Part 7

Besides, she has no bump of locality (neither have I, for the matter of that); but I thought it would look better if two of us were arrested for wandering about without any visible means of subsistence; at least, I could say I was her keeper.

Next morning we inquired of the barometer as to the weather prospects. By the way, that barometer is a unique treasure. V. and U. gave it to me one birthday; I had long been craving one that was a genuine antique. There was no doubt about this one—its antiquity, I mean; for the rest, until you get on speaking terms with it, I admit that it does seem a trifle ambiguous.

But I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I’ll say no more on this point, save that we tapped it vigorously; whereupon the long hand flew wildly round and round one way, while the short hand did a whirligig, equally excitedly, in the opposite direction.

We waited till they both got tired of spinning round, and then, as the long hand pointed to “Much Rain,” with leanings towards “Stormy,” we knew we could rely on a very fine day.

But we tapped it once again, just to make sure it knew its own mind. After it had wiggled giddily round as before, the long hand stopped midway between “Set Fair” and “Very Dry.” Of course that confirmed our former calculations, and we got out our new summer hats, and left our umbrellas at home. Virginia had worn _her_ new hat indoors most of the previous day, in order to get her money’s worth out of it, because she said she never got her money’s worth out of any of her garments, save her raincoat and her umbrella. [N.B.—Is an umbrella a garment?]

* * * * *

It was market day when we got there, and all the town was of course wending its way either to or from the market-place. One of the very first people we ran against was Mrs. Zebadiah Price; but, to our surprise, she was wearing neither my black cloth skirt nor Ursula’s black blouse. On the contrary, she was in quite gay attire—a brown coat and skirt, a blue blouse, a lace collar, a string of pearls as large as marbles, and a tuscan straw hat trimmed with roses and purple geraniums. I had known her in the past, when she lived in the village; so I stopped and spoke to her.

“I was so very sorry to hear of your sad trouble,” I began. Yet the subdued tones I used and felt necessary to the occasion seemed curiously out of place beside all that market-day finery.

“Yes, thank you, m’m; it did upset me awful,” she said, looking very woe-begone.

“I’m sure it did,” I said feelingly.

“You wouldn’t believe how I fretted over ’un. Seems kind o’ foolish I s’pose when I’ve got the children. But I got that attached to ’un.”

“I can _quite_ understand it,” I murmured sympathetically. “After all, children can’t take the place of the one that is gone.”

“No, m’m; that’s what I say.”

“And it was very sudden, wasn’t it?”

“Yes’m; taken bad and gone in a few hours,” she continued. “And that was the second I lost in two months. I don’t have no luck somehow.”

“The second in two months!” I repeated in surprise.

“Yes’m, and I feel that downhearted about it, I don’t think I’ll go in for another. I said so only last night to my husband.”

“Your husband?” I echoed again. It was beginning to sound like bigamy!

“He said at the time he thought the £15 I give was a swindle for the brindled cow.”

“The brindled cow?” I said feebly. I really didn’t know what else to say. Virginia need not have laughed!

Then I rallied my senses. “But I thought you had trouble about a fortnight ago—your husband, Zebadiah Price—I heard——”

“My Zeb? About a fortnight ago? Let’s see?”—thoughtfully turning her left eye in the direction of the church spire, and thereby tilting her hat askew. “Ah, I expect you mean about last February; to be sure, he did have a touch of this ’ere influenza; and he were a bit queer for a couple of days, he were: but that was nothing to my losing my calf!”

“I’m glad it was no worse,” I said heartily. “Why, Mrs. Jane Price told me she was coming to the funeral.”

“_Jane!_” ejaculated Mrs. Zebadiah. “Jane Price said she was coming to _his_ funeral? Not if I know’d it, and it had been me very own even, she wouldn’t; the _hussy_—begging your pardon, m’m, for using sech a word. She knows better than to try to put so much as a shoenail of her foot inside our door. She never aren’t and she never shan’t. Though for brazenness there ain’t their beat in the county. Why, p’raps you’ve heard how that there Gladys Price has started an ole clothes shop in the town here, right under our very nose, and my husband as respected as he is. There it is for everybody to read over the door—‘G. PRICE. Ladies and Gents’ Hemporium’—whatever that may be! Coming to his funeral, indeed! It makes me _broil_!” And Mrs. Z. went off fairly sizzling with indignation.

* * * * *

When we had duly found (after long search) and surveyed the Roman remains (which consisted of three upright stones, something like those used for kerbstones in the streets, and stood in the middle of a very boggy field), and had failed to decide whether they were the viaduct, the amphitheatre, or the villa, I suggested a speedy return to the station, as it was now coming down a steady drizzle, with indications of still more to follow. But Virginia said—

“I’d like, while we’re here, just to have a look into the hemporium window, to see what she has marked that hat of mine.”

When we reached it, behold, it was like taking a regretful look back into the past, for most of the garments there displayed we had formerly known when they walked our village street in decorous Sunday glory. And they included: a grey cloth coat of mine that had disappeared most mysteriously; a long silk scarf of Ursula’s that, so far, she had never missed; and a bead-bag I had often admired when carried by the lady of the manor, and which, we felt sure, she had never given away.

“Talk about excavating Roman remains!” I exclaimed; but Virginia’s conversational powers were only equal to “_Did_ you EVER!”

And we damply faded away in the direction of the station.

VII

Just Being Neighbourly

THOSE superior Londoners who know nothing at first hand about Nature “unimproved,” the type who find complete satisfaction for soul, body and mind at some loud and crowded seaside resort, sometimes say to me: “I can’t think how you can endure the terrible isolation of the country—with absolutely nothing to look at, no one to say a word, nobody to take the slightest interest in you, dead or alive. Well, _I_ should go out of my mind in such solitariness! But then, I am _so_ human; I do like a little life,” etc.

I don’t attempt to convert such people. After all, they are just as much entitled to their views as I am to mine. Besides, I am only too thankful that they keep away from our hills, and disport themselves in an environment more in keeping with their personal tastes. We don’t want the blatant woman, or the overdressed (which nowadays means underdressed) woman, or the artificial woman, or the woman who “likes a little life”; our hills would never suit them as a background, either mentally or otherwise. Why, we have neither a music-hall nor a picture palace for I don’t know _how_ many miles round! A benighted spot, isn’t it!

But when they reproach us with having no one to say a word, and nobody to take the slightest interest in our doings—well, I _could_ say many things! But I merely assure them that we are nothing if not neighbourly!

* * * * *

I took my sewing and went down to the bottom of the lower orchard. It was a warm day, but not too hot to sit out of doors at eleven in the morning, provided one found a shelter from the sun overhead. As I have explained before, my cottage is on a steep hillside, the whole earth runs either up or down. In only a few favoured spots can you place a chair—and sit on it—with any degree of certainty; and even then you probably have to level up the back, or the front, by putting some flat stones under two of the legs. The slope of the hill faces south; hence we get all the sun there is.

* * * * *

The bottom of the lower orchard was just the place for such a day. A wall with overhanging tangles of honeysuckle and ivy, and an oak-tree that spread big arms well over the wall, gave just the shade one needed from the blazing sun. I put the wicker chair with its back to the wall—and such a comfort a wall is anywhere out of doors when you want to sit down.

The view from this spot is very restful on a summer’s day: the hot south is behind; one faces the cooler, glareless northern sky above the hill that rises before one.

This orchard is but sparsely populated with fruit-trees, and most of these are very old. There are some huge pear-trees that rise tall and fairly straight, suggestive of rather well-fed poplars. There are some twisted, rugged apple-trees, every branch and twig presenting a wonderful study in silver and grey and green filigree, where the lichens have spread and revelled unmolested for many a year. The lichens are so marvellously beautiful, it always takes me quite a time to get down to the lower wall; there is so much to look at on the way. The delicate fronds, that seem closely related in their appearance to the hoarfrost designs on the winter windows, show such a variety of different cluster-schemes. They decorate the odd corners, and throw beauty over the hard knots and gnarls, till I sometimes think they are among the most exquisite things Nature has ever produced—only while I am thinking this, I come upon something else equally beautiful.

Even on a hot day, when most of the mosses and lichens have faded in the glare and drought, we still find the silvery-grey tracery flourishing on the shady side of the apple-trees, and on the pieces of branches that were snapped off and blown down into the long grass by the equinoctial gales. I usually gather up an armful of these branches, with their delicate pencil studies on a darker background, and carry them down to the bottom of the orchard with me—only to wonder why I didn’t leave them where they were till I returned, as I have to carry them back up the hill again presently!

It may seem weakly sentimental to those who do not understand, but I confess that, much as I love the smell of burning applewood, it always gives me a real pain to put on the fire twigs that are ornamented with moss or lichen. It seems heartless to destroy such beauty, even though there is “plenty more where that came from,” as people sometimes tell me.

In the summer I put the pieces of the grey-green branches, that I gather up about the orchard, in the empty hearths and grates.

Many of the old trees originally planted in the lower orchard have died or been blown down; the wind takes a heavy toll from these heights; we can’t have pergolas and rose arches up here, as they can lower down in the valley, unless we fasten them to very firm foundations.

As no previous owner in this happy-go-lucky district thought it worth whiles to put new stock in the place of the fruit-trees that have come down, there are plenty of open spaces, and comparatively little to obstruct the view as you sit against the bottom wall and look up the hillside. I am afraid this orchard is more ornamental than useful, for the pears are the hard bitter sort used for making perry, a drink that is very popular locally; and the apples are the equally uninteresting-to-the-taste cider variety. Yet they are so exceptionally beautiful, as the fruit turns crimson and yellow and golden brown, that the trees become a glory of colour in fruit-gathering time.

After all there is excuse for ornament without specific use, if a thing be very, _very_ ornamental—and the orchard certainly is that.

The sun reaches well under the trees, where the wild flowers and grasses make a softly waving sea of colour. Of course, I know the grass ought to be kept cut, so as to prevent undue nourishment being taken from the earth for the support of “mere weeds.” But we pretend that it is properly cropped by “Hussy;” she is the mild-eyed dusky Jersey, belonging to the farmeress who supplies our milk, and is so-called, because she has a playful habit of kicking over the pail.

Occasionally she is turned in and roams about at meditative leisure, to the indignation of the small dog, who regards her as a hated rival. But once the fruit appears, she has to be removed; either she chokes herself with pears, or else they don’t agree with the butter; or various other things. Even a cow seems a complicated problem when you own a real one; and though I have only had cow-anxieties secondhand, so to speak, my acquaintance with “Hussy” has led me to wonder whether, on the whole, a tin of milk is a more sure and certain investment for sixpence-halfpenny.

But even when the orchard has a tenant, it is surprising how little damage she seems to do to the wild flowers. This is all the more remarkable if you have ever seen what devastation one simple-minded cow is capable of, if it indulges in but a ten minutes’ revel in your flower-garden! “Hussy” seems to eat carefully round the flowers, leaving the whole plant intact, which is more than a mowing machine will do, despite its much vaunted up-to-dateness. Civilisation has still a lot to learn.

Every season has its special flower show in this orchard. I only wish I could get the same never-failing succession of flowers in my garden that Nature does in hers.

On this particular July day the large field scabious was perhaps the most noticeable flower; its mauve-blue blossoms high above all the rest; its long stalks always determining to out-top everything else that grows in the delightful medley.

* * * * *

“Please, ma’am, I’ve brought you some flowers,” said a little pinafored girl to me one day, when I had just arrived. She is an especial favourite of mine, and lives in a cottage along my lane. This is her way of just being neighbourly. In her hand was a large bunch of scabious and grasses.

“These are very pretty,” I said. “What do you call them?”

“Please, ma’am, I call them ‘Queen Mary’s Pincushions,’” she said shyly.

The country names for the flowers are often so much more interesting than the ones you find attached to them in books. After all, “Queen Mary’s Pincushion” has something real and understandable about it for just ordinary people like myself; whereas _Scabiosa arvensis_ (its proper name) doesn’t stir my heart the least little bit. It was easy to see the process by which the child had got the name—the flowers are wonderfully like plump round pincushions, with the stamens for the pins: but anything so delicately beautiful would not be suitable for aught save a royal lady’s dressing-table; hence Queen Mary was, of course, the one to whom they were dedicated.

And isn’t the name “Lady’s Laces” most suggestive? That is what we call the white filmy flowers of the hedge-parsley. I seldom see a fine white lace evening gown without thinking of the soft mist of white over green that surprises us in June, and smothers the orchard when the Lady’s Laces suddenly burst into billows of bloom.

Some of the local names are more material and prosaic than idealistic, however. There is another flower that grows all about the orchard, in close company with the scabious; it has bunches of bright yellow flowers of the daisy family, growing in compact heads at the top of a tall stem. I am very fond of this flower; it gleams sunshine all over the place; but I don’t care to call it _Senecio Jacobœa_, which is its proper name; it’s so mortifying when people look at you puzzled and inquiring, and then ask, with a patient sigh, if you would mind _spelling_ it! I never could spell.

Neither do I care for its other slightly less official name, “Common Ragwort.” So one day when an old man was passing, who is fairly well-up in flowers, I asked him if he could tell me the name of this Sunshine plant. To which he replied—

“Wealluscallsemards’m.”

I didn’t ask him to spell it, because I don’t fancy he can spell any better than I can. I merely said, “I don’t think I _quite_ caught the name?”

“I said ‘’ARDS,’ Mum; (_crescendo_) ‘=’ARDS=.’ We allus calls ’em that ’cos they’re so ’ard to pull up.”

I thanked him, and still, in secret, call them the Sunshine flowers—though I admit that Virginia, having recently set out gaily to rectify my shocking laxity in the matter of the proper cultivation of an orchard, at last decided herself to call them “’Ards.” She found that the act of sitting down violently and unexpectedly so many times in the course of trying to pull up a few innocent-looking plants, wore her out more than it did the ’ards; so she gave it up at length, and there they remain until this day!

Intermingling with Queen Mary’s Pincushions and the Sunshine flowers is a rosy purple flower that blends delightfully with the other two; Knapweed is one of its names; it looks something like a thistle bloom at a distance, but it is really a relation of the Sweet Sultan that grows in the garden beds, I believe.

Then there are Harebells dancing in the wind on the top of little grassy mounds; so frail they look—yet “Hussy” never seems to walk on them! Ragged Robins flutter pink petals beside a little brook that runs down at the side of the orchard; and here are also big blue forget-me-nots, with bright yellow centres.

But there is one thing about this orchard that very few people have discovered, and that is the host of sweet-smelling things that you walk on or rub against, as you carry the wicker-chair down to the bottom wall.

Do you know what it is like to walk on Pennyroyal and Sweet Basil? Have you ever stood still suddenly and said, “What _is_ it?” as a delicious aromatic scent added itself to all the other lovely scents floating around?

I discovered a whole world of beautiful scents in among the orchard grass. The Pennyroyal was most unsuspicious-looking, till I stepped on it. (I didn’t mean to step on it; but then one must walk _somewhere_!) Next I found out the Sweet Basil, with its unobtrusive pink flowers.

Still I hadn’t found it all; a little later I came upon some wild mint beside the brook. The tansy I had long been friendly with; the scent of it seems to fit in so exactly with a hot summer day; and the wild thyme that grows on a sunny bank at one side of the orchard you couldn’t possibly miss, the bees have so much to say about it. Bushes of balm, that have possibly strayed away from the garden, are always at hand, to rub a leaf when desired.

But I think of all my favourites, the black peppermint has first place. I shall never forget the day I first discovered its dark shoots pushing up undaunted among the grass; not but what I had a long-standing friendship with peppermint—in my first childhood, as bull’s-eyes; in my second childhood, as peppermint creams.

But I hadn’t the slightest notion what it was like in its natural state. When once I found it, I soon realised that it stood alone among all the scented wonders. I put some of it at various corners about the garden, because I found it has remarkable healing powers. No matter how dispirited you may be or out of joint with the world, it is only necessary to take a leaf, rub it and sniff it, whereupon the world smiles again, and you realise that, in spite of all, it is good to be alive. You will understand, therefore, how essential it is to have it in handy places, so that weary people, even if they do not know of its unique qualities, may rub against it in passing, and unconsciously come under its spell.

It dies down in the winter, but when spring comes we always look eagerly for the first purple-black shoots pushing up cheerily from the soil.

It has only one fault; it suffers from zeal without discretion. It will not keep within proper bounds. At the present moment I am wondering whether it is better to dig up the bergamot or rout out the peppermint; they are having a hand-to-hand fight for supremacy in one particular flower corner.

* * * * *

I am afraid my needlework was a mere matter of form that morning. Who could glue their eyes to a piece of hemstitching with the whole earth fairly dancing with colour and light around them? I faintly (but not very earnestly) wished that I had brought knitting instead of sewing, because that doesn’t need to be looked at, and you can keep up a semblance of respectable industry while you are watching all the wild things.

I had been feeling rather aggravated with a woman who had written commiserating with my odd predilection for being “buried” in a spot where there was “positively nothing to be seen.” She was really pitying me! Well, I pitied her back, and pitied her hard; had she only known it, she would have been aggravated too. So at least we were quits. She had said that, for her part, she should simply die in such an unsociable place. I took care to be just as sorry for her as she was for me: it was a slight satisfaction to me! It was at this moment that I heard voices of two women talking in the lane, hidden from view by the orchard wall.

“How’s yourself, Mrs. Blake?”

“Only middling.” (We always start our conversations with lugubriousness; it seems indecorous to parade health and happiness before our neighbours!) “I’m in a tearing hurry. I’ve just been to the doctor’s to see if he can’t give me something for my poor Jim’s tooth. It do pester him something cruel. I promised him I’d run all the way there and back; he’ll be raving till I get back.”

“Ah, he won’t get no peace till he has it out, I reckon.”

“The doctor says why don’t he have ’em out and get some new ’uns? But I call it waste. Look at my sister’s husband: cost him a guinea his did! Of course, he got a complete set top and bottom for that, fifty-three teeth altogether I believe he told me, and as natural as you please, I’ll own. But seeing as of course he’s got to take ’em out to eat, I call it spending just for show, even if they do give you a good mouthful for your money.”

“By the way, speaking of teeth reminds me—only I can’t stop to tell you all about it now, as the children’ll be in from school at half-past twelve, and I haven’t started the dinner yet—but I’ve just heard that poor Mrs. Jeggins over to Brownbrook’s gone.”

“Pore thing! Is she though?”

“Yes, your mentioning Jim’s tooth made me think of it. They fancy it started with a tooth in her case too; for she had faceache turrible bad about six months ago, her husband told me. And then it just went all over her like. The doctor simply couldn’t do nothing with it. He tried every mortal bottle he had in his surgery, and gave her some out of every single one, and _yet_ she died! But there, I s’pose it had to be!”

“I heeard tell from her sist’r-’n-law as she drank somethin’ awful; but, mind you, if it’s a lie, ’taint my lie; it’s her lie as told me. And I don’t at all hold with repeating a thing like that. But in any case, I shouldn’t think it was her tooth! I expect she et something that didn’t agree with her.”

“Well, maybe; as I always say, you can’t be too careful what you eat nowadays. The dinner they’ve got up there smells tasty, don’t it?”

“Yes; it’s roast duck.”

“Duck, is it? I didn’t know they’d had a duck _this_ week. Who did they get it from?”

“Sarah Ann Perkins—that old brown one of hers.”

“The _brown_ one! How much did she ask for it?”

“Four-and-six.” (An audible chuckle.) “Yes, _four-and-six_, if you believe me! Fancy her having the face to ask it for that _brown_ duck! But there, those that can afford to pay may just as well do so for those who can’t.”