Part 3

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.