Mistress Anne Part 38

Thus in the darkness Geoffrey struggled and strove. "Speaking of candlesticks," he wrote to Anne, "it was as if a thousand candles lighted my world when I read your letter!"

CHAPTER XVI

_In Which Pan Pipes to the Stars._

THAT Richard in New York should miss his mother was inevitable. But he was not homesick. He was too busy for that. Austin's vogue was tremendous.

"Every successful man ought to be two men," he told Richard, as they talked together one Sunday night at Austin's place in Westchester, "'another and himself,' as Browning puts it. Then there would be one to labor and the other to enjoy. I want to retire, and I can't. There's a selfish instinct in all of us to grip and hold. That is why I am pinning my faith to you. You can slip in as I slip out. I have visions of riding to hounds and sailing the seas some day, to say nothing of putting up a good game of golf. But perhaps that's a dream. A man can't get away from his work, not when he loves it."

"That's why you're such a success, sir," Richard told him, honestly; "you go to every operation as if it were a banquet."

Austin laughed. "I'm not such a ghoul. But there's always the wonder of it with me. I sometimes wish I had been a churchgoing man, Brooks. There isn't much more for me to learn about bodies, but there's much about souls. I have a feeling that some day in some physical experiment I shall find tangible evidence of the spiritual. That's why I say my prayers to Something every night, and I rather think It's G.o.d."

"I know it's G.o.d," said Richard, simply, "on such a night as this."

They were silent in the face of the evening's beauty. The great trees on the old estate were black against a silver sky. White statues shone like pale ghosts among them. Back of Richard and his host, in a semicircle of dark cedars, a marble Pan piped to the stars.

"And in the cities babies are sleeping on fire escapes," Austin meditated. "If I had had a son I should have sent him to the slums to find his work. But the Fates have given me only Marie-Louise."

And now his laugh was forced. "Brooks, the G.o.ds have checkmated me.

Marie-Louise is the son of her father. I had planned that she should be the daughter of her mother. I sowed some rather wild oats in my youth, and waked in middle age to the knowledge that my materialism had led me astray. So I married an idealist. I wanted my children to have a spiritual background of character such as I have not possessed. And the result of that marriage is--Marie-Louise! If she has a soul it is yet to be discovered."

"She is young. Give her time."

"I have been giving her time for eighteen years. I have wanted to see her mother in her, to see some gleam of that exquisite fineness. There are things we men, the most material of us, want in our women, and I want it in Marie-Louise. But she gives back what I have given her--nothing more.

And I don't know what to do with her."

"Her mother?" Richard hinted.

"Julie is worn out with trying to meet a nature so unlike her own. Our love for each other has made us understand. But neither of us understands Marie-Louise. I sent her away to school, but she wouldn't stay. She likes her home and she hates rules. She loves animals, and if she were a boy she would practice medicine. Being a woman and having no outlet for her energies, she is freakish. You saw the way she was dressed at dinner."

"I liked it," Richard said; "all that dead silver with her red hair."

"But it is too--sophisticated, for a young girl. Why, man, she ought to be in white frocks and pearls, and putting cushions behind her mother's back."

"You say that because her mother wore white and pearls, and put cushions behind _her_ mother's back. There aren't many of the white-frocks-and-pearls kind left. It's a new generation. Perhaps dead silver with red hair is an expression of it. And it is we who don't understand."

"Perhaps. But it's a problem." Austin rose. "If you'll excuse me, Brooks, I'll go to my wife. We always read together on Sunday nights."

He sent Marie-Louise out to Richard. She came through the starlight, a shining figure in her silver dress, with a silver Persian kitten hugged up in her arms. She sat on the sun-dial and swung her jade bracelet for the kitten to play with.

"Dad and mother are reading the Bible. He doesn't believe in it, and she gets him to listen once a week. And then she reads the prayers for the day. When I was a little girl I had to listen--but never again!"

"Why not?"

"Why should I listen to things that I don't believe? To-night it is the ten virgins and their lamps. And Dad's pretending that he's interested. I am writing a play about it, but mother doesn't know. The Wise Virgins are Bernard Shaw women who know what they want in the way of husbands and go to it. The Foolish Virgins are the old maids, who think it unwomanly to get ready, and find themselves left in the end!"

The silver kitten clawed at the silver dress, and climbed on her mistress's shoulder.

"All of the parables make good modern plots. Mother would be shocked if she knew I was writing them that way. So I don't tell her. Mother is a dear, but she doesn't understand. I should like to tell things to Dad, but he won't listen. If I were a boy he would listen. But he thinks I ought to be like mother."

She slipped from the sun-dial and came and sat in the chair which her father had vacated. "If I were a boy I should have studied medicine. I wanted to be a trained nurse, but Dad wouldn't let me. He said I'd hate having to do the hard work, and perhaps I should. I like to wear pretty clothes, and a nurse never has a chance."

"Perhaps you'll marry."

"Oh, no. I should _hate_ to be like mother."

"Why?"

"She just lives for Dad. Now I couldn't do that. I am not going to marry.

I don't like men. They ask too much. I like books and cats and being by myself. I am never lonesome. Sometimes I talk to Pan over there, and pretend he is playing to me on his pipes, and then I write poetry. Real poetry. I'll read it to you some time. There's one called 'The Rose Garden.' I wrote it about a woman who was a patient of father's. When she knew she was going to die she wrote him a little note and asked him to see that her body was cremated, and that the ashes were strewn over the roses in his garden. He didn't seem to see anything in it but just a sick woman's fancy. But I knew that she was in love with him. And my poem tells that her blessed dust gathered itself into a gentle wraith which lives and breathes near him."

"And you aren't afraid to feel that her gentle wraith is here in the garden?"

"Why should I be? I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe in fairies, either, or Santa Claus. But I like to read about them and write about them, and--and wish that it might be so."

There was something almost wistful in her voice. Richard, aware suddenly of what a child she was, bent forward.

"I think I half believe in fairies, and Christmas wouldn't be anything without Santa Claus, and as for the soul of your gentle lady, I have a feeling that it is finding Heaven in the rose garden."

She was stroking the silver kitten which had curled up in her lap. "I wish I weren't such a--heathen," she said, suddenly. "I know what you mean. But it is only the poetic sense in me that makes me know. I can't _believe_ anything. Not about souls--or prayers. Do you ever pray?"

"Every night. On my knees."

"On your knees? Oh, is it as bad as that?"

Richard, writing to his mother, said of Marie-Louise, "Her mind isn't in a healthy state. It hasn't anything to feed on. Her father is too busy and her mother too ill to realize that she needs companionship of a certain kind. I wish she might have been a pupil at the Crossroads school, with Anne Warfield for her teacher. But no hope of that."

He wrote, too, of his rushing days, and Nancy, answering, hid from him the utter hopelessness of her outlook. Her life began and ended with his letters and the week-ends which he was able to give her. But some of his week-ends had to be spent with Eve; a man cannot completely ignore the fact that he has a fiancee, and Richard would have been less than human if he had not responded to the appeal of youth and beauty. So he motored with Eve and danced with Eve, and did all of the delightful summer things which are possible in the big city near the sea. Aunt Maude went to the North Sh.o.r.e, but Eve stayed with Winifred, and wove about Richard her spells of flattery and of frivolity.

"I want to be near you, d.i.c.ky boy. If I'm not you'll work too hard."

"It is work that I like."

"I believe that you like it better than you do me, d.i.c.ky."

"Don't be silly, Eve."

"You are always saying that. Do you like your work better than you do me, d.i.c.ky?"

"Of course not." But he had no pretty things to say.