about six o’clock james canterton took leave of guinevere, and passing out through the yew hedge, made his way down the rhododendron walk to the wicket gate that opened on the side of a hill. on this hill-side was the “heath garden” that tumbled when in full bloom like a cataract of purple and white wine till it broke against the shadowy edge of a larch wood. the spires of the larches descended in glimmering confusion towards the stream that ran among poplars and willows in the bottom of the valley.
canterton followed a path that led into the larch wood where the thousands of grey black poles were packed so close together that the eye could not see for more than thirty yards. there was a faint and mysterious murmuring in the tree tops, a sound as of breathing that was only to be heard when one stood still. the ground was covered with thin, wiry grass of a peculiarly vivid green. the path curled this way and that among the larch trunks, with a ribbon of blue sky mimicking it overhead. the wood was called the wilderness, and even when a gale was blowing, it was calm and sheltered in the deeps among the trees.
canterton paused now and again to examine some of the larches. he had been working at the spruce gall aphis disease, trying to discover a new method of combating it, or of lighting upon some other creature that by preying upon the pest might be encouraged to extirpate the disease. the winding path led him at last to the lip of a large dell or sunken clearing. it was a pool of yellow sunlight in the midst of the green glooms, palisaded round with larch trunks, its banks a tangle of broom, heather, bracken, whortleberry, and furze. there was a boggy spot in one corner where gorgeous mosses made a carpet of green and gold, and bog asphodel grew, and the sundew fed upon insects. all about the clearing the woods were a blue mist when the wild hyacinth bloomed in may.
down below him in a grassy hollow a child with brilliant auburn hair was feeding a fire with dry sticks. she knelt intent and busy, serenely alone with herself, tending the fire that she had made. beside her she had a tin full of water, an old saucepan, two or three potatoes, some tea and sugar twisted up together in the corner of a newspaper, and a medicine bottle half full of milk.
“hallo—hallo!”
the auburn hair flashed in the sunlight, and the child turned the face of a beautiful and wayward elf.
“daddy!”
she sprang up and raced towards him.
“daddy, come along. i’ve got to cook the supper for the fairies.”
canterton had never evolved a more beautiful flower than this child of his, lynette. she was his in every way, without a shred of her mother’s nature, for even her glowing little head was as different from gertrude canterton’s as fire from clay.
“hallo, come along.”
he caught her up with his big hands, and set her on his shoulder.
“now then, what about princess puck? you don’t mean to say the greedy little beggars have eaten up all that pudding we cooked them last night?”
“every little bit.”
“it must have been good. and it means that we shall have to put on our aprons.”
on the short grass at the bottom of the clearing was a fairy ring, and to lynette the whole wilderness was full of the little people. the dell was her playing ground, and she fled to it on those happy occasions when miss vance, her governess, had her hours of freedom. as for canterton, he was just the child that she was, entering into all her fancies, applauding them, and taking a delight in her gay, elf-like enthusiasm.
“have you seen brer rabbit to-night?”
“no.”
“he just said ‘how de do’ to me as i came through the wood. and i saw old sergeant hedgehog taking a nap under a tuft of grass.”
“i don’t like old hedgehog. i don’t like prickly people, do you, daddy?”
“not much.”
“like miss nickleton. she might be a pin-cushion. she’s always taking out pins, and putting you all tidy.”
“now then, we’ve got to be very serious. what’s the supper to be to-night?”
“baked potatoes and tea.”
“by jove, they’ll get fat.”
canterton set her down and threw himself into the business with an immense seriousness that made him the most convincing of playfellows. he took off his coat, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and looked critically at the fire.
“we want some more wood, daddy.”
“just so.”
he went among the larches, gathered an armful of dead wood, and returned to the fire. lynette was kneeling and poking it with a stick, her hair shining in the sunlight, her pale face with its hazel eyes full of a happy seriousness. canterton knelt down beside her, and they began to feed the fire.
“rather sulky.”
“blow, daddy.”
he bent down and played æolus, getting red in the face.
“i say, what a lot of work these fairies give us!”
“but won’t they be pleased! i like to think of them coming out in the moonlight, and feasting, and then having their dance round the ring.”
“and singing, ‘long live lynette.’”
they heated up the water in the saucepan, and made tea—of a kind—and baked the potatoes in the embers of the fire. lynette always spread the feast on the bottom of a bank near the fairy ring. sergeant hedgehog, black-eyed field mice, and an occasional rat, disposed of the food, but that did not matter so long as lynette found that it had gone. canterton himself would come down early, and empty the tea away to keep up the illusion.
“i think i’ll be a fairy some night, lynette.”
her eyes laughed up at him.
“fancy you being a fairy, daddy! why, you’d eat up all the food, and there wouldn’t be room to dance.”
“come, now, i’m hurt.”
she stroked his face.
“you’re so much better than a fairy, daddy.”
the sun slanted lower, and shadows began to cover the clearing. canterton smothered the fire, picked up lynette, and set her on his shoulders, one black leg hanging down on either side of his cerise tie, for canterton always wore irish tweeds, and ties that showed some colour.
“off we go.”
they romped through the larch wood, up the hill-side, and into the garden, lynette’s two hands clasped over her father’s forehead. fernhill house showed up against the evening sky, a warm, old, red-brick building with white window frames, roses and creepers covering it, and little dormer windows peeping out of the tiled roof. stretches of fine turf were unfurled before it, set with beds of violas, and bounded by great herbaceous borders. a cedar of lebanon grew to the east, a noble sequoia to the west, throwing sharp black shadows on the gold-green grass.
“gallop, daddy.”
canterton galloped, and her brilliant hair danced, and her red mouth laughed. they came across the grass to the house in fine uproarious style, and were greeted by the sound of voices drifting through the open windows of the drawing-room.
their irresponsible fun was at end. canterton set the child down just as the thin primrose-coloured figure came to one of the open french windows.
“james, mrs. brocklebank has come back with me. where is miss vance?”
lynette replied for miss vance.
“she had a headache, mother.”
“i might have inferred something of the kind. look at the front of your dress, lynette.”
“yes, mother.”
“what have you been doing? and you have got a great hole in your left stocking, over the knee.”
“yes, mother, so i have.”
“lynette, how often have i told you——”
mrs. brocklebank or no mrs. brocklebank, canterton interposed quietly in lynette’s defence.
“if it’s anybody’s fault it’s mine, gertrude. let the child be a child sometimes.”
she turned on him impatiently, being only too conscious of the fact that lynette was his child, and not hers.
“how can you expect me to have any authority? and in the end the responsibility always rests with the woman.”
“perhaps—perhaps not. run along, old lady. i’ll come and say good night presently.”
lynette walked off to the south door, having no desire to be kissed by mrs. brocklebank in the drawing-room. she turned and looked back once at her father with a demure yet inimitable twinkle of the eyes. canterton was very much part of lynette’s life. her mother only dashed into it with spasmodic earnestness, and with eyes that were fussily critical. for though gertrude canterton always spoke of woman’s place being the home, she was so much busied with reforming other people’s homes, and setting all their social machinery in order, that she had very little leisure left for her own. a housekeeper managed the house by letting mrs. canterton think that she herself managed it. miss vance was almost wholly responsible for lynette, and gertrude canterton’s periodic plunges into the domestic routine at fernhill were like the surprise visits of an inspector of schools.
“mrs. brocklebank is staying the night. we have some business to discuss with regard to the children’s home.”
canterton detested mrs. brocklebank, but he went in and shook hands with her. she was a large woman, with the look of a very serious-minded white cow. her great point was her gravity. it was a massive and imposing edifice which you could walk round and inspect, without being able to get inside it. this building was fitted with a big clock that boomed solemnly at regular intervals, always making the same sound, and making it as though it were uttering some new and striking note.
“i see you are one of those, mr. canterton, who like to let children run wild.”
“i suppose i am. i’d rather my child had fine legs and a good appetite to begin with.”
his wife joined in.
“lynette could not read when she was six.”
“that was a gross crime, gertrude, to be sure.”
“it might be called symptomatic.”
“mrs. brocklebank, my wife is too conscientious for some of us.”
“can one be too conscientious, mr. canterton?”
“well, i can never imagine gertrude with holes in her stockings, or playing at honey-pots. i believe you wrote a prize essay when you were eleven, gertrude, and the subject was, ‘how to teach children to play in earnest.’ if you’ll excuse me, i have to see lavender about one of the hothouses before i dress for dinner.”
he left them together, sitting like two solemn china figures nodding their heads over his irresponsible love of laissez-faire. mrs. brocklebank had no children, but she was a great authority upon them, in a kind of pathological way.
“i think you ought to make a stand, gertrude.”
“the trouble is, my husband’s ideas run the same way as the child’s inclinations. i think i must get rid of miss vance. she is too easygoing.”
“the child ought soon to be old enough to go to school. let me see, how old is she?”
“seven.”
“send her away next year. there is that very excellent school at cheltenham managed by miss sandys. she was a wrangler, you know, and is an ll.d. her ideas are absolutely sound. psychological discipline is one of her great points.”
“i must speak to james about it. he is such a difficult man to deal with. so immovable, and always turning things into a kind of quiet laughter.”
“i know. most difficult—most baffling.”
though three people sat down at the dinner table, it was a diner à deux so far as the conversation was concerned. the women discussed the primrose league fête, and lord parallax, whom gertrude canterton had found rather disappointing. from mere local topics they travelled into the wilderness of eugenics, mrs. brocklebank treating of mendelism, and talking as though canterton had never heard of mendel. it amused him to listen to her, especially since the work of such master men as mendel and de vries formed part of the intimate inspiration of his own study of the strange beauty of growth. mrs. brocklebank appeared to have muddled up mendelism with galton’s theory of averages. she talked sententiously of pure dominants and recessives, got her figures badly mixed, and uttered some really astonishing things that would have thrilled a scientific audience.
yet it was dreary stuff when devitalised by mrs. brocklebank’s pompous inexactitudes, especially when accompanied by an interminable cracking of nuts. she always ended lunch and dinner with nuts, munching them slowly and solemnly, exaggerating her own resemblance to a white cow chewing the cud.
canterton escaped upstairs, passed miss vance on the landing, a motherly young woman with rich brown hair, and made his way to the nursery. the room was full of the twilight, and through the open window came the last notes of a thrush. lynette was lying in a white bed with a green coverlet. her mother had ordered a pink bedspread, but miss vance had thought of lynette’s hair.
canterton sat on the edge of the bed.
“well, princess, are you a pure dominant?”
“i’ve said my prayers, daddy.”
“oh, that’s good—very good! i wonder how the feast is getting on in the wilderness?”
“they won’t come out yet, not till the moon shines.”
“think of their little silver slippers twinkling like dewdrops on the grass.”
“i wish i could see them, daddy. have you ever seen a fairy?”
“i think i’ve caught a glimpse of one, now and again. but you have to be ever so good to see fairies.”
“you ought to have seen lots, then, daddy.”
he laughed, the quiet, meditative laugh of the man wise in his own humility.
“there are more wonderful things than fairies, lynette. i’ll tell you about them some day.”
“yes, do.”
she sat up in bed, her hair a dark flowing mass about her slim face and throat, and canterton was reminded of some exquisite white bud that promised to be an exquisite flower.
“let’s have some rhymes, daddy.”
“what, more bed ballads?”
“yes.”
“what shall we start with?”
“begin with cat.”
“all right, let’s see what turns up:
“outside the door there lay a cat,
aunt emma thought it was a mat,
and though poor puss was rather fat,
aunt emma left her, simply—flat.”
“oh, poor pussy!”
“rather too realistic for you, and too hard on the cat!”
“make up something about mister bruin.”
“bruin. that’s a stiff thing to rhyme to. let’s see:
“now, mister bruin
went a-wooin’,
the lady said ‘what are you doin’!’
“i’m stumped. i can’t get any farther.”
“oh, yes you can, daddy!”
“very well.”
“let’s call him mr. bear instead,
and say his mouth was very red.
miss bruin had a paris gown on,
she was a sweet phenomenownon.
the gloves she wore were just nineteens,
of course you know what that size means!
mr. bear wore thirty-ones,
but then he was so fond of buns.
he asked miss b. to be his wife,
and said, ‘i will lay down my life.’
she answered him, ‘now, how much money
can you afford, and how much honey?’
poor b. looked rather brown at that,
for he was not a plutocrat.
‘my dear,’ he said, ‘it makes me sore,
that i should be so very poor.
i’ll start a bun shop, if you like,
and buy you a new motor-bike.’
she said, ‘i know where all the buns would go,
and motor biking’s much too low.’
poor teddy flew off in disgust,
saying, ‘marry a marquis if you must.’”
lynette clapped her hands.
“what a horrid miss bruin! i hope she died an old maid!”
“no, she married lord grizzley. and he gave her twopence a week to dress on, and made her give him her fur to stuff his bath-chair cushions with.”
“how splendid! that’s just what ought to have happened, daddy.”
when he had kissed her “good night,” and seen her snuggle down with her hair spread out over the pillow, canterton went down to the library and, in passing the door of the drawing-room, heard mrs. brocklebank’s voice sending out its slow, complacent notes. this woman always had a curious psychical effect on him. she smeared all the fine outlines of life, and brought an unpleasant odour into the house that penetrated everywhere. what was more, she had the effect of making him look at his wife with that merciless candour that discovers every crudity, and every trifle that is unlovely. gertrude was a most excellent woman. he saw her high forehead, her hat tilted at the wrong angle, her hair straggling in wisps, her finnicking vivacity, her thin, wriggling shoulders, the way she mouthed her words and poked her chin forward when she talked. the clarity of his vision often shocked him, especially when he tried to remember her as a slim and rather over-enthusiastic girl. had they both changed so vastly, and why? he knew that his wife had become subtly repulsive to him, not in the mere gross physical sense alone, but in her mental odour. they ate together, but slept apart. he never entered her room. the idea of touching her provoked some fastidious instinct within him, and made him shrink from the imagined contact.
sometimes he wondered whether gertrude was aware of this strong and incipient repulsion. he imagined that she felt nothing. he had not lived with her for fifteen years without discovering how thick was the skin of her restless egotism. canterton had never known anyone who was so completely and actively self-satisfied. he never remembered having seen her in tears. as for their estrangement, it had come about gradually when he had chosen to change the life of the amateur for the life of the trader. then there was the child, another gulf between them. a tacit yet silent antagonism had grown up round lynette.
on canterton’s desk in the library lay the manuscript of his “book of the english garden.” he had been at work on it for two years, trying to get all the mystery and colour and beauty of growth into the words he used.
he sat down at the desk, and turned over the pages written in that strong, regular, and unhurried hand of his. the manuscript smelt of lavender, for he always kept a few sprigs between the leaves. but to-night something seemed lacking in the book. it was too much a thing of black and white. the words did not strike upon his brain and evoke a glow of living colour. roses were not red enough, and the torch lily had not a sufficient flame.
“colour, yes, colour!”
he sat back and lit his pipe.
“i must get someone to start the plates. i know just what i want, but i don’t quite know the person to do it.”
he talked to himself—within himself.
“rogers? no, too flamboyant, not true. i want truth. there’s peterson. no, i don’t like peterson’s style—too niggling. loses the charm in trying to be too correct.”
he was disturbed by the opening of a door, and a sudden swelling of voices towards him. he half turned in his chair with the momentary impatience of a thinker disturbed.
“let us look it up under ‘hygiene.’”
the library door opened, and the invasion displayed itself.
“we want to look at the encyclopædia, james.”
“it’s there!”
“i always feel so stimulated when i am in a library, mr. canterton. i hope you don’t mind our——”
“oh, not in the least!”
“i think we might make our notes here, gertrude.”
gertrude canterton was standing by a revolving book-stand looking out the volume they needed.
“yes. james, you might get us the other light, and put it on the table.”
he got up, fetched the portable red-shaded lamp from a book-stand, set it on the oak table in the centre of the room, and turned on the switch.
“oh, and the ink, and a pen. not one of your nibs. i can’t bear j’s.”
“something thinner?”
“please. oh, and some paper. some of that manuscript paper will do.”
they established themselves at the table, mrs. brocklebank with the volume, gertrude with the pen and paper. mrs. brocklebank brought out her pince-nez, adjusted them half down her nose, and began to turn over the pages. canterton took a book on moths from a shelf, and sat down in an easy chair.
“hum—hygiene. i find it here—public health, sanitary by-laws; hum—hum—sewage systems. i think we shall discover what we want. ah, here it is!”
“the matron told me——”
“yes, exactly. they had to burn pastilles. hum—hum—septic tank. my dear, what is a septic tank?”
“something not quite as it should be.”
“ah, exactly! i understand. hum—let me see. their tank must be very septic. that accounts for—hum—for the odour.”
canterton watched them over the top of his book. he could see his wife’s face plainly. she was frowning and biting the end of the pen, and fidgeting with the paper. he noticed the yellow tinge of the skin, and the eager and almost hungry shadow lines that ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth. it was a passionless face, angular and restless, utterly lacking in any inward imaginative glow. gertrude canterton rushed at life, fiddled at the notes with her thin fingers, but had no subtle understanding of the meaning of the sounds that were produced.
mrs. brocklebank read like a grave cleric at a lectern, head tilted slightly back, her eyes looking down through her pince-nez.
“the bacterial action should produce an effluent that is perfectly clear and odourless. my dear, i think—hum—that there is a misconception somewhere.”
neither of them noticed that canterton had left them, and had disappeared through the french window into the garden.
a full moon had risen, and in one of the shrubberies a nightingale was singing. the cedar of lebanon and the great sequoia were black and mysterious and very still, the lawns a soft silver dusted ever so lightly with dew. not a leaf was stirring, and the pale night stood like a sweet sad ghost looking down on the world with eyes of wisdom and of wonder.
canterton strolled across the grass, and down through the japanese garden where lilies floated in the still pools that reflected the moonlight. all the shadows were very sharp and black, the cypresses standing like obelisks, the yew hedge of the rosery a wall of obsidian. canterton wandered up and down the stone paths of the rosery, and knocked his pipe out in order to smell the faint perfumes that lingered in the still air. he had lived so much among flowers that his sense of smell had become extraordinarily sensitive, and he could distinguish many a rose in the dark by means of its perfume. the full moon stared at him over the yew hedge, huge and yellow in a cloudless sky, and canterton thought of lynette’s fairies down in the wilderness tripping round the fairy ring on the dewy grass.
the sense of an increasing loneliness forced itself upon him as he walked up and down the paths of the rosery. for of late he had come to know that he was lonely, in spite of lynette, in spite of all his fascinating problems, in spite of his love of life and of growth. that was just it. he loved the colours, the scents, and the miraculous complexities of life so strongly that he wanted someone to share this love, someone who understood, someone who possessed both awe and curiosity. lynette was very dear to him, dearer than anything else on earth, but she was the child, and doubtless he would lose her when she became the woman.
he supposed that some day she would marry, and the thought of it almost shocked him. good god, what a lottery it was! he might have to hand her over to some raw boy—and if life proved unkind to her! well, after all, it was nature. and how did marriages come about? how had his own come about? what on earth had made him marry gertrude? what on earth made most men marry most women? he had been shy, rather diffident, a big fellow in earnest, and he remembered how gertrude had made a little hero of him because of his travels. yes, he supposed it had been suggestion. every woman, the lure of the feminine thing, a dim notion that they would be fellow enthusiasts, and that the woman was what he had imagined woman to be.
canterton smiled to himself, but the pathetic humour of life did not make him feel any less lonely. he wanted someone who would walk with him on such a night as this, someone to whom it was not necessary to say trite things, someone to whom a touch of the hand would be eloquent, someone who had his patient, watchful, wonder-obsessed soul. he was not spending half of himself, because he could not pour out one half of all that was in him. it seemed a monstrous thing that a man should have taught himself to see so much, and that he should have no one to see life with him as he saw it.
