It is not to be supposed, however, that Anne wore her heart upon her sleeve for society daws to peck at. She hid it and its little ache deep under a charming courtliness which was, if anything, more charming than usual. And if she smiled a little more frequently, if a bon mot came more readily to her lips, after all they were but attempts to bury the heartache a bit deeper, and it was at least the real Anne who once more walked the earth.
She saw Millicent occasionally, but only occasionally. There was now between them a civil exchange of courtesies; an assumption, but merely an assumption, of the old friendly footing. On a certain afternoon in the White House Millicent had attempted to give a version of a particular story to Anne. To which Anne had responded that she already knew it. Millicent, however, had attempted to explain, and in explaining had told Anne one or two things Anne had not before known, which things had caused those aforementioned cracks in Millicent to gape with such ominous wideness that Millicent herself suddenly perceived them, and, worse still, saw that Anne perceived them. Anne had quietly announced that she preferred not to talk of the matter further: the part of it that concerned Millicent was her own affair, the part of it that concerned herself was hers. And so it had concluded, outwardly at all events. But it did not require a vast amount of acumen to perceive that their former friendly relationship was of necessity a trifle strained.
It is not to be inferred from this, however, that Anne and Millicent were anywhere near warfare with each other. Anne was far too much grande [Pg 232]dame for such a proceeding. Also her sentiments towards Millicent were now those of pure indifference. Millicent had never counted a great deal in her life, she now merely counted less. Of Millicent one cannot be so sure. She had seen Anne’s face on that historic afternoon; she had seen Peter’s face. She had therefrom drawn her own conclusions—conclusions to which Anne’s subsequent refusal to discuss the matter had given further weight.
Millicent would have liked to think of Peter as pining in quiet grief for her, leading a kind of piano life of minor passages in which she stood for the keynote. She had—to be candid—pictured Peter in her mind as a prematurely grey-haired man, slightly bowed at the shoulders (from remorse), gazing fervently at a photograph of a Madonna-like woman with a child in her arms (Millicent’s latest by Lafayette), sorrowfully considering the fact that the child was not his, and announcing to Heaven that the thought of her should guide him at last to its Gates. It must be allowed that it was a distinct jar to find him not at all grey-haired, not at all bowed at the shoulders, but jaunty, debonair, carrying a ridiculous [Pg 233]hat with a peacock feather in his hand, and talking intimately to one of her own friends, one, too, who had kept her acquaintanceship with him a dead secret. Millicent’s feelings towards both him and Anne verged on something like hatred, though this primeval instinct was so hidden beneath a mask of culture that no one, Anne least of all, perceived it.
Of General Carden Anne now saw a good deal. Having come once to her house he came again, and came frequently. And every time, by some subtle method of his own device, he contrived to mention a certain green-covered book, and also to speak of the author. And, queerly enough, Anne responded. Perhaps by some feminine intuition she guessed General Carden’s secret, namely, that he had a pretty shrewd inkling of the identity of the author, and perhaps underneath the courtly worldly demeanour of the old man she saw the heart which longed for some word, some sign, from him. And perhaps knowing this, seeing this, the heart of the now liberated Anne went out to the old General, having in a way a common cause of unhappiness. And so the two smiled and chatted, and skimmed the surface of [Pg 234]their sorrow, finding in so doing a curious consolation, so queer and unaccountable is human nature.
And then one day, a few weeks after her conversation with Muriel, she became conscious of a tiny hope in her heart. She could no more say at which precise moment it had first been born than one can say at which precise moment the tiny green leaves of a spring flower first push above the brown earth. For weeks there is nothing to be seen, and then one morning we come down to our garden and the tiny shoot is there in the sunshine, smiling shyly at us.
And so one morning, all unsuspected in its hidden growth, a tiny green shoot of hope sprang up in Anne’s heart, a hope that after all her pride had not been abased as she had feared, but that somewhere, somehow, love was lifting it from the earth. It is not easy to put into exact words precisely what she hoped, but assuredly trust had been renewed. And with an old priest praying at an altar, and a woman kneeling to St. Joseph, and somewhere, far away, a man’s heart worshipping and adoring, it is hardly surprising that it was so.
CHAPTER XXIV