eve came down to breakfast in the panelled dining-room at “rock cottage,” and stood at one of the open windows, watching an aberdeen puppy demolishing an old shoe in the middle of the lawn. the grass had been mown the day before, and the two big borders on the near side of the yew hedge were full of colour, chiefly the blues of delphiniums and the rose and white of giant stocks. nearer still were two rose beds planted with the choicest hybrid teas, and mauve and yellow violas. the rock garden beyond the yew hedge had lost some of its may gorgeousness, but the soft tints of its rocks and the greys and greens of the foliage were very restful to the eyes. above it hung the blue curtain of a rare june day.
“billy, you bad boy, come here!”
the puppy growled vigorously, and worried the shoe up and down the lawn.
“oh, you baby! you have got to grow up into a responsible dog, and look after my house.”
she laughed, just because she was happy, and, kneeling on the window-seat, began a flirtation with master billy, who was showing off like any small boy.
“now, i’m sure i’m more interesting than that shoe.”
a bright eye twinkled at her.
“i suppose it is very wrong of me to let you gnaw slippers. i am sure mrs. baxter is harder hearted. but you are so young, little billy, and too soon you will be old.”
the door opened, and a large woman with a broad and comfortable face sailed in with a tray.
“good morning, miss!”
“good morning, mrs. baxter! whose shoe has billy got?”
“i’m thinking it’s one of mine, miss.”
“the wretch!”
“i gave it him, miss. it’s only an old one.”
eve’s eyes glimmered.
“oh, mrs. baxter, how very immoral of you! i thought billy’s education would be safe with you.”
“there, miss, he’s only a puppy.”
“but think of our responsibilities!”
“i wouldn’t give tuppence for a boy or a puppy as had no mischief in him, miss!”
“but think of the whackings afterwards.”
“i don’t think it does no harm. i’ve no sympathy with the mollycoddles. i do hold with a boy getting a good tanning regular. if he deserves it, it’s all right. if he’s too goody to deserve it, he ought to get it for not deserving of it.”
eve laughed, and mrs. baxter put the tea-pot and a dish of sardines on toast on the table. she was a local product, and an excellent one at that, and being a widow, had been glad of a home.
“i’ve made you the china tea, miss. and the telephone man, he wants to know when he can come and fix the hinstrument.”
“any time this morning.”
“thank you, miss.”
the panelled room was full of warm, yellow light, and eve sat down at the gate-legged table with a sense of organic and spiritual well being. there were roses on the table, and her sensitive mouth smiled at them expressively. in one corner stood her easel, an old mahogany bureau held her painting kit, palettes, brushes, tubes, boards, canvases. it was delightful to think that she could put on her sun-hat, wander out into the great gardens, and express herself in all the colours that she loved. lynette’s glowing head would come dancing to her in the sunlight. the wilderness was still a fairy world, where mortals dreamed dreams.
there were letters beside her plate. one was from canterton, who had gone north to plan a rich manufacturer’s new garden. she had not seen him since that drive to london, for he had been away when she had arrived at “rock cottage” to settle the furniture and begin her new life with mrs. baxter and the puppy.
she read canterton’s letter first.
“carissima,—i shall be back to-morrow, early, as i stayed in town for a night. perhaps i shall find you at work. it would please me to discover you in the rosery. i am going to place guinevere among the saints, and each year i shall keep st. guinevere’s feast day.
“i hope everything pleases you at the cottage. i purposely left the garden in an unprejudiced state. it may amuse you to carry out your own ideas.—a rivederci.”
she smiled. yes, she would go and set up her easel in the rosery, and be ready to enter with him upon their spiritual marriage.
under a furniture-dealer’s catalogue lay a pamphlet in a wrapper with the address typed. eve slit the wrapper and found that she held in her hand an anti-suffrage pamphlet, written by gertrude canterton.
she was a little surprised, not having heard as yet a full account of that most quaint and original of interviews. but she read the pamphlet while she ate her toast, and there was a glimmer of light in her eyes that told of amusement.
“a woman’s sphere is the home!” “a woman who is busy with her children is busy according to nature! no sensible person can have any sympathy with those restless and impertinent gadabouts who thrust themselves into activities for which they are not suited. sex forbids certain things to women. the eternal feminine is a force to be cherished!” “woman is the sympathiser, the comforter. she is the other beam of the balance. she should strive to be opposite to man, not like him. a sweet influence in the home, something that is dear and sacred!”
eve asked herself how gertrude canterton could write like this. it was so extraordinarily lacking in self-knowledge, and suggested the old tale of the preacher put up to preach, the preacher who omitted to do the things he advocated, because he was so busy telling other people what they should do. how was it that gertrude canterton never saw her real self? how did she contrive to live with theories, and to forget lynette?
yet in reading the pamphlet, eve carried gertrude canterton’s contentions to their logical conclusion.
“motherhood, and all that it means, is the natural business of woman.
“therefore motherhood should be cherished, as it has never yet been cherished.
“therefore, every healthy woman should be permitted to have a child.”
and here eve folded up the pamphlet abruptly, and pushed it away across the table.
after breakfast she went into the garden, played with billy for five minutes, and then wandered to and fro and up and down the stone paths of the rock garden. there were scores of rare plants, all labelled, but the labels were turned so that the names were hidden. eve had been less than a week in the cottage, but from the very first evening she had put herself to school, to learn the names of all these rock plants. after three days’ work she had been able to reverse the labels, and to go round tagging long names to various diminutive clumps of foliage and flowers, and only now and again had she to stretch out a hand and look at a label.
all that was feminine and expressive in her opened to the sun that morning. she went in about nine and changed her frock, putting on a simple white dress with a low-cut collar that showed her throat. looking in her mirror with the tender carefulness of a woman who is beloved, it pleased her to think that she needed one fleck of colour, a red rosebud over the heart. she touched her dark hair with her fingers, and smiled mysteriously into her own eyes.
she knew that she was ambitious, that her pride in her comrade challenged the pride in herself. his homage should not be fooled. it was a splendid spur, this love of his, and the glow at her heart warmed all that was creative and compassionate in her. this very cottage betrayed how his thoughts had worked for her. a big cupboard recessed behind the oak panelling held several hundred books, the books she needed in her work, and the books that he knew would please her. there was a little studio built out at the back of the cottage, but he had left it bare, for her own self to do with it what she pleased. it was this restraint, this remembering of her individuality that delighted her. he had given her so much, but not everything, because he had realised that it is a rare pleasure to a working woman to spend her money in accumulating the things that she desires.
on her way through the plantations she met lavender, and she and lavender were good friends. the enthusiast in him approved of eve. she had eyes to see, and she did not talk the woolly stuff that he associated with most women. her glimpses of beauty were not adjectival, but sharp and clear-cut, proof positive that she saw the things that she pretended to see.
he offered to carry her easel, and she accepted the offer.
“have you seen those japanese irises in the water garden, miss carfax?”
“yes, i am going to paint them this afternoon. whose idea was it massing that golden alyssum and blue lithospermum on the rocks behind them? it’s a touch of genius.”
lavender’s nose curved when he smiled.
“that was one of my flashes. it looks good, doesn’t it?”
“one of the things that make you catch your breath.”
he swung along with his hawk’s profile in the air.
“i fancy we’re going to do some big things in the future. if i were a rich man and wanted the finest garden in england, i’d give mr. canterton a free hand. and, excuse me saying it, miss, but i’m glad you’ve joined us.”
he gave her a friendly glare from a dark and apprizing eye.
“i’m keen, keen as blazes, and i wouldn’t work with people who didn’t care! mr. canterton showed me those pictures of yours. i should like to have them to look at in the winter, when everything’s lying brown and dead. if you want to know anything, miss carfax, at any time, i’m at your service.”
his manners were of the quaintest, but she understood him, that he was above jealousy, and that he looked on her as a fellow enthusiast.
“i shall bother you, mr. lavender, pretty often, i expect. i want to know everything that can be known.”
“that’s the cry! but isn’t it a rum thing, miss carfax, how nine people out of ten knock along as though there were nothing fit to make them jump out of their skins with curiosity. why i was always like a terrier after a rat. ‘what’s this?’ ‘what’s that?’ that’s my leitmotiv. but most people don’t ask nature any questions. no wonder she despises them, the dullards, just as though they hadn’t an eye to see that she’s a good-looking woman!”
he erected her easel for her in the rosery, tilted his panama hat, and marched off.
eve sought out guinevere and sat herself down before the prospective saint, only to find that she was in no mood for painting. her glance flitted from rose to rose, and the music of their names ran like a poem through her head. moreover, the june air was full of their perfume, a heavy, somnolent perfume that lures one into dreaming.
suddenly she found that he was standing in one of the black arches cut in the yew hedge. she knew that the blood went to her face, and she remembered telling herself that she would have to overcome these too obvious reactions.
he came and stood beside her, looking down at her with steady and eloquent eyes.
“you have found out guinevere?”
“yes. we are old friends now.”
“i am not going to market this rose. she is to be held sacred to fernhill. how are you getting on at the cottage?”
her eyes glimmered to his.
“thank you for everything.”
“and billy pleases you?”
“he has a sense of humour.”
“and mrs. baxter?”
“has what they call a motherly way with her.”
his eyes wandered round the rosery with a grave, musing look.
“i want to talk.”
“talk to me here. i want to know how——”
“how she accepted it?”
“yes.”
“she laughed. thought it ridiculous. and i had been ready for a possible tragedy!”
“what an amusing world it is.”
he moved a little restlessly.
“i want to get away from that. let’s walk through the plantations. i can’t keep still to-day. i want to see you everywhere, to realise you everywhere.”
they wandered off together, walking a little apart. all about them rose the young trees, cedars, cypresses, junipers, yews, pines, glimmering in the june sunlight and sending out faint, balsamic perfumes. men were hoeing the alleys between the maples and limes, their hoes flashing when a beam of sunlight struck through the foliage of the young trees.
canterton stopped and spoke to the men. also he spoke to eve as to a partner and a fellow-expert who understood.
“do you think we make enough use of maples in england?”
“isn’t there a doubt about some of them colouring well over here?”
“they give us a very fair show. the spring tints are almost as good as the autumn ones in some cases. i want to see what you think of a new philadelphus i have over here.”
they walked on, and when their eyes met again hers smiled into his.
“thank you for that seriousness.”
“it was genuine enough. i am going to expect a very great deal from you.”
“i’m glad. i’ll rise to it. it will make me very happy. do you know i have learnt nearly all the names of the plants in my rock garden!”
“have you, already!”
“yes. and i am going to study every whim and trick and habit. i am going to be thorough!”
they came to a grove of black american spruces that were getting beyond the marketable age, having grown to a height of fifteen or twenty feet. the narrow path was in the shade, a little secret path that cut through the black glooms like a river through a mountainous land.
canterton was walking behind her.
“hold out your hand!”
without turning her head she held her hand out palm upwards, and felt something small dropped into it.
“wear it—under your dress.”
it was a little gold ring, the token of their spiritual marriage.
they came out into the sunshine, and eve’s eyes were mistily bright. she had not spoken, but her lips were quivering sensitively. she had slipped the ring on to her finger.
“a king’s ransom for your thoughts!”
she turned to him with an indescribable smile.
“i am lynette’s fairy mother. oh, how good!”
“for her?”
“and for me.”
“i have a formal invitation to deliver from lynette. she hailed me out of the window. we are to have tea in the wilderness, and billy is asked.”
“the wilderness! that is where we forget to be clever.”
they came round to the heath garden where it overhung the green spires of the larches.
“i am going on with my book. your name will be added to it.”
“may i sign the plates?”
“oh, we’ll have you on the title-page, ‘paintings by eve carfax.’ and i shall ask you to go pilgrimaging again, as you went to latimer.”
she drew in her breath sharply.
“ah, latimer! i shall be dreaming dreams. but i want some of them to be real.”
“tell me them!”
“i want to help other women; help them over the rough places.”
“you can do it. i mean you to have a name and a career.”
“i don’t want to live only for self.”
“first make ‘self’ a strong castle, then think of helping the distressed. we are only just at the beginning of things, you and i. we’ll have a rest home for tired workers. i know of a fine site in my pine woods. and you will become a woman of affairs.”
“i shall never rush about and make speeches!”
“no, i don’t think you will do that.”
they turned towards the white gate, and heard the voice of lynette—lynette who had been giving chase.
“daddy! miss eve!”
she came on them, running; glowing hair tossing in the sunlight, red mouth a little breathless.
“oh, miss eve, the fairies have asked you to tea!”
“i know. i have heard!”
she caught lynette, and kneeling, drew her into her arms with a great spasm of tenderness.
“i am going to be a fairy, one of your fairies, for ever and ever.”
“be the queen fairy!”
“yes, yes.”
“for ever and ever. i think god is very kind. i did ask him so hard.”
“dear!”
lynette had never been kissed as she was kissed at that moment.
