SIXTEEN: ANGELS
Thetrain reached Linton station at last, and Anne leaped out of the stuffy carriage, all the weariness of her long wait at Cambridge forgotten in the excitement of seeing again what she had so often seen before. She could not hide the eagerness in her voice as she handed her bag to the porter, asking him to give it to the carrier.
“Well, Miss, are you glad to be back?” he asked, recognizing her.
“Yes, of course I am,” she answered, and smiling with surprise she made her way across the market place.
Linton was unchanged, and she was filled with joy and gratitude to the little town, believing that it could never alter in the future and not reflecting that it was scarcely three months since she had set off with even greater excitement on her way to France in the belief that she would never see Linton again.
She walked on, and turned down Bridge Street, rejoicing to see the signs over the shops and the faces of the shopmen who were standingin their doorways looking out for the last customers before closing—all familiar things and persons. On the crest of the bridge she paused and looked back, thinking that on the morrow she would have met Grandison at the station and would be walking with him through the streets of the old town. A lorry coming towards her filled the bridge, and she took shelter in one of the angles of the parapet. Looking down over the side, she watched the waters of the Ouse slipping away from the masonry of the piers, and hoped that she would see a fish, but no fish showed itself, and when she lifted her eyes she was startled by the sight of an addition to the landscape, the beginnings, surely, of Mr. Sotheby’s hotel. There was a huge hole excavated by the edge of the river, filled with muddy water, a mound of blue clay, an ordered pile of white glazed bricks, a few wheelbarrows upside down, a lot of drain-pipes and nothing else.
“So perish all innovations!” Anne exclaimed, and recollecting how the old grocer had talked to her three months before, and seeing his tragedy before her, she began to laugh.
“I wonder if Richard laughed when he saw that hole full of water? Yes, to be sure he did, for we all laugh at our parents, we understand them so well,” but, her thoughts turning suddenlyto her own father, she sighed in despair and walked on.
She had scarcely left the bridge when she caught sight of the grocer himself. He was sitting bolt upright, driving his flea-bitten white pony, his head thrown back, and his white beard sticking out in front of him. “Like a billy-goat looking up to Heaven,” thought Anne. “Yet he is like Richard too, he has the same foxy nose.”
“Good evening, Mr. Sotheby,” she called out. The pony had dropped to a walk as she spoke, but the old man’s eye fell stonily on her and he made no answer to her greeting. When he had passed, Anne looked after him in doubt whether she had been deliberately ignored or had not been recognized, or perhaps not even heard, and she saw that the old dog-cart had been lately repainted and newly varnished; on the back was written in scarlet letters:
“International Tea Trust.”
“He looks ill,” she thought. “And his illness is that his pride has been wounded. He has been so virtuous and so successful all his life, it is too bad that Grandison and Ginette, and excavating a hole in a river bank, should have combined to ruin him.” She smiled as she said this, but her thought was broken suddenly by the reflectionthat her own father was waiting for her and that in less than an hour they would be speaking together. Trouble would be sure to arise between them at once, and each of them would behave with falsity. And reluctant to come to her journey’s end, unconsciously she dropped into a slower walk.
The road was long and dusty, and she was glad to turn aside into the footpath by the cross-roads, a footpath that was little frequented, for it was half a mile longer than the road. The first field was so huge that it seemed she would never cross it; there was not a tree on which she could rest her eyes and nothing in it except the tussocky grass underfoot and a dozen thirsty bullocks clustering round an empty cistern by the gate, waiting for the water-cart. A field of ripening wheat lay next, and she pushed her way down the narrow lane between the ears, unable to resist snatching at some of them. The grains were still full of milk, yet there was something dry even in their juiciness which made her clear her throat and wish for a cup of tea. Already she could see the elms of Dry Coulter, and she pushed on, getting at last into the next field, where there were men at work with teams of horses harrowing and rolling the dusty earth.
“It is likely enough that these are the menand the horses that came to our doorstep in the snow,” she said, and soon she had crossed to the far side, where a line of men, bent up double, were strung out across the field. But so big was the expanse that rollers and harrows, men and teams of horses and this string of men dibbling, were so far away that she could not see their faces, and felt as though she were alone.
“They are planting cabbages,” she guessed. “Each man leans forward to make a hole with the dibber in his right hand, sticks in a young plant and treads it firm with his left heel as he passes in his stride forward to strike the next hole. So they work all day, and this will be a vast expanse of cabbages before the winter. The life of these men is to labour all day in the sun, or in the rain, in these immense fields, alone for hour after hour, with nothing to speak with but horse, and to go back at night to sleep in a tiny room with a candle burning in the closed window, then to rise again with the first colour of the dawn. That is the life that the greater number have always led, yet it has hardly touched our thoughts and we live on their labour, drinking the milk and swallowing the buttered toast, thinking of anything rather than of how the cows are kept fat and the thistles and docks are spudded out to make room for the wheat,for there is nothing in all that labour, or in all those lives, to interest us. The labourers themselves are silent about it; there are few songs which take mangels or potatoes as their subject, and when we look for poetry in the fields we turn south to Italy or Greece and the goats nibbling at the vines.”
The footpath had been ploughed up, its last traces had disappeared beneath the harrow and the roller, and she walked carefully among the young cabbage plants, withering and grey after the long day’s sun. They looked dead, but they would live.
“They would die in a garden unless they were shaded under flower-pots, but everything lives in the fields; perhaps the air is purer under the open sky,” thought Anne.
As she crossed into the next field a bird flew out of a poplar tree by the stream. “A hawk,” was her first thought, but it surprised her by calling “Cuckoo” as it flew.
“He ought to have changed his tune a month ago. ‘In July he gets ready to fly; in August, go he must.’ Go he must, go he must,” she repeated, and the sentence in her father’s letter came back into her mind in which he had compared her to a whitethroat.
“Indeed he was right, for I was under thesame compulsion to go as the birds, but my going was harder. At least I fancy so, though the young swallows find it a difficult business to leave England, staying a week or two after the old birds have gone.” And Anne was surprised at herself for thinking of the birds with pleasure: in the past she had found her father’s love for them so irritating.
“I remember that I wished for a bird for my hat, yet in Paris where I could have worn it, the suggestion would have disgusted me. There, where I was going to the opera, I was always thinking of the birds, and the one beautiful thing that I shall never forget is the shout of the birds’ song with which one is woken on a March morning. And how they sing after the rain.” She laughed at the contradiction in herself which had made her love in Paris what had so much bored her in England.
“Yet within an hour of my meeting with my father I shall be wishing the cats good hunting,” she added smiling.
“How will he greet me, I wonder?”—a question which had been repeated so often that it made her ill with apprehension.
“What are the troubles that await me?” She was already at Dry Coulter; the elms rose up before her, and when she had crossed the lastfield the path would lead her through the churchyard and on to the green. The last field had been cut and the last of the hay was being carried, a little boy drove a clicking horse-rake across her path and, pulling a lever, dropped a thin roll of the last gleanings of hay at her feet; farther on two women were raking up the wisps of hay into heaps and a boy was pitching it into a red tumbril where another boy gathered it into his arms and trod it underfoot, after which the old mare was led on to the next heap.
Anne could see that the hard work was done, that they were enjoying 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 hopfrom 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:
NOTICEOwing 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. LambertH. Bottle}Churchwardens.
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.
“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 canvasbooths 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 placeswe 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 thoughsummer 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 roundthe 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 stoodbefore 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