Tetherstones

Twelve deep notes sounded from the clock-tower of the Cathedral, and the Bishop’s secretary dropped her hands from her typewriter and turned her face to the open window with a quick sigh. The Bishop’s garden lay sleeping in the sunshine—the pure white of lilies and royal blue of delphiniums mingling together as the wrought silks on the fringe of an altar-cloth. The age-worn stone of the Cathedral rose beyond it, and the arch of the cloisters gave a glimpse of the quiet burial-ground within. A great cluster of purple stone-crop rioted over one corner of the arch, and the secretary’s tired eyes rested upon it with a touch of wistfulness as though the splendour of it were somewhat overwhelming. She herself was so slight, so insignificant, so altogether negligible a quality, a being wholly out of place in the midst of such glorious surroundings. But yet she loved them, and her happiest hours were those she spent with her little sketching-block in various corners of that wonderful garden. It was only that the purple flower seemed somehow to be the symbol to her of all that was out of reach. Her youth was slipping from her, and she had never lived.

The tired lines about the brown eyes were growing daily more marked. The little tender curve about the lips was becoming a droop. The brown hair that grew so softly about her forehead gleamed unexpectedly white here and there.

“Yes, I’m getting old,” said Frances Thorold. “Old and tired and dull.” She stretched up her arms with a sudden movement, and for a second her hands were clenched. Then they fell to her sides.

“I suppose we are all slaves,” she said, “of one kind or another. But only the rebels know it.”

She turned again to her work, and for a space only the sharp click of the machine disturbed the summer silence. It had an unmistakably indignant sound as though its manipulator were out of sympathy with the words so deftly printed on the white page. The secretary’s mouth became very firm as she proceeded, the brown eyes narrowed and grew hard.

Suddenly she lettered an impatient exclamation and looked up. “Oh, these platitudes!” she said. “How are they going to help men and women to live?”

For a moment she had almost a desperate look, and then abruptly she laughed.

“Perhaps it isn’t all your fault,” she said to the manuscript by her side, “that you give us stones for bread. You have lived on them all your life and don’t know the difference.”

“How do you know?” said a voice at the window.

The secretary gave a start. Her eyes met the eyes of a man who stood against the clematis-covered window-frame looking in upon her—a careless, lounging figure as supremely at ease as a cat stretched in the sunshine.

He marked her brief confusion with a smile. “Do tell me how you know!” he said.

Her eyes fenced with his for a moment, then were proudly lowered. It was as if she drew a veil over her face.

“His lordship is not here,” she remarked in a tone that was strictly official.

“So I have already observed,” rejoined the new-comer, with his easy tolerance that was somehow quite distinct from familiarity. “In fact, at the present moment, I believe his lordship is in the thick of an argument with the Dean as to whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote the Bible. It’s rather an important point, you know. Have you any theories on the subject, might one ask?”

A little quiver that could hardly be described as a smile passed over the secretary’s thin features, but her eyes remained upon her work.

“I don’t go in for theories,” she said, “or arguments. I am far too busy.”

“By Jove!” he commented. “How you hate it!”

She raised her brows very slightly,—delicate brows, one of them a shade more tilted than the other, giving a quaint look of humour to a face that seldom smiled.

“I hate nothing,” she said with precision, “I have no time.”

“By Jove!” he said again, and chuckled as at some hidden joke.

The exasperating click of the typewriter put an end to all discussion, but it did not dislodge the intruder as was obviously intended. He merely propped himself against the grey stone-work of the window and took out his cigarette-case. His eyes dwelt with artistic appreciation upon the stately glories of the old garden, the arch of the cloisters against the summer blue, the wealth of purple flower adorning it. His face had the lines and the weather-tan of the man who has travelled far and wide, has looked upon the wonders of life and death with a certain cynical amusement, and returned almost to the starting-point with very little of value in his pack.

As the click of the typewriter persisted, he turned from his deliberate survey and gave his attention to a calm study of the woman seated behind it. His gaze was speculative, faintly humorous. There was something in that face of passive severity that aroused his curiosity. An insignificant type, it was true; but behind the insignificance there lurked something unusual that drew his interest. He wondered how long she would manage to ignore him.