Between the Larch-woods and the Weir

Between the Larch-woods
and the Weir

Between
the Larch-woods
and the Weir

By
FLORA KLICKMANN
Editor of
“The Girl’s Own Paper and Woman’s Magazine”
Author of
“The Flower-Patch among the Hills”

NEW YORK
Frederick A. Stokes Company
Publishers

Dedicated to
the Memory
of Arthur,
Bertie, and
Wilfrid—my
Brothers

Move along these shades

In gentleness of heart; . . .

. . . for there is a spirit in the woods.

I
Preamble

On one of the high hills that border the river Wye, there stands an old cottage, perched on an outstanding bluff, with apparently no way of approach save by airship.

Looking up at it from the river bank by the weir (the self-same weir beside which Wordsworth sat when he wrote his famous “Lines”), you can only glimpse the chimneys and angles of the roof, so buried is the house in the trees that clothe the hill-slopes to a height of nearly nine hundred feet.

The cottage is not quite at the top of the hill; behind it rise still more woods, making the steeps in early spring a mist of purple and brown and soft grey bursting buds, followed by pale shimmering green, with frequent splashes of white when the hundreds of wild cherries break into bloom.

A darker green sweeps over all with the oncoming of summer, which in turn becomes crimson, lemon, rust-gold, bronze-green, copper and orange in the autumn, where coppices of birch and oak, ash and beech, wild cherry, crab apple, yew and hazel intermingle with the stately ranks of the larch-woods that revel in the heights, and give the hills a jagged edge against the sky.

The casual tourist who merely “does” the Wye Valley—which invariably means scorching along the one good road the district possesses, skirting the foot of the hills—has a clever knack of entirely missing, as a rule, the larch-woods and the weir. Obviously, when any self-respecting motorist finds himself on a fine road where he can trundle along at thirty miles an hour (at the least), with seldom any official let or hindrance, he naturally shows his friends what his car can do! And in such circumstances it is necessary to keep the eyes glued to the half-mile straight ahead. Even though the natives are too virtuous to need the upkeep of many policemen, stray cattle and slow-dragging timber-wains can be quite as upsetting as a constable; while a landslide down the hills may precipitate huge trees across the road any day of the year, and prove an equal hindrance.

Hence, the motorist seldom seems to have eyes to spare for anything but the road; he takes as read the woods that climb the great green walls towering far and yet farther above him. And as for the many weirs he passes—who could even hear them above the hustle of a becomingly powerful car that is hoping to boast how it covered the twenty-nine miles from Chepstow to Ross in exactly thirty minutes! Small wonder that such as these never see that weather-worn cottage, half-hidden among the green.

But for those who are too poor, or too rich, to need to bother about advertising their car—those who can indulge in the luxury of walking with no fear of losing social prestige—there is, about that cottage, a world of eternal youth that never grows old, a world that is for ever offering new discoveries.

And from the weir in the valley to the larch-woods at the summit, curiously insistent voices are calling. You have but to walk along the river bank to hear them in the tumbling, swirling waters as they pour over, and sweep around, the boulders in the river bed. And although the only living thing you may actually see is the blue glint of a darting kingfisher, or a heron standing sentinel on some mossed and water-splashed rock, or a burnished swallow skimming over the surface of the water, you know for a certainty that there is more—much more—in the murmur of the river and the clamour of the weir than the ear can ever classify.

Loud as it is when the tide is going down, it is not noisy—for noise never soothes, whereas this babbling of the waters is one of the most restful sounds the tired mind can know.

When you leave the river, and take the path that climbs up through the woods—the path you have to search for, so overgrown is it with nut bushes and bracken and low hanging branches of the birches—another sense of mystery awaits you. Though the way may get easier, and the trail a little more defined, the higher you climb, you feel you are penetrating a new land—that you are the first ever to come this way.

And that inexplicable lure of the unknown seizes you; though you can see nothing ahead of you but a steep rough footpath arched over by the branches of the trees that hedge you about on either side, you are conscious of “something” beyond the croon of the ringdoves and the scuttle of the rabbit. It comes to you in the odour of last year’s dead leaves under the oaks; in the pungent warm scent of the larches in the sun. It greets you in the army of foxgloves that have monopolized the one bit of open sky space where a few trees were uprooted in a storm; and in the tall clump of dark blue campanula that has sprung up in another spot where a sun-shaft falls; and in the regiments of wild daffodils in a clearing that so far have escaped the trowel of the spoiler.

You sense it on an early Easter day, when you pause half-way up, and look back on a vast tracery of bare branches and twigs, pale grey where the light strikes on them, and bursting into smiles at intervals where the blackthorn has come out.

It speaks to you when you come upon the smooth grey bark of the beeches, the beautifully ribbed rind of the Spanish chestnut, and the scaly, red trunks of the pines.

You feel it at your feet when you see the brown, uncurling fern fronds; and it pulls at your heart when you step across a brook that is quietly talking to itself, like a happy baby, as it wanders downhill, unconcerned and most haphazard, amid watercress and ragged robin and creeping jenny.

When at last you emerge for a moment—breathless—from the woods, and come upon the cottage, standing in the midst of its gay flower-patch, you think you have solved the mystery in the sweet smell of the newly turned earth; or that it hovers over the crimson flame of the Herb Robert glowing all about the tops of the grey stone walls.

Yet it is not merely the birds and the flowers, the wood scents and the trees that hold one as with a spell. Such things can be catalogued; whereas there is something intangible among the wild woods, something indefinable, beyond all material things, that makes in some incomprehensible way for peace of mind and the mending of the soul. And it is one of our greatest blessings that we cannot tabulate it, or order it by the dozen from the Stores; that it cannot be “cornered” or monopolized by the money grubber.

The healing of the hills cannot be purchased with gold. It is free to all—yet it can only be had by individual, quiet seeking.

The Glory still burns in the Bush; the Light of God’s kindling can never be extinguished. But sometimes we are too preoccupied to turn aside to see the great sight; and sometimes we fail to put our shoes from off our feet, forgetting that the place whereon we stand is holy ground.

II
Enter Eileen

I have no “at home” day. I confess it reluctantly, knowing what a state of social forsakenness this implies. But it is wonderful how you can manage to occupy your time with the simple little duties of an editor’s office, till you never feel the lack of greater events!

Not that I am cut off from acquaintances thereby; decidedly not. They are kind enough to turn up on Saturday afternoons and take their chance of finding me in; and when they do, with one accord they proceed to pity me for all the “at homes” I’ve missed during the week, and they do their best to make me bright and happy for the short half-holiday I am able to take from work, while I just sit with my hands in my lap and give myself up to being entertained.

I don’t do knitting on such occasions, unlike Miss Quirker who, when I chance to call, remarks, “You’ll excuse my going on with this sock, won’t you?—then I shan’t feel that I’m entirely wasting my time!”

For weeks I had been feeling that, no matter what happened, I simply must get away from London for a change of scene and a change of noise—not a holiday; holidays had been out of the question for some time past, with the major portion of the office staff at the front. We had been postponing and postponing going away, feeling that it was unpatriotic to be out of town when there was so much work to do. But at last I decided some fresh air was imperative, and arranged to spend a little time at my cottage on the hillside, Virginia and Ursula, my two most intimate friends, accompanying me, as the Head of Affairs was abroad on important business.

It seemed such long, long months since I had heard anything about the Flower-Patch. True, I had left Mrs. Widow (the villager who is supposed to look after the house in my absence) a bundle of stamped, addressed envelopes, when last I was down, begging her to send me an occasional letter, giving me news of the cottage, and telling me how the flowers were getting on, and whether the rose arches had blown down, and when the wild snowdrops in the orchard were in bloom, and if there were many apples on the new trees we had planted, and whether the lavender cuttings had taken hold, etc. I felt that a few details of this description might help to keep my brain balanced amid the tumult and terror of the War.

Mrs. Widow wrote regularly every month, and this is the type of letter she always sent:—

“Dear Mam. i hope your well, my newralger has been cruell bad but it is Better now. my daugters baby ethel have two teeth. she is a smart Baby but do cry a lot. Mrs Greens little girl have had something in her throat taken out. doctor says its had a noise. John Green have been called up but I expec you dont know none of them As they lives 3 mile above Monmouth. Mrs Greens sister lives to Cardiff she had a boy last week. i hope the master is well. Its the Sunday School versary tomorror. Thank you for the money. glad to say everything all rite.

Yours
Mrs Widow.”

I suppose the correct thing would be to call the letters “human documents”; but as the humans mentioned in the documents are, as often as not, people of whom I have never heard, the record of anniversaries, illnesses, births, deaths, and marriages that she sends regularly each month (as a receipt for cash received), are seldom either illuminating or exciting. There was nothing for it but to go down and glean impressions first hand.

It was known that I was going out of town the following week, therefore a collection of callers had looked in, and they were doing their utmost to “liven me up” one afternoon in February, and we were having a lovely time explaining to each other how highly strung our respective doctors said we were when they insisted that we must take a complete rest. It appeared—after a lavish amount of detail—that we each suffered from far too active a brain; I found I was by no means the only one!

We also were most communicative about the brilliancy of our children—not that we said it because we were their mothers, you understand; fortunately, unlike other mothers, we were able to take quite detached views of our own children, and regard them from a purely impersonal standpoint; a great gain, because it enabled us to see how really exceptional they were.

I was not expected to contribute anything under this heading, save copious notes of exclamation on hearing what the various head masters and mistresses had said regarding the genius of the respective children. It was simply amazing to sit there and just contemplate how indebted the world would ultimately be to these ladies, for having bestowed such prodigies on their day and generation; for evidently there wasn’t one of my guests who owned a just-ordinary child! No, these young people were all the joy and pride of their teacher, and the way all of them would have passed their exams, (if they hadn’t also possessed too active brains, like their mothers), was positively phenomenal.

There was one exception though—a boy at Dulwich, who was notorious for his adhesion to the lowest place in the form. But his mother, not one whit behind the others in her proud estimate of her son, confided to me that, for her part, she shouldn’t think of allowing Claude to be high up in the form. His ability was so marked, that the doctor said he must at all costs be kept back. Besides, you always knew that a school that put its brightest and most brilliant boys at the bottom of the class never showed favouritism or forced the children unduly.

I agreed with her heartily, and then listened to the confidences of another caller, a near neighbour (this one was without children, brilliant or otherwise), who told me that she had felt it her patriotic duty in war time to do all she could with her own two hands in the house; she had therefore cut down her fourteen indoor servants to nine; and she assured me she found that they could really manage quite well with this small number. Of course I looked politely incredulous; who wouldn’t, knowing that there was her husband as well as herself to be waited upon?—and I raised my eyebrows interrogatively, as though to inquire how she ever succeeded in getting even the simplest war-meal served with so inadequate a staff! But before she had time to tell me how she managed, the door opened and Mrs. Griggles was announced. And as, whenever Mrs. Griggles is announced, it is the signal for everyone who can to fly, I was not surprised to see furs and handbags being collected, and in a few more minutes the newcomer and I had the drawing room to ourselves.

Mrs. Griggles is a woman with, let us say, a dominant note; not that I object to that; every woman nowadays simply must have a dominant note if she is to keep her head above water (women’s war-work has proved a boon in that respect), and some of them are more trying than Mrs. Griggles’ pursuit of charity recipients. There is the moth-ball lady, for instance, who’s perennial boast is that the moth never come near her furs; the nuisance is that no one else can come near them either.

Then there is the educational lady, who runs a serial story on the iniquities of our educational methods. “The whole system is wrong, abso-lute-ly wrong, from beginning to end,” she declaims. My one consolation is, that she would be far less pleased if it were right, since she would then have nothing to rail about.

But my greatest bugbear is the inquisitorial lady—generally eulogized by the Vicar, when he is stuck fast for an adjective, as “very capable.” She starts right away, in the middle of a piece of best war-cake, with a clear cut inquiry such as: “Does your husband wear striped flannel shirts under his white ones?” Hurriedly you try to decide on the safest reply. But she has you either way! If you say Yes, she explains how injurious it is to wear coloured stripes; they may be a deadly skin irritant, for all you know. If you say No, she holds up hands of amazement that any woman can neglect the man of her heart in such a way, and instructs you in the necessity for his wearing flannel in addition to his vests.

Mrs. Griggles is a mere picnic beside the inquisitorial lady, for at least you know what her theme will be; whereas with the other you never know where she will open an attack.

Mrs. Griggles’ mission in life is to be generous and charitable. “It is so beautiful to feel that you have done another a kindness, no matter how small,” she constantly remarks. And I’ll say this for Mrs. Griggles, I never knew anyone able to do so many kindnesses in the course of the year—at other people’s expense! And I never knew anyone more generous—with other people’s possessions.

Where her own belongings are concerned, she is the very soul of rigid economy; why they didn’t co-opt her on to the War Savings Committee I cannot understand.

Only once has she been known to give away anything of her own, and that was a paper pattern of a dressing jacket that she cut out in newspaper from the tissue original which she had borrowed from a friend.

Whenever I see the lady looming in the offing, I find myself mentally running over my wardrobe, to see what coat or skirt I can spare for the sad case she is probably just starting in a hairdresser’s shop; or wondering whether I have any sheets for a sick woman; or whether the stock of knee-caps I purchased at the last Bazaar is quite exhausted; or whether the kitchen would rebel if she does send every week for the tea-leaves; or whether I’ve given away all the Surgical-Aid letters.

You never know what request she will make. Yet she doesn’t irritate me, as she does some people, simply because I regard her as a Charity-Broker; her work is distinctly useful, and, up to a certain point, praiseworthy, if she didn’t make quite such a song about her own benevolence and ignore the part in it played by other people.

She saves my time by hunting out cases that may, or may not, need help; and if she glows when she bestows my money or my boots upon them—well, I glow too, with the thought of my own kindness and beneficence. And anything that can make anybody glow in this vale of tears, isn’t to be despised.

Of course I wasn’t surprised when she began, with her second mouthful, “By the way, dear, I’ve such a distressing case I’m needing a little help for; really quite heart-breaking.”

I’d heard it all before, and instantly decided that my mackintosh could go; it was rather too skimpy for the fuller skirts that the season had ushered in. Likewise the plaid blouse; the pattern was very disappointing now it was made up; piece goods are so deceptive. And I would gladly part with the vermilion satin cushion embroidered with yellow eschscholtzias, that had lain in a trunk in the attic since the last Sale of Work but two, if the distressing case could be induced to believe that it needed propping up in bed. But the rest of my goods I meant to cling to with all the tenacity of a war-reduced woman with no separation allowance. I hadn’t one solitary woollen garment to spare, no matter how rheumaticky the heartbreak might be.

But it turned out that it wasn’t clothes she was wanting, at least, only as a side issue. Her main need was for a few weeks of fresh air, a happy home, plenty of good plain food and good influence (this last, she told me, was most important, and that was why she had thought at once of coming to me) for a girl who had just had a bad break-down, through overwork and underfeeding in a cheap-class boarding house where she had been the maid of all work. Nothing the matter with her that you could put your finger on, but just a general slump—though Mrs. Griggles put it more choicely than that.

The girl’s biographical data included: a grandmother who attended Mrs. Griggles’ mothers’ meeting regularly, though she had to hobble there, one of the cleanest and most respectful women you could ever hope to meet; a mother who had died in the Infirmary at her birth, a father who had never been forthcoming, and an upbringing in the workhouse schools.

I hadn’t been exactly planning to take on an orphan at that time: they are proverbial for their appetites, and the butcher’s book hadn’t led my thoughts in that particular direction, any more than the dairyman’s weekly bill. All the same, when Mrs. Griggles showed me how plain my duty lay before me, naturally I said: “Send her and her grandmother round to see me this evening.” I was even more anxious to see the grandmother than the girl; for I had long ago given up all hope of ever meeting again such a phenomenon (or perhaps it should be phenomena, being feminine) as a woman who was clean as well as respectful!

They arrived promptly. The grandmother seemed a sensible, hard-working body, who had migrated from Devonshire to London when she married; for over forty years she had lived, or rather existed, in the back-drifts of our great city with never a glimpse of her native village. Yet——

On my writing table there stood a bowl of snowdrops, in a mass of sweet-scented frondy moss, with sprigs of the tiny-leaved ivy; they had arrived only that morning from the Flower-Patch among the hills. When she saw them, the old woman clasped her hands with genuine emotion. “Oh, ma’am, how they ’mind me of when I was a girl!” she exclaimed. “And with that moss and all! Why, I can just feel my fingers getting all cold and damp as they used to when I did gather them in the lane ’long by our house—it seems on’y yesterday, that it do!” and tears actually came to her eyes.

I decided on the spot that her granddaughter should have the freshest of air and the best of food (to say nothing of unlimited good influence) for the next month, at any rate.

As for the granddaughter herself, I think she was the most utterly dejected, forlorn, of-no-account-looking girl I have ever set eyes on. She told me she was twenty (though her intelligence seemed about fourteen), and her name was Eileen. It was noticeable, however, that her grandmother, in the fit of reminiscent absent-mindedness occasioned by the snowdrops, called her Ann.

It wasn’t that she looked ill; hers was an expression of hopelessness; the look that comes to a young thing from a course of systematic unkindness from which it has neither the wit nor the courage to escape. Since she had left the Parish Schools, she had apparently drifted from one place to another, each worse than the last. Fortunately her grandmother had kept a firm hold of her, and had done her best to keep her clean—both in body and mind; but her whole appearance said as plainly as any words, that no one else had ever taken the slightest personal interest in her, or given her anything to hope for.

Her hair was screwed round in a small tight knot in the nape of her neck, and kept there by two huge hairpins the size of small meat skewers; her dress was merely a dingy-black shapeless covering, not even a fancy button to brighten it; her hat was a plain all-black sailor. She had that blank, dazed look that one so often sees when lower-class children are brought up in masses, where individual attention is impossible.

I told them that I was going down to the West of England the following week, and if she thought she could stand the quiet, and the absence of shops and people, Eileen could come for a month, and just breathe the fresh air and do her best to get strong.

She was genuinely delighted—there was no mistake about that. She seemed quite to wake up, and became almost animated at the thought of going into the country. That was the thing that appealed to her; and she looked at me with open-eyed amazement when I told her that the snowdrops grew wild in the orchard there.

In the orchard? And might she pick a few for herself and send one or two to her grandmother? Wouldn’t “they” mind if anyone picked some? She had never seen a violet or a primrose growing wild in her life, though she had always wanted to.

And she and her grandmother looked and smiled at each other with some new bond of sympathy.

Heredity will out!

“But,” said the grandmother firmly, almost ashamed of her own sentimental lapse of the minute before, “of course she will work, ma’am, and work well—or she’s no granddaughter of mine!—in return for your great kindness in having her. She can’t pay you in money, but she can work, and I hope you’ll find her very useful. You’ll do your best for the lady, won’t you, Ann?”—most severely to the girl.

“Yes, grandmother,” she replied, dropping back into an attitude of meek dejection. “Of course I’ll do my very best.”

I told them there was no need for her to do more than make her own bed. Abigail would be there to do all I needed. But the girl protested she should be happier if she had proper work to do, if only I could find something I wanted done; and her grandmother insisted that she hoped she knew her place, and it wasn’t a lady she was born to be, and therefore I must see that she didn’t sit with her hands idle.

So I said she and the housemaid must settle it between them, and I summoned Abigail to be introduced to Eileen, and explained that they would be spending the next week or two together.

Abigail listened, I presume, though her gaze was on the curtain-pole at the far end of the room; and she finally departed with neither look nor word that betrayed the slightest consciousness of Eileen’s existence; Eileen meanwhile looked nervously frightened and more dejected than ever.

I was by no means surprised when Abigail sought me out next morning to inquire, if it was all the same to me, might cook go down to the country this time, in her stead? as her sister was expecting to be married immediately—well, it might be next week, or the week after, or next month; she couldn’t say exactly; it all depended on when her young man got leave. But naturally she, Abigail, wanted to be present at the wedding; and one couldn’t get up in half-an-hour from Tintern! In any case, she was having a new dress made, in readiness for the event, and wanted to go to the dressmaker next Friday.

It would be a most inhuman person who sought to part a girl and her sister’s wedding; naturally I said on no account must she be away from London on such an occasion—and please send cook to me.

She came, with pursed lips.

Of course, if Madam wished her to go down to the country, Madam had only to give instructions, etc.—the inference being that whenever Madam gave instructions, crowds flew to carry them out!

But her left ankle had been very troublesome lately; Madam probably remembered that it was all due to the time she turned her foot under on the rough path in the lower wood the very last occasion she went down. She had thought of asking for a couple of hours off, to go to the doctor about it to-morrow; but of course, if there wasn’t time for that, etc.——

February in the country never did agree with her; always gave her hay fever, she was never herself for six months after; still, if I wished her to go next week, etc.——

Only, there was one point on which she would be glad of a clear understanding before she went: was she expected to wait on that young person?

I told her, no; and she need not wait on me either. I shouldn’t take either of them down with me. I left it at that—to her surprise.

Then I sought out Eileen and her grandmother, asked if she felt she could make the fires and wash up, if Mrs. Widow and I did all the rest; as, if so, I should pay her at the same rate that I paid Abigail. You should have seen the look of relief that came over her face when she heard Abigail was not going.

“Oh, I could do everything,” she said. “I’d so much rather do it and be by myself. I’m very strong; and I’m afraid I might upset Miss Abigail.”

“Miss Abigail!” snorted the old grandmother. “Has to earn her living same as the rest of us, I suppose! But I’m much more easy in my mind, ma’am, that Ann is going without her. She’ll look after you well, she will; you’ll want nothing, her’ll see to that” (slipping back into her old-time Devonshire), “but she’s not bin used to stuck-up society.”

Thus it came about that instead of the fashionably-attired and efficient Abigail, I eventually went down to my cottage accompanied by a girl who looked precisely like an estimable orphan, just stepped out of some Early Victorian Sunday-school library book; and you felt sure she would come to an equally virtuous end.

Nevertheless, I didn’t go the following week, as I had planned.

III
“You Never Know”

Life is full of surprises.

Virginia has always maintained that the motto of my house ought to be “YOU NEVER KNOW,” simply because of the rapidity with which I change my mind, and the complications and unexpected developments that follow thereupon.

She begged me to have it carved in the wooden beams above the mantelpiece. But as I didn’t, she brought me a Chinese tablet (her brother is a persistent traveller, and I think she had unearthed it from some of his effects), bearing on a red background three imposing-looking Chinese symbols, in gold.

I asked her what they meant; though I have never embarked on any language of China, Virginia has studied most things under the sun, and I concluded she knew. She replied that it was the household motto: “You never know”; and she placed it in a conspicuous position above the fireplace in my London dining-room. And when guests asked its meaning, of course I translated it for them, with the air of one who had spoken Mandarin from her cradle; and they looked proportionately impressed.

One day, however, an Oriental scholar of unquestionable authority chanced to be dining with us, and he suddenly raised his glasses and studied the tablet with evident interest.

“May I ask why you have that above the mantelpiece?” he inquired politely.

“Oh, it’s merely the family motto,” I answered airily, “but we have it in Chinese to-night, in your honour.”

“Really! You do surprise me!! It seems so curious to be greeted with that in your house!!!” And he looked at me in undisguised amazement.

Then I grew anxious, and wondered to myself what it did mean; and since discretion is the better part of a good many things, I thought it would be wisest to explain that I hadn’t the faintest idea what it stood for.

He smiled when I confessed. “Well, I can tell you,” he said, as he proceeded to mumble a little in an unknown tongue to himself, reading each collection of strokes in turn. “It means—er—let me see—well—to translate it quite broadly, you understand, in the vernacular, the nearest equivalent in English is ‘Beware of Pickpockets.’”

Truly, you never know!

Work was extra heavy in my office that week. Like every other business house, we were understaffed, with the majority of our expert men at the front. Moreover, I was trying to get things a little ahead, as I was going away on the Friday.

I did not get home till nearly nine o’clock on the Tuesday following my adoption of Eileen, and by that time I was too tired to trouble about matters domestic. Nevertheless I noticed that the house seemed very draughty; but I put it down to a very high wind that had set in earlier in the day.

As I was going upstairs to bed about half-past ten, I noticed the powerful draught again. I like plenty of air in the house, but after all a line should be drawn somewhere when it is blowing a hurricane, and I said so.

“Well, and to think I forgot to tell you!” said Abigail cheerfully. “The skylight’s blown clean away, and rain’s been pouring in like anything on the top landing!” Judging by her pleased expression, you might have thought that the deluge was in gold.

If you have ever been fortunate enough to find yourself minus a fair-sized skylight on a stormy night, and the man of the house away on urgent business, and not expected back for a month, you will know what my feelings were when I heard the news. It is useless for me to try to describe them.

Virginia and Ursula, who live near me in London, were hastily summoned. By the time we had all done exclaiming, “Well, I never!” singly and in chorus, and had heard full details of the catastrophe repeated for the eighth time by Abigail, it was eleven o’clock. And as no self-respecting builder’s man can do any work after five o’clock (and few seem able to do any before that hour), it was obviously useless to hope for professional aid. So we took a step-ladder to the top landing and piled it on a table, with me on top of all, domestics clutching the step-ladder fervently as I balanced myself on its dizzy height, and exclaiming, “Oh, do be careful, madam!” at frequent intervals; with Virginia and Ursula offering unlimited advice in a running duet.

At last I was high enough to get my head out of the space where the skylight ought to have been, and there I saw it further down the roof. I fished for it with the crook of an umbrella-handle, and got it up at last, though it threatened to blow away again every moment. We managed to secure it by putting some screws in the framework of the roving skylight, and also in the woodwork to which that skylight was supposed to be attached, but wasn’t; and then winding copper wire round and round both sets of screws. In this way we kept the flighty creature anchored till the morning. I was rather proud of the neat and effectual job I had made of it, when I surveyed it from below.

The builder smiled politely but pitifully when he gazed at my efforts next day. He then proceeded to explain to me that though, of course, he was quite competent to refix that skylight as it ought to be fixed (and as, indeed, it never had been fixed since the day the house was built), nevertheless it would be an exceedingly awkward job. From what I could gather from his technical conversation, and diagrams made with a stubby bit of pencil on old envelopes from his pocket, that skylight had been placed in absolutely the most inaccessible part of the whole roof; it would take all sorts of ladders, to say nothing of scaffolding, to get anywhere near it, etc. It would be a dangerous job, too, and of course he must take every precaution and run no risks. All of which I knew from past experience was by way of letting me know that (being the unfortunate owner of the property) I should have the privilege of settling a nice long bill presently.

I did feebly suggest that rather than imperil the lives of his most valuable-looking assistants, he should simplify matters by dealing with the skylight from the inside. But he only looked at me witheringly and said, “Madam, the hinges are outside.”

Naturally, I was humiliated and effectually silenced.

When, finally, they had accomplished the well-nigh impossible, and reached that skylight, the builder returned to report that never, in all his life, had he seen a roof in worse condition than mine was. It appeared to be simply a special providence that the whole covering to the house had not blown clean away—or else tumbled in on top of us! He said he just wished I would come up and see it; he didn’t ask anyone merely to take his word for it; there it was for me to see; and I might believe him when he said that if the roof needed three new slates it needed three hundred.

Once again I got in a gentle word to the effect that it was strange we had never had any trouble with the roof, nor a drop of rain come through; but the look of injured, virtuous dignity he put on at the mere hint of doubt on my part, made me hastily beg him to proceed with the necessary work—otherwise I saw myself sitting up another night sick-nursing a skylight!

The builder told me I needn’t worry about the gentleman being away; lots of gentlemen he was in the habit of working for were away just now; he would superintend the work his own self, and he went off assuring me that he meant to make a good job of it.

Then I sent a note to Eileen, asking her kindly to postpone packing for a few days, as I was unavoidably detained in town.

The men got on the top of the roof most mornings at about half-past six, and apparently started to play golf up there—judging by the sounds overhead. But they always found it too windy, or too wet, or too something, to stay up there, once they had awakened the whole household. So they invariably went away again till about three-thirty in the afternoon—by which time I suppose the roof was thoroughly well aired, and it was safe for them to sit on it and smoke a pipe or two.

It was a fortnight before that roof was finished. Finally they left. And the kitchen staff grew pensive.

But the very day after they had cleared their ladders away, I saw a tiny stream oozing out of the sodden grass in the front garden. I knew, even before the builder returned and looked wise, that it was a leak in the pipe leading from the water-main.

The pipe-mending squad that arrived next morning was not the same as the roof-mending squad; but the kitchen, being quite impartial, recovered its spirits immediately.

These men, evidently most competent, started work in a business-like manner, by removing the two sets of gates, that terminate the semi-circular carriage drive, and blocking up the stable door with them. Next they dug what looked like a network of trenches for giants. They piled up the edging tiles from the beds, and the gravel from the paths, on the front door step; they banked up turf and more gravel under the windows; they uprooted laurels and privet, and the usual array of evergreens that are the only things that will keep alive in a London front garden, and laid them one on top of the other, effectually barricading the tradesmen’s entrance. And when they had made it delightfully impossible for anyone to get either in or out of the house, they one and all came to a halt, and leant wearily on their picks.

Just then a brilliant idea seemed to strike one of them whereby he might make himself a still greater nuisance, and he hurriedly turned off the water.

They spent the remainder of the day resting on their tools—save when they were gallantly passing in cans and jugs of water (borrowed from my neighbour) to smiling Cook or Abigail at the side door.

It rained hard all night, and by next morning we had quite a spacious lake in the front garden. The squad returned to the post of duty, and once more disposed themselves like guardian angels on its banks. When, in sheer exasperation, I asked them how long they were going to leave things like that, and the house without a drop of water, the foreman replied, politely but non-committally, that he couldn’t exactly say, but the Boss was coming round to see me shortly.

The builder arrived later, to inform me that this was a most serious leak; he didn’t know when he had seen one precisely like it before. Of course, it was partly due to the pipe; how any man could have called himself a plumber, and put in such a pipe as that!—well, words failed him! He himself was not a man to boast of his own doings, but he didn’t mind telling me that I could take up any piece of ground I liked, where he had laid a pipe, and see the sort he put underground.

Then it transpired that the leakage was of such a character that he dare not proceed an inch farther with it without calling in the water company’s officials. Did I authorise him to do so? Of course they would charge special fees for “opening up the ground.” I wondered where else they would find any to “open up” on my premises, seeing that by this time the whole estate was a gaping void! As I saw the turncock and a variety of other gentlemen with gold letters embroidered on their collars, propping themselves up against my holly hedge, I just said, “Oh, yes; do anything you please.”

And they did.

Some of the embroidered ones then proceeded to dig up the whole pavement, and right out into the middle of the road (the leak being inside the garden, close beside my front door!). It does not take long to write about it, but I don’t want to mislead you into thinking there was any feverish haste about their methods. Oh, no! theirs was the calm un-hurrying work of the true artist; and the builder’s squad stood round admiringly, most careful not to interfere.

Once again the whole lot came to a standstill, and rested on any available implement; and they now made a goodly crowd (I had no idea there were so many non-khaki men still loose), which was further supplemented by a policeman, one or two aged men who had discarded the workhouse for the more leisurely life that modern business offers, and a variety of languid young ladies who had been sent out on urgent errands from sundry local shops.

In the lull, the chief official from the water company sought an interview with me, when he broke the news that never, in all his life, had he seen a more antiquated stop-cock (which, by the way, had been made in Germany) than the one I had had placed (apparently out of sheer perversity or malice) in the front of my premises. It seems that there was no key in the whole of London that would turn that stop-cock; and when finally it had turned it, that key could not be got out again. However, or whenever, I had managed to evade the Eye of Authority so far as to drop that stop-cock into the ground, he could not think; but, at any rate, out it would have to come again.

Here I managed to get in a word sideways, and told him that the much maligned article had been placed there by another squad of men from the same water company (after a similar harangue), and then duly “passed” by an inspector only two years ago.

Two years ago! he exclaimed, why, that inspector had been called up in the spring, and he was no loss to the company! Not that he (the speaker) was one to say anything against another man’s work, but if I would just come out and examine it for myself (it was raining torrents, and the stop-cock was an island in a watery waste) I would see that the whole affair was scandalous. He was the last to utter an ill-word about any man, more especially behind his back, but conscientiousness compelled him to state that the late inspector was about as fit to be in the employ of a water company as—“as you are, ma’am.” Evidently he could think of no more hopelessly incapable specimen of humanity.

Then it transpired that the real object of his call on me was to ask whether I authorised him to put in a new stop-cock (more special fees, of course).

As I didn’t seem to be left much choice in the matter, and I wasn’t sure whether, if I left it in, after being told to take it out, the Defence of the Realm couldn’t come and have me shot at dawn, I told him he had my full permission to put in twenty new stop-cocks if he liked; he was at liberty to place them as a trimming outside my garden wall, or as an edging at the kerb, or in a fancy zigzag design around the drive—anything—everything—whatsoever and howsoever he pleased, so long as it enabled him, conscientiously, to turn on my water again.

(The lady next door had already said that while she was delighted to give me the water, and would even throw in all the jugs and cans she possessed, she really couldn’t spare her coachman (aged 73) for more than half-an-hour at each delivery, as he was the one ewe-lamb left them, since war claimed the rest, and would I kindly see that my kitchen limited their conversation to that extent, and returned him, carriage forward, within that time.)

The Chief Official looked at me thoughtfully for half a moment, and then retired in silence—to have the door-mat he had just vacated immediately monopolised by the builder, who had been waiting respectfully in the background. (I say background, because I can’t think of any other comprehensive term that signifies a couple of narrow, wobbly, muddy planks, laid across a well-filled moat; ground there was none.)

He congratulated me on having been let off by the Official so easily, and cited instances of owners of property he knew who had been compelled to lay miles of fresh pipes (or it seemed to be miles, judging by the time he took to describe it) as the result of inattention to Official Rules and Regulations regarding Stop-cocks. But he intimated that he had put in a good word for me, and besought them to deal leniently with me, “Knowing, ma’am, how generous you and the gentleman always are.”

I didn’t respond to the hint.

Just at this point he made an opportunity to suggest that in view of the shocking workmanship revealed in the pipes outside, it would certainly be wise of me to have the pipes overhauled all through the house, because one could never tell when one might burst without a moment’s notice, and a flood of water ruin everything. It would only necessitate his taking up the floors in the dining-room and the study and the hall and the kitchens and the greenhouse next the house, and possibly a landing and bath-room and dressing-room upstairs. As it was, the pipes might be leaking terribly under the ground-floors already, disseminating damp and disease throughout the house (though the servants and I were particularly healthy at the time). There was a terrible amount of illness about, he continued; next door to him a little boy had whooping-cough, and the local undertaker, a friend of his, had just told him trade had never been better; although they were working day and night they could hardly manage to execute all the orders. Of course, all this was primarily due to damp.

Even as he spoke he pressed his ample foot so heavily on the hall floor, that but for a stout linoleum I feel sure he would have gone through; then he said it looked to him very much as though dry rot had set in there already, and it would probably be necessary to re-floor the hall.

In vain I reminded him that it had rained without cessation—so far as my distraught memory served me—for the past eighteen months, hence dry rot would seem little short of a miracle. But he only looked at me in that pitying way builders do when any feminine owner of property ventures a remark; and he next asked if I had noticed signs of damp anywhere in the upstairs room? After all, the upstairs pipes might be leaking too.

Then I remembered, and I told him there undoubtedly was damp upstairs, now he mentioned it, one patch about two feet square, and another smaller one. He was instantly alert, said it would certainly be one of the pipes leading from the cistern; most dangerous, too, for you never knew when the whole cistern might be flowing down over everything. So I took him up and showed him the big wet patches on a ceiling, one dripping with a melancholy hollow sound into a zinc bath Abigail had placed below; they were on the ceiling directly under that portion of the roof where his men had played golf each morning, the cistern being in another part of the house, and no pipes were anywhere near.

He became silent, and I left him meditating, while I went down to see Virginia, who had come in.

“Ursula and I have been making plans for you,” she began, “as you seem too distracted to make any for yourself.”

“Distracted! I should think I am; so would you be if you had the cheerful prospect of a cistern emptying itself on top of you at any moment—that is to say, if it ever gets full again—and the whole of the downstairs floor to come up, and dry-rot in the hall, and the Law down on you because you’ve been harbouring an alien stop-cock, and exactly a pint of water in the house (apart from that which is coming in through the roof, of course), and whooping-cough and a watery grave just ahead of you, and the undertaker too busy to bury you!”

“Just listen to me,” she said soothingly. “You are probably not aware that you have got the back of your skirt fastened somewhere about your left hip, and the braiding that ought to be down the centre in front, is just at your right hand. Now when a woman puts on her clothes like that, it’s a sure sign she needs a little rest. Therefore I’m going to take you right off to the cottage first thing to-morrow morning; I’ve told Eileen to be ready; and Ursula is coming in here to assume charge of affairs till such time as those amiable British workmen see fit to remove themselves.”

I protested that I was far too necessary to the well-being of London to be spared at the moment, and widespread havoc would result if I left town at this juncture. By way of reply, she asked if I would take some linen blouses with me, as well as my thicker things, in case the weather turned warmer? And then she summoned Abigail to help her do my packing.

Next morning, as I was being tenderly placed in the one and only cab our suburb now possesses, the whole battalion of workmen, embroidered and otherwise, paused respectfully in the midst of further excavations and a vastly extended scheme of earthworks they had started upon; and I saw a look on the face of the Chief Official that plainly said he considered they were removing me to an asylum none too soon!

IV
The Hill-Side Trail

Eileen didn’t say much on the journey, save an occasional burst of ecstasy when she saw a rabbit sitting up and washing its face. It was interesting to watch the Devonshire ancestry looking out through eyes that hitherto had seen little but the sordid grey-brown grime of London, but were now drinking in everything on that loveliest of English lines—and where can you equal the G.W.R. for beautiful scenery, combined with such good carriage springs, such courteous officials, and such always-attentive guards?

Owing to the accommodating character of the Time Table, as re-arranged by our paternal government, there was no Wye Valley connection, and we had some time to wait at Chepstow. We went into the hotel and I ordered a meal, Eileen choosing fried ham and eggs as the greatest flight of luxury to which her mind could soar. I admit it was reckless extravagance for war-time, but Virginia and I, to say nothing of Eileen, were cold and hungry, and really one can’t be held accountable for one’s actions under such circumstances. It was a noble dish when it came, enough for five people.

When Eileen had cleared her first helping, she merely gazed at me with a seraphic smile, still clutching her knife and fork. I asked if she would like any more?

“No, thank you, ma’am,” she replied, in the most polite company style. But seeing her eyes still on the dish, I pressed her to have another slice; I knew she would have several hours of keen fresh air before we could get our next meal.

She leant a little towards me, her knife and fork held upright on the table the while. “Well, it’s like this,” she said, in a loud stage whisper, that sent a ripple over the few people who were in the coffee room. “Does you have to pay for it whether you eats it or not?”

I nodded.

“Then I will have some more, thank you,” and she heaved a sigh of deep contentment.

Perhaps it was as well Abigail didn’t come!

The drive from the station to my cottage seemed to be through one long vista of sweet odours.

Up to Monmouth the Wye is a tidal river, and the water was rushing up, backed by a strong wind, bringing with it, faint but unmistakable, the salt tang of the sea, that seems all the more delicious when it has swept over woods and meadows and ploughed fields.

As we left the river bank and started the long uphill climb, the scent of the newly-turned earth became more and more insistent as one passed stray farms and cottages, where the most was being made of the little bright sunshine.

Although it was only the end of February, the brave bit of sunshine had stirred in the larches thoughts of coming spring, and already there was a suspicion of the resinous odour that is one of their many delightful characteristics.

But it would be impossible to name even a fraction of the perfumes that were floating about that day: everything in Nature had responded to the welcome sun-warmth; and incense was rising from myriads of leaf-buds, closely sheathed as yet; from uncountable armies of grass blades; from flowering moss, and uncurling ferns, and bursting acorns; from the hundreds of thousands of catkins swinging on the hazels; from primroses pushing up pink stems and yellow blossoms in sheltered corners, where they had been protected by drifts of dead leaves. And probably the leaves of the wild hyacinths, now an inch or so above ground, had brought up some of the sweet earth-scents from below; likewise the blue-green leaves of the daffodils just poking through the soil, and the snowdrop spears, whose white flowers were nodding in big patches in orchards and front gardens. And it is certain that some early violets were hiding under their leaves.

It is noticeable that while the scents of autumn are often strong and bitter, the scents of spring are usually delicate and sweet.

It seems to me that in time we town-dwellers will lose our sense of smell! The odours that pervade our cities are so surpassingly abominable, that in sheer self-defence we have to “turn off our nose,” if you know what I mean by that; we are getting to smell as little as possible, just as we are getting to breathe as little as possible, owing to the vitiated air of the great crowded centres; with the result that we seem to be losing our power to smell sensitively and keenly, as well as our power to breathe deeply.

In town, the winds and the seasons seem only distinguishable by the grade of one’s underwear. Outer garments are no guide, for in December and January one meets bare chests in the public thoroughfares and transparent gowns indoors; while in August, with equal suitability, we trim a chiffon blouse with fur! (and, by the way, it is instructive to recall the fact that it was a German Court dressmaker who first set going the inappropriate, vulgar, inartistic fashion of trimming frail transparent dress materials with fur).

If you live in clean fresh air, however, you know the seasons by their odours, and it is possible to distinguish with absolute certainty the four winds of heaven by their scent, just as at sea you can smell land, or an iceberg, before it is anywhere within sight.

The scent of the east wind is entirely different from the scent of the north wind, though both are cold and penetrating. In the same way, the scent of growing bracken—for instance—is entirely different from the scent of moss. But it takes time for the town-dweller to be able to distinguish between the more subtle of the thousand fragrances that Nature flings broadcast about the countryside, so blunted is the sense of smell by the coarse reek of dirt, and petrol, and chemicals, and smoke, and over-breathed poisoned atmosphere that does duty for “air” in the modern centres of civilisation.

Virginia was vowing that she could actually smell the salmon in the river, when we entered the village; at the same time, the fish cart that makes a weekly tour of these hills was standing outside the “New Inn” (dated 1724). I omitted to draw her attention to the coincidence, because at that moment the lady of the post-office stepped out into the road and waved a telegram at our approaching steed.

It was from the Head of Affairs, briefly stating that he had returned home, safe and sound, that he would soon have the little mess cleared up, and that I need not worry.

Naturally, my inclination was to turn round there and then, get back home as soon as possible, and fall on his overcoat; but Virginia reminded me that there was no train returning that day, and if there were, we should probably only cross one another on the road—in accordance with my usual method of meeting people.

So I went on, a huge load having been lifted from my brain. I am sufficiently out-of-date and weak-minded to be profoundly thankful when the Head of Affairs steps in and re-adjusts my always-very-much-in-a-tangle affairs, and sets them on a business-like basis again: and knowing his capability to deal both with mind and matter, I didn’t worry another moment, though I was sceptical about any speedy clearing up of the mess!

And because my heart was lighter, I seemed to see so many things I had not noticed before. In every sheltered corner shoots were showing, and green things starting from the earth—and every shoot set one’s mind running on ahead to the things that were yet to be. I have heard people deplore the fact that human nature is so prone to anticipate events; I have been told that the reason animals live such a placid, contented life, is because they only concentrate on the present. It may be so; but personally, I wouldn’t be without my anticipations, even though it may mean a loss of placidity.

The commandment is to take no anxious thought for the morrow; there is nothing said against looking ahead for happiness.

And a wander among our hills and along our lanes on a mild February day, means that in addition to the loveliness of early spring, you sense the beauty of summer—and much more besides.

Every soft, grey-green shoot on the tangled honeysuckle stems sets you thinking of the yellow, rosy-tinged blossoms that will fill the long summer evenings with fragrance; every crimson thorn and bursting leaf on the wild rose, tells of far-flung branches that will arch the hedges and flush them with pale-pink flowers later on; the rosettes of foxglove leaves on the roadside banks remind you of the bells that will be ringing all along the lanes when summer sets in.

And although the fresh green of all the courageous little things that have braved the winds and peeped forth, is exquisite enough in itself to satisfy that eternal craving of the human heart for something fresh from the Hand of God, yet the promise that each proclaims carries one into further realms of loveliness, and conjures up visions that can never be put down in black and white.

One dimly understands how impossible was the task St. John set himself when he tried to describe the glimpse that was permitted him of the City not made with hands. He wrote of gold, and pearls, and crystal, and inexhaustible gems—yet these are but cold, lifeless things, and the list of them leaves us unmoved. With all the words at his command, with all the similes he could muster, nothing brings us so near a conception of that vision as his indication of the Divine understanding of poor human needs, and the promise of a fuller, richer life, freed from earthly disadvantages and with nothing to sever us from God.

At a time like the present, when souls innumerable are bearing silent sorrows, and the whole earth is scarred with the iron hoof of the Prussian beast, how much more to us than all the radiance of topaz, jacinth, sapphire and amethyst is the assurance—“There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain . . . and there shall be no more curse: but the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His Face.”

At this season of new-bursting life we, too, catch a glimpse of the Beyond, and underlying all our delight in the material beauty of spring, is there not the still deeper joy arising from the promise it brings of greater beauty yet unfulfilled—beauty that transcends all earthly imaginings? The heart, whether conscious of it or not, assuredly finds comfort in the reminder of the Resurrection that Nature whispers wheresoever we may turn.

It is no mere haphazard chance that Easter falls about the time of the blossoming of the bare blackthorn bough.

One very satisfying feature of the landscape, about this part of the river side, is the sight of the cottages, yellow-washed or white, that seem literally to nestle in the hollows on the hillside. While crowded streets hold no charm for me, and modern mansions leave me unmoved, there is something very appealing about a little homestead standing in its own bit of garden, with its couple of beehives beside a towering sunflower, its few gnarled apple trees, its cow and hayrick maybe, if there is a bit of pasture land about the cottage that has been redeemed by the hardest of labour from the rocky hillside, its fowls clucking about on the fringe of the small holding, its wood pile, its cabbages and marrows and rhubarb and black currants, all according to the season, its hedge draped with washing—too white ever to have come into touch with that modern improvement the steam laundry. In looking at all this, you are looking for the most part at the total worldly wealth of the cottager, wealth, too, that has often been acquired by the genuine sweat of his (and her) brow. It may not seem much to you when you run your eye over it; but it speaks of home in a way that no city dwelling has ever yet attained to. Here is not merely shelter, or just a place wherein to spend the night; it is the very centre of life to the inmates; the major portion of their food is either growing in, or running about, the garden. The side of bacon on the rack in the kitchen came from their own pigsty; the potatoes, the onions, the swedes in the outhouse grew from their own planting; the big yellow vegetable marrows hanging up in the kitchen, and the pots of black currant and plum jam in the cupboard, originated in their garden. The little plot is endeared to them because it provides them with the necessities of life, and the dwellers in the cottages live very close to the fundamental things that really matter, even though they may lack some of the items that over-civilization has ticketed the refinements of life.

And after a winter in town spent in a stern wrestle for coal, potatoes, butter and milk and bacon and many of the other necessities of life, it is bliss indeed to land in this haven of sufficiency, where queues are unknown, and where the cow and the hen do their duty in life each according to her station, and the garden and the forests do much of the rest!

Even then, one has not gone to the root of the matter. Many of these cottages are the ancestral homes of the people who live in them, homes that were literally wrested from the hillside by the forefathers of those who are now living in them. And in such cases the roots go far deeper than the surface soil. An ancestral home, no matter how small, can mean more to the inmates than the most gorgeous pile that the newly-rich millionaire can raise.

And to my mind, by no means the least of the many hideous sins for which the Germans will ultimately be called to account at the world’s Bar of Justice, will be the violation of the homes, the landmarks, and the ancient birthrights of unoffending peoples, while they themselves sat smug and sanctimonious under their own vines and fig trees, self-complacent in the knowledge that they were protected from deserved retribution by their devil-driven guns.

When at last we reached the little white gate, leading into the cottage garden, we stood for a moment, as we always do, and looked at the peak beyond peak, and the deep lying valleys.

Sloping away from our very feet were our own orchards and coppices, the bright lichen on the twisted old apple trees showing almost a blue-green against the purple of the bare birch tree branches still lower down.

The sun was dropping behind the larches that ridged the opposite hills. Birds everywhere were explaining to each other that they must—they really must—set about house-hunting the very first thing in the morning.

Out in the lane, the mountain spring was over-full and singing a riotous song of jubilation as it tumbled out of the little wooden trough into the pool below, and tore away down into the valley.

“It’s a marvellous world,” said Virginia as we gazed at the vast panorama that stretched before us; and then she added, “Do you know, I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer a spring of water outside the gate to all the stop-cocks and water-mains in the world.”

Next morning a letter from the Head of Affairs skipped airily over the episode of his meeting with the builder, concentrating on the point that I was to stay where I was, as he would join me in a few days. But Ursula supplied the missing details.

“After I saw you off at Paddington,” she wrote, “I hurried back as fast as I could; I felt that I should at least like to see if the four outside walls remained of what was once your happy home. Because, though we didn’t let you know, the builder confided to me, as you were leaving, that he had discovered the whole front of the house was in a most shocking condition, necessitating prompt ‘shoring-up’ (whatever that may mean), and requiring to be underpinned immediately. But by the time I reached the place where your gates ought to have been—but weren’t—I found the Head of Affairs (he’d sent a wire as soon as he landed in England, but it evidently never reached you) bestowing as much gratuitous eloquence on the builder and the Water Company as would have run an election. What did he say? Why, everything that is in the English language, and in a hundred different keys! Sometimes he singled out some separate ‘official,’ and gave it him, personally, in considerable detail.

“His analysis of the private character of the builder was nothing short of an epic; and as for the turncock!—what he said about turncocks was a revelation to an unsuspecting ratepayer like myself—No, it might be as well not to repeat it; but I feel sure that turncock won’t call, with a long double knock, for a Christmas-box next December. Indeed, his remarks on the mental capacity of every single person employed by the Water Company lead me to think that your family won’t be really popular with the Metropolitan Water Board for some time to come!

“And then, when he had said everything that could possibly be said about each man standing there, and about water and pipes and stop-cocks and gravel and pavement and suchlike things, he announced his intention of going on the roof to inspect where the builder proposed to put the pile of new slates.

“Now it’s a funny thing, but that builder was not nearly so pressing that he should go up and see for himself, as he was when talking to you. But he insisted, and once up, he started all over again, and made such forceful comments on the subject of slates—and more especially the men who put on the slates—that I was afraid they would come through the roof.

“Well, I don’t think I ever saw a more wilted-looking blossom than that builder when he was finally had inside and given his marching orders. Even before the two had descended from the roof, the embroidered men were hurriedly toppling the earth back into the trenches. I believe they’ve had twenty-four hours allowed them to get things put to rights again. And I think they will hurry, for they don’t seem anxious for more of the master’s society than is absolutely necessary. At any rate, he seemed quite able to manage matters without any assistance from me, and so I left it in his hands, and I’m coming down by the next train.”

V
Just Outside the Back-Door

There is one spot in the Flower-Patch that is loved by grown-ups as well as birds. It is the little grotto that is just outside the cottage back-door. It has made itself by making the best of circumstances. Can I describe it so that you will see it, I wonder?

First there comes a narrow garden bed, full of old-fashioned flowers—Bee-balm, Jacob’s Ladder, and Solomon’s Seal; then a rough stone wall about two feet high keeps the earth above from tumbling down on to the narrow bed below. The whole of the garden being on a steeply sloping hillside, the earth has to be propped up at intervals by these lovely little ranks of natural rockery, planted by Nature with hart’s-tongue and a variety of other little ferns, with mother-of-millions and creeping ivy, with stone-crop and house-leeks. How do the things get there? How do they plant themselves? Isn’t it marvellous this unending gardening of Nature!

On a level with the top of the low wall is another garden bed. You see the ground is rising, rising up to the clouds all the time at the back of the cottage, just as it is falling, falling down to the river in the valley all the time in front of the cottage. This next terrace bed loses itself entirely in a miniature wild wood and drops down into a tiny dell, just big enough for a couple of small children to give a tea-party to the fairies in.

Here it is that the beauty of the whole place seems to climax. The other side of the dell is bounded by a large grey boulder, about six feet high, flanked by a few smaller ones tumbling about at various angles. The stone was too big for the original gardener to move, so he wisely left it where it was. They often do that on these hills. I know one cottage that has a most substantial stone table in the centre of the kitchen. It is just a huge stone that was too big to move by ordinary methods when they erected the cottage, and so they simply left it, and built the kitchen round it.

But my boulder in the grotto is not so much for use as for beauty. True, it supports a plum tree that springs up from behind it, just outside the orchard rails. But the way Nature has festooned that rock is worth going a long way to study. From the ground at one side springs a wild rose with stout stems that grow fairly straight and erect, considering it is a wild rose, and this sends out long curved and arched sprays, dotted with pink blossoms.

At the other side is a yellow jasmine, evidently a stray from the garden.

The stone itself is thickly covered with moss, small-leaved ivy (and isn’t small-leaved ivy lovely in its colouring very often, in the early months of the year, some brown and yellow, some red and green?) and little ferns, till scarcely a trace of the grey stone can be seen, and where it does push through it is splashed with milky-green lichen.

Then wandering over all is a wealth of honeysuckle that catches hold of everything impartially, and twines itself in all directions. At the base of the precipitous boulder the grass is thick and green; violets, the big purple-blue scented sort, cluster all around the corners, and hold up rich-looking blossoms; primroses laugh out in the sunshine; snowdrops dingle their bells to a delightful melody, if only our ears were more delicately tuned to catch the music; daffodils blow their own trumpets above their clumps of blue-green leaves; the ground-ivy creeps and creeps and lights up the green with its lovely blue flowers that have never received half the praise that is their due. And in a damp spot there is a mass of blue forget-me-nots, with one clump that is pure white.

Large ferns send up giant fronds to make cool shadows at one end. Tiny ferns busy themselves with the decoration of odd corners. A hazel bush reaches over and joins hands with the plum tree, to form a fitting roof to so lovely a dell; as I write—in February—it is a mass of fluttering catkins, and the plum tree is talking about shaking out a few flowers. But without these the place is already full of blossoms.

In a month or six weeks the old trees in the orchard behind will be like bouquets of pink and white blossoms.

You approach the grotto by a tiny path, about wide enough for a child; the entrance to the path is marked by a stunted old bush of lavender at one side, and a grey-green clump of sage at the other. They stand, with stems twisted and rugged like gnomes, guarding the entrance to the fairy’s playground; but if you rub them the right way they send up a lovely fragrance, and then you know you are admitted to the freedom of the enchanted spot.

It is so sheltered in this corner, and protected from the cold winds by the high hill behind, that even the ferns from last year are green and fresh-looking, you would think there had not been any winter here. And the brambles that clamber over the orchard rail—assuring the world at large that they are a highly respectable orchard-grown fruit tree, and not a wild weed—are still green and crimson and a rich purple with the lovely tints of last autumn.

The birds are fond of this grotto, and other wild things have found it out. Last summer, when the boulder seemed to be dripping with large juicy crimson honeysuckle berries, I watched a big bullfinch gorging to his heart’s content, his red waistcoat mingling well with the red of the berries. Mrs. Bullfinch was also there, in her less obtrusive grey and browny-black dress, and she had a couple of youngsters too. But do you think the father had any intention of sharing the delicacies? Not a bit of it! Every time his wife approached from the rear surreptitiously to snatch a berry, he turned round and drove her off (I really could have pardoned her if she had joined the suffragettes on the spot). She ranged her family along the orchard rail just above, and made various attempts to forage for them. But it was no use. So she took up her position beside the family on the rail and waited patiently, making plaintive sounds the while, till Mr. Bully had stuffed to repletion and flew away. I was glad there were a few hundred berries still left for the family. And didn’t they have a good time!

Just now the blue tits are very busy about the fruit trees, and a robin comes out from somewhere in the grotto at unexpected moments and stands motionless on a stone, with a bright eye cocked up inquiringly at the human intruder. I fancy he has chosen it for his summer residence.

A squirrel is very attached to this part of the garden. Sometimes one sees him, when the nuts are ripe, scurrying along the orchard rail in ever such a hurry, his chestnut-red tail bigger than himself. There are specially good nuts on that hazel-tree.

This morning I went out of the back-door, to find a large rabbit sitting and sunning himself at his ease among the snowdrops and violets in the little dell—within a yard of the door.

The weather has been like April to-day, brilliant sunshine and heavy showers. Suddenly the sky behind the cottage was lit up with a rainbow—a glorious span of colour that seemed to be resting on the hill-top. Then it dropped a bit lower at one end, and the big pine trees that stand higher up at the top of the orchard looked most majestic against it. Lower it seemed to drop, and then I distinctly saw the place where it touched the ground. You know they say there is a pot of gold buried at the end of the rainbow—where do you think that rainbow pointed? Why, straight at my fairy dell! So I know there is gold buried under that boulder, and that is why there is always sunshine peeping through the green; first it comes out in the yellow jasmine, then it flares in the daffodils, later you find it in the dancing buttercups and in the lovely honeysuckle, finally it waves to you a bright “Good-bye, Summer,” in the clump of golden-rod that is near the entrance.

VI
Dwellers in the Flower-Patch

February on our hills may be anything—from September round to May. Sometimes it is mild and sunny and sweet with the scent of newly-turned earth; or it may be bitingly cold, and very bleak in the exposed parts, with a shivery-ness even in the valleys. You just take your chance, sure, at least, of fresh air, peace—and the birds.

That is one of the perennial joys of the place; summer or winter you know there will be a host of little fluttering things all ready to welcome you as a friend, if you will but show the least bit of friendliness towards them.

Not that their greeting is entirely cordial when you arrive. The starlings are probably the first to see you; they are arrant busybodies, and seem to spend most of their time retailing gossip from the ridge of the red-tiled roof. No wonder their nests are the lazy make-shifts they are!

A perfect scandal to the bird world, Mrs. Missel-Thrush has told me; it’s a wonder the sanitary authorities don’t insist on their being pulled down and rebuilt! Anything, stuffed in anywhere; a handful of straw in the chimney; dried grass and oddments of rubbish collected in a corner under the tiles; you wouldn’t think any self-respecting egg would consent to be hatched out in such a nest!—certainly no young thrush would put up with so disreputable a nursery. But then, as we all know, the thrushes come of very good family; whereas the starlings!—well—not that one would say a word against one’s neighbours, but since everyone can see and hear it for themselves, the starlings are simply “impossible.”

But the starlings don’t seem to be the least bit worried by the cold shoulder of the more exclusive residents; they gabble and bawl the whole day long, from the top of the roof, while the one who has managed to secure the apex of the weathercock is positively insulting. And the moment we turn into the little white gate, they begin.

“See who’s down there? I say, everybody, look! There’s that wretched white dog again! Remember what a perfect nuisance he was last August, when we’d just got the youngsters out of the nest? We were afraid every moment lest he would start to climb the trees like their old cat used to. Hi! there, you on the barn-roof! Have you heard the news?” Shriek, shriek! chatter, chatter, chatter! So they go on for hours at a time.

Then policeman-robin arrives. “What’s all this noise about?” he demands, from the post of the gate leading into the upper orchard. “Oh, good gracious! it’s that horrid white dog again! Nearly shoved his nose right into our nest in the woodruff bank last year! Chit! chit! chit! But don’t you worry, my dear” (this to the lady he has just married); “I’ll drive him away; you can trust to me,” and he flicks his conceited little tail, and flies to the top of a tree stump near by, still calling out his “Chit! chit! chit!” in severe reprimand.

Next the blackbird, hunting for a little fresh meat among the grey, mossed-over stones that edge the garden beds, raises his head and cranes his neck above the overhanging heart’s-ease trails, and the foliage of the pinks, to see what the commotion is all about.

“I say, Martha!” (to the demure body in brown, who has been meekly tracking along behind him), “there’s that terror of a dog again! Recollect when he was here last year? Never a chance to enjoy a snail in peace; before you’d given the shell more than one tap on the stone, down he’d rush. Here he comes now! Slip along quick to the laurels. I say, that was a near shave! Chut! chut! chut! Go away! What business have you to come here disturbing respectable old inhabitants like us?”

And so the hubbub continues, while the small white dog with the brown ears trots in a business-like manner all over the place, making sure that every corner-stone, and bush, and gate-post is just where he left it last time. And having ascertained that the universe is still intact, he sets off to a particular spot in the lower orchard, sniffs about till he finds the identical tuft of grass he is searching for; whereupon he eats, and eats, at the long green blades, much in the same way as we fall on the young lettuces, or the black currants, or whatever else may be in season when we come down. Though why this particular tuft of grass should be the only one he selects out of the acres and acres at his disposal, is always a mystery to us. Yet he never forgets it; straight for that small patch in the middle of the big orchard he makes, once he has done his tour of inspection round the estate.

Before I have been in the house half-an-hour, I start making overtures to the birds, and they immediately respond. I proceed by way of the bird-board.

This may need explanation.

Outside one of the living-room windows I have established a board that projects about a foot beyond the wide window-ledge. At first I had it resting on the window-ledge, but I found that the birds were down out of sight, when they came up to feed, hidden by the sash and window-frame. Therefore I had it raised to bring it exactly on a level with the glass. It is fixed securely on supports, so that it won’t blow away, neither would a flock of jays and wood-pigeons overbalance it. A couple of stout bits of tree branches have been fixed upright at the sides; these are very popular, as they make the board look less bare, more tree-like and familiar to the birds. They love to alight on a branch, before going down to feed, and they often return to the branch when they have eaten their fill, saucing their relations and daring them to touch a morsel of the food, which each bird seems to consider its own exclusive property! Strips of narrow lath have been nailed to the outside edges of the board, projecting about an inch above the level of the board. This wooden rim saves the food from rolling off, or blowing away too easily; it also gives the birds a little perch that they love to stand on while they run their eyes over the menu.

On this board—in times of plenty—go crumbs, seed, rolled oats, maize, peas, little bits of fat or suet, anything in fact that birds will eat; and if the weather be cold, a lump of suet will be lashed to each branch, for the tits to peck at, with occasional bunches of bacon rind, hanging like tassels.

In war-time the birds just have to take what they can get.

Within twenty-four hours of our arrival, the birds have re-discovered their food board, and over they come, from garden and adjoining orchards and woods, with such a whirring of wings, directly they hear the window being opened. In the apple tree, in the laburnum tree, in the damson tree they wait, and the moment I move away from the window, down they pounce, and such a squabbling and chatter and succession of arguments takes place. In a few days’ time, as they get more used to me, they flutter down before I have even spread out their meal, perching on the edge of the board and eyeing me with the most audacious nerve. The robin is positively impudent in his demand that I should hurry up!

And it is not longer than a week before they come hopping right into the room, hunting all over the breakfast table if the window be left open, and I have not been down sufficiently early to meet their requirements. If the days are cold, and outside food scarce, they tap the window sharply with their beaks, to call attention to their needs, while plaintive, appealing little faces look anxiously at me.

And oh, they are such a pretty little crowd. One has no idea what clear, beautifully bright colour our British birds can show, unless one has seen them right away from the taint of smoke and grime. Town environments, be they ever so rural, are always reminiscent of the chimneys in the distance, or the railways that cut them up. But on these hills, where cottage chimneys are very few and far between, and what smoke there is, is usually wood smoke, some of the birds are exceedingly lovely.

There is the great-tit, brilliantly yellow as a daffodil, with an admixture of black velvet and pure white; he and his wife quite take your breath away as they splash down, out of space, and flitter about among the sober thrushes and darker blackbirds. And when, in the summer, they bring their babies along with them, I don’t think there is a prettier sight in creation than the little bluey-grey balls of fluff, that peck daintily at the bits of suet, and then hiss vigorously and scold at the big wasps that come and steal it from under their very beaks! So tame and innocent of fear they are, that they come into the room whenever the window is left open; and mother and father follow them, quite as trustfully.

Then again, we all think we know the blue-tit; but when you see him in the wilds he is a very different-looking morsel from the dirty-blue apology you meet nearer town. On the bird-board, he is almost metallic in the brightness of his blue-green feathers, and the lovely tint of yellow. He raises his crest feathers, with pleasure, when he sees the suet on the branch; and over the little acrobat goes, hanging head downwards or clinging with one tiny claw to a piece of twig; it is all one to him, he swings about like a bright enamel pendant.

The male chaffinch is another very gay little fellow, with his warm red and pretty blue and yellow. He calls “Spink, spink,” in clear penetrating notes, as he lands on the board; and up comes his wife—one of the most shapely and elegant of all the small birds, with the dearest little face!

Mr. and Mrs. Bullfinch invariably come together, unless she is detained at home with the family. They perch on the edge of the drinking saucer, side by side, like a pair of solemn paroquets; he, very beautiful in crimson and black velvet; she, decidedly more homely and nondescript.

But I can’t go through the whole list, there is such a crowd—including a little flock of eight goldfinches that for two winters have always been about the garden together.

Jays, with their handsome wing feathers and ugly, very ugly, mouths, swoop down continually, scaring the small birds to vanishing point, and gobbling up the food by the shovelful! Magpies in plenty perch on the garden rails, but only once has one come to the board when I have been there, and then he got his tail so mixed up with the decorative branches, that he had the fright of his life, and never repeated the adventure.

Wood pigeons are regular in their attendance, when other food is scarce. Oh, certainly, I know all that is to be said on the subject of encouraging wood pigeons! But—have you ever studied the peacock and wine-colour gleam on their necks, when unsmirched by smoke or grime? If so, you will understand my admiration for them. And, in any case, ours isn’t a farming area; there is no corn here for them to squander, and although they sigh all summer long, in the fir trees, “Take two pears, Tommy! Take two pears, Tommy!—do!” there are very few pears available that Tommy would even look at; most that grow in the orchards around are the harsh, bitter variety, used for making the drink known as “perry” (the pear equivalent of apple cider).

The wood pigeons have helped me back to health and strength many a time, with their soft crooning in the larches, and their quiet talk of things above the petty strife and noisy clamour of the struggling market place. Therefore, I don’t say them nay, in times of plenty, if I have a little to spare, and they chance to need it.

Of all the bird family, however, I think the coal-tits are our favourites—and there are such a quantity of them. Coal-tits always abound in the neighbourhood of larch woods and birches, which accounts for the numbers that dart about my garden; there are birch woods lower down the hill below the cottage, as well as the larch woods up above; and both birch and larch cluster thick down one side of the house to shield it from the cold winds.

Though the coal-tit is not brightly-coloured, like its relations, there is something very delightful about his soft grey garb, and his black head with its light grey or nearly white streak down the back. Like the robin, he always looks well-tailored, not a feather out of place, not a draggled filament anywhere. And he is so extraordinarily alert; he doesn’t seem to give himself time to fly, he darts and dives and flits all over the place, and seems to have an appetite proportionately equal to that of the proverbial alderman.

Down he dives the minute the food appears. He stands very erect on his slim little legs (no squatting down on his breast bone, as the sparrows and even the chaffinches often do); he cocks his head from side to side, promptly decides on the largest lump of fat he can find; seizes it, and flies up into a big fir tree, where, apparently, he bolts the whole lump instantaneously! At any rate, before you have time to see where he alighted, down he dives, seizes another big piece, and off he goes again. He seems to eat twice his own size in suet in a few minutes! But I conclude he must drop some of it, though I’ve never been able to prove it. And the theory of a nestful of hungry beaks doesn’t always explain his voraciousness; for he disposes of just as much in the winter as in nesting time.

Yet, in spite of his appetite, we love him, for he is so tiny and so wonderfully alert; one marvels how so much energy can be boxed up in such a small body.

Visitors who have never had much to do with birds at close quarters—and the birds may be said to be part of the family at this cottage, for they live with us and meal with us—are usually surprised at the differences and the distinctiveness of their various personalities.

The robin not only adopts you at once, but he proceeds to supervise your every action, and instals himself as your personal attendant. Probably this is all the more emphasized by the fact that he will not allow any rival to encroach on his particular territory. Most birds seem to peg out a claim at the beginning of the season, and to resent, more or less, the intrusion of any other of its own kind. Swallows and sparrows and rooks, and a few others, build in colonies, but the majority of birds seem to prefer a little domain each to himself, wife and family, and you will find one pair of blackbirds driving another from the laurel bush they have chosen, or chasing strangers from the particular garden path they call their own.

Though starlings feed—and chatter—in flocks, one particular pair of starlings make it their business to oust any other starling that they find on the bird board.

But the robin can be a perfect terror in the way he seeks to domineer over the whole earth. It is a very large area that he marks off for his individual own, and woe betide any other robin who tries to defy him—unless he be the stronger of the two. One of our robins killed his own wife (we conclude, as she disappeared, after a series of thrashings he gave her daily!), and then he injured the wing of one of his own youngsters, because we had petted them, and given them food inside the living room.

The father used to hide behind a stone down on the garden bed, and watch as his family—the mother and two babies—nervously and timidly approached the bird-board, looking round anxiously lest father should see! Then, when they started to feed, he would hiss out the dreadfullest of wicked words at them, and fling himself on them, bashing them with his beak—a positive little fury.

So one day I put some food on the table inside the room, and the down-trodden ones hopped in. I shut the window before the irate father could follow them. He seemed demented with rage, when he saw them feeding and couldn’t get at them; he literally stamped his foot, and viciously tossed off all the pieces of food that were on the board, flinging them to the ground in a most highly-glazed specimen of temper!

I let the family out by a side window, instead of the bird-board window, and they evaded their loving and affectionate relative for a little while. But he found them at last; and went for his wife, while the children cheeped forlornly among the pansies in the border. We never saw her again, poor, plucky little soul; and one of the youngsters dragged a broken wing along the path next day, explaining to me, pitifully, that he couldn’t possibly get up to the bird-board now, neither could he find mother anywhere.

I took him in, and tried to save his life—but it was no use. With all our knowledge and skill and discoveries and training, what clumsy, inadequate creatures we are in comparison with a little mother bird!