Mistress Anne Part 52

"Why should you feel responsible?"

"It's the water supply. Typhoid. If I had been there I should have had it looked into. I had started an investigation but there was no one to push it. And now there are a dozen cases. Eric Brand's little wife, Beulah, and old Peter Bower, and the mother of little Francois."

"And you are thinking that you ought to go down?"

"Yes."

"I don't see how I can let you go. It doesn't make much difference where people are sick, Brooks, there's always so much for us doctors to do."

"But if I could be spared----"

"You can't, Brooks. I am sorry. But I've learned to depend on you."

The older man laid his hand affectionately on the shoulder of the younger. If for the moment Richard felt beneath the softness of that touch the iron glove of one who expected obedience from a subordinate, he did not show it by word or glance.

They talked of other things after that, and presently Richard wandered off to find Eve. He pa.s.sed beyond the terraces to the garden. He felt tired and depressed. The fragrance of the roses was heavy and almost overpowering. There was a stone bench set in the midst of a tangle of bloom. He sank down on it, asking nothing better than to sit there alone and think it out.

He felt at this moment, strongly, what had come to him many times during the winter--that he was not in any sense his own master. Austin directed, controlled, commanded. For the opportunity which he had given young Brooks he expected the return of acquiescence. Thus it happened that Richard found less of big things and more of little ones in his life than he had antic.i.p.ated. There had been times when the moral side of a case had appealed to him more than the medical, when he had been moved by generosities such as had moved his grandfather, when he had wanted to be human rather than professional, and always he had found Austin blocking his idealistic impulses, scoffing at the things he had valued, imposing upon him a somewhat hard philosophy in the place of a living faith. It seemed to Richard that in his profession, as well as in his love affair, he was no longer meeting life with a direct glance.

He rose and went on. He must find Eve. He had promised and yet in that moment he knew that he did not want to see her. He wanted his mother's touch, her understanding, her love. He wanted Crossroads and big Ben--and the people who, because of his grandfather, had called him--"friend."

He found Anne and Geoffrey and Marie-Louise by the fountain at the end of the gra.s.s walk. Marie-Louise perched on the rim was, in her pale green gown, like some nymph freshly risen. Her hat was off, and her red hair caught the sunlight.

Anne was reading the first chapter of Geoffrey's new book. He sat just above her on the steps of the fountain. His gla.s.ses were off, and as he looked down at her his eyes showed a brilliancy which seemed to contradict his failing sight.

Marie-Louise held up a warning finger. "Sit down," she said, "and listen.

It is such a wonder-book, Dr. d.i.c.ky."

So Richard sat down and Anne went on reading. She read well; her voice had a thrilling quality, and once it broke.

"Oh, why did you make it so sad?" she said.

"Could I make it glad?" he asked, and to Richard, watching, there came the jealous certainty that between the two of them there was some subtle understanding.

When at last Anne had read all that he had written Marie-Louise said, importantly, "Anne is the heroine, the Princess who serves. Will you ever make me the heroine of a book, Geoffrey Fox?"

"Perhaps. Give me a plot?"

"Have a girl who loves a marble G.o.d--then some day she meets a man--and the G.o.d is afraid he will lose her, so he wakes to life and says, 'If you love this man, you will have to accept the common lot of women, you will have to work for him and obey him--and some day he will die and your soul will be rent with sorrow. But if you love me, I shall be here when you are forgotten, and while you live my love will demand nothing but the verses that you read to me and the roses that lay at my feet.'"

Geoffrey gave her an eager glance. "Jove, there's more in that than a joke. Some day I shall get you to amplify your idea."

"I'll give it to you if you promise to write the book here. There's a balcony room that overlooks the river--and n.o.body would ever interrupt you but me, and I'd only come when you wanted me."

Marie-Louise's breath was short as she finished. To cover her emotion she caught up the wreath which she had made in the morning, and which lay beside her.

"I made it for you," she told Geoffrey, "and now that I've done it, I don't know what to do with it."

She was blushing and glowing, less of an imp and more of a girl than Richard had ever seen her.

Geoffrey rose to the occasion. "It shall be a mascot for my new book.

I'll hang it on the wall over my desk, and every time I look up at it, it shall say to me, 'These are the laurels you are to win.'"

"You have won them," Marie-Louise flashed.

"No artist ever feels himself worthy of laurel. His achievement always falls short of his ambition."

"But 'Three Souls,'" Marie-Louise said; "surely you were satisfied?"

"I did not write it--the credit belongs to Mistress Anne. Your wreath should be hers."

But Marie-Louise's mind was made up. Before Geoffrey could grasp what she was about to do, she fluttered up the steps, and dropped the garland lightly on his dark locks.

It became him well.

"Do you like it?" he asked Anne.

"To the Victor--the spoils," she told him, smiling.

Richard felt out of it. He wanted to get away, and he knew that he must find Eve. Eve, who when he met her would laugh her light laugh, and call him "d.i.c.ky Boy," and refuse to listen when he spoke of Crossroads.

The path that he took led to a little tea house built on the bank, which gave a wide view of the river and the Jersey hills. He found Winifred and Tony side by side and silent.

"Better late than never," was Tony's greeting.

"I am hunting for Eve."

"She and Meade were here a moment ago," Winifred informed him. "Sit down and give an account of yourself. We haven't seen you in a million years."

"Just a week, dear lady. I have been horribly busy."

"You say that as if you meant the 'horribly.'"

"I do. It has been a 'bluggy' business, and I am tired." He laughed with a certain amount of constraint. "If I were a boy, I should say 'I want to go home.'"

Winifred gave him a quick glance. "What has happened?"

"Oh, everybody is ill at Crossroads. Beastly conditions. And they ought to have been corrected. Beulah's ill."

"The little bride?"

"Yes. And Eric is frantic. He has written me, asking me to come down. But Austin can't see it."

"Could you go for the day?"

"If I went for a day I should stay longer. There's everything to be done."

He switched away from the subject. "Crowd seems to have separated. Fox and Anne Warfield by the fountain. You and Tony here, and Eve and Pip as yet undiscovered."