Dr. Martin, a little irritated by this fresh and probably petty call on his services, wondered at the girl's dignity. It must be galling at her age to be told to "run away." He scented tragedy, and sized it up and turned to its creator with professionalism and small sympathy.
"Now, Mrs. Boucicault, if you could just tell me——"
Anne heard the last words and smiled bitterly to herself. She went out on to the verandah and stood there looking down into the sunlit garden with eyes that were blind with misery and anger and contempt. In that quiet room, listening to the doctor's pleasantly modulated voice, she had been through purgatory. She knew that the ways of God were inscrutable—it was the all-covering explanation of her creed—but they were sometimes hard to tread. Why had He given a bad woman the power to save the life of a good man? Why had He allowed Evil to creep in and take possession of peaceful Gaya? Was it perhaps a trial, a test of their strength? That seemed possible. At least she did not doubt the working of God's hand. She had seen it strike—strike terribly. In a few hours it had brought a miracle of change in her little cosmos. The figure of terror had gone down like some monstrous clay-footed idol, and become pitiful and pitiable. She no longer feared it—no longer hated. She yearned towards it as towards a sinner whose punishment has been meted out with an implacable justice. He was a symbol of Divine wrath, an awful admonition, but beyond man's hate or censure. He had become almost sacred to her. But her mother had drifted from her, had wilfully stood apart in that solemn moment, with that hateful smile on her lips had seemed to deny the very existence of God Himself. Anne shuddered. It was as though a mask had fallen from the grey-tinted, childish, wrinkled face, and that Anne saw her as she was, petty, cruel, mean-souled—a hard, unlovable woman who had perhaps driven her father to his destruction. Her father had been a great man—a fine soldier, brave, daring, much beloved. She thought of him with a dim, uncertain pride which grew stronger and clearer. But her mother sank into a shadow. She was little and selfish. In this awful hour when Death hung over them, she thought of her own petty ailments—of a trivial bruise, keeping Dr. Martin back to discuss herself with a nauseating self-pity.
In that moment Anne's heart turned towards her father with an overpowering tenderness, a kind of comradeship of understanding.
How long they were! Presently she heard her mother's voice, high-pitched and steady. Mrs. Boucicault led the way out on to the balcony. She was toying with the red rose, smelling it with a deliberate epicureanism.
"I am so glad you are able to stay on a few days, Dr. Martin. I am giving a dinner and a little dance to the Station next week, and of course Miss Fersen will be of the party. She is rather a friend of mine. You will meet her then. Good-bye for the present, and ever so many thanks."
Dr. Martin muttered something. Even then Anne wondered at him. He took no notice of her, and went stumbling awkwardly down the steps like a man shaken out of his composure. His face was white and rather sickly looking.
The two women stood side by side, and watched him clamber up into the dog-cart and drive off. Even after he had disappeared they remained motionless as though both feared the first move, the first break in the long silence between them. Or perhaps it was only Anne who was afraid, for when she turned suddenly she found her mother's gaze fixed absently on the distance, her smile lingering at the corners of her mouth like the forgotten grimace of an actor who has suddenly ceased to act.
"Mother—you didn't mean it—it was a mistake—I didn't understand you, of course—it isn't true about the dinner——"
"Why not?" Mrs. Boucicault turned her faded blue eyes to her daughter's face. "Yes, it's perfectly true," she said.