time, just as she was going to begin, she was interrupted by some
remark of his. Such a subject could not be opened without preparation,
when her father spoke of the decoration of the church at Easter her
courage failed her, and before she had recovered it, he had shaken the
crumbs off his waistcoat and had gone into his study.
“I shall have to leave a letter for him to read after I am gone,” said
Anne, but the idea was hateful to her; it revealed her own cowardice
too clearly, and when she began to compose the letter that should be
left behind, she found the task an impossible one.
“A walk will help me to think things out,” but in the road her
footsteps turned of themselves across the green, and she was half-way
to the Burnt Farm before she stopped suddenly, realizing that she was
going there to lay her difficulties before the grocer’s son.
“That will be the best way,” she said aloud. “In such a position as
mine, one must seek advice, for it is only when one has been advised by
someone else that one recovers confidence in the sanity of one’s own
opinions.”
Directly she had passed through the iron gates the sunshine seemed
warmer; it was as hot as June; she could see the daffodils clustering
on the banks of the pond and reflected in its waters; a brimstone
butterfly rose from the flagged pathway and rambled in front of her,
settling at last on one of the brick walls.
There was a continuous cooing from the top of the dove house, and the
beat of the wings of the pigeons coming and going; a blackbird was
singing in the tangled orchard.
Rachel Sotheby was nowhere to be seen; there was no fire burning, but
recollecting that Richard Sotheby would be painting on the other side
of the house, Anne walked round into the wild garden. She could not see
him, and soon sat down, putting her arms up to tidy her hair, loosened
by an angry toss of her head, for she was vexed to have come looking
for the young man.
“Please stay like that,” said a sharp voice behind her, and she looked
round to find Richard Sotheby watching her from inside the ruined walls.
“Please stay where you are, Miss Dunnock,” he repeated. “You are
exactly what I want in my picture; I knew there was something
needed;--now I see that it is a figure.”
But Anne jumped up before the sentence was finished, and Richard
Sotheby climbed out of the ruin with his palette in his hand and a
frown on his face, repeating, “Please stay there....”
He was insistent, and Anne had to agree to sit for a few minutes while
he made a charcoal drawing.
“When I have finished you shall have tea,” he said as though he were
speaking to a child. Anne sat, looking up at the sky with her hands to
her hair and her elbows up, as he had posed her, saying to herself that
she had never met anyone with such bad manners.
She was hot with annoyance, but soon the blush left her cheek, and
while she listened to the pigeons her resentment faded away.
“May I see your picture?” she asked five minutes later, and when the
artist refused, shaking his head and laughing, she felt no irritation.
It seemed natural to her that he should say: “Not till it is finished.”
“When will that be?” she asked, remembering her own departure.
“It will take me a week to put in that figure; I don’t know how I shall
do it unless you sit for me. Come, let us have tea.”
“I am afraid I cannot sit, Mr. Sotheby,” said Anne. “I have come to-day
to say good-bye.”
The young man opened his eyes at this; his curiosity had to be
satisfied, and soon Anne was telling him that her life was being wasted
at the vicarage, and that she was determined to leave her father.
Richard Sotheby listened without saying a word; he was kneeling in
front of the little fire he had just lighted. The sticks smouldered
but went out when the paper had burnt away, and she paused in her
story while he fetched a bottle of turpentine from his paint-box. He
sprinkled a little of the spirit, and a thick yellow flame sprang up;
then the sticks crackled. All his attention seemed to be for the fire,
only when she spoke of the advertisement he turned his head sharply to
look at her, and when she told him that an answer had come that morning
he exclaimed: “Extraordinary!” under his breath.
“But what does your father say to all this?” he asked suddenly, as he
handed her the cup of tea he had poured out. Anne found the confession
of her cowardice was difficult; Sotheby was staring at her as if he
were surprised by her words.
“I think that would be behaving very heartlessly,” he said when she had
done. He filled the lid of the kettle with tea, blew on it and added:
“It would be a great shock to him, and it seems to me so unnecessary.
Children have parents so much at their mercy; their one duty to them,
surely, is to avoid shattering their illusions. I’m not a good son;
my father is excessively irritating; quite as irritating as yours. I
don’t love him, and that makes me feel ashamed.... You have left it so
late.... Do you really think that getting this place is worth having to
behave so badly?”
Anne’s face fell, and rather sulkily she pulled the letter she had got
that morning out of her pocket.
Richard Sotheby glanced at it, wrinkled his nose, and began reading it
aloud:
“Spion Kop,”
14A Kimberley Road,
West Sutton Vallance,
London, W.23.
Dear Madam,
I have seen your advertisement in _The Church Times_, and think it
possible that you may suit me. I am looking for a companion of gentle
birth who would be willing to undertake light duties in the house.
I have a girl who comes in daily. What I really require is someone
who will, as far as possible, take the place of my own devoted and
dearly-loved daughter who died last year after a long illness,
patiently borne.
I would introduce you to a pleasant circle of friends, and would look
after you as, I think you will agree, a girl should be looked after
on coming so near London. I cannot offer a high wage, but you will
have every home comfort. Will you please tell me in your answer,
your age, and whether you have been away from home before, and when
you can come up for me to interview you. It is essential that you
should be fond of dogs, but no doubt you are. This neighbourhood is
considered a very healthy one, and the house is next door to the
church.
Yours faithfully,
ETHEL CROWLINK.
Each phrase had sounded comic as he read it aloud, and his voice ended
with such a queer note that Anne burst out laughing.
“You think I oughtn’t to go to her?” she said.
“It is ridiculous to think of it,” he answered. “Not for your father’s
sake but for your own. It would be out of the frying-pan into the fire:
surely you see that?”
She did not answer, and he went on: “Why should you choose to live with
the horrid old woman who wrote this letter, in a London suburb? If you
must leave home....”
“I must....” she said. “Better anything, however horrid it may sound.
If I do not get away from home, I shall never be able to speak to
anyone.”
There was a long silence while she watched Richard Sotheby wrinkling up
his nose.
“You may be more unhappy when you can speak, Anne. Particularly if you
should fall in love. That makes one more unhappy than anything else.
However, you would do better to go as an English governess in a French
family. In that way you would see new people and have quite fresh
experiences.”
And Richard Sotheby began to speak of Paris, while Anne sat fascinated
by the magic flow of words, seeing pictures of a great town full of
avenues and open spaces, with a twisting river, crossed by innumerable
bridges. And for some reason, though she knew that Paris was a huge
city, and though Richard spoke often of the crowds thronging the
boulevards, she imagined Paris as a willow-pattern plate; its bridges
like that steep bridge over which a blue figure is hurrying, with
bald-headed Chinamen fishing in the winding river beside it on which
a barge is floating, a lady is disembarking, and weeping willow trees
border the Elysian fields.
The voice went on, Anne watching the fine forehead and the abstracted
eyes gazing into the fire, was carried away by her imagination and saw
herself living in the willow-pattern city.
“That will be wonderful,” she said. “But what am I to say in my letter
to Mrs. Crowlink?”
She spoke in a tone of such despair that he burst out laughing at her.
“You are a child!” he said, but his voice was too pleasant for her to
take offence, and for the first time she knew the sweetness of being
laughed at without minding it. “I feel sure of his sympathy,” she said
to herself. “Though I came here believing that I disliked him, and even
now I am not sure what I think of him.”
Richard Sotheby had gathered his brushes together, and was pouring
water from the kettle on to the ashes.
“You will come and sit to me to-morrow, won’t you?” he asked. “And then
we can go on with our discussion of your future. Come at half-past two,
but now we had better go home separately, otherwise we shall see our
names written up on Lambert’s Barn: ‘Richard Sotheby loves Anne Dunnock
and takes her to the Burnt Farm.’ I wonder if they would put ‘the dirty
dog,’ or ‘bless his heart,’ after my name? It is usually one or the
other.”
Anne laughed at this, and looked the grocer’s son in the eyes, but his
glance was one of mere amusement.
“Oh, they would put ‘the dirty dog’ after your name,” she said suddenly.
“You are quite right,” he said laughing. “Wonderful you should guess.”
He did not offer to shake hands, and she walked away.
She had read the scrawls chronicling the loves of the village boys and
girls, but she had never thought that it would be possible to speak
of them. As she hurried home her heart was beating fast; she looked
neither to left nor right, but kept repeating to herself: “Richard
Sotheby loves Anne Dunnock, the dirty dog!” “But he doesn’t,” she
added, wondering if she would wish to be loved by him.
Then she repeated as a variation: “Richard Sotheby doesn’t love Anne
Dunnock, the dirty dog!” That was more like the truth! And she thought
of the telegram she had seen him write, and wondered if he would
tell her about La Grandison. Perhaps one day soon she would see her,
alighting from a barge in the Seine that ran through a willow-pattern
Paris.
There were no other answers to her advertisement, and as soon as the
lying letter to Mrs. Crowlink had been posted, Anne was free to forget
her problems. The week which followed passed happily enough; every
afternoon she sat for an hour or more in the spring sunlight talking to
Richard Sotheby while he painted her, answering his questions about her
childhood at Ely, describing the poverty in which they had lived, and
how her mother had been looked down upon by the ladies of the cathedral
set, then telling him of her father’s eccentricities, and his violent
temper, and of the last outburst when he had insulted a canon, and had
been sent for by the Bishop, and of how he had been kept to lunch at
the palace and sent away with the words: “I think you will do better by
yourself, Mr. Dunnock. There is a living going begging at Dry Coulter.
A hundred and twenty pounds a year....”
The pigeons cooed through all the afternoon, the pear tree burst into
flower over her head, and was filled with the hum of hundreds of bees
working among the scarlet stamens, at intervals Anne spoke of her life,
and every now and then Richard would interrupt her with questions
about her father. When she told of his love for the birds, Richard was
delighted, and the rest of the afternoon was spent describing all his
little acts of tenderness and consideration: scattering straw for the
sparrows to build their nests, sowing teazles for the goldfinches....
“I see that I should get on much better with your father than you do,”
he said. “We should have a great deal in common.”
“He has made me hate birds,” said Anne. “Sometimes I think I should
like to wear a bird in my hat.”
“You feel about birds what I feel about love and about religion, I
suppose,” said Richard.
“My father has got birds and religion all mixed up, somehow,” said
Anne, but when he asked her to explain, all she could say was: “I don’t
understand it, and I can’t explain it, but I know I am right. It is
difficult to tell often of which he is speaking.”
“That seems rather a beautiful confusion to me,” said Richard. “Just
listen for a moment to the pigeons in the dove house and you will feel
inclined to it yourself.”
“I only hate them because I am wicked and selfish,” said Anne. “I am
not going to sacrifice all my life to beautiful things. Father can only
see beauty in a chaffinch or a wagtail; I might be beautiful too, but
he would never notice it.”
Richard laughed at this outburst. “As pretty as a wagtail,” he mused,
screwing up his eyes, and teasing her. “That is flying rather high,
isn’t it?”
“I don’t see why a human being shouldn’t be as beautiful as a bird,”
said Anne seriously, at which her companion laughed more than ever.
“Perhaps not,” he said. “Still you don’t really hope that anyone should
ever say to you: ‘Miss Dunnock, you are as pretty as a hedge-sparrow.’
I, of course, with my long nose, am rather like a snipe.” Then,
changing his tone, he went on: “You are more like a heron than a
hedge-sparrow: a tall ghostly figure seen by moonlight standing in the
reeds at the water’s edge. The heron’s hair is always flying loose like
yours; he tries in vain to keep it up with fish bones.”
“I am going to cut all my hair off!” cried Anne savagely.
“Yes, I think you would look better,” said Richard simply. “But you
must not do that until my picture is finished. Seriously, if you want
admiration, you should come to Paris. You are quite sure to find
someone there who will think you are beautiful.”
She bit her lip, and asked herself if Richard could have told her more
plainly, to her face, that he did not think so.
“He does not care for me,” she said to herself as she walked home the
following afternoon, after the last sitting. “Had he cared for me, he
would have said something nice to me when he said good-bye. He is only
amused, and contemptuous. Thank Heaven I did not show him any of my
drawings!”
For she had taken out her drawing book that morning, to try her hand
at fashion plates, and had sat a long while examining her old careful
sketches of a dead-nettle in flower and a spray of honeysuckle in bud,
only to put them away at last guessing that her work would not make
Richard Sotheby take her any more seriously, though an ambition to earn
her living by drawing clothes was still present in her mind.
“Yet he likes me, I am sure of that,” she said. “He would not tease me
otherwise.” The thought consoled her, and she crossed the green more
happily. Suddenly she heard a little cry behind her, a sharp note like
the clink of flint on steel, and looking round she saw Rachel.
“Will you come to tea to-morrow?” the child asked when she had
overtaken her. “It is my birthday and mother told me I might ask anyone
that I liked.”
NINE: BIRTHDAY TEA
Anne sat down to tea on the following afternoon, with the four
Sothebys, round an iced cake with thirteen candles, in the rather
dark little room where she had retired to hide her tears after Plough
Monday, darker now, for it was raining outside. There were chocolate
biscuits in glass dishes and crackers lying on the table between the
plates. But in spite of the air of jollity, and of Rachel’s excitement,
Anne felt just as she had done on the first occasion she had entered
the room: anxious to escape.
Rachel had met her at the door, they had kissed, and she had given
the little girl a pair of fur-lined slippers as a birthday present,
but immediately afterwards Mrs. Sotheby had begun to introduce her
to Richard and he had no sooner cut his mother short by saying that
they were acquainted already, when the grocer came up and said: “Miss
Dunnock, this is my son Richard of whom I think I have spoken to
you....”
“Miss Dunnock and I have met,” said Richard, and Anne added: “Richard
and I are old friends already,” but at once became aware that what she
said was the wrong thing, for there was an expression of astonishment,
almost of alarm, possibly even of disapproval, on Mr. Sotheby’s face.
Certainly he seemed nervous as he said: “Well, well, since I find we
are all acquainted let us sit down to tea.”
The difficulties of the introduction were forgotten in the excitement
of cutting the cake, and it was not long before the last of the
crackers was pulled; a yellow paper crown was found for Mr. Sotheby;
there were paper caps for the rest of the company, and though several
of the mottoes alluded to Christmas, they were read aloud with pleasure
and received with delight.
“It is too bad, Richard,” said Mr. Sotheby over his third cup of tea.
“You are going away the day after to-morrow, and you have never painted
the portrait of your mother, for which I have asked so often.”
Anne felt numb on hearing that Richard was going away in two days’
time: “Why didn’t he tell me that?” she asked herself, but without
noticing her look the grocer went on: “You have spent all your time out
sketching the old manor house, but you have not shown us any of your
work.”
“He brought it back to-day,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But I haven’t seen
it.” Richard was reluctant to show his picture, but at last he left
the room, and it was only then, seeing Rachel was trembling, and upset
about something, that Anne suddenly remembered that the Sothebys might
easily recognize the figure of the girl in the foreground, engaged in
doing up her hair.
Richard lifted an eyebrow at her as he put the canvas on the
mantelpiece, and there was a long silence, a silence which grew
alarming, and Anne knew that she had been recognized.
“This figure is you, Miss Dunnock,” said the grocer at last, speaking
stiffly.
“Miss Dunnock came by while I was making tea for Richard,” said Rachel
in her precise tone, and everyone in the room breathed more freely.
“She stayed to tea with us.”
“And she was good enough to pose for me while I drew a sketch of her to
put into the foreground,” said Richard.
“It was very kind of you, to be sure,” said his father.
“I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself, Richard,” said Mrs.
Sotheby. “Putting Miss Dunnock into your horrid picture like that; you
haven’t done her justice at all. I should scarcely have recognized
her.” And the grocer’s wife gave Anne a little smile to tell her that
she did not mind Richard’s having painted her instead of the portrait
that his father wanted.
“I should never have sat to him,” said Anne, “if I had known that he
ought to have been painting your portrait,” but Mr. Sotheby was saying
that he had to be off on business.
“Very, very kind of you to come on Rachel’s birthday,” he said as he
left the room.
“No, indeed, there is hardly any resemblance at all,” said Mrs.
Sotheby. “Anyone might think it was one of the Puttys come home again.”
“Who are the Puttys?” asked Anne.
“What, you don’t mean to say that you have never heard of the Puttys!”
exclaimed Rachel and her mother together, and Richard, who had been
looking glum since he had shown his picture, added: “Yes, you ought to
hear that story, since you are the only other person that has turned
the ploughmen away.”
“How can you say such a thing, Richard!” said Mrs. Sotheby. “You know
how that came about by mistake,” but Anne asked:
“Did the Puttys have their doorstep ploughed up?”
“No, not the Puttys,” was the answer, and as Anne seemed mystified but
eager to hear more Richard said: “Come, mother, tell Miss Dunnock the
whole story from the beginning.” And Rachel also added her request for
the story.
“Well, wait a moment till I have cleared away the tea-things,” said
Mrs. Sotheby, work that was soon done with both Rachel and Anne
helping. While they were out of the room Richard seized the opportunity
to take his canvas off the mantelpiece. He hid it in the woodshed and
came back feeling happier.
The chairs were drawn up round the fire, Rachel sitting at Anne’s knee
and holding her hand, and Mrs. Sotheby began:
“What you children call the ‘Burnt Farm’ is really the ruins of a manor
house; the squire lived there, Captain Purdue, and since the burning
there has been no squire at Dry Coulter. I can remember him very well:
a tall man who had been a captain in the navy, and he certainly thought
a great deal about appearances. One could tell that just by looking at
him; what one could not have told was that he cared a great deal about
money too.”
“You have forgotten to say that he had been dismissed the service,”
Richard reminded his mother.
“Well, his ship was wrecked, you know, and he left the navy after that;
I have heard that he was turned out because of it, but I do not really
know,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Certainly he was a very unlucky man, but at
first all went well; he had a fine house, built in the time of King
Charles II (Oliver’s men had burnt the old house down in the civil
wars), and a wonderful garden (he had a whole greenhouse full of arum
lilies in the winter), his horses were famous, and his dairy cows won
prizes. At that time there was not a gentleman’s place for miles round
that was kept up better. But I should have said that Captain Purdue
was married, to a very good-looking lady indeed. She was a good deal
younger than he was, and I think she came from the Channel Islands. But
they had no children.”
There was the jangle of the shop bell. Mrs. Sotheby broke off her
sentence and started to her feet, but Rachel had slipped out into the
shop before her, and they could hear a woman saying that she had just
run across for a bar of soap, and then, when she had made her purchase,
ask: “It is your birthday, isn’t it, Rachel? Many happy returns!
How does it feel to be grown up?” and the little girl answer: “Very
pleasant indeed, thank you very much, Mrs. Papworth.”
“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: