“Eh bien! we will work together. You will give him what can be given by a beautiful and exquisite woman, and I will do all that can be done by the accredited agent of Dulau et Compagnie, Wine Shippers of Bordeaux.”
So, I repeat, Aristide was entirely happy. His waking dreams were of the four-year-old child. The glad anticipation of the working day in Great Tower St., E. C., was the evening welcome from the simple but capable gentlewoman and the sense of home and intimacy in her little parlour no bigger than the never-entered and nerve-destroying salon of his parents at Aigues Mortes, but smiling with the grace of old oak and faded chintz. At Aigues Mortes the salon was a comfortless, tasteless convention, set apart for the celebrations of baptisms and marriages and deaths, a pride and a terror to the inhabitants. But here everything seemed to be as much a warm bit of Anne Honeywood as the tortoise-shell comb in her hair and the square of Brussels lace that rose and fell on the bosom of her old evening frock. For, you see, since she expected a visitor in the evenings, Anne had taken to dressing for her sketch of a dinner. For all her struggle with poverty she had retained the charm that four years before had made her touch upon Jean seem a consecration to the impressionable man. And now that he entered more deeply into her life and thoughts, he found himself in fragrant places that were very strange to him. He discovered, too, with some surprise, that a man who has been at fierce grips with Fortune all his life from ten to forty is ever so little tired in spirit and is glad to rest. In the tranquility of Anne Honeywood’s presence his soul was singularly at peace. He also wondered why Anne Honeywood seemed to grow younger, and, in her gentle fashion, more laughter-loving, every day.
The Saint Martin’s summer lasted to the beginning of December, and then it came to an end, and with it the idyll of Aristide and Anne Honeywood.
One Saturday afternoon, when the rain was falling dismally, she received him with an embarrassment she could scarcely conceal. The usual heightened colour no longer gave youth to her cheek; an anxious frown knitted her candid brows; and there was no laughter in her eyes. He looked at her questioningly. Was anything the matter with Jean? But Jean answered the question for himself by running down the passage and springing like a puppy into Aristide’s arms. Anne turned her face away, as if the sight pained her, and, pleading a headache and the desire to lie down, she left the two together. Returning after a couple of hours with the tea-tray, she found them on the floor breathlessly absorbed in the erection of card pagodas. She bit her lip and swallowed a sob. Aristide jumped up and took the tray. Was not the headache better? He was so grieved. Jean must be very quiet and drink up his milk quietly like a hero because Auntie was suffering. Tea was a very subdued affair. Then Anne carried off Jean to bed, refusing Aristide’s helpful ministrations. It was his Saturday and Sunday joy to bath Jean amid a score of crawly tin insects which he had provided for the child’s ablutionary entertainment, and it formed the climax of Jean’s blissful day. But this afternoon Anne tore the twain asunder. Aristide looked mournfully over the rain-swept common through the leaded panes, and speculated on the enigma of woman. A man, feeling ill, would have been only too glad for somebody to do his work; but a woman, just because she was ill, declined assistance. Surely women were an intellect-baffling sex.
She came back, having put Jean to bed.
“My dear friend,” she said, with a blurt of bravery, “I have something very hard to say, but I must say it. You must go away from Beverly Stoke.”
“Ah!” cried Aristide, “is it I, then, that give you a headache?”
“It’s not your fault,” she said gently. “You have been everything that a loyal gentleman could be—and it’s because you’re a loyal gentleman that you must go.”
“I don’t understand,” said he, puzzled. “I must go away because I give you a headache, although it is not my fault.”
“It’s nothing to do with headaches,” she explained. “Don’t you see? People around here are talking.”