Mistress Anne Part 57

"Oh," Marie-Louise exulted, "look at the moon. In a moment there will be light, and you thought you were in the dark."

"You mean that it is an omen?"

"Yes."

"What a small and comfortable person you are," Geoffrey said, and now Anne could see the two of them silhouetted against the brightening sky, one tall and slim, the other slim and short. They walked on, and she heard their voices faintly.

"Do I really make you comfortable, Geoffrey Fox?"

"You make me more than that, Marie-Louise."

CHAPTER XXIII

_In Which Richard Rides Alone._

"EVE."

"Yes, Pip."

"Can't you see that if he cared Richard would do the thing that pleased you--that New York would be Paradise if you were in it?"

"Why shouldn't Crossroads be Paradise to me--with him?"

"It couldn't be."

"I am going to make it. I talked it over last night with Aunt Maude.

She's an old dear. And I shall be the Lady of the Manor. If d.i.c.ky won't come to New York, I'll bring New York down to him."

"It can't be done. And it's going to fail."

"What is going to fail?"

"Your marriage. If you are mad enough to marry Brooks."

She mused. "Pip, do you remember the fat Armenian?"

"At Coney? Yes."

"He said that--I had reached for something beyond my grasp. That my fingers would touch it, but that it would soar always above me."

"Sounds as if Brooks were some fat sort of a bird. I can't think of him as soaring. I should call him the c.o.c.k that crowed at Crossroads. Oh, it's all rot, Eve, this idea that love makes things equal. I went to the Hippodrome not long ago and saw 'Pinafore.' Our fathers and mothers raved over it. But that was a sentimental age, and Gilbert poked fun at them.

He made the simple sailor a captain in the end, so that Josephine shouldn't wash dishes and cook smelly things in pots and hang out the family wash. But your hero balks and won't be turned into a millionaire.

If you were writing a book you might make it work out to your satisfaction, but you can't twist life to the happy ending."

"I shall try, Pip."

"In Heaven's name, Eve! It is sheer obstinacy. If everybody wanted you to marry Brooks, you'd want to marry me. But because Aunt Maude and Winifred and I, and a lot of others know that you shouldn't, you have set your heart on it."

She flashed her eyes at him. "Is it obstinacy, Pip, I wonder? Do you know I rather think I am going to like it."

Her letters said something of the sort to Richard. "I shall love it down there. But you must let me have my own way with the house and garden.

Don't you think I shall make a charming chatelaine, d.i.c.ky, dear?"

He had a sense of relief in her unexpected acquiescence in his decision.

If she had objected, he would have felt as if he had turned his back not only on the work that he hated but on the woman he had promised to marry.

It would have looked that way to others. Yet no matter how it had looked, he could not have done differently. The call had been insistent, and the deeps of his nature been stirred.

He was thinking of it all as one morning in October he rode to the Playhouse on big Ben to see Beulah.

Dismounting at the gate, he followed the path which led to the kitchen.

Beulah was not there, and, searching, he saw her under an old apple tree at the end of the garden. She wore a checked blue ap.r.o.n, stiffly starched, and she was holding it up by the corners. A black cat and three sable kittens frisked at her feet.

Some one was dropping red apples carefully into the ap.r.o.n, some one who laughed as he swung himself down and tipped Beulah's chin up with his hand and kissed her. Richard felt a lump in his throat. It was such a homely little scene, but it held a meaning that love had never held for himself and Eve.

Eric untied Beulah's ap.r.o.n string, and carrying the apples in this improvised bag, with his arm about her waist sustaining her, they came down the walk.

"This is Beulah's pet tree. When she was sick she asked for apples and apples and apples."

Beulah, sinking her little white teeth into a red one, nodded. "It is perfectly wonderful," she said when she was able to speak, "how good everything tastes, and I can't get enough."

Eric pinched her cheek. "Pretty good color, doctor. We'll have them matching the apples yet."

Richard wanted to ask Eric about the dogs. "Some of my friends are coming down to-morrow for the Middlefield hunt."

"If they start old Pete there'll be some sport," Eric said.

"I shall be half sorry if they do," Richard told him. "I am always afraid I shall lose him out of my garden. He is a part of the place, like the box hedge and the cedars."

He said it lightly, but he meant it. He had hunting blood in his veins, and he loved the horses and the dogs. He loved the cold crisp air, and the excitement of the chase. But what he did not love was the hunted animal, doubling on its tracks, pursued, panting, torn to pieces by the hounds.

"Old Pete deserved to live and die among the hills," Beulah said. "Is Miss Chesley coming down?"

"Yes, and a lot of others. They will put up at the club. Mother and Sulie aren't up to entertaining a crowd."

He wanted Eric's dogs for ducks. Dutton-Ames and one or two others did not ride to hounds, and would come to Bower's in the morning.

As he rode away, he was conscious that as soon as his back was turned Eric's arm would again be about Beulah, and Beulah's head would be on Eric's shoulder. And that he would lift her over the threshold as they went in.

That afternoon Richard motored over to the Country Club to welcome Eve.

She laughed at his little car. "I'd rather see you on big Ben than in that."

"Ben can't carry me fast enough."

"Don't expect me to ride in it, d.i.c.ky."