In the past few days, though, it had been hurriedly made ready for Harriet’s homecoming: swept out and tidied up, its broken windowpanes replaced, the tiny flower bed weeded and planted with a small riot of flowers.įather had been asked to go up to London and ride with her back to Buckshaw, but he had insisted on being at the little station at Buckshaw Halt to meet the train. How odd it was to see these two men-gentleman and servant-who had been through such ghastly times together, standing dressed in their Sunday best at an abandoned country railway station.Īlthough Buckshaw Halt had once been used to bring both goods and guests to the great house, and although the rails remained, the station proper, with its weathered bricks, had been boarded up for donkey’s years.
I think it was the first time in my life I had ever seen Daffy without a book in her hand.įather, who stood a bit apart from us, kept glancing every few minutes at his wristwatch and looking along the track, eyes squinting, watching for smoke in the distance.ĭirectly behind him stood Dogger. Ophelia, my oldest sister, was a still, pale, silent shadow, lost in her own thoughts.Īt the appointed time, which happened to be ten o’clock, we were all of us gathered more or less together on the little railway platform at Buckshaw Halt. “It’s like a colored plate from Wordsworth,” my sister Daphne said, almost to herself. Somewhere in the woods on the other side of the railway line, a nightingale was singing.
Sunshine broke through the fat white dumplings of the clouds, sending shadows chasing one another playfully across the green fields and up into the gently rolling hills. To begin with, it was a perfect English morning: one of those dazzling days in early April when a new sun makes it seem suddenly like full-blown summer.
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