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Title: The Flower-Patch Among the Hills

Author: Flora Klickmann

Release Date: February 16, 2016 [EBook #51228]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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    The Flower-Patch
    Among the Hills

[Illustration: _Flora Klickmann_]




The Flower-Patch Among the Hills

    By
    FLORA KLICKMANN

    Editor of
    “The Girl’s Own Paper and Woman’s Magazine”


    NEW YORK
    Frederick A. Stokes Company
    Publishers




    PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
    WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
    STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.




    Dedicated to
    My Husband




    There twice a day the Severn fills;
        The salt sea-water passes by,
        And hushes half the babbling Wye,
    And makes a silence in the hills.
                            _In Memoriam._




I

Just to Explain


I. Who Everybody is

Virginia and her sister Ursula are my most intimate friends.
Virginia—really quite a harmless girl—imagines she has a scientific
bias. Ursula—domesticated to the backbone—led a strenuous life in the
pursuit of experimental psychology, till she switched off to wash
hospital saucepans.

It will be so obvious that I scarcely need add: What little common
sense the trio possesses is centred in ME.

Abigail is my housemaid; her title to fame is the fact that she is the
only servant I have ever been able to induce to remain more than a
fortnight at one stretch in the country. The others, including those
who are orphans, always have a parent who suddenly breaks its leg—after
they have been about ten days away—and wires for them to come home at
once.

The cook has discovered a number of cousins in the Naval Division at
the Crystal Palace (detachments of which pass my London house hourly,
while many units partake of my cake and lemonade), and, of course, you
can’t neglect your relatives in war time.

“You never know whether that’ll be the last time you’ll see them,” she
says, waving a tearful tea-towel at all and sundry who march past.
Naturally, _she_ doesn’t care to be away from town for many days at a
time.

The parlourmaid was interested in a member of the L.C.C. Fire Brigade,
when he enlisted, and incidentally married someone else—unfortunately
the very week she was away with me. This has given her a marked
distaste for the simple pleasures of rural life.

Abigail is unengaged. “What I ask is: What better off are you if you
are?” she inquires of space. “Take my sister, now, with eight children,
and——” But as I am not taking anyone with eight children just now, the
sister’s biography is neither here nor there.

Abigail is a willing, kindhearted girl. Also she has a mania for trying
to arrange every single household ornament in pairs. She would be
invaluable to anyone outfitting a Noah’s Ark.

       *       *       *       *       *

As for the other people who walk through these pages, they do not
appertain exclusively to one district. I have had two cottages, one
beyond Godalming, in Surrey, the other high up among the hills that
border the river Wye. Some of the country folk live in the one village,
some in the other; but the scenery, the little wild things, and the
garden are all related to the cottage that overlooks Tintern Abbey.


II. Why the Cottage is

I took a cottage in the country on a day when I had got to the fag-end
of the very last straw, and felt I could not endure for another minute
the screech of the trains, the honking of motors, the clanging of
bells, the clatter of milk-carts, the grind-and-screel of electric
cars, the ever-ringing telephone, the rattle and roar of the general
traffic, the all-pervading odour of petrol, and the many other horrors
that make both day and night hideous in our great city, and reduce the
workers to nervous wreckage.

The cottage has been so arranged that not one solitary thing within its
walls shall bear any relation to the city left far behind; and nothing
is allowed to remind the occupants of the business rush, the social
scramble, and the electric-light-type of existence that have become
integral parts of modern life in towns.

Here, to keep my idle hands from mischief, I made me a Flower-patch.


III. Why this Book is

I was viciously prodding up bindweed out of the cottage garden, with
the steel kitchen poker, when the telegraph boy opened the gate.

Unhinging my back, and inducing it into the upright with painful care,
I read a message from my office to the effect that there was some hitch
in regard to the American copyright of a certain article I had passed
for press before leaving; this would necessitate it being thrown out of
the magazine that month. Would I wire back what should go in its place,
as the machines were at a standstill?

Under ordinary circumstances I should merely have waved a hand, and
instantly a suitable substitute would have been on the machines with
scarcely a perceptible pause—that is, if I had been in London. But such
is the witchery of the Flower-patch, that no sooner do I get inside the
gate than I forget every mortal thing connected with my office. And try
how I would, I couldn’t recall what possible articles I had already in
hand that would make exactly six pages and a quarter—the length of the
one held over.

And because I could think of nothing else on the spur of the moment, I
threw down the poker (it was red-rust, alas, when I chanced upon it a
week later) and went indoors and wrote about the cottage and the hills.

When it was published in the magazine, readers very kindly wrote by
the bagful begging for a continuation. It has been continuing—with
perennial requests for more—for some time now. This only shows how
generously tolerant of editors are the readers of periodical literature.

Virginia merely sniffs, “What won’t people buy!”

I don’t think she need have put it so baldly as that.

       *       *       *       *       *

If by some miraculous chance there should be any profits from the sale
of this book, I intend to devote them to the purchase of a cow (or hen,
if it doesn’t run to a cow), to aid the national larder. I shall call
it “the Memorial Cow,” in memory of those who have been good enough to
assist in its purchase.

Should any reader wish to have the cow (or hen) named specially after
him—or her—self this could doubtless be arranged. Particulars on
application to the publisher.




II

About Getting There


WE always consider that emancipation takes place at one exact spot on
the Great Western Railway; the only difficulty is that Virginia and I
never agree as to which is the exact spot.

Virginia insists that the air suddenly changes just beyond Chepstow
Station, where we change from the London and South Wales main line to
the local train that, two or three times a day (week-days only), runs
through our particular Valley, like a small boy’s toy affair.

This train, which makes up in black smoke for what it lacks of other
dignity, steams out of the main line junction with an important snort
and rumble; over the bridge it goes, and the stranger would imagine
it was well under way. But no; it then comes to a standstill at the
point where the main line and the Valley line meet, in order that
the gentleman who lives—we presume—in the signal-box (but who is
always standing on the railway line when we see him) may hand to our
engine-driver a metal staff—some sort of a key, they tell me, which is
said to unlock the single railway line. I don’t pretend to understand
the process myself. I only know that our engine-driver looks lovingly
at it as though it were the apple of his eye (I’ve craned my head out
of the window, that’s how I know), and clasps it to his chest, until he
gets to the first station on the Valley line, where he hands it over to
the station-master, who, in turn, gives him another one, to which he
clings just as pathetically.

In this leisurely way we proceed up the Valley.

It wouldn’t have any deep significance, but for the fact that Virginia
maintains it is the first key that unlocks the imprisoned Ego within
her, and sets her soul free from the trammels and shackles and cobwebs
and chains, hampering, warping, and enmeshing her, that have been
riveted by the blighting tendencies of London (and a lot more to the
same effect). She says she feels the fetters burst directly that
key is handed over, for she knows then that the train is beyond the
possibility of making a mistake, and getting back on to the London main
line again instead of the single pair of Valley rails.

Then it is that the air becomes fresher than ever. The primroses that
grow all up the rocks, just beyond the signal-box, are very much finer
than those on the junction side; the Sweet Betsey (alias red valerian)
starts to drape the ledges with rosy-crimson as soon as the signalman
walks back up the wooden steps to his cabin. And Virginia herself
becomes a different being, though opinions are painfully divided as to
whether the change is for the better or for the worse.

She says she feels just like the Lord Mayor, or the Speaker in the
House of Commons, with a myrmidon going on ahead of her bearing the
mace.

We just let her talk on when she gets lightheaded like this. After all,
this Rod of Office which the engine-driver cherishes is what Virginia
waits for through four hours of express train—six if you go by a
slow one. And the spot where he receives it on the line is where she
develops a beatific smile of wondrous amiability.

For me, the chains snap a little further on.

After the driver has received his Key of Office the train meanders
peacefully through west country orchards, placid meadows, and
tawny-gold cornfields; past grey-brown haystacks; past little cottages,
each with its pig-sty and scratting hens, and a clothes-line displaying
pinafores and sundry other garments only mentioned _sotto voce_ in the
paper pattern section of ladies’ papers. Small, hatless, yellow-haired
children, gathering daisies or cowslips in adjoining fields, wave at us
as we go by.

Then the engine braces itself for a mighty effort, and gives a
business-like shriek on its whistle (this is the great exploit of the
whole journey) as it plunges into a very long, dark, clattering tunnel,
cut through solid rock. Here we sit in the breathless darkness for
several minutes, to emerge finally upon scenery so unlike that we left
behind at the entrance to the tunnel as to suggest that we had entered
another country.

Gone are the cornfields, the gentle undulations, gone the farms and
cottages, the hayricks and barns. Almost in sheer precipices the rocks
rise up from the rushing winding river in the valley below, clothed
from summit to base with forest trees. The train, now an insignificant
atom on the face of Nature, puffs vigorously along a ledge cut half-way
up the face of these giant hills.

From the windows on one side of the train you look down upon a world of
rocks, trees and water, to the Horse Shoe bend, where the river turns
and twists and doubles back on itself again. Not a house is in sight.

The windows on the other side show more grey rocks rising up out of
sight, with trees growing where you would scarcely think they could
find root-hold, much less food to live and thrive on. And where it is
bare stone, and there are no trees, the scarred and jagged surface of
the rocks—due to far-away earth-rends and more modern rock-slides—is
lovingly swathed and festooned with trails of Travellers’ Joy and ivy
and bryony; while ferns and foxgloves, wild strawberries and Mother of
Millions flourish on the narrow ledges, and sprout out from sheltered
crannies—such a mist of delicate loveliness veiling all that is grim
and cold and hard.

Even the wooden posts, from which wire is stretched to fence off the
railway company’s land from the adjoining woods, are entirely covered
with a living mosaic of small-leaved ivy, patterned, with no two
scrolls alike, in a way that human hand could never copy.

Below there is always the river, that swirls and rushes noisily at
low tide over its weirs. A heron stands motionless on a grey-green
moss-covered boulder near the bank. He looks up at the little train;
but it is too far away to worry him. He, and a kite circling high
overhead, are the only signs of life to be seen as one passes along.
Yet the whole earth is teeming with small folk, furred and feathered;
the rarest of butterflies are glinting over the rocks; the otter is
hiding down in the river-pools; and from time to time a salmon leaps
into the air, a flash, a streak of silver, and a series of eddying
ripples—that is all.

This is the spot where, for me, a new life begins; where unconsciously
I draw my breath with a deep intake, and suddenly feel the past
slipping from me; the noise and din, the sordidness and care of the
city fade into the background and become nothing more substantial than
some remote nightmare.

Here in this Valley of Peace and Quietness my dreams become realities.
And best of all, here God seems to lay His Hand on tired heart and
tired brain; and I find myself saying, “This is the rest wherewith ye
may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing.”

       *       *       *       *       *

We had just witnessed the presentation of the first key. As usual,
Virginia and I had been arguing—no, that isn’t the right word; I never
argue; I merely discuss things intelligently. At any rate, we had been
exchanging views (that differed) as to the exact place where we noticed
the great change come over ourselves in particular, and things in
general. As we didn’t get any nearer a final settlement we appealed to
Ursula, who was sitting silent, with a far-away look in her eyes, as of
one engaged in bridging space and measuring the stars.

She came back to earth, however, at our question, and said she was
absolutely sure the moment of _her_ great transformation was when
she got hold of a cup of proper domestic tea, as distinct from the
indigestive railway variety. Indeed, for the past few minutes she had
been entirely absorbed in the mental contemplation of the meal she
hoped Abigail would soon be preparing. Even then she could smell the
sizzling ham and the frying eggs and the buttered toast we should have
on arrival.

We were in the sulphurous depths of the tunnel at the moment. Naturally
I was hurt. As I said to her, I knew my board was frugal, and my viands
simple, modest, unaffected and unassuming, but at least they didn’t
smell like _that_!

Fortunately she hadn’t much time to explain what she did and what she
didn’t mean, for we came out of the tunnel into the panorama of hills
and silence; no one ever talks much just here, save the braying type of
tourist.

Besides, there is the “Abbey” to watch for. No matter how many times
you may see that, you always wait expectantly for the moment when you
catch the first glimpse of the wonderful grey ruin.

The abbey-makers of the olden days not only knew how to build, but they
also knew how to “place” their beautiful structures. And the setting of
our Abbey is as nearly perfect as anything can be in this world.

The steep hills recede a little bit just at one bend of the river,
leaving room for a broad green meadow between the water and the
uprising steeps. Here the Abbey was placed: a babbling river in the
foreground, dark larch-covered hills in the background. Surely it is
no fanciful exaggeration to think that the beauty all around them must
have influenced the men who raised that wonderful poem in stone!

I would like to take you into the Abbey and show you the beautiful
views that can be seen from every ruined window, each one a framed
picture in itself; the spray of oak-leaves carved on one piece of
stone, the live snapdragons growing out of buttresses, the graceful
spring of each slender arch, the perfect proportions of the whole
building, for, despite the cruel wreckage it suffered in the past, it
is still the most lovely Gothic ruin in England.

But to-day we can’t stay.

The train hurries on, through another short tunnel, over a bridge
spanning the river and a talkative weir, and then into our station.

In the summer there is a good deal of bustle in this station, which
is the haunt of many tourists. I am told that five out of every
ten visitors are from the United States. No American thinks of
“doing” England without seeing our valley, which is famous for its
scenery and its ruins. Thus you always find a number of women in
trim “shirt-waists,” and wearing large chiffon veils on the top of
their hats at angles quite unknown to the English woman, sitting on
the platform about train time, writing the usual budget of picture
postcards.

But we aren’t “foreigners” (as the natives style everyone who doesn’t
belong to their village). That is one of the many charms of arriving
at this station. Here no one regards us merely as passengers who
can’t find their luggage; or, passengers who have changed where they
had no business to; or, passengers who expect the local porter to
know by heart all the railway connections and times of return trains
throughout the British Isles. Neither are we among the people who
look suspiciously at every wagonette driver, certain that he is going
to overcharge, and uncertain as to which is likely to overcharge the
least. We have no anxieties concerning the truth of the advertised
merits of the various hotels, and apartments to let, in the village.

We “belong.”

There is a sense of home-coming in our arrival. The porters actually
rush forward to help with our luggage, and the station-master raises
his cap.

Old Bob—who occupies the doubly proud position of being the only one
among the fly proprietors who displays a pair of steeds attached to his
vehicle, while he is also the one who usually drives what he describes
as “the e-light-y”—is waiting with his wagonette (and pair, don’t
forget) and a cart for the luggage.

It really is comforting to be claimed by someone at the end of a
journey, if it be but the wagonette driver. I feel so solitary,
such an orphan, when I chance to arrive alone at some strange place
in quest of a holiday, possibly unknown to a single person but the
landlady-to-be. Don’t you know the sinking feeling that comes over
you as you look round upon the crowds of people, some scrambling in,
and some scrambling out of the train; every face a blank so far as you
are concerned? No one to trouble whether you ever get any further, or
whether you remain in that jostling turmoil for ever.

You almost wish you could get into the train and go back to town again;
you reflect that there at least the butcher knows you, and the people
next door, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner.

You revive after having some tea, but it is possible to spend a very
doleful, homesick quarter of an hour between the time you get out of
the train and the time you sit down to a meal in some strange room,
whose painful unlikeness to the ones you live in accentuates your
loneliness.

But that never happens to us in our Valley. Before we have got out of
our compartment, Abigail is already on the platform and holding a levee
consisting of two porters, the signalman, the assistant engine-driver
from a goods train in the siding, and old Bob’s nephew, who drives the
cart. All lend a hand as she proceeds to marshal the luggage, and with
a peremptory wave of her umbrella, directs its disposal.

       *       *       *       *       *

Of course there really isn’t much luggage. That is one of the
advantages of retreating to your own secluded cottage; being off
the beaten track as we are, there is no necessity to take many
“toilettes”—either demi or semi—or a large variety of lounge robes,
or matinées, or boudoir negligées, or rest frocks, or tea-gowns, or
cocoa-coats, or evening wraps built of chiffon, and really necessary,
handy things of that sort. All we take with us is just a few clothes to
wear.

On one occasion Virginia did bring down a long “article” (I don’t
know what else to call it) composed of about ten yards of white net,
embroidered here and there with large beads, an artificial rose sewn
on to one corner of the curtain-like thing, a gilt-metal fringe
suggestive of shoelace tags all around the edges. She couldn’t quite
understand how she came by it, she said. She remembered an energetic
ultra-elegant shop-assistant, somewhere, displaying it before her,
with the information that it was a “slumber swirl,” and assuring her,
condescendingly, that it was the very latest, and absolutely sweet, and
just the thing for outdoors in the summer. Virginia said she agreed
with her, she was sure; knowing her own sweet and plastic disposition,
she would certainly have agreed with her; she was thankful to say she
wasn’t one of those people who perpetually disagree with other people.
But—she had no recollection of having attached her name and address to
the wisp, much less of having paid for it! Still, the energetic damsel
had sent it home—and here it was!

Ursula, after one glance at the confection, hastily turned her eyes
away and announced that, for her part, she didn’t consider it—well,
quite adequate!

Her sister explained that it wasn’t supposed to be worn _that_ way;
and she arranged herself with closed eyes on the sofa to show us how
it would look when draped over her—head and all—as she rested in the
hammock. It took a lot of adjusting so as to avoid getting some knobbly
bead motif just under her ear, and to prevent the shoe-lace tags
attacking the under-side of the face. And when she had at last found a
spot of unembellished net on which to lay her rose-leaf cheek, she was
afraid to move for fear of splitting the frail net.

Ursula merely snorted.

When next I saw the “slumber swirl,” part of it had been converted into
a meat-safe of irreproachable moral character, Ursula having utilised
the frame of our getting-worn-out one for the purpose.

       *       *       *       *       *

No; our luggage is only trifling, and only consists of just what we
need. Abigail takes mine and her own to Paddington in a bus, which also
picks up the luggage of the other two girls _en route_. Individually,
the details do not seem much, but I confess, when I see it dumped all
together on the platform, the aggregate looks somewhat nondescript.

There will be four large hat-boxes (or five if Abigail brings more than
one); anything from three to seven trunks; Abigail’s collapsible straw
basket; a bundle of umbrellas and sunshades; the dog, in his travelling
basket; a chip basket containing pots of mysterious seedlings Virginia
has been specially raising in town (which usually get upset once or
twice on the way, and have been known to turn out docks). There is
sure to be a cardboard box for one of Abigail’s best Jap silk Sunday
frocks that she doesn’t want to get crushed; a string bag containing
Abigail’s novels and snippety weeklies, her crochet, a few oranges, two
bananas, some chocolate, and whatever other refreshment she will need
on the journey; a brown-paper parcel holding a few articles of wearing
apparel, also belonging to Abigail, that she only remembered at the
last minute, and cook did up for her.

Then Ursula is sure to bring some contribution to the larder—perhaps
tomatoes and a cake. Naturally, there is our lunch basket; and I,
personally, never feel complete unless I have my leather dispatch-box
beside me. I also take a suit-case containing my mackintosh—in case
it rains when I arrive—books and papers which I never read, knitting,
and similar necessities for the journey; it is also useful as a final
receptacle for oddments I omitted to pack elsewhere. Virginia and
Ursula bring similar suit-cases, for similar reasons.

Sometimes Abigail springs surprises on us at the last minute. “Whatever
have you there?” I asked one day, as she joined us on the Paddington
platform, a jangling parcel in one hand that sounded like a badly
cracked bell, and a large protrusion—silent, fortunately—embraced in
the other arm.

“Oh, this is just a new zinc pail” (shaking the musical packet), “we
need an extra one; and I’ve put in a little iron shovel, as I want one
for my kitchen scuttle: and there’s a nutmeg grater too; the one down
there is getting rusty. And _this_” (nodding towards her chest) “is an
enamel washing-up bowl. Our big one down there leaks.”

And she proceeded serenely on her way to the accompaniment of iron
shovel clink-clanging against zinc pail, with the nutmeg-grater
tintinnabulating cheerfully in a higher key—and evidently pleased at
the public interest she was arousing.

Not that her surprises are always so useful. On one occasion I noticed
she had brought two collapsible straw baskets, but concluded she had
some very special new frocks for the flower show. The porter disposed
of the luggage—while Abigail was looking the bookstall over. When she
returned and found both baskets missing, she rushed to the guard’s van.
Soon things were being dragged out again, Abigail excitedly urging
haste. The guard helped, Abigail assisting with much conversation.

Eventually she lugged one basket up to her own compartment, scorning
the help of the penitent porter. As she passed my compartment, a
heartrending “mee-au” came from the basket.

“What in the world—!!—!!!” I began.

“It’s only Angelina,” Abigail explained. “She hasn’t seemed well
lately. I thought a change of air might do her good. Only it gave me a
bit of a fright when I found they’d put her in the van, thinking she
was luggage!”

(Incidentally, Angelina is _my_ cat.)

Being my own place and not someone else’s we are going to, it
occasionally happens that there are items of furnishing that need to
go down, a mirror, for instance, that is too large to pack in a trunk.
Strictly speaking, the railway company might be within their rights
if they argued that such things could not legitimately be called
passenger’s luggage; but Virginia said, with regard to the mirror—4
feet × 2—that if they objected to take it, she should tell them every
woman is entitled to carry a mirror among her personal luggage.

Fortunately no one so far has objected to any of the details of our
_impedimenta_, so long as the excess charges are promptly paid. We
usually go down with the same guard. I tell him what the contraband
is. He carries the parcel off majestically, assuring me that his one
eye won’t leave it all the way down, no matter where the other may be
focused; and he begs me to have no anxiety as to its safety. I haven’t.
I know from long experience that the guards and officials on the G.W.R.
have elevated politeness and courtesy from a mere duty to a fine art.

Sometimes I almost wish they wouldn’t take quite such care of our
things! There was the brown pitcher, for instance. I had been wanting
a very large one for fetching the water from the spring outside the
cottage gate. Of course, I know you can get big enamel jugs (painted
duck-egg blue, or anything else in the art line that you fancy);
but the latter seems so strident, so townified, so newly-rich, so
over-dressed, when you see them beside our moss-grown wooden spout,
where the mountain spring splashes down into a stony hollow, among
ferns and long mosses. The sturdy but humble brown pitcher tones in
better with the pale yellow sand in the bottom of the hollow, the
browns and greys and greens of the stones and growing things all round.
The very water falls into it with a mellow musical sound, instead of
the hollow tinny ring that the enamelled creature gives forth.

But I couldn’t see one in the village shop as big as I required.
Ursula, however, ran against the very thing unexpectedly in town. The
only difficulty was the packing, so she decided to carry it just as it
was. Virginia expressed a sincere hope that she would at least tie a
pale blue bow on the handle.

She got it safely as far as Paddington, but here an iron pillar
suddenly ran alongside and torpedoed the pitcher—so she said—knocking a
small but very business-like hole clean through its bulging side. Then
the question arose: What was she to do with the remnants? The train
was due to start in two minutes, so she hadn’t time to inquire for the
station dust-bin.

Virginia suggested that she should try to induce the bookstall boy to
accept it as payment for a packet of milk chocolate; failing that,
she had better put an advertisement in the paper offering a wonderful
specimen of antique Roman pottery in exchange for a sable motoring
coat, or a cartload of white mice.

What she did do was to leave it tidily on the nearest seat, with the
intention of bestowing sixpence on the first porter she could waylay if
he would make himself responsible for its after career. But apparently
every employee at Paddington Station had enlisted.

The whistle was blown, and the train started to move slowly, just as
the vigilant eye of the guard fell upon the disabled crock. His face
lighted up. He seized it, rushed to the moving compartment containing
Ursula. “Madam,” he gasped, “you have forgotten this,” and he thrust it
into her arms.

She didn’t dare try to leave it behind any more!

       *       *       *       *       *

Then there was the fish. It was on an occasion when Virginia was
coming down by herself, and thus lacked the restraining, and more
practical, hand of Ursula. Now, as I have already hinted, Virginia is
an intelligent girl. She can tell you exactly how many million tons of
certain chemicals could be excavated from the very bottom of Vesuvius
(if only they could manage to put the fire out, of course), and how,
if these million tons were applied to the land in Mars, as artificial
manure, the wheat crop they would produce in one year—if only you could
raise their temperature a few hundred degrees, and this could easily be
done if you transfer—by wireless—the heat that isn’t needed in Vesuvius
to Mars (or is it the moon?), where they do want it—why, then—(where
was I?)—Oh, yes, the wheat crop they would harvest per annum would be
sufficient to feed the whole of the inhabitants of this planet of ours,
and several others thrown in, for—I forgot how many dozen years.

Yes, she is a very bright girl, just as well informed on any other
subject you like to mention—excepting fish! There she draws a woeful
blank: she has no more notion how to tell fresh fish at sight than a
baby!

Still, she is generous in her intentions, and as no one ever thinks
of journeying to the cottage without taking something in the eatable
line—it is only right to take a little present when you go to stay with
friends, isn’t it?—Virginia cast about as to what she could bring. Game
has no attraction—we have plenty of that. Fish, on the contrary, is a
rarity. Although our river is full, we seldom see fish at the cottage,
excepting a very over-due variety that a man peddles round occasionally.

So she decided on fish—alas! And hastened into the first fishmonger’s
she saw and ordered a dozen pairs of soles. She maintains that wasn’t
what she meant to ask for. It was oysters she wanted to bestow on me,
and she went in with the definite intention of purchasing a dozen
oysters. At that moment, however, her mind was somewhat pre-occupied
with a scientific invention she was thinking out, whereby no woman need
ever again handle a broom or carpet-sweeper or anything of that kind.

It was a simple device, consisting of a vacuum between the layers
of leather on the bottom of the shoe, and some sort of a suction
arrangement whereby you drew up the dust from the carpet (or wherever
you walked) just by stepping on it. You would clear as you go, and
instead of a person trailing dirt up and down the stairs by walking
straight in from the garden and up to the top attic, they would really
be giving the stair carpet what would be equal to a good brushing.

Moreover, not only would spring cleaning be banished for ever—when her
invention was perfected—but your shoes would never more need mending.
The dust collected in the shoe, being subject to so many cubic inches
of pressure due to the person standing on top of the shoe, would become
so compressed and self-adhesive as to offer a direct resistance to the
friction set up between boot and alien matter trodden upon, equal to
the inverse ratio of—I haven’t the faintest notion what! But I dare say
you can follow her line of argument. She herself says she is always
lucid and concise.

At any rate, I remember she said that it was terribly hard to be the
mother of a huge family of boys, who not only trailed dust and dirt
into the house at all times and seasons, but also wore out innumerable
pairs of boots into the bargain. Whereupon I reminded her that neither
of us need worry personally about that just yet!

She agreed, but said that did not alter her desire to benefit her day
and generation, and to rid the world of “the Burden of the Broom.”
And she was meditating on this, and thinking of all the leather we
had wasted by letting it wear off the bottoms of our boots, when
she saw the fish shop, and though she _thought_ a dozen “oysters,”
what she _said_ was a dozen “pairs of soles”—and, of course, I would
recognise that the mistake wasn’t her fault; it was entirely due to the
psychological action of the subconscious something that connected soles
with boots, etc.

Anyhow, the result was that she paid cheerfully for such a collection
of fish as I hope I may never see again. And how happy that fishmonger
must have been, when the transaction was completed, only those who got
a whiff of the fish can estimate.

Virginia admitted that she thought the price seemed a lot for a dozen
oysters (soles were two shillings a pound at the time), and the bag
seemed heavy. Also, she confessed that it was a trifle more than she
had intended to spend on a present for me at that moment, though she,
being a real lady, would have been the last to mention it if I hadn’t.
No, she hadn’t thought to look at what he put in; she merely told him
to pack them up very securely, as she was going on a long railway
journey. She didn’t know they were soles till she glanced at the bill
in the train. She consoled me with the information that fish has the
most wonderful phosphorescent properties, invaluable in the case of
brain-fag; and she should see that I ate it all!

After a few miles of the journey the soles grew a little noisy in the
rack. You don’t want to look a gift-horse in the mouth—truth to tell, I
didn’t want to look at that particular gift at all. But I had to open
both windows.

At our first stop, Reading, when the guard came to the door and
politely inquired, “Are you ladies all right? Can I get you anything?”
I asked him if he would be so good as to take charge of the big rush
bag. I suggested that he could tie it on to the back buffer at the very
end of the train. I assured him it was nothing that would hurt. But he
only smiled, and said he had plenty of room in his own compartment; the
basket would be quite safe there, no one would touch it. I could quite
believe it!

When he came down the platform at Swindon he looked very pale and out
of sorts, I thought. Conscience-stricken, I pressed a shilling into
his hand, and begged him to get himself a good cup of tea. He said he
would, and certainly seemed to have revived when next he passed.

We got it home, eventually, without Abigail detecting it—I wanted to
save Virginia’s face before the handmaiden—as we took the basket,
wrapped up in my mackintosh, in the wagonette with us, Abigail
following behind in the luggage-cart. She did say later, however, that
she wished that pedlar and his awful kippers and bloaters could be
suppressed by law. He had evidently just been round, she said, and she
could smell his wretched fish all the way as she drove up. We didn’t
tell her what we had hidden in the old barn.

We buried them darkly at dead of night. The only soft spot we could
find, that admitted of a good-sized trench being dug without much
trouble, was the moist earth beside the brook in the lower orchard.

Next morning, at breakfast-time, when the small dog ran in to greet us,
his nose and paws showed signs of active service as he joyfully dabbed
brown mud on the front of our fresh print frocks, and waggled his tail
with the air of a dog who is conscious of heroic achievements. Abigail
followed him with the bacon-dish, which, in her excitement, she tried
to balance on the top of the coffee-pot.

“You’d never believe what a high tide there has been in the brook!”
she began. “A spring tide, I should think. It’s washed up hundreds and
hundreds and _hundreds_ of large fish on to the bank. Never saw such
a thing in my life before. First I knew of it was slipping on one on
the kitchen hearthrug. Dandie had brought one in—wanted me to grill
it for his breakfast, I suppose! Then I found he’d carried one up to
the mat outside your bedroom door, and just dropped a few others here
and there about the house. So I went out to see where he got ’em from.
Judging by the smell, they must have lain there for weeks. Wish I’d
been here with a net at the time. I’ve never caught a live fish in my
life, though I’ve often tried to fish in the pond on Peckham Rye.”

Naturally we expressed great interest, and suggested immediate
cremation in the kitchener.

Later on, the handy man was decidedly sceptical. His grandfeyther had
once caught a trout in that brook (only he gave long biographical,
geographical and historical details, which proved that it wasn’t that
brook at all); but he hadn’t a-seed any hisself a-coming down.

Abigail scornfully pointed out that high tides came _up_, and these
fish had been washed _up_ from the river, which is 700 feet below; and
she flapped one as evidence before his astonished eyes.

Seeing is believing in our village!

To this day Abigail’s tales, to cook and co. and her friends at home,
of how she goes out and catches soles as large as plaice in our own
brook, and boils them for supper, equal any fish stories ever told!

       *       *       *       *       *

But to return to the luggage and ourselves, which I left waiting at our
little station.

While the luggage is being stowed into the vehicles, we take stock of
the platform, that seems to fancy itself the pivot of the universe!
Everybody that is going away scrambles into the train with precipitate
haste, as though they were trying to catch a train on the Tube, or a
sprinting motor-bus in the Strand! although they know quite well that
the peaceful old engine—already twenty-five minutes behind time—won’t
think of stirring again until it has had a ten minutes’ nap!

Those who have just arrived seem equally in a hurry to get somewhere
else, and they try to squeeze three thick out of the small station
gate—only to plant themselves in the path just outside for a long
gossip with the first person they see.

There are women with empty baskets returning from market, and women
seeing off friends, each carrying a huge “bookey” of flowers, built
up in the approved style, from the back: first a big background
rhubarb leaf, or something equally green and spacious, then some
striped variegated grass—gardeners’ garters, we call it; also some
southernwood—better known as Old Man’s Beard; tall flowers like
foxgloves, phlox, Japanese anemones, early dahlias and sunflowers
follow; the shorter stems of pinks, calceolarias, sweet williams and
roses are the next in succession; finishing off with some gorgeous
pansies and a very fat cabbage rose with a short stem (that persists
in tumbling out), a piece of sweetbriar, and a few silver and gold
everlasting flowers down low in the front. If you have a geranium in
your window, etiquette demands that you add the best spray—as a special
offering—to the bunch, telling your friend all about the way you got
that geranium cutting, and the trouble you had to rear it.

You know the sort of complacent well-packed bunches that are the
result of this combination. Not artistic, of course, according to town
standards, but, all the same, they are dears; and I always feel I want
every one I see.

The station itself is a flower garden. And even in the space outside,
where the motor-cars await the rich, and the wagonettes and carts await
the nearly-poor, primroses and violets and cowslips and bluebells grow
thick on the banks.

Naturally the arrival of the train is a matter of local importance, and
if you happen to be near the station about train-time you go in and sit
on the platform just to see who comes or goes.

And how well everybody looks, and sturdy, and brown, after the pale
anæmic faces we have left in town! You think how happy they must all
be here in the fresh air and the sunshine. So they ought to be, and so
most of them could be, if only they kept a look-out for happiness, and
seized all that came their way. But human nature the world over seems
to love to contemplate the tragic, or at least to pity itself! The
result is that every other person you meet in our village will tell you
a tale of woe as highly-coloured as anything you hear in town.

“How do you do?” I inquired, last time I arrived, of a comfortable
healthy-looking woman, who had just been seeing her daughter off by
train. Her husband is a steady man, in regular work. She owns the
cottage she lives in, and a pig, and has no difficulty in supplying the
wants of her family, which are few.

“Oh, I’m not up to much, m’m,” she began. “Things is so hard nowadays,
and no one gives _we_ a bit o’ help. There’s that Jane Price, _she_ got
a pound of tea, and a hundudweight of coal, and a red flannel petticut,
from the lady of the manor at Christmas, and _she_ be a widder with
on’y her children. But _I_ on’y got some tea and a petticut (not a nice
colour red neither), no coal nor nothing, and thur I’ve got _he_ to
keep as well as the children, and in course I need it wuss’n her do!”

Further along the platform I spoke to the wife of a small farmer, a
healthy soul, with nothing much to worry her. But she didn’t intend to
be behindhand with trouble! Other people found plenty to moan about;
she wasn’t to be outdone.

“You’ve heard of the awful time I’m having with my husband? Fell down
in the wood and broke his leg in four places! Suffers terrible, he
does.”

I expressed sympathy, and asked how long he had been in bed.

“Oh, he isn’t in bed; can’t spare the time to lay up, with the
haymaking just on. He’s cutting the five-acre field to-day. He gets
about, but he has an abundation of pain at nights. Yes, you’re right.
Very active he is, there’s no keeping him still. He’ll walk to his own
funeral, _he_ will.”

Actually the man had a touch of rheumatism!

       *       *       *       *       *

Finally we are settled in the fly, piled up with the lighter luggage,
while Abigail and old Bob’s nephew follow in the cart.

To the stranger who has never been in our Valley before, the drive to
the Cottage is a thing of wonder; to those of us who do the journey
many times in the course of the year new beauties are always revealing
themselves, and the whole scene seems more lovely each time we look
upon it, if that be possible.

The station is on the river level, down in the green depths of
the Valley. But you cannot go many yards on level ground, as the
hills on either side of the river are steep, with nothing but the
narrowest footpath in places, between their precipitous sides and the
fast-rushing water. In many cases the cottage-gardens on the hill-side
have to be kept up with walls of stone—as one sees the vineyards built
up on steep hill-sides in vine-growing districts—otherwise the rains
and swollen brooks would wash the earth down, in the winter, into the
river below.

The horses start the ascent as soon as they leave the station, and pass
through the small village, which shows a curious medley in the way of
architecture. In the wall of an old cow-house there is a Gothic window,
built probably with stones taken from the ruined Abbey; all the windows
of one cottage bear an ecclesiastical stamp. Before the beautiful ruin
was carefully guarded as it is now, people must have gone and helped
themselves as they pleased to carved stonework and any fragment that
they could make use of; and thus you may find an exquisite bit of
carved stone in a most ordinary three-roomed dwelling. Some of the
cottages and barns may have been part of the Abbey property; at any
rate one comes on architectural surprises in the most unexpected places.

But even though in this district man’s handiwork has achieved wondrous
things, it is the work of Nature that claims the attention.

The Abbey seems a huge pile when you stand under its roofless walls;
but once you start to ascend the hills, everything takes on new
proportions. No longer are you shut in by two high green hill-walls,
the higher you go the smaller become the hills that are nearest to you,
as they reveal far greater giants behind them. The blue Welsh mountains
rise up, still further beyond again.

Below, the river winds and loses itself, seeming to come to an abrupt
end against a barrier of dark green slopes; but it evidently finds
a way out, for it is seen further on in the far distance, a silver,
gleaming band, still winding, and still guarded by mountains that now
are tinged with the purply-blue tone that Nature uses for her distant
effects.

The lanes through which we pass are miracles of loveliness, with
their ferns and flowers and birds and butterflies. But I think one’s
overwhelming thought is of the grandeur of the distances. One is always
looking away to the far-off, to the farms and small homesteads dotted
at rare intervals on far heights and among the forests; to the peaks
beyond peaks; to the light playing on miles of birch and oak; to the
shadowy coombes where hills drop down into other valleys.

I have always noticed, when I am bringing anyone for the first time
from the station to my house, that, though I point out the roadside
springs and waterfalls, the glory of the hedges, the rose-coloured
honeysuckle that grows over one cottage, smothering roof, chimneys
and all, the visitors do not expend so much admiration on any of this,
it is always the inexplicable mystery of the hills that holds them.
Every five minutes takes one higher, and reveals a further panorama.
Beautiful as are the lesser things, lovely as is the old ruined Abbey,
the human and the near seem to slip away from you as you look across
the deep chasm where the river lies below, to the vastness on the
other side. There is a power, a force born of great heights and great
spaces, that cannot be explained, but is surely felt by all who have
not mortgaged their soul to mammon. There was a depth of mystic meaning
in the words of the shepherd poet, even in the world’s young days, when
he wrote: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh
my help.”

It takes you about an hour to drive up to the cottage, and by this time
the lane has grown so narrow—and so bumpy!—that you marvel the horses
have ever got you there at all. But when you have reached the little
white gate you stand and look in silence. A new touch is added to the
landscape. You are now high enough to look over the tops of some of the
intervening hills, and there away beyond, between a dip in the hills,
you see a gleaming band of silver, the waters of the Channel.

Some people consider no scenery perfect unless there is a railway in
the foreground to take them back to town as soon as possible. Some
artists always want a touch of scarlet to complete any picture. Myself,
I always think a glimpse of water is needed to make a beautiful view
absolutely satisfying. At my cottage I am doubly blessed! I can see the
river in the Valley below, and beyond there is the Channel, towards
which that river is ever hurrying.

During the drive up, the small white dog with brown ears, sits on the
box seat, dividing his time between shrieking Billingsgate insults
to every local dog (I blush for his manners. And he looks so refined
too!) and licking old Bob’s face. Not that he has any particular
affection for our driver, but he gets quite hysterical when he sees
the countryside and scents the rabbits; and old Bob is the handiest
recipient for his overwhelming gratitude. A few dogs trail after us
through the village, telling him—and one another—what they will do when
they get hold of him; but they fall back when it comes to the hill;
and our own treasure looks triumphantly ahead for new dogs to revile;
deluding himself with the idea that he has slain all behind him, and
left their corpses in the road! Occasionally he ceases to be a bullying
war-dog, and becomes almost human; then he suddenly looks round at
us, wags his tail all he knows how, and gives a little whimper that
plainly says, “Isn’t it good to be here again!” And we all agree.

It _is_ good to see the hills, and the valleys, the sturdy trees, and
the tender little ferns growing out of the walls. Best of all, it is
good to see the small white gate, and the red-tiled roof, and the blue
smoke curling up, oh, so peacefully, from the cottage chimney. It is
good to see the flowers smothering the walls and the garden beds; and
very good to greet one’s own furniture again, one’s own rooms, one’s
own familiar things—no matter how humble they may be.

For months we have clean forgotten that the living-room window
requires two thumps if it is to be got open; yet without a moment’s
hesitation Ursula pulls off her gloves the moment we enter the door,
makes straight for the window, and gives it the requisite couple of
vigorous bangs, so as to let in the evening scent of the honeysuckle
that is thick about the porch. For months, it may be, we have forgotten
entirely that the lid of the biggest brown teapot has a knack of
tumbling off into the teacup, unless it is held on while one pours.
And yet, the moment I take up that teapot again, instinctively my hand
grips the lid.

There is an indefinable spirit of welcome in all these little familiar
things—so commonplace and feeble and stupid they would seem to
outsiders; yet to us they imply that “we belong.” It is part of the
all-pervading rest that we find among these hills, that we go on from
just where we left off last time. We don’t have to start afresh, or
get acquainted with the place, or learn anything new. There is a great
charm in returning to familiar scenes that is missed by those who are
always rushing off on some new quest. True, they may find interest in
another direction; but I think with most of us—excepting when we are
very young and very inexperienced—the homing instinct is strong.

I have laid my battered brain on pillows in some of the largest hotels
in the world; but I have never known in any of them the peaceful rest
that is to be found in the cottage bedroom, despite its sloping roof.
I’m not saying that there is nothing whatever to disturb one there—all
too often Mr. and Mrs. Starling (several of them) persist in building
under the tiles just above my head, and the various families demand
breakfast at 3.30. Yet I even get to sleep through this.

There is one thing, however, that always wakes me and calls me in
a most peremptory manner to get up, and that is the return of the
swallows one morning in April or May, when the sites are being chosen
for the new nests under the eaves. It is such a sweet little chatter,
such a bubbling over of comment and advice and reminiscence, as they
get their first beakful of mud, and start to lay the foundation-stone
of the nest.

What do they say? I often wonder. They seem to talk the whole time,
and explain to each other the excellent residential qualities of their
various positions. One thing I am sure they say—and they twitter it
over and over again—I know they mean it, though I don’t understand
their language; for the homing instinct is strong in them, as it is in
all of Nature’s children; and as I listen to them in the early morning,
I can almost hear their words, “Isn’t it good to be here again?”




III

At the Sign of the Rosemary Bush


WHEN the cottage was originally built—about one hundred and thirty
years ago—it was probably just two rooms upstairs, one going out of the
other, and a kitchen and scullery downstairs. In the intervening years,
however, one owner has added on a couple of rooms on one side, and
another has put on two more and a pantry round the corner, and so on,
till it is difficult to say exactly what type of dwelling it really is.

There is a proper front door somewhere about the place, only no one
ever seems to find it; the path leading to it from the main gate
unobtrusively hides itself among the fir-trees, wandering round at the
rear of the house, and under some low apple-trees—of course, no one
who wasn’t familiar with the geography of the estate would think of
exploring such an out-of-the-way, narrow, grass-grown trail. No, they
would naturally follow along the irregularly-flagged broad path that is
kept by the handy man fairly free from weeds (except some little ferns
that will peep up at the edge, no matter what he does to them, and a
saucy white violet that has planted itself right in the very middle of
the walk and blooms vigorously).

Along this path most people go, whether they carry their best sunshade,
a bead bag and a silver card-case, or are merely delivering two
half-pounds of butter done up in dock leaves, and a cream-coloured duck
wrapped up in a coarse white tea-cloth with his liver tucked under
his wing, a big bunch of fresh sage stuck in his mouth—“and, please,
mother’s put in a couple o’ onions in case you didn’t happen to have
none.”

This broad path leads to a corner in the architectural conglomeration
where there are two doors at right angles—one moderately respectable
and one smaller and shabbier. If you carry a silver card-case, you
knock at the respectable-looking door—which promptly admits you into
the scullery: if you are merely someone anxious to dispose of a few
eggs or wanting to borrow a little flour, you knock more humbly at the
shabby door—to find you are battering at the coal-house.

Abigail deals with callers according to their status: the silver
card-cases are invited, in dulcet tones, to retrace their steps along
the broad path and take the narrow one to the front door. Sometimes
they do exactly as they are told; but more often, alas! they espy yet
another door, which they promptly make for, and this one precipitates
them right into the living-room and on top of me, no matter what I may
be doing.

Inside the cottage it is a similar jumble. You think you have found the
living-room all right, when you come in from the garden, only to pull
up in a large pantry, like a small room, with shelves full of delicious
mysteries in glass jars and jampots and pickle bottles.

You open a door in the living-room, thinking it is the one leading out
into the back hall, to find yourself confronted with a very steep and
narrow stone staircase, which is one way of getting upstairs! Of course
you get used to it all in a few days, and eventually cease to tumble
down over the odd step that is obligingly placed here and there in dark
spots, wherever the floor level changes in the halls or landings. But
to those who are not native-born it is a wee bit confusing at first.

       *       *       *       *       *

The living-room was originally the kitchen. It has a large fireplace
with an oven, and wide hobs whereon you can stand a kettle or anything
else you want to keep hot. It has a crane, too—only we daren’t cook our
dinner in a pot suspended from it, because I don’t want Abigail to give
notice. We have therefore to content ourselves with giving the crane an
occasional swing.

The mantelpiece—of oak that is black with age—has two shelves, the
upper one projecting beyond the lower, which has a frill of chintz
beneath. Higher up still there is an ancient rack for holding a couple
of guns, and there are cupboards on each side, also of black oak, that
must have been put there when the house was built.

But I think the thing that delights my heart above everything else in
this room is the huge dresser.

When you start with a room like this—I forgot to mention that there are
oak rafters, with hooks for home-fed hams—it is easy to make it cosy.
The big wooden settle keeps off draughts, some chairs that belonged to
my great-grandparents are far more comfortable than anything I could
buy nowadays, with the wood worn to that smooth polish that can only be
attained by generations of handling.

The oak dower chest is heavily carved, though its iron hinges and
locks suggest a prison door for solidity and size; still it is a handy
receptacle for the miscellaneous collection of MSS. and papers that
haunts me wherever I go!

I do not expect everybody to admire this style of room. There was one
caller (who came out of sheer curiosity) who, after gazing around the
living-room, with manifest disapproval, at last said, “You really could
make this into quite a nice little drawing-room if you had those old
rafters and beams done away with, and a proper ceiling put. Then you
could easily have a nice tiled modern stove in place of that dreadfully
old-fashioned fireplace, with those great hobs. And if you moved the
dresser into the kitchen, and——” So she went on, winding up with the
encouraging assurance, “And you would hardly know the place when you
had got it all done.”

With one voice we said we could quite believe it.

People so often fail to realise that both a country cottage decked out
in imitation of a town villa, and a town villa decked out in imitation
of a country cottage, are equally unsatisfying. In each case the fake
and insincerity of the schemes jar.

       *       *       *       *       *

If it isn’t bothering you too much, I should like you to look at
the ornaments—these, as much as anything else, give the room its
“unlikeness” to anything you see in the city. Here is a lovely fat
fish in a glass case among reeds and grasses. On the walls are antlers
of the fallow deer. Then there is a framed sampler, and likewise some
wonderful needlework of a bygone age when needlework was an art.

On the mantelpiece shelves are china cottages and castles, an old china
mill with a wonderful mill stream, on which are china ducks, each the
size of the mill-wheel! Then Red Riding Hood, in a little sprigged
pinafore, carrying a dear little basket, and patting affectionately
a most engaging, friendly-looking wolf, is always admired. Timothy’s
grandmother (a dignified-looking matron), teaching little Timothy out
of the Bible, is a relic from the days when Scriptural subjects were
among the ornaments found in most households. “Going to Market” and
“Returning from Market” are a choice pair of china subjects, showing
the lady riding behind her husband on a prancing steed that would do
credit to Rotten Row.

Mary and her little Lamb is one of the prettiest in the collection,
only she lost one of her arms over fifty years ago! There are various
cows and sheep (some with blue ribbons round the neck), and other
quaint china oddities.

Then there is a beautiful hen sitting on a most symmetrically woven
(china) straw nest packed full of eggs (each one, in proportion to the
hen, is the size of an ostrich egg). The hen (eggs and all) can be
lifted up, using her head, poor thing, as the handle, and then you find
she is the cover to an oval dish. I always intend—should any members of
our Royal Family get stranded on these hills, and drop in unexpectedly
to tea—to serve them with a poached egg in this identical dish.

And you must not overlook the shining brass candlesticks, some tall and
stately, some squat, with square trays and extinguishers, that have
been winking and glinting in the light for a century now—and are still
shining; nor the brass and horn lantern hanging from a beam. A lantern
is an absolute necessity on these rugged hills when there is no moon.

How friendly the old brass things are! Just look at the warming-pan
with its bright sun-face. I have no doubt modern radiators and
hot-water pipes are a boon to those who do not mind headaches and
dried-up air—but do they _look_ as warm and comforting as the gleaming
warming-pan?

That reminds me of the first time Abigail came down from London. She
looked at the warming-pan with interest, as she had never seen one
before. The weather was cold, and hot-water bottles were the order of
the night in town.

When I returned from an evening stroll with some guests, she met me
with an anxious face. “If you please, miss, will you kindly show me
how you keep the water inside that warming-pan? I can’t get it to stay
inside nohow when I start to lift it!”

       *       *       *       *       *

I wonder if you have ever seen a dresser like this one? The oak
shelves forming the upper part are built into a deep recess in the
wall, one above the other, up to the rafters, and all set back in the
thickness of the wall—and you can see how thick these walls are from
the window-ledge, which is fifteen inches deep. But they need to be
solid, for the winter storms that thrash across these hills show scant
consideration for present-day building methods; and a modern “bijou
bungalow” would probably be found scattered about the next parish, if
it ever lived long enough to get its roof on!

The dresser is closely hung with jugs and mugs and cups, willow-pattern
plates and dishes make a good deal of white and blue against the walls,
which are a full buttercup yellow, while a collection of ancient china
teapots, with some square willow-pattern vegetable dishes and a tall
Stilton cheese dish with two big sunflowers on it, occupy the wider
ledge at the bottom.

Here are some uncommon specimens of lustre jugs. This is a rare lustre
mug, brown with green bars outside, and a purple band inside. A lustre
pepper-box stands on one of the dresser ledges, and salt-cellars of
glass, so heavy as to suggest paper-weights.

Do you know the fascination of old English mugs? On this dresser
they range from a tiny mug in Rockingham ware, only an inch and a
half high, to noble things that suggest long draughts of home-made
herb beer! There are mugs with bunches of flowers on them, others
with conventional bands or designs, some with landscapes, some with
butterflies, some with words of wisdom to be imbibed by the youthful
along with the milk.

Jugs, again, are most alluring, once you get a mania for them! One of
my jugs is of brown earthenware, smothered with a raised design showing
a trailing grape-vine, with big bunches of grapes here and there. Two
other jugs that belonged to a bygone ancestress are apparently made of
a white stone wall, with the most natural-looking ivy creeping up it
and displaying bunches of berries. Jug-makers of the past gave so much
interest to their goods by reason of this raised work, instead of being
content to transfer a flat design as they do now. One white jug has
off-standing deer around it, grazing among trees. Another has a hunt in
full progress, horses and riders, dogs and all—though it always hurts
me to see the running hare.

A real, proper dresser is a useful bit of furniture, provided it
has plenty of hooks. It holds such a quantity of things. I have all
sorts of odd cups and saucers on mine, relics of past treasures that
have somehow survived the hand of the hired washer-up; little bits
that remind me of all sorts of pleasant things, such as tea-services
my mother had when I was little, some that have belonged to other
relatives.

In passing, I may say that a dresser of this sort is a great incentive
to good works. Many a relation, on looking at it, has said, “_I_ have
an old jug that belonged to your great, no, your great-great-aunt; I
shall give it to you, as you like things of that sort.”

Or another time it will be: “_What_ a collection of odd cups! Good
gracious, if a little thing like _that_ amuses you, I’ll turn out a lot
I have stored away somewhere, glad to get rid of them; it only annoys
me to look at them, as it reminds me how all the rest of the set got
smashed. You can have them and welcome.”

There has been a good deal of this sort of “give and take” about the
furnishing of this cottage. And it is so much more interesting to me
as the owner to know the history of the various items, than if I had
merely bought antiques by the houseful, as I have known some people do.
In the latter case, a room is so apt to look like nothing but an old
curiosity shop; as it is, the things all seem to “belong,” just as much
as we do.

       *       *       *       *       *

But I mustn’t weary you with a catalogue of household furnishings,
though I know, if you could actually _see_ the china and the little
bedrooms, with white, washable handwork everywhere, and wonderful old
patchwork and knitted quilts, you would love it all. The Bird room is
the general favourite, with its unique crochet; there are swallows
flying across the curtain-tops, swans sailing among bulrushes on the
washstand splash, wild geese flying above the tree-tops at another
window, ducks swimming sedately along towel-ends, more swallows (in
cross-stitch this time) on a table-cover, parrots (in darned filet)
on the dressing-table cloth, while seagulls float along a frieze, a
glass case of rare birds is over the mantelpiece, and a large wool-work
pheasant, balancing itself ingeniously on the top of a small basket of
grapes, and endeavouring to look as though it were quite its natural
habitat, is framed, and hangs on the wall. I don’t think the far-back
relative who worked it had much of an eye for proportion, however!

On the mantelpiece stands a sedate row of china fowls, a marble
fountain basin in the centre, with white pigeons basking around the
edge.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just one other room you must look into—the sitting-room, because I
want you to see my dolls’ things. Yes, I know it sounds imbecile, but
I never had a dolls’ house. When I was young, the rest of us were
brothers, and it wasn’t considered economical, therefore, to present
a toy that would only be serviceable to one out of the bunch. Besides
which, in those days children didn’t immediately get what they stamped
for. So I had to go without the thing I yearned for above all others.
But you may be sure I took care of what dolls’ things did chance to
come my way.

Dolls themselves were very scarce, but I had several sets of dolls’
tea-things, given by discerning aunts, and here they are, in a funny
old glass cupboard in the corner of the sitting-room. One is a very
small set, with teeny pink rosebuds on it; another is a larger set,
that my small friends drank tea out of (and occasionally smashed a cup
for me). There are two dinner services, one in plain white—a round soup
tureen, a gravy boat, a square vegetable dish, with some remaining
plates and dishes; the other a gorgeous affair, with Dickens scenes on
each plate—one dozen meat and six soup plates, with dishes and tureens
galore, and oh! such lovely china soup and sauce ladles, all _en suite_.

These dolls’ things seem to affect people in different ways. Some look
at them with eyes that go back to their own childhood, and memories
that recall similar treasures that they wanted when they, too, were
little, and did—or did not—get. Such people know exactly why I value
these things. They handle them lovingly, but don’t say much.

But there are others who gaze at the dolls’ china (and the little
wooden animals, and the glass slipper I was certain Cinderella wore,
and the china grand piano, and the dolls’ brass fender, and all the
other oddments), and then look at me in blank astonishment. It is
evidently incomprehensible to them that any sane woman, in these days
of strenuous intellectuality, can hoard such childish rubbish. And I am
powerless to explain my reasons.

Occasionally, however, light breaks across one of these amazed
countenances, and a woman will suddenly exclaim: “_I_ have part of a
dolls’ dinner service somewhere in the attic at home, I believe. I
shall get it out, and put it in _my_ china cabinet. It looks quite
smart, doesn’t it?”

To which I reply: “Yes; and I hear they are going to be _much_ worn
this season.”

       *       *       *       *       *

All the decorations in the house are on the most homely lines, one room
has each deep window-ledge filled with seashells and coral. If you want
silver boxes and cut-glass scent-bottles in the bedroom, you must bring
them yourself. _We_ think the wooden dressing-table looks all that
can be desired, clothed in a blue-glazed lining petticoat, with white
dotted muslin on top. And who could want a silver-backed hand-glass,
when they have the chance of using one that has its back encrusted with
small seashells!

There are plenty of pictures all over the house, many of them without
frames. Haulage is an expensive matter on these hills, and we always
take this into consideration. Several of the rooms have friezes made of
brown paper, to which have been affixed a series of coloured plates.
The charm of this arrangement is that you can take down the old frieze
and put up a new one—or stick a fresh picture over some old one—as
often as you please.

All pictures, however, show beautiful views of outdoor scenery:
heather-clad hills, flowering gardens, snow-covered peaks, and rolling
waves. Whether they are original paintings that famous artists have
given me, or plates from art magazines, they are all views of large
spaces, and induce big, restful thoughts.

Some cards that hang on the bedroom walls have been singled out again
and again by my friends for special commendation. I happened to see
them one day when I was going round the Book Saloon of the R.T.S. in
St. Paul’s Churchyard. One special favourite has these lines on it
(possibly you know them?):—

GOOD NIGHT.

    Sleep sweet within this quiet room,
      Oh thou! whoe’er thou art,
    And let no mournful yesterday
      Disturb thy peaceful heart;
    Nor let to-morrow scare thy rest
      With dreams of coming ill;
    Thy Maker is thy changeless friend,
      His love surrounds thee still.
    Forget thyself and all the world,
      Put out each feverish light;
    The stars are watching overhead,
      Sleep sweet, Good Night, Good Night.

Another, bought the same day, is entitled:—

A QUIET RESTING PLACE.

    And so I find it well to come
    For deeper rest to this still room;
    For here the habit of the soul
    Feels less the outer world’s control,
    And from the silence multiplied
    By these still forms on every side,
    The world that time and sense has known
    Falls off and leaves us God alone.

For the Flower room, Canon Langbridge’s delightful book, _Restful
Thoughts for Dusty Ways_, supplied me with a verse:—

HEAVEN COVERS ALL.

    When the world’s weight is on thy mind,
      And all its black-winged fears affright,
    Think how the daisy draws her blind,
      And sleeps without a light.

And for the Bird room, I have on the wall W. C. Bryant’s beautiful
poem, “Lines to a Waterfowl.” You will remember these verses:—

            There is a Power whose care
    Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
    The desert and illimitable air—
            Lone wandering, but not lost.

            He who, from zone to zone,
    Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
    In the long way that I must tread alone
            Will lead my steps aright.

On more than one occasion visitors have thanked me for having left them
these goodnight thoughts.

Of course, being a cottage in the midst of a flower-patch, we never run
short of flowers, and you find plenty indoors. When they are in bloom,
however, I always like to put a bunch of white moss rose-buds (one of
my favourite flowers) in a blue mug on a visitor’s dressing-table.

But whatever the flowers, it is our custom to welcome all guests with
rosemary, for I have discovered that the scent of it (even the sight
of it) is a certain cure for the divers maladies caused by overdoses
of unsatisfactory dressmakers, cooks who give notice every month,
much boredom in crowded unventilated drawing-rooms, and all the many
varieties of restlessness that have been invented to help women to kill
time. It has also been known to prove efficacious in cases of people
prone to overwork.

At any rate, if you come to visit me you will find a vase with sprigs
of rosemary on the deep window-ledge in your room; and few of my
friends go away without taking a slip from the gnarled bush by the door
to plant in less congenial surroundings.

I believe Shakespeare said that rosemary typifies remembrance; Virginia
unblushingly improves on Shakespeare by insisting that it means the
remembrance of peace.




IV

Miss Quirker—Incidentally


EVERY visit to the cottage seems prefaced with a scramble. Either the
work at the office suddenly does itself up in a tangle, or the domestic
arrangements show signs of incipient paralysis, which it takes all my
available energy to avert, or else it is people who inflict themselves
upon me when I’m at my final gasp without a moment, or a single company
smile, to spare for anybody. And of all the three forms of irritation,
the uninvited people are the worst; for they always seem to absorb the
last bit of vitality left me, which I had hoped would just carry me
over the journey.

There is Miss Quirker, for instance. You don’t know Miss Quirker? How I
envy you!

I can best describe her as a lady well over forty (or more), who
apparently hasn’t anything at all to do, and who does it thoroughly
well. She has a couple of very decided and conspicuous gifts—one is the
ability to waste the time and dissipate the amiable qualities of every
individual whose path she crosses; and the other is a positive genius
for saying the wrong thing.

I was near the window writing for all I was worth, when she knocked at
the door and inquired for me, adding, “I see she is busy writing, but
if you tell her who it is, I know she’ll see _me_.” Of course I had to
see her.

She entered the room with a kittenish little rush and scuffle, that is
by no means the happiest form of affectation for a tall, largely-built
woman, well over forty (or more).

“Ah! I’ve found you in at last” (with a roguish wag of a stiff finger
in a size too small glove). “I was determined to see you, dear, though
Abigail always looks so forbidding at the door. I met Miss Virginia
shopping just now, and I asked if you were at home. She said you were
_frightfully_ busy, nearly off your head with work, as you were leaving
town the first thing in the morning. So I said at once: Then of course
I must go round and call on her this very afternoon.

“She said she wasn’t sure that you’d be in if I did, but I said I
should chance it—it’s such an age since we’ve met—why, not since your
engagement was announced! Now, just give me an account of yourself, and
tell me all about everything.

“I would have asked Miss Virginia, but I never think she is at all
cordial, or perhaps I should say—sympathetic. Indeed, I don’t think she
really knew me at first. I was right in her path, yet she seemed to
look through me! But I took a seat next to her at the lace counter,
and spoke to her. By the way, is she deaf? It was so strange that she
didn’t seem to hear a quarter of the questions I asked her about you,
so I really got next to _no_ information from her. It was so funny
sometimes that I almost laughed—I’ve _such_ a sense of humour, you
know. For instance, when I asked her what she thought of your _fiancé_
(you know you’ve never introduced me to him yet!) and was it her idea
of a suitable match, and was he tall or short, she replied: ‘I think
it wonderful value considering, and it should wear well; the size is
five yards round, so I had better have six yards to allow for corners.’
And, do you know, I was some minutes before I realised that she wasn’t
talking about his waist measure, but an afternoon tea-cloth for which
she was buying the lace. She evidently hadn’t heard a word I had said.
And so I raised my voice and asked her what part he had come from, as I
knew he didn’t go to _our_ church. She just looked at me and replied:
‘Cluny; I always think Cluny lace washes so well, don’t you?’

“You see, I got absolutely _nothing_ out of her. In fact, I wondered,
dear, whether—of course, I know you don’t mind me speaking quite
frankly—whether there had been any little rift—er—you understand; of
course I know you’ve a wonderful fund of patience, only those two girls
always seem to be with you, and though I’m sure you wouldn’t tell them
so, yet anyone with the very _slightest_ tact might see that they
aren’t wanted. And of course....

“Oh, well, I’m glad to hear you _do_ think as much of them as ever. I
shouldn’t have thought it; but you needn’t mind telling _me_ if there
_had_ been a little coolness. I’m fairly sharp at seeing through a
stone wall. And I always have said that—personally, mind you—I never
knew two girls less....

“Of course, we won’t discuss them if you’d rather not. As you know, I
am the very last one to want to introduce a disagreeable topic. We’ll
talk about you. Turn round to the light, and let me see how you are
looking. My _dear_! but you do look ill!! I don’t know _when_ I’ve seen
you look so utterly washed out and anæmic....

“You never felt better in your life? Well, I’m glad to hear it, I’m
sure. Oh, I see what it is, it’s that blue dress you are wearing that
gives you that aged and sallow look—a very trying colour, isn’t it? I
don’t think anyone ought to wear that colour, but those with very clear
young-looking complexions, and then it looks charming. It always suited
me. By the way, did Madame Delphine make that dress?... I thought so, I
knew it the minute I saw you. It’s a queer thing, but I have never yet
seen anyone look even passable in a dress that she has made. You can’t
exactly say that it doesn’t fit, can you? It’s a something—I don’t
know how to express it—about her gowns that always strikes me as—well,
you know what I mean, don’t you? And that dress you’ve got on looks
just like that! I know you won’t mind _me_ speaking quite plainly;
you see, I’ve known you for so long, and I’m not one to flatter, I
never was. What we need in this world is absolute sincerity; don’t you
agree with me? And I always think it’s the kindest thing when you see
a friend in anything that makes her look plainer than ever, to tell
her so at once, then she knows just exactly what she looks like. And,
after all, other people are the best judges as to what suits us. We
can’t see ourselves. Mrs. Ridley was saying at the Guild ‘At Home’ at
the Archdeacon’s the other day, she thought you were so wise to stick
to that way you do your hair; she said she thought it suited you,
considering that....”

Here I did manage to interpolate a sarcastic regret that they couldn’t
find a more interesting topic of conversation!

“Oh, yes, we _had_ other more interesting things to talk about, dear,
but Mrs. Archdeacon had your photo on the table, and the Archdeacon
said something about you, I forget what—nothing of any importance—and
that was the only reason we mentioned you. I said I thought perhaps you
did it that way because it was a little thin just there.... Oh, I know
you used to have a lot of hair, dear; but some people’s hair _does_
come out, and a pad doesn’t look so well anywhere else....

“It’s all your own hair? You don’t wear—— Well, I _am_ surprised! I
should _never_ have thought it!! I don’t mean that it looks much in any
case, but I always concluded that you wore——

“Oh, how delightful! I’ll confess I was longing for a cup of tea....
Yes, three lumps and plenty of milk. I always say it makes up for any
deficiencies in the tea, if one has lots of milk.... China tea, is it?
I thought so. I dare say it’s all right for those who like it. And, of
course, if you tell people what it is, they understand why it _looks_
so poor....

“On _no_ account; don’t _think_ of having some Indian tea made
specially for me. I can quite well make this do, because I’m going
straight home after I leave you, and tea will be waiting for me, and I
shall have a _good_ cup first thing....

“Yes, I think I will have another sandwich, even though it is the third
time of asking. These make me think of the Guild ‘At Home’ last week.
You ought to have been there. The Archdeacon makes such a delightful
host _and_ the sandwiches!—well, I can’t _tell_ you what they were
like; literally hundreds and hundreds of them, and such delicious
filling; all cut in their own kitchen, too. You really should get Mrs.
Archdeacon to tell you what her cook put in them; you’d never touch one
of these ordinary ones again, once you had tasted hers.

“But what I _would_ like to know is, what does she do with all the
crusts? Mrs. Ridley thought that perhaps they made them up into savoury
puddings; only, as I said to her: How about those with fish in them?
She said that perhaps they kept them separate when cutting; but I know
the shuffling ways of cooks better than that! I never kept one, and I
never will....

“I must certainly try the cake if you made it yourself. I seldom get
time to do any cooking myself, though I’m a very good hand at cakes.
But you’ve secretaries to take everything off your hands; you must have
lots of spare time.”

(A moment’s pause while she tries the cake.)

“Have you ever used the Busy Bee Flour Sifter? No? Then I should
strongly advise you to get one. I should think _that_ might help you to
make a lighter cake; or do you think you put in enough baking powder?
But there, some people have a light hand with cakes, and some haven’t.
I don’t think anything makes any difference if you haven’t. It’s just
like plants, isn’t it—they always grow well for those who love them.
_Your_ ferns aren’t looking very bright, are they?...

“Oh, don’t you like the ends of the fronds rubbed?... I see, they
were given you by your _fiancé_, and naturally they are the apple of
your eye. That reminds me, you haven’t shown me his portrait yet. I’m
longing to see it....

“Is _that_ the gentleman! Well! he’s the very last man in the world I
should have chosen for you! Not a bit like what I pictured....

“No, I don’t mean that there’s anything _wrong_ with him, only—er—he
doesn’t look a scrap like the man _you_ would become engaged to....

“Well, I don’t know that I can exactly describe the type of man I
expected. I thought he would be tall and——

“He is? Over six feet? Well, he doesn’t look it from his photo, does
he?...

“That’s true; a vignetted head doesn’t show the full height. But apart
from that, I expected an artistic sort of man....

“He is? Really! And then I should have pictured him rather—er—well,
Napoleonic, and with that far-away poetic fire in his eyes that carries
you off your feet to untold heights....

“No, of course I don’t mean an aviator! I mean a—but it isn’t easy to
put it into words; only you can’t think how disap—how surprised I am to
see a little man....

“Of course, I remember you did say he was tall and well made. But
there, handsome is as handsome does; and, after all, I’ve heard that
it is often the plainest and most uninteresting-looking men that turn
out the best in the end. I can only hope that it will be so in your——

“Why, I declare! Here’s Miss Virginia! How d’y’do? We’ve been talking
about you all the afternoon. Well, I really _must_ be going, and I
simply won’t listen to any of your persuasions to stay longer. I’ve
brightened her up nicely, Miss Virginia; she was looking ever so gloomy
when I called. Good-bye, dear. _Good_-bye, Miss Virginia.”

    _Exit Miss Quirker._

What we said after she had gone had better not be recorded! My own
remarks may not have been _quite_ cordial; but I know that Virginia’s
were even worse—if that were possible.

       *       *       *       *       *

But though visitations such as these, when bestowed upon me at the
eleventh hour, always reduce me mentally to a sort of bran-mash (and
Virginia says she can’t see why anybody need bother a government to
_import_ pulp nowadays, considering the state of her brain, to say
nothing of those of other people who shall be nameless), the sight of
the garden makes me human once more, and by sunset the silence of the
hills has so restored my soul, that the sun seldom, if ever, goes down
upon my wrath.

After tea, there will probably be two hours of daylight for watering
the garden. Even though the sun has dropped behind the opposite hills,
it is light up here on the hill-top long after the valley has gone to
sleep; and when the sun has really set, there is a long and lovely
twilight.

Indoors and out there is absolute peace. The grandfather’s clock ticks
with that slow deliberation that is so soothing; even the preliminary
rumble it gives before striking is never irritating—you feel it is a
concession due to advanced age.

Through the open window float in the scents of thousands of flowers
that are feeling unspeakably grateful for the liberal watering the
girls have been giving them; you cannot distinguish any one in
particular; one moment you think it is the sweet briar, then you are
sure it is the white lilies, then the breeze brings the breath of the
honeysuckles that are climbing trees and hedges, till the whole air is
laden with perfume.

Up the garden white dresses are seen among the borders.

“There, I believe we’ve done everything but that upper bed of
hollyhocks, and they won’t hurt for to-night.” Virginia sounds as
though she had been working hard.

“Now the tent,” calls out Ursula. And we all make a stampede to the
bottom of the lower orchard, and with a few dexterous turns the tent
is down and folded up; for though the trees may be motionless now,
the wind springs up at any moment on these hills, and once you hear
it soughing in the tops of the big fir-trees in the garden you will
realise the advantage of having the tent indoors!

As you saunter up the garden, back to the house, crushing the
sweet-odoured black peppermint in the grass underfoot, the stars
seem very near. The cottage looks like a toy, with the light shining
from each little window. And as you cross the threshold into the
living-room, the log fire flashes and gleams (a fire is acceptable up
here after sundown, even in the summer), and everything smiles with
such a cosy welcome, till brass candlesticks and cups and jugs and the
homely willow patterns on the dresser, all seem to say, “We are so glad
you’ve come.”




V

The Geography of the Flower-Patch


THE first night at this cottage you may lie awake, if you are a
stranger to these hills, almost awed by the silence. Gradually you
realise that the silence is not actual absence of sound. In May and
early June the nightingales trill in the trees around; or you will hear
the owls calling to one another in the woods—a trifle weird if you do
not know what it is. At another time it is the corn-crake; or the wind
brings you the bleating of lambs down in the valley. As you listen
longer, you hear the tinkle, tinkle of the little spring that tumbles
out of a small spout into a ferny well outside the garden gate.

You take a final look out of the window to where, miles away in the
distance, a lighthouse flashes at fixed intervals. It seems strangely
companionable, even though it is so far off. And then you close your
eyes—unconscious that you have fallen asleep—only to open them again in
a minute, as you think. Someone is speaking.

You detect Ursula’s voice in a stage whisper through the keyhole.

“I say—aren’t you ever going to get up?”

You rub your eyes. It certainly is morning! And you such a poor
sleeper, possibly one of those who “never had a wink of sleep all
night, and such horrid dreams.” The plaintive voice continues at the
keyhole:

“I planted out nine hundred and thirty-seven wallflower seedlings
yesterday, and I want to cover them up with fern before the sun gets
too strong. If you’ll get up you can gather the bracken, while I creep
around on all fours covering them up. See? Virginia is busy thinning
out the turnips. And SHE is never any good at getting up early, you
know!”

I regret to say this last scornful reference is to me!

       *       *       *       *       *

And now when you look out of the little bedroom window again, to the
accompaniment of an early cup of tea, what a change has taken place
since yesterday! Last night the ranges of opposite hills, with the sun
setting behind them, looked vague and mysterious with shadows. This
morning the sun is full on them, but now there is another mystery—or so
it seems to those who see it for the first time.

Instead of looking down into the green tree-clad valley to where the
river winds along at the base of the steep hills, you now look down
on to a bank of solid white—the mist that rises up at night and fills
the lower part of the valley, reminding one of the mist that went up
from the earth in the first Garden, “and watered the whole face of the
ground.”

With the sun on it, the mist gives back a dazzling light. And then
slowly, slowly, the whole white bank in the valley lifts silently and
wonderfully; up and up it goes in a solid mass, and as the higher
parts of the hills, which were previously in sunshine, are temporarily
hidden by the uprising mass, so the lower part of the valley gradually
becomes visible, first only a strip at the very bottom, then more and
more as the white curtain is raised. Finally the white mass disappears
and joins its fellows in the sky above, a fragment of cloud lingering
sometimes a little below the summit of the highest hill. If the day is
going to be fine, this last trail of silvery cloud disappears, and then
the sun lights up the woods and the upland meadows, showing you distant
cottages and far-off farmhouses where you saw nothing but tremulous
shadows the night before.

However often one looks upon this sight, the marvel never lessens,
and the “simple scientific explanation,” which every learned person
who visits this cottage pours over the breakfast-table, is quite
unnecessary. Scientific explanations are admirable for cities, but when
we set foot on these hills, it is just sufficient for us that Nature
“is.”

       *       *       *       *       *

One drawback about this cottage is the fact that one’s poetic thoughts
and soulful dreams are constantly being interrupted by things
material, more especially those appertaining to food! And even as
you are gazing out of the window at the glorious scenery all around
you, there arises the odour of frizzling ham (that originally ran
about, uncooked, in a field lower down), fried potatoes (the good
old-fashioned sort done in the frying-pan), coffee, and other hungry
things; and you find to your surprise that a substantial breakfast is
on the table by eight o’clock, though (and this is where guests bless
their hostess) no one need get up to breakfast, if they prefer to have
it in bed, for very tired people come here sometimes.

But it does not matter what nervous wrecks Virginia and Ursula may
have landed at the door overnight, the first morning sees them up with
the lark and out gardening; and one of the earliest sounds you hear
is the clink of the brown pitcher on the stones, as Virginia sets it
down after filling it at the little spring outside the garden gate.
This is a thirsty garden; it is everywhere on the slope, remember,
and is composed of the lightest soil imaginable with rock everywhere
beneath. As fast as you put water on it, it runs away downhill; hence,
a moment’s leisure, morning or evening, always means some pitchers of
water for the garden.

All the cottages on the hillside seem to have been built in the same
way. Someone evidently hunted about for a few feet of land where
it was slightly less sloping than the rest, and within reach of a
spring of water, and this plot he levelled a bit by excavating the big
boulders and smaller stones which make up our substratum, and often the
top-stratum too. Then if the piece of land wasn’t quite large enough,
he cut away part of the hill behind, banking it up with some of the
biggest of the boulders, to keep it from tumbling down on to the piece
he had cleared.

Next he excavated more rocky pieces from the up-and-down land around
his clearing; this gave him a bit of clean ground for a garden, and
also provided him with enough stone to build his habitation. Any stone
he might have over he made into a wall around his plot, by the simple
process of piling one piece on top of another. That, apparently, is all
man does to the place. Then Nature sets to work; and, oh, what festoons
of loveliness she flings over all!

As several different owners have had a hand at my particular cottage,
the garden has been extended in various directions, but always
requiring stone walls to prop it up. Hence you get a moderately level
patch, with a drop of four or six feet over the edge of the garden-bed.

A few rough stone steps take you down to the next level, where there
is another bit of garden, the steps themselves sprouting in every
chink, with wild strawberry, primroses, ferns, columbines, and a stray
Canterbury bell. In this way the cottage is surrounded with steps going
up or going down, with a flower-bed running along here, and some more
a few feet lower down; another terrace of flowers and some more steps
(nearly smothered with big periwinkle, these are) take you down to an
absurd lawn, that some enterprising person levelled up so delightfully
on the tilt that neither chair nor table will remain where you place
it! If they roll far enough, they go over the edge of the lawn, a drop
of about twenty feet, into the lower orchard! Nevertheless, this lawn
is popular, because it is edged at one side with white and pink moss
rose-trees.

Thus perhaps you can picture it—big beds and little beds, some running
one way, some spreading out in another direction; sometimes large
patches where flowers grow by the quarter-acre; sometimes little scraps
and corners no bigger than a hearth-rug, where we managed to dig out
some more stones, and make a further bit of clearing. But everywhere
you go there are the big plateaux or little terraces supported by
massive grey stone walls, which vary from two to twenty feet in height,
according to the amount of hillside they are required to prop up.

And how these walls bloom! Ivy and moss and ferns seem to love them,
for all the local walls sprout ferns without any apparent provocation,
and the walls about this garden are no exception.

But, in addition, white arabis hangs over in cascades, in
the spring, and you see then why the country people call it
“Snow-on-the-Mountains”; and mingling with the white is the exquisite
mauve variety; wallflowers of lovely colouring, rose pink, deep
purple, pale primrose, bright orange, as well as the richly-streaked
brown-and-yellow flowers, bloom gaily on the rocky ledges; snapdragons
flower later, with nasturtiums, and even some blue-eyed forget-me-nots
have sown themselves up there, and bloom with the rest. Honesty plants
have established themselves in the crevices; masses of wild Herb Robert
have been allowed to remain; and carpeting everything are all manner
of sedums, and Alpine and ice plants, some with grey-green foliage and
ruby-coloured stems, some with white flowers, some with crimson; and in
the hottest places there are clumps of houseleeks looking sturdy and
homely.

Certain weeks in the year the tops of some of the walls are a golden
mass when the yellow stonecrop is in bloom; but whatever the season,
there is always something to look at—something holding up a brave head
and preaching as loudly as ever a plant can preach of the advantages of
making the best of your surroundings.

Does the wall face a sunless north? Very well; out come the ferns and
up creeps the ivy; the Rock Stonecrop, with its blue-green stems and
leaves (looking almost like a huge moss) fills every shady spot it can
find, seemingly appearing from nowhere.

Is the wall sunny? All right; the wallflowers laugh at you, pinks climb
over the top edge, just to see what is going on down below; one baking
spot supports a mass of sage about a yard and a half in diameter, a
smother of blue flowers in the summer; no one planted it, it just came!
A red ribis has hooked itself in at one spot; what it lives on I don’t
know; while white, mauve and purple Honesty seeds itself everywhere,
making a brave show of colour in the spring. In fact, white and mauve
are the prevailing colours on the walls in April.

Later on you may expect—and will find—anything; for annuals and
bi-annuals seed themselves, continually dropping the seed to a lower
level; hence there is always a self-planted garden bed at the base of
each wall, reminiscent of what was growing above the season before.

On the shady side of one wall, we have made a moss garden—it was
Virginia’s idea, and she takes a very special pride in it, adding
new sorts whenever she finds them. Hence you will sometimes find her
coming home from a ramble, carrying a huge stone with her, or lugging
along a veritable boulder. In this way she brings the moss home,
local habitation and all, annexing any stone she sees (a wild stone,
of course, not a tame one from someone’s garden wall) that bears a
promising crop of some new variety.

As a result, she fairly bulges with pride whenever she exhibits
the moss garden, and explains how much of it is her own particular
handiwork.

We have not yet settled whether she ought to pay me rent for my wall
that she uses for her moss garden, or I ought to pay her wages for
moss-gardening my wall.

One characteristic of this garden is an ever-changing show of colour.
It varies according to the season, but whatever the time of year there
are usually gorgeous splashes of colour that make you stand and wonder.

Do not forget that this is only a cottage garden, even though it is
a roomy one. I hope you are not picturing to yourself an orthodox
country-house garden, with expanses of well-kept lawns, with
proper-looking beds of geraniums, and lordly pampas grass at intervals,
and well-groomed rose-bushes in tidy beds, and correct herbaceous
borders, and beds of begonias and heliotropes planted out from the
greenhouses, and all the other nice-mannered, polite flowers that every
well-paid, certificated gardener conscientiously insists on planting in
exactly the same way all the country over.

This garden grows a little of everything, and a great deal of
some things, and when you look at it you might easily imagine that
everything had planted itself just where it pleased. The garden is
not tidy, for the things are constantly growing over each other, and
then out across the paths. Moreover, it lacks someone there all the
time to keep it tidy; the ministrations of the handy man are decidedly
erratic. But at least it is bright, always bright, and you can pick as
many flowers as you please—handfuls, armfuls, apronfuls—with no fear of
an autocratic gardener glaring at you; and the flowers will never be
missed.

In the spring wallflowers predominate, every colour that the modern
varieties produce. Ursula’s remark that she had planted over nine
hundred seedlings was well within the mark. A thousand or two of
wallflower seedlings do not go very far in this garden, because at one
time of the year the place appears to be a waving mass of wallflowers
from end to end.

And have you any idea what the scent is like when you have thousands of
wallflowers smiling on a sunny spring morning?

But there are all sorts of oddments, some things you do not expect and
some things you do. The cowslip bed is very pretty. Here are yellow,
orange, copper-coloured and mahogany brown cowslips; pale-coloured
oxlips, and polyanthuses in as many shades as the wallflowers, from
rosy red to dark purple-brown with every petal edged with bright yellow
as though they had been buttonholed round.

There is no need to cultivate primroses in the garden beds, for
the two orchards are thick with them; where there are also large
patches of wild snowdrops with crowds of wild daffodils, and dancing
wind-flowers—or wood anemones; while tall spikes of the pale mauve
spotted orchises grow in the grass around the edge near the walls.

Before the wallflowers have finished flowering the tulips are out,
the old-fashioned “cottage tulips,” many of them, tall and with large
cup-like flowers—pink and crimson, brown and yellow, showy “parrots,”
and delicate mauve feathered with white, purple-black, deep maroon;
such a brilliant army those tulips make, with hundreds of them in bloom
at once.

Before the tulip petals have fallen, the peonies have opened out great
heavy heads of flowers that can’t keep upright. The scarlet oriental
poppies with their blue-black centres make masses of colour that have
to be kept very much to themselves or they kill every other flower
within reach; these are therefore planted near the clumps of white
irises, and the deep blue and pure white perennial lupins, that make a
beautiful show all down one border.

Speaking of lupins reminds me of the tree-lupins. Virginia brought some
harmless-looking little plants with her one year, remembering my love
for lupins.

“These are tree-lupins,” she said. “I’m sure I don’t know what they
will grow into, but the man said they were just like lupins, only much
more so; therefore I bought them. Don’t blame _me_ if they die.”

She planted them comfortably and cosily in a bed along with white
foxgloves and pink pentstemons, all the members of this happy family
looking about the same size.

The following year when Virginia visited the cottage she asked, “Where
are my tree-lupins?” She was shown great bushes each the size of a
round dining-table, and each holding aloft hundreds of yellow spikes,
and filling the air with the scent of a bean-field. There were the
tree-lupins all right! But where were the foxgloves and pentstemons?

       *       *       *       *       *

Perhaps you think there must be large, dull spaces when the wallflowers
cease blooming, but in between the wallflower plants are others coming
on, and by the time the wallflowers have finished—and are ready to be
pulled up—these beds are filling with sweet williams and snapdragons.
The young plants were there, and they come into bloom as the
wallflowers finish. And then, where only a short time before there were
beds all purples and yellows and browns, you have now reds and pinks
and every shade of rosy tint that the bright eyes of the sweet williams
can produce.

The snapdragons once played a joke on the garden. I was ordering some
seeds from Sutton’s, and said, “I want some very hardy snapdragons,
that will stand being planted in the windiest part of the garden where
nothing of any height will grow.” The seeds were guaranteed to grow in
the most uprooting of hurricanes.

In due time the seedlings appeared above ground, and Ursula devoted
several back-aching evenings to planting them out into the windswept
beds. By the middle of the following summer those jaunty snapdragons
had each grown six feet high, and there, waving in that exposed place,
where any well-conducted plant would have sternly refused to grow more
than a foot high, was a plantation of great flowers, each tied to a
stout stake like hollyhocks, and the blooms seemed to have outgrown
their normal size just as the rest of the plants had done.

Of course, people came from ever so far to gaze at these snapdragons;
and unbelievers surreptitiously pulled out tape-measures and two-foot
rules, and one and all, after meditating seriously on the subject, and
looking at it from all points of view, would finally shake their heads
and say, “Well, I’ll just tell you what it is—the place evidently
suits them.” We never got any further than that!

By every law and reason known to properly-trained gardeners and
horticulturists, this garden ought to be able to produce nothing but
low-growing flowers and shrubs. Every local resident kindly volunteered
this information directly he or she set eyes on the cottage; they said
it was too high up, too bleak in winter, too exposed, too dry, too
rocky, or too glaringly sunny—for anything above six inches high to
have a chance in it.

And yet Nature goes on laughing at the pessimists, and so do those who
tend this flower-patch. And the columbines, yellow, pink, pale blue,
purple, and white, send up tall heads of flower. The coreopsis plants
grow so big and bushy they have to be staked. The cornflowers, a streak
of blue at the end of the cabbage bed, are taller than the broad beans
adjoining. Then there are the hollyhocks and the larkspurs—these hold
their heads as high as anyone could desire, and the tall red salvias
are not far behind. The foxgloves are also a brave sight (though
I do not include in this category those that are buried under the
tree-lupins!).

Of course, there are low-growing things in the garden as well as the
more lofty-minded. There is one bed that is a ramping mass of giant
mimulus of various colours. Convolvulus minor spreads about the ground
in one of the white lily beds; and eschscholtzias cover the earth for
another row of lilies. Pansies rove about at their own sweet will in
this garden, and the old-fashioned white pinks and the pink variety
spread themselves out over the big stones that edge the borders.

The mignonette bed has a row of lavenders at the side, and mounds of
nasturtiums grow where the earth is too rocky and barren to support
anything else.

Naturally, there are hedges of sweet peas; sometimes they are heavy
with flowers, sometimes the slugs or birds settle the matter at the
beginning of the season. One hedge runs along at the back of the herb
garden, and the herbs have so spread themselves out that the sweet peas
were getting swamped. Virginia has been cutting them back.

Do you know what the scent of cut herbs is like on a hot summer day,
with sweet peas in the background? In this herb garden there is sage,
with its lovely blue flowers, lemon thyme, silver thyme, savory,
hyssop, lavender, rosemary, rue, balm, marjoram, black peppermint,
spearmint and parsley.

In this bed also grows the old-time bergamot, with its heavily-scented
leaves and lovely tufts of crimson flowers.

But though one part of the garden is set apart for herbs and another
for vegetables, you must not imagine that they are only to be found
there. Fine clumps of parsley have planted themselves in among the
annual larkspurs; mint persists in running riot among the pink and
white mallows (but the mint family never remains quietly at home);
a sturdy scarlet runner comes up, year after year, beside a great
bush of gum cistus, which makes me think it might be treated as a
perennial; it seems impossible to get the artichokes to part company
with the Michaelmas daisies, while raspberry canes shoot up among
the old-fashioned red fuchsia bushes; radishes are flourishing like
the green bay-tree underneath the sweetbriar; a regiment of pickling
onions is living on most neighbourly terms with a row of cup-and-saucer
Canterbury bells; and as for rhubarb—well, what can you expect when one
man, whom I employed for a brief spell, remarked:

“You’ll see where I’ve put in that thur special rubbub, miss, because
I’ve planted a traveller’s joy a-top of he to mark the spot.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Cupid’s Border is another section of this garden that may interest you.
Here you naturally find Love-in-a-mist and Love-lies-bleeding. The
flowers which the country folks call Love-lockets dangle pink and white
from their graceful curving stems; (alas, in catalogues and places
where they know, this plant is merely regarded as dielytra). In this
border you of course find forget-me-nots “that grow for happy lovers”;
bachelor’s buttons, too, hold up their heads in a very sprightly
manner, and please notice that they are getting nearer and nearer to
the clump of Sweet Betsy. But the bachelor’s buttons have a rival, for
the other side of Sweet Betsy stands lad’s love—and though not so showy
as the bachelor’s buttons, lad’s love claims to be of more solid worth.
I leave them to settle the matter between themselves, however; I’m not
one to interfere in such affairs.

At the other side of the border stands a maiden’s blush rose, and
gallantly waving beside it is a clump of Prince’s Feather (sometimes
referred to in common parlance as “they laylock bushes”). At the
edge of the border you naturally find heartsease, not the stiff,
over-developed article of modern flower-shows, but the old-fashioned
sort, all streaks and splashes of rich purple and yellow.

There is no time now to go round the vegetable garden—not that this
can be regarded as an entirely separate part of the estate, for the
vegetables have got mixed up in a terribly haphazard way with the rest
of things, as I hinted just now. The potato-plot, for instance, has a
border of golden wallflowers all round and double daisies at the edge,
with a row of giant sunflowers, hollyhocks, and clumps of honesty at
the back.

This mixture is partly in the nature of a compromise. The gentleman
who wields the spade has to be taken into account. No matter who
he is, no matter how often he discharges me and I have to beg yet
someone else to “oblige” me, it is always the same, the tiller of
the soil regards space given over to flowers as a grievous waste,
not to say an indication of feeble-mindedness! Therefore he inserts
a row of vegetables or seeds whenever I happen to have cleared out
some flowering plants and left a morsel of space _pro tem._ It seems
a prevailing idea among the non-qualified working classes, in rural
districts, that the cultivation of flowers ranks about on a level with
doing the washing—work derogatory to a man and only fit for women!

To the credit of the handy man I must say that on one occasion he did
kindly present me with a load of pig manure. He put it on the flower
garden the day before we arrived, as a pleasant surprise, which it
certainly was! Next day we all had relatives with broken legs, who
needed our immediate return to town.

       *       *       *       *       *

Nevertheless the vegetables play their part, and assume no small
importance, in due course; for it is another unwritten law of this
cottage that visitors shall go out and select the day’s vegetables,
and cut them with the dew on; of course, if they are superlatively
lazy, they can meanly get some early riser to do it for them; also they
can confer together, or each can gather her own choice.

Hence you will see Virginia or Ursula in a large hat that is all
brim, with basket on arm, and wearing an apron (not a lacy, frilly
muslin thing, but a good-sized, well-made, old-fashioned lilac print
apron), going up the garden and gathering broad beans, cutting young
cauliflowers, or “curly greens,” or turnip tops, or a marrow, forking
up potatoes, pulling carrots, collecting lettuces, spring onions, cress
and other salading—all according to the season.

And if it should chance that you have never yourself put on a big
apron, and cut your own vegetables before the dew is off them, then
Virginia will be truly sorry for you.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is plenty of time to be lazy, however; and a hot summer day means
long leisure in this garden; for when the sun is high the brown pitcher
rests (though the brown teapot does not) until the fir-trees throw
shadows from the west.

All day you can sit in the shade at the bottom of the garden, looking
up the hill at the wonderful mass of colour before you. Along the ridge
of the cottage roof perches a row of swallows, chirping and chattering
in their usual way. The starlings, who have built under the tiles,
are ordering their respective families to cease clamouring for more,
explaining that hunting caterpillars is hot work. Most other birds are
quiet when the sun is fiercest, but over all the garden there is the
hum, hum of thousands of industrious bees, while literally hundreds of
white butterflies keep up a perpetual flutter over the tall blue spikes
of bloom on the lavender bushes.

Even the small white dog with the brown ears ceases to tear about the
garden, and bark at nothing in a consequential way; he just lies down
on the edge of somebody’s dress, and hangs out a little pink tongue for
air.

This is the time when the flower-patch among the hills spells REST.

An old woman passing up the lane a few nights ago paused at the gate.
“How them pinnies do blow, miss!” she said, gazing admiringly at a
clump of peonies. Then she added—

“Ain’t it strange, now, that it do take a woman to make a flower
garden? A man ain’t no good at that; he simply can’t help hisself
a-running to veg’tables!”

But after thinking this over, and despite all that strong-minded
womankind tells me to the contrary, I cannot really believe that there
is such total depravity in the other sex!




VI

That Jane Price!


WHEN Abigail announced, “Mrs. Price says can you spare a minute to see
her, please, ma’am,” you would have known by the toss of her nose that
the lady-caller was not very _nearly_ related to the aristocracy.

As a matter of fact, Mrs. Price, or “that Jane Price,” as she is
more usually styled, is held in no great esteem in our village. Yet
everything is said to fulfil some useful purpose, and if Mrs. Price
does nothing else, at least she and her family serve as conspicuous
moral warnings and give us something to throw up our hands about at
intervals, when we exclaim:

“_Did_ you EVER!!”

She is a widow of ample and well-fed proportions, owning her cottage,
some bees and a pig, and apparently getting a fairly good living out of
doing remarkably little sewing. If, under a mistaken sense of duty, you
strive to encourage local industry, and seek to engage her services,
she has to consider before she consents to undertake the bit of sewing
you offer her to do, at three times the amount you would have to pay
for having it done in town. And as often as not she replies that she
“really _can’t_ oblige you” this time, as she’s got a “spell” on cruel
bad, that has gone all down her back to her knees, making her head
feel nohow.

You turn away not even worried about her condition, since she seems as
cheerful as a daisy and as comfortably complacent as a cow. And you
also know, even though you may have been acquainted with the lady only
a few months, that however cruel the spell may be, and however long it
may last and prevent her working, her children will be some of the most
elaborately dressed in the Sunday school, and from the cottage door
there will radiate the most appetising of odours as regularly as the
mealtimes come round.

How it is that she manages to do so well with so little visible means
of subsistence, only a stranger would stop to inquire. The residents
know only too well that her pockets are large; that the shawl she
invariably wears on weekdays has voluminous folds; that her carrying
and stowing-away capacity is almost worthy of a professional conjurer.
Kleptomania (to give it as refined a name as we can) is her besetting
sin. Unfortunately her family follow in her footsteps.

Mrs. Price seems to have a positive gift for turning everything to
profitable account; and her methods of raising money are as ingenious
as they are varied.

Knowing her idiosyncrasies, I asked Abigail where she was at the
moment.

“In the kitchen, sitting in my wicker easy-chair,” Abigail replied,
still with elevated nose. “She just walked right in and plumped herself
down.”

Whereupon I indicated, by dumb pantomime, that she was on no account
to be left there without personal oversight; and Abigail intimated, by
means of nods and becks and wreathèd scowls, that she was keeping her
left eye on the visitor, over her shoulder, even while she was talking
to me. We both knew that all was fish that came to Mrs. Price’s net,
and she would negotiate with absolute impartiality a piece of soap, a
duster, or a half-crown, should they lie in her way.

       *       *       *       *       *

Not long before, Miss Bretherton, the Rector’s niece, a middle-aged
lady who keeps house for him, had tried to give one of the Price
girls—Esmeralda by name—a good start in life, taking her into the
rectory kitchen. But things disappeared with such alarming rapidity
during the first month she was in residence, that she had to be sent
back home again.

She left on a Saturday after middle-day dinner. In the afternoon the
house was observing the all-pervading quiet that was customary on
Saturdays while the Rector was in his study preparing for Sunday.

Miss Bretherton, requiring something in the dining-room that adjoined
the study, went in on tiptoe so as not to disturb him, when, to her
amazement, she came upon the discharged Esmeralda sitting on the floor
beside an open sideboard cupboard where some jars of pickles were
stored, ladling out pickled walnuts as fast as she could into one of
the maternal pudding basins. Seeing Miss Bretherton, she just picked up
her basin, walnuts and all, and hastily retired the same way that she
had come, through the French window.

Now, obviously her ex-mistress—over fifty years of age and liable
to rheumatism—couldn’t chase after her in house-slippers and minus
a bonnet, seeing it was raining; so the bereft lady just closed the
sideboard door and communed with her own feelings, womanfully stifling
her desire to burst into the study and tell the Rector about it, even
though it was his Saturday silence time.

Next morning, Sunday, just as she was buttoning her gloves, preparatory
to crossing the rectory lawn by the short cut to the church, the cook
came to her with the agitated inquiry: Had the mistress done anything
with the leg of mutton left by the butcher yesterday morning?

No, of course not! Why should she? etc.

Well, they hunted high and they hunted low, and the church bell gave
its final peremptory clang when they were still hunting, but no leg
of mutton was found either in the master’s boot cupboard, or under
the bed in the spare room, or in the bookcase in the library, or in
the woodshed, or in any other of the equally likely places which they
searched. Indeed, no one had ever expected that it would be found once
its absence was discovered; they just looked darkly at each other
and murmured, “That Esmeralda, of course.” Cook declares that her
mistress added “the good-for-nothing baggage” under her breath; but I
can’t credit that of Miss Bretherton, who always manages to maintain a
wonderful calm and self-restraint under the most trying circumstances.

At any rate, she told cook they must have fried ham and eggs for
dinner—if you ever heard of such a thing on a Sunday at the rectory!
and the Archdeacon of Saskatchewan preaching in the morning on behalf
of the C.M.S. too!

Moreover, Miss Bretherton was ten minutes late for church, a thing
never known before in the memory of the oldest inhabitant; and then,
still more remarkable, instead of waiting to speak to people after
church, she set off at a terrific pace for Mrs. Price’s cottage, and
walked in to find the kitchen full of a delightful aroma, and a fine
leg of mutton just being taken from the roasting-jack by Esmeralda and
placed on the table, which was already adorned with a saucer containing
pickled walnuts.

Miss Bretherton knew better than to say, “That’s my leg of mutton.” Our
village understands all about “having the law on ’un,” if anyone upsets
their feelings in any way. Therefore, swallowing hard, and determining
for the hundredth time not to lose her temper, she said, “Where did you
get that leg of mutton from, Mrs. Price?”

Had the woman replied, “From the butcher,” that would have been fairly
incriminating, because, of course, we don’t require more than one sheep
a week for home consumption in the village, and, as everybody knows,
each sheep has only two legs, and it wouldn’t require a Sherlock Holmes
to track those two legs any week in the year. As it happened, this
week’s other leg had gone to my house. Had Mrs. Price claimed it as her
own, she would have been undone.

But she was too shrewd for that; she promptly replied, with a look of
surprised innocence at such a strange question being asked by Miss
Bretherton at such a time—

“That leg of mutton, do you mean, miss?” (as though there was a meat
market to choose from!) “Yes; ain’t it a fine one; it weighs seven
pound, if it weighs an ounce.” (Miss B. knew that; she had studied the
butcher’s ticket only that morning.) “I couldn’t get it into the oven,
so we had to roast it afore the fire. I expect you find the kitchen a
bit ’ot. But as I was saying” (Miss B. had to press her lips together
very hard), “it ain’t often as I get a windfall like this, but my
brother-in-law come up to see us yesterday from Penglyn, and he brought
it me for a birthday present; that’s why I had to send ’Sm’ralder round
to the rectory in the afternoon to fetch my pudding basin as she’d left
behind—the one she brought round that day with some new-laid eggs in,
what I give her for a present for cook’s mother who were bad.”

Miss Bretherton pressed her lips still tighter, and walked out. She
knew the brother-in-law wouldn’t speak to “that Jane” if he met her
in the same lane—such was the love between the two families—much less
bring her a leg of mutton; besides, he had none too many joints for his
own family. She also knew that cook’s mother had not been ill, and if
she had, it wouldn’t have been Mrs. Price who would have supplied the
new-laid eggs.

But she also knew the futility of attempting to circumvent a woman of
this type, and she hated to have her stand there and tell still more
untruths, the children hovering round.

So she returned silently, and served the ham and eggs, and listened
while the Archdeacon explained the difference between Plain Cree and
Swampy Cree (which, he was surprised to find, she had hitherto confused
in her mind, or at best regarded as one and the same language) with
all the Christian grace and forbearance she could muster.

Only once did this nearly give out, and that was when, after she had
apologised to their guest for such frugal fare and had briefly outlined
the reason for the same, the Rector looked with his usual absent-minded
benignity through his glasses at his plate, and said—

“Well, my dear, I hadn’t noticed any difference: I thought this was
what we usually have for dinner on Sundays.”

Just think of it! And for the Archdeacon to go home and tell his wife!
So like a man!

       *       *       *       *       *

This much as a general survey of Mrs. Price’s characteristics. She
doesn’t make an idyllic picture, I admit, nor seem likely to be in
the running for a stained glass window in the Parish Room. But then
villages no less than towns are made up of varied assortments of human
nature—and don’t forget we are none of us perfect.

Nevertheless, making all allowances for human frailty, you don’t
wonder that I wasn’t anxious for Mrs. Price to have the free run of my
kitchen, and Abigail, remembering that she had left her purse on the
dresser, hurried back.

I finished the letter I was writing, and then went out to see her. As
I approached, I could hear her:

“‘Sally,’ he says, ‘don’t let the kids fergit me,’ and then ’e was
gone. It’s this new disease they’ve got from America—the ‘germs,’ they
calls it—and they do say as ’e makes a beautiful corpse, though I
shouldn’t never have thought it of ’e, the Prices being none of them
pertickerlelly well favoured, even if he was me own pore husband’s
brother. But thur, thur, I say speak nothing but good of them what’s
gone.”

She rose when I appeared, and, with a good deal of side-tracking on to
irrelevant matters, chiefly connected with the excellence of her own
children, she explained that her late husband’s brother had just died
“over to Penglyn,” a little town fifteen miles away across the hills,
and in a most un-get-at-able corner of the county.

The funeral was to-morrow, and neither she nor the family of the
deceased had a scrap of black, “leastways, exceptin’ this bonnet,
which don’t look really respeckful to ’im as is gone, being me own
husband’s own brother.” I admit the item that had been placed upon
her head—whether for use or adornment it was hard to decide—resembled
a jaded hen’s nest more than anything else! The rest of her attire
consisted of a green skirt, a crimson blouse, and a very light fawn
coat (portions of costumes that had started life in considerably
higher social circles in the village), and a purple crochet scarf.

Dimly it occurred to me that I had not seen Mrs. Price in bright
colours before, for although she never wore the conventional widow’s
weeds, she was usually in something black or dark; the matrons
in our village haven’t gone in for skittish skirts or glaring
colour-combinations as yet! I concluded, however, that her black
clothes were too shabby. She was saying—

“And I didn’t know where to turn, m’m. Everybody saying they hadn’t
none when I called, and there didn’t seem to be a soul left to go to,
and that pore dear sister-in-law of mine—leastways same as, being me
poor husband’s brother’s wife—with not a scrap to put on ’cept his best
overcoat what she’s cuttin’ down for one of the boys.

“And then I bethought me of you, it come to me all of a suddint. I put
down the pan of ’taters I was peeling and come straight up. ’Sm’ralder
says to me, ‘But, mother, you can’t wear that ole bonnet up to _that_
house!’ But I says to her, ‘It’s certain I can’t wear what I haven’t
got, and the Queen haven’t sent me one of her done-with crowns yet.’ So
I just come as best I could.”

I was a little surprised to hear that she had been refused at every
door, for, irrespective of personal reputation, the better-off
residents are always very good to any of the villagers who may be
in want or in trouble; indeed, we have only one mean woman among us,
she who once remarked to a paid lady-companion, newly-arrived from a
freezingly cold journey, and badly in need of a cup of tea to eke out
her skimpy cold-mutton-bone lunch: “I’m sure you will enjoy a glass
of water. We have really _beautiful_ water here. Pray help yourself
when_ever_ you like.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Still, it was possible no one had had any black.

I meditated a moment on my own wardrobe and Mrs. Price’s capacious
waist-measure! Virginia’s things would be still less use, as she is the
size of a sylph.

“I’m afraid I haven’t anything that would fit you in the way of a
skirt,” I began, “but I’ve a large winter jacket if you don’t think it
will be too warm for June.”

“Oh, thank you, m’m. It’s only the first week in June. I’m a _very_
chilly person” (no one looking at her buxom proportions would have
thought so!), “and a thick jacket is just what I’m needin’ terrible
bad. And if you had a skirt, it ’ud be jest the size for my pore dear
sister-in-law. Ah, I can feel for her, being a widow myself, and left
with them children. She said to me on’y yesterday, ‘Jane, do try to get
me a black skirt from anywhere, if on’y you can.’ She says——”

“But you told me just now that you hadn’t seen her since before her
husband died,” blurted in Abigail, forgetful of her usual good manners,
and begrudging to see the family wardrobe being disbursed in this way,
as she rather regarded my coats and skirts as her perquisites.

Mrs. Price turned full upon Abigail that look of surprised innocence
that stood her in such good stead. “She said it in a letter she writ me
yesterday,” she replied with dignified composure.

Finally I told her I would look her out something if she sent Esmeralda
up for it in the evening. Mrs. Price lingered to recite further tales
of woe to Abigail, till she, kind girl, in spite of her private
estimate of the lady, bestowed on her a pair of black lisle thread
gloves, as she spoke so pathetically about having to go to the funeral
with bare hands and not being able to afford any gloves.

       *       *       *       *       *

When Virginia came in from “sticking” sweet peas in the garden, I told
her about Mrs. Price.

“Well, I don’t consider her a worthy object for charity as a rule,” she
remarked. “But at the same time, if Fate kindly supplies me with an
opportunity to get rid of that big black hat of mine that I’ve never
liked and never intend to wear again, I’m not the one to disregard it,
especially as it will save my carrying that huge hat-box back to town.
But whether she or the ‘sister-in-law-same-as’ wears it, either will
find it good weight for the money.”

So we left the winter jacket, and the hat, and a black blouse Ursula
added to the parcel, and my black cloth skirt for the sister-in-law,
against Esmeralda should come for them. And then we started out to make
some calls.

       *       *       *       *       *

Passing Miss Primkins’ house, we just stopped to leave a book I had
promised to lend her. Miss Primkins is a pleasant middle-aged lady, of
very small independent means, who lives in a cottage by herself. The
door stood open as usual. She looked over the stairs when I knocked,
then explained that she would be down in a moment if we would go in.

“I’ve been turning out things in the box-room—in order to find a little
black for that Mrs. Price. Her husband’s brother has just died, and the
funeral is to be to-morrow, and she says no one in the place has any
black in hand. So she came and asked me if I would mind _lending_ her a
black mantle!—_lending_ it to her indeed!

“I asked her what she had done with that black dolman I gave her not
three months ago—you remember that dolman trimmed with black lace that
I was rather fond of? I bought it—oh, it must be at least ten years
ago—for my uncle’s funeral. It was trimmed with two bands of crêpe,
one about four inches deep, and the other three inches, or perhaps
two-and-three-quarters; very stylish it looked, too. Then I had the
crêpe taken off and some black silk put on it—very good ottoman silk it
was—that had originally been part of a black silk dress belonging to
my sister. Next I had it covered with fancy net with velvet appliqué
for a change—not that I liked it, or would have thought of having it
done had I known what it was going to cost. But they do take you in so
at those town shops; why, I could have got a new dolman for what it
cost to cover that one! And then it lasted no time, used to catch in
everything, so I had next to no wear out of that.

“I had it taken off, and the dolman _thoroughly_ turned—every bit; and
the dressmaker put on some fringe, a sort of wavy fringe; but I had to
have it taken off, because that Gladys Price, when she came home for
a holiday, had on a silk coat trimmed with fringe exactly like it, so
there again I got taken in, as you might say.

“After that, I put my brown fur trimming on it, but for the winter
only; and then for the summer I put on some deep black lace. I hadn’t
had that lace on more than six months when I gave her the dolman. (I
remember quite well sitting up late that night to pick the lace all
off it.) Altogether, you can’t say I had so much wear out of any of it,
and it was a constant expense. And yet, would you _credit_ it, when I
asked her what she had done with it, she said it had ‘wored out’! Why,
_I_ could have had it another ten years in good use, without its being
‘wored out.’ She’s a thriftless woman, that’s what she is. Still, I
suppose it isn’t for us to judge her.”

       *       *       *       *       *

We had to hurry on. I wanted to call on Miss Bretherton, who had
sprained her ankle and needed commiseration. We found her in that state
of suppressed and bottled-up-in-a-Christian-manner irritation that
is common to very active women who are suddenly tied to a chair with
some of their machinery out of gear; and, like most other women under
similar conditions, she was trying to do ten times as much as she ought
to have done, in order to prove to everybody that there was nothing the
matter with her.

“You’ll just have to come into the midst of all this muddle,” she
sighed, “for I can’t move myself into another room.”

“Sorting things for a jumble sale?” I inquired, looking at sundry piles
of garments strewn about her.

“It almost amounts to that; though I really started out to get a few
things together for a woman in the village who seems to be rather
needy at the moment, that Jane Price. Her brother-in-law has just
died—you remember Zebadiah Price, who lived at Briar Bush Cottage
before they took a little place at Penglyn? We lost sight of them after
they left here—it’s such a cross-country place they’ve gone to. I’m
rather surprised they haven’t asked the Rector to bury him, he thought
a good deal of Zebadiah; but all the same I’m glad they haven’t, for it
takes you the best part of a day to cover that fifteen miles, and he
has a slight cold. It seems she’s going to the funeral to-morrow.

“I admit there are several women in the parish I should feel a greater
pleasure in helping—she does try my patience at times—but I felt I
ought to do what I can in this particular case, as she doesn’t seem
able to get any black from anyone else. Everybody says they gave theirs
to the last jumble sale, she tells me, though _I_ didn’t see any of it!

“She is wanting some for Zebadiah’s family too; they are left in
bad straits, she says. I was only too glad to find that she and
her sister-in-law have buried the hatchet at last; they’ve been at
loggerheads for years; she really spoke very nicely about it. She
said the older she got the more she felt life was too short to spend
it in quarrelling, and at a time like this she thought bygones should
be bygones. I don’t like to misjudge the woman,” Miss Bretherton
continued with a sigh. “Sometimes she seems so anxious to do right. Her
bringing up was against her. And yet——” And then the Rectoress closed
her lips firmly determined to say no uncharitable thing, even about
“that Jane Price.”

I’m afraid I didn’t think too highly of Mrs. Price at that moment.
I remembered the parcels of black garments waiting at my house and
again at Miss Primkins’. Moreover, Mrs. Price’s occasional lapses into
fervent piety annoyed me very much, because I suspected they were
developed for my benefit. She always gave me a long recital of woes and
financial difficulties whenever she saw me, and invariably finished
up with, “But thur, thur, I don’t let it worry me, for I always say,
‘The Lord will provide.’” I much objected to her taking the Name in
vain in this manner, more especially as it generally happened that she
gave Providence every assistance in the matter by helping herself to
anything that lay within reach of her hand!

       *       *       *       *       *

We did not stay long at the rectory, as I wanted to call on the lady
of the manor. She kept us waiting a few minutes before she appeared;
but explained, as she apologised for the delay, “I’ve just turned out
five trunks, two cupboards, and four chests of drawers—and goodness
knows how many more I should have set upon if you hadn’t come!
It’s a pastime that seems to grow upon one like taking to drink or
gambling—the more you have the more you want!

“I only meant to look through one chest for a black bonnet I thought
I had put there—I’m trying to find some funeral wear for that Mrs.
Price. Her husband’s brother has died, Zebadiah Price; they live over
the hills at Penglyn. While he was alive, she hadn’t a good word to say
for his wife; but now he’s gone, her conscience seems to worry her, and
she says she feels the very least she can do is ‘to show respeck to the
remains,’ and she wants to help his family. So I’ve been going over a
good deal of ancient history in my search for garments calculated to
show a sufficiency of respect. She said she was afraid that what she
had on might give a wrong impression.”

“If she wore the same set of glad rags that she had on when she came to
see us, likewise asking for mourning,” Virginia interpolated, “she’d
give the impression of a ragged rainbow gone wrong and turned inside
out, rather than a funeral.”

“Oh, she’s been to you, has she? She told me she couldn’t think of
making so bold as to intrude her troubles on other people, and only
came to me because she knew I had been so kind to Zebadiah years ago
when he was ill; and added that my clothes always suited her so well!”

When we got outside, Virginia suggested with a twinkle that we should
call on a few more people. We did, and at every house we were met with
the sad intelligence of Zebadiah Price’s death and his sister-in-law’s
quest for suitably respectful apparel.

Surely Royalty could not have been more universally mourned—in our
village, at any rate!

       *       *       *       *       *

Next Sunday we were rather puzzled on entering the church to see an
ample lady clad in the most resplendent of widow’s weeds, sitting in
solitary state in the very front row—a seat usually patronised only by
the halt and maimed.

Her dress and mantle were of dull black silk trimmed with crêpe about
a quarter of a yard in depth. True, it was not quite new, but its cut
and style were unmistakable; anyone who possessed such a dress could
afford to wear it even after its first newness had worn off; it stamped
the wearer as a lady of means. A long weeper, black kid gloves, and a
black-bordered handkerchief completed all we could see of the lady. We
could only conclude that the distinguished stranger must be very deaf
indeed, to take the front seat.

By this time all the congregation as it came in was interested. Such
a stylish stranger would naturally attract attention. She kept her
head devoutly bent, and used the handkerchief frequently; we couldn’t
see her face. She might have been a peeress-in-waiting, judging by the
dignity and decorum of her bearing.

It was just as the Rector was repeating the opening sentences that the
resplendent one turned round to see the effect she was making on the
congregation, and behold—that Mrs. Price!

I am afraid I only just saved myself from making the time-honoured
remark, “_Did_ you EVER!”

       *       *       *       *       *

“But what I want to know is this,” said Miss Primkins (as several of
us walked together along the high road after church, leaving Mrs.
Price giving details of the funeral, and the innumerable wreaths, to
her friends). “Where did she get those weeds from? There isn’t a widow
among us, nor a relative of a widow, so far as I know. Now who gave
them to her?”

But we none of us knew. It certainly looked suspiciously as though Mrs.
Price had used the poor late Zebadiah as an excuse for dragging the
whole county!

I wasn’t surprised that she herself had donned fresh weeds, for as
we are remarkably healthy upon these hills, we are apt to make the
most of a funeral when it chances our way, and the opportunity to
wear mourning, carrying with it, as it does, a certain personal
distinction, is not to be passed over lightly.

On one occasion I remember meeting a farmer’s wife on Sunday morning
in deep black (that had done duty for several previous family
bereavements), weeping into her handkerchief as she went along the road
to church. We stopped to inquire about her trouble.

“My poor old mother’s gone at last,” she sobbed. We were truly sorry
for her grief, and asked when she had died.

“Well, I ’spect it would be about three or four this morning; that’s
the time they usually go. I had a letter last night saying as how they
didn’t reckon she’d live the night. So she’ll be gone by now. My poor
mother! I’ll never see her again!” and she wept afresh.

I’m glad to say the mother is still alive, and very flourishing.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was about a fortnight later that Virginia gave me the
wildly-exciting information, culled from the local paper, that some
Roman remains had just been excavated. I murmured “Oh!” in that
absent-minded way people will do when their thoughts are called off the
subject of What shall we have for the midday meal? to higher things.

I was thinking like this: “I did intend to have steak and kidney
pudding, but as the butcher is late, there won’t be time to cook it;
there isn’t enough cold tongue—at least, that knobbly end part is no
use—we have plenty of eggs in the house, so we must just make out with
that soup left over from yesterday and omelettes; or we might easily
have——”

“Either a viaduct or an amphitheatre or a villa; they aren’t sure as
yet which it is,” went on Virginia. “You read about it yourself; it’s
awfully interesting. There; in that column—see? ‘Roman Remains at
Penglyn.’”

“At Penglyn? It can’t be Zebadiah,” I commented; “he wasn’t as old as
_that_!”

Nevertheless, we aren’t particular to a few hundred years in our
village. For I remember last year an old woman telling me, “Have
you heard, m’m, of the great news in the village? The Black Prince
is staying at the Inn! Yes, to be sure! And he seems to understand
our language beautiful, he do; though they say he does speak the
foreign to a gentleman what’s staying there with him. The only thing
I was surprised about was to see how young he do look, considering
of his age. Why, I remember hearing tell about him when I was at
school!” Later on I found the historic potentate was a harmless Indian
law-student.

Virginia kept on about the Roman excavations, and announced her
intention of going to see them. I protested that I wasn’t going to
be hauled across a stony mountainous region in a wagonette, and then
change twice by slow train, an hour or so to wait at each change, and
ditto to get back, all to see a few brick walls, when the garden so
badly needed weeding.

She was indignant, said she should prefer to go alone to having
unsympathetic and uninformed society; reminded me of the histories
of nations that had been found embedded in brick walls, waxed
eloquent on the subject of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Rosetta
Stone, skipped lightly from the pointed apex of the Pyramids to the
significance of the flat roofs of Thibet, examined the walls of the
buried cities in central Asia, and before I had fully realised that I
was really travelling in the East, I found that she was examining the
designs on the Aztec pottery of ancient Mexico.

Fearing that we should have this sort of thing straight on end for a
week, I said we would go next day, weather permitting, if only she
would help me decide whether to have the omelette plain, or a cheese
omelette, or would they prefer macaroni cheese? I have found in the
past that the crystallisation of thought necessary to follow Virginia,
when she is in an informing mood, creates a vacuum, and then I get a
cold in my head.

I also inquired whether she would prefer to drive all the way, or go by
train.

She replied, still with her eyes glued to the interesting newspaper
treatise on antiquarian relics, that she would rather I settled these
minor details, adding that she always liked to leave the arrangement of
everything to me, as it gave her such opportunities to point out to me
the feebleness of my methods and ideas.

I decided to go with her, simply because I knew that unless she
had some firm, restraining force beside her, she would go and buy
that Roman viaduct, amphitheatre, or villa, and order it to be sent
home; and, for all I knew, she might give _my_ address in a fit of
wandering-mindedness, and what should _I_ do with it when it arrived?
You can’t pack an amphitheatre away in the empty pigsty, and all the
other space was occupied with seedlings and things!

Besides, she has no bump of locality (neither have I, for the matter of
that); but I thought it would look better if two of us were arrested
for wandering about without any visible means of subsistence; at least,
I could say I was her keeper.

Next morning we inquired of the barometer as to the weather prospects.
By the way, that barometer is a unique treasure. V. and U. gave it
to me one birthday; I had long been craving one that was a genuine
antique. There was no doubt about this one—its antiquity, I mean; for
the rest, until you get on speaking terms with it, I admit that it
does seem a trifle ambiguous.

But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’ll say no more
on this point, save that we tapped it vigorously; whereupon the long
hand flew wildly round and round one way, while the short hand did a
whirligig, equally excitedly, in the opposite direction.

We waited till they both got tired of spinning round, and then, as the
long hand pointed to “Much Rain,” with leanings towards “Stormy,” we
knew we could rely on a very fine day.

But we tapped it once again, just to make sure it knew its own mind.
After it had wiggled giddily round as before, the long hand stopped
midway between “Set Fair” and “Very Dry.” Of course that confirmed our
former calculations, and we got out our new summer hats, and left our
umbrellas at home. Virginia had worn _her_ new hat indoors most of the
previous day, in order to get her money’s worth out of it, because she
said she never got her money’s worth out of any of her garments, save
her raincoat and her umbrella. [N.B.—Is an umbrella a garment?]

       *       *       *       *       *

It was market day when we got there, and all the town was of course
wending its way either to or from the market-place. One of the very
first people we ran against was Mrs. Zebadiah Price; but, to our
surprise, she was wearing neither my black cloth skirt nor Ursula’s
black blouse. On the contrary, she was in quite gay attire—a brown
coat and skirt, a blue blouse, a lace collar, a string of pearls as
large as marbles, and a tuscan straw hat trimmed with roses and purple
geraniums. I had known her in the past, when she lived in the village;
so I stopped and spoke to her.

“I was so very sorry to hear of your sad trouble,” I began. Yet
the subdued tones I used and felt necessary to the occasion seemed
curiously out of place beside all that market-day finery.

“Yes, thank you, m’m; it did upset me awful,” she said, looking very
woe-begone.

“I’m sure it did,” I said feelingly.

“You wouldn’t believe how I fretted over ’un. Seems kind o’ foolish I
s’pose when I’ve got the children. But I got that attached to ’un.”

“I can _quite_ understand it,” I murmured sympathetically. “After all,
children can’t take the place of the one that is gone.”

“No, m’m; that’s what I say.”

“And it was very sudden, wasn’t it?”

“Yes’m; taken bad and gone in a few hours,” she continued. “And that
was the second I lost in two months. I don’t have no luck somehow.”

“The second in two months!” I repeated in surprise.

“Yes’m, and I feel that downhearted about it, I don’t think I’ll go in
for another. I said so only last night to my husband.”

“Your husband?” I echoed again. It was beginning to sound like bigamy!

“He said at the time he thought the £15 I give was a swindle for the
brindled cow.”

“The brindled cow?” I said feebly. I really didn’t know what else to
say. Virginia need not have laughed!

Then I rallied my senses. “But I thought you had trouble about a
fortnight ago—your husband, Zebadiah Price—I heard——”

“My Zeb? About a fortnight ago? Let’s see?”—thoughtfully turning her
left eye in the direction of the church spire, and thereby tilting her
hat askew. “Ah, I expect you mean about last February; to be sure, he
did have a touch of this ’ere influenza; and he were a bit queer for a
couple of days, he were: but that was nothing to my losing my calf!”

“I’m glad it was no worse,” I said heartily. “Why, Mrs. Jane Price told
me she was coming to the funeral.”

“_Jane!_” ejaculated Mrs. Zebadiah. “Jane Price said she was coming to
_his_ funeral? Not if I know’d it, and it had been me very own even,
she wouldn’t; the _hussy_—begging your pardon, m’m, for using sech a
word. She knows better than to try to put so much as a shoenail of her
foot inside our door. She never aren’t and she never shan’t. Though for
brazenness there ain’t their beat in the county. Why, p’raps you’ve
heard how that there Gladys Price has started an ole clothes shop in
the town here, right under our very nose, and my husband as respected
as he is. There it is for everybody to read over the door—‘G. PRICE.
Ladies and Gents’ Hemporium’—whatever that may be! Coming to his
funeral, indeed! It makes me _broil_!” And Mrs. Z. went off fairly
sizzling with indignation.

       *       *       *       *       *

When we had duly found (after long search) and surveyed the Roman
remains (which consisted of three upright stones, something like those
used for kerbstones in the streets, and stood in the middle of a very
boggy field), and had failed to decide whether they were the viaduct,
the amphitheatre, or the villa, I suggested a speedy return to the
station, as it was now coming down a steady drizzle, with indications
of still more to follow. But Virginia said—

“I’d like, while we’re here, just to have a look into the hemporium
window, to see what she has marked that hat of mine.”

When we reached it, behold, it was like taking a regretful look
back into the past, for most of the garments there displayed we
had formerly known when they walked our village street in decorous
Sunday glory. And they included: a grey cloth coat of mine that had
disappeared most mysteriously; a long silk scarf of Ursula’s that, so
far, she had never missed; and a bead-bag I had often admired when
carried by the lady of the manor, and which, we felt sure, she had
never given away.

“Talk about excavating Roman remains!” I exclaimed; but Virginia’s
conversational powers were only equal to “_Did_ you EVER!”

And we damply faded away in the direction of the station.




VII

Just Being Neighbourly


THOSE superior Londoners who know nothing at first hand about Nature
“unimproved,” the type who find complete satisfaction for soul, body
and mind at some loud and crowded seaside resort, sometimes say to
me: “I can’t think how you can endure the terrible isolation of the
country—with absolutely nothing to look at, no one to say a word,
nobody to take the slightest interest in you, dead or alive. Well, _I_
should go out of my mind in such solitariness! But then, I am _so_
human; I do like a little life,” etc.

I don’t attempt to convert such people. After all, they are just as
much entitled to their views as I am to mine. Besides, I am only too
thankful that they keep away from our hills, and disport themselves in
an environment more in keeping with their personal tastes. We don’t
want the blatant woman, or the overdressed (which nowadays means
underdressed) woman, or the artificial woman, or the woman who “likes a
little life”; our hills would never suit them as a background, either
mentally or otherwise. Why, we have neither a music-hall nor a picture
palace for I don’t know _how_ many miles round! A benighted spot, isn’t
it!

But when they reproach us with having no one to say a word, and nobody
to take the slightest interest in our doings—well, I _could_ say many
things! But I merely assure them that we are nothing if not neighbourly!

       *       *       *       *       *

I took my sewing and went down to the bottom of the lower orchard. It
was a warm day, but not too hot to sit out of doors at eleven in the
morning, provided one found a shelter from the sun overhead. As I have
explained before, my cottage is on a steep hillside, the whole earth
runs either up or down. In only a few favoured spots can you place a
chair—and sit on it—with any degree of certainty; and even then you
probably have to level up the back, or the front, by putting some flat
stones under two of the legs. The slope of the hill faces south; hence
we get all the sun there is.

       *       *       *       *       *

The bottom of the lower orchard was just the place for such a day. A
wall with overhanging tangles of honeysuckle and ivy, and an oak-tree
that spread big arms well over the wall, gave just the shade one needed
from the blazing sun. I put the wicker chair with its back to the
wall—and such a comfort a wall is anywhere out of doors when you want
to sit down.

The view from this spot is very restful on a summer’s day: the hot
south is behind; one faces the cooler, glareless northern sky above the
hill that rises before one.

This orchard is but sparsely populated with fruit-trees, and most of
these are very old. There are some huge pear-trees that rise tall and
fairly straight, suggestive of rather well-fed poplars. There are
some twisted, rugged apple-trees, every branch and twig presenting
a wonderful study in silver and grey and green filigree, where the
lichens have spread and revelled unmolested for many a year. The
lichens are so marvellously beautiful, it always takes me quite a time
to get down to the lower wall; there is so much to look at on the way.
The delicate fronds, that seem closely related in their appearance to
the hoarfrost designs on the winter windows, show such a variety of
different cluster-schemes. They decorate the odd corners, and throw
beauty over the hard knots and gnarls, till I sometimes think they are
among the most exquisite things Nature has ever produced—only while I
am thinking this, I come upon something else equally beautiful.

Even on a hot day, when most of the mosses and lichens have faded
in the glare and drought, we still find the silvery-grey tracery
flourishing on the shady side of the apple-trees, and on the pieces of
branches that were snapped off and blown down into the long grass by
the equinoctial gales. I usually gather up an armful of these branches,
with their delicate pencil studies on a darker background, and carry
them down to the bottom of the orchard with me—only to wonder why I
didn’t leave them where they were till I returned, as I have to carry
them back up the hill again presently!

It may seem weakly sentimental to those who do not understand, but I
confess that, much as I love the smell of burning applewood, it always
gives me a real pain to put on the fire twigs that are ornamented with
moss or lichen. It seems heartless to destroy such beauty, even though
there is “plenty more where that came from,” as people sometimes tell
me.

In the summer I put the pieces of the grey-green branches, that I
gather up about the orchard, in the empty hearths and grates.

Many of the old trees originally planted in the lower orchard have died
or been blown down; the wind takes a heavy toll from these heights; we
can’t have pergolas and rose arches up here, as they can lower down in
the valley, unless we fasten them to very firm foundations.

As no previous owner in this happy-go-lucky district thought it worth
whiles to put new stock in the place of the fruit-trees that have come
down, there are plenty of open spaces, and comparatively little to
obstruct the view as you sit against the bottom wall and look up the
hillside. I am afraid this orchard is more ornamental than useful,
for the pears are the hard bitter sort used for making perry, a
drink that is very popular locally; and the apples are the equally
uninteresting-to-the-taste cider variety. Yet they are so exceptionally
beautiful, as the fruit turns crimson and yellow and golden brown, that
the trees become a glory of colour in fruit-gathering time.

After all there is excuse for ornament without specific use, if a thing
be very, _very_ ornamental—and the orchard certainly is that.

The sun reaches well under the trees, where the wild flowers and
grasses make a softly waving sea of colour. Of course, I know the grass
ought to be kept cut, so as to prevent undue nourishment being taken
from the earth for the support of “mere weeds.” But we pretend that
it is properly cropped by “Hussy;” she is the mild-eyed dusky Jersey,
belonging to the farmeress who supplies our milk, and is so-called,
because she has a playful habit of kicking over the pail.

Occasionally she is turned in and roams about at meditative leisure,
to the indignation of the small dog, who regards her as a hated rival.
But once the fruit appears, she has to be removed; either she chokes
herself with pears, or else they don’t agree with the butter; or
various other things. Even a cow seems a complicated problem when you
own a real one; and though I have only had cow-anxieties secondhand, so
to speak, my acquaintance with “Hussy” has led me to wonder whether,
on the whole, a tin of milk is a more sure and certain investment for
sixpence-halfpenny.

But even when the orchard has a tenant, it is surprising how little
damage she seems to do to the wild flowers. This is all the more
remarkable if you have ever seen what devastation one simple-minded
cow is capable of, if it indulges in but a ten minutes’ revel in your
flower-garden! “Hussy” seems to eat carefully round the flowers,
leaving the whole plant intact, which is more than a mowing machine
will do, despite its much vaunted up-to-dateness. Civilisation has
still a lot to learn.

Every season has its special flower show in this orchard. I only wish
I could get the same never-failing succession of flowers in my garden
that Nature does in hers.

On this particular July day the large field scabious was perhaps the
most noticeable flower; its mauve-blue blossoms high above all the
rest; its long stalks always determining to out-top everything else
that grows in the delightful medley.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Please, ma’am, I’ve brought you some flowers,” said a little pinafored
girl to me one day, when I had just arrived. She is an especial
favourite of mine, and lives in a cottage along my lane. This is her
way of just being neighbourly. In her hand was a large bunch of
scabious and grasses.

“These are very pretty,” I said. “What do you call them?”

“Please, ma’am, I call them ‘Queen Mary’s Pincushions,’” she said shyly.

The country names for the flowers are often so much more interesting
than the ones you find attached to them in books. After all, “Queen
Mary’s Pincushion” has something real and understandable about it for
just ordinary people like myself; whereas _Scabiosa arvensis_ (its
proper name) doesn’t stir my heart the least little bit. It was easy
to see the process by which the child had got the name—the flowers are
wonderfully like plump round pincushions, with the stamens for the
pins: but anything so delicately beautiful would not be suitable for
aught save a royal lady’s dressing-table; hence Queen Mary was, of
course, the one to whom they were dedicated.

And isn’t the name “Lady’s Laces” most suggestive? That is what we call
the white filmy flowers of the hedge-parsley. I seldom see a fine white
lace evening gown without thinking of the soft mist of white over green
that surprises us in June, and smothers the orchard when the Lady’s
Laces suddenly burst into billows of bloom.

Some of the local names are more material and prosaic than idealistic,
however. There is another flower that grows all about the orchard,
in close company with the scabious; it has bunches of bright yellow
flowers of the daisy family, growing in compact heads at the top of a
tall stem. I am very fond of this flower; it gleams sunshine all over
the place; but I don’t care to call it _Senecio Jacobœa_, which is
its proper name; it’s so mortifying when people look at you puzzled
and inquiring, and then ask, with a patient sigh, if you would mind
_spelling_ it! I never could spell.

Neither do I care for its other slightly less official name, “Common
Ragwort.” So one day when an old man was passing, who is fairly well-up
in flowers, I asked him if he could tell me the name of this Sunshine
plant. To which he replied—

“Wealluscallsemards’m.”

I didn’t ask him to spell it, because I don’t fancy he can spell any
better than I can. I merely said, “I don’t think I _quite_ caught the
name?”

“I said ‘’ARDS,’ Mum; (_crescendo_) ‘=’ARDS=.’ We allus calls ’em that
’cos they’re so ’ard to pull up.”

I thanked him, and still, in secret, call them the Sunshine
flowers—though I admit that Virginia, having recently set out gaily to
rectify my shocking laxity in the matter of the proper cultivation of
an orchard, at last decided herself to call them “’Ards.” She found
that the act of sitting down violently and unexpectedly so many times
in the course of trying to pull up a few innocent-looking plants, wore
her out more than it did the ’ards; so she gave it up at length, and
there they remain until this day!

Intermingling with Queen Mary’s Pincushions and the Sunshine flowers
is a rosy purple flower that blends delightfully with the other two;
Knapweed is one of its names; it looks something like a thistle bloom
at a distance, but it is really a relation of the Sweet Sultan that
grows in the garden beds, I believe.

Then there are Harebells dancing in the wind on the top of little
grassy mounds; so frail they look—yet “Hussy” never seems to walk on
them! Ragged Robins flutter pink petals beside a little brook that
runs down at the side of the orchard; and here are also big blue
forget-me-nots, with bright yellow centres.

But there is one thing about this orchard that very few people have
discovered, and that is the host of sweet-smelling things that you walk
on or rub against, as you carry the wicker-chair down to the bottom
wall.

Do you know what it is like to walk on Pennyroyal and Sweet Basil? Have
you ever stood still suddenly and said, “What _is_ it?” as a delicious
aromatic scent added itself to all the other lovely scents floating
around?

I discovered a whole world of beautiful scents in among the orchard
grass. The Pennyroyal was most unsuspicious-looking, till I stepped on
it. (I didn’t mean to step on it; but then one must walk _somewhere_!)
Next I found out the Sweet Basil, with its unobtrusive pink flowers.

Still I hadn’t found it all; a little later I came upon some wild mint
beside the brook. The tansy I had long been friendly with; the scent of
it seems to fit in so exactly with a hot summer day; and the wild thyme
that grows on a sunny bank at one side of the orchard you couldn’t
possibly miss, the bees have so much to say about it. Bushes of balm,
that have possibly strayed away from the garden, are always at hand, to
rub a leaf when desired.

But I think of all my favourites, the black peppermint has first place.
I shall never forget the day I first discovered its dark shoots pushing
up undaunted among the grass; not but what I had a long-standing
friendship with peppermint—in my first childhood, as bull’s-eyes; in my
second childhood, as peppermint creams.

But I hadn’t the slightest notion what it was like in its natural
state. When once I found it, I soon realised that it stood alone among
all the scented wonders. I put some of it at various corners about the
garden, because I found it has remarkable healing powers. No matter
how dispirited you may be or out of joint with the world, it is only
necessary to take a leaf, rub it and sniff it, whereupon the world
smiles again, and you realise that, in spite of all, it is good to be
alive. You will understand, therefore, how essential it is to have it
in handy places, so that weary people, even if they do not know of its
unique qualities, may rub against it in passing, and unconsciously come
under its spell.

It dies down in the winter, but when spring comes we always look
eagerly for the first purple-black shoots pushing up cheerily from the
soil.

It has only one fault; it suffers from zeal without discretion. It will
not keep within proper bounds. At the present moment I am wondering
whether it is better to dig up the bergamot or rout out the peppermint;
they are having a hand-to-hand fight for supremacy in one particular
flower corner.

       *       *       *       *       *

I am afraid my needlework was a mere matter of form that morning. Who
could glue their eyes to a piece of hemstitching with the whole earth
fairly dancing with colour and light around them? I faintly (but not
very earnestly) wished that I had brought knitting instead of sewing,
because that doesn’t need to be looked at, and you can keep up a
semblance of respectable industry while you are watching all the wild
things.

I had been feeling rather aggravated with a woman who had written
commiserating with my odd predilection for being “buried” in a spot
where there was “positively nothing to be seen.” She was really pitying
me! Well, I pitied her back, and pitied her hard; had she only known
it, she would have been aggravated too. So at least we were quits.
She had said that, for her part, she should simply die in such an
unsociable place. I took care to be just as sorry for her as she was
for me: it was a slight satisfaction to me! It was at this moment that
I heard voices of two women talking in the lane, hidden from view by
the orchard wall.

“How’s yourself, Mrs. Blake?”

“Only middling.” (We always start our conversations with
lugubriousness; it seems indecorous to parade health and happiness
before our neighbours!) “I’m in a tearing hurry. I’ve just been to the
doctor’s to see if he can’t give me something for my poor Jim’s tooth.
It do pester him something cruel. I promised him I’d run all the way
there and back; he’ll be raving till I get back.”

“Ah, he won’t get no peace till he has it out, I reckon.”

“The doctor says why don’t he have ’em out and get some new ’uns? But I
call it waste. Look at my sister’s husband: cost him a guinea his did!
Of course, he got a complete set top and bottom for that, fifty-three
teeth altogether I believe he told me, and as natural as you please,
I’ll own. But seeing as of course he’s got to take ’em out to eat,
I call it spending just for show, even if they do give you a good
mouthful for your money.”

“By the way, speaking of teeth reminds me—only I can’t stop to tell you
all about it now, as the children’ll be in from school at half-past
twelve, and I haven’t started the dinner yet—but I’ve just heard that
poor Mrs. Jeggins over to Brownbrook’s gone.”

“Pore thing! Is she though?”

“Yes, your mentioning Jim’s tooth made me think of it. They fancy it
started with a tooth in her case too; for she had faceache turrible bad
about six months ago, her husband told me. And then it just went all
over her like. The doctor simply couldn’t do nothing with it. He tried
every mortal bottle he had in his surgery, and gave her some out of
every single one, and _yet_ she died! But there, I s’pose it had to be!”

“I heeard tell from her sist’r-’n-law as she drank somethin’ awful;
but, mind you, if it’s a lie, ’taint my lie; it’s her lie as told me.
And I don’t at all hold with repeating a thing like that. But in any
case, I shouldn’t think it was her tooth! I expect she et something
that didn’t agree with her.”

“Well, maybe; as I always say, you can’t be too careful what you eat
nowadays. The dinner they’ve got up there smells tasty, don’t it?”

“Yes; it’s roast duck.”

“Duck, is it? I didn’t know they’d had a duck _this_ week. Who did they
get it from?”

“Sarah Ann Perkins—that old brown one of hers.”

“The _brown_ one! How much did she ask for it?”

“Four-and-six.” (An audible chuckle.) “Yes, _four-and-six_, if you
believe me! Fancy her having the face to ask it for that _brown_ duck!
But there, those that can afford to pay may just as well do so for
those who can’t.”

“Just as well. But—_four-and-six_! And she won’t finish it up neither;
doesn’t care for cold poultry, I’m told; she’ll have a fair slice
from the breast, but that’s all; never allows it to be seen in the
dining-room a second time. And there’s only the two of them there now.
Still, that Abigail’s a hearty eater! My husband was up there a-fixing
a tile that had got loosish on the roof, and he told me what she et
that day. A gammon rasher and an egg and four slices of bread and
butter and a piece of fried bread out of the frying-pan and two cups
of coffee—half milk—and some jam for breakfast. He was just a-going up
the ladder past the kitchen window at the time; and when he come down,
finding as he needed a bit of cement, she was having lunch of bread and
cheese and a cup o’ tea out of her lady’s teapot—she always has a cup
of tea between ’leven and twelve—and he’d smoked his pipe right out
afore she’d finished. And when he come down again at dinner-time she
was having a dinner fit for a growed man just come home from the cattle
market—made him hungry to see her, it did; he hung about a bit looking
for his jack-knife, as he wanted something to measure with. And at
tea-time he went in for a drop o’ water to mix the cement, and she was
having potted meat and toast—butter, too, not dripping toast, if you
ever did. But, of course, she relishes the good vittles she gets in a
country place like ourn. So different to the stuff you get in a town.”

“You’re right there; but they do have a sight o’ things down from
London. There was a box with ‘Army and Navy Stores’ writ on it that
was so heavy, it was all old Bob could do to get it on his shoulder,
with our Tom to give him a hand. Old Bob said he’d been reading in the
papers what awful waste there is in some o’ the army camps and how
the food gets throw’d away or sold by the cartload, to get rid of it,
but he didn’t know it was going on in the navy too—wicked, I call it.
They thought it must be tinned things, it were such a weight, but they
couldn’t make out for sure, though they rattled it ever so hard to see;
it was packed up awful tight.”

“Taters weigh heavy, but it wouldn’t be they; she’s got plenty, what
with new ones coming on soon, and a large box left still of the old
ones; I saw them in the scullery last time I was there. I’m going to
ask if I can have ’em, I’m so short for the pig. It might have been
soap and soda and hearthstone, though; they all weighs heavy.”

“That’s true. Still, I know for certain she has a heap of queer things
sent down, because when I was in Jane Price’s the other day, she had
a pot of something called ‘tunny fish,’ whatever that may be, on the
dresser. I asked her what it was. She told me she was passing here one
day and thought she heard someone calling her name; so she stepped
inside and looked around. No one was there, but she chanced to pass the
back door, and there on the top of the dustbin she saw this pot. She
brought it away with her just to ask our Tom if he knew what it was;
but he says they don’t catch it about here; never heeard tell on it.
Still, those sort of things aren’t like a nice piece of fat bacon to my
taste, to say nothing of duck; though I like a bit more picking on mine
than they’ll be on that _brown_ one, I reckon.”

“D’you know, I expect they’re cooking it now to have it cold for the
company’s supper to-night, because in any case they don’t _need_ it
to-day. They had two chops and a shoulder of lamb and some gravy beef
on Saturday. I met the boy taking it up, and asked him what he had.
They’d have the chops that day, and the lamb roast on Sunday, and cold
Monday; and it’s only Tuesday now, and they can’t have finished it
up—it was a fair-sized one; and there’s the gravy beef soup. You may
depend it’s for the visitors.”

“Oh! I didn’t know she was expecting company? It won’t be Miss Virginia
and her sister, because they’re abroad. She asked my husband to call
for her afternoon letters as he was passing the post-office yesterday,
and he brought ’em up, and there was a postcard with a picture on it of
some foreign place, and it said, ‘This is our hotel; enjoying ourselves
immensely; expect to be here a fortnight.’ And there was something
written at the bottom that I couldn’t make out, but it might have been
a ‘V,’ or a ‘U,’ only it was smudged so’s you couldn’t see _what_ it
was. So it was sure to be from them.”

“No, it wasn’t they two; ’twasn’t their trunks.”

“More than one trunk, is there? Then they’re going to stay a little
while. My Buff Orpingtons have started to lay again; that’s lucky. How
many do you say were coming?”

“I don’t know for certain, but I fancy it must be three, because there
were two blankets, one single-bed and one double, hanging in the sun
when I came past yesterday, and Abigail was polishing the downstairs
winders, and she’d got clean cutt’ns to the little room over the
kitchen, as well as in the sittin’-room. Not that there was any need
to put up clean cutt’ns, that I can see; those in the sittin’-room had
only been up two months, and the upstairs ones were new last time she
was down here; you could tell they were new, the muslin hung so stiff.
I take it a cutt’n isn’t properly washed if it don’t last six months at
least. But she’s very pertickler about cutt’ns. Abigail told my Mabel,
that in London they don’t never dream of keeping a cutt’n up more than
a month, and often th’whole lot is changed in a fortnight; and just
think, the winders is done _every week_! Send me crazy, it would! I
don’t think it’s healthy to be as finnicky clean as that; why, you’re
always opening winders and letting in draughts. And now this morning I
see she’s got the cutt’ns down in the Flower room——”

“The Flower room? Which be that?”

“Oh, it’s the name they’ve give the one on the right at the top o’ the
stairs. It’s got a new laylock paper on the wall, and she’s got a new
bedspread, white, with bunches of laylock all about it, and a bit o’
eeliertrope sateen hangs down behind the head of the bed to keep the
draught off, though it ’ud be far more sense to shut the winder, _I_
say, for that sateen’s faded dretful in the folds already. I was only
noticing it th’other day, when my cousin was up from Woolv’ampton,
and I took her over the house.... Oh, yes, Mrs. Widow’ll lend me the
key any time” (Mrs. Widow is my caretaker), “and it do make a bit of
a change to take anyone to. My cousin said at the time she’d never
buy a bedspread like that; the colour’s so fleeting. Besides, she
wouldn’t have a white ground in any case, it’s always in the wash.
She’s made herself a _lovely_ spread, she was telling me, out of a pair
of old long curtains, just cutting out the bad places and then dyeing
it a deep coffee colour with a little cold tea; makes it last like
anything. I say the same; them white spreads never pay for themselves.
Though I rather like the one she’s got with roses on—Hannah Craddock
was a-washing of it one day when I dropped in” (Hannah is the village
laundress), “that was the last time Miss Ursula was down, because
Hannah was doing of her blouses that week, and my Mabel was very taken
with one that had bits of crochet let in all about, and points of it up
the sleeves just here, and my Mabel tried to copy it, only Hannah had
promised it home that very afternoon, so we’re waiting for it to come
again, as Mabel can’t get the yoke quite right. I’m sorry it isn’t them
who’s coming. She wants to get it finished afore she goes to London
next month.”

“Did you see the name on the trunks? Now you mention it, I saw the boy
taking a telegraft up to the house yesterday—no, the day before.”

“It was my husband told me about it, when he looked in home just now,
and his sight being so poor, he couldn’t see the name” (in spite of the
Educational Authorities many of the men in our village cannot read,
but by courtesy it is always referred to as poor sight!), “so he asked
the station-master if he should drop ’em anywhere, as he had got her
ladyship’s cart there. He is helping at the Manor House to-day. He’d
just taken some hay to the station, and it seemed a real waste o’ good
time to do nothing with it coming back. But the station-master said
they was for up here, and old Bob was taking ’em up as the ladies
wouldn’t have the fly; said they’d _pefer_ to walk. And, would you
believe it, he never so much as thought to ask how many there were.
Still, I’ll soon find out and let you know. I’ll go up and ask Abigail
if she can oblige me with the loan of a little salt. I’ve a couple of
ducks myself as I’d be glad to get four-and-six apiece for if——”

At this moment Abigail appeared at the cottage door, and the gong
reverberated and echoed as she gave it a vigorous hammering, calculated
to wake me up wherever I might be.

“Good gracious, that’s for her one o’clock dinner!” exclaimed both the
women in one breath, and fled in opposite directions, presumably to
minister to the raving and the ravenous!

       *       *       *       *       *

As the conversation had implied, the duck was tough and inadequate; but
it was a certain satisfaction to me—as I sought about in vain for a
fairly good slice from the breast of the skinny carcase—to reflect that
I hadn’t paid for it as yet. I was out when the youthful Perkins had
delivered it.

For the rest, I didn’t attach any value to the women’s gossip. Once you
have any real footing in a rural district, and have become part and
parcel of the country-side, you soon learn that one impossibility is
“terrible isolation.” From rosy morn till dewy eve one or another woman
is engaged in lengthy gossip with any other she meets, and in nearly
every case the topic of exhaustive conversation will be the doings of
somebody else; moreover, the less that is actually known about the
third and absent party the more two and two will add up to nineteen.

In the main, I have seldom found such gossips either spiteful or
slanderous. They consider it being neighbourly to keep count of your
sayings and doings.

There were two items in the women’s chatter that were enlightening,
however. I had always suspected that Mrs. Price knew where certain
items from my store cupboard had gone one winter’s night when the
cottage was uninhabited and the kitchen window forced. I doubt if there
was another person in the place who would have done it. Still I was
glad to have the mystery cleared up.

I was not surprised to hear that all and sundry had the run of my
house when I wasn’t there. The Englishwoman who occupies any house of
more than six rooms, we will say (which she can keep clean her unaided
self), knows that she never can call any room her own, excepting the
one she chances to be in at the moment—and not even that one if the
British workman happens to be in the ascendant! It is one of the
compensations of life that the smaller our habitation, the more we
ourselves get out of it personally—a kind of “intensive” interest.
Whereas the larger our domains, the more imposing our houses, the more
numerous our rooms, the more they are monopolised by other people—paid
assistants for the most part—to the exclusion of ourselves.

In my own very humble way I soon realised that even my country cottage
and its contents were only my own so long as I could sit on them,
so to speak. I early discovered that my sheets and pillow-cases, my
towels and tablecloths, were not allowed to lead a life of idle,
selfish exclusiveness in my absences. Mrs. Widow’s enterprising married
daughter quickly furnished a room at her own cottage over an outhouse
which had hitherto been used as a lumber garret; this she could always
let in the summer, when the big houses in the neighbourhood were full
up with visitors and extra rooms were needed.

Of course, at times I proved exceedingly tiresome, and turned up at
inconvenient moments. But in such an emergency neighbours would assist
her with the loan of a sheet here and there and a towel or two, if mine
had to be returned hastily. I have always found the poor most ready to
help each other—especially when it was a case of “doing” someone who
was a little better off.

No, I was not surprised that Mrs. Widow graciously bestowed my door-key
on her friends in search of an afternoon’s recreation; but I _was_ just
a trifle curious to know how they had got hold of the lilac bedspread,
seeing that it was put away in a cupboard that possessed—so I prided
myself—a unique lock; and it had never been used yet—at least, not by
me!

       *       *       *       *       *

After dinner I wrestled womanfully with the overpowering desire to go
down the orchard again and do nothing; but a shower seemed threatening,
and I decided to answer letters and correct proofs indoors. I told
myself I would put in a full afternoon at really solid work, and would
even carry it right on into the night, if need be, without a moment’s
cessation save for the conventional nourishment—this, in order to clear
up some of my arrears, and to enable me to garden the whole of next day
with a perky conscience.

“How _do_ you kill time on a wet day in the country?” people sometimes
ask me. It’s simple enough. Here is the recipe:

* Draw up a chair to the table; get out ink and pens from one of the
aged oak cupboards beside the fireplace. Open the dresser drawers and
haul out stacks of unanswered queries from magazine readers, the office
staff, printers, block-makers, artists, authors, and from people of
whom I know nothing (friends and relatives gave me up long ago!).

Next, take the heavy lid right off the oak chest (hinges were broken
fifty years ago, so it won’t lift up properly), dive in for armfuls of
MSS., proofs, photographs, diagrams, sketches; place same on table;
proceed to hunt among same for some one particular thing I feel I
ought to deal with at that particular moment (though it may have lain
unhonoured and unsung for weeks); can’t find it anywhere. Go through
everything again, this time classifying matter slightly by putting it
in piles around me on the floor; still can’t find it, but unearth much
else that ought to have been attended to long ago but wasn’t.

Decide to search upstairs; turn out trunks, turn out cupboards, turn
out drawers (incidentally discover and meditate upon various things
needing mending); forget what I _was_ looking for; go on searching
for it; remember presently, and eventually run it to earth in my
blotting-book downstairs, where, if I had had any sense, I should
have looked in the first instance. Breathe freely, sit down—rather
exhausted—to serious work.

A tap at the door; “May I come in?” Enter visitor No. 1. And then they
follow in quick succession.

Finally, Abigail kindly undertakes to tidy up my papers “without
disturbing a single thing!”*

Next day (if still wet) you repeat from * to *, as they tell us in the
crochet patterns.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had just got settled to work on the missing-and-now-discovered
letter, when Abigail tapped and entered.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, ma’am, but could you spare me one of those
Missionary books?” pointing to a shelf containing a selection of the
annual reports of religious and philanthropic societies.

Now for some time past I had been trying to interest Abigail—who is
a church member—in foreign missions. I rather prided myself that I
had done it tactfully, not forcing it upon her, but just arousing her
interest by taking her to attractive meetings. I found that she had
even gone to one on her own account. Hence I was naturally pleased
to find that she was anxious to follow up the subject; but as I did
not consider an ordinary official report, with its small print, and
balance-sheets and monotonous lists of subscribers, the type of
literature best calculated to enthuse the novice, I reached down a
small volume of bright stories of girl-life in India, well illustrated
and prettily got-up.

“Here is just the very thing,” I said. But she took it reluctantly,
dubiously, turning it about and looking it over in a dissatisfied
manner.

“No,” she said, “it’s one like that I want,” pointing to a solid tome
issued by one of the most revered of our missionary societies. “Can I
have that one?”

“Certainly,” I acquiesced, though it was an out-of-date report, and I
knew the other book would have suited her better.

“Yes, that’s just right,” she said cheerfully, as I handed it to her.
“That other’d be too thin; it’s to go under the back leg of the side
table in the kitchen, where the stone floor’s broken. I’ve used one
like this regular since last summer, but it’s getting shabby. I thought
a new one would smarten us up a bit.”

       *       *       *       *       *

I remember on one occasion being at a missionary meeting for young
people, at which there was a remarkably fine speaker from the foreign
mission field. He said that if any felt they had a call to take part in
the work in any way, he would be pleased to see them at the close. When
the meeting was over, a small boy approached the platform. “Please can
I speak to you, sir?”

“Certainly, my lad,” said the speaker, shaking him warmly by the hand.
“Now, what is it? You can talk quite frankly to me.”

“Well, I wondered if—er——”

“Have no hesitation, my boy, in asking me anything you like.”

“Well, do you happen to have any foreign postage stamps?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Just as I had settled down again, somewhat chastened, to my much
neglected work, there was a knock at the door, and the lady of the
manor was shown in.

“I see you’re busy,” she began; “but I won’t keep you a moment. I only
want to ask you if you’re expecting Miss Virginia and her sister this
afternoon? No? Oh, I _am_ sorry! I did hope they were coming. But,
anyhow, whoever it is, do you think they would help to-morrow at the
Sale of Work? Two visitors I was expecting have failed me, and I’ve no
one possible for the picture post-cards or the pinafores. They needn’t
know anything about it, you know; it only wants someone who can reckon
up that seven penny cards comes to sevenpence, and that’s one and
ninepence change out of half-a-crown, and that sort of thing. Now, do
you think your friends would help?”

“But I’ve no friends coming,” I said.

“_Haven’t_ you? Why, I quite understood—— I was calling on Miss
Primkins just now (she’s jam and jelly, you know), and I asked her if
she couldn’t put it on the pinafores—it would look quite decorative,
and in this way I should save a stall; even then we shall be very
crowded. Mrs. Blake had just been in to say she couldn’t spare Miss
Primkins the duck she had ordered, because you had visitors arriving
to-day and would want a pair for Sunday.”

“Oh!! Well, I’m not having visitors, neither am I having the ducks.
But I’ll come down myself to-morrow, if that’s any help, and keep one
eye on the pinafores and one on the picture postcards. And I think my
mental arithmetic will be just right for the change you give.”

“But, don’t you remember, you’ve already promised to look after the
bookstall? You sent us that big box of books months ago, with some of
your own books in—which I want you to autograph, by the way. So I was
going to ask you if at the same time you’d manage the jumble corner—the
two things would go very well together.”

I agreed with her heartily.

“Oh, you _know_ I don’t mean anything like _that_!” she added hastily.
“I only meant that you could more easily turn from selling lovely
books, to dispose of one of your own done-with-but-still-charming coats
and skirts, for instance, than if you had to cut up for the refreshment
stall, and return with buttery fingers to respond to the rush there
will be for your autograph.”

“Add the postcards to the books,” I said, trying to be equally amiable,
“and Abigail will gladly run the jumble corner; she will be smarter at
it than you or I.”

Abigail appeared as soon as her ladyship had gone. The farmeress who
supplied us with milk was waiting in the kitchen to know if I wanted
extra milk morning and evening in future, on account of company; as,
if so, she would save it specially. She was experiencing a shortage of
milk, “Hussy” having run dry, and “Clover,” for some unknown reason
that I hadn’t time to listen to, not doing her lactic duty as befitted
her station in life.

Emphatically I said that I should not want any extra milk—and a few
other things.

I resumed my work.

Ten minutes later there was yet another interruption. This time it was
the owner of the Buff Orpingtons, who had arrived at the back door to
inquire if I was wanting any eggs—she’d brought eight with her, and
expected another one to-night, which she’d send up—her hens had just
started laying again, etc.

I fairly blessed the individual who had first set going the fable that
I was expecting visitors.

I told Abigail that it was a matter of perfect indifference to me
whether all the fowls in the district did, or did not, accommodatingly
lay nine, or even ten, eggs for my especial benefit; but what did
matter to me was whether I could, or could not, get nine or even ten
minutes of uninterrupted peace, in order to finish my letters before
the postman arrived. (He always calls obligingly at five o’clock for my
afternoon mail.) And I requested that she would kindly take in any and
everything that came during the next hour (so long as it didn’t need
paying for!); only, for pity’s sake, would she cease opening that door
and seeking advice on the subject.

After that I was left severely alone. From time to time I heard voices
in the rear; there was one very loud series of bumps and bangs—I
concluded it was the missionary report being introduced to the table.
But I worked on, and had just sealed up my last budget of proofs, and
addressed it to the printers, when the postman appeared. I heaved a
sigh at the amount of stuff he carried away. The shower had passed over
without even damping the blossoms. I would have some tea, and then
start watering.

The postman was speaking to someone at the gate. No, it wasn’t Abigail.
I heard him say, “Yes; this is Rosemary Cottage.” I was gathering up
my papers as footsteps dragged themselves along the path—“dragged” is
the only word for it—and before I had time to step outside to see who
was there, two female forms, one ample and one spare, made for the
door opening into the living-room, precipitated themselves into the
room, and sank into the nearest chairs, in the last stages of panting
exhaustion; while the ample one, in a coat and skirt of a large black
and white plaid, buttoned and piped with cerise, exclaimed—

“At last! Well, of all the out-of-the-way forsaken places! We’ve been
tramping nearly all day, trying to get here from that wretched station!
We must have walked miles—_miles_—up and down hill, only it was _all_
uphill; we found ourselves in woods with no possibility of ever
getting out again; we got into lanes that ended nowhere, and when we
got there it was the wrong place; we tried to take a short cut across
some fields, and got stuck in a bog; we met a flock of wild cows, and
the top of that hedge positively ran into me like needles. When we did
chance to find a house, hoping it was yours, it never was; the people
always told us to go on and ask further directions at the next house we
came to, but each time there wasn’t another house. Why ever didn’t we
take that fly at the station! But there, he could never have driven us
over all the huge stone walls we’ve had to climb! We’ve been walking
for hours on end—_hours_—haven’t we, dear?”

“Dear” nodded feebly. She was leaning back in the easy-chair with
closed eyes. Her hat—of a remarkable shape—was trimmed with what looked
like a kitchen flue-brush standing straight upright at the back; at
least, it would have been upright if her hat hadn’t shifted askew;
at the moment the flue-brush was inclining towards her left ear. Her
costume was mustard colour, with spasms of black. She must have been
_very_ pleased with it when she bought it, otherwise she could never
have induced herself to get inside it!

I soon found that the ample one did not require any reply other than
the feeble nod, as it would have impeded her eloquence. She went on—

“I think, if you don’t mind, we won’t go upstairs till we’ve had some
tea. We are absolutely prostrate, aren’t we, dear?” The flue-brush
dipped slightly. “Could we have some tea at once?”

“Certainly,” I said with alacrity. I had already decided that tea was
the only possible way to relieve the strain of the situation, and I
rang the bell.

Abigail, after one comprehensive glance at the callers, fetched my
very best afternoon tea-cloth, which she displayed on the table to
the utmost advantage, that not an Irish inlet or a bit of lace border
should be lost on the visitors. When she does not approve of any
callers, or does not consider them quite in keeping with the family
traditions, she invariably makes a terrific splash in front of them,
getting out the special silver and the finest china, and serving with
an air of withering superiority, as though she said, “Behold! this
is how _we_ live every day; very different from what _you’ve_ been
accustomed to!”

The tiresomeness of it is that when intimate friends call, who really
matter, the handmaiden treats the tea-table most casually; they
evidently don’t count if they are known to be above reproach!

From the look she gave the strangers, I knew we should have it all,
and we did! She was wonderfully quick in getting both the tea and her
smartest cap and apron. She put as much silver as she could squeeze on
the table; she got out some egg-shell china plates for the bread and
butter, and the old cut-glass for the preserves. She opened new jars
of plum, black-currant, strawberry and raspberry jam; she turned out
preserved ginger into a blue Chinese bowl; she put lemon-curd into a
quaint brown dish, and honey in a lustre saucer. She hunted out all
the cake we possessed, and opened a tin of apricots; she mashed up
sardines with Worcester sauce, and heaped it on pale lettuce leaves,
and she garnished some thin slices of ham most artistically with lemon
and cucumber and flowering sprigs of rosemary. All this while the
ample one was explaining to me how marvellously things were managed
in London, the miles you could ride in a motor-bus for twopence, the
cleanliness and speed and safety of the Tube, the ever-recurring
convenience of a halfpenny in a tramcar, and the luxury of a taxi; and
then more moans to think of the miles they had covered without meeting
either motor-bus, Tube, tramcar or taxi.

When the table seemed on the very verge of breaking down with its
abundance, and they had just drawn up their chairs, Abigail asked in
clear tones that the visitors were bound to hear, “Would you wish me to
bring in the cold duck, madam?” (“Madam” indicates company; “ma’am” is
ordinary every-day.) I wasn’t exactly anxious to bestow my to-morrow’s
dinner on the strangers, for I had reckoned to make the duck do for
twice; but, of course, under the circumstances, I was bound to ask
sweetly, “Oh, would you care for a little roast duck? It’s _cold_,”
I added, by way of disqualifying the joint a little in their eyes.
Fortunately they preferred ham, but it was satisfactory that at least
they knew we had roast duck in the larder.

After sitting up and taking a little nourishment, the wilted ones
revived perceptibly, and even began to be gracious. I am afraid I am
not very fond of the graciousness of that type of woman; she does get
it so mixed up with patronage. But I buoyed myself up with the thought
that perchance I was entertaining angels unawares—though they didn’t
look like it!

The ample one continued to be voluble. I did not interrupt her with
questions, because I find it is usually as well to let a situation
explain itself; it usually does in time. Besides, I didn’t quite know
what to say. I couldn’t exactly ask, “Who are you? where have you come
from? and why have you singled me out for this particular visitation?”
Yet the longer I waited, the more awkward it became to open inquiries.

“You have a very well-trained maid, I see,” the large plaid continued,
“that is to say, for the country”—with emphasis, to show me that there
were obvious deficiencies, only she was willing to make allowances for
them. “It’s the first thing I always notice in a house. We are used to
such excellent service—_most excellent_ service, aren’t we, dear?”

Dear agreed, but not very heartily; she seemed to ponder for a moment
before she said her customary “Yes.”

“That is one reason why I always hesitate about leaving home.” (How I
wished she’d hesitated a little longer! The sun was getting behind the
fir-trees, and I did so want to start watering!) “You have some garden,
I see, but it wants planning, doesn’t it? I wish you could see ours
at home; it would give you some ideas. We have a man in occasionally;
but we always superintend him ourselves. I’ll tell you how we have it
arranged. In the centre is a square lawn, and in the middle of this
we have a round bed with scarlet geraniums in the centre, and a ring
of calceolarias round them, and then outside that, at the edge of the
bed, you understand, all round, you know, we have lobelias, little blue
flowers, you know. You’ve no idea how bright and effective it is. And
then in the border all round the garden by the fences, we have standard
roses about a couple of yards apart, and a row of scarlet geraniums.
It’s so bright, and doesn’t cost so much when you buy them by the dozen.

“Your ceiling is very low, isn’t it?—still, for a cottage, it isn’t a
bad-sized room; and I see you’ve made the best of it with your little
bits of things put about.” I do wish you could have heard the charming,
indulgent condescension with which she said “your little bits of
things”! “Though I don’t think I’ve ever seen yellow walls before—very
_quaint_, of course, but—er—rather peculiar. Don’t you think so, dear?”

Dear said she did. But I don’t know why, seeing that she was carrying
about more yellow on her mustard person than I had in the whole of the
house!

“I _wish_ you could see our _lovely_ dining-room at home,” the plaid
continued. I murmured inarticulations, as there was a pause where I
was evidently intended to say something. “It has a dark red paper on
the wall. We have just furnished it with fumed oak. I think fumed oak
is _so_ artistic. We have a most _handsome_ sideboard that will only
just stand across one end of the room. I don’t mind telling you that
it cost fifty pounds originally, but as the people to whom it belonged
were a little unfortunate, we got it—well, we didn’t give quite that
much for it; but you’d never know. It was just as good as new. And we
have aspidistras and a _beautiful_ palm in copper flower-pots—really
exquisite works of art they are; and they go so well with the fumed
oak, don’t they, dear?”

By the time I had been taken over their _beautiful_ drawing-room, we
had finished tea—happily, for I already saw a _beautiful_ best bedroom
suite looming ahead.

Having made a most excellent, not to say solid, meal, the voluble one
shoved her chair back and said—

“I feel all the better for that cup of tea. Now, I think, if you’ll
show us the way, we’ll go upstairs and have a good wash, and make
ourselves presentable—not that you dress much for dinner, I suppose?”

I conclude I, too, was all the better for my cup of tea, for I felt
myself warming to the work—and I led the way washstandwards most
cordially. I didn’t take them out into the hall to the more modern
staircase, I opened the door in the corner of the room, and revealed
the steep stone stairs; and you should have heard their gurgles and
squeals.

“Oh, dearest, _do_ look. _Isn’t_ it primitive? And do you go up and
down this every day?”

“Oh, no,” I couldn’t help replying. “We only use this when visitors are
here. On ordinary occasions we get in and out of the bedroom windows,
and hop down the honeysuckle.”

She drew herself up reprimandingly; she evidently wished me to
understand that, though she was willing to treat me as an equal so long
as I behaved myself, she couldn’t allow any undue familiarity on my
part.

“I don’t suppose _you_ would see anything unusual in such an approach
to the upper storeys, having been used to it all your life,” she said
distantly; “but accustomed as _we_ are to our magnificent staircase at
home—wide enough to drive up a carriage and pair, isn’t it, dear?”—

“Er—nearly——” (Dear was the more truthful of the two, I fancy.)

“—And our beautiful pile carpet, in rich reds and blues, and the
thickest of stair-pads underneath, till you would think you were
walking on real Turkey carpet, this naturally strikes us as—how shall I
put it so as not to hurt your feelings?—as—as very humorous, you know!”

“I quite understand,” I said, as we entered my bedroom.

She walked straight over to the window and looked out.

“Not a house to be seen anywhere,” she exclaimed dismally, “whichever
way you look; nothing in sight but those everlasting tree-covered
hills.”

As she seemed inclined for a lengthy soliloquy, I poured out some
water and indicated the soap-dish, as politely as I knew how, to Dear,
who had taken off her hat and coat, and seemed almost grateful for my
attentions. I noticed that Abigail had been up and had adorned the
towel-horse with my finest damask towels with embroidered ends, and had
got out a rare and treasured bedspread made entirely of lace, that had
just been sent me as a present from Venice, and had put it over the bed
in place of the old-world patchwork quilt that I infinitely prefer in
the cottage; it was so much more in keeping with the surroundings.

The ample one turned with a sigh from the depressing outlook that was
so deficient in motor-buses and halfpenny car rides and taxis and
houses, and said, evidently striving to make the best of a bad job, “At
any rate you’ve tried to make it look as nice as you can inside. Do you
know, I rather like that bedspread”—as though conveying a real favour
on the article in question. “It reminds me of an _exquisite_ bedspread
we have at home something like it, only ours is linen, with shamrocks
on it in solid embroidery.” And she flung down her coat and other
_impedimenta_ on the top of the lace in a way that made me tremble for
its safety. “It’s _something_ like ours—don’t you think so, dear?”

Dear had her face in the soft delicious lather of the rainwater, and
didn’t reply.

“But”—at this point transformation came over the black and white
plaid—“I’ve only just noticed it! This is a _double_ bed! Look, dear,
it’s a DOUBLE bed! And I most distinctly said in my letter it was
imperative that we have two single beds; the same room would do, I
said—no need to go to the expense of two rooms—but on no account
a double bed. As I can’t possibly rest unless I have the bed to
myself—I’m a _very_ light sleeper, whereas my friend sleeps rather
heavily, not to say—er—sonorously, don’t you, dear?—I must simply
insist that you have this bed taken down and two single ones put up in
its place. Had I _seen_ the rooms before I engaged them I shouldn’t
have taken a place with such a desolate outlook; but as we’ve had the
expense of coming here, I don’t mind staying if you undertake to have
the beds changed; and they must both be feather beds, too. Now, can you
do this?”

“I’m afraid I can’t!” I said. “But if——”

“There can be no ifs; I put everything quite clearly in my letter. I’ve
got a copy of it here. I wrote——”

“My dear lady, if you will sit down in that easy-chair, we’ll make
everything still clearer.” She was beginning to prance around the room.

Dear, unmoved, was having a very thorough wash. So the light sleeper
sank into the chair and rummaged in her hand-bag, presumably for the
copy of the letter in question.

I tried to speak as lightly and soothingly as possible, for she was
fairly bursting with indignation! “Now, please understand that I am
delighted to give a meal to any wayfarer who, like yourself, arrives
hungry and tired at my door. I’m glad for them to come in and have
a rest, and even a wash and brush up, if they want it. But, when an
absolute stranger, of whom I know nothing, demands my own bed, and my
feather bed into the bargain, then I must protest! That feather bed is
one of my most cherished possessions!”

“But you expected me?”—sitting bolt upright.

“I certainly did not!”

“Didn’t I write and tell you we would arrive to-day?”

“I’ve neither heard of you, nor from you, in my life before!”

“But this is Rosemary Cottage?”

“It is.”

“Then you _must_ be Miss Flabbers!”—with an air of finality.

“I’m sorry, but I’m _not_!”

At this, Dear dropped the soap with a sudden splosh into the water and
looked round in frozen astonishment. (The merest wraith of it remained
two hours later when Abigail emptied the water. It was a new cake, too!)

At the name of Flabbers, light came. Miss Flabbers is a gentlewoman in
somewhat reduced circumstances, who lives in a cottage a good mile and
a half away. Presumably she was going to add to her income by taking in
boarders.

“If it’s Miss Flabbers whom you are wanting,” I continued, filling up
a painful silence, “her house is called Rose May Cottage. I expect you
got the names confused in your mind.”

“There! It’s all _your_ fault,” said the ample one, turning irritably
to her companion; “you said it was Rose May Cottage when you read
the first letter: but I said that was an absurd name, and it must be
Rosemary it was intended for—country people _do_ write so badly. I do
_wish_, dear, you would be careful to be more accurate; if only you
had said the right name I might have been saved all this trouble—and
expense, because of course I shall _insist_ on paying for our tea——”
(she didn’t though!) “and think how many miles I’ve walked, and now I
suppose I’ve to do it all again. How I wish I’d listened to that old
man at the station and gone with——”

She paused suddenly and threw up her hands; and then there arose that
cry common to all womankind the world over, when they are weary with
their pilgrimage, footsore and travel-stained; the cry that must have
rent the air in the olden days when Sarai trailed after Abram across
the plains of Mamre, even as it sounds to-day from Yokohama to Land’s
End:

“_Where’s our luggage?_”

There was a perceptible gasp—and then, “Yes; _where’s our luggage?_”
faintly echoed Dear, as she nervously clutched her gloves with feverish
haste and pinned them on her head, and then wildly tried to get her
arms into her hat.

“I expect it’s reposing peacefully in Miss Flabbers’ best bedroom,” I
said assuringly. “At any rate it isn’t _here_!” as I saw signs that
they were going to crawl under the bed in search of it. “The man would
be sure to deliver it there, and——”

Abigail knocked at the door and asked if she could speak to me for a
minute.

When I got outside she said, “There’s a person downstairs wants to see
you _particular_, ma’am, or I wouldn’t have disturbed you.” Abigail
divides all her sex into two classes, “persons” and “ladies,” and no
one is more careful than she to see that “persons” don’t think more
highly of themselves than their social status warrants.

I found a pleasant-faced woman who lives in a cottage near Miss
Flabbers. “Please, ma’am, Miss Flabbers has lost two ladies rather
suddint, and I wondered if you’d chanced to set eyes on ’em? Miss
Flabbers is _that_ worrit as never was; expected ’em by the eleven
train, and I misdoubt me if the cutlets won’t be a bit heavy by now,
though she’s had ’em over a saucepan of hot water ever since. She’s so
upset she don’t know what to do, yet she can’t go out to look for ’em
in case they turns up meanwhile. I thought it ’ud be just neighbourly
if I went out for her and hunted around. I know they come by that
train, for I see’d ’em myself at the station, puffeck ladies you’d have
took ’em for, only they wouldn’t have a fly. They’re not friends, no,
nor boarders, no, she wouldn’t think of having boarders, so reserved
as she is; they’re what’s called paying guests. I know, because my
son’s got a friend in the _Hargus_ office, and he told him about an
adver-_tise_ment she put in, only you wouldn’t have known it was her,
being only X Y Z on it, but the people at the _Hargus_ knew as the X Y
Z meant her, though _how_ they should know puzzles me, and they send on
the letters to her. But she’s kep’ it very private; no one knew they
was coming, so I wouldn’t dream of mentioning X Y Z to a soul. I’ve
tracked ’em up here. Everybody all over the Common and even up to the
Crag Farm has a-seed them, they’ve scoured the county for miles round.
You’d be sure to rekernize them once you’d saw them——”

I should think so! E’en the slight harebell raised its head and stared
after them whenever they passed it that afternoon, I’m certain.

By dint of shouting above her talking I managed to get her to hear that
I had them safe and sound; and should be everlastingly grateful if she
would take them off my hands and place them in the safe keeping of Miss
Flabbers.

Then I fetched them down and introduced the neighbourly soul, who, you
could see, felt elated at the distinction of being the one to take such
costumes in tow.

“Better go out of the back door,” I said, “and up the garden to the
top gate; it will save you a few steps.”

And then the ample one turned and said icily, “I suppose we must thank
you for what you have done; but I _do_ think you should have told us
_sooner_ who you were.” Yet I hadn’t told them even then!

       *       *       *       *       *

It was as they were going out of the back door that Dear amazed us by
falling unexpectedly to her knees and affectionately clasping a dark
object that I had not seen in the dim recess of the lobby.

“_Here’s_ our trunks!” she shrieked hysterically.

And then both those women glared things unspeakable at me. They knew
now, what they had only suspected before, that I was a deeply-dyed
villainess with designs on them and their property.

“What’s this? Why wasn’t I told about it?” I inquired of Abigail, who,
naturally, was not missing a word.

“Old Bob brought them while you were busy. He said they were for here,
so of course I took them in, madam, as you said you were not to be
disturbed,” with an injured sniff, “and I’ve had no opportunity to tell
you since.”

The two, true to the instincts of their sex, had promptly seated
themselves on the trunks, and I feared they had no intention of
budging unless the trunks went with them. But the neighbourly person
was anxious to be on the move; she wanted the _kudos_ of walking
through the village with them in the broad daylight, so she said—

“They’ll be all right; my ’usband’ll come round for them soon as we get
back. Now don’t you worrit the least little bit.”

Thus they were got off at last.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Puffeck ladies,” I said to myself as I seized the brown pitcher and
the water-can, and went out to the spring.




VIII

Merely to be Prepared


I COULDN’T have been asleep many minutes (though, when I come to think
of it, no one ever is, in London), because I had waited up till eleven
for Abigail.

It was like this: the day before, cook had asked me if she might stay
out till eleven that night, as she wanted to go and see an old lady in
whose employ she had once been. The old lady was seriously ill; she
couldn’t get her off her mind; and she felt she ought to give her what
little pleasure she could, as she wouldn’t be likely to get over it.

I begged her to take the whole afternoon; such affection was really
touching. I saw myself in a few years’ time, decrepit, aged, and
infirm, being visited by a crowd of devoted retainers, who murmured one
to another:

“She had her faults, goodness knows, but at least we will scatter seeds
of kindness!”

In any case, I was pleased for cook to take some extra time, as she is
invariably home early—the Naval Division at the Crystal Palace have to
be under glass by nine o’clock.

She thanked me, but declined the afternoon, as she thought half-past
nine or ten in the evening would suit the old lady best; she was in a
West End nursing home. It seemed late to visit one who was so aged and
so ill, but, of course, I gave the extended leave.

She returned at 10.55, looking very bright, a bunch of roses in
her coat-belt, a box of chocolates dangling from her finger, and a
programme in her hand.

Yes, thank you; she had had a lovely time. The old lady?—er—oh, yes!
she was getting on nicely, thank you.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next day, Abigail came to me, also asking for an eleven o’clock
leave. It transpired that she was expecting a little orphan cousin
to arrive that night from Blackpool; _such_ a sad affair—child left
without a father when it was only four years old—she was eight now.
No, she hadn’t ever seen the little cousin, but she felt it was such a
distressing case that it was her duty to do what she could.

I hinted that eleven o’clock at night seemed rather late for one who
was so young and so orphaned to be up and about, and likewise offered
her the afternoon. But she said the train didn’t arrive sooner, and the
trains were often late. So I gave her till 11.0 p.m. to welcome the
pitiful orphan.

She also arrived in at night looking radiant. Under her mackintosh
she was wearing a pink chiffon dress, edged with swansdown; a bandeau
of sparkles was on her hair, a horseshoe of the same make adorning
the back of her head; she carried a fan, and some flowers that had
evidently been worn on the dress.

I am glad to say that she, too, had enjoyed herself immensely, and the
desolate relative had been most pleased to make her acquaintance.

After that I retired.

       *       *       *       *       *

And then I conclude it was the bang that did it; at any rate, the whole
household woke with a start, and with one accord the feminine portion
precipitated itself downstairs and on to the front door mat, and peered
out into the dark road in the hope of seeing _something_!

The masculine element, being gifted with a faculty for keeping cool,
calm and collected in any emergency, stayed to gather up a few wraps
and rugs and overcoats and anything else he could lay his hands on in
the dark (including his disreputable old gardening jacket), which he
brought down and distributed among us, as we had not stopped for much
in the way of clothing.

At that moment Virginia and Ursula rushed along the road from their
own house and joined us. Virginia was clad in a nightdress, with a
mackintosh over it and a sumptuous pale blue kimono (covered with brown
and black flying herons) on the top of the mac. Ursula was wearing her
heliotrope dressing-gown, an ostrich feather boa, and an eiderdown
quilt.

They both apologised for calling so late (it was past midnight), but
said they felt they should just like to talk things over.

While I was bidding them welcome, Miss Quirker (from round the corner)
appeared; likewise Miss Thresher (a secondary-school mistress) and her
friend Mrs. Brash, who share a flat near by; and in the rear came Mrs.
Ridley, the doctor’s widow from across the road.

They all said they had come because they could see “it” better from my
house, which stands on a high point, overlooking London one way, and
Kent from the other side.

Each caller was grateful for the loan of a blanket.

Meanwhile, in far less time than it takes to write all this,
fire-engines and ambulances, and policemen and motor-cars and
pedestrians appeared as by magic from nowhere and went tearing along
the road. Yet, crane our necks as we would, not a glimpse could we
catch of “it.”

Miss Quirker—who always seems to have special and exclusive information
about everything—said the creature was exactly over her bedroom
chimney when the bomb was dropped; she heard a strange whirring noise
(described most graphically), and turned on the electric light for
company; then there was a _brilliant_ flash in the sky (yes, she could
see it above the electric light), and the bomb fell—she was sure
it was in her back garden. She looked very pleased with herself and
superior, to think that she had been singled out by Fate for this
special and distinctive visitation.

The man of the house, after bidding us stay just where we were as he
wouldn’t be gone a minute, hied him buoyantly down the road in company
with neighbouring masculines—to find the bomb, I suppose. He soon
returned, however, with the exceedingly flat information that a gas
explosion had occurred in a house further along, though they couldn’t
tell whether it was due to the geyser or the cooking-range, as they
couldn’t find either.

[Later on, the remains of a geyser and part of a porcelain bath were
picked up about six miles off, in the Walworth Road; and I understand
that the police at Sevenoaks found the remnants of an alien gas-stove
wandering about in a suspicious manner, and promptly interned it. But
this is by the way.]

“Only a gas explosion!” exclaimed everybody in doleful disappointment.
Mrs. Brash certainly looked relieved; but then she is a very nervous
little woman with a weak heart.

“Well, I call it _too_ bad!” said Virginia. “Every solitary relative,
friend, and acquaintance I possess, even to the third and fourth
generation, has had a Zepp cross ‘right over their very road’; and
every person I’ve met during the last twelve months boasts and brags
of the way they’ve had them ‘exactly above their heads.’ And yet, do
what I will, I can’t get a sight of even the tail of one.”

“Just my case,” said everybody else in chorus; “I seem to be the only
one in London who hasn’t seen one.”

But Miss Thresher cut short our bemoanings over the hardness of our
lot, by saying in her head-mistress voice—

“I’m afraid an excess of untutored imagination is one of the weaknesses
of this age. We, however, can console ourselves with the knowledge
that at least we are _truthful_; and truth, after all, is the greater
asset”—looking witheringly at Miss Quirker.

I replied, “How about some hot coffee?” It was the most appropriate
remark that I could think of on the spur of the moment.

Cook promptly offered to get it, while I went after tea-gowns and
dressing-gowns and similar symbols of propriety for our shivering
guests, who looked a trifle nondescript now that the lights were on.
The man of the house had returned to assist at the explosion.

If Miss Thresher hoped that her last remark would quelch Miss Quirker,
she was mistaken nothing can suppress that lady, and nothing is sacred
to her. She will stalk up to your secret cupboard, no matter how boldly
you may have labelled it “strictly private,” and drag out into broad
daylight the most disreputable skeleton you keep in it, the one you
packed away at the very back of the top shelf—and then be pained at
your ingratitude!

As I entered the room with an armful of apparel I heard her saying
to Miss Thresher, “Why don’t you put a flounce on the bottom? Those
cheap flannelettes always shrink in the wash.... Oh, flannel is it?...
Really! no one would ever think you gave that much for it, would they?
At any rate I couldn’t sleep if I didn’t have them right down around my
feet.”

       *       *       *       *       *

To change the subject I asked Virginia why she had put her mac. on
under her kimono, when obviously the correct order would have been to
wear it outside.

She said she concluded it was sheer genius and originality made her do
it, for she had never worn such a combination in her life before; and
the same must have applied to Ursula, for, looking back on a varied
and chequered career, she could never remember seeing her sister, even
once, promenading the highway in an eiderdown before.

At the same time, she inquired why it was that _I_ had stood for a
quarter of an hour on that doormat, clasping feverishly to my chest a
pair of satin slippers and a bath towel, and clinging pathetically
to a bedroom candlestick; when obviously any candle would have blown
out had I attempted to light it, and the bedroom slippers would have
been more usefully employed on my shoeless feet; while as for the bath
towel...!

The coffee came at that moment. I remembered that some time ago the
kitchen had been very interested in an article in one of the dailies,
giving various directions as to what should be done in the case of
bombs overhead. I forget a good deal of it, but I remember you had to
lay mattresses all over the top floors before you came downstairs, and
you had to dip a cloth in hyposulphate of something, and hold it to
your nose as you came down to seek a place of safety.

The servants were rather taken with the mattress idea, said how simple
it was, and that, as they had five mattresses between them, they would
cover a good deal of floor space. I even generously offered them the
two off my own bed, if they would come down and fetch them as soon as
the Zepps were heard, so long as they undertook to place them carefully
above _my_ head.

When Abigail brought in the trays, I asked how many mattresses she had
laid down.

“I never gave ’em a thought,” she owned up; “my two legs seemed all
that mattered, for I was sure I saw the Zeppelin-thing looking straight
in at my bedroom window—such sauce!”

“Untutored imagination again!” murmured Ursula in my ear.

Nervous little Mrs. Brash said that was just the difficulty; when it
actually came to the point you could think of nothing that you ought to
remember. Wouldn’t it be well to talk the subject over and decide a few
things—merely to be prepared—now that there was a group of us together.

Miss Thresher, who loves the importance of being in any sort of office,
enthused over the idea; said we had better have a committee meeting
there and then; to be forewarned was to be forearmed, she told us, with
an impressive air of wisdom. She said she would be Minute Secretary,
and we must draw up schedules stating definitely and clearly what a
woman ought to do, first by way of preparation beforehand, and secondly
when the crisis actually arrived.

Miss Quirker endorsed this, and remarked in an aggrieved tone (in my
direction) that she should have thought the women’s papers would have
dealt comprehensively with so important a subject long ago. She added,
however, that she thought “crisis” was far too respectable a name to
give them; had she not been a staunch Churchwoman, she would have
called them something far more vividly appropriate. I didn’t hear the
end of this, because I slipped away to find the man of the house, as I
had heard him return indoors.

Opening the study door, my eyes fell on such an upheaval that for the
moment I felt certain a gas explosion must have been at work there.
But no! He explained (turning out yet another drawer) that he was only
looking for some insurance policies, as he wasn’t quite certain what
was the attitude of the companies towards geysers. I pointed out that
it didn’t matter as we hadn’t one; but he went on looking, and his face
wore that tense expression seen on most men when hunting for the family
screwdriver, or the pair of black gloves kept for funerals. Having
found the policies at last (in the drawer where they had always been
kept, by the way), I left him in peace, to peruse them at his leisure.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Ladies’ Committee was well under way when I returned to the
dining-room, and as is the correct thing at such gatherings, everybody
was talking at once and on the most diverse topics. I consider myself
rather great on ladies’ committees; I’ve even occupied the proud
position of being in the chair, on occasion. And the more I see of
them the more I am lost in admiration of the courage, versatility, and
insuppressibility of my sex.

Why, there’s no man living who could trail as many totally irrelevant
topics across the agenda, and in defiance of a politely pleading
chairwoman too, as can the littlest and frailest woman at any ladies’
committee you like to name.

As it was, the only one who seemed within a hundred miles of Zeppelins
was poor Mrs. Brash, who was explaining to Mrs. Ridley—

“It isn’t that I mind dying: we all have to die _some_ day: but I do
prefer to die _whole_.”

Of course the doctor’s widow pooh-poohed this as nonsense, and asked
severely what would become of surgeons if everybody felt like _that_!

Miss Thresher couldn’t find a suitable heading for her schedule,
till Ursula suggested “Antizeptics.” Mrs. Ridley thought the medical
profession might not approve of the unprofessional use of the word;
but it was accepted by the majority, and then we all settled down
wholeheartedly to attack the problem from every point of view—which
included, among other things, borax as a preventive for moth, Queen
Mary’s graciousness, a comparison of the respective merits of local
butchers, economising on corsets, and the War Loan.

Perhaps you can’t see how these came in, but it was simple enough.
Miss Quicker said that, after all, explosions that you thought were
Zeppelins weren’t so bad if they enabled you to get such good coffee as
mine; and might she have a third lump of sugar, please? it was such a
treat to get a really sweet cup of coffee; she had given up sugar at
home as she was economising on it.

Being the hostess, I couldn’t exactly tell her that I, too, was trying
to economise on mine.

From the high price of sugar we naturally floated on to the ruinous
tendencies of butcher’s meat, and Mrs. Brash explained the trouble she
had with her butcher because he wouldn’t send home all the bones.

Mrs. Ridley had similar harrowments to relate about her butcher, but
his vice took the form of sticking to the trimmings from the joints,
which she was sure he sold at a good price for soap-making, now that
fat was so scarce and soap likely to be dear. She knew it because—as
she reminded us—she was the treasurer of the “Women’s League for
Encouraging the Troops to Wash,” and it came very hard on their funds.
What it would cost them for the cakes of soap they were going to send
out no one would believe! (No, they hadn’t sent any yet; but of course
they were going to, when they got enough members, and, by the way,
would _I_ join?)

She didn’t mind a fair charge, of course (we all murmured agreement).
War was war, and we must expect to pay something extra to help the
King keep going; he had his family to provide for like any other man.
Neither did she grudge one solitary penny that went to Lord Kitchener
(hearty applause). No, indeed! But what made her blood boil was to
feel that she was actually washing her hands with her own ribs—and at
one-and-threepence-halfpenny a pound, too!

Virginia suggested she should try a rather less heating soap; but she
was drowned by Miss Thresher, who said firmly, “Borax; that’s what you
ought to send to the troops. Not only would it soften the water for
them, poor things—and no one knows better than I do what awfully hard
stuff that German water is; nearly scraped my skin off when I went up
the Rhine two years ago—but they would find it so useful to put in with
their woollen things that we’ve been knitting them, to keep out the
moth.”

My reminder that our troops were not as yet, alas! drawing their
water from German cisterns was unnoticed; for the mere mention of
moth produced extraordinary animation. Was borax good? Weren’t they a
perfect nuisance? and so on. I said I always put it in with my furs,
and never had a moth near them.

“I wonder if that’s what they put with Queen Mary’s furs,” said Mrs.
Brash. “I never saw more lovely sables than those she had on when she
came to the hospital yesterday.”

Miss Thresher verified this last statement, absolutely superb they
were, and Miss Thresher had a right to speak, for the Queen had bowed
straight at her, as she stood on the kerb, “as near to her as I am to
you.”

Miss Quirker said that for her part she didn’t think there was another
woman in the world so gracious as Queen Mary—except of course Queen
Alexandra. She would bow to anyone she saw, no matter _how_ shabby they
were.

Mrs. Brash hurriedly said what she so much admired in Queen Alexandra
was her figure.

Miss Quirker continued, “Yes, and speaking of corsets I want to tell
you of another economy besides doing without sugar to help the nation.
You should buy your corsets several sizes larger than usual, and then
when they are getting worn, you can turn them upside down and wear them
the other way up. It’s so saving.”

Ursula said she quite believed it, because she knew, if she turned her
long corsets upside down, they would reach high enough up to support
the military collar at the back of her neck, and thus save boning.

I felt it was high time we got back to “Antizeptics,” and suggested
that we should put something in the first column of the schedule, which
was headed: “Things to place in readiness beforehand.”

Mrs. Brash announced that she wasn’t ever going to take her clothes off
any more till the war was over, if this was the sort of goings-on we
were to expect.

General opinion, however, was decidedly in favour of, at any rate,
removing the outside frock, simply because we none of us saw any
prospect of ever being able to afford to buy a new one.

Then we all said what we thought ought to go into that column. Woollen
undies, a fur-lined coat, a thick dressing-gown, a raincoat, a
travelling rug, and all sorts of other things, were to be placed _close
to the bedside_. This was insisted upon as a matter of the greatest
importance; otherwise, in the dark, we should never find anything, and
of course it wouldn’t be safe to have a light.

Miss Thresher and Miss Quirker had a small sub-committee on the subject
of stockings—should they be worn all night in bed? Miss Thresher said
obviously it was the only sensible course. Miss Quirker objected that
she should kick hers off in her sleep in any case, hers was such a
delicate skin (as a child people had always remarked on it), though
probably women less sensitive than herself might be able to endure
them. But if she lost hers among the bedclothes she would never find
them in the dark.

Eventually they compromised by agreeing to safety-pin a pair to the
front of the nightdress (as they fasten your handkerchief to you in
the hospital), so that at least they would know where to find them in
case of precipitate flight.

Meanwhile the question, “Should hats be worn?” necessitated Ursula and
Mrs. Brash going into another sub-committee on the lounge. Mrs. Brash
favoured a shawl—preferably white—being draped over the head; it was
more suited to the _négligé_ condition of the hair. This led her to
consult Ursula about the winter’s hat she was evolving. She had had
an _exceedingly_ good white and black crinoline hat the summer before
last, and the winter before last she had had a _very_ lovely violet
velvet toque—the rich deep colour favoured by Queen Alexandra.

Last winter she had taken the violet velvet from the hat of the winter
before, and put it over the crinoline hat of the summer before (you can
follow this, I hope?), and everybody had admired it. Now she proposed
to return the violet velvet to its original toque, only this time she
would smother it with some violets she had by her, and she had a really
beautiful little sable skin which she proposed to put round the brim.
Did Miss Ursula think the violets and the fur would combine well?

Ursula said she herself didn’t care for fur and flowers in combination,
because she always associated sables with snowy northern regions,
whereas violets suggested soft spring days and awakening woods and
gardens.

Mrs. Brash, who had never thought of putting things together in that
way before, said how very poetic it was. Then would Miss Ursula think
that quills would look better? After all, birds and flowers went
together.

Ursula agreed, and added that she had even found the neighbours’ fowls
scratting up the white violets one day. Mrs. Brash seemed to feel that
was conclusive proof of the desirability of the combination. And in
that case, should the quills tilt outwards or inwards? No, she didn’t
mean inside the hat, of course, but across the top or off the head?...
Yes, perhaps it would be the best to tilt them backwards, and she
should fasten them with a large cameo that had belonged to the late Mr.
Brash’s mother (prolific details as to the grasping character of Mrs.
Brash, senior, who had never given her a thing except this cameo).

Finally, she aired her only anxiety—would the shape of the
winter-before-last toque still be worn this winter? Ursula assured her
that the shapes of the winter-before-last will be worn till the war is
over, and by that time we shall have become so attached to them that we
shall refuse to part with them.

       *       *       *       *       *

After we had collected a fairly comprehensive pile of clothes—including
most we possessed—and placed it all close beside the bed, jewellery
came under discussion. Naturally no one wanted to lose even the
smallest tiara, and we were all quite sure the Government wouldn’t
include jewellery in the insurance. So we collected our trinkets and
placed them on top of the garments. It was astonishing how much we each
seemed to possess, and how careful we were to enumerate it all. Mrs.
Brash enlarged tearfully and at great length on the diamond necklace
her late husband had given her.

This opened up a wider question. How about silver plate? Yes, how about
the silver? each one echoed. Was it likely we were going to hand over
our teapots, shoelifts, candlesticks, pin-boxes, spoons and forks,
hair-brushes, entrée-dishes, and photo-frames to the enemy? No, indeed
not! So we all lugged our plate-chests to the bedside; though Miss
Thresher said she should put hers all into a laundry bag and hang it on
the bedpost; it would be easier to carry that way.

Then a number of side issues cropped up. Virginia had just invested in
the War Loan; there was her scrip. Mrs. Brash couldn’t think of leaving
behind the portrait of her great-grand-uncle, the admiral (always thus
referred to, as though no other had ever existed), whereupon we all
remembered we had ancestral portraits calling for preservation—after
all, it doesn’t look well if you haven’t!

Miss Quirker decided she would take the bedspread she had crocheted for
their forthcoming Red Cross bazaar (but didn’t intend to give it to
them now it was finished; it was far too pretty. Besides, the secretary
had only put her name in small type among “other ladies helping” below
the stallholders, and just think how she had slaved over that bazaar!).

Mrs. Ridley said that whatever else went, she meant at all costs
to save the presentation clock given to her late husband by a very
celebrated patient, whose name she was not at liberty to state. I’m
inclined to think this was mentioned as a set-off against Mrs. Brash’s
diamond necklace; the late Mr. Brash, though an admirable husband, did
not seem to have generated anything remarkable in the way of public
esteem, whereas the late Dr. Ridley was known to be anything but
generous.

Mrs. Ridley had no diamonds; but the clock was of solid granite, made
on the model of a pyramid. It was surmounted by a coy-looking sphinx,
representing about a quarter of a hundredweight of bronze metal.
Accompanying the pyramid—one at each end of the mantelpiece—was a pair
of heavy granite obelisks (like Cleopatra’s Needle, but just a size
smaller). It took both the servants to lift the clock every time the
mantelpiece was dusted, Mrs. Ridley explained with pride. Besides,
the obelisks were very useful to hang her knitting bag on, and so
appropriate too, with our brave lads out there rallying round and
defending the poor sphinx from the Turks. (Virginia whispered in my
ear, it was no wonder the bronze lady looked so cheerful.)

So of course these weighty items joined the jewellery at the bedside.

Other valuables rapidly suggested themselves; also more sordid things,
such as matches and candles, a tin of biscuits, and a small stove and
kettle, for use if we had to sit out in the road all night gazing at a
ruined home.

And of course we placed pails of sand and buckets of water close at
hand, to use if it should be an incendiary bomb. (I hoped I shouldn’t
hop out of bed straight into the water!)

Here Ursula reminded me that the pile of sand placed on the platform
of our London station several months (or was it years?) ago, for
Anti-zeptic treatment, was now sprouting luscious grass; obviously the
lawn-mower and garden-roller must be added to the bedside museum.

But I told her afterwards, she had better keep quiet if she lacks the
ability to grasp the strenuosity of any situation where a group of
conscientious women are conversing on the subject of “doing something.”
As it was, her remark only incited Miss Quirker to spend a tedious
five minutes in explaining to her how impossible it would be for a
single woman, with only one maid, to get the garden-roller upstairs,
and another ten in giving her recipes for exterminating grass; while
Mrs. Ridley went off at a tangent on the shortage of gardeners, and the
advantages of paraffin over fish-oil as a lubricant for mowing-machines.

I only succeeded in getting her back to the agenda, by begging her to
advise us, as she was such an authority on paraffin, whether to take an
oil-stove or a spirit-lamp for the outdoor encampment.

       *       *       *       *       *

At length, when any ordinary bedroom must have been packed quite full,
and suggestive of a furniture depository, Virginia’s voice rose above
the babel—

“But what I want to know is, how am I ever going to get into bed?”

“You may well ask!” said her sister. “Look at the time! Just you come
along home with me. I’ll show you. Where’s my eiderdown?”

Miss Thresher besought them to stay a few minutes longer, merely to
decide what to do when the Zeppelins actually arrived. But Ursula said
they had got all their work cut out to get through the preparatory
stages of the schedule.

So the Committee adjourned.

As they went out, a figure came out of the kitchen side entrance and
made for the coach-house, carrying a big cardboard box.

“Is anything the matter, Abigail?” I asked.

“No’m! I’m only hiding all our best hats in the stable; I expect
they’ll be less likely to find them there.”

“But the Zepps aren’t exactly like burglars!” I said.

“No, I suppose they’re not,” she replied, “but when a creature like
that Kaiser gets nosing about among _the stars_, as well as trying to
rampage all over the earth, there’s no telling _what_ he’ll be up to
next. It’s as well to be prepared.”




IX

Where the Road Led Over the Hills


NEXT morning I was a wreck. Virginia and her sister were the same.

For a week past I had realised that I was in the last stage of mental
and physical disrepair. The midnight committee was the final straw.

As a rule, I stick at work in town till nerves and brain refuse to hold
out another day; then, flinging my tools down, and leaving both my
office desk and my study table in a hopeless and bewildering state of
piled-up letters, MSS. and proofs, I just fly—a goodly bale of arrears
following me by next post.

I had had practically no holiday owing to the war, and had reached that
forlorn and useless frame of mind when I declared I was far too busy to
take one—a very mistaken notion for anyone to have, by the way; it is
surprising how well most of us can be done without when we do at last
take a little time off duty!

However, I had just one faint glimmer of common sense left me, and
that told me to take the first train going west next morning, which
I did, leaving Paddington (in company with Virginia and Ursula, who
had a holiday due to her from the hospital) in a warm close fog that
might imply a thunderstorm, or an early autumn, or merely the ordinary
airless carbonic-acid gloom that is a distinguishing feature of London.
Some eminent authority has said that the air in London hasn’t been
changed for over a hundred years, and I can quite believe it!

We found the cottage bathed in the glow of the soft sunshine that is
still summer, but that brings with it the first touch of regret for
the good-bye that is near at hand. There had been some soaking rains
after a dry spell, and everything in the garden was holding up bright,
refreshed leaves, and glowing flowers, one and all assuring me that
though they had a gasping time a few weeks before, and had wondered
from day to day if they could manage to hold on till the evening,
things had now taken a glorious turn for the better; and they were glad
they hadn’t given up, since I was so pleased to see them.

Several apologised for ragged washed-out blossoms lower down their
stem, but explained that it was due to the rain, and that they were
sending up new ones to take the place of the shabby ones as quickly as
ever they could.

The dear things seemed to look at me with such understanding sympathy;
the pansies held up their bright little faces just like a bevy of
inquiring children; the hollyhocks, I am sure, turned round to look
in my direction; the last of the sweet peas threw out tender little
fingers to touch my arm as I passed beside their hedge; the golden rod
stretched its neck and tiptoed lest I should miss it at the back of the
border.

Haven’t you noticed that most flowers seem to have faces? I don’t mean
that you can trace a direct resemblance to human features in them
as you can in the moon; but there is something in the flowers that
looks at you—something that looks at you shyly, as the wild rose; or
stares at you boldly, like the marigold; or twinkles at you gaily,
like the cornflower and coreopsis; or appears slightly inclined to
frivolity, like the larkspur and the ragged robin; or takes life with
solid seriousness, like the Canterbury bell; or gives you the innocent
look of a baby, like the primrose; or beams at you with large-hearted
maternal kindness, like a big gloire de Dijon.

Most flowers, you will find, give you a look with some definite
characteristic—at least, so it seems to me. Probably that is one reason
why they are so comforting and companionable.

And I was wanting something comforting and companionable that day. I
had overworked and generally neglected the rules of common sense, till
I had got to that dismal pitch that simply asks of blank space, “What’s
the good of anything?”

Then more questions began to worry me.

What had Christianity accomplished, seeing the way the Sermon on the
Mount was being trampled under foot by the instigators of this war?
After all, wasn’t might going to win, in spite of all one believed of
the supremacy of right? Wasn’t the devil having things all his own way
now? What were Christians doing? Had religion lost its power? What were
the churches doing? Was _anybody_ doing _anything_ worth whiles?

Those who have let themselves run down physically, and have neglected
to take proper meals, and have turned night into day, and have tried
systematically to cram a fortnight’s work into every week, know exactly
where one finds oneself at the end of a few months.

And it is only the very exceptional people who do not find their
spiritual condition about as jaded as their nerves after a course of
this sort of thing. We get to feel that we are ploughing a very lone
furrow, and it is only a step further to the state of mind that says it
isn’t worth ploughing at all.

Personal experience has taught me that there is only one cure for me
when I get to this state of nervous wreckage; and that is to get away
to the solitudes; to listen among the great silences of the hills for
the still small Voice that has never failed those who wait for its
Message.

God’s methods of restoring weary humanity are many and various.
Sometimes He sees that first and foremost, like Elijah, His tired
children need rest and food. And just as one of the greatest terrors
that can befall the worn-out worker in a city is insomnia, so one of
the greatest boons that Nature in her quietudes bestows is the ability
to drop off into peaceful, brain-mending oblivion.

So He giveth His beloved sleep.

Or it may be that He sees His children need to be drawn away from the
world for a while, in order to talk face to face with Him. Sometimes we
have to be brought to a state of great weakness before we will listen
to His plea: “Come ye yourselves apart and rest awhile.” We do not
always heed it when we are well and strong. In the enforced quiet we
can find time to turn to Him.

And a sojourn with our Lord in the desert has meant for many the
feeding of five thousand on the morrow.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I am badly in the depths, I know of no surer way to restore
my mind than a long walk across the hills. Some people need human
companionship; but, personally, I can do very well by myself under such
circumstances (always provided that I don’t meet a cow likewise on a
walking tour). I can pull myself together more quickly if I don’t have
to spend time and energy striving to be amiable and politely attentive
to someone.

I have often started out on a Sunday morning, and walked on till I came
upon some unknown church that served as a useful end to my pilgrimage.
On one occasion I remember discovering a small chapel hidden away among
a few homesteads in a pretty valley I unexpectedly tumbled into. They
were starting the first hymn as I entered. There were nine of us all
told, including the preacher, the two ladies who raised two different
tunes simultaneously, and the rugged-faced deacon or elder, who brought
me a hymnbook and, later, took the collection.

The singing was not a marked success at first, owing partly to the
divided opinion of the congregation as to which tune they were really
singing; moreover, my entrance had momentarily diverted attention
and seemed to make all concerned a trifle nervous. But at length the
preacher himself started a third tune that we all knew and were able to
join in; and a very sincere and devout service followed.

I gathered from information impressed upon us in the course of the
sermon (probably for my special benefit, as the handful of cottagers
assembled would assuredly know) that there was to be a special
collection that day on behalf of some chapel fund.

When I told this to Ursula, who didn’t then know so much about our
hill-people as she does now, she said, “Ah! I suppose that was why only
nine came!”

But, in reality, nine was not at all a poor congregation for a tiny
hamlet like this on a Sunday morning. The mothers are mostly at
home getting dinner; the fathers are seeing to the stock, and don’t
reckon to get themselves “cleaned up” till the afternoon. But in the
evening—then the little building would be packed to the door.

In his final prayer the minister prayed so earnestly that we might
all be induced to give with the greatest liberality, that I felt
exceedingly sorry I had only put a half-crown into my glove when I
started out, leaving my purse at home.

The rugged elder looked studiously in the opposite direction while I
slipped the coin on to the plate; somehow I hoped he wouldn’t be too
disappointed when he discovered that the respectable-looking stranger
had not given more handsomely after the pleading of the preacher. But
it was all I had.

After the service I lingered a moment to read a quaint old tombstone
in the church precincts. The rest of the worshippers likewise
lingered—respectful but curious—in the road outside the gate. The
preacher had shaken hands with me at the door; my rugged friend had
been immersed in the duties of his office as steward, treasurer, and
church secretary combined. But now he came out of the door, looked
anxiously about, and seeing me still there, made straight for me. I
concluded that he, too, was going to shake hands, and possibly inquire
if I was staying in the neighbourhood. But what he actually said was
this—

“Excuse me, ma’am, but do you happen to know what you put into the
plate?”

“A half-crown,” I faltered, wondering whether by any remote chance it
was a bad one.

He nodded his head, and, opening his work-hardened hand, displayed
the morning’s collection—seven pennies, three halfpennies, and my
half-crown on top.

“That’s right,” he nodded. And then, lowering his voice, presumably to
save my feelings, he added, “But if ’twas a mistake, and you didn’t
mean to put in all that, _you can have it back_.”

Do you know, it made a lump come in my throat.

       *       *       *       *       *

I told Ursula about it at dinner, remarking that it looked as though
they hadn’t much faith even though they had specially prayed for
generous giving.

Ursula said that in _her_ opinion it looked as though it was high time
I presented to the ragbag the hat I had worn that morning, since it
had been for months past a dejected object of pity, though with her
usual delicacy of feeling she had, up to the present, refrained from
telling me so in plain English. But now, in all kindness such as only a
dear friend can show, she had no hesitation in saying that she wasn’t
at all surprised that they mistook me for an old age pensioner on the
verge of bankruptcy.

       *       *       *       *       *

But I’ve been wandering again. To return to that September day when
I reached the cottage as weary of life and as downhearted about
everything as any mortal could well be. The whole world seemed out of
joint. Yet in my innermost soul I knew that religion was really all
right, and that it was I who had gone wrong. But I refused to look at
that aspect of it.

Next day I determined to give it all up, and just meditated on my own
funeral. I tried to reckon up how many people I could really rely on to
send wreaths; it didn’t make me feel any the less pessimistic when I
decided there were only four who could be counted upon as certainties,
and they included Virginia and Ursula!

And even one of these failed me; for when I mentioned the matter to
the girls, they said: Surely I didn’t imagine they were going to be so
wasteful as to send _two_ wreaths, when one would do quite as well if
both their names appeared on the card attached? But they did offer
to make it a wreath of painted-white-tin flowers, under a glass shade
(regardless of expense), if I preferred, suggesting that I might get
longer pleasure out of a wreath of this kind.

Getting no more consolation from them than this, I said I would go
for a walk. Virginia and Ursula anticipated my wishes and declined to
accompany me. They had urgent work on hand that was far too important
to postpone for a mere walk. It was the planting of onion seed.

The week before we had read in the papers how imperative it was that
everybody should plant food crops in any available scrap of ground they
might possess, to help keep starvation at bay.

We read the article eagerly.

I had several acres of land doing nothing in particular at the moment,
that I was only too glad to use for a special crop of eatables against
the time of national famine. Without finishing the article, we had
started to discuss what would be best to lay down, taking into account
the idiosyncrasies of our digestions.

“Green peas in the small field adjoining the orchard,” Ursula had
decided for me; and then she proceeded: “Broad beans in half of the
upper garden; scarlet runners at the back of the strawberry beds and
along by the south wall; the potato garden can now have carrots,
parsnips, turnips and beets; the west garden must have pickled cabbage
(I mean the cabbage before it is pickled), shallots, spring onions and
pickling onions, chives——”

“What _are_ ‘chives’?” interrupted Virginia.

“I don’t know, but I’ve read the name somewhere. Don’t interrupt me.”

“And fennel—that will come in handy for fish—and leeks. In that piece
of waste ground beyond the barn I think we ought to plant asparagus,
because, after all, there is no need to dispense with luxuries if you
can grow them for nothing, is there?

“And how would it be to plant maize all down that bed where you had the
Shirley poppies? I should think the same aspect would suit the two, and
some green corn would be very nice. I suppose, if you plant it now, it
will be about right in January or February, wouldn’t it? Or you could
sell it. It’s twopence halfpenny or threepence a cob at the Stores.
So if you had, say, fifty plants, and if each produced—how many _do_
they produce on a plant?... Oh, well, if you don’t know, let’s be on
the safe side and say one each—that would be a clear profit of—well,
at threepence each—let’s see, fifty pence is four and twopence, and
three times would be—twelve and sixpence—say twelve shillings, allowing
sixpence for seed. So that would be well worth trying, in case the
moratorium never ends. Then there would have to be cabbages and
suchlike. How about digging up the orchard, and——”

“Oh, yes,” said Virginia scornfully (she had picked up the paper and
read to the end of the aforementioned article, which had proved very
enlightening). “And I suppose you expect it all to grow under a couple
of feet of snow. Let me tell you that it is now too late to plant
anything but onions! He, she, or it, who wrote this article, says so.”

I myself had been going to tell her, when I could get a word in, that
it was too late for most of the things she had named.

But Ursula, who had never done any vegetable gardening, was still
sceptical. That was why I suggested that we should consult the obliging
manager at Carter’s, in Queen Victoria Street, as we often did over our
gardening woes.

Just ahead of us in the shop, when we got there, was an elderly
gentleman who wanted some grass seed; he asked if they would tell him
how to start a lawn next spring.

It was in the middle of the day—a very busy time for a shop of this
kind, when city men are on their way to or from lunch, and seize a few
extra minutes to buy their seeds. The shop was full—it looked as though
every scrap of land within the twelve-mile radius was going to be put
under cultivation—and the assistants had all their work to serve
everyone as quickly as they wanted to be served.

The Elderly Gentleman was apparently the only one who was not in a
hurry; so he asked the most minute questions, and the manager gave him
copious directions, from preparing the ground at the start, right up to
marking it off for tennis, when it was in its prime (though, judging
by the small packet of seed the E. G. had bought, the lawn would never
support a tennis-net).

Then by the time the shop was quite packed, and when everything that
was possible appeared to have been said about planting and maintaining
a lawn—including keeping it free from moss, the best way to trim the
edges, the law with regard to trespassing fowls, and the careful tying
of black cotton over the newly-planted seeds to keep off the birds—the
E. G. asked what he should do when daisies came up? The manager said
patiently that his firm’s grass seeds didn’t produce daisies; but as
the E. G. seemed to worry about daisies, he was told how to get rid of
daisies.

At last he really went, reluctantly, I admit; but the other
customers—who had all become so engrossed in his lawn that they
couldn’t remember what they had come in to buy for themselves—heaved a
sigh of relief.

Slowly he made his way to the middle of the wide crossing just in
front of the shop. You knew by his hesitating walk that there was
another question he had meant to ask, but he couldn’t recall it for the
moment.

Yes! He suddenly turned round briskly (and nearly ended the lawn under
a taxi), the shop-door opened again, and an anxious voice inquired,
“What ought I to do if the birds get at the seeds in spite of the black
cotton and the bits of white rag tied to them?”

The manager passed his hand across what looked like an aching brow, and
further braced himself to do his duty; but a gentleman customer came
to the rescue by replying, “It is usual, in such a case, sir, to buy
another packet of grass seed, and start all over again on exactly the
same lines as before, only you plant an extra reel of black cotton this
time.”

After this we were able to inquire of the manager what crops he would
advise us to plant as our contribution to the nation’s larder, to say
nothing of our own.

“Onions,” he said, so promptly that one would have thought others had
asked the same question. And then added—“Giant Rocca.”

I am not sure how many pounds of seed Ursula immediately ordered;
she proposed to make it a present to me, and naturally wished
to be generous. Virginia says she believes she heard her say a
half-a-hundredweight. Anyhow, the obliging manager asked, with a
slight cough, how large a portion of ground we were intending to
cultivate, as half an ounce would be sufficient for—I forget how many
acres! So she reduced her order to half a pound. She said she didn’t
want us to run short. (I don’t fancy we shall, either!) Besides, she
rather liked the name “Giant Rocca.” It suggested something large and
strengthening wherewith to combat the foe.

       *       *       *       *       *

We hadn’t a moment’s rest after we arrived at the cottage until the
onion seed was well underground. Ursula decided that it would be really
a blessing if I _would_ go out—she could then plant in peace.

The handy man being unable to “oblige” me by doing a little work just
then, she had decided to plant the seeds herself.

At first she had made long troughs in which to place the seed,
sprinkling it very finely with thumb and finger; but after half an hour
of this spine-breaking work she straightened her back with difficulty,
and decided that to “sow broadcast” was more in accordance with Nature
herself, to say nothing of Biblical teaching. Hence we had it broadcast.

Here I may say that we eventually had Giant Roccas sown the length
and breadth of the vegetable garden, in between the rows of spring
greens, as well as in open spaces; also they are sending up their
spears between rows of snapdragons; round standard rose-trees; in the
beds usually devoted to Darwin tulips; down the narrow bed that has
Persian irises in the centre and double daisies at the edge; in the
rough bed of foxgloves at the back of the pigsty, along the edge of the
borders where sweet alyssum bloomed in the summer; under the damson
tree where the ground is bare; along by the south wall, where the sweet
pea remains were pulled up to make room for them; among the raspberry
canes; all over the potato-patch; along with the carnation cuttings in
the cold frame; in little dibbles among the strawberry plants; and I
even found a few pots, each with a bit of glass over the top, placed in
the sunny scullery window, which also proved to be “Giant Roccas,” in
case we should run short indoors.

When all these Roccas have attained to their gigantic proportions, I
fancy we shall be able to scent that garden a mile or two away!

       *       *       *       *       *

Still, the onions were only being planted the day I set out for a walk,
wandering just where the road might chance to lead me. But you have
to take yourself with you, if you go for a walk, and it is some time
before you can get away from yourself—if you can make out what I mean
by this.

I merely walked on and on, looking at the blackbirds gobbling down
the red mountain ash berries, till one gasped at their stowing-away
capacity; at the swallows practising their long sweeping flights
preparatory to leaving us; at the ferns growing out of the shady side
of the walls; at a great patch of rich purple in the corner of a
field—that turned out to be a widespread tangle of flowering vetch; at
the beautiful colour effect of massed heliotrope Michaelmas daisies
against the grey-green background of a mossy fern-decked old stone
wall; at the harebells swinging in the wind; at the late foxgloves,
still poking beautiful spikes of colour through the hedges; at the
blackberries trailing over everything; at the butterflies still
flitting about, or resting motionless with outspread wings where they
found a warm sunny stone, or gorging themselves to repletion on some
over-ripe pears that had fallen by the roadside. There were several
lovely creatures with blue-black wings marked with red, white and a
little blue, who, like the wasps, were actually intoxicated with pear
juice!

A fox slunk across the road right in front of me, and plunged into a
wood; probably having the time of his life just now, with most of the
hunt somewhere in France.

The springs were coming to life again, after the heavy rain, and water
burbled along at the side of the lane, or tumbled out from the rocks at
the roadside in tiny waterfalls.

The orchard trees were flecked all over with gold, or pale yellow, or
bright crimson—surely we never had a more abundant apple year than this
one.

It was such a wonderful afternoon: I was bound to go on wandering.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last I came to the end of the lanes and found myself on an open
hilltop. As the fresh bracing air met me full in the face, I began to
feel hungry. I looked at my watch: it was five o’clock. I looked at the
landscape, and realised that, though I didn’t know where I was, I was
certainly miles away from any tea.

I paused and considered: Should I carefully retrace my steps? That
always seems a poor-spirited way of getting home again, even though
you are lost! On all sides stretched an expanse of hilly country, grey
lichen-covered boulders, yellow-flowered gorse, wiry mauve and purple
heather, and a wealth of green, and bronze, and golden tinted bracken,
with occasional woods and larch plantations. There was a general hum of
bees and insects in the air, and a pheasant rose from the ground close
to me and flew with a _whirr_ into a little coppice near by.

A sign-board was lying on the ground by the gate leading into the
coppice. It was the worse for wind and weather, but one could still
read the alarming warning, “Trespassers will be prosecuted!” Who would
trespass, and who would prosecute, on that wild bit of moorland, I
wonder? The only being in sight was a rabbit, sitting motionless close
beside the prostrate notice and studying me silently with the air of a
special constable! Yet even he went off and left me quite alone.

At that moment I caught sight of a chimney over the spur of the hill.
I felt convinced it must be attached to a fireplace, and surely there
would be a kettle on that fire. I made a bee-line for the place.

       *       *       *       *       *

To the eye of the town-dweller, hill and moorland distances are apt to
be deceptive; the house proved to be much farther off than I had at
first imagined. But this gave added zest to expedition; I determined to
reach it though I only arrived in time to put up there for the night.
A nearer view showed the cottage to be the fag-end of a small hamlet
lying snugly in the protecting hollow of the hills.

When I actually entered the village, there were so many pretty
dwellings, and they all looked equally inviting, that I was undecided
where to open an attack. However, I settled on one that had a couple of
hollyhocks, some late pinks, and a black-currant bush growing out of
the top of the garden wall, while a free-and-easy grape-vine, a tall
monthly rose, and some clematis waved arms of welcome to me from the
front of the cottage.

Just as I approached the gate, a pleasant-faced woman came out of the
door and walked down the garden path between the French marigolds that
edged the flower-beds. She was the only sign of life in the place
(apart from a few belated hens, who, being averse to early rising, I
suppose, had determined to take time by the forelock, and were catching
the historic early worm overnight).

I felt that the good lady’s appearance was a distinct indication that
Fate had decided I must have my tea there. Nevertheless, there were
signs that she was bound on some important errand; instead of the
ordinary sun-bonnet or battered hat that is the usual weekday headgear
among our hills, she had donned a carefully-brushed though somewhat
rusty black bonnet, and a black beaded mantle of unquestionable
antiquity, both worn with the air of her Sunday best.

“Good evening,” I began. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if you
can tell me where——”

“Th’ chapel?” replied the woman before I could finish my sentence.
“Why, of course you can’t find ’un. But you jes’ come ’long wi’ me. I’m
going there meself, an’ though we’m a bit late, it don’t matter; my
man’ll be keeping a seat fur me, and ther’ll be room, sure ’nough, for
’ee to squeeze in too. I do al’ays tell ’un our chapel didn’t oughter
belong where ’tis. No place o’ worship was ever more hid out o’ road
than ourn. Yet my man do say ’tis clear ’nough to see ’un if you’m
comin’ ’long the _lower_ road; for there ’tis all to once. But as I say
to him, the folk don’t all a-come down ’long the lower road; an’ if you
come _up_ ’long, why, there’s no chapel to be seen, and then where’m
you to? What I do say is, the way o’ salvation oughter be so plain that
th’ wayfarin’ man, though a _fool_, can’t lose un. An’ now here be you
to prove me very words!”

The good soul was all this time trotting energetically along what I
concluded could not be the lower road, since no chapel was in view. I
just followed, wondering what would happen next! Meanwhile my companion
talked, with scarcely comma-pause for breath.

“But I’m glad I happen to be late, or you might ha’ been wanderin’
around till you’re all mizzy-mazed. Soon as I saw you comin’ up
’long, I said to father—I was jes’ settlin’ ’im comfor’ble for th’
night—‘Father,’ I said, ‘here’s a lady a-lookin’ fur the chapel, sure
’nough. I shuden wonder a bit but what she’s come to speak at th’
meeting. Like as not she’s a friend of the minister, an’ ’pears she’s
lost.’ I suppose you belong to London, ma’am?” This with a glance all
over me to make sure there was no local hall-mark.

“My home is in London,” I replied, “but just at present I’m staying at
Woodacres.”

“You’ve walked all the way from Woodacres?” she exclaimed.

“Yes; and I’m terribly hungry,” I said, hurriedly seizing my chance.

At this the kind hospitable soul was most concerned, and insisted
on our turning into a relative’s house which we were passing at the
moment. The door stood open, though the place seemed to be deserted.

“Myra,” she called out. A girl came downstairs with some
pocket-handkerchiefs in her hand which she appeared to be marking
in red. There was a hurried whisper in a back room, and quickly she
brought in a glass of milk and some bread and butter—for which I was
truly thankful.

“The lady do look wisht,” my companion explained to the girl. “She’s
walked from Woodacres to hear the minister from London. She lost her
way, and so didn’t get in time for the tea-meeting.”

I was interested in this item of information about myself, but decided
to let the unexpected situation develop as it pleased.

We were soon walking along the road again, my companion talking the
whole time. Myra was her niece, going to Bristol next week to start
in a draper’s shop. “She says ’tisn’t stylish nowadays to let folks
think as you does your washing yourself, so she’s making sort o’ red
oughts and crosses in the corner, that the other girls ’ll think as
the washin’ was put out. _Put out_, indeed!”—with utter scorn of
voice—“‘Isn’t it all _put out_?’ I asks her. How could they dry ’un
else? I’ve no patience with such fangels—_that_ I haven’t! And isn’t
this war dreadful? I see in the paper I was a-readin’ to father that
that Kayser do call it a righteous war. _A righteous war_—when he don’t
even leave off a-fighting of a Sunday!”

Just then we turned a corner, and the maligned chapel certainly burst
into view “all to once.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The first thing to attract attention, as we neared the modest building,
was a large board above the front entrance, displaying the words
“Revival Meetings” in bold white letters pasted on a red turkey twill
background.

A hymn was progressing when we entered; a seat had been reserved for
the cottager by her husband, and had been left in charge of his hat
(turned upside down and holding a red pocket-handkerchief covered with
large white spots), while he himself distributed hymn books with backs
all suffering from spinal complaint in a more or less acute form.

By dint of energetic compression on the part of the good-natured
occupants of the pew, room was made for me as well as for my companion,
the owner of the hat electing to stand in the aisle, as became a pillar
of the church; the conspicuous crease adorning each trouser-leg and
the back of his black coat proclaimed them his best clothes, and gave
additional evidence that the meeting was of more than ordinary weekday
importance.

The place was packed to its utmost capacity. I decided that I had never
in my whole life heard a harmonium more asthmatically out of tune and
at the same time I wished that the lamps (which were economically
turned down, daylight being still visible) could only be raised, since
the odour of paraffin was not a refreshing ingredient to add to the air
of the already close room. For on our hills, as in other places where
fresh air is most abundant, ventilation is the least among the virtues
practised by the natives.

The congregation took some slight adjustment before all managed to
wedge themselves into the seats after the hymn. The general shuffle and
scuffle having subsided, a man on the platform addressed the assembly.

“I am sorry to say our brother has not yet arrived.”

The glow of expectancy on the faces of the people suddenly vanished.

“We think he has made a mistake over the time of commencement;
possibly he imagines it is seven instead of six o’clock; but he is
certainly coming, or he would have telegraphed——”

The disappointed ones looked hopeful again.

“Two friends have driven off to meet him”—many heads craned round in
the direction of the door, though the honoured pair were now a couple
of miles away—“and they will doubtless bring him along as quickly as
possible. I think we may safely rely on him being here in about half an
hour.” All eyes now scanned the face of the clock. “In the meanwhile,
we will hold a short Testimony meeting; and perhaps Brother Wilson will
first of all lead us in prayer.”

The man with the hymn-books, standing in the aisle, responded. Without
a moment’s halt or hesitation he poured forth a torrent of mingled
appeal, confession, praise and request. He touched on their week of
services, on themselves as a church, on the village and (according to
his view) its state of spiritual darkness; then he went further afield
and dealt with the whole of England, the sailors on our warships, and
the soldiers on the battlefields. This thought led him to mention the
Colonies, the missionaries labouring in foreign lands; and then he
prayed for the heathen who lived so far away that no missionary had yet
reached them. He concluded with a plea for all backsliders and a pæan
of gratitude for those who were saved.

The congregation followed the long prayer intently, punctuating every
remark with “Amen,” and many other expressions of assent, uttered
devoutly though fervently.

Then the one who presided asked all who had received a blessing that
week to testify to the others of the great things that had befallen
them. He sat down. After a pause of but half a minute, a woman rose,
saying in a quiet voice—

“I feel I ought to take the earliest opportunity of telling how good
God has been to me. I came to these meetings as hopeless as any human
being could very well be; but God has lifted the load from my soul; and
now, although I cannot see any light ahead, He has shown me He is near,
and I am content to walk by faith. And I know the light will come soon.”

She sat down, and the only sound that broke the stillness was the voice
of the chairman—

“Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in Him; and He shall bring it
to pass.”

A decrepit old man next hobbled to his feet. His voice was feeble; but
the peaceful look on his wrinkled face, and the light that shone in his
eyes, carried wonderful conviction with them. He was somewhat diffuse,
but dwelt on all the goodness that had fallen to his lot through life,
and his eager anticipation of the call that should summon him Home.

When once the ice was broken, the people followed one another as fast
as they could. An elderly woman sitting next to me rose to her feet,
steadying herself by holding on to the pew in front with her work-worn
hands, for she was trembling. She spoke in a hesitating manner; yet
what she said had infinite pathos in it. Would they remember in their
prayers the lads who were fighting so far away, some out of reach of
any services like these, that they might not forget the God of their
father and mother, and that they might be brought back safely to the
old home again.

And the poor woman, who was evidently much overwrought, just sat down
and hid her face in her handkerchief. I couldn’t help putting my hand
over hers in sympathy.

There were many other bowed heads in the meeting by then—old, careworn
women as well as younger ones, old men in plenty, but so few young
fellows.

“Let us pray,” said the chairman. All eyes were closed. There was a
slight pause, and then another voice full of wonderful restfulness sent
up a prayer to the Great Comforter on behalf of all the mothers and
fathers present, who night and day were longing for their sons’ return,
and for the wives who with aching hearts were hungering for news of the
absent loved ones. The prayer was very simple and unconventional, just
the asking of a boon from a Friend. But the speaker understood the
heartbreaks that were in those suppressed sobs, and his words brought
comfort to many a lonely one that night.

When he ceased, the lamps were all raised, and there on the rostrum was
one of the greatest—if not _the_ greatest—of the preachers of our times.

“The minister from London” had arrived.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was amazed when I saw him there—a man who preached every Sunday to
congregations numbering several thousands; whose name was the most
powerful attraction that could be found for a May meeting poster or a
Convention programme; a theologian whose lectures and writings were
followed with the closest attention by hundreds of students.

As he stood up in that small village chapel, the first thought that
came into my mind was something like this: What a waste to have such a
big man at a small meeting like this when he could easily fill Albert
Hall; and in any case he will probably be right above their heads; he
is far too scholarly for these simple-minded uneducated people. He will
be quite lost on them.

What I forgot was the fact that after all it is the Message that counts
in such a case.

The famous preacher had a Message for humanity; and he was great
enough to be able to deliver it in a way that would be understood by
anyone, rich or poor, educated or illiterate. And he was wise enough to
know that he might be doing a big work in speaking to that handful of
people in that remote corner of England, seeing that a chance visit had
brought him into the vicinity; therefore, when they had asked him if he
would speak at the revival meetings they were holding, he had consented
at once; and I was not the only one who had reason to be grateful to
God for the preacher’s words that night; mine was not the only heavy
heart that had come into the little chapel badly in need of an uplift;
I was not the only one who felt almost alone in a losing cause, with
all the old-time beliefs tottering.

       *       *       *       *       *

He read from Revelation vii. in the Revised Version:

    After these things I saw, and behold, a great
    multitude, which no man could number, out of every
    nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
    standing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed
    in white robes, and palms in their hands; and they cry
    with a great voice, saying, Salvation unto our God
    which sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb....

    And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, These
    which are arrayed in the white robes, who are they, and
    whence came they? And I say unto him, My lord, thou
    knowest. And he said to me, These are they which come
    out of the great tribulation, and they washed their
    robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
    Therefore are they before the throne of God; and they
    serve Him day and night in His temple: and He that
    sitteth on the throne shall spread His tabernacle over
    them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any
    more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any
    heat: for the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne
    shall be their Shepherd, and shall guide them unto
    fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away
    every tear from their eyes.

There was a moment’s silence as he closed his Bible. And then he
began to talk to the little crowd before him—not about the war, but
about much that the war is bringing, trouble, sorrow, suffering,
anxiety—great tribulation indeed.

I am not going to make any attempt to give you his sermon: merely to
take isolated sentences from a man’s address, and set them down in cold
print, deprived of the added strength and meaning that voice and tone
and emphasis and context convey, is usually most unsatisfactory.

But I wish you could have been there and seen the tense eager look on
every face, as he took us quickly and concisely over the great crises
that have befallen humanity in bygone ages, when it has seemed again
and again as though Christianity has been dealt a staggering blow—and
yet in every case the result has been the ultimate triumph of God, and
the building up of His people.

He reminded us how the darkest day in the world’s history, when our
Lord’s death seemed to end all hope, all promise of His Kingdom, was
in reality the day of the greatest victory.

       *       *       *       *       *

But I cannot give even a summary of his address; I can only tell you of
the effect it had upon me, and I think there were many others to whom
Light came in a strangely vivid manner that evening.

It seemed as though I was suddenly taken right out of my own small
petty troubles, and shown a bigger view of the world than I had ever
seen in my widest imaginings before. Things that had been perplexing,
bewildering before, seemed to fit in quite naturally into a huge plan
that was making for the ultimate good of humanity. But more than all
this, there suddenly came that enheartening sense of being no longer a
unit, no longer one of a small company fighting against overwhelming
odds; I was now one of a huge army that had been marching on through
all time, an army that will still be adding and adding to its numbers,
so long as the world shall last.

I seemed to hear the trampling of the feet, the great surge of the
voices as they sang the old yet ever new anthem—

“Salvation unto our God which sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb.
Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and
power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever.”

Here was no room for doubt; no question as to ultimate results; no
misgivings; no apprehensions. The final victory did not rest with me;
but I was privileged to take part in it if I was willing to endure any
hardships or tribulation that might happen by the way. And even these
seemed so slight, not to be mentioned beside the joy of the great
triumph that was surely ahead.

The Vision comes to us all differently, at different times, in a
different manner; but assuredly I had a glimpse then of the things
that are outside our everyday ken. I knew for an absolute certainty
that I was one of the greatest army that can ever be mustered; I knew
for an absolute certainty that God is leading this army, and that
with Him there is no possibility of failure, and that finally He will
permit evil to be banished and Good will prevail. I realised that any
afflictions we are called upon to bear here are but for a moment.
Nothing can hinder the progress of the great multitude that no man can
number—Christ’s followers through all the ages. In spite of all the
tribulation—_because_ of the tribulation—they reach His throne at last,
and worship Him, while He wipes away the tears that may have gathered
by the way.

       *       *       *       *       *

My thoughts had journeyed far away from the little chapel and its
earnest worshippers. I was recalled by the preacher’s voice reciting
his closing sentence—

“And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round the throne ... and
the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands
of thousands; saying, with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath
been slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and
honour, and glory, and blessing.”

       *       *       *       *       *

We stood up to sing the concluding hymn—one that has for long been a
great favourite of mine—

    Coming, coming, yes, they are,
    Coming, coming, from afar;
    From the wild and scorching desert,
      Afric’s sons of colour deep;
    Jesu’s love has drawn and won them,
      At the cross they bow and weep.

    Coming, coming, yes, they are,
    Coming, coming, from afar;
    From the Indies and the Ganges
      Steady flows the living stream
    To love’s ocean, to His bosom,
      Calvary their wond’ring theme.

    Coming, coming, yes, they are,
    Coming, coming, from afar;
    From the Steppes of Russia dreary,
      From Slavonia’s scatter’d lands,
    They are yielding soul and spirit
      Into Jesu’s loving hands.

    Coming, coming, yes, they are,
    Coming, coming, from afar;
    From the frozen realms of midnight,
      Over many a weary mile,
    To exchange their soul’s long winter
      For the summer of His smile.

    Coming, coming, yes, they are,
    Coming, coming, from afar:
    All to meet in plains of glory,
      All to sing His praises sweet:
    What a chorus, what a meeting,
      With the family complete!

And how that hymn was sung! It all seemed part of the music of the
Great Army. No longer we thought primarily of the troops rallying to
the call of the Mother Country and coming from the far ends of the
world to fight in earthly warfare; our souls saw farther than this—a
multitude out of every nation of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, all
marching under the banner of the Lord Jehovah.

I had received the answer to the questions I had been asking earlier
in the day: “What had Christianity accomplished?” It had accomplished
_this_: It had enlisted this mighty stream of humanity. We in that
humble little chapel were merely a small handful, but we belonged to
that Great Army; we had only to march on, trusting and worshipping God.

Was it possible that I had been picturing myself one of a small force
struggling for Right that was in danger of being overmastered by Might!
Now, I saw ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands,
on ahead of me, and could even hear the tramp and the singing of the
tens of thousands that would follow on after me.

Oh, it was wonderful to feel oneself in such a mighty company!

       *       *       *       *       *

At the close, while I was exchanging greetings with the preacher, my
friend who had brought me to the chapel busied herself in finding
someone who would be driving home in my direction—the meeting had been
attended by people from many miles round. She discovered that a farmer
and his wife were driving within a quarter of a mile of my cottage,
and I was placed in their trap, carefully wrapped up in a warm Paisley
shawl that had been produced from somewhere, the night being described
as “a bit freshish, after all the dryth we’ve had.”

We didn’t talk much on the homeward journey. My companions were
thinking some deep thoughts, I was certain, from the few remarks they
let drop. But we English do not easily betray our hearts in public.
Hence the farthest the farmer’s wife got was the remark, “I’d dearly
like to hear he again.” To which her husband replied, “Ay! for sure.”

They told me the meetings had been much blessed, but this one was the
best of all. Oh, yes, quite different from the others. No, the usual
congregation was not as large as this, only about forty; the village
was small. But people had come from all over the hills this week;
to-day twenty had walked in from Brownbrook—that was seven miles each
way.

They went on without any connecting link to say they felt sure the
English would win. There was no doubt in their minds about this, one
could see; and then the reason was clear. “Our Tom’s there,” the woman
explained to me, as though I of course knew “Our Tom,” and his presence
at the front settled the matter.

And I thought of the many fathers and mothers who were looking away
across the Straits, with just that pride and faith because “Our Tom” is
helping his country.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last we came to the little lane that turned off from the
turnpike-road, and led to my cottage, and I said good-bye to my
companions. The small white dog with the brown ears had heard my
footsteps and had run out joyfully to meet me; he had begun to be
seriously concerned as to whether he would ever get a proper meal
again! The night was certainly a bit freshish, but a glorious moon was
out, and the hills were all high lights and deep shadows. I stopped a
moment at my own gate, to look down at the old grey Abbey lying in the
valley seven hundred feet below. Everything was still and peaceful.
Only an owl called to another one in the steep woods across the river,
and a couple of baby owls answered. An apple fell with a dull thud
whenever the wind drifted across the orchard. It was so quiet, so
restful; it was difficult to think there was lurid war-fog away beyond
those hills.

Then suddenly, as I watched, I saw in the distance a procession of
swinging, twinkling lights moving along a footpath that cut through a
wood and crossed a low spur of the hills.

For the moment I wondered what it was, but in an instant I knew; it was
the party from Brownbrook on their homeward tramp, and their lanterns
were lighting them down the rugged precipitous footpath that was lying
in deep shadow.

When they reached the level road they started singing, their voices in
beautiful harmony, rising up and echoing again and again against the
steep hillsides.

Was I thinking of battlefields with a saddened heart again? No, the
cloud had lifted from my soul; I could look for something better,
something more world-wide in its effects than even this terrible war.
And as I stood thinking all this, the words came up to me that they
were singing, as they tramped along the silent moonlit road, at the
foot of the forest-clad hills:

    “Coming, coming, yes, they are,
     Coming, coming, from afar;
     All to meet in plains of glory,
       All to sing His praises sweet:
     What a chorus, what a meeting,
       With the family complete!”




X

The Little People of the Streams


HAVE you ever heard the Little People of the Streams singing in the
night? I wonder!

Once you have heard their music you will never forget it!

The first time I heard it was one February—shortly after I had taken
the cottage—the season above all others when the brooks and falls
and mountain springs are over-full of water, that hurries along at a
great pace, tumbling over rocks, dropping down into green wells and
grottos below, always galloping down hill till finally it reaches the
ever-rushing river in the valley.

By day, each brook seems merely to be chatting sociably to the banks
and the long harts-tongue ferns as it passes down, and you only hear
one at a time. But after dark, when most other sounds have ceased, the
voices of the streams seem to grow marvellously in volume.

I was lying awake one night with the windows open, listening literally
to the sound of many waters, and trying to disentangle them.

First I heard the spring outside my garden gate as it scrambled down
from the hillside above, splashing the overhanging greenery with light
spray, and finally pouring out of a little trough—dark brown wood,
closely enamelled with green mosses—into a rocky pool, where it ceases
its swirl for half a minute, just while it gets its breath, before
rushing on down the hill, finding its own way around, or over, all
sorts of obstacles, and resenting any interference of man.

Soon I could distinguish a second brook, that serves a cottage a
quarter of a mile further along the lane, before it winds about and
enters my lower orchard. This had overflowed in the orchard, and was
having quite a gay time, running skittishly out of the orchard gate and
into another lane, instead of pursuing its proper course.

Next I was able to detach the conversation of the small waterfall that
drops about a hundred feet from an overhanging ledge of rock into a
green cave under the hill, where mosses of wonderful size abound, and
yellow flags stand guard at the entrance, with creeping jenny and
forget-me-nots just outside.

The sound always seems to increase as you listen, and soon I detected
the noise of the river as it tears over successive weirs. If the tide
is low it is often a roar when you stand on the river bank beside a
weir; but up here on the heights the noise is softened to a purling
sound, that runs like a never-ceasing ground-bass or pedal note amid
the fluctuating tones of the nearer streams.

Other and more distant murmurings floated in at the window; but one
could never allocate them all, for, excepting in the hottest weather,
this is in truth “a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains
and depths that spring out of valleys and hills.”

I was thinking of this, when suddenly the babbling of the water was
drowned in the sound of wonderful bells that rose upon the night air.
It was not from our village church; that possesses only one bell, whose
sound, unfortunately, resembles nothing so much as a cracked iron
shovel struck with a pair of tongs: and there is no other bell for
miles around.

And yet there was no mistaking it. I could distinctly hear the joyous
clashing and clanging of bells in a tall steeple.

It was no brazen banging; rather, some fairy music, like the carillon
at Malines (which I am proud to remember I once played, though, alas! I
shall never play it again).

I listened in amazement; soon was added the sound of voices, like
subdued distant singing in some vast cathedral, while the bells still
clashed outside. Yet it was never close at hand; it always seemed to
float to me from a distance.

I was sure I was not asleep, for I knew where I was, and decided to
get up and go to the window, when—the dog barked—(probably he could
hear a fox prowling around outside). Instantly the spell was broken. I
opened my eyes; there was no sound but the murmuring and burbling of
the brooks.

Like a sensible person, I of course decided that I had been dreaming.

Yet again and again have I heard the clanging bells, with often the
sound of an organ and singing wafted through the open window. It
always comes when the streams are most impetuous and when I am in that
lotus-flowering land that lies between awakeness and sleep.

The music is always enthrallingly happy, and my only regret is that
the bells and the singers do not come a trifle nearer, so that I could
catch every note and jot it all down for future reference.

I related my experiences to one or two people; but this was all the
information they seemed able to give me:

“If I were you, I should run down to Margate for a week or so, and
leave all work behind. Go to a nice bright boarding-house, where
there are lots of people, and enjoy yourself; and forget about that
wretched cottage. You’ve been overdoing it lately. I had another
friend just like you—got a little peculiar, you know, and then—well,
I won’t tell you any more; don’t want to make you nervous, of course,
but—her mother never got over it, and _so_ well-connected, too—kept
three motors. You take my advice. I’ll send you the name of a charming
boarding-house I know,” etc.

Then I kept my own counsel, and decided that there were Little People
living in the streams, just as I had always liked to picture them
living in the flowers and under the mushrooms. And the music I heard
was the Little People singing, and ringing all the harebells and
foxglove bells that grow along the banks of the brooks.

I concluded that no one had ever heard them but myself. But, to my
surprise, one day I found that others did know about these Little
People!

I was reading “The Forest,” by Stewart E. White, where he describes his
impressions and experiences as he lay awake at night in a tent on the
banks of a Canadian river, when I came upon the following, that in many
points coincides with my own sensations:—

    “In such circumstances you will hear what the boatmen
    call the voices of the rapids. Many people never
    hear them at all. They speak very soft and low, and
    distinct, beneath the steady roar and dashing, beneath
    even the lesser tinklings and gurglings whose quality
    superimposes them over the louder sounds. In the
    stillness of your hazy half-consciousness they speak;
    when you bend your attention to listen, they are gone,
    and only the tumults and the tinklings remain.

    “But in the moments of their audibility they are very
    distinct. Just as often an odour will awake all a
    vanished memory, so these voices, by the force of a
    large impressionism, suggest whole scenes. Far off are
    the cling-clang-cling of chimes and the swell-and-fall
    murmur of a multitude _en fête_, so that subtly you
    feel the gray old town, with its walls, the crowded
    market-place, the decent peasant crowd, the booths,
    the mellow church building with its bells, the
    warm, dust-moted sun. Or, in the pauses between the
    swish-dash-dashings of the waters, sound faint and
    clear voices singing intermittently, calls, distant
    notes of laughter, as though many canoes were working
    against the current; only the flotilla never gets any
    nearer, nor the voices louder. The boatmen call these
    mist people the Huntsmen, and look frightened....
    Curiously enough, by all reports, they suggest always
    peacefulness—a harvest field, a street fair, a Sunday
    morning in a cathedral town, careless travellers—never
    the turmoils and struggles. Perhaps this is the great
    Mother’s compensation in a harsh mode of life.

    “Nothing is more fantastically unreal to tell about,
    nothing more concretely real to experience, than this
    undernote of the quick water. And when you do lie awake
    at night, it is always making its unobtrusive appeal.
    Gradually its hypnotic spell works. The distant chimes
    ring louder and nearer as you cross the borderland of
    sleep. And then outside the tent some little woods
    noise snaps the thread. An owl hoots, a whippoorwill
    cries, a twig cracks beneath the cautious prowl of some
    night creature—at once the yellow sunlit French windows
    puff away—you are staring at the blurred image of the
    moon spraying through the texture of your tent.”

Since reading this, I have spoken of the matter to others with more
courage; and although the majority do not seem to have come across
them, I have discovered several people who have heard the Little People
singing.

Some, indeed, have been kind enough to attempt to give me a lucid
explanation of what they are pleased to call a very simple natural
phenomenon, and they prattle of enharmonics and sound vibrations, of
nodes and super-tones, in a very impressive manner. One tells me the
whole thing is merely a psychological emotion vibrating in sympathy
with the acoustical environment.

I dare say.

       *       *       *       *       *

Personally, I would just as soon leave it unelucidated. There are
certain moods in which I do not want such things as nature, and love,
and beauty, and self-sacrifice explained. It is enough for me that they
are, and that I have been permitted to enjoy them.

       *       *       *       *       *

And although I know that the Little People are not necessarily wearing
gauze wings and white frocks and stars in their hair, as I pictured
them in my first childhood, I still like to think that even in the
brooks something is singing, something rejoicing, something giving
thanks for the gift of life.




XI

The Funeral of the Hero


IT was three months after the funeral of the Village Hero. Now I come
to think of it, I haven’t mentioned the funeral before.

The hero, a porter at the little railway station, enlisted very early
in the campaign. Our village—in the main—did nobly in the way of early
enlistment.

A quiet, retiring young fellow, he had never singled himself out for
any sort of notoriety, though I, personally, had always remarked on his
unvarying courtesy and his willingness to do everything he could to
assist passengers.

The news of his death was the first thing to bring the War actually
home to our isolated corner of the world.

People had known he was ill, because his wife had been summoned to a
military hospital some weeks before, when his condition was pronounced
critical. But no one had really anticipated the worst—till it came. And
then the word passed quickly from cottage to cottage: “Poor Aleck’s
gone!”

“Ay! You don’t say so! Ain’t it just like they Huns to go and kill off
the best of the bunch,” said one woman who never had a good word for
the lad during his lifetime.

One and all agreed forthwith that proper respect must be shown to “the
remains”; and those who didn’t intend to inconvenience themselves by
fighting, felt they were serving their country nobly by seeing that
poor Aleck had a handsome funeral.

The news of his death reached the village on Friday. On Saturday the
older members of the family selected the spot for his grave in the
little churchyard, as, of course, he must be buried near his home.

By Sunday all the relatives to the remotest generation wore deep
mourning to church—thanks to the superhuman efforts of the village
dressmaker, and numerous ready-mades purchased in the nearest town.

The Rector was in a nursing-home in London at the time, but the curate,
though only newly arrived, preached a moving sermon, extolling the
courage of the young man who had died “with his face to the foe,
braving the falling shells and raining bullets in order to defend his
country.”

The sentiment was right—Aleck was willing to do all that; but in
reality he never got beyond a training camp on the east coast, where,
the air proving too bleak for him after the mildness of the west,
he had gone down with pneumonia. The new curate didn’t know that,
however, and everybody said it was a beautiful sermon, and went and
told the poor mother about it, as she had been too grief-stricken to go
to church.

So far the widow had not written herself; but that wasn’t surprising;
she would be too broken down with trouble. Willing heads and hands did
all they could, however, to anticipate her wishes.

They telegraphed to the former curate (now the vicar of a crowded
Lancashire parish) and asked if he would conduct the funeral; he had
known the deceased from boyhood. He wired back: “Yes; send day and
hour.”

They sent to uncles and aunts and cousins throughout Great Britain: all
who could arrived post haste on Monday. And what a gathering it was
of outstanding members of the clan! Those who hadn’t recognised each
other’s existence for years now forgot their ancient feuds, while one
and all discovered such good qualities in the poor lad, and were so
anxious to insist on the nearness of their relationship, that his death
did not seem altogether in vain.

I myself wrote a note to the widow, only waiting to post it till I
could get her address.

Miss Bretherton, the Rector’s niece, hurried home from London to do
what she could to comfort the parents, who were aloof from the general
excitement and knew only the sorrow of the occasion.

While waiting for further details to arrive, people made wreaths, and
discussed how best the engine could be draped in black.

As there was no letter by Tuesday morning, and the vicar in Lancashire
had again asked for particulars, the self-constituted committee of
management decided to send a wire to the widow. After composing—and
then discarding—twenty-six different messages, till the post-office was
threatened with a famine in telegram forms, the post-mistress came to
their assistance, and suggested that the wording should be as brief and
as straightforward as possible, to save misunderstanding—and expense.
Eventually they were all persuaded to agree to the following:

“What train will the coffin come by? Reply paid.”

In about an hour the widow answered:

“Whose coffin? Don’t know what you mean. Aleck nearly well.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The whole village has had three points under discussion ever since.

I. Who was it said he _was_ dead?

II. Can a man be made to pay for his own grave being dug when he
refuses to occupy it?

III. And what is to become of the mourning anyhow?




XII

Just a Little Piece of Griskin


I WAS reminded of the funeral when I arrived at the valley station one
spring morning, by the fact that it was “the remains” who opened the
carriage door for me and helped us out with our things.

He was home for a few days’ leave, looking very smart and upright in
his uniform; and he saluted (even though he permitted himself to smile)
when I gave him a half-crown, telling him to buy himself a wreath.

       *       *       *       *       *

The white-painted garden gate had been placed wide open by way of
welcome. We had left behind us, in town, weather that called itself the
end of March, but in reality ought to have been January; we arrived at
the little cottage to find that the calendar had taken a leap forward,
for here it was like the end of April. On the grey stone walls beside
the gate clumps of wallflowers were in bloom—masses of pale primrose
flowers mixed with those of a rich rose-purple variety; only these two
sorts had been planted in the chinks of this particular wall. I am sure
the dear things nodded at us as we entered.

All over the garden were more wallflowers bursting by the thousand
into bloom. Some beds were a mixture of clear bright yellow flowers,
combined with the sort that are a deep mahogany, looking as though they
were made of velvet; other beds had a pretty rose-pink variety; while
on the top of more walls, and in corners and patches about the garden,
were the old-fashioned “streaky” kinds, all aglow with brown and yellow.

The long bed in front of the porch, given over to cowslips, oxlips,
polyanthus, auriculas, and suchlike homely flowers, was very gay. The
polyanthus were a delightful medley of claret colour, pink, brown,
crimson, orange, yellow, most of them looking as though the edges of
the petals had been buttonholed around with silk of a contrasting
colour. It seemed as though the flowers in this bed fairly tip-toed as
we came along the path, and stretched their necks as high as ever they
could, from out of their crinkled leaves, to show how remarkably fine
they were.

In the narrow beds under the cottage windows double daffodils made
plenty of colour, and at the edge were clumps of primroses—various
shades of pink and crimson. These had seeded over into the path, with
the result that baby primrose-plants were coming up cheerily between
the rough flagstones. The ordinary yellow primrose was starring the
grass all about the orchard, where wild daffodils were swaying by the
hundred. The white flowers of the blackthorn were like snowdrifts on
the hedges.

It was so wonderful, after the bleak, cheerless aspect of town, to come
upon this world of smiling growing things. The soft air, sweeping over
the hills, brought the scent of ploughed fields and newly-turned earth,
of bursting buds and opening blossoms, with the ozone of the sea, and
the salt of the weed that lies on the rocks around the lighthouse in
the far-away distance.

There seemed to be an all-pervading peace that laid hold of one’s very
soul; and yet you could not say it was really quiet, for birds were
giving rival concerts in every tree, and quite a number were devoting
their energies to saying insulting things to the newcomers and the
small dog who had taken the liberty of encroaching on their ancient
heritage. They are not sufficiently grateful for the fact that I leave
my woods uncut, and undisturbed, as bird sanctuaries.

Lambs were bleating in the valley meadows; the spring gurgled
cheerfully outside the gate as it tumbled out of the spout into the
pool below.

We stood in the garden for a moment to take a good breath, and drink
in as much of the beauty as we could, when Virginia just touched my
arm and looked towards a long belt of trees—mostly oak and fir—that
runs down one side of the garden and orchards, linking the larch woods
up above us with the birch and hazel coppice down below—the coppice
where the nightingales sing, and the tiny wrens and the tomtits build,
and where the little dormouse lives, who comes out from among the
undergrowth, with no apparent fear, when I stand in the wood-path and
softly whistle.

This barricade of trees was originally left standing when the rest of
the ground was cleared, to screen the house from the winter gales. But
we have named it the Squirrels’ Highway.

Sure enough, as we stood there silent and motionless, down came one
little bushy tail from the upper woods, followed by another, probably
his wife. They leapt from branch to branch, and from tree to tree,
nibbling a young oak shoot here, sniffing delicately at a few leaves
somewhere else.

Little bright eyes looked down and saw the strangers; but they had
seen them before, and no harm ever resulted—only lovely feasts of
nuts laid out on the tops of walls—so they just ran on down their own
highway, seeming as light as feathers, and leaping and springing with
indescribable grace.

At last they got to the high wall that divides the lower orchard from
the birch and hazel coppice, and they played along that wall, bright
spots of reddy-brown against the dark green of the ivy and the purple
tone of the swelling birch buds. All seemed gaiety and happiness, till
a third little bushy tail popped up over the wall from the coppice—and
then there were fireworks indeed! I expect they were relations who were
not on cordial terms! We left them having a whole-hearted hand-to-hand
fight—which, I must say, seems a much more satisfactory way of settling
a difference than either Zepp or submarine methods.

       *       *       *       *       *

Indoors the table had been laid for tea, preparatory to our arrival, by
Mrs. Widow, who, as already mentioned, is the custodian of the house
in my absence. She gives an old-world curtsy that is very disarming,
and says, “I’m main glad to see you back again, miss, and I hope you’ll
find everything to your liking.”

That, however, is as it may be.

Nevertheless, there is something about the way that table is always
laid that rejoices my heart, even though I might not wish to have
my meals set in that pattern every day. The large white cloth may
not present the glass-like surface of the town-laundered tablecloth,
but at least it is white, and—like the cottage sheets and towels
and pillow-cases—it holds the scents of the hillside garden where
it was hung out to dry; and though the creases are somewhat ridgy
and insistent, and the cloth has been ironed a trifle askew, I know
several people who would rather have tea off this tablecloth than the
most elaborate dinner and the finest napery that London hotels can
produce.

Knives and forks are placed with great precision around the table at
intervals, a cup and saucer and plate beside each, the crockery never
by any chance matching! In the mathematical centre a loaf of farmhouse
bread stands on a kitchen plate, flanked on one side—to the East, as
it were—by a large white jug holding a quart of milk, and to the West,
by the sugar basin. The big brown teapot stands at the South Pole;
and a pudding-basin of new-laid eggs, laid by the widow’s own fowls,
are waiting, at the North Pole, to be cooked. A small plate bearing a
dinner knife and half a pound of butter (which is never put into the
proper butter dish) is placed at the South-West; this is balanced at
the South-East by a pot of home-made jam and a tablespoon. Watercress
and lettuce may grace the table, though this will be according to the
season; but summer or winter, one feature is never omitted, and that is
a large kitchen jug full of flowers, gathered by Mrs. Widow from her
own garden.

On the day I am writing about, the jug had a brave handful of
daffodils, a few sprays of red ribis, dark-brown wallflowers, some
small ivy, with some short-stemmed polyanthus suffocating in the
centre of the big bunch. And it is wonderful how much you can get
crammed into one jug when you try!

       *       *       *       *       *

Abigail, having none of my weak-minded leanings towards “the
primitive,” scornfully whisked the whole lot off the table, as soon as
Mrs. Widow had gone back to her own cottage, and re-laid it on modern
lines.

We did not hurry over the meal. Virginia got on a lengthy dissertation
as to the crying need for fish forks with magnetised prongs that would
just draw the bones out of the fish, without any preliminary search
and scrutiny. I suggested a radium tip to the prongs—I could think of
nothing that seemed more suitable—but she said _that_ might demolish
fish and all, in which case one would get no more personal satisfaction
out of the creature than one does when having to eat it with its full
complement of bones intact.

I then ventured a suggestion that forks made like an ordinary magnet
would do, if the fish were given steel drops in regular doses for a
few weeks before being caught, so as to get its bones susceptible to
the magnet. But Virginia was very lofty, as she always is, about my
scientific explanations. I never heard her solution of the problem,
because the telegram boy arrived at the moment, with a wire for
Abigail, saying that her mother had broken her arm (a genuine case
this time!).

So she left by the next train, bewailing the fact that her mother
could not get compensation from anyone, as she had given up a post
of housekeeper but three months before; if she had only been in the
situation still she could have claimed £300 a year for life, Abigail
thought—provided the arm could only be induced to remain broken.

Some people, especially her relatives, were always unfortunate, she
said, while others were just the reverse. There was a cousin of a
friend of hers; he had been out of work for a year or so before he got
a job, and then the very first day he met with an accident at the works
and had to have his leg amputated; and there he is now, a gentleman for
life, comfortably settled on his compensation. Her people never had
luck like that. It did seem hard!

       *       *       *       *       *

“Are you awake?” Virginia’s voice lilted up the stairs next morning.

Awake! why, sleep had been impossible in that cottage for hours past!

For sheer undiluted racket, commend me to two earnest-souled girls,
who get up early, and go about with a stealthy tread that creaks every
old board in the place, and commune with each other in stage whispers
that penetrate through every crack in the floor, all on the pretext of
making the fire!

We had decided that we could manage very well ourselves, without
sending for anyone to take Abigail’s place; and in order to forestall
me, the others had got up about cockcrow, and then began such a
whirligig below, that I just lay still and endeavoured to allocate
every fresh noise.

They raked and shovelled at the grate, and appeared to be scattering
cinders all over the place. They broke up applewood twigs with
resounding snaps, and argued as to the amount required to set the fire
going. Ursula said you ought to put in handfuls till you got a good
crackling blaze; Virginia said that was a childish, brainless way of
doing it, to say nothing of the chance of waste; by rights the quantity
of twigs employed ought to be strictly in inverse ratio to the quantity
of inflammable gas contained in the coal. I dare say I should have
heard a good deal more as to the way to assess the ignitable quality of
coal, but fortunately the fire burnt up quickly, and they gave their
attention to other domestic details.

They dashed about the brass fender; they whacked the blacklead brush
against the oven-door at every turn; they set down the zinc pail with a
ringing thud, and then scoured the hearth with zeal enough to take off
half an inch of stone surface; they polished the brass fire-irons with
some concoction of bath-brick and salt which they invented on the spot,
as they couldn’t find any metal polish; they banged the hearthrug out
of doors till the surrounding hills reverberated with the echoes; they
rinked the carpet-sweeper up and down till it made me dizzy to listen;
and as this was not thorough enough for Ursula, she also got a short
stiff brush and apparently pommelled out any dust that might be under
the settle and in other obscure corners; they dusted with equal energy,
and then went off into the kitchen to consult about the breakfast menu,
while the kettle chose the opportunity to boil all over the fire,
thereby raising clouds of white ash that settled on everything, and
they said, “Oh, dear! Just _look_ at it.”

Finally, I heard the white cloth being flapped over the table; cups and
saucers and plates were chinked and rattled off the dresser; knives and
forks and spoons jingled on to the table, and I knew that breakfast was
well under way. It was just then that Virginia put her head through the
staircase-door to ask—in moderated tones calculated not to disturb me
should I still be slumbering!—was I awake?

Hastily hopping out on to the rug, I replied that I was “nearly
dressed, and would be down in a minute.”

“No hurry,” she replied artlessly, “we’ve only just come down
ourselves, and are going to see to breakfast. But what I want to know
is: Where do you keep your frying-pan?”

“Hanging on its proper nail in the kitchen,” I replied.

“Well, it isn’t there.... No, it isn’t on the saucepan shelf,
either—we’ve hunted _everywhere_.... But Abigail didn’t use it
yesterday—don’t you remember? We had boiled eggs, and some of that cold
ham we brought with us.... All right, we can just as well have eggs
again.... That’s true, we shan’t want bacon, with that pork coming for
dinner; but be quick, as the kettle’s boiling now.... Oh, it’s not a
bit of trouble.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Whether it was due to the sunshine, or to the tonic of the air, or to
the virtuous feeling that always overtakes those who get up early in
the morning and disturb everyone else, I cannot say; but at any rate
Ursula announced that she intended to start right in, immediately after
breakfast, and give the whole cottage a thorough spring cleaning.

The domesticities of the morning seemed to have whetted her appetite
for such matters, and she said she felt she must give the place a
“Dutch” turn-out, and have every shelf and stool and all the pots and
pans scrubbed and scoured and tilted out of doors to dry, as they do
in Holland.

Virginia said that she, too, felt a strong force—it might be her
sub-conscious self, or she might have a dual personality, she couldn’t
say which—within her, impelling her to turn the house inside out.

So I told them to go ahead; I’m the last one to discourage anyone from
doing my work for me. I suggested, however, that for the first day they
should confine their attentions to the living-rooms downstairs.

Of course, the reader of average intellect will wonder what necessity
there could be for any such upheaval, seeing that the place would
obviously have been overhauled before we arrived; but this brings me
back to Mrs. Widow. “A worthy body and an honest soul,” the Rector
said, when he originally recommended her to me, all of which was quite
true; but, alas, thoroughness in regard to house-cleaning is not her
strong point.

When I first sought her out and broached the subject of the caretaker
I was requiring, she listened in a non-committal way. I stated how
much a year I was willing to pay—naming an exceptionally good sum—and
explained that for this money the house must be looked after in my
absence, and be got quite ready for me whenever I should come down,
while anything she might do while I was “in residence” would be paid
for as an extra.

She showed no indecorous haste to secure the appointment. She merely
said she would talk it over with her married daughter, and if she
thought any more of it she would let me know. A few hours later she
came to me, and said casually that on second thoughts she didn’t mind
obliging me. (No one ever “works” for you in our village, they merely
“oblige.”) In the interval, however, the whole village had gone into
committee on the subject, and everyone’s advice had been sought, and
very freely given.

Once more I went through the terms of the agreement, and she said she
quite understood. Nevertheless, subsequent events led me to believe
that she regarded the annual wage in the light of a retaining fee only,
since most of the work is always left to be done after I arrive, when
it will have to be paid for as a separate transaction if it is more
than Abigail can wrestle with.

At the same time I can truly endorse the Rector’s tribute to her
honesty. If I were to strew the floor with sovereigns or diamond rings,
I know I should find them on the mantelpiece when next I returned, and
she never annexes anything permanently.

But the fact that one has a village-wide reputation for honesty need
not detract from one’s worldly prosperity—so long as one can borrow
with light-hearted frequency, and borrow for indefinite periods, too!
Mrs. Widow has reduced borrowing to a fine art, but her honesty is
demonstrated by the fact that I have never known her decline to return
any of my possessions; indeed, so scrupulous is she that she will bring
back the tin of metal polish, when it is empty, explaining that she was
quite sure I wanted it to be used rather than wasted!

Abigail invariably spends the first couple of days at the cottage in
skirmishing and reclaiming missing articles. Knowing all this, I was
not surprised when I heard the frying-pan was minus; I also knew that
time would reveal other vacancies.

Had it been July or August, the preserving-pan—a family treasure—would
have been gone, too. Mrs. Widow is always very solicitous for its
welfare about fruit-gathering time; she says damp would easily hurt a
really good preserving-pan, so she takes it home with her to keep it
dry. Yet the poor thing will be left to face the winter in my kitchen
with never a thought bestowed on its delicate constitution.

And it is just at jam-making time, too, that my kitchen scales and
weights require the ameliorated atmosphere of Mrs. Widow’s cottage; my
own kitchen, with the midsummer sun upon it all day, being obviously
far too cold and damp for such highly-strung _bric-à-brac_ as one
pound and half-pound weights.

A town acquaintance once said to Virginia: “I suppose Miss Klickmann
goes down to her cottage for poetic and literary inspiration?”

“Oh, dear, no!” was the reply. “She simply goes down, as a mere matter
of feminine curiosity, to see what is left.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“Where do you keep your tea-towels?” Ursula began, as she prepared to
wash up the breakfast things.

“There ought to be a pile in one of the drawers of the kitchen table,”
I said. “They are not there? Oh, well, they’ll come back presently!”

While we were speaking, a small girl appeared at the side door, holding
in one hand a basket containing a nice chunk of pork (wrapped in one of
my tea-towels), and in the other hand my mincing-machine. This was Mrs.
Widow’s grandchild.

“If you please, ma’am, father’s killed the pig, and mother thought you
might like just a little piece of griskin, and mother’s been taking
care of the mincer so’s it shan’t get rusty.”

An exchange of courtesies having been effected by means of a bottle of
pear-drops, the small maid departed with her empty basket; the mincer
was restored to its proper niche in the pantry, and we were at least
one tea-towel to the good.

I might mention that Mrs. Widow’s married daughter had recently
acquired considerable local fame by making “faggots,” which were in
great demand. You know the dish?—a combination of liver, pork, sage
and onions, etc., baked in squares. Other people in the district made
faggots, too, but none could rival hers, and orders came to her from
many of the big houses.

“No one ever manages to get them chopped so beautifully fine as she
does,” said Miss Bretherton when recommending them to my notice. “I
advise you to try them.”

Still, whatever obligation there may have been was offset, surely, by
the piece of pork. The griskin is the lean portion of some part of the
quadruped’s anatomy after the fat has been cut off for curing. This
joint—which we never see in London—is always popular with us in the
country; so popular, that I had ordered a piece only the day before
from the butcher. It was just the season when people were killing their
pigs, and the butcher had suggested griskin. Still, it was easy to
put the extra piece in salt, and the flavour would only be improved
thereby; my one regret was that the butcher had sent a very large
joint, when I had particularly mentioned that I only wanted a little
piece.

I had originally intended to devote the day to gardening, not to
house-cleaning.

“Of course you keep a permanent gardener?” people inquire of me. “I
see; a general handy man; it comes to the same thing; he will save you
all trouble.”

Those of my acquaintances who have never had a place out of town to
look after, always conclude that country districts fairly bristle with
capable, willing men, and poor-but-honest, hard-working women, all of
them anxious to do my work—and at a merely nominal wage too; whereas
one has the utmost trouble to get either man or woman to do a day’s
work at any price. I pay the handy man the same wage per day as I pay
my thoroughly experienced London gardener; and he can only manage to
spare me a small amount of his time at that price.

He knows very little about flowers, but he weeds in an enlightened
manner, and he understands the elementary principles underlying
vegetable growing on a small scale. For the most part the villagers
bother very little about their gardens, only cultivating just
sufficient ground for their immediate needs.

The unenlightened local method of dealing with weeds is
this. He-who-is-paid-to-garden leaves them to grow to a fair
height—especially if no one is likely to be there for some weeks to see
them. Then, when they have absorbed a generous amount of nourishment
from the ground, and generally suffocated everything small within their
reach, he merely turns the soil over, with the weeds on the underneath
side, draws a rake over the surface, and presto! you have a nice tidy
bed.

This method is known as “digging in.”

Of course, in twenty-four hours the good-natured things start to poke
cheerful noses through the soil again. But that doesn’t matter. Life is
long, and the gardener is paid to clear them away again.

There is an optional method, referred to as “cleaning up the beds.” In
that case, he leaves the weeds to grow higher, more especially in beds
that are full of promising seedlings; in fact, he doesn’t worry about
them at all until there is sudden and urgent reason why the garden
should present a kempt, well-cared-for appearance.

Then, the weeds being so healthy and luxuriant that they would raise
the face of creation a couple of inches if he attempted to dig them in,
he simplifies matters by removing the surface of the earth, weeds and
seedlings and all; this he wheels away in a barrow, perchance to lay it
down on some rough and rubbly bit of lane that the road-menders have
ignored.

When she-who-pays arrives, all expectation, and inquires for the
missing seedlings, the tiller of the soil shakes his head lugubriously,
and refers to the recent plague of slugs (or thunderstorms, or
frost, or east winds, or whatever other natural phenomena seem most
convincing), and says he had a hard job to save what is left in the
garden—this last in a martyr-like tone of voice, indicating that though
all his self-sacrificing labour is passed over unrecognised, he himself
has the virtuous consciousness of having at least done his simple duty,
and what man can do more!

Now I come to think of it, there are many different ways of gardening;
that must be why it is always interesting to go round the garden with
the gardener. When I say different ways, I don’t mean such trifling
divergencies of method as landscape gardens versus intensive culture,
or tomatoes under glass versus gloxinias. These primarily concern the
pocket; the differences that interest me are temperamental.

There is Miss Bretherton, for instance, a most diligent and vigilant
gardener. And yet she never seems to me to get much genuine, unalloyed
pleasure out of her garden; she never basks in its beauty—though for
the matter of that Miss Bretherton never basks anywhere! A middle-aged
woman who does her duty by a scattered parish, conscientiously
and thoroughly and unremittingly, never has time for that sort of
dissipation! Miss Bretherton deals with her garden much as she deals
with the parish. At best it is a case of striving to lead reluctant
feet in the paths of virtue, while by far the greater part of her
efforts is an unflagging wrestle with original sin.

A walk round the rectory garden is usually like this. Miss Bretherton
always picks up a pair of gardening scissors and a basket mechanically
as she steps out.

“What a wonderful glow of colour!” I exclaim, as I bury my nose in a
magnificent Gloire de Dijon.

“But it is such a wretched thing for sending up suckers,” Miss
Bretherton replies. “I’m always digging them up. Why, I declare there
is one a foot high,” giving it a drastic prod with the scissors. “I
thought I’d cut them all away yesterday”; more prods till the sucker is
finally unearthed.

“And aren’t those hollyhocks tall!”

“Not nearly so fine as they would have been if that red-spotty blight
hadn’t attacked them. Just look at these leaves!”

Snip, snip, snip! Off came a dozen or so.

I stop to admire the fairy flowers in the Virginia stock, rosy carmine,
lemon and mauve, just opening in the sun.

“I don’t think there is anything sweeter for a border,” I remark.

“The trouble with Virginia stock is that it so soon looks untidy,” Miss
Bretherton says dispiritedly. “Do what I will, I can’t keep the edges
tidy once that goes off bloom. I pull it all out at last, and then that
leaves a bare rough-dried looking space with nothing in it.”

I praise the white lilies—such a stately row of spotless beauty.

“I wish I could do something to hide that raggedness at the bottom of
the stems. They do look so shabby. Excuse me, I see that Canterbury
bell has withered off—that’s the worst of them. They all go at once
so suddenly, and look such a withered mass. I must cut off those dead
blooms, it may send up a second crop. But there, if it does, they will
only be small bells!”

       *       *       *       *       *

I’m not sure whether the handy man’s method is temperamental, but I
know it is very conversational, if you can call it a conversation when
he insists on doing the whole of it himself. He is an elderly bachelor;
and Mrs. Widow once explained the situation to me:

“You see, he ain’t never had no wife to talk his head off for him, so
he talks it off for hisself.”

I give him copious instructions whenever I leave, which he promises to
carry out; but no matter what I may have asked him to do—whether it was
to nail up the yellow roses over the front door, or to set lavender
cuttings—it all works out to the same thing in the end: it is only the
vegetables that are deemed worthy of mention. The flowers are just
tolerated because—well, because I keep on putting them in the ground,
and you can’t expect practical common-sense from a woman anyhow! But
after all, it isn’t reasonable to expect an untrained cottager to make
a garden different from those he sees around.

You can understand, however, that we are usually kept pretty busy from
the moment we arrive till the hour we go away.

But this particular morning gardening was out of the question. The
two girls started with the spring-cleaning on most vigorous lines.
Virginia said the hygienic way was to place everything that was movable
out-of-doors, so that, scientifically speaking, the sun’s rays could
penetrate every fibre and tissue, and neutralise the harmful germs that
would assuredly be lurking by the million in every stick and shred in a
house as neglected as that one had been.

I objected to my cherished possessions being referred to as sticks and
shreds, and I said so, with emphasis.

Ursula said if we were going to argue at that length it would be the
August Bank Holiday before we got things back in their place again. For
her part, she regarded all that germ-business as a harmless fairy-tale
that was very suitable and safe reading for a mild intellect like
Virginia’s. All the same, she quite agreed that everything ought to be
put outside, so as to give more elbow-room indoors; moreover, things
that were washed and scrubbed would, of course, dry quicker in the sun.

So out they all came!

Then we saw how badly the boards around the carpet needed re-staining,
and we dispatched Virginia to the village to see what she could get in
the way of oak or walnut floor-stain.

She returned with a large bottle of rheumatic lotion. Miss Jarvis, who
keeps the village shop, hadn’t a bottle of stain left, but Virginia
turned over everything she had and decided on the lotion, as it was
thickish and a nice rich brown. She bore it off, Miss Jarvis beseeching
her to remember it was for outward application only.

It wasn’t bad, only it flavoured the air rather strongly for days.

Ursula’s labours were bearing much fruit. To look at the scene outside
the cottage, you might have thought a distraint had been made on the
contents for rent. Chairs, tables, meat-safes, crockery, saucepans,
oak chests, pictures, books, the warming-pan, brass candlesticks,
coal-scuttles, fenders, were all basking unblushingly, and in the
direst confusion, in the sunshine.

What pained me most was to notice how the furniture that had looked
delightfully appropriate in the subdued lights of indoors, became
appallingly shabby when subjected to the glare of day. I remarked that
if I had confronted the things on a London burglar’s barrow, I should
neither have recognised them nor have desired to claim them.

Ursula tried to reassure me by reminding me that the things were mostly
very old, and antique things are invariably shabby as well as very
valuable. Virginia contributed the consoling information that she had
noticed, whenever people moved, they always left their good furniture
behind in the empty house, for they only removed shabby-looking things.

I tried to feel duly proud of my possessions once more; but all the
same I suggested that we should hurry on as fast as we could; I had
a strong conviction that if any of my county neighbours called, they
would probably be more impressed with the disreputable appearance of my
belongings than with their priceless antiquity.

Of course, people came while we were still in chaos, as I knew they
would. The first to arrive was Miss Primkins, who apologised for
calling at such an hour, but she wanted to consult me on a private
matter, she was so very worried. Was I busy? (with an inquiring glance
at the all-pervading marine-store). Naturally I said I wasn’t.

The difficulty was to find a seat indoors to accommodate us while we
talked; it wasn’t warm enough, as yet, to sit in the open. I found two
chairs in the china pantry—a fair-sized apartment with a big window,
even though it is called a pantry—and here we established ourselves,
Miss Primkins reiterating how kind she thought it of me to receive her
in this homely way, treating her just like one of the family. I tried
to make her understand, however, that, as a general rule, it was not
the family custom to foregather in the crockery cupboard!

She was a long while getting to the cause of her worry. I wonder why
it is that so many women, when they start out to say anything, wander
about and deviate into innumerable side channels and backwaters before
they get to the point?—but there, I do myself, so we won’t follow up
that line of thought.

Eventually, it transpired that when war was declared, and the attendant
moratorium, Miss Primkins had hidden away what little gold she had in
the bottom of a coffee canister, with the coffee put in again artlessly
on top. Since then she had added to her store of gold, till at last she
had £12 in all.

On hearing this I scented the trouble, and began to commiserate: “You
don’t mean to say someone has stolen it! Who could it have been?”

“Oh, no; it hasn’t been stolen—though sometimes I almost wish—but
there, I oughtn’t to say that! No, the difficulty is that now I don’t
know how to get rid of it! I never thought there was any harm in
putting a little by, in case anything happened, till I saw in the
papers that someone said” (lowering her voice) “that those who hoard
gold are traitors to their country, and” (in a still more shocked tone)
“actually helping Germany! I’d never had any such idea! Why, it’s the
very last thing I should wish to do!

“So I started unhoarding at once and took a sovereign when next I went
out to pay my little grocery bill. Miss Jarvis wasn’t in the shop
herself—she wouldn’t have been so rude!—but her assistant said, ‘Well,
I never! Doesn’t it seem odd to see a sovereign again! I can’t tell you
when I saw one last. I didn’t know there was a solitary one left in the
village! Wherever did you get it from, Miss Primkins?’

“Do you know, I went hot and cold all over; didn’t know what to do
with myself, for fear she should guess I’d been hoarding and helping
the country to be a traitor—no, I mean helping Germany to be—well—you
understand. I just said quietly, with all the composure I could muster,
‘I chanced to have it in my purse,’ because, after all, it wasn’t her
business, was it?”

I agreed that it wasn’t.

“Then I thought I would change half a sovereign—that would be smaller
and look less hoardingish—at the station, as I was going into Chepstow
to get some more wool for those socks for Queen Mary. Would you
believe it?—the station-master said—you know his jocular way—‘Why,
Miss Primkins, what bank have you been robbing? I haven’t had my hand
crossed with gold, I don’t know when! I’d like to keep it myself, for
luck, only the Prime Minister would be down on me for hoarding, I
suppose.’

“My knees shook so I could hardly get into the train. I decided I
wouldn’t let anyone see another bit of it; yet actually, when I was in
Mrs. Davis’s shop and getting out the money to pay for the wool, if I
didn’t take out another half-sovereign in mistake for a sixpence!—I
was so unnerved, I suppose—and she said, ‘Just fancy seeing a
half-sovereign again! I thought they were all called in. Wherever did
you light on that, Miss Primkins?’

“Now you can understand I’m at my wits’ end to know what to do with
that money. I can’t spend it without everyone knowing. If I put it in
my savings bank book, and so get it back to the Government that way, I
have to hand it over the counter at the post office. You know so much
about business, can you suggest anything?”

I immediately offered to give the nervous, worried lady Treasury notes
in exchange.

“Oh, but I couldn’t let you incriminate yourself like that,” she
protested, “kind as it is of you. There’s your reputation as well as
mine to be thought of.”

I explained, however, that it was easier to dispose of an accusing
golden sovereign in London without arousing the suspicions of the
populace than it was in the country, and I said I was sure my bank
manager would oblige me by receiving the gold for the good of the
country, knowing me to be an honest and respectable Englishwoman.

“I never thought to be so thankful to see the last of a sovereign,” she
said, as she tucked the paper notes into her handbag. “I’ve scarcely
slept all this week. Why, Germany is the very last thing I would help!”

Mrs. Widow came in at the gate as Miss Primkins went out; and, seeing
the house all turned out of windows, looked her surprise at such
goings on! She carried a frying-pan, a long-handled broom, a double
milk-boiler, an egg-beater, and a lemon-squeezer, and explained that
they had kept beautifully dry in her kitchen, whereas they would have
been ruined if left to get damp in an empty house. Parenthetically, she
hoped I would excuse her having used half a dozen lemons I had left in
the pantry last time; she was afraid they would not keep; also some
sugar in a tin, that she dare say might have melted away—and it seemed
cruel to waste it considering the price of sugar.

Of course I said she was quite welcome.

And, by the way, was I wanting a jar of lemon curd? Her daughter had
made some that was really lovely, and she would not mind obliging me by
selling me a jar.

While she was describing the distinctive merits of the lemon curd, and
relating what the lady of the manor had said in praise of the jar she
had purchased, a man-servant arrived from the Manor House with a note
and a basket, which he handed to me (with a very superior air that gave
me to understand he was not in the habit of carrying baskets, and was
only doing so now as a patriotic act in war time) across the kitchen
table that stood in the path and blocked his further progress. While
I read the note, he fixed his eyes upon his boots, and apparently
looked neither to the right hand nor to the left; yet I know that he
catalogued every item of those wretched domestic oddments that were
decorating the lawn and garden path.

Mrs. Widow, possessed of a natural curiosity that it is hard to
circumvent, was loath to leave without a glimpse of the contents of the
basket. But Virginia got her off by escorting her to the gate, and
telling her that I had not been very well in town.

“Ah! anybody could see that, miss,” said Mrs. Widow feelingly, glancing
in my direction. “Don’t she just look ’aggard!” And then, seeing a look
of surprise on the face of Virginia—who distinctly resented my being
described as haggard—she added hurriedly, “Leastways, I mean ’andsome
’aggard, of course, miss.”

The lady of the manor had written to say that a cold was keeping her
indoors for a day or two; but in the meanwhile, as they were busy
curing bacon at the home farm, she had had them cut just a little piece
of griskin, which she was sure I should like, and was having it sent up
at once, etc.

The superior person left, carrying in one hand an envelope addressed to
his mistress, which contained all the thanks I could muster, and in the
other a note to be left at the village shop, asking Miss Jarvis to send
me up a large block of salt.

       *       *       *       *       *

“What shall you do with all the pork?” Ursula inquired.

“I haven’t the faintest idea!” I said. “I can’t bestow any of it on the
poor because, no matter which piece I gave away, Mrs. Widow’s married
daughter would be sure it was _her_ gift I had spurned, and would feel
duly slighted.”

Virginia broke in upon us breathlessly, her arms full of pasteboard,
soup tureen, hearthrug, hassock, and fire-irons, which she had hastily
gathered up from the path. “The Rector’s outside in the lane talking to
some children.”

“And has _he_ any basket in his hand?” asked Ursula.

“No, he only appears to be carrying his umbrella.”

“Thank goodness!” said Ursula fervently, as she put the third flank of
griskin in the coldest larder.

By this time the next caller was coming up the path, and though I could
invite him to take a seat in one of the armchairs that were now inside,
anything like order had not yet been evolved from the chaos.

The Rector is loved by rich and poor alike, by reason of his
unselfishness, his absolute sincerity and “other-worldliness.” He is
now well on in years, but neither distance nor weather keeps him from
visiting regularly all in his wide-scattered parish. His calls are
always welcomed, though I admit I should have preferred to see him any
day other than the one in question.

“I have come with a message from my niece,” he began. “She told me
to say that she is sending up a small trifle—a little housewifely
notion of hers—for your kind acceptance. She thought you might find
it add a little variety to the cottage menu. As a matter of fact, the
rectory pig has gone the way of most pigs! And we said, the moment we
heard you had arrived, that we must get you to sample the home-grown
article, so she is sending you up just a little piece of—— Ah, here it
is, I expect”—as the Rector’s handy man came in at the gate, carrying
the inevitable basket; and though the contents were wrapped up in a
spotless white cloth, there was no need for one to be told what he was
bringing.

I tried to be as truly grateful as ever I could; I told myself I must
not think about the gift itself, but must keep my mind focused on the
kind thought that had prompted the gift. Nevertheless, the basket
seemed very heavy as I carried it into the larder, and added one more
joint to the goodly collection already assembled. And as I went back
into the living-room, I heard Virginia warbling outdoors:

    “Not more than others I deserve,
     But Heaven has given me more.”

There is something singularly exasperating about other people’s
joyousness, when it is purchased at one’s own expense!

       *       *       *       *       *

We were restoring the last jug to its proper hook on the dresser, when
once more we saw Miss Primkins toiling up the steep garden path.

She really felt terribly ashamed to be intruding on me again; but she
had just read in the paper that the Prime Minister now said everyone
must save, and no one who was a true patriot would spend more than was
absolutely necessary. Now what was the difference between hoarding and
saving? She did so want to do the right thing; it was so little she
could do to help her country. Yet, for the life of her, she couldn’t
make out whether she ought to save that £12 or spend it.

Would I mind explaining it to her? She never could understand anything
Prime Ministers, or people like that, said nowadays; so different from
what it was in her young days. When there was only Lord Salisbury and
Mr. Gladstone everything was so sensible and straightforward. Her
father used to say: “Always believe Lord Salisbury; never believe Mr.
Gladstone”—or else it was the other way round, she wasn’t sure which.
Whereas now, what with radicals, and coalitions, and territorials, and
boards of this, that, and the other, her brain almost gave way trying
to find out who anybody was.

“And when at last I think I’ve got it straightened out, I find there’s
a lot of ‘antis,’ and it’s just the opposite thing they say you ought
or ought not to do; or else you have to begin at the other end and work
backwards. What a lot those Germans have to answer for!”

I offered my own simple political creed for her guidance: “When the
King or Lord Kitchener says anything, then I know it’s all right. When
they hold their tongues, I know it’s equally all right; and the rest I
don’t worry about!”

She said I had expressed her own views entirely, only she never thought
to put it so concisely as that. What a wonderful thing it was to have a
brain like mine that grasped things so clearly! She should just go on
being economical as her mother had always taught her to be, until the
King—or, possibly, Queen Mary—said anything definite on the subject,
then people would know where they were.

“At least, you aren’t the only one bothered about the question of
hoarding,” I said. “I’m also wrestling with the problem. Look here,”
and I led the way to the larder and gave details. “I’ve been wondering
whether, as I relieved you of your hoard, you could assist me out with
mine! Will you accept a piece of griskin, merely to get it off my
premises?”

Miss Primkins was almost tearful in her thanks. “It’s so strange you
should have thought to offer this,” she said in a sort of broken
hesitation, “because I’m going to Cardiff by the first train to-morrow
to see my sisters. I always like to take them a little something, you
understand. They have big families, and business is bad now; and, of
course, coming from the country—— Only eggs are so dear, and fowls such
a price; and just now—well, you know—dividends aren’t coming in as they
did, and I’ve my three houses standing empty, and such a big bill for
repairs, and—— Only, of course,” rallying herself, “I’m heaps better
off than those poor Belgians; but oh, I can’t tell you how grateful I
am to you for your kindness. You see, I was keeping that £12 by me in
case I should be ill—we never know, do we?—or to meet the rent if I
should run short. Please pardon my speaking of these things, only—you
understand,” and the poor lady blushed to think she should have let
herself refer to finances.

Yes, I understood. Rumour had already reached me that Miss Primkins had
only used three hundredweight of coal through the whole of the winter
(of course, in our village everybody knows how much everybody else
buys of everything), and she had been seen out in the woods gathering
sticks. She had cut her milk down to a half-pint a day, and that was
consumed by Rehoboam (the cat). She seldom had any meat, and practised
all sorts of pitiful little economies, living chiefly on the vegetables
she had grown in her garden. But she never let anything interfere with
a coin going into the Sunday offertory, or her knitting for the troops;
and she gave a donation to the Red Cross Fund as gladly as anyone.

It makes one’s heart ache to think how many poor elderly ladies there
are up and down the land, who have lost what at best was but a very
modest meed of comfort, in the present financial upheaval; and these
have additional anxiety in the fact that it would be torture to them
were their poverty paraded before the world. They have not the physical
strength to engage in national work, though their spirits are valiant
enough for any self-sacrifice. So, since it is all they can do for
their country, they shoulder their burdens uncomplainingly, keeping a
frail body alive on sugarless tea and sparsely-buttered bread, while
they knit long, long thoughts into socks and comforters, if by any
means they can raise the money to purchase the wool.

No Fund is large enough to embrace such as these; no charity could ever
meet their case. All the same they are part of the bulwark strength of
England, these dear, faithful women, who in old age and feeble health
hide their own privations beneath a brave exterior, willing to make any
personal sacrifice rather than Might should triumph over Right.

       *       *       *       *       *

“Miss Primkins!” I exclaimed, when I heard of the Cardiff visit,
“I believe you’re the good fairy who, I used to think, lived at the
entrance to the waterfall cave under the hill; and I’m certain you’ve
been sent up here for the explicit purpose of relieving me of that
meat! If you’re going to Cardiff, it’s your clear duty to take a
griskin to each of your sisters—hearty-eating boys, did you say? Good!
That will rid me of two! Well, you’ll find them at the station in the
morning waiting for the 9 o’clock train—we’ll do them up to look like
hothouse grapes and pineapples.”

Of course she protested, but I remained firm; as I told her, I wasn’t
going to let slip such a heaven-sent opportunity to get those joints
transported for life.

When Virginia and Ursula put them in the railway carriage next morning,
she asked if they would mind, as they passed her house on their way
home, seeing if they could find Rehoboam; he hadn’t come back for his
milk, and she couldn’t wait for him. They would find the door-key under
the fourth flower-pot on the right hand window-sill; and if he was
waiting on the step (his usual custom about half-past nine) would they
be so kind as to give him the milk that was in the larder? Then she
need not worry any more about him.

       *       *       *       *       *

They found Rehoboam as per schedule, and gave him the milk. They
couldn’t help seeing that there was only a small piece of cold suet
pudding, a little blackberry jam, and one thin slice of bacon in the
larder.

When they got back we set to work on a cooking crusade; and isn’t there
a delightful sense of freedom when you can do what you like in your own
kitchen, with no Abigail oversighting your operations! We cooked some
griskin, and made pastry and cakes, and put some eggs into pickle. (Do
you know these? hard-boiled eggs shelled when cold and put into pickle
vinegar; ready in a couple of days.)

Then when it got to within an hour of train time, the girls went down
and lit Miss Primkins’ fire, taking down a scuttle of coals for the
purpose; her outside coal-cellar being locked fortunately gave us an
excuse for not using up hers. They also took some milk, three of my
finest potatoes, and other things.

By the time the train arrived, and Miss Primkins was on a tired
homeward walk, the kettle was singing on the hob; three floury
potatoes—strained, but keeping hot in the saucepan—stood beside the
kettle; the supper table was laid with cold griskin, a jam tart, and a
small spice cake, while in the larder stood two sausage-rolls, a seed
cake, and a jar containing three eggs in course of pickling.

Of course the girls couldn’t resist ticketing the things “Virginia
made this, so be cautious! (Signed) Ursula,” and similar nonsense,
hoping thereby to divert Miss Primkins from the bald truth, viz., that
we were trying to smuggle something into a bare cupboard!

Then, after rounding up Rehoboam, and placing him on the hearthrug
to give an air of social welcome, they locked the door, putting the
key under the fourth flower-pot, and skipped up the hill again by the
woodland path, as Miss Primkins turned into her little garden gate.




XIII

When the Surgeon Crossed the Hills


OF course, it seemed ridiculous for a sane and moderately well
brought-up individual to dress herself to go out—and in a new hat,
too—and, then, simply because her dog happened to tumble out of the
window, to collapse on the hearthrug like an anæmic concertina, while
she draped her head gracefully over the fender, with the plumes of the
said new hat resting resignedly on the fire-irons.

It didn’t seem quite reasonable to want to go to sleep like that.
Still, as I showed signs of doing it once more, after they had propped
me upright again, they decided to put me to bed.

When I woke up, they told me I was ill. That seemed ridiculous, too,
and I said so; and added that now I had had a little rest I intended
to get up and go to town—important appointment; couldn’t possibly be
spared, etc.

And they all said lots of things—you know the kind of arguments your
friends always bring to bear on you if you chance to be just a little
out of sorts. I tried to make them understand that I was indispensable
to the well-being of London; that, though _they_ might be in the habit
of shirking work under the slightest pretext of a headache, _I_ wasn’t
that sort of a person. I owed it to my conscience, as well as to the
world at large, to be at work in my office within half an hour, penning
words of wisdom that should keep the universe on its proper balance.

Ursula merely asked if I liked the milk with the beaten egg _quite_
cold or a trifle warm?

In the end I had to give in. They insisted I was ill; and I admit I was
feeling unusually tired.

But as the weeks went by I did not get as strong as I had hoped to do.
I seldom got farther than an easy-chair, and not always as far as that.
So at last I determined to try the cure that hitherto had never failed
me. Trunks were packed, and they got me down by easy stages to the
cottage among the hills. I felt that if only I could see the flowers
and breathe the air that blows way over from where the lighthouse
blinks in the channel, I should certainly pick up both my strength and
my courage.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I reached the cottage the autumn sun was setting on hills that
were a gorgeous blaze of brilliant crimson, yellow, bright rust,
gold, pale lemon, chestnut brown, with the dark green of yew-trees
at intervals. I have never seen colours like our autumn hillsides
anywhere in the world, though, of course, they can be matched in places
where the woods are made up of a wide variety of different trees. After
the murk of London in October the glory of it all fairly dazzled me.

The garden was lovely too, but in a wistful sort of way. Snapdragons
and zinnias and eschscholtzias were blooming lustily; there were still
blossoms on the monthly rose bushes; nasturtiums flaunted in odd
corners, and made splashes of brightness; the purple clematis over
the porch was in full flower; fuchsias, geraniums, belated larkspurs,
hollyhocks, and sweet alyssum talked of summer not yet over; while
peeping out from crevices among the stones and nestling at the roots of
trees were primroses already in flower; violets were blooming in the
big bed by the kitchen door, and the yellow jasmine was smothered in
bloom—such a curious mixture of summer and spring overlapping, with no
hint of autumn and winter in between.

The fruit had not all been gathered in, and the trees in the orchard
were bowed down with masses of crimson and pale green and golden
yellow and russet brown, with spots of colour dotted about among the
lush grass. It seemed impossible that one could remain ill in such an
earthly paradise!

I was too tired with the journey to go round the garden that day; I
put it off till to-morrow. Next day I was not equal to going out at
all, and the third day I did not get up.

The colours gradually faded from the hillsides; the woods grew a
purply-brown; the white mists were later and later in rising from the
river in the valley below me. All day long I lay in bed watching the
sun move from east to west across the mountains, while near at hand
tomtits and finches, jays and magpies, cheeky robins and green and
crimson woodpeckers flitted about in the bare trees just outside my
windows.

One little wren used regularly to pay me a morning call on the
window-ledge; often she flew right into the room. I liked to think she
came to ask how I was. Once I opened my eyes to find a robin perched on
the rail at the bottom of the bed, eyeing me inquiringly. The little
wild things on these hills seem so friendly.

As soon as twilight fell the owls woke up the adjoining wood, and
called to other owls across the ravine.

These were the only sounds to break the silence.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is when you are ill, more than at any other time, that you realise
the human difference between town and country. You can live all
your life, and then be ill and die, in London, and the people next
door—even those in the same building—may know nothing about it.

I knew of a girl living in a block of small flats occupied by women
workers, and trying to make a living by journalism, who lay dead in her
room for a week, and then was only discovered by the caretaker because
her rent was overdue. No one had missed her, though there were women
going up and down stairs and in and out of the rooms, all around her.
The isolation of the solitary woman in a crowded city can be something
awful.

It isn’t that town dwellers at heart are more selfish than country
folks; it is their mode of life that is to blame.

London claims so much of one’s time and energy for the doing of “most
important” work, and the pursuit of machine-made pleasure, till next to
nothing is left for the greatest of all work and the greatest of all
pleasure—merely being kind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once it was known that I wasn’t getting better and the local doctor
had been summoned (he lives in another village nearly four miles off),
kindnesses came from all directions, everybody offering the best
they had. If extra people had been required to take turns sitting up
at night, any number were ready to come on duty. One woman, who is
exceedingly capable, though an amateur masseuse, came to inquire if it
was a case where rubbing would be beneficial. She brought a bottle of
Elliman’s with her, in case she could be of use, and offered to come
daily.

Did the Buff Orpingtons lay that priceless treasure, an unexpected
mid-winter egg? It was promptly sent up by a small child, with a kind
hope from mother that the lady would be able to take it.

I believe Sarah Ann Perkins would have slain every duck she possessed
(and have scorned to take payment), if only there had been the
slightest chance of my once more eating that fair slice from the breast!

A calf’s foot was needed for jelly. The butcher hadn’t one, didn’t
know who had; but one arrived next day, though he had had to scour the
county for it.

Was anything required hurriedly from the village shop? Everybody
was willing to go and fetch it, or Miss Jarvis would toil up with
it herself, after the shop was closed, rather than I should be kept
waiting, bringing up a bunch of early violets from her garden at the
same time.

One farmer’s wife trailed up the rough, wet paths, with a little pigeon
all ready for roasting, in the hope that it might tempt me.

The handy man went out and shot an owl because he was sure I must find
all they hooters a turr’ble noosance. Of course he didn’t know how I
love the owls, nor how companionable it seemed to hear them calling to
one another through the long, long night. But probably the kind thought
behind his gun was of greater worth than the bird he shot.

Yes, everybody was anxious to do something, only there was so little
they could do—till one day Angelina lost herself! She had followed
Abigail in the afternoon to the village, where a dog suddenly scared
and chased her, and she flew off into the woods.

Abigail hunted for her till the winter dusk settled in, but no cat
responded to her calls. So she had to content herself with mentioning
the matter at each cottage in the vicinity, everyone willingly
undertaking to keep a look-out for the missing cat. By the next
afternoon every youngster in the village was out scouting for her, and
saucers of milk were placed enticingly outside doors.

But poor Angy was never seen again.

I missed her very much. She was only a very ordinary tabby, but she was
a large, comfortable, homely sort of a cat; and she had made it part
of her daily programme to come upstairs and jump softly on my bed with
a pleased little mew, and then settle herself down beside me, where I
could reach out my hand to stroke her, while she purred soothingly the
whole time. The little dog was too boisterously demonstrative, in his
joy at seeing me, to be allowed in the room; but the more sedate and
gentle Angelina helped me to pass many a weary hour.

When all search for her proved fruitless, the kindly village people
didn’t dismiss the matter as done with. Forthwith there started a
procession from the village to my house, and about every hour someone
arrived with an offering. I could hear their voices at the door below,
through the open bedroom window.

First it was a labouring man with a big hamper: “My missus is so worrit
about the poor young lady losing her cat, so I’ve brought up our Tom,
if she’d care to accept him. He’s a fust-class ratter—killed a big ’un
in our barn yesterday,” etc.

Then it was the piping voice of a small girl, accompanied by two
smaller: “Please, we’re so sorry about the lady not having a pussy when
she’s poorly, and we’ve brought her our two little kitties, an’ one has
six toes!”

Next a bigger girl: “Gran says would miss like one of our kittens?
They’ll be able to leave their mother next week, and I’ll bring the lot
up for her to choose from, if she’d like one.”

A boy arrived with a basket containing a fine black cat. “Mother’s sent
this for the lady. Just you see how he’ll jump over my hand and stand
on his hind legs!”—(a wild scramble followed). “Here, Peter! here—come
_back_—Pe-ter! Puss, puss, puss! There now, I’ve done it! Mother said
as I wasn’t to open the basket till I was inside the house! I ’spect
he’s back home again by now! But I’ll bring him up again presently. The
lady’ll love to have him, he’s so knowing.”

Later, I heard a woman’s voice: “Poor _dear_ soul, it _do_ seem hard;
and the on’y cat she’ve got, too! Well, we’ve six to our house, and she
can have all of ourn and welcome.”

As Virginia said, it was not quite so embarrassing as griskins,
because, at least, each had four legs with which to get itself off home
again.

       *       *       *       *       *

But it is weary work lying still day after day till the weeks actually
lengthen into months. I kept on telling myself I was making headway,
but it was a poor pretence. I gave up thinking about it at last, and
wondered how I could best endure the pain that no one seemed able to
relieve.

The autumn had now changed to winter, and one morning I woke to see
snow bearing down the fir-trees and lying on the hills. The snow is
very beautiful when one is well and strong, and able to go out in the
crisp cold air and enjoy it; but to me, penned in among the hills,
miles away from town and the advantages of up-to-date civilisation, it
gave a sudden sense of desolation. It shut me off most effectually from
the big world I wanted so badly to see again. As I looked out upon that
snow, it seemed as though I were buried already.

One desire swamped all others, and that was the longing to get back
to London where friends would be around me, and specialists within
easy reach. And yet that appeared to be an utter impossibility. It has
always been a matter of pride with me that my cottage is situated in
one of the most inaccessible spots in the British Isles; I used to feel
so happy in the thought that it was only with the utmost difficulty
that a vehicle could be got near the garden gate. It gave me such a
sense of seclusion and delightful “far-away-ness” after the crush and
hustle of town life.

But for once I wished I had been a wee bit more accessible. I realised
that there might be certain advantages in having a good county road
close by whereon a helpless invalid could be driven to the station
without having every bone in her body jolted to pieces! But it was too
late to do anything now.

Altogether it was two months before I let anyone in town know how ill
I really was; most people thought I was merely taking a long rest.
Naturally it was at once suggested a specialist should be sent for; but
I said no. I was such a weak creature by this time, I felt I couldn’t
bear to hear the worst—I was almost sure there would be a “worst” to
hear—and that a specialist wouldn’t diagnose my illness as merely
overwork. I insisted that I would rather be left to die quietly. I know
it sounds very cowardly, and I _was_ a coward at the time. But I think
many women will understand this condition of mind; we do try so often
to push back, with both our hands, trouble of this sort, when we dimly
see it ahead.

The hale and hearty person will naturally exclaim: “How perfectly
ridiculous! How much more sensible to have proper advice, and then set
to work to get strong again!” I know! I have myself said this sort of
thing to ill people many a time in the past! But I learnt a lot of
things during that breakdown; among them, that it is very easy to lay
down the law as to what should be done, and to act in a common-sense
manner, when one is well; but it is quite another thing to follow one’s
own good advice, or, in fact, do anything one ought to do, when one is
too weak even to think!

Yet how often it happens that, in our direst extremity, help comes when
least expected! So soon as it became known in town that I was really
seriously ill, there appeared among my morning letters a note from one
of London’s most famous surgeons saying that he was coming down on a
friendly visit in a couple of days “just to see if I can help you at
all.”

I read the letter a second time, and then all my fears vanished.
Someone coming “to help” me seemed so different from a formal
consultation. That phrase was better than reams of ordinary sympathy,
or kind inquiries, or professional expressions. And then I felt so glad
that the matter had been taken out of my hands. It seemed as though
a weight was lifted from my brain, and being a feeble as well as a
foolish creature, at first I put my head under the eiderdown and had a
weep—for sheer gratitude; but a few minutes later I rubbed my eyes and
felt I was heaps better already!

       *       *       *       *       *

Yet the way was not entirely clear, even though this busy, over-worked
specialist was offering to spend more than a day in journeying right
across England to the far-off cottage; there was the snow to be
reckoned with, and, when it likes, the snow on our hills can frustrate
anybody’s best-laid plans. The sky was very grey; I did hope no more
would fall, otherwise the roads would probably be impassable.

Owing to the scarcity of trains in our valley, the local doctor was to
tap the main line some miles away, and meet the great surgeon; and a
rich resident was kindly loaning a cherished new car, as the doctor
did not consider either of his own motors worthy of the occasion.

But even he was dubious as he looked at the heavy skies. He said he
could manage to get the car through eighteen inches of snow; but if
it were deeper than that——! I remembered that only a couple of years
before I had been snowed up in the cottage with drifts six-foot deep.
The outlook wasn’t exactly encouraging.

Such heaps of tragedies seemed possible within the next twenty-four
hours. Suppose, for instance, royalty should suddenly develop some
malady necessitating arms or legs being amputated without delay——!
I simply dared not think about such a calamity; and even though the
specialist escaped a royal command, and actually set off to catch the
train that was to bring him to our hill-country, there might be an
accident; London streets are beset with terrors; I never realised till
that moment how many dangers a man must face between Wimpole Street and
Paddington Station! But I tried to have faith that all would be well.

I heard a soft step in the room—every step that came near me was
softened nowadays. I opened my eyes and saw Abigail beside my bed.

“Please, m’m, do you happen to know if the specialist-doctor takes
pepper?” she asked in the half-whisper that she had adopted as her
bedroom voice.

“I haven’t the remotest idea,” I said; “but why do you want to know?”

“Because we’ve just smashed the glass pepper-box, and we haven’t
another down here. And I can’t exactly put it on the table in a
mustard-pot!”

       *       *       *       *       *

I watched for the snow, the eighteen inches I was dreading; but the
wind changed and it didn’t fall. Instead, next morning found us
enveloped in a solid fog—the only fog we had had this season. Hills
and valleys were blotted out as completely as though they had never
existed. The cottage seemed to stand in mid-air, with nothing but grey
unoccupied space around it. And it was such a raw, penetrating fog.

I just lay and watched the grey, blind world outside the windows, and
counted the half-hours as the morning wore by. And isn’t it amazing how
long the very minutes can be when one is right-down ill, and waiting
for a doctor?

In a small isolated community like ours, one excitement is made to do
duty for a long while. The impending visit of the surgeon from London
was soon the topic of general conversation. And little white curtains
were pulled aside from cottage windows as the car, with the doctor and
a stranger, was seen coming down one hill and over the bridge into the
village in the valley, switchbacking again up the opposite hill to
reach the particular crag on which my cottage is perched.

Owing to previous heavy rains, the lanes were almost impassable in
places; overflowing brooks made rivers and swamps in most unexpected
spots. Thus it was that the car could not come within half-a-mile
of the cottage; it had to be “beached” high and dry in somebody’s
farmyard, and the rest of the journey made on foot. The walk is a
positive fairyland dream in summer; but on the bleak December day the
ferns and flowers were gone, and the withered grass stalks rustled with
a disconsolate wheeze, while the pine-trees creaked and moaned in the
wind. It seemed an unkind, inhospitable sort of a day to bring a busy,
valuable man such a long, cold distance.

At last I heard brisk footsteps coming down the path to the door,
scrunching the cones that had fallen from the larches. Then a cheerful
voice was speaking, while great-coats were being taken off down below.
I shut my eyes, and felt I need not worry any more.

       *       *       *       *       *

After all, we women are curious creatures! We consult a specialist when
we have some weakness that won’t give way to ordinary treatment, and
then, when, out of his exceptional knowledge and wide experience, he
tells us what will probably cure us, many of us immediately beseech
him to make it something else.

When the surgeon told me what course it would be necessary to take
if I was to be got on to my feet again, I immediately began to state
a hundred reasons why I wished he would prescribe something entirely
different. He said he was going to have me brought to London at once
and taken to a hospital. I knew that was the very last thing I could
endure. I have always had an absolute terror lest I should ever have to
go into a hospital; and here I was confronted with it face to face. I
said I could _not_ go into one; whatever treatment was necessary must
be done in my own home. I didn’t want to be among strangers and with
nurses whom I had never seen before; I wanted to be nursed by people I
knew. And as for chloroform, well, I would gladly die first! such was
the horror I had of it. And I continued on these lines.

The surgeon listened very patiently and let me have my say out. (Where
in the world does a man like this get his marvellous stock of patience
from!) He even agreed with most of my arguments. Anæsthetics were
disagreeable; it certainly would be pleasanter to be in my own home;
and it might be nicer if I had only friends around me, etc.

But, all the same, it was borne in upon me that I might as well try
to get the Sphinx to turn its head and nod over to a pyramid, as to
attempt to make the man who was talking to me budge an eighth of an
inch. And he wound up by saying, “I am afraid, however, that it will
have to be a hospital—I’m so sorry—but I want you to go into a private
ward in Mildmay. You shall have the best man in London to administer
the anæsthetic; and as for nurses—well, if you don’t say they are some
of the finest women you have ever met, I shall be much surprised.”

By this time I had my head under the eiderdown again, and was howling
away (quietly). I was so truly sorry for myself!

The great man waited for a minute, and then, as the sniffles didn’t
stop, he said—

“Now just listen to me. You are in the habit of writing heaps of good
advice to people when they are in trouble—telling them to have faith
when adversity comes, and to bear their burdens bravely. Don’t you
think you are a most inconsistent person? Here you are, confronted with
something that is going to be a trifle trying, and you immediately turn
your face to the wall, and say you prefer to die, without so much as
giving a solitary kick! Why, Hezekiah isn’t in it, beside you! What is
your faith worth at this rate!”

Then for a good half-hour he sat and talked, reminding me of our duty
as professing Christians; of the wrong we do when we try to shuffle
away from our work; of God’s care for His children individually, and of
our foolishness in doubting Him in times of trouble.

I had got to a very low ebb spiritually as well as physically. Being
cut off from the world and so much alone, with only a pain to think
about, my outlook on life had become altogether distorted. My soul was
certainly in need of a bracing up just then—and it got it.

One thing impressed me very much at this time, viz., the marvellous
power that lies in the hands of those who can bring healing to the soul
as well as healing to the body. The most devoted of God’s ministers
have seldom such power as this. They can bring messages of hope and
consolation, but they do not know how much a sick person is able,
physically, to stand in the way of a strong spiritual tonic, and they
seldom dare administer one, even though they may think it necessary.

But the doctor knows how much the patient is equal to. And the man who
has consecrated to God’s service a life that is spent in mending the
poor broken bodies of humanity is surely doing work that angels might
envy; undoubtedly God gives him power and opportunity that falls to the
lot of few other men.

       *       *       *       *       *

The December afternoon closed in early, and the surgeon had once more
to take a long, dreary journey to get back to the urgent work waiting
for him in town. But he left behind him a far more sane and sensible
person than he had found on his arrival.

When he had gone, after having made the most comprehensive and detailed
plans for my removal, Abigail tiptoed into my room, her face all aglow
with excitement.

“I thought you’d like to know I heard the specialist-doctor say, when
I was bringing in the sweets at lunch, that he didn’t know when he had
eaten roast chicken he had enjoyed so much. I shall rub it into cook
when we go home. And I’d better let Sarah Ann Perkins know, as we got
it from her.”

“Take whatever is left, and keep it for a souvenir,” I said. “And if
you like to have the carcase framed, I’ll pay for it.”

“You look better already,” she replied.

Thus the great man scattered cheeriness in various directions; and
Sarah Ann, a year later, pridefully showed me the chicken’s wings a-top
her best Sunday bonnet.

       *       *       *       *       *

In just as much time as it took my London doctor to come west to assume
charge of me, they got me under way.

“But how am I ever going to reach the main road!” I wailed.

“Perfectly easy,” said Ursula. “You are going to be carried, and every
masculine in the place is willing to lend a hand.”

And so they did. One young man made himself entirely responsible for
my luggage, going off with it by train, that there should be no chance
of any delay. A stalwart fisherman and a sturdy young farmer carried
me, in a chair, straight up hill for half a mile to where a motor was
waiting on the county road.

Everybody was so gentle and quiet, and yet very businesslike. They
stood silently, with their hats off, while I was put into the car. I
looked round on the hills, convinced that I was looking at them for the
last time, and felt exactly as though I were present at my own funeral!

Even the people in the village kept sympathetically in the background,
with the same sort of respect one observes when a funeral procession
passes; though at the last house in the village one dear kindly soul
pulled her little white curtains aside, waving her hand and smiling
encouragingly to me as we went by.




XIV

In Mildmay Hospital—An Interlude


I DON’T think there is anything worse than the sense of utter
desolation that envelops you when the hospital door finally closes on
everybody you know, and you are alone with total strangers and unknown
terrors ahead. The dreariest moment of my whole life was when I found
myself alone in a private ward at Mildmay, with no one whom I knew
within call.

Yet was it mere chance, I wonder, that the nurses at their prayers that
day sang Matheson’s beautiful hymn—“O Love, that wilt not let me go”?

It came to me along the corridor, as I lay staring at the ceiling. I
tried, in my heart, to sing it with them; but I gave it up when they
got to the verse—

    “O Joy, that seekest me through pain,
       I cannot close my heart to Thee;
     I trace the rainbow through the rain,
     And feel the promise is not vain,
       That morn shall tearless be.”

I couldn’t see the rainbow just then.

Nevertheless, I got to love that room as one of the happiest spots on
earth, for the sake of the people whom I found there; and during the
ten weeks I remained in it, I proved beyond all chance of further doubt
that when God seems to be taking from us, He is in reality giving us
something better than all we could ever ask or think. At the moment of
the taking, perhaps, our eyes are too dimmed to see this, but in the
fulfilment of time, when He wipes away our tears, may it not be that,
in addition to banishing our sorrows, He will clear our vision, that we
may see how marvellously He made all things work together for good?

       *       *       *       *       *

Next day I remarked, irritably, that I didn’t like the green walls, and
I thought the green bedspread positively bilious.

The matron, looking at me with a twinkle in her eyes, said, “Dear lady,
you shall have another bedspread this instant; and as soon as you are
well enough to be moved, we will re-paint the walls whatever colour
meets with your approval;—we can’t do it while you are in bed, can we?
Meanwhile, I shall call you ‘Delicate Fuss’!”

(And “Delicate Fuss” I have remained ever since.)

But there was such an amount of misery bottled up inside me, some of it
was obliged to spill over, and I once more reiterated my desire to die.

“That’s all right,” said the matron cheerfully; “but how about your
tombstone? You would like a really artistic one, wouldn’t you? And
being literary, surely you would wish to edit what is to go on it. Now
let us see what we can scheme out.”

So we all settled to a discussion of shapes and styles and suitable
words. The nurses warmed to the work, the ward sister came in to give
her views, and for the first time for weeks I found myself smiling.
Finally, it was unanimously decided that the most appropriate and
truthful description would be these simple words—

    “SHE WAS PLAIN BUT OCCASIONALLY PLEASANT.”

But the time came when I was beyond even discussing tombstones; when I
could not bear a sound in the room and even quiet footsteps jarred me.
Then it was that I found out more especially what the spirit of Mildmay
stands for. It was no mere perfunctory service that was rendered the
invalid. Doctors, matron, nurses said nothing of the extra hours of
work they put in on my account; of the watching and the tending when
they were really supposed to be off duty. It seemed wonderful that I,
who had looked forward to the inevitable with a terrible dread of being
lonely and among strangers, should actually find myself, when the time
came, surrounded by friendly faces, and cared for by people who had
grown very dear to me.

And fancy a hospital where they went to the trouble of bandaging up the
door-handles to prevent noisy bangs; where they laid down matting to
deaden the sounds in the corridor; where they fixed peremptory notices
to the doors, enjoining all and sundry to close them quietly; where
even the ward-maid constituted herself dragoness-in-chief, for the time
being, watching and waiting, and then pouncing on any unthinking person
who might let a latch slip through her fingers, or a house-porter who
might clatter a coal-scuttle.

Yet this—and a great deal more—is what they did at Mildmay, just
because one patient was going through a bad time.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thanks to all the care I received, I was at last able to leave the
hospital. Of course I was glad to go out into the big world again—who
wouldn’t be, after lying all that time with no other “view” visible
from where I lay but three chimney-pots? I was glad to think I was
going to be able to walk again, and take up my work once more. But
I felt genuine regret at having to say good-bye to the people I had
really grown to love during my stay with them.

I shall never forget the morning that I was taken away by a couple
of nurses to the seaside. The others came, in ones and twos, to say
good-bye. And in the midst of it, the great surgeon walked in—just to
see what the patient was like before she started.

“Now confess,” he said, “a hospital isn’t such a bad place after all,
is it?”

I agreed with him; but I couldn’t put into words what a wonderfully
good place I had found it.

I could only think what a contrast was presented between the
poor, forlorn thing who arrived those months before, and the
still-very-wobbly, but cheerfully-smiling, person who was now driving
away, while the nurses leaned out of the upper windows and showered
rice all over the vehicle.




XV

The Return to the Flower-Patch


AND because it is the correct thing to introduce a wedding into the
last chapter, I had better mention the one I know most about.

I always did say that, whenever I married, my wedding should be
characterised by everything appertaining to common sense; while all the
feebleness and foolishness and weakmindedness I had noticed at other
people’s weddings would be entirely lacking. I have often remarked
how strange it is that otherwise sensible people seem to lose all
idea of proportion when it comes to arranging a wedding; how they let
themselves be obsessed with clothes and furniture and wedding presents
that they don’t require; or if they do require them, they might have
been dealt with on orderly systematic lines.

“Why need there be a chaos of garments in the spare room and every
wardrobe and chest of drawers in the house just because one person is
going to be married?” I have said many a time. Well, I’m not going to
say it again. In fact, the older I get the more I find life resolves
itself into one continual discovery that I needn’t have said half the
things that I did say in my first youth.

But with regard to the wedding, I think I started all right; it was as
matters proceeded that I was overtaken by the inevitable. I really was
too busy with arrears of work that accumulated during my long illness
to see to the trousseau details _in extenso_, so I asked an intimate
friend if she would take this in hand for me—which she kindly agreed
to do. She had had lots of experience, and her taste was exquisite; so
I knew matters were safe with her. She asked me what frocks I already
had. I replied, “Not a rag fit to wear!”

“Then I’ll make a good selection, and have them sent home for you to
choose from,” she replied, her face suffused with that joy-radiance
that invariably overtakes a woman who starts out shopping with a blank
cheque in her handbag.

She certainly did make a good selection; I almost wished it hadn’t been
quite so good, then at least I should have known what to send back. But
as it was, every fresh box I opened, I exclaimed, “Isn’t that lovely!
I _must_ have _that_!” till presently the room was a billowy sea of
tissue paper and beautiful garments that looked as though hands had
never touched them. I thought I was quite hardened and proof against
lures of this kind; but the snare of it simply enmeshes you before you
know where you are. As my bedroom was soon full to overflowing, I said
the rest of the things had better go into a spare room. Very soon the
spare rooms were full too. And so we went on like that!

Why didn’t I put the things away in drawers and wardrobes? Simply
because every such receptacle I possessed was full to distraction
before the trousseau things started to arrive! Did you ever know a
woman who possessed a drawer or a wardrobe peg that wasn’t already over
full, and she pining for more space? So for weeks we had to hop over
piles of cardboard boxes no matter what room we entered, and scrabble
up more bales of tissue paper and things to make room on the sofa for
the friend who called to bring her good wishes in person.

Still, I have always thought that a strong argument in favour of a
woman getting married is the fact that she, presumably, comes in for
additional drawers and wardrobes. Hence I looked forward to getting
into my new home with considerable satisfaction in view of the purchase
of extra furniture.

“Yes, I know it’s a bit crowded just now,” I agreed, when Virginia
suggested I should set up a shop with “Modes et Robes” over the door,
because she had estimated that I shouldn’t need to buy any tissue paper
for eleven years and five months. “But I shall have _heaps_ of spare
room when I get into the new house; I really shan’t know what to do
with so many chests of drawers!”

But alas! in spite of the additional furniture, I am still squeezing
things into drawers that would be so much more useful if made of
elastic india-rubber instead of wood. And I am still flattening
garments into wardrobes that are so bulgingly full that I wonder
sometimes whether the looking-glass will stand the inside pressure. And
still I don’t seem to have a rag fit to wear.

But the moving process was even worse than the trousseau. The very
thought of it was turning my brain to stone.

When I mentioned my quakings about the moving to the Head of Affairs,
he said airily, “Don’t you give a solitary thought to _that_. Just go
away for a couple of days’ holiday, and when you come back you will
find everything as right as can be in the new house. You don’t need to
touch a thing or pack an atom. The men do _everything_. Now, why bother
your head with unnecessary worrying?” etc.

I seemed to think I had heard the same remark made in the dim past when
we removed from one house to another in my early days. I also remember
that the brother of Virginia and Ursula said the very same thing to
them when they moved, and they, acting on masculine advice, had the
greatest difficulty, ultimately, in ever finding any solitary thing
they possessed (including themselves) among the ruins. So I decided to
postpone the couple of days’ holiday and face the worst.

There is no need to go into details about that move. Those who have
been through it know exactly how many months it takes to find such
things as the corkscrew, the buttonhook, the oil-can belonging to the
sewing-machine, the one hammer that has its head fixed on firmly.

They know the joy with which you fall on the missing sofa cushions
when they are eventually discovered done up with spare bedding in the
attic—that everyone has been too tired to undo; and the affectionate
greetings bestowed on the hall clothes-brush when it is at length
found—in company with the dog’s whip—in a drawer one has forgotten in
a small table. Of course, it’s very satisfactory when the perspiring
gentleman who has packed—and then unpacked again—all the china comes
to announce, “Not a single piece is cracked or chipped, madam;” but
when you survey the piles of crockery and glass on the kitchen dresser
and table and window-ledge and mantelpiece, that haven’t yet found an
abiding-place, and see the pantries full to overflowing, a lurking
thought comes that perhaps it might have been an advantage if he _had_
smashed a few dozens of the multitudinous array of cups and saucers
and plates and dishes that seem woefully superfluous at the moment!

As there seemed a good bit still to do, I said I would dispense with
the conventional “tour,” proper to the occasion, and spend the time
trying to dispose of the twenty-seven British workmen, supposed to be
house-decorating, who were cheerfully in possession (and apparently
regarding their posts as life appointments) when our goods arrived at
the door, despite our having let them live in the house rent free for
two months previously.

It was a little difficult to follow their twenty-seven lines of
argument as to why they should remain with us permanently, with Abigail
continually at my elbow presenting a tradesman’s card and explaining—

“Please, ma’am, this man says he served the people who were here
before; but I’ve told him he’s the ninth fishmonger who has said that
to-day.”

Or else it would be, “There’s a man at the door says he served the last
people with groceries. Can I tell him to run back and get some soap? I
can’t find where the men put our packets, and it will be quicker than
sending to the Stores. I suppose you don’t happen to have seen it, m’m?
Cook and I have looked everywhere. But we’ve found the anchovy sauce,
and the carpet beater. Where _do_ you think they had packed them——” and
so on.

But I determined to do my wifely duty in making a happy home for the
man who had had the courage to marry me.

I was politely attentive when interviewed by a near-by magnate who was
anxious to propose the Head of Affairs for the Conservative Club. I
accepted particulars supplied me by the secretary of the Golf Club, who
felt we were the very people the club needed. I tried to understand
when the gardener explained the peculiarities of the greenhouse heating
apparatus, and the danger that would threaten if anyone but himself
entered the greenhouse.

I endured the postman knocking at the door a dozen times a day to
inquire if we lived there, only to point out to us that we didn’t when
we had assured him that we did. I informed the sweep that everything
was quite satisfactory thank you, and I should hope to have the
pleasure of meeting him again.

I accepted the coal man’s many reasons for not having delivered the
coal sooner; and I thanked cook for the information that the policeman
said he or his mate would always be on point duty at the corner
whenever we wanted him.

I filed half a bushel of tradesmen’s price lists and laundry data.

I put the whole household on a milk-pudding diet, rather than waste the
numerous samples of milk left, by rival and mutually abusive dairymen,
in a row of cans at the side door.

And when a sumptuously apparelled resident called to say that the
previous occupant had always contributed liberally to the local
working men’s brass band, I tried to look gratified to hear of such
generosity—though I had the presence of mind to say I should not be at
home on Saturday evening when they proposed to serenade me in the front
garden.

Yes, it was a pleasant and peaceful couple of days, and I dare say I
should have been all the better for the complete rest, had not the
telephone men and the gas stove men called simultaneously with the
electrical engineers (who had been summoned to see why the electric
light sulked), and, with a unanimity of purpose that was truly
beautiful in a world so full of variance, they all set to work to take
up floor-boards, in rooms and halls where the carpets and lino had been
laid—the twenty-seven standing around and assisting with reminiscence
and anecdote.

Then it was that the Head of Affairs put down a firm foot and insisted
on the Flower-Patch.

At first Abigail was reluctant to leave such bright scenes in the
kitchen as she hadn’t known for several years; but, remembering that
a halo of distinction surrounds the bearer of exclusive information,
no matter how unimportant, she set off cheerfully next morning, and we
followed a day later.

She prided herself on the tactful way she broke her news to the village.

“Hasn’t Miss Klickmann come down ’long with ’ee?” inquired Mrs. Widow
and the handy man in unison.

“You’ll never see Miss Klickmann again,” Abigail replied in funereal
tones.

“Oh! You don’t tell me so! Poor _dear_ thing! though I knowed she
wasn’t long for this world,” and kind-hearted Mrs. Widow started to mop
her eyes with her apron. “Was it very suddint at the last?”

“Very!” said the handmaiden. “Couldn’t make up her mind till the very
day before the wedding.”

When they had grasped the true state of affairs, and imbibed enough
particulars to have filled three newspaper columns, Mrs. Widow hurried
off home, and then on to the village, likewise conscious of the halo of
distinction. But the handy man paused—

“I wish I’d er knowed a bit sooner,” he said, “then I’d er made an arch
with ‘Welcome’ on it as large as you please. Yes, I’d er like to have
had an arch. But thur,”—after a moment’s thought—“perhaps I’d better do
a bit o’ weedin’ and cut the grass.”

Thus it happened that I was once again going along the road, over which
they had carried me only seven months before. It was cold and cheerless
then; now it was all flowers and sunshine.

The kindly, motherly soul who lives in the end house was at her gate
now, watching for our coming.

“Well there! Well there!” as the wagonette stopped for me to speak to
her. “I thought I should never see you again”—and she grasped my hand
in her own, having first polished it on her apron, which is always
fresh and spotless. “And now here you are. My dear, I’m _that_ glad to
see you back, and I do hope you’ll be happy.”

The stalwart fisherman, standing on the river bank, raised his cap—I
hadn’t forgotten the good work he had done for me. Miss Jarvis at the
village shop came to the door and waved her hand—I remembered the box
of violets and moss and little ferns she had posted to the hospital.

In the cottage itself kind hands had been hard at work; it was simply
a bower of wild flowers. The walls inside were nearly smothered with
trophies of moon daisies, grasses and ferns, and the same scheme of
flowers was carried all up the stairs. On the window ledge on the
landing were bowls of Sweet Betsy and cow parsley—and such a pretty
mixture the crimson and the white flowers made. Upstairs the rooms
were gay with bowls of forget-me-nots and buttercups. Downstairs
it was wild roses and honeysuckle, with mugs of red clover on the
mantelpieces. Being summer, the fire-grates were at liberty, and these
were filled with branches of bracken, ivy, silvery honesty seeds, and
foxglove. Everything had such a delightfully “misty” effect, by reason
of the seeding grasses that had been added lavishly to the flowers.

The only garden flowers in the house were some roses, in the centre
of the dinner-table, sent by Miss Jarvis (with some pale green young
lettuces) from her garden.

Outside the swallows were twittering, and, like all the other birds,
were fussing about their small families. The distant hills were glowing
crimson by the acre where the timber had been cut, I knew it was
myriads and myriads of foxgloves. Near at hand the Flower-Patch was
a mass of nodding blossoms, coupled, with a choice variety of weeds.
I wondered where I had better begin, and how I should cope with the
bindweed, flaunting itself everywhere that it had no business to be.
Had I better start the handy man on it at once, or would it be better
to set him to cut the hedges?

But even as I was planning out a good week’s work for him, I saw him
coming up the path, a picturesque figure in a blue jersey, a large,
shady, rush hat, and carrying, as signs of office, a pitch-fork, a
scythe, and a rake; and I heard his voice in the garden speaking to the
Head of Affairs: “Good-day to ’ee, sir. I’m main glad to see ’ee, for I
calkerlate as how in future I takes my orders from the master.”


    PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
    WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
    STAMFORD STREET, LONDON, S.E.

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained as
printed.

Page 32, “it” changed to “in” and word “on” added to text (put in; she
merely told him to pack them up very securely, as she was going on a
long railway)

Page 35, “georgeous” changed to “gorgeous” (with some gorgeous pansies)

Page 112, “crepe” changed to “crêpe” (trimmed with crêpe)

Page 173, “welome” changed to “welcome” (bidding them welcome)

Page 200, “is” changed to “in” (hesitation in saying that)





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