Four Gardens by Margery Sharp

Author:Margery Sharp [Sharp, Margery]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Dean Street Press
Published: 2021-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

II

The society of Friar’s Green was not large. It comprised a doctor, a parson, a middle-aged landscape-painter R.A., and two maiden ladies who bred Golden Labradors, all of whom Caroline saw in church the first Sunday morning. Their aspect was reassuring; they looked just like people in Morton. Also as in Morton, there was a working party at the Vicarage, where Caroline was soon spending three afternoons a week and paying the usual fourpence for her tea. Here indeed the air blew at first a little coldly; she was aware—not of antagonism—but of a critical, still charitably suspended judgment which was nevertheless predisposed to come down heavily on the wrong side. She was the New Rich. She was the wealthy Mrs. Smith—how extraordinary it seemed to her!—who had stepped into Mrs. Cornwallis’s shoes. That she wore them at all was a misdemeanor; if she trod in them too proudly—or if with an affected humility—on would go the black cap. All this Caroline felt as the Vicar’s wife first came forward to greet her: she saw the Labrador spinsters politely aloof, the Doctor’s wife faintly smiling, at the other end of the table women from the cottages looking curiously over their work. Caroline smiled, sat, and accepted wool for a pair of bedsocks. When the talk turned on the inefficiency of the old sewing-machine she resisted the impulse to offer a new one; as she had previously resisted impulses to buy a Golden Labrador from the Misses Brodrick and a landscape from the R.A. But she promised flowers for the church, and offered the use of her garden and boat-house to such Boy Scouts as wished to practice life-saving. By the end of the afternoon the Vicar’s wife at least had lost her constraint. She promised to call the next day; and though this in a sense was unnecessary, Caroline did not dissuade her. There was a good deal she wanted to say and the Vicar’s wife seemed the right person to say it to.

“First of all,” began Caroline—she had been rehearsing the speech all day—“I want you to let me know all that Mrs. Cornwallis did for the village and in the church, and how much of it I can do instead. It’s not”—in spite of herself she flushed a little—“it’s not that I want to—to take her place; but I don’t want Friar’s Green to lose by our coming. I could see at the working party—”

“Oh, no!” cried the Vicar’s wife rashly.

“Not you,” said Caroline, “but it’s only natural. So I want you to tell me things.”

The Vicar’s wife looked slightly embarrassed.

“As far as Mrs. Cornwallis is concerned—she had a pew of course—”

(“I’m Chapel, really,” put in Caroline frankly.)

“—but, apart from that I don’t think she did anything at all.”

The statement seemed to take them both by surprise—Caroline because she had expected something so different, the Vicar’s wife because she had never before put it into words.

“Well!” said Caroline.

“She once lent the gardens for a treat, but the children broke a rose-bush.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.