Part 10

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.