DAVID GARNETT
GO SHE MUST!
[Illustration]
ALFRED·A·KNOPF: NEW YORK
MCMXXVII
COPYRIGHT 1927, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
STEPHEN TOMLIN
CONTENTS
ONE: BIRDS IN THE SNOW 3
TWO: PLOUGH MONDAY 16
THREE: SOTHEBY’S SHOP 31
FOUR: THE TRAPEZE BOY 45
FIVE: THE FROST HELD 60
SIX: WINGED SEEDS 77
SEVEN: THE BURNT FARM 90
EIGHT: WILLOW-PATTERN PARIS 105
NINE: BIRTHDAY TEA 121
TEN: NO GOOD-BYES 134
ELEVEN: BEFORE THE SWALLOW DARES 150
TWELVE: RICHARD’S FRIENDS 165
THIRTEEN: PARIS 179
FOURTEEN: A REMOVAL 192
FIFTEEN: HONEYMOONING 213
SIXTEEN: ANGELS 228
GO SHE MUST!
ONE: BIRDS IN THE SNOW
Snow lay thick over everything on the morning of the second Monday in
the year, and the Reverend Charles Dunnock, drawing back the curtains
of his bedroom window, said to himself that if the great sycamore full
of rooks’ nests in the churchyard were to fall, or even if a steeple
were to be built for the little church of Dry Coulter, such changes
would not alter the landscape so much as this snowstorm had done.
Buried under three inches of snow the country was recognizable, but
wholly transformed, and he asked himself how it was that a uniform
colouring should make a totally new world yet one which was composed of
familiar objects in their accustomed places.
Indifferent to the cold, he gazed out of his bedroom window enchanted
by the beauty of the scene, and then, as he caught a glimpse of the
first horizontal beams of the sun falling on Nature’s wedding-cake,
he told himself that even the dullest witted of his dissenting
parishioners would feel compelled to cry out: “This is like Heaven! I
could fancy myself dead, and this Eternity!”
“Yes”--he reflected--“all men must feel it, for that conceit is helped
out by the extraordinary stillness, the footfalls of man and bird and
beast are muffled, and the world seems empty. Nobody is stirring, for
there is nothing like a heavy fall of snow to keep people by their
firesides. Only the postman and the milkman go their rounds”; and while
he was dressing he heard their sudden knocks at the back door, with no
warning crunch of gravel, or sound of the gate slamming in the yard.
“Their fidelity,” he said to himself, “is like that of the clocks
striking the hours when there is death in the house”--for Mrs. Dunnock
had died exactly a year before, and her death was always in his mind.
His bedroom had been her bedroom, though only for a few months, for she
had died soon after her husband had been presented with a living, and
since her death he slept alone in the great bed where she had waited so
often for him to come up from his study, and where he had always found
her with her soft hair spread like a bird’s wing over the pillow, and
in which she had died.
“The clocks strike the hours in the moments of our greatest sorrow,” he
said to himself. “Nothing will keep them from the punctual discharge
of their duty, and listening to them we are recalled to this life,
we shoulder our burdens once more, we begin ticking again ourselves,
ticking away our ordinary lives.”
He went to the looking-glass hanging over _her_ dressing-table and
began to comb his beard, then, looking once more out of the window,
watched two men pass by, leading a horse along the road to be roughed
at the blacksmith’s, a slow business, for one of the men had to throw
down sacks every few yards for it to step on, wherever the blizzard had
whirled away the snow and left a polished slide of ice.
At a few minutes before nine he sat down to the breakfast table and
took the cup of tea that his daughter poured out for him; then, hearing
a shout, both Anne and he turned to the window and caught sight of a
red muffler flying in the wind, and a thrown snowball, but when the
children had passed, running on their way to school, all was silence,
for Mr. Dunnock had turned to read a circular which the postman had
brought that morning.
“Evangelicals! Evangelicals!” he muttered angrily, for he was a
ritualist; a last flicker of the Oxford Movement had filled his life
with poetry. Then he pushed away the newspaper, and, taking some bread
for the birds, he rose from the breakfast table and went to the front
door.
The world outside was dazzling, and the snow lay piled up deep before
the sill. Mr. Dunnock peered out, not daring to step in the snow in his
carpet slippers. He listened: not a sound; he looked and marked the
roofs which yesterday were but the edges of a row of tiles, to-day as
thick as thatch--like Christmas cards. “And here’s a robin,” he said,
“waiting for me to throw him some of the bread.” He threw a piece which
was lost in the snow. “A wedding-cake! How strange it is to reflect
that Anne is older now than her mother when I married her! Yes, the
world is become a wedding-cake. Something very strange has happened,
and who knows what will be the end of it? for it has begun to snow
again, and the rare flakes drift slowly to the ground like feathers
from the angels’ wings. Are they moulting up there? Or has Satan got
among them like a black cat which has climbed through the wire netting
into the dove loft?”
Mr. Dunnock fetched a piece of cardboard from his study to serve as a
table for the birds, and dropped it a few feet away on to the snow,
then, crumbling the bread in his fingers, he threw the birds their
breakfast. Some of the crumbs fell on each side into the snow and were
lost.
“Here they come,” he said to himself, for bright eyes had been watching
him from every tree and bush.
The birds fluttered nearer, eyeing the crumbs spread out for them, and
then looking sideways at the tall, bearded man standing in the doorway.
Their fear was speedily forgotten, for the clergyman made it his habit
to feed them every morning, and soon the cardboard table was covered
with sparrows, robins, blackbirds, and thrushes, all of them flashing
their wings, bickering and scrambling for the finest crumbs like a
flock of bantams. And having been successful, one would often fly off
with a piece in his bill, which he wished to devour in solitude.
Anne Dunnock remained at the breakfast table, for she had only just
finished the kipper on her plate. “The labourers will not go to work
in the fields on such a day as this,” she said to herself. “And not
a woman will venture out except me, for women’s boots are generally
leaky, and their skirts flap wet against their calves. With a frost
like this there should be skating, but the snow will have spoilt the
ice, even if it were swept.” She finished a piece of toast and rose
from the table to clear away the breakfast. The loaf was a pitiful
object, only a shell of crust, with all of the inside scooped out.
“Another loaf gone,” she said to herself. “We always have stale crusts,
yet I am sure the birds would eat them as readily as they do the crumb,
and crusts are so nasty in bread-and-butter pudding.”
Mr. Dunnock continued watching the birds, and the draught from the open
front door made his daughter shiver. “Birds! Birds! I should like to
wear a bird in my hat.”
She was a tall girl, beautiful, with a small pale face, and
straw-coloured hair, hair which would not stay up; wherever she went
she scattered hairpins. She was still in mourning for her mother’s
death, and her long black dress fitted her badly, hindering her
impatient movements, and giving her the look of a converted savage
dressed in a missionary’s night-gown.
“Father is feeding the birds. He never forgets them, and here am I
grudging them the crumb of the loaf. But housekeeping would have made
Saint Francis uncharitable, though Saint Francis would not have said he
wanted a bird for his hat.”
The marmalade, the cruet, the silver toast rack, all were put away into
the mahogany sideboard, the tablecloth was brushed, and holding the
little wooden tray full of crumbs, she went out into the hall, where
her father still stood at the open door, and then leaning over his
shoulder she shook the crumbs out on to the snow, and, scared by her
sudden gesture, the birds flew off.
“Oh, Anne, how stupid and inconsiderate you are!” exclaimed her father,
angrily. “How little imagination you have. Don’t you understand that
when you wave anything suddenly like that you frighten them? There was
such a fine missel-thrush too. He is not regular, and though the other
birds will soon come back, he will be discouraged. It is most vexing.”
Now that Mr. Dunnock had lost his congregation (a far larger one than
had ever attended a Communion service at Dry Coulter Church), he shut
the door, shaking his head irritably, then he put his beard in his
mouth, as if that were the best way to stifle his anger, and went into
his study.
The book he took up fell from his hands before he had turned the second
or third page, for he had not the intellect nor the determination to
be a scholar. A beautiful word always set his mind chasing a beautiful
picture; his thoughts clouded over with dreams, and he remained lost in
meditation. When he came to himself it was to sink on to his knees in
prayer, for he was a shy man, unable to express himself to men, and
for that reason much given to communing with God.
For twenty years he had been a poor curate at a church in the shadow
of Ely Cathedral, but he had not been popular: he was indifferent to
the things which were important to his fellow clergy, and his mystical
love of ritual had found no sympathizers, until at last the Bishop took
pity on him, and gave him a small living in a district in the fens. His
growing uncertainty of temper, combined with a sort of hopeless oddity,
had begun to make him a nuisance, and some provision had to be made.
At Ely the Church is taken seriously: it is a great power, and on
taking up his new position, Mr. Dunnock was shocked to find it
completely disregarded, for the inhabitants of Dry Coulter are
Nonconformists. Even with the few who belonged to the church, he was
not a success. His sermons were incomprehensible, yet they might have
passed unnoticed if he had not affected a cassock and a biretta, if he
had not placed a crucifix on the Communion table and called a blessing
on the houses of the sick before he entered them. As vicar Mr. Dunnock
was a failure, and within less than a year he was regarded with far
greater contempt than is usually extended to the clergy. Yet he was
not a disappointed man, for he had never been ambitious of success,
and had never imagined that he might be popular. He knew that it was
too late in his life for him to make any effort; he was disinclined
to exert himself with his parishioners, and avoiding them as far as
he could, he was not unhappy. He had grown lazy, too, and now that it
was in his power, he neglected to hold the innumerable little services
which as a curate he had longed to celebrate.
If his wife had lived he might perhaps have exerted himself, but
he knew that Anne did not share his emotions, and soon the special
days were passed over, and Mr. Dunnock remained sunk in melancholy.
Sometimes his conscience pricked him; then he shut himself up in his
room and remained for hours in prayer.
“Damn the missel-thrush!” thought his daughter. “But father is always
irritable on Mondays; I have noticed it before. Life indeed would be
intolerable if it were not for the house. I have everything to make me
unhappy, but I love this house. Dear old Noah’s ark.”
She went upstairs, where Maggie was waiting for her to help in making
the beds. Maggie Pattle was a girl of seventeen, who lived out with her
mother, and let herself into the vicarage early every morning, for she
was the only servant and came in by the day. Shorter than Anne, she
was fully twice as broad, a well-nourished girl, who would eat a pound
of sausages or of bacon at a sitting, washing it down with vinegar, and
her red cheeks shone with health.
Anne often thought that if only Maggie had come from another village
she would have made an excellent servant; all her sluttish ways came
from her mother’s being just round the corner; she had only to slip
down the vicarage garden and through a hole in the hedge to be at home.
The cottage was so small, and Mrs. Pattle and her family so large, that
Anne thought of the old woman who lived in a shoe whenever she looked
at it; though Mrs. Pattle never seemed in any doubt what to do. She
knew when to slap a child, and when only to swear at it.
No doubt she was a good mother, resembling very much one of the huge
sows which sometimes wandered over the village green in front of her
cottage--a sow whose steps were followed by a sounder of little porkers
trotting about in all directions. What if she did chastise one, or
even gobble it up? One would not be missed.... No, indeed, for how did
it come about that Mrs. Pattle had three children that all seemed to
be between two and three years old, yet none of them twins? Was one
of them Maggie’s? Anne thought not, but it was difficult to be sure,
and if the matter were not settled soon she would never know; on such
points the Pattles’ memories were not trustworthy. Yes, they were a
slipshod family, though not exactly what one would call an immoral
one....
Yet, though Anne despised Maggie for her sluttishness and
untruthfulness, in some ways she admired her. Maggie was a good girl,
she did what she was told, had a passion for washing floors, and was
not a bad cook. Then she would go anywhere at any time, and do anything
for anybody to oblige. Mrs. Pattle’s cottage was crawling with babies,
could one of them be the fruit of this cheery good-nature?
But if Anne admired the way Maggie scrubbed the scullery floor, she
felt envy when she saw her sauntering along the lanes with her hands in
her pockets, whistling like a ploughboy, and stopping to speak to every
person she met on the road. Did she envy Maggie only because she had so
many friends, or was it partly because she knew all the boys and the
young men, and went in the grove in the evenings, coming out with her
cheeks no redder than they were by nature?
Why was it, Anne asked herself, that she could not whistle as she
walked along in her long black dress and her black straw hat? She
had no friends to talk to except the village people, and she could
only visit them if they were ill, or in trouble. That, and watching
her father feed the birds, was not enough to fill her life. She read,
and when the young carters went ploughing she laid aside her book to
watch them as they passed the house, sitting sideways on their great
horses. Anne liked the way men whistled, and their deep voices as
they spoke to the cart-horses drinking at the pond, voices so full of
restraint and kindliness. There was no way for her to speak to these
young men who looked so cheerful as they went by to work in their rough
clothes, though sometimes, when she was out on a long walk and was far
from home, she had tried to get into conversation with a young farmer
leaning over a gate, or with a gamekeeper idling along the edge of a
wood, his black and white spaniel at his heels.
But the beds had to be made, and since she liked to sleep in a big
four-poster that they had found in the vicarage on their arrival, and
her father also slept in a large bed, she helped Maggie to turn the
mattresses.
It takes two to make a bed properly, and with an unselfish companion
who does not take more than her fair share of the sheets to tuck in on
her side, it is pleasant work.
How the mattress bends and coils on itself, somersaulting heavily like
a whale, and how brave the great linen sheet looks as you turn it down!
The last of the two beds was made, and they were tucking in the quilt
when a strange sound came from outside the house--a confused noise of
voices singing. Was it a hymn?
“Whatever can that be, Maggie?” she asked.
“That’s the carters come, Miss,” the girl answered. “It is Plough
Monday to-day.”
“What is Plough Monday?”
Maggie could only stare at this question--she could not answer it,
except by saying:
“Well, they always keep Plough Monday round here, though not properly,
like they used to do. They came to the gate last year, but I told them
not to come singing with your mother lying ill.”
“I shall go and see,” said Anne, and she ran across the landing
from her bedroom, which faced the garden, into her father’s, which
overlooked the road.
TWO: PLOUGH MONDAY
The sound of voices came again, men and boys singing, one out of tune
with the others, but all ringing with the same fresh gaiety and purity
through the frosty air, reminding the hearer of the sharp notes of
the blacksmith’s hammer raining on the anvil, and giving him the same
assurance that the very texture of man’s ordinary life is a beautiful
and joyous fabric.
This time Anne could hear the words of the song.
One morning very early,
The ploughboy he was seen
All hastening to the stable
His horses for to clean.
She ran to the window and, looking out into the whiteness, she was
blinded for the first moment by the sun shining on to the dazzling
field of snow, but in the next instant she perceived three great
chestnut horses standing just below her immediately in front of the
door. They were harnessed to a plough, at the handles of which stood a
labourer, whilst at the head of each of the horses was a young carter,
and on the foremost of the horses were two little boys riding. It was
the voices of these little boys which were so oddly out of tune.
Anne was astonished to see them with their plough and horses so close
to the doorstep, and was filled with a sense of strangeness even before
she saw what was most strange about these visitors. That a plough
should be standing so close to the house was strange, and even for the
moment seemed to her shocking, for one of the horses was standing on
a flower-bed, but this was nothing to the appearance of the men, for
all of them had their faces blacked and their shoulders and their caps
were white with snow. The black faces against the whiteness of the snow
frightened her; for a moment she caught her breath with fear, which
turned almost instantly to wonder and delight.
With chaff and corn
He did them bait,
Their tails and manes
He did comb straight.
What was it? What was it? Something strange, something beautiful, the
thing perhaps she had always wanted, and half guessed at, but which
she had never before met face to face.
The tune changed:
Come all you lads and lasses
See a gay ploughboy.
Gay, yes, they were gay; the snow was falling, and the sun was shining,
and they had blacked their faces and come to her doorstep, and one
black face with an open pink mouth was looking up at her in the window.
Please can you spare a halfpenny
For an old ploughboy?
A bit of bread and cheese
Is better than nothing.
The song was over; one of the young carters came to the door and gave
a knock which echoed through the house. Anne started, woken from her
rapt contemplation of the horses and the men, and still repeating under
her breath: “Beautiful, they are beautiful!” she ran downstairs to open
the door. Mr. Dunnock, however, was there before her, and from the hall
she could see nothing of the men with their black faces, nor of the
plough, nor the horses with their satin coats, their manes flecked with
snow, and their tails twisted up in plaits of straw; her father’s back
blocked the doorway, and she could hear his voice in anger.
“That’s enough of this foolery. You should know better than to trample
down the lawn and the flower-bed.”
Give us a shilling and we shall be glad,
Give us a penny and we shall go home,
piped the two little boys from the horse’s back. “Please, Sir, it’s
Plough Monday, we like to keep it up.”
“I have nothing for you,” said her father. “I have quite enough
deserving objects for my charity.” He shut the door, and found himself
face to face with his daughter.
“Some village clod-hoppers have come begging,” said the clergyman,
throwing back his head and giving vent to a cough of irritation. “They
actually brought three horses and a plough over the flower-beds and up
to the door.”
“They won’t have hurt the flower-beds, father, in this weather, with so
much snow on the ground,” said Anne.
“Perhaps not,” he answered, “but they have made a great mess of the
snow in front of the house; besides I had wished to measure the
footprints of the birds.”
“You might have given them something, they seemed so jolly.”
“Jolly?” Mr. Dunnock’s cough became almost a bark. “It is not my
idea of jollity, nor I should have hoped yours, for yokels to black
their faces in imitation of Christie minstrels, and come begging for
money simply because they are given a day’s holiday on account of the
weather.”
“But, father, I think that it is an old custom, and that they expect to
be given money.”
Mr. Dunnock gazed at his daughter with real surprise.
“I won’t hear of it. I most strongly disapprove. They may try other
people. I am not going to be victimized, or imposed on. Old custom?
Remember what the midshipman said in his letter to his mother: ‘Manners
they have none, and their customs are beastly.’” The clergyman
recovered himself sufficiently to laugh at his own joke, but when his
daughter moved towards the door, he said angrily: “I forbid you to
encourage them, Anne; the incident is closed and I have sent them away.”
The local Christie minstrels, however, had not gone away, and as Mr.
Dunnock spoke a loud knock resounded on the door.
“You had better go upstairs, Anne. Kindly leave me to deal with them.”
Anne ran upstairs, trembling with rage, and rushed into her father’s
bedroom, where, by looking out of window, she was able to see what was
going on and overhear most of what was being said.
When Mr. Dunnock opened the door he found all the ploughmen gathered in
a group on the doorstep.
“It’s Plough Monday, Sir, and we have come to keep it, and ask you for
a piece of money for our song.”
“I have told you already to go away,” said the clergyman, coughing with
exasperation. “I don’t give money to beggars.”
There was a silence, then one of the young men at the back laughed
and said: “He doesn’t tumble to it; tell the parson that it is Plough
Monday.”
“Where would you be if there weren’t no ploughmen, or no ploughing
done?” asked the spokesman of the group. “You wouldn’t get no tithes if
it weren’t for the plough.”
There was a chorus of approval at that.
“No, that you wouldn’t!”
“He can’t answer that, Fred.”
They shouted, but at the word _tithes_ Mr. Dunnock had slammed the
door in their faces. The ploughmen knocked again, and for some minutes
the sound echoed through every room in the house. Anne could see that
they were puzzled, and in some doubt what to do next. One or two of
them were laughing, another scratched his head while he said: “Called
us beggars, did he? Reckon we work as hard as he.” Presently they
retreated to one corner of the garden and remained talking together for
some little while, until Maggie appeared from round the corner of the
kitchen and called out to them.
“You had best go away,” she said. “The parson he says you are a lot
of lazy louts. I heard him. He won’t give you naught. You won’t get
nothing if you do plough his doorstep up.” The ploughmen did not answer
her, nor did they appear to pay any attention to her words, but slowly
went back to their horses’ heads. “What must be, must be,” said the
oldest of the company, laying hold of the handles of the plough. “I’ld
as lief keep the custom. Come on, boys!” he shouted. At these words
Anne could see that they all suddenly recovered their good humour, and
a moment after they began joking among themselves.
“Parson will have to wipe his feet on his mat before we have done with
him,” said one lad.
“There won’t be anyone shy of paying us our pennies after this,” added
another.
“Let him preach what sermon he likes next Sunday; there won’t be no one
but his daughter and our Maggie to hear him swearing.”
“Hey, my beauties!” shouted the ploughman at the handles.
The great horses strained and began to move; the young carters at their
heads shouted and led the team in a wide circle across the untouched
snowfield which was the lawn; the plough sidled and circled through the
snow, and the men began arguing with the horses.
“Hold back, can’t you!”
“Steady there, whoa.”
At last, after one horse had nearly put its head through the window of
Mr. Dunnock’s study, and another had trampled down a rose bush, the
plough was got into position at the far corner of the house. After
that they all waited while the ploughman left the handles and began to
hammer at part of his plough.
The fear which Anne had felt when she first looked out returned to her,
and the sense of strangeness persisted. Was she waking or dreaming, was
she afraid or was she glad? Suddenly she heard Maggie’s voice saying in
excited tones:
“You are never going to plough up Mr. Dunnock’s doorstep!” and hearing
these words Anne began to tremble.
At last the ploughman straightened his back and said:
“Calls us idle beggars, does he? And too busy to speak with us; we’ll
mark Plough Monday in his prayer-book. Get up there....”
The horses strained, and the plough sank through the snow into the
soft earth of a flower-bed, the traces tightened and the three horses
pulled; a wrinkle or two showed itself in their haunches, and the share
of the plough threw up a broad streak of raw earth.
“Steady, boys, steady by the doorstep,” called the ploughman, and the
carters edged the horses nearer in to the wall of the house. In a
moment the plough reached the door, and Anne, gazing down from above,
saw the flagstone lift and topple, while the plough ran swiftly on, and
the earth streamed out upon the snow.
“I must stop them,” she whispered, but she did not move, or take her
eyes off the scene. Watching from above, the girl was fascinated
and horrified by every detail; the swift and irresistible progress
of the hidden ploughshare running through the earth delighted her;
the strength of the three stalwart Suffolk Punches, and the lean,
sinewy wrists of the ploughman guiding the handles, and the gay young
men, all thrilled her. While watching, she could not have told what
were her emotions: yet she knew that the scene was beautiful, the
plough slipping so easily in the rich earth had the grace and lissom
strength of a snake. Once again the horses turned, sweeping down and
halting beside the hedge of laurel, and there was another pause while
the plough was got into position, and then the team swept round and
strained forward again to cut the second furrow, and, that finished, to
draw the plough out into the roadway in front of the vicarage, while
the ploughman threw the handles on one side and held them down so that
the share skidded through the snow over the grass.
The men did not call out, nor even appear to speak or to laugh among
themselves; having cut their two furrows, they went away swiftly,
pausing only for a moment on the road to adjust the ploughshare, and
then hurrying on to sing their songs under other windows.
Only when the plough had turned the corner of the lane and the last
of the horses’ heads had vanished down the avenue of elm trees, did
Anne Dunnock leave her position at the window, and only then did she
burst into a flood of tears. “I cannot live after such an insult,”
she said to herself. “How could they do such a thing to our house? But
why is it that it seemed to me so beautiful as well as so cruel?” and
as she asked herself this question she noticed that though she had
dried her tears her hands were still trembling. “The lawn of virgin
snow has been torn up by the plough, the naked earth exposed, and the
garden trampled over by the iron shoes of the horses and the hobnails
of the labourers,” she said. “And our doorstep has been overturned; my
father’s fault, for he was in the wrong. I feel now as if I could never
forgive him for bringing this shame on us, yet if it had not been him
it might have been me, for the same fault of character is in both of
us. We are rejected everywhere, unable to share in the life around us,
or to understand it. Enid taught me that at Ely, but to-day it has been
recognized by the ploughmen, and this broad gash in the earth and the
uprooted doorstep proclaim it to our neighbours. I shall never dare
show my face in the village after this.”
So saying, Anne Dunnock found herself sobbing again. “This is too
silly,” she told herself, yet the tears continued to flow, until she
gave up resisting them and lay down on the bed in her own room. She
thought of Enid, to whom she had written so many poems and so many
passionate letters, only to discover that they had been shown to all
the girls in the school, that they had been borrowed and read aloud in
every bathroom where there were girls talking before going to bed. “I
could have killed Enid; she made all the girls in Ely think that I was
perfectly ridiculous.” And all the bitter experiences of her life came
back into her mind and were confused with her present unhappiness.
“Why should we suffer from this?” she asked herself, after a few
moments of weeping. “For I know father suffers from it as much as I
do, though he has never spoken of it to me, and perhaps not even to
himself. Is it because he is a clergyman, or is it because we are in
some way superior, cleverer, or better than our neighbours? No,” she
answered herself, “it cannot be that, for though I am intelligent,
perhaps even remarkably intelligent, father is terribly stupid. In fact
he is almost deficient in some respects, and I am sure neither he nor I
are superior morally. We are both too emotional and too ready to lose
our tempers. All our troubles spring from the fact that father is a
clergyman, for whether they recognize it or not, ordinary people have
a contempt for the clergy, and clergymen are always ill at ease with
their fellow men. Thank God father isn’t one of the hearty sort; in
his own way he is an honest man and a religious one, but he has ruined
my life. It is Ibsen’s _Ghosts_ over again,” for Anne had been reading
Ibsen lately. Then a phrase from another book she had been reading, De
Quincey’s _Opium-eater_, came into her mind: “Unwinding the accursed
chain.”
“How can I unwind the accursed chain?” she asked herself. “I must begin
soon, for I am twenty-three, and the best part of my life is gone.”
“It is no good crying over spilt milk,” she said, and went on: “At all
events I am glad that they did not go away when father told them to
go; I am glad that they tore up our garden with that narrow snake-like
plough wobbling a little as it ran through the earth. I am glad of it,
though I shall find it hard to face our neighbours after this, for they
will have changed. Everyone will know of our disgrace.”
She rose from her bed and tidied her hair before the glass; as usual
all the hairpins had fallen. Then turning to the window she looked out
over the untouched snowfield at the back of the house where not even a
dog had run as yet. Everything was covered, even the winter jessamine
on the summer-house was concealed, and the black poplars beyond the
pond had every twig laden with snow.
“All will be forgotten as soon as the snows are melted,” she said to
herself suddenly, with the certainty that her words were true. “All my
emotion is nonsense. To me everything seems changed, but it is only
a joke to the carters; they will laugh about it over a pint of beer
to-day, but in a week’s time they will have forgotten it; the fact that
some dog has killed a rat will seem more important. My life is not
changed: to-morrow the mason will come to lay the doorstep in its old
place, and I shall say: ‘It’s a fine day,’ when I go to the grocer’s
shop, and: ‘Very seasonable weather,’ when I take the loaves from the
baker. That is the nearest that I shall ever get to contact with my
fellows; why should they care how we live, what we do, or whether we
disgrace ourselves or not? We mean nothing to them.”
And Anne Dunnock, who only a few moments before had been weeping
because the world was changed, began suddenly to weep again because it
appeared to her that it had not changed and that it would always remain
the same. This time the tears were not so readily checked, for one tear
brings the next after it, and Anne remained hidden in her bedroom until
Maggie knocked at the door to say that lunch was on the table. But by
then she herself had forgotten what had so much moved her less than
two hours before, for she had taken up _Peer Gynt_, and as she went
downstairs she was thinking not of the carters with their black faces
and the snow on their caps, but of the trolls.
THREE: SOTHEBY’S SHOP
In the night the wind changed to the west and rain fell, so that by
morning the snow was gone from the grass, and only lingered in a few
places, on the roads and on the bare earth of the kitchen garden,
and the rain which thawed the snow washed away the memory of Plough
Monday, thus bringing to pass what Anne had fancied sooner than she had
expected.
She no longer felt ashamed to go into the village, and as for her
father, half an hour after the event he had forgotten his irritation in
watching the starlings searching for worms in the loose earth thrown up
by the plough.
After breakfast, old Noah, the gardener, busied himself in filling in
the furrow, and old Simmonds, who called himself a builder and fencing
contractor, came round and, after mixing a little mortar on a board,
laid the doorstep back, only a trifle askew, in its old place.
“There’s your doorstep, Miss,” he said, straightening his back as Anne
opened the front door and stood on the threshold prepared for walking.
“There’s your doorstep; no one will ever shift that again.”
Simmonds was right, for Anne lacked the courage to tell him to take it
up and set it straight.
“May I step on it?” she asked.
“Ay, he’ll bear your weight, Miss,” said the old man blinking, and to
prove his words he stepped on to the doorstep himself, blocking her
path while he stamped once or twice with his hobnailed boots.
“Is that firm enough for you, Miss?” he asked, speaking with melancholy
pride, and then standing aside for her to walk on it herself.
“Yes, that seems all right, Simmonds,” she said, stepping on to the
stone, and was aware as she spoke that her words were meaningless, for
why should the old man be so proud of the force of gravity which kept
the doorstep where it lay? Why should she have to give him credit for
it?
“I was going to speak to your father, Miss, about the sills,” said
Simmonds.
“About what?”
“It’s a long time since they were painted, and the wood is perishing. I
thought perhaps your father might like me to estimate for them.”
Anne frowned; the question of the sills annoyed her, but she could not
escape until she had looked at them.
Simmonds was right--the paint on the window-sills had cracked into
hundreds of little grey lichenous cups.
“I’ll speak to him about it,” she said. “We must have it done one day.”
The elm trees were so beautiful; it was because of the elms that she
loved Dry Coulter. Soon the spring would come, soon the snowdrops would
cluster thickly under the garden walls, and every day that passed
improved the quality of the birds’ song.
“There is no prison so terrible as beauty,” she said suddenly to
herself. “I love the seasons, the beauty of the village, the clouds,
and the tall groves of elms standing round the green. I love our
orchard with its old apple trees, and the pears; I dream in the winter
of what the crop will be in the following autumn, fearing that the
bullfinches will take the buds, or the blossom be cut down by a late
frost, yet time is flying--and while my blood runs fast as it does now
I must walk demurely like the old woman that I shall so soon become.
Yes, I shall be old before I am free to live as I should like. Shall
I ever go to the opera? A cheap seat would do--I cannot expect a box,
or emeralds, but one can hear as well from the gallery, and it is
the music that I want to hear. Shall I escape one day? Shall I go to
London?”
Then it came into her mind that perhaps even if she went to London,
even if she got to know interesting men (and such beings must exist),
even if she went to the opera with them, she might still feel herself
a prisoner, and that perhaps the most that one can do in life is to
exchange one sort of beauty for another; the beauty of the apple trees
for the beauty of music.
“Yes, there is no prison so terrible as beauty,” she said again, and
added immediately: “Now I must go to the grocer’s,” and though she
disliked the grocer himself, she smiled with pleasure at the thought
that she might see his little daughter Rachel.
“_Emmanuel Sotheby, Grocer and Provision Merchant_” was painted over
the little shop with its windows filled with bars of soap, packets of
starch, clay pipes, and walnuts, for Sotheby dealt in everything, and
though the shop was small, the stock was large. Sotheby always had
what you wanted: calico, mustard, cotton, China tea, boot polish, even
lamp chimneys. There was no shop so good as Sotheby’s in the nearest
town: there was nothing better than Sotheby’s even in Ely, yet would
he be able to provide her with drawing-pins? It was unlikely, almost
impossible, and Anne determined not to mention them until she had made
her other purchases; she would only speak of them just before she left
the shop. In that way Mr. Sotheby would not feel that she had expected
too much of him, or think that she was disappointed. With her hand on
the latch, she said to herself: “I will not speak of the drawing-pins
if there are other customers,” but the shop was empty, and the jangling
bell brought Mrs. Sotheby out of an inner room. The grocer’s wife was
a slender woman of fifty; her pale wrinkled face made her seem older,
though her hair was still a beautiful brown, and when she smiled she
showed two even rows of little pearly teeth. Mrs. Sotheby was always
merry; whenever Anne came into the shop her brown eyes twinkled, or
she broke into a low musical laugh, while her face crumpled itself up
into all its wrinkles, her white teeth flashed, and her eyes almost
vanished. Such a merry laugh greeted Anne that morning, and Mrs.
Sotheby explained it by a reference to the events of the day before.
“Good morning, Miss Dunnock, I have been hearing such dreadful things
all yesterday about the ploughmen. I am afraid they must have upset
your father, but you must not take any notice of them. It is all
foolishness, and I don’t know what the men can have been thinking of,
but, of course, it is an old custom and they like keeping it on that
account. You know men are just like boys about anything like that, but
they did not mean to be disrespectful or unneighbourly, I’m sure. Your
father is still rather a stranger here; I expect he did not understand
their ways.”
At Mrs. Sotheby’s words Anne started, all her shame came back to her
suddenly, but she saw that she must answer. A lump came in her throat,
and her mouth trembled as she said:
“No, neither father nor I had ever heard of Plough Monday. It was
entirely my father’s fault: he is sometimes impatient when he is
disturbed reading.”
“It was very foolish of the men,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “And they should
feel ashamed of themselves, but directly I heard of it I knew there was
a misunderstanding of some sort. It happens so easily, only I thought
I would speak of it, because you know it is an old custom, and the men
are proud of keeping it here, so you must make allowances for them.”
The kindliness of these words was more than Anne could bear. “Thank
you, thank you so much,” she cried, and suddenly she found that her
tears would flow--she could not keep them back, though she shook her
head angrily, and as she did so a couple of hairpins dropped on to the
floor.
At that moment a shadow passed in front of the windows; there was the
sound of wheels, and a horse being pulled up short in front of the shop.
Anne looked about her wildly, but Mrs. Sotheby had lifted a flap of the
counter and was saying:
“Come into our parlour and sit down for a little while, Miss Dunnock;
it was foolish of me to speak, but I never guessed you would have taken
such nonsense to heart. If one were to pay attention to half the silly
things men do, our lives would not be worth living.”
Anne followed Mrs. Sotheby through the shop into a little room, with
a coal fire burning in the grate. She sat down in the armchair pushed
forward for her, while the grocer’s wife hurried back into the shop,
summoned by the jangling bell. For a little while Anne was overcome
with mortification at finding herself in the grocer’s parlour and
wondered how she could have so disgraced herself.
Why, if she must cry every morning (and it seemed to have become a
habit), could she not retire to her own room and weep in solitude?
But after a few moments of humiliation the thought came into her mind
that at last she had disgraced herself finally and for ever, and this
reflection was a consolation to her.
“I cannot undo this. If I were to steal out of the back door without
Mrs. Sotheby hearing me, it would make no difference. I have shown her
my feelings; I have burst into tears in her shop; I cannot pretend to
have any dignity after this.”
Anne dried the last of her tears, reflecting that it was exciting
to have made a fool of herself, and that if she had not lost her
self-control she would never have been asked into that parlour. Then,
taking off her hat, she began tidying her hair and looking about her.
The room she was in was small and richly furnished with uncomfortable
armchairs, upholstered in dark red plush; there was a table covered
with a red cloth, which had a fringe of little balls; a slowly
ticking clock stood on the mantelpiece; on a small table, before the
window, stood a large green pot containing an arum lily with one leaf
half-unfurled and a white bud showing; from the curtain rod hung a wire
cage full of maidenhair ferns. On the walls were photographs: Mr. and
Mrs. Sotheby on their wedding day, a plump and rather ugly young woman,
the Tower Bridge with a ship going through it, and a boy with pomatum
on his hair. Then, turning her head, Anne saw a large photograph
hanging just behind her.
“What a strange face!” for the young man certainly had a strange face,
and was wearing an odd little round cap, almost like a skull-cap, with
a tiny tail sticking up in the middle; his throat was bare, with no
sign of a collar or tie, or even of a shirt. A cigarette was hanging
out of the corner of his mouth, but the strangest thing was not the
cap, but the face, or rather the expression of the face, for the
features themselves were vaguely familiar. The young man was laughing,
but there was a look of careless contempt, almost of insolence, which
Anne very much disliked. The nose was long and straight, and rather
foxy, the eyes mere slits set wide apart; the forehead was broad
and large, but the chin feeble. “Good gracious me!” exclaimed Anne,
noticing that in one ear there was a little earring. “A man wearing
an earring! How extraordinary!” She gazed at the photograph for some
time, taking in every detail of the face. Certainly there was something
disagreeable in the expression; the laughter was untrustworthy and
heartless; he was laughing at other people, not sharing his laughter
with them.
But the customer was staying a long while in the shop, and, becoming
impatient, she went to the door and listened. The voice she heard was
that of Mr. Lambert, a young farmer, whom Anne knew since he attended
church (he was a churchwarden), and once he had stopped her in the road
and told her that she should go riding.
To Anne his remark had seemed ridiculous, since he must know well
enough that they were too poor to keep a hack for her use, and he could
not have meant that he had one for her to ride.
If he had wished to say: “If you get the habit, I’ll mount you on one
of my horses,” why hadn’t he said so? He could not have intended that,
and even if he had, what would she have answered? What did he expect in
return? That she should go riding with him? She smiled at the thought:
Mr. Lambert’s company might not be so bad, but she would not care for
it if she were under an obligation to him. If she killed his horse in
taking a fence ... that would be awkward! And if he met a girl whom he
liked better as a companion on his rides--in that case she would be
left with the habit on her hands. Her father would never allow such a
thing; think of the gossip there would be!
“Damn this place! Damn my father!” she said to herself, and listening
to the farmer’s sharp, but very pleasant voice, and closing her eyes,
she had for a moment the delicious sensation of the horse bounding
under her, of patting its withers, listening to the creak of the
saddle, and keeping her balance while she looked proudly over the level
landscape of the fens.
“I will, I will, I will,” she repeated to herself. “I will ride a
horse once in my life. I will even if I get left with a riding habit.
But I suppose that is the spirit which brings young girls to ruin.
I can imagine how Maggie would say to herself: ‘I will let my head
be turned by a man, even if I am left with a baby.’” Anne laughed at
the comparison. “Silly thoughts.... They hurry me on to absurdities,
and all because Mr. Lambert said something polite and meaningless to
me, for it is politeness to assume that one can do whatever one likes
without regard for money. But here am I laughing when I ought still
to be sobbing, since I am still waiting for Mrs. Sotheby to come and
console me. What shall I do? How on earth, by what false pretences, did
I ever get into this cosy little room? If Mr. Lambert does not go away
soon, I shall march into the shop, lift the flap in the counter and go
away.”
She listened then to the voices. “Very good, Mrs. Sotheby, you shall
have the pig for scalding on Thursday, unless Mr. Sotheby sends me word
to-morrow.”
The bell of the shop tinkled; Mr. Lambert paused to add a last word,
and Mrs. Sotheby answered him: “Well, if you say so, Mr. Lambert,” and
Anne could hear her hand on the latch.
“Well, I thought Mr. Lambert was never going. He had come to see Mr.
Sotheby about carting sand, and really I didn’t know what to say to
him. Now I have agreed to share a pig with him; let me know if you
would like a leg of pork, or sausages, or one of my pork cheeses. My
husband is so busy now; I hardly see him from morning till night; he is
putting up some cottages at Linton, and his mind is far more on them
than on the grocery business, so that I have quite as much as I can
manage. I am really sorry that I undertook to scald the pig, but it
was rather tempting. Still, however many pigs I scald, I shall never
do half so much as Emmanuel does; he’s out every day of the week, and
drives the round himself, and then he preaches twice every Sunday,
here and in the Ebenezer Tabernacle at Wet Coulter. Mr. Lambert wanted
to see him in a hurry, but I could not tell him where to find my
husband. I cannot keep in my head half the things he is doing, and I
have not yet been out to see the Linton cottages. Still, it keeps him
in good spirits, and he is doing it for my boy. But I mustn’t keep you
any longer now.” Mrs. Sotheby stopped speaking, she smiled, and added
rather shyly: “You will come and chat with me sometimes, won’t you,
Miss Dunnock?”
Anne promised to come again soon, and spoke of the arum lily beginning
to unfold its flower, and then, passing through into the shop, asked
for curry powder and sultanas.
When these had been given her, she hesitated, asking herself whether,
after Mrs. Sotheby’s kindness, she could ask for drawing-pins. Perhaps
Mr. Sotheby would fetch some from Linton, but at that moment she felt
shy of asking a man who was building a row of cottages to execute her
little commissions. She would wait until another day for that. But on
the doorstep she paused:
“Thank you for being so kind to me. I shall always come and talk to you
if I am upset by anything.”
The face behind the counter broke into hundreds of wrinkles, the little
teeth shone, and a delighted laugh answered her. “Like pouring water
out of a glass bottle,” thought Anne as she went out into the winter
sunshine.
There was happiness, who could doubt it? The secret of life was to
be like the Sothebys, and to work as they did, absorbed in building
cottages. Would she ever think the prospect of scalding a pig too
tempting to be refused, if she were over-worked already?
“Mr. Sotheby must be very enterprising,” she said to herself, trying
to conquer her dislike for him, and forgot the grocer in gazing at the
distant elms which bounded the far side of the village green a quarter
of a mile away, for in the middle of the village was a long and lovely
stretch of common pasture.