But the voice which had cried ‘Ethel!’ now cried ‘Ethel!’ again. This time it was nearer.

‘Here is Mrs Gauntlett.’

An old woman was drifting down the path towards them. Her dark glasses and the inconsequential way she 253moved gave her a resemblance to a moth. Miss Parminter said, ‘I will introduce you, I think.’ As they had both risen and must be plainly visible, this remark struck him as so nearly an ineptitude that he felt a piercing disillusionment. Answering his thought, she continued, ‘She won’t have seen you. She is blind.’

He was introduced. Turning her face towards the sound of his voice, Mrs Gauntlett said that it was very kind of Mr Tilney to help Ethel with the gooseberries, and she hoped he would come in and drink some sherry. Just as under happier circumstances Miss Parminter would have seen to it that his nails were clean enough, his hair sufficiently combed, for tea in the drawing-room, she now substantiated his regrets, his obligation to keep an engagement elsewhere. Serenely hospitable and quite unconcerned, Mrs Gauntlett said that he must come in August, when her grandchildren would be there. He replied that he would certainly come if he could, knowing full well that he could never come again.

It was farewell to Batshanger—in every way, farewell; for even the squirming residual hope that one day he might buy it and somehow put it together again had been knocked on the head by the mention of the grandchildren. Yet, as he drove away, he realized that though he yearned for Batshanger he yearned even more for Miss Parminter. He thought of the two children who had grown up at Batshanger with Miss Parminter’s cool, strong hand to cling to, and now were safe dead, and wondered how even the gods could pour such felicity on those they elected to love.254

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Acknowledgments

With the exception of At the Trafalgar Bakery, Under New Management, At a Monkey’s Breast, Absolom, My Son, and A Funeral at Clovie, all these stories were first published in the New Yorker to whom my thanks are due.256

About the Author

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER (1893–1978) was a poet, novelist, journalist and musicologist. Born in Harrow on the Hill and raised in rural Devonshire, she was a talented music student and intended to study in Vienna. However, with the outbreak of World War I, she moved to London to work in a munitions factory. With her partner Valentine Ackland, whom she lived with from 1930 until her death, Warner was active in the Communist Party in the fight against fascism and served in the Red Cross during the Spanish Civil War. She wrote her acclaimed debut, Lolly Willowes, in 1926, followed by six more novels – Mr Fortune’s Maggot (1927), The True Heart (1929), Summer Will Show (1936), After the Death of Don Juan (1938) and The Corner That Held Them (1948) – as well as hundreds of stories and political articles.

Copyright

Published in UK in 2022
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House,
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA