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Mistress Anne, a novel by Temple Bailey |
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Chapter 24. In Which St. Michael Finds Love In A Garden |
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_ CHAPTER XXIV. In Which St. Michael Finds Love in a Garden THE flowers in Marie-Louise's bowl were lilacs. And Marie-Louise, sitting up in bed, writing verses, was in pale mauve. Her windows were wide open, and the air from the river, laden with fragrance, swept through the room. The big house had been closed all winter. Austin had elected to spend the season in Florida, and had taken all of his household with him, including Anne. He had definitely retired from practice when Richard left him. "I can't carry it on alone, and I don't want to break in anybody else," he had said, and had turned the whole thing over to one of his colleagues. But April had brought him back to "Rose Acres" in time for the lilacs, and Marie-Louise, uplifted by the fact that Geoffrey Fox was at that very moment finishing his book in the balcony room, had decided that lilacs in the silver bowl should express the ecstatic state of her mind. Anne, coming in at noon, asked, "What are you writing?" "_Vers libre._ This is called, 'To Dr. Dicky, Dinging.'" "What a subject, and you call it poetry?" "Why not? Isn't he coming to dinner for the first time since--he left New York, and since he broke off with Eve, and since--a lot of other things--and isn't it an important occasion, Mistress Anne?" Anne ignored the question. "What have you written?" "Only the outline. He comes--has caviar, and his eyes are on the queen. He drinks his soup--and dreams. He has fish--and a vision of the future; rhapsodies with the roast," she twinkled; "do you like it?" "As far as it goes." "It goes very far, and you know it. And you are blushing." "I am not." "You are. Look in the glass. Mistress Anne, aren't you glad that Eve is married?" "Yes," honestly, "and that she is happy." "Pip was made for her. I loved him at Palm Beach, adoring her, didn't you?" "Yes." Anne's mind went back to it. The marriage had followed immediately upon the announcement of the broken engagement. People had pitied poor young Dr. Brooks. But Anne had not. One does not pity a man who, having been bound, is free. He had written to her a half dozen times during the winter, friendly letters with news of Crossroads, and now that she was again at Rose Acres, he was coming up. The spring day was bright. Rich with possibilities. "Marie-Louise, don't stay in bed. Nobody has a right to be in the house on such a day as this." But Marie-Louise wouldn't be moved. "I want to finish my verses." So Anne went out alone into the garden. It was ablaze with spring bloom, the river was blue, and Pan piped on his reeds. Geoffrey waved to her from his balcony. She waved back, then went for a walk alone. She returned to have tea on the terrace. The day seemed interminable. The hour for dinner astonishingly remote. At last, however, it was time to dress. The gown that she chose was of pale rose, heavily weighted with silver. It hung straight and slim. Her slippers were of silver, and she still wore her dark hair in the smooth swept-up fashion which so well became her. Richard, seeing her approach down the length of the big drawing-room where he stood with Austin, was conscious of a sense of shock. It was as if he had expected that she would come to him in her old blue serge, or in the little white gown with the many ruffles. That she came in such elegance made her seem--alien. Like Eve. Oh, where was the Anne of yesterday? Even when she spoke to him, when her hand was in his, when she walked beside him on the way to the dining-room, he had this sense of strangeness, as if the girl in rose-color was not the girl of whom he had dreamed through all the days since he had known that he was not to marry Eve. The winter had been a busy one for him, but satisfying in the sense that he was at last in his rightful place. He had come into his own. He had no more doubts that his work was wisely chosen. But his life was as yet unfinished. To complete it, he had felt that he must round out his days with the woman he loved. But now that he was here, he saw her fitted to her new surroundings as a jewel fitted to a golden setting. And she liked lovely things, she liked excitement, and the nearness of the great metropolis. There were men who had wanted to marry her. Marie-Louise had told him that in a gay little letter which she had sent from the South. As he reviewed it now disconsolately, he reminded himself that he had never had any real reason to know that Anne cared for him. There had been a flash of the eye, a few grave words, a break in her voice, his answered letters; but a woman might dole out these small favors to a friend. Thus from caviar to soup, and from soup to roast, he contradicted Marie-Louise's conception of his state of mind. Fear and doubt, discouragement, a touch of despair, these carried him as far as the salad. And then he heard Austin's voice speaking. "So you are really contented at Crossroads, Brooks?" "Yes. I wish you would come down and let me show you some of the things I am doing. A bit primitive, perhaps, in the light of your larger experience. But none the less effective, and interesting." Austin shrugged. "I can't imagine anything but martyrdom in such a life--for me. What do you do with yourself when you are not working--with no theaters--opera--restaurants--excitements?" "We get along rather well without them--except for an occasional trip to town." "But you need such things," dogmatically; "a man can't live out of the world and not--degenerate." "He may live in it, and degenerate." Anne was speaking. Her cheeks were as pink as her gown. She leaned a little forward. "You don't know all that they have at Crossroads, and Dr. Brooks is too polite to tell you how poor New York seems to those of us who--know." "Poor?" Richard had turned to her, his face illumined. "Isn't it? Think of the things you have that New York doesn't know of. A singing river--this river doesn't sing, or if it does nobody would have time to listen. And Crossroads has a bell on its school that calls to the countryside. City children are not called by a bell--that's why they are all alike--they ride on trolleys and watch the clocks. My little pupils ran across the fields and down the road, and hurried when I rang for them, and came in--rosy." She was rosy herself as she recounted it. "Oh, we have a lot of things--the bridge with the lights--and the road up to the Ridge--and Diogenes. Dr. Austin, you should see Diogenes." She laughed, and they all laughed with her, but back of Richard's laugh there was an emotion which swept him on and up to heights beyond anything that he had ever hoped or dreamed. After that, he could hardly wait for the ending of the dinner, hardly wait to get away from them all, and out under the stars. It was when they were at last alone on the steps above the fountain, with the garden pouring all of its fragrance down upon them, that he said, "I should not have dared ask it if you had not said what you said." "Oh, St. Michael, St. Michael," she whispered, "where was your courage?" "But in this gown, this lovely gown, you didn't look like anything that I could--have. I am only a country doctor, Anne." "Only my beloved--Richard." They clung together, these two who had found Love in the garden. But they had found more than Love. They had found the meaning for all that Richard had done, and for all that Anne would do. And that which they had found they would never give up! [THE END] _ |
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