Father (British Library Women Writers) by von Arnim Elizabeth

Author:von Arnim, Elizabeth [von Arnim, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2020-09-10T00:00:00+00:00

Next morning she went back to Gower Street.

Very early it was when she locked the cottage door behind her, left the key at Mrs. Jones’s on her way through the village, and set out on the long tramp to Amberton.

This time she had nothing to carry, and her feet weren’t aching. Also, she now knew the way. So that, the day being young and cool, having paused a moment to scowl at the vicarage of Benendon St. Michael as she passed its inhospitable gate, she briskly stepped out, did the remaining six miles in two hours, caught the London express, and was home by eleven.

Home? No, this wasn’t home any more, she thought thankfully, opening the door with her latchkey and going into the narrow, gloomy hall, which looked narrower and gloomier than ever after the vast brightness of the Sussex downs. The house was in much the same confusion of displaced furniture and rolled-up carpets as when she left it the Friday before, little progress having been made during her absence; but what progress had she not, during this time, made herself! Unexpected and developing indeed had been her experiences since last she stood on that doormat. In the short space of a single week-end she had ripened, she felt, considerably; and if the spinster who let herself in at the Gower Street door was different from the one who had let herself out of it three days earlier, it was chiefly, she candidly admitted, because of James. He had mellowed her. Difficult to make head or tail of as it was, there was no doubt that the result of her brief association with him was that she was mellowed.

“Minnie, I’m mellowed!” she all but called down the kitchen stairs, when what she meant to say was, “I’m back.”

Minnie was beginning to prepare lunch, and the familiar smell of the sort of lunch one had on Mondays came up the stairs to meet her, offending a nose which had so lately been smelling only roses and fruit. Not that it mattered. Nothing in that house mattered to her any more. She could regard it now, its furniture, its gloom, its endless memories of work and silence, with the benevolent, slightly amused indulgence a newly-released spirit, about to depart and dwell for ever in light, may be presumed to feel at the sight of the discarded body of its death.

“I’m home, Minnie,” she called, suppressing that other announcement; and then corrected herself, and said, “I mean, I’m back.”

“Found something to suit you, Miss?” asked Minnie, coming out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs.

“Yes, everything,” said Jen, smiling down at her. “Just think—I’m in a cottage already. I’ve taken it. It’s mine. I’ve been living in it ever since I saw you last.”

And Minnie, glowing with justified pride in the efficiency and promptness of her Churchgoer , said, “Didn’t I tell you, Miss Jen? There’s nobody like the clergy when it comes to giving one a warm welcome.”

And Jen, her face becoming suddenly thoughtful, was obliged to agree that that was true.

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