themselves playing at hay-making, clearing up what the men had left
behind. Soon she was out of the hay-field, slipping over the wall of
the churchyard, a wall which had been worn smooth by the breeches of
generations of labourers, for a short cut to the footpath ran among the
graves beneath the limbs of the giant sycamore. She had never liked
the tree, sharing her father’s jealousy for the little church so far
overtopped by it and so overshadowed in summer. If it had not been part
of the rookery he would have had it cut down. The nests were hidden now
in the leaves, and as she looked up into the tree an old fancy came
back into her mind and she said: “The sycamore is like Ely Cathedral,
so cool and so airy; to hop from one branch to another must be like
sitting first on one chair and then on another; the pigeons shorten
wing and alight to rest a while before they continue their voyages,
just as the tourists come in and sit for a few moments before they
motor on to Cambridge or King’s Lynn.”
As she passed the porch she stopped with a new curiosity to read the
notices, in the past she had so often written them herself, but the
notice which caught her eye brought back all her apprehensions:
NOTICE
Owing to the continued indisposition of the vicar, arrangements have
been made for morning service to be held every Sunday by the Reverend
J. Grasstalk and the Reverend the Honourable F. H. G. L. à Court
Delariver, alternately, until further notice.
F. LAMBERT }
H. BOTTLE } _Churchwardens_.
“That means that father will lose his living unless I can persuade
him.... I shall have to write to the Bishop. Perhaps if he took a
holiday....” Anne hurried on and her spirits rose, for the worst had
not happened. She had feared that she would find an inhibition. She
opened the lychgate and went out on to the green, passing beneath the
elms. There was the little stream, and there lay the old monument and
the maze, but her thoughts of her father were dispersed by catching
sight of a jumble of yellow derricks, of caravans and steam engines on
the green.
“Dry Coulter feast!” she exclaimed in astonishment. “Why, it must begin
to-morrow! Here are the swing-boats and the roundabouts; here are the
showmen and the gipsies.” She hurried forward, excited and yet annoyed
that her home-coming had chanced to be on the eve of so momentous an
occasion as the village feast. “Timed to fall between the hay-making
and the harvest,” she said to herself. “Richard would tell me that the
feast is as much a pagan custom as Plough Monday or May-day. Each of
the villages about here has its feast, and they come one after another
in the height of summer. They are feasts at which there is little
feasting, only a roundabout and swing-boats on the green, but to-morrow
the village girls will dance and the men roll up their shirtsleeves and
try their strength and run in hurdle races, or win coconuts or a cup
and saucer.”
Under the elms and the beeches the canvas booths were already
standing, five or six men were working hard to put up the swings, women
were carrying pails of water, and the horses, still in their harness,
were roaming over the green and cropping the grass. All the travelling
people and even their children were working hard; they shouted to each
other as they ran to and fro without sparing a glance for the groups of
village children, the boys following them and getting in their way, the
girls standing and gazing, or sitting close by in the grass. Among one
of the groups, sitting and lying on the grass, Anne recognized a friend
as she drew nearer.
“Rachel,” she called, and the little girl looked up at once, but she
hesitated for a moment before rising to her feet and, though she came
to meet her, Anne noticed that she walked slowly where a few months
before she would have run. The child’s shyness caused a like shyness
in Anne herself, and they stood facing each other without kissing or
shaking hands.
“Thank you very much for the postcards you sent me, Mrs. Grandison,”
said Rachel. “Richard gave me all the postcards you and Mr. Grandison
sent him and I have put them all in my album.”
“I wish you could have seen some of the places we went to, Rachel. A
great river, the Rhone, rushes down between the vineyards, and there
are castles and wonderful old towns,” said Anne, and for a little while
she chattered of what she had seen abroad, but ended by saying: “I see
they are getting ready for the feast. We went to a wonderful circus at
Avignon. I thought of you, Rachel, when I saw it. Grandison won a live
pigeon as a prize, for which we had no home, so we let it fly from the
bridge over the river. It beat its wings and flew crazily this way and
that, but at last it lifted itself and disappeared over the battlements
into the town. Have you been to any circuses since we went to Linton
Fair together?”
There was a look of defiance in the child’s face and a hard note in her
shrill voice. Her face was paler than ever, but dark under the eyes.
“No, I haven’t been to a circus there, Mrs. Grandison. Richard wanted
to take me to the feast at Wet Coulter but I wouldn’t go.”
“You’ll enjoy the feast here to-morrow, won’t you?”
“Yes, I shall enjoy the Dry Coulter feast, Mrs. Grandison,” answered
Rachel.
“Come part of the way home with me,” said Anne.
“I’ll come to the edge of the green.”
They walked for a little while in silence.
“You have had your hair cut, Rachel. Was that Richard’s doing?”
The little girl blushed scarlet, she hung her head and seemed on the
point of bursting into tears. Anne cursed herself for her unfortunate
question. “The child must have got creatures in her head; I should have
remembered the village better,” but she was mistaken in her thought,
for when Rachel spoke it was to say: “I heard that you had your hair
cut off, Mrs. Grandison.”
Anne took off her hat. “Yes,” she said. “It is shorter than yours. Did
Richard tell you that?” Their eyes met; Rachel had recovered herself.
“I am going to let it grow again,” she said defiantly. “Father doesn’t
like it short.” She stopped to kick a stone viciously out of her path.
On hearing Mr. Sotheby spoken of, Anne felt strangely embarrassed, and
to turn the conversation she asked: “How is your mother? Will you tell
her that I am back and that I shall come round to the shop to see her
as soon as I can?”
“Mother is not in the shop now,” replied Rachel almost rudely.
They had reached the edge of the green, and the little girl stopped
short, motionless and stubborn, by the little bridge.
“Mother is never in the shop now, nor am I. Father is made the
manager, and there is a man under him learning to take his place.”
“Is Richard here or in London?” Anne asked. “My husband spent a day
looking for him but couldn’t find him.”
“Richard’s busy.” This time the rudeness in the child’s voice was
unmistakable, and there was a pause whilst Anne looked down into the
pale face working with passion. The little girl was trying hard to keep
back her tears.
“I’m to go to school at Cambridge. Richard says I am to get a
scholarship to go to college.”
“Come a little farther and tell me about it,” said Anne.
Rachel’s emotion upset her, and she was tired of standing still.
“No, I must go back now.” The little girl was still uneasy, and shifted
from foot to foot.
“Well, I daresay we shall meet to-morrow,” said Anne, disappointed. She
was reluctant to let Rachel go, wanting to find an excuse for delaying
her own arrival at the vicarage.
“Let’s go to the feast to-morrow and ride on the roundabout together,”
she said.
Rachel lifted a pale face and gazed at her angrily; two tears ran
unheeded down her cheeks and she answered with indignation.
“No, you won’t be stopping here long”; then, without waiting for an
answer or to say good-bye, she ran back on to the village green. When
she had gone a little way she dropped into a walk and soon stopped.
She was not in the mood to rejoin her companions; watching the gipsies
would no longer interest her, and as soon as Anne had turned the corner
Rachel slowly followed in her footsteps.
The rays of the sun were horizontal, and the last strip of turf by
the Broad Ditch was striped with the shadows of the elms, the darkest
and the most brilliant greens; on the water a crowd of ducklings were
swimming eagerly in all directions, in and out of the sunlight; in
another half-hour the dew would begin to fall and the little owls would
come out to hoot at the cats. Anne turned to look back. Behind her the
lower branches of the elms were already in shadow, their tops shone in
the sunlight; between the trunks she could see a glimpse of the village
green beyond, with the yellow painted roof of a roundabout. There was a
silence and suddenly Anne gave a long sigh, a sigh of happiness.
“I am happy now and completely at peace. I was never happy here before,
but I am now, for I am free. The opinion of neighbours cannot weigh
on me, for my life is full and happy and satisfied. Each day is rich
and full, and though summer passes it returns again. There are better
years coming than any of the years which are past, and the leaves will
always drop in November and spring afresh in May.”
The figure of Rachel came into view, and Anne saw the child stop.
“Well, now I must see my father,” she said to herself, shrugging her
shoulders, a trick she had caught from Grandison; then she turned
towards the vicarage, and swinging her arms and shaking her bare head,
she walked forward. From a distance the vicarage was black against the
sunset, but as she came abreast of it, she saw it clearly, the old
familiar building, strangely like a Noah’s ark, with a chimney at each
end. But the moment that she glanced at it Anne stopped short. The
vicarage--it had been burnt! It was a ruin. But the hollyhocks were
standing in full flower; the roses on the wall were not scorched--and
Anne could see that there had been no fire: all that had happened was
that the windows had been taken out: there was no glass: there were no
window-sashes.
Wire netting had been nailed across each of the down-stair windows,
but the bedroom windows were open spaces. Otherwise there was little
change; the front lawn had been mowed recently, the path had been
weeded, and round the windowless house all the rose-trees were in
bloom.
Anne walked slowly up the pathway, noticing everything and reassured
by a hundred little details. The box-trees had been clipped. On the
doorstep she paused, uncertain whether to try the door-handle or to
ring the bell.
“I will ring the bell,” she said to herself, lifting her eyes to see if
she were being spied upon from upstairs. Through the open windows first
one bird flew and then another, a third chased it; then, as the bell
jangled in the hall, a whole covey of sparrows flew out over her head.
“The windows have been taken out so that the birds may fly in.” The
change seemed to her a sensible one for her father to have made. She
could hear the shuffling of footsteps inside, and at that moment the
thought flashed through her mind that if her father’s eccentricities
were become such that he could no longer be a clergyman, he would make
an admirable bird-watcher on some island sanctuary.
“He would live alone in a hut without seeing anyone for six months of
the year, and he would be perfectly happy.” Her project filled her with
excitement; she longed to talk of it, to find out if she could put it
into execution.
The door was flung open and her father stood before her, glaring up
at her, for the floor of the house was sunk below the level of the
garden, but he showed no sign of recognition. His cheeks were hollow,
his tangled beard full of grey hairs and his black, clerical coat was
filthy with the droppings of birds; the shoulders and sleeves seeming
as if they had been spattered over with whitewash. An unpleasant dirty
smell came through the door; in spite of ventilation the house smelled
like an old hen-coop.
Anne waited for her father to speak, watching him silently while the
anger died out of his gaze. He coughed once or twice, blinked his eyes
as if very tired, and said at last in a mild voice: “Well, Anne, my
dear.”
“Did you get my letter? I have come to pay you a visit, father.”
A mischievous, slightly guilty expression came over Mr. Dunnock’s face
and he coughed again. “I am afraid I didn’t read it,” he answered. “I
hardly know if I can invite you in. You see I am living with the angels
now.”
There was a long silence. “It was very sweet of you to write such a
kind letter about my marriage,” said Anne at last. “And to send me
Mamma’s teapot, and to tell me about the tragedy in the dove house.”
“The swallows have come back,” said Mr. Dunnock. He spoke eagerly, and
stepping out of the house, he took his daughter by the arm and led her
round the end of the vicarage. A steel-blue bird circled over their
heads and swooped into the open door of the dove house.
“Angels,” said Mr. Dunnock, putting a finger to his lips. “They are
angels.”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.