“It’s odd,” said William. “I suppose they’ve all gone out, and taken the dog with them.”
“Where are the cocks and hens?” said Griselda suddenly. As if in answer to her query, a scraggy pullet at the awkward age appeared on the top of the farmyard gate, flapped groundwards and proceeded to investigate the neighbouring soil with a series of businesslike pecks. Their eyes turned towards the yard whence the pullet had emerged in search of her usual bevy of feathered companions; but the satisfied cluck of the bird as she sampled a seed remained unechoed and unanswered and brought no comrade to the spot. Obviously the family excursion was unlikely to be accompanied by a lengthy procession of poultry; and moved by a common impulse of wonder William and Griselda made for the gate and surveyed the farmyard beyond … The doors of byre and stable were standing wide, untenanted either by horse or by cow, and the two farm-carts had vanished. There was a small dark square in the corner of the yard marking the spot where yesterday an imprisoned mother had kept watch and ward over a baker’s dozen of attractive yellow downlings; now the dark square was the only trace of mother, chicks and cell.
“I wish,” said William, “that we could read what’s written on that paper. What can have happened to them all?”
“What’s happened to them is that they’ve gone,” Griselda returned with decision. “And gone for a good long time—people don’t take their cows and chickens and carthorses with them when they go for a weekend. I suppose they’re moving and taking another farm.”
“Ye‑es?” William agreed doubtfully. “But I shouldn’t have thought they’d have moved at such short notice—with all those animals. Of course, if they’re moving, they’ll come back for what they’ve left—those spades and the wheelbarrow and the furniture. There are a lot of things still in the kitchen … they may come to fetch them tonight.”
“They’re sure to,” his wife said hopefully. “Besides, Madame Peys would never leave us without milk or provisions for the morning—she’s much too considerate. I daresay the new farm isn’t far off, and she’ll either come herself or send Philippe. Then we must explain about the train tomorrow morning.”
William, still doubtful in spite of Griselda’s optimism, paused at the half-open door of the kitchen, pushed it more widely ajar and surveyed the interior in detail.
“They must have started in rather a hurry,” he commented.
The comment was justified by the disordered appearance of the room, suggesting a departure anything but leisurely and packing anything but methodical. There was an armchair upturned by the hearth where the ashes of the wood fire still glowed and reddened in places, but all the other chairs had vanished. The heavy table was still in the centre of the room, but a smaller one had gone, and several pans were missing from the row that shimmered on the wall opposite the fireplace. The canary’s cage and the clock on the mantelpiece had departed; and the china cupboard standing wide open was rifled of part of its contents—apparently a random selection. On the floor in one corner was a large chequered tablecloth knotted into a bundle and containing, judging by its bulges, a collection of domestic objects of every shape known to the housewife. It lay discarded at the foot of the stairs like a bursting and badly cooked pudding; its formidable size and unwieldy contour accounting in themselves for the household’s decision to abandon it … There was about the place—as in all dismantled or partially dismantled rooms—an indefinite suggestion of melancholy; William and Griselda were conscious of its influence as they stood in the centre of the kitchen which they had hitherto known only as a model of orderly arrangement.
“I wonder how long they will be,” Griselda said, as she and her husband came out into the dying sunlight. “It isn’t any good hanging about here; if nobody has turned up we can stroll down again after supper … I wonder if I could make an omelette—I’ve often watched her do it, and it doesn’t seem so very difficult. How lonely that chicken looks poking about by itself.”
Her eye followed the gawky pullet as it clucked and pecked in its loneliness about the vegetable garden—and suddenly her hand shot out and caught at her husband’s arm.
“William,” she said in a queer little whisper, “what’s that?”
“What?” William queried, half-startled by the clutch and the whisper.
“Don’t you see?—that heap … beyond the gooseberry bushes!”
He looked where she pointed, and she felt him thrill, as she herself had thrilled when her hand went out to his arm; neither spoke as they went towards the end of the garden, instinctively hushing their footsteps … The soft earth beyond the gooseberry bushes had been heaped into a long mound, and the solitary pullet was clucking and pecking at the side of a new-made grave.
They stood looking down at it in silence—dumb and uneasily fearful in the presence of a mystery beyond their powers of fathoming. The empty, untidy house behind them was suddenly a threat and a shadow; so was the loneliness and all-enclosing silence of the valley … The damp garden earth was still fresh and black from its turning; whoever lay under it could have lain but an hour or two; and, lest the unmistakable shape of the mound should fail to indicate what it covered, someone had
