Nightfall | Page 7

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 it would be a pity to waste them." She helped herself liberally out of Val's hand. "Now stop both of you, you can't have any more."
She linked her other arm in Val's and dragged her brothers out of the dangerous proximity of the strawberry beds. Val sat down on a deck chair, one leg thrown over the other, Rowsley dropped at full length on the turf, and Isabel doubled herself up between them, her arms clasped round her knees. "How's the Old Man?" she asked in friendly reference to Rowsley's