When she was in the house again she had a colloquy with the cook about the dinner for that evening. As Esme Darlington had given up an engagement in London to come to Little Cloisters, her dinner must be something special. She told the cook so in her cordial, almost confidential, way, and they “put their heads together” and devised a menu full of attractions. That done she had the day to herself. Dion and Robin would come home some time in the afternoon, and they were all going to have tea together up in the nursery. It might be at half-past four, it might be at half-past five. Till then she was free.
For a moment she thought of going to see some of her friends, of telling Mrs. Dickinson and other adherents of hers that her days in Welsley were numbered. But a reluctance seized her. She felt a desire to be alone. What if instead of saying good-by to Welsley, she said good-by to her dreams in Welsley? She summoned Annie and told her not to let any one in.
“I’m going to spend a quiet day, Annie,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Annie, with an air of intelligent comprehension.
“Though what else any one ever does in old Welsley I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she afterwards remarked to the cook.
“You’re a cockney at ‘eart, Annie,” repeated that functionary. “The country says nothing to you. You want the parks, that’s what you want.”
“Well, I was brought up in ‘em, as you may say,” said Annie, whose father had been a park-keeper, and whose mother and grandmother were natives of Westbourne Grove.
By a quiet day Rosamund meant a day lived through in absolute solitude, a day of meditation in the cloistered garden. She would not have any lunch. Then she would have a better appetite for the nursery tea at which Robin would relate to her all the doings of the greatest day of his life. Precious, precious Robin!
She went down into the garden.
It was a mistily bright day of November. The sun shone through a delicate veil. The air was cold but not sharp. Neither autumn nor winter ruled. It seemed like a day which had slipped into an interstice between two seasons, a day that was somehow rare and exceptional, holding a faint stillness that was strange. There was in it something of the far away. If a fairy day can be cold, it was like a fairy day. On such a day one treads lightly and softly and at moments feels almost as if out of the body.