An Unofficial rose

Randall stood watching her until she disappeared. Then he turned back towards the hops. But when he had got under cover, in the shade of the heavy green festoons, he paused again. He would go and take a last look at the roses.

The great hop field, passing behind the stables, reached as far as the road, and he walked in concealment through the quiet loaded colo

He stood for a while looking down the hill. He could hardly believe that this was the end and that he had struggled for so many years to arrive simply at this moment of a

There was still no one to be seen. He walked a little way down the hill, drawn by his favourite corner where gallica and bourbon, moss and damask, made with their more luscious and ferny foliage a welcome haze of green beyond the gawky sterus of younger breeds. He passed a tool shed and impulsively entered and picked up a pair of secateurs. All was in order in the shed. He noticed, half with disappointment, that the place did not seem to be deteriorating.

The old roses were at the height of their season, and Randall stood still among them, completely absorbed into a heaven of vision. There were moments when he knew that he loved nothing in the world so much as he loved these roses; and that he loved them with a love of such transcendent purity that they made him, for the moment, like to themselves. He could have knelt before these flowers, wept before them, knowing them to be not only the most beautiful things in existence but the most beautiful things conceivable. God in his dreams did not see anything lovelier. Indeed the roses were God, and Randall worshipped.

Moving slightly in the breeze the intense little heads surrounded him and drowned him in their odour. Lifting a few towards him he looked with his ever new amazement at the close packed patterns of petals, those formulae that Nature never forgot, those forms that were the most desirable of all things and so exquisite that it was impossible to carry them in belief and memory through the winter; so that every year one saw them as if for the first time, and as they must have looked in the Garden of Eden when in a felicitous moment God said: let there be roses. So Randall moved on, deeper into the rose forest, between the tall thickets with their crossing and interlacing boughs, and as he went he picked them, snipping off here a faintly blushing alba and here a golden-stamened wine-dark rose of Provence.

A woman started up suddenly, appearing on the grass path between the bushes with the sudden illuminated presence of a Pre-Raphaelite angel. He turned with a gasp of fear. But it was Nancy Bowshott; She came up to him breathless, her dress billowing, her eyes wide, her chestnut hair wild and bushy after ru

He contemplated her: pretty buxom Nancy, a rose of a different sort. No one could have been farther from his thoughts. She had indeed never really occupied his thoughts at all, and he resented her intrusion now upon the rite of farewell.

'Yes, Nancy, going away.

«For good, is that, Mr Peronett?

'For good, Nancy.

'Ah —’ she said, and turned from him, her eyes filling with tears.

Randall was shocked. The roses had put him into a trance-like state, and Nancy's red face, her heaving bosom, her moist and spilling eyes were suddenly too real, too close. He said, 'Come, come, Nancy. You mustn't be upset. It had to be, you know.

'I can't stay here without yon. she said. 'The place will be horrible without you.

The thought that he would leave at least this aching heart behind him at Grayhallock did not altogether displease Randall. He said, 'Now don't be tiresome, Nancy. Don't be so emotional. You'll get on perfectly well without me.

'No, I won't, she said. 'I shall die here without you. Please let me come too. You'll want a servant or something. Let me come with you, Mr Peronett. I'd work for you, I'd be no trouble, I promise I'd be no trouble »

'What nonsense! said Randall. But he was touched. 'Your place is here, Nancy. You must help Mrs. Peronett. You know how much she relies on you. And after all, there's Bowshott. You can't leave him, can you?

'If you can leave her I can leave him. She looked at him fiercely, her tears mastered, suddenly his equal.

'What you ask is impossible, said Randall. 'I'm sorry. You'll soon settle down again. Now stop being so foolish. They stared at each other. He saw her, but only for a second, as a separate being with troubles and desires of her own. Then the silence between them took on a new quality. She seemed to him with her flushed face and her fierce brow and her disordered hair suddenly beautiful. The wind from Dungeness drew her dress tight about her.

They stood for another moment, close together, perfectly still.

Then Randall took her in his arms and as her body yielded to him, faint and sighing, he began to kiss her savagely. The roses fell to the ground.