Anne Page. 1909

ANNE PAGE

I

At the hour between sunset and twilight Miss Page was generally to be found in her garden.

The long irregular front of Fairholme Court faced the west, and before it, through the interminable evenings of summer, was spread the pageant of the sunset, the quiet glory of the after-glow, and finally the transition, mysterious, indefinably subtle, from the light of day, to the vaporous purple of night.

It was at this quiet end of evening that the garden, always beautiful, took on an added grace, the dream-like delicate charm which belongs to the enchanted places of the earth—places such as Corot knew, and with a magic equal to their own, has transferred upon canvasses which hold for ever the glamour of the dawn or the mystic spell of twilight.

The house, built originally in the last years of Elizabeth, and enlarged in succeeding 


reigns, was a medley of incongruous architecture, resulting in a style delightful and fantastic enough for a dwelling in a fairy tale. The latest wing, added in Georgian days, its red brick toned now to a restful mellow colour, imparted an air of formal stateliness to the irregular but charming structure.

Roses wreathed the latticed window-panes of the older part of the house; clematis rioted over part of the roof and climbed the chimney-stacks. On the sunny walls of the later wing a vine had been trained.

The door of the panelled hall in the middle of the house opened upon a square of flagstones, and level with these, a lawn, its smoothness unspoilt by flower-beds, stretched to a sunk fence from which meadowland, whose broad expanse was broken here and there by groups of elms, extended far as the eye could see till its verge touched the sunset sky.

On the lawn to the right of the house, one magnificent beech tree swept the ground with its lower branches, and then soared majestically towards the sky. On the left there was a group of chestnuts. But, except for a small white fountain opposite the hall porch, the lawn in its velvet softness was left unadorned.

The fountain Miss Page had brought back after one of her periodical journeys to Italy. It was a slight, graceful thing, of delicate workmanship, its thread of water falling from a fluted shell into a square marble basin. It was a fountain beloved by the fan-tailed pigeons, who from their dovecote behind the kitchen garden came to it often to drink. When they perched on the edge of the shell, or walked near it on the grass, their snowy tails outspread, a hint of Italian courtyards, a sort of fragrance of Italy, was wafted into the English garden.

All the flowers grew in secluded sheltered spots, protected by high walls or hedges of yew.

Away from the lawn, behind the beech tree, a moss-grown wall into which a little gate was set, gave promise of scent and colour within—of a garden enclosed.

This particular enclosure, one of many, was known as the “lavender garden.” It was arranged in the formal Dutch fashion—divided into square beds filled with pink monthly roses, each bed surrounded by a thick border of lavender. A sundial stood in the midst, and against the sundial, her elbows resting upon its lichen-stained plate, leant Anne Page, her face turned towards the lingering sunset.


She was expecting friends to dinner, but unable to resist the temptation of the garden, she had wandered from the drawing-room into the sweet evening air. She wore a dress the colour of which, in its shades of grey-green and purple, might have been suggested by the lavender in the borders. It was a graceful flowing dress; beautiful naturally, inevitably. Anne Page possessed the gift of surrounding herself with everything that was exquisite, as simply as a flower surrounds itself with leaves and dainty buds.

She was not a young woman. She had indeed travelled quite far on the road that leads from youth to death.

It was even on record that a girl staying at the vicarage had alluded to her as an old lady.

Every one had started with shocked surprise. None of Anne Page’s friends were accustomed to consider her age.

To them, she was just “beautiful Miss Page.” In the same way, one never thought of analyzing her appearance, nor of criticizing her features. It would have seemed an impertinence. One felt vaguely that she would have been quite as lovely without any, for her beauty was like a rare effect of light that has no connection with the object it transfigures.

Certainly her face had the delicacy of a white rose. Certainly her eyes were blue; blue as cornflowers; blue as the sea. But they were Miss Page’s eyes, and one instinctively compared them to lovely natural things.

She turned her head as the gate creaked.

Burks, in a frilled apron and a becoming cap with streamers, was hurrying up the path towards the sundial.

“There’s a carriage coming up the drive, ma’am,” she said.

“Thank you, Burks, I’ll come.”

The maid hastened back, her skirts ruffling the lavender borders, and, gathering up the filmy folds of her own gown, her mistress followed her.

At the gate, she turned for a last glance at the dying sunset sky.

On her way across the lawn, she noticed, with a thrill of pleasure, the beauty of the trees, motionless, dreaming in the dusk. White and slim in the half-light, the little fountain suggested to her a strayed nymph, transfixed with surprise and fear to find herself so near the haunts of man. Smiling at the fancy, Anne entered the drawing-room by one of the long open windows, and waited for her guests.

In a few moments, Burks admitted the Vicar and his wife.

The Reverend George Carfax was of the type already somewhat vieux jeu, of the muscular school of Christianity.

Good-looking, clean-shaven, bullet-headed, his appearance was rather that of a country squire than of a vicar of Christ. An excellent cricketer, hearty in manner, sound in health, he was nevertheless the ideal pastor for the rising generation of youths and maidens, whose muscles were possibly better worth developing than their souls.

His wife was the dowdy little woman, who inevitably by a process of natural selection becomes the mate of the muscular Christian.

In her first youth she had possessed the undistinguished prettiness common to thousands of English girls whose character, composed of negative qualities, renders them peculiarly acceptable to the average self-assertive man.

Now, at forty-five, in spite of her family of children, her figure was as spare and meagre as it had been at twenty, and the gown she wore, a black silk, slightly cut out at the neck, and trimmed with cheap coffee lace, was as dowdy as any of the dresses of her girlhood.

Miss Page walked with a charming dignity, her long gown moving over the floor with a soft frou-frou suggestive of silk, and cloudy concealed frills. Her appearance as she bent 

towards the dowdy little woman, made a contrast almost ludicrous, if it had not also been somewhat pathetic.

Mrs. Carfax, innocent of contrasts and all they implied, took her hand in both of hers with an affectionate movement, and in the Vicar’s firm handshake, and in his hearty words of greeting, the same evident liking for their hostess was expressed.

“Dr. and Mrs. Dakin,” said Burks, at the door, and again Miss Page’s smile welcomed the new-comers.

She particularly liked the tall thin man who entered. Dr. Dakin was a scholar and a dreamer, a man too unpractical by nature adequately to cope with a profession eminently practical. The doctor was only a partial success at Dymfield, where a man of the Vicar’s stamp, genial, a trifle blustering, always cheerful, would have inspired more confidence than the dreamy medical man, who did not treat illness in the high-handed fashion unconsciously expected by his patients.

Only his success with one or two really serious cases in the neighbourhood preserved for him some measure of respect, and a general concurrence of opinion, that absent-minded as he appeared before the milder forms of ailment, when it came to graver maladies, Dr. Dakin 


was presumably to be trusted. To no one was his lack of force and “push” a greater trial than to his wife, whose ambition for her husband had been a London practice, and for herself a smart amusing circle of acquaintances……………………….