Mistress Anne Part 37

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 p.u.s.s.y 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 peac.o.c.k-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 cla.s.sic 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 gra.s.s 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 Pal.u.s.tria_, 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 s.h.i.+vering 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.