CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH THE HEROINE PRESENTS HER LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

Philomène’s first day at the Cushats happened to be a Sunday, and after breakfast on the lawn Isolde took her goddaughter to the weekly children’s service. These services were short and simple, and the vicar of Wyndham-on-Ferry was acknowledged by everybody to be at his best when addressing children. He was a tall, spare man, with a somewhat stern expression of face, “and what his servant is about is more than I can tell,” Nurse had once remarked, “for he has the look of a person who lives on nothing but mince and hot water.”

In the side-chapel of the village church hung a copy of an Italian picture, S. Mary Magdalene, black-haired and crimson-robed, and to Philomène the pale sad face, framed in its shadowy tresses, seemed like the face of some sorrowful mermaid. Neither her father nor her godmother had ever insisted upon her attending drearily long services which could have held no meaning for her, and the result was that she was very fond of going to church. She loved the sweet-voiced bells and the vibrating tones of the organ, the rich colouring of the stained-glass and the stately rhythm of the prayers.

“It just makes me feel like a king’s daughter,” she had once confided to Isolde, “and do you know, Godmother, I really think I like it better than the theatre, because there is no tiresome clapping to interrupt in the middle, and disturb one, and make one feel every-dayish again all of a sudden.”

“What would you like to do, little cushat?” asked Isolde, as the two strolled home together across the fields. “I have some letters that I must write, and I am afraid they will take me till lunch-time.”

“I will look at your Granny’s big picture Bible first,” said Philomène, “and then write to Daddy and play with the pussies, and after that I will go and have a look at the dove-cot.”

“There aren’t any doves, you know,” said Isolde, “I don’t particularly want to keep any. There are quite enough in the woods all round.”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter a bit,” said Philomène, “one can always pretend.”

So Godmother settled herself to write on the verandah, and Philomène brought out the Bible. It was a very bulky book, for it contained not only the Old and New Testaments, but the Old and New Testament Apocryphas as well. Judging from the dog’s-eared pages thereabouts, it would appear that Godmother’s Granny had looked oftenest at the picture of Jacob blessing his twelve sons from a four-poster bed, and at another of the Last Judgment, the grouping of which suggested nothing so much as a prize-giving. But Philomène preferred Martha, cumbered with a pepper-pot and a soup-tureen, because she reminded her of Lilian Augusta, and Pharaoh’s daughter with the rosettes on her shoes, and best of all she liked S. Anne by the laurel-bush, complaining to the sparrow in its nest that she had no child. Again and again had Philomène peeped over the edge of that nest to count the eggs, but the mother bird spread wide its brooding wings, and baffled her curiosity.

As soon as Philomène had had a look at her favourite pictures, she put away the book and wrote two whole sheets to her father. After that she began to play with Don Whiskerandos, Isolde’s black Persian, who sat blinking in the sun at his mistress’s feet. Occasionally he roused himself sufficiently to wash his front paws, which were like velvet tassels for softness, but for the rest he was sleepy and undemonstrative. Philomène had christened him Dives, because he fared sumptuously every day and took no notice of his neighbours, and she soon gave up trying to play with him, and went in search of Lazarus, the gingery stable cat. Lazarus was certainly as plain and as under-bred as it is possible for a cat to be, but as Philomène always loved anything which other people did not consider it worth their while to love, his very gingerliness and the bullet shape of his head cried out to her for affection.

By the time Lazarus had had his full share of attention, the bell rang for luncheon on the verandah, and when lunch was over, Isolde gave herself up to her godchild. She swung her untiringly in the swing between the two horse-chestnut trees, she tucked her up in the hammock and read to her, they played battledore and shuttlecock together on the lawn, and at tea-time retreated to the shadow of a giant haystack in a field close by, to eat home-made scones and strawberries and cream.

It was here that the vicar found them. He was no stranger to Philomène, for he often dropped in at the Cushats on a Sunday afternoon, and she was not shy with him, but as soon as he and her godmother began talking politics, she thought it was about time for the dove-cot. As she left the field and came back into the garden, it occurred to her that it might be as well to take with her Sweet William’s letter of introduction. The tall silver savings-box stood on the dressing-table in her room, and inside were the latchkey and the anemone. With the flower in her hand she hurried towards the disused dove-cot, and upon reaching it was very much surprised by a slight flutter of wings from inside it. She put her hand into one of the pigeon-holes, and something brushed past it and flew out into the open. Could it be a dove after all? she wondered. But then she saw that the anemone was full blown, and in another minute she became aware of a little creature perched upon the dove-cot. It was a fairy; who but a fairy could have had such glistering wings, and worn a dress of tussore-coloured silk from a caterpillar’s cocoon? The elf rather reminded Philomène of Master Mustardseed, for she had small, bright eyes like those of a bird, and her little head was cocked on one side as she sat and looked at the intruder.

“I am very sorry to have disturbed you,” began Philomène, “but I had no idea that this was your house. I think I have a letter for you,” and so saying she handed the Japanese anemone to the fairy, who buried her face in its petals. When she looked up from the letter, she was smiling kindly.

“Did you have any green ribbons——”

“Yes,” interrupted Philomène eagerly, “I did; on my christening robe.”

“Ah, that accounts for it,” said the elf, still smiling, “and I shall be very glad to do anything I can to amuse you while you are here. I only wish I were not quite so busy, but the grounds are large, very large for the size of the house, and my time is not my own. However, I will do what I can, during the hours when you and your godmother are not together. I do not know Sweet William at all, not even by name, but he has written of you in the most flattering terms. I was asleep just now when you put your hand into my bedroom, and I am sure I ought to feel very grateful to you for waking me up out of my shockingly long noon-day nap, for I have any amount of work before me, so that I am afraid I cannot be of much service to you this afternoon.”

“What is it that you are going to see to?” asked Philomène with interest.

“I am in great difficulties about housing a mole,” replied the little agent in a troubled voice, “I let part of the front lawn to him, but the gardener interfered. He is a most tiresome old man.”

“Godmother says he doesn’t know much about gardening,” remarked Philomène, “and I know that whenever I ask him the name of a flower he just goes on muttering, ‘What’s this we call it now? What’s this we call it?’ till either I remember it myself, or someone else comes up and tells me. But Godmother keeps him on because he has been here a long time, and I expect the other man and the boy really do all the work. Besides, I once heard her say to my Daddy that the one thing he did understand was grass, and that he makes her lawns as good as any in the county. She seemed quite pleased about it.”

The elf nodded her head sagely. “That is just the trouble,” she replied, “I mean from the point of view of a land- and house-agent. He is so careful of the lawns that he won’t allow any mole to rent them. However, I must see what I can do for my tenant in some out of the way corner. And now I must really say good afternoon, and ask you to put off our next meeting till to-morrow. Oh, by the way though, before I go you had better tell me your name—Sweet William has forgotten to mention it.”

“My name is Philomène, Philomène Isolde,” said the little girl, “and please, what is yours?”

“Speedwell,” answered the other, and she spread her wings, nodded a friendly good-bye, and flew away. Philomène stood watching her flight till the glittering wings disappeared behind the rosemary hedge, after which she made her way to the wilderness of currant and gooseberry bushes behind the house. Here stood a tub, and a see-saw, and a shed, but before she had made up her mind whether to go to sea in the tub, or turn the shed into a Red Indian wigwam, her attention was distracted by what sounded like the twittering of two birds at once in a currant bush near by.

“And yet it doesn’t sound quite like an ordinary bird either,” thought Philomène, and she went close up to the bush. One bird there certainly was, perched on a leafy twig and twittering shrilly, but it was Speedwell who was sitting upon another branch, and arguing with the bird. As Philomène came up both stopped talking, seemingly quite out of breath.

“What have you done with the letter?” asked Philomène smiling, “did you throw it away when you started house-hunting for the mole?”

The elf cocked her head on one side, and looked up with small bright eyes; her shimmering wings were folded, and her little green shoes peeped from beneath her dress of tussore-coloured silk. “I do not understand you,” said she, “I don’t even know who you are. Oh, yes, I do though, you must be the little girl who was to arrive yesterday; the stable cat told me you were expected. But we have not met till this moment.”

“But I was speaking to you only a few minutes ago at the dove-cot, and I gave you Sweet William’s letter of introduction!” exclaimed Philomène in amazement.

The elf laughed. “It must have been my twin sister whom you saw just now,” said she, “I am Spirea. However, I don’t wonder at your mistake, for when we were babies and cradled in the same pod, our own mother did not know us apart. We will settle about your lease some other time,” she added, turning to the bird, who had been preening his feathers to conceal his annoyance at the interruption, “and you had better not mention it to the people at the Rookery till you hear something more definite from me. Now I am at your disposal,” she continued to Philomène, “where shall we go? To the swing? You might sit in it, and I could talk to you from a mossy settee between the roots of one of the horse-chestnuts.”

The place was soon reached, and the two remained chatting there very pleasantly, till Philomène thought it must be getting late, and that she ought to find out if her godmother intended to go to evensong; so she said good-night to Spirea, who promised to see her again the following day.

Isolde was still sitting in the hayfield, and the vicar stood before her, abusing modern operas. “What dreadfully dull things they do talk about,” thought Philomène, “when they might have been making friends with twin fairies all this time! But perhaps they couldn’t, even if they wanted to, not without the green ribbons.”

“You’re fond of music, aren’t you?” asked the vicar, sitting down and drawing Philomène towards him into the lengthening shade of the hayrick. Philomène nodded.

“Yes,” she replied, “some music. I don’t like Lilian Augusta’s hymns much, but I do like it when Godmother sits by herself at the spinet and sings:

‘I would I were on yonder hill, ’Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill, Till every tear should turn a mill.’”

Isolde blushed. “It is only a little Irish song,” she explained in some confusion, “a very plaintive little love-song; I believe Hændel is supposed to have said that he would rather have written that one air than the whole of the ‘Messiah.’”

“Are you going to church, Godmother?” asked Philomène, as she lay full length on the hot grass, looking up at the clouds that were drifting white, fleecy, and unshepherded, across their native pastures, and asking herself whether in the long run she would prefer blue fields to green.

“I think so,” said Isolde, and she got up as she spoke.

“Then I will too,” said Philomène, “and of course you will come anyhow, because you have to,” she added in her serious, understanding way to the vicar. He laughed good-humouredly, and walked by her side, swinging his cane, and repeating half aloud as he went:

“The sun, above the mountain’s head, A freshening lustre mellow Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow.”

“Capital,” murmured the tall, gaunt vicar, “the very words for it, the only words for it! ‘His first sweet evening yellow’—what wouldn’t I give to have written that myself?”