Free The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson Page A

felled, townspeople gawping at the houses of one's friends. 'Isn't there any hope that he will see his duty and marry?'
    Miss Somerville shrugged. 'I don't know. Livy saw him at the theatre twice with a girl before he went abroad, but she didn't think he was serious.'
    'He never is serious,' said Lady Rothley bitterly. 'Anyone would think one married for pleasure.' She was silent, remembering the horror of her bridal night with Rothley. But she had not screamed or run away, she had endured it, as later she endured the boredom of his weekly visits to her bed, looking at the ceiling, thinking of her embroidery or her dogs. And now there were children and a future. Oak trees remained unfelled, parkland was tended because girls like her gritted their teeth. 'It is for England that one marries,' she said. 'For the land.'
    'Yes, I know. But what more can we do?' said Frances wearily. 'You know how many people have tried…'
    There was no need to finish the sentence. Girls of every shape and size had ridden through the gates of Bowmont on their thoroughbreds, climbed healthily up the turf path with their tennis rackets, smiled at Quin across dance floors in white organdie, in spangled tulle…
    'You don't think he might be interested in someone who understood his work?'
    'Not a student!' said Frances, horrified.
    'No… but… I don't know; he's so clever, isn't he?' said Lady Rothley, trying to be tolerant. 'Only, I can't see a decently brought up girl knowing about old bones, so I suppose it's no good.' She rose to her feet, re-knotted her scarf. 'Anyway, give the dear boy my love - but tell him absolutely no more refugees?
    Left alone, Miss Somerville took her secateurs and her trug and went through to the West Terrace, to the sheltered side of the house away from the sea. For a moment, she paused to look at the orderly fields stretching away to the blue humpbacks of the Cheviots: the oats and barley, green and tall, the freshly shorn flock of Leicesters grazing in the Long Meadow. The new manager Quin had engaged was doing well.
    Then she crossed the lawn, opened a door in the high wall - and entered a different world. The sun ceased to be merely brightness and became warmth; bumble bees blundered about on the lavender; the scent of stock and jasmine came to meet her - and a great quietness as the incessant surge of the sea became the gentlest of whispers.
    'I should hope so,' said Frances firmly to a Tibetan poppy which two days ago had dared to look doubtful, but now unfurled its petals of heavenly blue.
    It was Quin's grandmother, the meek and silent Jane Somerville, who had made the garden. The daughter of a wealthy coal owner from County Durham, she brought the consolations of the Quaker faith to her enforced marriage with the Basher, and she needed them.
    Jane had been two years at Bowmont when, to her own horror and amazement, she rose in the Meeting House at Berwick and found that she had been moved to speak. 'I am going to make a garden,' she said. She never again spoke in Meeting, but the next day she gave orders for the field adjoining the West Lawn to be drained. She travelled to the other side of England to commandeer the old rose bricks of a recently demolished manor house; she planted windbreaks, built walls and brought in lorry loads of loam. The experts told her she was wasting her time; she was too far north, too close to the sea for the kind of garden she had in mind. The Basher, on leave from the navy, was furious. He made scenes; he queried every bill.
    Jane, usually so gentle and acquiescent, took no notice. She sent roses and wisteria and clematis rioting up the walls; she brought in plants from places far colder and more inhospitable than Bowmont: camellias and magnolias from
    China, poppies and primulas from the Atlas mountains - and mixed them with the flowers the villagers grew in their cottage gardens. She set an oak bench against the south wall and flanked it with buddleias for the butterflies - and