Free Air and Angels by Susan Hill Page A

philistine. I daresay this is all in character. He will like nothing better than an excuse to take the boy away. He has a dim view of scholarship.’
    ‘Try to be forgiving.’
    But he felt that his heart had been turned tostone and all his hopes and expectations dashed and he could not forgive.
    Only, much later, he was overcome with remorse, and a picture of the young man weeping in his rooms came to his mind with such force that he put on his coat again and returned to college, meaning to see him and speak gentler words.
    Georgiana had said, ‘I hate it when you are so hard. That is not the brother I know.’
    He bowed his head, against the wind and rain, and in acknowledgement of his own lack of charity.
    The boy’s rooms were in darkness, and when he sought out the servant, it was to hear that Eustace Partridge had already left the college.
    Returning to his own desk, he wrote a short, anguished letter of contrition and, after addressing it, walked across the court and into the chapel. There, he kneltin the darkness and poured out his heart, prayed for the young man and his lost future, for the young woman and the unborn child, commended them all to God, and then turned his attention inward and searched his own soul, asking for the grace to have a right judgement in all things, and for the gifts of mercy, of humility and of love.
    And the air seemed to seethe around him with the prayers ofthe centuries, they pressed in upon him, and he felt touched and uplifted by them, and as if his own prayers and his solitary voice had joined others, to become part of the fabric of the building. Relief filled him, and gratitude, he had a more immediate sense of the holy and live-giving than for years, and was profoundly comforted.
    Three days later, he took the train to Norfolk.

13
    OTHER GIRLS sit out on the verandah, sewing, writing diaries, sketching, gossiping, giggling. Drinking sodas and lime. And perhaps, later, a piano lesson.
    But their mothers sit, too, and write endless chits, about that evening’s dinner or the stores, or send messages, by the boy, about dances and dress patterns (for now the young women have arrived from Home, everyone is very much concernedwith fashion, and refurbishing last year’s dresses and ordering new. The returned girls are quizzed relentlessly for details of the latest collars and trimmings, hats and hems, the local dressmakers driven frantic with orders, toil and toil.)
    And other women on other verandahs hasten to reply.
    But Kitty does lessons every morning.
    (And if they have ever disagreed about it, Eleanor has toldLewis that at least if Kitty is educated, she will make a better companion for a husband. Though she knows there is more to it than that.)
    ‘Men don’t want clever women. They don’t want that sort at all.’
    He has been tetchy, at the end of a day, gone off, irritably, to his bath.
    But they talk on, through the open door. Only the boy has got the water at the wrong temperature, or else the soapdoes not lather.
    ‘Kitty is going to marry. It goes against all natural thinking that she should be clever . Let her have fun, be admired. So long as she does not damage her reputation. George Springer’s girls …’
    She lets him grumble on, hearing the regular sluicing of the water down his back.
    And of course, when he is out and dried and dressed, it has all been smoothed away. Then, they agreeabout Kitty after all, discussing George Springer’s buck-toothed daughters, and having higher aspirations for their own.
    For she is all they have.
    Miss Hartshorn is much recovered.
    (Though the terror will disfigure her dreams, sleeping and waking, perhaps for ever.)
    But she is up and about and anxious to put on a brave face and be back to work, at least for the time being.
    So here is Kitty,sitting beside her, listening.
    It was a threatening, misty morning – but mild. We first rested in the large boat-house, then under a furze bush. The wind seized our breath. The Lake was