CHAPTER V
EVE ENTERS THE WILDERNESS
Eve Carfax read James Canterton’s letter at breakfast, and her mother, who like many passive people, was vapidly inquisitive, wanted to know when the letter had come, why it had been written, what it said, and what it did not say.
Eve was a little flushed, and ready to fall into a reverie while looking along a vista of sudden possibilities. This frank and straightforward letter had brought a flutter of exultation into her life.
“Mr. Canterton wants me to do some flower pictures for him.”
“How nice, dear! And shall you?”
“Of course—if I can.”
“It must have been our subscription to——”
“Mother, is it likely?”
“I am sure Mrs. Canterton was most charming. Is he going to pay you for——”
“He doesn’t say anything about it.”
“He might not think it quite nice to say anything—just at first.”
“I really don’t know why it shouldn’t be nice to mention a thing that we all must have. He wants me to go and see him.”
Eve set off for Fernhill with a delightful sense of exhilaration. She was in a mood to laugh, especially at the incident of yesterday, and at the loss of those two half-crowns that had seemed so tragic and depressing. This might be her first big bit of luck, the beginning of a wider, finer life for which she yearned. She was amused at her mother’s idea about Mrs. Canterton. Mrs. Canterton indeed! Why—the flow of her thoughts was sharply arrested, and held back by the uprising of a situation that suddenly appeared before her as something extraordinarily incongruous. These two people were married. This fussy, sallow-faced, fidgeting egotist, and this big, meditative, colour-loving man. What on earth were they doing living together in the same house. And what on earth was she herself doing letting her thoughts wander into affairs that did not concern her.
She suppressed the curious feeling of distaste the subject inspired in her, took a plunge into a cold bath of self-restraint, and came out close knit and vigorous. Eve Carfax had a very fastidious pride that detested anything that could be described as vulgarly curious. She wanted no one to finger her own intimate self, and she recoiled instinctively from any tendency on her own part towards taking back-door views of life. She was essentially clean, with an ideal whiteness that yet could flush humanly. But the idea of contemplating the soiled petals of other people’s ideals repelled her.
Eve entered the Fernhill Nurseries by the great oak gates that opened through a high hedge of arbor vitæ. She found herself in a large gravelled space, a kind of quadrangle surrounded by offices, storerooms, stables, and packing sheds, all built in the old English style of oak, white plaster, and red tiles. The extraordinary neatness of the place struck her. It was like a big forecourt to the mysteries beyond.
She had her hand on the office bell when Canterton came out, having seen her through the window. He was in white flannels, and wearing a straw hat that deepened the colour of his eyes and skin.
“Good morning! We both appear to be punctual people.”
He was smiling, and looking at her attentively.
“It was good of you to come up at once. I left it open. I think it would be a good idea if I took you over the whole place.”
She answered his smile, losing a momentary shyness.
“I should like to see everything. Do you know, Mr. Canterton, you have set me up on the high horse, and——”
“Well?”
“I don’t want to fall off. I have been having thrills of delightful dread.”
“I know; just what a man feels before an exam., when he is pretty sure of himself.”
“I don’t know that I am sure of myself.”
“If you can paint other things as you painted that rose, I don’t think there is any need for you to worry.”
The quiet assurance of his praise sent a shiver of exultation through her. What an encouraging and comforting person he was. He just intimated that he believed you could do a thing very well, and the thing itself seemed half done.
“Then I’ll show you the whole place. I’m a bit of an egotist in my way.”
“It’s only showing someone what you have created.”
He took her everywhere, beginning with what he called “the administrative department.” She saw the great glass-houses, the stacks of bracken for packing, the piles of ash and chestnut stakes, the shed where three old men spent their time making big baskets and hampers, the rows and rows of frames, the packing and dispatch sheds, the seed room, the little laboratory, with its microscopes and microtome and shelves of bottles, the office where several clerks were constantly at work.
Canterton was apologetic.
“I have a craze for showing everything.”
“It gives one insight. I like it.”
“It won’t tire you?”
“I think I am a very healthy young woman.”
He looked at the fresh face, and at the lithe though fragile figure, and felt somehow that the June day had an indefinable perfume.
“I should like to show you some of the young conifers.”
They were wonderful trees with wonderful names, quaint, solemn, and diminutive, yet with all the dignity of forests patriarchs. They grew in groves and companies, showing all manner of colours, dense metallic greens, soft blues, golds, silvers, greys, green blacks, ambers. Each tree had beauties and characteristics of its own. They were diminutive models of a future maturity, solemn children that would be cedars, cypresses, junipers, pines and yews.
They delighted Eve.
“Oh, the little people, ready to grow up! I never knew there were such trees—and such colours.”
He saw the same look in her eyes as he had seen in the rosery, the same tenderness about the mouth.
“I walk about here sometimes and wonder where they will all go to.”
“Yes, isn’t it strange.”
“Some day I want to do a book on trees.”
“Do you? What’s the name of that dear Japanese-looking infant there?”
“Retinospora Densa. You know, we nurserymen and some of the botanists quarrel about names.”
“What does it matter? I tried to study botany, but the jargon——”
“Yes, it is pretty hopeless. I played a joke once on some of our botanical friends; sent them a queer thing I had had sent from China, and labelled it Cantertoniana Gloria in Excelsis. They took it quite seriously.”
“The dears!”
Laughter passed between them, and an intimate flashing of the eyes that told how the joy of life welled up and met. They wandered on through acres of glowing maples, golden privets and elders, purple leaved plums, arbutus, rhododendrons, azaleas, and all manner of flowering shrubs. In one quiet corner an old gardener with a white beard was budding roses. Elsewhere men were hoeing the alleys between the straight rows of young forest trees, poplars, birches, elms, beeches, ilexes, mountain ashes, chestnuts, and limes. There were acres of fruit trees, acres of roses, acres of the commoner kind of evergreens, great waves of glooming green rolling with a glisten of sunlight over the long slopes of the earth. Eve grew more silent. She was all eyes—all wonder. It seemed futile to exclaim when there was so much beauty everywhere.
They came at last to a pleasaunce that was the glory of the hour, an herbaceous garden in full bloom, with brick-paved paths, box edging, and here and there an old tree stump or a rough arch smothered with clematis, or honeysuckle. Delphiniums in every shade of blue rose like the crowded and taperingflèchesof a mediæval city. There were white lilies, gaudy gaillardias blazing like suns, campanulas, violas, foxgloves, snapdragons, mauve erigeron, monkshood, English iris, and scores of other plants. It was gorgeous, and yet full of subtle gradations of colour, like some splendid Persian carpet in which strange dyes merged and mingled. Bees hummed everywhere. Old red brick walls, half covered with various kinds of ivy, formed a mellow background. And away on the horizon floated the blue of the Surrey hills.
Eve stood motionless, lips slightly apart.
“Mr. Canterton!”
“You like it?”
“Am I to paint this?”
“I hope so.”
“Let me pour out my humility.”
He laughed gently.
“Oh, you can do it!”
“Can I? And the old walls! I should not have thought the place was so old.”
“It isn’t. I bought my bricks. Some old cottages were being pulled down.”
“Thank God, sometimes, for money!”
She stood a moment, her chin raised, her eyes throwing long, level glances down the walks.
“Mr. Canterton, let me do two or three trial sketches before you decide anything.”
“Just as you like.”
“Please tell me exactly what you want.”
“I want you to begin here, and in the rosery. You see this book of mine is going to be a big thing, a treasure house for the real people who want to know. I shall need portraits of individual flowers, and studies of colour effects during the different months. I shall also want illustrations of many fine gardens that have been put at my service. That is to say, I may have to ask you to travel about a little, to paint some of the special things, such as the Ryecroft Dutch garden, and the Italian gardens at Latimer.”
As he spoke the horizon of her life seemed to broaden before her. It was like the breaking through of a winter dawn when the grey crevices of the east fill with sudden fire. Everything looked bigger, more wonderful, more alluring.
“I had no idea——”
He was watching her face.
“Well?”
“That it was to be such a big thing.”
“It may take me two or three more years. I have allowed myself five years for the book.”
She drew in her breath.
“Mr. Canterton, I don’t know what to say. And I don’t think you realise what you are offering me. Just—life, more life. But it almost frightens me that you should think——”
His eyes smiled at her understandingly.
“Paint me a few trial pieces. Begin with one of the borders here, and a rose bed in the rosery that I will show you. Also, give me a study of trees, and another of rocks and plants in the rock garden.”
“I will begin at once.”
He looked beyond her towards the blue hills.
“As to the terms between us, will you let me write you a letter embodying them?”
“Yes.”
“You can have an agreement if you like.”
She answered at once.
“No. I think, somehow, I would rather not. And please don’t propose anything till you have seen more of what I can do.”
Canterton led the way towards the rosery to show her the roses he wanted her to paint, and in passing through one of the tunnels in the yew hedge they were dashed into by a child who came flying like a blown leaf. It was Eve who received the rush of the impetuous figure. Her hands held Lynette to save her from falling.
“Hallo!”
Lynette’s face lifted to hers with surprise and laughter, and a questioning shyness. Eve kept her hold for the moment. They looked at each other with an impulse towards friendliness.
“Lynette, old lady!”
“Daddy, Miss Vance has gone off——”
“Pop? Miss Carfax, let me introduce my daughter. Miss Lynette Canterton—Miss Carfax.”
Eve slid her hands from Lynette’s body, but the child’s hands clung and held hers.
“I’m so sorry. I hope it didn’t hurt? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”
“Well, we rushed at each other when we did meet.”
“Is daddy showing you the garden?”
“Yes.”
“My name’s Lynette—not like linnet, you know, but Lyn-net.”
“And my name’s Eve—just Eve.”
“Who was made out of Adam’s rib. Poor Mr. Adam! I wonder whether he missed it?”
They all laughed. Lynette kept hold of one of Eve’s hands, and held out her other one to Canterton.
“Daddy, do come down to the Wilderness. I want to build a wagwim.”
“Or wigwam?”
“I like wagwim better. Do come.”
“Miss Canterton, I am most seriously occupied.”
She tossed her hair, and turned on Eve.
“You’ll come too, Miss Eve? Now I’ve invited you, daddy will have to come. Ask him.”
Eve looked at Canterton, and there was something strange in the eyes of both.
“Mr. Canterton, I am requested to ask you——”
“I surrender. I may as well tell you, Miss Carfax, that very few people are invited into the Wilderness. It is fairyland.”
“I appreciate it. Lynette, may I come and build a wagwim with you?”
“Yes, do. What a nice voice you’ve got.”
“Have I?”
Eve blushed queerly, and was intimately conscious of Canterton’s eyes looking at her with peculiar and half wondering intentness.
“I’m going to have dinner there. Mother is out, and Miss Vance is going to Guildford by train. And Sarah has given me two jam tarts, and some cheese straws, and two bananas——”
Canterton tweaked her hair.
“That’s an idea. I’m on good terms with Sarah. We’ll have some lunch and a bottle of red wine sent down to the Wilderness and picnic in a wagwim, if the wagwim wams by lunch time.”
“Come along—come along, Miss Eve! I’ll show you the way! I’m so glad you like wagwims!”
So these three went down to the Wilderness together, into the green light of the larch wood, and into a world of laughter, mystery and joy.
CHAPTER VI
WOMEN OF VIRTUE
The local committee of a society for the propagation of something or other had taken possession of Canterton’s library, and Mrs. Brocklebank was the dominant lady. The amount of business done at these meetings was infinitesimal, for Mrs. Brocklebank and Gertrude Canterton were like battleships that kept up a perpetual booming of big guns, hardly troubling to notice the splutter of suggestions fired by the lesser vessels. The only person on the committee who had any idea of business was little Miss Whiffen, the curate’s sister. She was one of those women who are all profile, a busy, short-sighted, argumentative creature who did her best to prevent Mrs. Brocklebank and Gertrude Canterton from claiming the high seas as their own. She fussed about like a torpedo boat, launching her torpedoes, and scoring hits that should have blown most battleships out of the water. But Mrs. Brocklebank was unsinkable, and Gertrude Canterton was protected by the net of her infinite self-satisfaction. Whatever Miss Whiffen said, they just kept on booming.
Sometimes they squabbled politely, while old Lady Marchendale, who was deaf, sat and dozed in her chair. They were squabbling this afternoon over a problem that, strange to say, had something to do with the matter in hand. Miss Whiffen had contradicted Mrs. Brocklebank, and so they proceeded to argue.
“Every thinking person ought to realise that there are a million more women than men in the country.”
“I wasn’t questioning that.”
“Therefore the female birth rate must be higher than the male.”
Miss Whiffen retorted with figures. She was always attacking Mrs. Brocklebank with statistics.
“If you look up the records you will find that there are about a hundred and five boys born to every hundred girls.”
“That does not alter the situation.”
“Oh, of course not.”
“This scheme of helping marriageable young women to emigrate——”
Mrs. Brocklebank paused, and turned the big gun on Miss Whiffen.
“I said marriageable young women! Have you any objection to the term, Miss Whiffen?”
“Oh, not in the least! But does it follow that, because they marry when they get to the Colonies——”
“What follows?”
“Why, children.”
“Marriages are more fruitful in a young country.”
“But are they? When my married sister was home from Australia last time, she told me——”
Gertrude Canterton joined in.
“Yes, it’s just the prevailing selfishness, the decadence of home life.”
“Men are so much more selfish than they used to be.”
“I think the women are as bad. And, of course, the question of population——”
Old Lady Marchendale, who had dozed off in her arm-chair by the window, woke up, caught a few fragmental words, and created a digression.
“They ought to be made to have them—by law!”
“But, my dear Lady Marchendale——”
“I see her ladyship’s point.”
“Every girl ought to have her own room.”
“Of course, most certainly! But in the matter of emigration——”
“Emigration? What has emigration to do with the Shop Girls’ Self Help Society?”
“My dear Lady Marchendale, we are discussing the scheme for sending young women to the Colonies.”
“Bless me, I must have been asleep. I remember. Look at that lad of yours, Mrs. Canterton, out there in the garden. I’m sure he has cut his hand.”
Lady Marchendale might be rather deaf, but she had unusually sharp eyes, and Gertrude Canterton, rising in her chair, saw one of the lads employed in the home garden running across the lawn, and wrapping a piece of sacking round his left hand and wrist.
She hurried to the window.
“What is the matter, Pennyweight?”
“Cut m’ wrist, mum, swappin’ the hedge.”
“How careless! I will come and see what wants doing.”
There had been First Aid classes in the village. In fact, Gertrude Canterton had started them. Miss Whiffen and several members of the committee followed her into the garden and surrounded the lad Pennyweight, who looked white and scared.
“Take that dirty sacking away, Pennyweight! Don’t you know such things are full of microbes?”
“It’s bleedin’ so bad, mum.”
“Let me see.”
The lad obeyed her, uncovering his wrist gingerly, his face flinching. The inner swathings of sacking were being soaked with blood from the steady pumping of a half-severed artery.
Miss Whiffen made a little sibilant sound.
“Sssf, sssf—dear, dear!”
“A nasty cut.”
Pennyweight hesitated between restive fright and awe of all these gentlewomen.
“Hadn’t I better go t’ Mr. Lavender, mum? It does bleed.”
“Nonsense, Pennyweight! Miss Ronan, would you mind going in and ringing for the housekeeper? Tell her I want some clean linen, and some hot water and boracic acid.”
Miss Whiffen was interested but alarmed.
“It’s a cut artery. We ought to compress the brachial artery.”
“Isn’t it the femoral?”
“No, that’s in the leg. You squeeze the arm just——”
“Exactly. Along the inside seam of the sleeve.”
“But he has no coat on.”
This was a poser. Gertrude Canterton looked annoyed.
“Where’s your coat, Pennyweight?”
“Down by t’ hedge, mum.”
“If he had his coat on we should know just where to compress the artery.”
No one noticed Canterton and Lynette till the man and the child were within five yards of the group.
“What’s the matter?”
The lad faced round sharply, appeared to disentangle himself from the women, and to turn instinctively to Canterton.
“Cut m’ wrist, sir, with the swap ’ook.”
“We must stop that bleeding.”
He pulled out a big bandanna handkerchief, passed it round the lad’s arm, knotted it, and took a folding foot-rule from his pocket.
“Hold that just there, Bob.”
He made another knot over the rule on the inside of the arm, and then twisted the extemporised tourniquet till the lad winced.
“Hurt?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s stopped it. Gertrude, send one of the maids down to the office and tell Griggs to ride down on his bicycle for Kearton. Feel funny, Bob?”
“Just a bit, sir.”
“Lie down flat in the shade there. I’ll get you a glass of grog.”
Lynette, solemn and sympathetic, had stood watching her father, disassociating herself from her mother and Miss Whiffen, and the members of the committee.
“Wasn’t it a good thing I found daddy, Bob?”
“It was, miss.”
“The old ladies might have let you bleed to death, mightn’t they?”
Bob looked sheepish, and Gertrude Canterton called Lynette away.
“Go to the nursery, Lynette. It is tea time.”
Lynette chose to enter the house by the library window, and, finding old Lady Marchendale sitting there in the arm-chair, put up her face to be kissed. She liked Lady Marchendale because she had pretty white hair, and eyes that twinkled.
“Did you see Bob’s bloody hand?”
“What, my dear?”
“Did you see Bob’s bloody hand?”
“I can’t quite hear, dear.”
Lynette put her mouth close to Lady Marchendale’s ear, and spoke with emphasis.
“Did—you—see—Bob’s—bloody—hand?”
“Lynette, you must not use such words!”
Gertrude Canterton stood at the open window, and Lady Marchendale was laughing.
“What words, mother?”
“Such words as ‘bloody.’”
“But it was bloody, mother.”
“Bless the child, how fresh! Come and give me another kiss, dear.”
Lynette gave it with enthusiasm.
“I do like your white hair.”
“It is not so pretty as yours, my dear. Now, run along. We are very busy.”
She watched Lynette go, nodding her head at her and smiling.
“I am so sorry, Lady Marchendale. The child is such a little savage.”
“I think she’s a pet. You don’t want to make a little prig of her, do you?”
“She’s so undisciplined.”
“Oh, fudge! What you call being ‘savage,’ is being healthy and natural. You don’t want to make the child a woman before she’s been a child.”
The gong rang for tea.
Eve was painting in the rosery when Mrs. Brocklebank persuaded the members of the committee that she—and therefore they—wanted to see Mr. Canterton’s roses. It was a purely perfunctory pilgrimage, so far as Gertrude Canterton was concerned, and her voice struck a note of passive disapproval.
“I think there is much too much time and money wasted upon flowers.”
“Oh, Mrs. Canterton! But isn’t this just sweet!”
“I don’t know very much about roses, but I believe my husband’s are supposed to be wonderful.”
She sighted Eve, stared, and diverged towards her down a side path, smiling with thin graciousness.
“Miss Carfax?”
Eve did not offer to explain her presence. She supposed that Gertrude Canterton knew all about her husband’s book, and the illustrations that were needed.
“You are making a study of flowers?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right. I hope you will find plenty of material here.”
“Mr. Canterton was kind enough to let me come in and see what I could do.”
“Exactly. May I see?”
She minced round behind Eve, and looked over the girl’s shoulder at the sketch she had on her lap.
“That’s quite nice—quite nice! But what a lot of colour you have put into it.”
“There is rather a lot of colour in the garden itself.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid I can’t see what you have put on paper——”
Miss Whiffen was clamouring to be told the name of a certain rose.
“Mrs. Canterton—Mrs. Canterton!”
“Yes, dear?”
“Do tell me the name of this rose!”
“I’ll come and look. I can’t burden my memory with the names of flowers. Perhaps it is labelled. Everything ought to be labelled. It is such a saving of time.”
Eve smiled, and turning to glance at the rose bed she was painting, discovered a big woman in black hanging a large white face over the one particular rose in the garden. Mrs. Brocklebank had discovered Guinevere, and a cherished flower that was just opening to the sunlight.
Mrs. Brocklebank always carried a black vanity bag, though it did not contain such things as mirror,papier poudre, violet powder, hairpins, and scent. A notebook, two or three neat twists of string, a pair of scissors, a mother-of-pearl card-case, pince-nez, and a little bottle of corn solvent that she had just bought in Basingford—these were the occupants. Eve saw her open the bag, take out the scissors, and bend over Guinevere.
Eve dared to intervene.
“Excuse me, but that rose must not be touched.”
Perhaps she put her protest crudely, but Mrs. Brocklebank showed hauteur.
“Indeed!”
“I believe Mr. Canterton wants that flower.”
“What is it, Philippa?”
Mrs. Canterton had returned, and came wriggling and edging behind Eve.
“There is rather a nice bud here, and I was going to steal it, but this young lady——”
“Miss Carfax!”
Eve felt her face flushing.
“I believe Mr. Canterton wants that flower.”
“Nonsense. Why, there are hundreds here. Take it, my dear, by all means, take it.”
“I don’t want to interfere with——”
“I insist. James is absolutely foolish about his flowers. He won’t let me send a maid down with a basket. And we had such a quarrel once about the orchid house.”
Eve turned and went back to her stool. Mrs. Brocklebank’s eyes followed her with solemn disapproval.
“That’s a rather forward young person.”
“Do take the flower, Philippa.”
“I will.”
And the rose was tucked into Mrs. Brocklebank’s belt.
CHAPTER VII
CANTERTON PURSUES MRS. BROCKLEBANK
Ten minutes later Eve saw Canterton enter the rosery.
He was walking slowly, his hands in his pockets, pausing from time to time to examine some particular rose bush for any signs of blight or rust. Eve’s place was in the very centre of this little secret world of colour and perfume, and the grey paths led away from her on every side like the ground plan of a maze. There was some resemblance, too, to a silver web with strands spread and hung with iridescent dewdrops flashing like gems. In the midst of it all was the woman, watching, waiting, a mystery even to herself, while the man approached half circuitously, taking this path, and now that, drawing nearer and nearer to that central, feminine thing throned in the thick of June.
Canterton walked along the last path as though he had only just realised Eve’s presence. She kept on with her work, looking down under lowered lashes at the sketching-block upon her knees.
“Still working?”
“Yes.”
“Have you had any tea?”
“No.”
“I’ll have some sent out to you.”
“Oh, please don’t bother.”
“You may as well make a habit of it when you are working here.”
She lifted eyes that smiled.
“I am so very human, that sweet cakes and a cup of fine China tea——”
“Remain human. I have a very special blend. You shall have it sent out daily, and I will issue instructions as to the cakes. Hallo!”
He had discovered the spoiling of Guinevere.
“Someone has taken that rose.”
His profile was turned to her, and she studied it with sympathetic curiosity.
“Mrs. Canterton and some friends have been here.”
“Have they?”
“And a stout lady in black discovered Guinevere, and produced a pair of scissors. I put in a word for the rose.”
He faced her, looking down with eyes that claimed her as a partisan.
“Thank you.”
“I think the lady’s name is Mrs. Brocklebank.”
He was half angry, half amused.
“I might have suspected it. I suppose someone over-ruled your protest?”
“Yes.”
She went on with her work, brushing in a soft background of grey stones and green foliage.
“Was Mrs. Canterton here?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes remained fixed upon the rose in front of her, and the poise of her head and the aloofness of her eyes answered his question before he asked it.
“I want that rose most particularly. It has to go to one of the greatest rose experts in the country.”
“Yes.”
“Which way did they go?”
“Back to the house, I think.”
“I’ll go and have your tea sent out. And I want to catch Mrs. Brocklebank.”
Canterton started in pursuit of the lady, found that she had only just left the house, and that he would catch her in the drive. He intended to be quite frank with her, knowing her to be the most inveterate snatcher up of trifles, one of those over-enthusiastic people who will sneak a cutting from some rare plant and take it home wrapped up in a handkerchief. Lavender had told him one or two tales about Mrs. Brocklebank, and how he had once surprised her in the rock garden busy with a trowel that she had brought in an innocent looking work-bag.
Canterton overtook her just before she reached the lodge gates, and found Guinevere being carried off as a victim in Mrs. Brocklebank’s belt.
“I am afraid you have taken a rose that should not have been touched.”
“Oh, Mr. Canterton, I’m sure I haven’t!”
He looked whimsically at the rose perched on the top of a very ample curve.
“Well, there it is! My wife ought to have warned you——”
“She pressed me to take it. My dear Mr. Canterton, how was I to know?”
“Of course not.”
He was amused by her emphatic innocence, especially when, by dragging in Eve Carfax’s name, he could have suggested to her that he knew she was lying.
“You see, my wife knows nothing about flowers—what is valuable, and what isn’t.”
Mrs. Brocklebank began to boom.
“My dear Mr. Canterton, how can you expect it? I think it is very unreasonable of you. In fact, you ought to mark valuable flowers, so that other people should know.”
He smiled at her quite charmingly.
“I suppose I ought. I suppose I am really the guilty party. Only, you see, my garden is really a shop, a big general store. And in a shop it is not supposed to be necessary to put notices on certain articles, ‘This article is not to be appropriated.’”
“Mr. Canterton!”
She took the rose out of her belt, and in doing so purposely broke the stalk off close to the calyx.
“I think you are a very horrid man. Fancy suggesting——”
“I am a humorist, you know.”
“I am afraid I have broken the stalk.”
“It doesn’t matter. I can have it wired.”
He went and opened the lodge gates for her, and stood, hat in hand, as she passed out. He was smiling, but it was an uncomfortable sort of smile that sent Mrs. Brocklebank away wondering whether he was really quite a pleasant person or an ironical beast.
Canterton took the rose to Lavender, who was working through some of the stock lists in the office.
“Nearly lost, but not quite, Lavender.”
The foreman looked cynical, but said nothing.
“Wire it up, and have it packed and sent off to Mr. Woolridge to-night. And, by the way, I have told Mrs. Brocklebank that if she wants any flowers in the future, she must apply to you.”
“I shan’t forget that little trowel of hers, sir, and our Alpines.”
“Put up a notice, ‘Trowels not admitted.’ I am writing to Mr. Woolridge. Oh, and there are those American people coming to-morrow, who want to be shown roses, and flowering shrubs. Will you take them round? I fancy I shall be busy.”
Canterton returned to the rosery, and, picking up a stray chair in one of the main paths, joined Eve Carfax, who had a little green Japanese tea-tray on her lap. She was pouring out tea from a tiny brown teapot, her wrist making a white arch, her lashes sweeping her cheek.
“They have brought your tea all right?”
“Yes.”
“What about cakes?”
She bent down and picked up a plate from the path.
“Someone must fancy me a hungry schoolgirl.”
“It looks rather like it. How is the painting going?”
“I am rather pleased with it.”
“Good. On show soon?”
“I have only to put in a few touches.”
He swung his chair round, and sat down as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to come and talk to her. Her curious resemblance to Lynette may have tricked him into a mood that was partly that of the playmate, partly that of the father. Lynette, the child, had set him an impetuous example. “Miss Eve feels the fairies in the wood, daddy. She feels them there, just like me.” That was it. Eve spoke and understood the same language as he and the child.
“I overtook Mrs. Brocklebank.”
“And rescued Guinevere?”
“Yes, and the good dragon pretended to be very innocent. I did not drag your name in, though I was reproved for not labelling things properly, and so inviting innocent old ladies to purloin flowers.”
“But you got the rose back?”
“Yes, and she managed to break the stalk off short in pulling it out of her belt. I wonder if you can tell me why the average woman is built on such mean lines?”
She gave him a sudden questioning glance which said, “Do you realise that you are going beneath the surface—that the real you in you is calling to the real me in me?”
He was looking at her intently, and there was something in his eyes that stirred a tremor of compassion in her.
“What I mean is, that the average woman seems a cad when she is compared to the average man. I mean, the women of the upper middle classes. I suppose it is because they don’t know what work is, and because they have always led selfish and protected lives. They haven’t the bigness of men—the love of fair-play.”
Her eyes brightened to his.
“I know what you mean. If I described a girls’ school to you——”
“I should have the feminine world in miniature.”
“Yes. The snobbery, the cult of convention, the little sneaking jealousies, all the middle class nastiness. I hated school.”
He was silent for some moments, his eyes looking into the distance. Then he began to speak in his quiet and deliberate way, like a man gazing at some landscape and trying to describe all that he saw.
“Life, in a neighbourhood like this, seems so shallow—so full of conventional fussiness. These women know nothing, and yet they must run about, like so many fashionable French clowns, doing a great deal, and nothing. I can’t get the hang of it. I suppose I am always hanging my head over something that has been born, or is growing. One gets right up against the wonder and mystery of life, the marvellous complex of growth and colour. It makes one humble, deliberate, rather like a big child. Perhaps I lose my sense of social proportion, but I can’t fit myself into these feminine back yards. And some women never forgive one for getting into the wrong back yard.”
His eyes finished by smiling, half apologetically.
“It seems to me that most women would rather have their men respectable hypocrites than thinkers.”
She put the tray aside, and brushed some crumbs from her skirt.
“The older sort of woman, perhaps.”
“You mean——”
“Generations of women have never had a fair chance. They had to dance to the man’s piping. And I think women are naturally conservative, sexually mistrustful of change—of new ideas.”
“They carry their sex into social questions?”
“Or try to crush it. There is a sort of cry for equality—for the interplay of personality with personality—without all that——”
He bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees.
“Have we men been guilty of making so many of our women fussy, conventional, pitiless fools? Have you ever run up against the crass prejudice, the merciless, blind, and arrogant self-assurance of the ordinary orthodox woman?”
She answered slowly, “Yes.”
He seemed to wait for her.
“Well?”
“There is nothing to say.”
“Absolute finality! Oh, I know! Everything outside the little rigid fence, ununderstandable, unmentionable! No vision, no real sympathy, no real knowledge. What can one do? I often wonder whether the child will grow up like that.”
“Lynette?”
He nodded.
She looked at him with that peculiar brightening of the eyes and tender tremulousness of the mouth.
“Oh, no! You see, she’s—she’s sensitive, and not a little woman in miniature. I mean, she won’t have the society shell hardened on her before her soul has done growing.”
His face warmed and brightened.
“By George, how you put things! That’s the whole truth in a nutshell. Keep growing. Keep the youngsters growing. Smash away the crust of convention!”
She began to gather up her belongings, and Canterton watched her cleaning her brushes and putting them back into their case. A subtle veil of shyness had fallen upon her. She had realised suddenly that he was no longer an impersonal figure sitting there and dispassionately discussing certain superficial aspects of life, but a big man who was lonely, a man who appealed to her with peculiar emphasis, and who talked to her as to one who could understand.
“I must be off home. I thought I should finish this to-day, but I will ask you not to look at it till to-morrow.”
“Just as you please.”
She strapped her things together, rose, and turned a sudden and frank face to his.
“Good-bye. I think Lynette will be ever so safe.”
“I shall do my best to keep her away from the multitude of women.”
Eve walked back through the pine woods to Orchards Corner, thinking of Canterton and Lynette, and of the woman who was too busy to know anything about flowers. How Gertrude Canterton had delivered an epigram upon herself by uttering those few words. She was just a restless shuttle in the social loom, flying to and fro, weaving conventional and unbeautiful patterns. And she was married to a man whose very life was part of the green sap of the earth, whose humility watched and wondered at the mystery of growth, whose heart was, in some ways, the heart of a child.
What a sacramental blunder!
She was a little troubled, yet conscious of a tremor of exultation. Was it nothing to her that she was able to talk to such a man as this. He was big, massive, yet full of an exquisite tenderness. She had realised that when she had seen him with the child. He had talked, and half betrayed himself, yet she, the woman to whom he had talked, could forgive him that. He was not a man who betrayed things easily. His mouth and eyes were not those of a lax and self-conscious egoist.
Eve found her mother sitting in the garden, knitting, and Eve’s conscience smote her a little. Orchards Corner did not pulsate with excitements, and youth, with all its ardour, had left age to its knitting needles and wool.
“Have you been lonely, mother?”
“Lonely, my dear? Why, I really never thought about it.”
Eve was always discovering herself wasting her sentiments upon this placid old lady. Mrs. Carfax did not react as the daughter reacted. She was vegetative and quite content to sit and contemplate nothing in particular, like a cat staring at the fire.
“Bring a chair and a book out, dear. These June evenings are so pleasant.”
Eve followed her mother’s suggestion, knowing very well that she would not be permitted to read. Mrs. Carfax did not understand being silent, her conversation resembling a slowly dripping tap that lets a drop fall every few seconds. She had never troubled to read any book that did not permit her to lose her place and to pick it up again without missing anything of importance. She kept a continuous sparrowish twittering, clicking her knitting needles and sitting stiffly in her chair.
“Have you had a nice day, dear?”
“Quite nice.”
“Did you see Mr. Canterton?”
“Oh, yes, I saw him!”
“He must be a very interesting man.”
“Yes.”
“I should think his wife is such a help to him.”
“Oh?”
“Looking after all the social duties, and improving his position. I don’t suppose he would have held quite the same position in the neighbourhood without her. She was a Miss Jerningham, wasn’t she? And, of course, that must have made a great deal of difference.”
“I suppose it did, mother.”
“Of course it did, my dear. Marriage makes or mars. Mrs. Canterton must be very popular—so energetic and public spirited, and, you see, one has to remember that Mr. Canterton is in trade. That has not kept them from being county people, and, of course, Mrs. Canterton is responsible for the social position. He must be very proud of his wife.”
“Possibly. I haven’t asked him, mother. I will, if you like.”
Mrs. Carfax was deaf and blind to humour.
“My dear Eve, I sometimes think you are a little stupid.”
“Am I?”
“You don’t seem to grasp things.”
“Perhaps I don’t.”