Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

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.

“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.

“Very well then, it isn’t. And I don’t care. I only know I want to see her again,--horribly. And she’ll be here to-night, thank goodness, and I’m going to meet her at the station.”

François shrugged his shoulders, and continued to paint.

“Where’s her hotel? Oh, the Impérial. She’s got that out of Baedeker.” He laughed.

“Come now, François. Own that sweet Anne Page in Paris will be rather nice!”

“You’d better ask her to tea here to-morrow. Your place is even more of a pig-sty than mine. We shall see Dacier and Thouret at the _Lilas_ this evening. We can ask them then.”

“All right. But I’m not going to have you about all the time mind!”

“You won’t,” returned his friend briefly. “I can’t stand fools.”

René’s face darkened for a moment, but the retort died on his lips.

“Look here, old man,” he urged. “Don’t be a beast. I’m serious.”

“_Tant pis_,” was François’ implacable reply.

But when next day Anne was actually in his studio, and he heard her voice, and saw her smile, and listened to the laughing clamour around her, as she sat in the only armchair that was not broken, and drank execrable tea out of a cup which did not match its saucer, it was difficult even for Fontenelle to be anything but gay and pleased.

With an odd mixture of sensations, he noticed how fair her skin looked against her black dress. The fur she wore on her shoulders was also exceedingly becoming. François, who as a painter of many women’s portraits knew something of the cost of feminine apparel, looked at it with a certain surprise. Either the old lady had been fairly generous, or Anne in her one day’s shopping, had been disgracefully extravagant. In either case the result was admirable. He emerged from his reflections to find a furious discussion raging as to which restaurant she should be taken to dine.

“_Café de la Régence_,” said François authoritatively, “and afterwards we’ll drive back to the _Lilas_.”

* * * * *

It was several days before Anne found herself alone with René.

He came to her hotel one morning, and carried her off to lunch with him at a little restaurant in the neighbourhood of his studio.

“You have such a devoted body-guard, that I never get a word with you,” he complained. “And I want you to see my pictures. We must get in before the light goes. It gets so confoundedly dark in the afternoons now.”

Later on in the great gaunt studio at the top of the pile of buildings in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Anne stood before some of the pictures which in after years were to fetch great sums from art collectors, which were to be discussed by connoisseurs, to be execrated, loved, praised, condemned, admired.

She did not see them. For her at the moment, they were non-existent.

One thing only was in her mind; one idea, and that in the form of a question.

How should she accomplish what she had come to do?

This was the first time René had deliberately sought her alone, and in the circumstance, without malice, she divined the influence of François Fontenelle.

He had meant to be careful. He had meant to see her only in the presence of others, but,--she knew him so well that she could have smiled,--to-day he had thrown prudence to the wind.

Tenderness was in his voice, in his eyes, even while he kept tender words from his lips.

It grew dusk while she lingered. The blue of twilight filled the windows, and a ruddy gleam from the stove lay along the floor. Anne sat down on the couch, and René settled cushions at her back.

His hand touched her arm, and for a moment it rested there, before he turned abruptly away.

Earlier in the day, Anne had spoken of returning to Dymfield.

“You mustn’t go yet,” he broke out all at once. “You won’t leave Paris yet?”

The words were an appeal, and his voice was not steady.

“I came to see you,” said Anne deliberately.

He turned to her sharply. It was too dark to see his face, but she heard the anxiety in his tone.

“All of us--or me?”

“To see you.”

He threw himself on his knees beside her. “Anne,” he whispered, “stay. I want you. Will you marry me?”

He had taken her hands and was holding them tight against his breast.

“No, René.”

The words were decisive, but she made no effort to release herself, and her hands rested quietly in his.

“Sit here, beside me,” she said, moving a little on the couch. “I want to talk to you.”

Wondering at something in her voice, he obeyed in silence, and she went on speaking, still very quietly.

“I won’t marry you, dear, because I’m too old for you. I will never marry you. But if you want me, I will stay.”

In his amazement, he let her hands drop, and bent forward to see her face.

Quite quietly, Anne got up. “It’s very dark,” she said. “I’ll light the candles. I saw where you put the matches.”

He watched her in a sort of stupor as she went to a side table for the matches, and lighted one after another of the candles in a sconce on the opposite side of the room.

Did she know what she had said? Had he understood her?

He sat staring at her as she reached up to the sconce, the movement throwing into relief the lines of her beautiful figure.

When the last candle was lighted, she turned to him smiling.

“No. You haven’t misunderstood me,” she said. “Now you can see my face you will know you have not.”

She came swiftly across the room, and sat down beside him.

“Listen, René. I will not marry you, for many reasons. Two months ago I was prepared never to see you again. But things have altered. I haven’t told you yet, but all my circumstances have changed. I’m a rich woman now, and my life is my own, to do what I like with it. And because I love you, I propose to give it to you, for a little while at least. As long as you want me. Until----”

Her voice, quite calm and quiet at first, broke at the last words, and she paused abruptly.

René sprang to his feet, and drew her quickly up from the sofa into his arms.

“Anne!” he cried. “Sweet Anne Page!” the words came brokenly between tremulous laughter. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You will marry me, of course, because we love each other, because----”

She put one hand on his shoulder, and so kept him at arm’s length.

“I will never marry you,” she repeated. “If you won’t consent to let me stay as I suggest, I shall say good-bye to you now, and I will not see you again.

“Remember René, you’re not talking to a girl. You’re dealing with a woman who knows her own mind, and will have this or nothing. If I stay we both have perfect freedom. I am old enough to do what I please with my life. And I please to do this. René,” for the first time the colour came to her cheeks, and her eyes wavered, “you’ll make me shy if I have to ask you so many times to let me stay.”

She looked suddenly so like a child as she spoke, that in spite of his perplexed amazement, Dampierre smiled.

He kissed her soft hair, and then her lips. “You’re adorable,” he murmured. “But you amazing woman, you’re an _enfant terrible_! What am I to do with you?”

“Don’t you see how simple it is?” she asked. “I’m rich now, so I can stay as long as you--as long as I please.” She altered the pronoun hurriedly. “And you have plenty of money, too, René, haven’t you? I mean that we are each quite independent. It makes it all so easy.”

He laughed again as the only expression of his otherwise inexpressible emotions.

She was as guileless, as simple as a child. Yet she was proposing----Good God, what was she not proposing? And above all she meant what she proposed; meant it absolutely. He looked into her eyes, and knew that no words of his would move her.

“But Anne, Anne!” he stammered. “You’re saying awful things. Not from my point of view, but as an Englishwoman. _Mon Dieu!_ as an Englishwoman with the fear of Mrs. Grundy if not the fear of God before her eyes!”

She looked at him, and his words, which amazement and uncertainty had made flippant, died before the sadness of her glance.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Nobody troubles about me. Nobody has ever troubled. I have never been happy all my life. And now when I could have happiness without hurting any one, why must I give it up because of a world in which I have no concern?” She paused a moment, and looked at him uncertainly.

“You think I ought to feel I’m doing wrong? Perhaps I ought. But I _don’t_ feel it, René. I should be doing wrong if I married you, because----” She left the sentence unfinished, forbearing to tell him that he would some day thank her for his freedom.

“Don’t argue about it,” she said, smiling, though her eyes were full of tears. “It’s my last word. If you won’t agree, I shall go back to Dymfield to-morrow.”

“No. Don’t let us waste time now, at any rate,” he exclaimed eagerly. “We shall have plenty of time to talk and argue. Just now I’m too absurdly happy!”

He drew her down beside him on the sofa, and covered her eyes with kisses.

“Anne! do you know what a sweet thing you are? No, of course you don’t know, and that’s what make you so delicious!”

Even while she thrilled from head to foot with an almost unbearable happiness, Anne remembered the price at which it was bought, and told herself that it was not too dear.

“I only know I’m happy,” she whispered. “But I’m afraid of waking up and finding it’s a dream.”

* * * * *

Again and again, through the years as they passed, her own words came back to her.

In the summer evenings at Dymfield, she thought of them. When she travelled, they often came to her as she stood before some picture in church or gallery. She thought of them sometimes at night, when on some Italian terrace she sat watching the sunset.

To-day she remembered them, as she walked home through the sunshine, and mounted the stately Spanish steps towards her apartment on the heights.

“Twenty years ago!” She repeated the words to herself in wonder.

“It was a beautiful dream, and thank God, I never waked.”

XVI

Dr. Dakin was spending the night in town on his way to Paris.

For the previous fortnight, urged not so much by the impressive hints concerning his duty thrown out by Mrs. Carfax, as by a curious change in his wife’s letters to him, he had been on thorns of impatience to join her in Paris, and bring her home.

The serious illness of a patient, an exasperating case which always seemed on the point of mending, only to sink into another relapse, kept him prisoner.

Not till the previous day had he considered it safe to telegraph for the doctor he had engaged to look after his practice during his own absence, and a still further delay had been occasioned by the necessity of meeting this man in London to explain the peculiar nature of the case under treatment.

Leaving his hotel in the evening, he walked westward in search of a place to dine, meditating in a troubled fashion as he walked. His wife had been away more than three months, and he had made no effort to recall her. The visit, accepted ostensibly at least, partly on the ground of her health, was in any case to have been a long one. Then followed the plea of the cure which a certain well-known physician had prescribed, and again her husband had agreed to her wishes. He told himself to be patient. After his talk with Miss Page, he had been full of hope. But it would not do to annoy Madge by bringing her home again before she wished to come. It would be wiser to let her tire of Paris, and then when she returned, he would take the advice of a wise and charming woman, and perhaps there might yet be happiness for Madge,--and for him too.

So he had waited, forcing himself to self-control through his hourly longing for her.

At first, for many weeks, her letters were discouraging;--hurried and indifferent. She was enjoying Paris. She felt better, or not so well. They were the letters of a woman who writes perfunctorily, from a sense of duty. Quite lately they had altered, and though the change in them filled him with delight, it was joy mingled with uneasiness. They were hysterical letters, composed of vague self-reproaches about her selfish neglect of him, mingled with terms of endearment, and assertions of her own unworthiness.

Fatal letters to write to a man who possessed a trace of cynicism, or of what is commonly called knowledge of the world, but to the simple mind of her husband, they suggested only alarming fears for her bodily health. He must go and fetch her home immediately. Poor little Madge! In the midst of his anxiety, he was not insensible of a thrill of joy at the thought that from whatever cause, her heart had turned to him.

With this thought in his mind, he again dismissed as an impertinence, a letter he had lately read containing more than a hint that his wife’s protracted stay in Paris was due to a certain bad influence exercised upon her in the past.

He had never considered the matter seriously, yet as he entered the dining-room a moment later, the whole circumstance of the letter and its accusation, was recalled by the sight of a face he remembered.

He had turned into a restaurant in the Haymarket, to which on their rare visits to town, he had once taken Madge to dine.

With the sentimental idea at which he scarcely smiled, of finding the exact place they had on that occasion occupied, he went upstairs, and was glad to find the table in the corner disengaged. He had given his order to the waiter, before seated at some little distance across the room, he saw the man he recognized.

For the moment he was puzzled, then like a flash came the memory of a dinner party at Fairholme Court six months ago, and with it in a flood the further memory of other things he had for the moment forgotten.

Monsieur Fontenelle apparently did not see him, but apart from the fact that he had liked him, Dr. Dakin was quite determined to recall their previous meeting to his consciousness.

Madge had sometimes mentioned him in letters. If he had recently come from Paris, he would have news of her. He left his place and crossed to his neighbour’s table, with outstretched hand.

“We met at a very pleasant little dinner at Fairholme Court, some months ago,” he began. “My name is Dakin. I expect you’ve forgotten it. Yours is a name one can’t forget.”

Fontenelle gave him a hasty glance; then took the hand he offered, with a charming smile.

“But of course! When Miss Page was our hostess. Have you heard from her lately? I am told she is coming back.”

“Won’t you come to my table, as we have neither of us begun to feed?” suggested Dr. Dakin. “It’s quieter there. Out of the draught.”

“Delighted!” François assured him.

The change was effected.

“I can give you the latest news of your wife,” he said almost before he was seated. “I saw her only yesterday. I called in fact to make my farewells.”

“How is she?” inquired the doctor anxiously. It was the one question that concerned him.

“Not altogether well, I fancy. A little homesick. Paris possibly a little on her nerves.”

He took up the wine list. “Can we agree as to wine?”

The doctor made a hasty gesture. “Anything you like. I’m on my way to bring her home,” he observed.

Fontenelle, who was giving the waiter elaborate directions about warming the Burgundy he had selected, did not at once reply.

When the man had hurried off with a _Bien Monsieur!_ he looked at his companion.

“You are going to fetch her you say? Good! I think all she wants is the rest and quiet of your charming village. Paris is not the place for nervous women, doctor. The atmosphere is too exciting--too distracting.” He made a little comprehensive gesture with both hands.

“But you don’t think she’s ill?”

In spite of himself, in spite of his British horror of displaying emotion, the doctor’s voice shook a little.

“_Mais non! Mais non. Rien de tout_,” returned his companion, with a reassuring smile. “Madame is suffering a little from her ‘cure.’ That is only to be expected. Pardon!” he laughed genially. “For the moment I forgot I was not speaking to a layman.”

The doctor laughed also, and tried to forget that the mere mention of his wife’s name had set his heart beating.

He applied himself to his dinner.

“Did I understand that you’re going to leave Paris for long?” he asked. “I think you said you had been to say good-bye to Madge--to my wife?”

“I’m really uncertain,” returned François, regarding him with keen smiling eyes. “I’m over here on business connected with the exhibition to which your countrymen with more politeness than discretion have elected me President. After that?” He shrugged his shoulders with a characteristic gesture. “I don’t know. A journey to Egypt, perhaps. But that depends on circumstances. Did I tell you that Miss Page is coming home? She may even be in Paris by this time. Mrs. Dakin is evidently looking forward to seeing her.”

For a moment the doctor was silent.

“Miss Page is an old friend of yours--a great friend?” he asked suddenly.

“I think I may say my best and dearest friend.”

At the mention of Anne’s name an imperceptible change crept into his manner. An undercurrent of irony, too subtle for his companion’s apprehension, vanished from his voice and from his words, which were grave and deliberate.

“I might with truth repeat what you have said,” returned the doctor slowly.

He took up his knife and fork, and absently replaced them on his plate, into which he stared, as though lost in thought.

“And so,” said François, watching him, “you are naturally indignant about a certain story----”

The other man looked up quickly.

“I know all about it,” Fontenelle went on. “Madame Didier, who belongs to a certain feminine type indigenous to every country, has worked with great industry, and Fortune has favoured her. During her visit to England, she came across a certain Mrs. Crosby, the wife of old Mrs. Burbage’s nephew.”

He paused, and critically tasted the wine which the waiter had just poured into his glass.

“_Bon!_” he exclaimed appreciatively.

“This woman,” he continued, “convinced that her husband’s inheritance was stolen from him by our friend, naturally paints her in the glaring colours of an adventuress.”

Both men smiled.

“The character suits Anne Page, doesn’t it? At any rate it suited Madame Didier, who with unfailing resource has patiently unearthed the story of twenty years ago. This story, I understand, she has lost no time in communicating to the wife of the vicar of your idyllic village, whence having reached the fountain head, I imagine it is flowing in refreshing streams through the entire county?”

“No,” returned the doctor quickly. “The vicar, whatever qualities he may lack, happens to be a gentleman, and is moreover one of Miss Page’s many friends. Fortunately this woman, Madame Didier, wrote to him, not to Mrs. Carfax, and as the letter to some extent concerned my wife, he brought it to me.”

Fontenelle gently raised his eyebrows, but refrained from comment.

“The vicar,” Dr. Dakin went on with a half smile, “is filled with righteous indignation about what he naturally believes an impudent lie. He has written to his correspondent, threatening pains and penalties if she communicates with his wife, or tries in any way to spread the scandal. He’s a wise man,” he added dryly. “Mrs. Carfax is not the woman to be trusted with the reputation of her dearest friends.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I didn’t tell him,” continued the doctor, “that I had previously heard the story from my wife, who assures me it is true.”

François’s expression was inscrutable.

“And--pardon me--you, I imagine, regard the matter as, well let us say as an Englishman?”

“If as I suppose I am to understand, you mean that I’m naturally a hypocrite,” returned the doctor rather stiffly, “you are mistaken. Miss Page is the best, the most generous woman I have ever met. Whatever her life may have been, that is the result. The rest doesn’t concern me.”

A sudden light sprang into the other man’s eyes.

“I beg your pardon,” he said simply, in a tone of sincerity.

He looked round the room which was now hot, crowded, and noisy with the clink of glasses, and the babel of talk.

“Have you anything to do this evening? If not, will you come round to my club where we can smoke in peace?”

“I should like nothing better,” returned Dr. Dakin.

XVII

“I’m going to tell you the story of Anne Page as I know it,” said Fontenelle, as they sat in a corner of the almost deserted smoking-room. “You may hear all sorts of versions, and I should like you to listen now to the true one.”

He smiled, as he lighted a cigarette.

“You, also, are a student of psychology, doctor, and it has always seemed to me that Anne Page is a singularly interesting study.

“Nowadays in this age of modern thought, perhaps I should rather say in this age of fads and cranks, through which men and women are groping towards a different conception of life, her conduct would not have been so amazing.

“If she had been a modern woman, filled with the latest ideas of the sanctity of passion, whatever that may mean; the duty of leading her own life, and so forth, one might class her with a number of earnest feminine enthusiasts whose brains, like the old bottles of Scripture, are unequal to the strain of the new wine of recent ideas.”

“She doesn’t fit in _there_,” returned the doctor, smiling.

“Think of it!” exclaimed François with sudden animation. “A simple gentle woman of twenty years ago. A woman who had led the narrowest of lives; ignorant of men; ignorant of passion--till at the age of thirty-seven she falls in love, and is loved by a man ten years younger than herself. And that man, René Dampierre.”

The doctor started. “You mean the painter?”

François nodded. “She was his mistress for three years.”

Both men smoked in silence for a few moments.

“One might have guessed,” said the doctor quietly, “that she would choose a lover worthy of her.”

“Anne is an unconscious artist,” returned Fontenelle. “It was the most beautiful love affair I have ever known. The only perfect one--thanks to her courage and self-sacrifice.

“Anne is a simple woman in the sense that all her emotions are unsophisticated, original, generous. But she is also the wisest woman I ever met.

“She knew René better than he knew himself. That is to say, she knew men--or rather divined their natures, by her sixth sense of intuition.

“She might have married him. He wanted to marry her. But she knew what the result would be.

“Oh, René was not a brute,” he exclaimed in answer to his companion’s sudden movement. “Far from it. Except for his genius, he was the average kindly natured man. But Anne very wisely took his genius into account. He was not the man to marry, and she knew it. She is proud, as only a woman of her type can be proud. And then--here felt the artist in life--this was her first and last passion, the only vital emotion she had ever experienced in an existence otherwise incredibly grey, incredibly monotonous. She wanted to make it a perfect memory for herself, as well as for him.”

He paused a moment, throwing back his head against the padded chair, while he watched the rings of smoke he was blowing.

“And so,” he went on presently, “she made a resolve which few women would have found the courage either to make, or what is more important--to keep. She determined to stay with him only while his first passion lasted. She made up her mind to go even before the first cloud was in the sky,--at any rate before it was visible to _him_. Women have keener eyes than men for rising clouds.”

The doctor was silent. “Rightly or wrongly,” he went on, “she felt that only in this way, only by running no risk of injuring either him or his career, she was justified in taking her little measure of happiness. She knew him very well,” he added meditatively. “René was as weak as most of us, weaker than some perhaps, where women are concerned. He would have been unfaithful, but he could never take his unfaithfulness callously. He would have been torn perpetually between his desires, and his dread of hurting her. And his work would have suffered terribly. Anne was right to go.”

“You speak as an artist,” remarked the doctor drily.

“I can speak in no other way,” returned François. “René Dampierre was a great man with a definite work to do.”

“But Dampierre,--René Dampierre?” The doctor uttered the name with respect. “He must have died soon afterwards, surely?”

“Eighteen months afterwards. But not, I regret to tell you, of a broken heart.”

François placed the end of his cigarette in the ash-tray before him, and ground it to powder. His smile was a curious blend of sadness and irony.

“It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. The result of a fall from his horse. He was riding at Chantilly.”

“And you mean that----?”

“That Anne was right to go. She knew the woman before René himself guessed the truth. She suffered I know, or perhaps as I _don’t_ know. But not so horribly, I think, as they would both have suffered if she had stayed. And she made her exit with dignity.” He smiled again. “I am a Frenchman, doctor, and I suppose the love of _le beau geste_ is in my blood. I take off my hat to Anne Page.”

When Dr. Dakin spoke, it was in a voice from which he could not banish indignation.

“It seems incredible! That he could forget a woman like that, I mean.”

His own faithful nature rose up in revolt at the outrage to all his sentiments of enduring love.

“He didn’t,” returned François quickly. “Anne had no real rival. She may rest in peace. Fate was kind to her--and perhaps to him,” he added. “Their love while it lasted, was perfect, and death settled the future. You are thinking that if any woman was worthy of fidelity it was Anne Page? I agree with you. But when a woman late in life falls in love with a genius----” he made a gesture with his hand, and left the sentence unfinished.

“Tragic, doctor, I admit. But it’s life,--and Anne knew and accepted it.”

The faint irony which he could seldom keep out of his voice, was almost submerged by something that sounded like real emotion.

“You knew them both very well, of course?” asked Dr. Dakin, after quite a long silence. “When they were together, I mean.”

“I was with them nearly every evening, when they entertained all the men best worth knowing, in Paris. It must have struck you that Anne is a woman of unusual mental distinction?”

“She is a very brilliant woman.”

“That is easily discernible when, as with you, she has a chance of real conversation. She has naturally a keen quick mind, and she learnt to talk in a very admirable school.

“The evenings at the flat in the Rue de Fleurus are still remembered in Paris.”

He smiled to himself, as though in thought he had gone back to those evenings.

“I wish I could put before you doctor, the charm of their home life. There has been nothing like it since. That sounds terribly middle-aged, doesn’t it? I realize that I’m growing old, when I think of the society of twenty years ago, as incredibly brilliant and fascinating.

“At any rate it was composed of the men and women who have since made their mark on our age. They are well known names, at any rate to a man like you who interests himself in our countrymen as well as in your own.