Part 7

As I disposed of it at leisure—for it was scalding, and had, besides, in an Epicurean way, to be husbanded as a relish to my portion of simple loaf—I watched the rotund but brisk dame prepare another instalment of the superior, or penny, brew against the next influx of customers. The first _clientèle_ ‹it appeared in course of friendly if fitful conversation› came about six o’clock—journeymen without a _ménagère_ at home, on their way to their day’s task; or night-workers in the Halles, on their way to morning sleep. The next one would begin soon—clerks, workgirls, and small employés who have to be at their post about eight. Then the demand for the penny bowl would rise afresh about noon.

To one who was even then tasting the full value of the finished product the method of production had the interest of actuality, and was otherwise enlightening. And, _pardi!_ it is worth recording, as an instance of what could be done with raw material to the value of twelve sous—less than sixpence—to provide twenty people with a savoury dishful of broth and leave a distinct turnover of profit.

These—as far as I could judge—were about a score of medium-sized onions of the more pungent kind ‹twopence, four sous or four cents›; half a pound or thereabouts of butter, salt butter it is true, but your Parisian insists wherever he can upon _cuisine au beurre_ ‹six sous›; a ladle-full of flour ‹say one farthing, half a cent›; something like two sous’ worth of stale bread, baker’s shop remnants. Leaving the cost of firing out of consideration—and in thrifty ingenious French hands it would be small—the return would be like thirty per cent. on the outlay.

As for the technique of the brewing, it was simple but elegant. The sliced onions, fried in the butter at the bottom of the iron pot to a pleasing sunset colour under the watchful eye of the matron, were at the right moment powdered with the allowance of flour and stirred until the suitable appetizing brown was achieved—“The flour is just to thicken the _bouillon_, you understand, my lad,” the benevolent operator was pleased to comment, noticing inquisitiveness.—Then, at the precise moment of alchemic projection, the sliced shreds of bread were precipitated in the caldron, and gently turned round with a wooden spoon to let them take unto themselves all the unction of the butter, all the essence of the succulent bulbs. And presently the whole thing was drowned under a cataract of scalding hot water ‹some two gallons›. After a bubble or two of boiling the combination was completed and the savoury caldron was set aside upon a nest of smouldering ashes, ready against the next breakfast seeker.

* * * * *

And the _escholier_, having absorbed the last crumb and the last spoonful, hastened, greatly refreshed, by every conceivable short cut to his heights of Montmartre—_Mons Martyrum_, by the way, some etymologists insist on dubbing, in opposition to the _Mons Martis_ theory, in regard that it was the site of the martyrdom of St. Denis, the French “Champion of Christendom.”

[Sidenote: VIRGIL ON “DOGGIES”]

He was a trifle late—no doubt as a result of short cuts—and Mr. Gilchrist proportionately stern, just at first. But the dear enthusiastic teacher gradually mellowed under the influence of that morning’s reading—the “Georgics,” most enchanting of all Garden Talk volumes. The old scholar’s geniality had completely returned by the time we reached that “doggy” passage of the Third Book beginning with “_Nec tibi cura canum fuerit postrema_.”

I can still see him smiling confidently at me over the line, “Let not thy dogs be the last of thy cares....” There was something prophetic about it!

* * * * *

Here, two score of years later, as I dream of the past, lies Arabella stretched by the fire, now and again heaving her great sighs of comfort. Bettina, curled at my feet, looks up adoringly at the master and wags her stump of tail whenever she meets his eye. As for Prince Loki, he has commandeered the best deep armchair, where he lies flat on his back, with front paws folded upon his bosom, and hind legs stretched out in abandoned beatific fashion, snoring melodiously.... _Cura canum postrema_, indeed!

XV

The Hyacinths are all out in the Dutch Garden. But alas, the winds of March!—they grew and gathered and became a gale and laid some twenty of our silver-blue soldiers prostrate. Their fat juicy stalks snap all too easily. In the pots on the terrace wall, half have been swept away. However, thanks to our close planting, only the eye of the initiate could perceive the gaps. Right under the study windows there are still twin lakes of exquisite pale sapphire, breathing fragrance.

In the bank below the Dutch Garden, the Narcissus, which have been set to the tune of two thousand, are swaying long lemon-coloured buds out of a field of green spikes. There are, in that tongue of land, two Buddleia trees which have grown to unusual height and girth and are a mass of orange balls in due season. And there is a band of Iris to which we are perpetually adding, but which, mysteriously, never seems to increase. There is also a shrubby bit where you will behold a wild rose tree; two nondescript flowering evergreens; a darling little Scotch Briar, one mass of yellow Pompons, entrancing by their wild scent; those disappointing bushes known as Altheas, so eulogized by garden chroniclers; and a Rheum.

We planted the Rheum last year. This March it astonishes us by the leaf buds it has produced. They are like stormy, sinister, crimson blossoms with gaping yellow mouths, and look poisonous and tropical: altogether out of place in a Surrey moorland—especially with the innocence of the grey Lavender plant that grows beside them. What a thrilling thing a garden is and how full of surprises!—do Rheums always do this, we wonder?

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CARPETS OF BLUE]

All the Compton pots along the terrace are filled with blue Hyacinths and Forget-me-nots; all the beds about the house are stuffed with Tulips and again Forget-me-nots. Now, some people ‹we read in a garden-book the other day› eschew this plant, _Myosotis silvestris_, because “it spreads so rapidly that it may almost be regarded as a weed.” We are the kind of people who like our flowers to spread like weeds; especially when, as in the case of this attractive sinner, every bed becomes a delicate cloud of blue from which on long stems the Darwins rear their cups of wonderful colour.

A little later on, we mean to make the same use of Nemophila, which last year, in spite of ceaseless rain, kept bravely blue in the patch where it had been sown until quite the end of autumn.

Every one tells us that Madonna Lilies will not succeed in our soil. We are making another effort with giant bulbs, which, so far, promise splendidly.

Fate, in its unexpected way, has provided us with a double row of red Duc van Thol Tulips on each side of the two little rose beds that run down the grass slope under the bench yclept “_Schöne Aussicht_.” That particular slope, by the way, in the pristine days of jungle, was the worst bit of wilderness. Heather, Gorse, Bramble, Bracken and underwood made it simply impenetrable. Now, cleared and turfed, it leads the eye gently on to the Pine Tree Avenue; to the green of the fields beyond; to the valley and the distant hills. In a triangular bed at the top a clump of Lilac has been planted and carpeted beneath with “Bachelor’s Buttons.” Already it is very gay, although the Lilacs are only in bud. We believe these double Daisies go by another title in gardening circles, but this is a name associated with youthful memories. They ought to flourish the whole year round, since bachelors will always be in season. We shall see.

* * * * *

There is nothing that gives one a more intimate sense of the joy of spring than the renewed song of the birds. It is good to wake at early dawn and hear the soft sleepy calls and cries with which they first rouse each other, then the exquisite voice of thrush or blackbird, singing as it were under its breath the morning hymn which is one of the most touching things in Nature.

Just now a small bird was spinning out a monody as delicate and continuous and attenuated as a spider’s gossamer—some feathered mother, we fancy, cradling her eggs. We never heard any song quite like it before. Adam shakes his head and says we are bringing the birds about the house with our winter largesses; but one might as well be told that if you want to keep your house tidy you should banish the children!

Says Victor Hugo:

“_Préservez moi, Seigneur, préservez ceux que j’aime, Frères, parents, amis, et mes ennemis mêmes, Dans le mal triomphants, De jamais voir, Seigneur, la ruche sans abeilles La printemps sans oiseau, l’été sans fleurs vermeilles ... La maison sans enfants!_”

Substitute “_jardin_” for “_printemps_” and you have our views. We have no children in this house, worse luck ... except the fur ones.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: CONCERNING CALIBAN]

Caliban, the garden man, has again broken his “pledge,” a little quicker than usual this time, and we fear we must be firm and keep to our last ultimatum—that unless he takes it afresh he will have to go. Caliban always reminds us of a prehistoric man. Whenever one meets him he looks exactly as if he had just reared himself upright from running on all fours, and would drop down again immediately as soon as we are out of sight. He has an excellent hard-working wife, and works very well himself—until the last pledge has quite worn away. We are sorry for Mrs. Caliban, the mother of three prehistoric babies: for we hear that Caliban, in the philosophic language of the district, “knocks her about a bit,” when he has had what he calls “his glass of beer.”—“You couldn’t wish for a nicer husband, when he’s sober,” she vows, poor woman, and is pathetically hopeful every time the oath of abstinence is administered! It is dreadful how many bad husbands there are in this small district. In another family the father is so well known that the mere mention of his name is enough to stiffen the employer of labour.

“_Dere Miss, my husband as been very unlucky and strained hisself again and ad to give up his work._”

Thus the poor wife starts the usual appeal when the inevitable has occurred and there is no more bread in the house. We are quite accustomed to these missives, which indeed might be stereotyped with space left for the date. Although the brother of a local policeman, this black sheep is altogether so hopeless, that, in order to keep his poor little progeny from growing sable in their turn, we have placed a lamb out here and there in divers charitable folds. Alfie, the last rescued, is a more original letter-writer than his mother. This was the document that he sent her from that happy Home for Little Boys where we trust he will grow up with an unimpeachable fleece.

“_Dere Mother,—I hope this finds you well. I hope James and Vilet and Alice are well and nice and good. This is a very nice place. I hope you will tell me when you are going to call that I may be in. God bless you._

_“Yours trewly_,

“_ALFRED_.”

In yet another family, the head of which was in the habit of spending ten or twelve shillings a week regularly on cigarettes and tipple, until Nemesis overtook him in the shape of consumption, the pretty, hard-working, fiery-haired Irish wife declares without a thought of unkindness, that if she could only get him “out of the way for good” she could “do all right” for herself and her three small children.

[Sidenote: THE VILLAGE CURSE]

If ever woman has a voice in social reform, though with a few glaring exceptions legal interference with the liberty of the subject is abhorrent to Loki’s Grandmother, and she has little wish herself for suffrage or any other rage, she vows that she will vote and vote and vote for any measure that may tend to eliminate the Public House from the countryside—curse of the small home that it is! In every one of these cases there would be comfort and happiness in the family were it not for the perpetual temptation to the breadwinner.

The blacker the sheep, sad to say, the larger as a rule the family of doubtfully hued lambs. Mrs. Mutton—the letter-writer—is “not so well just now.” She is pathetically anxious that the new babe may be born alive, having lost the last one. Loki’s Ma-Ma went to see her the other day, and found her with a knowledgeable neighbour who has promised to “see her through,” and in a state of profound gloom, not unmixed, however, with a faint, pleasurable importance.

“Oh, Miss, we have just heard of such a sad thing in the village. The nurse, she’s just been up to tell me—a pore young woman, Miss, gone with her first!”

“Oh, dear!”—Loki’s Mother is duly impressed, but anxious to distract Mrs. Mutton’s mind—“That is very sad. I hope you’re feeling pretty well to-day, Mrs. Mutton?”

“No, Miss, I’m very poorly these days. Mrs. Tosher here says she’s never seen any one like me. ‘What can it be,’ she says, ‘that makes you like this?’ Don’t you, Mrs. Tosher?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“I fell agin the water-butt this morning,” goes on Mrs. Mutton, in the melancholy drone that is habitual to her. “A kind of weakness it was come over me. I hit my eye—something awful, Miss, as you can see!”

The signorina had been tactfully averting her gaze from that black orb; she now blesses the superior tact which enables her to contemplate it calmly.

Mrs. Tosher—a large, jovial, untidy female with a shrunken “blue cotton” inadequately fastened by two safety pins across her capacious bosom—gives a heavy but non-committal groan. Mr. Mutton’s name is not mentioned. The water-butt explanation is accepted without demur.

“Of course, she’s ’ad a shock to-day, Miss, you see,” says the village matron, and brings the conversation back to the original topic, which is one of great attraction.

“Yes, Miss, it ’aving been just as it might be me, Miss.” Mrs. Mutton sighs, and looks in a detached, if one-sided manner, out of the grimy window. The visitor perceives there is nothing for it: she must hear the details. Wisely she resigns herself.

“What happened?”

“Well, it was all along of two suet dumplings and some chops, Miss, which wasn’t as they ought to have been, having been kept in the ’ouse too long, you see. Wasn’t that it, Mrs. Tosher, my dear?”

“Yes, my dear, and some ’ard bits of parsnip.”

“But it was mostly the chops, Miss, they’d been kept, you see. The doctors, they couldn’t do nothing for her.” Mrs. Mutton sighs and lifts the fringe of her shawl to the damaged eye. Tragic as the tale is, Loki’s Mother visibly brightens:

“But then the poor thing was poisoned,” she cries cheerfully.

“Yes, Miss, potomaine poison along of her condition, being the same as mine, Miss.”

“But, Mrs. Mutton, anyone—”

“No, Miss.” Mrs. Tosher intervenes: she cannot allow this foolish attempt at consolation to proceed. “The doctor said it was along of her condition.”

“Yes, Miss, it’s the condition as done it—all along of a bit of chop—kept like—and ’ard parsnips.”

XVI

A friend of ours once told us that a doubtful sister-in-law had written describing the weather as “boysterious.” The word pleases us. It looks so much more graphic, spelt thus, than in the ordinary way. Well, we are having a “boysterious” time with shifting winds, this end of March. All the poor Pheasant-eye’s leaves are bruised and drooping, and the little field of Narcissus under the Buddleia trees is bent and tangled. To-day Adam has rolled away six tubs filled with last year’s Hyacinths and put them in the border before the rough wall in the front courtyard, against which we have last autumn planted Wichuriana Roses in divers shades of yellow and tawny, chiefly “Jersey Beauties.” A row of Polyanthuses, “Munstead Strain,” are blooming in front. The Hyacinths are blue. The effect ought to be pretty in a week or so. When the Hyacinths are over we shall go back to the old pink climbing Geraniums for the tubs, and they will, please Heaven, flourish from June onwards between our yellow roses. We think we will plant pink Geraniums, but we are not quite sure, for last year we had red “Jacobys” in those tubs, and very well they looked. We should not at all object to them in contrast to the roses.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: HONEYSUCKLE AND BITTER APPLE]

Last night Loki’s Grandmother began to plan a new garden extravagance. She finds it very soothing when sleep abandons her pillow. We have not half enough Honeysuckle—that’s a fact. She thinks she will order a dozen pots. She has also a desire to get a dozen Clematis, chiefly Jackmanni, in the mauve and purple sorts, and plant them in their pots—the only way, she believes, in which even the commonest sorts will grow in this ungrateful soil. Honeysuckle, we know, thrives here. One summer we took a house on a hill near this, a little house buried in a wood, and the whole place was exquisite with the scent of Honeysuckle. It was grown all about the house, and over archways in the garden. Horrid archways made of wire they were: but it didn’t matter, the Honeysuckle was the thing. We wanted all we could get of it, for there were other odours, not at all so nice, that lurked about. The owner of the house, thrifty soul ‹at least we suppose it goes with a thrifty soul›, waged war against moths with _naphthalene_ and Bitter Apple, which are _anathema maranatha_ to us. We have had our nights poisoned in a house in Scotland with the reek of Bitter Apple in the blankets. We don’t know what people’s noses are made of that they can voluntarily surround themselves with such a pestilential atmosphere. The owner of the awful blankets also keeps her furs with the same evil-smelling precaution; and we can trace her entrance into the most crowded winter tea-party in London if she has as much as passed up the stairs.

Besides Bitter Apple inside the honeysuckle-covered house, there was a pig outside—not on the premises hired by us, but in the adjoining place, where there was a school for little boys. When the wind blew from the direction of that school, the garden was odious, Honeysuckle and all. The first day we hoped it might be accidental. Then Saturday came, and we suppose the odd man did a turn at the sty, for there was peace till the next Tuesday, when the wind blew from the south again. Then Loki’s Grandmother marched into the room of Loki’s Grandfather ‹there was no Loki then, so he wasn’t a grandfather, but that is immaterial› and dictated a letter to the schoolmaster. Loki’s Future Grandfather protested. It is the kind of thing he hates doing. She drove him into the garden to smell. He tried to say he couldn’t smell it. Then she changed her tactics and hinted at insalubrity—a case of diphtheria in the village, and the danger to Loki’s Future Mother. That had him. He went in and sat down like a lamb. She dictated, as has been said. If anyone wants to know the kind of letter in which to remonstrate upon a neighbouring schoolmaster’s pigsty, he cannot do better than copy this model:

“_Dear Sir,—I must apologize for troubling you but I feel sure that you are unaware of the offensive condition of the pigsty which adjoins our garden—_”

“Offensive?” said Loki’s Grandpa doubtfully.

“Offensive,” said she firmly. “Offensive, you can’t put anything milder. It’s disgusting, pestilential, a public nuisance.” “_There is so much sickness in the district_—” she dictated on.

“Oh, I don’t think I need put that.” Loki’s Grandfather was getting bored.

“You must,” said she; “that will fetch him more than anything. Isn’t he a schoolmaster? If it gets about that he’s got an insanitary pig—”

Well, the letter was finished with this artful twist. It had the most brilliant and unexpected results. Not only was the schoolmaster profoundly grateful for having his attention drawn to the matter—and the pigsty really was better ever after—but he expressed his gratitude in the most effusive terms. And he and his whole family called, and we went to tea in a thunderstorm at the school-house, which apparently had been built the day before yesterday, for the plaster was so wet the whole place steamed, and Loki’s Grandmother caught the cold of her life.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: RUMOURS OF THE PIG-FARM]

It is a very singular thing that in Ireland, the Padrona’s native land, supposed, and with reason, to be very inferior in the matter of cleanliness, the pig should be so much better cared for. Never have we found the sweet airs of that beloved country impregnated with “_bouquet de pigsty_” as they are in every farm here. Of course most of the pigs in Ireland—nice, clean, intelligent, active creatures—roam cheerfully about the roads all day, and share the family domicile by night. But even on properties which own a separate habitation for the “gintleman that pays the rint” it is swept and garnished for him in a manner seldom seen over here.

In the particular region of Dorsetshire where Loki’s Great Aunt dwells there is quite a pretty house and grounds nearly always tenantless by reason of the pig-farm at the back. The farmer who kept the farm was amazed and indignant when one of the passenger tenants remonstrated with him and threatened him with the Sanitary Inspector. What if his pigs were noticeable? “Pigs ain’t pizen,” he said. I dare say, to him, by reason of associations with his bank account, they were sweeter than violets.

Personally we should never keep pigs for choice, no matter how interested we might be in farming. However we might insist on the spotless condition of their dwelling-place, however affectionately we might invite them to the frequent bath and rejoice at the clean pink of their skins, the horror of the moment of inevitable parting would always be before us.

A near relation of ours was the centre of a certain horrid little anecdote, likewise connected with pigs, that is nevertheless humorous enough. It happened in Dorset, in a picturesque manor-house, the walled gardens of which abut on a comely, prosperous farm. One April morning the air was rent with the agonizing clamours of protesting pigs; and she, whose tender heart suffered with the pain of every animal, was rent too with compassion.

“Oh, what,” she cried to her hostess, who was also her daughter, “what can Mr. Boyt be doing to the poor, poor pigs? Oh! Polly, I’m afraid he’s killing them!”

Polly was not at all sure in her own mind that this was not the case, but she was stout in asseverations to the contrary.

“Oh, dear no, darling; nobody ever kills pigs this time of year. They’re just cleaning out the sties, that’s all. You know what pigs are, darling.”

In spite of a fresh and most dismal explosion, her mendacity rose equal to the occasion; and her final statement, that she knew for a fact that pigs weren’t half fattened yet, produced the intended effect, and the dear visitor was convinced.

[Sidenote: TIRING WORK]