“Yes. I have got a voice. I know I could do something with it. And you see they don’t understand. Mother says I can take lessons from Miss Rowe at Dorminster. Miss Rowe!” She laughed derisively. “And father says if I sing well enough to please them at home, and to lead in the choir, what more do I want? They expect me to trot round with mother on her district calls, when I’m really only in the way. Mother likes doing it. She wouldn’t give up her work to me even if I wished it. And I’m supposed to do needlework for the children, when poor Mrs. Jones down the village would be glad of it, and ought to have it. And they think I’m awful and ungrateful not to be quite happy with tennis parties and flower shows for my amusement! Oh Miss Page, don’t you think to be a daughter at home, with no money, at the mercy of your parents, unable to get away, is just like being a slave?”
She poured out the words passionately. Her hands were shaking, her eyes full of tears.
Anne looked at her, and a wave of comprehension and pity passed over her heart.
The girl’s incoherent words were echoes; they touched painful memories of years for her, long past.
She recognized the despairing cry of youth, articulate in these modern times, no longer stifled as in the days of her own girlhood.
Youth, fettered, struggling with passionate clamour to be free.
She recognized the revolt of a temperament unsuited to its environment, bound by a tyranny no less stifling because it was unconscious and even loving.
She rose, and began to walk about the room, conscious of the modern spirit, accepting it as inevitable, and in spite of all the misery it involved, right in its essence, a necessary step towards the just claim for individual liberty.
Sylvia watched her hungrily, like a prisoner who has staked his existence on the goodwill and clemency of a ruler.
“I will do what I can, Sylvia,” she said at last. “I will speak to your father. I think you ought to go.”