DAVID GARNETT GO SHE MUST! [Illustration] ALFRED·A·KNOPF: NEW YORK MCMXXVII COPYRIGHT 1927, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA TO STEPHEN TOMLIN CONTENTS ONE: BIRDS IN THE SNOW 3 TWO: PLOUGH MONDAY 16 THREE: SOTHEBY’S SHOP 31 FOUR: THE TRAPEZE BOY 45 FIVE: THE FROST HELD 60 SIX: WINGED SEEDS 77 SEVEN: THE BURNT FARM 90 EIGHT: WILLOW-PATTERN PARIS 105 NINE: BIRTHDAY TEA 121 TEN: NO GOOD-BYES 134 ELEVEN: BEFORE THE SWALLOW DARES 150 TWELVE: RICHARD’S FRIENDS 165 THIRTEEN: PARIS 179 FOURTEEN: A REMOVAL 192 FIFTEEN: HONEYMOONING 213 SIXTEEN: ANGELS 228 GO SHE MUST! ONE: BIRDS IN THE SNOW Snow lay thick over everything on the morning of the second Monday in the year, and the Reverend Charles Dunnock, drawing back the curtains of his bedroom window, said to himself that if the great sycamore full of rooks’ nests in the churchyard were to fall, or even if a steeple were to be built for the little church of Dry Coulter, such changes would not alter the landscape so much as this snowstorm had done. Buried under three inches of snow the country was recognizable, but wholly transformed, and he asked himself how it was that a uniform colouring should make a totally new world yet one which was composed of familiar objects in their accustomed places. Indifferent to the cold, he gazed out of his bedroom window enchanted by the beauty of the scene, and then, as he caught a glimpse of the first horizontal beams of the sun falling on Nature’s wedding-cake, he told himself that even the dullest witted of his dissenting parishioners would feel compelled to cry out: “This is like Heaven! I could fancy myself dead, and this Eternity!” “Yes”--he reflected--“all men must feel it, for that conceit is helped out by the extraordinary stillness, the footfalls of man and bird and beast are muffled, and the world seems empty. Nobody is stirring, for there is nothing like a heavy fall of snow to keep people by their firesides. Only the postman and the milkman go their rounds”; and while he was dressing he heard their sudden knocks at the back door, with no warning crunch of gravel, or sound of the gate slamming in the yard.