“Outside the door there lay a cat,Aunt Emma thought it was a mat,And though poor Puss was rather fat,Aunt Emma left her, simply—flat.”
“Outside the door there lay a cat,Aunt Emma thought it was a mat,And though poor Puss was rather fat,Aunt Emma left her, simply—flat.”
“Outside the door there lay a cat,Aunt Emma thought it was a mat,And though poor Puss was rather fat,Aunt Emma left her, simply—flat.”
“Outside the door there lay a cat,
Aunt Emma thought it was a mat,
And though poor Puss was rather fat,
Aunt Emma left her, simply—flat.”
“Oh, poor Pussy!”
“Rather too realistic for you, and too hard on the cat!”
“Make up something about Mister Bruin.”
“Bruin. That’s a stiff thing to rhyme to. Let’s see:
“Now, Mister BruinWent a-wooin’,The lady said ‘What are you doin’!’
“Now, Mister BruinWent a-wooin’,The lady said ‘What are you doin’!’
“Now, Mister BruinWent a-wooin’,The lady said ‘What are you doin’!’
“Now, Mister Bruin
Went a-wooin’,
The lady said ‘What are you doin’!’
“I’m stumped. I can’t get any farther.”
“Oh, yes you can, daddy!”
“Very well.”
“Let’s call him Mr. Bear instead,And say his mouth was very red.Miss Bruin had a Paris gown on,She was a sweet phenomenownon.The gloves she wore were just nineteens,Of course you know what that size means!Mr. Bear wore thirty-ones,But then he was so fond of buns.He asked Miss B. to be his wife,And said, ‘I will lay down my life.’She answered him, ‘Now, how much moneyCan you afford, and how much honey?’Poor B. looked rather brown at that,For he was not a plutocrat.‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it makes me sore,That I should be so very poor.I’ll start a bun shop, if you like,And buy you a new motor-bike.’She said, ‘I know where all the buns would go,And motor biking’s much too low.’Poor Teddy flew off in disgust,Saying, ‘Marry a Marquis if you must.’”
“Let’s call him Mr. Bear instead,And say his mouth was very red.Miss Bruin had a Paris gown on,She was a sweet phenomenownon.The gloves she wore were just nineteens,Of course you know what that size means!Mr. Bear wore thirty-ones,But then he was so fond of buns.He asked Miss B. to be his wife,And said, ‘I will lay down my life.’She answered him, ‘Now, how much moneyCan you afford, and how much honey?’Poor B. looked rather brown at that,For he was not a plutocrat.‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it makes me sore,That I should be so very poor.I’ll start a bun shop, if you like,And buy you a new motor-bike.’She said, ‘I know where all the buns would go,And motor biking’s much too low.’Poor Teddy flew off in disgust,Saying, ‘Marry a Marquis if you must.’”
“Let’s call him Mr. Bear instead,And say his mouth was very red.Miss Bruin had a Paris gown on,She was a sweet phenomenownon.The gloves she wore were just nineteens,Of course you know what that size means!Mr. Bear wore thirty-ones,But then he was so fond of buns.He asked Miss B. to be his wife,And said, ‘I will lay down my life.’She answered him, ‘Now, how much moneyCan you afford, and how much honey?’Poor B. looked rather brown at that,For he was not a plutocrat.‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it makes me sore,That I should be so very poor.I’ll start a bun shop, if you like,And buy you a new motor-bike.’She said, ‘I know where all the buns would go,And motor biking’s much too low.’Poor Teddy flew off in disgust,Saying, ‘Marry a Marquis if you must.’”
“Let’s call him Mr. Bear instead,
And say his mouth was very red.
Miss Bruin had a Paris gown on,
She was a sweet phenomenownon.
The gloves she wore were just nineteens,
Of course you know what that size means!
Mr. Bear wore thirty-ones,
But then he was so fond of buns.
He asked Miss B. to be his wife,
And said, ‘I will lay down my life.’
She answered him, ‘Now, how much money
Can you afford, and how much honey?’
Poor B. looked rather brown at that,
For he was not a plutocrat.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it makes me sore,
That I should be so very poor.
I’ll start a bun shop, if you like,
And buy you a new motor-bike.’
She said, ‘I know where all the buns would go,
And motor biking’s much too low.’
Poor Teddy flew off in disgust,
Saying, ‘Marry a Marquis if you must.’”
Lynette clapped her hands.
“What a horrid Miss Bruin! I hope she died an old maid!”
“No, she married Lord Grizzley. And he gave her twopence a week to dress on, and made her give him her fur to stuff his bath-chair cushions with.”
“How splendid! That’s just what ought to have happened, daddy.”
When he had kissed her “good night,” and seen her snuggle down with her hair spread out over the pillow, Canterton went down to the library and, in passing the door of the drawing-room, heard Mrs. Brocklebank’s voice sending out its slow, complacent notes. This woman always had a curious psychical effect on him. She smeared all the fine outlines of life, and brought an unpleasant odour into the house that penetrated everywhere. What was more, she had the effect of making him look at his wife with that merciless candour that discovers every crudity, and every trifle that is unlovely. Gertrude was a most excellent woman. He saw her high forehead, her hat tilted at the wrong angle, her hair straggling in wisps, her finnicking vivacity, her thin, wriggling shoulders, the way she mouthed her words and poked her chin forward when she talked. The clarity of his vision often shocked him, especially when he tried to remember her as a slim and rather over-enthusiastic girl. Had they both changed so vastly, and why? He knew that his wife had become subtly repulsive to him, not in the mere gross physical sense alone, but in her mental odour. They ate together, but slept apart. He never entered her room. The idea of touching her provoked some fastidious instinct within him, and made him shrink from the imagined contact.
Sometimes he wondered whether Gertrude was aware of this strong and incipient repulsion. He imagined that she felt nothing. He had not lived with her for fifteen years without discovering how thick was the skin of her restless egotism. Canterton had never known anyone who was so completely and actively self-satisfied. He never remembered having seen her in tears. As for their estrangement, it had come about gradually when he had chosen to change the life of the amateur for the life of the trader. Then there was the child, another gulf between them. A tacit yet silent antagonism had grown up round Lynette.
On Canterton’s desk in the library lay the manuscript of his “Book of the English Garden.” He had been at work on it for two years, trying to get all the mystery and colour and beauty of growth into the words he used.
He sat down at the desk, and turned over the pages written in that strong, regular, and unhurried hand of his. The manuscript smelt of lavender, for he always kept a few sprigs between the leaves. But to-night something seemed lacking in the book. It was too much a thing of black and white. The words did not strike upon his brain and evoke a glow of living colour. Roses were not red enough, and the torch lily had not a sufficient flame.
“Colour, yes, colour!”
He sat back and lit his pipe.
“I must get someone to start the plates. I know just what I want, but I don’t quite know the person to do it.”
He talked to himself—within himself.
“Rogers? No, too flamboyant, not true. I want truth. There’s Peterson. No, I don’t like Peterson’s style—too niggling. Loses the charm in trying to be too correct.”
He was disturbed by the opening of a door, and a sudden swelling of voices towards him. He half turned in his chair with the momentary impatience of a thinker disturbed.
“Let us look it up under ‘hygiene.’”
The library door opened, and the invasion displayed itself.
“We want to look at the encyclopædia, James.”
“It’s there!”
“I always feel so stimulated when I am in a library, Mr. Canterton. I hope you don’t mind our——”
“Oh, not in the least!”
“I think we might make our notes here, Gertrude.”
Gertrude Canterton was standing by a revolving book-stand looking out the volume they needed.
“Yes. James, you might get us the other light, and put it on the table.”
He got up, fetched the portable red-shaded lamp from a book-stand, set it on the oak table in the centre of the room, and turned on the switch.
“Oh, and the ink, and a pen. Not one of your nibs. I can’t bear J’s.”
“Something thinner?”
“Please. Oh, and some paper. Some of that manuscript paper will do.”
They established themselves at the table, Mrs. Brocklebank with the volume, Gertrude with the pen and paper. Mrs. Brocklebank brought out her pince-nez, adjusted them half down her nose, and began to turn over the pages. Canterton took a book on moths from a shelf, and sat down in an easy chair.
“Hum—Hygiene. I find it here—public health, sanitary by-laws; hum—hum—sewage systems. I think we shall discover what we want. Ah, here it is!”
“The matron told me——”
“Yes, exactly. They had to burn pastilles. Hum—hum—septic tank. My dear, what is a septic tank?”
“Something not quite as it should be.”
“Ah, exactly! I understand. Hum—let me see. Their tank must be very septic. That accounts for—hum—for the odour.”
Canterton watched them over the top of his book. He could see his wife’s face plainly. She was frowning and biting the end of the pen, and fidgeting with the paper. He noticed the yellow tinge of the skin, and the eager and almost hungry shadow lines that ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth. It was a passionless face, angular and restless, utterly lacking in any inward imaginative glow. Gertrude Canterton rushed at life, fiddled at the notes with her thin fingers, but had no subtle understanding of the meaning of the sounds that were produced.
Mrs. Brocklebank read like a grave cleric at a lectern, head tilted slightly back, her eyes looking down through her pince-nez.
“The bacterial action should produce an effluent that is perfectly clear and odourless. My dear, I think—hum—that there is a misconception somewhere.”
Neither of them noticed that Canterton had left them, and had disappeared through the French window into the garden.
A full moon had risen, and in one of the shrubberies a nightingale was singing. The cedar of Lebanon and the great sequoia were black and mysterious and very still, the lawns a soft silver dusted ever so lightly with dew. Not a leaf was stirring, and the pale night stood like a sweet sad ghost looking down on the world with eyes of wisdom and of wonder.
Canterton strolled across the grass, and down through the Japanese garden where lilies floated in the still pools that reflected the moonlight. All the shadows were very sharp and black, the cypresses standing like obelisks, the yew hedge of the rosery a wall of obsidian. Canterton wandered up and down the stone paths of the rosery, and knocked his pipe out in order to smell the faint perfumes that lingered in the still air. He had lived so much among flowers that his sense of smell had become extraordinarily sensitive, and he could distinguish many a rose in the dark by means of its perfume. The full moon stared at him over the yew hedge, huge and yellow in a cloudless sky, and Canterton thought of Lynette’s fairies down in the Wilderness tripping round the fairy ring on the dewy grass.
The sense of an increasing loneliness forced itself upon him as he walked up and down the paths of the rosery. For of late he had come to know that he was lonely, in spite of Lynette, in spite of all his fascinating problems, in spite of his love of life and of growth. That was just it. He loved the colours, the scents, and the miraculous complexities of life so strongly that he wanted someone to share this love, someone who understood, someone who possessed both awe and curiosity. Lynette was very dear to him, dearer than anything else on earth, but she was the child, and doubtless he would lose her when she became the woman.
He supposed that some day she would marry, and the thought of it almost shocked him. Good God, what a lottery it was! He might have to hand her over to some raw boy—and if life proved unkind to her! Well, after all, it was Nature. And how did marriages come about? How had his own come about? What on earth had made him marry Gertrude? What on earth made most men marry most women? He had been shy, rather diffident, a big fellow in earnest, and he remembered how Gertrude had made a little hero of him because of his travels. Yes, he supposed it had been suggestion. Every woman, the lure of the feminine thing, a dim notion that they would be fellow enthusiasts, and that the woman was what he had imagined woman to be.
Canterton smiled to himself, but the pathetic humour of life did not make him feel any less lonely. He wanted someone who would walk with him on such a night as this, someone to whom it was not necessary to say trite things, someone to whom a touch of the hand would be eloquent, someone who had his patient, watchful, wonder-obsessed soul. He was not spending half of himself, because he could not pour out one half of all that was in him. It seemed a monstrous thing that a man should have taught himself to see so much, and that he should have no one to see life with him as he saw it.
CHAPTER III
GUINEVERE HAS HER PORTRAIT PAINTED
The second day of Guinevere’s dawning found Canterton in the rosery, under the white tent umbrella. It was just such a day as yesterday, with perhaps a few more white galleons sailing the sky and making the blue seem even bluer.
Guinevere’s first bud was opening to the sun, the coral pink outer petals with their edging of saffron unfolding to show a heart of fire.
About eleven o’clock Lavender, the foreman, appeared in the rosery, an alert, wiry figure in sun hat, rich brown trousers, and a blue check shirt. Lavender was swarthy and reticent, with a pronounced chin, and a hooked nose that was like the inquiring beak of a bird. He had extraordinarily deep-set eyes, and these eyes of his were the man. He rarely missed seeing anything, from the first tinge of rust on a rose, to the beginnings of American blight on a fruit tree. As for his work, Lavender was something of a fanatic and a Frenchman. Go-as-you-please dullards did not like him. He was too ubiquitous, too shrewd, too enthusiastic, too quick in picking out a piece of scamped work, too sarcastic when he found a thing done badly. Lavender could label everything, and his technical knowledge was superb. Canterton paid him five hundred a year, knowing that the man was worth it.
Lavender came with a message, but he forgot it the moment he looked at the rose. His swarthy face lost all its reticence, and his eyes seemed to take fire under their overhanging eyebrows. He had a way of standing with his body bent slightly forward, his hands spread on the seat of his trousers, and when he was particularly interested or puzzled he rubbed his hands up and down with varying degrees of energy.
“She’s out, sir!”
“What do you think of her, Lavender?”
The foreman bent over the rose, and seemed to inhale something that he found intoxicatingly pleasant.
“You’ve got it, sir. She’s up above anything that has been brought out yet. Look at the way she’s opening! You can almost see the fire pouring out. It’s alive—the colour’s alive.”
Canterton smiled.
“Just like a little furnace all aglow.”
“That flower ought to make the real people rave! It’s almost too good for the blessed public. Any pinky thing does for the public.”
“I am going to send the second flower to Mr. Woolridge.”
“He’ll go down on his knees and pray to it.”
“So much the better for us. If anyone’s praise is worth hearing his is.”
“He’s a wonder, sir, for a clergyman!”
Lavender rubbed his trousers, and then suddenly remembered what he had come for.
“There’s a lady, sir, in the office. Wants to know whether she may come into the nursery and do some painting.”
“Who is she?”
“Miss Carfax from Orchards Corner. I said I’d come and see you about it.”
“Miss Carfax? I don’t remember.”
“They’ve been there about a year. The mother’s an invalid. Quiet sort of woman.”
“Oh, well, I’ll see her, Lavender.”
“Shall I bring her here?”
“Yes. I don’t want to leave the rose till I have seen the whole cycle. And Mrs. Canterton said she was sending one of the maids down to cut some roses.”
Lavender went off, and returned in about five minutes with a girl in a straw hat and a plain white linen dress. He stood in one of the openings through the yew hedge and pointed out Canterton to her with a practical forefinger.
“That’s Mr. Canterton over there.”
She thanked him and walked on.
Canterton was bending forward over the rose, and remained unaware of her presence till he heard footsteps close to him on the paved path.
“Mr. Canterton?”
“Yes.”
He stood up, and lifted his hat. She was shy of him, and shy of asking for what she had come to ask. Her blue eyes, with their large pupils looked almost black—sensitive eyes that clouded quickly.
“I am afraid I am disturbing you.”
He liked her from the first moment, because of her voice, a voice that spoke softly in a minor key, and did not seem in a hurry.
“No, not a bit.”
“I’m Miss Carfax, and I paint a little. I wondered whether you would let me come and make some studies in your gardens.”
“Won’t you sit down?”
He turned the chair towards her, but she remained standing, her shyness lifting a little under the spell of his tranquil bigness. She became aware suddenly of the rosery. Her eyes swept it, glimmered, and something seemed to rise in her throat.
“Nothing but roses!”
Canterton found himself studying her profile, with its straight, low forehead, short nose, and sensitive mouth and chin. Her hair was a dense, lustrous black, waved back from the forehead, without hiding the shapeliness of her head. She wore a blouse that was cut low at the throat, so that the whole neck showed, slim but perfect, curving forward very slightly, so that her head was poised like the head of one who was listening. There was something flower-like in her figure, with its lithe fragility clothed in the simple white spathe of her dress.
Canterton saw her nostrils quivering. Her throat and bosom seemed to dilate.
“How perfect it is!”
“Almost at its best just now.”
“They make one feel very humble, these flowers. A paint brush seems so superfluous.”
For the moment her consciousness had become merged and lost in the colours around her. She spoke to Canterton as though he were some impersonal spirit, the genius of the place, a mind and not a man.
“There must be hundreds of roses here.”
“Yes, some hundreds.”
“And the dark wall of that yew hedge shows up the colours.”
Canterton felt a curious piquing of his curiosity. The girl was a new creation to him, and she was strangely familiar, a plant brought from a new country—like and yet unlike something that he already knew.
He showed her Guinevere.
“How do you like this rose—here?”
Her consciousness returned from its voyage of wonder, and became aware of him as a man.
“Which one?”
“Here. It is the latest thing I have raised.”
It was an imaginative whim on his part, but as she bent over the rose he fancied that the flower glowed with a more miraculous fire, and that its radiance spread to the girl’s face.
“This is wonderful. The shading is so perfect. You know, it is a most extraordinary mixing and blending of colours.”
“That was just the problem. Whether the flower would turn out a mere garish, gaudy thing.”
“But it is exquisite.”
“I have been sitting here for two whole days watching the bud open.”
She turned to him with an impulsive flash of the eye.
“Have you? I like the idea of that. Just watching the dawn.”
Her shyness had gone, and Canterton felt that an extraordinary thing had happened. She no longer seemed a stranger among his roses, although she had not been more than ten minutes in the rosery.
“Nature opens her secret doors only to those who are patient.”
“And what a fascinating life! Like becoming very tiny, just a fairy, and letting oneself down into the heart of a rose.”
He had it, the thing that had puzzled him. She was just such a child as Lynette, save that she was the woman. There was the same wonder, the same delightful half-earnest playfulness, the same seeing look in the eyes, the same sensitive quiver about the mouth.
She was gazing at Guinevere.
“Oh, that piques me, challenges me!”
“What, the flower?”
“It makes me think of the conquest of colours that I want to try.”
He understood.
“Come and paint it.”
“May I?”
“Certainly.”
“If I might come and try.”
“You had better come soon.”
“This afternoon?”
“Why not?”
“It is very good of you, Mr. Canterton.”
“Not a bit.”
“Then I’ll come.”
She kept to her word, and reappeared about two o’clock with her paint box, a camp stool, and a drawing-block. Canterton had lunched in the rosery. He surrendered his place under the white umbrella, made her sit in the shade, and went to fetch a jug of water for her brushes. He rejoined her, bringing another garden chair with him, and so it happened that they spent the afternoon together.
Canterton smoked and read, while Eve Carfax was busy with her brushes. She seemed absorbed in her work, and Canterton, looking up from his book from time to time, watched her without being noticed. The intent poise of her head reminded him vaguely of some picture he had seen. Her mouth had a meditative tenderness, and her eyes were full of a quiet delight.
Presently she sat back in her chair, and held the sketch at arm’s length. Her eyes became more critical, questioning, and there was a quiver of indecision about her mouth.
“Have you finished it?”
She glanced at him as though startled.
“In a way. But I can’t quite make up my mind.”
“May I see?”
She passed him the block and watched his face as he examined the work. Once or twice he glanced at Guinevere. Then he stood up, and putting the painting on the chair, looked at it from a little distance.
“Excellent.”
She flushed.
“Do you think so?”
“I have never seen a better flower picture.”
“It is such a subtle study in colours that I could not be sure.”
“You must be very self-critical.”
“Oh, I am!”
He turned and looked at her with a new expression, the respect of the expert for an expert’s abilities.
“You have made a study of flowers?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you must have done. I ought to know that.”
Her colour grew richer.
“Mr. Canterton, I don’t think I have ever had such praise. I mean, praise that I valued. I love flowers so much, and you know them so intimately.”
“That we understand them together.”
He almost added, “and each other.”
CHAPTER IV
THE IMPORTUNATE BEGGAR
As Lavender had said, the Carfaxes lived at Orchards Corner.
Approaching the place you saw a line of scattered oaks and Scots firs, with straggling thorns and hollies between them along the line of a chestnut fence that had turned green with mould. Beyond the hollies and thorns rose the branches of an orchard, and beyond the orchard a plantation of yews, hollies, and black spruces. The house or cottage was hardly distinguishable till you turned down into the lane from the high road. It betrayed itself merely by the corner of a white window frame, the top of a red-brick chimney, and a patch of lichened tiling visible through the tangle of foliage.
The Carfaxes had been here a year, the mother having been ordered country air and a dry soil. They had sublet the orchard to a farmer who grazed sheep there, but had kept the vegetable garden with its old black loam, and the plot in front with its two squares of grass, filling nearly all the space between the house and the white palings. The grass was rather coarse and long, the Carfaxes paying a man to scythe it two or three times during the summer. There were flower-beds under the fence, and on every side of the two pieces of grass, and standard roses flanking the gravel path.
Eve met the man with the scythe in the lane as she walked home after her second day at Fernhill. She found her mother dozing in her basket-chair in the front garden where a holly tree threw a patch of shadow on the grass. Mrs. Carfax had her knitting-needles and a ball of white wool in her lap. She was wearing a lilac sun-bonnet, and a grey-coloured shawl.
The click of the gate-latch woke her.
“Have you had tea, mother?”
“No, dear; I thought I would wait for you.”
Mrs. Carfax was a pretty old lady with blue eyes and a rather foolish face. She was remarkable for her sweetness, an obstinate sweetness that had the consistency of molasses, and refused to be troubled, let Fate stir ever so viciously. Her passivity could be utterly exasperating. She had accepted the whole order of the Victorian Age, as she had known it, declining to see any flaws in the structure, and ascribing any trifling vexations to the minute and multifarious fussiness of the Deity.
“You ought to have had tea, mother.”
“My dear, I never mind waiting.”
“Would you like it brought out here?”
“Just as you please, dear.”
It was not daughterly, but Eve sometimes wished that her mother had a temper, and could use words that elderly gentlewomen are not expected to be acquainted with. There was something so explosively refreshing about the male creature’s hearty “Oh, damn!”
That cooing, placid voice never lost its sweetness. It was the same when it rained, when the wind howled for days, when the money was shorter than usual, when Eve’s drawings were returned by unsympathetic magazines. Mrs. Carfax underlined the adjectives in her letters, and had a little proverbial platitude for every catastrophe, were it a broken soap dish or a railway smash. “Patience is a virtue, my dear.” “Rome was not built in a day.” “The world is not helped by worry.” Mrs. Carfax had an annuity of £100 a year, and Eve made occasional small sums by her paintings. They were poor, poor with that respectable poverty that admits of no margins and no adventures.
Mrs. Carfax was supremely contented. She prayed nightly that she might be spared to keep a home for Eve, never dreaming that the daughter suffered from fits of bitter restlessness when anything seemed better than this narrow and prospectless tranquillity. Mrs. Carfax had never been young. She had accepted everything, from her bottle onwards, with absolute passivity. She had been a passive child, a passive wife, a passive widow. Life had had no gradients, no gulfs and pinnacles. There were no injustices and no sorrows, save, of course, those arranged by an all-wise Providence. No ideals, save those in the Book of Common Prayer; no passionate strivings; no divine discontents. She just cooed, brought out a soft platitude, and went on with her knitting.
Eve entered the house to put her things away, and to tell Nellie, the infant maid, to take tea out into the garden.
“Take tea out, Nellie.”
“Yes, miss. There ain’t no cake.”
“I thought I told you to bake one.”
“Yes, miss. There ain’t no baking powder.”
“Oh, very well. I’ll order some. Put a little jam out.”
“There only be gooseberry, miss.”
“Then we’ll say gooseberry.”
Eve returned to the garden in time to hear the purr of a motor-car in the main road. The car stopped at the end of the lane. A door banged, and a figure in black appeared beyond the gate.
It was the Cantertons’ car that had stopped at the end of the lane, and it was Mrs. Canterton who opened the gate, smiling and nodding at Mrs. Carfax. Gertrude Canterton had paid a first formal call some months ago, leaving in Eve’s mind the picture of a very expeditious woman who might whirl down on you in an aeroplane, make a few remarks on the weather, and then whirl off again.
“Please don’t get up! Please don’t get up! I mustn’t stay three minutes. Isn’t the weather exquisite. Ah, how do you do, Miss Carfax?”
She extended a hand with an affected flick of the wrist, smiling all the while, and wriggling her shoulders.
“Eve, fetch another chair, dear.”
“Oh, please don’t bother!”
“We are just going to have tea, Mrs. Canterton.”
Eve gave her mother a warning look, but Mrs. Carfax never noticed other people’s faces.
“Tell Nellie, dear.”
Eve walked off to the house, chiefly conscious of the fact that there was no cake for tea. How utterly absurd it was that one should chafe over such trifles. But then, with women like Mrs. Canterton, it was necessary to have one’s pride dressed to the very last button.
Two extra chairs and tea arrived. The conversation was never in danger of death when Gertrude Canterton was responsible for keeping up a babble of sound. If the other people were mute and reticent, she talked about herself and her multifarious activities. These filled all gaps.
“I must say I like having tea in the garden. You are, really, most sheltered here. Sugar? No, I don’t take sugar in tea—only in coffee, thank you.”
“It does rather spoil the flavour.”
“We have a very exquisite tea sent straight to us from a friend of my husband’s in Ceylon. It rather spoils me, and I have got out of the way of taking sugar. How particular we become, don’t we? It is so easy to become selfish. That reminds me. I want to interest our neighbourhood in a society that has been started in London. What a problem London is.”
Mrs. Carfax cooed sympathetically.
“And the terrible lives the people lead. We are very interested in the poor shop girls, and we have started an organisation which we call ‘The Shop Girls’ Rest Society.’”
“Eve, perhaps Mrs. Canterton will have some cake.”
Eve was on edge, and full of vague feelings of defiance.
“I’m sorry, there isn’t any cake.”
“Eve, dear!”
“Oh, please, I so rarely take cake. Bread and butter is so much more hygienic and natural. I was going to tell you that this society we have started is going to provide shop girls with country holidays.”
“How very nice!”
Mrs. Carfax felt that she had to coo more sweetly because of the absence of cake.
“I think it is quite an inspiration. We want to get people to take a girl for a week or a fortnight and give her good food, fresh air, and a sense of homeliness. How much the home means to women.”
“Everything, Mrs. Canterton. Woman’s place is the home.”
“Exactly. And I was wondering, Mrs. Carfax, whether you would be prepared to help us. Of course, we shall see to it that the girls are really nice and proper persons.”
The thought of the absence of cake still lingered, and Mrs. Carfax felt apologetic.
“I am sure, Mrs. Canterton, I shall be glad——”
Eve had grown stiffer and stiffer, watching the inevitable approach of the inevitable beggar. Gertrude Canterton had a genius for wriggling her way everywhere, even into other people’s bedrooms, and would be putting them down for ten guineas before they were half awake.
“I am sorry, but I’m afraid it is out of the question.”
She spoke rather brusquely, and Gertrude Canterton turned with an insinuating scoop of the chin.
“Miss Carfax, do let me——”
“Eve, dear, I’m sure——”
Eve was stonily practical.
“It is quite impossible.”
“But, Eve——”
“You know, mother, we haven’t a bed.”
“My dear!”
“And no spare bedclothes. Mrs. Canterton may as well be told the truth.”
There was a short silence. Mrs. Carfax looked as ruffled as it was possible for her to look, settled her shawl, and glanced inquiringly at Mrs. Canterton. But even to Gertrude Canterton the absence of bedclothes seemed final.
“I am sure, Mrs. Carfax, you would have helped us, if you had been able.”
Eve persisted in being regarded as the responsible authority. She was quite shameless now that she had shown Mrs. Canterton the empty cupboard.
“You see, we have only one small maid, and everything is so adjusted, that we just manage to get along.”
“Exactly so, Miss Carfax. I quite understand. But there is a little thing you could do for us. I always think that living in a neighbourhood makes one responsible for one’s poorer neighbours. I am sure, Mrs. Carfax, that you will give a small subscription to the Coal and Clothing Club.”
“With pleasure.”
“It doesn’t matter how small it is.”
“Eve, dear, please go and fetch me some silver. I should like to subscribe five shillings. May I give it to you, Mrs. Canterton?”
“Thank you so very much. I will send you a receipt.”
Eve had risen and walked off resignedly towards the cottage. It was she who was responsible for all the petty finance of the household, and five shillings were five shillings when one’s income was one hundred pounds a year. It could not be spared from the housekeeping purse, for the money in it was partitioned out to the last penny. Eve went to her own room, and took a green leather purse from the rosewood box on her dressing-table. This purse held such sums as she could save from the sale of occasional small pictures and fashion plates. It contained seventeen shillings at this particular moment. Five shillings were to have gone on paints, ten on a new pair of shoes, and two on some cheap material for a blouse.
She was conscious of making instinctive calculations as she took out two half-crowns. What a number of necessities these two pieces of silver would buy, and the ironical part of it was that she could not paint without paints, or walk without shoes. It struck her as absurd that a fussy fool like this Canterton woman should be able to cause so much charitable inconvenience. Why had she not refused point blank, in spite of her mother’s pleading eyes?
Eve returned to the garden and handed Mrs. Canterton the two half-crowns without a word. It was blackmail levied by a restless craze for incessant charitable activities. Eve would not have grudged it had it gone straight to a fellow-worker in distress, but to give it to this rich woman who went round wringing shillings out of cottagers!
“Thank you so much. Money is always so badly needed.”
Eve agreed with laconic irony.
“It is, isn’t it? Especially when you have to earn it!”
Gertrude Canterton chatted for another five minutes and then rose to go. She shook hands cordially with Mrs. Carfax, and was almost as cordial with Eve. And it was this blind, self-contentment of hers that made her so universally detested. She never knew when people’s bristles were up, and having a hide like leather, she wriggled up and rubbed close, never suspecting that most people were possessed by a savage desire to say some particularly stinging thing that should bite through all the thickness of her egotism.
“Thank goodness!”
“Eve, you were quite rude! And you need not have said, dear——”
“Mother, I told the truth only in self-defence. I was expecting some other deserving charity to arrive at any moment.”
“It is better to give, dear, than to receive.”
“Is it? Of course, we needn’t pay the tradesmen, and we can send the money to some missionary agency.”
“Eve, dear, please don’t be flippant. A word spoken in jest——”
“I’m not, mother. I’m most desperately serious.”
Gertrude Canterton had a very successful afternoon. She motored about forty miles, trifled with three successive teas, and bored some seven householders into promising to consider the claims of the Shop Girls’ Rest Society. She was very talkative at dinner, describing and criticising the various people from whom she had begged.
Canterton showed sudden annoyance.
“You went to the Carfaxes?”
“Yes.”
“And got something from them?”
“Of course, James.”
“You shouldn’t go to such people.”
Her face was all sallow surprise.
“Why, they are quite respectable, and——”
“Respectable! Do you think I meant that! You know, Gertrude, you charitable people are desperately hard sometimes on the real poor.”
“Whatdoyou mean, James?”
“People like the Carfaxes ought not to be worried. You are so infernally energetic!”
“James, I protest!”
“Oh, well, let it pass.”
“If you mean——Of course, I can send the money back.”
He looked at her with a curious and wondering severity.
“I shouldn’t do that, Gertrude. Some people are rather sensitive.”
Canterton went into the library after dinner, before going up to say “good night” to Lynette. Within the last two days some knowledge of the Carfaxes and their life had come to him, fortuitously, and yet with a vividness that had roused his sympathy. For though James Canterton had never lacked for money, he had that intuitive vision that gives a man understanding and compassion.
His glance fell upon the manuscript of “The Book of the English Garden” lying open on his desk. An idea struck him. Why should not Eve Carfax give the colour to this book? To judge by her portrait of Guinevere, hers was the very art that he needed.