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Mistress Anne, a novel by Temple Bailey |
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Chapter 15. In Which Anne Asks And Jimmie Answers |
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_ CHAPTER XV. In Which Anne Asks and Jimmie Answers "'A MONEYLESS man,'" said Uncle Rod, "'goes quickly through the market.'" He had a basket on his arm. Anne, who was at her easel, looked up. "What did you buy?" He laughed. His laugh had in it a quality of youth which seemed to contradict the signs of age which were upon him. Yet even these signs were modified by the carefulness of his attire and the distinction of his carriage. Great-uncle Rodman had been a dandy in his day, and even now his Norfolk coat and knickerbockers, his long divided beard and flowing tie gave him an air half foreign, wholly his own. In his basket was a melon, crusty rolls, peaches and a bottle of cream. "Such extravagance!" Anne said, as he showed her the bottle. "It was the price of two chops. And not a lamb the less for it. Two chops would have been an extravagance, and now we shall feast innocently and economically." "Where shall we eat?" Anne asked. "Under the oak?" She shook her head. "Too sunny." "In the garden?" "Not till to-night--people can see us from the road." "You choose then." It was a game that they had played ever since she had come to him. It gave to each meal the atmosphere of an adventure. "I choose," she clapped her hands, "I choose--by the fish-pond, Uncle Rod." The fish-pond was at the end of the garden walk. Just beyond it a wooden gate connected a high brick wall and opened upon an acre or two of pasture where certain cows browsed luxuriously. The brick wall and the cows and the quiet of the corner made the fish-pond seem miles away from the town street which was faced by the front of Cousin Margaret's house. The fish-pond was a favorite choice in the game played by Anne and Uncle Rod. But they did not always choose it because that would have made it commonplace and would have robbed it of its charm. Anne, rising to arrange the tray, was stopped by Uncle Rodman. "Sit still, my dear; I'll get things ready." To see him at his housekeeping was a pleasant sight. He liked it, and gave to it his whole mind. The peeling of the peaches with a silver knife, the selection of a bowl of old English ware to put them in, and making of the coffee in a copper machine, the fresh linen, the roses as a last perfect touch. Anne carried the tray, for his weak arm could not be depended upon; and by the fish-pond they ate their simple meal. The old fishes had crumbs and came to the top of the water to get them, and a cow looking over the gate was rewarded by the remaining half of the crusty roll. She walked away presently to give place to a slender youth who had crossed the fields and now stood with his hat off looking in. "If it isn't Anne," he said, "and Uncle Rod." Uncle Rod stood up. He did not smile and he did not ask the slender youth to enter. But Anne was more hospitable. "Come in, Jimmie," she said. "I can't offer you any lunch because we have eaten it all up. But there's some coffee." Jimmie entered with alacrity. He had come back from New York in a mood of great discontent, to meet the pleasant news that Anne Warfield was in town. He had flown at once to find her. If he had expected the Fatted Calf, he found none. Uncle Rodman left them at once. He had a certain amount of philosophy, but it had never taught him patience with Jimmie Ford. Jimmie drank a cup of coffee, and talked of his summer. "Saw your Dr. Richard in New York, out at Austin's." "Yes." "He's going to marry Eve." "Is he?" "Yes. I don't understand what she sees in him--he isn't good style." "He doesn't have to be." "Why not?" "Men like Richard Brooks mean more to the world than just--clothes, Jimmie." "I don't see it." "You wouldn't." "Why shouldn't I?" "Well, you look so nice in your clothes--and you need them to look nice in." He stared at her. He felt dimly that she was making fun of him. "From the way you put it," he said, with irritation, "from the way you put it any one might think that it was just my clothes----" "That make you attractive? Oh, _no_, Jimmie. You have nice eyes and--and a way with you." She was sewing on a scrap of fancy work, and her own eyes were on it. She was as demure as possible, but she seemed unusually and disconcertingly self-possessed. And now Jimmie became plaintive. Plaintiveness had always been his strong suit with Anne. He was eager for sympathy. His affair with Eve had hurt his vanity. "I have never seen a girl like her. She doesn't care what the world thinks. She doesn't care what any one thinks. She goes right along taking everything that comes her way--and giving nothing." "Did you want her to give you--anything, Jimmie?" "Me? Not me. She's a beauty and all that. But I wouldn't marry her if she were as rich as Rockefeller--and she isn't. Her money is her Aunt Maude's." "Oh, Jimmie--sour grapes." "Sour nothing. She isn't my kind. She said one day that if she wanted a man she'd ask him to marry her. That it was a woman's right to choose. I can't stand that sort of thing." "But if she should ask you, Jimmie?" Again he stared at her. "I jolly well shouldn't give her a chance. Not after the way she treated me." "What way?" "Oh, making me think I was the whole thing--and then--throwing me down." "Oh, so you don't like being thrown down?" "No. I don't like that kind of a woman. You know the kind of woman I like, Anne." The caressing note in his voice came to her like an echo of other days. But now it had no power to move her. "I am not sure that I do know the kind of woman you like--tell me." "Oh, I like a woman that is a woman, and makes a man feel that he's the whole thing." "But mustn't he be the whole thing to make her feel that he is?" He flung himself out of his chair and stood before her. "Anne," he demanded, "can't you do anything but ask questions? You aren't a bit like you used to be." She laid down her work and now he could see her eyes. Such steady eyes! "No, I'm not like myself. You see, Jimmie, I have been away for a year, and one learns such a lot in a year." He felt a sudden sense of loss. There had always been the old Anne to come back to. The Anne who had believed and had sympathized. Again his voice took on a plaintive note. "Be good to me, girl," he said. Then very low, "Anne, I was half afraid to come to-day." "Afraid--why?" "Oh, I suppose you think I acted like a--cad." "What do _you_ think?" "Oh, stop asking questions. It was the only thing to do. You were poor and I was poor, and there wasn't anything ahead of me--or of you--surely you can't blame me." "How can I blame you for what was, after all, my great good fortune?" "Your what?" She said it again, quietly, "My great good fortune, Jimmie. I couldn't see it then. Indeed, I was very unhappy and sentimental and cynical over it. But now I know what life can hold for me--and what it would not have held if I had married you." "Anne, who has been making love to you?" "Jimmie!" "Oh, no woman ever talks like that until she has found somebody else. And I thought you were constant." "Constant to what?" "To the thought--to--to the thought of what we might be to each other some day." "And in the meantime you were asking Eve to marry you. Was it her money that you wanted?" "Her money! Do you think I am a fortune-hunter?" "I am asking you, Jimmie?" "For Heaven's sake, stop asking questions. You know how a pretty woman goes to my head. And she's the kind that flits away to make you follow. I can't fancy your doing that sort of a thing, Anne." "No," quietly, "women like myself, Jimmie, go on expecting that things will come to them--and when they don't come, we keep on--expecting. But somehow we never seem to be able to reach out our hands to take--what we might have." He began to feel better. This was the wistful Anne of the old days. "There has never been any one like you, Anne. It seems good to be here. Women like Eve madden a man, but your kind are so--comfortable." Always the old Jimmie! Wanting his ease! After he had left her she sat looking out over the gate beyond the fields to the gold of the west. When at last she went up to the house Uncle Rod had had his nap and was in his big chair on the front porch. "Jimmie and I are friends again," she told him. He looked at her inquiringly. "Real friends?" "Surface friends. He is coming again to tell me his troubles and get my sympathy. Uncle Rod, what makes me so clear-eyed all of a sudden?" He smoothed his beard. "My dear, 'the eyes of the hare are one thing, the eyes of the owl another.' You are looking at life from a different point of view. I knew that if you ever met a real man you'd know the difference between him and Jimmie Ford." She came over, and standing behind him, put her hands on his shoulders. "I've found him, Uncle Rod." "St. Michael?" "Yes." "Poor little girl." "I am not poor, Uncle Rod. I am rich. It is enough to have known him." The sunset was showing above the wooden gate. The cows had gone home. The old fish swam lazily in the shadowed water. Anne drew her low chair to the old man's side. "Uncle Rod, isn't it queer, the difference between the things we ask for and the things we get? To have a dream come true doesn't mean always that you must get what you want, does it? For sometimes you get something that is more wonderful than any dream. And now if you'll listen, and not look at me, I'll tell you all about it, you darling dear." * * * * * It was in late August that Anne received the first proof sheets of Geoffrey's book. "I want you to read it before any one else. It will be dedicated to you and it is better than I dared believe--I could never have written it without your help, your inspiration." It was a great book. Anne, remembering the moment the plot had been conceived on that quiet night by Peggy's bedside when she had seen the pussy cat and had heard the tinkling bell, laid it down with a feeling almost of awe. She wrote Geoffrey about it. It was her first real letter to him. She had written one little note of forgiveness and of friendliness, but she had felt that for a time at least she should do no more than that, and Uncle Rod had commended her resolution. "Hot fires had best burn out," he said. "If you never do anything else," Anne wrote to Geoffrey, "you can be content. There isn't a line of pot-boiling in it. It is as if you had dipped your pen in magic ink. Rereading it to Uncle Rodman has brought back the nights when we talked it over, and I can't help feeling a little peacock-y to know that I had a part in it. "And now I am going to tell you what Uncle Rod's comment was when I finished the very last word. He sat as still as a solemn old statue, and then he said, 'Geoffrey Fox is a great man. No one could have written like that who was sordid of mind or small of soul.' "If you knew my Uncle Rodman you would understand all that his opinion stands for. He is never flattering, but he has had much time to think--he is like one of the old prophets--so that, indeed, I sometimes feel that he ought to sing his sentences like David, instead of saying wise things in an ordinary way. And his proverbs! he has such a collection, he is making a book of them, and he digs into old volumes in all sorts of languages--oh, some day you must know him! "I am going back to Crossroads. It seems that my work lies there. And I have great news for you. I am to live with Mrs. Brooks. She has her cousin, Sulie Tyson, with her, but she wants me. And it will be so much better than Bower's. "All through Mrs. Nancy's letters I can read her loneliness. She tries to keep it out. But she can't. She is proud of her son's success--but she feels the separation intensely. He has his work, she only her thoughts of him--and that's the tragedy. "In the meantime, here we are at Cousin Margaret's doing funny little stunts in the way of cooking and catering. We can't afford the kind of housekeeping which requires servants, so it is a case of plain living and high thinking. Uncle Rod hates to eat anything that has been killed, and makes all sorts of excuses not to. He won't call himself a vegetarian, for he thinks that people who label themselves are apt to be cranks. So he does our bit of marketing and comes home triumphant with his basket innocent of birds or beasts, and we live on ambrosia and nectar or the modern equivalent. We are quite classic with our feasts by the old fish-pond at the end of the garden. "Cousin Margaret's garden is flaming in the August days with phlox, and is fragrant with day lilies. There's a grass walk and a sun-dial, and best of all, as I have said, the fish-pond. "And while I am on the subject of gardens, Uncle Rod rises up in wrath when people insist upon giving the botanical names to all of our lovely blooms. He says that the pedants are taking all of the poetry out of language, and it does seem so, doesn't it? Why should we call larkspur _Delphinium_? or a forget-me-not _Myostis Palustria_, and would a primrose by the river's brim ever be to you or to me _primula vulgaris_? Uncle Rod says that a rose by any other name would _not_ smell as sweet; and it is fortunate that the worst the botanists may do cannot spoil the generic--_rosa_. "And now with my talk of Uncle Rod and of Me, I am stringing this letter far beyond all limits, and yet I have not told you half the news. "I had a little note from Beulah, and she and Eric are at home in the Playhouse. She loves your silver candlesticks. So many of her presents were practical and she prefers the 'pretties.' "You have heard, of course, that Dr. Brooks is to marry Eve Chesley. The wedding will not take place for some time. I wonder if they will live with Aunt Maude. I can't quite imagine Dr. Richard's wings clipped to such a cage." She signed herself, "Always your friend, Anne Warfield." Far up in the Northern woods Geoffrey read her letter. He could use his eyes a little, but most of the time he lay with them shut and Mimi read to him, or wrote for him at his dictation. He had grown to be very dependent on Mimi; there were even times when he had waked in the night, groping and calling out, and she had gathered him in her arms and had held him against her breast until he stopped shaking and shivering and saying that he could not see. He spoke her name now, and she came to him. He put Anne's letter in her hand. "Read it!" and when she had read, he said, "You see she says that I am great--and she used to say it. Am I, Mimi?" "Oh, Geoffrey, yes." "I want you to make it true, Mimi. Shall I begin my new book to-morrow?" It was what she had wanted, what she had begged that he would do, but he had refused to listen. And now he was listening to another voice! She brought her note-book, and sat beside him. Being ignorant of shorthand she had invented a little system of her own, and she was glad when she could make him laugh over her funny pot-hooks and her straggling sketches. Thus in the darkness Geoffrey struggled and strove. "Speaking of candlesticks," he wrote to Anne, "it was as if a thousand candles lighted my world when I read your letter!" _ |
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