There was a very long and very gay dinner, and many more guests came during the evening. When the last of them had gone and Anne went to her own pink room, the only luxurious room in the house, she felt happier than even during the past enchanted weeks, for she was at home and the home was her own.
She had never been permitted to interfere with the ancient and admirable housekeeping at Warkworth Manor, but she discovered next morning that the spirit of the housewife was in her, and was far more exultant over her bunch of keys, her consultations with her major-domo, her struggles with the most worthless servants on earth, than she had ever been over her first doll or her first novel. The routine into which the young couple immediately settled was unique to both and had little of monotony in it. After their early walk Warner spent the morning in his library, where he had a large case of books, Hunsdon’s wedding present, to consider. He resisted his friend’s proposition to write political pamphlets with the seriousness that rises from the deepest humour, but he loved to read and ponder, and his few hours of solitude were easily occupied with the lore of the centuries. After siesta they rode and called at one or other of the Great Houses, and every evening they were dined or dined others. Bath House was closed, but the island was always gay until the dead heat of summer came and hurricanes threatened but rarely thinned the heavy air, when although tropical storms were frequent, the rain was as hot as the earth.
Even then Warner and Anne had a companionship of which they never tired, and there was a new interest in watching the torn Caribbean and the furious driving of the wind among the trees. They could always exercise on the long veranda, or play games within doors.
Then, for a time, this perfect state of bliss was threatened. Anne was thrown from her horse, frightened by a flash of lightning, as, caught in a storm, they were riding full speed for home, and was in agony and peril for several days, confined to her bed for a fortnight longer. There were the best of doctors on so wealthy an island as Nevis, and she recovered completely, although forced to shroud not the least of her desires. But the wild despair of Warner while she was in danger, and his following devotion, his inspired ingenuity in diverting her during her term of sadness and protest, made her feel that to cherish disappointment even in her inmost soul would be flying in the face of providence; her spirits struggled up to their normal high level, and once more she was the happiest of women. It was another fortnight before she could leave the house, but the languor was a new and pleasant sensation and not unbecoming the weather. Warner read aloud instead of to himself, and they wondered that they had never discovered this firm subtle link in comradeship before. The rainy summer is the winter of the tropics, and they felt the same delight in hiding themselves within their own four walls that others so often experience in a sterner clime when the elements forbid social intercourse.
CHAPTER XXII
Anne could never recall just when it was she discovered, or rather divined, that her husband was once more a dual being. A vague sense of change cohered into fact when she realised that for some time he had been reading aloud and pursuing an undercurrent of independent thought. His devotion increased, were that possible, but the time came when he no longer could conceal that he was often absent in mind and depressed in spirit. He took to long rambles in which she could not accompany him at that season while so far from robust, smilingly excusing himself by reminding her that being so much more vigorous than of old he needed a corresponding amount of exercise. There finally came an entire week when he was forced to remain indoors, so persistent were the torrential rains, and after the first two days he ceased even to pretend to read, but sat staring out of the window with blank eyes and set lips, at the gray deluge beating down the palm trees. He came to the table and consumed his meals mechanically. Nor was he irritable. The gentleness of his nature seemed unaffected, but that his mental part seethed was autoptical. If he was less the lover he clung to Anne as to a rock in mid-ocean, and if he would not talk he was uneasy if she left the room.
There was but one explanation, and he was becoming less the man and more the poet every day. He slept little, and lost the spring from his gait. Anne was as convinced as Lord Hunsdon or Lady Constance that all geniuses were unsound of mind no matter how normal they might be while the creative faculty slept. Sleep it must, and no doubt this familiar of Warner’s had been almost moribund owing to the extraordinary and unexpected change that had taken place in his life, and the new interest that had held every faculty. This interest was no less alive, but it was no longer novel, and a ghost had risen in his brain clamouring for form and substance.