Mr. Wycherly closed the book. "I cannot," he said, "be expected to
express an opinion after so cursory a glance at the contents. Montagu,
go and ask Mrs. Dew for a glass of milk; this child looks faint; bring
some biscuits, too."
Montagu sped away, and he turned to Jane-Anne.
"You mustn't mind him," he said kindly. "Clever Winchester boys are
always intolerant--while they are boys. Montagu reads a great deal more
than he can digest, and people with indigestion are proverbially
cantankerous."
Jane-Anne didn't understand what he meant in the very least, but she
felt immediately and immensely comforted. So much so, that she was
impelled to speak to Mr. Wycherly of her thoughts when she first came
out.
"Please, sir," she said, calmly dismissing the merits or demerits of
"Home Influence" that seemed so vital a moment ago. "Do you know a
piece of poetry about mountains?"
"A great deal of poetry has been written about mountains," Mr. Wycherly
replied cautiously.
"It's a piece of poetry I want to find," said Jane-Anne, "that I heard
many times long ago, and I can't remember anything about it except that
there was mountains. I thought perhaps you'd know it."
Here Montagu appeared with a glass of milk and some biscuits. The milk
had slopped over on to the biscuits "in some unaccountable way," he
explained; but their sopped condition did not spoil them for Jane-Anne,
who munched quite happily and smiled her broad ecstatic smile at him to
show that she had forgiven his cruel remarks about "Home Influence."
Presently the doctor came to see her, and Mrs. Dew fetched her in to be
sounded.
The moment she had gone Montagu turned upon his guardian, demanding
sternly: "Well, isn't it hopeless squish?"
"It is her prize," said Mr. Wycherly gently.
"Why, that's just what she said," Montagu exclaimed in astonishment at
his usually logical guardian taking this line.
"You will find," said Mr. Wycherly, "as you go through life that it is
never safe to abuse things violently before you have realised your
hearer's point of view. You may offend deeply."
"You'd have to be jolly dishonest to always think of that," Montagu
answered indignantly.
"You will be jolly rude and disagreeable if you never think of it," Mr.
Wycherly retorted. "Besides, did she ask you for your opinion?"
"Well, no--but it seemed such a pity to go on liking such stuff. People
must begin to learn what's good and what's bad sometime--and I shouldn't
think she's stupid."
"I am quite sure she is not stupid, and I am equally sure that she is
painfully sensitive and that you were more than a little stupid not to
see it."
"Me, stupid!" Montagu repeated in surprise. "No one has ever called me
that before."
Mr. Wycherly chuckled. "I thought," said he, "that the presence of a
young girl among us would be mentally stimulating. She has not been in
the house two days and yet, you see, already she has suggested to you
new possibilities in yourself. By the way--just make a note of any
poems you can think of bearing on mountains."
"Why, there are thousands," cried Montagu, aghast.
"Sure to be in Wordsworth," said Mr. Wycherly. "Anyway, we'll mark the
places."
*CHAPTER X*
*FORTUNE'S WHEEL*
"But that's all shove be'ind me
Long ago and fur away."
RUDYARD KIPLING.
The boys had been back at school a fortnight. Jane-Anne was quite
convalescent and got up to breakfast, but the date of her return to the
Bainbridge was still undecided.
The doctor came at longer intervals, but every time he came he still
declared that there was "a roughness" in Jane-Anne's lung, and that it
would be madness to send her North until that roughness was smoothed
away.
Night and morning and many times during the day, Jane-Anne bombarded
heaven with petitions that "the roughness" might perhaps increase a very
little, since it gave her no inconvenience whatever; anyway, that it
might remain sufficiently rasping to confirm the doctor in his view that
her return to the Bainbridge was at present out of the question.
Mrs. Dew, although properly respectful to the doctor as a friend of Mrs.
Methuen, yet felt that in this case he pushed professional caution to
the verge of the ridiculous. Here was Jane-Anne eating and sleeping as
well as could be, with pinker and plumper cheeks than she had had for
many a long day, looking, in fact, as her aunt said, "the picture of
health," though some people might have thought the picture rather
elusive and misleading; here was Jane-Anne eating the bread of idleness
with almost aggressive satisfaction in Holywell when she ought to have
been reaping the benefits of her "nomination" up in Northumberland.
Why all this fuss about a slight roughness? "Mark my words and anyone
can 'ear anything as he listens for," said Mrs. Dew.
Finally, Mr. Wycherly interviewed the doctor, who said to him in plain
words what he had feared to say to the child's aunt.
The doctor was an outspoken young man of sporting tendencies. He wore a
white hat rather on one side and drove an uncommonly good horse, and to
Mr. Wycherly he said: "It's like setting a thoroughbred filly to pull a
cart-load of bricks to expect that child to do housework in her present
state. She ought to do nothing for three months, and even then I should
say she is singularly unfitted for the kind of life she has up there. I
know those schools--excellent for big strong girls; but that child isn't
strong. She's all nerves and brains and empty, craving heart. The lung
trouble isn't serious if it's checked in time, but if she goes back
she'll get overtired and catch cold again directly. I'm sorry for her
aunt, but what can I say? I won't be responsible for sending her back."
The doctor spoke angrily. He hated interfering in other people's
business and he thought it exceedingly probable that an old gentleman
living by himself might strongly object to having a girl child foisted
upon him for an indefinite period.
"It seems to me," said Mr. Wycherly mildly, "that it would be criminal
stupidity to allow her to go back."
The doctor looked rather astonished.
"But what's to become of the child?" he asked.
"Surely there is nothing to prevent her remaining here with her aunt,
and when she is strong enough are there not good schools in Oxford?"
The doctor picked up his white hat. "Of course," he said, "if you have
no objection to her remaining here the whole thing is perfectly simple,
but I understood from her aunt that the arrangement was the child was
only to be here in her holidays, and she seemed sadly afraid of
trespassing upon your good-nature in keeping her here so long as it is.
She's a very decent, honest woman, but----"
Mr. Wycherly rose and rang the bell to summon Mrs. Dew.
And the end of it all was that somebody wrote to Lord Dursley.
Jane-Anne's "nomination" at the Bainbridge was presented to a girl whose
physique was more deserving, and his lordship, instead of being annoyed,
as Mrs. Dew had feared, at Jane-Anne's failure to benefit from his good
intentions on her behalf, declared himself quite ready to pay for her
"schooling" in Oxford whenever that fidgetty fellow, the doctor, should
consider her able for instruction.
"Not till the autumn," said the doctor, to Mrs. Dew. "She can help you
till then, you won't overwork her, I'm sure."
Jane-Anne knew perfectly well that her fate hung in the balance when the
doctor sought his interview with Mr. Wycherly, and when the result of
that interview was imparted to her rather grudgingly, and with many
injunctions as to decorous conduct, by her aunt, she felt such a
passionate love and gratitude towards the gentle-mannered master who had
made this beatific state of things possible that she could not rest that
night without going to thank him.
Therefore, without consulting her aunt, she sought his study after
dinner and knocked timidly at the door.
Mr. Wycherly was, as usual, seated at his desk writing; the shaded light
was pulled low over his papers, making a little pool of brightness in
the grey dusk of the room. The big window was wide open and a scent of
wallflowers was wafted in from the garden below.
"Come in, my child, come in," said the kind, welcoming voice as he saw
the timid figure at the door.
And Jane-Anne came in with a nervous rush, but she did not forget to
shut the door behind her.
She dropped on her knees beside him and seized his hand, kissing it
passionately, much to his confusion. He was quite unaccustomed to
violent manifestations of feeling, and his long residence in Scotland
had increased his natural reserve.
"I know it's you who managed that I shouldn't go back, and I do want so
to thank you. You don't know what I feel like. Please, sir, I will try
to be useful. Anything you would like me to do----"
Very gently Mr. Wycherly withdrew his hand. "Suppose you sit on a
chair," he suggested, "and we will have a chat together."
With stately courtesy, he placed a chair for Jane-Anne, and, seated
again in his own revolving-chair, turned to face her.
As always, when much moved, she was very white, and to-night her great
eyes were soft and dog-like in their devotion.
"By the way," said Mr. Wycherly, "I haven't forgotten your inquiry about
the poem that you cannot remember, and I have marked in a volume of
Wordsworth a number of verses dealing with mountains. Perhaps you would
like to look through it at your leisure."
"Thank you, sir," Jane-Anne whispered.
"I know nothing," Mr. Wycherly continued, "more annoying than a
half-remembered quotation. I sincerely hope that you will soon find it."
For a moment there was silence, then:
"Sir," Jane-Anne said earnestly, "are you very lonely now the young
gentlemen have gone back to school?"
"I do miss them greatly of course."
"Do you remember, sir, when you came to see me, when I was in bed the
first day I was here, you said when they went back that the sun set for
you----"
"Did I?" said Mr. Wycherly, rather surprised at himself.
"You really did, sir, and I wondered whether--though the sun has
set--whether you'd let me try--to be a little tiny star--just so you
wouldn't feel quite so lonely."
Mr. Wycherly's hand still tingled with the touch of those soft
unaccustomed girlish lips, nevertheless he held it out to her, saying,
"That will be very kind of you."
Jane-Anne placed her own within it and she did not attempt to kiss Mr.
Wycherly's hand again, but she looked at him as though she would read
his very soul and asked: "Sir, have you ever heard anything about a
place called Greece?"
Mr. Wycherly laughed. "For a considerable portion of my life," he
replied, "I have heard about little else."
"Will you tell me things sometimes, sir? Will you?"
"I shall be most happy," said Mr. Wycherly. "You certainly ought to know
as much as possible about your father's country--and there is so much to
know."
"I have another name," she said suddenly and with apparent irrelevance.
"Shall I tell it you? Very few people know."
"Do you mean Stavrides?" Mr. Wycherly asked.
"No, sir, not that; I have another Christian name. Allegra; don't you
think it's very pretty?"
"Very," said Mr. Wycherly; "it is a beautiful name, but it isn't Greek."
"I'm called after somebody's daughter that died. I don't know who she
was; mother knew. My daddie liked the name. I daresay I shall find out
some day all about her."
"I daresay you will," said Mr. Wycherly, and looked hard at Jane-Anne.
"Which would you like to call me?" she asked.
"I shall call you Jane-Anne, not Allegra," Mr. Wycherly said decidedly.
"It's a pretty name," she said wistfully.
"It has rather sad associations for me," he added.
The clock upon the mantelpiece struck nine. Jane-Anne rose. "I must go,
sir, now; good night, and thank you."
"Good night, my child. Get strong and rest you merry. And here is the
Wordsworth; tell me when you find your poem."
She took from him a large brown volume that bristled with inserted slips
of paper. He crossed the room and opened the door for her, and
Jane-Anne went out with her head held high. "Just like he did for Mrs.
Methuen," she reflected ecstatically.
When she had gone Mr. Wycherly went and stood at the window and looked
out into the night. The sky was unclouded, of a deep, soft, soothing
blue, and right in a line with his window shone one star.
"I wonder," he pondered, "what made him call her after Byron's
daughter."
When Jane-Anne reached the kitchen, proudly bearing her volume of
Wordsworth, she found her aunt sitting at the newly scrubbed kitchen
table darning a stocking.
"What made you stop so long for?" Mrs. Dew inquired tartly, "hindering
and worritin' the master. It don't take half an hour to say 'thank you,
and my duty to you.'"
"The master set a chair for me and talked to me," Jane-Anne replied
gloriously, "and when I came away he opened the door for me, just like
he did for Mrs. Methuen when she came the other day, and he's lent me a
great big poetry book. Look at it! Oh, aunt, I do believe the Almighty
must be just like Mr. Wycherly."
Mrs. Dew nearly dropped her stocking. "Jane-Anne!" she exclaimed in
tones of horrified amazement, "how you can stand there and say such
things passes me. Go to bed this minute, you inyuman child. You ought
to be ashamed of yourself, that you ought."
"But, aunt," Jane-Anne expostulated, "Miss Stukely, the lady that taught
us Sundays, she said we must love God, be always loving Him, and always
talking about Him; we couldn't think and talk too much about Him; the
more we did it the fitter we'd be for heaven, and I've never seen
anybody before as I'd like Him to be like--so where's the harm?"
The child spoke with breathless earnestness.
Mrs. Dew stared at her, intensely disapproving.
"How you can stand there," she repeated; "how you can have the face to
stand there and talk about the Almighty bein' _like_ anybody, just as if
He was your next door neighbour, turns me cold. Where's your respect?
Where's your sense of decency? I'll have none of your revival ways
here, I can tell you; quiet, respectable church I've always been, with
none of such goin's on. It's quite enough for most of us to do our duty
in that station of life without talking familiarly of lovin' and such.
_Go_ to bed, I tell you, and let me hear no more of such fandanglements,
and I'll come in ten minutes to fetch your candle and bring you that hot
milk as is all over skin you've been so long. Now bustle about
smartish."
Jane-Anne bustled.
Mrs. Dew leant back in her chair as one quite unable to cope with the
force of circumstances.
"My stars! Good fathers!" exclaimed Mrs. Dew. "If that's the sort of
thing they teaches at the Bainbridge it's more than time my niece was
took away."
Very early next morning Jane-Anne crept out of bed, pulled up her blind,
and seized the volume of poetry Mr. Wycherly had lent her. She read till
her eyes ached and her head swam; she read without the smallest
understanding or enjoyment, but with the greatest care and application,
and though there was much about mountains there was nothing that struck
the faintest chord of memory in Jane-Anne. Whatever it was that her
father had repeated when he used to carry her about, it wasn't there.
And yet she was certain about "the mountains." Yes, it was "the
mountains."
"I'm afraid he'll have to look again," she said to herself. She had not
the smallest doubt that Mr. Wycherly would help her.
It was a very hot May, and as the doctor had said she could not be too
much in the fresh air, her aunt, that afternoon, put a little table and
chair for her under the apple-tree, gave her some needle-work, and
bidding her listen for any bell that might happen to ring, announced her
intention of going out to do some household shopping. "Unless anyone
calls to see the master it's unlikely that anyone'll come at all," said
Mrs. Dew, "and the front door bell's that loud you'll hear it right
enough if so be as you don't get moonin'. I shan't be more than a
hour."
Shortly after Mrs. Dew's departure Mr. Wycherly came to his window and
looked out.
There sat Jane-Anne at the little table covered by a heap of white
sewing, and he thought what a pleasant picture she made in her stiff
buff frock, so maidenly and sweet, so suitably and sensibly employed on
this sunny afternoon in the midst of the green old garden, gay with
tulips and fragrant wallflowers.
Suddenly Jane-Anne stooped down and took off her heavy shoes and there
and then flung them one after another to the other side of the lawn.
Then she removed her stockings. Mr. Wycherly gazed fascinated. What was
the child about?
This was soon deplorably evident.
Jane-Anne was taking off her dress.
Mr. Wycherly felt that he ought to go away from that window, but he
didn't. He stayed where he was and, what's more, he placed his
eyeglasses upon his nose.
She gave herself a complicated kind of shake and the buff abomination
fell about her feet in stiff expostulating folds.
Daintily and deliberately, she stepped out of it as though withdrawing
her feet from something dirty and distasteful. She wore a skimpy little
blue-and-white striped petticoat of cotton; body and skirt in one piece
it reached just to her knees, but was sleeveless, and her long, slender
arms were bare.
A thrush was singing in the apple-tree and a blackbird warbled loudly in
a lilac bush trying to drown the thrush. They sang as though there were
no such thing as winter in the world, and neither of them cared a whit
for Jane-Anne and her disrobings.
Flinging her white arms above her head, she danced into the middle of
the lawn on slim, twinkling white feet and continued to dance all over
it with the greatest abandon and enjoyment, while her long black plaits
bumped joyously. So light of foot, so variously graceful in her
gracious suppleness, with such divine gravity and dainty decorum that
Mr. Wycherly watching was fain to take his glasses off and wipe them,
for suddenly he could not see as clearly as he wished. Her radiant face
was pale, but her wide eyes were full of a gladness that seemed to
mirror back the brightness of that May afternoon, and the little
petticoat was like the sheath of a flower enfolding and displaying all
this happy grace.
Loudly carolled the blackbird, lustily chirruped the thrush, and
Jane-Anne danced to their orchestra, and while she danced her mind kept
saying: "I've done with it; I've done with it. I shall never go back.
Life is before me, a new life; a life full of wonders, and a bedroom to
myself, with furniture like looking-glasses; a life with a kind,
sensible, if worldly minded aunt, who gives to little girls delicious
puddings that they like. A life with books in it, big books; not
interesting, perhaps, but very grand and splendid to have lent one. A
life that is to be lived under the same roof with a beautiful, kind old
gentleman who will perhaps, by-and-bye, let me wait upon him. Oh,
wonderful and delicious prospect, to wait upon Mr. Wycherly! To hand
him his plate and to pour out--what should she pour out? Wine, she
expected, though Miss Stukely said wine was wrong. Not, perhaps, for
the gentry, for the _real_ gentry, as her aunt would say. How soft and
warm the grass to the bare tripping feet! How kind of those birds to
sing like that! How lovely it was to be young and light and to have got
rid of heavy shoes and hot, uncomfortable frock. How----"
It was the front door bell.
Jane-Anne heard it and Mr. Wycherly did not.
There certainly was the making of a quick-change artist in Jane-Anne.
In a twinkling she had found her shoes and stockings and put them on,
and she ran to the house struggling into her dress as she ran.
"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where has the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"
said Mr. Wycherly, wondering why she had stopped so suddenly.
*CHAPTER XI*
*THE CULT OF BRUEY*
"The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one
difference between him and other animals being that he is the most
imitative of living creatures." _Poetics_, ARISTOTLE.
Jane-Anne was a true Athenian in that she was ever ready to run after
any new thing, and during her last two terms at the Bainbridge the
strongest influence in her life was that of her Sunday-school teacher,
Miss Stukely.
Jane-Anne whole-heartedly admired Miss Stukely, and where she admired
she invariably imitated. Miss Stukely was delicate, and Jane-Anne
delighted in her own "crepitations" as being the sincerest sort of
flattery of that lady.
Miss Stukely was slender, always elaborately dressed, gentle in manner,
with white, heavily ringed hands. She was not, perhaps, beautiful in
face, being somewhat sallow with a receding chin; but her expression was
kindly, and Jane-Anne read into her face the spiritual excellencies the
lady was most fond of extolling. She had a way of closing her eyes when
she was most earnest in exhortation that Jane-Anne found very
impressive. Moreover, she frequently used a gold-topped smelling
bottle, and the possession of a similar restorative was just then
Jane-Anne's most cherished aspiration.
To lean back in a chair while inhaling the vinegary fragrance of a
cut-glass bottle, to lean back with closed eyes, in an aura of the
faintness and exhaustion induced by strong emotion, was to Jane-Anne as
the ecstatic vision of a mystic: a state of mind and body only to be
attained by profound spiritual exaltation.
She learned by heart with ease. She could reel off any number of
appropriate, or quite as often, inappropriate texts; and did so on the
smallest provocation, greatly to the indignation of Mrs. Dew, who felt
that she required no religious instruction at her niece's hands.
This facility greatly impressed Miss Stukely, who felt that in Jane-Anne
she indeed found fertile soil for the good seed, and there was no
question whatever that Jane-Anne fully deserved the prize she gained for
"Bible-searching."
This prize was the history of one "Bruey," "a little worker for Christ,"
whose winning personality (Miss Stukely was fond of the word "winning,"
generally using it in the sense of a successful gainer of souls) seized
upon Jane-Anne's imagination till she lived and walked and had her being
in that character.
Bruey was just her own age, had "great dark eyes" (Jane-Anne was
pleasantly conscious of possessing similar orbs), had palpitations.
Jane-Anne couldn't quite achieve these, but felt that crepitations were
nearly as good and that she was, at all events, near the rose, if not
the royal flower herself.
Bruey had no father (another resemblance) and a mother, who, though an
industrious church-worker, was perhaps not quite as understanding and
sympathetic as she might have been. Put Mrs. Dew in place of the mother
and there you are!
Bruey always read her Bible seated upon a box in her bedroom window; "a
folded rug upon this box made it soft and comfortable for a seat." Here
she studied the scriptures and said her prayers, watching the sunset the
while. She always kept a pencil by her and marked the texts she found
most helpful, and Jane-Anne's Bible already was scored heavily in
hundreds of places. Its newness (being a prize) was rather afflicting,
so she wetted her thumb and doubled down the corners to hasten its look
of age and constant use.
The box and the window were denied to Jane-Anne at the Bainbridge, for
twelve girls slept in a dormitory where the ledges of the windows were
five feet from the ground, and no box of any sort was permitted in an
apartment of almost superhuman neatness.
At Jeune Street, too, the room was so small that the window was blocked
up by a chest of drawers far too heavy for Jane-Anne to move.
But the moment she came to Holywell she perceived glorious possibilities
of Bruey-ness in the fine big bedroom her aunt had given up to her. It
is true that the dressing-table stood in the window, but it was an
old-fashioned, spindle-legged affair with swing looking-glass attached,
quite light and easy to move, and the moment that Jane-Anne could get
about without assistance she pulled it back into the room, dragged her
empty tin box under the window, and having no shawl, folded her
dressing-gown on the top to make it "soft and comfortable for a seat."
As a matter of fact it did nothing of the kind, the box was dinted and
lumpy and very hard, but what cared Jane-Anne? Bruey's box was covered
with chintz, but that, she felt, was a very minor detail. The main
properties were all there--box, window, Bible, little girl.
That the window did not face towards the west was disappointing; that
very little sky was to be seen owing to the presence of a tall house
just across the yard was rather annoying. Still, there was the box and
there was the window, and there was Jane-Anne, ready to throw herself
into the part of Bruey with the utmost abandon.
She even improved upon Bruey, grafting on to the character certain
attributes of Miss Stukely.
That morning, Mrs. Dew had turned out the kitchen cupboard, and among
discarded bottles and boxes Jane-Anne had found a tiny phial that had
contained vanilla essence. This she secretly pocketed. She tore a
piece off her sponge, thrust it into the little bottle and then hied her
to the bath-room where there was some Scrubbs' Ammonia. In a trice the
bits of sponge in the bottle were saturated with that pungent fluid.
Behold Jane-Anne equipped with a smelling bottle, quite as efficacious
if not so handsome as Miss Stukely's.
She sought her bower at seven o'clock, while her aunt was safely engaged
in the final preparations for Mr. Wycherly's dinner. She had no time
for reading and meditation at bed-time, for Mrs. Dew always came to take
away the candle. Her aunt mistrusted Jane-Anne ever since she had set
her hair on fire one evening in Jeune Street. When she reached her room
she found that her box had been put back in the corner and her
dressing-gown was hanging behind the door. This constantly happened.
Jane-Anne muttered something that sounded like "interfering old thing"
and hastened to arrange it all again. This didn't take long, and once
the stage was set she mounted the box, and gazed out into the
uninspiring stone-cutter's yard with a suitable expression of "winning
tenderness." Next she closed her eyes wearily and distantly inhaled the
Scrubbs' Ammonia in the vanilla bottle. It restored her and she opened
her Bible haphazard with a sanctimonious Jack-Horner sort of expression
on her thin, eager little face.
She opened at the book of Job.
Now this was unexplored country. Genesis she knew; Kings and
Chronicles, and the greater part of the New Testament she had read. But
somehow the book of Job hadn't entered into Miss Stukely's scheme of
salvation, and Jane-Anne's only acquaintance with Job so far had been in
her aunt's phrase, "you'd try the patience of Job," and she had vaguely
pictured him as a meek old gentleman tormented by a large family of
unruly children.
Montagu and Mr. Wycherly had dipped into "Home Influence" anywhere.
This was a new way of reading to her, and she felt she must at once do
likewise. So into the end of the book of Job she thrust and started at
the words, "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or
loose the bonds of Orion," and read on aloud.
Now, there was in Jane-Anne a fine feeling for the beautiful and she
liked the sound of it greatly, her voice growing stronger and more
impressive as she read. Especially was she carried away by the
description of the horse: "_He paweth in the valley and rejoiceth in his
strength; he goeth on to meet the armed men.... He swalloweth the ground
with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of
the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the
battle afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting._"
By this time, quite unconsciously, she had raised her voice very
considerably, and she stopped in great confusion as her aunt bounced
into the room demanding anxiously: "What ever is the matter? Who're you
a-calling out to?"
"I'm only reading to myself," Jane-Anne mumbled.
"Well, I wish you'd read a bit quieter," said Mrs. Dew, "frightening a
body to death with 'ha-ha-in's' and sech. An' what are you doin'
sitting on that there box as I put away this very afternoon? Why can't
you leave it be in the corner?"
Jane-Anne made no reply. It is disconcerting to be snatched suddenly
from all the exciting panoply of a battle-field to a mere discussion as
to the position of boxes. She felt bewildered and unreal.
"Why don't you answer me?" Mrs. Dew asked impatiently.
"I was reading," Jane-Anne repeated stupidly.
"An' a very bad light to read in," said Mrs. Dew. "You come down into
the kitchen an' give me a hand with the master's dinner instead of
sittin' hollerin' there, and you put back that box in its proper place."
While Jane-Anne was washing up she remembered with contrition that she
had not marked a single text.
In two particulars only did she feel that she could never hope to
emulate Bruey. Firstly, because Bruey died in the last chapter of her
palpitations. Now nothing was more opposed to Jane-Anne's aims than
that she should succumb to her crepitations. Secondly, she felt that
she could not hope even to approach Bruey's noble self-abnegation in the
matter of hats.
Bruey at first taught her Sunday class wearing a beautiful best hat
adorned with roses; but on a senior teacher pointing out that this
embellishment might have a bad effect upon the morals of her infant
scholars, she begged her mother to remove the offending garniture and
replace it by a simple ribbon.
Never, Jane-Anne was assured, could she attain to such heights of
self-denial. She never had possessed a hat with roses, but if she ever
did--not all the Sunday-school teachers in creation should wrest them
from her. On that point her determination was rooted. She would follow
Bruey in all else but death-beds and hats. At present she felt that her
hat would not excite any emotion save loathing in no matter how
frivolous a breast. But if ever the day came--after all, Miss Stukely
had hydrangeas in her hat--and there was no need to model herself
slavishly on Bruey.
Much as she loved Mr. Wycherly, he caused her some heart-searching. She
adored him. To her, he seemed to combine in his own person every kind
and gracious and beautiful quality; but so far he had not said any "good
words" to her except that twice he had murmured, "God bless you." Not
one text had he quoted when they spake together, nor had he asked her
any of those searching intimate questions as to her spiritual condition,
that she found so exciting and so wonderfully easy to answer
satisfactorily.
She had the true mystic's sense of nearness to the unseen; and in giving
to the lonely child this feeling of fellowship with the saints, this
serene confidence in Heaven's interference in her affairs, Miss Stukely
and Bruey, between them, had bestowed on her a real and precious gift.
But they had also created a mental pose. They had imbued her with a
sense of pious security that armed her against endeavour. What she did
easily she did well. What she disliked and found difficult she did not
try to do at all, and any unpleasantness resulting from such inactivity
she looked upon as a "cross." So long as she was meek and patient under
rebuke; so long as she turned the other cheek to the smiter and bore no
malice, she felt that she had done all that could be expected of her.
For instance, in the matter of the box, it seemed absolutely vital to
her that she should read her Bible and meditate in Bruey's fashion no
matter how the constant disturbance of the said box annoyed her aunt.
As she wiped plates in a smeary and perfunctory fashion, she was
rejoicing in the existence of Montagu and Edmund, because Bruey had a
cousin Percy whom she influenced for good. There was a Percy, too, in
"Home Influence," and like all the Percies in that class of fiction,
these two were dashing, full of generous impulses, but easily led
astray. Bruey's Percy even read yellow-backed novels in bed at night,
and Jane wondered whether Montagu was given to similar nocturnal orgies.
She had no more idea of what a yellow-back was than she had of a Roman
Catholic, but she was sure that both were equally pernicious.
Edmund fitted more easily into the Percy part, he was so merry and
good-looking; but fond as she was of the centre of the stage, Jane-Anne
could not yet quite see herself enlightening Edmund in the approved
Bruey fashion.
He was so unexpected, he would be certain to say the wrong thing.
At this moment Mrs. Dew came back from the dining-room. "You're to go
and see the master in his study," she said; "it's a quarter to nine now,
and the minute the clock strikes you're to come."
Jane-Anne flew to the sink to wash her hands and hastened upstairs,
buttoning her sleeves as she went.
"Well, have you found the poem?" asked Mr. Wycherly.
"No, sir. I've read every one you marked, but it isn't one of them."
"Curious," Mr. Wycherly said thoughtfully; "we must try again. Sit
down, my child, and think if you can remember in what sort of metre it
was written, that would be a help."
But Jane-Anne knew nothing about metre, so the question of the poem
lapsed for the time being.
The precious moments were fleeting, and Bruey being still in the
ascendant, she asked _apropos_ of nothing:
"Please, sir, do you think Master Montagu and Edmund are little
workers?"
"Edmund certainly isn't," Mr. Wycherly replied decidedly; "he's an idle
young dog"--here he chuckled--"but all the same he can do whatever he
sets himself to do. Montagu, on the contrary, is naturally industrious.
He loves knowledge for its own sake. Why do you ask?" and Mr. Wycherly
looked inquiringly at Jane-Anne.
She was mystified. That anybody should call anybody else "an idle young
dog" in that tone of affectionate amusement was in itself most puzzling.
"I suppose," she said, deliberately paraphrasing a favourite remark of
Miss Stukely's, "we can all be workers, 'you in your small corner; I in
mine.'"
"Quite so," Mr. Wycherly assented politely, though he in his turn was
somewhat staggered by Jane-Anne's gently patronising tone. Had the
Greek nymph of the afternoon turned into an amazing little prig in the
evening? It was evident that this child was a quick-change artist in
more than the matter of make-up.
As for Jane-Anne, she felt curiously flattened out. This courteous,
kindly old gentleman made her feel incredibly small. Bruey, she was
certain, or even the apostolic Miss Stukely herself, would find it
exceedingly difficult to approach Mr. Wycherly on the subject of his
soul. And then and there was lighted in the youthful mind of Jane-Anne
one little candle of common-sense which illuminated this dark and
difficult situation with the bright suggestion that possibly Mr.
Wycherly's soul was Mr. Wycherly's business and not hers; and just at
that very crucial moment she heard him saying:
"By the way, child, isn't that dress rather hot and heavy for this
summer weather? Don't you think we'd better see about something else if
you've not got anything thinner?"
She jumped to her feet, clasping and unclasping her hands in an agony of
earnestness. Where frocks were concerned souls had a poor chance with
Jane-Anne.
"Oh, sir," she cried, "it's a hateful old dress, but my two cotton
frocks were left at the Bainbridge and aunt said we couldn't ask for
them as I'd left, and they said I could keep this and my best, as I'd
got them with me, but I wish they hadn't. Mightn't some poorer child
than me have this? It is so hideous and uncomfortable."
She had come close up to Mr. Wycherly and was pleading as though her
very life depended on it.
Mr. Wycherly drew her between his knees, and there was a look of
considerable amusement on his handsome old face as he asked: "If it is
so ugly and so uncomfortable, why should you want to bestow it upon
anybody else?"
"But it's quite good," Jane-Anne expostulated; "we couldn't throw it
away. Some child might be glad of it. I'm not. Let's talk about what
I shall have," she added coaxingly, and somehow she found herself
sitting on Mr. Wycherly's knee.
It was years since she had sat on anybody's knee, and that she should do
so again and in such circumstances seemed to her inconceivably
delightful.
Jane-Anne expanded like a flower.
It did not seem such an extraordinary thing to Mr. Wycherly that a child
should sit on his knee. He had served a long and somewhat severe
apprenticeship to Montagu and Edmund, who both had generally elected to
sit upon him at the same time. What most impressed him about Jane-Anne
was that she was distressingly light.
They had a long and intimate confabulation on the subject of frocks,
finally deciding that, with Mrs. Dew's permission, Mrs. Methuen should
be taken into their counsels.
The clock struck nine.
Jane-Anne flung her arms round his neck and kissed him, and yet again he
opened the door for her as she went out.
The following afternoon Mrs. Dew sent her out to do some messages, and
while she was outside a shop--there were hats in that shop, and
Jane-Anne flattened her nose against the window in her enthusiastic
interest--two ladies came out to a carriage that was waiting at the
kerb.
The ladies were gorgeously arrayed, evidently on their way to some
party, and she turned to stare after them admiringly. The footman
slammed the door, leapt upon the box, and the carriage started, when she
observed that one of the ladies had dropped her purse in the gutter. It
was a pretty trifle made of links of gold in the shape of a little bag.
She picked it up at once and darted after the carriage, calling out to
them to stop, but the ladies shook their heads at her and the coachman
was far too exalted a personage to take any notice at all. The footman
did just look round, but he regained his proud immobility in the next
second of time.
There was a good deal of traffic that afternoon and the carriage could
not get along very fast. Jane-Anne ran after it, never letting it get
out of sight, though she was breathless and tired, and her heart thumped
in her ears in a fashion that was rather too realistically reminiscent
of Bruey to be altogether agreeable. She was almost giving up in despair
when the carriage turned in through big gates. Faint, but pursuing,
Jane-Anne followed and ran up the broad path after it. There were many
gaily dressed people standing about, who stared at her, and numbers of
other carriages so that the one she followed had to go very slowly. She
came up with it just as it stopped at an entrance.
The ladies saw her. "Go away, little girl," said the younger crossly;
"we have nothing for you, and you have no business to follow us."
Too breathless and exhausted to speak, Jane-Anne held out the purse
towards her.
"Good gracious! I must have dropped it, and you followed us; how very
kind. I suppose I'd better give her something," in an aside to her
companion. "I hope I've got some small change. Here you are, and thank
you very much."
She selected sixpence and held it out towards Jane-Anne.
Now Jane-Anne wanted that sixpence dreadfully, for she hadn't a farthing
in the world; but she had conceived a dislike for the lady; she was
indignant at being taken for a beggar, and having somewhat recovered her
breath, she said very distinctly:
"No, thank you; but I think you might have told the coachman to stop,
then I shouldn't have had to run so far," and with her head in the air,
she set off down the drive again.
A good many people had arrived at the door, and they were all listening.
She hadn't gone far when she heard quick footsteps behind her and a
short, good-tempered looking gentleman pulled her by the arm. He wore a
festal white waistcoat and looked the personification of jollity. "You
were quite right to refuse her beggarly sixpence, my dear," he remarked
confidentially; "but it's a shame you shouldn't have something for your
trouble; very good-natured of you, I call it, to run all that way.
Here, you go and buy some lollipops with this!" and he held out two
bright new half-crowns towards Jane-Anne.
Never had she seen so much wealth, and it was hers just for the taking;
and yet she was certain she ought not to take it; that Mr. Wycherly
would not like it; and already she had begun to identify herself with
him.
She shook her head a little sadly. "No, thank you," she said very
gently, for this time she felt the donor meant to be kind. "I mustn't,
thank you," and she went on her way.
The stout gentleman looked after her and scratched his chin. "That was
a nasty one," he said to the nearest passer-by. "The lass is a lady and
I offered her five bob."
Jane-Anne made her way blindly into the road. She was nearly run over
three several times by carriages coming up the drive. As she turned
into the open she charged into someone walking in the opposite
direction, and recovering from the impact, discovered that she had run
into Mr. Wycherly.
Mutual explanations followed. Mr. Wycherly was taking the daily walk he
had promised Montagu to take. Jane-Anne explained her presence at the
garden-party, but said nothing about the rewards offered.
Presently she found herself walking home hand in hand with Mr. Wycherly,
and when they reached the house he said: "We must have more walks
together, you and I, and if I forget to go out you must come and stir me
up."
At tea she told her aunt about the purse, and about the money offered.
"You were quite right to refuse it," said Mrs. Dew, "an' I'm glad you
had that much sense; but what made you?"
"I thought the master wouldn't have liked it."
"The master needn't never have known nothing about it."
"But I should have known," said Jane-Anne.
*CHAPTER XII*
*FOUND!*
"And if she can have access to a good library of old and classical
books, there need be no choosing at all ... turn her loose into the old
library every wet day, and let her alone ... let her loose in the
library, I say, as you do a fawn in the field. It knows the bad weeds
twenty times better than you; and the good ones, too, and will eat some
bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest
thought would have been so." _Sesame and Lilies_.
Jane-Anne had got her heart's desire. She was allowed to wait upon Mr.
Wycherly. She laid his breakfast and carried it in. She laid his
luncheon and his dinner and her good aunt brought the heavy trays to the
slab outside the dining-room door, and Jane-Anne fetched dishes one by
one and set them on table or sideboard, and handed vegetables and poured
out Mr. Wycherly's beer for him from the old brown Toby jug that had
once belonged to Admiral Bethune.
It was brought about in this wise. When Jane-Anne had been in Holywell
about a month there came a letter for her one morning.
Now, that she should have a letter at all, except from her aunt, was a
tremendous and most untoward event. Yet it was undoubtedly for her, for
it was addressed Miss Jane-Anne (no surname), c/o M. Wycherly, Esq., not
enclosed in one of his, but stamped and sent to her direct. She found
it on her plate at breakfast when she came down, and turned it over and
over in her hands before she opened it.
The handwriting was small, clear and upright, and rather like Mr.
Wycherly's own. She noticed this at once as she had often taken his
letters to post for him.
"Aren't you going to open your letter?" her aunt asked.
Nervously Jane-Anne tore the envelope, flushed and paled, as she always
did when excited, and then read it eagerly in absolute silence.
"Well?" Mrs. Dew demanded impatiently. "Who's been writing to you?"
"It's from Master Montagu," Jane-Anne cried breathlessly. "He's written
to _me_, to ask me to see that Mr. Wycherly eats his meals--oh aunt you
_will_ let me wait on him now, won't you?"
"What's he say?" asked Mrs. Dew.
"My dear Jane-Anne," she read aloud, "I'm glad to hear from Guardie
you're all right again. It would be decent of you if you'd write to me
sometimes and tell me how he is, for he never says himself. And there's
another thing: I wish you'd go in and out sometimes at meals and see
that he isn't reading and forgetting to eat at all. That's what he does
if he isn't watched, Robina told me. Just go in and joggle his elbow
and remind him, if he's got a book, especially if it's 'Aeschylus'; he's
very fond of that and forgets the chops and potatoes and everything.
And please make him go out every day; you might take him. You see he
used always to take Mause, our dog, for a walk, but she's dead, poor
thing.
"You've not got much to do, with no school, so just look after Guardie
like a good kid. I shall be awfully obliged, and please write.
"Yours truly,
"MONTAGU BETHUNE WYCHERLY."
"There," said Jane-Anne.
"I'll not say but what it's quite a good idea," Mrs. Dew admitted,
"though you can't go jogglin' the master's elbow or any impudence of
that sort. Still, you might wait on him, and if he gets reading, just
go quiet and say 'potatoes, sir,' or 'peas, sir,' and it'll bring 'im
back. It goes to my very heart when he forgets and leaves a homelette
till it's all flat and tough, an' it'd come easier like from you--you
can stop in the room at lunch and dinner, and stand be'ind him at the
sideboard. And mind you don't get woolgathering too, as is but likely."
"Can I have a cap and apron, like Mrs. Methuen's parlour-maid?" Jane
Anne asked eagerly, desirous to dress to the part.
"Certainly not; you'd look ridiklus. I don't want any tweeny maids in
this house--you go in neat and tidy in one of the nice dresses as Mrs.
Methuen got made, and behave quiet and respectful, an' if there's
company--why I'll wait myself, though I don't care about it much, it not
bein' what I've bin used to."
"Why couldn't I wait if there was company? I'd be very quick and quiet,
and I'd love to hear the gentry talk."
"We'll see first how you waits without," said Mrs. Dew, ever dubious as
to Jane-Anne's practical capacities.
So it came about that she waited on Mr. Wycherly that very day at lunch,
and when she handed him the vegetables he murmured something about
"tender little thumbs" which puzzled her extremely.
She was very deft and quiet, because she wanted to wait well, and
whatever Jane-Anne wanted to do, that she did excellently. She had
watched Mrs. Methuen's parlour-maid, and she modelled herself on that
very superior young person. So quiet was she, that at first, Mr.
Wycherly would sometimes forget she was there, and pick up the brown
calf-bound book with the queer scratchy print, that Jane-Anne already
loved because she knew it was Greek, and fall a-reading only to be
instantly recalled by a vegetable dish presented at his elbow and a prim
low voice (even her voice was modelled on Mrs. Methuen's parlour-maid)
remarking, "Cabbage, sir," or something of the sort.
But although Jane-Anne completely forgot herself in the ardour of her
impersonation, Mr. Wycherly after the very first did not forget
Jane-Anne.
"Couldn't you stand where I can see you?" he suggested after about a
week of her ministrations, "or better still, sit down."
"Oh, sir, I mustn't sit down," she remonstrated in shocked tones;
"parlour-maids never do that."
"Don't they?" said Mr. Wycherly. "It's so long since I had a
parlour-maid I've forgotten. When I was young I was generally waited
upon by men, and in Scotland we never had any waiting at all; we helped
each other."
"Men are best," Jane-Anne replied from her place on the hearth-rug where
she had obediently taken her stand. "If I grow up good-looking perhaps
I may marry a first footman."
"Good God!" ejaculated Mr. Wycherly in tones of the utmost
consternation.
Jane-Anne looked very surprised.
"There was a first footman at Dursley House. Oh, he was a beautiful
young man!" she exclaimed in reminiscent rapture; "so dignified."
Mr. Wycherly was quite shaken out of his usual smiling fatalism. Had he
been able at the moment to analyse his feelings he would have been
amazed at the violence of his objection to a first footman as a possible
husband for Jane-Anne. But just then he was only conscious of strong
resentment at the very idea.
It was one thing for her to wait upon him, but to think of his Greek
nymph in intimate relations with anybody's first footman was
inconceivable. He grew hot all over, and his chief desire at that
moment was to knock somebody down.
There she stood by the fireplace, slender and virginal and sweet, a
graceful, gracious figure in the straight blue linen dress Mrs. Methuen
had chosen for her, regarding him with large surprised brown eyes, and
calmly proposing to marry a footman.
"Do you not think it would be nice?" she asked.
"My dear," said Mr. Wycherly, recovering himself with difficulty and
striving ineffectually to speak with his usual calm detachment, "it is
an outrageous and impossible contingency, and I beg that you will
forthwith dismiss it from your mind at once and for ever."
"Sir, you are not eating your dinner," Jane-Anne remarked after a
moment's silence.
"How can I eat if you suggest such horrible things?" Mr. Wycherly
complained.
"But I'd like to marry somebody," Jane-Anne protested, "and I wouldn't
like an ugly person."
"Heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Wycherly. "Are footmen the only good-looking
men in the world?"
"They're the best-looking men in our walk in life, sir," Jane-Anne
rejoined primly, in exact imitation of her aunt.
"Come here, Jane-Anne," said Mr. Wycherly.
She went obediently and stood beside him.
"Have you ever thought," he said gravely, "that your walk in life may be
precisely what you choose to make it?"
"No, sir," she said frankly, "I've always supposed I should be a
servant--there doesn't seem anything else for me to be. You see, aunt
knows she could get me into a good family."
"I don't think you're strong enough for a servant," Mr. Wycherly
objected.
"Then," she said decidedly, "I think I'd better be a ward."
"A ward?" Mr. Wycherly repeated in puzzled tones.
"Your ward, like Master Edmund and Master Montagu. I'd like that, it
would be lovelly."
Mr. Wycherly laughed. "It seems to me," he said, "that I have already
adopted you."
"Then that's all right for just now, but afterwards, when I'm grown up,
what would you like me to be, sir?"
"We'll think about that later on. Just now I want you to be an entirely
happy little girl, to dance in the sunshine and get fat and merry----"
"I hope I shall never be fat," she interrupted. "I think it's hideous."
"Well, perhaps not fat--but plump and round and jolly--to learn all your
good aunt teaches you and to read for yourself----
"May I read the books in the book-case in the parlour?" she asked
eagerly. "I'll be so careful. I don't spoil books, I truly don't."
"Certainly you may; you will find many excellent books among them, and
when I come back--I'm going to London for a few days, to-morrow--you
shall tell me what you have read and we'll talk it over together."
The book-case in the dining-room was full of books that had belonged to
Miss Esperance, and Mr. Wycherly felt that he was perfectly safe in
giving Jane-Anne permission to read any of them. He had never even
troubled to see what they were. He knew there was a whole edition of
Sir Walter and most of the standard novels up to about the year 1870.
Many theological works, and the little gilt books--precious these--that
had come to Miss Esperance from her own mother.
"You won't be long away, I hope, sir?" Jane-Anne said wistfully. "It
will seem very lonely when you are gone."
"I shall not be a moment longer than I can help, and I shall expect to
hear all sorts of interesting news when I come back."
"Do you think I could ever learn to be a lady, sir--if I can't be a
servant?"
"I see no reason why you should not grow up a very charming lady."
"But ladies don't dust and wash dishes and do things like I do."
"As I do," Mr. Wycherly corrected almost mechanically. Then, as if he
had not spoken, he went on, "the best and most beautiful lady I ever
knew did all these things."
"Did she like doing them?"
"I don't think she ever thought much about what she liked or disliked.
She did what she had to do, and did it better and more gracefully than
anybody else."
She pondered over this. It seemed to her an impossible ideal. How
could anyone do a thing "more gracefully than anybody else" just because
it had to be done? Liking had everything to do with Jane-Anne's doings.
When she had cleared away, Mr. Wycherly sat long over his glass of port.
He did not read. He did not drink his wine, but sat on at the table
staring at nothing, and wondering about the future of this queer, lonely
child who had crept into his heart so quietly and imperceptibly that not
till she made that astounding announcement as to her matrimonial
ambitions did he realise how dear she had become.
He had released the starling; it was true.
The bird was very tame, and came at call to his hand; but the wings were
there, young and strong and untried.
When the time came for flight, whither would they bear her?
* * * * *
On Thursday Mr. Wycherly went to London. He was to remain over Sunday,
in order to hear an old friend preach at the Temple Church. On Friday
morning Jane-Anne hied her to the parlour to inspect the book-case.
It is true that all the books in the dining-room had belonged to Miss
Esperance, but Mr. Wycherly had reckoned without the Admiral. His books
were there too. These included the works of Henry Fielding and Tobias
Smollett, and there was on the top shelf a long row of little books,
"the dear and dumpy twelves" beloved by our ancestors.
The book-case was a tall one, and, with the natural perversity of
children, Jane-Anne attacked the top row first. Just because she could
not reach it, she desired ardently to look at the small dull-coloured
books on the top shelf. So she dragged up a chair, placed a work-box
upon that and then, mounted upon the two, she could read the titles on
the books, and pull the books out at her ease.
There were ten little books all alike, bound in dark green cloth with a
shield and a coronet in gold above the title on the backs, and a golden
crest on the front cover. Haphazard she pulled one out just to look at
it.
Evidently it had been much read at one time, for it opened of itself and
she saw that it was poetry and that certain of the verses were marked at
the side in pencil, just as she marked her favourite texts.
"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,
Where burning Sappho loved and sung."
Where had she heard those lines before?
Slowly and carefully she read on till she gave a little cry and nearly
fell off the work-box in her excitement.
"The mountains look on Marathon--
And Marathon looks on the sea--
And musing there an hour alone,
I dreamed that Greece might still be free."
The long quest was at an end.
The poem that her father had chanted as he used to carry her about, was
found.
She jumped off the work-box on to the floor, and sat down upon it,
leaning her back against the book-case.
The tears were wet on her cheeks as she read, and her breath came
quickly as though she had been running. She was deeply moved. She
repeated the lines softly, whispering them to herself, sometimes
mispronouncing the long words but ever vividly and intensely alive to
the music of the measure, to the nobility of the conception, to the
tragic dignity of its expression.
The dew of genius had fallen upon the thought, and the words bloomed
again in their fiery beauty for this small, unlettered girl, who, with
something of the spirit of old Greece, sat weeping over the wonder of
it.
Over and over again she read those sixteen verses, till she heard her
aunt calling her to come to dinner, and, carrying the precious work with
her, she darted upstairs to her bedroom, hid it in a drawer, and rushed
down again in a tumult of excitement that could find no outlet.
"You've got a cold, Jane-Anne," said Mrs. Dew as she carved the joint.
"Your nose is red an' you're sniffling."
Jane-Anne did not explain. The imputation must be borne.
"I don't think it's much, aunt," she said meekly. "Did you ever," she
added in her eager way, "hear of anybody called Lord Byron?"
"He never visited where I lived," Mrs. Dew answered; "but then there's
a-many lords as I never heerd on. Why do you want to know?"
"I only wondered. It would have been nice if you'd known about him. He
wrote poetry."
"Then I shouldn't think as he was much of a lord. The real old families
don't do such things. Perhaps he made his money in beer (there's a good
many such) and then took to writing poetry to amuse himself when he'd
retired. You may depend it was somethin' of the sort. Now you come to
mention it, I've a notion as your mother had some of his poetry books.
She'd seen the places as he wrote about--yet I don't hold much with
poetry myself, and the books was all sold--only a few pence they
fetched--after she died."
Jane-Anne felt chilled and disappointed. She disliked the smell of beer
exceedingly, and to connect it with the author of these soul-stirring
verses was impossible. She could find out, she was sure, all about Lord
Byron when Mr. Wycherly returned; but she was an impatient person--how
could she wait until then?
A bright thought struck her.
"Aunt, don't you think I ought to answer Master Montagu's letter?" she
asked diplomatically. "Will you give me a stamp and I'll do it this
afternoon."
"Mind you're respectful and proper--you'd better let me see the letter
before it goes. And if it's suitable, I'll give you a stamp."
"Very well, aunt," Jane-Anne sighed. It was very hard to write what
would seem suitable to those unsympathetic eyes--but she'd have a try
for the thing she wanted.
Ink was provided, one sheet of paper, an envelope, a pen, with a point
like a needle, and a single sheet of much-used blotting-paper.
Jane-Anne sat down at the table in the housekeeper's room and wrote in a
neat, round hand:
"DEAR MASTER MONTAGU,
"I send my duty and the master was quite well when he left yesterday.
"I wait upon him at meals and he doesn't read at all now; he talks to
me, and I think he eats pretty well considering. I also go out with
him, which is very beautiful. It is very sad here now he is gone. I
wonder if you are acquainted with a poetry book named 'Don-Juan,' or if
you think it squish like 'Home Influence.' I don't think it is like
'Home Influence,' but I love it, I shall read it all, it is in two vols.
The master said I was to read any books I liked in the parlour; there
are ten volumes by his Lordship there. I shall read them all. Can you
tell me if he is one of the real gentry like Lord Dursley. I would like
to see him.
"Yours respectfully,
"JANE-ANNE."
Mrs. Dew read the letter through and grunted that it was much too long,
but she gave Jane-Anne a stamp, which she immediately affixed. Then she
frolicked gleefully to the post and put her precious missive in the box.
*CHAPTER XIII*
*A FAR CRY*
"I have not loved the world, nor the world me--
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing; I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream."
_Childe Harold's Pilgrimage._
The boys always wrote to Mr. Wycherly on Sundays and as they knew he was
to be in London over the week-end, he duly received his weekly letters
on Monday morning at Morley's Hotel.
Edmund's was, as usual, brief and to the point. He hoped his guardian
was well; he announced the cheering intelligence that he himself was
well, and after a brief reference to his most recent scores at cricket,
concluded with the information: "It is expensive here at school; the
munny I came back with is all gone; it is very inconvenient. Could you
spair me a little more?"
Montagu talked of his work and of the Greek play they were reading, and
then he finished up with: "I had quite a decent letter from Jane-Anne.
Whatever made you start her on Byron? I haven't read 'Don Juan' myself,
but I suppose I must, as she has, then we can talk about it in the
holidays."
Mr. Wycherly read this portion of Montagu's letter three times, frowned
over it, pondered it; and finally, _apropos_ of nothing, found himself
repeating Miss Stukely's favourite quotation which had remained in his
mind with provoking persistency.
"You in your small corner, I in mine." He hadn't the vaguest notion
whence this flower of thought was culled, but it occurred to him at that
moment that Jane-Anne's small corner must have been considerably
enlarged during the last few days if she had read much of "Don Juan."
"It is quite time I returned to Holywell," Mr. Wycherly reflected.
"What possible wind of fate has blown 'Don Juan,' of all things, across
the child's path? And what in the world will she make of it?"
He went back to Holywell that afternoon, and Jane-Anne carried in his
tea in her best parlour-maid manner, only to relapse immediately into
herself, falling upon her knees by his chair and covering his hand with
kisses the moment she had set down the tray.
"My child, my child," exclaimed Mr. Wycherly, "it is very wonderful and
delightful of you to be so glad. But you must get up and sit beside me
and pour out tea, and tell me all the news, and what has been happening
since I went away, and what you have been doing with yourself?"
"A very great thing has happened," Jane-Anne said solemnly, holding the
teapot poised in mid-air. "I have found it."
Mr. Wycherly nearly said, "Found what?" but he stopped himself just in
time, and remembered "the mountains," and asked kindly:
"Well, and where is it?"
"In Marathon," said Jane-Anne gravely. "Do you know it?"
"Yes," Mr. Wycherly replied, "and it is a curious thing that I was
reminded of that very poem when I saw you dancing in the garden. I
wonder why I didn't connect it with your mountains?"
"I often dance. I dance when I'm happy, and I dance when I'm very full
of feelings, not exactly happy, but--big, tremendous feelings."
"Tell me, my child, what you think of 'Don Juan' as far as you have
read."
"Poor dear," cried Jane-Anne, "he was so unfortunate. No sooner did he
get comfortably settled with a nice, beautiful lady than some cross old
husband or father, or somebody, interfered. It was a shame."
"Perhaps," Mr. Wycherly suggested, "there may have been something to say
on their side, too, you know. Though it is a side less often treated by
the writers of romance."
"Haidee's father was horrid," she cried vehemently. "You must think so,
too, don't you?"
"Suppose," said Mr. Wycherly, "I went away for a long time, so long that
you came to the conclusion I was dead----"
"I should die, too," Jane-Anne interrupted.
"Oh, no, you wouldn't. Suppose, say, that some very charming and
delightful youth appeared who took up all your attention, and suddenly I
came back to find you giving a grand party in the garden."
"Aunt would never permit it for one minute," she cried, aghast.
"But we must eliminate aunt; Haidee, so far as we know, had no wise and
excellent aunt to look after her. Let me see. Oh, yes! Suppose I came
back and found this festivity going on, the agreeable youth acting as
host, and you, my dear, entirely absorbed in him, and the whole house
upside down. Would you expect me to feel very amiable?"
Jane-Anne gazed earnestly at Mr. Wycherly. The gentle, high-bred face
was quite grave, though persons better versed than Jane-Anne in
subtleties of expression might have noted a look of considerable
amusement in his handsome eyes.
"But Haidee's father wasn't a bit like you," she objected. "He was a
cruel pirate."
"Even pirates have their parental feelings," he pleaded.
Jane-Anne looked much perturbed.
"It sounds horrid said like that," she murmured sadly; "but it's
beautiful in the poetry book."
"How much have you read?" asked Mr. Wycherly.
"Only to where poor, pretty Haidee dies. I don't read very fast, you
know--not like you, sir, and Master Montagu; and when I like a bit I
read it over and over again."
"And what do you like best in the book so far as you have gone?"
"Oh, my father's poem, far, far the best. I can say it nearly all by
heart. But one reason I've been so slow is, I wanted dreadfully to know
about Lord Byron, and in the bottom shelf, where 'Sir Stafford Raffles'
is, I found a book all about him, a fat crimson book, and I've been
reading that."
"Really," Mr. Wycherly remarked, "you've lost no time. Well, and what
do you make of that?"
"It's rather difficult, sir, so many letters; but he seems to have been
very unlucky, too, like Don Juan. A _most_ unkind mother; fancy, she
threw the fireirons at him, and her one of the gentry--and his wife
didn't seem very nice either--and then I looked at the end----"
"Well?" said Mr. Wycherly, for Jane-Anne paused suddenly.
"And I found he's dead, and he died to help Greece; and I'm so sorry."
"Sorry he died to help Greece?"
"No, for that's why my daddie loved him, I'm sure of that; but because
he's dead. _I_ should have loved him dearly."
"A great many people did that," said Mr. Wycherly.
"I shall read all his poetry books, and learn all the bits I like; and
then--perhaps--do you think that, up in heaven, he could ever know how
much I cared?"
Mr. Wycherly looked into the eager, wistful face, and wondered, too.
"Listen to me, my child," he said. "I think that if Lord Byron does
know, he is very pleased and touched; but I also think that he would be
the very first person to suggest that you should wait a little before
you read all his poetry. If you will allow me, I will select the
volumes I think he would prefer you to begin on. 'Don Juan,' for
instance, I should leave alone for the present; directly you know by
heart and can write out, in your most beautiful writing, the whole of
your favourite poem from the third canto----"
"I can do that now," she cried eagerly. "Would it please Lord Byron, do
you think, sir?"
"I am certain of it."
"And you'll tell me what you think he'd like me to read. I should so
love to do something for him; poor dear, so sad and lonely often. Did
you ever know him, sir?"
Mr. Wycherly shook his head. "He died a good many years before I was
born."
"So long ago!" Jane-Anne's voice was solemn and awestruck, for Mr.
Wycherly seemed to her incalculably old and wise.
"One thing, sir," she continued in quite a different tone, "I have quite
altered. I shan't marry a first footman--I shall marry a poet. I shall
hunt about till I find someone like Lord Byron--if he's a lord so much
the better. I'd like that; but if he isn't--if he can say very
beautiful things, I shall love him just the same. Shall you like that
better, sir?"
Mr. Wycherly sighed. "I'm afraid, my dear, that I'm a selfish old
curmudgeon, who would like to keep you in his heart-pocket always. I
shan't like any of them."
"Then I shall stay in your pocket," said Jane-Anne.
It was time to clear away, and she took the tea-things back to the
kitchen.
Mr. Wycherly went into the parlour, a room he rarely entered except when
the boys were at home. He set his glasses firmly on his nose and
inspected the contents of the book-case.
Just before he went away, Jane-Anne had pressed her favourite "Bruey"
upon him, and he had read it. Now he took down the second volume of
"Don Juan"--the first was missing--from the top shelf, and turned the
leaves, shaking his head:
"It's a far cry from Bruey to Byron," thought Mr. Wycherly. "I wonder
if I have done the right thing? On one point I am quite convinced, for
the ultimate safety of that child, we must set about developing her
sense of humour at once."
Jane-Anne was so excited over her find, that she wrote to Miss Stukely
to tell her about it. This time she begged a sheet of paper and an
envelope from Mr. Wycherly, and he gave her a packet of each, the
envelopes ready stamped being the kind he always used. She was highly
elated, carried the ink to her bedroom without consulting her aunt, and
sat down at her washstand to indite the following letter:
"DEAR TEACHER,
"I hope you are well. I am well and most happy. I live with my aunt,
and I have a carpet in my bedroom--not oilcloth; and it is a beautiful
big room. The master here is like an angel--he is so kind and good.
There are a most enormous lot of books in this house. I hope to read
them all before I am grown up. I am learning the Greek alphabet. The
master is teaching me. Do you know of a poet called Lord Byron? I am
reading all his poetry books. I am sure you would love them. I found a
poem my father used to say to me when I was a little girl. I was so
glad. Lord Byron wrote it, too. He is in heaven, so I can't see him.
With love and duty, from your affectionate friend,
"JANE-ANNE."
By return of post came a letter from Miss Stukely.
"MY DEAR JANE-ANNE,
"I was glad to hear from you that your health is better. But, dear
childie, there was much in your letter to disquiet me. I do beg of you
to read no more poetry that is not known to be of sound evangelical
teaching. I should like you to promise me that you will not read any
poetry except what is by Frances Ridley Havergal, Eliza Cook, or Mrs.
Hemans. The works of those three saintly women can only do you good,
and there is only too great reason to fear that poetry as a rule leads
one's thoughts away from higher things. So promise me this, my dear
girlie, that my mind may be at rest about you. As to this Lord Byron
you mention, I have never read any poem of his and I never shall, for I
understand that he was a man of very evil life, and an unbeliever, and
that it is quite unlikely he is in heaven, as you seem to suppose. I
hope you will dismiss him and all his works from your mind. I cannot
see any use in your learning the Greek alphabet. The Ancient Greeks
were wicked heathens, and it can do no one any good to know about them.
I hope you read 'The Upward Path' regularly. I shall always be glad to
hear from you, and I shall never fail to remember you in my prayers.
Like our dear Bruey, I keep my daily little list and I hope you do the
same.
"Let me have your promise, dear girlie, and I shall feel more happy
about you--although we are parted in body we can still commune in
spirit, and I shall be most happy to supervise your reading, and to send
you little suitable books from time to time. I have a sweet class at
the Bainbridge, and our weekly meetings are very helpful. Always your
friend and well-wisher,
"BLANCHE STUKELY."
Jane-Anne found this letter somewhat difficult to decipher, as Miss
Stukely wrote a sloping, pointed hand, much more trying to read than
that of Montagu or his guardian.
So, in defiance of all her aunt's rules, she invaded Mr. Wycherly in his
study directly after breakfast, and asked him to read it aloud for her.
He did so, and when he had finished she cast herself upon the ground
despairingly, and burst into violent sobs.
This tragic reception of what, to him, seemed a singularly
ill-considered and narrow-minded letter, fairly flabbergasted Mr.
Wycherly, and for a minute or two he sat at his table in perfect
silence, holding Miss Stukely's missive in his hand, irritably aware
that it was written on scented note-paper, and that he abominated the
odour. He looked down at the lithe, slender figure prone upon the floor
in absolute abandonment of grief, and at last he asked:
"Why do you cry, Jane-Anne?"
Jane-Anne rolled over, sat up, and gasped out between her sobs:
"Because she says he isn't in heaven, and if he isn't in heaven then he
must be in hell for ever and ever, and I can never, never feel happy any
more."
"Get up, child, and sit upon a chair," Mr. Wycherly said sternly. He
had an old-fashioned objection to scenes, and an indefinable feeling
that to lie on the floor was neither decorous nor dignified, even for a
little girl of twelve. Neither physical nor mental _deshabille_ appealed
to him. "Now tell me, why should you take it for granted that Lord
Byron--is not in heaven?"
A ray of light pierced the gloom of her outlook, and she stopped crying
to ask eagerly: "Is Miss Stukely wrong, then; was he a good man after
all?"
"Even supposing he were not what is popularly considered a good man.
Even so, what right has this Miss Stukely, or anybody else, to conclude
that Lord Byron----"
"Is in hell." Jane-Anne glibly finished the sentence.
"Exactly," said Mr. Wycherly. "What right has she, I say, to assume
anything of the kind?"
"But the wicked do go there."
"What about the thief on the cross?" asked Mr. Wycherly.
"But he repented," she answered promptly.
"And how do you, or Miss Stukely, or I, or anyone know that Lord Byron
was unrepentant?"
"Then you think it is all right?" she asked anxiously.
"I am sure it is all right," Mr. Wycherly replied confidently.
"Could you lend me your handkerchief, sir?" Jane-Anne asked. "I seem to
have lost mine."
Refreshed by the borrowed handkerchief, and much comforted in soul, she
turned to another part of the letter, asking:
"Do those ladies she speaks of write beautiful poetry, like my mountains
piece?"
"I am not well versed in the writings of the ladies Miss Stukely
mentions," Mr. Wycherly said cautiously, "but I fancy I am safe in
saying that their work does not display the highest poetical genius,
although it is doubtless very pleasing to their admirers."
"Would you promise, if you was me?"
"Certainly not," he answered vigorously. "Nothing would induce me to
promise anything so absurd."
"Absurd?" Jane-Anne's voice was astonished; it was not an adjective
which she would have applied to anything so serious.
"Most ridiculous," Mr. Wycherly repeated.
"She will be sorry, and she was very kind to me."
"Never forget her kindness, repay it if ever you get the chance; but
never promise anybody anything without fully understanding what you
undertake."
"Not even you, sir?"
"Certainly not me, of all people--but I hope I should never ask you to
make impossible promises."
"Then I may go on loving Lord Byron?"
"It seems to me that you ought to love him more if you think that he was
sinful and unfortunate, and unhappy. It's a poor sort of love that only
cares for the good, the fortunate, the successful."
"Christ was fond of unfortunate people," Jane-Anne said softly. Not
altogether in vain had she read her New Testament.
"Ah," said Mr. Wycherly, "that is a phase of His character certain of
His followers are apt to forget."
"I shall tell Miss Stukely that," Jane-Anne remarked perkily.
"You most certainly will do nothing of the kind. You must not preach at
people--it's--it's so ill-bred."
Poor Jane-Anne looked very puzzled.
"It's a very funny thing," she said thoughtfully. "Nothing could be
differenter than aunt and a real gentleman like you, and yet, sometimes,
you both say the same sort of thing. Only, you call it ill-bred, and
she'd call it the heighth of impidence."
"You may take it that we both mean the same thing," said Mr. Wycherly;
and his kind eyes twinkled.
"Well, I don't understand, and I know aunt'll be raging because I'm not
there to help to make the beds, but I'm happier. Here's your
handkerchief, sir, and many thanks."
And Jane-Anne thrust a damp and sticky ball into Mr. Wycherly's hand,
quite unconscious of offence.
When the door shut behind her, he dropped the handkerchief into his
waste-paper basket, and he laughed. It was so like Montagu or Edmund.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*AN EXPERIMENT*
"Canst play the fiddle?" asked the stranger.
"I don't know," quoth the Irishman, "but I'll try if you'll
lend me the instrument." _Old Legend_.
Mrs. Methuen was having tea with Mr. Wycherly under the apple-tree at
the side of the lawn. She came very often to see him for the simple
reason that she found it so exceedingly difficult to persuade him to
come and see her. He always protested that he had lived out of the
world too long to go a-visiting now, that he did not know how to behave
in society, that he was a fusty old anchorite whom no one could really
want.
Now, Mrs. Methuen really did want him, so she came to see him instead,
to their great mutual satisfaction, and as it was a fine summer and she
generally came at teatime, Mrs. Dew would set it for them under the
apple-tree on the lawn, and Jane-Anne was allowed to carry out the cakes
and bread-and-butter.
On this particular afternoon they had discussed Jane-Anne's future, for
Mrs. Methuen was full of a new plan, and when she had a new plan she was
wont to be most enthusiastic.
"You see," she was saying, "it would be so much more original than being
a governess; they don't do any heavy work, and the uniform is so
charming, she'd look sweet in it."
"But do you think," Mr. Wycherly asked dubiously, "that Jane-Anne has
any special gift for looking after little children? She has had no
experience; why should she be particularly fitted for that?"
"She would be trained," cried Mrs. Methuen eagerly; "it is a splendid
training, and the girls are so sought after--Norland Nurses are never
out of a place----"
"Is your nurse a Norland Nurse?" asked Mr. Wycherly, trying to remember
if he had seen Mrs. Methuen's nurse in any very enchanting uniform, but
only succeeding in a faint remembrance of a stout, comfortable person
who certainly did look "used to babies."
"Well, no," Mrs. Methuen answered, a trifle shamefaced. "You see,
mother thought I was young and inexperienced and we had all known Nannie
such years, and--she's Nannie you see, and no one else was possible."
"Of course, of course," Mr. Wycherly agreed hastily. "I'm sure it is
most good of you to interest yourself so warmly in Jane-Anne, and such a
career might prove most suitable--but would it not be well to see--could
we not bring her into contact with some little child and see how they
get on?"
"I have it," cried Mrs. Methuen; "she shall go and mind Mrs. Cox's baby
on the days the nursery is turned out; it would be a great help to her.
They're not well off, you know, and she has only one servant besides the
nurse, and it will give Jane-Anne a taste for babies: her baby's a
perfect darling. It's a beautiful idea--so helpful to poor Mrs. Cox and
so good for Jane-Anne, and she lives so close, too, only a few doors
down the street. I'll go and propose it to her now and come back and
tell you what she says."
No sooner said than done. Mrs. Methuen found Mrs. Cox at home, unfolded
her scheme to her, laying stress on the benefit it would be to Jane-Anne
and on Jane-Anne's exceptional fitness for the task. She also pointed
out the unusual advantages the baby would enjoy in having so refined and
charming an unpaid under-nurse (Mrs. Methuen was fond of Jane-Anne) and
hinted at all sorts of possibilities when she should be older and more
experienced.
Mrs. Cox, wife of a young doctor as yet not very abundantly blessed with
patients, embraced the idea with effusion, and Mrs. Methuen flew back to
Mr. Wycherly to tell him she had arranged it and that Jane-Anne might
make her debut as an embryo Norland Nurse on Tuesday, that day being
Friday.
"She mustn't attempt to carry a heavy baby," Mr. Wycherly exclaimed
anxiously, knitting his brows distressedly.
"Of course not," Mrs. Methuen said decidedly. "She'd wheel the darling
up and down Holywell in her pram, or perhaps in South Parks Road, it's
so nice and quiet."
"I hope it's not a heavy perambulator," Mr. Wycherly murmured.
"Now don't you worry. No one would dream of setting Jane-Anne to do
anything hard or heavy. You wouldn't, I suppose, object to her sitting
with the baby on her knee, would you? She's quite a little baby, only
six months old and very small."
"No," Mr. Wycherly said doubtfully, "if you think it's quite safe for
the baby."
"My dear Mr. Wycherly, Jane-Anne is nearly thirteen."
"I know," he answered humbly, "that I must appear foolishly nervous to
you--but a tiny baby always seems to me so brittle, and Jane-Anne
herself is--so fragile--she might drop it."
"Don't you worry," Mrs. Methuen repeated consolingly. "Mrs. Cox will
take every care of Jane-Anne, and Jane-Anne will take every care of the
baby. Besides, it's only once a week, on nursery cleaning day."
Then Mrs. Methuen went to see Mrs. Dew in the kitchen and unfolded the
scheme to her.
Mrs. Dew, of cautious Cotswold habit, viewed the plan with marked
distrust, but she was too well-trained a servant to do other than seem
to acquiesce gratefully in Mrs. Methuen's kind efforts to benefit her
niece. So it was settled that Jane Anne should go to Mrs. Cox on
Tuesday morning at ten for a couple of hours, as Mrs. Methuen had
arranged. The one person who was not consulted was Jane-Anne herself.
Term was over. The men had all gone down, and next day the Methuen
household was off to the seaside.
Mrs. Methuen's visit to Mr. Wycherly had been to bid him farewell for a
space; and in arranging this for Jane-Anne she felt she had been really
helpful.
Mr. Wycherly had consulted Mrs. Methuen on many matters connected with
the child. For one thing he had begged her to assist him in developing
her sense of humour. Whereupon she sent Jane-Anne both the "Alices,"
and suggested she should be allowed to see _Punch_ every week. She also
gave her "German Popular Stories" and "A Flat Iron for a Farthing."
These works were all of absorbing interest and somewhat interrupted
Jane-Anne's study of Lord Byron, as had been intended.
_Punch_ she took to her heart at once; not on account of the Immortal
Jester's humour, but because of the beautiful ladies depicted by Mr. Du
Maurier. These she whole-heartedly admired and set herself to imitate.
All the same, Jane-Anne was getting on. She laughed very often now,
sometimes from sheer joy at being in a world where there were people so
kind and delightful as Mrs. Methuen and Mr. Wycherly; sometimes because
things really did seem funny. She began to realise, too, that it was
possible to jest; that Mr. Wycherly often said things that he did not
mean; and that it was conceivable that you might love a person with all
your heart and soul and yet be perfectly cognisant of their little
weaknesses and oddities. Mr. and Mrs. Methuen taught her this, quite
unconsciously, while she waited upon them when they lunched with Mr.
Wycherly.
Jane-Anne was a quick study.
That night as she waited upon "the master" at dinner, he unfolded to her
Mrs. Methuen's plan, and Jane-Anne at once burst into floods of tears,
declaring hotly that she'd rather be his parlour-maid than anybody's
nurse, "not if it was a prince." That she didn't want to wait upon a
horrid little baby when there was her own dear master to wait upon, and
she'd promised Master Montagu!
Very gently, Mr. Wycherly explained the arrangement, and when she heard
of the uniform the training lost some of its horror.
"I shan't have to go for years and years, shall I?" she asked.
"Certainly not for many years; never at all if you don't like it."
"And I'm to practise on Mrs. Cox's baby?"
"You are to take care--the greatest care--of Mrs. Cox's baby for a short
time once a week."
"Do you want me to?"
Candidly, Mr. Wycherly wanted nothing less. He detested schemes for the
ultimate employment of Jane-Anne. To him, everything suggested seemed
incongruous and infeasible, but he mistrusted his own judgment in
practical matters and bowed before the youthful wisdom and general
competence of Mrs. Methuen.
"I think," he said guardedly, "that every woman ought to know how to
manage a baby."
"I wonder," she said dreamily, "if Lord Byron would approve of it?"
"As we have no means of finding out, let's take it that he will," he
answered drily.
"I don't like the name Norland," she objected.
"It will be years before you are even ready to apply for admission to
the Norland Institute," said Mr. Wycherly.
"If it's an institution, I'm not going," she said firmly.
"What you have got to do is to see how well you can look after Mrs.
Cox's baby."
"I'll do my best, I really will," said Jane-Anne, "and it'll be rather
fun to wheel it about, and I shall look very proud and stand-off like
Mrs. Methuen's Nannie. I expect people will admire me very much and
wonder whose nurse I am."
"That is possible," Mr. Wycherly politely acquiesced.
"Shall I have to make the beds that morning, sir?"
"That, my dear child, is your good aunt's province, not mine."
"Master, dear--whenever you speak of aunt to me, you say she's good, or
worthy, or excellent, or sensible--do you say those nice things about me
when I'm not there? Do you say 'my excellent Jane-Anne' when you talk
about me to Mrs. Methuen? I hope you do--or 'that most sensible
girl'--do you?"
"How do you know I ever talk about you at all to Mrs. Methuen?"
Jane-Anne looked rather foolish for a moment, then brightened as she
remarked: "But you must to know all about Mrs. Cox's baby and Norland
Nurses, and that. I'm sorry, though, that the young gentlemen have all
gone down; I'd like them to have seen me wheeling the pram."
"My dear child," exclaimed Mr. Wycherly with real consternation in his
voice. "You surely don't suppose that a well-bred undergraduate would
be aware of the existence of a little girl wheeling a perambulator."
"They're aware of _my_ existence, anyway, master, dear. I heard one say
one day: 'Look what hair that flapper's got.'"
"A most impertinent and ill-bred young man. I hope you felt very
angry."
"Angry?" she repeated in a surprised voice. "Oh, no; I was pleased he
should admire my hair. It is very long, you know."
Mr. Wycherly groaned, but he said nothing more, only registering a
mental vow to the effect that nothing would induce him to allow
Jane-Anne to wheel anybody's perambulator once the men came up again.
"But she'll be safely at school then," he reflected, "and there will be
an end of these ridiculous schemes."
Mrs. Dew discussed the question with her niece during their supper in
the housekeeper's room.
"I don't fancy the notion much, myself," she said. "A nurse as is worth
having for a nurse is born so, and I don't see as any institution will
either make or mar her. Bein' a fine lady with someone else to do your
nurseries'd suit you well enough, I've no doubt, but whether you'd ever
learn to do _your_ part is more than mortal can say."
"Aunt, what do you do with a baby if it cries?"
"Turn it face downwards on your knee an' pat it gentle--ten to one it's
got wind, poor little soul, and that'll break it up. Many's the time
I've held you that way an' you starin' at the carpet with those great
eyes of yours as good as gold. But you won't have much nursing to
do--it's wheelin' that you'll be doin', an' mind as you don't let the
wheel go over the kerb. Whatever it is you're doin', Jane-Anne, for
mercy's sake think about that thing, and don't go dreamin' of poetry
books and such foolhardy nonsense."
Tuesday came and it poured with rain.
Jane-Anne duly made her timid appearance at Mrs. Cox's and was shown
into Mrs. Cox's study, where the baby sat propped up in her pram while
her mother pushed her back and forth to amuse her. Mrs. Cox stayed for
a little, then the baby showed signs of wanting to go to sleep, so she
was laid down and Jane-Anne was instructed to continue the gentle to and
fro movement till she "went off," and Mrs. Cox departed to see to some
household matters elsewhere, leaving the door open.
The Cox baby was fair and plump and pretty, and appeared an entirely
exemplary infant, for in five minutes she was fast asleep.
Jane-Anne stopped pushing the perambulator to and fro, and sat down to
look round. There was a book-case at one side of the fireplace and its
two lowest shelves were full of bound volumes of _Mr. Punch_. In a
moment, her quick eyes had taken in this pleasing fact and she had one
of the big flat books open on her knee. She looked at the pictures and
read the legends beneath them with great content for a little while,
always, however, with one eye on the perambulator and ears alert to
catch the faintest movement from its occupant.
Presently there was a little stir and the indescribable soft sound a
baby makes when it is just waking up. From the room above came sundry
bumps and scrapings that proclaimed the cleaning to be in full swing.
She darted to the perambulator and looked in; the baby, rosy and warm
and adorable looked up at her and smiled. It was too much for
Jane-Anne. She forgot Mrs. Cox's instructions that she was on no account
to lift the baby out when it woke, but to call her. She seized the
small delicious bundle that stretched and cuddled against her and sat
down on the low seat close by the book-case.
Baby began to whimper.
Jane-Anne repeated "See-Saw, Margery Daw," but the baby evidently was
impervious to the charms of poetry, and the whimper grew a little more
decided.
Then there flashed into Jane-Anne's perturbed mind her aunt's
instructions: "Turn it face downwards on your knee and pat it gentle."
No sooner thought of than done, and it was, apparently, quite
successful.
Jane-Anne had just got to a very interesting part of _Punch_, and she
longed to return to it. As the baby was evidently quiet and happy, she
felt she might go back to her study of the Great Jester--nurses always
were reading--even while they wheeled their prams--so it was all right.
She kept one hand on the baby's back to steady it and tried to hold up
the volume of _Punch_ with the other, but _Punch_ was heavy and she was
not very successful.
Presently a brilliant thought struck her: If _Punch_ was open on the top
of the baby, it would fulfil a double purpose, keep the baby from
rolling off her knee, and amuse her, Jane-Anne.
It really was a very fascinating _Punch_.
For a moment Miss Cox was perfectly quiet. The heavy weight across her
back petrified her with astonishment. She tried to lift her head to see
what it all meant, but some hard substance caught her just in the nape
of the neck and prevented her doing anything of the kind.
Such an indignity was not to be borne for an instant.
Miss Cox filled her lungs as well as she could, considering how
compressed she was, and gave vent to a good hearty roar of rage and
grief that such impertinent persons should be left loose in a naughty
world.
Jane-Anne absently patted the pages of _Mr. Punch_ and read on
absorbedly.
There was a pause in the cleansing operations overhead. A door was
opened hastily and quick steps descended from above. At the same
instant, another door was opened just across the hall, and Mrs. Cox and
the nurse met at the open study door to behold the cause of the uproar.
Jane-Anne was never very clear as to what happened during the next three
minutes. All she knew was that _Mr. Punch_ fell violently on the floor
to the ultimate detriment of his back--the baby was seized from her and
two people hurled indignant reproaches at her while the baby, once more
in a position to inflate properly, filled the air with angry wails.
Of course Jane-Anne wept too. She made no excuses, for there were none
to be made, and this rather disarmed Mrs. Cox, who was kindly and
gentle, and finding that only the baby's feelings were hurt, recovered
her sense of humour, laughed, and bade Jane-Anne go back to her aunt as
she was evidently not fitted yet for an under-nurse.
Nurse, with the baby clasped safely in her arms, had already stalked
upstairs in high dudgeon.
Soon after eleven o'clock, a meek, draggled, tear-stained Jane-Anne
crept in at the side-door in Holywell. Mrs. Dew was in the front of the
house "turning out" the dining-room, as her niece had observed as she
passed the windows.
Upstairs she flew and reached Mr. Wycherly's study door undetected. She
looked particularly forlorn and miserable, for she wore her aunt's
macintosh, a voluminous purple garment much too large for her. She had
left her umbrella at the Cox's in the shame of her hasty exit, and the
heavy rain had beaten upon her face, mingling with her tears. Very
timidly she knocked.
Mr. Wycherly had quick ears, and he knew that knock.
"Come in, my child; they didn't need you long," he said, always with the
same kind welcome in his voice.
Jane-Anne shut the door softly and rushed across the room to throw
herself on her knees at his side.
"I'm sent away," she cried tragically; "dismissed, disgraced; I don't
know what aunt will say."
"What in the world has occurred?" Mr. Wycherly said quietly. "Take off
that wet macintosh; look what a pool it's making. Get up, you poor,
silly child; there, that's better--now come and sit on my knee and tell
me exactly what happened."
Jane-Anne flung herself upon Mr. Wycherly, buried her wet face in his
neck and sobbed out: