Chapter IV: Part 4

“The first of the Captain’s misfortunes,” continued Mrs. Sotheby, “was that his wife ran away from him, and it was not long after that before he was killed in an accident. He was having his barn altered; it was an old building, nearly as old as the house, and he wanted to make it a couple of feet higher and was having the roof raised on jacks. They got one side of it up some inches, and then the foreman sent for him to tell him that it couldn’t be done. The Captain went to see for himself but he would not listen to anything the men said, but gave the word to go on with the work, and they had not given the screws on the other side half a dozen turns before the main beam broke in two and the whole roof fell in on them. Captain Purdue was standing just underneath, and was killed, and three of the men were badly injured. You see it was no one’s fault but his own, and indeed it was very lucky that others were not killed beside himself.”

“But how did the house get burnt, and what had the ploughmen to do with it?” asked Anne.

“Nothing at all,” answered Mrs. Sotheby with a laugh. “But some of the most ignorant of the men said that his bad luck was because they had ploughed the doorstep up. That’s why it was so wrong of them to behave like that to your father if they really believe what they say. But I don’t think they do believe such things nowadays: everyone laughs at them, but I think people will do anything if it is the custom.”

“So they are expecting us to have bad luck?” asked Anne with her face suddenly serious.

Richard looked at her rather maliciously and laughed.

“Yes, we all expect you to run away from home and your father to fall out of a tree and break his neck while he is putting a young bird back into its nest.”

Richard laughed at this while his mother exclaimed: “How dare you talk like that, Richard!”

“He is only being a tease,” said Rachel, looking up at Anne. “I have got used to it now, and pay no attention to him.”

“Finish the story, mother,” said Richard, and Anne added her voice to his. “Please finish the story. I am waiting to hear how the house was burnt down. Then I shall go home and buy some fire extinguishers.”

They all laughed at this, and Mrs. Sotheby continued:

“After Captain Purdue’s death it was nearly a year before the lawyers could find the heirs to the estate, and when they did find them the trouble was to know what to do with them. They called themselves Putty, though the name was really Purdue; the father and mother were dead and there were two brothers and two sisters. They had lived all their lives in a tumble-down cottage without proper windows or doors, right out on the Bedford Level, miles from anywhere. The brothers were labourers, ditchers. The elder of the two was called Jack: he was the best of the family but it was difficult to make out what he said. There was no getting anything out of his brother; he was stone deaf and had a cleft palate. The girls were very wild, dirty creatures, and not quite right in the head. When they were sober they were all like wooden images, and they looked very queer when they first came, in the black clothes Mr. Stott had bought for them. Well, they moved into the house, and within a week all the servants left and they were alone there. None of the gentry round would have anything to do with them; nobody went near the house except Dr. Boulder and Mr. Noble, who was the vicar here in those days, and of course Mr. Stott, the lawyer. At first they lived very quietly, only making a fearful mess of the three rooms they used. They were afraid that Mr. Stott could turn them out if he had wanted to, but after they had been there two or three months they grew more confident. And though they were like images if there were other people about, there was plenty of noise when they were by themselves and when they were drunk. Jack used to throw things and his sisters would throw things back. At first they came to ‘The Red Cow’ for drink, and Jack used sometimes to wave Captain Purdue’s hunting crop and threaten to horsewhip anybody who didn’t take his hat off, and one day when he had got very drunk he stood by the monument on the green and made a speech. People could hear him bellowing for miles round, but no one could make out much of what he said except that he was the squire, and that he ought to have been told before, and that he would never be rough with anybody.

“One day when he was in ‘The Red Cow’ one of the men asked him how it was that he didn’t like port wine. That was the first Jack had heard of Captain Purdue’s cellar, for, would you believe it, the Puttys had never been all over the house, and the cellar being locked up they had not troubled to break it open. After they found the wine nothing was seen of them for more than a week and then, one night, we were all woken up with the news that the manor house had caught fire. Everyone in the village turned out to help and the fire engine was fetched from Linton, but it came too late to be any use. The whole house was ablaze when we got there; the dairy and stables too, for they were touching the house. The men had made a line from the pond and were passing buckets, but it did no good, for the rooms were very old-fashioned and all the panelling had caught alight by that time, and the staircase too. The flames made it as light as day.”

“What about the Puttys?” asked Anne.

“Well, that was a very dreadful story. Jack Putty had just broken his way out of the house when we got there, but the two girls and the deaf brother were still inside. One of the Peck boys, who went to Wet Coulter afterwards as a ploughman, got out both of the girls, but they were terribly burned, and the brother lost his life. Jack Putty did not seem to understand what was happening at first, but when the fire had taken hold of everything he missed his brother, and then he ran back into the house to find him. He came out again with his clothes alight and jumped into the pond, and then, when he got out, he ran back into the fire again. It was dreadful to see that. He got out alive a second time, and would have gone in a third time, but everyone could see it was no use, and they prevented him; it took four men to hold him. Poor fellow, his feet were terribly burned, but he didn’t seem to mind that, but kept crying out that he must save his brother.

“After that they were all taken to the hospital, and there they found out that the girls were not fit to be about, so they were sent to an asylum for the imbecile. They have been there ever since, but Jack Putty seemed a different man after that. He went out to Australia; Mr. Stott sends him his rent regularly, and Jack sent him word when he got married. The property still belongs to him, of course, and that is how it is that the manor house has never been rebuilt.”

There was a silence in the little parlour, while they turned the story over in their minds. Mrs. Sotheby began to poke up the fire in the grate, and the flames shot up; they had been sitting almost in the dark.

“A wonderful story,” said Richard. “I often think of Jack Putty as a model: a man who was really able to love his brother as himself. That is the only sort of love, love which will sacrifice everything, put up with everything, yet ask for nothing in return. Selfish love is misery, I suppose it deserves to be, but how does one avoid it?”

“Why do you think Jack Putty felt unselfish love?” Anne asked, feeling rather puzzled.

“You don’t think he tried to go back into the fire for the third time because it was gentlemanly, do you? though I’ve no doubt he really was a gentleman,” answered Richard.

“You would not have thought Jack Putty was a gentleman if you had seen him,” said his mother.

“I daresay not, but I should have been wrong ... he was fearless, and he was independent,” said Richard.

“He certainly was not a biddable man,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But that was the only thing he had in common with his second cousin, Captain Purdue.”

“The Peck boy went in once, to rescue the two girls, but I should not have gone in at all. I don’t think I should go into a burning house even if you or Rachel were inside it. I’m sure if Ginette ... Grandison.... But it’s not a proof of love at all; some people will risk their lives to save a kitten.” He muttered something else, but the others could not catch it.

“I must be going,” said Anne, getting up. “Gracious me, it is past six o’clock.” And thanking Mrs. Sotheby for her story and kissing Rachel, she hurried back through the rain to the vicarage to prepare supper.

TEN: NO GOOD-BYES

It was morning before Anne could find any sleep, and the hours she spent lying in the darkness with her eyes open, or sometimes standing at her bedroom window gazing out at the pale lawn and the moony spaces of the orchard beyond, listening to the whispering notes of the little owls, and to the weather-vane on the dove house, whimpering as it swung in the wind: those hours were remembered afterwards as the most miserable of her life.

“What have I done?” she asked herself, but she could find nothing in her own conduct to explain Richard’s behaviour. “If he regarded me with even the interest of a casual acquaintance he must have told me of his departure. He would have said something, surely. Even if he hates me he would have spoken of when he was going away.”

But Richard had not mentioned it, and had it not been for a chance remark of Mr. Sotheby’s she would have known nothing of the matter. “He must have intended to hide it from me,” she said, wondering why it should be hidden and asking herself if it was because he was afraid of telling her, or because he had fancied that she was in love with him.

“No, he has no such thoughts,” she assured herself. “It is because of his complete indifference to me. His whole mind is occupied by Ginette Grandison.” And suddenly, a new thought striking her, she said aloud and almost joyfully: “Who knows what unhappiness she may be causing him?” The thought of Richard’s pain was a comfort to her, and she wondered once more what the woman could be like who had so enslaved him.

“I seem sometimes in my thoughts to assume that I am in love with Richard myself,” she said to herself with surprise. “But indeed I don’t love him. He is hateful; when I am with him I know well enough that we could never by any chance love each other. He is as sharp as his own nose; he has no feelings that I can understand. But yet I am fond of him, for he is the first man to whom I have been able to speak freely, the first man. How I long to live in a world of such men. To live in Paris.”

Presently her thoughts turned from Richard and his cruel behaviour, to think of her own life and what it would become.

“I should have escaped from here by now had it not been for him,” she said bitterly, and then, recollecting that there had been no more answers to her advertisement, she wondered if she would ever have another opportunity. “If I have the courage to advertise again,” she added, for even that seemed doubtful to her at that hour.

“Damn the fellow,” she said at last. “He has disturbed my life to no purpose, he has raised a hundred questions he cannot answer; I should have been happier if I had never seen him.”

And it seemed to her that every fresh experience in life would always bring her such regrets; that all struggles were only destined to make her suffer, and that the best course perhaps was to go through life blindly, living from day to day, immersed in a world of dreams like her father, and like him shunning all contact with her fellow creatures. These thoughts were dreadful to her, for the afternoons she had passed sitting at the Burnt Farm talking to Richard Sotheby while he painted her were precious. “The happiest moments in my life,” she cried. “For I thought then that I had found a friend.”

Yet it was true: she would have been happier if she had never met him.

“I am not jealous,” she exclaimed. “I know he is in love with Ginette Grandison; I have always known it, and it has never given me a moment’s pang of jealousy. If only he had spoken of her, if he had told me he was going back to her, I should have felt happy for his sake. I should not have had a single selfish thought.

“But he has made me lay bare my whole life to him and has never once spoken of his own. I only know of the existence of Ginette Grandison by an accident; he would not trust me with his secret and would be annoyed at my knowing it. No friendship can be based on anything so one-sided as our conversations have been. And the reason is plain, only that I have been too stupid to see it before. The reason is that he never intended a friendship. It amused him to get my little secret from me; it flattered his....”

But Anne suddenly checked her thought, crying: “No, that is vulgar, that is unworthy. The root of the matter is that I mean nothing to him, nothing, whilst to me he is the only man with whom I have spoken freely; the only intimate friend except Enid that I have ever had. And he cares no more for me than she did.”

A flood of tears eased her heart; she turned her face to the pillow; then, when she had done weeping, she got out of bed once more and went to the window. The air was cold; there was a gust of wind in the chimney; the weather-cock gave its gentle whine.

After standing there an hour, Anne went back to bed again with a picture of the darkness in her mind, saying to herself: “And so on for ever and ever, cold and darkness after the sunshine and the warmth of the day.”

Next morning Anne felt ill when she woke; her head ached, she was dizzy, and the outer world was seen alternately as a whirling mist and defined with extraordinary clearness. She got up from habit, but she could eat nothing at breakfast, and as soon as her bed had been made she undressed and lay down on it, and fell asleep.

When she awoke it was with the echo of Richard’s voice ringing in her ears; she scrambled out of bed and went at once to her window. There was nothing to be seen, she blinked her eyes in the brilliant sunlight and, reeling with sleep, groped her way back through the sudden darkness of the room to her bed to fall into a doze from which she awoke once more, this time with the certainty of having heard voices: beyond a doubt, one of them was Richard’s.

The voices rose for a moment; then she heard the front door slam, in a gust of wind, and there was a silence. She understood suddenly that Richard had been in the house, that he had come to see her, and she got out of bed.

The bedroom window gave on to the garden, so she ran to her father’s room just as she had done to see the ploughmen on that snowy winter morning. Her guess had been right, for there almost directly beneath her were Richard and her father; they were standing bare-headed in the rain talking amicably; she could hear her father’s gentle laugh; they were reluctant to part. Anne’s first instinct was to call out; to ask Richard to wait while she exchanged her dressing-gown for clothes in which she could appear, but she realized that it was impossible to do so, and then, with the angry feelings that every sick person has experienced of knowing that life is going on unchanged behind his back, she was forced to watch Richard disappear after shaking hands with her father by the garden gate.

“A thousand pities,” she said to herself. “He must have come to see me. What can he have said to my father?” Her headache and dizziness were gone, she felt eager and excited, and the moments while she was putting on her clothes and doing up her hair were spent in trying to imagine the conversation that had been going on while she was asleep.

“What an extraordinary thing,” said Anne, “that he should think of calling! Nobody but Richard would have done such a thing!” Her thoughts were interrupted by Maggie coming to ask her if she would like to have tea in bed. As she was going downstairs it occurred to her that Richard might have spoken of her; he would have told her father that they had met; he might even have mentioned his picture. As she opened the door into the room where her father was already sitting, she remembered the well-brought-up heroes in Victorian novels who ask a father’s permission before entering into correspondence with the girl they have rescued when the pony has taken the bit between its teeth and the governess cart is heading for the side of the quarry ... a memory which was driven away with a laugh, but which left her anxious and expectant as she took her place at the tea table.

Mr. Dunnock did not make any reference to his visitor, though he was less abstracted than usual, asking Anne with great solicitude about her headache, and then saying: “I have been feeling a little more melancholy than usual to-day because of the bad weather, and so I took down Burton. In his anatomy he has much to say about the effect of food. The authorities all agree that beef is only safe for those who lead an active life; that pork is definitely bad for the reasoning man; that goats’ flesh disposes those who partake of it to evil-living; venison is most strongly condemned, and even horse-flesh is held to account for the well-known melancholy of your Spaniard; among vegetables the onion and its congeners, and I am glad to say the cabbage, are absolutely condemned; peas and beans should be avoided as far as possible, and salads and fruit only taken in the strictest moderation. Burton thinks that the potato may be a safe article of diet, and highly recommends borage.”

Anne was smiling at her father’s enthusiasm. “There seems very little for you to eat,” she said.

“Well, Anne, I do not know quite what Burton would recommend; he says nothing against wheaten bread; he regards fresh country cheese as wholesome, and speaks with enthusiasm of beer.” Mr. Dunnock giggled as he said this and for some reason that familiar clerical sound seemed to his daughter at that moment to express all that she most hated and despised. “The giggle is unforgivable,” she said to herself gazing at her father over the tea table. “He is a grown-up man; he has a beard; he is my father, but if beer is mentioned one hears a silly adolescent giggle. One would think that he was a choir boy caught with a cigarette.”

She left the table and went out into the garden in a fury; she had forgotten her own embarrassment when Richard had used the word “rape.”

Mr. Dunnock, absorbed in his own thoughts, hardly looked after her.

“Beer,” he said, pouring himself out a fourth cup of tea, and giggling slightly. “Good stuff, beer. He thought that because his name was Burton,” and Mr. Dunnock began to wonder if Robert Burton had really come from Burton-on-Trent, and if beer had always been brewed there.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said to Anne at supper, “that I had a visit this afternoon from Richard Sotheby, the son of our grocer. It was a great pity that you had a headache, for we do not have many interesting visitors. I think he is charming: a most delightful, most intelligent young man. But you should have told me that you had met him; you should have asked him to tea, and have introduced him to me. It was too bad, Anne, to have kept him to yourself.”

Anne gasped with astonishment and, not knowing what to reply, waited until her father went on: “He seems to have liked you very much; you have made quite a conquest,” and Mr. Dunnock smiled his peculiar little smile which showed that he was not speaking seriously.

“I thought you rather disapproved of the Sothebys,” said Anne. “Because, of course, they are Nonconformists.”

“Well, well,” said her father, wrinkling up his face at the word, for it set his teeth on edge like the thought of sour fruit. “Well, well, I suppose they are happy with their little ugly worship; I confess their outlook is repugnant to me. But the son has escaped from all that. He told me he has been to visit Little Gidding, and asked me a number of questions about Nicholas Ferrar’s community. Apparently he is greatly interested in the antiquities of the county.”

Anne had known Little Gidding all her life, and she shared her father’s love for the lonely little church perched on the edge of the hillside, with the slope of green sward below and the woods behind. She had been brought up to revere Nicholas Ferrar, and had loved to reconstruct a life which had so much of the beauty of religion in it, and nothing of what she disliked. Often she thought that she would have been content for her father to have been a clergyman if he had lived in the seventeenth century, or even in the eighteenth for the matter of that, for it was only during the reign of Queen Victoria that the clergy in England lost touch with the community and became self-conscious. Anne knew how much happier her father would have been had he belonged to Nicholas Ferrar’s household, and though she would not have cared for it herself (she would have disliked rising at four o’clock for prayers every morning) she wished he could live in such a way himself. Thus for once she was tolerant, for she loved Little Gidding, and had prayed in the narrow little church with an outburst of religious passion such as she had never experienced in Ely Cathedral.

For the rest of that evening father and daughter spoke of Little Gidding, calling up pictures in each other’s minds of how it must be looking in the spring weather, and of the life of the immense and extraordinary household which had lived there until the Roundheads had burned the roof over their heads and had thrown the brass eagle lectern in the church into the pond below.

“The men slept in one wing of the house and the women in the other,” Anne remembered. “And Nicholas Ferrar slept watchfully in the middle. That is the funny side,” but she hid her thought from her father, and when she spoke it was to remind him of the immense number of children in the community.

“His daughter brought her eleven children; there were thirty people altogether,” said her father, and he passed on to describe the three visits of King Charles I, and so vivid were his words that Anne could picture to herself, more clearly than ever before, the visit the King paid during the civil war when he came toiling up the hill on foot, and alone, to pray.

“There is no more sacred spot in England,” said Mr. Dunnock, and Anne was inclined to agree with him. That night she lay for some time without sleeping, giving herself up to the happiest thoughts, and when at last she dozed off it was with the picture of Richard Sotheby in her mind: Richard walking over the greenest turf where the manor house had stood, resting on the sides of the dry grassy moat, and then walking down by the edge of the wood to the little church with Nicholas Ferrar’s tomb in the pathway leading up to it, under a tombstone, the letters of which are written in moss. A tall figure came toiling up the hill to meet him; she saw a tired man with a pale face--King Charles the First, and try how she would to dream of Richard Sotheby, King Charles would reappear.

“I shall certainly try to see Richard before he goes this morning,” Anne thought at breakfast. “I shall look in and tell Mrs. Sotheby that I have come to say good-bye.”

But when the time came she went past the shop, for she remembered Mr. Sotheby’s look of surprise when he found that she was acquainted with his son, and the long hostile silence before he spoke, after he had recognized her in the painting.

“Mr. Sotheby does not approve of my knowing Richard,” Anne said to herself, glancing through the windows of the shop. She could see no one inside, and the longer she meditated over the grocer’s behaviour at Rachel’s birthday party, the more convinced she became that he was jealous of her, and alarmed lest an attachment should spring up between his son and her.

“I will go for a stroll on the green,” and looking about her she saw for the first time that the sun was shining, and that the grass was greener after the rain of the day before. “Why, the hawthorns have come into leaf; the horse-chestnut buds are bursting; in a few days the apples will be in blossom,” but the daily progress of the spring, which would ordinarily have given her such keen pleasure, was meaningless now. “I must see Richard before he goes,” she said in desperation. “I must arrange with him about finding me work in Paris,” and she remembered with dismay that she did not even know his address.

Soon she turned back on her footsteps, and fully an hour was spent in passing and repassing the grocer’s shop.

“I am wasting my time,” she thought. “For Easter is nearly upon us; there is much to do at the church.” But it was not possible to go home after waiting so long, and at last she set off along the road to Linton. A mile was covered before it occurred to her that Richard would be driving with his father, and that even if Mr. Sotheby should pull up it would be difficult for them to speak in front of him, and she turned back and walked to the village at top speed.

All seemed well, for she had not passed them on the road, and she determined once more to enter the shop, but it occurred to her, as she approached, that Rachel would be coming out of school in a few minutes: it was just twelve o’clock.

As she turned the corner by the schoolhouse, she noticed the strange ring deeply cut into the earth and full of dust, and wondered again what game the children played there.

Soon the door opened and the children began to run out. “In this riot I shall not be able to speak to Rachel,” Anne said to herself. “But if I walk back towards the shop she may walk another way.”

“A lovely morning, Miss Dunnock,” said a voice behind her, and she turned to find Mr. Lambert.

The moments spent talking to him were agonizing, for every instant she expected to see Rachel run past her, but Mr. Lambert would not be hurried. Soon he began to speak of Easter, and the arrangements at the church, for he was a churchwarden, and when that subject was exhausted he returned to the weather.

“One is happy to be alive on such a morning, Miss Dunnock; I envy you your leisure to enjoy it. Free as air, Miss Dunnock, and no one to call your master. Work is my master. This weather keeps us very busy.”

“Impertinent puppy,” said Anne to herself, though as a matter of fact she rather liked Mr. Lambert, and saw nothing impertinent in his manners.

At the very moment when Mr. Lambert released her she heard Rachel’s voice saying: “Good morning, Miss Dunnock,” and the little girl ran by her with two or three other children. Anne saw that it was useless to wait any longer, and returned to the vicarage; there was nothing to be angry about, nobody was at fault.

“There was this note left for you. Rachel Sotheby brought it over,” said Maggie when she went into the kitchen, and Anne thought the girl’s grin was an impertinence too.

Richard had gone by the early morning train. “I am so sorry not to see you to say good-bye,” he wrote. “You must not forget your promise to write, and remember to tell me all the news of the parish.” He enclosed his address.

ELEVEN: BEFORE THE SWALLOW DARES

Easter was over, but the church at Dry Coulter was still full of the scent of flowers mingled with the odour of their corruption. A necklace of decayed marsh-mallows hung forlornly round the neck of the eagle; its brazen beak held a bunch of wilted cowslips, but the daffodils and narcissus on the altar still breathed out their perfume. Easter was over, and Mr. Dunnock heaved a sigh of relief for he had come to feel the church festivals a great strain upon him.

Easter was over; Mrs. Pattle marched up the aisle on her flat feet and began tearing down the flowers which her children had gathered three days before.

Mr. Dunnock walked by the little pathway from the vestry to his wife’s grave, and stood there looking at the headstone. He stayed there so long and stood so still that a robin, recognizing a friend in him, came to perch on his shoulder.

“The resurrection of the flesh has come to pass,” Mr. Dunnock said aloud. “These ones come to me and they commune with me; why does she alone delay?”

At last a cow lowing on the other side of the hedge, interrupted the clergyman’s reverie; he started slightly and coming to himself began to pull his beard with a gesture of despair, and the robin, who had been wondering if he could induce his wife to nest in it, flew off to a tombstone, disappointed.

“I live in two worlds,” Mr. Dunnock reflected. “Only the saints know how terrible the strain of such an experience can be. I cannot bear it much longer; something will break in me. My head aches when I am recalled from the contemplation of so much glory to the pettiness in which men live, their eyes on the ground and their ears stopped to the voices of the angels. I cannot endure it any longer; it would be better, I think, if I were to live alone.” He clutched at his head suddenly, and then walked rapidly from the churchyard towards the vicarage. But the song of a willow wren caught his ear as he passed under the elms, and he paused to listen. The clear top note was followed by a stream of softer sounds and ended with a cadence of lower notes, a touch of melancholy in which the vicar felt his own heart expressed. The bird sang, and sang again, and Mr. Dunnock, resting his shoulder against the rough bark of an elm, listened without seeing the approach of two village women, or noticing their inquisitive glances as they passed near him, or hearing their words, for, in answer to a nudge, one of them had protested to her companion: “Oh, dear me, Fanny. Don’t.”

They were silent for fear of laughing, but when they had passed the vicar, one of them said: “Maggie told me she couldn’t make anything of his sermon on Easter Sunday. It was all about Easter Eggs being the promise of glory. She didn’t know what he meant by it.”

But the women did not laugh, and soon turned to safer and more interesting topics of conversation.

The willow wren had been silent a long while, and was looking for worms, when at last for Mr. Dunnock also the mood of ecstasy passed; he looked about him startled and bewildered, and then, reassured by finding he was alone, he shook his head sadly, and the first glance of fear was replaced by a bitter smile as he hurried back to the vicarage at top speed.

“Lay my meals on a tray in future,” he said to Maggie a few minutes later. “And put the tray on the table in the passage outside my study. I shall hear if you tap on the door.” Words which were repeated to Anne when she came down to lunch. She was content to be alone, but at dinner she was disturbed at this alteration in her father’s habits, wondering whether he were unwell, or whether by any chance Maggie were right in believing that he wished the change to be permanent. But this seemed to her so unlikely a possibility that she did not dwell on it, and, when the meal was over, she lit the lamp and settled down with her drawing-board in front of her; she had at last begun the fashion plates which she had been projecting all the winter. The fine weather had returned after Richard Sotheby’s departure, and for the first day of warm sunshine Anne had found happiness enough in being out of doors, a happiness shot through with irritation against herself.

“I am wasting my life looking at this pear blossom. What does it matter to me whether the fruit set or not? I shall be gone before the gathering.” But her habitual interest had been too strong for her, and she had watched the bees flying in and out among the masses of curdy petals with delight.

“I am lingering on. I shall linger all my life. I must go now; I must leave home to-day.”

But it was impossible to leave on the day before Easter, and instead of packing her box, she had gone to the church to pin up the notice saying: “There will be no service on Saturday, when the church will be open for decoration.”

When Saturday had come she had gone herself to help the little girls, and it was not until after Easter was over that the fashion plates had been begun. The results of her labours surpassed Anne’s expectations; such fashion plates as hers she felt sure would excite the Parisian dressmakers.

“I must send them to Richard at once,” she said as she took out the drawing-pins. But the thought of waiting for a letter, and the agony of uncertainty in which she saw herself, dismayed her. In her mood of exultation delay of any kind seemed impossible.

“But I will wait all the same,” she said, “until I have finished a dozen, and then I shall go to Paris myself to seek my fortune. I will write and tell Richard that I am coming.”

The letter was put off; she would not write until she knew the day and the hour of her arrival, and for several days she worked hard, shutting herself up in her room every morning when the bed had been made. When she laid down her brush it was to plan how she would have her hair cut off in London, and how she would buy herself a smart dress for the journey, for she believed that she would never impress a dressmaker in such rags as she possessed. With her mind full of such matters, Anne rose and looked out of her window; the first blush of pink petals was showing through the early green of the apple trees; in another week they would be in full blossom. Under the trees Mr. Dunnock was standing with his arms raised above his head, gazing up at the sky, a pose which Anne found sufficiently startling to make her look again, carefully screening her eyes from the sunlight. Her father stood motionless; every little while she could see a small bird fly up and settle on his shoulder.

“I have scarcely spoken to father for three days; I must speak to him now and tell him of my plans,” and as she made this resolution, she saw him moving slowly across the lawn. As he came nearer she saw that a crowd of little birds was following him, a wild twittering came from them, they were mobbing him as though he were a cat or an owl; at every moment birds would settle on his head or shoulders, or on his up-raised hands, and then would fly off again.

A beautiful spectacle it seemed to Anne, and she felt a new tenderness for her father as she watched. The thin black figure with the head thrown back, the eyes turned up, and the beard jutting out, no longer seemed queer as it had a moment before, when she had first caught sight of it standing under the apple trees.

“He will feel my desertion,” she murmured, a sudden sympathy with her father coming to her, and she felt a love which had been forgotten for many months.

“First mother, and then me,” she said. But her love did not weaken her determination to speak to him of her departure, but strengthened it.

When Mr. Dunnock reached the house, he shook his head, first gently, but then, as a blue-tit still remained perched there, more violently, and then turning round waved his hands towards the birds which had settled in the rose bushes about the door. Anne saw that he was bestowing a benediction. She did not wait longer, but hurrying downstairs, followed her father into his study.

“We see very little of each other now, father,” she said.

Mr. Dunnock started at her words and looked round at her with guilty eyes.

“Yes, Anne, yes,” he murmured. “Do you wish to speak to me? Something perhaps about the housekeeping?” and he began to fidget with his fingers, wishing that she would go away.

“I have wanted to speak to you for some time,” said Anne. “I have been thinking a great deal about my own life. It will seem very selfish to you, and very heartless. It is very selfish....”

“We are all of us selfish,” said Mr. Dunnock. “What is it that you want?”

“I want to go away, at least for a time,” said Anne. “I do not want to settle down for the rest of my life without seeing something of the world. I have never been to London.”

There was a silence, and after a little she went on: “I shall have to earn my own living, of course, but that should not be impossible. An experiment ... an experience ... the experience would be good for me. I have never been to London. There are so many things.”

“That seems a very sensible plan, if it can be managed,” said Mr. Dunnock, cutting her short. “But then you have plenty of good sense, Anne, more than I have in some ways.”

He sat down suddenly at his writing table, dropping his head between his hands, and there he remained, silent for so long that Anne began to wonder if he had forgotten her, but she said nothing, only repeating under her breath: “It is settled: I am leaving home.”

But at last Mr. Dunnock looked up, saying: “Let me see.... What was I going to say? You will require some money, Anne, if you are going away. I can give you twenty pounds, enough to enable you to look about you. Do as you think best, dear child, in every way.” His head began to nod again, and then, as if suddenly waking up, he said:

“I am glad you are going, Anne. I am glad the suggestion came from you: that it should be your own wish. I am rather bad company, I know, but there is a reason for that. You think my life here is narrow perhaps, but you see only one side. I can assure you that you are mistaken; my life is incredibly rich and overflowing with happiness. But that has to be hidden; there is a reason for that. I need loneliness; you perhaps need to see the world at present, but we shall meet again, and I have no fear that ultimately ... you will understand what is hidden....” He broke off disconnectedly, and suddenly Anne felt her happiness shot through by a feeling of dismay, in which she wondered if she could leave her father to fend for himself. Such phrases were familiar to her from his lips, but they seemed strange coming at such a moment and when she went from the room it was with a conviction that she would be doing wrong to go away.

Her scruples were soon forgotten in the excitement of making plans, and the rest of the day was spent in packing and unpacking a wooden box with her possessions. Two days later all was ready, and the hour of her departure had been fixed for the morrow. In the morning she went to say good-bye to Mrs. Sotheby, and to ask if Rachel would come to have tea with her.

“We shall miss you very much,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But I shall try to think that you are enjoying yourself seeing more of the world than you would here. I hardly know what to say about Rachel. You know how fond she is of you. She will want to come to say good-bye; it is a great pity that Mr. Sotheby has arranged to take us to see the cottages at Linton. You would not care to come with us, I suppose? Then everyone would be happy.”

“I should like to come very much,” said Anne, “if I shall not be in the way.”

“I’ll just ask Mr. Sotheby if there will be room in the dog-cart for us all,” said the old woman and, through the opened door into the parlour, Anne could see the grocer sitting at the table, looking up from a sheet of blue paper with a T-square in his hands.

They set off soon after lunch, Anne sitting on the back seat of the dog-cart with Rachel, but the pony did not seem to feel the extra weight. Anne soon set Rachel talking, and the little girl kept her amused with stories of her school, and how she had been teased about her brother, and it was some time before she broke the news of her own departure. Rachel stared down at the road, a yellow river flowing so swiftly from below the dog-cart that she could not distinguish the stones in it. “You won’t ever think of me; you won’t write to me; you won’t ever come back,” were her thoughts, but she knew that she must hide her unhappiness, and when she spoke, as the trap drew up smartly, it was to ask: “Will you be going to Paris?” a question which Anne found so disturbing that she saw little of the first cottage into which she was led. The smell of fresh paint, mingled with the fragrance of aromatic pine shavings on the plank floors, recalled her to her surroundings, and she listened for a moment to Mr. Sotheby, who was speaking to her.

“These cottages are only a stepping-stone to greater things, Miss Dunnock. I have mortgaged them already. What Linton lacks is a high-class Temperance Hotel, overlooking the river. Such a hotel would attract visitors for the fishing and boating, and would cater also for the more respectable commercial men. A Temperance Hotel would wake up trade in the town, and would provide a delightful centre for holiday-makers and abstainers, and men from the university.”

“What shall I say to Rachel?” Anne asked herself as she followed the grocer up the little staircase into the poky bedrooms, which smelt of varnish.

“A little shop like ours is a great snare for a man with ambition. I have wasted the best years of my life in it, years during which I might have built up a great merchandising house. But this hotel, and others like it, will soon make my son a rich man, and provide for Rachel. A Temperance Hotel with a grand loggia looking over the river, pillars with climbing roses, a small winter garden with azaleas.... We must move with the times, you know, Miss Dunnock.”

Anne descended the narrow stairs and followed Mrs. Sotheby across a patch of sticky clay to the dog-cart.

“Yes, I am going to Paris. Don’t tell anyone; it is a secret,” she said to the little girl as they drove off. It was only after saying this that Anne looked up at the cottages, seeing them for the first time. Their extreme ugliness and the evident signs of jerry-building dismayed her.

“What will the next thing be like?” she asked herself, remembering the grocer had spoken of an hotel, and expecting to see it round the corner. In a moment or two Mr. Sotheby drew rein by the side of the quiet stream of the Ouse, but there was no building visible, only an empty field, the site for the new hotel.

“A lounge hall lit entirely by windows of yellow stained glass is my idea,” said Mr. Sotheby. “It will give the effect of sunshine all the year round. The landing-stage is to run the entire length of the building. It will be covered by a glass roof. There is to be a garage on the right and a boathouse on the left, each under its own dome of glass, thus giving symmetry to the whole. There will be central heating, a lift, electric light, a banqueting hall....”

Anne gazed at the water-logged field, at the slow stream with the bunches of reeds and the gasworks on the opposite bank, and ceased to listen to Mr. Sotheby’s words. The mud and water and slime would remain mud and water and slime; the fine old bridge with the toll house, which had once been a chapel, would stay there; nothing would move the gasworks, and Anne felt unable to picture to herself the glittering abomination of which the grocer spoke, on that melancholy river bank.

But Mr. Sotheby went on talking for some time, and, turning her head, Anne could see that his wife was not listening, and her own attention soon wandered. She saw the whip being pointed first in one direction and then in another, and the white beard which wagged as the grocer opened and shut his mouth, but the stream of words went on unheard. At last Mr. Sotheby picked up the reins, cracked his whip, and they set off for home. Except for Rachel, they had enjoyed themselves as Mrs. Sotheby had predicted.

No one in Dry Coulter would have recognized the slim figure in a fashionable tailor-made dress who took her seat in the boat-train three days later. When she shook her head to refuse the offer of magazines, no hairpins flew on to the platform, and the reason was explained when she removed her rakish little hat: Anne wore an Eton crop. Her whole character seemed to her to have changed, and looking into the mirror in the lid of her little vanity-case, she was pleased with her new self. For a moment she fingered an unused lip-stick and then, laughing to herself, deliberately reddened her lips. She was off to Paris, alone, to seek her fortune. Her father, everyone at Dry Coulter, every experience she had ever had in her life seemed never to have existed. It was a dream which would be speedily forgotten, and reaching for her bag, Anne opened a French book of which Richard had spoken.

Somewhere in the Weald of Kent, the grinding noise of the brakes, suddenly applied, disturbed her reading. The train dragged itself to a halt and a long silence followed.

At last Anne threw open the window and peered into the darkness. There was nothing to be seen but a red light shining somewhere down the line, and the vague forms of oak trees near at hand. For a moment there was nothing to be heard, and then, suddenly, her ear caught a far-off melodious chuckle and a moment afterwards the first startling clear notes of a bird’s song. The red light changed to green; there was a long puff, and a series of snorts from the engine; the ticking of released brakes, and once more the train was in motion. But Anne had recognized the note of the nightingale.

“Love,” she said to herself, and began laughing.

TWELVE: RICHARD’S FRIENDS

Two men and a woman were having breakfast in the studio in their dressing-gowns.

“Oh, my God, Grandison!” exclaimed Richard Sotheby, after looking into the letter which Anne had posted two days before in London. “What am I to do? Here is that girl arriving in Paris to-morrow. She asks me to get her lodgings, and to meet her at the station. What on earth am I to do? I wonder if I could stop her coming.... She doesn’t give her London address. No, I can’t stop her. Oh, what a curse....”

Grandison laughed and, turning to the woman beside her, told her the news in bad French. A look of incredulity passed over her brown face, and then she also began to laugh. The dark eyes sparkled with malice, the even white teeth shone, she put the point of her healthy pink tongue between her painted lips; and then, the humour of the situation increasing as she turned the news over in her mind, she sprang up and danced bare-footed round the breakfast table in the middle of the immense room. The skirts of the silk dressing-gown whirled round the lithe body; every movement was lovely, but neither of the men looked at her. When she stopped it was to pour out a flood of questions which went unanswered.

“It is not a joke,” said Richard Sotheby gloomily. “You will have to help me. You don’t object, I suppose,” he added in French to the girl, “if Grandison devotes his time to her?”

“How insolent you are, Richard!” said the woman, taking hold of Grandison’s arm, and putting her cheek beside his head. “I am to be sacrificed because you can’t face a woman. I could call you some hard names if I chose.” She pouted, but at once went on: “But I won’t, for I sympathize with you. Really I am anxious to see this girl of yours, Richard. It will be a curiosity. Are you going to bring her to live with us? I shall be charming to her, and she will keep me company sometimes. Two men is more than I can manage.” She pouted again, and added in tones of deep tenderness: “Two dirty Englishmen.”

Richard Sotheby looked at her with a patient smile, then, ignoring her questions, he turned to his friend and said, speaking in English: “And two women is more than I can manage.”

Grandison flushed with anger, but Richard forestalled anything he might have said by adding: “My dear, you know I am fond of Ginette; don’t misunderstand what I say. But two women is more than I can put up with....”

“Why on earth will you persist in regarding Ginette as a woman?” demanded the younger man in tones of fury. “Woman! woman! It’s always woman with you. Ginette is Ginette, just as I am Gerald and you are Richard.”

Sotheby did not reply, and his friend’s angry tones soon subsided. Harmony was restored while the breakfast dishes were cleared away, and for the rest of the morning Anne’s arrival was discussed calmly, sometimes in English, sometimes in French, while the two men painted and Ginette posed. In the evening everything that had been said in the morning was repeated, but at last it was decided that Grandison should meet Anne at the station, instead of Richard, and that he should take her to an hotel.