[CHAPTER VII]
AT THE MIRES
A more God-forsaken-looking place than the Mires it would be impossible to imagine. Even on this glorious day in late August it looked dreary and forbidding. The cluster of stone cottages, half of them roofless, with the inner white-washed walls showing through the jagged gaps where windows and doors had been, straggled round a marsh whose pools of water glistened like scales among tufts of rush and treacherous slimy moss. The hollow was cup-like. There was no ling on its sides, they were covered with a harsh dry bent, through which the breeze swished. In one place this was disfigured by a mound of shaly refuse marking the site of an old coal-pit. Its seams had been exhausted years ago, and the miners now trudged a mile to a shaft on the edge of the firwoods that divided the Hall and Old Lafer. At one end a stream oozed from the rushes and wandered away with a forlorn look over a stratum of clay. The chirping of a grasshopper made the silence more intense. The heat was overpowering.
When Anna left Borlase he drove back a little way, out of sight of the cottages. Anna half ran, half slipped through the bent. Hartas Kendrew's was the cottage from whose chimney the smoke curled. It stood a little apart from the others, and was in good repair. Scilla had even tried to make it cheerful by hanging checked curtains in the windows, and nursing a few pots of geranium and hydrangea on the sills. It seemed to Anna that they gasped for air, flattened as they were against the closed panes. She thought of Old Lafer, cool and sweet, the doors and windows wide open, and the velvety breeze wandering into every corner. Scilla's life seemed now as much cramped as her flowers. From having been a bonny blithe girl, singing about her work at Old Lafer, free from care and responsibility, she was saddened by her husband's absence in prison, and shackled with his father's drunken humours.
Anna reached the edge of the marsh on the side opposite to Kendrew's. So far no one was visible. Now, a figure appeared in the doorway. It was Mrs. Severn. She came towards her, waving her hand as though bidding her remain where she was. Anna did so, gazing at her. She saw in a moment that she walked steadily, and thought she had never looked more handsome. Her incongruity with her surroundings seemed to vanish in the harmony of the silvery green background. She walked slowly, the long black dress she always wore trailing after her, yet half-looped up over one arm, akimbo on her hip. The cameo-like head was held with regal dignity; her dark hair was braided in a knot that would have enchanted a sculptor. The sun seemed to catch and outline every curve of her figure. She was not so pale as usual, and the tinge of colour gave a deep but passionless glow to her eyes, which seemed to light up her face to an extraordinary degree. She fixed them on Anna with the silent mesmerism that always drew speech from any one whom she expected to speak to her. They expressed no emotion beyond an expectation that Anna felt to be sharpened with defiance. Anna, with her fire of indignation kindling every look and gesture, though held in control, was an absolute contrast.
When she was only a few paces away, Anna hurried forward and took her hands. No sooner had she done so than she felt the old love, the old longing to kiss and forgive. She held her at arm's length in a scrutiny from which she banished suspicion and reproach.
'You'll come home with me, Clothilde,' she said.
Mrs. Severn smiled and disengaged her hands.