Mistress Anne Part 54

There was nothing cold about her now. She was a fiery spark. "Only a--_cad_ could do such a thing--and I thought--oh, Dr. d.i.c.ky, I thought he was a _man_----"

She flung herself at his feet like a stricken child. He went down to her.

"Marie-Louise, stop. Sit up and tell me what's the matter."

She sat up. "I shall ask Anne. I shall go and get her and ask her."

He found himself calling after her, "Marie-Louise," but she was gone.

She came back presently, dragging the protesting Anne. "But Marie-Louise, what do you want of me?"

Richard, rising, said, "Please don't think I permitted this. I tried to stop her."

"I didn't want to be stopped," Marie-Louise told them. "I want to know whether you and Geoffrey Fox are going to be married."

Anne's cheeks were stained red. "Of course not. But it isn't anything to get so excited about, is it, Marie-Louise?"

"Yes, it is. He told Dr. d.i.c.ky that you were, and he _lied_. And I thought, oh, you know the wonderful things I thought about him, Mistress Anne."

Anne's arm went around the sad little nymph in green. "You must still think wonderful things of him. He was very unhappy, and desperate about his eyes. And it seemed to him that to a.s.sert a thing might make it come true."

"But you didn't love him?"

"Never, Marie-Louise."

And now Richard, ignoring the presence of Marie-Louise, ignoring everything but the question which beat against his heart, demanded:

"If you knew that he had told me this, why didn't you make things clear?"

"When I might have made things clear--you were engaged to Eve."

She turned abruptly from him to Marie-Louise. "Run back to your poet, dear heart. He is waiting for the book that you were going to bring him.

And remember that you are not to sit in judgment. You are to be eyes for him, and light."

It was a sober little nymph in green who marched away with her book.

Geoffrey sat on the stone bench a little withdrawn from the others. His lean face, straining toward the house, relaxed as she came within his line of vision.

"You were a long time away," he said, and made a place for her beside him, and she sat down and opened her book.

And now, back in the dim library, Anne and Richard!

"I stayed," she said, "because they were speaking out there of Crossroads. I have had a letter, too, from Sulie. She says that the situation is desperate."

"Yes. They need me. And I ought to go. They are my people. I feel that in a sense I belong to them--as my grandfather belonged."

"Do you mean that if you go now you will stay?"

"I am not sure. The future must take care of itself."

"Your mother would be glad if your decision finally came to that."

"Yes. And I should be glad. But this time I shall not go for my mother's sake alone. Something deeper is drawing me. I can't quite a.n.a.lyze it. It is a call"--he laughed a little--"such as men describe who enter the ministry,--an irresistible impulse, as if I were to find something there that I had lost in the city."

She held out her hand to him. "Do you know the name I had for you when you were at Crossroads?"

"No."

"I called you St. Michael--because it always seemed to me that you carried a sword."

He tightened his grip on the little hand. "Some day I shall hope to justify the name; I don't deserve it now."

Her eyes came up to him. "You'll fight to win," she said, softly.

He did not want to let her go. But there was no other way. But when she had joined the others on the terrace he made a wide detour of the garden, and wandered down to the river.

It was not a singing river, but to-day it seemed to have a song, "_Go back, go back_," it said; "_you have seen the world, you have seen the world_."

And when he had listened for a little while he climbed the hill to tell Austin and to tell--Eve.

CHAPTER XXII

_In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds._

"RICHARD!"

"Yes, mother, I'm here. Austin thinks I am crazy, and Eve won't speak to me. But--I came. And to think you have turned the house into a hospital!"

"It seemed the only thing to do. Francois' mother had no one to take care of her--and there were others, and the house is big."

"You are the biggest thing in it. Mother, if I ever pray to a saint, it will be one with gray hair in a nurse's cap and ap.r.o.n, and with shining eyes."

"They are shining because you are here, Richard."

Cousin Sulie, in the door, broke down and cried, "Oh, we've prayed for it."

They clung to him, the two little growing-old women, who had wanted him, and who had worked without him.

He had no words for them, for he could not speak with steadiness. But in that moment he knew that he should never go back to Austin. That he should live and die in the home of his fathers. And that his work was here.

He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion. "Mother, you and Cousin Sulie mustn't. I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll spoil me with softness and ease."

"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she told him. "Did Eric meet you at the station?"

"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped in to see old Peter before I came up. I can pull him through, but I shall have to have some nurses."