It was one of
those lingering mellow mornings of late September, when the air, just
warmed through, lifts off the stubbles, and the hedgerows are not yet
dried of dew. The short cut led across two fields, a narrow strip of
village common, where linen was drying on gorse bushes coming into
bloom, and one field beyond; she met no one. Crossing the road, she
passed into the cottage-garden, where sunflowers and Michaelmas daisies
in great profusion were tangled along the low red-brick garden-walls,
under some poplar trees yellow-flecked already. A single empty chair,
with a book turned face downward, stood outside an open window. Smoke
wreathing from one chimney was the only sign of life. But, standing
undecided before the half-open door, Gyp was conscious, as it were, of
too much stillness, of something unnatural about the silence. She was
just raising her hand to knock when she heard the sound of smothered
sobbing. Peeping through the window, she could just see a woman dressed
in green, evidently Mrs. Wagge, seated at a table, crying into her
handkerchief. At that very moment, too, a low moaning came from the room
above. Gyp recoiled; then, making up her mind, she went in and knocked
at the room where the woman in green was sitting. After fully half a
minute, it was opened, and Mrs. Wagge stood there. The nose and eyes and
cheeks of that thinnish, acid face were red, and in her green dress, and
with her greenish hair (for it was going grey and she put on it a yellow
lotion smelling of cantharides), she seemed to Gyp just like one of
those green apples that turn reddish so unnaturally in the sun.
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