Chapter III: Part 3

Anne put on her boots and hurried out into the blustering March wind. It had broken the first hyacinth, and the daffodils were lying flat on the earth. How the wind roared! It was pleasant to be out of the house, for the chimneys had been smoking. The grass on the lawn was lashed into white streaks by the wind before which the hens ran sideways, like old ladies crossing the road. There was a thick scum at one side of the broad ditch, a scum of withered catkins fallen from the black poplars. Catkins hung like funereal trappings or like black caterpillars on every twig of the apple trees; on the ditch, the ducks were dancing on the waves.

“Such a wind as this scatters the seeds,” said Anne. “The winged fruits of the elms and the maples are whirled up from the ditches where they have been lying all the winter, and are carried over the tops of the tallest trees, and this wind will gather me up like a seed that has lain too long under the tree from which it fell. Heaven knows where it will carry me! To Egypt or Greece, maybe, or perhaps only to pull the rug over the knees of an old lady driving her donkey-cart along the lanes of an adjoining parish.”

Under the avenue of elms the wind roared so loud that Anne feared for the safety of the trees, and stepped cautiously, looking up among the swaying branches. In her hand she held the precious letter that was to set her free, the letter which was to her as the wing is to the seed.

“Once this is posted, there is no turning back,” she thought. “There will be difficulties, but they will be overcome, and when I look back on my life I shall say it began on the day when I posted this letter, and I shall remember the March gale roaring like a lion among the elms.”

A vision of an elderly lady with soft brown eyes like bees, and short grey hair, haunted her: a precise lady she would be, perhaps one who had been an actress or an opera singer in her day, and kept a casket of love-letters from all the poets of the ’eighties standing on the table beside her. Her employer would laugh gently at her enthusiasm, and would tell her wonderful anecdotes. Her name would be beautiful, and familiar: a name that is to be found in every catalogue of roses, for she was the kind of lady after whom roses are named. Anne would take the place of a daughter, and would soon inherit all her passionate fire tempered by her knowledge of the world, all her deep wisdom born of experience and of renunciation; all her cynical clear-sighted witty tenderness....

“Good morning, Miss Dunnock.” Anne’s day-dream was interrupted, and she looked down to find Rachel Sotheby standing before her, her bright eyes shining, and her cheeks flushed by the wind. Anne was pleased to see the little girl, and thinking that they must part soon, she bent down to kiss her, a thing she had not done before. As she did so, she remembered Mr. Yockney’s remark about Rachel’s boots and glanced at them. Yes, they were stiff little boots, cracked behind the toe-caps, worn out, they would let in the water.

“Mr. Yockney was quite right,” she said to herself, and entering the Post Office, was embarrassed to find a stranger standing at the counter writing a telegram.

“This must be Rachel’s brother,” she thought as she recognized the foxey nose, and the slit eyes of the photograph she had seen in the grocer’s parlour. “This must be Richard Sotheby, who has been turned into a gentleman while his sister has holes in her boots.”

As Anne asked for her postal order she avoided looking at the young man of whom she had heard so much, but while she was waiting for the pen (there was only one in the Post Office with which it was possible to write) she could not keep her eyes turned away, and when he had finished his telegram, she had to meet his eye as he handed her the pen. The action was polite, but though their eyes met for an instant, she could see that it was mechanical, she had not engaged his attention, he was thinking of his telegram, and next moment she heard him spelling it over to Mrs. Day, the post-mistress, and explaining that it was in French.

“_The Church Times_....” wrote Anne.

“G...R...A...N...D...I...S...O...N,” spelt the young man.

“Barclays Bank and Co.,” wrote Anne, keeping her ears open but failing to follow the address.

She had filled in her postal order and had sealed up her letter; there was no reason to stay longer listening while Mrs. Day repeated the letters after him, and she went out, posted her letter, and turned homewards. Already her emotions about her advertisement had subsided, and as she hurried under the storm-tossed elms her thoughts were occupied with the grocer’s son and his strange telegram.

“Je suis las de tes amourettes et de mon amour. Je consens. Ecris.” What did that mean? And who was the Grandison to whom it was addressed?

Her meditations were interrupted by Richard Sotheby himself, who passed her, walking rapidly down the avenue. His hat was jammed hard on his head: he did not lift it, and directly he had passed she noticed that he was wearing button boots made of patent leather.

SEVEN: THE BURNT FARM

The March gale continued for several days; the daffodils were broken, the hyacinths in the border laid low, but one morning Anne awoke to find that not a breath of wind was stirring in the elms, and after an hour or so the sun was blazing with the heat of June. On the breakfast table lay _The Church Times_, and she trembled with emotion when she saw it in her father’s hands.

“I must speak to him,” she said to herself, “I must speak to him now,” but she did not speak, consoling herself for her lack of resolution with the thought that the earliest answers to her advertisement could not arrive for two days, since they were to be forwarded from the office in Fleet Street; she had not given her name and address, but had used a box number.

“I will speak to him to-morrow,” she said to herself. “For I would like to enjoy one day of perfect spring weather before I leave Dry Coulter, and our conversation is certain to upset us.”

She waited eagerly until the birds’ breakfast left her free to take the newspaper into her hands. Her advertisement was in, and reading the modest three lines Anne felt her heart swell with the triumph of authorship, and she ran upstairs with _The Church Times_ in her hand to read the announcement over and over to herself in private.

“There is no turning back now!” she exclaimed. “I have shown my independence; I have taken the first step, and nothing now can keep me from achieving my purpose.”

Anne’s eyes flashed as she turned to the looking-glass; and the eager look she met there intoxicated her: at that moment she almost suffocated with the sense of her own power. The blood rushed to her head, and she clenched her fists, and ground her teeth in the effort to remain calm.

“Have you seen _The Church Times_?” called Mr. Dunnock, coming back from watching the birds.

“Here it is, father,” she answered, and running downstairs surrendered it to him without a tremor. Her father took it absentmindedly, saying as he did so:

“I think there is some straw somewhere, my dear. Would you ask Noah to scatter it about the lawn? It will be useful for the sparrows; the nearest rick is several hundred yards away, a long journey for them, almost an impossible one if the wind should veer to the east. On a calm day like this, it is not so important, but there are not many calm days in March, and in any case it will save a great deal of trouble.”

At another moment Anne might have been vexed at her father’s solicitude for the hated sparrows, but she was in a mood to forgive his follies, and she ran off at once to the potting-shed to find the straw, and scattered it on the lawn herself.

All the morning she was beside herself with excitement; and she found it hard to answer Maggie sensibly when she spoke of their plan of whitewashing the scullery. When the proposal had been put forward a fortnight before by Anne, it had seemed to mark an epoch, but Maggie found that it was suddenly brushed on one side, her feelings were hurt, the date was left uncertain, and Anne had fled out into the garden before she had time to question her again.

The first tulips were standing stiffly to attention in their field-grey uniforms, their buds unopened, but the girl could not think of tulips as she paced up and down the borders. Her life at the vicarage was coming to an end, and she must speak to her father, but after thinking over what she would say for an hour, she could find no words, and came to the conclusion that it would be unwise to open the subject before she had decided where she was going. Her father would be certain to raise objections, and they would appear more formidable if her plans were not fixed. It would be better for both of them if the parting were to come suddenly.

“I will go to him in his study,” she said, “when my bag is packed,” and with this settled in her mind she felt happy for the first time that morning. She had come out to enjoy the warm spring weather, but, as soon as she had decided not to speak to her father, and before she had time to look about her, she saw Maggie waving from the kitchen door and knew that it was time for lunch.

After the strain of making plans about her future she found the meal a pleasant one, emotion had given her an appetite, and, as she ate, Anne enjoyed listening to her father inveighing against the stupidity of old Noah.

“You would scarcely believe it,” said Mr. Dunnock, “but within half an hour of your having scattered the straw, that old fool was sweeping it up. I ordered him to stop, but he would not listen to me until I had taken him by the arm and had explained my reasons. But so blind is the prejudice of the rustics about here, that he said that he would as soon poison the sparrows as not. I was forced to speak to him very severely. It is his first lapse since the question of the strawberry nets last year.”

The mild sunlit air was full of bees as Anne left the vicarage after lunch; the celandines were gaping in the sunlight on the bank above the Broad Ditch. Wagtails ran round the water’s edge, goldfinches flew up into the elms, and yellowhammers trotted before her on the road.

As she passed the Post Office she remembered Richard Sotheby and his strange telegram, and tired of the turmoil of her own emotion, she welcomed the memory. “I am tired of thy little love affairs and of my own love. I consent. Write.” And pondering over these words she asked herself what kind of creature the Grandison might be to whom they were addressed.

A rich woman in Paris, it seemed reasonable to suppose, who had been his mistress.... “It is to secure her love that little Rachel is neglected.” Anne wondered what their life had been in Paris, and slowly a picture of Miss Grandison formed itself clearly in her mind--a fair woman she must be, with a white skin like the flesh of a hazel nut, with fair almost colourless hair and light blue eyes, a thick, slightly aquiline nose.... That certainly was Miss Grandison, and at the opera she wore diamonds and was wrapped in white fur. On summer evenings her habit must be to drive with Sotheby out of Paris in her limousine to have supper in the open air, of lobsters and cream, raspberries and iced champagne.... As the night drew on she would become bored, and drag young Sotheby after her to a vast hotel in Paris where they could dance all night. The men in their starched shirtfronts would turn pale, and wilt in the small hours of the morning under the tropical palms, but La Grandison would dance on and on, ruthlessly, first with one man and then with another. Richard Sotheby would be forgotten, a young man from the Peruvian Embassy would escort her home, while Richard, disconsolate and brokenhearted, would be left to pay for the buckets of iced champagne, and the mounds of uneaten sandwiches.... No wonder, with such a woman, that he should declare he was weary of her love affairs and of his love. But there was a hint of jealousy in his bitterness.

Anne smiled contentedly. Richard Sotheby’s telegram enabled her to see her own life with more philosophy. Soon she forgot to think, and walked slowly onwards, happy in feeling the soft air caress her cheek, in hearing the chatter of starlings in the orchard trees, in looking about her in idleness. Ewes lay indolently on the green; their lambs were already strong on their legs, and she watched the play of the pair nearest to her, at one moment butting each other, in the next skipping behind each other, or mounting on one another in amorous curvets and then, suddenly indifferent, breaking off their play.

The stream was still swollen, though rain had not fallen for a week. Anne crossed it by the little bridge beside the water splash, and made her way across the green, the sheep scattering as she passed. On each side of the old track that led to the burnt farmhouse, the blackthorn bushes were in flower. The masses of frail blossom were full of the humming of bees, but as yet there were no wild flowers in the hedge, only an occasional celandine shone on the bank like a dropped sovereign.

The fields on each side were hired by a farmer living at a distance; they were still cultivated and kept in some sort of repair, but much had gone to ruin since the farmhouse had been burnt. The hedges had not been cut for years; there were forest trees in them, and holes big enough for bullocks to wander through. The great stretch of pasture by the farm itself, the home meadows where the prize herd of spotted cows used to be milked in the open, that had gone out of cultivation, and was full of hawthorn bushes, of the trailing briars of dog-roses and of brambles. The finest pasture which had yielded the richest butter was become no more than a covert where the French partridges nested. Of the farmhouse itself there was nothing left but a few of the walls, heaps of plaster where the nettles grew in summer, and one or two blackened beams. The vegetable garden was a wilderness with a quarter of an acre of horseradish and matted gooseberry bushes buried in convolvulvus. At one side, on a smooth expanse of turf, stood the old square dove house, as sound as the day it had been built, and the pigeons came and went as they had always done, for the dove house was still used as a granary, and the pigeons were the perquisite of a farmhand.

As Anne came in front of the house, it seemed strange to her to see the fine iron gates, with great ilexes on either side of them, and the flagged path that ran so cleanly up to a mere heap of broken bricks, where the front door had been. Not a weed had taken root on the pathway, not a bramble strayed across it, and even the pond, by whose bricked side it ran, was clear water. Irises grew there and flowered in the summer time; on the grassy bank opposite there were daffodils in bloom. Anne let herself in at the iron gates, thinking to herself that it was very strange that no farmhouse had been rebuilt there on the site of the old one, that no labourer had been allowed to work the rich garden as his allotment, and that it was impossible to guess why everything should have been let go to ruin except the square dove house of red brick, which must have stood for three centuries and which looked as if it would stand for as many more. All about there were the traces of a former fruitfulness, a great walnut overshadowed one of the ancient yards by the edge of the pond, and on the other side, hidden in an impenetrable thicket of bullaces, giant pear trees and plum suckers, laced about with bramble and dog-rose, was the orchard. The plums were bursting into a fine blow, and Anne wondered whether the boys came there to rob the fruit, or whether the plums and apples fell of their own weight, or hung until the wasps had hollowed out the last of them. She wondered how it was that she had never met anyone by the Burnt Farm, never a child nor a village labourer. She had not seen it before in spring, though in the summer it had been a favourite haunt of hers; and she had gathered roses there late on into the autumn from a bush which had not yet gone wild. As she walked up the path she smelt a breath of wood smoke, and turning the corner of the house by what had been the chimney stack, she saw tongues of flame shooting up, and heard the crackle of sticks. “A tramp, or perhaps an encampment of gipsies,” she said to herself, and would have drawn back, but at that instant she caught sight of Rachel Sotheby coming from the orchard with an armful of dry sticks.

“Why, Rachel, are you having a picnic here?” she asked, seeing a kettle on the fire.

Rachel came running to her with eyes that shone with excitement; she had lost her grave look of self-possession, so that it was natural for Anne to stoop to kiss her for the second time, seduced by her wild look and her tangled curls.

“Yes, Miss Dunnock. Do you come here often? I have never been here before, but my brother brought me. He is sketching the house from the other side.”

Anne would have taken her leave on hearing of Richard Sotheby’s presence, but Rachel would not let her go before she had gathered her some daffodils from the far side of the pond, and had shown her the white violets growing under the walnut tree. The kettle had not boiled when they came back to the fire, and as Richard Sotheby was nowhere to be seen, she sat down for a little while, talking to the little girl while she heaped up the sticks and unpacked the basket. A minute passed when suddenly she heard a step, and, jumping up, saw that Richard Sotheby was standing a yard or two behind her. He was bare-headed, frowning, his lips twitching, and seeing Anne at the same moment as she saw him, he gave his sister rather a puzzled glance.

“This is my brother Richard,” said Rachel, looking up from blowing the fire. “Richard, this is Miss Dunnock.”

The young man’s face broke into smiles at her name, and he held out his hand.

“I am very pleased to meet you,” said Anne, taking it. “Now I must be getting on. Good-bye, Rachel.”

“Please don’t go,” said the grocer’s son. “I have finished work for to-day; the light has changed, and I have been wanting to meet you. I want to ask you all about how your doorstep was ploughed up. I shall never meet anyone else to whom such a thing has happened, and I want to know what it felt like.”

Anne was too much taken aback by this to know what to answer, but just at that moment they were interrupted by Rachel’s saying that the tea was made.

Young Sotheby repeated his invitation, and Anne sat down on a block of stone which had once supported the corner of a haystack, feeling very foolish, shy, and ashamed of her shyness, but she was determined that she would not run away after what he had said. She had blushed crimson when he had spoken of Plough Monday, but it had pleased her to hear something spoken of openly about which so much must have been said behind her back.

“Yes. Our doorstep was ploughed up,” she said, and her voice sounded to the others as though she were angry. “Why does it interest you?”

“It was very wicked of the men to do it,” said Rachel suddenly. “And you ought not to speak of such a thing to Miss Dunnock, Richard.”

The grocer’s son laughed at his sister’s indignant interruption. “Rachel is a great friend of yours, Miss Dunnock. I shall have to apologize to her, but I hope I have not offended you also.”

“No. Not at all. I want to talk about it, Rachel,” she said, looking at the child. The little girl’s mouth was trembling.

“That don’t matter,” she said, almost crying. “Richard did not ought to have spoken to you of that thing. Mother told everyone that what they done was no better than if they were heathens, and that no one was to say a word about it. No one would have ever but our Richard.”

Anne took Rachel on to her knees, and hugged the child close; at that moment she was near to tears herself; for the first time in her life she understood that she had neighbours who loved her, and did not think of her only as a queer girl, and the daughter of a queer clergyman.

“Sit here, close to me,” she said, letting the child go. “And let me talk to your brother, because he is very clever and is....” It was on the tip of her tongue to say “a gentleman,” but she altered it to: “because I am sure he would never be unkind.”

Rachel looked at him in a way which threatened that if he were unkind to Miss Dunnock there would be terrible consequences, and Richard Sotheby poured out the tea in silence, until Anne asked him again why he was interested in the ploughing up of the doorstep.

“Because it was, as my mother said, a heathenish act, and I imagine that, like most heathen things, it must have been beautiful.”

“Yes, it was beautiful,” replied Anne instantly. “It was so beautiful that I was fascinated watching it, and though I was crying with shame, I was glad that they had done it.”

Richard Sotheby grinned with interest as Anne said this, and nodded his head several times.

“Like a rape,” he said under his breath. His words were not meant for Anne to hear, but she had caught the word, and for some minutes did not know what to say or where to look, but sat praying with all her soul that she would not blush. At last the danger passed, and she went on to speak of the plough wobbling a little as it ran through the earth, and of the broad, shiny backs of the three chestnut horses, and the handsome face opposite her quickened with pleasure as she told how it happened after a fall of snow, and that there was snow on the horses’ manes and on the carters’ caps.

When she had described the whole scene, he pressed her for further details, and soon she found that she was speaking of her feelings after the event, and that he was listening in silence. She pulled herself up suddenly, unwilling to tell him so much about herself, and there was a long silence, for the young man did not press her with questions, but the silence was broken at last by Anne saying: “But you cannot understand it unless I were to tell you about my father.”

“Of course it came about through him in the first place,” said Richard Sotheby reflectively, and Anne would have begun to speak of her father and her feelings for him if she had not felt Rachel shiver, and then she perceived that the sun was sinking low, and that it had grown cold for sitting out of doors.

“That is too long a story,” she said, rising to her feet. “You would not understand it, and if you did, it would bore you. But it is late now, and I must be going home.”

“You must promise to tell me another time,” said the grocer’s son. “If the weather keeps fine I shall be working here every afternoon, until about half-past three when the light changes. Come and have tea with me to-morrow and finish your story.”

Anne promised to come, and then gathering up her flowers and saying good-bye to Rachel, she hurried off, for young Sotheby had to go back to his easel and put it away in the dove house, and she had no wish to be seen walking home with him.

EIGHT: WILLOW-PATTERN PARIS

For several days a gentle wind blew from the west and the cloudiness of dew-drenched mornings was followed by the sunshine and softness of the afternoons. Anne Dunnock knew that the grocer’s son was painting at the Burnt Farm, but though each day she set out in that direction, she always turned aside on the way, breaking her promise that she would meet him there again.

“I spoke to him too freely; Heaven knows what he must think of me!” she repeated to herself. At moments she found it consoling to remember that she felt quite sure that she did not like Richard Sotheby, but at other times it seemed to her that what was so terrible was to have confided so much of her secret life to a man whom she disliked. But the weather was too beautiful for her to remain long unhappy for such reasons, and nearly her whole day was spent out of doors. In the morning she would busy herself in the garden, and, tempted by the sunshine, Mr. Dunnock would leave his study to come and stand beside her while she sowed the sweet peas and the mignonette, or planted out young wallflowers in the borders.

“Do not forget to sow teazles by the pond,” he would remind her. “They are as handsome as hollyhocks, and wherever there have been teazles in summer time the goldfinches will come in winter.”

Anne did not regard the teazle as a weed, she loved the plant’s bold leaves that hold hands about the prickly stem, making a cup to catch the rain, and the flower-heads with their bands of blue which creep up and down the inflorescence.

Few words passed between father and daughter, yet both were happy as they went together to sow the teazle seed that he had saved, and were conscious of being in sympathy with one another as they had scarcely been all the winter. Once there was a rose tree to be transplanted; on another occasion a rambler which had been blown down had to be nailed up on the far side of the summer-house, and while Anne shovelled the earth round the roots, and drove the nails through strips cut from an old stair carpet, Mr. Dunnock held the tree upright and the creeper in place, his hands protected in Noah’s hedging gloves.

“The bees are working in the willows,” he said. “Though it is still three weeks to Palm Sunday.”

Yet Anne had not abandoned her plan; it was only that the spring and the garden full of growing things had claimed her attention. But one morning she found a letter for her on the breakfast table, and as she opened it her heart sank, for she guessed that it was from a lady anxious to engage her as a companion.

“What am I to say to him?” she asked herself, looking up at her father as he came into the room, and the morning was spent wandering about the house, first carrying an old trunk out of the box-room to pack her things, and then with pale cheeks running to the door of her father’s study. She did not knock, when she stood trembling outside the door, though she knew that in a day or two at most, perhaps even in a few hours, she would be leaving the vicarage.

During luncheon she came nearest to speaking to her father, but each time, just as she was going to begin, she was interrupted by some remark of his. Such a subject could not be opened without preparation, when her father spoke of the decoration of the church at Easter her courage failed her, and before she had recovered it, he had shaken the crumbs off his waistcoat and had gone into his study.

“I shall have to leave a letter for him to read after I am gone,” said Anne, but the idea was hateful to her; it revealed her own cowardice too clearly, and when she began to compose the letter that should be left behind, she found the task an impossible one.

“A walk will help me to think things out,” but in the road her footsteps turned of themselves across the green, and she was half-way to the Burnt Farm before she stopped suddenly, realizing that she was going there to lay her difficulties before the grocer’s son.

“That will be the best way,” she said aloud. “In such a position as mine, one must seek advice, for it is only when one has been advised by someone else that one recovers confidence in the sanity of one’s own opinions.”

Directly she had passed through the iron gates the sunshine seemed warmer; it was as hot as June; she could see the daffodils clustering on the banks of the pond and reflected in its waters; a brimstone butterfly rose from the flagged pathway and rambled in front of her, settling at last on one of the brick walls.

There was a continuous cooing from the top of the dove house, and the beat of the wings of the pigeons coming and going; a blackbird was singing in the tangled orchard.

Rachel Sotheby was nowhere to be seen; there was no fire burning, but recollecting that Richard Sotheby would be painting on the other side of the house, Anne walked round into the wild garden. She could not see him, and soon sat down, putting her arms up to tidy her hair, loosened by an angry toss of her head, for she was vexed to have come looking for the young man.

“Please stay like that,” said a sharp voice behind her, and she looked round to find Richard Sotheby watching her from inside the ruined walls.

“Please stay where you are, Miss Dunnock,” he repeated. “You are exactly what I want in my picture; I knew there was something needed;--now I see that it is a figure.”

But Anne jumped up before the sentence was finished, and Richard Sotheby climbed out of the ruin with his palette in his hand and a frown on his face, repeating, “Please stay there....”

He was insistent, and Anne had to agree to sit for a few minutes while he made a charcoal drawing.

“When I have finished you shall have tea,” he said as though he were speaking to a child. Anne sat, looking up at the sky with her hands to her hair and her elbows up, as he had posed her, saying to herself that she had never met anyone with such bad manners.

She was hot with annoyance, but soon the blush left her cheek, and while she listened to the pigeons her resentment faded away.

“May I see your picture?” she asked five minutes later, and when the artist refused, shaking his head and laughing, she felt no irritation. It seemed natural to her that he should say: “Not till it is finished.”

“When will that be?” she asked, remembering her own departure.

“It will take me a week to put in that figure; I don’t know how I shall do it unless you sit for me. Come, let us have tea.”

“I am afraid I cannot sit, Mr. Sotheby,” said Anne. “I have come to-day to say good-bye.”

The young man opened his eyes at this; his curiosity had to be satisfied, and soon Anne was telling him that her life was being wasted at the vicarage, and that she was determined to leave her father.

Richard Sotheby listened without saying a word; he was kneeling in front of the little fire he had just lighted. The sticks smouldered but went out when the paper had burnt away, and she paused in her story while he fetched a bottle of turpentine from his paint-box. He sprinkled a little of the spirit, and a thick yellow flame sprang up; then the sticks crackled. All his attention seemed to be for the fire, only when she spoke of the advertisement he turned his head sharply to look at her, and when she told him that an answer had come that morning he exclaimed: “Extraordinary!” under his breath.

“But what does your father say to all this?” he asked suddenly, as he handed her the cup of tea he had poured out. Anne found the confession of her cowardice was difficult; Sotheby was staring at her as if he were surprised by her words.

“I think that would be behaving very heartlessly,” he said when she had done. He filled the lid of the kettle with tea, blew on it and added: “It would be a great shock to him, and it seems to me so unnecessary. Children have parents so much at their mercy; their one duty to them, surely, is to avoid shattering their illusions. I’m not a good son; my father is excessively irritating; quite as irritating as yours. I don’t love him, and that makes me feel ashamed.... You have left it so late.... Do you really think that getting this place is worth having to behave so badly?”

Anne’s face fell, and rather sulkily she pulled the letter she had got that morning out of her pocket.

Richard Sotheby glanced at it, wrinkled his nose, and began reading it aloud:

“Spion Kop,”
14A Kimberley Road,
West Sutton Vallance,
London, W.23.

Dear Madam,

I have seen your advertisement in _The Church Times_, and think it
possible that you may suit me. I am looking for a companion of gentle
birth who would be willing to undertake light duties in the house.
I have a girl who comes in daily. What I really require is someone
who will, as far as possible, take the place of my own devoted and
dearly-loved daughter who died last year after a long illness,
patiently borne.

I would introduce you to a pleasant circle of friends, and would look
after you as, I think you will agree, a girl should be looked after
on coming so near London. I cannot offer a high wage, but you will
have every home comfort. Will you please tell me in your answer,
your age, and whether you have been away from home before, and when
you can come up for me to interview you. It is essential that you
should be fond of dogs, but no doubt you are. This neighbourhood is
considered a very healthy one, and the house is next door to the
church.

Yours faithfully,
ETHEL CROWLINK.

Each phrase had sounded comic as he read it aloud, and his voice ended with such a queer note that Anne burst out laughing.

“You think I oughtn’t to go to her?” she said.

“It is ridiculous to think of it,” he answered. “Not for your father’s sake but for your own. It would be out of the frying-pan into the fire: surely you see that?”

She did not answer, and he went on: “Why should you choose to live with the horrid old woman who wrote this letter, in a London suburb? If you must leave home....”

“I must....” she said. “Better anything, however horrid it may sound. If I do not get away from home, I shall never be able to speak to anyone.”

There was a long silence while she watched Richard Sotheby wrinkling up his nose.

“You may be more unhappy when you can speak, Anne. Particularly if you should fall in love. That makes one more unhappy than anything else. However, you would do better to go as an English governess in a French family. In that way you would see new people and have quite fresh experiences.”

And Richard Sotheby began to speak of Paris, while Anne sat fascinated by the magic flow of words, seeing pictures of a great town full of avenues and open spaces, with a twisting river, crossed by innumerable bridges. And for some reason, though she knew that Paris was a huge city, and though Richard spoke often of the crowds thronging the boulevards, she imagined Paris as a willow-pattern plate; its bridges like that steep bridge over which a blue figure is hurrying, with bald-headed Chinamen fishing in the winding river beside it on which a barge is floating, a lady is disembarking, and weeping willow trees border the Elysian fields.

The voice went on, Anne watching the fine forehead and the abstracted eyes gazing into the fire, was carried away by her imagination and saw herself living in the willow-pattern city.

“That will be wonderful,” she said. “But what am I to say in my letter to Mrs. Crowlink?”

She spoke in a tone of such despair that he burst out laughing at her. “You are a child!” he said, but his voice was too pleasant for her to take offence, and for the first time she knew the sweetness of being laughed at without minding it. “I feel sure of his sympathy,” she said to herself. “Though I came here believing that I disliked him, and even now I am not sure what I think of him.”

Richard Sotheby had gathered his brushes together, and was pouring water from the kettle on to the ashes.

“You will come and sit to me to-morrow, won’t you?” he asked. “And then we can go on with our discussion of your future. Come at half-past two, but now we had better go home separately, otherwise we shall see our names written up on Lambert’s Barn: ‘Richard Sotheby loves Anne Dunnock and takes her to the Burnt Farm.’ I wonder if they would put ‘the dirty dog,’ or ‘bless his heart,’ after my name? It is usually one or the other.”

Anne laughed at this, and looked the grocer’s son in the eyes, but his glance was one of mere amusement.

“Oh, they would put ‘the dirty dog’ after your name,” she said suddenly.

“You are quite right,” he said laughing. “Wonderful you should guess.” He did not offer to shake hands, and she walked away.

She had read the scrawls chronicling the loves of the village boys and girls, but she had never thought that it would be possible to speak of them. As she hurried home her heart was beating fast; she looked neither to left nor right, but kept repeating to herself: “Richard Sotheby loves Anne Dunnock, the dirty dog!” “But he doesn’t,” she added, wondering if she would wish to be loved by him.

Then she repeated as a variation: “Richard Sotheby doesn’t love Anne Dunnock, the dirty dog!” That was more like the truth! And she thought of the telegram she had seen him write, and wondered if he would tell her about La Grandison. Perhaps one day soon she would see her, alighting from a barge in the Seine that ran through a willow-pattern Paris.

There were no other answers to her advertisement, and as soon as the lying letter to Mrs. Crowlink had been posted, Anne was free to forget her problems. The week which followed passed happily enough; every afternoon she sat for an hour or more in the spring sunlight talking to Richard Sotheby while he painted her, answering his questions about her childhood at Ely, describing the poverty in which they had lived, and how her mother had been looked down upon by the ladies of the cathedral set, then telling him of her father’s eccentricities, and his violent temper, and of the last outburst when he had insulted a canon, and had been sent for by the Bishop, and of how he had been kept to lunch at the palace and sent away with the words: “I think you will do better by yourself, Mr. Dunnock. There is a living going begging at Dry Coulter. A hundred and twenty pounds a year....”

The pigeons cooed through all the afternoon, the pear tree burst into flower over her head, and was filled with the hum of hundreds of bees working among the scarlet stamens, at intervals Anne spoke of her life, and every now and then Richard would interrupt her with questions about her father. When she told of his love for the birds, Richard was delighted, and the rest of the afternoon was spent describing all his little acts of tenderness and consideration: scattering straw for the sparrows to build their nests, sowing teazles for the goldfinches....

“I see that I should get on much better with your father than you do,” he said. “We should have a great deal in common.”

“He has made me hate birds,” said Anne. “Sometimes I think I should like to wear a bird in my hat.”

“You feel about birds what I feel about love and about religion, I suppose,” said Richard.

“My father has got birds and religion all mixed up, somehow,” said Anne, but when he asked her to explain, all she could say was: “I don’t understand it, and I can’t explain it, but I know I am right. It is difficult to tell often of which he is speaking.”

“That seems rather a beautiful confusion to me,” said Richard. “Just listen for a moment to the pigeons in the dove house and you will feel inclined to it yourself.”

“I only hate them because I am wicked and selfish,” said Anne. “I am not going to sacrifice all my life to beautiful things. Father can only see beauty in a chaffinch or a wagtail; I might be beautiful too, but he would never notice it.”

Richard laughed at this outburst. “As pretty as a wagtail,” he mused, screwing up his eyes, and teasing her. “That is flying rather high, isn’t it?”

“I don’t see why a human being shouldn’t be as beautiful as a bird,” said Anne seriously, at which her companion laughed more than ever.

“Perhaps not,” he said. “Still you don’t really hope that anyone should ever say to you: ‘Miss Dunnock, you are as pretty as a hedge-sparrow.’ I, of course, with my long nose, am rather like a snipe.” Then, changing his tone, he went on: “You are more like a heron than a hedge-sparrow: a tall ghostly figure seen by moonlight standing in the reeds at the water’s edge. The heron’s hair is always flying loose like yours; he tries in vain to keep it up with fish bones.”

“I am going to cut all my hair off!” cried Anne savagely.

“Yes, I think you would look better,” said Richard simply. “But you must not do that until my picture is finished. Seriously, if you want admiration, you should come to Paris. You are quite sure to find someone there who will think you are beautiful.”

She bit her lip, and asked herself if Richard could have told her more plainly, to her face, that he did not think so.

“He does not care for me,” she said to herself as she walked home the following afternoon, after the last sitting. “Had he cared for me, he would have said something nice to me when he said good-bye. He is only amused, and contemptuous. Thank Heaven I did not show him any of my drawings!”

For she had taken out her drawing book that morning, to try her hand at fashion plates, and had sat a long while examining her old careful sketches of a dead-nettle in flower and a spray of honeysuckle in bud, only to put them away at last guessing that her work would not make Richard Sotheby take her any more seriously, though an ambition to earn her living by drawing clothes was still present in her mind.

“Yet he likes me, I am sure of that,” she said. “He would not tease me otherwise.” The thought consoled her, and she crossed the green more happily. Suddenly she heard a little cry behind her, a sharp note like the clink of flint on steel, and looking round she saw Rachel.

“Will you come to tea to-morrow?” the child asked when she had overtaken her. “It is my birthday and mother told me I might ask anyone that I liked.”

NINE: BIRTHDAY TEA

Anne sat down to tea on the following afternoon, with the four Sothebys, round an iced cake with thirteen candles, in the rather dark little room where she had retired to hide her tears after Plough Monday, darker now, for it was raining outside. There were chocolate biscuits in glass dishes and crackers lying on the table between the plates. But in spite of the air of jollity, and of Rachel’s excitement, Anne felt just as she had done on the first occasion she had entered the room: anxious to escape.

Rachel had met her at the door, they had kissed, and she had given the little girl a pair of fur-lined slippers as a birthday present, but immediately afterwards Mrs. Sotheby had begun to introduce her to Richard and he had no sooner cut his mother short by saying that they were acquainted already, when the grocer came up and said: “Miss Dunnock, this is my son Richard of whom I think I have spoken to you....”

“Miss Dunnock and I have met,” said Richard, and Anne added: “Richard and I are old friends already,” but at once became aware that what she said was the wrong thing, for there was an expression of astonishment, almost of alarm, possibly even of disapproval, on Mr. Sotheby’s face. Certainly he seemed nervous as he said: “Well, well, since I find we are all acquainted let us sit down to tea.”

The difficulties of the introduction were forgotten in the excitement of cutting the cake, and it was not long before the last of the crackers was pulled; a yellow paper crown was found for Mr. Sotheby; there were paper caps for the rest of the company, and though several of the mottoes alluded to Christmas, they were read aloud with pleasure and received with delight.

“It is too bad, Richard,” said Mr. Sotheby over his third cup of tea. “You are going away the day after to-morrow, and you have never painted the portrait of your mother, for which I have asked so often.”

Anne felt numb on hearing that Richard was going away in two days’ time: “Why didn’t he tell me that?” she asked herself, but without noticing her look the grocer went on: “You have spent all your time out sketching the old manor house, but you have not shown us any of your work.”

“He brought it back to-day,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But I haven’t seen it.” Richard was reluctant to show his picture, but at last he left the room, and it was only then, seeing Rachel was trembling, and upset about something, that Anne suddenly remembered that the Sothebys might easily recognize the figure of the girl in the foreground, engaged in doing up her hair.

Richard lifted an eyebrow at her as he put the canvas on the mantelpiece, and there was a long silence, a silence which grew alarming, and Anne knew that she had been recognized.

“This figure is you, Miss Dunnock,” said the grocer at last, speaking stiffly.

“Miss Dunnock came by while I was making tea for Richard,” said Rachel in her precise tone, and everyone in the room breathed more freely. “She stayed to tea with us.”

“And she was good enough to pose for me while I drew a sketch of her to put into the foreground,” said Richard.

“It was very kind of you, to be sure,” said his father.

“I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Richard,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Putting Miss Dunnock into your horrid picture like that; you haven’t done her justice at all. I should scarcely have recognized her.” And the grocer’s wife gave Anne a little smile to tell her that she did not mind Richard’s having painted her instead of the portrait that his father wanted.

“I should never have sat to him,” said Anne, “if I had known that he ought to have been painting your portrait,” but Mr. Sotheby was saying that he had to be off on business.

“Very, very kind of you to come on Rachel’s birthday,” he said as he left the room.

“No, indeed, there is hardly any resemblance at all,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Anyone might think it was one of the Puttys come home again.”

“Who are the Puttys?” asked Anne.

“What, you don’t mean to say that you have never heard of the Puttys!” exclaimed Rachel and her mother together, and Richard, who had been looking glum since he had shown his picture, added: “Yes, you ought to hear that story, since you are the only other person that has turned the ploughmen away.”

“How can you say such a thing, Richard!” said Mrs. Sotheby. “You know how that came about by mistake,” but Anne asked:

“Did the Puttys have their doorstep ploughed up?”

“No, not the Puttys,” was the answer, and as Anne seemed mystified but eager to hear more Richard said: “Come, mother, tell Miss Dunnock the whole story from the beginning.” And Rachel also added her request for the story.

“Well, wait a moment till I have cleared away the tea-things,” said Mrs. Sotheby, work that was soon done with both Rachel and Anne helping. While they were out of the room Richard seized the opportunity to take his canvas off the mantelpiece. He hid it in the woodshed and came back feeling happier.

The chairs were drawn up round the fire, Rachel sitting at Anne’s knee and holding her hand, and Mrs. Sotheby began:

“What you children call the ‘Burnt Farm’ is really the ruins of a manor house; the squire lived there, Captain Purdue, and since the burning there has been no squire at Dry Coulter. I can remember him very well: a tall man who had been a captain in the navy, and he certainly thought a great deal about appearances. One could tell that just by looking at him; what one could not have told was that he cared a great deal about money too.”

“You have forgotten to say that he had been dismissed the service,” Richard reminded his mother.

“Well, his ship was wrecked, you know, and he left the navy after that; I have heard that he was turned out because of it, but I do not really know,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Certainly he was a very unlucky man, but at first all went well; he had a fine house, built in the time of King Charles II (Oliver’s men had burnt the old house down in the civil wars), and a wonderful garden (he had a whole greenhouse full of arum lilies in the winter), his horses were famous, and his dairy cows won prizes. At that time there was not a gentleman’s place for miles round that was kept up better. But I should have said that Captain Purdue was married, to a very good-looking lady indeed. She was a good deal younger than he was, and I think she came from the Channel Islands. But they had no children.”

There was the jangle of the shop bell. Mrs. Sotheby broke off her sentence and started to her feet, but Rachel had slipped out into the shop before her, and they could hear a woman saying that she had just run across for a bar of soap, and then, when she had made her purchase, ask: “It is your birthday, isn’t it, Rachel? Many happy returns! How does it feel to be grown up?” and the little girl answer: “Very pleasant indeed, thank you very much, Mrs. Papworth.”