TRIX SEEKS ADVICE
Trix walked along the road from Woodleigh to Byestry in infinitely too happy a state of mind to think consistently of any one thing. She did not even think precisely definitely of the man who had caused this happiness. She knew only that the happiness was there.
The hoar frost still lay thickly on the hedges and the grass by the roadside. The frost finger had outlined the twigs, the blades of grass, the veins of dried leaves with the delicate precision nature alone can achieve. At one spot a tiny rivulet, arrested by the ice-king in its course from a field and down a bank, hung in long glistening icicles from jutting stones and frozen earth. Now and again her own footfall struck sharp and metallic on the hard road. The sky was cloudless, a clear, cold blue. A robin trilled its sweet, sad song to her from a frosted bough.
It was all amazingly like a frosted Christmas card, thought Trix, those Christmas cards her soul had adored in her childish days, and yet which, oddly enough, always brought with them a sentimental touch of sadness. Many things had brought this odd happy sadness to Trix as a child,—the sound of church bells across water, fire-light gleaming in the darkness from the uncurtained windows of some house, the moon shining on snow, a solitary tree backgrounded by a grey sky, or a flight of rooks at sunset.
It was a quarter to eleven or thereabouts when she reached Byestry, and she made her way at once to the little white-washed, thatched presbytery, separated from the road by a small front garden.
Trix walked up the path, and rang the bell. Father Dormer was at home, so his housekeeper announced, and she was shown into a small square room with a round table in the centre, and a vase of bronze chrysanthemums on the table.
Trix sat down and began to try and arrange her ideas. She was by now perfectly well aware that they were not only rather difficult to arrange, but would be infinitely more difficult to express. She sighed once or twice rather heavily, gazing thoughtfully at the bronze chrysanthemums the while, as if seeking inspiration from their feathery brown faces. And then the door opened and Father Dormer came in in his cassock, which he always wore in the morning.
“It is an unexpected pleasure to see you, Miss Devereux,” he said. “Please sit down again.”
Trix sat down, and so did Father Dormer.
“I only arrived yesterday,” said Trix, “and I came over to see you this morning because I wanted to ask you something rather particular.” Trix was feeling just a little nervous, she was also feeling that if she did not open the subject immediately, it was quite possible that she might leave the presbytery without having done so, despite all her preconceived intentions.