Part 9

“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.

“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.