Read Online The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Goudge
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best qualified to help him, he had come to see it as God’s will for himself and Jean. By taking a country living he would be setting a younger man free for an industrial parish, or one of the new housing estates into which the hordes of the heathen English were now pouring in their thousands, or the mission field. He had good health and private means. He would be able to take a living with a small stipend, would not find the work too much for him and would have leisure for the writing of his books. So he had gone to a theological college for a year, leaving Jean still in North Oxford in the care of the Brewsters but much happier when he was away. After his ordination they went to Appleshaw, the devoted Brewsters going with them.
How fortunate he was in the Brewsters James Anderson did not perhaps sufficiently consider, for he belonged to a generation that had taken good service and comfortable living for granted, but he was grateful for the small dignified Georgian house in which he lived, his garden, his study and his peace. As a parish priest he was thankful to find that he got on reasonably well. The glorious church gave him profound satisfaction and to administer the sacraments within it, as so many other men had done before him, shook him as nothing had shaken him yet. For a man who had been lecturing all his life preaching only needed a little readjustment, and he barked out short scholarly sermons twice a Sunday with no trouble at all. He got on famously with the indigenous countryfolk, men like Joshua Baker and Bert Eeles. He found that he understood them as well as liked them, and they on their side liked his Scottish integrity and forthrightness. But the women! Not the countrywomen, whom he liked nearly as well as their husbands, but the Hepplewhite and those like her, and that appalling woman Valerie Randall. He had never liked women. They had souls to be saved, he knew, but his knowledge remained purely academic. But there were those in the parish whom he loved with a steady and reverent affection, Colonel and Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Croft the district nurse, Dr. Fraser, a gruff and sensible fellow Scot, and Paul Randall, and to them he humbly hoped that he was sometimes of use. If he was then he could be glad that he had come here.
At work at his study table he was aware of the vicarage thrush singing at the bottom of the garden. The cadences of his song seemed to intensify the silence and deepen the blue of the spring evening. He laid down his pen and listened, not so much to the song as to the silence, and found it hard to believe that anything existed within it except himself and the thrush. He was Adam, in those days of blessed solitude before Eve came. Since he came to Appleshaw he had tasted solitude with more understanding than in his Oxford days, and for this knowledge also he was glad that he had come.
Chapter IV
1
M ARY too, as she left her bedroom, was aware of the depth of the country silence, but it was now her duty to turn her attention to her bathroom. “Baker and I distempered it,” said Mrs. Baker. “We felt we couldn’t let you see it like it was.”
The bathroom was over the kitchen and looked out over the kitchen garden. The walls were shocking pink and the ceiling sky blue. Tact was one of Mary’s strong points and as she smiled her appreciation there was no sign upon her face of her inward recoil. The bath was an old-fashioned one poised on four legs, with the enamel peeling off. It was extremely small but on the other hand the mahogany throne was approached by two steps. It seemed to Mary that there was no washbowl, towel rail, chair or cupboard, but the light was growing dim and she put out her hand for the switch. There did not seem to be one. “There’s electric light?” she asked.
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Baker. “Lamps and candles. We’ve only had the Rayburn the last two years. Those bills I told you of are in the kitchen, and the bills for the tea and sugar and eggs and that.
How fortunate he was in the Brewsters James Anderson did not perhaps sufficiently consider, for he belonged to a generation that had taken good service and comfortable living for granted, but he was grateful for the small dignified Georgian house in which he lived, his garden, his study and his peace. As a parish priest he was thankful to find that he got on reasonably well. The glorious church gave him profound satisfaction and to administer the sacraments within it, as so many other men had done before him, shook him as nothing had shaken him yet. For a man who had been lecturing all his life preaching only needed a little readjustment, and he barked out short scholarly sermons twice a Sunday with no trouble at all. He got on famously with the indigenous countryfolk, men like Joshua Baker and Bert Eeles. He found that he understood them as well as liked them, and they on their side liked his Scottish integrity and forthrightness. But the women! Not the countrywomen, whom he liked nearly as well as their husbands, but the Hepplewhite and those like her, and that appalling woman Valerie Randall. He had never liked women. They had souls to be saved, he knew, but his knowledge remained purely academic. But there were those in the parish whom he loved with a steady and reverent affection, Colonel and Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Croft the district nurse, Dr. Fraser, a gruff and sensible fellow Scot, and Paul Randall, and to them he humbly hoped that he was sometimes of use. If he was then he could be glad that he had come here.
At work at his study table he was aware of the vicarage thrush singing at the bottom of the garden. The cadences of his song seemed to intensify the silence and deepen the blue of the spring evening. He laid down his pen and listened, not so much to the song as to the silence, and found it hard to believe that anything existed within it except himself and the thrush. He was Adam, in those days of blessed solitude before Eve came. Since he came to Appleshaw he had tasted solitude with more understanding than in his Oxford days, and for this knowledge also he was glad that he had come.
Chapter IV
1
M ARY too, as she left her bedroom, was aware of the depth of the country silence, but it was now her duty to turn her attention to her bathroom. “Baker and I distempered it,” said Mrs. Baker. “We felt we couldn’t let you see it like it was.”
The bathroom was over the kitchen and looked out over the kitchen garden. The walls were shocking pink and the ceiling sky blue. Tact was one of Mary’s strong points and as she smiled her appreciation there was no sign upon her face of her inward recoil. The bath was an old-fashioned one poised on four legs, with the enamel peeling off. It was extremely small but on the other hand the mahogany throne was approached by two steps. It seemed to Mary that there was no washbowl, towel rail, chair or cupboard, but the light was growing dim and she put out her hand for the switch. There did not seem to be one. “There’s electric light?” she asked.
“Oh no,” said Mrs. Baker. “Lamps and candles. We’ve only had the Rayburn the last two years. Those bills I told you of are in the kitchen, and the bills for the tea and sugar and eggs and that.
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