"'Farther than France. But not a word, Harry. Not a word of it. But I wish I could tell you everything. I can't. I mustn't. I've given my promise. I've got to keep faith. All one has to do in the world is to love and keep faith. But I wish mother had let me help wash-up to-night, my last night. She hates me. She'll hate me more yet.... I wonder if I'll keep awake all night or cry myself to sleep. Let's race as far as the goods-station, Harry, and then walk home.'"
§ 5
"The next night Fanny did not come home at all. As the hours passed and the emotion of my family deepened I began to realise the full enormity of the disaster that had come upon our home."
Sarnac paused and smiled. "Never was there so clinging a dream. I am still half Harry Mortimer Smith and only half myself. I am still not only in memory but half in feeling also that young English barbarian in the Age of Confusion. And yet all the time I am looking at my story from our point of view and telling it in Sarnac's voice. Amidst this sunshine.... Was it really a dream? ... I don't believe I am telling you a dream."
"It isn't a bit like a dream," said Willow. "It is a story—a real story. Do you think it was a dream?"
Sunray shook her head. "Go on," she said to Sarnac. "Whatever it is, tell it. Tell us how your family behaved when Fanny ran away."
"You must keep in mind that all these poor souls were living in a world of repressions such as seem almost inconceivable now. You think they had ideas about love and sex and duty different from our ideas. We are taught that they had different ideas. But that is not the truth; the truth is that they had no clear, thought-out ideas about such things at all. They had fears and blank prohibitions and ignorances where we have ideas. Love, sex, these were things like the enchanted woods of a fairy tale. It was forbidden even to go in. And—none of us knew to what extent—Fanny had gone in.
"So that evening was an evening of alarm deepening to a sort of moral panic for the whole household. It seemed to be required of my family that they should all behave irrationally and violently. My mother began to fret about half-past nine. 'I've tole 'er, once for all,' she said, partly to herself but also for my benefit. 'It's got to stop.' She cross-examined me about where Fanny might be. Had she said anything about going on the pier? I said I didn't know. My mother fumed and fretted. Even if Fanny had gone on the pier she ought to be home by ten. I wasn't sent to bed at the usual hour so that I saw my father and uncle come in after the public-house had closed. I forget now why my uncle came in to us instead of going straight home, but it was not a very unusual thing for him to do so. They were already disposed to despondency and my mother's white face and anxious tiding deepened their gloom.
"'Mortimer,' said my mother, 'that gal of yours 'as gone a bit too far. Sarf-pars' ten and she isn't 'ome yet.'
"''Aven't I tole 'er time after time,' said my father, 'she's got to be in by nine?'