‘Cat! Really, child! Calm yourself,’ Hester exclaims, shocked by the girl’s excessive reaction, the way she seems unable to tolerate his touch. The touch of an ordained man. ‘It’s only Mr Canning! There’s no need to …take fright,’ she admonishes, uneasily. Cat relaxes, and looks at Hester with that odd blankness. It falls like a mask over her actual expression, Hester sees; hiding the girl’s thoughts, leaving her true nature unseen. Hester recoils a little from the baleful stare.
‘Sorry, madam. He startled me, that’s all,’ Cat says, quietly.
‘We’ll have breakfast now, thank you, Cat,’ Hester says, stiffly, hurrying the girl away with little shooing motions of her fingers.
‘Breakfast! Oh, no – I couldn’t eat anything! Oh, Hester! I have had the most marvellous experience! The most wonderful thing has happened!’ Albert exclaims, hurrying forward again and taking her hands, squeezing them tightly. His face is flushed pink with pleasure, his eyes glistening with excitement; even his hair seems affected, standing out from his head at rakish angles.
‘What is it, my darling? What’s happened?’ she asks, her voice high with anxiety.
‘I … I hardly know where to start … how to explain …’ Albert’s gaze slips past her face, falling out of focus into the middle distance. ‘Suddenly words seem … inadequate …’ he says, softly. Hester waits for a moment, then squeezes his fingers to rouse him.
‘Come and sit down, Bertie dear, and tell me everything.’
Albert allows himself to be led into the dining room, and to be manoeuvred into a chair just as Cat comes in with the first plate of eggs and chops, and a basket of bread. Hester takes her seat opposite Albert, helps herself to some bread with what she hopes is not over-eagerness, and begins to spread it with butter.
‘I’m all ears, my dear,’ she says, when Albert does not speak. He looks up at her as she begins to eat, then bursts up from his chair again and paces to the window. Bewildered, Hester chews slowly.
‘I was out walking in the meadows, up by the river, just on one of my usual jaunts. There is a place to the east of here, I don’t know if you have ever seen it, where the river is shallow and shaded from the north bank by willow and elder trees, and the bulrushes are as high as my eyes in places, and the whole of it is sprinkled with wild flowers like a carpet of jewels … The ground forms a hollow there; a wide, shallow hollow where in times of rain a swampy puddle forms, but now in summer it is lush with long meadow grasses and horsetails and buttercups and figwort … The mist seems to linger slightly longer in that hollow. I was watching it clear, watching its slow rising, and the way it glowed where the sun touched it and I saw … I saw …’
‘What, Albert?’ Hester asks, almost alarmed by the way her husband is talking. Albert turns to her, his face breaking into an incredulous smile of joy.
‘Spirits, Hester! Nature spirits! The very elemental beings that God sends to tend the wildlife and the flowers, to drive all the many workings of his natural world! I saw them at play, as clearly as I see you now!’ Albert cries, his voice dense with emotion. Cat pauses in the act of placing a pot of coffee on the table, glancing from Albert to Hester and back again with an incredulous look on her face.
‘Thank you, Cat,’ Hester says, pointedly. ‘Albert, that’s … quite astonishing! Are you sure?’
‘Sure? Of course I’m sure! I saw them with my own eyes, as clear as day! As exquisite as wild orchids … each of them …’
‘But, what did they look like, Albert? What were they doing?’
‘They were the colour of wild rose petals – white, if you did not look closely enough, but touched with gold and pink and pearly silver if you did, and each of them slender like a willow branch, dressed in some kind of robes … I could not clearly make out the fabric, but that it was pale and floated about them as if it weighed less than the very air; and they were dancing, Hetty! Dancing slowly and gracefully, the way the frond of a plant moves under water – easily and with never a sudden change, their arms first rising and then falling … Oh, Hester! I feel as though I have borne witness to a miracle! I feel like I have been favoured by God with this glimpse at what is usually hidden from man!’
‘Albert … this is remarkable. I mean …’ Hester flounders. Albert is beaming at her, clearly intoxicated by his experience. She frowns at the thought, looking at him closely, and finds herself leaning slightly towards him, inhaling as subtly as she can. But there is no hint of brandy or wine, or anything of the sort. Hester smiles uncertainly. ‘Quite … unprecedented,’ she says, lamely. ‘And you truly believe that these creatures—’