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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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