lady anne garland was sitting in mrs. cresswell’s drawing-room. it was a charming room, with its domed ceiling, its panelled walls, its long windows, its curtains and brocades of dull orange and glowing brown, with its porcelains, its bronzes, and its masses of yellow and white roses in old china bowls and slender glasses.
anne herself, in a dress of some gleaming material, pale primrose in colour, was sitting on an empire sofa. the warm brown of its brocade made a delightful harmony with the colour of her dress—in fact, she looked entirely in keeping with her surroundings. a white-haired man, with blue eyes and wearing faultless evening clothes, was sitting on the sofa beside her; and anne was asking herself where in the name of wonder she had seen him before. something [pg 132]in his manner seemed familiar, or was it, perhaps, his eyes, his keen old blue eyes under their shaggy eyebrows? he had been introduced to her early in the evening, and somehow there had seemed at once a curious and indefinable sympathy between them, one which had sprung to life with the first conventional words they had uttered. throughout the evening he had monopolized her—unquestionably monopolized her—yet entirely without appearing to do so. and over and over again anne was asking herself when and where she had seen him before.
she glanced at him now as she slowly waved her fan—a delicate thing of mother-of-pearl and fine old cobwebby lace softly yellow with age. anne possessed the trick of fan-waving in its subtlest form, a trick—or art—she had inherited from an ancestor of more than a century ago, one dolores di mendova, a very noted beauty of the spanish court, from whom anne had also inherited her hair, her creamy skin, and her panther-like grace.
general carden turned and saw that she was watching him. a faint rose colour tinged the ivory of anne’s face.
“i was wondering,” she said, explanatory, “where it was that i had seen you before.”
general carden smiled, a gay old smile. “i can tell you where i have seen you, though whether you have deigned to notice me is quite another matter.”
“yes?” queried anne the fan fluttering to and fro.
“i have frequently seen you driving in the park,” said general carden. “you in your carriage, i in my car.”
“yes?” mused anne, still doubtful.
“you do not remember?” asked general carden. he was frankly disappointed.
“on the contrary, i remember perfectly. i confess i had forgotten the fact till you mentioned it. yet somehow it does not quite explain—” she broke off.
“explain?” asked general carden.
anne laughed. “explain the quite absurd notion that i have actually spoken to you before. something in your manner, your speech, seems almost familiar. i fancied i must have known you—not intimately, of course, but slightly.”
“i fear,” he regretted, “that i have not had [pg 134]that pleasure. i shall hope now to be able to make up for my previous loss. you live in town?”
“the greater part of the year,” said anne. “i spend three or four months in the country.”
“which, no doubt, you like,” replied general carden courteously. “being young, you are able to enjoy it. i prefer london. i only leave town during august, when i go abroad. and the whole time i wish i were in england. an unprofitable method of spending a yearly month of one’s life. once i—” he broke off. “i am too old for travelling now,” he ended.
“isn’t that rather—nonsense?” said anne, with a faint hint of a smile, and glancing at the upright figure beside her.
general carden straightened his shoulders. she was candid—absolutely candid—in her remark.
“very charming of you to suggest it, lady anne,” he said, and he tried unavailingly to keep the pleasure out of his voice. “perhaps after all——”
“yes,” smiled anne, “after all, you don’t find it quite as disagreeable as you pretend.”
“ah, well!” he said.
there was a pleasant little silence. anne watched the groups of people in the room, sitting or standing in intimate conversation. there was an atmosphere of airy gaiety about the place, a lightness, an effervescence. listlessness or boredom was entirely absent. in one of the farthest groups was her friend, muriel lancing, with whom she was staying. she was an elfin-like, dainty figure in a green dress, on which shone a brilliant gleam of diamonds. muriel herself was sparkling to-night like a bit of escaped quicksilver.
rather nearer was another woman, tall and massive. her figure was undoubtedly good, but her pose gave one the faintest suspicion that she was conscious of that fact. she reminded one of a statue which had become slightly animated by some accident. apparently, too, she had never forgotten the fact of having been a statue, and wished other people not to forget it either. her face was a faultless oval, and her hair worn in a madonna-like style. but beyond the oval and the hair the madonna-like impression ceased. her face was hard, there was none of the exquisite warmth, the tender humanity seen in the paintings of the virgin mother.
general carden was also looking at mrs. sheldon, whom, it may be remembered, he had seen on a previous occasion in the park, a day now three or four weeks old. anne noticed the direction of his glance.
“do you know her?” she asked suddenly, then added as an afterthought, “she is a friend of mine.” anne did not state that it was a friendship of only two years’ standing, and one which existed infinitely more on mrs. sheldon’s side than on her own.
“i once had the honour of knowing her fairly intimately,” replied general carden. “we still exchange bows and civil speeches, but—well, i fancy i remind her of an episode she wishes to forget—a perfectly unimpeachable little episode as far as she was concerned, of course.”
anne glanced at him sideways. there was almost a hard note in his voice, which had not escaped her. she saw his profile clean-cut against the dark panelling of the room. and then a sudden little light of illumination sprang [pg 137]to her eyes. she had all at once discovered of whom it was he reminded her. there was in his fine old face a very distinct look of the vagabond piper. it was one of those indefinable likenesses which nevertheless exist, at all events in the eyes of those who chance to see it. it was faint, elusive, and to the majority it probably would not be the least apparent, but anne now knew that it was this which had puzzled her throughout the evening.
and with the discovery came a sudden mental picture of a man standing in the moonlight with a crimson rose against his lips. it was a picture that had presented itself many times to her mental vision during the last few days, and as many times had been dismissed. it was apt to make her heart beat a trifle faster, to make the warm colour surge faintly to her face. being unable—or unwilling—to account for a certain picturesque, if too impetuous, impulse which had moved her that moonlight night, she wished to forget it. yet it had a disturbing way of representing itself before her mind.
in banishing it now her thoughts turned into another trend, which was apt to absorb them quite a good deal, the thought of that writer of letters and books—robin adair. anne was perfectly aware that this unknown writer occupied a large amount of her mind; it swung and see-sawed between him and the vagabond piper in a way that was almost uncomfortable and altogether unaccountable. she was not accustomed to have her thoughts encroached on in this way without her will being consulted, and she could not understand it, or she told herself that she could not understand it, and that possibly came to the same thing. at all events, she was undoubtedly in a slight puzzlement of mind. it is the only word to describe her vaguely perplexed state. as now robin adair had swung uppermost, his book presented itself to her as a subject of conversation.
she asked general carden if he had read it. she fancied—it was probably pure fancy—that he started slightly. he glanced, too, at mrs. cresswell, who was only a few paces away and quite possibly within earshot.
“ah, yes,” he replied indifferently. “mrs. cresswell recommended it to me—a fairly promising book, i thought.” he was adhering faithfully to the expression.
“fairly promising!” anne’s voice held a note akin to indignation. “i thought it delightful; clever, cultured, quite admirably written.”
general carden experienced a sensation which might be described as a glow of satisfaction. “isn’t that,” he said, “rather high praise?”
“not an atom more than the book deserves!” responded anne warmly. “and the reviews on it—i saw two or three—were excellent.”
“indeed!” said general carden politely. the old hypocrite had no mind to mention that every review ever penned on it was now lying safely locked in his desk, that he knew them all nearly verbatim, that he had gloated over them, exulted over them though with many a little stab of pain in the region called the heart.
“of course,” pursued anne thoughtfully, “it isn’t merely a surface book, full of adventure, movement, and incident; and what incident there is might be termed improbable by those who don’t realize that nothing is improbable, nothing impossible. it’s in its style, its finish, its—its texture that the charm and beauty of it lie.”
“it has certainly some well-turned phrases,” conceded general carden magnanimously. he liked her to talk about the book; he longed for her to continue, though for the life of him he could not give her a lead. yet his grudging admiration—all a pretence though it was, though anne could not know that—fired her to further defence of the writing, stimulated her to fresh praise.
“there are delightful phrases!” she said emphatically. “it is a modern book, yet with all the delicacy, the refinement, the porcelain-air of the old school. for all that the scenes are laid mainly in the open, and are, as i said, quite modern; it breathes an old-world grace, a kind of powder-and-patches charm, which makes one feel that the writer must have imbibed the finish, the courtesy of the old school from his cradle, as if it must have come to him as a birthright, an inheritance.”
general carden drew himself up. his blue eyes were shining. “your praise of the book,” he said, “is delightful. the author”—his eyes grew suddenly sad—“would, i am sure, be honoured if he knew your opinion.”
anne flushed. did he not know? had she not told him? though perhaps not in those very words.
“it does surprise me,” she, allowed, after a second’s pause, “that you are not more enthusiastic about it. i should have fancied somehow—slightly as i know you—that it would have entirely appealed to you.”
general carden gave a little cough. “it does appeal to me,” he said. “it appeals to me greatly—so much, in fact, that i assumed a certain disparagement in order that i might have the pleasure of hearing you refute me.” he had forgotten mrs. cresswell, but the words had not escaped her, absorbed though she appeared to be in conversation, and there was the tiniest—the very tiniest—expression of triumph in her eyes.
“oh!” said anne, at once puzzled and debating. and then she said, “i am longing to read his next book.”
“he has not published another, then?” queried general carden carelessly. double-faced that he was, he knew perfectly well that no second book had appeared as yet. had he not advised mudie’s—naturally not in mrs. cresswell’s presence—to supply him with a copy the moment one appeared?
“no,” replied anne. and she stopped. had not robin adair himself told her that his wanderer had escaped him, and heaven knew whether he would ever again be caught, chained, fettered, and imprisoned in the pages and between the covers of a book?
later in the evening general carden, taking his departure, said to anne, “i should like to have the honour of calling on you, if you will allow me to do so.”
and anne replied: “i should be quite delighted. i am staying now with mrs. lancing, and go down to the country in a few days, but i shall return to town to my own house in the autumn.”
“in the autumn, then,” said general carden, bowing over her hand.
