Kitabı oku: «Anna the Adventuress», sayfa 14
Chapter XXXI
ANNA’S TEA PARTY
“I suppose you haven’t the least idea who I am,” Lady Lescelles said, as she settled herself in Anna’s most comfortable chair.
“I have heard of you, of course,” Anna answered hesitatingly, “but – ”
“You cannot imagine what I have come to see you about. Well, I am Nigel Ennison’s sister!”
“Oh!” Anna said.
“Nigel is like all men,” Lady Lescelles continued. “He is a sad blunderer. He has helped me out of scrapes though, no end of times. He is an awfully good sort – and now he has come to me to help him if I can. Do you know that he is very much in love with you?”
Anna smiled.
“Well,” she admitted. “He has said something of the sort.”
“And you have sent him about his business. He tells me that you will not even see him. I don’t want to bother you, of course. A woman has a perfect right to choose her own husband, but Nigel seemed to think that there was something a little mysterious about your treatment of him. You seemed, he thought, to have some grievance which you would not explain and which he thought must arise from a misunderstanding. There, that sounds frightfully involved, doesn’t it, but perhaps you can make out what I mean. Don’t you care for Nigel at all?”
Anna was silent for a moment or two.
Lady Lescelles, graceful, very fashionably but quietly dressed, leaned back and watched her with shrewd kindly eyes.
“I like your brother better than any other man I know,” Anna said at last.
“Well, I don’t think you told him as much as that, did you?” Lady Lescelles asked.
“I did not,” Anna answered. “To be frank with you, Lady Lescelles, when your brother asked me the other day to be his wife I was under a false impression as regards his relations – with some other person. I know now that I was mistaken.”
“That sounds more promising,” Lady Lescelles declared. “May I tell Nigel to come and see you again? I am not here to do his love-making for him, you know. I came to see you on my own account.”
“Thank you very much,” Anna said. “It is very nice of you to come, but I do not think for the present, at any rate, I could give him any other answer. I do not intend to be married, or to become engaged just at present.”
“Well, why not?” Lady Lescelles asked, smiling. “I can only be a few years older than you, and I have been married four years. I can assure you, I wouldn’t be single again for worlds. One gets a lot more fun married.”
“Our cases are scarcely similar,” Anna remarked.
“Why not?” Lady Lescelles answered. “You are one of the Hampshire Pellissiers, I know, and your family are quite as good as ours. As for money, Nigel has tons of it.”
“It isn’t exactly that,” Anna answered, “but to tell you the truth, I cannot bear to look upon myself as a rank failure. We girls, my sister and I, were left quite alone when our father died, and I made up my mind to make some little place in the world for myself. I tried painting and couldn’t get on. Then I came to London and tried almost everything – all failures. I had two offers of marriage from men I liked very much indeed, but it never occurred to me to listen to either of them. You see I am rather obstinate. At last I tried a dramatic agent, and got on the music hall stage.”
“Well, you can’t say you’re a failure there,” Lady Lescelles remarked, smiling. “I’ve been to hear you lots of times.”
“I have been more fortunate than I deserved,” Anna answered, “but I only meant to stay upon the music hall stage until I could get something better. I am rehearsing now for a new play at the ‘Garrick’ and I have quite made up my mind to try and make some sort of position for myself as an actress.”
“Do you think it is really worth while?” Lady Lescelles asked gently. “I am sure you will marry Nigel sooner or later, and then all your work will be thrown away.”
Anna shook her head.
“If I were to marry now,” she said, “it would be with a sense of humiliation. I should feel that I had been obliged to find some one else to fight my battles for me.”
“What else,” Lady Lescelles murmured, “are men for?”
Anna laughed.
“Afterwards,” she said, “I should be perfectly content to have everything done for me. But I do think that if a girl is to feel comfortable about it they should start fairly equal. Take your case, for instance. You brought your husband a large fortune, your people were well known in society, your family interest I have heard was useful to him in his parliamentary career. So far as I am concerned, I am just now a hopeless nonentity. Your brother has everything – I have not shown myself capable even of earning my own living except in a way which could not possibly bring any credit upon anybody. And beyond this, Lady Lescelles, as you must know, recent events have set a good many people’s tongues wagging, and I am quite determined to live down all this scandal before I think of marrying any one.”
“I am sure,” Lady Lescelles said, gently, “that the last consideration need not weigh with you in the least. No one in the world is beyond the shaft of scandal – we all catch it terribly sometimes. It simply doesn’t count.”
“You are very kind,” Anna said. “I do hope I have been able to make you understand how I feel, that you don’t consider me a hopeless prig. It does sound a little horrid to talk so much about oneself and to have views.”
“I think,” Lady Lescelles said, putting down her teacup, “that I must send Nigel to plead his own cause. I may tell him, at any rate, that you will see him?”
“I shall like to see him,” Anna answered. “I really owe him something of an apology.”
“I will tell him,” Lady Lescelles said. “And now let us leave the men alone and talk about ourselves.”
“I am delighted to see you all here,” Anna said smiling upon them from behind the tea-tray, “but I shall have to ask you to excuse me for a few minutes. My agent is here, and he has brought his contract for me to sign. I will give you all some tea, and then I must leave you for a few minutes.”
The three men, who had arrived within a minute or two of one another, received her little speech in dead silence. Ennison, who had been standing with his back to the window, came suddenly a little further into the room.
“Miss Pellissier,” he said, “I came here this afternoon hoping particularly to see you for a few moments before you signed that contract.”
She shook her head.
“We may just as well have our talk afterwards,” she said, “and I need not keep poor Mr. Earles waiting.”
Courtlaw suddenly interposed.
“May I be allowed to say,” he declared, “that I came here with the same intention.”
“And I also,” Brendon echoed.
Anna was suddenly very quiet.
She was perhaps as near tears as ever before in her life.
“If I had three hands,” she said, with a faint smile, “I would give one to each of you. I know that you are all my friends, and I know that you all have very good advice to give me. But I am afraid I am a shockingly obstinate and a very ungrateful person. No, don’t let me call myself that. I am grateful, indeed I am. But on this matter my mind is quite made up.”
Ennison hesitated for a moment.
“Miss Pellissier,” he said, “these gentlemen are your friends, and therefore they are my friends. If I am to have no other opportunity I will speak before them. I came here to beg you not to sign that contract. I came to beg you instead to do me the honour of becoming my wife.”
“And I,” Courtlaw said, “although I have asked before in vain, have come to ask you once more the same thing.”
“And I,” Brendon said, humbly, “although I am afraid there is no chance for me, my errand was the same.”
Anna looked at them for a moment with a pitiful attempt at a smile. Then her head disappeared suddenly in her hands, and her shoulders shook violently.
“Please forgive me – for one moment,” she sobbed. “I – I shall be all right directly.”
Brendon rushed to the piano and strummed out a tune.
The others hurried to the window. And Anna was conscious of a few moments of exquisite emotion. After all, life had still its pulsations. The joy of being loved thrilled her as nothing before had ever done, a curious abstract joy which had nothing in it at that moment of regret or even pity.
She called them back very soon.
The signs of tears had all gone, but some subtle change seemed to have stolen into her face. She spoke readily enough, but there was a new timidity in her manner.
“My friends,” she said, “my dear friends, I am going to make the same answer to all of you – and that is perhaps you will say no answer at all. At present I cannot marry, I will not become bound even to any one. It would be very hard perhaps to make you understand just how I feel about it. I won’t try. Only I feel that you all want to make life too easy for me, and I am determined to fight my own battles a little longer. If any of you – or all of you feel the same in six months’ time from to-day, will you come, if you care to, and see me then?”
There was a brief silence. Ennison spoke at last.
“You will sign the contract?”
“I shall sign the contract. I think that I am very fortunate to have it to sign.”
“Do you mean,” Courtlaw asked, “that from now to the end of the six months you do not wish to see us – any of us?”
Her eyes were a little dim again.
“I do mean that,” she declared. “I want to have no distractions. My work will be all sufficient. I have an aunt who is coming to live with me, and I do not intend to receive any visitors at all. It will be a little lonely sometimes,” she said, looking around at them, “and I shall miss you all, but it is the fairest for myself – and I think for you. Do not avoid me if we meet by accident, but I trust to you all not to let the accident happen if you can help it.”
Brendon rose and came towards her with outstretched hand.
“Good-bye, Miss Pellissier, and success to you,” he said. “May you have as much good fortune as you deserve, but not enough to make you forget us.”
Courtlaw rose too.
“You are of the genus obstinate,” he said. “I do not know whether to wish you success or not. I will wish you success or failure, whichever is the better for you.”
“And I,” Ennison said, holding her fingers tightly, and forcing her to look into his eyes, “I will tell you what I have wished for you when we meet six months from to-day.”
Chapter XXXII
SIX MONTHS AFTER
Up the moss-grown path, where the rose bushes run wild, almost met, came Anna in a spotless white gown, with the flush of her early morning walk in her cheeks, and something of the brightness of it in her eyes. In one hand she carried a long-stalked red rose, dripping with dew, in the other the post-bag.
She reached a tiny yellow-fronted cottage covered with flowering creepers, and entered the front room by the wide-open window. Breakfast was laid for one, a dish of fruit and a shining coffee equipage. By the side of her plate was a small key. With trembling fingers she opened the post-bag. There was one letter. One only.
She opened and read it at once. It was dated from the House of Commons on the previous day.
“My Dear Miss Pellissier, —
“To-morrow the six months will be up. For days I have been undecided as to whether I would come to you or no. I would like you to believe that the decision I have arrived at – to stay away – is wholly and entirely to save you pain. It should be the happiest day of your life, and I would not detract from its happiness by letting you remember for a moment that there are others to whom your inevitable decision must bring some pain.
“For I know that you love Ennison. You tried bravely enough to hide your preference, to look at us all with the same eyes, to speak to us in the same tone. It was not your fault you failed. If by any chance I have made a mistake a word will bring me to you. But I know very well that that word will never be spoken.
“Your great success has been my joy, our joy as well as yours. You have made for yourself a unique place upon the stage. We have so many actresses who aspire to great things in the drama, not one who can interpret as you have interpreted it, the delicate finesse, the finer lights and shades of true comedy. Ennison will make a thousand enemies if he takes you from the stage. Yet I think that he will do it.
“For my own part I have come fully now into my inheritance. I am bound to admit that I greatly enjoy my altered life. Every minute I spend here is an education to me. Before very long I hope to have definite work. Some of my schemes are already in hand. People shrug their shoulders and call me a crazy socialist. Yet I fancy that we who have been poor ourselves must be the best judges of the needs of the people.
“You will write to me, I am sure – and from the date of your letter I trust most earnestly that I may come back to my old place as
“Your devoted friend,“Walter Brendon.”
She set the letter down, and drew from her pocket another with a foreign post mark which had come the day before. This one too she read.
“Hassell’s Camp,“Near Colorado.
“On or about the day you receive this letter, Anna, the six months will be up. Do you expect me, I wonder. I think not. At any rate, here I am, and here I shall be, twenty thousand feet above all your poison-reeking cities, up where God’s wind comes fresh from heaven, very near indeed to the untrodden snows. Sometimes I tremble, Anna, to think how near I came to passing through life without a single glimpse, a moment’s revelation of this greatest and most awful of mysteries, the mystery of primaeval nature. It is a true saying that in the mountains there is peace. One’s sense of proportion, battered out of all shape in the daily life of cities, reasserts itself. I love you still, Anna, but life holds other things than the love of man for woman. Some day I shall come back, and I will show you on canvas the things which have come to me up here amongst the eternal silence.
“Many nights I have thought of you, Anna. Your face has flitted out of my watch-fire, and then I have been a haunted man. But with the morning, the glorious unstained morning the passion of living would stir even the blood of a clod. It comes over the mountains, Anna, pink darkening into orange red, everywhere a wonderful cloud sea, scintillating with colour. It is enough to make a man throw away canvas and brushes into the bottomless precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist of us all a pigmy. When I think of those ateliers of ours, the art jargon, the decadents with their flamboyant talk I long for a two-edged sword and a minute of Divinity. To perdition with them all.
“I shall come back, if at all, a new man. I have a new cult to teach, a new enthusiasm. I feel years younger, a man again. My first visit will be to you. I must tell you all about God’s land, this marvellous virgin country, with its silent forests and dazzling peaks. I make no apology for not being with you now. You love Ennison. Believe me, the bitterness of it has almost departed, crushed out of me together with much of the weariness and sorrow I brought with me here by the nameless glory of these lonely months. Yet I shall think of you to-day. I pray, Anna, that you may find your happiness.
“Your friend,“David Courtlaw.
“P.S. – I do not congratulate you on your success. I was certain of it. I am glad or sorry according as it has brought you happiness.”
Anna’s eyes were a little dim as she poured out her coffee, and the laugh she attempted was not altogether a success.
“This is all very well,” she said, “but two out of the three are rank deserters – and if the papers tell the truth the third is as bad. I believe I am doomed to be an old maid.”
She finished her breakfast and strolled out across the garden with the letters still in her hand. Beyond was a field sloping steeply upwards, and at the top a small pine plantation. She climbed slowly towards it, keeping close to the hedge side, fragrant with wild roses, and holding her skirts high above the dew-laden grass. Arrived in the plantation she sat down with her back against a tree trunk.
Already the warm sun was drawing from the pines their delicious odour. Below her stretched a valley of rich meadowland, of yellow cornfields, and beyond moorland hillside glorious with purple heather and golden gorse. She tried to compose her thoughts, to think of the last six months, to steep herself in the calm beauty of the surroundings. And she found herself able to do nothing of the sort. A new restlessness seemed to have stolen in upon her. She started at the falling of a leaf, at the lumbering of a cow through the hedge. Her heart was beating with quite unaccustomed vigour, her hands were hot, she was conscious of a warmth in her blood which the summer sunshine was scarcely responsible for. She struggled against it quite uselessly. She knew very well that a new thing was stirring in her. The period of repression was over. It is foolish, she murmured to herself, foolish. He will not come. He cannot.
And then all her restlessness was turned to joy. She sprang to her feet and stood listening with parted lips and eager eyes. So he found her when he came round the corner of the spinney.
“Anna,” he cried eagerly.
She held out her arms to him and smiled.
“And where,” he asked, “are my rivals?”
“Deserters,” she answered, laughing. “It is you alone, Nigel, who have saved me from being an old maid. Here are their letters.”
He took them from her and read them. When he came to a certain sentence in Brendon’s letter he stopped short and looked up at her.
“So Brendon and I,” he said, “have been troubled with the same fears. I too, Anna, have watched and read of your success with – I must confess it – some misgiving.”
“Please tell me why?” she asked.
“Do you need me to tell you? You have tasted the luxury of power. You have made your public, you are already a personage. And I want you for myself – for my wife.”
She took his hand and smiled upon him.
“Don’t you understand, Nigel,” she said softly, “that it was precisely for this I have worked so hard. It is just the aim I have had in view all the time. I wanted to have something to give up. I did not care – no woman really cares – to play the beggar maid to your King Cophetua.”
“Then you will really give it all up!” he exclaimed.
She laughed.
“When we go indoors I will show you the offers I have refused,” she answered. “They have all been trying to turn my head. I think that nearly every manager in London has made me an offer. My reply to all of them has been the same. My engagement at the ‘Garrick’ terminates Saturday week, and then I am free.”
“You will make me horribly conceited,” he answered. “I think that I shall be the most unpopular man in London. You are not playing to-night, are you?”
“Not to-night,” she answered. “I am giving my understudy a chance. I am going up to dine with my sister.”
“Annabel is a prophetess,” he declared. “I too am asked.”
“It is a conspiracy,” she exclaimed. “Come, we must go home and have some luncheon. My little maidservant will think that I am lost.”
They clambered down the hill together. The air was sweet with the perfume of flowers, and the melody of murmuring insects, the blue sky was cloudless, the heat of the sun was tempered by the heather-scented west wind. Ennison paused by the little gate.
“I think,” he said, “that you have found the real home of the lotus-eaters. Here one might live the life of golden days.”
She shook her head gently.
“Neither you nor I, Nigel, are made of such stuff,” she answered. “These are the playgrounds of life. The great heart of the world beats only where men and women are gathered together. You have your work before you, and I – ”
He kissed her on the lips.
“I believe,” he said, “that you mean me to be Prime Minister.”
