Chapter 2 #2
“No, not evil. She just doesn’t understand me, even after all these years. All she wants is to contrive a suitable match for me. For that is her definition of happiness.”
“Like she did for Fanny?” Lotty asked.
“Yes.”
“How is your sister?”
Fanny’s pinched, teary face appeared in Anne’s mind, and she heard again her sister’s bitter tone. With a glance at Miss Birt, Anne mustered a smile. “She’s fine. She asked me to pass along her greetings.”
It was one thing to share her own personal woes, but quite another to spread her sister’s. Fanny sometimes chastised Anne for being indiscreet as it was.
Perhaps noticing something amiss in Anne’s expression, Miss Lotty changed the subject. “Well, let’s get you settled.” She rang a small bell on the side table.
The maid of all work hurried in again and bobbed a curtsy.
“Dinah, if you could please show Miss Loveday to the guest room.”
“Yes, miss.”
“You remembered to take up fresh water and towels?”
“I did, miss.”
“Good.” Lotty turned back to Anne. “I would take you myself, but the doctor insists I avoid stairs for the time being.”
“I agree.” Anne picked up her case and valise, while Dinah hoisted her small trunk. “Thank you again for having me.”
After a simple meal, Anne excused herself to take a stroll, eager to stretch her legs and see Painswick again.
She crossed the street to St. Mary’s and started up one of the churchyard paths. She stopped to pluck and smell a stalk of lily of the valley and then paused under the wedding tree to recall again that last happy family picnic.
Next, she visited her grandparents’ grave. The two had died within a fortnight of each other. Their names and birth and death dates were carved there, as well as an epitaph they had chosen themselves:
Farewell vain world, I’ve seen enough of thee,
In grief and pain, sickness and misery.
Thy smiles I value not, nor frowns do fear,
Thanks be to God, I sleep at quiet here.
What fault you’ve seen in me, still strive to shun,
And look at home, there’s something to be done.
The verse was not unique to them, yet it summed them up so well: their faith, their stoic suffering, their humility, and a belief in hard work and responsibility.
Thomas and Sarah Spring had been instrumental in shaping Anne’s character, as had her parents, of course, and she would always be grateful and always love them.
She tenderly ran a finger over the carved letters of their names and whispered, “I miss you.” She trusted that her mother and grandparents were in heaven and certainly hoped to see them again one day.
Anne then continued on, of old habit, to the favorite hiding place of her youth—an ancient chest tomb, its epitaph worn illegible, half covered by a low-hanging yew tree.
She ducked beneath its lowest boughs and rose within the shelter of scratchy branches above the chest-shaped tomb.
Oh, the many times she had hidden there during long-ago games of hide-and-seek with Fanny, Jasper Paine, and other local youths.
It had been her special place. Hiding there as a child, she imagined she’d shrunk to the size of a tiny fairy concealed under a mushroom cap.
Emerging again a few moments later, Anne brushed yew needles and spring pollen from her sleeve.
She felt someone watching her and glanced around.
No one. Slowly scanning the area, she lifted her gaze, and there, over the high stone wall, loomed adjacent Painswick Court, its stone slate roof and tall chimney stacks rising like an angry hand toward the heavens.
Was someone watching her from one of its upper-story windows?
Or was the nearness of the old house itself, rumored to be haunted, the cause of her unease?
She shivered, her skin prickling with gooseflesh.
Anne quickly walked on, out of the churchyard to St. Mary’s Street, past the market and then down Vicarage Street, passing humble cottages until she reached the Friends meetinghouse. Here she turned right down a narrow track she had enjoyed walking along as a girl.
One side of the path was bordered by a dense thicket of scrubby trees and brush, and the other looked onto a broad valley dotted with wool-drying racks and lofty Beacon Hill beyond.
There she paused to relish the view of the lovely vale draped in twilight.
From the other side of the thicket came the hum of voices in low conversation. Whoever it was probably thought themselves shielded from hearing as well as from sight.
A man said, “You should not have come here.”
A woman’s voice murmured a reply Anne could not hear.
“And you should definitely not stay at Painswick Court.”
Anne turned, attention caught by the name.
“Why not?”
“Shh. Keep your voice down. And you know the answer to that.”
“That’s why you’ve come, is it not?”
“No!” the man insisted. “Nothing good can come of this scheme of yours. Let it lie, I beg of you.”
“How can I? Besides, it’s too late. I . . .”
Anne could not make out the rest of her sentence, but whatever she said caused the man to groan an epithet under his breath.
Silence followed, and thinking they’d moved on, Anne took a step forward.
Snap! A branch cracked beneath her half boots.
Stopping in her tracks, she looked up and found herself peering through a small gap in the foliage.
A man’s face looked in her direction, clearly startled.
Through the narrow tunnel their gazes caught.
With her back to the gap, his shorter companion remained out of sight.
Anne glimpsed the top of a straw bonnet and no more.
A second later, the man turned, apparently leading the woman away. “Come. We shouldn’t discuss this out in the open.”
Anne remained where she was, oddly fearful the man might find a larger opening in the thicket and emerge to confront her. But their footsteps faded.
Heart pounding, Anne turned and retraced her steps, hurrying to leave this deserted track for the busier streets of town and the safety of Yew Cottage.