CHAPTER IXTHE QUEST"My voice shall with thy future visions blend,And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,A token and a tone...."Childe Harold.Next day Jane-Anne was allowed to sit in the garden under the apple-tree: a queer little hunched-up figure in the tight stuff-dress and a shawl. She also wore the pie-dish, for Mrs. Dew was one of those people who considered it almost disreputable to be out of doors bare-headed.She sat in a basket-chair and on her knees lay her most recent prize, "Home Influence," a fat handsome volume bound in purple cloth with gilt edges. For lessons, Jane-Anne had won every prize open to her at the asylum. Although she had only been there a year, and that year constantly broken by long bouts of illness, she had gained seven books. These, which included a Bible, a prayer-book, and church hymnal, with one other comprised her whole library. The prizes were all of a moral and edifying character, and Jane-Anne had read them over and over again hungrily, with the passionate interest and enthusiasm which she brought to everything outside her actual daily duties. And although she whole-heartedly admired them she was yet subconsciously critical and unsatisfied. She regarded her prizes with the greatest respect. Familiarity had, so far, bred no contempt for them in her mind, but all the time she felt that there was something lacking. Although they were the only books she possessed, they were not the only ones she had read. In the previous autumn, her mother's mistress, Lady Dursley, had commanded her aunt to take the child for a change to their place in Gloucestershire, accompanying the order with a liberal cheque for travelling expenses. The family was in Scotland and most of the big house shut up, and nearly all the servants were making holiday, except the housekeeper, an old friend of Mrs. Dew, and one elderly kitchen-maid. But the great library was open, for a young man had been sent down to catalogue the books. He was an intelligent young man and took a fancy to Jane-Anne and had her with him a great deal. He found her books he thought good for her, and on departure presented her with the little green-covered "Children's Treasury," compiled by Palgrave.In this Jane-Anne read constantly and carefully, not because she was particularly attracted by the poems, though some of them she loved and learned by heart, but because whenever she came across any poetry she searched through it eagerly in the hope of finding a poem her father used to repeat to her. She had read and re-read the little green book unceasingly, but nowhere could she find her poem.Her father died before she was five years old, but Jane-Anne's recollection of him was curiously vivid, and at this very moment her mind strove to materialise a memory elusive in some ways as a puff of smoke, sharp and defined in others as a tongue of leaping flame against a midnight sky.The moment Mrs. Dew had safely disappeared into the house the child dragged off the pie-dish and cast it violently on the grass at her feet. Then she lay back in her chair, her eyes dreamy and pensive, though ever and again she knit her black eyebrows in her effort to remember.Her thin hands lay folded above the unopened volume on her knees and she sat very still.It was warm and pleasant in Mr. Wycherly's garden; a thrush sang in the boughs above her head, and every now and then pink and white petals dropped softly upon her hair. A flutter of wind blew over a great clump of narcissus bearing their perfume on its wings, and the heavy scent was memory-laden for Jane-Anne.She saw a long, low-ceiled, lamp-lit room with a window at either end and all the furniture ranged round the walls that a free path might be open for the restless pacing up and down of one who was never too busy or too absorbed to be at the beck and call of an often fretful little girl. As in a vision she beheld that man "with all his keen worn look and Grecian grace" tramping to and fro and holding in his arms a tired, fidgetty child who could not sleep.Backwards and forwards he went, and with the soothing movement was the sound of words sorrowful and majestic, musical in their rhythmic swing and balance: words that poor Jane-Anne could never remember though she felt that they were written indelibly on mind and heart but covered, covered deeply with layer upon layer of fugitive things of little worth. Some day, she was convinced, she would find that poetry and with it a thousand things about her father that she had forgotten. He often wore a narcissus in his button-hole, and as her head lay on his shoulder the crushed flower gave forth a double fragrance.It was this familiar scent, strong in the warm old Oxford garden, that seemed to compass her about in an atmosphere of memories, memories of a time when she, too, was always warm, cared about, schemed for, enwheel'd around with love on every hand.The lines between the black eyebrows were smoothed out as by a tender hand. The unremembered poem ceased to worry her. She would find it some day. Meanwhile, she was sure her daddy knew she loved him. There was something he had told her to remember and she had forgotten, but only for a little while. It would come back, she was sure it would come back. Here, in this house, where there were so many books, perhaps she would find it.She saw again her beautiful, gentle mother, so calm always and patient. Mrs. Dew was careful to impress upon Jane-Anne that she in no way resembled her mother, and the child never resented this reproach, for had not that very mother rejoiced in her likeness to her father? "My little Maid of Athens," had been her mother's name for Jane-Anne, and Jane-Anne treasured it in her mind. She knew that her worthy aunt had never either liked or approved of her father, and this only made her more passionately loyal to his memory. She pondered these things in her heart, puzzled and pained sometimes, but never daunted in her pride. It was from no mean country that her father had come, she was sure of that. She knew little enough of Greece, nothing of its great history, but chance phrases that she had heard in infancy remained in her mind. She was sure that there was something to know, something worth knowing, and that she would know it some day.She never spoke of her parents to her companions at the asylum; and although Mrs. Dew would often talk fondly and proudly of her mother and Jane-Anne loved her for it, her aunt's silence with regard to the father she adored filled the child with a resentment none the less bitter that it never found expression. Jane-Anne was perfectly aware of her hostile attitude, although Mrs. Dew was careful never to say one word in disparagement of a man she had been quite unable to understand; whom she had heartily disliked."I wonder why I'm thinking so much of my daddie since I came here?" Jane-Anne thought to herself. "I suppose it's because I'm happier."Presently, over the grass towards her came Montagu, very long in the leg and short in the sleeve. Edmund was out zestfully finding his way about Oxford in his recently discovered fashion.Montagu sat down on the grass at Jane-Anne's feet and looked up at her, smiling broadly, but never a word said he till he espied the book in her lap."What's that?" he asked."One of my prizes, sir," Jane-Anne answered primly."Is it decent?""It's most interesting.""Can I look at it?"The book changed hands and Montagu began to read. He turned the pages very fast, to the wonderment of Jane-Anne, who had never seen people read after this fashion.He was lying face-downwards on the grass in front of her, and she watched his eyes as they swept the page from top to bottom in, apparently, one glance. She liked his thin brown face with the large kind eyes and firm capable mouth that was always shut when he wasn't talking, but just at that moment she thought that his expression was less pleasant than usual, that there was something scornful and almost sinister about his mouth, and yet she was sure that in some queer way he was amused. Why?Jane-Anne had never found anything in the least amusing in the work in question; interesting, certainly; "touching" (the lady who gave them Sunday lessons at the asylum was fond of the word "touching") frequently; but humorous never. The authorities who chose books for female orphans at the Bainbridge did not consider the cultivation of a sense of humour in any way a necessary part of the training.Presently Montagu began to dip into the book here and there, still reading with that lightning-like rapidity that so astonished Jane-Anne.In five minutes he shut it with a slam and looked up at her and laughed."What awful rot," he remarked genially, as though certain of sympathy.Jane-Anne gazed at him in consternation. "Rot?" she faltered."Fearful squish; you don't mean to say you really like it?""I don't know what you mean," she said, so offended that she quite forgot the respectful "sir.""It's so stilted and bombastic and unnatural. The style"—here Montagu unconsciously gave a perfect imitation of his house master's manner—"is so cheap and meretricious.""I don't understand about style in books," said Jane-Anne, still much umbraged. "D'you mean the binding?""Good gracious, no. I mean the way it's written. Listen to this"—and Montagu opened the book haphazard and read the following extract aloud:—"'He had been minister of a favourite church in one of the southern towns, and master of an establishment for youths of high rank, in both which capacities he had given universal satisfaction. The reprehensible conduct of some of his pupils, carried on at first so secretly as to elude his knowledge, at length became so notorious as to demand examination. He had at first refused all credence, but when proved by the confused replies of all, and half-confession of some, he briefly and emphatically laid before them the enormity of their conduct, and declared, that as confidence was entirely broken between them, he would resign the honour of their education, refusing to admit them any longer as members of his establishment.' There!" Montagu exclaimed, "could you have anything worse?""I think it's all said very properly and grandly," Jane-Anne protested. "I don't see what's the matter with it at all."Montagu rolled over on the grass and sat up. "It's the grandness that's so detestable.""It's my best prize," she said indignantly."I'm sorry," said Montagu, seeing that she was really hurt, "but you ask Guardie about that sort of writing.""It's printed," snapped Jane-Anne.Montagu gazed at her in hopeless bewilderment. He had never before argued with a girl.Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes filled with angry tears. She clenched her thin little hands and bit her lips to keep from bursting into sobs."I say," Montagu exclaimed, with real contrition, "why do you mind? What does it matter what I think?""If you," Jane-Anne gasped, "had as few books as me, and loved them every one dearly, and then someone came along and abused them and called them 'rot' and 'merry something' and 'squish,'youwouldn't like it."This time the big tears escaped, rolled over and down her cheeks, dropping with a splash on to the plaid shawl covering her knees.And at this critical moment Mr. Wycherly came out of the house and across the grass towards them. He had seen the children from his study window, and remembering that the boys went back to school next day, decided to seek their society under the pleasant shade of the apple-tree.Montagu stalked over to the tool house to fetch a chair for his guardian and arrived with it as Mr. Wycherly reached the apple-tree. Jane-Anne had lost her handkerchief, the tears were shining on her cheeks, and she gave a most unmistakable sniff just as Mr. Wycherly reached them. But she stood up and curtsied with downcast eyes and burning cheeks, and at the same moment Montagu came back bearing a chair for his guardian."What is the matter?" asked Mr. Wycherly.Jane-Anne continued to stand, and lifted her tear-washed eyes to his face. Had it been stern or severe she could never have answered a word; as it was, she said quite simply: "He didn't like my prize and I minded."Mr. Wycherly sat down in the chair Montagu had brought and looked from the pained and indignant Jane-Anne to the evidently puzzled and distressed Montagu."Suppose we all sit down and try to come to a better understanding," he said.Jane-Anne sank heavily into her chair. She was still weak, and even the little effort to greet Mr. Wycherly with due respect caused her legs to quake and her heart to beat thunderously in her ears.She leant her head against the back of the chair and looked so white that for a moment Mr. Wycherly thought she was about to faint. But she did nothing of the kind.Instead, she said in a voice that wholly belied her exhausted appearance: "Have you read 'Home Influence,' sir?""I don't think so," said Mr. Wycherly; "is that the name of the book under discussion?"Jane-Anne held it out towards him; he took it from her carefully, placed his eye-glasses on his nose, opened it haphazard, and began to read.Precisely the same thing happened as with Montagu. His eyes sought a page and he turned it. This extraordinary way of reading was not peculiar to Montagu, that was evident. But in Mr. Wycherly's face neither scorn nor amusement was portrayed, only a polite interest.In three minutes Montagu said, "Well?"Mr. Wycherly closed the book. "I cannot," he said, "be expected to express an opinion after so cursory a glance at the contents. Montagu, go and ask Mrs. Dew for a glass of milk; this child looks faint; bring some biscuits, too."Montagu sped away, and he turned to Jane-Anne."You mustn't mind him," he said kindly. "Clever Winchester boys are always intolerant—while they are boys. Montagu reads a great deal more than he can digest, and people with indigestion are proverbially cantankerous."Jane-Anne didn't understand what he meant in the very least, but she felt immediately and immensely comforted. So much so, that she was impelled to speak to Mr. Wycherly of her thoughts when she first came out."Please, sir," she said, calmly dismissing the merits or demerits of "Home Influence" that seemed so vital a moment ago. "Do you know a piece of poetry about mountains?""A great deal of poetry has been written about mountains," Mr. Wycherly replied cautiously."It's a piece of poetry I want to find," said Jane-Anne, "that I heard many times long ago, and I can't remember anything about it except that there was mountains. I thought perhaps you'd know it."Here Montagu appeared with a glass of milk and some biscuits. The milk had slopped over on to the biscuits "in some unaccountable way," he explained; but their sopped condition did not spoil them for Jane-Anne, who munched quite happily and smiled her broad ecstatic smile at him to show that she had forgiven his cruel remarks about "Home Influence."Presently the doctor came to see her, and Mrs. Dew fetched her in to be sounded.The moment she had gone Montagu turned upon his guardian, demanding sternly: "Well, isn't it hopeless squish?""It is her prize," said Mr. Wycherly gently."Why, that's just what she said," Montagu exclaimed in astonishment at his usually logical guardian taking this line."You will find," said Mr. Wycherly, "as you go through life that it is never safe to abuse things violently before you have realised your hearer's point of view. You may offend deeply.""You'd have to be jolly dishonest to always think of that," Montagu answered indignantly."You will be jolly rude and disagreeable if you never think of it," Mr. Wycherly retorted. "Besides, did she ask you for your opinion?""Well, no—but it seemed such a pity to go on liking such stuff. People must begin to learn what's good and what's bad sometime—and I shouldn't think she's stupid.""I am quite sure she is not stupid, and I am equally sure that she is painfully sensitive and that you were more than a little stupid not to see it.""Me, stupid!" Montagu repeated in surprise. "No one has ever called me that before."Mr. Wycherly chuckled. "I thought," said he, "that the presence of a young girl among us would be mentally stimulating. She has not been in the house two days and yet, you see, already she has suggested to you new possibilities in yourself. By the way—just make a note of any poems you can think of bearing on mountains.""Why, there are thousands," cried Montagu, aghast."Sure to be in Wordsworth," said Mr. Wycherly. "Anyway, we'll mark the places."CHAPTER XFORTUNE'S WHEEL"But that's all shove be'ind meLong ago and fur away."RUDYARD KIPLING.The boys had been back at school a fortnight. Jane-Anne was quite convalescent and got up to breakfast, but the date of her return to the Bainbridge was still undecided.The doctor came at longer intervals, but every time he came he still declared that there was "a roughness" in Jane-Anne's lung, and that it would be madness to send her North until that roughness was smoothed away.Night and morning and many times during the day, Jane-Anne bombarded heaven with petitions that "the roughness" might perhaps increase a very little, since it gave her no inconvenience whatever; anyway, that it might remain sufficiently rasping to confirm the doctor in his view that her return to the Bainbridge was at present out of the question.Mrs. Dew, although properly respectful to the doctor as a friend of Mrs. Methuen, yet felt that in this case he pushed professional caution to the verge of the ridiculous. Here was Jane-Anne eating and sleeping as well as could be, with pinker and plumper cheeks than she had had for many a long day, looking, in fact, as her aunt said, "the picture of health," though some people might have thought the picture rather elusive and misleading; here was Jane-Anne eating the bread of idleness with almost aggressive satisfaction in Holywell when she ought to have been reaping the benefits of her "nomination" up in Northumberland.Why all this fuss about a slight roughness? "Mark my words and anyone can 'ear anything as he listens for," said Mrs. Dew.Finally, Mr. Wycherly interviewed the doctor, who said to him in plain words what he had feared to say to the child's aunt.The doctor was an outspoken young man of sporting tendencies. He wore a white hat rather on one side and drove an uncommonly good horse, and to Mr. Wycherly he said: "It's like setting a thoroughbred filly to pull a cart-load of bricks to expect that child to do housework in her present state. She ought to do nothing for three months, and even then I should say she is singularly unfitted for the kind of life she has up there. I know those schools—excellent for big strong girls; but that child isn't strong. She's all nerves and brains and empty, craving heart. The lung trouble isn't serious if it's checked in time, but if she goes back she'll get overtired and catch cold again directly. I'm sorry for her aunt, but what can I say? I won't be responsible for sending her back."The doctor spoke angrily. He hated interfering in other people's business and he thought it exceedingly probable that an old gentleman living by himself might strongly object to having a girl child foisted upon him for an indefinite period."It seems to me," said Mr. Wycherly mildly, "that it would be criminal stupidity to allow her to go back."The doctor looked rather astonished."But what's to become of the child?" he asked."Surely there is nothing to prevent her remaining here with her aunt, and when she is strong enough are there not good schools in Oxford?"The doctor picked up his white hat. "Of course," he said, "if you have no objection to her remaining here the whole thing is perfectly simple, but I understood from her aunt that the arrangement was the child was only to be here in her holidays, and she seemed sadly afraid of trespassing upon your good-nature in keeping her here so long as it is. She's a very decent, honest woman, but——"Mr. Wycherly rose and rang the bell to summon Mrs. Dew.And the end of it all was that somebody wrote to Lord Dursley. Jane-Anne's "nomination" at the Bainbridge was presented to a girl whose physique was more deserving, and his lordship, instead of being annoyed, as Mrs. Dew had feared, at Jane-Anne's failure to benefit from his good intentions on her behalf, declared himself quite ready to pay for her "schooling" in Oxford whenever that fidgetty fellow, the doctor, should consider her able for instruction."Not till the autumn," said the doctor, to Mrs. Dew. "She can help you till then, you won't overwork her, I'm sure."Jane-Anne knew perfectly well that her fate hung in the balance when the doctor sought his interview with Mr. Wycherly, and when the result of that interview was imparted to her rather grudgingly, and with many injunctions as to decorous conduct, by her aunt, she felt such a passionate love and gratitude towards the gentle-mannered master who had made this beatific state of things possible that she could not rest that night without going to thank him.Therefore, without consulting her aunt, she sought his study after dinner and knocked timidly at the door.Mr. Wycherly was, as usual, seated at his desk writing; the shaded light was pulled low over his papers, making a little pool of brightness in the grey dusk of the room. The big window was wide open and a scent of wallflowers was wafted in from the garden below."Come in, my child, come in," said the kind, welcoming voice as he saw the timid figure at the door.And Jane-Anne came in with a nervous rush, but she did not forget to shut the door behind her.She dropped on her knees beside him and seized his hand, kissing it passionately, much to his confusion. He was quite unaccustomed to violent manifestations of feeling, and his long residence in Scotland had increased his natural reserve."I know it's you who managed that I shouldn't go back, and I do want so to thank you. You don't know what I feel like. Please, sir, I will try to be useful. Anything you would like me to do——"Very gently Mr. Wycherly withdrew his hand. "Suppose you sit on a chair," he suggested, "and we will have a chat together."With stately courtesy, he placed a chair for Jane-Anne, and, seated again in his own revolving-chair, turned to face her.As always, when much moved, she was very white, and to-night her great eyes were soft and dog-like in their devotion."By the way," said Mr. Wycherly, "I haven't forgotten your inquiry about the poem that you cannot remember, and I have marked in a volume of Wordsworth a number of verses dealing with mountains. Perhaps you would like to look through it at your leisure.""Thank you, sir," Jane-Anne whispered."I know nothing," Mr. Wycherly continued, "more annoying than a half-remembered quotation. I sincerely hope that you will soon find it."For a moment there was silence, then:"Sir," Jane-Anne said earnestly, "are you very lonely now the young gentlemen have gone back to school?""I do miss them greatly of course.""Do you remember, sir, when you came to see me, when I was in bed the first day I was here, you said when they went back that the sun set for you——""Did I?" said Mr. Wycherly, rather surprised at himself."You really did, sir, and I wondered whether—though the sun has set—whether you'd let me try—to be a little tiny star—just so you wouldn't feel quite so lonely."Mr. Wycherly's hand still tingled with the touch of those soft unaccustomed girlish lips, nevertheless he held it out to her, saying, "That will be very kind of you."Jane-Anne placed her own within it and she did not attempt to kiss Mr. Wycherly's hand again, but she looked at him as though she would read his very soul and asked: "Sir, have you ever heard anything about a place called Greece?"Mr. Wycherly laughed. "For a considerable portion of my life," he replied, "I have heard about little else.""Will you tell me things sometimes, sir? Will you?""I shall be most happy," said Mr. Wycherly. "You certainly ought to know as much as possible about your father's country—and there is so much to know.""I have another name," she said suddenly and with apparent irrelevance. "Shall I tell it you? Very few people know.""Do you mean Stavrides?" Mr. Wycherly asked."No, sir, not that; I have another Christian name. Allegra; don't you think it's very pretty?""Very," said Mr. Wycherly; "it is a beautiful name, but it isn't Greek.""I'm called after somebody's daughter that died. I don't know who she was; mother knew. My daddie liked the name. I daresay I shall find out some day all about her.""I daresay you will," said Mr. Wycherly, and looked hard at Jane-Anne."Which would you like to call me?" she asked."I shall call you Jane-Anne, not Allegra," Mr. Wycherly said decidedly."It's a pretty name," she said wistfully."It has rather sad associations for me," he added.The clock upon the mantelpiece struck nine. Jane-Anne rose. "I must go, sir, now; good night, and thank you.""Good night, my child. Get strong and rest you merry. And here is the Wordsworth; tell me when you find your poem."She took from him a large brown volume that bristled with inserted slips of paper. He crossed the room and opened the door for her, and Jane-Anne went out with her head held high. "Just like he did for Mrs. Methuen," she reflected ecstatically.When she had gone Mr. Wycherly went and stood at the window and looked out into the night. The sky was unclouded, of a deep, soft, soothing blue, and right in a line with his window shone one star."I wonder," he pondered, "what made him call her after Byron's daughter."When Jane-Anne reached the kitchen, proudly bearing her volume of Wordsworth, she found her aunt sitting at the newly scrubbed kitchen table darning a stocking."What made you stop so long for?" Mrs. Dew inquired tartly, "hindering and worritin' the master. It don't take half an hour to say 'thank you, and my duty to you.'""The master set a chair for me and talked to me," Jane-Anne replied gloriously, "and when I came away he opened the door for me, just like he did for Mrs. Methuen when she came the other day, and he's lent me a great big poetry book. Look at it! Oh, aunt, I do believe the Almighty must be just like Mr. Wycherly."Mrs. Dew nearly dropped her stocking. "Jane-Anne!" she exclaimed in tones of horrified amazement, "how you can stand there and say such things passes me. Go to bed this minute, you inyuman child. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you ought.""But, aunt," Jane-Anne expostulated, "Miss Stukely, the lady that taught us Sundays, she said we must love God, be always loving Him, and always talking about Him; we couldn't think and talk too much about Him; the more we did it the fitter we'd be for heaven, and I've never seen anybody before as I'd like Him to be like—so where's the harm?"The child spoke with breathless earnestness.Mrs. Dew stared at her, intensely disapproving."How you can stand there," she repeated; "how you can have the face to stand there and talk about the Almighty bein'likeanybody, just as if He was your next door neighbour, turns me cold. Where's your respect? Where's your sense of decency? I'll have none of your revival ways here, I can tell you; quiet, respectable church I've always been, with none of such goin's on. It's quite enough for most of us to do our duty in that station of life without talking familiarly of lovin' and such.Goto bed, I tell you, and let me hear no more of such fandanglements, and I'll come in ten minutes to fetch your candle and bring you that hot milk as is all over skin you've been so long. Now bustle about smartish."Jane-Anne bustled.Mrs. Dew leant back in her chair as one quite unable to cope with the force of circumstances."My stars! Good fathers!" exclaimed Mrs. Dew. "If that's the sort of thing they teaches at the Bainbridge it's more than time my niece was took away."Very early next morning Jane-Anne crept out of bed, pulled up her blind, and seized the volume of poetry Mr. Wycherly had lent her. She read till her eyes ached and her head swam; she read without the smallest understanding or enjoyment, but with the greatest care and application, and though there was much about mountains there was nothing that struck the faintest chord of memory in Jane-Anne. Whatever it was that her father had repeated when he used to carry her about, it wasn't there. And yet she was certain about "the mountains." Yes, it was "the mountains.""I'm afraid he'll have to look again," she said to herself. She had not the smallest doubt that Mr. Wycherly would help her.It was a very hot May, and as the doctor had said she could not be too much in the fresh air, her aunt, that afternoon, put a little table and chair for her under the apple-tree, gave her some needle-work, and bidding her listen for any bell that might happen to ring, announced her intention of going out to do some household shopping. "Unless anyone calls to see the master it's unlikely that anyone'll come at all," said Mrs. Dew, "and the front door bell's that loud you'll hear it right enough if so be as you don't get moonin'. I shan't be more than a hour."Shortly after Mrs. Dew's departure Mr. Wycherly came to his window and looked out.There sat Jane-Anne at the little table covered by a heap of white sewing, and he thought what a pleasant picture she made in her stiff buff frock, so maidenly and sweet, so suitably and sensibly employed on this sunny afternoon in the midst of the green old garden, gay with tulips and fragrant wallflowers.Suddenly Jane-Anne stooped down and took off her heavy shoes and there and then flung them one after another to the other side of the lawn. Then she removed her stockings. Mr. Wycherly gazed fascinated. What was the child about?This was soon deplorably evident.Jane-Anne was taking off her dress.Mr. Wycherly felt that he ought to go away from that window, but he didn't. He stayed where he was and, what's more, he placed his eyeglasses upon his nose.She gave herself a complicated kind of shake and the buff abomination fell about her feet in stiff expostulating folds.Daintily and deliberately, she stepped out of it as though withdrawing her feet from something dirty and distasteful. She wore a skimpy little blue-and-white striped petticoat of cotton; body and skirt in one piece it reached just to her knees, but was sleeveless, and her long, slender arms were bare.A thrush was singing in the apple-tree and a blackbird warbled loudly in a lilac bush trying to drown the thrush. They sang as though there were no such thing as winter in the world, and neither of them cared a whit for Jane-Anne and her disrobings.Flinging her white arms above her head, she danced into the middle of the lawn on slim, twinkling white feet and continued to dance all over it with the greatest abandon and enjoyment, while her long black plaits bumped joyously. So light of foot, so variously graceful in her gracious suppleness, with such divine gravity and dainty decorum that Mr. Wycherly watching was fain to take his glasses off and wipe them, for suddenly he could not see as clearly as he wished. Her radiant face was pale, but her wide eyes were full of a gladness that seemed to mirror back the brightness of that May afternoon, and the little petticoat was like the sheath of a flower enfolding and displaying all this happy grace.Loudly carolled the blackbird, lustily chirruped the thrush, and Jane-Anne danced to their orchestra, and while she danced her mind kept saying: "I've done with it; I've done with it. I shall never go back. Life is before me, a new life; a life full of wonders, and a bedroom to myself, with furniture like looking-glasses; a life with a kind, sensible, if worldly minded aunt, who gives to little girls delicious puddings that they like. A life with books in it, big books; not interesting, perhaps, but very grand and splendid to have lent one. A life that is to be lived under the same roof with a beautiful, kind old gentleman who will perhaps, by-and-bye, let me wait upon him. Oh, wonderful and delicious prospect, to wait upon Mr. Wycherly! To hand him his plate and to pour out—what should she pour out? Wine, she expected, though Miss Stukely said wine was wrong. Not, perhaps, for the gentry, for therealgentry, as her aunt would say. How soft and warm the grass to the bare tripping feet! How kind of those birds to sing like that! How lovely it was to be young and light and to have got rid of heavy shoes and hot, uncomfortable frock. How——"It was the front door bell.Jane-Anne heard it and Mr. Wycherly did not.There certainly was the making of a quick-change artist in Jane-Anne. In a twinkling she had found her shoes and stockings and put them on, and she ran to the house struggling into her dress as she ran."You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,Where has the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"said Mr. Wycherly, wondering why she had stopped so suddenly.CHAPTER XITHE CULT OF BRUEY"The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures."Poetics, ARISTOTLE.Jane-Anne was a true Athenian in that she was ever ready to run after any new thing, and during her last two terms at the Bainbridge the strongest influence in her life was that of her Sunday-school teacher, Miss Stukely.Jane-Anne whole-heartedly admired Miss Stukely, and where she admired she invariably imitated. Miss Stukely was delicate, and Jane-Anne delighted in her own "crepitations" as being the sincerest sort of flattery of that lady.Miss Stukely was slender, always elaborately dressed, gentle in manner, with white, heavily ringed hands. She was not, perhaps, beautiful in face, being somewhat sallow with a receding chin; but her expression was kindly, and Jane-Anne read into her face the spiritual excellencies the lady was most fond of extolling. She had a way of closing her eyes when she was most earnest in exhortation that Jane-Anne found very impressive. Moreover, she frequently used a gold-topped smelling bottle, and the possession of a similar restorative was just then Jane-Anne's most cherished aspiration.To lean back in a chair while inhaling the vinegary fragrance of a cut-glass bottle, to lean back with closed eyes, in an aura of the faintness and exhaustion induced by strong emotion, was to Jane-Anne as the ecstatic vision of a mystic: a state of mind and body only to be attained by profound spiritual exaltation.She learned by heart with ease. She could reel off any number of appropriate, or quite as often, inappropriate texts; and did so on the smallest provocation, greatly to the indignation of Mrs. Dew, who felt that she required no religious instruction at her niece's hands.This facility greatly impressed Miss Stukely, who felt that in Jane-Anne she indeed found fertile soil for the good seed, and there was no question whatever that Jane-Anne fully deserved the prize she gained for "Bible-searching."This prize was the history of one "Bruey," "a little worker for Christ," whose winning personality (Miss Stukely was fond of the word "winning," generally using it in the sense of a successful gainer of souls) seized upon Jane-Anne's imagination till she lived and walked and had her being in that character.Bruey was just her own age, had "great dark eyes" (Jane-Anne was pleasantly conscious of possessing similar orbs), had palpitations. Jane-Anne couldn't quite achieve these, but felt that crepitations were nearly as good and that she was, at all events, near the rose, if not the royal flower herself.Bruey had no father (another resemblance) and a mother, who, though an industrious church-worker, was perhaps not quite as understanding and sympathetic as she might have been. Put Mrs. Dew in place of the mother and there you are!Bruey always read her Bible seated upon a box in her bedroom window; "a folded rug upon this box made it soft and comfortable for a seat." Here she studied the scriptures and said her prayers, watching the sunset the while. She always kept a pencil by her and marked the texts she found most helpful, and Jane-Anne's Bible already was scored heavily in hundreds of places. Its newness (being a prize) was rather afflicting, so she wetted her thumb and doubled down the corners to hasten its look of age and constant use.The box and the window were denied to Jane-Anne at the Bainbridge, for twelve girls slept in a dormitory where the ledges of the windows were five feet from the ground, and no box of any sort was permitted in an apartment of almost superhuman neatness.At Jeune Street, too, the room was so small that the window was blocked up by a chest of drawers far too heavy for Jane-Anne to move.But the moment she came to Holywell she perceived glorious possibilities of Bruey-ness in the fine big bedroom her aunt had given up to her. It is true that the dressing-table stood in the window, but it was an old-fashioned, spindle-legged affair with swing looking-glass attached, quite light and easy to move, and the moment that Jane-Anne could get about without assistance she pulled it back into the room, dragged her empty tin box under the window, and having no shawl, folded her dressing-gown on the top to make it "soft and comfortable for a seat."As a matter of fact it did nothing of the kind, the box was dinted and lumpy and very hard, but what cared Jane-Anne? Bruey's box was covered with chintz, but that, she felt, was a very minor detail. The main properties were all there—box, window, Bible, little girl.That the window did not face towards the west was disappointing; that very little sky was to be seen owing to the presence of a tall house just across the yard was rather annoying. Still, there was the box and there was the window, and there was Jane-Anne, ready to throw herself into the part of Bruey with the utmost abandon.She even improved upon Bruey, grafting on to the character certain attributes of Miss Stukely.That morning, Mrs. Dew had turned out the kitchen cupboard, and among discarded bottles and boxes Jane-Anne had found a tiny phial that had contained vanilla essence. This she secretly pocketed. She tore a piece off her sponge, thrust it into the little bottle and then hied her to the bath-room where there was some Scrubbs' Ammonia. In a trice the bits of sponge in the bottle were saturated with that pungent fluid. Behold Jane-Anne equipped with a smelling bottle, quite as efficacious if not so handsome as Miss Stukely's.She sought her bower at seven o'clock, while her aunt was safely engaged in the final preparations for Mr. Wycherly's dinner. She had no time for reading and meditation at bed-time, for Mrs. Dew always came to take away the candle. Her aunt mistrusted Jane-Anne ever since she had set her hair on fire one evening in Jeune Street. When she reached her room she found that her box had been put back in the corner and her dressing-gown was hanging behind the door. This constantly happened.Jane-Anne muttered something that sounded like "interfering old thing" and hastened to arrange it all again. This didn't take long, and once the stage was set she mounted the box, and gazed out into the uninspiring stone-cutter's yard with a suitable expression of "winning tenderness." Next she closed her eyes wearily and distantly inhaled the Scrubbs' Ammonia in the vanilla bottle. It restored her and she opened her Bible haphazard with a sanctimonious Jack-Horner sort of expression on her thin, eager little face.She opened at the book of Job.Now this was unexplored country. Genesis she knew; Kings and Chronicles, and the greater part of the New Testament she had read. But somehow the book of Job hadn't entered into Miss Stukely's scheme of salvation, and Jane-Anne's only acquaintance with Job so far had been in her aunt's phrase, "you'd try the patience of Job," and she had vaguely pictured him as a meek old gentleman tormented by a large family of unruly children.Montagu and Mr. Wycherly had dipped into "Home Influence" anywhere. This was a new way of reading to her, and she felt she must at once do likewise. So into the end of the book of Job she thrust and started at the words, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bonds of Orion," and read on aloud.Now, there was in Jane-Anne a fine feeling for the beautiful and she liked the sound of it greatly, her voice growing stronger and more impressive as she read. Especially was she carried away by the description of the horse: "He paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men.... He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting."By this time, quite unconsciously, she had raised her voice very considerably, and she stopped in great confusion as her aunt bounced into the room demanding anxiously: "What ever is the matter? Who're you a-calling out to?""I'm only reading to myself," Jane-Anne mumbled."Well, I wish you'd read a bit quieter," said Mrs. Dew, "frightening a body to death with 'ha-ha-in's' and sech. An' what are you doin' sitting on that there box as I put away this very afternoon? Why can't you leave it be in the corner?"Jane-Anne made no reply. It is disconcerting to be snatched suddenly from all the exciting panoply of a battle-field to a mere discussion as to the position of boxes. She felt bewildered and unreal."Why don't you answer me?" Mrs. Dew asked impatiently."I was reading," Jane-Anne repeated stupidly."An' a very bad light to read in," said Mrs. Dew. "You come down into the kitchen an' give me a hand with the master's dinner instead of sittin' hollerin' there, and you put back that box in its proper place."While Jane-Anne was washing up she remembered with contrition that she had not marked a single text.In two particulars only did she feel that she could never hope to emulate Bruey. Firstly, because Bruey died in the last chapter of her palpitations. Now nothing was more opposed to Jane-Anne's aims than that she should succumb to her crepitations. Secondly, she felt that she could not hope even to approach Bruey's noble self-abnegation in the matter of hats.Bruey at first taught her Sunday class wearing a beautiful best hat adorned with roses; but on a senior teacher pointing out that this embellishment might have a bad effect upon the morals of her infant scholars, she begged her mother to remove the offending garniture and replace it by a simple ribbon.Never, Jane-Anne was assured, could she attain to such heights of self-denial. She never had possessed a hat with roses, but if she ever did—not all the Sunday-school teachers in creation should wrest them from her. On that point her determination was rooted. She would follow Bruey in all else but death-beds and hats. At present she felt that her hat would not excite any emotion save loathing in no matter how frivolous a breast. But if ever the day came—after all, Miss Stukely had hydrangeas in her hat—and there was no need to model herself slavishly on Bruey.Much as she loved Mr. Wycherly, he caused her some heart-searching. She adored him. To her, he seemed to combine in his own person every kind and gracious and beautiful quality; but so far he had not said any "good words" to her except that twice he had murmured, "God bless you." Not one text had he quoted when they spake together, nor had he asked her any of those searching intimate questions as to her spiritual condition, that she found so exciting and so wonderfully easy to answer satisfactorily.She had the true mystic's sense of nearness to the unseen; and in giving to the lonely child this feeling of fellowship with the saints, this serene confidence in Heaven's interference in her affairs, Miss Stukely and Bruey, between them, had bestowed on her a real and precious gift.But they had also created a mental pose. They had imbued her with a sense of pious security that armed her against endeavour. What she did easily she did well. What she disliked and found difficult she did not try to do at all, and any unpleasantness resulting from such inactivity she looked upon as a "cross." So long as she was meek and patient under rebuke; so long as she turned the other cheek to the smiter and bore no malice, she felt that she had done all that could be expected of her.For instance, in the matter of the box, it seemed absolutely vital to her that she should read her Bible and meditate in Bruey's fashion no matter how the constant disturbance of the said box annoyed her aunt.As she wiped plates in a smeary and perfunctory fashion, she was rejoicing in the existence of Montagu and Edmund, because Bruey had a cousin Percy whom she influenced for good. There was a Percy, too, in "Home Influence," and like all the Percies in that class of fiction, these two were dashing, full of generous impulses, but easily led astray. Bruey's Percy even read yellow-backed novels in bed at night, and Jane wondered whether Montagu was given to similar nocturnal orgies. She had no more idea of what a yellow-back was than she had of a Roman Catholic, but she was sure that both were equally pernicious.Edmund fitted more easily into the Percy part, he was so merry and good-looking; but fond as she was of the centre of the stage, Jane-Anne could not yet quite see herself enlightening Edmund in the approved Bruey fashion.He was so unexpected, he would be certain to say the wrong thing.At this moment Mrs. Dew came back from the dining-room. "You're to go and see the master in his study," she said; "it's a quarter to nine now, and the minute the clock strikes you're to come."Jane-Anne flew to the sink to wash her hands and hastened upstairs, buttoning her sleeves as she went."Well, have you found the poem?" asked Mr. Wycherly."No, sir. I've read every one you marked, but it isn't one of them.""Curious," Mr. Wycherly said thoughtfully; "we must try again. Sit down, my child, and think if you can remember in what sort of metre it was written, that would be a help."But Jane-Anne knew nothing about metre, so the question of the poem lapsed for the time being.The precious moments were fleeting, and Bruey being still in the ascendant, she askedaproposof nothing:"Please, sir, do you think Master Montagu and Edmund are little workers?""Edmund certainly isn't," Mr. Wycherly replied decidedly; "he's an idle young dog"—here he chuckled—"but all the same he can do whatever he sets himself to do. Montagu, on the contrary, is naturally industrious. He loves knowledge for its own sake. Why do you ask?" and Mr. Wycherly looked inquiringly at Jane-Anne.She was mystified. That anybody should call anybody else "an idle young dog" in that tone of affectionate amusement was in itself most puzzling."I suppose," she said, deliberately paraphrasing a favourite remark of Miss Stukely's, "we can all be workers, 'you in your small corner; I in mine.'""Quite so," Mr. Wycherly assented politely, though he in his turn was somewhat staggered by Jane-Anne's gently patronising tone. Had the Greek nymph of the afternoon turned into an amazing little prig in the evening? It was evident that this child was a quick-change artist in more than the matter of make-up.As for Jane-Anne, she felt curiously flattened out. This courteous, kindly old gentleman made her feel incredibly small. Bruey, she was certain, or even the apostolic Miss Stukely herself, would find it exceedingly difficult to approach Mr. Wycherly on the subject of his soul. And then and there was lighted in the youthful mind of Jane-Anne one little candle of common-sense which illuminated this dark and difficult situation with the bright suggestion that possibly Mr. Wycherly's soul was Mr. Wycherly's business and not hers; and just at that very crucial moment she heard him saying:"By the way, child, isn't that dress rather hot and heavy for this summer weather? Don't you think we'd better see about something else if you've not got anything thinner?"She jumped to her feet, clasping and unclasping her hands in an agony of earnestness. Where frocks were concerned souls had a poor chance with Jane-Anne."Oh, sir," she cried, "it's a hateful old dress, but my two cotton frocks were left at the Bainbridge and aunt said we couldn't ask for them as I'd left, and they said I could keep this and my best, as I'd got them with me, but I wish they hadn't. Mightn't some poorer child than me have this? It is so hideous and uncomfortable."She had come close up to Mr. Wycherly and was pleading as though her very life depended on it.Mr. Wycherly drew her between his knees, and there was a look of considerable amusement on his handsome old face as he asked: "If it is so ugly and so uncomfortable, why should you want to bestow it upon anybody else?""But it's quite good," Jane-Anne expostulated; "we couldn't throw it away. Some child might be glad of it. I'm not. Let's talk about what I shall have," she added coaxingly, and somehow she found herself sitting on Mr. Wycherly's knee.It was years since she had sat on anybody's knee, and that she should do so again and in such circumstances seemed to her inconceivably delightful.Jane-Anne expanded like a flower.It did not seem such an extraordinary thing to Mr. Wycherly that a child should sit on his knee. He had served a long and somewhat severe apprenticeship to Montagu and Edmund, who both had generally elected to sit upon him at the same time. What most impressed him about Jane-Anne was that she was distressingly light.They had a long and intimate confabulation on the subject of frocks, finally deciding that, with Mrs. Dew's permission, Mrs. Methuen should be taken into their counsels.The clock struck nine.Jane-Anne flung her arms round his neck and kissed him, and yet again he opened the door for her as she went out.The following afternoon Mrs. Dew sent her out to do some messages, and while she was outside a shop—there were hats in that shop, and Jane-Anne flattened her nose against the window in her enthusiastic interest—two ladies came out to a carriage that was waiting at the kerb.The ladies were gorgeously arrayed, evidently on their way to some party, and she turned to stare after them admiringly. The footman slammed the door, leapt upon the box, and the carriage started, when she observed that one of the ladies had dropped her purse in the gutter. It was a pretty trifle made of links of gold in the shape of a little bag. She picked it up at once and darted after the carriage, calling out to them to stop, but the ladies shook their heads at her and the coachman was far too exalted a personage to take any notice at all. The footman did just look round, but he regained his proud immobility in the next second of time.There was a good deal of traffic that afternoon and the carriage could not get along very fast. Jane-Anne ran after it, never letting it get out of sight, though she was breathless and tired, and her heart thumped in her ears in a fashion that was rather too realistically reminiscent of Bruey to be altogether agreeable. She was almost giving up in despair when the carriage turned in through big gates. Faint, but pursuing, Jane-Anne followed and ran up the broad path after it. There were many gaily dressed people standing about, who stared at her, and numbers of other carriages so that the one she followed had to go very slowly. She came up with it just as it stopped at an entrance.The ladies saw her. "Go away, little girl," said the younger crossly; "we have nothing for you, and you have no business to follow us."Too breathless and exhausted to speak, Jane-Anne held out the purse towards her."Good gracious! I must have dropped it, and you followed us; how very kind. I suppose I'd better give her something," in an aside to her companion. "I hope I've got some small change. Here you are, and thank you very much."She selected sixpence and held it out towards Jane-Anne.Now Jane-Anne wanted that sixpence dreadfully, for she hadn't a farthing in the world; but she had conceived a dislike for the lady; she was indignant at being taken for a beggar, and having somewhat recovered her breath, she said very distinctly:"No, thank you; but I think you might have told the coachman to stop, then I shouldn't have had to run so far," and with her head in the air, she set off down the drive again.A good many people had arrived at the door, and they were all listening.She hadn't gone far when she heard quick footsteps behind her and a short, good-tempered looking gentleman pulled her by the arm. He wore a festal white waistcoat and looked the personification of jollity. "You were quite right to refuse her beggarly sixpence, my dear," he remarked confidentially; "but it's a shame you shouldn't have something for your trouble; very good-natured of you, I call it, to run all that way. Here, you go and buy some lollipops with this!" and he held out two bright new half-crowns towards Jane-Anne.Never had she seen so much wealth, and it was hers just for the taking; and yet she was certain she ought not to take it; that Mr. Wycherly would not like it; and already she had begun to identify herself with him.She shook her head a little sadly. "No, thank you," she said very gently, for this time she felt the donor meant to be kind. "I mustn't, thank you," and she went on her way.The stout gentleman looked after her and scratched his chin. "That was a nasty one," he said to the nearest passer-by. "The lass is a lady and I offered her five bob."Jane-Anne made her way blindly into the road. She was nearly run over three several times by carriages coming up the drive. As she turned into the open she charged into someone walking in the opposite direction, and recovering from the impact, discovered that she had run into Mr. Wycherly.Mutual explanations followed. Mr. Wycherly was taking the daily walk he had promised Montagu to take. Jane-Anne explained her presence at the garden-party, but said nothing about the rewards offered.Presently she found herself walking home hand in hand with Mr. Wycherly, and when they reached the house he said: "We must have more walks together, you and I, and if I forget to go out you must come and stir me up."At tea she told her aunt about the purse, and about the money offered."You were quite right to refuse it," said Mrs. Dew, "an' I'm glad you had that much sense; but what made you?""I thought the master wouldn't have liked it.""The master needn't never have known nothing about it.""But I should have known," said Jane-Anne.
CHAPTER IX
THE QUEST
"My voice shall with thy future visions blend,And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,A token and a tone...."Childe Harold.
"My voice shall with thy future visions blend,And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,A token and a tone...."Childe Harold.
"My voice shall with thy future visions blend,
And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold,
A token and a tone...."Childe Harold.
Next day Jane-Anne was allowed to sit in the garden under the apple-tree: a queer little hunched-up figure in the tight stuff-dress and a shawl. She also wore the pie-dish, for Mrs. Dew was one of those people who considered it almost disreputable to be out of doors bare-headed.
She sat in a basket-chair and on her knees lay her most recent prize, "Home Influence," a fat handsome volume bound in purple cloth with gilt edges. For lessons, Jane-Anne had won every prize open to her at the asylum. Although she had only been there a year, and that year constantly broken by long bouts of illness, she had gained seven books. These, which included a Bible, a prayer-book, and church hymnal, with one other comprised her whole library. The prizes were all of a moral and edifying character, and Jane-Anne had read them over and over again hungrily, with the passionate interest and enthusiasm which she brought to everything outside her actual daily duties. And although she whole-heartedly admired them she was yet subconsciously critical and unsatisfied. She regarded her prizes with the greatest respect. Familiarity had, so far, bred no contempt for them in her mind, but all the time she felt that there was something lacking. Although they were the only books she possessed, they were not the only ones she had read. In the previous autumn, her mother's mistress, Lady Dursley, had commanded her aunt to take the child for a change to their place in Gloucestershire, accompanying the order with a liberal cheque for travelling expenses. The family was in Scotland and most of the big house shut up, and nearly all the servants were making holiday, except the housekeeper, an old friend of Mrs. Dew, and one elderly kitchen-maid. But the great library was open, for a young man had been sent down to catalogue the books. He was an intelligent young man and took a fancy to Jane-Anne and had her with him a great deal. He found her books he thought good for her, and on departure presented her with the little green-covered "Children's Treasury," compiled by Palgrave.
In this Jane-Anne read constantly and carefully, not because she was particularly attracted by the poems, though some of them she loved and learned by heart, but because whenever she came across any poetry she searched through it eagerly in the hope of finding a poem her father used to repeat to her. She had read and re-read the little green book unceasingly, but nowhere could she find her poem.
Her father died before she was five years old, but Jane-Anne's recollection of him was curiously vivid, and at this very moment her mind strove to materialise a memory elusive in some ways as a puff of smoke, sharp and defined in others as a tongue of leaping flame against a midnight sky.
The moment Mrs. Dew had safely disappeared into the house the child dragged off the pie-dish and cast it violently on the grass at her feet. Then she lay back in her chair, her eyes dreamy and pensive, though ever and again she knit her black eyebrows in her effort to remember.
Her thin hands lay folded above the unopened volume on her knees and she sat very still.
It was warm and pleasant in Mr. Wycherly's garden; a thrush sang in the boughs above her head, and every now and then pink and white petals dropped softly upon her hair. A flutter of wind blew over a great clump of narcissus bearing their perfume on its wings, and the heavy scent was memory-laden for Jane-Anne.
She saw a long, low-ceiled, lamp-lit room with a window at either end and all the furniture ranged round the walls that a free path might be open for the restless pacing up and down of one who was never too busy or too absorbed to be at the beck and call of an often fretful little girl. As in a vision she beheld that man "with all his keen worn look and Grecian grace" tramping to and fro and holding in his arms a tired, fidgetty child who could not sleep.
Backwards and forwards he went, and with the soothing movement was the sound of words sorrowful and majestic, musical in their rhythmic swing and balance: words that poor Jane-Anne could never remember though she felt that they were written indelibly on mind and heart but covered, covered deeply with layer upon layer of fugitive things of little worth. Some day, she was convinced, she would find that poetry and with it a thousand things about her father that she had forgotten. He often wore a narcissus in his button-hole, and as her head lay on his shoulder the crushed flower gave forth a double fragrance.
It was this familiar scent, strong in the warm old Oxford garden, that seemed to compass her about in an atmosphere of memories, memories of a time when she, too, was always warm, cared about, schemed for, enwheel'd around with love on every hand.
The lines between the black eyebrows were smoothed out as by a tender hand. The unremembered poem ceased to worry her. She would find it some day. Meanwhile, she was sure her daddy knew she loved him. There was something he had told her to remember and she had forgotten, but only for a little while. It would come back, she was sure it would come back. Here, in this house, where there were so many books, perhaps she would find it.
She saw again her beautiful, gentle mother, so calm always and patient. Mrs. Dew was careful to impress upon Jane-Anne that she in no way resembled her mother, and the child never resented this reproach, for had not that very mother rejoiced in her likeness to her father? "My little Maid of Athens," had been her mother's name for Jane-Anne, and Jane-Anne treasured it in her mind. She knew that her worthy aunt had never either liked or approved of her father, and this only made her more passionately loyal to his memory. She pondered these things in her heart, puzzled and pained sometimes, but never daunted in her pride. It was from no mean country that her father had come, she was sure of that. She knew little enough of Greece, nothing of its great history, but chance phrases that she had heard in infancy remained in her mind. She was sure that there was something to know, something worth knowing, and that she would know it some day.
She never spoke of her parents to her companions at the asylum; and although Mrs. Dew would often talk fondly and proudly of her mother and Jane-Anne loved her for it, her aunt's silence with regard to the father she adored filled the child with a resentment none the less bitter that it never found expression. Jane-Anne was perfectly aware of her hostile attitude, although Mrs. Dew was careful never to say one word in disparagement of a man she had been quite unable to understand; whom she had heartily disliked.
"I wonder why I'm thinking so much of my daddie since I came here?" Jane-Anne thought to herself. "I suppose it's because I'm happier."
Presently, over the grass towards her came Montagu, very long in the leg and short in the sleeve. Edmund was out zestfully finding his way about Oxford in his recently discovered fashion.
Montagu sat down on the grass at Jane-Anne's feet and looked up at her, smiling broadly, but never a word said he till he espied the book in her lap.
"What's that?" he asked.
"One of my prizes, sir," Jane-Anne answered primly.
"Is it decent?"
"It's most interesting."
"Can I look at it?"
The book changed hands and Montagu began to read. He turned the pages very fast, to the wonderment of Jane-Anne, who had never seen people read after this fashion.
He was lying face-downwards on the grass in front of her, and she watched his eyes as they swept the page from top to bottom in, apparently, one glance. She liked his thin brown face with the large kind eyes and firm capable mouth that was always shut when he wasn't talking, but just at that moment she thought that his expression was less pleasant than usual, that there was something scornful and almost sinister about his mouth, and yet she was sure that in some queer way he was amused. Why?
Jane-Anne had never found anything in the least amusing in the work in question; interesting, certainly; "touching" (the lady who gave them Sunday lessons at the asylum was fond of the word "touching") frequently; but humorous never. The authorities who chose books for female orphans at the Bainbridge did not consider the cultivation of a sense of humour in any way a necessary part of the training.
Presently Montagu began to dip into the book here and there, still reading with that lightning-like rapidity that so astonished Jane-Anne.
In five minutes he shut it with a slam and looked up at her and laughed.
"What awful rot," he remarked genially, as though certain of sympathy.
Jane-Anne gazed at him in consternation. "Rot?" she faltered.
"Fearful squish; you don't mean to say you really like it?"
"I don't know what you mean," she said, so offended that she quite forgot the respectful "sir."
"It's so stilted and bombastic and unnatural. The style"—here Montagu unconsciously gave a perfect imitation of his house master's manner—"is so cheap and meretricious."
"I don't understand about style in books," said Jane-Anne, still much umbraged. "D'you mean the binding?"
"Good gracious, no. I mean the way it's written. Listen to this"—and Montagu opened the book haphazard and read the following extract aloud:—"'He had been minister of a favourite church in one of the southern towns, and master of an establishment for youths of high rank, in both which capacities he had given universal satisfaction. The reprehensible conduct of some of his pupils, carried on at first so secretly as to elude his knowledge, at length became so notorious as to demand examination. He had at first refused all credence, but when proved by the confused replies of all, and half-confession of some, he briefly and emphatically laid before them the enormity of their conduct, and declared, that as confidence was entirely broken between them, he would resign the honour of their education, refusing to admit them any longer as members of his establishment.' There!" Montagu exclaimed, "could you have anything worse?"
"I think it's all said very properly and grandly," Jane-Anne protested. "I don't see what's the matter with it at all."
Montagu rolled over on the grass and sat up. "It's the grandness that's so detestable."
"It's my best prize," she said indignantly.
"I'm sorry," said Montagu, seeing that she was really hurt, "but you ask Guardie about that sort of writing."
"It's printed," snapped Jane-Anne.
Montagu gazed at her in hopeless bewilderment. He had never before argued with a girl.
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes filled with angry tears. She clenched her thin little hands and bit her lips to keep from bursting into sobs.
"I say," Montagu exclaimed, with real contrition, "why do you mind? What does it matter what I think?"
"If you," Jane-Anne gasped, "had as few books as me, and loved them every one dearly, and then someone came along and abused them and called them 'rot' and 'merry something' and 'squish,'youwouldn't like it."
This time the big tears escaped, rolled over and down her cheeks, dropping with a splash on to the plaid shawl covering her knees.
And at this critical moment Mr. Wycherly came out of the house and across the grass towards them. He had seen the children from his study window, and remembering that the boys went back to school next day, decided to seek their society under the pleasant shade of the apple-tree.
Montagu stalked over to the tool house to fetch a chair for his guardian and arrived with it as Mr. Wycherly reached the apple-tree. Jane-Anne had lost her handkerchief, the tears were shining on her cheeks, and she gave a most unmistakable sniff just as Mr. Wycherly reached them. But she stood up and curtsied with downcast eyes and burning cheeks, and at the same moment Montagu came back bearing a chair for his guardian.
"What is the matter?" asked Mr. Wycherly.
Jane-Anne continued to stand, and lifted her tear-washed eyes to his face. Had it been stern or severe she could never have answered a word; as it was, she said quite simply: "He didn't like my prize and I minded."
Mr. Wycherly sat down in the chair Montagu had brought and looked from the pained and indignant Jane-Anne to the evidently puzzled and distressed Montagu.
"Suppose we all sit down and try to come to a better understanding," he said.
Jane-Anne sank heavily into her chair. She was still weak, and even the little effort to greet Mr. Wycherly with due respect caused her legs to quake and her heart to beat thunderously in her ears.
She leant her head against the back of the chair and looked so white that for a moment Mr. Wycherly thought she was about to faint. But she did nothing of the kind.
Instead, she said in a voice that wholly belied her exhausted appearance: "Have you read 'Home Influence,' sir?"
"I don't think so," said Mr. Wycherly; "is that the name of the book under discussion?"
Jane-Anne held it out towards him; he took it from her carefully, placed his eye-glasses on his nose, opened it haphazard, and began to read.
Precisely the same thing happened as with Montagu. His eyes sought a page and he turned it. This extraordinary way of reading was not peculiar to Montagu, that was evident. But in Mr. Wycherly's face neither scorn nor amusement was portrayed, only a polite interest.
In three minutes Montagu said, "Well?"
Mr. Wycherly closed the book. "I cannot," he said, "be expected to express an opinion after so cursory a glance at the contents. Montagu, go and ask Mrs. Dew for a glass of milk; this child looks faint; bring some biscuits, too."
Montagu sped away, and he turned to Jane-Anne.
"You mustn't mind him," he said kindly. "Clever Winchester boys are always intolerant—while they are boys. Montagu reads a great deal more than he can digest, and people with indigestion are proverbially cantankerous."
Jane-Anne didn't understand what he meant in the very least, but she felt immediately and immensely comforted. So much so, that she was impelled to speak to Mr. Wycherly of her thoughts when she first came out.
"Please, sir," she said, calmly dismissing the merits or demerits of "Home Influence" that seemed so vital a moment ago. "Do you know a piece of poetry about mountains?"
"A great deal of poetry has been written about mountains," Mr. Wycherly replied cautiously.
"It's a piece of poetry I want to find," said Jane-Anne, "that I heard many times long ago, and I can't remember anything about it except that there was mountains. I thought perhaps you'd know it."
Here Montagu appeared with a glass of milk and some biscuits. The milk had slopped over on to the biscuits "in some unaccountable way," he explained; but their sopped condition did not spoil them for Jane-Anne, who munched quite happily and smiled her broad ecstatic smile at him to show that she had forgiven his cruel remarks about "Home Influence."
Presently the doctor came to see her, and Mrs. Dew fetched her in to be sounded.
The moment she had gone Montagu turned upon his guardian, demanding sternly: "Well, isn't it hopeless squish?"
"It is her prize," said Mr. Wycherly gently.
"Why, that's just what she said," Montagu exclaimed in astonishment at his usually logical guardian taking this line.
"You will find," said Mr. Wycherly, "as you go through life that it is never safe to abuse things violently before you have realised your hearer's point of view. You may offend deeply."
"You'd have to be jolly dishonest to always think of that," Montagu answered indignantly.
"You will be jolly rude and disagreeable if you never think of it," Mr. Wycherly retorted. "Besides, did she ask you for your opinion?"
"Well, no—but it seemed such a pity to go on liking such stuff. People must begin to learn what's good and what's bad sometime—and I shouldn't think she's stupid."
"I am quite sure she is not stupid, and I am equally sure that she is painfully sensitive and that you were more than a little stupid not to see it."
"Me, stupid!" Montagu repeated in surprise. "No one has ever called me that before."
Mr. Wycherly chuckled. "I thought," said he, "that the presence of a young girl among us would be mentally stimulating. She has not been in the house two days and yet, you see, already she has suggested to you new possibilities in yourself. By the way—just make a note of any poems you can think of bearing on mountains."
"Why, there are thousands," cried Montagu, aghast.
"Sure to be in Wordsworth," said Mr. Wycherly. "Anyway, we'll mark the places."
CHAPTER X
FORTUNE'S WHEEL
"But that's all shove be'ind meLong ago and fur away."RUDYARD KIPLING.
"But that's all shove be'ind meLong ago and fur away."RUDYARD KIPLING.
"But that's all shove be'ind me
Long ago and fur away."
RUDYARD KIPLING.
RUDYARD KIPLING.
The boys had been back at school a fortnight. Jane-Anne was quite convalescent and got up to breakfast, but the date of her return to the Bainbridge was still undecided.
The doctor came at longer intervals, but every time he came he still declared that there was "a roughness" in Jane-Anne's lung, and that it would be madness to send her North until that roughness was smoothed away.
Night and morning and many times during the day, Jane-Anne bombarded heaven with petitions that "the roughness" might perhaps increase a very little, since it gave her no inconvenience whatever; anyway, that it might remain sufficiently rasping to confirm the doctor in his view that her return to the Bainbridge was at present out of the question.
Mrs. Dew, although properly respectful to the doctor as a friend of Mrs. Methuen, yet felt that in this case he pushed professional caution to the verge of the ridiculous. Here was Jane-Anne eating and sleeping as well as could be, with pinker and plumper cheeks than she had had for many a long day, looking, in fact, as her aunt said, "the picture of health," though some people might have thought the picture rather elusive and misleading; here was Jane-Anne eating the bread of idleness with almost aggressive satisfaction in Holywell when she ought to have been reaping the benefits of her "nomination" up in Northumberland.
Why all this fuss about a slight roughness? "Mark my words and anyone can 'ear anything as he listens for," said Mrs. Dew.
Finally, Mr. Wycherly interviewed the doctor, who said to him in plain words what he had feared to say to the child's aunt.
The doctor was an outspoken young man of sporting tendencies. He wore a white hat rather on one side and drove an uncommonly good horse, and to Mr. Wycherly he said: "It's like setting a thoroughbred filly to pull a cart-load of bricks to expect that child to do housework in her present state. She ought to do nothing for three months, and even then I should say she is singularly unfitted for the kind of life she has up there. I know those schools—excellent for big strong girls; but that child isn't strong. She's all nerves and brains and empty, craving heart. The lung trouble isn't serious if it's checked in time, but if she goes back she'll get overtired and catch cold again directly. I'm sorry for her aunt, but what can I say? I won't be responsible for sending her back."
The doctor spoke angrily. He hated interfering in other people's business and he thought it exceedingly probable that an old gentleman living by himself might strongly object to having a girl child foisted upon him for an indefinite period.
"It seems to me," said Mr. Wycherly mildly, "that it would be criminal stupidity to allow her to go back."
The doctor looked rather astonished.
"But what's to become of the child?" he asked.
"Surely there is nothing to prevent her remaining here with her aunt, and when she is strong enough are there not good schools in Oxford?"
The doctor picked up his white hat. "Of course," he said, "if you have no objection to her remaining here the whole thing is perfectly simple, but I understood from her aunt that the arrangement was the child was only to be here in her holidays, and she seemed sadly afraid of trespassing upon your good-nature in keeping her here so long as it is. She's a very decent, honest woman, but——"
Mr. Wycherly rose and rang the bell to summon Mrs. Dew.
And the end of it all was that somebody wrote to Lord Dursley. Jane-Anne's "nomination" at the Bainbridge was presented to a girl whose physique was more deserving, and his lordship, instead of being annoyed, as Mrs. Dew had feared, at Jane-Anne's failure to benefit from his good intentions on her behalf, declared himself quite ready to pay for her "schooling" in Oxford whenever that fidgetty fellow, the doctor, should consider her able for instruction.
"Not till the autumn," said the doctor, to Mrs. Dew. "She can help you till then, you won't overwork her, I'm sure."
Jane-Anne knew perfectly well that her fate hung in the balance when the doctor sought his interview with Mr. Wycherly, and when the result of that interview was imparted to her rather grudgingly, and with many injunctions as to decorous conduct, by her aunt, she felt such a passionate love and gratitude towards the gentle-mannered master who had made this beatific state of things possible that she could not rest that night without going to thank him.
Therefore, without consulting her aunt, she sought his study after dinner and knocked timidly at the door.
Mr. Wycherly was, as usual, seated at his desk writing; the shaded light was pulled low over his papers, making a little pool of brightness in the grey dusk of the room. The big window was wide open and a scent of wallflowers was wafted in from the garden below.
"Come in, my child, come in," said the kind, welcoming voice as he saw the timid figure at the door.
And Jane-Anne came in with a nervous rush, but she did not forget to shut the door behind her.
She dropped on her knees beside him and seized his hand, kissing it passionately, much to his confusion. He was quite unaccustomed to violent manifestations of feeling, and his long residence in Scotland had increased his natural reserve.
"I know it's you who managed that I shouldn't go back, and I do want so to thank you. You don't know what I feel like. Please, sir, I will try to be useful. Anything you would like me to do——"
Very gently Mr. Wycherly withdrew his hand. "Suppose you sit on a chair," he suggested, "and we will have a chat together."
With stately courtesy, he placed a chair for Jane-Anne, and, seated again in his own revolving-chair, turned to face her.
As always, when much moved, she was very white, and to-night her great eyes were soft and dog-like in their devotion.
"By the way," said Mr. Wycherly, "I haven't forgotten your inquiry about the poem that you cannot remember, and I have marked in a volume of Wordsworth a number of verses dealing with mountains. Perhaps you would like to look through it at your leisure."
"Thank you, sir," Jane-Anne whispered.
"I know nothing," Mr. Wycherly continued, "more annoying than a half-remembered quotation. I sincerely hope that you will soon find it."
For a moment there was silence, then:
"Sir," Jane-Anne said earnestly, "are you very lonely now the young gentlemen have gone back to school?"
"I do miss them greatly of course."
"Do you remember, sir, when you came to see me, when I was in bed the first day I was here, you said when they went back that the sun set for you——"
"Did I?" said Mr. Wycherly, rather surprised at himself.
"You really did, sir, and I wondered whether—though the sun has set—whether you'd let me try—to be a little tiny star—just so you wouldn't feel quite so lonely."
Mr. Wycherly's hand still tingled with the touch of those soft unaccustomed girlish lips, nevertheless he held it out to her, saying, "That will be very kind of you."
Jane-Anne placed her own within it and she did not attempt to kiss Mr. Wycherly's hand again, but she looked at him as though she would read his very soul and asked: "Sir, have you ever heard anything about a place called Greece?"
Mr. Wycherly laughed. "For a considerable portion of my life," he replied, "I have heard about little else."
"Will you tell me things sometimes, sir? Will you?"
"I shall be most happy," said Mr. Wycherly. "You certainly ought to know as much as possible about your father's country—and there is so much to know."
"I have another name," she said suddenly and with apparent irrelevance. "Shall I tell it you? Very few people know."
"Do you mean Stavrides?" Mr. Wycherly asked.
"No, sir, not that; I have another Christian name. Allegra; don't you think it's very pretty?"
"Very," said Mr. Wycherly; "it is a beautiful name, but it isn't Greek."
"I'm called after somebody's daughter that died. I don't know who she was; mother knew. My daddie liked the name. I daresay I shall find out some day all about her."
"I daresay you will," said Mr. Wycherly, and looked hard at Jane-Anne.
"Which would you like to call me?" she asked.
"I shall call you Jane-Anne, not Allegra," Mr. Wycherly said decidedly.
"It's a pretty name," she said wistfully.
"It has rather sad associations for me," he added.
The clock upon the mantelpiece struck nine. Jane-Anne rose. "I must go, sir, now; good night, and thank you."
"Good night, my child. Get strong and rest you merry. And here is the Wordsworth; tell me when you find your poem."
She took from him a large brown volume that bristled with inserted slips of paper. He crossed the room and opened the door for her, and Jane-Anne went out with her head held high. "Just like he did for Mrs. Methuen," she reflected ecstatically.
When she had gone Mr. Wycherly went and stood at the window and looked out into the night. The sky was unclouded, of a deep, soft, soothing blue, and right in a line with his window shone one star.
"I wonder," he pondered, "what made him call her after Byron's daughter."
When Jane-Anne reached the kitchen, proudly bearing her volume of Wordsworth, she found her aunt sitting at the newly scrubbed kitchen table darning a stocking.
"What made you stop so long for?" Mrs. Dew inquired tartly, "hindering and worritin' the master. It don't take half an hour to say 'thank you, and my duty to you.'"
"The master set a chair for me and talked to me," Jane-Anne replied gloriously, "and when I came away he opened the door for me, just like he did for Mrs. Methuen when she came the other day, and he's lent me a great big poetry book. Look at it! Oh, aunt, I do believe the Almighty must be just like Mr. Wycherly."
Mrs. Dew nearly dropped her stocking. "Jane-Anne!" she exclaimed in tones of horrified amazement, "how you can stand there and say such things passes me. Go to bed this minute, you inyuman child. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you ought."
"But, aunt," Jane-Anne expostulated, "Miss Stukely, the lady that taught us Sundays, she said we must love God, be always loving Him, and always talking about Him; we couldn't think and talk too much about Him; the more we did it the fitter we'd be for heaven, and I've never seen anybody before as I'd like Him to be like—so where's the harm?"
The child spoke with breathless earnestness.
Mrs. Dew stared at her, intensely disapproving.
"How you can stand there," she repeated; "how you can have the face to stand there and talk about the Almighty bein'likeanybody, just as if He was your next door neighbour, turns me cold. Where's your respect? Where's your sense of decency? I'll have none of your revival ways here, I can tell you; quiet, respectable church I've always been, with none of such goin's on. It's quite enough for most of us to do our duty in that station of life without talking familiarly of lovin' and such.Goto bed, I tell you, and let me hear no more of such fandanglements, and I'll come in ten minutes to fetch your candle and bring you that hot milk as is all over skin you've been so long. Now bustle about smartish."
Jane-Anne bustled.
Mrs. Dew leant back in her chair as one quite unable to cope with the force of circumstances.
"My stars! Good fathers!" exclaimed Mrs. Dew. "If that's the sort of thing they teaches at the Bainbridge it's more than time my niece was took away."
Very early next morning Jane-Anne crept out of bed, pulled up her blind, and seized the volume of poetry Mr. Wycherly had lent her. She read till her eyes ached and her head swam; she read without the smallest understanding or enjoyment, but with the greatest care and application, and though there was much about mountains there was nothing that struck the faintest chord of memory in Jane-Anne. Whatever it was that her father had repeated when he used to carry her about, it wasn't there. And yet she was certain about "the mountains." Yes, it was "the mountains."
"I'm afraid he'll have to look again," she said to herself. She had not the smallest doubt that Mr. Wycherly would help her.
It was a very hot May, and as the doctor had said she could not be too much in the fresh air, her aunt, that afternoon, put a little table and chair for her under the apple-tree, gave her some needle-work, and bidding her listen for any bell that might happen to ring, announced her intention of going out to do some household shopping. "Unless anyone calls to see the master it's unlikely that anyone'll come at all," said Mrs. Dew, "and the front door bell's that loud you'll hear it right enough if so be as you don't get moonin'. I shan't be more than a hour."
Shortly after Mrs. Dew's departure Mr. Wycherly came to his window and looked out.
There sat Jane-Anne at the little table covered by a heap of white sewing, and he thought what a pleasant picture she made in her stiff buff frock, so maidenly and sweet, so suitably and sensibly employed on this sunny afternoon in the midst of the green old garden, gay with tulips and fragrant wallflowers.
Suddenly Jane-Anne stooped down and took off her heavy shoes and there and then flung them one after another to the other side of the lawn. Then she removed her stockings. Mr. Wycherly gazed fascinated. What was the child about?
This was soon deplorably evident.
Jane-Anne was taking off her dress.
Mr. Wycherly felt that he ought to go away from that window, but he didn't. He stayed where he was and, what's more, he placed his eyeglasses upon his nose.
She gave herself a complicated kind of shake and the buff abomination fell about her feet in stiff expostulating folds.
Daintily and deliberately, she stepped out of it as though withdrawing her feet from something dirty and distasteful. She wore a skimpy little blue-and-white striped petticoat of cotton; body and skirt in one piece it reached just to her knees, but was sleeveless, and her long, slender arms were bare.
A thrush was singing in the apple-tree and a blackbird warbled loudly in a lilac bush trying to drown the thrush. They sang as though there were no such thing as winter in the world, and neither of them cared a whit for Jane-Anne and her disrobings.
Flinging her white arms above her head, she danced into the middle of the lawn on slim, twinkling white feet and continued to dance all over it with the greatest abandon and enjoyment, while her long black plaits bumped joyously. So light of foot, so variously graceful in her gracious suppleness, with such divine gravity and dainty decorum that Mr. Wycherly watching was fain to take his glasses off and wipe them, for suddenly he could not see as clearly as he wished. Her radiant face was pale, but her wide eyes were full of a gladness that seemed to mirror back the brightness of that May afternoon, and the little petticoat was like the sheath of a flower enfolding and displaying all this happy grace.
Loudly carolled the blackbird, lustily chirruped the thrush, and Jane-Anne danced to their orchestra, and while she danced her mind kept saying: "I've done with it; I've done with it. I shall never go back. Life is before me, a new life; a life full of wonders, and a bedroom to myself, with furniture like looking-glasses; a life with a kind, sensible, if worldly minded aunt, who gives to little girls delicious puddings that they like. A life with books in it, big books; not interesting, perhaps, but very grand and splendid to have lent one. A life that is to be lived under the same roof with a beautiful, kind old gentleman who will perhaps, by-and-bye, let me wait upon him. Oh, wonderful and delicious prospect, to wait upon Mr. Wycherly! To hand him his plate and to pour out—what should she pour out? Wine, she expected, though Miss Stukely said wine was wrong. Not, perhaps, for the gentry, for therealgentry, as her aunt would say. How soft and warm the grass to the bare tripping feet! How kind of those birds to sing like that! How lovely it was to be young and light and to have got rid of heavy shoes and hot, uncomfortable frock. How——"
It was the front door bell.
Jane-Anne heard it and Mr. Wycherly did not.
There certainly was the making of a quick-change artist in Jane-Anne. In a twinkling she had found her shoes and stockings and put them on, and she ran to the house struggling into her dress as she ran.
"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,Where has the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"
"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,Where has the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"
"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where has the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"
said Mr. Wycherly, wondering why she had stopped so suddenly.
CHAPTER XI
THE CULT OF BRUEY
"The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures."Poetics, ARISTOTLE.
Jane-Anne was a true Athenian in that she was ever ready to run after any new thing, and during her last two terms at the Bainbridge the strongest influence in her life was that of her Sunday-school teacher, Miss Stukely.
Jane-Anne whole-heartedly admired Miss Stukely, and where she admired she invariably imitated. Miss Stukely was delicate, and Jane-Anne delighted in her own "crepitations" as being the sincerest sort of flattery of that lady.
Miss Stukely was slender, always elaborately dressed, gentle in manner, with white, heavily ringed hands. She was not, perhaps, beautiful in face, being somewhat sallow with a receding chin; but her expression was kindly, and Jane-Anne read into her face the spiritual excellencies the lady was most fond of extolling. She had a way of closing her eyes when she was most earnest in exhortation that Jane-Anne found very impressive. Moreover, she frequently used a gold-topped smelling bottle, and the possession of a similar restorative was just then Jane-Anne's most cherished aspiration.
To lean back in a chair while inhaling the vinegary fragrance of a cut-glass bottle, to lean back with closed eyes, in an aura of the faintness and exhaustion induced by strong emotion, was to Jane-Anne as the ecstatic vision of a mystic: a state of mind and body only to be attained by profound spiritual exaltation.
She learned by heart with ease. She could reel off any number of appropriate, or quite as often, inappropriate texts; and did so on the smallest provocation, greatly to the indignation of Mrs. Dew, who felt that she required no religious instruction at her niece's hands.
This facility greatly impressed Miss Stukely, who felt that in Jane-Anne she indeed found fertile soil for the good seed, and there was no question whatever that Jane-Anne fully deserved the prize she gained for "Bible-searching."
This prize was the history of one "Bruey," "a little worker for Christ," whose winning personality (Miss Stukely was fond of the word "winning," generally using it in the sense of a successful gainer of souls) seized upon Jane-Anne's imagination till she lived and walked and had her being in that character.
Bruey was just her own age, had "great dark eyes" (Jane-Anne was pleasantly conscious of possessing similar orbs), had palpitations. Jane-Anne couldn't quite achieve these, but felt that crepitations were nearly as good and that she was, at all events, near the rose, if not the royal flower herself.
Bruey had no father (another resemblance) and a mother, who, though an industrious church-worker, was perhaps not quite as understanding and sympathetic as she might have been. Put Mrs. Dew in place of the mother and there you are!
Bruey always read her Bible seated upon a box in her bedroom window; "a folded rug upon this box made it soft and comfortable for a seat." Here she studied the scriptures and said her prayers, watching the sunset the while. She always kept a pencil by her and marked the texts she found most helpful, and Jane-Anne's Bible already was scored heavily in hundreds of places. Its newness (being a prize) was rather afflicting, so she wetted her thumb and doubled down the corners to hasten its look of age and constant use.
The box and the window were denied to Jane-Anne at the Bainbridge, for twelve girls slept in a dormitory where the ledges of the windows were five feet from the ground, and no box of any sort was permitted in an apartment of almost superhuman neatness.
At Jeune Street, too, the room was so small that the window was blocked up by a chest of drawers far too heavy for Jane-Anne to move.
But the moment she came to Holywell she perceived glorious possibilities of Bruey-ness in the fine big bedroom her aunt had given up to her. It is true that the dressing-table stood in the window, but it was an old-fashioned, spindle-legged affair with swing looking-glass attached, quite light and easy to move, and the moment that Jane-Anne could get about without assistance she pulled it back into the room, dragged her empty tin box under the window, and having no shawl, folded her dressing-gown on the top to make it "soft and comfortable for a seat."
As a matter of fact it did nothing of the kind, the box was dinted and lumpy and very hard, but what cared Jane-Anne? Bruey's box was covered with chintz, but that, she felt, was a very minor detail. The main properties were all there—box, window, Bible, little girl.
That the window did not face towards the west was disappointing; that very little sky was to be seen owing to the presence of a tall house just across the yard was rather annoying. Still, there was the box and there was the window, and there was Jane-Anne, ready to throw herself into the part of Bruey with the utmost abandon.
She even improved upon Bruey, grafting on to the character certain attributes of Miss Stukely.
That morning, Mrs. Dew had turned out the kitchen cupboard, and among discarded bottles and boxes Jane-Anne had found a tiny phial that had contained vanilla essence. This she secretly pocketed. She tore a piece off her sponge, thrust it into the little bottle and then hied her to the bath-room where there was some Scrubbs' Ammonia. In a trice the bits of sponge in the bottle were saturated with that pungent fluid. Behold Jane-Anne equipped with a smelling bottle, quite as efficacious if not so handsome as Miss Stukely's.
She sought her bower at seven o'clock, while her aunt was safely engaged in the final preparations for Mr. Wycherly's dinner. She had no time for reading and meditation at bed-time, for Mrs. Dew always came to take away the candle. Her aunt mistrusted Jane-Anne ever since she had set her hair on fire one evening in Jeune Street. When she reached her room she found that her box had been put back in the corner and her dressing-gown was hanging behind the door. This constantly happened.
Jane-Anne muttered something that sounded like "interfering old thing" and hastened to arrange it all again. This didn't take long, and once the stage was set she mounted the box, and gazed out into the uninspiring stone-cutter's yard with a suitable expression of "winning tenderness." Next she closed her eyes wearily and distantly inhaled the Scrubbs' Ammonia in the vanilla bottle. It restored her and she opened her Bible haphazard with a sanctimonious Jack-Horner sort of expression on her thin, eager little face.
She opened at the book of Job.
Now this was unexplored country. Genesis she knew; Kings and Chronicles, and the greater part of the New Testament she had read. But somehow the book of Job hadn't entered into Miss Stukely's scheme of salvation, and Jane-Anne's only acquaintance with Job so far had been in her aunt's phrase, "you'd try the patience of Job," and she had vaguely pictured him as a meek old gentleman tormented by a large family of unruly children.
Montagu and Mr. Wycherly had dipped into "Home Influence" anywhere. This was a new way of reading to her, and she felt she must at once do likewise. So into the end of the book of Job she thrust and started at the words, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or loose the bonds of Orion," and read on aloud.
Now, there was in Jane-Anne a fine feeling for the beautiful and she liked the sound of it greatly, her voice growing stronger and more impressive as she read. Especially was she carried away by the description of the horse: "He paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men.... He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting."
By this time, quite unconsciously, she had raised her voice very considerably, and she stopped in great confusion as her aunt bounced into the room demanding anxiously: "What ever is the matter? Who're you a-calling out to?"
"I'm only reading to myself," Jane-Anne mumbled.
"Well, I wish you'd read a bit quieter," said Mrs. Dew, "frightening a body to death with 'ha-ha-in's' and sech. An' what are you doin' sitting on that there box as I put away this very afternoon? Why can't you leave it be in the corner?"
Jane-Anne made no reply. It is disconcerting to be snatched suddenly from all the exciting panoply of a battle-field to a mere discussion as to the position of boxes. She felt bewildered and unreal.
"Why don't you answer me?" Mrs. Dew asked impatiently.
"I was reading," Jane-Anne repeated stupidly.
"An' a very bad light to read in," said Mrs. Dew. "You come down into the kitchen an' give me a hand with the master's dinner instead of sittin' hollerin' there, and you put back that box in its proper place."
While Jane-Anne was washing up she remembered with contrition that she had not marked a single text.
In two particulars only did she feel that she could never hope to emulate Bruey. Firstly, because Bruey died in the last chapter of her palpitations. Now nothing was more opposed to Jane-Anne's aims than that she should succumb to her crepitations. Secondly, she felt that she could not hope even to approach Bruey's noble self-abnegation in the matter of hats.
Bruey at first taught her Sunday class wearing a beautiful best hat adorned with roses; but on a senior teacher pointing out that this embellishment might have a bad effect upon the morals of her infant scholars, she begged her mother to remove the offending garniture and replace it by a simple ribbon.
Never, Jane-Anne was assured, could she attain to such heights of self-denial. She never had possessed a hat with roses, but if she ever did—not all the Sunday-school teachers in creation should wrest them from her. On that point her determination was rooted. She would follow Bruey in all else but death-beds and hats. At present she felt that her hat would not excite any emotion save loathing in no matter how frivolous a breast. But if ever the day came—after all, Miss Stukely had hydrangeas in her hat—and there was no need to model herself slavishly on Bruey.
Much as she loved Mr. Wycherly, he caused her some heart-searching. She adored him. To her, he seemed to combine in his own person every kind and gracious and beautiful quality; but so far he had not said any "good words" to her except that twice he had murmured, "God bless you." Not one text had he quoted when they spake together, nor had he asked her any of those searching intimate questions as to her spiritual condition, that she found so exciting and so wonderfully easy to answer satisfactorily.
She had the true mystic's sense of nearness to the unseen; and in giving to the lonely child this feeling of fellowship with the saints, this serene confidence in Heaven's interference in her affairs, Miss Stukely and Bruey, between them, had bestowed on her a real and precious gift.
But they had also created a mental pose. They had imbued her with a sense of pious security that armed her against endeavour. What she did easily she did well. What she disliked and found difficult she did not try to do at all, and any unpleasantness resulting from such inactivity she looked upon as a "cross." So long as she was meek and patient under rebuke; so long as she turned the other cheek to the smiter and bore no malice, she felt that she had done all that could be expected of her.
For instance, in the matter of the box, it seemed absolutely vital to her that she should read her Bible and meditate in Bruey's fashion no matter how the constant disturbance of the said box annoyed her aunt.
As she wiped plates in a smeary and perfunctory fashion, she was rejoicing in the existence of Montagu and Edmund, because Bruey had a cousin Percy whom she influenced for good. There was a Percy, too, in "Home Influence," and like all the Percies in that class of fiction, these two were dashing, full of generous impulses, but easily led astray. Bruey's Percy even read yellow-backed novels in bed at night, and Jane wondered whether Montagu was given to similar nocturnal orgies. She had no more idea of what a yellow-back was than she had of a Roman Catholic, but she was sure that both were equally pernicious.
Edmund fitted more easily into the Percy part, he was so merry and good-looking; but fond as she was of the centre of the stage, Jane-Anne could not yet quite see herself enlightening Edmund in the approved Bruey fashion.
He was so unexpected, he would be certain to say the wrong thing.
At this moment Mrs. Dew came back from the dining-room. "You're to go and see the master in his study," she said; "it's a quarter to nine now, and the minute the clock strikes you're to come."
Jane-Anne flew to the sink to wash her hands and hastened upstairs, buttoning her sleeves as she went.
"Well, have you found the poem?" asked Mr. Wycherly.
"No, sir. I've read every one you marked, but it isn't one of them."
"Curious," Mr. Wycherly said thoughtfully; "we must try again. Sit down, my child, and think if you can remember in what sort of metre it was written, that would be a help."
But Jane-Anne knew nothing about metre, so the question of the poem lapsed for the time being.
The precious moments were fleeting, and Bruey being still in the ascendant, she askedaproposof nothing:
"Please, sir, do you think Master Montagu and Edmund are little workers?"
"Edmund certainly isn't," Mr. Wycherly replied decidedly; "he's an idle young dog"—here he chuckled—"but all the same he can do whatever he sets himself to do. Montagu, on the contrary, is naturally industrious. He loves knowledge for its own sake. Why do you ask?" and Mr. Wycherly looked inquiringly at Jane-Anne.
She was mystified. That anybody should call anybody else "an idle young dog" in that tone of affectionate amusement was in itself most puzzling.
"I suppose," she said, deliberately paraphrasing a favourite remark of Miss Stukely's, "we can all be workers, 'you in your small corner; I in mine.'"
"Quite so," Mr. Wycherly assented politely, though he in his turn was somewhat staggered by Jane-Anne's gently patronising tone. Had the Greek nymph of the afternoon turned into an amazing little prig in the evening? It was evident that this child was a quick-change artist in more than the matter of make-up.
As for Jane-Anne, she felt curiously flattened out. This courteous, kindly old gentleman made her feel incredibly small. Bruey, she was certain, or even the apostolic Miss Stukely herself, would find it exceedingly difficult to approach Mr. Wycherly on the subject of his soul. And then and there was lighted in the youthful mind of Jane-Anne one little candle of common-sense which illuminated this dark and difficult situation with the bright suggestion that possibly Mr. Wycherly's soul was Mr. Wycherly's business and not hers; and just at that very crucial moment she heard him saying:
"By the way, child, isn't that dress rather hot and heavy for this summer weather? Don't you think we'd better see about something else if you've not got anything thinner?"
She jumped to her feet, clasping and unclasping her hands in an agony of earnestness. Where frocks were concerned souls had a poor chance with Jane-Anne.
"Oh, sir," she cried, "it's a hateful old dress, but my two cotton frocks were left at the Bainbridge and aunt said we couldn't ask for them as I'd left, and they said I could keep this and my best, as I'd got them with me, but I wish they hadn't. Mightn't some poorer child than me have this? It is so hideous and uncomfortable."
She had come close up to Mr. Wycherly and was pleading as though her very life depended on it.
Mr. Wycherly drew her between his knees, and there was a look of considerable amusement on his handsome old face as he asked: "If it is so ugly and so uncomfortable, why should you want to bestow it upon anybody else?"
"But it's quite good," Jane-Anne expostulated; "we couldn't throw it away. Some child might be glad of it. I'm not. Let's talk about what I shall have," she added coaxingly, and somehow she found herself sitting on Mr. Wycherly's knee.
It was years since she had sat on anybody's knee, and that she should do so again and in such circumstances seemed to her inconceivably delightful.
Jane-Anne expanded like a flower.
It did not seem such an extraordinary thing to Mr. Wycherly that a child should sit on his knee. He had served a long and somewhat severe apprenticeship to Montagu and Edmund, who both had generally elected to sit upon him at the same time. What most impressed him about Jane-Anne was that she was distressingly light.
They had a long and intimate confabulation on the subject of frocks, finally deciding that, with Mrs. Dew's permission, Mrs. Methuen should be taken into their counsels.
The clock struck nine.
Jane-Anne flung her arms round his neck and kissed him, and yet again he opened the door for her as she went out.
The following afternoon Mrs. Dew sent her out to do some messages, and while she was outside a shop—there were hats in that shop, and Jane-Anne flattened her nose against the window in her enthusiastic interest—two ladies came out to a carriage that was waiting at the kerb.
The ladies were gorgeously arrayed, evidently on their way to some party, and she turned to stare after them admiringly. The footman slammed the door, leapt upon the box, and the carriage started, when she observed that one of the ladies had dropped her purse in the gutter. It was a pretty trifle made of links of gold in the shape of a little bag. She picked it up at once and darted after the carriage, calling out to them to stop, but the ladies shook their heads at her and the coachman was far too exalted a personage to take any notice at all. The footman did just look round, but he regained his proud immobility in the next second of time.
There was a good deal of traffic that afternoon and the carriage could not get along very fast. Jane-Anne ran after it, never letting it get out of sight, though she was breathless and tired, and her heart thumped in her ears in a fashion that was rather too realistically reminiscent of Bruey to be altogether agreeable. She was almost giving up in despair when the carriage turned in through big gates. Faint, but pursuing, Jane-Anne followed and ran up the broad path after it. There were many gaily dressed people standing about, who stared at her, and numbers of other carriages so that the one she followed had to go very slowly. She came up with it just as it stopped at an entrance.
The ladies saw her. "Go away, little girl," said the younger crossly; "we have nothing for you, and you have no business to follow us."
Too breathless and exhausted to speak, Jane-Anne held out the purse towards her.
"Good gracious! I must have dropped it, and you followed us; how very kind. I suppose I'd better give her something," in an aside to her companion. "I hope I've got some small change. Here you are, and thank you very much."
She selected sixpence and held it out towards Jane-Anne.
Now Jane-Anne wanted that sixpence dreadfully, for she hadn't a farthing in the world; but she had conceived a dislike for the lady; she was indignant at being taken for a beggar, and having somewhat recovered her breath, she said very distinctly:
"No, thank you; but I think you might have told the coachman to stop, then I shouldn't have had to run so far," and with her head in the air, she set off down the drive again.
A good many people had arrived at the door, and they were all listening.
She hadn't gone far when she heard quick footsteps behind her and a short, good-tempered looking gentleman pulled her by the arm. He wore a festal white waistcoat and looked the personification of jollity. "You were quite right to refuse her beggarly sixpence, my dear," he remarked confidentially; "but it's a shame you shouldn't have something for your trouble; very good-natured of you, I call it, to run all that way. Here, you go and buy some lollipops with this!" and he held out two bright new half-crowns towards Jane-Anne.
Never had she seen so much wealth, and it was hers just for the taking; and yet she was certain she ought not to take it; that Mr. Wycherly would not like it; and already she had begun to identify herself with him.
She shook her head a little sadly. "No, thank you," she said very gently, for this time she felt the donor meant to be kind. "I mustn't, thank you," and she went on her way.
The stout gentleman looked after her and scratched his chin. "That was a nasty one," he said to the nearest passer-by. "The lass is a lady and I offered her five bob."
Jane-Anne made her way blindly into the road. She was nearly run over three several times by carriages coming up the drive. As she turned into the open she charged into someone walking in the opposite direction, and recovering from the impact, discovered that she had run into Mr. Wycherly.
Mutual explanations followed. Mr. Wycherly was taking the daily walk he had promised Montagu to take. Jane-Anne explained her presence at the garden-party, but said nothing about the rewards offered.
Presently she found herself walking home hand in hand with Mr. Wycherly, and when they reached the house he said: "We must have more walks together, you and I, and if I forget to go out you must come and stir me up."
At tea she told her aunt about the purse, and about the money offered.
"You were quite right to refuse it," said Mrs. Dew, "an' I'm glad you had that much sense; but what made you?"
"I thought the master wouldn't have liked it."
"The master needn't never have known nothing about it."
"But I should have known," said Jane-Anne.