Part 7

The Vicomte had risen, and in a silence that lasted for some time the men stood before the picture.

“Charming!” he murmured at last. “Adorable! They’ve picked out the right thing, _mon ami, hein_? The smile! How well one remembers it. So sweet, and so shy. And that flowered gown. Admirable! It suggests one of the Botticelli Madonnas. It might be a robe all sown with stars. And the hair, that delicious soft hair that was no particular colour--_couleur de miel_, perhaps.”

“Mistress Anne Page? She has brown hair, and speaks small, like a woman,” quoted François softly.

“What’s that?”

“It’s Shakespeare. And it’s Anne Page,” he answered smiling.

“And the flowers! The great sheaf of flowers she’s carrying. They’re English, and ‘sweet-Anne’ too.”

Fontenelle looked amused. “You always pronounced it like that,--as one word!” he said.

“I used to think it _was_ one word. Just a Christian name; a lovely name.”

He joined in his friend’s laugh.

“When did you do this?” he asked after a moment.

“Just before she went.”

“Was I away then?”

“You were just married. You had gone to America with your wife.”

“Yes. I stayed a year. But when I came back why didn’t you show it to me?”

“I put it away. She wouldn’t accept it, and I didn’t want to see it, after she had gone. I never looked at it again till last spring. Paul! Do you know that picture’s been painted eighteen years, and I’ve never done anything to touch it since? Encouraging, isn’t it? Something to congratulate one’s self upon.”

The last words were accompanied by a bitter laugh. His friend was silent.

“Here comes tea,” said François, with an abrupt change of voice.

His _femme de ménage_ entered with a tray which she placed on one of the tables. She went out, and re-entered with the spirit lamp and kettle.

“_Voilà, Monsieur!_”

François began to put the tea into the teapot.

“Antoinette brews it abominably; I always make it myself,” he remarked.

“This tea-habit dates from ‘Sweet Anne’s’ time, doesn’t it?” asked the Vicomte.

“I believe it does. Do you remember the flat in the Rue Vaugirard? And Anne pouring out tea on winter afternoons?”

Before the other man could answer, he turned to the picture again.

“I painted that as a sort of memory of the first day I saw her, in an old English garden. Did I ever tell you how we four, the old four, you know, first met Anne Page? _You_ only knew her here in Paris, when she had learnt to dress, when she had learnt to talk, when she had grown used to us and our ways. We saw her in her garden, when she knew no one, when from year’s end to year’s end she spoke to no one but the invalid old woman with whom she lived.”

“What were you four doing in her garden?” inquired the Vicomte, helping himself to sugar.

“Well, René was in England. He was often there, visiting his relations--his mother’s people.

“You know he was educated in England? Went to school there, to Beaumont, and afterwards lived some time in London. René was an Englishman with at least half his nature. And he loved England because of his mother. Well, he wrote to me that year--to Thouret, Dacier and me, to suggest that we should join him for the summer. He told us he’d found a gorgeous village, where we could all paint and write, and go on with our beastly art as much as we liked. We thought it wouldn’t be bad, so we said all right, and packed up our traps and went.

“Have some more tea? Well, another cigarette?

“Dymfield is in Warwickshire, _mon cher_,” he went on, striking a match, “and Warwickshire is Shakespeare’s county, and Anne Page is one of Shakespeare’s women. So it was all as right as it could be.

“We put up at the inn. The Falcon it was called. Such a jolly old place! Sixteenth century. Yawning fireplaces, beams, oak staircases, walls a yard thick. You know the sort of thing.

“And the village! Thatched roofs all stained with moss. Oh, the colour of those roofs! Cottage gardens full of hollyhocks and roses. Such a church! If you’ve ever seen a really beautiful English village, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Dymfield is one of them.”

“And how did you get to know Anne?”

“Well, René’s mother had been a friend of the rich woman of the place, an old lady who no more deserved to possess Fairholme Court than she deserved Anne as her companion.”

“Cantankerous?”

“I don’t know anything about her moral qualities. Her taste was execrable. Anyhow René made his mother responsible for taking us to see the place--a wonderful jumble of every style from the fifteenth century downward. But beautiful! _Mon Dieu_, beautiful as a dream. And Fate was kind. The old lady was ill in bed, and sweet Anne--I told you she was her companion, didn’t I?--was forced to do the honours.”

François got up, and began to pace up and down the floor as he talked.

“We were all packed into the drawing-room to wait, the first time we called, and while René was making absurd remarks about the sofa cushions, and the bead mats, and the whole chamber of horrors, I caught sight of Anne coming across the lawn.

“She wore that gown.” He nodded towards the portrait. “An absurd thing really, but it suited her because it showed her figure.”

“Her figure was superb,” murmured the Vicomte.

“Yes.”

Fontenelle paused a moment. “Even at the time,” he said rather slowly, “I wondered how she would strike René. Because she wasn’t really beautiful, you know. Certainly not in those days. Only remarkable looking, curious, and very sweet.”

“But he was struck too?”

“I remember he looked up suddenly, and said, ‘By Jove, who on earth is this? It’s some garden goddess or other. Flora. Yes, that’s it,--Flora. Good Lord, let’s run out and burn incense or something!’

“She had a heap of flowers, branches of lilac and hawthorn and things, in one arm, supported against her hip, and with the other hand she held her dress away from her feet. She was moving quickly across the grass. You know how she walks?

“Then she came into the drawing-room, and we saw her curious face.”

“There it is!” said the Vicomte, with his eyes on the portrait. “You’ve got it exactly. Something between a Botticelli Madonna and a pagan goddess--Flora is admirable. But it’s the sort of face that it takes a painter to admire.”

“She had been considered hideous all her life, of course. She thought herself desperately plain. Even when we burnt incense,--and René at once began to send it up in clouds,--she thought we were laughing at her.” François laughed gently himself.

“You remember Anne? You know how she would take praise. Adorably, like a little girl who is almost too shy to be pleased. It was absurd, of course. She was by no means young even then, remember. But somehow that only made it more piquante. Anne is one of the few women for whom age is an absurd convention. Quite meaningless, quite beside the point. The goddesses are immortal.”

“But there was nothing of the goddess about her nature,” objected his friend.

“Good heavens, no! Except physically. She’s a mortal woman if ever there was one. She’s just what she always was, sweet Anne Page.”

Twilight was creeping into the studio. The polished floor with its costly rugs, the pictures on the walls, the outlines of cabinets and tables, all were growing dim and indistinct. The last light from the window above the men’s heads fell across the face of the portrait on the easel. It looked down upon them gently with the wavering uncertain smile in the eyes, and on the lips, red and soft as the petals of a rose.

“René saw a great deal of her that summer, I suppose?” asked the Vicomte, breaking a silence.

“We all did. The gods for their own inscrutable purposes had decided Anne’s fate. The old lady got weaker and insisted upon having a hospital nurse. She was in her room all day in bed, and Anne was bidden to entertain us.

“When we were not in her garden, she was at the old barn which René and I had rigged up as a studio.

“She amazed us all. Do you know those tightly shut buds on a rose-tree, that you think will never open? And then the sun shines, and gradually, very slowly, a little every day, they grow pinker and sweeter, till at last they are roses?

“I think the sun came out for Anne that year, for the first time in her life.

“We made her laugh. I don’t believe she had ever laughed before. And we discovered that she had brains, and taste and understanding, and _instinct_ for everything that fired our young brains. Instinct is the word for Anne. It’s a sixth sense with her. The only sense it’s any good for a woman to possess. The very sense that nowadays with their education and their emancipation, and their ‘rights,’ women are doing their best to kill.

“And she’d read, _mon cher_. Good heavens, what she’d read! The modern English woman with her smattering of Latin and Greek, is an ill-educated prig beside her. For five years she had been shut up in a library, and I believe she had read everything worth reading in her own literature, and much of ours too, for that matter. And I, who like René am partly English by education at least, know what that means. It’s a magnificent literature for those who have ears to hear, and a heart to understand.”

He began to light one of the lamps, stooping over it as he talked.

“She used to read poetry to us sometimes. Thouret and Dacier knew very little English then, but they could understand the simple things when she read them. I can hear Thouret now, trying to say after her--

“‘_I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write How Roses first came red, and Lilies white._’”

François laughed, as he mimicked the accent of his friend the novelist, who since the days of which he talked, had attained an almost European reputation.

“That’s Herrick. You don’t know him? Well, he’s an English seventeenth-century poet, and he wrote on purpose for a woman as simple and natural as Anne Page. She used to read him to us in an old walled garden, where in June that year, the lilies were ‘coming white.’”

“And Dampierre?” asked the Vicomte. “I didn’t know Dampierre in those days, remember. Tell me something about him.”

He spoke as one speaks of a great man who is dead, whose lightest word is of importance to the admirers who survive him.

“René was twenty-seven then,” said François, slowly. “He was a year younger than I. You know how he looked? He was like his mother. Quite magnificent. Oh sometimes absurdly handsome, when the right mood affected his face. He used to dress like an Englishman in those days, in white flannels. When he and Anne walked together they were worth looking at, I can tell you.”

“But she was, what was it? Seven--ten years older?”

“Yes. She remembered that,” returned François.

His companion glanced quickly in his direction. He had never heard the whole story, and his curiosity was roused; but something in his friend’s voice assured him that it would not be gratified.

He made a tentative effort, however, by a suggestion half seriously offered.

“_Mon ami_, you were in love with her yourself.”

François echoed his light laugh. “No,” he declared. “No. My feeling for her now is what it has always been. I have paid her the compliment of thinking of her in a different way from every other woman I ever met. And I’ve never arrived at defining that way to myself. An English writer--I’m boring you to death with English writers to-day,--comes nearest to it in his definition of religion. He says ‘_religion is morality touched by emotion_.’

“Well, I believe what I have always felt for Anne Page is affectionate morality,” he laughed again, “strict morality mind, touched with emotion.”

“Have you seen her lately?”

“I saw her last June, for the first time in three or four years.”

“She’s altered, of course?”

“She has. She’s more beautiful. She’s really beautiful now, so that even the turnip-headed people she lives among see and acknowledge it.”

“That’s rather wonderful.”

“You would think so, if you saw her with them. She’s the village goddess and oracle. Giving to charities with both hands, petitioned for advice and counsel, loved by every one, high and low. That’s not surprising. Nor is it more surprising, I suppose, that she’s happy. Her nature is essentially simple and maternal. She ought to have had children and children’s children by now.”

He got up and switched on all the lights, revealing the spacious room, and the beautiful things it contained; revealing also once more the portrait on the easel.

The Vicomte again examined it. “The Luxembourg has made a good choice,” he repeated. “It’s a beautiful thing, _mon cher_. Gracious, dignified, sweet--but sad. In spite of the smile, because of it, I suppose, profoundedly sad. But why? She was not, she is not a sad woman.”

François was moving about the room, rearranging the canvases against the wall.

“She was sad then.”

The Vicomte waited, but François said no more, and the conversation turned upon other matters.

As he rose to go, he stooped to examine a little sketch propped up on the top of a cabinet, against the wall.

“That’s rather nice,” he remarked critically. “It’s the little woman I met here the other day, isn’t it? Dark. Pretty. English. Who is she?”

“A Mrs. Dakin. By the way, she’s one of Anne Page’s friends. One of the people in her village. She’s staying here with Madame Didier.”

“Louis Didier’s wife? Did they know her then?” asked his friend quickly.

“Who? Anne? No. It was all ages before their time. Louis has only been in Paris five or six years.”

“So much the better. That woman’s a cat, _mon cher_. Sleek fur, claws and all.”

“Madame Didier? I agree,” returned François with a laugh. “The typical English devotee of Mrs. Grundy. Louis goes in mortal fear of her.”

“_Tant pis!_” exclaimed the Vicomte, with an accent of commiseration.

X

Towards the middle of December, Mrs. Carfax became possessed with the idea of going to London.

Various circumstances had combined to render her projected visit pleasurably fraught with interest.

There was shopping to be done, of course. There was also Sylvia to embrace;--Sylvia whose holidays were so short that she herself had suggested the advisability of staying in town for Christmas, in order not to interrupt her work.

Naturally Mrs. Carfax was anxious to see her child. Naturally also she looked forward to staying with the Lovells, who were old friends, and had a comfortable house in Bayswater.

Then too, she had been deeply interested to hear that the niece who was visiting Mrs. Lovell, was none other than the Madame Didier who had invited Mrs. Dakin to Paris.

Mrs. Dakin had not yet returned to Dymfield, and it was natural and neighbourly of Mrs. Carfax to feel as much interest in her protracted absence, as that which palpitated in every Dymfield breast. In a few days she would be in the position of knowing all that Madame Didier knew about her late guest. And then there was Sylvia of course, and the shopping, and the delight of meeting her dear friends the Lovells. Mrs. Carfax was quite determined to go.

“I shall take the three o’clock train this afternoon,” she announced to the Vicar at breakfast time, “and send a telegram to Laura. She is quite ready for me, and urges me to come at once.”

“Very well, my dear,” agreed the Vicar. “Please yourself of course, though I scarcely think it necessary. You were in town only three months ago.”

“You don’t think it necessary to see Sylvia, who is not coming home for Christmas?” demanded his wife. “Well, I do. I have the feelings of a mother after all, and I think it’s cruel to leave the poor child up there, with never the sight of a home face.”

“Please yourself, my dear, as I have already said. There seems to be a spirit of great unrest working amongst us,” he went on, stirring his second cup of coffee irritably. “There’s Miss Page abroad, and Sylvia away, and Mrs. Dakin not yet returned. And now you----”

“Children, go upstairs if you’ve finished your breakfast,” interrupted their mother. “Johnny, say grace. Now all of you go and get your lessons ready for Miss Hope. She’ll be here in a minute.”

There was a stampede to the door, and when it closed on the last child, Mrs. Carfax turned to her husband.

“It’s most extraordinary about Mrs. Dakin, isn’t it?” she exclaimed. “And such a strange thing that this Madame Didier should be Major Lovell’s niece. I heard something once about a niece of his having married a Frenchman, but I never knew her name. I shall probably hear all about Mrs. Dakin from her.”

“Then my dear Mary, if you do, I hope you will be discreet.”

“Discreet, George? What do you mean? Am I not always discreet?”

The Vicar prudently disregarded the question.

“What I wish to point out, is this,” he returned. “The duty of taking broad and charitable views. There is a reasonable explanation of Mrs. Dakin’s absence. I met Dakin yesterday, and he told me it was a question of his wife’s health. She’s seeing some doctor in Paris, and going through a course of treatment.”

Mrs. Carfax sniffed. “With her own husband a doctor!”

“My dear, you know as well as I do that doctors seldom attend their wives.”

“You annoy me, George. You speak as though I should be glad to hear that there was any other reason. I’m sure I hope with all my heart it’s the true one. But everybody is talking about it, and I must say I think the poor man looks very unhappy.”

“Broad views,” returned the Vicar, clearing his throat, “are those which in Christian charity we should always endeavour to assume with regard to our fellows. Let us remember also, that we have neither part nor lot in this matter.”

“Why don’t you tell me straight out to mind my own business?” asked Mrs. Carfax angrily. “It’s what you mean. And we’re not in church, so you needn’t beat about the bush. You only take ‘broad views’ as you call them, when you want to be annoying and put me in the wrong. You know as well as I do that it’s not right for a wife to stay months away from her husband. Dr. Dakin must be a fool to allow it. At the same time, you know how delighted I should be if it _is_ all right. And yet you pretend to think that in a spirit of vulgar curiosity I’m going up to town on purpose to gossip and try to find out things which don’t concern me! My object in going, as you know, is to see Sylvia----”

“And to do some shopping. Yes, my dear. Yes. You’ve said so many times,” interrupted her husband, rising. “You’d better tell Mark to bring the trap round at half-past two.”

The Vicar closed the breakfast-room door with a slightly firm touch.

“Is mamma going to London to-day?” shouted Johnny, who regardless of lesson books, was sliding down the banisters outside.

“I believe so. I trust it may do her good,” answered his father piously. “Go upstairs, at once, and get ready for Miss Hope.”

He entered his study, and with some disinclination, sat down to the sermon for which a more deferential hearing might possibly be anticipated than that accorded in the home circle.

* * * * *

Mrs. Carfax arrived at Rushworth Terrace just in time to dress for dinner. Madame Didier, to whom she was presented in the drawing-room just before the gong sounded, was a tall young woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a sharp face and a thin pointed nose. Her fair hair was arranged neatly over her forehead, and her dress, though fashionable, was undistinguished.

“Helen doesn’t look a bit French, does she?” asked her aunt.

Mrs. Lovell was a fat comfortable woman with no figure, and less intelligence.

“I’m glad she’s kept so English. One would have thought that living in Paris so long would have made a Frenchwoman of her.”

“We should quarrel if it had!” declared the Major in a loud voice. “I don’t like foreigners. Can’t stand ’em. Beg your pardon, my dear. I forgot your husband!”

He laughed heartily. “But you must excuse me. I’ve never seen him, and I dare say you’ve made an Englishman of him. Hope so, I’m sure.”

“Oh, nothing would make an Englishman of Louis, I’m sorry to say,” answered Madame Didier. “He can’t bear England. We’re always fighting about it.”

“Well, come along! Dinner. Dinner. I’m famished,” declared the Major.

“Come along, Mrs. Carfax. How’s your husband? And the children? All well, eh? That’s right.”

“I’m so interested to hear that you know a neighbour of ours,” began Mrs. Carfax during the first favourable opportunity at dinner-time.

“Oh! Madge Dakin? Yes. Aunt Laura has been telling me that you are neighbours. She has been staying with us in Paris, as of course you know.”

“Yes. I’m so sorry to hear she is ill.”

Mrs. Carfax helped herself to bread sauce, and waited in suspense.

“Madge is never quite so ill as she thinks she is,” replied Madame Didier in her decisive voice. “It’s all a question of nerves with her. However, I suggested she should go to a doctor who did me a great deal of good some time ago. I’m a _real_ sufferer from nerves. And as I couldn’t keep her any longer--I had visits to pay and so on,--she is boarding with some people in Paris to go on with the treatment.”

The explanation, delivered in Madame Didier’s high thin voice, seemed sufficiently reasonable. Yet Mrs. Carfax was conscious of an under-current.

Her hostess was silent, but the Major, always garrulous, broke in with one of his pet grievances which lasted till the end of the meal, and ended by proving anew, through many ramifications, that the country was going to the dogs.

In the drawing-room, when coffee was served after dinner, and her host had gone to the smoking-room, circumstances for Mrs. Carfax were more propitious.

Madame Didier took out her embroidery, and Mrs. Lovell lay back in an easy-chair, and warmed her feet at the fire.

“Helen has been telling me a good deal about this Mrs. Dakin,” she began.

Her tone suggested that further confidences might be expected from Mrs. Dakin’s friend, and Mrs. Carfax sat upright in her chair, and leant forward a little.

“Oh, but if Mrs. Carfax is a friend----” objected Madame Didier.

“Well, dear, so are you,” put in Mrs. Lovell, who, as Mrs. Carfax suddenly decided, was really quite stupid.

Madame Didier’s offended expression might portend anything--even silence.

Innocent of psychology, Mrs. Carfax could not be expected to know that on this score, at least, she need have no apprehension.

“Of course I am Madge’s friend,” said Madame Didier, stitching very fast, “and that’s why I am so distressed at her foolish behaviour.”

“What has she----?” Mrs. Carfax paused. It was perhaps safer not to interrupt.