EIGHT: WILLOW-PATTERN PARIS
Forseveral days a gentle wind blew from the west and the cloudiness of dew-drenched mornings was followed by the sunshine and softness of the afternoons. Anne Dunnock knew that the grocer’s son was painting at the Burnt Farm, but though each day she set out in that direction, she always turned aside on the way, breaking her promise that she would meet him there again.
“I spoke to him too freely; Heaven knows what he must think of me!” she repeated to herself. At moments she found it consoling to remember that she felt quite sure that she did not like Richard Sotheby, but at other times it seemed to her that what was so terrible was to have confided so much of her secret life to a man whom she disliked. But the weather was too beautiful for her to remain long unhappy for such reasons, and nearly her whole day was spent out of doors. In the morning she would busy herself in the garden, and, tempted by the sunshine, Mr. Dunnock would leave his study tocome and stand beside her while she sowed the sweet peas and the mignonette, or planted out young wallflowers in the borders.
“Do not forget to sow teazles by the pond,” he would remind her. “They are as handsome as hollyhocks, and wherever there have been teazles in summer time the goldfinches will come in winter.”
Anne did not regard the teazle as a weed, she loved the plant’s bold leaves that hold hands about the prickly stem, making a cup to catch the rain, and the flower-heads with their bands of blue which creep up and down the inflorescence.
Few words passed between father and daughter, yet both were happy as they went together to sow the teazle seed that he had saved, and were conscious of being in sympathy with one another as they had scarcely been all the winter. Once there was a rose tree to be transplanted; on another occasion a rambler which had been blown down had to be nailed up on the far side of the summer-house, and while Anne shovelled the earth round the roots, and drove the nails through strips cut from an old stair carpet, Mr. Dunnock held the tree upright and the creeper in place, his hands protected in Noah’s hedging gloves.
“The bees are working in the willows,” he said. “Though it is still three weeks to Palm Sunday.”
Yet Anne had not abandoned her plan; it was only that the spring and the garden full of growing things had claimed her attention. But one morning she found a letter for her on the breakfast table, and as she opened it her heart sank, for she guessed that it was from a lady anxious to engage her as a companion.
“What am I to say to him?” she asked herself, looking up at her father as he came into the room, and the morning was spent wandering about the house, first carrying an old trunk out of the box-room to pack her things, and then with pale cheeks running to the door of her father’s study. She did not knock, when she stood trembling outside the door, though she knew that in a day or two at most, perhaps even in a few hours, she would be leaving the vicarage.
During luncheon she came nearest to speaking to her father, but each 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 recoveredit, 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 ofthe 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. Annesat, 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, andshe 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,”14AKimberley Road,West Sutton Vallance,London, W.23.Dear Madam,I have seen your advertisement inThe 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 tointerview 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.
“Spion Kop,”14AKimberley Road,West Sutton Vallance,London, W.23.
Dear Madam,
I have seen your advertisement inThe 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 tointerview 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 inlove. 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, thentelling 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, amrather 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 carefulsketches 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.”