Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

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And as she mused, came a wondering recognition of the healing of time, the passing of all violent emotion, whether of joy or of despair.

From some recess of her memory there sprang the words of an Eastern sage, who as a motto true alike in times of sorrow and times of delight, told his disciple to grave upon his signet ring, one sentence--_This too will pass_.

XXI

Anne started for London next morning, intending to spend the night in town, and devote the next day to her brother, and to Sylvia Carfax, to whom she had not found time to write.

Early on Thursday morning she drove to Carlisle House.

The page boy who took her up in the lift, indicated a door at the end of the corridor, and left her.

Anne knocked, and in response to a voice within, entered Sylvia’s bedroom.

It was littered with cardboard boxes, open trunks, dresses, hats, raiment of all sorts, and stumbling over the obstacles in her way, Sylvia rushed towards her with a cry of joy.

Even before she kissed her, Anne had time to notice the worried look on the girl’s face, which robbed it of its youthful prettiness.

“Oh!” she gasped. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come in time, and I didn’t know _what_ to do, or how to get out of it. Oh! I’m so thankful to see you, Miss Page. Sit down. Do sit down--if you can find a place,” she added, trying to laugh.

Anne chose the bed as the only available spot.

“My dear child, what’s the matter?” she exclaimed. “You’re packing, I suppose. Where are you going?”

“To--America,” returned Sylvia, with a gulp.

Anne looked at her, and drew her down beside her on the bed.

“Tell me all about it from the very beginning,” she said, with quiet insistence.

“_Don’t_ be angry with me,” implored Sylvia, her lips trembling. “I thought I’d been so clever to arrange it all myself, without saying a word about it. But--but now I’m frightened. And my contract’s signed, and I daren’t----”

“But what’s it all about? Tell me clearly, Sylvia.”

Sylvia made an effort to obey, and though lucidity was not the strong part of her story, by the end of half an hour’s questioning and explanation, Anne gathered that the girl had fallen into the hands of the manager of a third-rate theatrical company. The man had tempted her with the offer of a “star” part in a musical comedy, and she had signed a contract with him for America.

“He said he would make my fortune,” she declared. “He praised my voice so much, and told me I was wonderful, and that I should make a great hit. But he made me promise not to tell any one I was going. He said he wanted to have the credit of discovering me, and all that sort of thing. I knew mother and father would be horrified, but I thought it was too good a chance to lose, and that I’d risk their anger. Because, if I turned out a success, and made a lot of money, they would be very proud,” she added.

The instinctive knowledge of human nature shared by the pillars of the Church, caused Anne despite her anxiety, a secret smile.

“I thought he was so kind,” Sylvia went on pitifully, “and he seemed so nice at first, but lately he’s been different, and his manner has been so funny. He--he looked at me in a horrid way yesterday,” she confessed, “and held my hand tight, and when I tried to get away, he laughed. But my contract’s signed,” she declared with a wail of despair in her voice.

“Haven’t the principals of this place interfered?” Anne inquired. “The matron, or whoever it is who’s supposed to look after you?”

“They think I’m going home,” confessed Sylvia in an abashed voice. “I managed it so that they should think so.”

Anne rose, and with a terrified expression, the girl clung to her hand.

“Oh! Miss Page,” she gasped. “You’re not going? I’m to sail to-morrow night, and----”

“Don’t be frightened, you silly little thing. Of course you won’t sail to-morrow, nor any other night. Give me the address of this man.”

Sylvia falteringly repeated it.

Anne wrote it down, and stooped to kiss her.

“Unpack all those things, and put them tidy,” she said. “I haven’t time to scold you now, but I’ll come back and do it thoroughly this afternoon.”

The girl’s look of relief touched her, but she could scarcely repress a smile as she turned at the door, to see her standing like a penitent baby amongst all her finery.

“I wonder what I should have done with daughters?” she asked herself, half humorously, as she stepped into a cab, outside.

The question was answered by a smile and a sigh that were almost simultaneous.

Anne spent a busy morning. She went first to her solicitor, and after an hour’s colloquy with him on the case of Sylvia Carfax, she drove on to her brother’s house in Kensington. It stood in a highly respectable square, and was one of the hundreds of dull substantial edifices which came into existence during the mid-Victorian era.

Anne rang the bell, and stood waiting rather excitedly under the stucco canopy supported by pillars.

Her present meeting with Hugh was divided from the last, by a period of twenty years. It was odd to remember how little she knew of this brother, her only near relative in the world. He would be much changed, of course.

A sudden vivid recollection of the last time she had met him, swept through her mind, as she stood waiting admittance. How desolate she had been. How shy. How filled with the sense of being an outsider, a forgotten guest, unbidden to the banquet of life!

The door opened, and it was Hugh himself who drew her over the threshold, and welcomed her in the loud, kind voice she remembered.

“We’ve been waiting for you all the morning,” he declared, “and I rushed down when I heard the bell. Come in and let me look at you! It’s impossible to see anything in this wretched foggy atmosphere.”

With his arm still round her shoulder, he pushed open the door of a large room on the right of the hall.

“Here she is, Alice!” he exclaimed, as his wife rose from a sofa near the fire.

“Why Anne, what have you done to yourself?”

The words were uttered in amazement. Anne had slipped off her heavy cloak, and stood laughing tremulously as she held her brother by both hands, and noticed for the first time that his hair was white, and his good-natured bronzed face lined and wrinkled. She turned from him to greet her sister-in-law.

The slim little creature she remembered was a stout matron, whose hair was just touched with grey.

Alice’s start of amazement as she gazed a moment before she kissed her, was almost comic.

“Why, Anne, my dear, you’ve grown quite a beautiful woman!” declared her brother, so simply that the tears sprang to Anne’s eyes.

“She’s grown younger, hasn’t she, Alice?” He looked at her with a puzzled expression.

Anne laughed, and touched her hair. “But it’s your white hair that---- And yet I don’t know. It’s you altogether! I never saw such a change. You---- She looks like a great lady in a French picture, doesn’t she, Alice? Court of one of the French kings. Louis the Sixteenth, that sort of thing.”

Anne laughed again. “My dear boy. You make me embarrassed. Don’t stare at me so,” she begged.

The pink colour sprang into her cheeks, and the shy deprecating smile of François’ portrait crept for a moment to her lips.

“I’m just Anne--twenty years older than when you last saw me.”

“Well--it’s magic. I give it up,” declared Hugh.

“Where are the boys?” she asked, turning with a quick, eager movement to her sister-in-law. “I want to see my nephews.”

“They’re out to-day. I’m so sorry. They’ve gone to lunch with some relations of mine. But you’ll see them this evening. I let them go because I knew that you would want to talk to Hugh,” Alice answered. “You’ll excuse me a little while, won’t you? I must speak to cook.”

Her voice--her tone of deference, marked Alice’s recognition of the change in the woman she had once regarded as insignificant, a poor meek creature to be treated with compassion and tolerance; and her husband’s awkward laugh as she closed the door, was sufficient indication that her altered attitude was not lost upon him.

“She can’t help fussing about the servants. Old habits, you know,” he said, turning to his sister. “For years she did all the housework, and she can’t give it up.”

“But you’ve finished with work now, haven’t you, dear?” Anne asked, as she sat down beside her brother on the sofa.

“Thanks to you.” Hugh glanced at her gratefully.

“That money was just what I wanted, Anne. It made me. I only needed capital to develop the farm, and it came just at the right moment. We owe everything to your generosity, dear. And now we’re going to talk business. You’ve put me off in every letter, but I must insist----”

Anne laid her hand quickly on his lips. “I won’t hear a word about it!” she declared. “You’re not going to rob me of one of the greatest delights of my life, Hugh? The power I once had to help my only brother? You can’t be so unkind!”

Her tone of pained entreaty made him laugh. He kissed her again.

“You dear absurd woman! Why haven’t you married, Anne?” he exclaimed suddenly. “Some man’s been robbed of a wonderful wife. It’s not fair of you!”

She smiled. “Tell me about the boys,” she urged.

A maid entered to announce that lunch was served, and during the meal, the boys and their prospects were the chief topic of conversation.

“Alice thinks them both geniuses, of course,” laughed her husband. “But they’re only ordinary youths. I shall be quite satisfied if they can just jog along.”

“Rupert has great talent,” his mother assured Anne. “Don’t listen to Hugh. I’m sure he’ll make a splendid architect.”

“I’m sure he will,” she agreed sympathetically.

“You know we lost our little girl?” said Alice softly, when they returned to the drawing-room.

Her voice suddenly drew Anne’s heart.

“The boys are dears, of course,” she added. “But I should love to have had a daughter.”

Anne was silent a moment. Then with a sudden inspiration, she thought of Sylvia.

“Where’s your luggage?” inquired Hugh. “Bless my soul, I’d forgotten it! You’re going to stay with us, Anne, of course?”

“Your room is all ready,” Alice assured her rather timidly.

“I _was_ going back to-day, and coming to you later. But if I may send for my things from the hotel, I should like to stay a little while. There’s a child I know, a girl I must help out of a difficulty, and I find it will take a little time.”

She told them Sylvia’s story, and noticed with satisfaction that Alice seemed interested.

“Poor silly child!” she exclaimed. “She ought to be taken care of. She ought to live in some nice family.”

Anne made a mental note, but at the moment said nothing.

XXII

Two or three days later, she was back at Fairholme Court.

Burks had been sent on to join the other servants, and by the time Anne reached the house, everything was in its usual spotless order.

As she sat looking into the fire the afternoon following her return, Anne felt that it was good to be home. She glanced round the charming room, and experienced a thrill of pleasure. The fresh curtains at the windows with their rose garlands, pleased her eye. The inlaid cabinets, the tables, the dainty bookcases, shining and spotless from the maids’ energetic ministrations, reflected the firelight at every angle. The pictures she loved seemed even more beautiful for her absence, and the pots of lilies and hyacinths about the room filled the air with sweet scent.

Anne looked from them to her books, as one glances from one loved face to another. It was good to be home, and she felt happy, and at rest. Painful misgivings had disappeared, and her mind was filled with contented thoughts of her friends.

From Sylvia, inexpressibly relieved, she had just received a letter of girlish effusion and gratitude.

It was in her hand as she sat smiling into the fire, glad to remember the girl as she had yesterday seen her, pretty once more, gay, and full of extravagantly noble resolutions for the future.

Madge Dakin, who with her husband had returned a few days previously, she had already seen.

She looked thin and pale still, but Anne was satisfied to hear that Harry was the dearest and best of men, and that she had never been so much in love with any one in her life.

To-day Anne found the human comedy agreeable. A spectacle to be viewed with a smile from which tears of pity and sympathy were not very far removed. But the smile came first. She reflected that she must see the Vicar, and she was making up her mind to leave the fireside for that purpose, when the door opened, and he was announced.

She rose quickly with an exclamation of pleasure, and went to meet him.

He took her outstretched hand, but let it drop again immediately, and glancing at him with half-defined surprise, she saw that he wore his pulpit expression of slightly pompous gravity.

“Sit down,” begged Anne, cordially. “I was just coming up to see you.”

“Thank you,” said the Vicar, dropping heavily into the chair she indicated.

“I saw Sylvia only yesterday. She sent many messages to you, and to her mother.”

“Thank you,” repeated the Vicar. “It is distressing to me, but I am constrained to say I’m sorry you saw her,” he added after a moment’s hesitation.

Anne looked at him in silence, and Mr. Carfax cleared his throat.

“Miss Page,” he began, “I am here to speak on a very painful subject, and I think the sooner I mention it the better.”

“Certainly,” said Anne, drawing herself back against the cushions of her chair.

“I repeat, I am sorry you have seen my child, because in future, I say it with great reluctance, I wish her acquaintance with you to cease.”

Anne still waited in silence, and again the Vicar cleared his throat. It was difficult to talk with her eyes upon him, and his carefully prepared speeches seemed a trifle ridiculous.

“I’d better tell you the history of this affair from the beginning,” he broke out abruptly. “Shortly it is this. Some two or three weeks ago I received a private letter from a lady whose name I will not mention----”

“Madame Didier,” interrupted Anne quietly.

The Vicar paused.

“Madame Didier, since you seem to know my correspondent. It was a letter written to me as the vicar of the parish, begging me to warn Dr. Dakin against your influence with his wife.”

Anne did not speak.

“Madame Didier gave reasons for this interference,” he went on after a moment. “Reasons which seemed to me to be based on false and scandalous charges. The letter, however, so intimately concerned my friend, that I was compelled to show it to him. It was burnt in my presence, and such was my implicit confidence in you that I wrote a strong, I may say a threatening letter to the lady, forbidding her to circulate libellous reports.”

“I am grateful to you,” Anne said.

The Vicar glanced at her.

“I have since regretted that letter,” he added deliberately.

“A fortnight ago, business called me to London, and I spent an evening with my wife’s friends, the Lovells. Madame Didier, whose stay in England has been protracted, was with her aunt. I did not know this when I went to see the Lovells,” he added, “or I should naturally have avoided the chance of an unpleasant encounter.

“However, in spite of my protestations, and my refusal to hear your name spoken by her, the lady insisted, and to avoid entering upon unpleasant details, I may say at once that she gave me incontrovertible evidence as to the truth of her assertions.”

There was a pause which Anne did not break. She sat quite still, looking into the fire.

“I need not say,” pursued the Vicar stiffly, “that though I was constrained to offer an apology to Madame Didier for my somewhat intemperate letter, I repeated my warning to her with regard to the danger of spreading this story.”

“Thank you,” said Anne again.

The Vicar moved uncomfortably.

“Under any other circumstances--had Madame Didier, I mean, merely reported gossip or hearsay, I should immediately have come to you for an explanation, and I should have accepted your bare word against what might to others appear grave suspicion. But unfortunately, as I said, her evidence is incontrovertible. I have seen letters. In short, to put it plainly, Miss Page, to ask for an explanation from you would be the merest farce. It therefore becomes my painful duty----”

“An explanation of what?” asked Anne, turning to him with a deliberate movement, and again the Vicar fidgeted under her gaze.

“Of--of--a mode of life which proves you to have been unworthy of the position you have held in our midst.”

The Vicar gathered himself together; it was time for the peroration, and from force of habit his voice grew full and deep. He reminded himself vigorously of the sanctity of the home, the preservation of the family, and in sonorous tones continued----

“You have been loved and trusted by pure and innocent women. You have been esteemed as a friend by myself, as well as by many another upright and honourable man. And I say it with pain, you have deceived us. My own child has made you her confidante----”

Anne rose, and the stream of the Vicar’s eloquence suddenly ran dry.

There was a moment’s silence, during which he felt a prey to greater and more paralyzing nervousness than he had experienced since the preaching of his first sermon.

The pause was broken by the opening of the door, and the appearance of Burks with a letter on a tray.

“This is sent down from the Vicarage, ma’am,” she said, addressing her mistress, “and the maid says will Mr. Carfax kindly read it at once.”

She handed the tray to the Vicar, who took the letter, and with a murmured apology, broke the envelope. A note from his wife dropped out first. He picked it up, and hurriedly glanced through its contents.

“_I am wild with anxiety. I send you the enclosed, which has
just come from Mrs. Lovell, so that you may read it while you
are with Miss Page. She may perhaps be able to throw some light
upon the matter. At any rate, ask her advice. She is so good
and wise._”

The Vicar snatched up the other letter, which mechanically, in a dazed voice, he began to read aloud.

“_MY DEAR MARY_,

“_I hasten to tell you, though I fear too late, of something
I have just heard about your dear Sylvia. She has signed a
contract to go to America with a theatrical travelling company,
and I am told that she has already sailed. The manager I
understand to be a man of bad character, as indeed he must be
to induce a girl to leave England without her parents’ consent.
This has come to my knowledge in a roundabout way through a
chorus girl who happens to be related to my maid. I should have
telegraphed, but Simpkins has just showed me the announcement
of the company’s departure from Liverpool, and in that case a
telegram is useless._

“_All my sympathy, dear. In haste_,
“_Your affectionate_
“_LAURA LOVELL_.”

Mr. Carfax dropped the letter.

In the waning light, Anne saw that his face was white.

“You must have known of this!” he broke out fiercely. “You must have known, I say!”

Anne moved swiftly to his side, and laid her hand on his arm.

“It’s all right,” she whispered hurriedly. “I _did_ know. I stopped it. Sylvia is quite safe, at Carlisle House. If I had guessed that such news would reach you, I would have told you at once. I was going to tell you when you came in. But you put it out of my head,” she added simply.

The Vicar’s colour had not returned. He stood mopping his forehead slowly with his handkerchief, his face working so painfully that Anne, her eyes full of tears, turned away.

She opened her writing-table, and rang the bell.

“What are you going to do?” stammered her companion.

“Send a note to your wife. I can’t bear to think of her anxiety.”

“True,” murmured the Vicar. “You are very kind. It’s like you--to think of everything,” he added, still in a dazed voice.

He began to pace the room with uneven steps.

“If the maid has gone, run up as quickly as you can to the Vicarage with this note,” said Anne, sealing the envelope, as Burks entered.

“She’s still here, ma’am.”

“Then give it to her, and tell her to go _at once_, please, Burks. It’s important. Don’t keep her a moment longer talking.”

The maid disappeared, and Anne lighted the candles on the mantelpiece, quietly, one by one.

“You need have no anxiety,” she said without looking at the Vicar. “Sylvia has been very imprudent, but she realizes it, and is sorry. She had arranged with me to come home and tell you all about it, as soon as I had first spoken to you. She seemed to think that I might have some--some little influence. But I must now leave her to tell her own story. I only want you to understand that she’s safe. I went to my solicitor about the matter, and as she is under age, he had no difficulty in settling the whole affair.”

“But--this man?” demanded Mr. Carfax in an unsteady voice. “The man Mrs. Lovell mentions?”

For the first time she glanced at him, and saw the fear in his eyes.

“Be quite easy. Sylvia had no idea of any evil intention on the man’s part. She is only utterly ignorant and inexperienced. She is one of the pure and innocent women you mentioned just now.”

Her voice was gentle, and had not a trace of bitterness.

The Vicar continued for a moment his perambulation of the room.

Then he stopped abruptly and raised his head.

“Thank you,” he said in a husky tone. “I owe you a debt I can never repay. I----” he hesitated painfully. “I wish to God----” he broke out again, and again paused. She looked at him steadily.

All the pompous self-importance had died out of his face; all the arrogance of the priest who denounces the sinner. His was the very human face of a man still gasping with relief from deadly fear, still unable to believe that the threatened danger is over. And with this expression of scarcely assured safety there was mingled real sorrow, a look of real affection for the woman to whom he owed his escape from a crushing blow.

“You spoke of an explanation,” said Anne in a low voice. “A moment ago I should have asked you to leave me, because of the manner in which you spoke of it.

“Now I have changed my mind, and I think I should like to give you an explanation--_my_ explanation.”

She was still standing, still looking at him steadily.

“You were kind enough to say that people here had loved and trusted me. I am glad if that is the case--very glad.” She waited a moment.

“If as you say they have been good enough to give me their love and confidence, it is because I have understood them; because they have never been afraid to tell me their inmost thoughts. Well, you will not believe me, perhaps,--that power of understanding would never have been mine but for the ‘mode of life’ to which you have alluded.

“Twenty years ago, Mr. Carfax, I was a self-doubting, colourless woman. My youth, as I thought, was past. It had brought me nothing. No love, no human experience, no joys, no very deep sorrows even. Nothing but the grey hopeless depression of a woman who has never taken her part in the world, who has always stood outside, who knows nothing of life; the sort of woman who ignorant to begin with, grows narrower and more prejudiced as the years pass, till at last in the bitter sense of the word, she is an old maid by nature, useless as a friend, helpless as a comforter, of no account in a world of men and women she cannot understand.

“Well, before that happened to me, before I was old in heart at least, I met a man who loved me, and whom I loved. I might have married him. I chose _not_ to marry him, because----” She smiled a little. “I need not trouble you with my reasons. They seemed good reasons to me, and I have never regretted them. I lived with him for three years. The memory of those three years has lasted with me to this day, and has made me a woman so proud and happy that if my deep content has overflowed, and reached the lives of others, it is no credit to me. I simply can’t help caring for people, because by the mercy of Heaven, I have loved and been loved. Nothing else, for me at least, would have made that understanding and caring possible. Not the money that came to me, nor the opportunities it afforded for what is called ‘doing good.’ It was a change in _me_, that was needed, a personal experience of loving and suffering. Well! I have loved and I have suffered, and now I _understand_.

“That’s my little story. It’s a story I would not have told you ten minutes ago. But--well, you made me feel just now that you were human.

“Don’t imagine you see before you the sinner that repenteth. She has never repented. She never will repent, though it’s an old white-haired woman who is talking--to a man years younger than herself!”

Her eyes met his, and beneath their smiling gaze, half wise, half whimsical, the Vicar dropped his own, and reddened like a school-boy.

The gentle reproof, implied rather than spoken, went home.

Suddenly, in the presence of this dignified gracious woman, he felt raw and awkward, very young, more than a little ashamed. He was confused moreover, with the sense that there existed possibly whole realms of experience which no code of morals he had ever preached seemed adequate to cover.

Here was a woman who certainly possessed the fairest of the Christian virtues. She was gentle, tolerant, generous (with a twinge of compunction he realized how great a part the anticipated loss of her donations had played in his reflections during the walk from the Vicarage to Fairholme Court). She was patient, longsuffering,--the Vicar ran through the whole gamut of spiritual gifts, and acknowledged her richly endowed.

Could it be that there were other paths to the Kingdom of Heaven than the strait way and the narrow gate that alone were said to lead to salvation?

The very useful brain of Mr. Carfax, unaccustomed to be exercised in unusual directions, began to feel the strain, and its possessor wisely took the hint, and abandoned the fatiguing labour of original research.

In any case Miss Page was a charming woman, and by however amazing process the result had been achieved, a good one also.

He looked at her, and with a sudden frank movement, held out his hand.

“Forgive me,” he said simply. “You--you have shown me I had no right to judge. I beg your pardon.”

Anne put her hand into his with a very sweet smile.

“My dear friend,” she replied, “you must do what you think right, and Dymfield will not be behind the judgment of most of the world in this matter. You know I love the place, but I can’t stay here when the people no longer look upon me as a friend. Well, the world is wide, and fortunately for me I’m not a poor woman.”

“You mustn’t leave us! You won’t leave us!” begged the Vicar. “There will be no occasion. The position is unchanged. The only two people who know anything of--of the matter, are your friends. Even if through malice or carelessness a breath of scandal should reach others, surely you can trust us to treat the rumour with the----” He hesitated.

“With the contempt it doesn’t deserve?” suggested Anne gently.

Greatly to his surprise, and somewhat to his horror, the Reverend George Carfax was betrayed into an answering smile.

He hastened to efface it, but the deed was done.

“And Sylvia?” asked Anne tentatively. “I wanted her to stay with me for a few days. You have only to say if you would rather she did not, and I won’t ask her.”

“If after all the trouble she has given you, Sylvia will be welcome, I can answer for her delight,” returned Mr. Carfax promptly.

Anne put out her hand with an impulsive gesture.

“You are quite a dear!” she observed, and her sudden smile still further illuminated the dusky corners of the Vicar’s strictly limited imagination.

The entrance of Burks with the tea-things gave him a moment to recover from the shock of a series of mental and emotional upheavals to which he was unaccustomed.

“You will stay, of course?” begged Anne. “My note to your wife was quite explicit,” she added. “She won’t be anxious now.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Carfax. “I want to hear particulars about Sylvia, and I feel I should be all the better for a cup of tea.”

Five minutes later, Mrs. Carfax entered a room bright with fire and candle-light, in which her husband sat comfortably ensconced in an arm-chair opposite to Miss Page, who was passing him hot cakes of a delicious crispness.

Anne went quickly across the room.

“It’s quite right. Don’t worry,” she hastened to say, as she kissed her visitor. “I’m just telling your husband all about it.”

“Sylvia must come home!” declared her mother, after Anne’s recital. Her hand was still trembling as she put down her tea-cup. “She’s not fit to be left alone in a great wicked city. I always _said_ to George it was madness to let her go away from us!”

“It’s so difficult to get women to take broad views,” complained the Vicar, turning to Anne, “it requires the masculine mind, free from prejudice and indifferent to common opinion, to see the wider outlook.”

Anne laid her hand on his wife’s arm.

“Dear Mrs. Carfax, do let her finish her training,” she urged. “The child acknowledges her foolishness. I quite agree that she ought not to be alone, and before you came in, I was suggesting a plan to your husband.

“Let her go to my brother and his wife. They lost their little girl some years ago, and Alice has always longed for a daughter. She’s such a nice kind little woman, and she would treat Sylvia as her own child. I spoke to her of the possibility of this, before I left London, and she was delighted with the idea.”

“It would be a splendid thing for her, Mary, if it can be arranged. It’s so like Miss Page to have thought of such a plan.”

Mrs. Carfax hesitated.

“We must think about it. I wouldn’t give my consent for her to go anywhere else. But if it’s a case of _your_ relations, dear, it’s different. I should feel safe and happy about her, of course. We must talk about it, George.”

Anne leant back against her sofa cushions with a satisfied expression.

When her visitors rose to go, she followed them to the door.

While his wife was being helped into her goloshes by Burks, outside in the hall, the Vicar lingered a moment to hold her hand in a tight grasp.

“I can never thank you enough,” he murmured. “You are the best woman I ever met,” he added, looking her straight in the face.

Anne flushed a little; there were tears in her eyes.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I shall look forward to having Sylvia here next week.”

* * * * *

When the hall door had closed, she drew a deep breath of exhaustion and relief.

She had won peace with honour. She knew it, and was thankful. But she was glad to be alone.

She walked round the room, bending over the pots of lilies of the valley, touching the waxen bells of the hyacinths with gentle fingers. They had been grown for her home-coming, and they welcomed her delicately. She stirred the fire to a brighter blaze, and smiled to see its glow spreading to the furthest corner of the room.

Never had her home seemed so sweet, so inviting, so restful.

“It would have broken my heart to leave it!” she thought with sudden conviction.

She looked at the bookcases filled with books all the more precious, because for three months she had not touched them.

Finally she reached for a volume on one of the upper shelves, and taking it to the sofa, turned to a poem she loved.

“_Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses,
O toi, tous mes plaisirs! O toi, tous mes devoirs!
Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses,
La douceur du foyer et le charme des soirs,
Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses!_

“_Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon,
Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.
Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton cœur m’était bon!
Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,
Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon._”

Anne let the book slip into her lap. “_Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses_,” she repeated softly.

It was of these “imperishable things” she was thinking, the things of the spirit, that persist when as with her the desire of the flesh is dead, and the lust of the eyes. The imperishable things that last into the evening of life, when the stars come out, and ever nearer and nearer draw the “murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.”

XXIII

It was two years before François Fontenelle re-visited Fairholme Court. Again it was June, and Anne had taken him to the garden, full of pride to show him her roses in the height of their beauty.

They strolled round its paths talking of a thousand things, and finally sat down under the arch, over which there poured a cascade of snowy bloom. The table in front of the bench was littered with papers, which François began idly to examine.

“_The New Thought!_” he exclaimed, holding up one of the leaflets between his finger and thumb. “What on earth are _you_ doing with this latter day product?”

Anne laughed. “A strenuous young thing who is spending her holiday in the village brought a heap of papers this morning, and begged me to read them. She said it was scandalous that such an intelligent woman as I appeared to her, should be ignorant of the ‘movement,’” she added demurely.

“Whatever the modern young woman lacks, it isn’t cheek,” he returned.

“Well! What do you think of the ‘no property’ idea in the eternally boring sex question? Let me see, there are to be state babies, aren’t there? Have state lovers been suggested yet, or is that a figment of my imagination?”

Anne sighed. “Perhaps I’m too old for it,” she said. “I know I don’t understand it. It all seems to me so terribly business-like, and I was never a business woman.”

François laughed. “I should as soon expect one of these roses to start company promoting.”

“One thing I feel quite sure about,” she went on, drawing her lace shawl round her shoulders. “The men and women who write some of these letters have never loved.”

“Love has gone out of fashion in England, and the new wisdom has taken its place,” observed François. “Its professors are gentlemen who live on grape nuts, and are occupied municipally. They don’t believe in love, partly because a diet of grape nuts is not conducive to the emotion, partly because they are afraid of disagreeing with Mr. Bernard Shaw. You have saved me from belonging to the latter class, but only as a brand is snatched from the burning.”

“The simile is ill-chosen,” declared Anne serenely. “There’s no fire about any of the new doctrines. They are all eminently cool, calculating and dull. Dull as ditch-water, and quite as appetizing.”

François smiled. “You are a very old-fashioned woman, Anne,” he declared, “and the sight of these things near you is absurd, and even indecent.”

He swept them from the table.

“Go and fetch your Herrick, and read me how roses first came red, and lilies white.”

“My lord shall be obeyed--another time,” said Anne laughing.

“How is Mrs. Dakin?” asked François suddenly, lighting a cigarette.

Anne was engaged in pushing the end of a trailing green branch through one of the spaces in the lattice work.

“She and the baby, who is six weeks old to-day, are away on a visit to her mother. She is very well, and exceedingly happy,” she added after a moment spent in arranging the branch to her satisfaction.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

She turned to him. “I believe you are, François.”

“I’m also glad to hear she’s away, since because of that circumstance presumably I was honoured with an invitation to-day.”

“Why haven’t I seen you for so long?” inquired Anne irrelevantly.

“I was afraid to come,” he said, looking at her with a smile.

“Why?”

“Oh, not because I dreaded a scene with you. Have you ever made a scene in your life, Anne? You ought to have done it once at least, to prove your affinity with the sex you adorn. But I don’t believe you ever have. No. I was afraid of your eyes.”

“What’s the matter with my eyes?” she asked, with a smile concealed in them.

“Anne Page, if you’re going to flirt with me I give you due warning that I’m a poor weak man, and I can’t answer for the consequences.”

She laughed. “The baby is a darling, and I’m its godmother. They’ve called her _Anne_.”

“They may, but they needn’t flatter themselves she’ll ever be as attractive as Anne Page.”

“Her father already thinks her the most lovely creature in the world--except his wife.”

“And how are all the other worthies? Still at your feet, I suppose?”

“They are all charming to me. My little friend Sylvia, the Vicar’s daughter, sang at her first concert the other night, and had a great success. The vicarage is standing on its head with pride, in consequence.”

“And the pastoral life still amuses you?”

“Very much.”

“Wonderful woman!”

“Dear François, why not?” she asked. “You know I am a very simple person.”

“Yes. Though you were once the queen of quite a brilliant salon.”

She was silent.

“When are you coming over to see your picture?”

“This autumn.” For a moment she paused. “You know my wishes, François? I have left René’s pictures to the Luxembourg. The two we like best--you know them--are to hang on either side of the portrait. It’s in my will, of course.”

He smoked a moment without speaking.

“I wonder if he’ll come and look at them?” he said at last. “I think he will, and you’ll smile at him out of the portrait.”

“I’m so glad he liked it,” she answered softly, after a long pause.

“He only saw it once. I never dared show it to him again. That’s why I put it away.”

The birds had begun their evening song, and the garden rang with the voices of blackbirds and thrushes.

“Well! I must get back to _The Chase_,” declared François, glancing at his watch. “I shall be late for dinner as it is. This is good-bye till September. Not a moment later mind, and then you will stay in Paris a decent time?”

He looked at her, as she got up and stood for a moment embowered in the roses, her lace shawl hanging from her arms, her figure still beautiful and gracious.

“The gods have granted you the gift of eternal youth, Anne,” he declared. “I want to paint another portrait.”

She laughed, and shook her head.

“There will be no more portraits,” she said.

* * * * *

She went with him as far as a little gate which gave upon the meadows, through which a field path led to _The Chase_.

After he had gone she wandered into the lavender-garden, and in the gathering summer twilight paced the path between the grey-green borders.

In the west, the sky was still flushed with sunset. The air, so quiet that not a leaf trembled, was sweet with the scent of flowers.

Anne walked slowly, her mind occupied with pleasant trifles. She decided that the lilies in the south border must this autumn be divided. She must tell Davis to plant more daffodils in the orchard under the apple trees. There was the village children’s treat to be considered, and she must not forget to talk it over with the Vicar. Suddenly she remembered that Dr. Dakin was coming in to smoke his pipe and talk. Madge and the baby were returning on Thursday. He would therefore be in excellent spirits.

The roses on the hedge round the sundial breathed a sweet strong fragrance into the dusk.

Anne picked one of them, and tucked it into the front of her gown, before she turned towards the house.

THE END

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.

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