Part 8

"I've tried so hard, sir. I really have. Your young gentlemen don't have to wear horrid clothes at their school; you don't know how dismal it is. I believe if I might live here with you and aunt I'd never have the creppits any more; I'd be so warm and happy in my heart."

"Well, you must keep on being warm and happy, and get strong and merry--and then--we'll see what can be done."

Oh, weak, soft-hearted Mr. Wycherly! Against his will, against his better judgment, the words slipped out.

Jane-Anne, white but radiant, lay back exhausted on her pillows. Mr. Wycherly stood up to go. "Promise me," he said, "that you won't worry, that you will eat and sleep as much as you can, that you will do everything that your good aunt and the doctor bid you, and that you will try to be happy and at home."

Jane-Anne sat forward again. "Mr. Wycherly, sir," she said breathlessly, "you won't forget, you will try and make aunt keep me? Oh, I have cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, and I don't think God can expect much more of a little girl like me, do you?"

"Crying is absolutely forbidden. You must promise me that you won't cry any more."

"I promise," she said meekly, and lay back on her pillows again. "But you, too; you won't forget?"

"I certainly shall not forget. Now I must really go."

He had reached the door, when an imperative cry from the bed stopped him.

"You haven't said it."

"Said what?" and Mr. Wycherly trembled lest she should force him to swear then and there that she should not go back to the Bainbridge.

"What you said yesterday afternoon. Please say it, and then perhaps He will."

"God bless you, my child," Mr. Wycherly mumbled, much embarrassed.

As he made his way through the housekeeper's room to his own part of the house he reflected that Mrs. Dew was certainly right when she described her niece as "making a stir." She had assuredly stirred his heart to a quite painful extent. He was moved and perturbed and puzzled as he had not been for many a long day, and through all his pondering there sounded Sterne's words to the imprisoned starling: "_'God help thee--but I'll let thee out, cost what it will.'_"

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE QUEST*

"My voice shall with thy future visions blend, And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold, A token and a tone...." _Childe Harold_.

Next day Jane-Anne was allowed to sit in the garden under the apple-tree: a queer little hunched-up figure in the tight stuff-dress and a shawl. She also wore the pie-dish, for Mrs. Dew was one of those people who considered it almost disreputable to be out of doors bare-headed.

She sat in a basket-chair and on her knees lay her most recent prize, "Home Influence," a fat handsome volume bound in purple cloth with gilt edges. For lessons, Jane-Anne had won every prize open to her at the asylum. Although she had only been there a year, and that year constantly broken by long bouts of illness, she had gained seven books. These, which included a Bible, a prayer-book, and church hymnal, with one other comprised her whole library. The prizes were all of a moral and edifying character, and Jane-Anne had read them over and over again hungrily, with the passionate interest and enthusiasm which she brought to everything outside her actual daily duties. And although she whole-heartedly admired them she was yet subconsciously critical and unsatisfied. She regarded her prizes with the greatest respect. Familiarity had, so far, bred no contempt for them in her mind, but all the time she felt that there was something lacking. Although they were the only books she possessed, they were not the only ones she had read. In the previous autumn, her mother's mistress, Lady Dursley, had commanded her aunt to take the child for a change to their place in Gloucestershire, accompanying the order with a liberal cheque for travelling expenses. The family was in Scotland and most of the big house shut up, and nearly all the servants were making holiday, except the housekeeper, an old friend of Mrs. Dew, and one elderly kitchen-maid. But the great library was open, for a young man had been sent down to catalogue the books. He was an intelligent young man and took a fancy to Jane-Anne and had her with him a great deal. He found her books he thought good for her, and on departure presented her with the little green-covered "Children's Treasury," compiled by Palgrave.

In this Jane-Anne read constantly and carefully, not because she was particularly attracted by the poems, though some of them she loved and learned by heart, but because whenever she came across any poetry she searched through it eagerly in the hope of finding a poem her father used to repeat to her. She had read and re-read the little green book unceasingly, but nowhere could she find her poem.

Her father died before she was five years old, but Jane-Anne's recollection of him was curiously vivid, and at this very moment her mind strove to materialise a memory elusive in some ways as a puff of smoke, sharp and defined in others as a tongue of leaping flame against a midnight sky.

The moment Mrs. Dew had safely disappeared into the house the child dragged off the pie-dish and cast it violently on the grass at her feet. Then she lay back in her chair, her eyes dreamy and pensive, though ever and again she knit her black eyebrows in her effort to remember.

Her thin hands lay folded above the unopened volume on her knees and she sat very still.

It was warm and pleasant in Mr. Wycherly's garden; a thrush sang in the boughs above her head, and every now and then pink and white petals dropped softly upon her hair. A flutter of wind blew over a great clump of narcissus bearing their perfume on its wings, and the heavy scent was memory-laden for Jane-Anne.

She saw a long, low-ceiled, lamp-lit room with a window at either end and all the furniture ranged round the walls that a free path might be open for the restless pacing up and down of one who was never too busy or too absorbed to be at the beck and call of an often fretful little girl. As in a vision she beheld that man "with all his keen worn look and Grecian grace" tramping to and fro and holding in his arms a tired, fidgetty child who could not sleep.

Backwards and forwards he went, and with the soothing movement was the sound of words sorrowful and majestic, musical in their rhythmic swing and balance: words that poor Jane-Anne could never remember though she felt that they were written indelibly on mind and heart but covered, covered deeply with layer upon layer of fugitive things of little worth. Some day, she was convinced, she would find that poetry and with it a thousand things about her father that she had forgotten. He often wore a narcissus in his button-hole, and as her head lay on his shoulder the crushed flower gave forth a double fragrance.

It was this familiar scent, strong in the warm old Oxford garden, that seemed to compass her about in an atmosphere of memories, memories of a time when she, too, was always warm, cared about, schemed for, enwheel'd around with love on every hand.

The lines between the black eyebrows were smoothed out as by a tender hand. The unremembered poem ceased to worry her. She would find it some day. Meanwhile, she was sure her daddy knew she loved him. There was something he had told her to remember and she had forgotten, but only for a little while. It would come back, she was sure it would come back. Here, in this house, where there were so many books, perhaps she would find it.

She saw again her beautiful, gentle mother, so calm always and patient. Mrs. Dew was careful to impress upon Jane-Anne that she in no way resembled her mother, and the child never resented this reproach, for had not that very mother rejoiced in her likeness to her father? "My little Maid of Athens," had been her mother's name for Jane-Anne, and Jane-Anne treasured it in her mind. She knew that her worthy aunt had never either liked or approved of her father, and this only made her more passionately loyal to his memory. She pondered these things in her heart, puzzled and pained sometimes, but never daunted in her pride. It was from no mean country that her father had come, she was sure of that. She knew little enough of Greece, nothing of its great history, but chance phrases that she had heard in infancy remained in her mind. She was sure that there was something to know, something worth knowing, and that she would know it some day.

She never spoke of her parents to her companions at the asylum; and although Mrs. Dew would often talk fondly and proudly of her mother and Jane-Anne loved her for it, her aunt's silence with regard to the father she adored filled the child with a resentment none the less bitter that it never found expression. Jane-Anne was perfectly aware of her hostile attitude, although Mrs. Dew was careful never to say one word in disparagement of a man she had been quite unable to understand; whom she had heartily disliked.

"I wonder why I'm thinking so much of my daddie since I came here?" Jane-Anne thought to herself. "I suppose it's because I'm happier."

Presently, over the grass towards her came Montagu, very long in the leg and short in the sleeve. Edmund was out zestfully finding his way about Oxford in his recently discovered fashion.

Montagu sat down on the grass at Jane-Anne's feet and looked up at her, smiling broadly, but never a word said he till he espied the book in her lap.

"What's that?" he asked.

"One of my prizes, sir," Jane-Anne answered primly.

"Is it decent?"

"It's most interesting."

"Can I look at it?"

The book changed hands and Montagu began to read. He turned the pages very fast, to the wonderment of Jane-Anne, who had never seen people read after this fashion.

He was lying face-downwards on the grass in front of her, and she watched his eyes as they swept the page from top to bottom in, apparently, one glance. She liked his thin brown face with the large kind eyes and firm capable mouth that was always shut when he wasn't talking, but just at that moment she thought that his expression was less pleasant than usual, that there was something scornful and almost sinister about his mouth, and yet she was sure that in some queer way he was amused. Why?

Jane-Anne had never found anything in the least amusing in the work in question; interesting, certainly; "touching" (the lady who gave them Sunday lessons at the asylum was fond of the word "touching") frequently; but humorous never. The authorities who chose books for female orphans at the Bainbridge did not consider the cultivation of a sense of humour in any way a necessary part of the training.

Presently Montagu began to dip into the book here and there, still reading with that lightning-like rapidity that so astonished Jane-Anne.

In five minutes he shut it with a slam and looked up at her and laughed.

"What awful rot," he remarked genially, as though certain of sympathy.

Jane-Anne gazed at him in consternation. "Rot?" she faltered.

"Fearful squish; you don't mean to say you really like it?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said, so offended that she quite forgot the respectful "sir."

"It's so stilted and bombastic and unnatural. The style"--here Montagu unconsciously gave a perfect imitation of his house master's manner--"is so cheap and meretricious."

"I don't understand about style in books," said Jane-Anne, still much umbraged. "D'you mean the binding?"

"Good gracious, no. I mean the way it's written. Listen to this"--and Montagu opened the book haphazard and read the following extract aloud:--"'He had been minister of a favourite church in one of the southern towns, and master of an establishment for youths of high rank, in both which capacities he had given universal satisfaction. The reprehensible conduct of some of his pupils, carried on at first so secretly as to elude his knowledge, at length became so notorious as to demand examination. He had at first refused all credence, but when proved by the confused replies of all, and half-confession of some, he briefly and emphatically laid before them the enormity of their conduct, and declared, that as confidence was entirely broken between them, he would resign the honour of their education, refusing to admit them any longer as members of his establishment.' There!" Montagu exclaimed, "could you have anything worse?"

"I think it's all said very properly and grandly," Jane-Anne protested. "I don't see what's the matter with it at all."

Montagu rolled over on the grass and sat up. "It's the grandness that's so detestable."

"It's my best prize," she said indignantly.

"I'm sorry," said Montagu, seeing that she was really hurt, "but you ask Guardie about that sort of writing."

"It's printed," snapped Jane-Anne.

Montagu gazed at her in hopeless bewilderment. He had never before argued with a girl.

Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes filled with angry tears. She clenched her thin little hands and bit her lips to keep from bursting into sobs.

"I say," Montagu exclaimed, with real contrition, "why do you mind? What does it matter what I think?"

"If you," Jane-Anne gasped, "had as few books as me, and loved them every one dearly, and then someone came along and abused them and called them 'rot' and 'merry something' and 'squish,' _you_ wouldn't like it."

This time the big tears escaped, rolled over and down her cheeks, dropping with a splash on to the plaid shawl covering her knees.

And at this critical moment Mr. Wycherly came out of the house and across the grass towards them. He had seen the children from his study window, and remembering that the boys went back to school next day, decided to seek their society under the pleasant shade of the apple-tree.

Montagu stalked over to the tool house to fetch a chair for his guardian and arrived with it as Mr. Wycherly reached the apple-tree. Jane-Anne had lost her handkerchief, the tears were shining on her cheeks, and she gave a most unmistakable sniff just as Mr. Wycherly reached them. But she stood up and curtsied with downcast eyes and burning cheeks, and at the same moment Montagu came back bearing a chair for his guardian.

"What is the matter?" asked Mr. Wycherly.

Jane-Anne continued to stand, and lifted her tear-washed eyes to his face. Had it been stern or severe she could never have answered a word; as it was, she said quite simply: "He didn't like my prize and I minded."

Mr. Wycherly sat down in the chair Montagu had brought and looked from the pained and indignant Jane-Anne to the evidently puzzled and distressed Montagu.

"Suppose we all sit down and try to come to a better understanding," he said.

Jane-Anne sank heavily into her chair. She was still weak, and even the little effort to greet Mr. Wycherly with due respect caused her legs to quake and her heart to beat thunderously in her ears.

She leant her head against the back of the chair and looked so white that for a moment Mr. Wycherly thought she was about to faint. But she did nothing of the kind.

Instead, she said in a voice that wholly belied her exhausted appearance: "Have you read 'Home Influence,' sir?"

"I don't think so," said Mr. Wycherly; "is that the name of the book under discussion?"

Jane-Anne held it out towards him; he took it from her carefully, placed his eye-glasses on his nose, opened it haphazard, and began to read.

Precisely the same thing happened as with Montagu. His eyes sought a page and he turned it. This extraordinary way of reading was not peculiar to Montagu, that was evident. But in Mr. Wycherly's face neither scorn nor amusement was portrayed, only a polite interest.

In three minutes Montagu said, "Well?"

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.