Part 9

She turned her face towards the quiet evening sky, in which, despite one or two trembling stars, the flush of sunset still lingered, and again despair fell like a cold hand upon her heart.

All the afternoon she had felt so gay. She had been amused, interested, almost flattered.

Now the words she had just heard, recurred to her. “Tell them to come. You are quite old enough to look after them.”

A sudden miserable sensation of shame assailed her, to remember how young she had felt. In welcoming her visitors, she had not thought of her age at all. She had accepted them as equals and contemporaries.

The blinding tears which made her stumble on the path already dim with twilight, caused her to bow her head with the instinct of hiding them even from herself.

“I’m quite old--quite old,” she repeated with something that was partly a sob, partly a shiver. “They didn’t make me feel it, because they are kind, and they have charming manners. But they are young, and life is all before them. It’s all over for me--and I’ve never had it.”

The bats skimmed noiselessly past her, in the dusk. All the birds had ceased singing. It was nearly dark, but with a horror of returning to the house, of being shut within four walls, Anne sat at the foot of the sundial, and in the darkness her tears fell.

* * * * *

Yet next morning, in the sunshine, when René Dampierre came to ask her to the “studio,” it seemed not only easy, but natural, to smile, and be well pleased. When she found herself with her new friends, depressing thoughts fled like magic.

They were so obviously glad to see her. They interested her so much with their discussions, their enthusiasm, their talk, fresh and new to her, of methods, and values and style, in painting, in writing, in music, in the whole world of art to which hitherto she had travelled alone; speechless, like a ghost amongst ghosts.

From the outset, Anne saw that René Dampierre was regarded with a certain admiring respect by his companions. Already he was considered a great man; already they looked up to him as a leader, an authority.

Little by little, emerging from her provincial ignorance, she realized that a world of art existed in Paris, in which these young men had already made a place for themselves, and were recognized. From the first, it was chiefly through François Fontenelle that her imagination began to work, began to construct the life, the surroundings, the whole framework of existence, with its modern thought, its ideals, its ambitions, out of which her friends had for a moment stepped into the stagnant peacefulness of this English village. It was with François that she talked most easily. His fluent speech, his gift of picturesque narration and description, led her to realize a new world; gave sight to her eyes, gave her understanding.

Thouret and Dacier were delightful boys, younger by three or four years than the other two friends.

Anne liked them heartily, and was amused by their boyish high spirits, and nonsense talk, but her real interest was with François Fontenelle, and René Dampierre.

With René, her shyness lasted longer than with the others, and often as she searched her mind for the reason, she could never determine it, except that as she incoherently put it to herself, he was “so absurdly good-looking.”

His manner to her was charming, more charming perhaps than the manner of any of the others, though they all treated her with that flattering air of mingled deference and admiration to which she was growing accustomed. But despite herself, the little tremor of confusion when René addressed her, never ceased to trouble and embarrass her. In the company of François she was at her ease; interested, pleased, serene, ready to talk or to listen. René alone, though she loved him to talk to her, longed for it in fact with an intensity for which she often despised herself, never succeeded in effacing a secret inexplicable dismay.

The days passed on. May slipped into a radiant June. It was a brilliant summer, warm and sunny, the first happy summer Anne had ever known.

Early in their acquaintance Fontenelle had asked her to sit to him, and out of doors, in the garden of Fairholme Court, he made sketch after sketch.

He was always dissatisfied.

“It isn’t right!” he exclaimed time after time. “You are the most elusive creature in the world. I don’t think I know you well enough yet to get down what I want. But some day I will paint you. You are going to make my fortune!”

“Then you must come again--many times,” Anne said.

Even while she spoke, her smile died.

Next summer, who could tell where she might be? She could not blind herself to the seriousness of her friend’s illness.

And when she was gone?

Anne refused to look forward. Once long ago, Mrs. Burbage had told her she need not be anxious about the future.

“I shall see that you don’t starve, my dear,” she had said.

But Anne realized that her life would be very different. It would probably mean facing the world once more in some sort of struggle for existence, without the companionship, which quiet unemotional as it was, meant all she had ever known of a friendly home, and human affection.

Often as these reflections assailed her, she put them from her. This was her summer. She would not spoil it by thinking of cold rain and wintry days.

It was while she was sitting to François that they talked most; and always sooner or later, the conversation centred upon René Dampierre.

“He has genius,” François assured her with the generous enthusiasm of an artist for work that is beyond his own powers.

“We are all desperately excited about René’s career. He will be great, as Corot, as Daubigny are great. He is the coming man. You will see. In ten years time, he will be a leader, the founder of a new school of painting; a great power in France. Oh! we’re going to be proud of René! Unless, of course,” he added with a change of tone, “he plays the fool. There’s always that to fear with him. He must let women alone. They’re the very devil for smashing up a man’s work; and that’s René’s weak side. He’s a fool about women. Just the sort of sentimental fool who’s capable of marrying one of them. And if he does----” Fontenelle’s shrug of the shoulders and the gesture of his disengaged hand, completed the sentence.

“Why?”

Anne was accustomed to frank conversation from François Fontenelle. He discussed his own love affairs with perfect freedom. He told her of the adventures of his acquaintances in Paris, and with a Frenchman’s love of analysis, entered into long discussions on the psychology of love and passion.

Anne listened calmly. Ignorant as she was, except through her reading, of the phase of existence he described, she had by this time grown to form a very fair idea of the emotional life of the men in her friend’s set in Paris. Much of what François said, she heard with incomprehension, not of the facts, but of the feelings to which they corresponded. She was neither shocked nor surprised. François’ conversation never offended her. He talked to her frankly as to a grown woman of intelligence, and she accepted his confidences as simply as they were offered.

As yet, Anne knew little about herself. It had never occurred to her to analyze her own temperament. Throughout her life it never occurred to her, and in this circumstance lay the secret of a certain simplicity which to her dying day she preserved.

It never struck her that her character, formed in a seclusion unaffected by the clash of argument and conflicting ethical opinion, was wide and generous, and original. Free-thinking in the true sense of the word, inasmuch as her thoughts were her own, uncoloured by the prejudices and predilections of any sect or party. Her life had been forced into a narrow channel, but quite spontaneously, quite naturally, her nature accepted a wide outlook, and extended sympathy and tolerance to lives and standpoints of necessity different from her own.

To many men apparently, love as she had dreamed of it, was an utterly different conception from that she had formed for herself. She accepted the fact, merely trying to understand.

“Why?” she repeated. “He might find the right wife.”

François smiled as he looked up from his drawing, and met her blue eyes, candid as a child’s, but a woman’s eyes nevertheless.

“Sweet Anne Page!” he exclaimed. “Why shouldn’t he find the right wife? The chances are a million to one against it. Even if she exists. She would have to be a miracle of self-sacrifice and comprehension, and tact and wisdom, if she were not to stand in his way. René is an artist to his finger tips, and if only out of consideration for women, no great artist should marry. No! René must always love and ride away. And the women he loves must be those who are accustomed to see the cavalier depart, without grieving. The women who merely look out for the next.”

Anne was silent. It was a way of love she did not understand. Yet she could imagine its existence.

“Men must be very different,” she said after a long pause. “That sort of thing would hurt a woman so much. One sort of woman, I mean. I think it would kill the best in her, so that if she were doing any work like painting, for instance, far from helping her, it would _prevent_ her from doing as well as she might.”

“Men _are_ different. Most men. And if women would only recognize the fact, there would be fewer tears. Love is your whole existence, as one of your poets says, I believe. Bryon, is it? For us it’s often an episode,--more often a series of episodes. Sometimes, rarely, the other thing. But that for an artist is not a consummation to be desired. Think! His whole existence! What becomes of his work if it’s merged in the life of one woman? Why it goes to pot, of course,” he went on with one of his rapid descents into English slang, which combined with his foreign accent always made Anne smile.

“No, that’s the price an artist pays--if it’s a heavy price, which I doubt,” he added with the cynicism of youth. “No absorbing loves for him. Love is necessary for his imagination, of course. It fires him with enthusiasm. It gives him delight and gaiety, and bestows on him the joyous mind to work. But if he’s a wise man, no absorbing passions. Above all, no ties.”

Anne sighed. “I see what you mean. But it seems that art is very cruel.”

“It is.”

“Then I think if what you say is true, an artist ought to keep out of the way of any woman who--cares. But he wouldn’t if she pleased him,” she added softly.

François laughed. “In your wisdom you have divined the natural selfishness of man,” he said.

As the months passed slowly on, a change, or rather a development gradual but steady, was taking place in Anne’s nature, a development that presently made itself manifest in her appearance, in her attitude, in her demeanour, physical as well as mental.

Slowly but surely, she was waking to the consciousness of her womanhood, and of her power.

The men whom she had grown to know intimately, regarded her with obvious admiration.

In their eyes at least, the eyes of artists, it was evident that she was not as she had hitherto imagined, destitute either of beauty or of attractive charm.

_Ah! Voilà sweet Anne Page!_ She had grown used to the frequent exclamation when she appeared in the garden in which at Mrs. Burbage’s desire they were always free to come and go as they pleased.

It no longer made her feel embarrassed and uncertain as to its sincerity.

Her friends’ admiration for her had become a sort of cult. She was a new type, a woman to be praised--discreetly, with deference--yet praised. They brought to her the incense of a sincere flattery, and to Anne, starved of affection, unconsciously waiting for love, it was very sweet.

She accepted it humbly, gratefully, with a surprise as great as her pleasure. But it could not fail to produce results.

She began to take pains with her dress, and her natural taste made it easy to adapt the simple gowns she possessed, into becoming garments. When René Dampierre exclaimed how well something suited her, she went to the glass and looked at herself with innocent gratification and astonishment to find that he was right.

Her eyes grew softly bright. There was often a faint colour in her cheeks.

Even to the unobservant conventional bystander, that summer Anne was charming. If she scarcely recognized herself when she saw her reflection in the glass, the change in her mental personality still further surprised her.

By degrees, so slowly, so insensibly that it seemed a natural process, she had found herself, and in making that discovery, she had made others.

These men who had seemed so strange and wonderful at first;--beings from another planet, whose thoughts she did not understand, whom she watched with interested amazed eyes, became in one sense very simple people. People easily swayed and managed by a woman older than themselves, a woman naturally intuitive, but hitherto deprived of the opportunity of exercising gifts of which she had only recently become aware.

Her conversations with François Fontenelle, as well as her previous wide reading, had removed her ignorance of facts. The rest, now that she was freed from the shackles of self-mistrust, lay well within her natural powers.

To François Fontenelle, a quick observer, even then a man of the world, possessed of the keen and subtle intelligence which in later years was to stand him in good stead for the promotion of his material prosperity, the change was early discernible. He viewed it with secret amusement, and inasmuch as he felt himself to a large extent responsible, some pride, and finally a touch of uneasiness.

It was as though some gentle creature too inexperienced to know its strength, had unexpectedly without in any way losing its gentleness, become dangerous. Dangerous to itself, dangerous perhaps to others. He often found himself glancing uncertainly at René, and then reassuring himself by recalling his friend’s natural instinctive manner to women.

René was always a great success with women. His voice altered when he spoke to them; his attentions were very charming.

François had heard the voice, and witnessed the attentions many times before, and they had never meant anything more than the sort of thing which according to him, in the wisdom of his sapient youth, was “all right.” The love of a few weeks; at most, a few months. Nothing in short that from his point of view could affect the artist seriously, or jeopardize his position. Why then should he feel uneasy? Except of course, that this was a different matter. Anne’s was not the usual case; he could imagine no one further from the type of woman who with _sang-froid_ watches the departing cavalier.

The idea was preposterous, ludicrous to entertain side by side with the idea of Anne Page. If Anne fell in love--heavens! if Anne fell in love!

His brain almost ceased working at the bare notion.

“René would be done for,” he reflected incoherently. “I know his idiocy where women are concerned. And if a woman like Anne Page falls in love, there’ll be the devil to pay! He’d have to marry her. A woman years older than himself. And then exactions, tears, jealousy of him, of his work. Oh awful! Horrible!”

His rage at the bare possibility of such an event extended at moments to Anne. “I know these gentle women!” he told himself vindictively. “They’re worse than any of them, when it comes to a love affair. Tenacious, determined, implacable----”

And then Anne would enter the drawing-room to welcome him, or come across the grass. Anne with her sweet gay smile, and her gentle dignity, and his anger died.

It was all right, of course. What a fool he had been! The idea had never occurred to either of them, and all he had to do was to keep his preposterous notions to himself.

Moreover, September had arrived, and the time for the return of the whole party to Paris was approaching. René certainly seemed in no hurry to depart. But that was comprehensible.

He was working hard, and as François allowed, never had he worked better. There was a tenderness and grace in his landscapes which was new to them, inspired he said by the gracious beauty of Shakespeare’s county.

But he had finished the picture upon which lately all his efforts had been concentrated, and François was already urging that it was time to go.

They were all in the garden one afternoon, when the subject was first mentioned.

“This is delicious, charming, adorable!” exclaimed François, suddenly looking from the lawn across the level meadows, over which the sun was setting. “It has been a summer snatched out of Paradise. But we must be getting home to our daily toil.”

Tea was over, but the table, laden with silver and dainty china, had not yet been removed.

Anne sat near it, in a basket chair, an open book on her knee, from which at the men’s request she had been reading.

Her white muslin dress with its froth of frills trailed on the grass.

The muslin fichu crossed in front and knotted at the waist, revealed a glimpse of her long white throat.

Despite himself, François glanced at her curiously.

Her face was unmoved, but he fancied he detected the faintest tremor of the frills at her breast.

René was lying in a hammock slung beneath the beech tree, and the two younger men lay on the grass, smoking.

François’ remark was greeted with a torrent of invective from them.

Paris be consigned to everlasting perdition! It was still summer. Why talk of going?

René was silent. He raised himself in the hammock, and with half-closed eyes, looked at the evening fields.

“What a beautiful effect,” he said at last. “Look there, where the mist is rising. I must get that. There’s a picture.”

“You’ve finished your picture, _mon vieux_,” returned François, speaking in French. “I know the history of another one. You’ll mess about, and paint out, till the snow is on the ground. There isn’t time. No! The hour has arrived to pack up.”

“We can’t leave sweet Anne Page!” declared Dacier half seriously. He turned on his elbow, and glanced up at her, smiling. Without speaking, Anne returned his smile.

“She looks like an early Italian Madonna disguised as a Reynolds portrait,” thought François suddenly. “Why on earth has she grown so ridiculously attractive!” was his next irritable reflection.

“She must come to Paris,” declared Thouret.

“But of course she must come to Paris! When will you come, Mademoiselle Anne? At once, won’t you? It’s a magnificent idea. We’d take her to the Elysée Montmartre and to the Nouvelle Athènes. Yes! And to Versailles! Versailles in the autumn. Magnificent! And the little streets in Montmartre, and the Place Pigale! Seriously wouldn’t it be splendid to show our Paris to Anne Page?”

They talked all together, exclaiming and laughing, François joining them.

Dampierre alone said nothing. He was still gazing over the fields, now smouldering with faint gold, from which here and there like incense, a ghostly mist was rising.

“There’s a picture there,” he repeated.

“Hang the picture!” exclaimed Dacier and Thouret together. “Mademoiselle Anne Page is coming to Paris. Aren’t you, mademoiselle?”

Anne shook her head. “I never go anywhere.” She was still smiling, but François felt a sudden pang of pity and compunction. To his sensitive ear, the words were an epitome of Anne’s life.

When it was growing dusk, they rose, and this evening Anne did not ask them to stay.

Often when it was dull, or too cold to sit in the garden, she took them into the library, showed them her favourite books, sometimes read to them. Because as Dacier said, it was good for their English accent, and she had such a beautiful voice.

To-day she walked with them to the porch, and said good-bye, in a tone that was as friendly as ever.

“Tell me when you decide to go,” she said. “We must have a picnic or something for farewell.”

François turned at the gate, and saw her standing in the porch, her dress startlingly white in the dusk. He shrugged his shoulders, but involuntarily the troubling sense of having wounded some defenceless creature, returned to him. He told himself that he was a sentimental fool, but the illusion did not vanish.

XIII

For the next week, Anne saw little of her friends.

The day after the suggestion for their departure had been made, the old doctor who attended Mrs. Burbage, asked to see her.

“I’m not satisfied with our patient’s progress,” he said, closing the library door with much precaution. “I think, Miss Page, I should prefer to have another opinion, and I propose writing to-night to Dr. Mears of Harley Street.”

Anne listened with fear at her heart, and the next day, the specialist arrived from London.

After a lengthy visit, and a subsequent conversation between the doctors, she was told that the case was serious, and an operation would probably be necessary.

“Write to her relatives at once,” advised Dr. Mears, taking up his hat. “I can’t disguise from you that there’s cause for anxiety.”

Anne obeyed, and her letter was answered by a telegram, announcing the arrival of Mrs. Burbage’s nephew and his wife.

The intimation of their proposed visit was received by the patient with a grim smile.

“Let them come if they please,” she remarked. “I don’t propose to endure much of their society. I shall claim the privileges of a sick woman.”

They arrived the same evening; Mr. Crosby, a weak-looking undecided man of forty, whose thin fair hair was plastered over a retreating forehead, and his wife, a stout somewhat vulgar woman, arrogant and over-bearing.

The visit was not a success.

Mrs. Burbage, who once decided upon a course of action, remained characteristically obstinate, granted them one interview of ten minutes, after which her door was resolutely closed.

Mrs. Crosby, pleading solicitude for the relative who had always repulsed her advances, appealed to Anne, whom she at first treated with the superciliousness suitable to a dependent who had without doubt acquired for her own ends, a culpable ascendency over the old lady’s mind.

Three months previously, Anne would have been helpless in her hands; too nervous and self-mistrustful to cope with a blustering woman of the world.

Now, scarcely to her own surprise, so insensibly had the change in her been wrought, to all Mrs. Crosby’s attempted coercion, she preserved a self-possessed opposition.

Mrs. Burbage did not wish to see her nephew, or his wife.

That was enough. She did not see them. After two days which exercised all Anne’s powers of tact and self-restraint, Mrs. Crosby returned to her Devonshire home, her husband in tow, infuriated and baffled by the quiet woman whose imperturbable dignity still further roused her resentment.

“Mark my words Fred, that’s a designing creature!” she exclaimed as they drove to the station. “She behaves as though she were mistress of the place. An ugly pale-faced woman like that!”

“My dear, I don’t think her ugly exactly, and her figure is certainly very good,” murmured Fred, whose folly was proverbial.