Mistress Anne Part 56

Austin had said more than that to Anne. He had found her one hot day by the fountain. Nancy had written to her of the death of Francois' mother.

The letter was in her hand.

Austin had also had a letter. "Brooks is a fool. He writes that he is going to stay."

Anne shook her head. "He is not a fool," she said; "he is doing what he _had_ to do. You would know if you had ever lived at Crossroads. Why, the Brooks family belongs there, and the Brooks doctors."

"So you have encouraged him?" Austin said.

"I have had nothing to do with it. I haven't heard from him since he left, and I haven't written."

"And you think he is--right to--bury--himself?"

Anne sat very still, her hands folded quietly. Her calm eyes were on the golden fish which swam in the waters at the base of the fountain.

"I am not sure," she said; "it all has so much to do with--old traditions--and inherited feelings--and ideals. He could be just as useful here, but he would never be happy. You can't imagine how they look up to him down there. And here he looked up to you."

"Then you think I didn't give him a free hand?"

"No. But there he is a Brooks of Crossroads. And it isn't because he wants the honor of it that he has gone back, but because the responsibility rests upon him to make the community all that it ought to be. And he can't shirk it."

"Eve Chesley says that he is tied to his mother's ap.r.o.n strings."

"She doesn't understand, I do. I sometimes feel that way about the Crossroads school--as if I had shirked something to have--a good time."

"But you have had a good time."

"Yes, you have all been wonderful to me," her smile warmed him, "but you won't think that I am ungrateful when I say that there was something in my life in the little school which carried me--higher--than this."

"Higher? What do you mean?"

"I was a leader down there. And a force. The children looked to me for something that I could give and which the teacher they have isn't giving.

She just teaches books, and I tried to teach them something of life, and love of country, and love of G.o.d."

"But here you have Marie-Louise, and you know how grateful we are for what you have done for her."

"I have only developed what was in her. What a flaming little genius she is!"

"With a poem accepted by an important magazine, and Fox believing that she can write more of them."

Anne spoke quietly: "And now I am really not needed. Marie-Louise can go on alone."

He stopped her. "We want you to stay--my wife wants you--Marie-Louise can't do without you. And I want you to get Brooks back."

She looked her amazement. "Get him back?"

"He will come if you ask it. I am not blind. Eve Chesley is. The things she says make him stubborn. But you could call him back. You could call to life anything in any man if you willed it. You are inspirational--a star to light the way."

His voice was shaken. After a pause he went on: "Will you help me to get Brooks back?"

She shook her head. "I shall not try. He is among his own people. He has found his place."

Yet now that Richard was gone, Anne found herself missing him more than she dared admit. She was, for the first time, aware that the knowledge that she should see him now and then had kept her from loneliness which might otherwise have a.s.sailed her. The thought that she might meet him had added zest to her engagements. His week-ends at Rose Acres had been the goal toward which her thoughts had raced.

And now the great house was empty because of his absence. The city was empty--because he had left it--forever. She had no hope that he would come back. Crossroads had claimed him. He had, indeed, come into his own.

When the rest of his friends spoke of him, praised or blamed, she was silent. Geoffrey Fox, who came often, complained, "You are always sitting off in a corner somewhere with your work, putting in a million st.i.tches, when I want you to talk."

"You can talk to Marie-Louise. She is your ardent disciple. She burns candles at your altar."

"She is a charming--child."

"She is more than that. When her poem was accepted she cried over the letter. She thinks that she couldn't have done it except for your help and criticism."

"She will do more than she has done."

When Marie-Louise joined them, Anne was glad to see Geoffrey's protective manner, as if he wanted to be nice to the child who had cried.

She had to listen to much criticism of Richard. When Eve and the Dutton-Ames dined one night in the early fall at Rose Acres, Richard's quixotic action formed the theme of their discourse.

Eve was very frank. "Somebody ought to tie d.i.c.ky down. His head is in the clouds."

Marie-Louise flashed: "I like people whose heads are in the clouds. He is doing a wonderful thing and a wise thing--and we are all acting as if it were silly."

Anne wanted to hug Marie-Louise, and with heightened color she listened to Winifred's defense.

"I think we should all like to feel that we are equal to it--to give up money and fame--for the thing that--called."

"There is no better or bigger work for him there than here," Austin proclaimed.

"No," Winifred agreed, and her eyes were bright, "but it is because he is giving up something which the rest of us value that I like him.

Renunciation isn't fashionable, but it is stimulating."

"The usual process is to 'grab and git,'" her husband sustained her. "We always like to see some one who isn't bitten by the modern bacillus."

After dinner Anne left them and made her way down in the darkness to the river. The evening boat was coming up, starred with lights, its big search-light sweeping the sh.o.r.es. When it pa.s.sed, the darkness seemed deeper. The night was cool, and Anne, wrapped in a white cloak, was like a ghost among the shadows. Far up on the terrace she could see the big house, and hear the laughter. She felt much alone. Those people were not her people. Her people were of Nancy's kind, well-born and well bred, but not smart in the modern sense. They were quiet folk, liking their homes, their friends, their neighbors. They were not so rich that they were separated by their money from those about them. They had time to read and to think. They were perhaps no better than the people in the big house on top of the terrace, but they lived at a more leisurely pace, and it seemed to her at this moment that they got more out of life.

She wanted more than anything in the world to be to-night with that little group at Crossroads, to meet Cousin Sulie's sparkling glance, to sit at Nancy's knee, to hear Richard's big laugh, as he came in and found the women waiting for the news of the outside world that he would bring.

She knew that she could have the little school if she asked for it. But a sense of dignity restrained her. She could not go back now. It would seem to the world that she had followed Richard. Well, her heart followed him, but the world did not know that.

She heard voices. Geoffrey and Marie-Louise were at the river's edge.

"It is as if there were just the two of us in the whole wide world,"

Marie-Louise was saying. "That's what I like about the darkness. It seems to shut everybody out."

"But suppose the darkness followed you into the day," Geoffrey said, "suppose that for you there were no light?"

A rim of gold showed above the blackness of the Jersey hills.