Miss Bunting

by Angela Thirkell

  Dr Dale said one could but do what lay to one’s hand.

  There was another and rather embarrassing silence. Robin, looking at his watch, said it was twenty minutes past six.

  ‘Joram,’ said the Rector, touching the Colonial Bishop on the shoulder, who started.

  ‘I say, father,’ said Robin. ‘Do you think Bishop Joram would like to take Aunt Sally? It seems a shame for her to stay here doing nothing.’

  The Colonial Bishop, a man of action, the terror of all backsliders in his sub-Equatorial diocese, closed with the offer at once.

  ‘If you can really part with her, Dr Dale,’ said he, ‘I shall be more grateful than I can say. I miss my black flock very much at times, and she will make me feel that we are not entirely separated. I will wrap her in my raincoat and put her in my little car if I may, just for the night, and she will be in my lodgings – with a very respectable French lady, a Madame Tomkins, a dressmaker, in Barley Street – to greet me when I come back from my work. Thank you, thank you.’

  Robin then hurried the Colonial Bishop and his father towards the church and came back to Jane.

  ‘I do admire you, Robin,’ she said. ‘You don’t think he’ll worship it, do you? Aren’t you going to church?’

  Robin said he thought the Colonial Bishop could quite well look after himself and would not let Aunt Sally get the upper hand. And as his father had a real bishop, if a colonial one, to talk to, he thought he would take a holiday himself, and the Fieldings had asked him to supper to say goodbye before they left Hallbury.

  ‘I’ll see you some time soon then,’ said Jane. ‘I think – no, nothing. Good night, Robin.’

  She walked slowly home. No, she would not tell Robin yet. She would not tell Frank. Her father would not speak if she asked him not to. Mr Adams she had already almost forgotten, and in any case he could hold his tongue. She knew now, at last, quite certainly, what she wanted, hoped for, waited for; and until the day of meeting came, not so far ahead, she could be patient. Others should share her relief, her joy, very soon; but for a little while it should be her private treasure.

  So Robin went down Little Gidding and across the High Street to Hall’s End. In the drawing-room he found Anne alone with a good fire and Poe’s poems.

  ‘You know about Miss Bunting,’ she said.

  Robin said he did.

  ‘Poor Miss Bunting,’ said Anne.

  Robin said he was very sorry indeed, but Lady Fielding, whom he had talked to after church that morning, had told him that she died very quietly in her sleep.

  ‘“And I rest so composedly now in my bed,

  That any beholder might fancy me dead –”’

  said Anne thoughtfully. ‘I think Edgar Allen Poe is marvellous, Robin, don’t you?’

  Robin said he did, though some of his poems were better than others.

  ‘Poor Gradka cried dreadfully,’ said Anne, who seemed to Robin somehow much more grown-up since the previous day. ‘She is going back to Mixo-Lydia quite soon and she is going to have a school and call it Bunting College; in Mixo-Lydian of course, but I can’t properly pronounce the College part. And she will tell oll her pupils that Miss Bunting was an English lady who ollways hated Slavo-Lydia.’

  At this Robin began to laugh and Anne, amused by her own quite good imitation of Gradka’s speech, began to laugh too.

  ‘Oh dear, Robin,’ she said, suddenly serious. ‘I shan’t see you when I’m in Barchester.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Robin. ‘I’ll come to Barchester at the week-end sometimes. And when I’m at Southbridge I’ll ask you all to tea in my bed-sitting-room on Speech Days and Sports Days. All the masters have tea-parties then.’

  Anne, the fire shining on her face, said she would love that.

  ‘And don’t forget that when I’m a housemaster I shall need a wife,’ said Robin, half-mocking. ‘But that won’t be for quite some time of course.’

  Anne, pensively playing with Dr Dale’s ring on her left hand, slowly drew it off and put it on her right hand.

  ‘Your father said I could be engaged to him until I wanted to be engaged to someone else,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think I’m old enough to be engaged to anyone really, so I am going to wear his ring on my un-engagement hand.’

  ‘If anyone asks you to put a real engagement ring on your proper engagement hand,’ said Robin, ‘will you consult me first? I think I ought to know, in case you need some good advice.’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Anne. ‘But I don’t think I’d like to be really engaged, unless it was somebody I liked very much, like you.’

  Robin took her ringless hand, put the lightest of kisses on it and laid it on her lap again.

  Then Lady Fielding came in and summoned them to supper.