Part 28 (1/2)

I was astonished to find that she knew I had written plays. ”How did you know that I did that sort of thing?” I asked.

”I've seen one of them,” she said. ”'_The Mulberry Bush_'; when mother and I were in London last winter. And Arthur said you were the same Mr.

Melhuish. I suppose Frank Jervaise had told him.”

”People who go to the theatre don't generally notice the name of the author,” I commented.

”I do,” she said. ”I'm interested in the theatre. I've read dozens of plays, in French, mostly. I don't think the English comedies are nearly so well done. Of course, the French have only one subject, but they are so much more witty. Have you ever read _Les Hannetons_, for instance?”

”No. I've seen the English version on the stage,” I said.

I was ashamed of having written _The Mulberry Bush_, of having presumed to write any comedy. I felt the justice of her implied criticism. Indeed, all my efforts seemed to me, just then, as being worthless and insincere. All my life, even. There was something definite and keen about this girl of twenty-three that suddenly illuminated my intellectual and moral flabbiness. She had already a definite att.i.tude towards social questions that I had never bothered to investigate. She had shown herself to have a final pride in the matter of blackmailing old Jervaise. And in half a dozen words she had exposed the lack of real wit in my attempts at playwriting. I was humbled before her superior intelligence. Her speech had still a faint flavour of the uneducated, but her judgments were brilliantly incisive; despite her inferentially limited experience, she had a clearer sight of humanity than I had.

”You needn't look so depressed,” she remarked.

”I was thinking what a pity it is that you should go to Canada,” I returned.

”I want to go,” she said. ”I want to feel free and independent; not a chattel of the Jervaises.”

”But--Canada!” I remonstrated.

”You see,” she said, ”I could never leave my father and mother. Wherever they go, I must go, too. They've no one but me to look after them. And this does, at last, seem, in a way, a chance. Only, I can't trust myself.

I'm too impulsive about things like this. Oh! do you think it might kill my father if he were torn up by the roots? Sometimes I think it might be good for him, and at others I'm horribly afraid.”

”Well, of course, I've never seen him...” I began.

”And in any case, you're prejudiced,” she interrupted me. Her tone had changed again; it was suddenly light, almost coquettish, and she looked at me with a challenging lift of her eyebrows, as if, most astonis.h.i.+ngly, she had read my secret adoration of her and defied me to acknowledge it.

”In what way am I prejudiced?” I asked.

”Hus.h.!.+ here's Brenda coming back,” she said.

I regretted extremely that Brenda should have returned at that moment, but I was tremendously encouraged. Anne seemed in that one sentence to have sanctioned the understanding that I was in love with her. Her warning of the interruption seemed to carry some unspoken promise that I should be given another opportunity.

XII

CONVERSION

Anne had not once moved from her original place by the table in the course of that long conversation of ours, and she still stood there, her finger-tips resting on the oak with a powerful effect of poise when Brenda came into the room.

Brenda's actions were far more vivacious than her friend's. She came in with an air of youthful exuberance, looked at me with a shade of inquiry, and then sat down opposite Anne.

”I came back over the hill and through the wood,” she said, resting her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands. ”It's a topping evening.

Poor Arthur; I wish I could have gone with him. I offered to, but he didn't want me to come. I'm not sure he didn't think they might kidnap me if I went too near.” She turned to me with a bright smile as she added, ”Could they keep me, Mr. Melhuish; shut me up or something?”

”I'm not quite sure about that,” I said, ”but they could arrest--Arthur”--(I could not call him anything else, I found)--”if he ran away with you. On a charge of abduction, you know.”

”They could make it pretty nasty for us all round, in fact,” Brenda concluded.