Notwithstanding. Mary Cholmondeley
to remove. When Mr. Le Geyt's aunt and her own doctor arrived late that night, together with Mr. Le Geyt's valet, Annette had vanished into thin air. Only Mrs. Stoddart was there, and the nurse to hand over the patient, and to receive the cautious, suspicious thanks of Lady Jane Cranbrook, who continually repeated that she could not understand the delay in sending for her. It was, of course, instantly known in the hotel that the pretty lady who had nursed Monsieur so devotedly was not his wife, and that she had fled at the approach of his family. Mrs. Stoddart herself left very early next morning, before Lady Jane was up, after paying Annette's hotel-bill as well as her own. She had heard since through the nurse that Mr. Le Geyt, after asking plaintively for Annette once or twice, had relapsed into a state of semi-unconsciousness, in which he lay day after day, week after week. It seemed as if his mind had made one last effort, and then had finally given up a losing battle. The stars in their courses had fought for Annette, and Mrs. Stoddart had given them all the aid she could, with systematic perseverance and forethought.
She had obliged Annette to write to a friend in Paris as soon as she was well enough, rather before she was well enough to hold a pen, telling her she had been taken ill suddenly at Fontainebleau but was with a friend, and asking her to pack her clothes for her and send them to her at Melun. Later on, before embarking at Marseilles, she had made her write a line to her father saying she was travelling with her friend Mrs. Stoddart, and should not be returning to Paris for the present. After a time, she made her resume communications with her aunts, and inform them who she was travelling with and where she was. The aunts wrote rather frigidly in return at first, but after a time became more cordial, expressed themselves pleased that she was enjoying herself, and opined that they had had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Stoddart's sister, Lady Brandon. They were evidently delighted that she had left her father, and even graciously vouchsafed fragments of information about themselves. Aunt Maria had just brought out another book, Crooks and Coronets, a copy of which found its way to Teneriffe. Aunt Harriet, the invalid, had become a Christian Scientist. Aunt Catherine, the only practical one of the family, had developed a weak heart. And they had all decided to leave London, and were settling in a country farm in Lowshire, where they had once spent a summer years before.
Mrs. Stoddart with infinite care had re-established all the links between Annette's past life and her present one. The hiatus, which after all had only occupied six days, was invisible. Her success had apparently been complete.
"Only apparently," she said to herself. "Something may happen which I cannot foresee. Mr. Le Geyt may get better, though they say he never will; or at any rate he may get well enough to give her away, which he would never do if he were in full possession of his faculties. Or that French chamber-maid who was so endlessly kind may take service in England, and run up against Annette; or the valet who, she says, did not see her at the station, may have seen her after all, and may prove a source of danger. Or, most likely of all, Annette may tell against herself. She is quite capable of it."
Next day she said to Annette—
"Remember your reputation is my property. You threw it away, and I picked it up off the dunghill. It belongs to me absolutely. Now promise me on your oath that you will never say anything about this episode in your past to anyone, to any living creature except one—the man you marry."
"I would rather not promise that," said Annette. "I feel as if some time or other I might have to say something. One never can tell."
Mrs. Stoddart cast at her a lightning glance in which love and perplexity were about evenly mixed. This strange creature amused and angered her, and constantly aroused in her opposite feelings at the same moment. The careful Scotchwoman felt a certain kindly scorn for Annette's want of self-protective prudence and her very slight realization of the dangers Mrs. Stoddart had worked so hard to avert. But mixed in with the scorn was a pinch of respect for something unworldly in Annette, uncalculating of her own advantage. She was apparently one of that tiny band who are not engrossed by the duty of "looking after Number One."
Mrs. Stoddart, who was not easily nonplussed, decided to be wounded.
"You are hard to help, Annette," she said. "I do what I can for you, and you often say how much it is, and yet you can tranquilly talk of all my work being thrown away by some chance word of yours which you won't even promise not to say."
Annette was startled.
"I had not meant that," she said humbly. "I will promise anything you wish!"
"No, my dear, no," said Mrs. Stoddart, ashamed of her subterfuge and its instant success. "I was unreasonable. Promise me instead that, except to the man you are engaged to, you will never mention this subject to anyone without my permission."
"I promise," said Annette.
And Mrs. Stoddart, who never kissed anyone if she could help it, kissed her on the forehead.
CHAPTER VIII
"Thou hast led me astray, my youth, till there is nowhere I can turn my steps."—Koltsov.
It was the middle of April. The ginger tree had at last unsheathed the immense buds which it had been guarding among its long swordlike leaves, and had hung out its great pink and white blossoms at all their length. The coffee trees had mingled with their red berries the dearest little white wax flowers. The paradise tree which Annette had been watching day by day had come out in the night. And this morning, among its innumerable hanging golden balls, were cascades of five-leaved white stars with violet centres.
Annette was well again, if so dull and tame a word can be used to describe the radiance which health had shed upon her, and upon the unfolding, petal by petal, of her beauty. The long rest, the slow recovery, the immense peace which had enfolded her life for the first time, the grim, tender "mothering" of Mrs. Stoddart, had all together fostered and sustained her. Her life, cut back to its very root by a sharp frost, had put out a superb new shoot. Her coltishness and a certain heavy, naïve immaturity had fallen from her. Her beauty had shaken them off and stood clear of them, and Mrs. Stoddart recognized, not without anxiety, that the beauty which was now revealed was great. But in the process of her unduly delayed and then unduly forced development it was plain that she had lost one thing which would have made her mother's heart ache if she had been alive. Annette had lost her youth. She was barely twenty-two, but she had the dignity and the bearing of a woman of thirty. Mrs. Stoddart watched her standing, a gracious slender figure in her white gown under the paradise tree, with a wild baby-canary in the hollow of her hands, coaxing it to fly back to its parents, calling shrilly to it from a neighbouring thicket of lemon-coloured honeysuckle. She realized the pitfalls that lie in wait for persons as simple and as inapprehensive as Annette, especially when they are beautiful as well, and she sighed.
Presently the baby-canary fluttered into the honeysuckle, and Annette walked down the steep garden path to meet Victor the butler, who could be seen in the distance coming slowly on the donkey up the white high road from Santa Cruz, with the letters.
Mrs. Stoddart sighed again. She had safeguarded Annette's past, but how about her future? She had pondered long over it, which Annette did not seem to do at all. Teneriffe was becoming too hot. The two ladies from Hampstead had already gone, much mollified towards Annette, and even anxious to meet her again, and attributing her more alert movements and now quite unrolling eyes to the fact that they had made it clear they would not stand any nonsense, or take "airs" from anyone. Mrs. Stoddart was anxious to get home to London to her son, her one son Mark. But what would happen to Annette when they left Teneriffe? She would gladly have kept her as her companion till she married—for, of course, she would marry some day—but there was Mark to be considered. She could not introduce Annette into her household without a vehement protest from Mark to start with, who would probably end by falling in love with her. It was hopeless to expect that Annette would take an interest in any man for some time to come. Would she be glad or sorry if Annette eventually married Mark? She came to the conclusion that in spite of all the drawbacks of Annette's parentage and the Le Geyt episode, she would rather have her as her daughter-in-law