outwardly miss mason was not unlike certain pictures of the fairy godmother who escorted cinderella to the ball. being a fairy godmother, no doubt that old lady’s heart was every bit as young as miss mason’s, so the similarity may very likely have extended still further.
of the fairy godmother’s previous history there is no known record. miss mason’s history was the public property of the little town in which she lived. it is not unduly lengthy. it also cannot be termed exciting.
miss mason became an orphan at the age of five. her mother had been a pretty irish girl, only daughter of a penniless irish gentleman; and not having had enough of poverty in her own home, she gave her heart to one, dick mason, a struggling painter, who was as ugly as he was gay and light-hearted. in spite of poverty she had seven years of such happiness as falls to the lot of few women. then dick was killed riding a friend’s young unbroken mare, and a month later his wife followed him; dying—if such a complaint truly exists—of a broken heart.
from her glowing descriptions, the word studio came to sound in miss mason’s ears with a note akin to magic, while no one guessed the dreams of art and artists, of the mad sweet land of bohemia, cherished by the ugly girl who was known in the school as “that awkward olive mason.”
at the end of the year miss mason returned home, to find her presence almost hourly required by miss stanhope, who had developed into what is usually termed a malade imaginaire. her only recreations were gardening, and later—when at the age of twenty-seven she was allowed free access to the library—reading. in these two occupations she was able to forget the monotony of the days.
children who peeped through the gate on sunny mornings saw a small shrunken woman with a thin peevish face sitting on the lawn or in the veranda, according to the season, while miss [pg 23]mason was busy in the flower-beds, her grey dress tucked up over a black and white striped petticoat, goloshes on her feet, a large black hat tied on her head, and gauntlet gloves covering her hands. the progress of fashion being outside the strictly limited circle of miss mason’s life, she had adopted a costume of her own device, which costume she found both warm and comfortable, and it never varied.
the children who peeped through the gate grew to be men and women; their children peeped in like fashion, and still the same order of things endured at the house named the poplars.
during these years miss mason made one friend. it was curious, though perhaps not out of keeping with miss mason’s character, which was now almost as original as the garments she wore, that the friend should be a child of ten years old. she had come to live with her parents at the small town in which miss stanhope resided. the child’s paternal grandmother had been a friend of miss stanhope’s youth. that statement in itself had a flavour of respectability about it. armed with a letter of introduction from the grandmother—mrs. quarly—the parents ventured to call upon miss stanhope. she received them graciously enough, and a week later miss mason was ordered to return the visit.
it was then that she met little sybil quarly, who promptly took an unaccountable, but very [pg 24]strong, liking to her. in a short time sybil learnt which were the hours spent by miss mason in the garden, and from that moment those hours saw a fair-haired child in short petticoats busy in the flower-beds with her. to an onlooker miss mason’s manner would have appeared almost surly, but sybil, with the infallible instinct of childhood, recognized the tenderness beneath the gruff exterior. the two became fast friends.
for seven years sybil helped miss mason pull up weeds, destroy slugs, bud roses, and take cuttings of carnations. she called her “granny,” and she confided all her childish woes and griefs to her. her parents were conventional people, also they were somewhat strict and unsympathetic. they did not in the least understand sybil’s timid nature. miss mason saw, to her sorrow, that the child was being driven to subterfuge and petty untruth by an overharsh system of treatment. but she was powerless to do anything. mrs. quarly would have resented the smallest interference. for seven years miss mason gave the child all the tenderness at her disposal. at the end of that time sybil’s parents left the little town and took her to pangbourne.
during the next three or four years sybil and miss mason kept up a fitful correspondence. from much that the girl left unsaid miss mason felt that she was not happy. had she herself been gifted with the pen of a ready writer, she might [pg 25]indirectly have sought the girl’s confidence, but neither written nor spoken words came easily to her. there were times—and those when she most longed for the power of speech—when she felt herself possessed of a dumb dog. she wrote and told sybil that the roses were in bloom, that she had pickled a hundred and fifty slugs in salt and water after one shower of rain, that the shirley poppies they had planted one year were spreading like weeds over the garden. she heard from sybil that she had made a few new friends, among them one, cecily mainwaring, who lived in london, and that she stayed with her occasionally. her letters, however, gave mere facts; there was no hint as to her thoughts, or whether she were happy in her new surroundings. and miss mason longed to ask her, yet all the time she could write of nothing but pickled slugs and the blight on rose-trees. and after four years sybil’s letters suddenly ceased. miss mason wrote three times and received no answer. then she, too, stopped writing. and thus the years, as far as miss mason was concerned, rolled on.
but, at last, one sunny morning when a boy and girl approached the gate they saw no one in the garden, and the blinds in the house pulled down. old miss stanhope had died quietly in her sleep that morning, and after forty-three years miss mason had deserted the flower-beds. she was sitting in the desolate drawing-room, unable [pg 26]yet to grasp the meaning of the one really important event which had occurred in her life since she was five years old.
four days later miss stanhope’s will was read. miss mason had been left sole heiress to an income which amounted to something like fifteen thousand a year. no one but miss stanhope herself and her trustees had had the smallest conception of her wealth. the terms of the will, which appeared in the local papers, had the effect of taking every one’s breath away.
miss mason spoke to the lawyer regarding it.
“can’t spend anything like that amount a year,” she said gruffly. “don’t know how miss stanhope managed to. much rather you gave me one thousand and looked after the rest. shan’t find it easy to spend one.”
mr. davis stared for a moment. then he suddenly realized—and by a marvellous leap of intelligence on his part—that miss mason was under the impression that he would yearly press fifteen thousand sovereigns into her palm. the question of banks and cheque-books had not presented itself to her mind.
during the next half-hour henry davis found himself explaining matters to miss mason much as he would have explained them to a child of twelve. miss mason grasped the situation instantly.
“then before you go you’d better show me [pg 27]how to draw a cheque,” she said. “think that was your expression. i’m not imbecile, though when a woman of sixty doesn’t know the first principles of banks and cheque-books you might think she was.”
it was after mr. davis had left that miss mason gradually began to realize what miss stanhope’s death and her newly-acquired wealth would mean. she had lived so long in one groove that the possibility of change had never actually occurred to her. at first she had felt almost stunned. but suddenly, in a flash, she saw a new life before her. every dream of her seventeenth year could be fulfilled. it found expression in one short sentence:
“shall go to london and take a studio.”
