The Bridge of Years by May Sarton

Author:May Sarton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497685529
Publisher: Open Road Media

PART THREE

Autumn: 1936

Chapter I

Mélanie’s head was whirling; she might have had arms and legs of lead, so heavy did she feel when she woke up. But she couldn’t be ill—that was quite impossible with Bo-Bo leaving and so much to be done. And if she couldn’t be ill, she must be well. So she got up even earlier than usual and pampered herself by making a cup of tea before she went out into the garden. She was glad to be out of bed, where she had lain for an hour, wide awake, with a pit of loneliness in her stomach and her head on fire.

Of course it was only right that Bo-Bo should be leaving—the children were grown-up: her work as a governess was finished and they could hardly expect her to stay on as housemaid and cook, which is what it amounted to. But Mélanie, looking out into the garden, lost in mist, felt desolate. It was as if a sister, a close member of her family, were dying.

She unlocked the heavy front door and stood for a moment under the arbor. She shivered, but it was not only the cold breath of the early morning mist that made her shiver, it was the magic of the garden. Everything close to the ground was lost in swirls of white mist, only here and there the shriveled stalk of a Canterbury bell stood above it and quite close to her in the near bed a single deep red rose, like the rose in a fairy tale, a rose with a spell in it, had flowered in the night. The bushes, the trees had melted away into ghosts of themselves. This was one garden, but then when she lifted her eyes there was a whole other garden high up in the air where the sun caught the treetops—a clear, brilliant garden of leaves and the light on pale yellow and deep gold. The mystery and the cold breath of autumn vanished up there into a radiant morning.

The goats and ducks heard her sabots on the path and interrupted these reflections with loud whinnies and quacks. “I’m coming. I’m coming, my beasties,” she murmured, clattering across the stone court behind the kitchen to start the business of the day.

An hour later the autumn ravages in the garden were fully illuminated in the sun and Mélanie was hard at work stacking the bean poles, with piles of rotting stalks and leaves around her. Every time she stopped to catch her breath she saw something else that needed doing—it was time to rake the leaves and cover the flower beds before the hard frosts. Perhaps one of the children would find time for it this week. They did their best to help her, but now they were all three studying very hard at school—and Croll had died the year before. Poor old Croll. He really died of grief because he had had to stop working. His rheumatism kept him in bed. It was autumn then too.

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.