The gale had blown the winter away, and weald and wold were singing with early spring. Really singing — innumerable birds practicing their full melody among the still-bare branches of every hedge. As she crossed the smooth upland behind the Dores’ farm she saw a dazzling blink of black and white, gone before she could see the true shape of it, but she was sure it was wheat-ears. And then there were curlews, playing in the. steady southwest wind. The color of the woods had changed — beeches russet with the swelling of their tight little leaf-buds, birch-tops purple as a plum. And the larches were a real red with their tasseled flowers, and the sticky buds of chestnuts glistened when the sun came out from behind the lolloping fat clouds which rode up off the Atlantic.
But, more than anything, every breath she took was full of the odor of new growth, a smell as strong as hyacinths. In winter there are no smells, or very few and sour — woodsmoke and reeking dung heaps and the sharp odors man makes with his toil. But there comes a morning when the wind is right and the sun has real pith in it, and then all the sappy smells of growth are sucked out of the earth, like mists from a marsh, and the winds spread them abroad, streaming on the breeze with a thrilling honey-sweetness which even high summer — the summer of bees nosing into lime-blossom — cannot equal.
It was through such a world as this that Margaret rode home, with Scrub dancing and happy beneath her and all her blood and all her mind well again. (To be fair, Scrub was probably mostly happy not to be pulling the Dores’ cart.) She had to fetch a wide circle round Bristol, which seemed an even bigger city than Gloucester, and ask her way north many times; but all the people she spoke to were full of the kindliness of the season and answered her like friends. That night she slept in an isolated barn beside a beech-hanger, north of Chipping Sodbury. The air turned cold but she snuggled deeper into the tickling hay and made herself a nest of warmth where she dozed until the dawn birds began their clatter of small talk again.
It was another dew-fresh day, chilly but soft, with scarfs of mist floating in the valleys. The sun, an hour after it was up, became strong enough to strike caressingly through her coat, and the wind was less than yesterday’s and herding fewer clouds. She had started so early that she was hungry enough for another meal by mid-morning. As she settled to eat it in the nook of a south-facing dry-stone wall she saw, almost at her feet on the strip of last year’s plowland, a tuft of wildflowers: yellow and white, marked out with strong brown-purple lines which made each flower a quaint cat face. Wild pansies, heartsease. They must have been the very first of all the year.
She reached out to pick them so that she could carry home with her a token of that grimy but heroic tug, then drew her hand back and left them growing. All the time she munched the good farmbread and the orange cheese, she kept looking at them, so frail and delicate, but fluttering undamaged above the stony tilth.
It was dinnertime in the village when she came to Low Wood. She had worked her way round by well-known paths so as to be able to come to the farm without passing another house. Now she tied Scrub to a wild cherry, just big enough for the hired man not to have felled it, in the hollow of a little quarry where he couldn’t be seen from the road. She tried to tackle her problem Jonathan-style, so she used a knot which Scrub would be able to loose with a jerk or two — just in case she was trapped by vengeful villagers. The safest thing would be to creep up and hide until she could talk to Aunt Anne alone.
Primroses fringed the quarry, and celandine sparkled in the wood. She walked up the eight-acre, keeping well in under the hedge; then stole through the orchard. There seemed to be no sound of life in the whole village, though most of the chimneys showed a faint plume of smoke; no men called, no bridles clinked. She tiptoed along the flagged path at the edge of the yard and peeped carefully through the kitchen window.
They had finished their meal but were still sitting at the table — not in their own chairs at either end but side by side on the bench where the children used to sit. Aunt Anne’s hand lay out across the white deal, and Uncle Peter’s huge fist covered it. Their faces were shaped with hard lines, like those a stone-carver’s chisel makes when he is roughing out a figure for a tombstone. They both looked as though they had lost everything they had ever loved.
Margaret changed her mind about hiding; she stepped across to the door, lifted the latch and went in.
They looked up at her with a single jerk of both heads and sat staring.
“May I come back, please?” she said.
“Where’s Jo?” said Uncle Peter. His voice was a coughing whisper.
“Safe in Ireland, I think. There was a storm, and Scrub and I were washed overboard, but we climbed a hill and I saw the boat going on into what looked like calmer water; and it was still going properly, too. He’ll come back, Aunt Anne, I’m sure he will — as soon as the Changes are over, and that can’t be long now.”
“Please God,” said Aunt Anne faintly. Margaret now saw that the whole of Uncle Peter’s other side was hidden by a yellow sling.
“What have you done to your arm?” she said.
He gave an odd little chuckle.
“What’ve you done, you mean, lass. Your friend the bull broke it after he’d knocked Davey Gordon into the water and drowned him. But it’s mending up nicely enough. I went down with them to see what I could do for you, supposing you got caught in your craziness. Leastways I think I did.”
“That’s what I told Jo,” said Margaret. “Where’s Rosie?”
“Sent her packing,” said Uncle Peter triumphantly. “What call had she to go nosing among my son’s belongings in the middle of the night, eh?”
“Did he tell you why we did it?” said Margaret.
“He tried,” said Aunt Anne with a tiny smile, the first that Margaret could remember for months. “But he’s a
poor hand at explaining himself, at least on paper. You must tell us over supper.”
“You know,” interrupted Uncle Peter, “I needn’t have troubled myself to traipse down there getting my arm broken. I might as well have stayed at home milking for all the help you needed of me, you and Jo.”
He sounded really pleased with the idea — proud of them, almost.
“Thank you for coming home,” said Aunt Anne. “We need you, Pete and I.”
“Shall I be able to stay?” said Margaret. “I could dye my hair and pretend to be the new servant-girl, I thought.”
“No need, no need,” said Uncle Peter.
“The village is different now, isn’t it, Pete?” said Aunt Anne.
“It is that,” he answered. “All different since Davey died. Not that you can lay it against him, honest — he just brought out of us what was in us. Oh, he piped the tune all right, but we’d no call to dance to it if we hadn’t the lust in us. But never mind that: winter’s gone now, and the season of idleness. Spring’s on us, and that means hard work and easy hearts. What could a man ask more, hard work and an easy heart?”
“I saw some heartsease in a field above Dursley,” said Margaret.
“That’s very early,” said Aunt Anne. “It’s always been my favorite flower, with its funny face. Like Jo, I used to think.”