quarters seemed to have come; right up to the doors of Clifford's study,
when before they were so remote. For Mrs Betts would sometimes sit in Mrs
Bolton's room, and Connie heard their lowered voices, and felt somehow the
strong, other vibration of the working people almost invading the
sitting-room, when she and Clifford were alone. So changed was Wragby merely
by Mrs Bolton's coming.
And Connie felt herself released, in another world, she felt she
breathed differently. But still she was afraid of how many of her roots,
perhaps mortal ones, were tangled with Clifford's. Yet still, she breathed
freer, a new phase was going to begin in her life.
Chapter 8
Mrs Bolton also kept a cherishing eye on Connie, feeling she must
extend to her her female and professional protection. She was always urging
her ladyship to walk out, to drive to Uthwaite, to be in the air. For Connie
had got into the habit of sitting still by the fire, pretending to read; or
to sew feebly, and hardly going out at all.
It was a blowy day soon after Hilda had gone, that Mrs Bolton said:
`Now why don't you go for a walk through the wood, and look at the daffs
behind the keeper's cottage? They're the prettiest sight you'd see in a
day's march. And you could put some in your room; wild daffs are always so
cheerful-looking, aren't they?'
Connie took it in good part, even daffs for daffodils. Wild daffodils!
After all, one could not stew in one's own juice. The spring came
back...`Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of
Ev'n or Morn.'
And the keeper, his thin, white body, like a lonely pistil of an
invisible flower! She had forgotten him in her unspeakable depression. But
now something roused...`Pale beyond porch and portal'...the thing to do was
to pass the porches and the portals.
She was stronger, she could walk better, and iii the wood the wind
would not be so tiring as it was across the bark, flatten against her. She
wanted to forget, to forget the world, and all the dreadful, carrion-bodied
people. `Ye must be born again! I believe in the resurrection of the body!
Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it shall by no means
bring forth. When the crocus cometh forth I too will emerge and see the
sun!' In the wind of March endless phrases swept through her consciousness.
Little gusts of sunshine blew, strangely bright, and lit up the
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