face, weighing matters up in her mind. She believed in fate, though she preferred to call it the intervention of the Almighty. Was it not possible that the strange crossing of their paths might mean more in the end than a disentanglement—that even for Brock some knot might be unravelled and that bitter introspection broken?
Am I a sentimental, self-deceiving old woman? she wondered impatiently, then, seeing the dark familiar lines of Brock’s face already settling into indifference, she rejected her own fanciful notions.
“Very well,” she said; “but if this is to be an experiment— perhaps for both of you—you must remember that the advantage is yours. Whatever the truth Sabina may discover, never let it be said that you helped her towards unhappiness.”
His smile was the familiar little quirk of the mouth that he used when he detected reproof in her.
“That,” he said with irritating composure, “is not my intention at all.”
He knocked out his pipe on the range with a gesture of finality and took himself into the garden to gaze upon
the graves.
Willie Washer, the boy who periodically worked in the garden, was pulling weeds from the base of a tombstone. He liked to work in the churchyard, although the present vicar did not approve, for Willie was simple and nobody wanted him.
Brock stood watching the ungainly figure with a rough, impatient compassion. They were two of a kind, he reflected bitterly, both incapacitated by nature for the life for which they had been intended.
“Still at it, Willie?” he said, but he spoke gently and the mild blue eyes lifted to his face with trust.
“Yes, Maister Brock,” he replied with his slow, Cornish burr, “I do be terrible fond of they daid ’uns. They’m quiet-like, and
I do be powerful fond of quiet.”
“Yes, Willie, I know.” The mountains were quiet like the dead, with the same impersonal solace. “But you won’t neglect the garden, will you? Mrs. Fennell is not responsible for the churchyard any longer, you know.”
The tow-coloured hair fell over the boy’ s rather vacant eyes.
“Mis’ Fennell likes I should tend the daid,” he said with simple cunning. “She likes for to see they graves neat and tidy from her window.” He went on with what he was doing and took no further notice.
Poor Willie, thought Brock, moving away; he got what he wanted in the end, and Bunny would never turn him away, any
more than she would turn away that little waif upstairs when she had thought things out.
The day that Sabina came downstairs was bright and sunny, and she stood at one of the windows looking out with curiosity at the expanse of moorland which lay beyond the garden. It was desolate, she thought, but there was a certain grandeur in the desolation, and even the tombstones which straggled to the edge of the lawn seemed a natural part of the wild rough country.
“You see, even the weather has changed for you,” Brock said, glancing casually over her shoulder. “If you look you can see the first signs of spring—the green of the bogs, and the change in the heather before it blooms.”
“Spring!” said Sabina with disbelief. “But it’s the middle of winter!”
“It’s nearly March. Spring sometimes comes overnight in this part of the world.”
“Does it? Those hills on the horizon—are they mountains?”
“Hardly! They look like hills from this distance, but when you get close they are simply small rocky peaks, and are known as tors.”
“Tor ... what an odd word! How did they happen?”
“I don’t think anyone knows. A lot of this country was volcanic, of course, which explains the contours, but Cornwall is full of strange things—old tin-workings said to date back to the Phoenicians, hide-outs going back to the smuggling days, and, of course, legends and superstitions without number. Cornish folk are a race apart.”
“Is that why they think of us as foreigners?”
“Probably, though there’s plenty of genuine foreign
Am I a sentimental, self-deceiving old woman? she wondered impatiently, then, seeing the dark familiar lines of Brock’s face already settling into indifference, she rejected her own fanciful notions.
“Very well,” she said; “but if this is to be an experiment— perhaps for both of you—you must remember that the advantage is yours. Whatever the truth Sabina may discover, never let it be said that you helped her towards unhappiness.”
His smile was the familiar little quirk of the mouth that he used when he detected reproof in her.
“That,” he said with irritating composure, “is not my intention at all.”
He knocked out his pipe on the range with a gesture of finality and took himself into the garden to gaze upon
the graves.
Willie Washer, the boy who periodically worked in the garden, was pulling weeds from the base of a tombstone. He liked to work in the churchyard, although the present vicar did not approve, for Willie was simple and nobody wanted him.
Brock stood watching the ungainly figure with a rough, impatient compassion. They were two of a kind, he reflected bitterly, both incapacitated by nature for the life for which they had been intended.
“Still at it, Willie?” he said, but he spoke gently and the mild blue eyes lifted to his face with trust.
“Yes, Maister Brock,” he replied with his slow, Cornish burr, “I do be terrible fond of they daid ’uns. They’m quiet-like, and
I do be powerful fond of quiet.”
“Yes, Willie, I know.” The mountains were quiet like the dead, with the same impersonal solace. “But you won’t neglect the garden, will you? Mrs. Fennell is not responsible for the churchyard any longer, you know.”
The tow-coloured hair fell over the boy’ s rather vacant eyes.
“Mis’ Fennell likes I should tend the daid,” he said with simple cunning. “She likes for to see they graves neat and tidy from her window.” He went on with what he was doing and took no further notice.
Poor Willie, thought Brock, moving away; he got what he wanted in the end, and Bunny would never turn him away, any
more than she would turn away that little waif upstairs when she had thought things out.
The day that Sabina came downstairs was bright and sunny, and she stood at one of the windows looking out with curiosity at the expanse of moorland which lay beyond the garden. It was desolate, she thought, but there was a certain grandeur in the desolation, and even the tombstones which straggled to the edge of the lawn seemed a natural part of the wild rough country.
“You see, even the weather has changed for you,” Brock said, glancing casually over her shoulder. “If you look you can see the first signs of spring—the green of the bogs, and the change in the heather before it blooms.”
“Spring!” said Sabina with disbelief. “But it’s the middle of winter!”
“It’s nearly March. Spring sometimes comes overnight in this part of the world.”
“Does it? Those hills on the horizon—are they mountains?”
“Hardly! They look like hills from this distance, but when you get close they are simply small rocky peaks, and are known as tors.”
“Tor ... what an odd word! How did they happen?”
“I don’t think anyone knows. A lot of this country was volcanic, of course, which explains the contours, but Cornwall is full of strange things—old tin-workings said to date back to the Phoenicians, hide-outs going back to the smuggling days, and, of course, legends and superstitions without number. Cornish folk are a race apart.”
“Is that why they think of us as foreigners?”
“Probably, though there’s plenty of genuine foreign
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