SPRING came, and June who had had to fight for life and then
for reason, won slowly to a final sense of victory. This came to her on
a delicious April day, when the earth waking from its long sleep, was
renewed with the joy of procreation. Her own nature, which had passed
through so many months of darkness, was quickened to response in this
magic hour.
The force of the emotion owed much, no doubt, to the spirit of
environment. Life had begun again for June under conditions different
from any she had known. Powerful friends had been gained for her by
a singularly romantic story. Of certain things that had happened she
could not bring herself to tell; but when as much of the truth came out
as could be derived from facts precariously pieced together, she became
a real heroine in the sight of Sir Arthur Babraham and his daughter.
But for her courage and keen wit a great work of art might have passed
out of the country without anyone being the wiser. These staunch
friends were determined that justice should be done in the matter, and
kindly folk that they were, did not spare themselves in the long and
difficult task of restoring her to health.
The middle of April saw her installed in the gardener’s cottage at
Homefield in the care of a motherly and genial housewife. Here she
almost dared to be happy. The phantoms of the long night were being
dispersed at last in an atmosphere of sunny and cordial well-being.
Miss Babraham, who walked across the park from the house every morning
to see her, had become a sort of fairy godmother whose mission was to
see that she did not worry about anything. She must give her days and
nights to the duty of getting well. And she was going to be rich.
Riches, alas, for June, had the fairy godmother but known, were the fly
in the ointment. They could only arise from one source, and around it
must always hover the black storm clouds. She had no real right to the
money which was coming to her, and although she had no means apart from
it, she felt that she must never accept a single penny. It was morbidly
unpractical perhaps, but there the feeling was.
When June had been at Homefield about a week, Miss Babraham found her
one morning in the sunny embrasure of the pleasant little sitting
room improving her mind by a happy return to her favourite “Mill on
the Floss.” In passing out of its mental eclipse, the angle of June’s
vision had shifted a little; her approach to new phases of experience
was rather more sympathetic than it had been. Before “that” had
happened, she had been inclined, as became a self-respecting member of
the Democracy which is apt to deride what it does not comprehend, to
be a little contemptuous of “Miss Blue Blood,” a creature born to more
than a fair share of life’s good things. But now that she knew more
about this happy-natured girl, she felt a tolerance of which, at first,
she was just a little ashamed. Envy was giving place to something else.
Her graces and her air of fine breeding, which June’s own caste was
inclined to resent, were not the obvious fruits of expensive clothes;
in fact, they owed far less than June had supposed to the length of the
purse behind them.
The kindness, the charm, the sympathy were more than skin deep. In
the first place, no doubt their possessor had been born under a lucky
star; much of her quality was rooted inevitably in the fact that she
was her father’s daughter yet the invalid could not gainsay that “Miss
Blue Blood” had manners of the heart. Now that June saw her in her own
setting among her own people this golden truth shone clear. And in the
many talks June had with her good hostess, Mrs. Chrystal, the wife of
Sir Arthur’s head gardener, one radiant fact rose bright and free:
there was none like Miss Babraham. Her peer was not to be found on the
wide earth.
No doubt there were spots on this sun as there are spots on other
suns, but June agreed that as far as Miss Babraham was concerned these
blemishes were hidden from mortal eye. And each day gave cogency to
such a view. This morning, for example, the distinguished visitor was
brimming with kindliness. She talked simply and sincerely, without
patronage or frills upon the subjects in which June was now interested.
She had read _all_ George Eliot and gave as the sum of her
experience that the “Mill on the Floss” was the story she liked best,
although her father preferred “Adam Bede” or “Silas Marner.”
“Before my illness,” said June, “I was getting to think that all novels
were silly and a waste of time. But I see now that you can learn a lot
about life from a good one.”
She was in a very serious mood. Like most people who have not the
gift of “taking things in their stride” new orientations were a heavy
business. At school, as a little girl, she had shed many tears over her
arithmetic. The process of mind improvement was not to be undertaken
lightly. She could never be a Miss Babraham, but her ambition, in the
words of her favourite song, was to be as like her as she was able to
be.
Like true poets, however, Miss Babrahams were born. Such graces came
from an inner harmony of nature. All the best fairies must have
flocked to her christening. One minor gift she had which June allowed
herself to covet, since it might fall within the scope of common
mortals; it was the way in which her maid arranged her hair. June’s
own famous mane, which indirectly had brought such suffering upon her,
had mercifully been spared; it had not even been “bobbed,” and with
careful tendence might again achieve its old magnificence. As shyly
she confessed this ambition, which sprang less from vanity than simple
pride in her one “asset,” Miss Babraham assured her that nothing could
be nicer than her own way of doing it.
From hair and the art of treating it they passed to other intimate
topics; frocks and the hang of them; the knack of putting things on, in
which Miss Babraham’s gift of style filled June with envy since that,
alas, she would never be able to copy; and above all, her friend’s
wonderful faculty of looking her best on all occasions.
As the good fairy, after a stay of a full hour, rose to go, she said,
“If to-morrow morning is as fine as this morning, do you think you
could come over to us? You know the way. It’s an easy walk of less
than half a mile.”
June was sure she could.
“Please do, if you won’t find it trying. Come about eleven. And I
hope,” said the good fairy, casting back her charming smile as she was
about to pass out of the sitting-room door, “there may be a pleasant
little surprise for you.”
During the last few weeks June had known in abundance the agreeably
unexpected. And though at intervals during the rest of the fair spring
day, her mind toyed with this new “surprise,” she was not able to guess
what it was going to be.