Part 7

The chairs were drawn up round the fire, Rachel sitting at Anne’s knee and holding her hand, and Mrs. Sotheby began:

“What you children call the ‘Burnt Farm’ is really the ruins of a manor house; the squire lived there, Captain Purdue, and since the burning there has been no squire at Dry Coulter. I can remember him very well: a tall man who had been a captain in the navy, and he certainly thought a great deal about appearances. One could tell that just by looking at him; what one could not have told was that he cared a great deal about money too.”

“You have forgotten to say that he had been dismissed the service,” Richard reminded his mother.

“Well, his ship was wrecked, you know, and he left the navy after that; I have heard that he was turned out because of it, but I do not really know,” said Mrs. Sotheby. “Certainly he was a very unlucky man, but at first all went well; he had a fine house, built in the time of King Charles II (Oliver’s men had burnt the old house down in the civil wars), and a wonderful garden (he had a whole greenhouse full of arum lilies in the winter), his horses were famous, and his dairy cows won prizes. At that time there was not a gentleman’s place for miles round that was kept up better. But I should have said that Captain Purdue was married, to a very good-looking lady indeed. She was a good deal younger than he was, and I think she came from the Channel Islands. But they had no children.”

There was the jangle of the shop bell. Mrs. Sotheby broke off her sentence and started to her feet, but Rachel had slipped out into the shop before her, and they could hear a woman saying that she had just run across for a bar of soap, and then, when she had made her purchase, ask: “It is your birthday, isn’t it, Rachel? Many happy returns! How does it feel to be grown up?” and the little girl answer: “Very pleasant indeed, thank you very much, Mrs. Papworth.”

“The first of the Captain’s misfortunes,” continued Mrs. Sotheby, “was that his wife ran away from him, and it was not long after that before he was killed in an accident. He was having his barn altered; it was an old building, nearly as old as the house, and he wanted to make it a couple of feet higher and was having the roof raised on jacks. They got one side of it up some inches, and then the foreman sent for him to tell him that it couldn’t be done. The Captain went to see for himself but he would not listen to anything the men said, but gave the word to go on with the work, and they had not given the screws on the other side half a dozen turns before the main beam broke in two and the whole roof fell in on them. Captain Purdue was standing just underneath, and was killed, and three of the men were badly injured. You see it was no one’s fault but his own, and indeed it was very lucky that others were not killed beside himself.”

“But how did the house get burnt, and what had the ploughmen to do with it?” asked Anne.

“Nothing at all,” answered Mrs. Sotheby with a laugh. “But some of the most ignorant of the men said that his bad luck was because they had ploughed the doorstep up. That’s why it was so wrong of them to behave like that to your father if they really believe what they say. But I don’t think they do believe such things nowadays: everyone laughs at them, but I think people will do anything if it is the custom.”

“So they are expecting us to have bad luck?” asked Anne with her face suddenly serious.

Richard looked at her rather maliciously and laughed.

“Yes, we all expect you to run away from home and your father to fall out of a tree and break his neck while he is putting a young bird back into its nest.”

Richard laughed at this while his mother exclaimed: “How dare you talk like that, Richard!”

“He is only being a tease,” said Rachel, looking up at Anne. “I have got used to it now, and pay no attention to him.”

“Finish the story, mother,” said Richard, and Anne added her voice to his. “Please finish the story. I am waiting to hear how the house was burnt down. Then I shall go home and buy some fire extinguishers.”

They all laughed at this, and Mrs. Sotheby continued:

“After Captain Purdue’s death it was nearly a year before the lawyers 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.