Part 2
“Oh well, yes; but I haven’t time for that now. I must come some other day. I want to have a long talk with you about Sylvia. I can’t make the girl out.” He frowned. “She’s so restless and discontented. I can’t imagine why she doesn’t settle down and be of some little assistance to her mother. The girl annoys me. I have no patience with the modern shirking of home duties.”
“Dear little Sylvia!” repeated Miss Page. “She’s coming to tea with me to-morrow. I always like talking to Sylvia. She’s so pretty and charming.”
Mr. Carfax looked a little mollified. “There’s Dakin thinking I’ve overstepped my time-limit,” he declared. “Come along, Dakin, your innings now.”
The doctor approached Miss Page’s chair, a smile on his long thin face.
“I only want you to show me your latest toys,” he said, glancing at the cabinet. “I see you have one or two new things there.”
She rose with alacrity, and in a few moments they were bending over and discussing a piece of Battersea enamel.
Dr. Dakin, also an enthusiastic collector, was especially interested in the dainty trifles of the eighteenth century, which Anne too loved. It was a period which specially appealed to him, and the conversation passing from the frail things they handled--fans painted on chicken-skin, ivories, patch-boxes--soon extended to books, many of which he found Anne possessed.
Their conversation became engrossing, and Mrs. Dakin turned to her companion with a laugh.
“My husband is very happy,” she remarked.
“No wonder,” he returned. “Every one is happy with Miss Page.”
“And she’s so pretty, isn’t she?”
“The most beautiful woman of my acquaintance,” he replied gravely. “Because she has _acquired_ her beauty--secreted it, in the same marvellous way that from hidden cells a rose draws its colour and its sweetness.”
Mrs. Dakin glanced at him curiously. “It takes a Frenchman to say that. But it describes Miss Page,” she added.
She hesitated a moment, curiosity very strong within her.
“You have known her a long time? Many years?” she asked.
“I first met sweet Anne Page twenty years ago, in this very house.”
He smiled, a quiet reminiscent smile.
“And she wasn’t young even then!” exclaimed Mrs. Dakin, involuntarily.
“Pardon me. Anne Page was always young, in the sense that the brooks and the hawthorn-trees and the roses are always young.”
The smile was still on his lips, and Mrs. Dakin blushed.
“Oh yes, I know,” she began hurriedly. “One never thinks of age with regard to her. I didn’t mean that exactly.”
“He must have been in love with her!” The idea ran into the undercurrent of her thoughts. “Perhaps he is still. It would be awfully romantic. And not absurd at all,” she added, as a sudden mental supplement. “Sweet Anne Page is quite pretty.”
Aloud, still impelled by irresistible curiosity, she went on asking questions.
“But this house didn’t belong to her then, did it? We haven’t been at Dymfield long enough, of course, but the old people in the village remember when Mrs. Burbage lived here.”
“Mrs. Burbage! Yes, I’d forgotten. That was the name.”
“It was quite a romantic story, wasn’t it?” went on Mrs. Dakin, vivaciously. “You know it, of course? Miss Page was companion to old Mrs. Burbage for years before she died. She had a nephew, and naturally every one imagined that he would come into the property. But he displeased her in some way, and she left everything to Miss Page. At least, so I’m told. Is it right?”
Monsieur Fontenelle bowed. “I believe so.” He laughed suddenly. “When I first knew the house, it was horrible. This beautiful room, for instance, was full of antimacassars and wool-work mats. The old lady had--how do you call it? Mid-Victorian--yes, Mid-Victorian tastes.”
“Glass shades with wax fruits underneath, I suppose? Rep curtains and that sort of thing.”
“Oh, _c’était affreux_!” he agreed, with a comic gesture of horror.
“How Miss Page must have enjoyed refurnishing it! She has such exquisite taste, hasn’t she? But the garden? The garden must always have been lovely.”
“It was neglected. Mrs. Burbage was an invalid--fortunately. For the garden, I mean. But Anne had begun to work her magic even then. The first time I ever saw her she had been planting roses round a sundial.”
“Oh, in the lavender garden?”
“She took me there this morning. The rose hedge is very tall now, and the rose leaves were dropping down on to the sundial”--he stretched up his arm--“from a height like this, above it.”
“Yes. Fairholme Court is the most beautiful place in the neighbourhood. Certainly the most beautiful place _I’ve_ ever seen.”
There was a moment’s pause, during which Mrs. Dakin glanced towards the sofa, to which Anne had returned.
Her green and lavender gown fell in graceful folds round her feet. Against the cushions of dim purple at her back, her hair shone with a sort of moon-lit radiance. The poise of her head, the smile that wavered constantly near her sweet mouth, the radiance of her blue eyes, above all a certain dignity, too gentle to be quite stately, yet suggesting stateliness, made her a lovely and a gracious figure.
“Do you know,” said Mrs. Dakin, suddenly, “what surprises me is that the people who knew her long ago, when she first came here, scarcely remember her. They say, ‘Oh, she was a quiet creature. Very shy. We scarcely noticed her. She was just Mrs. Burbage’s companion.’ Things like that, you know. It has often disappointed me. I should have thought she must have been so beautiful as a younger woman.”
“She was always beautiful,” said her companion, quietly, “to those who had eyes to see. But she has learnt to use her beauty. She had first to learn that she possessed it. That took her a long time.” Again he smiled his odd little smile of reminiscence. “They are quite right when they say that she was shy. There are many people in the world, madame, who could be beautiful if they knew how. Beauty, the truest beauty, is an art. A subtle blend of many powers, mental and moral, which result in a mastery of the physical qualities. A knowledge of them, a perfect handling, a moulding of them to the ideal of the spirit. Do you remember what your critic Pater, says of _Mona Lisa_? It is a well-known passage, but it expresses what I am trying to say so poorly, so inadequately.”
Mrs. Dakin shook her head. “I’m a very ignorant person,” she said, with an embarrassed laugh.
“He is speaking of the portrait--which is lovely, according to the spirit rather than the flesh, and he says, ‘_It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries, and exquisite passions._’”
Mrs. Dakin wrinkled her forehead. The last words shocked her a little. Her plea of ignorance was a true one in every sense of the word. It was the plea of a woman who had passed most of her life with ordinary conventional people, as oblivious to the complexities of human life as to the world of ideas in art, in philosophy, in all the realms invaded by human thought and emotion.
If her existence was troubled, it was with the discontent of a child who cries for the moon which it regards as a pretty material plaything, rather than the trouble of a woman to whom the moon is a symbol of the rare, the exquisite things of life, which she weeps to find beyond her reach.
Yet her next remark pleased her companion.
“I think what you said about the rose describes her much better,” she ventured, rather timidly.
He smiled. “You’re quite right. I see you understand our sweet Anne Page. She doesn’t belong to the _Mona Lisa_ type. She’s made up of all the beautiful natural things; of the sunlight and the roses, and the dew. _Tiens!_ Don’t say I’m ignorant of your poets. One of them has come rather near it when he says, ‘_And beauty born of murmuring sound has passed into her face._’”
Mrs. Dakin had never heard the lines before, and hurriedly wondered how she could find them. She felt flattered, shy, and troubled at the same moment. It was rather a fearful joy to be talked to by this Frenchman, who was evidently so used to what she called “clever” people, that he quite naturally assumed her comprehension of his language. She wondered who _Mona Lisa_ was, and half thought of asking Harry. It occurred to her that Harry read a great deal; that his study was lined with books into which she had never thought of looking. He never talked to her about them.
“I suppose that’s because he thinks me too stupid,” was her impatiently scornful reflection.
She was half relieved, half sorry when Mrs. Carfax, with a conventional exclamation upon the lateness of the hour, rose to go.
“Good-bye,” she said, holding out her hand to her companion.
She hesitated, and then, shyness making the words a little brusque--
“If you are ever here again, I hope Miss Page will bring you to see us,” she added.
“_Enchanté_, madame!” he returned with his easy bow and smile.
“Delightful fellow that!” exclaimed Dr. Dakin, as he stepped into the motor-car after his wife. He spoke with an animation unusual to him. “It’s been a nice evening, hasn’t it, Madge?”
“Very,” she returned shortly, pulling the rug round her, and relapsing into silence.
She was thinking of the Frenchman’s smile, and of his voice. He had beautiful hands, she remembered. Her husband looked at her and sighed a little. He would liked to have discussed the party, but Madge was in one of her moods, and he knew that the attempt would be useless.
* * * * *
“There’s an air of unreality about foreigners,” remarked Mr. Carfax, pulling up the window with a jerk, as the hired brougham turned out of the drive.
“Theatrical, rather--the way that fellow talked, wasn’t it?”
“Quite absurd,” agreed his wife. “I didn’t listen. Miss Page is generally more interesting than she was to-night.”
“Yes. Women do better as a rule, to keep to the subjects that suit them,” announced the Vicar. “Not that Miss Page isn’t a clever woman, I believe. At least, Dakin says so, and _he_ ought to know.”
“I suppose this Monsieur--what’s his name--was one of the friends she made when she was travelling?”
“I suppose so. She was away long enough to make shoals of them.”
“You didn’t know her, George, did you, when you were a young man?”
The Vicar shook his head. “I may have seen her once or twice when she was old Mrs. Burbage’s companion. I had just left college then, and was at my first curacy in Nottingham--just before we were married, you know. I came back to the Vicarage once or twice in those days to see the old Dad, and I suppose she must have been at Fairholme Court then. But I don’t remember her. She was nurse and general factotum to the old lady. Mrs. Burbage was an eccentric woman, you know; rather dotty towards the end, I believe. I can imagine that poor Miss Page hadn’t much of a life with her.”
“And then directly she had the place left to her, she shut it up and went away?”
“Yes. That must be nearly twenty years ago. How time flies!”
“I remember we came to the Vicarage just after she had gone, when Sylvia was a baby; the year after your father died. It was a nine-days’ wonder then. And I remember the people at The Chase saying what a piece of luck it was for such a dowdy quiet woman to come into a fortune.”
“They can’t say that now!” observed the Vicar.
“No. I never was so surprised in my life as the first time I saw her. That must be ten years ago now, George?”
“Yes. She was away ten years, and she’s been back at the Court nearly the same time. That makes it about twenty years, as I thought. Dear me, it seems impossible!”
“She doesn’t alter at all, does she? Her hair may have got a little whiter since I first saw her, but I believe she’s prettier even. Well! Foreign travel must be wonderful if it can change a plain, dowdy creature into a woman like Miss Page.”
“Money!” exclaimed the Vicar, sententiously. “Money. It may be the root of all evil, but it’s a great power--a great power, Mary.”
“Mrs. Dakin’s always very much over-dressed, isn’t she?” remarked his wife, as they approached the Vicarage porch.
“Yes. Foolish little woman that--foolish little woman. Take care how you get out, Mary; the step is awkward.”
The sound of a high sweet voice floated out upon the darkness, and Mrs. Carfax looked up sharply at a lighted window on the first floor.
“There’s Sylvia singing!” she exclaimed in an exasperated tone. “She’ll wake all the children. Run up and tell her to stop at once, George! Really, she is the most annoying girl I ever met.”
II
Left alone for a few moments while his hostess was making her farewells in the hall, Monsieur Fontenelle sat still admiring the beautiful room, quiet now, its long windows open to the night and to the sound of the whispering trees.
Lighted by pink-shaded candles, its white panelled walls, its rose-patterned chintz curtains and chair-covers gave it an air of exquisite freshness and purity. Everywhere there were flowers. Roses glowed between the candles on the mantelpiece. China bowls filled with sweet peas, with pink mallows, with snapdragon, stood on tables, or on the top of Sheraton bureaus. Even the deep fireplace was filled with flowering plants.
Appreciatively, Monsieur Fontenelle glanced at the delicate workmanship of a Chippendale chair, noticed the graceful shape of a writing-table, and the beauty of an inlaid bookcase with a lattice-work of wood over its diamond panes. There were only one or two pictures on the walls, whose creamy surface made a restful background to the colour in the room. Monsieur Fontenelle examined them. His quick eye detected a Corot, a tiny sketch of Whistler’s, and then on the wall opposite to him, a landscape at the sight of which a peculiar brightness sprang to his eyes.
He crossed the room and stood looking at it. He was still looking at it when the rustle of a gown made him aware that Miss Page had come back.
Then he turned. She was standing just within the door, watching him, and in her eyes also there was the same curious brightness.
He looked at her a moment whimsically, without moving.
“You are a wonderful woman!” he exclaimed at last, speaking in French.
“Why?” she returned in the same language.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I leave that to the _bon Dieu_ who made you. He’s responsible, I suppose, for women of your type.”
She smiled without replying.
“You tell me you’re happy?” he asked.
“Quite happy, François.”
Again he shrugged his shoulders. “Come, let us talk,” he said, taking her by both hands and leading her to the sofa. “I only saw you for ten minutes this morning.”
“Let us talk,” she replied. And in French, “_Ça me fera du bien_.”
Instead of speaking at first, he looked at her.
“Anne,” he exclaimed after a moment, “you are amazing! How do you manage it? You look younger than the day I first saw you.”
“But I was old then,” she returned, shaking her head--“very old. A woman who had done with life.”
He answered her seriousness with a slow smile.
“Life had not done with you, had it?”
She did not reply, and with a change of voice, he said--
“So these are your neighbours.”
“Some of them. They are dear people. I can’t tell you half their kindness to me.”
“It’s not difficult to be kind to sweet Anne Page.”
She gave him a quick glance. “It’s nice to hear the old name again.”
“No name ever suited a woman better. So you can live with the inhabitants of Dymfield without boring yourself to extinction? But of course you can. I never saw you bored.”
“Boredom is a modern disease, isn’t it? And you know I am not a modern woman.”
“Thank God!” he exclaimed with fervour. “The little woman whose pretty head I’ve been puzzling all the evening, suffers from it terribly, though.”
“Boredom? You’re very quick, François. You always were. Poor little thing!” she added with a sigh.
“Why? Doesn’t her husband amuse her?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s one of those unnecessary tragedies of life. They don’t try to understand one another. The material for happiness is all there, and they miss it. He’s a dear fellow. Kind, and good; and a scholar too, as of course you discovered.”
“Yes. You have one person at least with whom you need not talk in words of one syllable.”
“Words of one syllable are often the sweetest.”
He laughed. “You remind me of the lady from whose lips whenever she opened them, a flower fell. Your floors ought to be strewn with roses and violets by this time. But come! I don’t want to discuss your neighbours. I want to talk about you. Do you know that in ten years I have only seen you three times? And you must have been through Paris very often. What have you to say for yourself?”
“Twice when I went to your studio you were away. The last time, the _concièrge_ told me you were with a lady.”
“Well?”
“Well I didn’t come up, of course.”
He laughed. “Anne! You are the same Anne. So demure--so discreet.”
“I thought you would have married by this time, François,” she said after a moment.
He shook his head. “No dear Anne, you didn’t. You know I am not the man to marry.”
She returned his glance. “You are right,” she answered quietly. “You have become such a celebrity François, that I ought to be afraid of you,” she added.
His face changed. “I have become a popular painter, you mean.”
“You are not satisfied?” She put the question softly.
He shrugged his shoulders. “One becomes what one is fit to become. I’m a lazy devil, Anne. It wasn’t in me to bear the heat and burden of the day without my hire. I have learnt to give the public what it wants, and to laugh in my sleeve at its stupid shouting. The result is that in every paper the world is assured that I have achieved an international reputation. And next week I shall stand at the head of a staircase, solemnly shaking by the hand, innumerable stupid people who know nothing, and care less about art, but have come because it is one of the functions of the season, to stare at the President of the International Art Congress. _Quelle farce!_”
He laughed a little. “It seems far enough away from that summer twenty years ago, when we all sat in that garden,” he nodded towards the open window, “and talked of our dreams and our ambitions. Ah! we were going to revolutionize art, weren’t we? We were going to bring the world to our feet like the young painters in _L’Oeuvre_, do you remember? The young painters who used to walk about Paris, talking, for ever talking, mad with hope and enthusiasm. And now? Henri is writing for _La Presse_ ... _Sacré tonnerre de Dieu_, as Lantier and Sandoz used to remark so frequently. What stuff! And how it pays! (Henri has a flat, Rue Malesherbes--Empire right through.) Paul has abandoned music, and is making vast sums on the Bourse, and I am President of the International Art Congress.”
He paused.
“And René is dead,” said Anne.
There was a silence. The lamp-lit room with its colour and fragrance was very still. To both of them, their minds filled with the scenes of other days, it assumed for a moment an air of brilliant unreality, like a room seen in a dream. Outside, the trees whispered very softly.
“Whom the gods love----” began François.
He rose abruptly, and moved to the picture he had been examining when Anne entered.
“That’s the real stuff!” he exclaimed. “God! how good it is! How did you get this?” he asked.
“I bought it.”
He wheeled abruptly round. “Have you much of his work?”
“I bought all I could get. _The Bathers_ and _The Forest_ are in my room upstairs.”
“Then France is the poorer by three masterpieces.”
“France will get them back at my death.”
“You have arranged that?”
She nodded. “They belong to his country, of course.”
He came and sat beside her again. “I told you that the Luxembourg had bought my portrait of you?”
“Yes. Dear François the news gave me more pleasure than anything I have heard about you for a long time.”
“It was to be my masterpiece, if you remember. They’re quite right. I’ve never done anything to touch it since. It belongs to my youth.”
He saw that she was pale, and that her eyes looked sad.
“I’ve distressed you. I’m a brute!” he declared impulsively. “And we’re not all _hommes ratés_, thank Heaven! Some of the men of the old Rue de Fleurus days are not to be despised.”
“Thouret, Bussières, Giroux,” murmured Anne.
“Yes; they have big names now. But after all Anne, it’s you who have made an art of _life_. You’re the only real success. You and René--who was wise enough to die,” he added.
“Talk to me about Paris,” Anne urged. “What is your new studio like? Very gorgeous, I suppose?”
“It’s the studio of a popular portrait-painter. Now you know all about it.”
“And the Duclos? And Georges Pasteurs?”
He began to talk gaily, while she questioned him, and they both laughed at reminiscences. There was no end to her eager inquiries.
“How you remember the people!” exclaimed François, presently.
“How can I forget?” she asked.
It was late when he rose to go.
“To-morrow, early I start for London, to prepare for the fuss of next week. I’m glad you won’t be there, Anne.”
His whimsical mocking smile met her as she raised her eyes.
“I should prefer you not to see your old friend playing the solemn fool.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Well! One can’t have everything, and I have five thousand a year. It’s enough to make one comfortable.”
“But not happy,” she said gently.
“That, till forty, depends on one’s temperament. Afterwards on one’s dinner. I’m very happy to-night. Your cook was chosen with your usual discretion.”
She laughed.
“You will be coming through Paris this winter?”
“Not to stay. Paris hurts me a little, old woman as I am. On my way back, in the spring perhaps.”
He kissed her hand. “Most certainly in the spring. It’s _au revoir_.”
III
An hour after her friend had gone, Miss Page sat by the open window in her bedroom. The room was full of moonlight, for she had put out the candles and drawn back the curtains.
Somewhere in the garden, or near it, a nightingale was singing.
Deep shadows lay across the lawn, and all the trees were dreaming. Far out, the meadows covered with a light mist, were like a mystic silver-flooded sea.
For a long time Anne did not move. Her long talk had revived memories. They crowded so swiftly to her mind that she grew bewildered, and as though impelled by a sudden impulse to seek relief, she rose and crossed the room to a tall bureau opposite the window.
Its interior revealed a number of pigeonholes, and tiny cupboards with brass knobs. Pressing a spring under one of these, a deep drawer sprang open.