‘Yes,’ said Henry. Surely if Lolly were business woman enough to grasp that so clearly, she would in time see reason on other matters.
‘Very well. You will sell them immediately——’
‘Lolly!’
‘—and reinvest the money in something quite unspeculative and unsound, like War Loan, that will pay a proper dividend. I shall still have enough to manage on. I shan’t be as comfortable as I thought I should be. I shan’t be able to afford the little house that I hoped for, nor the donkey. But I shan’t mind much. It will matter very little to me when I’m there.’
She stopped. She had forgotten Henry, and the unpleasant things she meant to say to him. She had come to the edge of the wood, and felt its cool breath in her face. It did not matter about the donkey, nor the house, nor the darkening orchard even. If she were not to pick fruit from her own trees, there were common herbs and berries in plenty for her, growing wherever she chose to wander. It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.
As she left the room she turned and looked at Henry. Such was her mood, she could have blessed him solemnly, as before an eternal departure. But he was sitting with his back to her, and did not look round. When she had gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
Ten days later Laura arrived at Great Mop. After the interview with Henry she encountered no more opposition. Caroline knew better than to persist against an obstinacy which had worsted her husband, and the other members of the family, their surprise being evaporated, were indifferent. Titus was a little taken aback when he found that his aunt’s romantic proposals were seriously intended. He for his part was going to Corsica. ‘A banal mountainous spot,’ he said politely, ‘compared with Buckinghamshire.’
The day of Laura’s arrival was wet and blusterous. She drove in a car from Wickendon. The car lurched and rattled, and the wind slapped the rain against the windows; Laura could scarcely see the rising undulations of the landscape. When the car drew up before her new home, she stood for a moment looking up the village street, but the prospect was intercepted by the umbrella under which Mrs. Leak hastened to conduct her to the porch. So had it rained, and so had the wind blown, on the day when she had come on her visit of inspection and had taken rooms in Mrs. Leak’s cottage. So, Henry and Caroline and their friends had assured her, did it rain and blow all through the winter in the Chilterns. No words of theirs, they said, could describe how dismal and bleak it would be among those unsheltered hills. To Laura, sitting by the fire in her parlour, the sound of wind and rain was pleasant. ‘Weather like this,’ she thought, ‘would never be allowed in London.’
The unchastened gusts that banged against the side of the house and drove the smoke down the chimney, and the riotous gurgling of the rain in the gutters were congenial to her spirit. ‘Hoo! You daredevil,’ said the wind. ‘Have you come out to join us?’ Yet sitting there with no companionship except those exciting voices she was quiet and happy.
Mrs. Leak’s tea was strong Indian tea. The bread-and-butter was cut in thick slices, and underneath it was a crocheted mat; there was plum jam in a heart-shaped glass dish, and a plate of rather heavy jam-puffs. It was not quite so good as the farmhouse teas she remembered in Somerset, but a great deal better than teas at Apsley Terrace.