Mistress Anne Part 51

"Dr. d.i.c.ky hopes his eyes are getting better."

"He says they are. That he sees things now through a sort of silver rain.

He has to have some one write for him. His little sister Mimi has been doing it, but she is going to be married."

"Mimi?"

"Yes. He found out that she had a lover, and so he has insisted. And then he will be left alone."

She sat gazing into the fire, a small humped-up figure in a gorgeous dressing-gown. At last she said, "Why didn't you love him?"

"There was some one else, Marie-Louise."

Marie-Louise drew close and laid her red head on Anne's knee. "Some one that you are going to marry?"

Anne shook her head. "Some one whom I shall never marry. He loves--another girl, Marie-Louise."

"Oh!" There was a long silence, as the two of them gazed into the fire.

Then Marie-Louise reached up a thin little hand to Anne's warm clasp.

"That's always the way, isn't it? It is a sort of game, with Love always flitting away to--another girl."

CHAPTER XXI

_In Which St. Michael Hears a Call._

IT was in April that Geoffrey Fox wrote to Anne.

"When I told you that I was coming back to Bower's, I said that I wanted quiet to think out my new book, but I did not tell you that I fancied I might find your ghost flitting through the halls, or on the road to the schoolhouse. I felt that there might linger in the long front room the glowing spirit of the little girl who sat by the fire and talked to me of my soldiers and their souls.

"And what I thought has come true. You are everywhere, Mistress Anne, not as I last saw you at Rose Acres in silken attire, but fluttering before me in your frock of many flounces, carrying your star of a lantern through the twilight on your way to Diogenes, scolding me on the stairs----! What days, what hours! And always you were the little school-teacher, showing your wayward scholars what to do with life!

"Perhaps I have done with it less than you expected. But at least I have done more with it than I had hoped. I am lining my pockets with money, and Mimi has a chest of silver. That is the immediate material effect of the sale of 'Three Souls.' But there is more than the material effect.

The letters which I get from the people who have read the book are like wine to my soul. To think that I, Geoffrey Fox, who have frittered and frivoled, should have put on paper things which have burned into men's consciousness and have made them better. I could never have done it except for you. Yet in all humility I can say that I have done it, and that never while life lasts shall I think again of my talent as a little thing.

"For it is a great thing, Mistress Anne, to have written a book. In all of my pot-boiling days I would never have believed it. A plot was a plot, and presto, the thing was done! The world read and forgot. But the world doesn't forget. Not when we give our best, and when we aim to get below the surface things and the shallow things and call up out of men's hearts that which, in these practical days, they try to hide.

"I suppose Brooks has told you about my eyes, and of how it may happen that I shall, for the rest of my life, be able to see through a gla.s.s darkly.

"That is something to be thankful for, isn't it? It is a rather weird experience when, having adjusted one's self in antic.i.p.ation of a catastrophe, the catastrophe hangs fire. Like old Pepys, I had resigned myself to the inevitable--indeed in those awful waiting days I read, more than once, the last paragraph of his diary.

"'And so I betake myself to that course which it is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave; for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good G.o.d prepare me!'

"Yet Pepys kept his sight all the rest of his life, and regretted, I fancy, more than once, that he did not finish his diary. And, perhaps, I, too, shall be granted this dim vision until the end.

"It seems to me that there are many things which I ought to tell you--I know there are a thousand things which are forbidden. But at least I can speak of Diogenes. I saw him at Crossroads the other day, much puffed up with pride of family. And I can speak of Mrs. Nancy, who is a white shadow of herself. Why doesn't Brooks see it? He was down here for a week recently, and he didn't seem to realize that anything was wrong. Perhaps she is always so radiant when he comes that she dazzles his eyes.

"She and Miss Sulie are a pathetic pair. I meet them on the road on their errands of mercy. They are like two sisters of charity in their long capes and little bonnets. Evidently Mrs. Brooks feels that if her son cannot doctor the community she can at least nurse it. The country folks adore her, and go to her for advice, so that Crossroads still opens wide its doors to the people, as it did in the days of old Dr. Brooks.

"And now, does the Princess still serve? I can see you with your blue bowl on your way to Peggy, and stopping on the stairs to light for me the torch of inspiration. And now all of this service and inspiration is being spilled at the feet of--Marie-Louise! Will you give her greetings, and ask her how soon I may come and worship at the shrine of her grinning old G.o.d?"

Anne, carrying his letter to Marie-Louise, asked, "Shall I tell him to come?"

"Yes. I didn't want him to go away, but he said he must--that he couldn't write here. But I knew why he went, and you knew."

"You needn't look at me so reproachfully, Marie-Louise. It isn't my fault."

"It is your fault," Marie-Louise accused her, "for being like a flame.

Father says that people hold out their hands to you as they do to a fire."

"And what," Anne demanded, "has all this to do with Geoffrey Fox?"

"You know," Marie-Louise told her bluntly, "he loves you and looks up to you--and I--sit at his feet."

There was something of tenseness in the small face framed by the red hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's cheek with a tender finger. "Dear heart," she said, "he is just a man."

For a moment the child stood very still, then she said, "Is he? Or is he a G.o.d, like my Pan in the garden?"

Later she decided that Geoffrey should come in May. "When there are roses. And I'll have some people out."

It was in May that Rose Acres justified its name. The marble Pan piping on his reeds faced a garden abloom with beauty. At the right, a gra.s.s walk led down to a sunken fountain approached by wide stone steps.

It was on these steps that Marie-Louise sat one morning, weaving a garland.

"I am going to tie it with gold ribbon," she said. "Tibbs got the laurel for me."

"Who is it for?"

"It may be for--Pan," Marie-Louise wore an air of mystery, "and it may not."

She stuck it later on Pan's head, but the effect did not please her. "You are nothing but a grinning old marble doll," she told him, and Anne laughed at her.

"I hoped some day you'd find that out."

Richard, arriving late that afternoon, found Mrs. Austin on the terrace.

"The young people are in the garden," she said; "will you hunt them up?"

"I want to talk to Dr. Austin, if I may."

"He's in the house. He was called to the telephone."

Austin, coming out, found his young a.s.sistant on the portico.

"Can you give me a second, sir? I've a letter from mother. There's a lot of sickness at Crossroads. And I feel responsible."