Part 14

Her towels were already saturated with beer, and only seemed to make matters worse.

Her eyes smarted and her nose was scarlet. The strong smell made her feel quite faint.

She began to cry bitterly; her hair was stickier than ever and showed no signs of even waving.

In her ardent pursuit of beauty she had forgotten that explanation would be necessary, and what explanation would be possible in the face of all these stains and this terrific smell? She hung her head out of the window and it dripped into the stone-cutter's yard.

A man passed underneath, sniffed, and looked up; all he saw was a wet mass of something that dripped beer. "Waste o' good liquor," he muttered, and passed on.

Jane-Anne was getting desperate when there came a rattling of the handle of her door, a hasty push against it, then a tremendous knocking and Edmund's voice:

"Are you there, Jane-Anne?"

"Yes," in a muffled sniff.

"What are you doing? Come out."

"I can't."

"Well, let me in, then. I want to speak to you."

"I daren't."

"Oh, nonsense, let me in quick, I say, I've something important to tell you."

Curiosity was too strong in her to resist this. She opened the door, hiding herself behind it as she did so.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Edmund. "It's here, too."

Then, as he saw the foot-bath on the floor, the beery stains everywhere, and lastly, the distracted figure behind the door shrouded in sticky locks that still dripped beer, he subsided upon the bed in fits of laughter.

Jane-Anne banged the door, bolted it, and faced him indignantly.

"Why are you laughing?" she demanded.

"You've never gone and done it really--well, you _are_ the simplest juggins."

"D'you mean," Jane-Anne demanded sternly, "that it _doesn't_ make hair curl?"

"Not that I know of," gurgled the perjured boy; "it may," and relapsing into howls of mirth he buried his face in her pillow to stifle them.

Jane-Anne clasped her beery hands and wrung them. "And I've endured all this for nothing," she cried indignantly.

"And wasted a whole cask of beer," Edmund continued. "You left it running, and the cellar's flooded and you can smell us half-way down the street; there's quite a little crowd outside," he announced gleefully.

"I wish I was dead," she moaned.

"I'd have a bath if I were you, quick," said Edmund. "If you're safe in there, locked in, no one can get at you. Mrs. Dew and Montagu and Guardie are all at the cellar. Montagu's wading about in it, scooping it up, and I want to go too, only I thought it would be mean not to fetch you----"

"You can't be meaner than you've been already," she cried angrily. "Why did you tell me such a lie?"

"Nonsense like that isn't lies," Edmund answered, angry in his turn. "It's chaff. I never dreamt you'd be such a fool as to go and do it."

"Is it really no use?" she pleaded, still clinging fondly even yet to the hope that all might not have been in vain.

Edmund looked at her and began to laugh again.

*CHAPTER XVII*

*THE PHILOSOPHY OF EFFORT*

"A man's fortunes are the fruits of his character." RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

When one has passed fifty, four years--provided no one of them brings severe illness or great sorrow--make little if any difference in outward appearance. Time is usually kind to the middle-aged, and it is only when we reach middle-age ourselves, and the dear old landmarks are removed one by one, that we realise how much we unconsciously depended on this stability of appearance, this changelessness in those who helped to shape our destiny.

Thus if there was little change in Mrs. Dew and Mr. Wycherly four years after Jane-Anne had flooded the Holywell cellar with beer, Jane-Anne herself and the boys looked back upon the children of that time with a kind of affectionate scorn.

Montagu was now taller than Mr. Wycherly, thin-faced and analytic as ever, only waiting for the following October to take up his scholarship at New College.

Edmund was on the _Britannia_, all uniform and gold buttons, naval phrases, and nonsense. When he appeared for his "leaves" (he scorned to call it holidays) he imported so much liveliness and laughter, to say nothing of visitors from the outer world, into the quiet household that during these hilarious weeks Jane-Anne forgot to be earnest.

For Jane-Anne was very earnest.

Four years of school-life had wrought great changes in Jane-Anne.

For one thing, no one any longer had to worry about her lungs. Crepitations were things of the past. She was strong as a Shetland pony with fully as much endurance.

There was nothing in her physique to prevent her becoming a most efficient housemaid. Moreover, she was tall enough for even the most exacting situation. But even Mrs. Dew had ceased to include that idea among practical politics.

For Jane-Anne had turned out "clever at her books" beyond all expectation. She went first of all to a nice school over Magdalen Bridge, but she got on so fast and was so unusually receptive a pupil that the head mistress herself called upon Mr. Wycherly and suggested that Jane-Anne should go on to the High School. Mr. Wycherly consulted Lord Dursley, who still continued to take a vicarious sort of interest in the child, and the matter was arranged without much difficulty.

Here Jane-Anne fell under the influence of Miss Willows and became strenuous and earnest to the last degree.

Miss Willows taught the top form, and she did more than teach it, she moulded it.

She was twenty-eight years old and was fully determined to be a head mistress herself before many years had passed. She was of the stuff head mistresses are made and she was modern of the moderns. She was tall and strong and handsome, good at games and a first in classics, and hers was indeed the doctrine of perfection.

"Don't only try to do things as well as other people," she would say; "try to do them a little better. Never be content with mediocrity."

Courage and strength were her watchwords and her ambition was that her girls should go forth into the world not to be shielded from temptation but armed to withstand it. Silliness she abhorred, and, satisfactory pupil as Jane-Anne was, she was thankful that Miss Willows could not, as she put it, "see inside her," for Jane-Anne was conscious that she frequently lapsed from grace, was often frankly and unashamedly silly and enjoyed it.

Miss Willows was always beautifully dressed, and taught her girls to care a good deal about their clothes. She was sarcastic, and the clumsy and untidy trembled before her.

Jane-Anne never trembled. She admired and adored and perhaps "inside" she was a little afraid of her, but outwardly she was quite fearless, and Miss Willows respected her in consequence. Even more did she respect the girl's quite extraordinary command of English and her familiarity with schools of philosophy that were to most of the class mere names.

Miss Willows had settled Jane-Anne's career. She was to go on to one of the women's colleges and then she was to teach. It was her plain duty. Jane-Anne said nothing, seemed to acquiesce in all these wise and benevolent plans on her behalf, and all the time dreamed dreams and saw visions of something very different indeed.

She had not wavered in her allegiance to Lord Byron. He was still her hero, and she stoutly refused to displace him by Mr. Robert Browning, who was the chosen prophet of Miss Willows.

"Lord Byron is so obvious," that lady said one day, when she had found fault with a quotation from "Childe Harold" that Jane-Anne had dragged into an essay.

"It is impossible to misunderstand what he means," Jane-Anne said quickly, ever ready to take up arms on behalf of "her oldest friend," as she called him.

"He is not subtle," Miss Willows continued.

"He is never obscure, never unmusical," quoth Jane-Anne.

"I am sorry," Miss Willows said gravely, "that you make such a hero of Lord Byron, the more so, that, from what I can make out, you do not do so in ignorance of his character. You say you have read his life?"

"Years ago."

Miss Willows made a point of never being shocked at anything her girls might say--to be shocked showed weakness. Nevertheless, she rather wondered what Mr. Wycherly could have been about to allow such a thing. And there was a black mark against him in her mind.

Curiously enough, it was Mr. Wycherly himself who first aroused Jane-Anne to any enthusiasm for the works of Robert Browning, and it came about in this way.

She still passionately desired curly hair. It was the desire of the moth for the star, for her hair remained obstinately straight. That it was beautiful in colour, texture and abundance, did not comfort her; it was straight, uncompromisingly straight, though it maintained its upward, outward sweep round her broad, low forehead.

Mr. Wycherly thought it was hard for Jane-Anne to have no money, and insisted on paying her five shillings a month for waiting upon him. Out of this, her aunt insisted that she must keep herself in stockings and gloves, which the child faithfully did.

But a girl at school enlightened her as to the uses of curling tongs, and Jane-Anne succumbed to temptation. She borrowed the goffering irons, heated them in the kitchen fire and burnt both her hair and her forehead rather badly.

Mr. Wycherly was infinitely more distressed about this than over the beer episode and took her gently to task for trying to improve upon what Nature had already made so harmonious and pleasing to the eye.

That was the way to get at Jane-Anne. As always, she was perfectly frank with him.

"Miss Willows says it is the duty of everyone to look as pretty as possible. 'Do your best and then think nothing more about it,' she says. But I seem obliged to think about it. You see, I _know_ I'd be so much nicer if my hair was frizzy."

"But I don't think you would," Mr. Wycherly argued. "Your type is severe and classical; 'frizziness' would be quite dreadful and incongruous."

"But could _anyone_ be beautiful with straight hair?"

"Why not?"

"Lord Byron had wavy hair, _you_ have wavy hair, all the goddesses and people and Helen of Troy had wavy hair."

"I assure you," Mr. Wycherly declared, absently passing a long, slender hand over his thick white locks, "I never think about my hair at all, except when I have to go and get it cut."

"You never think about it, my dear, because you are so sure it is all right. You _know_ you are a most beautiful old person and that people must admire you if they looked at you at all, _therefore_ you can afford not to think about it."

"My dear Jane-Anne, you are talking nonsense."

"I'm not; really, truly, not. I often see people look at you in the street and I often hear them say nice things----"

"Good heavens," cried Mr. Wycherly, "how dreadful!"

"I shouldn't think it a bit dreadful if they said such things about me," Jane-Anne said, "but they don't yet--not often."

"Do they ever?" Mr. Wycherly asked anxiously.

"If I told you, you would say it was impertinent, so I won't tell you, dear master."

"Will you promise me to let your hair alone?"

"If I promise, I should have to," Jane-Anne said doubtfully.

"That's why I want you to promise."

"Will a year do?" pleaded Jane-Anne.

"Three years," Mr. Wycherly maintained.

Jane-Anne sighed deeply. "Well, I promise--but if at the end of that time I find something that will really truly make it curl, without smelling horrible or burning or spoiling it----"

"Three years will do," said Mr. Wycherly.

That evening when she went to say good-night to him he read her "A Face," by Robert Browning.

"If one could have that little head of hers Painted upon a background of pure gold...."

Jane-Anne listened, breathless, charmed. When he had finished he turned to her:

"That always makes me think of you, and I wish I could have you painted so. But you wouldn't be a bit like it if you had different hair."

Jane-Anne was silent for nearly two minutes; then she said thoughtfully:

"I rather like Browning's poetry after all. I'll quote a bit in my next scripture just to please Miss Willows."

At first her position in the school was something of an anomaly. Her exceptional ability and her fleetness of foot gave her an assured place in the school work and games at once. Her personal appearance and her eager charm brought her friends. Then one of the girls, who had asked her to tea, a girl living in a large house in the Woodstock Road, whose people had nothing whatever to do with any of the colleges, discovered that she was no relation to the old gentleman in whose house she lived and that her aunt was his servant.

The girl was horrified, told every girl she could get to listen, and always concluded the harangue with the remark: "We all know the school's mixed enough, but it's getting a bit too much when they take the daughters of domestic servants. Someone ought to write and complain."

She forthwith cut Jane-Anne, as did several others. Jane-Anne was puzzled, then angry, and finally forced the girl to explain her conduct in the playground.

"Your aunt's his servant," the girl concluded, "and we don't like it."

"I'm his servant, too," Jane-Anne said haughtily, "and I'd rather be his servant than your friend any day."

"You won't have much chance of being that," the girl said angrily. "I wouldn't be seen with you for the world."

"The whole of Oxford," cried Jane-Anne, "can see me with him, and he's a great gentleman and a scholar; and you--you're a carroty-haired, ill-bred little nobody who can't write a French exercise without getting somebody else to do half of it."

The school took sides, and the best and cleverest half finally sided with Jane-Anne. She never told anybody but Montagu what she had gone through, but whenever any new girl made friendly advances Jane-Anne took care to inform her that Mrs. Dew, Mr. Wycherly's housekeeper, was her aunt, that she loved her and wasn't in the least ashamed of it. "And now," she always concluded, "you can go on being friends with me or not, just as you choose."

The girls were friendly enough in school, but she knew very few of them at home. Those she did know were nearly all friends of Mrs. Methuen and girls whose position was assured. Thus it happened that Jane-Anne's few friends were the nicest girls in the school. But she had very little time for friendship. She still helped her aunt in the house as much as ever she could. She had really hard and heavy homework to prepare--only her extraordinary quickness got her through it in the time she allowed for it, and she was, moreover, always to the fore if any play or recitation or fancy dancing was toward. She was so easily and far beyond any other girl in things of that sort that she could never be spared. The dancing-class was her greatest joy. Mr. Wycherly had insisted on her learning to dance whenever she went to school. He paid the fees himself, and sometimes even braved the phalanx of girls at the class in order to go himself and see her dance.

And once a year Curly came with his company and acted in the Oxford Theatre. Mr. Wycherly always took Jane-Anne and Curly always came to see them in Holywell, and every time he came he asked Mr. Wycherly the same question: "Well, and have you settled yet what she is to be?"

"She talks," said Mr. Wycherly, "of being a teacher of dancing--but it seems to me that in that case her education is rather thrown away."

"A teacher of dancing!" Curly repeated ironically. "I think I see her teaching dancing for long."

"She came to me last night," Mr. Wycherly continued, as though he had not heard, "and asked abruptly, 'Do you think one can serve God and dance for a living?'"

"Ah," said Curly, "that's a different thing; and what did you say, sir?"

"I fear," said Mr. Wycherly humbly, "that I made no very definite answer."

"I should like to know what you think," Curly persisted. "You consider dancing to be one of the beautiful and delightful arts?"

"I do."

"And in Jane-Anne that art finds the subtlest and most delicate expression?"

Mr. Wycherly groaned.

"Why should she not serve God as well in that way as in any other?"

"Because," said Mr. Wycherly haughtily, "I should dislike it extremely."

Curly laughed.

"I have an idea," he said, "that Miss Allegra Stavrides will find another mode of expressing the artist that is in her."

Mr. Wycherly groaned again. "She is so young," he said; "why should she be anything at all for years and years?"

"Because," said Curly, "the race is to the swift, and the child is very fleet of foot."

"You will not, promise me you will not, say or do anything to put such an idea into her head," Mr. Wycherly pleaded.

"My dear old friend, the idea has been there for years--and it is quite possible it may come to nothing."

But though Curly spake comfortable words there was no conviction in his voice.

*CHAPTER XVIII*

*GANTRY BILL*

"Oh, why are eyes of hazel? noses Grecian! I've lost my rest at night, my peace by day, For want of some brown holland or Venetian, Over the way." TOM HOOD

Old Holywell in Oxford town is an interesting street. Not only does every house there differ from its neighbour, but the inhabitants are just as varied.

Opposite Mr. Wycherly's was a tall, straight, grey house, which had been let as rooms to generations of undergraduates when the time came for them to "live out." Some two years before, Jane-Anne had watched these young gentlemen, as she then still called them, with the greatest interest; in fact, undergraduates as a class held for her one supreme possibility--one of them might fulfil in the flesh all she had dreamed in the spirit of Lord Byron.

She had never met one that in the least resembled her dream. They were, for the most part, broad-shouldered, brown-faced, exceedingly untidy young men, who slouched about Oxford in ancient Norfolk jackets, baggy grey flannel trousers, and slippers down at the heel. Most of them looked in the best of health and spirits. The few who might, perhaps, be suspected of soulfulness were so plain-looking, that she dismissed them at once; they were out of the running altogether.

Montagu was good-looking in a straight-featured, quiet sort of way. Edmund was radiantly and riotously handsome. Mr. Wycherly, in Jane-Anne's opinion and that of several other people, was the most beautiful person in Oxford. Therefore she was hard to please.

After she came under the influence of Miss Willows, young men interested her no more. True to her theory that every eventuality should be met fearlessly, Miss Willows never omitted the possibility of marriage from talks with her girls. With her, they regarded it as a rather commonplace fate, that might perhaps fall to the lot of some of them. But there were many more interesting things in life than that.

Miss Willows never, by word or look, hinted to her girls that young men were dangerous, and therefore to be avoided. They were there in Oxford in large numbers, let the girls meet them in society if possible, let them judge of them dispassionately. Let there be no glamour of the forbidden about them. They might talk to them; listen to them; weigh their conversation in the balance of reason, and--she always added inwardly--"find it wanting." But she never said this; she implied it, and the girls, with youthful earnestness and scorn, finished the sentence for themselves.

Jane-Anne met no young men. Every undergraduate at New College knew Mr. Wycherly by sight, but not one knew any more of him. At the time when Jane-Anne took an interest in them they took no sort of interest in her. Now that she was tall and straight, with frocks down to her ankles, and bright eyes that rained influence, a good many undergraduates wished they knew Mr. Wycherly. As for Jane-Anne, she desired no notice from foolish young men. The notice she craved was larger and more impersonal, and although she was an impatient young person, she was content to wait for it. She knew that she was not wasting her time. She studied Greek dramatists with Mr. Wycherly, and read eagerly every word of his translation of Aristotle's "Poetics," laying to heart many of its maxims. She walked to and from school by herself, she went on occasional errands for Mrs. Dew, but beyond that she was rarely seen in Oxford except accompanied by Mr. Wycherly. With him she wandered in college gardens, and by the banks of the Cherwell. When the boys came back, she spent long days on the river with them, and every new dance she learned at school she danced again for "the master," and in summer always danced barefooted on the lawn.

Mr. Wycherly allowed her to do her evening work in the parlour, which was quieter than the housekeeper's room in such close proximity to Mrs. Dew. The May nights were hot, and Jane-Anne opened the window and drew back the short white curtains to let in as much air as possible. People might look in if they liked. It mattered nothing to Jane-Anne, loftily absorbed in work for Miss Willows.

There she sat at the round, rosewood table in the middle of the room, the electric light shaded and drawn low over her papers (Mr. Wycherly never allowed her to work in a bad light), her delicate Greek profile presented to every chance observer, severe, detached, an example of studious girlhood most edifying to behold.

So evidently thought the undergraduate who lived opposite. For no sooner had she turned on her light than he extinguished his and took a seat in the window, which, a little above the level of hers, commanded an excellent view of Mr. Wycherly's parlour. His watch was shared by a white bull terrier, who spent long hours sitting on the sill.

That undergraduate was a rowing man, the Eights came on in another fortnight, and in the evenings he "did a slack."

He was musical, this undergraduate, possessed a piano and a pleasing tenor voice, and sometimes after dinner, although Jane-Anne would not have dreamed of interrupting her work for one instant to listen, she was vaguely conscious that the music was agreeable, and was sorry when it ceased.

One evening, however, she did listen, for there came from the house opposite strains that were, to her, curiously familiar; a queer, old-fashioned song, and then with a little leap of the heart she recognised a poem she knew and loved. The young man opposite had evidently been well taught, it was quite possible to hear his words. She stopped short in the middle of a complicated sentence to the effect that the aim of discipline is to produce a self-governing unit, laid down her pen, and, forgetful that the light was behind her, went to the window and leaned out.

The young man seated at the piano in the darkness of the room opposite smiled gleefully, and sang more loudly and with increased fervour:

"By those tresses unconfined Woo'd by each AEgean wind; By those lids whose jetty fringe Kiss thy soft cheek's blooming tinge; By those soft eyes like the roe ..."

Then followed the passionate Greek invocation with which each line of Byron's "Maid of Athens" concludes.

Miss Willows would doubtless have dismissed words and music as hackneyed and obvious. But her pupil had read the verses till she knew them by heart, feeling, as in the case of "She walks in beauty like the night," that Lord Byron had written them for her and about her; she had not heard them sung since her mother sang them to her when she was a very little child. Now in the soft spring night the once familiar strains came floating across the quiet street charged full of innocent and tender memories.