The Woman in the Bazaar

								

dangerous days its very inaccessibility may have been its chief
attraction; most of the villagers were descendants of gypsies, outlaws,
and highwaymen. Now, at the close of the nineteenth century, no one,
unless held by custom and tradition, or by lack of means, remained
permanently at Under-edge; for communication with the world in the
valley below was still conducted by carrier, postal arrangements were
awkward and uncertain, water very often scarce, and existence during
winter-time a long-drawn period of bleak and hard monotony.
But when the vast fields, bounded by rough stone walls, grew green and
luscious, and the oaks put forth new foliage the colour of a young
pea-pod, and the elm trunks sprouted feathery sprays that likened the
trees to gigantic Houdan fowls, life in Under-edge became at least
endurable. Even the dilapidated vicarage looked charming, wistaria
draping the old walls in mauve cascades, and white montana creeper
heaped above the porch; roses and passion flower climbed and clung to
broken trellis-work, and outside the dining-room window the magnolia
tree, planted by a former vicar many years ago, filled the air with
lemon scent from waxen cups. Though the garden was unkempt, the grass so
seldom mown, and the path unweeded, hardy perennials brightened the
neglected flower-beds, and lilac, syringa, laburnum, flourished in sweet
luxuriance. It was a paradise for birds, whose trilling echoed clear
from dawn to sunset in this safe retreat.
Rafella Forte, the vicar's daughter, came out of the house this summer
morning in a blue cotton frock that matched her eyes, wearing no hat on
her yellow head. A coarse market basket was slung on her arm, and she
carried a light pronged fork, since her object was not to cut flowers
for the drawing-room vases, as would seem natural for a young lady, but
to dig potatoes for the midday meal. The potato patch was perhaps the
most useful portion of the vicarage garden, and it meant real disaster
if the crop was scanty, since the living of Under-edge, though not quite
so miserable as some, was yet poor enough to render the garden produce
of infinite value, in support of one joint a week, an occasional hen
that had ceased laying, and sometimes a rabbit presented by a farmer.
Ella Forte was barely twenty-one, yet for years had she worked, and
scraped, and saved, so that the little household--herself, her father,
and a single-handed servant--might subsist in tolerable comfort; that
there might be something still in hand for parish claims, for possible
emergencies, for, at least, a passably respectable appearance. She
gloried in her management, she knew no discontent, she was proud to fill
the post surrendered by her mother, who lay beneath a shrinking mound in
the churchyard just beyond the vicarage domain. She was complacently
convinced of her father's dependence upon her, and of her influence in
the village, where she had no rival, for the squire's house stood empty,