Queenie's flush darkened. She was holding her mouth so tight that the
thin red line of the lips faded.
"Noel Fenwick," said Anne, suddenly remembering.
"What about him?" Queenie's throat moved as if she swallowed something
big and hard.
"Is he there still?"
"He was when I left."
Her angry, defiant eyes were fixed on the open doorway. You could see
she was waiting for Colin, ready to fall on him and tear him as soon as
he came in.
"Am I to see Colin or not?" she said as she rose.
"Have you anything to say to him?"
"Only what I've said to you."
"Then you won't see him. In fact I think you'd better not see him at
all."
"You mean he funks it?"
"I funk it for him. He isn't well enough to be raged at and threatened
with proceedings. It'll upset him horribly and I don't see what good
it'll do you."
"No more do I. I'm not going to live with him after this. You can tell
him that. Tell him I don't want to see him or speak to him again."
"I see. You just came down to make a row."
"You don't suppose I came down to stay with you two?"
Queenie was so far from coming down to stay that she had taken rooms for
the night at the White Hart in Wyck. Anne drove her there.
All summer the hard fight against the charlock, year after year the
same. You harrowed it out and ploughed it down and sprayed it with
sulphate of copper; you sowed vetches and winter corn to crowd it out;
and always it sprang up again, flaring in bright yellow stripes and fans
about the hills. The air was sweet with its smooth, delicious smell.
Always the same clear-cut pattern of the fields; but the colors shifted.
The slender, sharp-pointed triangle that was jade-green last June, this
June was yellow-brown. The square under the dark comb of the plantation
that had been yellow-brown was emerald; the wide-open fan beside it that
had been emerald was pink. By August the emerald had turned to red-gold
and the jade-green to white.
These changes marked the months and the years, a bright patterned,
imperceptibly moving measure, rolling time off across the hills.