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Updated: May 28, 2025
The watchers scarcely heard the words; but when she sank back upon her pillow, and smiled as though she had found the peace which passes understandings they knew that she had gone. Lettice stayed on at Birchmead until she had seen Alan's aunt carried to the churchyard, and laid under the shadow of the great yew trees. Aunt Bessy's death changed her plans.
The squire's cottages at Birchmead were detached, but their ample gardens had only a low wall between them, so that the neighboring occupiers could not well avoid an occasional display of their mutual disposition, whether good or bad. It was close upon winter when Mrs.
Chigwin's door, and, after a short confabulation, dismissed the cabman and went in. At any rate it was something for Birchmead to know that it had a visitor who had come in a Dorminster cab. That was an incident which for these good souls distinguished the day from the one which went before and the one which came after it. It was Lettice Campion who thus stirred the languid pulse of Birchmead.
I thought of throwing myself into the river; and I think I should have done it when I came to Birchmead and found that grandmother was dead, if it had not been for you. You found me in the garden that night, just as I had made up my mind. There's a place across the meadows where one could easily get into a deep pool under the river-bank, and never come out again. That was where I meant to go."
What was to prevent her from sending a carriage, as though it had been provided by Aunt Bessy, and letting him find his way to Birchmead, or wherever he wished to go, like any other discharged prisoner. Then she would not shock her friends she would not outrage the feelings of poor Sydney, who thought so much of the world's opinion and of the name they held in common.
Three miles from Angleford, on the other side of the river, and hidden away by trees on every side, sleeps the lazy little village of Birchmead. So lazy is the place so undisturbed have been its slumbers, from generation to generation, that it might puzzle the most curious to think why a village should be built there at all.
Other cottages have been run up in the meantime, and a few villas of a more pretentious character; but there is always a brisk competition for the substantial domiciles, as snug and sound as any almshouse, which encircle the village green of Birchmead. In one of these cottages Mrs. Bundlecombe found a refuge when Alan sent her away from London.
Birchmead in the summer and autumn is a very different place from the Birchmead which Alan Walcott saw when he came down to visit his aunt in the early days of February. Then the year had not begun to move; at most there was a crocus or a snowdrop in the sheltered corners of Mrs.
As it had been impossible for her to go and see her nephew, either before his trial or since, Mrs. Chigwin had written a letter for her, entreating Alan to come to Birchmead as soon as he was free; and the writer assured him on her own account that there was not a better place in England for quiet rest and consolation.
"I had been suspicious and uneasy for some time, especially when he told me I had better go to Birchmead and stay with my grandmother, as he was too busy to come and see me, and the rooms at Hampstead were expensive. So I went to Birchmead and told them that Mr. Beadon was abroad.
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