The first two days were days of dreams. The day’s work was the same, yet it passed with a peculiar pleasureableness as though there were soft music somewhere keeping a slow rhythm. He was conscious of an added wonder, of the immanence of something that had not taken material shape. A richer light played upon the colours of the world about him. He was conscious of the light, but he did not realise its nature, nor whence it came.
On the third day the weather changed, and an absurd restlessness took possession of him. Rain came in rushes out of a hurrying grey sky, and the light and the warmth seemed to have gone out of the world. Mysterious outlines took on a sharp distinctness. Figures were no longer the glimmering8 shapes of an Arthurian dream. Canterton became more conscious of the physical part of himself, of appetites, needs, inclinations9, tendencies. Something was hardening and taking shape.
He began to think more definitely of Eve at Latimer, and she was no longer a mere10 radiance spreading itself over the routine of the day’s work. Was she comfortable at the old red-faced “George”? Was the weather interfering11 with her work? Would she write to Lynette, and would the letter have a word for him? What a wonderful colour sense she had, and what cunning in those fingers of hers. He liked to remember that peculiar radiant look, that tenderness in the eyes that came whenever she was stirred by something that was unusually beautiful. It was like the look in the eyes of a mother, or the light in the eyes of a woman who loved. He had seen it when she was looking at Lynette.
Then, quite suddenly, he became conscious of a sense of loss. He was unable to fix his attention on his work, and his thoughts went drifting. He felt lonely. It was as though he had been asleep and dreaming, and had wakened up suddenly, hungry and restless, and vaguely12 discontented.
Even Lynette’s chatter13 was a spell cast about his thoughts. Having created a heroine, the child babbled14 of her and her fascinations15, and Canterton discovered a secret delight in hearing Lynette talk of Eve Carfax. He could not utter the things that the child uttered, and yet they seemed so inevitable16 and so true, so charmingly and innocently intimate. It brought Eve nearer, showed her to him as a more radiant, gracious, laughing figure. Lynette was an enchantress, a siren, and knew it not, and Canterton’s ears were open to her voice.
“I wonder if my letter will come to-day, daddy?”
“Perhaps!”
“It’s over two—three days. It ought to be a big letter.”
“A big letter for a little woman.”
“I wonder if she writes as beautifully as she paints?”
“Very likely.”
“And, oh, daddy, will she be back for our garden party?”
“I think so.”
“Mother says I can’t behave nicely at parties. I shall go about with Miss Eve, and I’ll do just what she does. Then I ought to behave very nicely, oughtn’t I?”
“Perfectly.”
“I do love Miss Eve, daddy, don’t you?”
“We always agree, Miss Pixie.”
On the fourth day Lynette had her letter. It came by the morning’s post, with a little devil in red and black ink dancing on the flap of the envelope. Lynette had not received more than three letters in her life, and the very address gave her a beautiful new thrill.
Miss Lynette Canterton,
Fernhill,
Basingford,
Surrey.
Lessons over, she went rushing out in search of her father, and, after canvassing17 various under-gardeners, discovered him in a corner of the rose nursery.
“Miss Eve’s written, daddy! I knew she would. Would you like to read it? Here’s a message for you.”
He sat down on a wooden bench, and drawing Lynette into the hollow of one arm, took the letter in a big hand. It was written on plain cream paper of a roughish texture18, with a little picture of the “George Hotel” penned in the right upper corner. Eve’s writing was the writing of the younger generation, so different from the regular, sloping, characterless style of the feminine Victorians. It was rather upright, rather square, picturesque19 in its originality20, and with a certain decorative21 distinctness that covered the sheet of paper with personal and intimate values.
“Dear Lynette,—I am writing to you at a funny little table in a funny little window that looks out on Latimer Green. It has been raining all day—oh, such rain!—like thousands of silver wires falling down straight out of the sky. If you were here we would sit at the window and make pictures of the queer people—all legs and umbrellas—walking up and down the streets. Here is the portrait of an umbrella going out for a walk on a nice pair of legs in brown gaiters.
“There is an old raven22 in the garden here. I tried to make friends with him, but he pecked my ankles. And they say he uses dreadful language. Wicked old bird! Here is a picture of him pretending to be asleep, with one eye open, waiting for some poor Puss Cat to come into the garden.
“There is a nice old gardener who makes me tea in the afternoon, but I don’t like it so much as tea in the Wilderness23.
“I want to be back to see you in your new party frock next Friday. I feel quite lonely without the Queen of the Fairies. If you were here I would buy you such cakes at the little shop across the road.
“Please tell Mr. Canterton that the weather was very good to me the first two days, and that I hope he will like the pictures that I have painted.
“Good-bye, Lynette, dear,
Much—much love to you, from
“Miss Eve.”
Lynette was ecstatic.
“Isn’t it a lovely letter, daddy? And doesn’t she write beautifully? And it’s all spelt just as if it were out of a book.”
Canterton folded the letter with meditative24 leisureliness25.
“Quite a lovely letter.”
“I’m going to put it away in my jewel case.”
“Jewel case? We are getting proud!”
“It’s only a work-box, really, but I call it a jewel case.”
“I see. Things are just what we choose to call them.”
Canterton went about for the rest of the day with a picture of a dark-haired woman with a sensitive face sitting at a white framed Georgian window, and looking out upon Latimer Green where all the red-tiled roofs were dull and wet, and the rain rustled26 upon the foliage27 of the Latimer elms. He could imagine Eve drawing those pen-and-ink sketches29 for Lynette, with a glimmer7 of fun in her eyes, and her lips smiling. She was seventy miles away, and yet——He found himself wondering whether her thoughts had reached out to him while she was writing that letter to Lynette.
At Latimer the rain was the mere whim30 of a day, a silver veil let down on the impulse and tossed aside again with equal capriciousness. Eve was deep in the Latimer gardens, painting from nine in the morning till six at night, taking her lunch and tea with her, and playing the gipsy under a blue sky.
Save for that one wet day the weather was perfect for studies of vivid sunlight and dense31 shadow. Latimer Abbey set upon its hill-side, with the dense woods shutting out the north, seemed to float in the very blue of the summer sky. There was no one in residence, and, save for the gardeners, Eve had the place to herself, and was made to feel like a child in a fairy story, who discovers some enchanted32 palace all silent and deserted33, yet kept beautiful by invisible hands. As she sat painting in the upper Italian garden with its flagged walks, statues, brilliant parterres, and fountains, she could not escape from a sense of enchantment. It was all so quiet, and still, and empty. The old clock with its gilded34 face in the turret35 kept
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