Free The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge Page A

and again how you loved them as a child.”
    “Did she part with many things?” asked Mary.
    “She had to, dear. As time went on, her money didn’t go so far. She sold a lot of silver and valuable china, and the furniture in the spare rooms, and the chest in the hall.”
    “Didn’t her lawyer get her an annuity?”
    “He wanted to, but she wouldn’t have it.”
    “But why not?” Mrs. Baker hesitated and with pity and compunction Mary answered her own question. “Because she wanted to leave something to me, a child she’d only seen once. I’m ashamed, Mrs. Baker.”
    “Well, dear, don’t take on. It’s a queer thing, but when I came to look at the little things, before I put them away, it seemed to me that there were a few missing. I couldn’t say which they were, for I’ve never got the little things rightly in my head, but I thought there were one or two gone. It worried me.”
    “Perhaps Miss Lindsay gave them away.”
    “It wouldn’t have been like her to do that, when she was keeping them for you.”
    There was a curious twanging sound, fumbling and a little eerie, and both women looked at each other. Then light dawned on Mrs. Baker. “Someone trying to ring the bell,” she said. “That bell needs seeing to,” and she left the room.
    Mary followed her, for the weak twanging had almost sounded like a cry for help, and together she and Mrs. Baker dragged the screeching garden door back over the paving stones. Outside on the steps stood the woman whom she had seen coming out of the post office yesterday. She was dressed in the same clothes and carried a very large basket in which reposed a very small pot of blackberry jelly, and she was trembling so violently that the pot rattled in the basket. “It’s Miss Anderson from the vicarage, come to see you,” said Mrs. Baker in encouraging tones, adding very low for Mary’s private enlightenment, “Poor dear.”
    “Do please come in,” said Mary. She had just been thinking of Cousin Mary, and now for a strange moment this woman seemed to be her. Yet there was not the slightest resemblance. She took her visitor’s arm and they walked together up the paved path. At the front door Jean recoiled, as though at the mouth of the pit, and Mrs. Baker made encouraging noises behind her. “It
is
dark,” said Mary, “but it’s light in the parlor, and I’ve a fire there.” She thought briefly that it had never occurred to her to call the paneled room the drawing room or the sitting room. It was the parlor and nothing else.
    She installed Jean by the fire in one of the little gilt chairs, mentally adding two small armchairs of suitable period and the repairing of the doorbell to her list of priorities, and Mrs. Baker fetched fresh tea. This seemed to revive Jean, though she had to hold her cup with both hands, and presently, while Mary talked about the beauty of Appleshaw, she set her cup down and removed her dark glasses. She sat facing the light and Mary could see her face, the most vulnerable face she had ever seen, with a taut look of suffering about the mouth. The eyes, blue and beautiful, were not the eyes of the woman whom Jean appeared to be, and looking into them Mary was aware of intelligence and courage. She realized with deep respect that this woman had always done what she had to do and faced what she had to face. If many of her fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage. The dark glasses, Mary felt, were more of a psychological protection than a physical one. The lack of coordination between what she was in herself, and the jarred mechanism of body and nerves, had so deeply shamed her that she must hide. But with Mary she had taken her glasses off. Had she known that she had done it? Mary was afraid to speak lest she frighten them on again.
    “My brother,” said Jean, “wanted me to bid you welcome. He’s the Vicar here, you know. He’ll be coming to see you soon. He wanted to