Part 6

“Poor little thing, she has never had a soul take any interest in how she looks,” Ursula remarked to me. “And even though we’re not allowed to cast our bread upon the waters, nowadays, they haven’t said anything officially about ribbons.” And so we searched our drawers for suitable finery that might bring a little colour into Eileen’s hitherto drab outlook. Virginia followed suit, remarking that she liked to scatter little seeds of kindness by the wayside, since you never know what may result.

True! She didn’t!

Meanwhile, Eileen gloated over the odds and ends, fixing weird and crazy-looking bows to her black sailor hat, draping her shoulders with bits of lace to see if they would make a collar, and standing in front of the kitchen glass trying the effect of pinks and purples under her chin.

For a time, the questions ceased.

VIII

A Cold Snap

FOR a couple of days the sun was radiant, and the air actually warm. We agreed with each other that Italy and the South of France weren’t in it.

We started gardening with all the zest of backwoods-women, who know that the only vegetables they can hope for are those they themselves grow. Unlike the majority of Londoners, the War had not added much to our knowledge in this direction. I had not owned a house in the country many months before I learnt the value of first-hand home production. Hence, when the allotment fever set in, we were quite able to keep pace with the rest of the world despite our failing intellects. The only thing that differentiated us from the remainder of our fellow-citizens in the Metropolis, was the fact that we appeared to be the only ones who did not feel themselves competent to bestow unlimited information and advice, in season and out of season, to all and sundry, on every imaginable and unimaginable point connected with the raising of food crops.

One of the many reasons for the charm that envelops our life at the hillside cottage lies in the fact that it brings us much closer to the fundamental principle of keeping alive than is ever possible in town with its over-civilization. Of course, it isn’t desirable that our mental and spiritual interests should centre in the question of what we shall eat and what we shall drink, and wherewithal shall we keep warm and comfortable, but I think a woman suffers a distinct loss when she eliminates these matters entirely from her horizon.

I know, from personal experience, that there comes a period in our lives when we women feel that there are much higher enterprises beckoning us, that we (individually, not collectively) are called to do some work in the world that is far greater than seeing to meals, and keeping the household machinery moving unobtrusively and with regularity; but it is fortunate that there eventually returns to us (if we are properly balanced) a realization that some of our very best work can be put into the making of a home, and that far from it being narrow and sordid and selfish to devote a large part of ourselves to household administration, it is in reality one of the widest spheres that a woman can choose, and one that will give her the biggest scope for bringing happiness and strength and health to others—and, after all, isn’t that the avowed aim of the most advanced of modern feminists?

Still, I admit that our cramped surroundings and jaded, strained existence in cities do not always make a round of domestic duties seem alluring to the woman who has to cram her belongings and her aspirations into a small modern flat, or who has to do her cooking in one of the unhealthy, sunless basements that prevail in the older houses in towns. A woman needs fresh air, sunshine and a garden if the best is to be brought out of her. Oh, yes, I know some few women have done great things without one or another of these items—but probably they would have done still more if they had had the opportunity to come to their full development under more favourable circumstances.

I’m not surprised that women, whose existence is limited by the narrow environment of towns, so continually beat the air with a longing to do something more than seems possible in the flat or dull suburban villa. Civilization has taken out of their hands so many of the useful occupations that formerly kept women busy—and worthily busy too; and it is not to be wondered at that they cry out for something to do, and invent Causes on which to expend their zeal and energy. The preparation of food, the laundry work, and indeed most household duties are now done for us in cities on the “penny-in-the-slot” principle (only we have to put a shilling in the slot, as a rule, for the pennyworth of result that we receive); and it is small wonder that so few of us can work up any interest in the process.

But how are matters to be altered? you ask me. I don’t know! Pray don’t think I’m proposing to find solutions for grave problems in these stories! I’m only giving you a record of facts, just simple everyday little happenings “of no value to anyone save the owner.” And we’ll leave it at that, if you don’t mind, and return to the garden.

* * * * *

Before the War labour was not so scarce, and there was no need for us to plant the vegetables ourselves, unless we desired to do so. Now, however, one’s own personal work was a valuable asset, and we put our backs into it—at least Ursula and I did; Virginia was engaged most of the time in describing the sort of tools she would make, if she were in that line of business, to obviate the grave spinal trouble she was certain she was developing.

I don’t mean to imply that Virginia isn’t a good gardener; she can be an excellent one when she likes, for she knows what gardening really stands for in the way of hard work. Whereas some of my would-be assistant gardeners seem to think the chief requisites are a comfortable hammock and a book; or, at most, a “picture” muslin frock and a pretty basket and a pair of baby scissors. Such girls remind me of many who write and inquire if I have a vacancy for a sub-editor in my office, the chief qualification stated in their letters being that they “do so love to browse among books.”

Virginia isn’t like that; she puts on a business-like garb, and knows—and annexes—a good tool when she sees it. But it is her bright ideas that are the hindrance to progress. She wasted ten minutes that morning explaining to me that she was sure, if I would only have turnips planted in the mint bed, it would be another war economy, as the mint flavour might permeate the turnips, and thus save double expense with lamb.

And then another ten minutes went in enlarging on the grasping nature of the makers of gardening gloves in not supplying four pairs of extra thumbs with each pair, since any intelligent gardener could wear out eight thumbs with one pair in the simplest day’s gardening. She offered to let me use the idea free of charge in my magazine, if I would undertake to keep her supplied with gardening gloves for the rest of her natural life; but she stipulated that they must be proper leather ones, not the four-and-sixpenny war variety she was then wearing, composed of unbleached calico, with merely a chamois postage-stamp stuck on the front of each finger and thumb.

In the intervals of conversation she aided us with our digging, yet, in spite of the National Call to spend as much on seed potatoes as would keep the family in vegetables for a couple of years, we continually found ourselves drifting away from the ground we were trenching, for the violets were already out, also some early primroses, and little white stars were showing on the wild strawberry trails in sheltered corners under walls that faced south.

And the garden is full of sheltered nooks, despite its being so high up. As the ground slopes towards the south, every wall that props up the garden—and there are so many, like giant steps down the steep hillside—gives protection from the cold winds to the little growing things that nestle in every crevice and on the ground below. Everywhere the pennywort was sending out clear green disks from the mysterious depths of crannies in the wall. Crocuses were showing orange buds in the garden beds. One precocious pansy held up a white flower, streaked and splashed with purple.

“Spring has really come,” we all chorused. And oh, how good it seemed to be done with the winter; such a winter too! Surely the longest and most awful winter humanity has ever known!

With spring and summer immediately before us, as it seemed, we decided to leave the trenching just for that day, and explore the lanes and woods. The lichens and mosses were at the height of their beauty—a beauty that would fade once the sun got any power. The wall-stones were splashed with browns and greys, rust-colour and orange, black and olive, and one particular lichen that is our especial joy tints the stone a milky pea-green shade that is unlike any other colour I can recall.

Last year’s bramble leaves were purple and scarlet and crimson and yellow. Where the small ivy creeping up the walls had been touched by the frost, it had turned a vivid yellow mottled with warm brown and crimson. And it is surprising, once you take note of it, how much crimson is used by Nature where you would expect to find only green; and not merely a dull red, it is a brilliant, vivid carmine that is dropped about in quiet, unsuspected places, lighting up dark patches, emphasizing sombre details that one might otherwise overlook.

We were turning over a handful of brown leaves under an oak tree in the wood; there we found the streak of crimson showing inside an acorn that had just burst to let out a young shoot that was seeking about for roothold below and light up above. Not only one, but hundreds of similar brilliant touches were scattered about where the fertile acorns lay among the moss and last year’s fern.

In one secluded spot, where the cold had not been severe enough to wither last year’s foliage on the undergrowth, long sprays of ground ivy, climbing over a fallen branch, had turned to deep wine colour, stems and all, and lay, as Eileen said, “beautiful enough for one of them lovely wreaths of leaves they put round best hats.” Certainly it looked more artificial than natural, if one didn’t happen to know that ground ivy often takes on this tint in its declining days.

Thanks to Tennyson, we all know that rosy plumelets tuft the larch; but it doesn’t matter how many times you see them, they are always worth looking at—and marvelling at—again.

And there seems no limit to the crimson splashes. Is there anything anywhere that can compare with the Herb Robert, its leaves far more radiant than its blossoms; or the leaves of the evening primrose when they start to fade at the bottom of the stem; or the waning foliage of the sorrel?

To make a list of the crimson touches (as distinct from the reddish-brown) that one finds on stems and foliage any day in the country, would be a revelation to most of us.

* * * * *

Though the sun had been so bright when we started, it doesn’t do to trust too much in an English spring, and we presently noticed a very decided change; the temperature dropped with great rapidity, as clouds came up and hid the sun, and the hills that towered about us suddenly loomed gloomy and forbidding. The wind veered round from south-west to north-east; and by evening it was piercingly, bitterly cold.

Taking a last look round with the lantern before we locked up for the night, not a sound could be heard; everything was absolutely still, with that unearthly silence of a land suddenly gripped by overpowering cold. I glanced at the thermometer hanging on the outside wall; it already registered three degrees below freezing; it would probably be ten before morning.

We bolted the door and shut out the cold, hoping no one was wandering lost on the hills that night (not that anyone ever is, but it is pleasant to have kind charitable thoughts like that, on a bleak night, as you put yet another log on the fire).

* * * * *

Next morning, as it was colder and more perishing than ever, I decided to cope with several days’ arrears of office work, piling itself up in all directions. Virginia said it was just as well the weather necessitated our remaining indoors, as she could now get on with _her_ work. Of course we asked: What work?

She informed us that she was engaged upon an anthology, “Shakespeare and the Great War.” She felt that “Shakespeare and Everything Else” had been done pretty thoroughly—by less competent people than herself, it is true; but, all the same, the poet had been dealt with exhaustively from every point of view but that of the War. Also, the War had been dealt with, _in extenso_, from every point of view but Shakespeare’s. Hence, her present literary effort.

And would I kindly give her any quotations I could think of, that had any bearing on this world-crisis.

All my brain was equal to was—

“Tell me, where is fancy bred?”

which undoubtedly indicated that the War Loaf was known to pall on the public taste even in Shakespeare’s time.

She said she had expected me to say that, it was so obvious. Nevertheless, I noticed she hurriedly jotted it down.

We asked her to read her MS. so far as she had gone; it seemed a pity for us to overlap.

“I’ve made a fair start,” she explained, “but the trouble is they all turn out so awkwardly. For instance, the first quotation I have down is—

‘She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household’

—anyone can see Daylight Saving there——”

Naturally, I opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me short, testily:

“Of course I know as well as you that it isn’t Shakespeare—at least I wasn’t reared a heathen!—but that’s just the tiresome part of it. Every quotation I think of isn’t Shakespeare at all. Here’s another that would do beautifully (and take up a nice bit of space on the page too),

‘The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags’ sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between.’

“Even a child could tell you they were the searchlights trying to spot a Zepp.—only it isn’t Shakespeare! It’s very worrying. Yet I know if only I could get the book done, there would be a fortune in it. W. S. always sells, and he’s so respectable too!”

I said I was sorry my office duties had prior claim on my time, and I urged Ursula to do her sisterly part. But she said she couldn’t be bothered just then; her mind was more than fully occupied in trying to lay the blame for everything on the right person.

So I took Virginia’s MS. and read it down.

“How full of briars is this working-day world.”

This proves that barbed wire entanglements were known in the seventeenth century.

“How far that little candle throws his beams!”

This indicates clearly that Shakespeare was fined for failing to comply with the Lighting Restrictions.

That he was compelled to pay War Profits out of the “royalties” on his plays is evidenced by these poignant words in _Macbeth_:—

“Nought’s had, all’s spent,”

and doubtless there was a subtle reference to War taxation in

“Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety.”

The unfailing hold of Shakespeare on humanity is the fact that he touched upon all phases of life. (This sentence was Virginia’s own literary contribution to the “Anthology.”) For example (she went on), even a sugar shortage was known in his day. To what else could he have been referring when he wrote

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,”

and can anyone doubt that

“Double, double, toil and trouble, Fire burn and cauldron bubble,”

points to meatless days?

Here we were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Miss Primkins, an elderly lady who lives by herself (or at least with Rehoboam, her cat) in a pretty little cottage further down the hill. Miss Primkins has been hard hit by the War, but no matter how she has to skimp and save in other ways, she never relaxes her work for the wounded.

And it was about her contribution to Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild that she came up to consult me. Not that we started there straight away—of course not. We talked about the shortage of sugar, and the high cost of boots, and the scarcity of chicken food, and the price of meat, and the difficulty of knowing how to feed Rehoboam adequately and yet in strict accordance with official regulations, and the colour of the bread, and “what are we coming to,” and other topical matters like that. Then, when I had pressed Miss Primkins several times to stay to our midday meal, and she had as many times assured me that she must not stay another minute, grateful though she was for my kind invitation, as she had put on the potatoes to boil before she came out, she produced (in an undertone) a paper parcel from her bag, and with much hesitation explained that she wanted advice on a private matter.

I was all attention.

Undoing the paper, she displayed what looked like a round bolster case made of pink and blue striped flannelette. As she held it up for inspection, it “flared” at the top (to use a dressmaker’s term) with merely a small round opening at the bottom.

I glanced it over as intelligently as I knew how, and then inquired what it was.

“It’s a pyjama for a soldier,” she murmured modestly, in a very low voice. “I’ve cut it exactly by the paper pattern, yet Miss Judson, who saw it yesterday, says she doesn’t believe it’s right. We’ve neither of us ever made one before, so I thought I would run up to you with it; you would be _sure_ to know.”

“Er—h’m—ah—yes,” I said, as light dawned. “It’s all right so far as it goes; but where’s the other leg?”

“The other leg?” she echoed, “there was only one in the pattern.”

“Of course; but you should have cut it out in double material; the garment requires two legs, you know.”

“Does it!” she exclaimed in genuine surprise. “Why, I thought it must be intended for a soldier who had had his other leg amputated!”

* * * * *

Before Virginia put away her “Anthology,” preparatory to having lunch, she added another quotation to her list—

“For never anything can be amiss When simpleness and duty tender it,”

and against this she scribbled, “one-legged pyjamas”—doubtless for elucidation and amplification at a later date. I hope I haven’t forestalled her.

IX

Snowdrifts

IT was later in the day, and the zest for Shakespeare had waned. Virginia had moved from beside the fire and was sitting nearer the window, in order to get what light there was from the sun just disappearing behind the opposite hills. She was very busy with some crochet edging she had lately started. It was the first time within the memory of living woman that Virginia had been seen with a crochet-hook in her hand—fancy-work had never been her strong point—hence the inordinate pride with which she patted out the short fragment on any available surface at frequent intervals, surveying it from different points of view with her head cricked at various angles, and calling upon all and sundry to admire.

After moving nearer the window she again patted out the seven small scallops on her knee, as usual, and then became meditative. No one paid much attention to her, however. I was sitting on the settle, with a heaped-up table before me, absorbed in MSS., which I was reading, and then sorting into various piles—for printer, for reserve, for return—and arranging these on the seat beside me; important work, which accounted for my preoccupation.

Ursula was busily engaged in the laudable endeavour to construct a pair of child’s knickers out of two pairs of stocking legs. Someone had told her this could be done. It had appealed to her as a serviceable way to use up done-with stockings (and she assured me the problem of what to do with these “done-withs” had been a long-standing mental burden), while at the same time one might be conferring a benefit upon the poor. The fact that the modern “poor” would have scorned anything so economical did not worry her.

At last Virginia broke the silence. “It’s really quite remarkable! I don’t know that I’ve met with a more extraordinary crochet pattern than this,” she said thoughtfully.

“Where did you get it from?” I asked rather absently, as I went on with my work.

“From one of the magazines you are supposed to edit,” she said blandly.

“What is there extraordinary about it?” I inquired, now thoroughly roused up to give the matter all my attention, while Ursula laid down the dislocated stocking leg she had been wrestling with.

“Well, it’s like this. There is the pattern, you see,” pointing to a picture I had seen before, “and there are the directions. When you’ve worked them through once, that makes one scallop. Do you see?”

We said we saw it quite plainly.

“Then, you notice it says at the very end, ‘go back and repeat from the first row’? Now this is the extraordinary part of the affair; every time I go back and repeat from the first row it makes an entirely different scallop. The last time but one, you see, the scallop came on the opposite side of the sewing-on edge; I thought _that_ was interesting enough! But now I find this last scallop has _turned a corner_. Funny, isn’t it?”

For the first time we gave Virginia’s bit of edging serious attention. What she had done with those directions it was impossible to say, but the result was certainly peculiar.

“That will be a valuable piece of lace by the time it’s finished,” I said. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I’m making it as a Christmas present for you,” she replied sweetly. “I think it may help to promote conversation if you display it at your social functions. I know you’re going to say how unselfish it is of me. I think, myself, I mellow as I age.”

“Not at all,” I replied politely, and suggested that we should go for a walk, lest such concentrated thinking should be too much for her.

“If you’d been a properly-minded hostess you would have proposed that long ago. I’ve been waiting anxiously for it, only there is Ursula absorbed in that outfit that no masculine infant anywhere would recognise——”

“Oh, I’ve given up the knicker idea long ago,” interrupted Ursula. “I’ve turned them into chest-protectors for the old people in the infirmary. And now, as a war economy, I’m going to enlarge your vests (I neither ask for, nor expect, gratitude!). The laundry having shrunk them to waistbands, I shall add an upper and a lower storey.”

“—and _you_ sit hour after hour reading MSS. What are they all about? What’s that one in your hand, for instance?”

“This one,” holding up some sheets of violently-written paper that almost burst through the envelope, “is an anonymous letter from some irate lady who objects to something or someone appearing in our pages. I haven’t time to read it, but if you care to wade through it——”

“Anonymous letters are so futile.”

“Anything but,” I told her. “It is always a pleasant thing, at the end of the day, to feel that you have, even in a slight way, contributed to anyone’s happiness. And I’m sure the lady who dug her pen into that anonymous letter was very happy when she posted it. Glad am I, therefore, to be the unworthy instrument permitted to promote her joy!”

Virginia merely snorted. “What’s the next MS. about?”

“This is a very long poem on the War, and the writer explains that she has made all the lines run straight on in order to save paper, but doubtless I can find out where it rhymes. It begins ‘Hail, proud mother of nations who dwell in these sea-girt islands for centuries past and centuries yet to be——’”

Virginia said she’d skip the rest, please, and wasn’t there a little light fiction anywhere in the chaos before me?