‘He will send me away,’ she thought, almost weeping. She knew that in that one moment of supreme failure she had forfeited all the years of self-sacrifice and laborious service.
But in the secret mind of the child a new thought was stirring. Anna saw that her father possessed something that was lacking in the familiar, oldish woman. Her imagination was touched, something like admiration began to awaken. Her father had become real to her.
When Anna was six years old a visitor came to Mascarat. This was Lauretta, the sister of the dead Lise. Lauretta, unlike her unfortunate sister, had done pretty well for herself in the world. She had married Heyward Bland, a retired military man, oldish, didactic, very British, very comme-il-faut, who had recently inherited a good deal of money. Their winters were spent on the Riviera. Now, suddenly, before she returned to England, an impulse of duty, or perhaps of curiosity, prompted her to visit the niece whom she had not seen for so long. She was fond of motoring, and the mountain district was picturesque. She would drive to Mascarat and see for herself that poor Lise’s child was being properly cared for.
Miss Wilson was thrown into an enormous flutter of excitement at the prospect of the visit. At the back of her mind a vague scheme was forming: possibly Lauretta could be persuaded to take the child away with her. Since the day of the falling boulder, Miss Wilson had felt that her own fate was sealed. She would not be allowed to stay much longer with her charge. Hence this scheming activity in her sly old brain, this desperate anxiety for Anna’s future.
But things did not work out well from the schemer’s point of view. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, with the mountains seeming further away, and a soft hyacinth-blue curtain over the harsh rocks. The landscape seemed softer and more mysterious, there was a smell of flowers in the air. The water ran clear as crystal in the ravine, making a merry noise. The almonds and the cherry trees were in blossom, dotting the foreground with puffs of delicate pink and white, like a Japanese picture.
Lauretta, who was inclined to sentimentalize over nature, found everything delightful. It seemed to her that one could wish no better fate than to live in that lovely valley, under the calm guardianship of the blue-grey mountains upon whose tops the little streaks of white, impalpable snow wandered like misty ribbons.
Lauretta Bland was such a charming little thing. In her light, beautiful dress, with a gay silk scarf fluttering from her shoulders, she was like a butterfly floating in the sunshine. It seemed that nothing ugly or crude could ever touch her. She was talkative and lively, with a pretty, bubbling laugh that came easily to her lips.
Anna stared at her in amazement, intrigued, fascinated, but somewhat suspicious. She had never seen anyone in the least like her, and with childish distrustfulness she rather fought shy of that fluttering vivacity. So she kept still, reserving judgment, while they sat at tea under the cherry trees, and a cool breeze from the melting snows blew the white petals like a flock of tiny birds, circling and dipping about Lauretta’s pretty head.
They made a queer little trio in that enormous setting: Lauretta, elegant, charming, beautifully-dressed and scented, a woman of the world for all her affectation of girlish gaiety; Miss Wilson, prim, uncompromising, nervous and faded beside her in her ancient, unbecoming clothes; and the child, a small, grave creature in a rather ill-fitting home-made dress, with bare legs and coloured espadrilles. James was not present.
Lauretta was not very well impressed by her niece. Anna was a serious, quiet, unobtrusive, independent child. She was rather tall for her age, and thin, with a creamy-brown skin, straight brown hair, and the steady blue-grey eyes of her father. She was critical and self-possessed and kept her head well up. She would not show off, or prattle childishly, or respond to her aunt’s charming advances. Lauretta thought her curiously unchildlike and somewhat disconcerting.
Miss Wilson realized distressfully that her charge was not making a good impression. Rather desperately, she tried to put things right, to show Anna off to her best advantage.
‘She really has a wonderful imagination,’ said Miss Wilson. And added with a little nod of nervous encouragement to Anna: ‘Tell your auntie one of the stories you have been telling me.’
Anna remained awhile in uneasy silence. She was neither shy nor sulky, but something restrained her from speaking freely in the presence of this attractive stranger. Her private imaginings were precious to her.
‘Go along, dear,’ urged Miss Wilson, feverishly amiable.
‘Well,’ said Anna at last, her clear eyes seeming to stare out with a certain challenge, ‘there was once a boy who lived in the middle of a chestnut tree.’
It was not at all the way in which her stories usually began. Miss Wilson looked on nervously, fidgeting with her thin fingers. Lauretta waited with a patient smile on her face. But nothing more was forthcoming. Anna shuffled with her feet, and stared up with challenging grey eyes. She simply could not bring herself to say another word to this visitor who had alighted like a strange brilliant bird under the familiar cherry trees, this charming, birdlike creature with her fluttering scarf and her scent and her pretty, smiling face, who seemed somehow to be an enemy. Anna did not know what she thought — whether she felt any admiration for Lauretta, or only just a childish, closed, reserved sort of suspicion. But she could not tell the story to her.
James Forrester, in his old grey suit that was as neat as on the day it had been finished, came strolling slowly under the white blossom, watching the feminine group with cold, inscrutable eyes. Slowly, with a heavy, cold assertiveness, he seemed to lay his dark shadow upon them, swamping them all in some way, laying a blight upon Lauretta’s elegant, butterfly gaiety. It was strange how his coming seemed to crush her into insignificance, into a rather pathetic sort of flippancy.
‘Refusing to do your parlour-tricks?’ he said to Anna. And though his voice was hard she felt he was on her side.
Lauretta left early, tripping on ridiculous high heels down the stony path to her motor car. She was quite satisfied with her visit to Mascarat. James was more impossible than ever. But the child was all right; a queer little fish, not very attractive. She seemed healthy, though, and well-cared-for. That poor, plain Miss Wilson was evidently a sensible woman. Of course, the place was terribly rough; but children didn’t mind things like that. Lauretta gave a sigh of relief. She had salved her conscience and done her duty by poor Lise’s child: now she was free to forget her.
A week later a parcel arrived at Mascarat. They stood round, Anna and Seguela, and Paul who had carried it all the way up from Paralba, while Miss Wilson very carefully, almost too carefully, almost tenderly, lifted the tissue-paper and brought out the dresses that Lauretta had sent as a final conscientious sop to her niece. There were pink and white and blue and patterned frocks, of organdie, of linen and of silk. None of them, except perhaps Miss Wilson, had ever dreamed of such frocks. There they stood, a rather forlorn little gathering, staring at the flower-gay dresses.
But they were standing round the table of the big, dark, cave-like kitchen, and into this cavernous darkness came the darker figure of James Forrester, a tall, black, imperturbable man, with danger in his coldly penetrating eyes.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked in a hard, subdued voice, not very loud.
While Miss Wilson was explaining in a voice gone rather squeaky with nervousness and a sort of wrennish defiance, he stood up close to the table in his peculiar heavy resistance, looking at the bright heap of flimsy stuffs.