Chapter 6

While Fritzing was losing his temper in this manner at the agent’s, Priscilla sat up in the churchyard in the sun. The Symford churchyard, its church, and the pair of coveted cottages, are on a little eminence rising like an island out of the valley. Sitting under the trees of this island Priscilla amused herself taking in the quiet scene at her feet and letting her thoughts wander down happy paths. The valley was already in shadow, but the tops of the hills on the west side of it were golden in the late afternoon sunshine. From the cottage chimneys smoke went up straight and blue into the soft sky, rooks came and settled over her head in the branches of the elms, and every now and then a yellow leaf would fall slowly at her feet. Priscilla’s heart was filled with peace. She was going to be so good, she was going to lead such a clean and beautiful life, so quiet, so helpful to the poor, so hidden, so cleared of all confusions. Never again would she need to pose; never again be forced into conflict with her soul. She had chosen the better part; she had given up everything and followed after wisdom; and her life would be her justification. Who but knows the inward peace that descends upon him who makes good resolutions and abides with him till he suddenly discovers they have all been broken? And what does the breaking of them matter, since it is their making that is so wholesome, so bracing to the soul, bringing with it moments of such extreme blessedness that he misses much who gives it up for fear he will not keep them? Such blessed moments of lifting up of the heart were Priscilla’s as she sat in the churchyard waiting, invisibly surrounded by the most beautiful resolutions it is possible to imagine. The Rev. Edward Morrison, the vicar of whom I have spoken as venerable, coming slowly up the path leaning on his son’s arm with the intention of going into the church in search of a mislaid sermon-book, saw Priscilla’s thoughtful back under the elm-tree and perceived at once that it was a back unknown to him. He knew all the Symford backs, and tourists hardly ever coming there, and never at that time of the year, it could not, he thought, be the back of a tourist. Nor could it belong to any one staying with the Shuttleworths, for he had been there that very afternoon and had found Lady Shuttleworth rejoicing over the brief period of solitude she and her son were enjoying before the stream of guests for the coming of age festivities began.

“Robin, what girl is that?” asked the vicar of his son.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Robin.

“She’ll catch cold,” said the vicar.

“I dare say,” said Robin.

When they came out of the church ten minutes later Priscilla had not moved.

“She’ll certainly catch cold,” said the vicar, concerned.

“I should think it very likely,” said Robin, locking the door.

“She’s sitting on a stone.”

“Yes, on old Dawson’s slab.”

“Unwise,” said the vicar.

“Profane,” said Robin.

The vicar took his boy’s arm again—the boy, head and shoulders taller than his father, was down from Cambridge for the vacation then drawing to its close—and moved, I fear, by the same impulse of pure curiosity they walked together down the path that would take them right in front of the young woman on the slab.

Priscilla was lost in the bright dreams she was weaving, and looked up with the radiance of them still in her eyes at the two figures between her and the sunset.

“My dear young lady,” said the vicar kindly, “are you not afraid of catching cold? The evenings are so damp now, and you have chosen a very cold seat.”

“I don’t feel cold,” said Priscilla, smiling at this vision of benevolence.

“But I do think you ought not to linger here,” said the vicar.

“I am waiting for my uncle. He’s gone to buy a cottage, and ought to be back, really, by now.”

“Buy a cottage?” repeated the vicar. “My dear young lady, you say that in the same voice you might use to tell me your uncle had gone to buy a bun.”

“What is a bun?” asked Priscilla.

“A bun?” repeated the vicar bewildered, for nobody had ever asked him that before.

“Oh I know—” said Priscilla quickly, faintly flushing, “it’s a thing you eat. Is there a special voice for buns?”

“There is for a thing so—well, so momentous as the buying of a cottage.”