Chapter IV: Part 4

Whereupon Jane-Anne's strength was increased tenfold, so that when she was dressed she walked across the room by herself, and sat in a chair by the window while the nurse packed her yellow tin trunk.

Then came the great, the tremendous moment when the fly stood before the door, and the strong young nurse carried her downstairs and placed her in it, with a cushion for her back and a rug sent by Mr. Wycherly over her knees.

The drive passed like a brilliant dream. The men were up and the busy streets were full of bustling life and youthful jollity. Jane-Anne sat forward in her seat, the wavering colour vivid in her cheeks, and even the inverted pie-dish could not wholly shadow the bright gaiety of her eyes. All too soon it was over and they stopped before the archway in Holywell where Mrs. Dew was waiting to help her niece in at the side-door.

It seemed a little hard to be hustled up to her aunt's room and there and then undressed and put to bed--a tame ending to so thrilling an experience; but once between the sheets Jane-Anne discovered that she was unaccountably and extraordinarily tired. She meekly drank the egg beaten up in warm milk that her aunt brought her, lay back on the pillow, and at once fell fast asleep.

Since term began Edmund had been exceedingly busy. Never before had he seen so many young men gathered together.

Hitherto his acquaintance had lain almost exclusively among elderly persons or boys of his own age. To be sure there were two youngish masters at his preparatory school, but the mere fact that they were masters set them on a distant and undesirable plane for Edmund.

But now young men, young men were all around him: in the houses opposite, on the pavements, in the hitherto so stately and silent quadrangles, on the river, in the playing fields.

One night as he lay in bed Edmund had heard a great many cabs plying up and down Holywell, and in the morning this transformation had come to pass. The tide of youthful life flooded every corner. Even the grave grey buildings seemed to open sleepy eyes and laugh and wink at one another in enjoyment of this resistless torrent, and all the inherent sociability in Edmund's nature gushed forth to join and mingle in the jocund stream.

Before three days had passed he had friends in half a dozen colleges. His method of procedure was quite simple. He sallied forth without Montagu, who was shy and exclusive and would have died rather than address a stranger without legitimate cause, and selecting an apparently amiable and manifestly idle youth, asked him the way somewhere in broadest Doric. On two occasions he happened to hit upon a fellow-countryman, and directly he discovered this he spoke in an ordinary way, and they were friends at once. He generally explained exhaustively who he was and whence he came, where he lived and the resources of the establishment in Holywell, and his new-found friends evidently found his conversation amusing, for they neither snubbed nor checked his garrulity.

On the day of Jane-Anne's arrival he had been out all the morning finding his way about Oxford by the means indicated, and only returned just as Mrs. Dew was laying luncheon.

"Is Jane-Anne not coming till afternoon?" he asked.

"Jane-Anne's here, Master Edmund, been here these two hours."

"Here! and we've never been told nor seen her. Where is she?"

"Sound asleep in my bed, she's that weak--but I don't believe moving her's done her a bit of harm, she's sleeping like a baby and looks that contented----"

"Can we go and look at her?" asked Montagu.

"No, sir, please, sir, I'd rather she slep' as long as she can. She's not slep' much this last week an' I shall let her be till she wakes."

"Will you tell us whenever she wakes?" Edmund persisted. "You see, we go back to school in two days now so we shan't see very much of her, 'specially if we don't begin at once."

"You young gentlemen had better keep on with your own doin's and never mind Jane-Anne. She's got to go to school, too--soon as she's well enough," said Mrs. Dew primly. She set the last spoon and fork symmetrically in their places and went back to the kitchen to dish up lunch.

Edmund looked across at Montagu. "I shall stop in this afternoon, and I'm going to see Jane-Anne," he whispered obstinately; "she's in our house."

"So'm I," said Montagu with brief decision.

The bed and "bits of furniture" came from Jeune Street in the afternoon, and the noise of the men carrying things up the uncarpeted stairs woke Jane-Anne, who lay for a minute staring at the unfamiliar room and wondering where she was.

It was a fairly large room with a wide latticed window that overlooked the stone-cutter's yard, for the cottage was to the side of the house and its three windows looked that way. Clean muslin curtains hung at the window, so that Jane-Anne couldn't see out except when they moved with the breeze. The ceiling was low and an oak beam crossed it. Most of the rooms in the main part of the house were panelled, but here they were papered, and the paper was of a cheerful chintzy pattern with garlands of little pink roses.

The furniture was all of brightly polished mahogany that had been in Elsa's room at Remote, and it had that characteristic individual look only to be found in old furniture well tended by careful hands through many years.

The Chippendale Talboys had a scroll top with a pedestal in the centre, and on that pedestal was a little brass owl. The handles had lost their lacquer with time, but the warm red wood was mirror-like in its brightness, and in the great "press"--a cupboard in two divisions with deep sliding shelves--Jane-Anne watched the reflection of the fluttering curtain with sleepy satisfaction.

She had no idea why she liked these things so much better than the painted wood that furnished the bedroom in Jeune Street, but she did like them amazingly, and their presence filled her with such satisfaction as caused her for a little while to forget how exceedingly hungry she was.

Presently the door was opened a little way and a fair curly head was poked through cautiously. Jane-Anne was lying with her back to the door, and all that was visible of her was a night of black hair streaming over the quilt and a long slender mound in the bed where her body lay. She was so still that Edmund thought she was asleep, and was going away again when something, some tiny sound, caused her to turn round, and she saw him.

Edmund vanished like a flash and she heard his stentorian voice proclaiming: "She's awake, Mrs. Dew; you can bring that chicken."

Then he returned, and nodding at her in most friendly fashion seated himself at the end of the bed, remarking:

"What an awful lot of hair you've got; isn't it frightfully hot?"

"I can never keep the ribbons on it in bed. I don't mind it. I rather like to be hot."

The two stared at each other, and Edmund decided that Jane-Anne looked nicer in bed than when she was up. The soft, shadowy masses of her hair were infinitely more becoming than the pie-dish. Her forehead was smooth and placid. There was no deep wrinkle between her black eyebrows.

"I'm glad you're here," said Edmund genially; "but it's a pity you're in bed. You might have done some more fielding if you'd been up."

"I'm very sorry I can't run after balls for you, sir," Jane-Anne said meekly, "but I can't be sorry I'm in bed, for if I wasn't I'd be going back to the Bainbridge almost at once, and now doctor says I can't go for another fortnight."

"And you're glad not to go? Why?"

"Because----" said Jane-Anne; but at this moment Mrs. Dew appeared with a tray. She swept Edmund out of the room, plumped up the invalid's pillows, got her into a bed-jacket, and then stood over her while, with the best will in the world, Jane-Anne did full justice to her dinner.

"What a pretty room this is, Aunt Martha," she said when she had eaten the last spoonful of pudding. "What is it makes it so pretty?"

"The things in it is all good," Mrs. Dew replied, "all old and good; not at all what's suited to a servant's bedroom, if you ask me. But they was here when I came, an', of course, it isn't for me to find fault. The other things has come, and I've got them arranged, but the carpet couldn't be nailed down for fear of waking you. They look very different in a good-sized room to what they did in Jeune Street, I can tell you. I'm very pleased to see my own things what I'm used to. You shall have this room, Jane-Anne, while you're here. I'll move my clothes to-morrow and put yours in. If it isn't Master Edmund again, and Master Montagu with 'im--I never knew such perseverin' young varmints, an' the times I've sent them away. One'd think you was some sort of a exhibition, that one would. Yes, sirs, you may come in, but you mustn't stop long. One'd think as you'd never seen a sick person before, an' me not had time so much as to wash her face before you was back again. What! Mr. Wycherly wants to come and see her after tea? Well, it's a great honour, and very kind on his part after going yesterday and all."

This time the interview was brief and unsatisfactory, for Mrs. Dew remained in the room and Montagu, in consequence, was absolutely dumb, while Jane-Anne was too nervous to do more than mumble negatives or affirmatives to the innumerable questions asked by the quite unembarrassed Edmund.

After five minutes of it the boys departed of their own accord.

Jane-Anne slept again from lunch till tea time, and after tea Mr. Wycherly came to see her.

This time Mrs. Dew did not remain. She set a chair for him and left them. Jane-Anne was sitting up in bed, arrayed in a white dimity jacket of Mrs. Dew's. This garment was voluminous and much too large for its wearer, so that Jane-Anne's face and hair seemed to emerge from amidst a billowy sea of dimity. Her hair was still loose and streamed over the bed. Mrs. Dew had wanted to plait it up, but Jane-Anne said the thick plaits hurt her head when she lay down, so her aunt gave way.

"You are looking better, my child," said Mr. Wycherly.

"I am better, sir; I'm nearly well, I'm afraid."

"Afraid! but surely you want to be well?"

"I should if I was going to stay here," Jane-Anne said earnestly. "Sir, do you think you could stop me going back to the Bainbridge?"

"Stop you," Mr. Wycherly repeated, much perplexed. "But I thought----"

"I'm sure," Jane-Anne interrupted eagerly, "if it's to learn to be a servant that I've got to go back, Aunt could teach me just as well--better, I think. She can do everything they do there, and do it nicer than the people that teaches us. She is a good servant, isn't she, sir?"

"Your aunt is a quite admirable person," Mr. Wycherly said gravely, "and most accomplished in every household art; but from what she told me I gathered that this school is a very good one, and that it was a great help to her to have got you into it."

Jane-Anne's eager face blanched. "Please, sir," she whispered, "if I promise to eat very little and work very hard would you let me stay with you and aunt?" She clasped her hands and leant forward, devouring Mr. Wycherly's face with her great tragic eyes. "Aunt would be very angry if she knew I'd spoken to you; but you could stop me going if you liked, and if I go back, I shall die, I know I shall."

"What is it you dislike so much?" Mr. Wycherly asked.

"All of it, except the lessons, they are lovelly. I can't seem to do it; my back aches so, and it's so cold."

"But it won't be cold this time. Summer is almost here."

"It isn't the weather, it's my heart," cried Jane-Anne; "it's that that's so cold. Nobody cares much about me, they think me odd and funny. Do you think me odd and funny, sir?"

Mr. Wycherly certainly did, but he laid one of his beautiful old hands on Jane-Anne's, saying gently, "I think that as yet you are not very strong, and I am quite sure that it is bad for you to worry about going back. You can't possibly go back for another fortnight, your aunt said so, and--who knows----?"

Mr. Wycherly had not intended to say this last at all. It was most unwise and misleading, but the brown eyes held his and compelled him to give them comfort. He tried to patch up his mistake by saying, in a matter of fact tone: "Suppose Montagu or Edmund begged me not to send him back to school, what should I do? Because, you see, I know that school is the best place for them--though for me the sun sets and never rises till they come back. We all have to do things we don't like."

"But they like school--they told me so."

"You probably would like it, too, if you made up your mind to do so."

"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.

"Come in, my child, come in," said the kind, welcoming voice as he saw the timid figure at the door.

And Jane-Anne came in with a nervous rush, but she did not forget to shut the door behind her.

She dropped on her knees beside him and seized his hand, kissing it passionately, much to his confusion. He was quite unaccustomed to violent manifestations of feeling, and his long residence in Scotland had increased his natural reserve.

"I know it's you who managed that I shouldn't go back, and I do want so to thank you. You don't know what I feel like. Please, sir, I will try to be useful. Anything you would like me to do----"

Very gently Mr. Wycherly withdrew his hand. "Suppose you sit on a chair," he suggested, "and we will have a chat together."

With stately courtesy, he placed a chair for Jane-Anne, and, seated again in his own revolving-chair, turned to face her.

As always, when much moved, she was very white, and to-night her great eyes were soft and dog-like in their devotion.

"By the way," said Mr. Wycherly, "I haven't forgotten your inquiry about the poem that you cannot remember, and I have marked in a volume of Wordsworth a number of verses dealing with mountains. Perhaps you would like to look through it at your leisure."

"Thank you, sir," Jane-Anne whispered.

"I know nothing," Mr. Wycherly continued, "more annoying than a half-remembered quotation. I sincerely hope that you will soon find it."

For a moment there was silence, then:

"Sir," Jane-Anne said earnestly, "are you very lonely now the young gentlemen have gone back to school?"

"I do miss them greatly of course."

"Do you remember, sir, when you came to see me, when I was in bed the first day I was here, you said when they went back that the sun set for you----"

"Did I?" said Mr. Wycherly, rather surprised at himself.

"You really did, sir, and I wondered whether--though the sun has set--whether you'd let me try--to be a little tiny star--just so you wouldn't feel quite so lonely."

Mr. Wycherly's hand still tingled with the touch of those soft unaccustomed girlish lips, nevertheless he held it out to her, saying, "That will be very kind of you."

Jane-Anne placed her own within it and she did not attempt to kiss Mr. Wycherly's hand again, but she looked at him as though she would read his very soul and asked: "Sir, have you ever heard anything about a place called Greece?"

Mr. Wycherly laughed. "For a considerable portion of my life," he replied, "I have heard about little else."

"Will you tell me things sometimes, sir? Will you?"

"I shall be most happy," said Mr. Wycherly. "You certainly ought to know as much as possible about your father's country--and there is so much to know."

"I have another name," she said suddenly and with apparent irrelevance. "Shall I tell it you? Very few people know."

"Do you mean Stavrides?" Mr. Wycherly asked.

"No, sir, not that; I have another Christian name. Allegra; don't you think it's very pretty?"

"Very," said Mr. Wycherly; "it is a beautiful name, but it isn't Greek."

"I'm called after somebody's daughter that died. I don't know who she was; mother knew. My daddie liked the name. I daresay I shall find out some day all about her."

"I daresay you will," said Mr. Wycherly, and looked hard at Jane-Anne.

"Which would you like to call me?" she asked.

"I shall call you Jane-Anne, not Allegra," Mr. Wycherly said decidedly.

"It's a pretty name," she said wistfully.

"It has rather sad associations for me," he added.

The clock upon the mantelpiece struck nine. Jane-Anne rose. "I must go, sir, now; good night, and thank you."

"Good night, my child. Get strong and rest you merry. And here is the Wordsworth; tell me when you find your poem."

She took from him a large brown volume that bristled with inserted slips of paper. He crossed the room and opened the door for her, and Jane-Anne went out with her head held high. "Just like he did for Mrs. Methuen," she reflected ecstatically.

When she had gone Mr. Wycherly went and stood at the window and looked out into the night. The sky was unclouded, of a deep, soft, soothing blue, and right in a line with his window shone one star.

"I wonder," he pondered, "what made him call her after Byron's daughter."

When Jane-Anne reached the kitchen, proudly bearing her volume of Wordsworth, she found her aunt sitting at the newly scrubbed kitchen table darning a stocking.

"What made you stop so long for?" Mrs. Dew inquired tartly, "hindering and worritin' the master. It don't take half an hour to say 'thank you, and my duty to you.'"

"The master set a chair for me and talked to me," Jane-Anne replied gloriously, "and when I came away he opened the door for me, just like he did for Mrs. Methuen when she came the other day, and he's lent me a great big poetry book. Look at it! Oh, aunt, I do believe the Almighty must be just like Mr. Wycherly."

Mrs. Dew nearly dropped her stocking. "Jane-Anne!" she exclaimed in tones of horrified amazement, "how you can stand there and say such things passes me. Go to bed this minute, you inyuman child. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, that you ought."

"But, aunt," Jane-Anne expostulated, "Miss Stukely, the lady that taught us Sundays, she said we must love God, be always loving Him, and always talking about Him; we couldn't think and talk too much about Him; the more we did it the fitter we'd be for heaven, and I've never seen anybody before as I'd like Him to be like--so where's the harm?"

The child spoke with breathless earnestness.

Mrs. Dew stared at her, intensely disapproving.

"How you can stand there," she repeated; "how you can have the face to stand there and talk about the Almighty bein' _like_ anybody, just as if He was your next door neighbour, turns me cold. Where's your respect? Where's your sense of decency? I'll have none of your revival ways here, I can tell you; quiet, respectable church I've always been, with none of such goin's on. It's quite enough for most of us to do our duty in that station of life without talking familiarly of lovin' and such. _Go_ to bed, I tell you, and let me hear no more of such fandanglements, and I'll come in ten minutes to fetch your candle and bring you that hot milk as is all over skin you've been so long. Now bustle about smartish."

Jane-Anne bustled.

Mrs. Dew leant back in her chair as one quite unable to cope with the force of circumstances.

"My stars! Good fathers!" exclaimed Mrs. Dew. "If that's the sort of thing they teaches at the Bainbridge it's more than time my niece was took away."

Very early next morning Jane-Anne crept out of bed, pulled up her blind, and seized the volume of poetry Mr. Wycherly had lent her. She read till her eyes ached and her head swam; she read without the smallest understanding or enjoyment, but with the greatest care and application, and though there was much about mountains there was nothing that struck the faintest chord of memory in Jane-Anne. Whatever it was that her father had repeated when he used to carry her about, it wasn't there. And yet she was certain about "the mountains." Yes, it was "the mountains."

"I'm afraid he'll have to look again," she said to herself. She had not the smallest doubt that Mr. Wycherly would help her.

It was a very hot May, and as the doctor had said she could not be too much in the fresh air, her aunt, that afternoon, put a little table and chair for her under the apple-tree, gave her some needle-work, and bidding her listen for any bell that might happen to ring, announced her intention of going out to do some household shopping. "Unless anyone calls to see the master it's unlikely that anyone'll come at all," said Mrs. Dew, "and the front door bell's that loud you'll hear it right enough if so be as you don't get moonin'. I shan't be more than a hour."

Shortly after Mrs. Dew's departure Mr. Wycherly came to his window and looked out.

There sat Jane-Anne at the little table covered by a heap of white sewing, and he thought what a pleasant picture she made in her stiff buff frock, so maidenly and sweet, so suitably and sensibly employed on this sunny afternoon in the midst of the green old garden, gay with tulips and fragrant wallflowers.

Suddenly Jane-Anne stooped down and took off her heavy shoes and there and then flung them one after another to the other side of the lawn. Then she removed her stockings. Mr. Wycherly gazed fascinated. What was the child about?

This was soon deplorably evident.

Jane-Anne was taking off her dress.

Mr. Wycherly felt that he ought to go away from that window, but he didn't. He stayed where he was and, what's more, he placed his eyeglasses upon his nose.

She gave herself a complicated kind of shake and the buff abomination fell about her feet in stiff expostulating folds.

Daintily and deliberately, she stepped out of it as though withdrawing her feet from something dirty and distasteful. She wore a skimpy little blue-and-white striped petticoat of cotton; body and skirt in one piece it reached just to her knees, but was sleeveless, and her long, slender arms were bare.

A thrush was singing in the apple-tree and a blackbird warbled loudly in a lilac bush trying to drown the thrush. They sang as though there were no such thing as winter in the world, and neither of them cared a whit for Jane-Anne and her disrobings.

Flinging her white arms above her head, she danced into the middle of the lawn on slim, twinkling white feet and continued to dance all over it with the greatest abandon and enjoyment, while her long black plaits bumped joyously. So light of foot, so variously graceful in her gracious suppleness, with such divine gravity and dainty decorum that Mr. Wycherly watching was fain to take his glasses off and wipe them, for suddenly he could not see as clearly as he wished. Her radiant face was pale, but her wide eyes were full of a gladness that seemed to mirror back the brightness of that May afternoon, and the little petticoat was like the sheath of a flower enfolding and displaying all this happy grace.

Loudly carolled the blackbird, lustily chirruped the thrush, and Jane-Anne danced to their orchestra, and while she danced her mind kept saying: "I've done with it; I've done with it. I shall never go back. Life is before me, a new life; a life full of wonders, and a bedroom to myself, with furniture like looking-glasses; a life with a kind, sensible, if worldly minded aunt, who gives to little girls delicious puddings that they like. A life with books in it, big books; not interesting, perhaps, but very grand and splendid to have lent one. A life that is to be lived under the same roof with a beautiful, kind old gentleman who will perhaps, by-and-bye, let me wait upon him. Oh, wonderful and delicious prospect, to wait upon Mr. Wycherly! To hand him his plate and to pour out--what should she pour out? Wine, she expected, though Miss Stukely said wine was wrong. Not, perhaps, for the gentry, for the _real_ gentry, as her aunt would say. How soft and warm the grass to the bare tripping feet! How kind of those birds to sing like that! How lovely it was to be young and light and to have got rid of heavy shoes and hot, uncomfortable frock. How----"

It was the front door bell.

Jane-Anne heard it and Mr. Wycherly did not.

There certainly was the making of a quick-change artist in Jane-Anne. In a twinkling she had found her shoes and stockings and put them on, and she ran to the house struggling into her dress as she ran.

"You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet,
Where has the Pyrrhic phalanx gone?"

said Mr. Wycherly, wondering why she had stopped so suddenly.

*CHAPTER XI*

*THE CULT OF BRUEY*

"The instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures." _Poetics_, ARISTOTLE.

Jane-Anne was a true Athenian in that she was ever ready to run after any new thing, and during her last two terms at the Bainbridge the strongest influence in her life was that of her Sunday-school teacher, Miss Stukely.

Jane-Anne whole-heartedly admired Miss Stukely, and where she admired she invariably imitated. Miss Stukely was delicate, and Jane-Anne delighted in her own "crepitations" as being the sincerest sort of flattery of that lady.

Miss Stukely was slender, always elaborately dressed, gentle in manner, with white, heavily ringed hands. She was not, perhaps, beautiful in face, being somewhat sallow with a receding chin; but her expression was kindly, and Jane-Anne read into her face the spiritual excellencies the lady was most fond of extolling. She had a way of closing her eyes when she was most earnest in exhortation that Jane-Anne found very impressive. Moreover, she frequently used a gold-topped smelling bottle, and the possession of a similar restorative was just then Jane-Anne's most cherished aspiration.

To lean back in a chair while inhaling the vinegary fragrance of a cut-glass bottle, to lean back with closed eyes, in an aura of the faintness and exhaustion induced by strong emotion, was to Jane-Anne as the ecstatic vision of a mystic: a state of mind and body only to be attained by profound spiritual exaltation.

She learned by heart with ease. She could reel off any number of appropriate, or quite as often, inappropriate texts; and did so on the smallest provocation, greatly to the indignation of Mrs. Dew, who felt that she required no religious instruction at her niece's hands.

This facility greatly impressed Miss Stukely, who felt that in Jane-Anne she indeed found fertile soil for the good seed, and there was no question whatever that Jane-Anne fully deserved the prize she gained for "Bible-searching."

This prize was the history of one "Bruey," "a little worker for Christ," whose winning personality (Miss Stukely was fond of the word "winning," generally using it in the sense of a successful gainer of souls) seized upon Jane-Anne's imagination till she lived and walked and had her being in that character.

Bruey was just her own age, had "great dark eyes" (Jane-Anne was pleasantly conscious of possessing similar orbs), had palpitations. Jane-Anne couldn't quite achieve these, but felt that crepitations were nearly as good and that she was, at all events, near the rose, if not the royal flower herself.