Anne Part 25

"I am extremely fond of her," replied Miss Vanhorn, dryly. "Run and make ready; and send the bodiced woman to me. I give you half an hour; no longer."

Jeanne-Armande came in with her gliding step. In her youth a lady's footfall was never heard. She wore long narrow cloth gaiters without heels, met at the ankles by two modest ruffles, whose edges were visible when the wind blew. The exposure of even a hair's-breadth rim of ankle would have seemed to her an unpardonable impropriety. However, there was no danger; the ruffles swept the ground.

The Frenchwoman was grieved to part with her pupil; she had conceived a real affection for her in the busy spot which served her as a heart. She said good-by in the privacy of the kitchen, that Miss Vanhorn might not see the tears in her eyes; then she returned to the blue room and went through a second farewell, with a dignity appropriate to the occasion.

"Good-by," said Anne, coming back from the doorway to kiss her thin cheek a second time. Then she whispered: "I may return to you after all, mademoiselle. Do not forget me."

"The dear child!" said Jeanne-Armande, waving her handkerchief as the carriage drove away. And there was a lump in her yellow old throat which did not disappear all day.

CHAPTER XI.

"Those who honestly make their own way without the aid of fortunate circ.u.mstances and by the force of their own intelligence. This includes the great mult.i.tude of Americans."

--GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

"He is a good fellow, spoiled. Whether he can be unspoiled, is doubtful. It might be accomplished by the Blessing we call Sorrow."

When the two travellers arrived at Caryl's, Helen was gone. Another telegraphic dispatch had again summoned her to her frequently dying grandfather.

"You are disappointed," said Miss Vanhorn.

"Yes, grandaunt."

"You will have all the more time to devote to me," said the old woman, with her dry little laugh.

Caryl's was a summer resort of an especial kind. Persons who dislike crowds, persons who seek novelty, and, above all, persons who spend their lives in carefully avoiding every thing and place which can even remotely be called popular, combine to make such nooks, and give them a brief fame--a fame which by its very nature must die as suddenly as it is born. Caryl's was originally a stage inn, or "tarvern," in the dialect of the district. But the stage ran no longer, and as the railway was several miles distant, the house had become as isolated as the old road before its door, which went literally nowhere, the bridge which had once spanned the river having fallen into ruin. Some young men belonging to those New York families designated by Tante as "Neeker-bokers"

discovered Caryl's by chance, and established themselves there as a place free from new people, with some shooting, and a few trout. The next summer they brought their friends, and from this beginning had swiftly grown the present state of things, namely, two hundred persons occupying the old building and hastily erected cottages, in rooms which their city servants would have refused with scorn.

The crowd of summer travellers could not find Caryl's; Caryl's was not advertised. It was not on the road to anywhere. It was a mysterious spot. The vogue of such places changes as fantastically as it is created; the people who make it take flight suddenly, and never return.

If it exist at all, it falls into the hands of another cla.s.s; and there is a great deal of wondering (deservedly) over what was ever found attractive in it. The n.o.bler ocean beaches, grand mountains, and bounteous springs will always be, must always be, popular; it is Nature's ironical method, perhaps, of forcing the would-be exclusives to content themselves with her second best, after all.

Caryl's, now at the height of its transient fame, was merely a quiet nook in the green country, with no more attractions than a hundred others; but the old piazza was paced by the little high-heeled shoes of fas.h.i.+onable women, the uneven floors swept by their trailing skirts.

French maids and little bare-legged children sported in the old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, and young men made up their shooting parties in the bare office, and danced in the evening--yes, really danced, not leaving it superciliously to the boys--in the rackety bowling-alley, which, refloored, did duty as a ball-room. There was a certain woody, uncloying flavor about Caryl's (so it was a.s.serted), which could not exist amid the gilding of Saratoga. All this Miss Vanhorn related to her niece on the day of their arrival. "I do not expect you to understand it," she said; "but pray make no comment; ask no question. Accept everything, and then you will pa.s.s."

Aunt and niece had spent a few days in New York, _en route_. The old lady was eccentric about her own attire; she knew that she could afford to be eccentric. But for her niece she purchased a sufficient although simple supply of summer costumes, so that the young girl made her appearance among the others without attracting especial attention.

Helen was not there; no one identified Miss Douglas as the _rara avis_ of her fantastic narrations. And there was no surface sparkle about Anne, none of the usual girlish wish to attract attention, which makes the eyes brighten, the color rise, and the breath quicken when entering a new circle.

That old woman of the world, Katharine Vanhorn, took no step to attract notice to her niece. She knew that Anne's beauty was of the kind that could afford to wait; people would discover it for themselves. Anne remained, therefore, quietly by her side through several days, while she, not unwilling at heart to have so fresh a listener, talked on and instructed her. Miss Vanhorn was not naturally brilliant, but she was one of those society women who, in the course of years of fas.h.i.+onable life, have selected and retained for their own use excellent bits of phrasing not original with themselves, idiomatic epithets, a way of neatly describing a person in a word or two as though you had ticketed him, until the listener really takes for brilliancy what is no more than a thread-and-needle shop of other people's wares.

"Any man," she said, as they sat in the transformed bowling-alley--"any man, no matter how insignificant and unattractive, can be made to believe that any woman, no matter how beautiful or brilliant, is in love with him, at the expense of two looks and one sigh."

"But who cares to make him believe?" said Anne, with the unaffected, cheerful indifference which belonged to her, and which had already quieted Miss Vanhorn's fears as to any awkward self-consciousness.

"Most women."

"Why?"

"To swell their trains," replied the old woman. "Isabel Varce, over there in blue, and Rachel Bannert, the one in black, care for nothing else."

"Mrs. Bannert is very ugly," said Anne, with the calm certainty of girlhood.

"Oh, is she?" said Miss Vanhorn, laughing shortly. "You will change your mind, my Phyllis; you will learn that a dark skin and half-open eyes are superb."

"If _Helen_ was here, people would see real beauty," answered Anne, with some scorn.

"They are a contrast, I admit; opposite types. But we must not be narrow, Phyllis; you will find that people continue to look at Mrs.

Bannert, no matter who is by. Here is some one who seems to know you."

"Mr. Dexter," said Anne, as the tall form drew near. "He is a friend of Helen's."

"Helen has a great many friends. However, I happen to have heard of this Mr. Dexter. You may present him to me--I hope you know how."

All Madame Moreau's pupils knew how. Anne performed her task properly, and Dexter, bringing forward one of the old broken-backed chairs (which formed part of the "woody and uncloying flavor" of Caryl's), sat down beside them.

"I am surprised that you remembered me, Mr. Dexter," said the girl. "You saw me but once, and on New-Year's Day too, among so many."

"But you remembered me, Miss Douglas."

"That is different. You were kind to me--about the singing. It is natural that I should remember."

"And why not as natural that I should remember the singing?"

"Because it was not good enough to have made any especial impression,"

replied Anne, looking at him calmly with her clear violet eyes.

"It was at least new--I mean the simplicity of the little ballad," said Dexter, ceasing to compliment, and speaking only the truth.

"Simplicity!" said Miss Vanhorn: "I am tired of it. I hope, Anne, you will not sing any simplicity songs here; those ridiculous things about bringing an ivy leaf, only an ivy leaf, and that it was but a little faded flower. They show an extremely miserly spirit, I think. If you can not give your friends a whole blossom or a fresh one, you had better not give them any at all."

"Who was it who said that he was sated with poetry about flowers, and that if the Muses must come in everywhere, he wished they would not always come as green-grocers?" said Dexter, who knew perfectly the home of this as of every other quotation, but always placed it in that way to give people an opportunity of saying, "Charles Lamb, wasn't it?" or "Sheridan?" It made conversation flowing.

"The flowers do not need the Muses," said Miss Vanhorn--"slatternly creatures, with no fit to their gowns. And that reminds me of what Anne was saying as you came up, Mr. Dexter; she was calmly and decisively observing that Mrs. Bannert was very ugly."

A smile crossed Dexter's face in answer to the old woman's short dry laugh.

"I added that if Mrs. Lorrington was here, people would see real beauty," said Anne, distressed by this betrayal, but standing by her guns.

Miss Vanhorn laughed again. "Mr. Dexter particularly admires Mrs.

Bannert, child," she said, cheerfully, having had the unexpected amus.e.m.e.nt of two good laughs in an evening.

But Anne, instead of showing embarra.s.sment, turned her eyes toward Dexter, as if in honest inquiry.

"Mrs. Bannert represents the Oriental type of beauty," he answered, smiling, as he perceived her frank want of agreement.