Notwithstanding Part 7

"That is a good thing."

"Has the time come when I may ask a few questions?"

Mrs. Stoddart hardly looked up from her knitting as she said tranquilly--

"Yes, my child, if there is anything on your mind."

"I suppose d.i.c.k Le Geyt is--dead. I felt sure he was dying that last day at Fontainebleau. It won't be any shock to me to know that he is dead."

"He is not dead."

A swift glance showed Mrs. Stoddart that Annette was greatly surprised.

"How is he?" she asked after a moment. "Did he really get well again? I thought it was not possible."

"It was not."

"Then he is not riding again yet?"

"No. I am afraid he will never ride again."

"Then his back was really injured, after all?"

"Yes. It was spinal paralysis."

"He did enjoy life so," said Annette. "Poor d.i.c.k!"

"I made inquiries about him again a short time ago. He is not unhappy.

He knows nothing and n.o.body, and takes no notice. The brain was affected, and it is only a question of time--a few months, a few years.

He does not suffer."

"For a long time I thought he and I had died together."

"You both all but died, Annette."

"Where is he now?"

"In his aunt's house in Paris. She came down before I left."

"I hope she seemed a kind woman."

"She seemed a silly one. She brought her own doctor and Mr. Le Geyt's valet with her. She evidently distrusted the Fontainebleau doctor and me. She paid him up and dismissed him at once, and she as good as dismissed me."

"Perhaps," said Annette, "she thought you and the doctor were in collusion with _me_. I suppose some lurid story, with me in the middle of it, reached her at once."

"No doubt. The valet had evidently told her that his master had not gone down to Fontainebleau alone. She arrived prepared for battle."

"And where was I all the time?"

"You were in the country, a few miles out of Fontainebleau, at a house the doctor knew of. He helped me to move you there directly you became unconscious. Until you fell ill you would not leave Mr. Le Geyt. It was fortunate you were not there when his aunt arrived."

"I should not have cared."

"No. You were past caring about anything. You were not in your right mind. But surely, Annette,"--Mrs. Stoddart spoke very slowly,--"you care _now_?"

Annette evidently turned the question over in her mind, and then looked doubtfully at her friend.

"I am grateful to you that I escaped the outside shame," she said. "But that seems such a little thing beside the inside shame, that I could have done as I did. I had been carefully brought up. I was what was called _good_. And it was easy to me. I had never felt any temptation to be otherwise, even in the irresponsible _milieu_ at father's, where there was no morality to speak of. And yet--all in a minute--I could do as--as I did, throw everything away which only just before I had guarded with such pa.s.sion. _He_ was bad, and father was bad. I see now that he had sold me. But since I have been lying here I have come to see that I was bad too. It was six of one and half a dozen of the other. There was nothing to choose between the three of us. Poor d.i.c.k with his unpremeditated escapade was snow-white compared to us, the one kindly person in the sordid drama of l.u.s.t and revenge."

"Where do I come in?" asked Mrs. Stoddart.

"As an unwise angel, I think, who s.n.a.t.c.hed a brand from the burning."

"You are the first person who has had the advantage of my acquaintance who has called me unwise," said Mrs. Stoddart, with the grim, benevolent smile which Annette had learnt to love. "And now you have talked enough.

The whole island is taking its siesta. It is time you took yours."

Mrs. Stoddart thought long over Annette and her future that night. She had made every effort, left no stone unturned at Fontainebleau, to save the good name which the girl had so recklessly flung away. When Annette succ.u.mbed, Mrs. Stoddart, quick to see whom she could trust, confided to the doctor that Annette was not Mr. Le Geyt's wife and appealed to him for help. He gravely replied that he already knew that fact, but did not mention how during the making of the will it had come to his knowledge.

He helped her to remove Annette instantly to a private lodging kept by an old servant of his. There was no luggage 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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 Lows.h.i.+re, 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 wis.h.!.+"

"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.