This is away in the fields—miles!
Pippa Passes.
On the day after Denis left the Bellevue, Dorothea also departed, with her mountain of trunks. She did not see Gardiner again. Louisa paid the bill. The feelings of the rejected lover, who had to make up the account and take the money, deserve mention as being probably unique.
On the second morning after this, Lettice received a letter from her cousin, inclosing a cheque for £20 and an entreaty that she would stay on at the Bellevue. "Send it back, my dear girl, if you don't feel like taking it," Denis wrote, "or call it a loan: I'd much rather you didn't, but I shan't feel hurt if you do. Only remember I don't need the money, and I'd rather spend it this way than any other. I hate to see you looking seedy, and you're not anything like fit yet, you know. Besides, I'd like you and Gardiner to get to know each other. You never would, so long as I was there in the way." A remark which showed that Denis was no fool. Lettice, who had been looking forward to an unpeaceful time in the bosom of her family, accepted the loan with simple gratitude, and stayed. It was easy to take favors from Denis: could higher testimonial be given?
* * * * * * * * *
Bredon was a seaside place without a single villa; just half-a-dozen old cottages and a new church, standing on the verge of the chalk cliffs of Thanet. This church was a building of surprising ugliness, red brick outside, decorated inside with stenciled texts chopped up like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The east window had paper transparencies, leaded and colored to imitate glass. The holy table was a table, with obvious legs, having the Ten Commandments above and a Bible upon it—none of your papistical altars. The vicar was a robust Evangelical with a mustache. Denis did not like him very much, but he approved of his doctrine, and attended his church.
Picture him, then, on his first Sunday at home, coming out into the churchyard among that humble congregation (vicar's wife, vicar's man, school children, candidate for coals, village policeman in uniform, one girl—
"And what took her there, do you guess?
Her sweet little duck of a bonnet,
And her new second-hand silk dress")