The bus, moving more easily now, like a horse approaching its stable, swept along a woodland road, turned a corner and stopped.
‘God’s Blessing crossroads!’ intoned Perce.
Mrs Cossett, Mrs Hale and Miss Faraday rose. The stranger did likewise, bumped his head sharply, and followed them. The spaniel came briskly after him. The bus moved away.
The stranger looked about him with interest. God’s Blessing, no flaunting village, did not display all its attractions to the first casual glance. Three very ugly cottages and a small general shop were in sight, while across the road a school built of bricks which had once been red peered at him from narrow windows of an ecclesiastical appearance. Before him he saw with pleasure a village green — a rough triangle of grass on which an enormous sow and a number of piglets were rooting happily. At the end of the green, a group of splendid elms looked down with well-bred disdain on a long and hideous building of corrugated iron. The stranger sighed with complete satisfaction, turned, and met the concerted gaze of three pairs of eyes.
Miss Faraday blushed hotly yet again, murmured a fluttering farewell to her companions and was gone. The two matrons, built of sterner stuff, held their ground. This man had broken into their conversation, had contradicted them, had filled their minds with raging curiosity. No power on earth should move them until they had seen his going.
‘Nice weather,’ said Mrs Cossett to Mrs Hale.
‘But hot for the time of year,’ said Mrs Hale to Mrs Cossett.
With maddening deliberation, the stranger filled a blackened pipe and swung his rucksack to his back.
‘Can you,’ he said politely, ‘tell me the shortest way to Corpse Path Cottage?’
There was a heavy pause.
‘Corpse Path Cottage?’ echoed Mrs Cossett in a hollow voice.
‘Corpse Path Cottage.’
‘Follow that lane,’ said Mrs Cossett, pointing. ‘Past the white house on the corner, to your left through the next field gate. But . . .’
‘But what do I want with Corpse Path Cottage? Well,’ said the stranger pleasantly, ‘my name is Endicott. Not Endalott, or even Bendalot. Just plain Endicott. I am, in fact, the loony—’
Mrs Hale uttered a hen like sound.
‘—and Corpse Path Cottage, for good or ill, belongs to me.’
CHAPTER II
AMY FARADAY PRANCED ALONG the lane, not from haughtiness of spirit but from mortification of the flesh. The sudden heat conspired with a pair of new and unfriendly shoes to give her pain. And apart from these bodily pangs, her face still burned with embarrassment. Recalling the way in which she had so lately gaped at that impossible stranger, she wondered at herself. A school girl could not have stood more unashamedly at gaze; not that school girls did such things any more, she reflected, wincing as a particularly virulent stab assailed her suffering feet. They moved, these children, straight from infancy into a devastating assurance and poise. She had never known what it was to have poise, she reflected sadly; she looked back on a dreary procession of years through which she had dithered and tripped over her own words, agonizingly conscious of appearing as foolish to others as to herself. But even she should have known better than to stare at That Man as she had. Mrs Cossett, Mrs Hale and herself; three idiotic faces all in a row, like three cows staring over a hedge. No wonder he had grinned in that supercilious way. No wonder.
Above the meadow to her right a lark mounted, singing as it went, a dancing brown speck against the blue. Miss Faraday thought suddenly that it was folly to trouble her head over a man whom it was unlikely that she would ever set eyes on again. Here she was, missing the beauty of this perfect spring day, partly through her own folly, partly through these accursed shoes. The past she could not recall, but with the shoes, at least, she might deal. Pausing, in a dark and secret manner, she looked over her shoulder. No fearful fiend did close behind her tread; she saw only the lane, sun dappled, fringed with green, and empty. She limped to the grass verge, set down her bag, seated herself and removed her shoes.
Like prisoners all unused to freedom, her feet in the first moments of release protested more violently than before, then the pain receded in a wave and a heavenly relief took its place. She stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes. The shabby tweed skirt rucked itself in an abandoned manner above her knees. Overhead the lark still sang.
She thought how her mother’s heart would have been gladdened by such a day as this. The first unfolding of spring she had always taken as a personal and delightful gift; it was a joy which had never forsaken her, even when the time had come that she could no longer creep around the garden to discover the first daffodil — the grape hyacinths, patches of heaven against the grass. It was said that you ceased mourning for the dead, thought Miss Faraday, with desolation closing coldly around her heart — that time must needs bring the balm of forgetfulness. Yet how could this be, when the simplest sight, sound or scent held power to remind you of the past so vividly that each time you lost them all over again? She had not wept in the presence of others when it would have been fitting and right to do so; at her mother’s grave she had not shed a tear. Now, because the winter was past and a lark sang, her eyes pricked, and the scene before her became a blur of green and gold.
She put her knuckles to her eyes in a childish gesture and called herself to order. It was time that she ceased sitting at the roadside like a statue of melancholy and put on her shoes. Delaying for a space the evil hour, she regarded them coldly — ugly, stout and serviceable, and wondered as she had often done before at the malign fate which made shoes all yielding comfort in the shop yet allowed them to change from Jekyll to Hyde once money was paid and the die cast. Well, pain or no pain, their proud spirit must needs be broken, since even in God’s Blessing one did not go barefoot. She bent forward.
With a sudden mighty crackling of twigs, a black dog burst through the hedge and uttered a loud bark almost in her ear. Surprised and confounded, Miss Faraday sprang to her feet. This, as she instantly discovered, was ill advised. She trod on a sharp stone, sat down suddenly where the grass verge was not, and disappeared into the ditch. The spaniel, greatly disconcerted at such behaviour, and vaguely conscious that he had sinned, barked continuously.
‘Quiet, you noisy devil,’ said Mark Endicott, swinging along the lane. ‘What the—!’
His astonished gaze had fallen on the shoes and the shopping bag at the roadside. As he stared, Miss Faraday, like Venus from the waves, rose and confronted him. Her hat was over one ear and decorated by a long trail of bramble. Her face was scarlet with anger and mortification. She recognized him and closed her eyes as if in prayer.
‘Good Lord, it’s the rabbit,’ said Endicott, moving to her assistance. ‘There we go. Up she comes, like a daisy.’
Held under the armpits in a grip of steel, Miss Faraday did, indeed, come up. For this assistance she felt no gratitude; the bitter resentment of the meek filled her heart. To her inflamed imagination this redheaded lunatic with his squint, his rucksack and his spaniel seemed to pervade God’s Blessing like a foul smell. A woman could not so much as rest without his appearing, it seemed, and first inciting his dog to deeds of violence and then calling his victims’ names. Rabbit, indeed. I would like to bite him. Hard, thought Amy, and after a backward glance, seated herself in majestic silence and waited for him to remove himself.
‘What happened?’ asked Endicott, apparently all unconscious of offence.
‘I was resting. That dog came bursting through the hedge. I was startled.’
‘And base over apex she fell, eh?’ Endicott laughed heartily. ‘You aren’t hurt, I hope? And fortunately the ditch was dry.’
‘I am not hurt. And the ditch, as you say, was dry.’
‘Well, I can only say that I’m sorry it happened. If there is anything I can do—’
‘Nothing, thank you.’ Only for God’s sake take yourself off, she added furiously to herself.
‘Not give you a brush down, or help you on
with your shoes? Pinch, do they?’
The much-tried Amy folded her lips tightly and shook her head.
‘I could never understand women wearing tight shoes,’ said Endicott conversationally.
‘Mine,’ said Amy in a suffocated voice, ‘are not tight. I twisted my ankle a little way back.’
‘Oh, bad luck. Which one?’
‘Both. That is, it was not so much a twist as a slight sprain. It is better now.’
‘Sure? Then I’ll say cheerio. To our next merry meeting!’
‘Goodbye,’ said Amy.
She waited until man and dog were out of sight before wrestling with her shoes.
‘It’s all your fault,’ she told them bitterly. ‘And, of course, it would be that — that oaf, and his mad dog.’ She tied up the laces, tugging them ferociously. ‘What possessed me to tell those idiotic lies? And I believe he was laughing like a hyena the whole time.’ She stood up, shaking herself vigorously to remove the vegetable matter which clung to her. ‘Rabbit! At least, thank God, I’ve seen the last of him!’
* * *
Mark Endicott, continuing his way with the source of Miss Faraday’s discomfiture pacing virtuously at his heels, recalled their encounter with pleasure. The lady, so meek and insignificant as his companion in the bus, had worked up quite a healthy anger on their second meeting. It was difficult to appear dignified when draped like a bacchante with clinging vines, especially when the shoes which did not pinch had been cast aside, but the effort, reflected Mark critically, had been highly praiseworthy. His name, as far as she was concerned, was most undoubtedly mud. He wondered how near a neighbour of his she was likely to be and looked inquisitively at the house he was now passing. No Corpse Path Cottage bought by a loony here; prim and white, it stood back from the lane, the patches of flower-bordered lawn before it veiled demurely by hawthorn hedges, and only visible from the green wicket gate. The spotted muslin curtain twitched to no enquiring fingers; no peering eyes looked forth to see the passing of a stranger. He called his dog and passed on. And around the bend, he came upon a decrepit field gate hanging from one hinge, which told him that if Mrs Cossett and Mrs Hale had directed him truthfully, he was in sight of his journey’s end.
Before him was a large field, hummocky and thick with thistles. A deeply rutted track led across it to a hazel coppice which beckoned pleasantly enough to a weary traveller, hinting of drifts of bluebells, and the clean scents of spring. Endicott did not heed it, he was looking at the depth of the ruts, and imagining what the clay soil would be like after rain. Well, he had wanted solitude — had, in fact, paid through the nose to get it — and must expect some slight drawbacks in exchange. Nor had he a wife to shudder at the habitation he had chosen.
A few yards to his left, the chimneys of his purchase, apparently sprouting like fungi from the soil, were all that told of the glories awaiting him. He marched purposefully along the rutted patch and looked down upon his domain.
Corpse Path Cottage might well have been named Toad in the Hole. Why any man had been moved to build in the depression so oddly dimpling the surface of the field was a mystery; unless the answer lay in the fact that he had utilized the piece of earth most difficult to cultivate. Not that the rest of the field showed signs of having paid for working; Endicott was country born and looked on it with a knowledgeable eye. A miserable patch, he thought, with a grudging, miserly air — not that it was any affair of his. Corpse Path Cottage and the saucer in which it stood was the extent of his purchase. And quite enough too, he thought, as he walked towards it, half moved by a boyish excitement, half wondering at his own folly.
The cottage was surrounded by a hedge, straggling and neglected, but proudly flaunting its new spring finery. The wicket gate had once been green, it checked under his impatient hand, and he was forced to lift it over the weed-strewn gravel. The spaniel shot ahead of him, quivering with excitement; Endicott walked slowly up the few feet of path which led to the front door, pausing there for a moment. And once again in his heart, he paid tribute to that redoubtable pair Mrs Cossett and Mrs Hale, who, whatever their failings, spoke no more than the truth.
The cottage was constructed with great simplicity in the fashion of a child’s drawing, and with as little regard for straight lines, since the solid mud walls had bulged ominously under the attacks of sun and rain. There were two-minute windows up and two down, with a door and a decrepit ivy-covered porch between. The thatched roof was blackened with age and as dilapidated as a deserted bird’s nest. The right-hand upper window had lost two panes of glass out of four, the left swung raffishly on broken hinges. Endicott nodded pensively to himself and wandered around the house. He found the back to be less ornate than the front, possessing a door but only one window, and this was covered with perforated zinc. The flourishing patch of deeply-rooted weeds which the house agent, blessed with simple faith, had described as a large and well stocked garden, spread over the slope behind the house. Not far away stood a kind of wooden sentry-box, leaning slightly, as if the victim of repeated assaults.
‘All the usual offices,’ said Endicott with a hollow laugh. ‘No, God help us, though — what about water?’
His search was rewarded when he stubbed his toe painfully on some hard substance masked by a luxuriant growth of nettles. He spoke shortly and bent to investigate. The wooden lid moved with reluctance, but at length he gazed down on his own face, mirrored like an unbeautiful Narcissus in a dark circle. The well was surprisingly small, but the level of water was high. Endicott, rising with green stains on the knees of his corduroys, reflected that this was to the good, since he was apparently expected to dip out the water by hand.
Feeling in his pocket for the key, he made for the front door. The dog suddenly darted past him, barking loudly. A young man who was on his hands and knees beside the path leapt up, looking surprised and displeased.
‘Well, well,’ said Endicott, ‘our first visitor.’
‘Who the devil are you?’ demanded the young man, scowling.
Endicott raised his brows. ‘I,’ he said, with simple pride, ‘am the owner of this charming bijou residence set in surroundings of rural beauty, having large grounds, usual offices, and own water. Name of Endicott. What can I do for you?’
Under his quizzical gaze, the young man coloured. He was extremely good looking with a close ripple in his fair hair, and blue eyes matched, as Endicott did not fail to note, the blue sports shirt under the tweed jacket. His teeth were white and even and his lips very red. Endicott found a name for him and spoke it to his immortal soul.
‘Er — as a matter of fact, it is what can I do for you?’ said his visitor, who appeared to be remarkably ill at ease. ‘We — that is, my mother — heard that the cottage was sold. Being at a loose end, I thought I might stroll round in case you’d arrived to see if we could lend a hand. Neighbourly, and all that.’
He gained confidence by the end of his speech and smiled with a flash of white teeth.
‘Neighbourly?’ asked Endicott, rather apprehensively. ‘Would yours be the white house at the bend of the lane?’
‘Not that, no. That belongs to Miss Faraday — school-marm, very prim, meek and mild. We live farther on — my name is Marlowe, incidentally, Brian Marlowe — and our abode is beyond the village on the corner of the main road. If such you can call it.’
‘Ah! Not close neighbours, then,’ said Endicott, with unmannerly satisfaction.
‘All part of God’s Blessing, old boy. God’s Blessing!’ repeated Marlowe, his smile fading and his tone not a benediction. ‘“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!” And how!’
‘It would seem,’ said Endicott, ‘that God’s Blessing does not meet with your approval.’
‘It won’t with yours,’ said Marlowe, ‘unless you happen to care for tittle tattle and petty scandal and peering eyes wherever you go. I don’t know what brought you here and it’s none of my damned business, but if your idea was to find peace and quiet — brother, you’ve
had it! Quiet, perhaps, but the quiet of a dirty pool with nasty things creeping under the slime—’
He broke off suddenly and attempted to smile, but the too handsome face was twisted. The hand with which he smoothed back his hair was shaking.
‘As bad as that?’ observed Endicott placidly. ‘A man can always get out.’
‘How right you are.’ Marlowe laughed. ‘Sorry for the outburst. I had rather a thick night. Forget it.’
Endicott nodded. All very fine and large, but what was this matinee idol after? The line about a neighbourly call was scarcely good enough. In any case, he had seen quite as much as he wanted of Brian Marlowe for the time being.
‘I must be looking over my domain,’ he said.
‘Yes. Sure there’s nothing I can do? You’re all fixed up?’
‘All fixed up,’ agreed Endicott.
‘In that case, I’ll leave you to it.’
‘Cheerio,’ said Endicott cheerfully, and turned to the door.
‘Cheerio,’ replied Marlowe dismally.
‘“Parting is such sweet sorrow,”’ muttered Endicott to himself and took out his key. Looking back, he saw with exasperation that his visitor still lingered.
‘I’ve just realized,’ said Marlowe, meeting his gaze, ‘that you might be thinking the place was furnished. That old Fairfax wouldn’t leave as much as a stick.’
‘No? It doesn’t matter. My furniture arrives on Monday.’
‘Monday? Then you won’t be sleeping here tonight?’
Endicott stared, half angry, half intrigued. The eagerness in the fellow’s voice was unmistakable.
He said shortly, ‘Why not?’
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