IV
Atfour o’clock, Sylvia Carfax swung the gate of the Vicarage garden behind her, and stepped into the dusty road.
It was nearly a mile to Fairholme Court, and the sun blazed in a sky of cloudless blue, and beat upon her shoulders protected only by a blouse of thin muslin.
Sylvia was just twenty, tall slim, and, as Miss Page suggested very pretty.
In her own mind Anne often wondered when she looked at the girl’s rich black hair, which made such a striking contrast to eyes blue as the sky, that from the shelter of the Vicarage and all it represented such a southern, opulent type of beauty should have emerged.
To reach her destination Sylvia had to walk through the village, past the blacksmith’s, and past the baker’s shop, with its quaint carving over the entrance porch.
Dymfield was an ideally beautiful village, to which even the doctor’s motor-car scarcelybrought more than a hint of the rush and hurry and ugliness of much of modern life.
In the gardens of the thatched cottages, summer flowers made a blaze of colour. Roses and honeysuckle clambered over porch and roof.
The church, resting peacefully in the green sea of the churchyard, was like some great rock, stained with lichen, crumbling with age, beautiful in its decay.
Near it, under the shade of mighty elms, was a row of almshouses, fine specimens of black-and-white work, and at the end of the rambling street stood the old well, with its canopy of wrought iron, and its ancient moss-grown steps.
As she passed through the village in which from babyhood she had lived, Sylvia recognized its beauty and its peace. It seemed a place where it was always afternoon, and for that reason, to the girl who yearned for the morning, herself in the glad confident morning of life, it was intolerable.
She gave herself an impatient little shake, and hurried on.
Now, across the green, the beeches of Fairholme Court were in sight.
In summer they almost completely screened the house, and made deep shadows in thedrive. Thankfully Sylvia plunged into the shade and quickened her steps.
The hall door was wide open, revealing the coolness of the white-panelled hall, and as she entered, the air was sweet with the scent of flowers.
She stopped a moment to bend over a great bowl of sweet peas.
“Everything is peaceful here too,” she thought. “But it’s interesting as well. I wonder why?”
The appearance of Burks, immaculate as usual in snowy cap and apron, interrupted her vague musing.
“Mistress is upstairs in her sitting-room. I’ll tell her you’re here, miss.”
“Thank you Burks, she expects me. I’ll go up.”
The maid disappeared, and Sylvia ran up the shallow stairs to the first floor, and knocked at a door on the right.
“Ah! my dear child!”
Anne half rose from a couch which was placed close to the window.
The matting blinds outside were half drawn to keep out the glare of the sun, and the room was filled with a light soft and green, as though it had filtered through a canopy of leaves. Beneath the blinds one caught a glimpse ofone of the rose-gardens. Protected by a yew hedge, roses of all colours lifted their sweet, hot faces to the sun. A grass path running down the middle of the garden ended at a white seat, in a bower of white blossom.
Sylvia drew a deep breath. “I believe all the delicious scents in the world are here!” she exclaimed.
“That’s why I like this room in the afternoon,” said Anne. “The sun draws all the sweetness out of the roses, and sends it up here. Take off your hat, my child. You’ve had a tiring walk, I’m afraid.”
“I’d walk twenty miles in the sun to find you at the end of them,” declared Sylvia, vehemently.
Anne laughed, as she got up and rang the bell for tea.
Her white wrapper of cambric and lace trailed after her as she moved. Sylvia touched it with reverent fingers.
“You look so sweet in these things,” she said.
“I ought to have changed my gown properly to receive you. But I was reading, and too lazy to move.”
Sylvia picked up the book which lay on the sofa.
“French, I see by the yellow cover.” Shebegan to turn over the leaves, and suddenly laughed.
“How like you to have a rose-leaf for a book-marker!Ishould put in a hairpin, or something equally ugly. I wish I could read French easily, then you would lend me all your books, wouldn’t you, Miss Page?”
“Not all of them,” returned Anne, smiling.
“Why not? I’m sureyouhaven’t got stupid ideas about proper reading for young girls, and all that sort of thing,” declared Sylvia, petulantly.
“I’ve got ideas on the subject, stupid or otherwise. Tea, please Burks. We’ll have it up here. And bring the pink tea-service. It goes so nicely with this room,” she explained to Sylvia in parenthesis.
“Do tell me why you wouldn’t lend me all your novels?” the girl persisted.
“Because certain books,my dear,are of no use to us till life makes them intelligible. And life can only be learnt by living it.”
“I wish I’d lived it then,” protested Sylvia.
“Oh Sylvia, there’s time enough. Don’t wish that,” returned Miss Page, quickly. She bent forward and took the girl’s hand. “Don’t wish your youth away. It goes so fast in any case. And it should be the most beautiful part of one’s life.”
“Should be!” replied Sylvia, passionately. “But is it? What’s the good of my youth to me, here in this dull little hole? I’d give the world to be like you, Miss Page. You’re not—not quite young, perhaps——”
“My dear, I’m almost an old woman.”
Her smile was wistful, though it was touched with amusement.
“You’ll never be that!” returned Sylvia, vehemently. “And anyhow, you’re lovely, and every one adores you. And you lead your own life and make it beautiful. And I’m perfectly certain that youhavehad everything I want. Except that you’re not married. I suppose I shall want to be married some time or other. But, then, as you didn’t marry it must have been because you didn’t want to. Hundreds of men must have been dying to marry you. I’m sure hundreds are dying now——”
“What an awful picture of carnage!” interrupted Anne, laughing, as Burks appeared with the tea.
“What alovelytea-service!” Sylvia exclaimed, taking up one of the Sèvres cups gently to examine it. “But then everything of yours is lovely. This room is as perfect as the drawing-room, and I think I like it almost better. I love the white matting onthe floor, and these green-and-white chair-covers and curtains. And I love a room lined with books. What a lot!”
She began to walk round examining them. “But heaps of them are French ones, so you needn’t be afraid,” she added mischievously. “Oh, and Italian too! Do you read Italian, Miss Page? Really? I ought to be afraid of you. You’re so awfully clever. I believe you keep everything you love best up here, don’t you? The pictures now—I don’t understand pictures, but I like the colour of these. This room seems moreyouthan all the rest of the house. Though it’s all like you in a way.”
“I only receive myspecialvisitors up here.”
Anne’s smile flattered and touched the girl.
She slipped down on to the sofa beside her friend, and moved close to her with a caressing movement, as she took the tea-cup from her hand.
“These cakes were baked expressly for you, so you must do them justice. Really cook makes them very prettily, doesn’t she? They’re rather like the cakes inGoblin Market. Do you remember how the sisters
‘Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,Cakes for dainty mouths to eat?’”
‘Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,Cakes for dainty mouths to eat?’”
‘Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,Cakes for dainty mouths to eat?’”
‘Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat?’”
She passed them to Sylvia in their silver basket, over the rim of which fell a d’oyley of fine lace and linen.
Sylvia shook her head. “I don’t know anything!” she exclaimed. “I shall never know anything if I stay here. Oh Miss Page,dohelp me to get away! You can do anything with father. Please persuade him that I ought to go. You know how it is at home. I’m not really wanted. We’re quite comfortably off, and there are enough servants to do the work withoutmakingwork for me, to try to keep me quiet when I’m aching to go and make my own life!”
She pushed her cup away from her with an impatient movement.
Anne waited a moment. “It’s still the music, I suppose?”
“Yes. Ihavegot a voice. I know I could do something with it. And you see they don’t understand. Mother says I can take lessons from Miss Rowe at Dorminster.Miss Rowe!” She laughed derisively. “And father says if I sing well enough to please them at home, and to lead in the choir, what more do I want? They expect me to trot round with mother on her district calls, when I’m really only in the way. Motherlikesdoing it. She wouldn’t give up her work to me even if Iwished it. And I’m supposed to do needlework for the children, when poor Mrs. Jones down the village would be glad of it, and ought to have it. And they think I’m awful and ungrateful not to be quite happy with tennis parties and flower shows for my amusement! Oh Miss Page, don’t you think to be a daughter at home, with no money, at the mercy of your parents, unable to get away, is just like being a slave?”
She poured out the words passionately. Her hands were shaking, her eyes full of tears.
Anne looked at her, and a wave of comprehension and pity passed over her heart.
The girl’s incoherent words were echoes; they touched painful memories of years for her, long past.
She recognized the despairing cry of youth, articulate in these modern times, no longer stifled as in the days of her own girlhood.
Youth, fettered, struggling with passionate clamour to be free.
She recognized the revolt of a temperament unsuited to its environment, bound by a tyranny no less stifling because it was unconscious and even loving.
She rose, and began to walk about the room, conscious of the modern spirit, accepting it as inevitable, and in spite of all themisery it involved, right in its essence, a necessary step towards the just claim for individual liberty.
Sylvia watched her hungrily, like a prisoner who has staked his existence on the goodwill and clemency of a ruler.
“I will do what I can, Sylvia,” she said at last. “I will speak to your father. I think you ought to go.”
The girl’s face grew radiant. “Oh, you’re anangel!” she cried. “What should I do without you? Speak to him soon, Miss Page!” she implored. “I can’t bear it any longer. I really can’t. I get on so badly with father now, and with mother too. I can’t help it. I know I’ve got an awful temper, but they irritate me so, and——”
Anne sat down beside her on the sofa. “I will speak to your father,” she repeated. “But, my dear, I know it’s a hard, perhaps almost an impossible thing to ask you, but try to see your parents’ point of view as well as your own. Theyhaveone, you know,” she added, smiling. “One that belongs to their age and the traditions of their education. To them, though you don’t believe it, their standpoint is as important as yours to you.”
“But you think mine is right?” demanded Sylvia, breathlessly.
Miss Page laughed. “For you, yes. But I’m sorry for your people.”
“I believe you’re sorry for every one,” said Sylvia, after a pause.
“There’s a tendency to get sorrier for most people as one gets older, I admit. You must bear with me, Sylvia.”
The girl flushed. “Now you’re laughing at me,” she said.
“No. Only remembering how I felt at your age, and being very sorry for you too.”
“Ought I to see every one’s point of view as you do?”
“You couldn’t. It’s not to be expected of you. And after all, it’s right that you shouldn’t. It’s the young who make history, and history is made by seeing one thing at a time to the exclusion of every other consideration. It’s only in the autumn of life that one has time to be sorry. But still my dear, you can be kind even without comprehension. Remember the immortal remark that our parents are fellow-creatures after all.”
She looked at the girl whimsically, and Sylvia laughed.
“How angry father would be to hear you say that!” she cried. “But you wouldn’t say it to him, of course,” she added.
“You know it’s only nonsense; and there’s such a thing as tact, my dear.”
“I know,” sighed Sylvia. “I haven’t got any.”
“That’s another of the things that comes with age.”
“All the nice things come with age, I believe.”
“Well, age should havesomecompensations,” returned Anne, gaily.
“You haveallof them,” Sylvia declared. “All the pretty things that generally belong to girls, and all the interesting things that ought to belong to women. It isn’t fair. You know how to talk to every one. I shouldloveto hear what you say to father. It would be too amusing! Mrs. Dakin came in this morning, and said you were wonderful with the Frenchman who dined here last night. And the way you talk to Dr. Dakin is quite different from the way you talk to father. And of course, you’re quite different with me again. You always remind me of that verse in the Bible about being all things to all men!”
“You’re really a terrible young woman!” was Miss Page’s reply. “Go and sing me something. It’s the only way to stop you from proving me a monster of duplicity.”
“No, no,” urged Sylvia, eagerly. “Youonly speak to people as they can understand. But the wonderful thing is, that you know by instinct exactly what theywillunderstand, and exactly how to say it.”
“Go and sing,” repeated Anne.
Sylvia went laughing to the piano. “I feel awfully happy. I must think of something that suits.”
She considered a moment, and then broke into a gay little love-song, with a charming refrain.
Anne listened, and as she listened, her determination grew. Sylvia was right. She must go. Her voice was worth cultivating, even at the price of parental displeasure.
“Thank you dear,” she said as the clear, ringing notes ceased. “I feel as though a nightingale with brains had been kind enough to fly into my room.”
“What else would you like?” Sylvia turned her head as she sat at the piano, playing rippling notes with her left hand. The cloud had left her face, and her parted red lips were very sweet.
Anne hesitated a moment. “You read music easily, don’t you? I wonder whether you could sing me a little French song?”
She got up, and opening a cupboard in the wall, began to turn over some papers.
“Here it is,” she said at last.
Sylvia left her place, and knelt beside her friends chair, taking the music from her hand.
There were some words upon the cover, but they were in French, and in a difficult handwriting.
Anne opened the page rather quickly. “You see it’s quite short and quite simple,” she observed.
“Let me read the words first, and you must correct my pronunciation.”
She began to say the lines a little falteringly, but her quick ear soon found their lilt, and she read them well.
“How pretty! They’re quite easy words. I can understand them,” she said, going to the piano again. “Who wrote them?”
Anne did not answer, and Sylvia, engrossed in trying the accompaniment, forgot her question.
“I see how it goes!” she exclaimed, playing the first bars. Involuntarily, as she began the first bar, Miss Page put out a quick hand as though to stop her, but the girl sang on unconsciously, and the hand dropped at her side.
“It’s lovely!” Sylvia cried, playing the last notes softly over again.
“Thank you, dear,” said Anne, gently.She had crossed the room, and was trying on her garden hat.
With one hand she gathered up the folds of her long gown.
“The sun is off the roses now, and I’m going to give you some to take home to your mother. Come out and help me pick them.”