Free The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge Page B

know if there’s anything we can do.” Her face was suffused with crimson but she had got it out.
    “That’s kind of you,” said Mary, “but I’m settling down well and loving this house.”
    “Loving it?” whispered Jean.
    “Did you know my cousin Miss Lindsay?” asked Mary, and was instantly aware that she had said the wrong thing, for Jean had begun to tremble again and was groping for her glasses. She was terrified of Cousin Mary, she thought, and she’s still terrified of the house. “Let’s go out into the garden,” she said. “We can go out through the conservatory. We won’t have to go back to the hall. The window opens almost down to the floor. Look, I’ll help you.”
    But Jean resisted her helping hand for a moment while she groped in the basket for the pot of blackberry jelly. “For you,” she said, holding it out. “I made it myself. Gladys helped me.”
    “Now I really feel I’ve come to live in the country,” said Mary gratefully, as she put it on the mantelpiece. “There are trees and birds in London but not blackberries. I can’t wait for the autumn in Appleshaw. Blackberries and the smell of bonfires, and the cherry trees scarlet along the edge of the woods.”
    “No, no!” cried Jean. “You must not hurry like that. I mean, it’s spring. Each year, I mean—I want—but I can’t do it!” She ended on a note of despair.
    “You mean each year not to let the spring go racing by while you think of something else. You form your resolution and having formed it you look up and it’s summer.”
    Jean nodded in astonishment and relief, as Mary helped her through the window. Mary had expressed it for her and the relief was physical as well as mental.
    “The vine grows up through the floor!” cried Mary. This was the first time she had been in the conservatory. The trunk of the old vine grew straight up through the center of the tessellated pavement of dim blue and green and spread out like an umbrella beneath the low domed glass roof. There was nothing else in the conservatory, though a shelf ran around it, waiting for flowers. Scented geraniums, thought Mary, and chrysanthemums in the winter.
    The conservatory door was open and they passed out into the garden, breathless for a moment while the scents and sounds of spring broke over their heads like a wave. Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like a taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her. This morning, for instance, putting on her outdoor shoes in her bedroom to call on the new Miss Lindsay, terror had come upon her. The dread of meeting someone who did not know about her was one of her worst fears. They would try to talk to her, and she would not know what they were talking about, or if she did know, and she knew more often than people realized, and the answers were lucid in her mind, she would not be able to find the words to give them form. She would see the surprise in the face of the newcomer, the embarrassment, and then the relief with which he effected his escape. And to that fear had been added her terror of The Laurels, and the thing that had happened to her there. She had fumbled helplessly with the knotted laces of her shoes and got in a panic because she could not tie them. Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root. And meanwhile she had not been able to get her shoes laced. She