FRANCES LOOKS ON HER FORMER HOME
In the churchyard, her knees felt weak as melting wax; but she managed to run, so great was her haste to be gone. From the grey headstones and the dark rampart of yew trees she broke away, and began to hurry, she did not know whither, along the empty village street. Queer Lloyd, the Anabaptist, who tended neither church nor chapel, came out of his cottage door and tried to stay her with speech. She could not grasp its meaning, and shook her head and fled from him. She climbed over the nearest hedge to avoid further encounter. Thoms pricked her legs and tore her clothes. Uphill she ran, through long wet grass that sucked at her skirt and clogged her feet. Soon the cold moisture soaked through her shoes, and her breath came in sobs. Her eyes were fixed upon the highest point she could see, a round lump on the shoulder of the hill she was ascending. From there she would be able to look down, perhaps with calm, for she would be far from the horror that had gripped her in church, far as the larks that filled the blue sky above her head with song. In that high place she might be able to think. But thinking would do no good. Murder had been done, and nothing could undo it. No-one but herself would know, but she would not forget.
At last she came to the tumulus and climbed its steep side. When she reached the top, she started back, seeing a man at her feet. He was lying on his stomach in the hollow made by the digging of a treasure seeker. Seeing a woman’s skirt almost over him, he raised himself on his elbow and looked up with a grin. She encountered the bright glance of black, birdlike eyes. His expression changed at once to dismay.
“Duwch,” he exclaimed, leaping up. “Well, indeed now, if it isn’t Miss Frances! I wasn’t looking to see you here, Ma’am, partic’lar not on a Sunday morning.”
He began to dart sidelong glances right and left, as though he expected another to appear. It crossed her mind that he was there to court, and her presence was a check on his pleasing anticipations. She ought to be gone at once, but was too shaken to move.
When he had shuffled from foot to foot and waited for her to go, he asked: “May I make so bold as to ask how long you are staying this time at the Plâs?” With a jerk of his thumb, he indicated the grey chimneys and roof of the big house below them.
“I’m leaving today,” she said on a sudden impulse. “There’s a mail train on Sundays. I could catch it at Llanon if I were to walk there now, couldn’t I?” That was what she must do. She could not go back. She would never go back. Never.
Aware of the countryman’s furtive regard, she asked at random. “Have you ever known anyone who could foretell coming events, Jones?”
He grinned. “I’ve heard a deal o’ talk among the old folk about such.”
“You don’t believe in it yourself, though?”
He shifted his gaze and shrugged, evidently made uneasy by so direct a question. “Well, indeed now, what are you thinking yourself o’ such things, Ma’am? They are reckoned a bit old fashioned like, aren’t they, now-a-days?”
“I am believed in my family to have second sight,” she told him.
“You don’t say! Could you spot the winner of a horse-race, now?”
She did not answer, but presently she said: “Would you take a message for me to the Plâs in about half-an-hour?”
“Anything to pleasure one o’ your family, Ma’am,” he assured her. “Isn’t it the most highly respected in the district?”
“My sister will be home from church by then,” Frances continued with a frown. “Will you please explain to her that I’ve a feeling I simply must return at once to my own home? Say I will write to her.”
He repeated the message, darting inquisitive looks at her and seeming to relish the mystery. “Is that right, Ma’am?”
“That’s right.” She would write to Gwenllian, saying only that she had nothing to fear. Gwenllian would understand. They would never meet again.
“But hadn’t I better be fetching a car from the Plâs to drive you to the station,” he suggested. “’Tis a terrible long step for a lady.”
“I prefer to go on my own feet,” she told him. Gwenllian and I shall never meet again, she was thinking. I shall never come to beautiful, devouring Plâs Einon again.
He pocketed her half-crown, and in return began to pay her Celtic compliments, that started with her well-preserved appearance, and ended with the magnitude of her sister’s possessions.
“This old tump be a grand place to see her estate from,” he said, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. “Unrolled like a map, just as it is below us, woods, and mansion, and farms and all. You couldn’t have a prettier property, now could you, Ma’am, not if you were to search the earth over for ’en? Ah, Miss Gwenllian, she did ought to be a happy lady.”
Frances was gazing down upon the patchwork of little fields. She was trying to discover the trees in the park she used to climb, and the river’s silver shallows across which she had waded. The scent of sap and woodland moisture came up to her and her eyes filled with tears. The curve of the valley with oak and beech and feathery mountain-ash, blurred into a shapeless smudge of green. Only the ring of ancient yews by the lodge remained darkly distinguishable through her tears.
“Good-bye,” she murmured.
“Good day to you, Ma’am,” said her companion in a cheerful tone. But discovering that she had not spoken to him, and that she was silently weeping, he tactfully turned away and began to whistle a mournful hymn tune. “Ah,” he said, at last, “I mind the day when first I shewed this fine view to the poor Captain. ‘All o’ this is yours, Sir,’ I was telling him. Indeed, Ma’am, I felt as grand as Satan hisself must have done, shewing the Lord all the kingdoms o’ the earth. And if I was a proud man that day, Ma’am, what must the Captain have been?” Without answering, she smiled and held out her hand. He shook it with hearty pleasure. After all, queer lady though she might be, she was an Einon-Thomas of Plâs Einon. As she turned away, he became eager to detain her.
“Some do say one thing and some another,” he began, as though settling down to prolonged conversation. “Perhaps you could be telling me what this place where we are standing rightly is?”
With her eyes upon Plâs Einon, she answered that it had been a place of burial.