[CHAPTER II]
LIFE, DEATH AND FRIENDSHIP
Just at that time Henry at Duncombe was thinking very much of his sister. He could not tell why, but she was appearing to him constantly; he saw her three nights in his dreams. In one dream she was in danger, running for her life along a sea road, high above the sea. Once she was shouting to him in a storm and could not make him hear because of the straining and creaking of the trees. During his morning work in the little library he saw her, laughing at him on the lawn beyond the window—Millie as she was years ago, on that day, for instance, when she came back from Paris and astonished them all by her gaiety and was herself astonished by the news of Katherine's unexpected engagement. He could see her now in the old green drawing-room, laughing at them all and shouting into Great-Aunt Sarah's ear-trumpet. "Well, she's in some trouble," he said to himself, looking out at the sun-flecked lawn. "I'm sure she's in trouble."
He wrote to her and to his relief received a letter from her on that same day. She said very little: ". . . Only another week of this place, and I'm not sorry. These last days haven't been much fun. It's so noisy and every one behaves as though a moment's quiet would be the end of the world. Oh, Henry darling, do come up to London soon after I get back, even if it's only for a day. I'm sure your old tyrant will let you off. I ache to see you and Peter again. I want you near me. I'm not a bit pleased with myself. I've turned nasty lately—conceited and vain. You and Peter shall scold me thoroughly. Vi says mother is just the same. . . ."
Well, she was all right. He was glad. He could sink back once more into the strange, mysterious atmosphere of Duncombe, and call with his spirit Christina down to share the mystery with him. He could creep closer to Christina here than real life would ever take him.
Strange and mysterious it was, and touchingly, poignantly beautiful. The wet days of early August had been succeeded by fine weather—English fine weather that was not certain from hour to hour, and gave therefore all the pleasure of unexpected joy.
"Why! there's the sun!" they would all cry, and the towers and the little square pond, and the Cupid, and the hedges cut into peacocks and towers and sailing-ships, would all be caught up into a sky so relentlessly blue that it surely never again would be broken; in a moment, white bolster clouds came slipping up; the oak and the mulberry tree, whose shadows had been black velvet patterns on the shrill green of the grass, seemed to spread out their arms beneath the threatening sky as though to protect their friends from the coming storm. But the storm was not there—only a few heavy drops and then the grey horizon changed to purple, the cloud broke like tearing paper, and in a few moments the shadows were on the lawn again and the water of the square pond was like bright-blue glass.
In such English weather the square English house was its loveliest. The Georgian wing with its old red brick, its square stout windows, was material, comfortable, homely, speaking of thick-set Jacobean squires and tankards of ale, dogs and horses, and long pipes of heavy tobacco. The little Elizabethan wing, where were the chapel and the empty rooms, touched Henry as though it were alive and were speaking to him. This old part of the house had in its rear two rooms that were still older, a barn used now as a garage with an attic above it that was Saxon.
The house was unique for its size in England—so small and yet displaying so perfectly the three periods of its growth. It gained also from its setting because the hills rose behind the garden and the little wood like grey formless presences against the sky, and on the ridge below the house the village, with cottages of vast age and cottagers who seemed to have found the secret of eternal life, slumbered through the seasons, carrying on the tradition of their fathers and listening but dimly to the changes that were coming upon the world beyond them. The village had done well in the War as the cross in front of the Post Office testified, but the War had changed its life amazingly little.