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