Mr. Wycherly's Wards

by L. Allen Harker

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.