V
Dr. Dakin’shouse stood in the village street. It was a plain Georgian dwelling of a type common to every English country town; a type which admirably combines comfort with a certain homely dignity.
It was covered with ivy, carefully trimmed where the rows of square-paned windows broke the front, and its long, narrow door was surmounted by the conventional classic design of skulls and garlands.
As Miss Page crossed the road towards the post-office one morning late in September, Mrs. Dakin tapped at the window of the breakfast-room, and then ran to the door.
Anne smiled as she crossed the threshold. “Why, Madge, what is it? You look radiant, my dear!”
“I am. I mean I feel radiant. Come in. Do come in. I want to tell you.”
Her voice shook with suppressed excitement, as Anne followed her across the stone-flagged hall to a room on the right.
“I’m going to Paris for a long visit!” she exclaimed, drawing up a chair for her friend close to the window. “What do you think of that?”
“I didn’t know you had friends in Paris.”
“Oh yes. Didn’t I ever tell you about Helen Didier? She was one of my school-fellows at the convent near Tours, where I went for a year. She married a Frenchman.”
“And she lives in Paris?”
“Yes. I haven’t seen her for ages—scarcely once since we both married. But I took it into my head to write to her a week or two ago, and just fancy! You’ll be awfully interested. She knows Monsieur Fontenelle quite well. Her husband is a friend of his.”
Anne looked up rather quickly. “Really?”
“Yes. Isn’t it strange? I happened to mention him when I wrote to her, and she knew all about him. She would, naturally, as he’s such a great man; but it’s awfully exciting that he should be a friend, isn’t it?”
“What does Harry say?” asked Anne.
“Oh, he doesn’t mind. He says it will do me good to have a change.”
“He will miss you horribly, my dear.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “He’s so busy, you know. And when he’s at home, he’s always buried in his books. Besides, heknows I must have a change. My nerves get worse and worse, and I’m always having neuralgia. I sleep badly, too.”
“You mustn’t look so brilliant, then,” returned Anne, laughing. “You’ll be considered a fraud.”
“It’s nothing but joy,” Madge declared. “You know I’ve never been to Paris. And just think of getting out of this hole for two or three months, perhaps. I could scream with excitement at the bare idea!”
“When do you go?”
“Next month. I shall be awfully interested to meet Monsieur Fontenelle again,” she added. “He’s so clever, isn’t he? I’m rather afraid of him. I envy you for getting on with him so well.”
Anne smiled.
“Why has he never been to see you before?”
“He’s not often in England now, though he travels a great deal, and is very cosmopolitan.”
“How on earth has he learnt to speak English so perfectly?”
“He has English relations—Lady Farringchurch is one of them. And as a young man he studied over here with a friend. But in any case he’s a wonderful linguist naturally.”
“What interesting people you must havemet!” exclaimed Madge, looking rather curiously at her visitor. “I suppose you met him during all those years you were travelling? I often wonder how you stand this miserable little dead-and-alive place. You must have had such an exciting life.”
Anne did not reply for a moment.
“My dear,” she said at last quietly, “when you come to my age, your garden, your books, and your friends make a very pleasant haven before you set sail.”
“And your memories, I suppose?” Madge glanced again swiftly at her friend.
“And your memories—yes,” Anne repeated.
“I shall have none,” declared Madge, restlessly. “None that count.”
Miss Page was silent. “Oh! I know you think me an ungrateful wretch!” she broke out, leaning back in her chair and tapping her foot impatiently. “Harry’s very good and all that. But I’m sobored. I’m bored from morning till night. When I get up every morning I think—‘Here’s another dull day, what on earth shall I do with it?’ And sometimes it doesn’t seem worth while to get up and go on.”
Anne watched her as she stared moodily into the narrow trim garden, discontent andlistlessness plainly expressed by her eyes and drooping mouth.
She was a woman loved faithfully and with infinite tenderness. If she had allowed them expression, Anne’s reflection would have been translated by a smile and a sigh, both of them utterly unintelligible to the little woman at her side. Both of them were therefore repressed.
“Well!” she said aloud. “I hope you’ll have a very gay time. I’m very glad for you, my dear. Go and be happy. Where does your friend live?”
“Over by the Parc Monceau, wherever that is.Dotell me what it’s like?” she begged, all animation again.
Anne stayed a few minutes longer, talking about Paris, and then rose to go.
Mrs. Dakin kissed her affectionately. “I wish you were going with me. I shall miss you horribly!” she declared.
She followed Anne to the door, and stood a moment, waving and smiling as her friend crossed the street.
All the bored discontent had vanished from her face, and her husband, who at the moment drove up in his car, thought she had never looked prettier.
The reflection was accompanied by a curiousdull pain at his heart, a pain to which he was well accustomed.
“I’ll drive you home,” he called to Miss Page, stopping his car at the opposite pavement.
“So Madge is going to Paris?” she said, as they swept off.
“Yes. I hope it will do her good,” he returned shortly. “She complains of neuralgia. Perhaps a change will set that right. I hear the little Carfax girl is going to London to study this autumn?” he added after a moment. “She’s off her head with delight about it. That’syourdoing, of course.”
“Well, I suggested it to her father,” Anne admitted.
He laughed. “We all know your suggestions. When a witch ‘suggests,’ mere man is instantly hypnotized. Poor old Carfax can do nothing now, but put his hand in his pocket and produce the necessary fees.”
Anne smiled. “Come in and look at my hollyhocks,” she said, as they turned into the drive. “They’re really worth seeing.”
The doctor followed her through the house and across the lawn into one of the walled gardens. “How gorgeous!” he exclaimed, as she opened the gate.
The enclosure was a blaze of colour. Wine-red,white faintly flushed with pink, yellow soft as a sunset sky, the flowers stood close together in stately rows.
Behind them, on either side of the dividing grass path, masses of phlox, white and rose and crimson, continued the wave of colour till it was arrested by the enclosing walls.
“Look at the butterflies,” said the doctor, instinctively lowering his voice as though he feared to disturb them.
They hovered in numbers above the silken cups of the hollyhocks. On the sulphur-coloured petals of one of them, a Purple Emperor, motionless, extended his splendid wings. Here and there, dazzling in fairy armour of peacock-blue and sheen of silver, darted a dragon-fly.
“The colour of the thing is intoxicating,” murmured Dr. Dakin.
“It reminded me this morning of an elaborately arranged ‘sensation’ scheme, planned by that madman inÀ Rebours. Only of course, he would have despised such a homely natural flower as the hollyhock.”
The doctor smiled. “What a curious anomaly you are here, my dear lady!” he declared suddenly. “And yet that’s not true either, because you also suit the place to perfection. Huysmans, and a country practice,and Carfax—and you! It’s an amazing world. I hope some intelligent Being doesn’t miss the exquisite humour of many human juxtapositions,” he added rather drily.
“I’m glad Sylvia’s going to study,” was Miss Page’s somewhat irrelevant reply. “She has a beautiful voice.”
“Quite remarkable,” he agreed. “She’ll be a difficult young woman though, if that face of hers means anything. I don’t know that you haven’t thrown her to the lions.”
“My dear doctor, isn’t it better to meet the lions, and take one’s chance, than to be preyed upon by restlessness and discontent till the whole of one’s character is worm-eaten?” asked Anne, quietly.
The doctor stooped to examine the Purple Emperor which still lay motionless, basking in the sunshine.
When he raised his head Anne saw the trouble in his eyes.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. Then abruptly, after a moment, “I wish I could give Madge the life that would suit her!” he exclaimed, jerking out the words awkwardly.
Miss Page waited a moment. “What do you thinkwouldsuit her?” she asked gently.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “She wants to live in London, you know. Shewants a gayer life. But I should be no use in town. I shouldn’t make a living even. I haven’t the manner. It’s as much as I can do to hold my own here.”
“Every one who knows you, ends by being thankful to find a splendid friend as well as an excellent doctor,” returned Anne.
The bitterness in his face softened. “If all the world were like you,” he began with a little laugh, and paused. “I’m glad they’re not, though. There must only be one Miss Page. But that’s it,” he went on, “I must know people well—better than one could ever know them in the rush of a London practice, where the polished manner I don’t possess is absolutely necessary.”
There was a silence, while they walked the length of the grass path together.
“I ought never to have married Madge,” he broke out at last, in a low voice. “She’s too pretty, and too gay by nature, for a slow coach like me. This village life is too dull for her. She wants her dances, her theatres”—he made a vague gesture—“all that sort of thing. I can’t make her happy.”
There was a note of sad discouragement in his voice which went to his listener’s heart.
“I think you could,” she said.
He turned his head sharply. “How?”The involuntary hope died. He shook his head. “She’s bored with me.”
“Partly I think, because she imagines you are bored with her.”
He started. “I?Bored with Madge?” He stopped, as though suddenly arrested, and stood staring down at the grass. “I—I don’t think you understand how much I—care for Madge. She’s the only woman I ever wanted to marry. I——”
His voice failed. Miss Page saw that his face was working.
“Idoknow. Better than any one, perhaps. But I don’t think you understand her.”
He looked at her mutely, waiting for her next words.
“You think of her as a butterfly, don’t you? A woman with no brains, perhaps? Oh! I know,” she interrupted, as he made a gesture of protest. “I know that would make no difference.” She smiled a little. “A man doesn’t want the woman he loves to have brains. But they are useful sometimes. In her case they may be very useful. She would like a life of gaiety, of course. She’s young and pretty, and it’s only natural. But she can’t have it. Very well then, if she were nothing but a butterfly, her lot—and yours,would be hard. But Madge has a mind. Oh, she’s ignorant, of course! She says so herself. She never reads. She never thinks. But that’s habit. No one has ever taken any trouble with her. Did you notice how interested she was the evening we were really talking—the evening Monsieur Fontenelle dined here? She was proud of you then. She wished she could take part in the conversation. Her mind is empty because she has never troubled to fill it. But it’s a mind of good quality. She has the power to be interested in a thousand things. You could open a new world to her, if you were careful—and had a little tact. And we all know that you possess that admirable quality!”
The flattery of her smile was not lost upon the doctor.
Surprise, involuntary hope, gratitude, admiration, all struggled in the look with which he regarded her.
“You always say the right thing,” he declared simply. “I didn’t know the child——” He paused, but there was a look of sudden tenderness in his eyes. “Well! she’s going away now,” he began.
“And that’s such a good thing,” interrupted Miss Page, eagerly. “She will hear and see so much to interest her. She willcome back with new impressions. You will have something to work on.”
They strolled out of the garden together, and across the lawn without speaking.
“Good-bye,” said the doctor, starting as though from a deep reverie, as he found himself opposite his car.
He pressed her hand warmly. “You have made me much happier,” he added shyly.
“But don’t forget to tell her very often that you love her, and that she’s the prettiest thing in the world!” Miss Page admonished him, with a laugh. “There are remarks which never bore a woman, however many times they are repeated. Those are two of them.”