a man is drawn irresistibly to a woman. He had been in her hands that night. She could have done as she pleased with him.

Anne knew her power at last, and deliberately, for his sake, she had not used it. He had gone away. He would forget, of course--unless----Slowly she sank into her chair, and sat thinking.

She thought through all her life. She thought of the never-ending days of childhood and youth, unlighted by any happiness, any hope; the dreary days which had killed at last even her dreams.

She thought of Hugh and his wife in a distant colony, happy, regardless of her, unmindful, unless she wrote to them, of her very existence.

She thought of the heart of despair which she had brought back to this very room six months ago, of the dumb certainty that life for her had been, was, and ever would be, empty of all gifts, of all delight. And then of the wonderful months that had just passed. Wonderful, because of all she had learnt of others--and of herself.

She remembered the diffident shrinking creature, who for shyness could scarcely lift her eyes to the men she regarded with awe, as dwellers in another world, whether gods or devils she did not know.

She could have smiled as she thought of them now.

They were neither gods nor devils, but weak human beings like herself. Weaker than herself, since they were young, impressionable clay in the hands of the potter.

And one of them loved her.

She leant forward in her chair, and covered her face with her hands.

A week ago, it had been an obscure penniless woman who had found courage to arrest an impending declaration of love.

To-day, the same woman,--she was rich, her own mistress, independent, free.

With a wondering sense of the simplicity of the matter, Anne saw herself at liberty to take a step the very existence of which, till to-night, she had not perceived.

She sat immovable, staring into the fire, thinking. In the silence of the sleeping house she looked at facts face to face, and made her decision. Here was she, Anne Page, not only a rich woman and her own mistress, but practically alone in the world. Life had hitherto offered her nothing. Now if she had courage to take it, a great if brief happiness was within her reach. She loved, and was beloved. Too late, as she had thought. But was it after all too late? Again Anne reflected while the fire upon which her unseeing eyes were fixed, leapt and sang softly to itself. Not if she could find the further courage to buy her happiness at a great price. To take it while it lasted, and of her own accord relinquish it before it had ceased to be happiness.

For as she thought and planned Anne saw clearly, as only a woman who is leaving her youth behind, can see clearly--without illusions, with only stern facts to guide her.

René Dampierre was young. Naturally, inevitably, sooner or later, he would turn to youth for love, and she must not stand in his way.

But because of this, could she not even for a little while know the joy which was every woman’s birthright?

If she were willing to pay for it, why not? Whatever happened, whatever misery was in store, at least she paid alone. She involved no one in her debt.

A cynic might have smiled at the simplicity of her reasoning. Not one thought of her changed circumstances entered into her reflections. She did not consider that Anne Page the penniless companion was a very different being from Anne Page the lady of great means. To her mind it only affected the situation in so far that it gave her freedom; made it possible for her to follow her own course without burdening man, woman, or child. It was only courage that was necessary. Courage to stake high, and not to shrink when sooner or later the odds should turn against her.

She measured her strength, and made her decision.

The little clock on the mantelpiece struck three, with a shrill silvery clamour. Anne started, and glanced round the familiar room with a shock of surprise, as though she had been long away, and was astonished to find it there.

As she rose slowly to her feet, her reflection in the glass above the chimney-piece also startled her.

It seemed to her that for ages she had been out of the body also.

She met absorbed blue eyes in a face pale but transfigured by an inner excitement and a great hope.

She saw a mouth sweet and tremulous, and a tall figure; very graceful, really beautiful; and suddenly she smiled.

“It’s not absurd. Not yet,” was the certainty that suddenly filled her with triumphant joy.

XV

Early in November, Dampierre burst one morning into Fontenelle’s studio. They worked in the same house in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, René on the top floor, François two flights lower down.

He looked up as his friend came in.

“Yes. I know. She’s coming,” he said, without ceasing to paint. “This background’s the very devil. It’s all wrong in tone.”

“How did you know?”

François nodded towards a side table. “There’s her note.”

Dampierre found it amongst a litter of brushes and palettes.

“Yes,” he said glancing over it, “she says the same thing to me. She feels she wants a change, so she’s shut up the house for a time, and she’ll stay in Paris possibly on her way elsewhere. That’s all she tells me.”

“The old lady must have left her some money,” observed François, still apparently engrossed with his background. “Looks as though it’s rather more than enough to keep body and soul together, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, do shut up, and leave that damned picture alone, and be sympathetic!” exclaimed René, irritably.

His eyes were bright, and he laughed rather excitedly.

“I know you’re sick she’s coming. But I can’t stand your wisdom any longer. I’m glad, do you hear? Glad. Glad. _Glad!_ And there’s an end of it.”

“Pardon me, but that’s just what it’s not,” returned Fontenelle.