CHAPTER II
INTRODUCES THE HONOURABLE JANE
The only one of her relatives who practically made her home with theduchess was her niece and former ward, the Honourable Jane Champion;and this consisted merely in the fact that the Honourable Jane was theone person who might invite herself to Overdene or Portland Place,arrive when she chose, stay as long as she pleased, and leave when itsuited her convenience. On the death of her father, when her lonelygirlhood in her Norfolk home came to an end, she would gladly havefilled the place of a daughter to the duchess. But the duchess did notrequire a daughter; and a daughter with pronounced views, plenty ofback-bone of her own, a fine figure, and a plain face, would haveseemed to her Grace of Meldrum a peculiarly undesirable acquisition. SoJane was given to understand that she might come whenever she liked,and stay as long as she liked, but on the same footing as other people.This meant liberty to come and go as she pleased; and no responsibilitytowards her aunt's guests. The duchess preferred managing her ownparties in her oven way.
Jane Champion was now in her thirtieth year. She had once beendescribed, by one who saw below the surface, as a perfectly beautifulwoman in an absolutely plain shell; and no man had as yet lookedbeneath the shell, and seen the woman in her perfection. She would havemade earth heaven for a blind lover who, not having eyes for theplainness of her face or the massiveness of her figure, might havedrawn nearer, and apprehended the wonder of her as a woman,experiencing the wealth of tenderness of which she was capable, theblessed comfort of the shelter of her love, the perfect comprehensionof her sympathy, the marvellous joy of winning and wedding her. But asyet, no blind man with far-seeing vision had come her way; and italways seemed to be her lot to take a second place, on occasions whenshe would have filled the first to infinite perfection.
She had been bridesmaid at weddings where the charming brides,notwithstanding their superficial loveliness, possessed few of thequalifications for wifehood with which she was so richly endowed.
She was godmother to her friends' babies, she, whose motherhood wouldhave been a thing for wonder and worship.
She had a glorious voice, but her face not matching it, its existencewas rarely suspected; and as she accompanied to perfection, she wasusually in requisition to play for the singing of others.
In short, all her life long Jane had filled second places, and filledthem very contentedly. She had never known what it was to be absolutelyfirst with any one. Her mother's death had occurred during her infancy,so that she had not even the most shadowy remembrance of that maternallove and tenderness which she used sometimes to try to imagine,although she had never experienced it.
Her mother's maid, a faithful and devoted woman, dismissed soon afterthe death of her mistress, chancing to be in the neighbourhood sometwelve years later, called at the manor, in the hope of finding some inthe household who remembered her.
After tea, Fraulein and Miss Jebb being out of the way, she wasspirited up into the schoolroom to see Miss Jane, her heart full ofmemories of the "sweet babe" upon whom she and her dear lady hadlavished so much love and care.
She found awaiting her a tall, plain girl with a frank, boyish mannerand a rather disconcerting way as she afterwards remarked, of "takingstock of a body the while one was a-talking," which at first checkedthe flow of good Sarah's reminiscences, poured forth so freely in thehousekeeper's room below, and reduced her to looking tearfully aroundthe room, remarking that she remembered choosing the blessed wall-paperwith her dear lady now gone, whose joy had been so great when the dearbabe first took notice and reached up for the roses. "And I can showyou, miss, if you care to know it just which bunch of roses it were."
But before Sarah's visit was over, Jane had heard manyundreamed-of-things; amongst others, that her mother used to kiss herlittle hands, "ah, many a time she, did, miss; called them littlerose-petals, and covered them with kisses."
The child, utterly unused to any demonstrations of affection, looked ather rather ungainly brown hands and laughed, simply because she wasashamed of the unwonted tightening at her throat and the queer stingingof tears beneath her eyelids. Thus Sarah departed under the impressionthat Miss Jane had grown up into a rather a heartless young lady. ButFraulein and Jebbie never knew why, from that day onward, the hands, ofwhich they had so often had cause to complain, were kept scrupulouslyclean; and on her birthday night, unashamed in the quiet darkness, thelonely little child kissed her own hands beneath the bedclothes,striving thus to reach the tenderness of her dead mother's lips.
And in after years, when she became her own mistress, one of her firstactions was to advertise for Sarah Matthews and engage her as her ownmaid, at a salary which enabled the good woman eventually to buyherself a comfortable annuity.
Jane saw but little of her father, who had found it difficult toforgive her, firstly, for being a girl when he desired a son; secondly,being a girl, for having inherited his plainness rather than hermother's beauty. Parents are apt to see no injustice in the fact thatthey are often annoyed with their offspring for possessing attributes,both of character and appearance, with which they themselves haveendowed them.
The hero of Jane's childhood, the chum of her girlhood and the closefriend of her maturer years, was Deryck Brand, only son of the rectorof the parish, and her senior by nearly ten years. But even in theirfriendship, close though it was, she had never felt herself first tohim. As a medical student, at home during vacations, his mother and hisprofession took precedence in his mind of the lonely child, whosedevotion pleased him and whose strong character and original mentaldevelopment interested him. Later on he married a lovely girl, asunlike Jane as one woman could possibly be to another; but still theirfriendship held and deepened; and now, when he was rapidly advancing tothe very front rank of his profession, her appreciation of his work,and sympathetic understanding of his aims and efforts, meant more tohim than even the signal mark of royal favour, of which he had latelybeen the recipient.
Jane Champion had no close friends amongst the women of her set. Herlonely girlhood had bred in her an absolute frankness towards herselfand other people which made it difficult for her to understand ortolerate the little artificialities of society, or the trivialweaknesses of her own sex. Women to whom she had shown specialkindness--and they were many--maintained an attitude of gratefuladmiration in her presence, and of cowardly silence in her absence whenshe chanced to be under discussion.
But of men friends she had many, especially among a set of youngfellows just through college, of whom she made particular chums; nicelads, who wrote to her of their college and mess-room scrapes, as theywould never have dreamed of doing to their own mothers. She knewperfectly well that they called her "old Jane" and "pretty Jane" and"dearest Jane" amongst themselves, but she believed in the harmlessnessof their fun and the genuineness of their affection, and gave them agenerous amount of her own in return.
Jane Champion happened just now to be paying one of her long visits toOverdene, and was playing golf with a boy for whom she had long had arod in pickle on this summer afternoon when the duchess went to cutblooms in her rose-garden. Only, as Jane found out, you cannotdecorously lead up to a scolding if you are very keen on golf, and gogolfing with a person who is equally enthusiastic, and who all the wayto the links explains exactly how he played every hole the last time hewent round, and all the way back gloats over, in retrospection, the wayyou and he have played every hole this time.
So Jane considered her afternoon, didactically, a failure. But, in thesmoking-room that night, young Cathcart explained the game all overagain to a few choice spirits, and then remarked: "Old Jane was superb!Fancy! Such a drive as that, and doing number seven in three and nottalking about it! I've jolly well made up my mind to send no morebouquets to Tou-Tou. Hang it, boys! You can't see yourself at champagnesuppers with a dancing-woman, when you've walked round the links, on aday like this, with the Honourable Jane. She drives like a rifle shot,and when she lofts, you'd think the ball was a swallow; and beat methree ho
les up and never mentioned it. By Jove, a fellow wants to havea clean bill when he shakes hands with her!"