One day the minister’s wife rushed in where Spencervale people had
feared to tread, went boldly to Old Lady Lloyd, and asked her if she
wouldn’t come to their Sewing Circle, which met fortnightly on Saturday
afternoons.
“We are filling a box to send to our Trinidad missionary,” said the
minister’s wife, “and we should be so pleased to have you come, Miss
Lloyd.”
The Old Lady was on the point of refusing rather haughtily. Not that she
was opposed to missions--or sewing circles either--quite the contrary,
but she knew that each member of the Circle was expected to pay ten
cents a week for the purpose of procuring sewing materials; and the
poor Old Lady really did not see how she could afford it. But a sudden
thought checked her refusal before it reached her lips.
“I suppose some of the young girls go to the Circle?” she said craftily.
“Oh, they all go,” said the minister’s wife. “Janet Moore and Miss Gray
are our most enthusiastic members. It is very lovely of Miss Gray to
give her Saturday afternoons--the only ones she has free from pupils--to
our work. But she really has the sweetest disposition.”
“I’ll join your Circle,” said the Old Lady promptly. She was determined
she would do it, if she had to live on two meals a day to save the
necessary fee.
She went to the Sewing Circle at James Martin’s the next Saturday, and
did the most beautiful hand sewing for them. She was so expert at
it that she didn’t need to think about it at all, which was rather
fortunate, for all her thoughts were taken up with Sylvia, who sat in
the opposite corner with Janet Moore, her graceful hands busy with a
little boy’s coarse gingham shirt. Nobody thought of introducing Sylvia
to Old Lady Lloyd, and the Old Lady was glad of it. She sewed finely
away, and listened with all her ears to the girlish chatter which went
on in the opposite corner. One thing she found out--Sylvia’s birthday
was the twentieth of August. And the Old Lady was straightway fired with
a consuming wish to give Sylvia a birthday present. She lay awake
most of the night wondering if she could do it, and most sorrowfully
concluded that it was utterly out of the question, no matter how she
might pinch and contrive. Old Lady Lloyd worried quite absurdly over
this, and it haunted her like a spectre until the next Sewing Circle
day.
It met at Mrs. Moore’s and Mrs. Moore was especially gracious to Old
Lady Lloyd, and insisted on her taking the wicker rocker in the parlour.
The Old Lady would rather have been in the sitting-room with the young
girls, but she submitted for courtesy’s sake--and she had her reward.
Her chair was just behind the parlour door, and presently Janet Moore
and Sylvia Gray came and sat on the stairs in the hall outside, where a
cool breeze blew in through the maples before the front door.
They were talking of their favourite poets. Janet, it appeared, adored
Byron and Scott. Sylvia leaned to Tennyson and Browning.
“Do you know,” said Sylvia softly, “my father was a poet? He published
a little volume of verse once; and, Janet, I’ve never seen a copy of
it, and oh, how I would love to! It was published when he was at
college--just a small, private edition to give his friends. He never
published any more--poor father! I think life disappointed him. But I
have such a longing to see that little book of his verse. I haven’t
a scrap of his writings. If I had it would seem as if I possessed
something of him--of his heart, his soul, his inner life. He would be
something more than a mere name to me.”
“Didn’t he have a copy of his own--didn’t your mother have one?” asked
Janet.
“Mother hadn’t. She died when I was born, you know, but Aunty says there
was no copy of father’s poems among mother’s books. Mother didn’t care
for poetry, Aunty says--Aunty doesn’t either. Father went to Europe
after mother died, and he died there the next year. Nothing that he had
with him was ever sent home to us. He had sold most of his books before
he went, but he gave a few of his favourite ones to Aunty to keep for
me. HIS book wasn’t among them. I don’t suppose I shall ever find a
copy, but I should be so delighted if I only could.”
When the Old Lady got home she took from her top bureau drawer an inlaid
box of sandalwood. It held a little, slim, limp volume, wrapped in
tissue paper--the Old Lady’s most treasured possession. On the fly-leaf
was written, “To Margaret, with the author’s love.”
The Old Lady turned the yellow leaves with trembling fingers and,
through eyes brimming with tears, read the verses, although she had
known them all by heart for years. She meant to give the book to Sylvia
for a birthday present--one of the most precious gifts ever given, if
the value of gifts is gauged by the measure of self-sacrifice involved.
In that little book was immortal love--old laughter--old tears--old
beauty which had bloomed like a rose years ago, holding still its
sweetness like old rose leaves. She removed the telltale fly-leaf; and
late on the night before Sylvia’s birthday, the Old Lady crept, under
cover of the darkness, through byways and across fields, as if bent on
some nefarious expedition, to the little Spencervale store where the
post-office was kept. She slipped the thin parcel through the slit in
the door, and then stole home again, feeling a strange sense of loss
and loneliness. It was as if she had given away the last link between
herself and her youth. But she did not regret it. It would give Sylvia
pleasure, and that had come to be the overmastering passion of the Old
Lady’s heart.
The next night the light in Sylvia’s room burned very late, and the
Old Lady watched it triumphantly, knowing the meaning of it. Sylvia was
reading her father’s poems, and the Old Lady in her darkness read them
too, murmuring the lines over and over to herself. After all, giving
away the book had not mattered so very much. She had the soul of it
still--and the fly-leaf with the name, in Leslie’s writing, by which
nobody ever called her now.
The Old Lady was sitting on the Marshall sofa the next Sewing Circle
afternoon when Sylvia Gray came and sat down beside her. The Old Lady’s
hands trembled a little, and one side of a handkerchief, which was
afterwards given as a Christmas present to a little olive-skinned coolie
in Trinidad, was not quite so exquisitely done as the other three sides.
Sylvia at first talked of the Circle, and Mrs. Marshall’s dahlias, and
the Old Lady was in the seventh heaven of delight, though she took care
not to show it, and was even a little more stately and finely mannered
than usual. When she asked Sylvia how she liked living in Spencervale,
Sylvia said,
“Very much. Everybody is so kind to me. Besides”--Sylvia lowered her
voice so that nobody but the Old Lady could hear it--“I have a fairy
godmother here who does the most beautiful and wonderful things for me.”
Sylvia, being a girl of fine instincts, did not look at Old Lady Lloyd
as she said this. But she would not have seen anything if she had
looked. The Old Lady was not a Lloyd for nothing.
“How very interesting,” she said, indifferently.
“Isn’t it? I am so grateful to her and I have wished so much she might
know how much pleasure she has given me. I have found lovely flowers
and delicious berries on my path all summer; I feel sure she sent me
my party dress. But the dearest gift came last week on my birthday--a
little volume of my father’s poems. I can’t express what I felt on
receiving them. But I longed to meet my fairy godmother and thank her.”
“Quite a fascinating mystery, isn’t it? Have you really no idea who she
is?”
The Old Lady asked this dangerous question with marked success. She
would not have been so successful if she had not been so sure that
Sylvia had no idea of the old romance between her and Leslie Gray. As it
was, she had a comfortable conviction that she herself was the very last
person Sylvia would be likely to suspect.
Sylvia hesitated for an almost unnoticeable moment. Then she said, “I
haven’t tried to find out, because I don’t think she wants me to know.
At first, of course, in the matter of the flowers and dress, I did try
to solve the mystery; but, since I received the book, I became convinced
that it was my fairy godmother who was doing it all, and I have
respected her wish for concealment and always shall. Perhaps some day
she will reveal herself to me. I hope so, at least.”
“I wouldn’t hope it,” said the Old Lady discouragingly. “Fairy
godmothers--at least, in all the fairy tales I ever read--are somewhat
apt to be queer, crochety people, much more agreeable when wrapped up in
mystery than when met face to face.”
“I’m convinced that mine is the very opposite, and that the better I
became acquainted with her, the more charming a personage I should find
her,” said Sylvia gaily.
Mrs. Marshall came up at this juncture and entreated Miss Gray to sing
for them. Miss Gray consenting sweetly, the Old Lady was left alone and
was rather glad of it. She enjoyed her conversation with Sylvia much
more in thinking it over after she got home than while it was taking
place. When an Old Lady has a guilty conscience, it is apt to make her
nervous and distract her thoughts from immediate pleasure. She wondered
a little uneasily if Sylvia really did suspect her. Then she concluded
that it was out of the question. Who would suspect a mean, unsociable
Old Lady, who had no friends, and who gave only five cents to the Sewing
Circle when everyone else gave ten or fifteen, to be a fairy godmother,
the donor of beautiful party dresses, and the recipient of gifts from
romantic, aspiring young poets?