Part 11

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.

“Among the painters there were Giroux, and Bussières, and Deslon. All men associated with the Impressionist movement. Thouret the novelist, and Dacier the poet, were intimate friends. They met Anne first at Fairholme Court, with me, and they were always devoted to her. Then there was Matignon the critic, a fine old man, who adored her. And Bellet, and Courtois--I could go on quoting indefinitely. They had a flat in the Rue de Fleurus, beautiful as only Anne knows how to make a home beautiful. It overlooked the Luxembourg gardens, and was close to my present studio. I remember it always full of sunshine, and I can see Anne arranging the flowers, (every room was full of flowers), and looking up from them to laugh.

“She was so radiantly happy it was a joy to see her. And she grew so beautiful. She learnt to dress, of course. Beautiful dress is one of her instincts, as you see even now. What a hostess she was! She became the fashion in our set,--René’s and mine. The men raved about her. They found _piquante_, that touch of English shyness and modesty which she combines so oddly with dignity. She held a real salon, and a very brilliant one too, in the Rue de Fleurus. Those were her _beaux jours_.”

“I can imagine it,” said the doctor.

“That sort of _ménage_ is only possible in Paris,” observed François. “Even there, it’s not without its difficulties. But she surmounted them by her very unconsciousness and simplicity. Some of the women even, were won over. One or two of the wives of men in René’s circle were her intimate friends. They went to her as we all did, for advice and sympathy.”

“Just as we all go now to be consoled,” put in Dr. Dakin.

“Precisely. And one of the secrets of her power of drawing confidence, is that Anne is by nature a maternal woman--a mother.”

“That’s the pity of it.”

“I agree. Life hasn’t given her everything. But at least it gave her three unforgetable years, and a memory which has kept her sweet and fresh and young as in her girlhood she could never have been.”

“And she went away,” said the doctor gently, “in the midst of her happiness?”

“She went away quietly, simply, with no fuss, as she does everything. With no farewell scene, or anything of that sort. She left him a letter, and with me, a message. The hardest I ever had to deliver in my life.”

Fontenelle got up, and threw the end of his cigarette into the fire.

“And then she travelled?”

“For years. When they were together, she and Dampierre went to Italy every spring. I believe she has gone over all the old ground since then. She seems to have gone half over Europe as well. I used to get letters from Athens, from Constantinople, from Naples, Rome, Florence. Fortunately she was a rich woman, able to work off her restlessness.”

He laughed a little. “That was one of her adorable simplicities. It never occurred to her that the possession of a fortune made any difference to the situation. She only looked upon it as a means of independence and freedom when her happiness should come to an end. And she was right. René never thought of it either. In some ways he was as childlike and as unworldly a creature as she. He had inherited a fairly good income from his father. He would not have known what to do with more. That’s Anne Page’s story, doctor. I don’t know how it strikes an Englishman, but to me it seems rather a wonderful one because of the type of woman to whom it belongs.”

“Yes,” returned Dr. Dakin meditatively. “One would have thought that convention, or religious prejudice----”

Fontenelle laughed. “She is untouched by either. _C’est un vrai caractère, cette chère Anne Page!_ Until she came to Paris, she hadn’t mixed enough with the world even to _know_ its conventions. Religion? Well, ‘by their fruits ye shall know them,’ and if the fruits of the Spirit are faith and hope, and the charity which suffers long and is kind, there never was a woman who has more absolutely attained the results of religion. It’s not a satisfactory result for the moralist, I admit,” he added.

“But in this very interesting and amazing world, the moralists don’t have it all their own way,” observed the doctor.

“So far as creeds and dogmas are concerned, Anne is a born pagan. It is not that she has examined and rejected them. They simply don’t appeal to her nature. When as young men we first met her, we called her _Flora_, amongst ourselves. She struck us even then as a curious blend of Madonna and goddess. And the physical appearance has a mental and moral parallel. I remember once when I wanted to tease her, I asked what had become of her religion.

“She looked at me with those childlike eyes of hers and said:

“‘I never had any,--in the sense you mean. By being with René I’m not hurting any one. And it’s only by hurting people one does wrong.’

“Then--I admit it was cruel of me, but I was curious--I said that some people had refrained from doing what she had done, for the sake of example to humanity. Her reply was ‘But apart from religion, people haven’t yet decided what _is_ the right way to arrange their lives.’”

Dr. Dakin smiled. “In view of the modern ferment of opinion, she was right there.”

François pushed his chair back, with a movement of impatience.

“Well now what’s to be done? The tale of her incredibly evil past will spread I suppose, and Dymfield will become impossible.”

He laughed rather savagely.

“It’s quite an amusing notion that scandal should attack a gentle woman of Anne’s age. Yet I imagine that few of the natives of a village possess a sense of humour.”

“I don’t think the story will spread. The vicar as I told you is absolutely incredulous, and no one else has heard it.”

“Except Madame?” hinted François. “I don’t wish to suggest an unkindness. But women, you understand? A whisper to a dear friend--_hein_?”

“My wife is devoted to Miss Page,” said the doctor shortly. “I shall warn her; but she will be indignant at the mere suggestion of betrayal.”

“_Parfaitement!_” returned François with a bow. “Pardon me. You will probably find Miss Page in Paris,” he added. “She was expected to-day.”

“So much the better. It will be a great pleasure.”

The doctor rose. “Good-night,” he said, extending his hand cordially. “And thank you for this talk. Perhaps if you decide not to go to Egypt, you will do us the honour of staying with us a little later, when my wife comes back? Our friendship for Miss Page makes a bond between us,” he added, in his pleasant sincere voice.

François met his eyes for an instant. They were full of the kindliness and instinctive liking he felt for the man he was addressing.

“A thousand thanks. But I think I am almost certain to go to Egypt.”

“Another time then. I shall only say _au revoir_.”

François followed him into the hall, and watched him step into a hansom, and give the address of his hotel to the driver.

When he turned away, there was a curious expression about his lips, which presently deepened into a smile that was partly cynicism, partly something else.

He was reflecting on the curious encounters liable to befall a man like himself. He thought of the evening’s conversation, and smiled again to think how completely till this moment he had failed to realize the humour of its friendly nature.

“_C’est un honnête homme. Il ne méritait pas ça----_”

François dismissed the subject of Dr. Dakin’s deserts with a mental shrug, as he went upstairs to his room, in which a bright fire was burning.

XVIII

François drew up an armchair close to the blaze, and lighted his pipe.

His thoughts at first dwelt upon the man with whom he had just parted--a loyal straight, good fellow if ever there was one, he decided. The verdict was accompanied by a greater sense of self-dissatisfaction, a sensation nearer to shame and regret that he had for years experienced.

It was an uncomfortable attitude of mind, and with characteristic love of ease, he hastened to obliterate it, by turning his attention elsewhere.

His conversation with the doctor had conjured up so many mental pictures of the past, that he scarcely knew which of them to examine first.

The salon in Anne Page’s flat, rose before him. With the retentive memory of a painter, François recalled minutely every detail of the charming room.

He saw the deep-red curtains drawn across the three windows, the rose-coloured carpet, the lights shining like stars between the flowers. He saw Anne standing near the table at which coffee was served, receiving her guests with her lovely smile, and eager words of welcome.

He remembered to the smallest detail of lace and trimming, a dress she often wore in the evening, a gown of purple silk which suited so admirably, her hair and the soft whiteness of her neck.

Giroux and Bussières were talking to her, and he watched with amusement their excited faces, and vehement gestures.

It was the evening after René had shown his new pictures.

There had been a crowd of his friends in the studio all the afternoon; a crowd of eager interested men and women, standing before the canvases now so well known, so greatly prized.

Bussières and Giroux he knew were talking of the latest picture, his masterpiece--the famous picture of the lady in the green dress, leaning back upon the sofa.

François looked round the room already filled with people.