Nightfall | Page 7

blouse was comfortably but inelegantly loose
round the armholes. Laura Clowes, who had a French instinct of dress,
and would have clad Isabel as Guinevere clad Enid, if Isabel had not
been prouder than Enid, looked after her with a smile and a sigh: it was
a grief to her to see her young friend so shabby, but, bless the child!

how little she cared--and how little it signified after all! Isabel's poverty
sat as light on her spirits as the sailor hat, never straight, sat on her
upflung head.
Isabel knew every one in Chilmark parish. Pausing before a knot of
boys playing marbles: "Herbert," she said sternly, "why weren't you at
school on Sunday?" Old Hewett, propped like a wheezy mummy
against the oak tree that shaded the Prince of Wales's Feathers, brought
up his stiff arm slowly in a salute to the vicar's daughter. "'Evening,"
said Isabel cheerfully, "what a night for rheumatics isn't it?" Hewitt
chuckled mightily at this subtle joke. "'Evening, Isabel," called out Dr.
Verney, putting up one finger to his cap: he considered one finger
enough for a young lady whom he had brought into the world. Isabel
knew every one in Chilmark and every one knew her. Such a range of
intensive acquaintance is not so narrow as people who have never lived
in a country village are apt to suppose.
Past the schoolhouse, past the wide stone bridge where Isabel loved to
hang over the parapet watching for trout--but not tonight, for it was late,
and Isabel after a "company tea" wanted her supper: by a footpath
through the churchyard, closely mown and planted with rosebushes:
and so into the church, where, after dropping a hurried professional
curtsey to the altar, she set about her evening duties. Isabel called
herself the curate, but she did a good deal which is not expected of a
curate, such as shutting windows and changing lesson-markers,
propping up the trebles when they went astray in the pointing of the
Psalms, altering the numbers on the hymn-board, writing out choir
papers, putting flowers in the vases and candles in the benediction
lights, playing the organ as required and occasionally blowing it. . . .
Before leaving the church she fell on her knees, in deference to Mr.
Stafford and the text by the door, and said a prayer. What did she pray?
"O Lord bless this church and all who worship in it and make father
preach a good sermon next Sunday. I wish I'd been playing with Val
instead of Jack, we should have won that last set if Jack hadn't muffed
his services. . . . Well, this curate was only nineteen."
And then, coming out into the fading light, she locked the north door

behind her and went off whistling like a blackbird, if a blackbird could
whistle the alto of Calkin's Magnificat in B flat. . . . Five minutes
climbing of the steep brown floor of the beechwood, and she was out
on uplands in the dying fires of day. It had been twilight in the valley,
but here the wide plain was sunlit and the air was fresh and dry: in the
valley even the river-aspens were almost quiet, but here there was still a
sough of wind coming and going, through the dry grass thick set with
lemon thyme and lady's slipper, or along the low garden wall where red
valerian sprouted out of yellow stonecrop.
A wishing gate led into the garden, and Isabel made for an open
window, but halfway over the sill she paused, gazing with all her soul
in her eyes across the vicarage gooseberry bushes. That grey suit was
Val's of course, but who was inside the belted coat and riding breeches?
"Rows-lee!" sang out Isabel, tumbling back into the garden with a
generous display of leg. The raiders rose up each holding a handful of
large red strawberries melting ripe, and Isabel, pitching in her racquet
on a sofa, ran across the grass and enfolded her brother in her arms.
Rowsley, dark and slight and shrewd, returned her hug with one arm,
while carefully guarding his strawberries with the other--"You pig, you
perfect pig!" wailed Isabel. "I was saving them for tea tomorrow,
Laura's coming and I can't afford a cake. Oh joy, you can buy me one!
How long can you stay?"
"Over the week end: but I didn't come to buy you cakes, Baby. I haven't
any money either. I came because I wanted you to buy me cakes."
"O well never mind, I'll make one," Isabel joyously slipped her hand
through Rowsley's arm. "Then I can get the flour from the baker and it
won't cost anything at all--it'll go down in the bill. Well give me one
anyhow, now they're picked