XXII

XXII

Twoor three days later, she was back at Fairholme Court.

Burks had been sent on to join the other servants, and by the time Anne reached the house, everything was in its usual spotless order.

As she sat looking into the fire the afternoon following her return, Anne felt that it was good to be home. She glanced round the charming room, and experienced a thrill of pleasure. The fresh curtains at the windows with their rose garlands, pleased her eye. The inlaid cabinets, the tables, the dainty bookcases, shining and spotless from the maids’ energetic ministrations, reflected the firelight at every angle. The pictures she loved seemed even more beautiful for her absence, and the pots of lilies and hyacinths about the room filled the air with sweet scent.

Anne looked from them to her books, as one glances from one loved face to another. It was good to be home, and she felt happy,and at rest. Painful misgivings had disappeared, and her mind was filled with contented thoughts of her friends.

From Sylvia, inexpressibly relieved, she had just received a letter of girlish effusion and gratitude.

It was in her hand as she sat smiling into the fire, glad to remember the girl as she had yesterday seen her, pretty once more, gay, and full of extravagantly noble resolutions for the future.

Madge Dakin, who with her husband had returned a few days previously, she had already seen.

She looked thin and pale still, but Anne was satisfied to hear that Harry was the dearest and best of men, and that she had never been so much in love with any one in her life.

To-day Anne found the human comedy agreeable. A spectacle to be viewed with a smile from which tears of pity and sympathy were not very far removed. But the smile came first. She reflected that she must see the Vicar, and she was making up her mind to leave the fireside for that purpose, when the door opened, and he was announced.

She rose quickly with an exclamation of pleasure, and went to meet him.

He took her outstretched hand, but let itdrop again immediately, and glancing at him with half-defined surprise, she saw that he wore his pulpit expression of slightly pompous gravity.

“Sit down,” begged Anne, cordially. “I was just coming up to see you.”

“Thank you,” said the Vicar, dropping heavily into the chair she indicated.

“I saw Sylvia only yesterday. She sent many messages to you, and to her mother.”

“Thank you,” repeated the Vicar. “It is distressing to me, but I am constrained to say I’m sorry you saw her,” he added after a moment’s hesitation.

Anne looked at him in silence, and Mr. Carfax cleared his throat.

“Miss Page,” he began, “I am here to speak on a very painful subject, and I think the sooner I mention it the better.”

“Certainly,” said Anne, drawing herself back against the cushions of her chair.

“I repeat, I am sorry you have seen my child, because in future, I say it with great reluctance, I wish her acquaintance with you to cease.”

Anne still waited in silence, and again the Vicar cleared his throat. It was difficult to talk with her eyes upon him, and his carefully prepared speeches seemed a trifle ridiculous.

“I’d better tell you the history of this affair from the beginning,” he broke out abruptly. “Shortly it is this. Some two or three weeks ago I received a private letter from a lady whose name I will not mention——”

“Madame Didier,” interrupted Anne quietly.

The Vicar paused.

“Madame Didier, since you seem to know my correspondent. It was a letter written to me as the vicar of the parish, begging me to warn Dr. Dakin against your influence with his wife.”

Anne did not speak.

“Madame Didier gave reasons for this interference,” he went on after a moment. “Reasons which seemed to me to be based on false and scandalous charges. The letter, however, so intimately concerned my friend, that I was compelled to show it to him. It was burnt in my presence, and such was my implicit confidence in you that I wrote a strong, I may say a threatening letter to the lady, forbidding her to circulate libellous reports.”

“I am grateful to you,” Anne said.

The Vicar glanced at her.

“I have since regretted that letter,” he added deliberately.

“A fortnight ago, business called me to London, and I spent an evening with my wife’sfriends, the Lovells. Madame Didier, whose stay in England has been protracted, was with her aunt. I did not know this when I went to see the Lovells,” he added, “or I should naturally have avoided the chance of an unpleasant encounter.

“However, in spite of my protestations, and my refusal to hear your name spoken by her, the lady insisted, and to avoid entering upon unpleasant details, I may say at once that she gave me incontrovertible evidence as to the truth of her assertions.”

There was a pause which Anne did not break. She sat quite still, looking into the fire.

“I need not say,” pursued the Vicar stiffly, “that though I was constrained to offer an apology to Madame Didier for my somewhat intemperate letter, I repeated my warning to her with regard to the danger of spreading this story.”

“Thank you,” said Anne again.

The Vicar moved uncomfortably.

“Under any other circumstances—had Madame Didier, I mean, merely reported gossip or hearsay, I should immediately have come to you for an explanation, and I should have accepted your bare word against what might to others appear grave suspicion. But unfortunately, as I said, her evidence is incontrovertible.I have seen letters. In short, to put it plainly, Miss Page, to ask for an explanation from you would be the merest farce. It therefore becomes my painful duty——”

“An explanation of what?” asked Anne, turning to him with a deliberate movement, and again the Vicar fidgeted under her gaze.

“Of—of—a mode of life which proves you to have been unworthy of the position you have held in our midst.”

The Vicar gathered himself together; it was time for the peroration, and from force of habit his voice grew full and deep. He reminded himself vigorously of the sanctity of the home, the preservation of the family, and in sonorous tones continued——

“You have been loved and trusted by pure and innocent women. You have been esteemed as a friend by myself, as well as by many another upright and honourable man. And I say it with pain, you have deceived us. My own child has made you her confidante——”

Anne rose, and the stream of the Vicar’s eloquence suddenly ran dry.

There was a moment’s silence, during which he felt a prey to greater and more paralyzing nervousness than he had experienced since the preaching of his first sermon.

The pause was broken by the opening ofthe door, and the appearance of Burks with a letter on a tray.

“This is sent down from the Vicarage, ma’am,” she said, addressing her mistress, “and the maid says will Mr. Carfax kindly read it at once.”

She handed the tray to the Vicar, who took the letter, and with a murmured apology, broke the envelope. A note from his wife dropped out first. He picked it up, and hurriedly glanced through its contents.

“I am wild with anxiety. I send you the enclosed, which has just come from Mrs. Lovell, so that you may read it while you are with Miss Page. She may perhaps be able to throw some light upon the matter. At any rate, ask her advice. She is so good and wise.”

“I am wild with anxiety. I send you the enclosed, which has just come from Mrs. Lovell, so that you may read it while you are with Miss Page. She may perhaps be able to throw some light upon the matter. At any rate, ask her advice. She is so good and wise.”

The Vicar snatched up the other letter, which mechanically, in a dazed voice, he began to read aloud.

“My dear Mary,“I hasten to tell you, though I fear too late, of something I have just heard about your dear Sylvia. She has signed a contract to go to America with a theatrical travelling company, and I am told that she has already sailed. The manager I understand to be aman of bad character, as indeed he must be to induce a girl to leave England without her parents’ consent. This has come to my knowledge in a roundabout way through a chorus girl who happens to be related to my maid. I should have telegraphed, but Simpkins has just showed me the announcement of the company’s departure from Liverpool, and in that case a telegram is useless.“All my sympathy, dear. In haste,“Your affectionate“Laura Lovell.”

“My dear Mary,

“I hasten to tell you, though I fear too late, of something I have just heard about your dear Sylvia. She has signed a contract to go to America with a theatrical travelling company, and I am told that she has already sailed. The manager I understand to be aman of bad character, as indeed he must be to induce a girl to leave England without her parents’ consent. This has come to my knowledge in a roundabout way through a chorus girl who happens to be related to my maid. I should have telegraphed, but Simpkins has just showed me the announcement of the company’s departure from Liverpool, and in that case a telegram is useless.

“All my sympathy, dear. In haste,

“Your affectionate“Laura Lovell.”

“Your affectionate

“Laura Lovell.”

Mr. Carfax dropped the letter.

In the waning light, Anne saw that his face was white.

“You must have known of this!” he broke out fiercely. “You must have known, I say!”

Anne moved swiftly to his side, and laid her hand on his arm.

“It’s all right,” she whispered hurriedly. “Ididknow. I stopped it. Sylvia is quite safe, at Carlisle House. If I had guessed that such news would reach you, I would have told you at once. I was going to tell you when you came in. But you put it out of my head,” she added simply.

The Vicar’s colour had not returned. He stood mopping his forehead slowly with hishandkerchief, his face working so painfully that Anne, her eyes full of tears, turned away.

She opened her writing-table, and rang the bell.

“What are you going to do?” stammered her companion.

“Send a note to your wife. I can’t bear to think of her anxiety.”

“True,” murmured the Vicar. “You are very kind. It’s like you—to think of everything,” he added, still in a dazed voice.

He began to pace the room with uneven steps.

“If the maid has gone, run up as quickly as you can to the Vicarage with this note,” said Anne, sealing the envelope, as Burks entered.

“She’s still here, ma’am.”

“Then give it to her, and tell her to goat once, please, Burks. It’s important. Don’t keep her a moment longer talking.”

The maid disappeared, and Anne lighted the candles on the mantelpiece, quietly, one by one.

“You need have no anxiety,” she said without looking at the Vicar. “Sylvia has been very imprudent, but she realizes it, and is sorry. She had arranged with me to come home and tell you all about it, as soon as I had first spoken to you. She seemed to think thatI might have some—some little influence. But I must now leave her to tell her own story. I only want you to understand that she’s safe. I went to my solicitor about the matter, and as she is under age, he had no difficulty in settling the whole affair.”

“But—this man?” demanded Mr. Carfax in an unsteady voice. “The man Mrs. Lovell mentions?”

For the first time she glanced at him, and saw the fear in his eyes.

“Be quite easy. Sylvia had no idea of any evil intention on the man’s part. She is only utterly ignorant and inexperienced. She is one of the pure and innocentwomenyou mentioned just now.”

Her voice was gentle, and had not a trace of bitterness.

The Vicar continued for a moment his perambulation of the room.

Then he stopped abruptly and raised his head.

“Thank you,” he said in a husky tone. “I owe you a debt I can never repay. I——” he hesitated painfully. “I wish to God——” he broke out again, and again paused. She looked at him steadily.

All the pompous self-importance had died out of his face; all the arrogance of the priestwho denounces the sinner. His was the very human face of a man still gasping with relief from deadly fear, still unable to believe that the threatened danger is over. And with this expression of scarcely assured safety there was mingled real sorrow, a look of real affection for the woman to whom he owed his escape from a crushing blow.

“You spoke of an explanation,” said Anne in a low voice. “A moment ago I should have asked you to leave me, because of the manner in which you spoke of it.

“Now I have changed my mind, and I think I should like to give you an explanation—myexplanation.”

She was still standing, still looking at him steadily.

“You were kind enough to say that people here had loved and trusted me. I am glad if that is the case—very glad.” She waited a moment.

“If as you say they have been good enough to give me their love and confidence, it is because I have understood them; because they have never been afraid to tell me their inmost thoughts. Well, you will not believe me, perhaps,—that power of understanding would never have been mine but for the ‘mode of life’ to which you have alluded.

“Twenty years ago, Mr. Carfax, I was a self-doubting, colourless woman. My youth, as I thought, was past. It had brought me nothing. No love, no human experience, no joys, no very deep sorrows even. Nothing but the grey hopeless depression of a woman who has never taken her part in the world, who has always stood outside, who knows nothing of life; the sort of woman who ignorant to begin with, grows narrower and more prejudiced as the years pass, till at last in the bitter sense of the word, she is an old maid by nature, useless as a friend, helpless as a comforter, of no account in a world of men and women she cannot understand.

“Well, before that happened to me, before I was old in heart at least, I met a man who loved me, and whom I loved. I might have married him. I chosenotto marry him, because——” She smiled a little. “I need not trouble you with my reasons. They seemed good reasons to me, and I have never regretted them. I lived with him for three years. The memory of those three years has lasted with me to this day, and has made me a woman so proud and happy that if my deep content has overflowed, and reached the lives of others, it is no credit to me. I simply can’t help caring for people, because by the mercy ofHeaven, I have loved and been loved. Nothing else, for me at least, would have made that understanding and caring possible. Not the money that came to me, nor the opportunities it afforded for what is called ‘doing good.’ It was a change inme, that was needed, a personal experience of loving and suffering. Well! I have loved and I have suffered, and now Iunderstand.

“That’s my little story. It’s a story I would not have told you ten minutes ago. But—well, you made me feel just now that you were human.

“Don’t imagine you see before you the sinner that repenteth. She has never repented. She never will repent, though it’s an old white-haired woman who is talking—to a man years younger than herself!”

Her eyes met his, and beneath their smiling gaze, half wise, half whimsical, the Vicar dropped his own, and reddened like a school-boy.

The gentle reproof, implied rather than spoken, went home.

Suddenly, in the presence of this dignified gracious woman, he felt raw and awkward, very young, more than a little ashamed. He was confused moreover, with the sense that there existed possibly whole realms ofexperience which no code of morals he had ever preached seemed adequate to cover.

Here was a woman who certainly possessed the fairest of the Christian virtues. She was gentle, tolerant, generous (with a twinge of compunction he realized how great a part the anticipated loss of her donations had played in his reflections during the walk from the Vicarage to Fairholme Court). She was patient, longsuffering,—the Vicar ran through the whole gamut of spiritual gifts, and acknowledged her richly endowed.

Could it be that there were other paths to the Kingdom of Heaven than the strait way and the narrow gate that alone were said to lead to salvation?

The very useful brain of Mr. Carfax, unaccustomed to be exercised in unusual directions, began to feel the strain, and its possessor wisely took the hint, and abandoned the fatiguing labour of original research.

In any case Miss Page was a charming woman, and by however amazing process the result had been achieved, a good one also.

He looked at her, and with a sudden frank movement, held out his hand.

“Forgive me,” he said simply. “You—you have shown me I had no right to judge. I beg your pardon.”

Anne put her hand into his with a very sweet smile.

“My dear friend,” she replied, “you must do what you think right, and Dymfield will not be behind the judgment of most of the world in this matter. You know I love the place, but I can’t stay here when the people no longer look upon me as a friend. Well, the world is wide, and fortunately for me I’m not a poor woman.”

“You mustn’t leave us! You won’t leave us!” begged the Vicar. “There will be no occasion. The position is unchanged. The only two people who know anything of—of the matter, are your friends. Even if through malice or carelessness a breath of scandal should reach others, surely you can trust us to treat the rumour with the——” He hesitated.

“With the contempt it doesn’t deserve?” suggested Anne gently.

Greatly to his surprise, and somewhat to his horror, the Reverend George Carfax was betrayed into an answering smile.

He hastened to efface it, but the deed was done.

“And Sylvia?” asked Anne tentatively. “I wanted her to stay with me for a few days. You have only to say if you would rather she did not, and I won’t ask her.”

“If after all the trouble she has given you, Sylvia will be welcome, I can answer for her delight,” returned Mr. Carfax promptly.

Anne put out her hand with an impulsive gesture.

“You are quite a dear!” she observed, and her sudden smile still further illuminated the dusky corners of the Vicar’s strictly limited imagination.

The entrance of Burks with the tea-things gave him a moment to recover from the shock of a series of mental and emotional upheavals to which he was unaccustomed.

“You will stay, of course?” begged Anne. “My note to your wife was quite explicit,” she added. “She won’t be anxious now.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Carfax. “I want to hear particulars about Sylvia, and I feel I should be all the better for a cup of tea.”

Five minutes later, Mrs. Carfax entered a room bright with fire and candle-light, in which her husband sat comfortably ensconced in an arm-chair opposite to Miss Page, who was passing him hot cakes of a delicious crispness.

Anne went quickly across the room.

“It’s quite right. Don’t worry,” she hastened to say, as she kissed her visitor. “I’m just telling your husband all about it.”

“Sylvia must come home!” declared hermother, after Anne’s recital. Her hand was still trembling as she put down her tea-cup. “She’s not fit to be left alone in a great wicked city. I alwayssaidto George it was madness to let her go away from us!”

“It’s so difficult to get women to take broad views,” complained the Vicar, turning to Anne, “itrequires the masculine mind, free from prejudice and indifferent to common opinion, to see the wider outlook.”

Anne laid her hand on his wife’s arm.

“Dear Mrs. Carfax, do let her finish her training,” she urged. “The child acknowledges her foolishness. I quite agree that she ought not to be alone, and before you came in, I was suggesting a plan to your husband.

“Let her go to my brother and his wife. They lost their little girl some years ago, and Alice has always longed for a daughter. She’s such a nice kind little woman, and she would treat Sylvia as her own child. I spoke to her of the possibility of this, before I left London, and she was delighted with the idea.”

“It would be a splendid thing for her, Mary, if it can be arranged. It’s so like Miss Page to have thought of such a plan.”

Mrs. Carfax hesitated.

“We must think about it. I wouldn’t give my consent for her to go anywhere else. Butif it’s a case ofyourrelations, dear, it’s different. I should feel safe and happy about her, of course. We must talk about it, George.”

Anne leant back against her sofa cushions with a satisfied expression.

When her visitors rose to go, she followed them to the door.

While his wife was being helped into her goloshes by Burks, outside in the hall, the Vicar lingered a moment to hold her hand in a tight grasp.

“I can never thank you enough,” he murmured. “You are the best woman I ever met,” he added, looking her straight in the face.

Anne flushed a little; there were tears in her eyes.

“Good-bye,” she said. “I shall look forward to having Sylvia here next week.”

When the hall door had closed, she drew a deep breath of exhaustion and relief.

She had won peace with honour. She knew it, and was thankful. But she was glad to be alone.

She walked round the room, bending over the pots of lilies of the valley, touching the waxen bells of the hyacinths with gentle fingers. They had been grown for her home-coming,and they welcomed her delicately. She stirred the fire to a brighter blaze, and smiled to see its glow spreading to the furthest corner of the room.

Never had her home seemed so sweet, so inviting, so restful.

“It would have broken my heart to leave it!” she thought with sudden conviction.

She looked at the bookcases filled with books all the more precious, because for three months she had not touched them.

Finally she reached for a volume on one of the upper shelves, and taking it to the sofa, turned to a poem she loved.

“Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses,O toi, tous mes plaisirs! O toi, tous mes devoirs!Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses,'La douceur du foyer et le charme des soirs,Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses!“Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon,Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton cœur m’était bon!Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.”

“Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses,O toi, tous mes plaisirs! O toi, tous mes devoirs!Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses,'La douceur du foyer et le charme des soirs,Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses!“Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon,Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton cœur m’était bon!Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.”

“Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses,O toi, tous mes plaisirs! O toi, tous mes devoirs!Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses,'La douceur du foyer et le charme des soirs,Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses!

“Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses,

O toi, tous mes plaisirs! O toi, tous mes devoirs!

Tu te rappelleras la beauté des caresses,'

La douceur du foyer et le charme des soirs,

Mère des souvenirs, maîtresse des maîtresses!

“Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon,Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton cœur m’était bon!Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.”

“Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon,

Et les soirs au balcon, voilés de vapeurs roses.

Que ton sein m’était doux! que ton cœur m’était bon!

Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,

Les soirs illuminés par l’ardeur du charbon.”

Anne let the book slip into her lap. “Nous avons dit souvent d’impérissables choses,” she repeated softly.

It was of these “imperishable things” she was thinking, the things of the spirit, thatpersist when as with her the desire of the flesh is dead, and the lust of the eyes. The imperishable things that last into the evening of life, when the stars come out, and ever nearer and nearer draw the “murmurs and scents of the infinite sea.”

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