“It is probable that I shall try to make some sort of career for myself in London.
“Perhaps I will write to you, when my new life is settled. Don’t try to see me. I ask you, from my heart, not to do that.
“Kiss Lynette, and make her think the best you can.
“I am sealing this and leaving it here for you with the pictures.
“Eve.”
A great restlessness came upon her when she had completed all these preparations, and she felt a desire to rush out and end the last decisive phase of her life at Fernhill. She hunted up a local time-table, and found that the first train left Basingford at half-past six in the morning. The earliness of the hour pleased her. The valise and bag were not very heavy, and she could walk the two miles to the station before the Basingford people were stirring.
Then a new fear came upon her, the fear that Canterton might still be near, or that he would return. A book that she picked up could not hold her attention, and the old bent cane rocking-chair that she had used so often when she was feeling like a grown child, made her still more restless. She went over the house, reconsidering everything, the clothes laid out on the bed, the furniture she was to leave, and whether it would be worth her while to warehouse the rather ancient walnut-cased piano, with its fretwork and magenta-coloured satin front. She wrote labels, even started an inventory, but abandoned it as soon as she entered her mother’s room.
The watch on her dressing-table told her that it was five-and-twenty minutes to four. Dawn would be with her before long, and the thought of the dawn made the little house seem dead and oppressive. She put on a pair of stout shoes, and, letting herself out into the garden, made her way to the orchard at the back of the house.
It had grown very dark before the dawn, and the crooked apple trees were black outlines against an obscure sky. They made her think of bent, decrepit, sad old men. The grass had been scythed a month ago, and the young growth was wet with dew. Everything was deathly still. Not a leaf moved on the trees. It was like a world of the dead.
She walked up and down for a long while before a vague greyness began to spread along the eastern horizon. A bird twittered. The foliage of the trees changed from black to an intense greyish blue. The fruit became visible—touches of gold, and maroon, and green. Eve could see the dew on the grass, the rust colour of the tiles on the roof, the white frames of the windows. A rabbit bolted across the orchard, and disappeared through the farther hedge.