their own seriousness was paining them, and impatient because they had stood there looking down on the ugly linoleum when just behind the courtroom doors a woman had proved to all who cared to listen that no matter what happened life was all right. Regretfully she stroked her useless throat, thinking how bitter it was that with her trained voice she could have made them all hear every word she might have said, but that her stupid brain could not put two words together to convey the brightness that possessed her. But at any rate she could tell Harrowby. She hurried down the stairs and past the policemen, on whom she smiled with dazzling gratitude, since they had upheld the gates of her entrance into everlasting happiness, and she went out into one of these stage-scene hours that sometimes come between a sunlit day and its twilight. The townsfolk were walking in radiance over prodigiously lengthened shadows, like bold and happy souls not awed by any consequences; and in the upper windows of one half of the marketplace blazed a piecemeal sunset more glorious than that in the opposing sky. Under the assault of the strong slanting shafts of light no house-fronts seemed much more solid than canvas; the lit shops seemed factitious, sets for the harlequinade; pale householders stepped out of their doors and had ruddiness clapped on their faces as a mask. These appearances seemed to her confirmation of her belief that everything in the world had suddenly been changed by the disclosure of some knowledge, and that now all was well; and she almost ran to the garage to tell her news.
The yard also was wrought on by the hour. The two sides of it, the proprietor’s house and the opposite wall, were tepid in shadow, colder than one would have thought anything red could be; but the wall at the end glowed like the wings of a Painted Lady butterfly, and the gate in it seemed to have had its iron convolutions veneered with strips of sunset. The blossom on the lilac bough that bobbed over from the next garden had been dipped in a honey of thick yellow light. Pulled out into the middle of the yard was the Wolseley, its glossy sides suffused with fire in which reflections swam as dilating and contracting islets; and in it sat Harrowby, reading Captain Coe.
He jumped out when he saw her coming. ‘Did you find the place all right, Miss?’
‘Oh, Harrowby, I didn’t go! But I saw something much more wonderful! I went to see the people being tried in that place with a clock, because that nice old gentleman at Clussingford was the judge, and I saw the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Just think there was an old woman of seventy tried for committing bigamy last March …’ She had to stop and gasp for breath.
‘Dear, dear, Miss!’ commented Harrowby mildly, folding up the Star. ‘An old woman of seventy committing bigamy! That’s what I call carrying coals to Newcastle.’
‘Oh, but it was wonderful of her! She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever seen. Alice Hester her name was, and somehow it suited her. I don’t think she’d ever been beautiful. You felt she’d never had to bother about all that. But, oh, she looked so nice …’ She paused again for breath.
‘They often do,’ said Harrowby, who had evidently not yet found his equilibrium in the story.
‘She looked so good, and you felt she’d always been nice to everybody. And she’d had lots of children ever so long ago, and her husband turned them all out of doors, and a ploughman came and took them to a barn, and then they came here and pretended they were married, and they were awfully happy for forty years, though they weren’t married—’
‘Oh, that,’ said Harrowby, with a certain fierceness, ‘don’t matter any more nowadays. If people are straight, they are, and that’s that.’
‘Well, then he got ill, and he knew he was going to die, and he wanted to be married to her. And though there was a horrid sort of boy in the house, and she
The yard also was wrought on by the hour. The two sides of it, the proprietor’s house and the opposite wall, were tepid in shadow, colder than one would have thought anything red could be; but the wall at the end glowed like the wings of a Painted Lady butterfly, and the gate in it seemed to have had its iron convolutions veneered with strips of sunset. The blossom on the lilac bough that bobbed over from the next garden had been dipped in a honey of thick yellow light. Pulled out into the middle of the yard was the Wolseley, its glossy sides suffused with fire in which reflections swam as dilating and contracting islets; and in it sat Harrowby, reading Captain Coe.
He jumped out when he saw her coming. ‘Did you find the place all right, Miss?’
‘Oh, Harrowby, I didn’t go! But I saw something much more wonderful! I went to see the people being tried in that place with a clock, because that nice old gentleman at Clussingford was the judge, and I saw the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Just think there was an old woman of seventy tried for committing bigamy last March …’ She had to stop and gasp for breath.
‘Dear, dear, Miss!’ commented Harrowby mildly, folding up the Star. ‘An old woman of seventy committing bigamy! That’s what I call carrying coals to Newcastle.’
‘Oh, but it was wonderful of her! She was the most wonderful person I’ve ever seen. Alice Hester her name was, and somehow it suited her. I don’t think she’d ever been beautiful. You felt she’d never had to bother about all that. But, oh, she looked so nice …’ She paused again for breath.
‘They often do,’ said Harrowby, who had evidently not yet found his equilibrium in the story.
‘She looked so good, and you felt she’d always been nice to everybody. And she’d had lots of children ever so long ago, and her husband turned them all out of doors, and a ploughman came and took them to a barn, and then they came here and pretended they were married, and they were awfully happy for forty years, though they weren’t married—’
‘Oh, that,’ said Harrowby, with a certain fierceness, ‘don’t matter any more nowadays. If people are straight, they are, and that’s that.’
‘Well, then he got ill, and he knew he was going to die, and he wanted to be married to her. And though there was a horrid sort of boy in the house, and she
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