Part 11

“Ah, no one knows what an anxiety that girl’s been to me,” went on the buxom, good-natured woman, who in reality never makes a trouble of anything, and has been a real mother to Kathleen. “I sometimes wonder why I married her father! But there, I will say it looks better on your tombstone to have ‘The beloved wife of,’ rather than plain Martha Miggins (as I was), all unbelongst to no one, as it were.”

Don’t imagine for a moment that this implied matrimonial divergence on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, for a more contented couple you couldn’t find in the village. It is merely the polite way we have, locally, of discounting our blessings, lest we should seem to be flaunting our happiness in the face of less fortunate people.

“By the way,” she said, as we were going out of the door, “have you heard who it was walked around your place the other night? Well, now, to think I should have forgotten to mention it, but it was no one, after all, but the policeman! My husband was over to the police-station this morning about that mare we’ve lost, and he mentioned it; and, sure enough, the policeman had got it down in his book that he crossed the hill by our road that night, and had looked over your house.”

And then I remembered that there was a police-station in the next village, that did duty for a very wide area of miles. And it was usual for the policeman to patrol from one village to another, by various routes, last thing at night, ascertaining if the inhabitants’ doors _en route_ were all duly locked. We were much relieved in our minds, and started for home discussing the situation, when Virginia suddenly said—

“Surely that is our dog barking further along the lane?”

We paused to listen.

“Yes, it is,” I said in surprise. “Whatever can he be doing out here?” and we hurried on; for the dog is a valuable one, and is never let out without an escort. A turn in the lane brought us face to face with a tall, familiar masculine figure.

“Why, wherever have you come from?” I exclaimed.

“I’ve just made my escape from the tame lunatic who seems to be in charge of the cottage,” said the Head of Affairs cheerfully, as he relieved Ursula of the quart of milk. “And I would suggest, my dear, that the next time you propose to turn your house into a sanatorium for ‘Mentally Deficients,’ you might give your family due notice. A shock like that isn’t good for one after climbing such a hill.”

* * * * *

And he might not have been particularly mollified when, later in the evening, Eileen offered the following apology:—

“I’m very sorry, sir, that I kept you waiting outside all that time in the cold; only how was I to know you were a gentleman, sir, when you looked so _exactly_ like a burglar?”

But, fortunately, in the interval he had discovered, in his dressing-room, a new-but-forgotten pair of boots, and a not-at-all-bad-considering-it’s-war-time overcoat; and, naturally, he was inclined to take a roseate view of life.

XI

Exit Eileen

IT was six months later, and about as broiling a Sunday afternoon as London can produce. Virginia and I were reading in the coolest spot in the garden, when Abigail came out and announced, with slight acidity, “That young person wants to know if she can see you, madam. I told her you were engaged, but she said she would wait.”

“What is her name?” I queried; there are so many young persons in the world.

“That Eileen!” she answered, this time with a definite sniff.

“She can come out here,” I said, and forthwith there sailed across the lawn a vision such as never before had graced my garden.

Eileen was wearing a white Jap silk skirt; a transparent rose pink blouse, that revealed the satin ribbon and lace camisole beneath; pink cotton open-work stockings; white shoes; one of those long stoles made of metallic-looking, lustre-brown fur, so beloved of the laundry girl; a big white hat, trimmed with the most violent of tangerine-coloured velvet, said velvet hanging in festoons down the back, and loops of it caught round the front and fastened to the fur stole—on one side with a large would-be-diamond lizard, about four inches long, and on the other with a crescent of similar make. Her hair, which was done in a wild imitation of the latest eccentricity of fashion, was radiant with more crescents and a sparkling three-tiered back comb. A string of large pearls adorned her neck.

To say I was taken aback at the sight, is to put it mildly; I was fairly dumb with astonishment. Where in the world had that demure, mouse-like orphan been to pick up such ideas! Even though I knew she had gone to work in a munition factory, I wasn’t prepared for such developments. She soon enlightened us.

After mutual polite inquiries about each other’s health, and a few more relative to the grandmother, she folded her hands in her lap, sat as though posing for a photograph, and then said: “And please, how do you think I look?”

“You are certainly very bright,” I stammered, striving valiantly after truth.

“Yes, I look very nice, don’t I?” she went on; “and I felt I ought to come round and show you, because, as I tell everybody, it’s all entirely due to _you_, ma’am, that I’m so stylish. I shouldn’t never have _thought_ to dress like this, if you hadn’t taught me how. And now I’m going round to show myself to Mrs. Griggles.”

XII

The Old Wood-House

THE old wood-house stands on the lee-side of a belt of trees, part of the Squirrels’ Highway, as we call it, that runs down one side of the Flower-patch, sheltering it from the bleak north winds.

Picture to yourself a building rather smaller than a very small church, built of great blocks of grey stone, with walls nearly two feet thick in places, a red-tiled pointed roof, a door at one end; and in case the walls should prove too flimsy to stand the winter gales, huge stone buttresses prop it up on the “off” side (i.e. the side where the ground goes on running downhill), lest the structure should take it into its head to run down-hill too!

In place of a spire, above the door, a weathercock swings its arrow to the winds—at least, it would swing it on any well-conducted apex, but being merely mine it permanently points south. Not that it is particular where it points; all it asks is to be left in peace to close its eyes in meditative contemplation of the landscape. We occasionally get a ladder and then a long stick, and move it round, trying to urge it to deeds of derring-do, but it falls asleep the moment our ministrations cease.

The last time, it was a neighbouring farmer who climbed the ladder to reason with it, after I had assured him there was no penalty under the Defence of the Realm Act for regulating weathercocks. He was a bit reluctant to touch it at first; as he said, what with clocks not being allowed to tick as they pleased, and the time being jiggered with anyhow, you didn’t know where you was with nothing. But once I had taken full responsibility for the affair, he went up with right goodwill, and—forgetting that it was the arrow alone that needed to move—he gave a sturdy tug to the north, south, east, and west arrangement, and sent the arms of that in all directions.

Then when we wanted to fix it up again, the question arose, which was the north? A local light supposed to know everything, who chanced to be passing, was summoned for consultation. After carefully surveying the various corners of heaven, as though looking for enemy air-craft, he said he didn’t know as he could say ezackly which wur the north, unless he had summat to tell him (we all felt like that, too!); but if we would a-float a needle on the top of a basin of water, then either the point of the needle—or—le’s see? maybe ’twas the heye, he wasn’t quite certain which—would point to the north, for sure.

Well, all hands rushed for basins and needles, as you may suppose; because, whether it was the point or the eye didn’t matter much, since we knew the direction in which the north lay; all we wanted was the precise angle. But alas, every needle promptly sank to the bottom of the basin, without so much as a kick!

Eventually we refixed the north pole approximately, pending such time as the Head of Affairs should arrive, when I knew we could rely on the small compass at the end of his watch chain. But Virginia, who uses the weathercock more than most of us, as she sees it from her bedroom window, and says it is so useful to dress by, was lugubriously certain his watch would be stolen on the next journey down, and begged me to place the arrow—still asleep—pointing south; even an approximate south, she said, might at least help to keep her spirits up, when a northeaster was blowing.

And south it remaineth unto this day, despite all our blandishments, and probably will do so till the end of the War, when the retirement of the Food Controller—who, presumably, supervises weathercocks—may permit of our using a modicum of grease.

* * * * *

The old wood-house (which, by the way, was originally used for coals, though no trace of this is left upon its clean, lime-washed interior) is the first building you run across as you enter by the top gate, which is the widest entrance we possess. Here you step from the lane right into a tiny larch plantation, and the path to the cottage is arched over with the boughs of the trees, while the brown cones crunch under your boots, or roll away down the steep incline of the path when your foot touches them. It was among these trees that a small clearing was made in the distant past to accommodate this particular out-building; though why the coal-house was considered the most artistic bit of bric-à-brac to greet you as you enter the main gate is not clear.

The actual outline of the building is not remarkable, being merely four walls and a pointed roof, with a door and a window; but at least it looks simple, dignified, and solid, and what it lacks in architectural decoration has been supplied by Nature herself. When we first saw it, we called it the private chapel; but later on I found Abigail & Co. calling it the picture palace.

At any rate, there it stands, shadowed by great oaks seemingly immovable, with their gnarled wide-stretching arms spread as in blessing over the lowlier woodland things; a big Spanish chestnut, though tardy in coming into leaf, scatters worthless burrs around later on, with generous goodwill; a walnut-tree invites the passer-by to rub its aromatic leaves, and is there any treasure-trove quite like the walnuts that one finds in the long wet grass on a windy autumn morning? Larches and firs make shady colonnades, with their straight uprising shafts, and dark drooping branches; silver birches, always graceful, no matter how they may have had to twist their trunks to accommodate themselves to their environment, give lightness and vivacity to the whole.

Incense there is in abundance. The warm resinous odour of the larches is always abroad; mountain-ash-trees load the air with scent in the late spring, and are ablaze with crimson in August. Two or three lichen-covered, twisted old apple-trees hang out bunches of pale-green mistletoe, for all to see during the winter months, and then surprise one with a bride-like flush of white and pink in the spring. Where the sun is brightest, a big hawthorn carpets the ground with white petals in May.

Then there are the lovely limes—and the lime-tree is much more of a stately lady than is realized by those who only know the sad, maimed and distorted stumps that disfigure suburban gardens in London. But see this lime-tree that forms a link in the Squirrels’ Highway! Its trunk measures about ten feet round. Under the shadow of its drooping far-sweeping branches you could give a small Sunday-school treat. Though the lowest branches spring from the trunk at least nine feet from the ground, their far ends touch the grass, forming a complete tent of translucent green and gold as you look upwards, through a multitude of layers of leaves, to a sun you cannot see, but which seems to have turned the whole tree into a rippling mass of molten colour. And when it shakes out its bunches of scented yellow blossoms, and trails them by the thousand down each branch and stem, then indeed the lime-tree is a lovely lady, and the bees and the butterflies come from far and near to pay her homage.

And each tree has a special and distinct winter-beauty of its own in the outline of branches and stems and twigs—a beauty that is lost to us once the leaves appear, but which suggests an exquisite etching in winter when the dark lines are silhouetted against the sky. The most graceful is the birch, with its light tracery of fine filaments, often with tassel-like catkins dangling at the end. The oak and beech give the impression of enormous strength in the ease with which they fling outright their massive arms with seldom any tendency to droop.

And each tree has its special and distinct melody when the wind signals the forest orchestra; there is the sea-surge of the beeches, the swish of the heavily plumed firs, the rain-sound of the twinkling aspen, the soft whisper of the birches, the æolian hum of the pines, and the sibilant rustle of the dead leaves still clinging to the winter oak.

* * * * *

Outside the wood-house door there is a little clearing adjoining the grove of trees, where a perfect thicket of wild flowers smiles at you for the greater part of the year. First come the early violets clustering about the roots of the trees, and in the shelter of the grey rock fragments; while primroses dot the grass with their crinkly leaves, and then send up pink stems covered with silver sheen, and delicately scented flowers each as big as a penny. Oxlips grow on the bank that borders one side of the clearing.

Later, it is an expanse of moon-daisies—thousands of them swaying the whole day long to the motion of the wind like the ever-restless surface of the sea. And with the moon-daisies are buttercups, crimson clover, rosy-purple knapweed, spikes of pink orchis delicately pencilled with mauve—all trying to grow to the height of the big yellow-eyed daisies; while here and there ruddy spears of sorrel out-top them all.

Tall grasses of every kind are here, some like a fine translucent veil of purple, others grey, or a pinky-green; some shaking out yellow or heliotrope stamens; some ever trembling like the quaking-grass—but all mingling with the tall flowers, softening the surface of the mass of white blossoms that seem in the sunshine almost too dazzling to look upon, were it not for the mist of the grasses that envelops them.

Underneath the tall flowers there is a wonderful carpet of lesser-growing things—masses of trefoil, the yellow blossoms often touched with fiery orange; patches of heath bed-straw, with its myriads of tiny gleaming white flowers, cling to any spot where the grasses leave it room to breathe, its first cousin, the woodruff, preferring a shadier part of the bank at the side—the bank where the wild strawberries grow to a luscious size, and whortleberry bushes add a touch of wildness to the spot.

The smaller clovers, both yellow and white, seem to thrive under the bigger flowers, where most else would suffocate. Pink-tipped daisies bloom wherever they can find room to hold up a little face. Rosy-pink vetches wander about at pleasure, and pretend they are going to do great things when they start to climb the stems of the moon-daisies.

Where the big fir trees throw a shadow, and the sun only touches the grass when it is getting round to the west, foxgloves send up shafts of colour and the pale-blue spiked veronica carpets the ground.

Still further back, where the sunshine never penetrates, even here something strives to give beauty to barrenness and soften austerity, for the small-leaved ivy starts to climb the hard tree trunks, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the many living things that are neighbour to the old wood-house.

And always in the grass there lie the snapped-off twigs and branches of the larches, with their brown picots up stems that are studded with exquisite cones. We strive hard to better Nature, to make new designs, to evolve fresh beauty; but with all our skill and experiments we have yet to improve on the cone as a design, with its rhythmic re-iteration of the one small motif and the perfection of its proportions. In my mind it ranks with the smoked-silver seed ball of the dandelion, both of them examples of absolute beauty derived from the simplest of outlines.

* * * * *

The walls of the wood-house have their share of green; on the north side an ivy, with a gnarled main stem the size of a fair sized tree trunk, sends evergreen branches over roof as well as walls. Outside the door, which opens to the south, stone-crop has planted itself in masses among the stones, a perfect carpet of it, that in June is a bright yellow. In the “good old times,” before my day, the stone-crop served as a convenient spot on which to dump the coal sacks!

On the western side where the ground drops down—a warm, snug and sheltered bank—in the long grass white violets bloom by the thousand in the early spring, their sweet little blossoms streaked with mauve, nestling up to the old grey walls with the trustfulness of little children. Add to this long-fronded ferns growing out from among the wall stones, and you have an idea of the geography of the place.

On a hot day the cool shade on the north side is an ideal resting place; on a chilly day the south side gives you a shield from the wind. A pile of tree trunks and old logs lying outside fairly ask you to sit for a moment and take in some of the loveliness of the scene—you can never exhaust the whole of it—and if you sit for a minute you will probably sit there for hours.

Here is absolute quiet of spirit, but never silence. The trees are seldom still; all day and all night the wind upon these hills sways the tall, lithe tops of the larches to and fro, to and fro; the leaves and the catkins of the birches are for ever fluttering; the vibrant branches of the pines hum and sing in the breezes, summer or winter; the music of it all never ceases though it varies in volume according to the season. On the hottest summer days the grasses still sigh; the bees hum all day long in the clover; the blue-tits tweet and twitter as they swing about the birches, and their cousins the coal-tits keep up an endless run of comment in the larches. In May the nightingale comes into the grove to sing; in June rival chaffinches perch on the top spikes of certain spruce trees—always the same bird on the same spike—and defy each other and the world in general. The stock-dove croons over its nest in the tallest firs, and the reddy-brown squirrel scolds you severely if you are coming too near his own particular chosen tree.

* * * * *

Inside the wood-house you may find many things; some you are prepared for, some you are not. In theory, it is sacred to the use of the Head of Affairs, a sort of play-house and workshop combined, wherein no handy man is supposed to set foot, and no prying eyes are supposed to discover that the owner is working in a jersey, with no qualms over the absence of waistcoat and stiff collar.

But I often go in when I am anxious to be alone and wanting many things that one cannot put down in words. And knowing this, the Head of Affairs doesn’t keep his best saws there!—not the splendid big “Farmer’s Saw,” with its doubly notched teeth, that run through big fir trunks with amazing ease; nor the finer tools that deal with the short snappy branches. No, the saw that is left for such emergencies is a nondescript article that has now a wavy—very wavy—edge, and a few of its teeth doubled over; a saw that seems as though you can never get it well into the wood, and once you have got it in, it can’t be got out again, much less be made to move with soft purring motion.

You see, I have individuality where sawing is concerned, but it is useless to talk about it, for I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever other moral improvements a woman may manage to effect in the man she marries, it is a lifework to get him to a proper appreciation of her method of goffering a saw!

But I must beg you not to picture the wood-house as the home of the miscellaneous collection of nondescript oddments so indescribably dear to every masculine heart. There is an outhouse elsewhere that accommodates short lengths of chain, pieces of wire netting, old locks, bits of copper wire, staples and hooks, broken hinges (that _might_ be made do duty again, if any one ever has a gate that prefers its hinges to be broken), oil cans, a piece of lead pipe, various lengths of iron rods, broom handles, stale putty, old keys, a couple of invalided padlocks, and—well, you know the type of things that every self-respecting man likes to gather around him, and keep handy, in case he might need them at any moment.

Unfortunately one of the many blighting influences of town-life, for ever hindering the full flowering of one’s better nature, is the lack of the necessary space to stock such useful items. But in the country one is not so hampered, and one’s private marine store grows apace, and differs only according to the temperament of the collector. Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that country air develops in man and woman alike that tendency to hoard, which is so noticeable in early childhood, when the small girl collects buttons and clippings from her mother’s sewing-room, and the small boy bulges the blouse of his sailor suit with string and “conquers” and coloured chalks, and old penknives and young frogs.

In town a woman’s only outlet, as a rule, is the bargain counter or annual sale or remnant day. These dissipations are denied us in the country, but we make up for it in many other directions. My own particular weakness is jam-jars, and the way I pounce on any round pot, be it glass or earthenware, that looks as though it might be made to hold jelly or jam, is quite a study in efficiency. And, like all expert collectors, my collection has sub-divisions, or perhaps you would call them ramifications; cups that have lost their handles, jugs ditto, glasses that once held a rolled tongue, or fish paste, are all included; and friends, as they bring round a portmanteau full of empty jars at Christmas or on my birthday, say, “It is so nice in your case that one knows what you actually want; so much better to give anyone what they really like, and will use, rather than some useless bit of jewellery.” And I quite agree.

There was one moment when I feared my jars would have to go in the general rending asunder of domestic life caused by the War, even though I had determined to stick to them as long as I could. But when that “one clear call” came for jam-pots, naturally I couldn’t be a traitor to my country, and I decided the jars at least must go, even though I might perhaps retain the handleless cups and jugs. So I told Abigail to let me know when the grocer called.

I interviewed the young lady wearing high white kid boots and an amethyst pendant on her bare chest, who brought my next large consignment of groceries, that had to be bought in order to secure a little sugar. But when she heard that there were jam-jars to go back, she looked at me coldly from the doorstep, and hurriedly pushing her basket further up her arm (lest I should attempt to force them into it, I presume), the Abyssinian gold bracelets clanking the while, haughtily informed me that her motor was for delivery only, not for the cartage of empties, and suggested that I should write the manager and see if he would consent to receive them.