Mistress Anne Part 20

"I hate to have you talk like that. It seems to separate me in some way from your friendship, and I thought we were friends."

Her gentleness conquered his mad mood. "Oh, you little saint, you little saint, and I am such a sinner."

So they patched it up, and he read to her the last chapter of his book.

"_And now in the darkness they lay dying, young Franz from Nuremberg, and young George from London, and Michel straight from the vineyards on the coast of France._"

In the darkness they spoke of their souls. Soon they would go out into the Great Beyond. What then, after death? Franz thought they might go marching on. Young George had a vision of green fields and of hawthorn hedges. But it was young Michel who spoke of the face of G.o.d.

Was this the Geoffrey who had teased her on the stairs? This man who wrote words which made one shake and shiver and sob?

"Oh, how do you do it, how do you do it?" The tears were running down her cheeks.

She saw him then as people rarely saw Geoffrey Fox. "G.o.d knows," he said, seriously, "but I think that your prayers have helped."

And after she had gone up-stairs he sat long by the fire, alone, with his hand shading his eyes.

The next morning he went to see Richard. The young doctor was in the Garden Room which he used as an office. It was on the ground floor of the big house, with a deer's horns over the fireplace, an ancient desk in one corner, a sideboard against the north wall. In days gone by this room had served many purposes. Here men in hunting pink had gathered for the gay breakfasts which were to fortify them for their sport. On the sideboard mighty roasts had been carved, and hot dishes had steamed. On the round table had been set forth bottles and gla.s.ses on Sheffield trays. Men ate much and rode hard. They had left to their descendants a divided heritage of indigestion and of strong sinews, to make of it what they could.

Geoffrey entering asked at once, "Why the Garden Room? There is no garden."

"There was a garden," Richard told him, "but there is a tradition that a pair of lovers eloped over the wall, and the irate father destroyed every flower, every shrub, as if the garden had betrayed him."

"There's a story in that. Did the girl ever come back to find the garden dead?"

"Who knows?" Richard said lightly; "and now, what's the matter with your eyes?"

There was much the matter, and when Richard had made a thorough examination he spoke of a specialist. "Have you ever had trouble with them before?"

"Once, when I was a youngster. I thought I was losing my sight. I used to open my eyes in the dark and think that the curse had come upon me. My grandfather was blind."

"It is rarely inherited, and not in this form. But there might be a predisposition. Anyhow, you'll have to stop work for a time."

"I can't stop work. My book is in the last chapters. And it is a great book. I've never written a great book before. I can talk freely to you, doctor. You know that we artists can't help our egotism. It's a disease that is easily diagnosed."

Richard laughed. "What's the name of your book?"

"'Three Souls.' Anne Warfield gave me the theme."

As he spoke her name it was like a living flame between them. Richard tried to answer naturally. "She ought to be able to write books herself."

Geoffrey shrugged. "She will live her life stories, not write them."

"Why not?"

"Because we men don't let such women live their own lives. We demand their service and the inspiration of their sympathy. And so we won't let them achieve. We make them light our torches. We are selfish beasts, you know, in the last a.n.a.lysis."

He laughed and rose. "I'll see a specialist. But n.o.body shall make me stop writing. Not till I have scribbled 'Finis' to my ma.n.u.script."

"It isn't well to defy nature."

"Defiance is better than submission. Nature's a cruel jade. You know that. In the end she gets us all. That's why I hate the country. It's there that we see Nature unmasked. I stayed three weeks at a farm last summer, and from morning to night murder went on. A cat killed a cardinal, and a blue jay killed a grosbeak. One of the servants shot a squirrel. And when I walked out one morning to see the sheep, a lamb was gone and we had a roast with mint sauce for dinner. For lunch we had the squirrel in a stew. A hawk swept down upon the chickens, and all that escaped we ate later fried, with cream gravy."

"In most of your instances man was the offender."

"Well, if man didn't kill, something else would. For every lamb there's a wolf."

"You are looking on only one side of it."

"When you can show me the other I'll believe in it. But not to-day when you tell me that my sun may be blotted out."

Something in his voice made the young doctor lay his hand on his shoulder and say quietly: "My dear fellow, don't begin to dread that which may never come. There should be years of light before you. Only you'll have to be careful."

They stood now in the door of the Garden Room. The sun was shining, the snow was melting. There was the acrid smell of box from the hedge beyond.

"I hate caution," said young Geoffrey; "I want to do as I please."

"So does every man," said Richard, "but life teaches him that he can't."

"Oh, Life," scoffed Geoffrey Fox; "life isn't a school. It is a joy ride, with rocks ahead."

CHAPTER IX

_In Which Anne, Pa.s.sing a Shop, Turns In._

ANNE had the Crossroads ball much on her mind. She spoke to Beulah about it.

"I don't know what to wear."

"You'd better go to town with me on Sat.u.r.day and look for something."

"Perhaps I will. If I had plenty of money it would be easy. Beulah, did you ever see such clothes as Eve Chesley's?"

"If I could spend as much as she does, I'd make more of a show."

"Think of all the tailors and dressmakers and dancing masters and hair-dressers it has taken to make Eve what she is. And yet all the art is hidden."

"I don't think it is hidden. I saw her powder her nose right in front of the men that day she first came. She had a little gold case with a mirror in it, and while Dr. Brooks and Mr. Fox were sitting on the stairs with her, she took it out and looked at herself and rubbed some rouge on her cheeks."

Anne had a vision of the three of them sitting on the stairs. "Well,"

she said, in a fierce little fashion, "I don't know what the world is coming to."

Beulah cared little about Eve's world. For the moment Eric filled her horizon, and the dress she was to get to make herself pretty for him.