CHAPTER VIII
LYNETTE TAKES TO PAINTING
Eve Carfax was painting an easel picture of the walled garden when Lynette arrived with a camp-stool, a drawing book, a box of paints, and a little green watering-pot full of water.
“I want to make pictures. You’ll teach me, won’t you, Miss Eve?”
“I’ll try to.”
“I’ve got a lovely box of paints. What a nice music stand you’ve got.”
“Some people call it an easel.”
“I ought to have one, oughtn’t I? I’ll ask Mr. Beeby to make one. Mr. Beeby’s the carpenter. He’s such a funny man, with a round-the-corner eye.”
Eve took the apprenticeship as seriously as it was offered, and started Lynette on a group of blue delphiniums, white lilies, and scarlet poppies. Lynette began with fine audacity, and red, white and blue splodges sprang up all over the sheet. But they refused to take on any suggestion of detail, and the more Lynette strove with them, the smudgier they became.
“Oh, Miss Eve!”
“How are you getting on?”
“I’m not getting on.”
“The colours seem to have got on your fingers.”
“They’re all sticky. I oughtn’t to lick them, ought I?”
“No. Try a rag.”
“I’ll go and wash in the gold-fish basin. The gold-fish won’t mind.”
She ran off into the Japanese garden, reappeared, borrowed one of Eve’s clean rags, and stood watching the expert’s brush laying on colours.
“You do do it beautifully.”
“Well, you see, I have done it for years.”
Lynette meditated.
“I shall be awful old, then, before I can paint daddy a picture. Can you draw fairies and animals?”
“Supposing I try?”
“Yes, do. Draw some in my book.”
The easel picture was covered up and abandoned for the time being. The two stools were placed side by side, and the two heads, the auburn and the black, came very close together.
“I’ll draw Mr. Puck.”
“Yes, Mr. Puck.”
“Mr. Puck is all round—round head, round eyes, round mouth.”
“What a funny little round tummy you have given him!”
“You see, he’s rather greedy. Now we’ll draw Mr. Bruin.”
“Daddy made such funny rhymes about Mr. Bruin. Give him a top-hat. Isn’t that sweet? But what’s he doing—sucking his fingers?”
“He has been stealing honey, and he’s licking his paws.”
“Now—now draw something out of the Bible.”
“The Bible?”
“Yes. Draw God making Eve.”
“That would take rather a long time.”
“Well, draw the Serpent Devil, and God in the garden.”
“I’ll draw the serpent.”
“What a lovely Snake Devil! Now, if I’d been God, I’d have got a big stick and hit the Snake Devil on the head. Wouldn’t it have saved lots and lots of trouble?”
“It would.”
“Then why didn’t God do it?”
Eve was rescued by Canterton from justifying such theological incongruities. He found them with their heads together, auburn and black bent over Lynette’s drawing-book. He stood for a moment or two watching them, and listening to their intimate prattle. This girl who loved the colour and the mystery of life as he loved them could be as a child with Lynette.
“You seem very busy.”
Lynette jumped up.
“Daddy, come and look! Isn’t Miss Eve clever?”
For some reason Eve blushed, and did not turn to look at Canterton.
“Here’s Mr. Puck, and old Bruin, and Titania, and Orson, and the Devil Serpent. Miss Eve is just splendid at devils.”
“Is she? That’s rather a reflection.”
He stood behind Eve and looked down over her shoulder.
“You have given the serpent a woman’s head.”
She turned her chin but not her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Symbolism?”
“I may have been thinking of something you said the other day.”
A full-throated and good-humoured voice was heard calling, “Lynette—Lynette!”
“Oh, there’s Miss Vance! It’s the music lesson. I’ll show her the Serpent Devil. I’ll come back, Miss Eve, presently.”
“Yes, come back, little Beech Leaf.”
They were silent for a few moments after she had gone.
“I like that name—‘Little Beech Leaf.’ Just the colour—in autumn, and racing about in the wind.”
He came and stood in front of Eve.
“You seem to be getting on famously, you two.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
“She’s delightful! No self-consciousness, no showing off, and such vitality. And that hair and those elf’s eyes of hers thrill one.”
“And she likes you too, not a little.”
Eve coloured.
“Well, if she does, it’s like a bit of real life flying in through the narrow window of little worries, and calling one out to play.”
“Little worries?”
“I don’t want to talk about them—the importunities of the larder, and the holes in the house-linen, and the weekly bills. I am always trying to teach myself to laugh. And it is very good for one to be among flowers.”
He glanced at the easel.
“You have covered up the picture. May I see it?”
“It is not quite finished. In twenty minutes——”
“May I come back in twenty minutes?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I like my own flowers to be just at their best when friends are to see them.”
“Yes, you understand.”
Canterton left her and spent half an hour walking the winding paths of the Japanese garden, crossing miniature waterways, and gazing into little pools. There were dwarf trees, dwarf hedges, and a little wooden temple half smothered with roses in which sat a solemn, black marble Buddha. This Buddha had caused a mystery and a scandal in the neighbourhood, for it had been whispered that Canterton was a Buddhist, and that he had been found on his knees in this little wooden temple. In the pools, crimson, white, and yellow lilies basked. The rocks were splashed with colour. Clumps of Japanese iris spread out their flat tops of purple and white and rose. Fish swam in the pools with a vague glimmer of silver and gold.
At the end of half an hour Canterton returned to the walled garden, and found Eve sitting before the picture, her hands lying in her lap. The poise of her head reminded him of “Beata Beatrix,” but her face had far more colour, more passionate aliveness, and there was the sex mystery upon her mouth and in the blackness of her hair.
“Ready?”
She turned to him and smiled.
“Yes, you may look.”
He stood gazing at her work in silence, yet with a profound delight welling up into his eyes. She watched his face, sensitively, hardly conscious of the fact that she wanted to please him more than anyone else in the world.
“Exquisite! By George, you have eyes!”
She laughed softly in a happy, exultant throat.
“I surprised myself. I think it must be Lynette’s magic, and the fairies in the Wilderness.”
“If you are going to paint like that, you ought to do big things.”
“Oh, I don’t know! There are not many people who really care.”
“That’s true.”
He gazed again at the picture, and then his eyes suddenly sought hers.
“Yes, you can see things—you can feel the colour.”
“Sometimes it is so vivid that it almost hurts.”
They continued to look into each other’s eyes, questioningly, wonderingly, with something akin to self-realisation. It was as though they had discovered each other, and were re-discovering each other every time they met and talked.
Lynette reappeared where the long walk ended in a little courtyard paved with red bricks, and surrounded by square-cut box hedges. She had finished her half-hour’s music lesson with Miss Vance, and was out again like a bird on the wing. Canterton had insisted on limiting her lessons to three hours a day, though his ideas on a child’s upbringing had clashed with those of his wife. There had been a vast deal of talking on Gertrude’s part, and a few laconic answers on the part of her husband. Now and again, when the issue was serious, Canterton quietly persisted in having his own way. He never interfered with her multifarious schemes. Gertrude could fuss here, there, and everywhere, provided she did not tamper with Lynette’s childhood, or thrust her activities into the serious life of the great gardens of Fernhill.
“Let’s go and have tea in the Wilderness.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll come, Miss Eve?”
She snuggled up to Eve, and an arm went round her.
“I’m afraid I can’t, dear, to-day.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I must go home and take care of my mother.”
Lynette seemed to regard this as a very quaint excuse.
“How funny! Fancy anyone wanting to take care of my mother. Why, she’s always wanting to take care of everybody else, ’cept me! I wonder if they like it? I shouldn’t.”
“Your mother is very kind to everybody, dear.”
“Is she? Then why don’t Sarah, and Ann, and Edith, and Johnson, like her? I know they don’t, for I’ve heard them talking. They all love you, daddy.”
Canterton looked at her gravely.
“You mustn’t listen to what everybody says. And never tell tales of everybody. Come along, old lady, we’ll go down to the Wilderness.”
“I wish you’d come, Miss Eve.”
“I wish I could, but I mustn’t to-day.”
“I do like you so much, really I do.”
Eve drew Lynette close and kissed her with impulsive tenderness. And Canterton, who saw the love in the kiss, felt that he was standing at the gateway of mystery.
CHAPTER IX
LIFE AT FERNHILL
The Fernhill breakfast table was very characteristic of the Cantertonménage.
Gertrude Canterton came down ten minutes after the gong had sounded, bustling into the room with every sign of starting the day in a rush. Her hair looked messy, with untidy strands at the back of her neck. She wore any old dress that happened to come to hand, and as often as not she had a piece of tape hanging out, or a hook and eye unfastened. Breakfast time was not her hour. She looked yellow, and thin, and voracious, and her hands began fidgeting at once with the pile of letters and circulars beside her plate.
Canterton had half finished breakfast. He and his wife were as detached from each other at table as they were in all their other relationships. Gertrude was quite incapable of pouring out his tea, and never remembered whether the sugar was in or not. She always plunged straight into her chaotic correspondence, slitting the envelopes and wrappers with a table knife, and littering the whole of her end of the table with paper. She complained of the number of letters she received, but her restless egoism took offence if she was not pestered each morning.
Canterton had something to tell her, something that a curious sense of the fitness of things made him feel that she ought to know. It did not concern her in the least, but he always classed Gertrude and formalism together.
“I have arranged with Miss Carfax to paint the illustrations for my book.”
Gertrude was reading a hospital report, her bacon half cold upon her plate.
“One moment, James.”
He smiled tolerantly, and passed her his cup by way of protest.
“Anyhow, I should like some more tea.”
“Tea?”
She took the cup, and proceeded to attempt two things at once.
“You might empty the dregs out.”
She humoured his fussiness.
“I have something supremely interesting here.”
“Meanwhile, the teapot is taking liberties. Inside the cup, my dear Gertrude!”
He had often seen her try to read a letter and fill a cup at the same moment. Sometimes she emptied the contents of the milk jug into the teapot, mistaking it for the hot water.
“Dear, dear!”
“It is rather difficult to concentrate on two things at once.”
She passed him the cup standing in a sloppy saucer.
“I take sugar!”
“Do help yourself, James. I never can remember.”
Gertrude finished glancing through the hospital report, and picked up a second letter.
“I wanted to tell you that I have engaged Miss Carfax to paint the pictures for my book.”
“What book, James?”
“The book on English gardens.”
“Oh, yes.”
He saw her preparing to get lost in a long letter.
“Miss Carfax has quite extraordinary ability. I think I may find her useful in other ways. Each year we have more people coming to us, wanting us to plan their gardens. She could take some of that work and save me time.”
“That will be very nice for you, James.”
“I need a second brain here, a brain that has an instinct for colour and effect.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
He sat and gazed at her with grave and half cynical amusement. Such a piece of news might have seemed of some importance to the average married woman, touching as it did, the edge of her own empire, and Canterton, as he watched her wrinkling up her forehead over those sheets of paper, realised how utterly unessential he had become to this woman whom he had married. He was not visible on her horizon. She included him among the familiar fixtures of Fernhill, and was not sufficiently interested even to suspect that any other woman might come into his life.
From that time Eve Carfax came daily to Fernhill, and made pictures of roses and flowering shrubs, rock walls and lily pools, formal borders and wild corners where art had abetted Nature. Canterton had given her a list of the subjects he needed, a kind of floral calendar for her guidance. And from painting the mere portraits of plants and flowers she was lured on towards a desire to peer into the intricate inner life of all this world of growth and colour. Canterton lent her books. She began to read hard in the evenings, and to spend additional hours in the Fernhill nurseries, wandering about with a catalogue, learning the names and habits of plants and trees. She was absorbed into the life of the place. The spirit of thoroughness that dominated everything appealed to her very forcibly. She, too, wanted to be thorough, to know the life-stories of the flowers she painted, to be able to say, “Such and such flowers will give such and such combinations of colours at a certain particular time.” The great gardens were full of individualities, moods, whims, aspirations. She began to understand Canterton’s immense sympathy with everything that grew, for sympathy was essential in such a world as this. Plants had to be watched, studied, encouraged, humoured, protected, understood. And the more she learnt, the more fascinated she became, understanding how a man or a woman might love all these growing things as one loves children.
She was very happy. And though absorbed into the life of the place, she kept enough individuality to be able to stand apart and store personal impressions. Life moved before her as she sat in some corner painting. She began to know something of Lavender, something of the men, something of the skill and foresight needed in the production and marketing of such vital merchandise.
One of the first things that Eve discovered was the extent of Canterton’s popularity. He was a big man with big views. He treated his men generously, but never overlooked either impertinence or slackness. “Mr. Canterton don’t stand no nonsense,” was a saying that rallied the men who uttered it. They were proud of him, proud of the great nurseries, proud of his work. The Fernhill men had their cricket field, their club house, their own gardens. Canterton financed these concerns, but left the management to the men’s committee. He never interfered with them outside their working hours, never preached, never condescended. The respect they bore him was phenomenal. He was a big figure in all their lives—a figure that counted.
As for Gertrude Canterton, they detested her wholeheartedly. Her unpopularity was easily explained, for her whole idea of philanthropy was of an attitude of restless intrusion into the private lives of the people. She visited, harangued, scolded, and was mortally disliked for her multifarious interferences. The mothers were lectured on the feeding of infants, and the cooking of food. She entered cottages as though she were some sort of State inspector, and behaved as though she always remembered the fact that the cottages belonged to her husband.
The men called her “Mother Fussabout,” and by the women she was referred to as “She.” They had agreed to recognise the fact that Gertrude Canterton had a very busy bee in her bonnet, and, with all the mordant shrewdness of their class, suffered her importunities and never gave a second thought to any of her suggestions.
Visitors came almost daily to the Fernhill nurseries, and were taken round by Lavender, the foreman, or by Canterton himself. Sometimes they passed Eve while she was painting, and she could tell by the expression of Canterton’s eyes whether he was dealing with rich dilettanti or with people who knew. Humour was to be got out of some of these tours of inspection, and Canterton would come back smiling over the “buy-the-whole-place” attitude of some rich and indiscriminate fool.
“I have just had a gentleman who thought the Japanese garden was for sale.”
“Oh!”
“A Canadian who has made a fortune in land and wood-pulp and has bought a place over here. When I showed him the Japanese garden, he said, ‘I’ll take this in the lump, stones, and fish, and trees, and the summer-house, and the little joss house. See?’”
“Was he very disappointed when you told him?”
“Oh, no. He asked me to name a price for fixing him up with an identical garden, including a god. ‘Seems sort of original to have a god in your garden.’ I said we were too busy for the moment, and that gods are expensive, and are not to be caught every day of the week.”
They laughed, looking into each other’s eyes.
“What queer things humans are!”
“A madman turned up here once whose mania was water lilies. He had an idea he was a lotus eater, and he stripped and got into the big lily tank and made a terrible mess of the flowers. It took us an hour to catch him and get him out, and we had him on our hands for a week, till his people tracked him down and took him home. He seemed quite sane on most things, and was a fine botanist, but he had this one mad idea.”
“Perhaps it was some enthusiasm gone wrong. One can sympathise with some kinds of madmen.”
“When one looks at things dispassionately one might be tempted to swear that half our civilisation is absolutely mad.”
He stood beside her for a while and watched her painting.
“You are getting quite a lot of technical knowledge.”
“I want to be thorough. And Fernhill has aroused an extraordinary curiosity in me. I want to know the why and the wherefore.”
He found that it gave him peculiar satisfaction to watch her fingers moving the brush. She was doing her own work and his at the same moment, and the suggestion of comradeship delighted him.
“It wouldn’t do you any harm to go through a course of practical gardening. It all helps. Gives one the real grip on a subject.”
“I should like it.”
“I could arrange it for you with Lavender. It has struck me, too, that if you care to keep to this sort of work——”
She looked up at him with eyes that asked, “Why not?”
“You may want to do bigger things.”
“But if the present work fills one’s life?”
“I could find you plenty of chances for self-expression. Every year I have more people coming to me wanting plans for gardens, wild gardens, rose gardens, formal gardens. I could start a new profession in design alone. I am pretty sure you could paint people fine, prophetic pictures, and then turn your pictures into the reality.”
“Could I?”
She flushed, and he noticed it, and the soft red tinge that spread to her throat.
“Of course you could, with your colour sense and your vision. You only want the technical knowledge.”
“I am trying to get that.”
“Do you know, it would interest me immensely, as an artist, to see what you would create.”
“You seem to believe——”
“I believe you would have very fine visions which it would be delightful for me to plant into life.”
She turned and looked at him with something in her eyes that he had never seen before.
“I believe I could do it, if you believe I can do it.”
He had a sudden desire to stretch out his hand and to touch her hair, even as he touched Lynette’s hair, with a certain playful tenderness.
Meanwhile Eve’s friendship with Lynette became a thing of unforeseen responsibilities. Lynette would come running out into the gardens directly her lessons were over, search for Eve, and seat herself at her feet with all the devotedness of childhood that sets up idols. Sometimes Lynette brought a story-book or her paint-box, but these were mere superfluities. It was the companionship that mattered.
It appeared that Lynette was getting behind Miss Vance and her Scripture lessons, and she began to ask Eve a child’s questions—questions that she found it impossible to answer. Miss Vance, who was a solid and orthodox young woman, had no difficulty at all in providing Lynette with a proper explanation of everything. But Lynette had inherited her father’s intense and sensitive curiosity, and she was beginning to walk behind Miss Vance’s machine-made figures of finality and to discover phenomena that Miss Vance’s dogmas did not explain.
“Who made the Bible, Miss Eve?”
“A number of wise and good men, dear.”
“Miss Vance says God made it.”
“Well, He made everything, so I suppose Miss Vance is right.”
“Has Miss Vance ever seen God?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But she seems to know all about Him, just as though she’d met Him at a party. Have you seen Him?”
“No.”
“Has anyone?”
“No one whom I know.”
“Then how do we know that God is God?”
“Because He must be God. Because everything He has made is so wonderful.”
“But Miss Vance seems to know all about Him, and when I ask her how she knows she gets stiff and funny, and says there are things that little girls can’t understand. Isn’t God very fond of children, Miss Eve, dear?”
“Very.”
“Doesn’t it seem funny, then, that He shouldn’t come and play with me as daddy does?”
“God’s ever so busy.”
“Is He busy like mother?”
“No; not quite like that.”
All this was rather a breathless business, and Eve felt as though she were up before the Inquisition, and likely to be found out. Lynette’s eyes were always watching her face.
“Oh, Miss Eve, where do all the little children come from?”
“God sends them, dear.”
“Bogey, our cat, had kittens this morning. I found them all snuggling up in the cupboard under the back stairs. Isn’t it funny! Yesterday there weren’t any kittens, and this morning there are five.”
“That’s how lots of things happen, dear. Everything is wonderful. You see a piece of bare ground, and two or three weeks afterwards it is full of little green plants.”
“Do kittens come like that?”
“In a way.”
“Did they grow out of the cupboard floor? They couldn’t have done, Miss Eve.”
“They grew out of little eggs, dear, like chickens out of their eggs.”
“But I’ve never seen kittens’ eggs, have you?”
“No, little Beech Leaf, I haven’t.”
Eve felt troubled and perplexed, and she appealed to Canterton.
“What is one to tell her? It’s so difficult. I wouldn’t hurt her for worlds. I remember I had all the old solemn make-believes given me, and when I found them out it hurt, rather badly.”
He smiled with his grave eyes—eyes that saw so much.
“Do you believe in anything?”
“You mean——”
“Do you think with the nineteenth-century materialists that life is a mere piece of mechanism?”
“Oh, no.”
“Something or someone is responsible. We have just as much right to postulate God as we postulate ether.”
“Yes.”
“Could you conscientiously swear that you don’t believe in some sort of prime cause?”
“Of course I couldn’t.”
“Well, there you are. We are not so very illogical when we use the word God.”
She looked into the distance, thinking.
“After all, life’s a marvellous fairy tale.”
“Exactly.”
“And sometimes we get glimmerings of the ‘how,’ if we do not know the ‘why.’”
“Let a child go on believing in fairy tales—let us all keep our wonder and our humility. All that should happen is that our wonder and our humility should widen and deepen as we grow older, and fairy tales become more fascinating. I must ask Miss Vance to put all that Old Testament stuff of hers on the shelf. When you don’t know, tell the child so. But tell her there is someone who does know.”
Her eyes lifted to his.
“Thank you, so much.”
“We can only use words, even when we feel that we could get beyond words. Music goes farther, and colour, and growth. I don’t think you will ever hurt the child if you are the child with her.”
“Yes, I understand.”
CHAPTER X
TEA IN THE WILDERNESS
Canterton needed pictures of the Italian gardens at Latimer Abbey, and since he had received permission to show the Latimer gardens in his book, it devolved upon Eve Carfax to make a pilgrimage to the place. Latimer, a small country town, lay some seventy miles away, and Canterton, who knew the place, told Eve to write to the George Hotel and book a room there. The work might take her a week, or more, if the weather proved cloudy. Canterton wanted the gardens painted in full sunlight, with all the shadows sharp, and the colours at their brightest.
The day before Eve’s journey to Latimer was a “Wilderness day.” Lynette had made Eve promise to have a camp tea with her in the dell among the larches.
“Daddy says you like sweet cakes.”
“Daddy’s a tease.”
“I asked Sarah, and she’s made a lot of lovely little cakes, some with chocolate ice, and some with jam and cream inside.”
“I shan’t come just for the cakes, dear.”
“No!”
“But because of you and your Wilderness.”
“Yes, but you will like the cakes, won’t you? Sarah and me’s taken such a lot of trouble.”
“You dear fairy godmother! I want to kiss you, hard!”
They started out together about four o’clock, Eve carrying the tea-basket, and Lynette a red cushion and an old green rug. The heath garden on the hill-side above the larch wood was one great wave of purple, rose, and white, deep colours into which vision seemed to sink with a sense of utter satisfaction. The bracken had grown three or four feet high along the edge of the larch wood, so that Lynette’s glowing head disappeared into a narrow green lane. It was very still and solemn and mysterious in among the trees, with the scattered blue of the sky showing through and the sunlight stealing in here and there and making patterns upon the ground.
They were busy boiling the spirit kettle when Canterton appeared at the end of the path through the larch wood.
“Queen Mab, Queen Mab, may I come down into your grotto?”
Lynette waved to him solemnly with a hazel wand.
“Come along down, Daddy Bruin.”
He climbed down into the dell laughing.
“That is a nice title to give a parent. I might eat you both up.”
“I’m sure you’d find Miss Eve very nice to eat.”
“Dear child!”
“How goes the kettle?”
“We are nearly ready. Here’s the rug to sit on, daddy. Miss Eve’s going to have the red cushion.”
“The cushion of state. What about the cakes?”
“Sarah’s made such lovely ones.”
Eve’s eyes met Canterton’s.
“It was ungenerous of you to betray me.”
“Not at all. It was sheer tact on my part.”
Tea was a merry meal, with both Lynette and her father dilating on the particular excellences of the different cakes, and insisting that she would be pleasing Sarah by allowing herself to be greedy. In the fullness of time Canterton lit a pipe, and Lynette, sitting next him on the green rug with her arms about her knees, grew talkative and problematical.
“Isn’t it funny how God sends people children?”
“Most strange.”
“What did you say, daddy, when God sent you me?”
“‘Here’s another horrible responsibility!’”
“Daddy, you didn’t! But wasn’t it funny that I was sent to mother?”
“Lynette, old lady——”
“Now, why wasn’t I sent to Miss Eve?”
Canterton reached out and lifted her into his lap.
“Bruin tickles little girls who ask too many questions.”
In the midst of her struggles and her laughter his eyes met Eve’s, and found them steady and unabashed, yet full of a vivid self-consciousness. They glimmered when they met his, sending a mesmeric thrill through him, and for the moment he could not look away. It was as though the child had flashed a mysterious light into the eyes of both, and uttered some deep nature cry that had startled them in the midst of their playfulness. Canterton’s eyes seemed to become bluer, and more intent, and Eve’s mouth had a tremulous tenderness.
Lynette was a young lady of dignity, and Canterton was reproved.
“Look how you’ve rumpled my dress, daddy.”
“I apologise. Supposing we go for a ramble, and call for our baggage on the way back.”
Both Eve and Canterton rose, and Lynette came between them, holding each by the hand. They wandered through the Wilderness and down by the pollard pool, where the swallows skimmed the still water. Lynette was mute, sharing the half dreamy solemnity of her elders. The playfulness was out of the day, and even the child felt serious.
It was past six when they returned to the garden, and Lynette, whose supper hour was due, hugged Eve hard as she said good-bye.
“You will write to me, Miss Eve, dear.”
“Yes, I’ll write.”
She found that Canterton had not come to the point of saying good-bye. He walked on with her down one of the nursery roads between groups of rare conifers.
“I am going to walk to Orchards Corner. Do you mind?”
“No.”
“I haven’t met your mother yet. I don’t know whether it is the proper time for a formal call.”
“Mother will be delighted. She is always delighted.”
“A happy temperament.”
“Very.”
They chose the way through the fir woods, and talked of the Latimer Abbey gardens, and of the particular atmosphere Canterton wanted her to produce for him.
“Oh, you’ll get it! You’ll get the very thing.”
“What an optimist you are.”
“Perhaps I am more of a mystic.”
The mystery of the woods seemed to quicken that other mysterious self-consciousness that had been stirred by the child, Lynette. They were in tune, strung to vibrate to the same subtle, and plaintive notes. As they walked, their intimate selves kept touching involuntarily and starting apart, innocent of foreseeing how rich a thrill would come from the contact. Their eyes questioned each other behind a veil of incredulity and wonder.
“You will write to Lynette?”
“Oh, yes!”
There was a naive and half plaintive uplift of her voice towards the “yes.”
“Little Beech Leaf is a warm-hearted fairy. Do you know, I am very glad of this comradeship, for her sake.”
“You make me feel very humble.”
“No. You are just the kind of elder sister that she needs.”
He had almost said mother, and the word mother was in Eve’s heart.
“Do you realise that I am learning from Lynette?”
“I don’t doubt it. One ought to learn deep things from a child.”
They reached the lane leading to Orchards Corner, and on coming to the white fence sighted Mrs. Carfax sitting in the garden, with the inevitable knitting in her lap. Canterton was taken in and introduced.
“Please don’t get up.”
Mrs. Carfax was coy and a little fluttered.
“Do sit down, Mr. Canterton. I feel that I must thank you for your great kindness to my daughter. I am sure that both she and I are very grateful.”
“So am I, Mrs. Carfax.”
“Indeed, Mr. Canterton?”
“For the very fine work your daughter is going to do for me. I was in doubt as to who to get, when suddenly she appeared.”
Mrs. Carfax bowed in her chair like some elderly queen driving through London.
“I am so glad you like Eve’s paintings. I think she paints quite nicely. Of course she studied a great deal at the art schools, and she would have exhibited, only we could not afford all that we should have liked to afford. It is really most fortunate for Eve that you should be so pleased with her painting.”
Her placid sing-song voice, with its underlining of the “sos” the “quites,” and the “mosts,” made Canterton think of certain maiden aunts who had tried to spoil him when he was a child. Mother and daughter were in strange contrast. The one all fire, sensitive aliveness, curiosity, colour; the other flat, sweetly foolish, toneless, apathetic.
Canterton stayed chatting with Mrs. Carfax for twenty minutes, while Eve sat by in silence, watching them with an air of dispassionate curiosity. Mrs. Carfax was just a child, and Canterton was at his best with children. Eve found herself thinking how much bigger, gentler, and more patient his nature was than hers. Things that irritated her, made him smile. He was one of the few masterful men who could bear with amiable stupidity.
When he had said good-bye to her mother, Eve went with him to the gate.
“Good-bye. Enjoy yourself. And when you write to Lynette, send me a word or two.”
He held her hand for two or three seconds, and his eyes looked into hers.
“You will be delighted with Latimer.”
“Yes. And I will try to bring you back what you want.”
“I have no doubts as to that.”
She stood for a moment at the gate, watching his broad figure disappear between the green hedgerows of the lane. A part of herself seemed to go with him, an outflowing of something that came from the deeps of her womanhood.
“Eve, dear, what a nice man Mr. Canterton is.”
“Nice” was the principal adjective in Mrs. Carfax’s vocabulary.
“Yes.”
“So good looking, and such nice manners. You would never have thought that he——”
“Was in trade?”
“Not quite that, dear, but selling things for money.”
“Of course, he might give them away. I suppose his social position would be greatly improved!”
“I don’t think that would be quite feasible, dear. Really, sometimes, you are almost simple.”
Canterton was walking through the woods, head bent, his eyes curiously solemn.
“What I want! She will bring me back what I want. What is it that I want?”
He came suddenly from the shadows of the woods into the full splendour of the evening light upon blue hills and dim green valleys. He stopped dead, eyes at gaze, a spasm of vague emotion rising in his throat. This sun-washed landscape appeared like a mysterious projection of something that lay deep down in his consciousness. What was it he wanted? A vital atmosphere such as this—comradeship, sympathy, passionate understanding.