scent of flowers mingled with the odour of their corruption. A necklace
of decayed marsh-mallows hung forlornly round the neck of the eagle;
its brazen beak held a bunch of wilted cowslips, but the daffodils and
narcissus on the altar still breathed out their perfume. Easter was
over, and Mr. Dunnock heaved a sigh of relief for he had come to feel
the church festivals a great strain upon him.
Easter was over; Mrs. Pattle marched up the aisle on her flat feet and
began tearing down the flowers which her children had gathered three
days before.
Mr. Dunnock walked by the little pathway from the vestry to his wife’s
grave, and stood there looking at the headstone. He stayed there so
long and stood so still that a robin, recognizing a friend in him, came
to perch on his shoulder.
“The resurrection of the flesh has come to pass,” Mr. Dunnock said
aloud. “These ones come to me and they commune with me; why does she
alone delay?”
At last a cow lowing on the other side of the hedge, interrupted the
clergyman’s reverie; he started slightly and coming to himself began
to pull his beard with a gesture of despair, and the robin, who had
been wondering if he could induce his wife to nest in it, flew off to a
tombstone, disappointed.
“I live in two worlds,” Mr. Dunnock reflected. “Only the saints know
how terrible the strain of such an experience can be. I cannot bear
it much longer; something will break in me. My head aches when I am
recalled from the contemplation of so much glory to the pettiness in
which men live, their eyes on the ground and their ears stopped to
the voices of the angels. I cannot endure it any longer; it would be
better, I think, if I were to live alone.” He clutched at his head
suddenly, and then walked rapidly from the churchyard towards the
vicarage. But the song of a willow wren caught his ear as he passed
under the elms, and he paused to listen. The clear top note was
followed by a stream of softer sounds and ended with a cadence of lower
notes, a touch of melancholy in which the vicar felt his own heart
expressed. The bird sang, and sang again, and Mr. Dunnock, resting his
shoulder against the rough bark of an elm, listened without seeing the
approach of two village women, or noticing their inquisitive glances
as they passed near him, or hearing their words, for, in answer to a
nudge, one of them had protested to her companion: “Oh, dear me, Fanny.
Don’t.”
They were silent for fear of laughing, but when they had passed the
vicar, one of them said: “Maggie told me she couldn’t make anything of
his sermon on Easter Sunday. It was all about Easter Eggs being the
promise of glory. She didn’t know what he meant by it.”
But the women did not laugh, and soon turned to safer and more
interesting topics of conversation.
The willow wren had been silent a long while, and was looking for
worms, when at last for Mr. Dunnock also the mood of ecstasy passed;
he looked about him startled and bewildered, and then, reassured by
finding he was alone, he shook his head sadly, and the first glance of
fear was replaced by a bitter smile as he hurried back to the vicarage
at top speed.
“Lay my meals on a tray in future,” he said to Maggie a few minutes
later. “And put the tray on the table in the passage outside my study.
I shall hear if you tap on the door.” Words which were repeated to
Anne when she came down to lunch. She was content to be alone, but at
dinner she was disturbed at this alteration in her father’s habits,
wondering whether he were unwell, or whether by any chance Maggie were
right in believing that he wished the change to be permanent. But this
seemed to her so unlikely a possibility that she did not dwell on it,
and, when the meal was over, she lit the lamp and settled down with
her drawing-board in front of her; she had at last begun the fashion
plates which she had been projecting all the winter. The fine weather
had returned after Richard Sotheby’s departure, and for the first day
of warm sunshine Anne had found happiness enough in being out of doors,
a happiness shot through with irritation against herself.
“I am wasting my life looking at this pear blossom. What does it
matter to me whether the fruit set or not? I shall be gone before the
gathering.” But her habitual interest had been too strong for her, and
she had watched the bees flying in and out among the masses of curdy
petals with delight.
“I am lingering on. I shall linger all my life. I must go now; I must
leave home to-day.”
But it was impossible to leave on the day before Easter, and instead
of packing her box, she had gone to the church to pin up the notice
saying: “There will be no service on Saturday, when the church will be
open for decoration.”
When Saturday had come she had gone herself to help the little girls,
and it was not until after Easter was over that the fashion plates had
been begun. The results of her labours surpassed Anne’s expectations;
such fashion plates as hers she felt sure would excite the Parisian
dressmakers.
“I must send them to Richard at once,” she said as she took out the
drawing-pins. But the thought of waiting for a letter, and the agony
of uncertainty in which she saw herself, dismayed her. In her mood of
exultation delay of any kind seemed impossible.
“But I will wait all the same,” she said, “until I have finished a
dozen, and then I shall go to Paris myself to seek my fortune. I will
write and tell Richard that I am coming.”
The letter was put off; she would not write until she knew the day and
the hour of her arrival, and for several days she worked hard, shutting
herself up in her room every morning when the bed had been made. When
she laid down her brush it was to plan how she would have her hair cut
off in London, and how she would buy herself a smart dress for the
journey, for she believed that she would never impress a dressmaker in
such rags as she possessed. With her mind full of such matters, Anne
rose and looked out of her window; the first blush of pink petals was
showing through the early green of the apple trees; in another week
they would be in full blossom. Under the trees Mr. Dunnock was standing
with his arms raised above his head, gazing up at the sky, a pose which
Anne found sufficiently startling to make her look again, carefully
screening her eyes from the sunlight. Her father stood motionless;
every little while she could see a small bird fly up and settle on his
shoulder.
“I have scarcely spoken to father for three days; I must speak to him
now and tell him of my plans,” and as she made this resolution, she
saw him moving slowly across the lawn. As he came nearer she saw that
a crowd of little birds was following him, a wild twittering came from
them, they were mobbing him as though he were a cat or an owl; at every
moment birds would settle on his head or shoulders, or on his up-raised
hands, and then would fly off again.
A beautiful spectacle it seemed to Anne, and she felt a new tenderness
for her father as she watched. The thin black figure with the head
thrown back, the eyes turned up, and the beard jutting out, no longer
seemed queer as it had a moment before, when she had first caught
sight of it standing under the apple trees.
“He will feel my desertion,” she murmured, a sudden sympathy with her
father coming to her, and she felt a love which had been forgotten for
many months.
“First mother, and then me,” she said. But her love did not weaken her
determination to speak to him of her departure, but strengthened it.
When Mr. Dunnock reached the house, he shook his head, first gently,
but then, as a blue-tit still remained perched there, more violently,
and then turning round waved his hands towards the birds which had
settled in the rose bushes about the door. Anne saw that he was
bestowing a benediction. She did not wait longer, but hurrying
downstairs, followed her father into his study.
“We see very little of each other now, father,” she said.
Mr. Dunnock started at her words and looked round at her with guilty
eyes.
“Yes, Anne, yes,” he murmured. “Do you wish to speak to me? Something
perhaps about the housekeeping?” and he began to fidget with his
fingers, wishing that she would go away.
“I have wanted to speak to you for some time,” said Anne. “I have been
thinking a great deal about my own life. It will seem very selfish to
you, and very heartless. It is very selfish....”
“We are all of us selfish,” said Mr. Dunnock. “What is it that you
want?”
“I want to go away, at least for a time,” said Anne. “I do not want to
settle down for the rest of my life without seeing something of the
world. I have never been to London.”
There was a silence, and after a little she went on: “I shall have to
earn my own living, of course, but that should not be impossible. An
experiment ... an experience ... the experience would be good for me. I
have never been to London. There are so many things.”
“That seems a very sensible plan, if it can be managed,” said Mr.
Dunnock, cutting her short. “But then you have plenty of good sense,
Anne, more than I have in some ways.”
He sat down suddenly at his writing table, dropping his head between
his hands, and there he remained, silent for so long that Anne began to
wonder if he had forgotten her, but she said nothing, only repeating
under her breath: “It is settled: I am leaving home.”
But at last Mr. Dunnock looked up, saying: “Let me see.... What was
I going to say? You will require some money, Anne, if you are going
away. I can give you twenty pounds, enough to enable you to look about
you. Do as you think best, dear child, in every way.” His head began to
nod again, and then, as if suddenly waking up, he said:
“I am glad you are going, Anne. I am glad the suggestion came from you:
that it should be your own wish. I am rather bad company, I know, but
there is a reason for that. You think my life here is narrow perhaps,
but you see only one side. I can assure you that you are mistaken; my
life is incredibly rich and overflowing with happiness. But that has to
be hidden; there is a reason for that. I need loneliness; you perhaps
need to see the world at present, but we shall meet again, and I have
no fear that ultimately ... you will understand what is hidden....” He
broke off disconnectedly, and suddenly Anne felt her happiness shot
through by a feeling of dismay, in which she wondered if she could
leave her father to fend for himself. Such phrases were familiar to her
from his lips, but they seemed strange coming at such a moment and when
she went from the room it was with a conviction that she would be doing
wrong to go away.
Her scruples were soon forgotten in the excitement of making plans, and
the rest of the day was spent in packing and unpacking a wooden box
with her possessions. Two days later all was ready, and the hour of her
departure had been fixed for the morrow. In the morning she went to say
good-bye to Mrs. Sotheby, and to ask if Rachel would come to have tea
with her.
“We shall miss you very much,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “But I shall try to
think that you are enjoying yourself seeing more of the world than you
would here. I hardly know what to say about Rachel. You know how fond
she is of you. She will want to come to say good-bye; it is a great
pity that Mr. Sotheby has arranged to take us to see the cottages at
Linton. You would not care to come with us, I suppose? Then everyone
would be happy.”
“I should like to come very much,” said Anne, “if I shall not be in the
way.”
“I’ll just ask Mr. Sotheby if there will be room in the dog-cart for us
all,” said the old woman and, through the opened door into the parlour,
Anne could see the grocer sitting at the table, looking up from a sheet
of blue paper with a T-square in his hands.
They set off soon after lunch, Anne sitting on the back seat of the
dog-cart with Rachel, but the pony did not seem to feel the extra
weight. Anne soon set Rachel talking, and the little girl kept her
amused with stories of her school, and how she had been teased about
her brother, and it was some time before she broke the news of her
own departure. Rachel stared down at the road, a yellow river flowing
so swiftly from below the dog-cart that she could not distinguish the
stones in it. “You won’t ever think of me; you won’t write to me; you
won’t ever come back,” were her thoughts, but she knew that she must
hide her unhappiness, and when she spoke, as the trap drew up smartly,
it was to ask: “Will you be going to Paris?” a question which Anne
found so disturbing that she saw little of the first cottage into which
she was led. The smell of fresh paint, mingled with the fragrance
of aromatic pine shavings on the plank floors, recalled her to her
surroundings, and she listened for a moment to Mr. Sotheby, who was
speaking to her.
“These cottages are only a stepping-stone to greater things, Miss
Dunnock. I have mortgaged them already. What Linton lacks is a
high-class Temperance Hotel, overlooking the river. Such a hotel would
attract visitors for the fishing and boating, and would cater also
for the more respectable commercial men. A Temperance Hotel would
wake up trade in the town, and would provide a delightful centre for
holiday-makers and abstainers, and men from the university.”
“What shall I say to Rachel?” Anne asked herself as she followed the
grocer up the little staircase into the poky bedrooms, which smelt of
varnish.
“A little shop like ours is a great snare for a man with ambition. I
have wasted the best years of my life in it, years during which I might
have built up a great merchandising house. But this hotel, and others
like it, will soon make my son a rich man, and provide for Rachel. A
Temperance Hotel with a grand loggia looking over the river, pillars
with climbing roses, a small winter garden with azaleas.... We must
move with the times, you know, Miss Dunnock.”
Anne descended the narrow stairs and followed Mrs. Sotheby across a
patch of sticky clay to the dog-cart.
“Yes, I am going to Paris. Don’t tell anyone; it is a secret,” she said
to the little girl as they drove off. It was only after saying this
that Anne looked up at the cottages, seeing them for the first time.
Their extreme ugliness and the evident signs of jerry-building dismayed
her.
“What will the next thing be like?” she asked herself, remembering
the grocer had spoken of an hotel, and expecting to see it round the
corner. In a moment or two Mr. Sotheby drew rein by the side of the
quiet stream of the Ouse, but there was no building visible, only an
empty field, the site for the new hotel.
“A lounge hall lit entirely by windows of yellow stained glass is my
idea,” said Mr. Sotheby. “It will give the effect of sunshine all
the year round. The landing-stage is to run the entire length of the
building. It will be covered by a glass roof. There is to be a garage
on the right and a boathouse on the left, each under its own dome
of glass, thus giving symmetry to the whole. There will be central
heating, a lift, electric light, a banqueting hall....”
Anne gazed at the water-logged field, at the slow stream with the
bunches of reeds and the gasworks on the opposite bank, and ceased to
listen to Mr. Sotheby’s words. The mud and water and slime would remain
mud and water and slime; the fine old bridge with the toll house,
which had once been a chapel, would stay there; nothing would move the
gasworks, and Anne felt unable to picture to herself the glittering
abomination of which the grocer spoke, on that melancholy river bank.
But Mr. Sotheby went on talking for some time, and, turning her head,
Anne could see that his wife was not listening, and her own attention
soon wandered. She saw the whip being pointed first in one direction
and then in another, and the white beard which wagged as the grocer
opened and shut his mouth, but the stream of words went on unheard. At
last Mr. Sotheby picked up the reins, cracked his whip, and they set
off for home. Except for Rachel, they had enjoyed themselves as Mrs.
Sotheby had predicted.
No one in Dry Coulter would have recognized the slim figure in a
fashionable tailor-made dress who took her seat in the boat-train three
days later. When she shook her head to refuse the offer of magazines,
no hairpins flew on to the platform, and the reason was explained when
she removed her rakish little hat: Anne wore an Eton crop. Her whole
character seemed to her to have changed, and looking into the mirror
in the lid of her little vanity-case, she was pleased with her new
self. For a moment she fingered an unused lip-stick and then, laughing
to herself, deliberately reddened her lips. She was off to Paris,
alone, to seek her fortune. Her father, everyone at Dry Coulter, every
experience she had ever had in her life seemed never to have existed.
It was a dream which would be speedily forgotten, and reaching for her
bag, Anne opened a French book of which Richard had spoken.
Somewhere in the Weald of Kent, the grinding noise of the brakes,
suddenly applied, disturbed her reading. The train dragged itself to a
halt and a long silence followed.
At last Anne threw open the window and peered into the darkness.
There was nothing to be seen but a red light shining somewhere down
the line, and the vague forms of oak trees near at hand. For a moment
there was nothing to be heard, and then, suddenly, her ear caught a
far-off melodious chuckle and a moment afterwards the first startling
clear notes of a bird’s song. The red light changed to green; there was
a long puff, and a series of snorts from the engine; the ticking of
released brakes, and once more the train was in motion. But Anne had
recognized the note of the nightingale.
“Love,” she said to herself, and began laughing.
TWELVE: RICHARD’S FRIENDS
Two men and a woman were having breakfast in the studio in their
dressing-gowns.
“Oh, my God, Grandison!” exclaimed Richard Sotheby, after looking into
the letter which Anne had posted two days before in London. “What am I
to do? Here is that girl arriving in Paris to-morrow. She asks me to
get her lodgings, and to meet her at the station. What on earth am I to
do? I wonder if I could stop her coming.... She doesn’t give her London
address. No, I can’t stop her. Oh, what a curse....”
Grandison laughed and, turning to the woman beside her, told her the
news in bad French. A look of incredulity passed over her brown face,
and then she also began to laugh. The dark eyes sparkled with malice,
the even white teeth shone, she put the point of her healthy pink
tongue between her painted lips; and then, the humour of the situation
increasing as she turned the news over in her mind, she sprang up and
danced bare-footed round the breakfast table in the middle of the
immense room. The skirts of the silk dressing-gown whirled round the
lithe body; every movement was lovely, but neither of the men looked
at her. When she stopped it was to pour out a flood of questions which
went unanswered.
“It is not a joke,” said Richard Sotheby gloomily. “You will have to
help me. You don’t object, I suppose,” he added in French to the girl,
“if Grandison devotes his time to her?”
“How insolent you are, Richard!” said the woman, taking hold of
Grandison’s arm, and putting her cheek beside his head. “I am to be
sacrificed because you can’t face a woman. I could call you some hard
names if I chose.” She pouted, but at once went on: “But I won’t, for
I sympathize with you. Really I am anxious to see this girl of yours,
Richard. It will be a curiosity. Are you going to bring her to live
with us? I shall be charming to her, and she will keep me company
sometimes. Two men is more than I can manage.” She pouted again, and
added in tones of deep tenderness: “Two dirty Englishmen.”
Richard Sotheby looked at her with a patient smile, then, ignoring her
questions, he turned to his friend and said, speaking in English: “And
two women is more than I can manage.”
Grandison flushed with anger, but Richard forestalled anything he might
have said by adding: “My dear, you know I am fond of Ginette; don’t
misunderstand what I say. But two women is more than I can put up
with....”
“Why on earth will you persist in regarding Ginette as a woman?”
demanded the younger man in tones of fury. “Woman! woman! It’s always
woman with you. Ginette is Ginette, just as I am Gerald and you are
Richard.”
Sotheby did not reply, and his friend’s angry tones soon subsided.
Harmony was restored while the breakfast dishes were cleared away,
and for the rest of the morning Anne’s arrival was discussed calmly,
sometimes in English, sometimes in French, while the two men painted
and Ginette posed. In the evening everything that had been said in the
morning was repeated, but at last it was decided that Grandison should
meet Anne at the station, instead of Richard, and that he should take
her to an hotel.
“Let it be on the other side of Paris,” said Richard next morning, as
he and Grandison left the studio on their way to the station, for he
had decided to accompany his friend in order to point out the girl whom
he was to meet.
“Everything in France is different,” Anne said to herself as she
looked out of the window of the train. “Those trees must be elms, but
they have been shaved like French poodles so that they are scarcely
recognizable. These are fields of corn, and here are cocks and hens
and cart-sheds, but they do not seem to be the real things so much as
imitations of ours. And the houses! How extraordinarily different are
the houses!” for the train was passing through a station, and building
after building flashed by her: dreary houses with the stucco peeling
off them, each with its broken-slatted shutters beside the windows,
houses such as do not exist in England.
“If there is any beauty in this country it is of another kind from
our English beauty, just as the ugliness is unlike our ugliness.” The
change did not dismay her; it had the same effect of strangeness as the
reflection of her own cropped head in the glass, seen unexpectedly as
she lifted her handbag from off the luggage rack.
The train was approaching Paris, and before many minutes had passed a
porter in a blue blouse had seized upon her handbag and Anne forgot to
look for Richard Sotheby in the effort to produce a good impression
on the porter. But even the inadequacy of her French could not detain
him for more than a moment. His moustache trembled eagerly, his eye
flashed, then he had disappeared.
“What a lovely outline there is to his cheek, how clear his
complexion, how expressive his every movement!” and looking after the
porter she began to fancy that if all Frenchmen were as handsome as the
porter she would be in love with them all. “The beauty of the French
face,” she said, “lies in the beauty of the cheekbones. An English face
is made up of eyes and nose and mouth: the rest of the face is a blank
space, but take away a Frenchman’s eyes: so often like eggs, or olives,
take away his nose, and his mouth (always an uninteresting mouth) and
you find his face is still full of expression and of beauty, indeed the
face is improved.”
But the porter was back, and had set off down the platform with a
commanding gesture to Anne to follow him, when she found herself being
accosted by a stranger.
“Is this Miss Dunnock? My name’s Grandison,” he said. “Richard Sotheby
asked me to meet you here; he is not able to come himself....”
“Ginette Grandison’s brother,” Anne said to herself, looking into the
surly, boyish face, and noticing Grandison’s shyness. Meanwhile the
porter with the lovely cheekbones had disappeared with her suit-case.
“What does the porter matter?” she thought. “What does the suit-case
matter? What does it matter what this young man is mumbling about
Richard? No, nothing matters. This is Paris; I have arrived, and a
delightful happy life awaits me with these charming people. The opera
... friends.” In such a mood it seemed scarcely surprising that Richard
should after all come up to them just as they were climbing into a cab.
“What is the latest news from Dry Coulter?” he asked, taking the seat
beside her. Anne had not slept; the channel crossing by night was too
exciting an experience to be missed, and she had remained on deck,
watching the receding lights of England disappear, and then the lights
of France springing up out of the darkness and growing in brilliance
and in number.
“Dry Coulter?” she asked, and for the first moment the name conveyed
nothing to her. “How can you ask about Dry Coulter when we are in
Paris!” Richard laughed and Anne added at once: “Oh, I went with your
father and mother and Rachel to see the new cottages, and the site for
the hotel.”