I told him I would alight there. He was closing the door, on the point of driving on, when I said to Vi, “Wouldn’t you like to get out as well? The church is worth a visit.”
She gave me her hand and I helped her down. The governess-car went forward to the village inn.
They had been scything the grass in the churchyard and the air was full of its cool fragrance. Dorrie ran off to gather daisies in a corner where it still stood rank and high.
We walked up the path together to the porch and tried the door. It was locked. We turned away into the sunlight, where dog-roses climbed over neglected graves and black-birds fluttered from headstones to bushes, from bushes to the moss-covered surrounding walls.
It was Vi who broke the pleasant silence. “I hope you didn’t mind the man talking.”
“Not at all. I expect I should have told you myself by and by.”
“Your mother must have been very beautiful. I like to think of her. All this country seems so different now I know about her; it was so impersonal before. Was—was she happy afterwards?”
I told her. I told her much more than I realized at the time. So few people had ever cared to hear me talk about her, and for all of them she was something past—dead and gone. My grandmother talked of her as a lottery-ticket; so did the Spuffler; at home we never mentioned her at all. Yet always she had been a real presence in my life. I felt jealous for her; it seemed to me that she must be glad when we, whom she had loved, remembered her with kindness.
Dorrie came back to us with her lap full of flowers. Seeing that we were talking seriously, she seated herself quietly beside us and commenced to weave the flowers into a chain.
The gate creaked. Footsteps came up the path. They paused; seemed to hesitate; came forward again. Behind us they halted. Turning my head, I saw an erect old man, white-haired, standing hat in hand, his back toward us, regarding a weather-beaten grave.