Chapter I: HAD pointed out, quite nicely and kindly, to Virginia, that she was (2)

“Now, dear, what are you going to have? They have soup, roast beef, roast lamb and mint sauce, roast mutton” (and so on, she declaimed the menu to the bitter end, while a long-suffering waitress stood first on one tired foot and then on the other). “Oh, but you must have something more than a bun. . . . Nonsense, that was hours ago; I had mine late, too, but I’m quite ready for lunch. . . . On strict diet, are you? That doesn’t count. Specialists always say that sort of thing; that’s what you pay the money for; but it doesn’t follow that you do what they say. Why, you’d starve to death if you did, and then you’d have to go to them again and pay another fee—though I dare say that’s their idea. . . . You would like a little roast lamb? Well, I might manage a little, too, if it is _very_ hot; but I expect they’ve only got it about lukewarm. If the roast lamb isn’t quite . . . what? It’s _cold_? All the joints are cold? The waitress says it’s _cold_, dear! Isn’t it simply ridiculous in a place like London never to be able to get a hot lunch! . . . What? The grill is hot? But, my good girl, I don’t want any grill. . . . And the soup and fish? I don’t want either soup or fish. . . . No, and I don’t want hot steak-and-kidney pie. I wanted hot roast lamb. Still, if you haven’t it, I suppose it isn’t your fault. All the same, it does seem as if you are—— . . . . Sausages, did you say? They would be rather nice. Now are _they_ hot or cold, which? . . . _Smoked??_ Only _smoked_ sausages?? Did you ever know such a place! . . . What do you say to oysters? . . . You thought I only took fruit? I tried that for a little while; my last doctor but one was very keen on it; but if you believe me, I was losing _pounds_ a week! I should have been a perfect skeleton by now if I’d gone on. So I went to another man, and he insisted—absolutely _insisted_ that I must take food containing a larger percentage of proteids. And I wasn’t sorry; I never had any faith in that fruit idea, only I met that doctor when I was at the Hydro, and he begged me to try it. A most charming man, and he took the _greatest_ interest in my writings; but someone told me only last week that he has a wife who is a positive—— . . . . Salmon? Is there salmon? I didn’t notice it. That wouldn’t be bad, would it? and the very best thing you could have as you’re dieting; so digestible, I always find. Now where’s that girl gone? I declare they slip away the minute your back’s turned, and they don’t give you a moment to look at the menu. Is that our waitress over there? I think it is; she has on an apron just like the girl who was here. . . . That’s true, now you mention it; their aprons are all alike. Still, I think that was the one, and she’s gone over there on purpose to be out of reach. But I’ll go to her.”

Here Virginia and I narrowly escaped detection, for the Literary Lady strode across the room, knocking down other people’s umbrellas in passing, brushing one lady’s velvet stole from the back of a chair, and kicking over a tray that had been put down in, apparently, the most out-of-the-way spot in the room. Clutching the arm of the waitress who belonged to our table and had no dealings with the other end of the room, she demanded immediate service. Instinctively Virginia and I bent our heads forward as low as possible over our plates, and fortunately the wide brims of our hats helped to conceal our features. But we only breathed freely when she returned to her seat to report to her friend—

“That waitress says the other girl will be back in a minute; but I doubt it. There; now _she’s_ gone off too! Ah, here’s ours—at last! Now, dear, you said sausage, didn’t you? Or did we decide on oysters? . . . You’re right; it was salmon. I always think that salmon—— . . . . What did you say? . . . Why, of _course_ we want bread! We couldn’t eat it without, could we? . . . Oh, I see, you mean bread or roll? She says will you have bread or roll, dear? . . . Yes, rolls would be nice, but—— Waitress! Not crusty ones! . . . Well, perhaps bread _would_ be softer for you under the circumstances. Stale bread, waitress! Those rolls are usually as hard as—— . . . . Yes, perhaps we _had_ better decide on what we will have to drink. I’m going to have lime-juice. You’d better have some too. It goes so well with salmon. . . . Of course they have coffee, if you really prefer it; but I do think that lime-juice—— Well, if that girl hasn’t gone off again! They do nothing but run about from pillar to post. Oh, she is bringing the other things! _That_ isn’t brown bread, waitress! I said _brown_ bread surely? I _must_ have said brown bread, because I positively cannot touch anything else. Don’t you remember I called you back and said, ‘_Brown_ bread, waitress?’ Well, if you can change it, that’s all right. Wait a minute, though; after all, I think I’ll have white. . . . Yes, you can leave it; but all the same, I can’t think why people never listen to what one says.”

Here half the room broke out into an unconcealed smile; _i.e._, the half that had found it impossible to raise their voices above hers, and so had finally given it up as hopeless, and now devoted themselves to listening. But all oblivious of everything but herself, she continued—

“I don’t like the look of that salmon. I feel sure it’s been frozen. Is that the best you have? It looks to me like New Zealand or Canterbury salmon! Really, _everything_ seems to be made in Germany nowadays, doesn’t it? And no mayonnaise. . . ? It’s in the cruet? I never care for that bottled stuff. . . . Oh, yes, leave it; but I wish now that we had had oysters. . . . It’s no use offering to change it; we’ve done nothing else so far but have wrong things brought us to have changed—or at least it would have been changed if I hadn’t consented to put up with the white bread. But you can bring us some lime-juice. Now don’t forget _this_ time and bring ginger-beer. . . . Yes, lime-juice for two. . . . But I thought you agreed to lime-juice just now? . . . Oh, have what you like by all means; _I_ don’t mind what it is; I only advised lime-juice because coffee is so _very_ bad for anyone on diet, and you can’t be too careful; still, please yourself, only _do_ let us decide on _something_, or she’ll be off again. . . . That’s it, one coffee and one lime-juice. . . . Yes, with plenty of milk. . . . Now, I wonder if that scatter-brained girl will go and put the milk in the lime-juice?

“You were surprised to hear I was back in town? I returned last week. I absolutely couldn’t have _existed_ on that benighted hill-top another hour. . . . I knew the moment I set eyes on it that it wasn’t sufficiently cooked. No one could be expected to eat it. She must get us something else. Waitress! This salmon isn’t _half_-done. It’s as soft as. . . . Oh, I see; yours is hard? Well, at any rate, it isn’t what it ought to be. Mine is quite spongy, and this lady’s is as hard as . . . the skin, is it? . . . this lady’s skin is just like leather. . . . I suppose it had better be oysters. . . . Now I wonder how much longer she’ll keep us waiting? But as I was saying, they were the dullest, most bucolic set of people I ever came across; not a thought above their fowls and cabbages. I tried to discuss Art and Literature with them—simple things, not too far above their heads, you know, just to draw them out; but they merely gazed at me in utter blankness. . . . Yes, she has a cottage there; I’d forgotten I mentioned it in my letter. . . . Oh, yes, I met her; in fact she persuaded me to address a drawing-room meeting at her house; she got it up on purpose, hearing I was in the district. I could ill afford to spare the time from my book; but she wrote and made _such_ a point of it, that I could hardly refuse without seeming rude. She invited a number of the local people to meet me; but a more stupid, unimpressionable collection of—— . . . what is she like? _Most_ ordinary. As you know, I’m endowed with unusual intuition, and can gauge people and sum them up in a _moment_, and I must say I found her a _very_ uninteresting person—not to say exceedingly heavy.”

* * * * *

“Which only proves,” said Virginia when we got outside, “that even the worst of us may profit by hearing the truth spoken in love!”

XVI

Moon-Gold in the Garden

THE flame of August is over all the garden, a blaze of yellow and scarlet, orange and red, for most of the blues and pinks go out with July, though the lavender flowers are opening intensely blue, and big clumps of eryngium, with blue stems as well as blue flower-heads, make masses of contrasting colour amidst the sunflowers, single and double, and the eschscholtzias and marigolds glowing golden and undaunted by the hottest sunshine. The flowers of the Red-hot-poker rival their namesakes; broad spreading clumps of montbretia, each waving hundreds of fiery orange and red blossoms, have sprung into existence, since last we were here, from lowly modest-looking patches of green blades.

The second crop of Gloire-de-Dijon roses are out, likewise holding in their hearts remembrance of the hot sunshine that pervades the earth. Geraniums, turned out of doors “to get a little air” (though there certainly isn’t much to get just now!), are shouting aloud in pride of their heavy, scarlet bosses. The mountain-ash trees contribute plenty of colour, each branch bent down with a smother of bunches of berries, which are being eagerly devoured by blackbirds, thrushes and hawfinches.

Tall red and yellow hollyhocks try to persuade you that they are nearly as high, and quite as brilliant, as the mountain-ash.

Nasturtiums trail all over the place, climbing where there is next to nothing to support them, with flowers so thick you lose count of the foliage. And what a dazzling mass they make, touched apparently with every shade of yellow and brown and red, from blossoms of palest primrose marked with vivid scarlet, past salmon-colour streaked with orange, and lemon yellow splashed with chocolate, to dark mahogany-red smoked with deep purple-brown. They smother weeds (that gain in impudence as the season advances), and cover bare places where bulbs and earlier blooming plants have died down. They hang over the tops of walls; they crowd the border pinks into the paths; they get mixed up with the hedges, and surprise you by sending out vermilion flowers at the top of a sedate old box-tree clipped to look like a solid square table. They run out of the little white gate into the lane, and they creep under the rails into the orchard. Indeed, there are times when their exuberance almost makes one tired, more especially if the thermometer favours the nineties!

The garden walls are teeming with colour. Sweet Alyssum has seeded itself wherever it can find a spare niche—rather a difficulty, unless a plant goes house-hunting quite early in the season! Though the white and purple arabis finished flowering months ago, it contributes crimson and purple to the colour scheme, as its foliage ripens in the hot sun.

Any intelligent gardener can tell me that the top of a sunny wall is far too hot for a fuschia. Certainly; and of course it is—especially in August. Yet some misguided person had one planted there—just where the wall has a break in it, and a flight of steps leads down to the next level. It is the lovely old-fashioned bush sort, smothered with slender drooping blossoms; and it reaches out long arms that arch right over the steps, and as you go down, unless you lower your head, you set a-tinkling scores of crimson bells with rich blue-purple centres.

And people who understand all about fuchsias glare at it severely, and then at me, and remark, “A most unsuitable position!”

And where nothing else in particular is making any sort of a show, the ubiquitous Herb Robert spreads itself about, on the top of the walls, or roots in crevices down the sides—it isn’t particular where; so long as there are stones that need clothing with loveliness, there you will find it, laying its crimson leaves with a lacy airiness over the stern surface of the rock.

The very scents of the garden are hot and pungent, as one rubs against thyme and marjoram, or the great sage bush that smothers one wall. The trees of sweet bay were cut in the morning; the rosemary bushes had to be trimmed where their branches were lying on the ground; someone has stepped on pieces in passing.

All day long the heat strikes down on the parched, cracking earth, baking the stones, shrivelling up any fern fronds that chance to catch its direct rays, drying up the little brook, and testing the powers of endurance of the scarlets and yellows, orange and reds, that are flaunting themselves in the face of the sun.

To sit out of doors is only possible beneath the firs and larches, in the green shade by the wood house, where the sun never penetrates; and even here it makes one warm to watch the glare beyond the thicket of trees, the hot air quivering, nothing but butterflies and dragon flies about, and nought to break a breathless silence but the twitter of the tits, grub-hunting in the larches, and the perpetual hum of uncountable insects, who seem to find no heat too great.

* * * * *

But presently the shadows of the pines begin to lengthen, and in the shade thrown by the larches along the meadow side blackbirds are seen making short runs along the ground on foraging expeditions. Chaffinches, tits, linnets, and bullfinches come out from green hiding places and go down to the birds’ bath to drink.

Longer grow the shadows, the swallows rise and take high curving sweeps in the upper air—wonderful little aeronauts whom no man has trained.

As the sun touches the top of the opposite hills a breeze wakes up the birch wood, whispering that the sunset will soon be here, and the leaves start talking about the stifling heat that so exhausted them through the day.

The sun drops lower behind the hill; rabbits peep out from beneath the brambles, then make for the hummocky field that adjoins my cabbages, the field where the big oaks stretch wide arms over soft, green, luscious grass—Offa’s Oaks we have named these ancient giants, because they border Offa’s Dyke; and they have so often described to the more youthful birch trees the time when they saw Offa, King of Mercia, come marching past in 765 A.D., that at length they have actually come to believe they were alive and flourishing in his day! We humour their age by pretending that it was so.

At last the sun disappears, flaming to the last in crimson and gold, orange and red. The breeze gets lustier after the sun has gone under, and a squirrel comes scampering head first down a tall fir-tree, in search of a delicious toadstool that he sometimes finds at its base. Pheasants strut up out of the coppice, and roam about the pasture.

Imperceptibly, you know not whence it comes, there steals over the earth the cool, refreshing scent of dew-drenched bracken, mingling with the sweet wistful evening incense of some late honeysuckle.

And as you watch the fading after-glow of pink and saffron, sea-green and tawny-rose, you sense that in some mysterious way the face of the garden has entirely changed. Gone is the fire of the scarlet geraniums; lost is the vermilion of the nasturtiums; even the sunflowers hang their heads, and the hollyhocks have turned off their lights. The marigolds have closed their eyes, and the eschscholtzias have folded up their brave flowers, the tired little heads bowing over, thankful for this respite.

Then, as the montbretias toll the Angelus from crowds of golden throated bells, the evening primroses, silently, gratefully, open a thousand blossoms and bathe the garden in a wondrous gleam.

Such a clear, clean yellow it is; so quiet and yet so penetrating; it seems in some strange way to hold the radiance of heaven and focus it on the sleeping Flower-patch, subduing all that would strike a glaring note, hiding the ragged deficiencies of fading leaves and withering seed-pods.

By day one scarcely noticed the straggling plants at all, save perhaps to remark on their rather shabby appearance. But now they shine from terraces and wall-tops; from crannies in the rough stone steps they send up tall shafts, bearing aloft their evening lamps; about the garden beds, among the currant bushes, at the edge of the gravel walk, between the stones in the paved path, wherever they can find root-room, they have taken hold—for they were ever wanderers, and given to exploring the farthermost corner of any garden wherein they have made themselves at home.

* * * * *

The last rose-pink flush has faded from the clouds; not even a sleepy twitter is heard from bush or bough; the wind soughs softly in the pine-trees, those harps of endless strings. From out her hidden stores of abundance, Nature has given moisture to the grass, refreshment to the fainting foxglove leaves, and damped the forest fern. Then, breathing quiet on a weary world, has bidden it take rest.

Yet all are not asleep. Standing like sentinels through the darkest hours of night, the evening primroses, adding scent to scent, flood the garden from end to end with a veritable glory of swaying, gleaming moon-gold.

XVII

The Carillon of the Wilds

OF all the host of alluring things that make for themselves homes on our hillside, one of the most lovely is the foxglove. Yet there is no blatancy about its beauty, nor a great blaze of light as when the ox-eye daisies wave over the fields in June.

There is something more subtle than even its colouring that attracts one to this flower, for there is mind-rest, there is balm for anxious hearts, there is new hope and new courage, with whispers of happiness, in the depths of a foxglove bell.

If you doubt this, go on a foxglove quest; leave everything bearing the hall-mark of advanced up-to-dateness far behind you—though I’ve nothing to say against the train that takes you away from towns to the place where the foxgloves grow! Forget all the regulation ways of enjoying yourself, and search out the haunts of the carillon of the wilds.

You will find them on the shady sides of the hedges, their spikes of bells pushing up through hawthorn and sloe, through the tangle of bramble and bryony, cleavers and dog rose that scramble over the pollarded nut-bushes, beeches, elm-stumps, and ash-boles, amid all the dear delights that go to make that poem of loveliness—an English hedgerow.

You will also find them in little hollows and dells, in small ravines and in craggy places—in any spot where they can get a little moisture for the roots and occasional sunshine for the flowers, with a certain amount of immunity from the devastating hand of the human marauder. Give them but a ghost of a chance to seed themselves (though this is what the greedy flower-gatherer invariably denies them), and they will spread with great rapidity, and paint the face of nature with a rich glowing carmine that almost makes you hold your breath when first you see the broad sweeps of colour on certain hillsides in mid-June.

When you have found them, in any of their haunts, lift one of the bells and look right into it, delighting in the splashes and markings, the fine filaments and the silken texture, the pink and purple and crimson, the dark brown and white, the poise of the stalk, the droop of the bells, the balance that the leaf-arrangement gives to the whole plant, and the many other characteristics that go to make up one of the most exquisite of nature’s products.

The trouble is that in sparse soil, or in wind-swept places, the plant does not grow so tall as in a protected and secluded spot. Hence when we meet it in the open, its bells hang downwards below the eye-line, and we do not often remember to stoop and lift one, to see what message the bee left for us. Perhaps that is one reason why it seems to me that, while sunflowers and hollyhocks spend their days in gazing after grown-ups, foxgloves are for ever nodding smilingly and encouragingly to little children.

To those who are accustomed to agricultural scenery, where the landscape shows far expanses of pasture-land and cornfields, with wide spreading low-roofed farms clustered around with barns and ricks, our hills come as a surprise with their uneven surfaces, and the scarcity of soil in comparison with the superabundance of rock.

And even taking into consideration all the cleared spaces and small farms, the outstanding feature of the country, so far as the eye can see, is timber. This is a region of woods and coppices, with springs that bubble up at the roots of sturdy trees, protected by their thick leafage from the onslaughts of the sun. This is a land of dim grey-green mystery, of silences that make one tread with reverent awe till one is brought back to earth, by the ring of the woodman’s axe, the leisurely song of his saw, and the crish-crash of a tree as it falls.

In the course of time, the woods have to be cut; some are cut every fourteen years; others are left much longer; it all depends on the kind of tree and the purpose for which it is being grown.

But though the woods are cut periodically, it is not so devastating a process as one might imagine. For one thing, it is clean work; for another, it is surface work; and then it is all done in the open air, with hand-tools and no machinery, and it is carried out on nature’s own lines. Hence there is no underground disturbance that would prevent further growth, and no smoke of power-driven machinery pollutes the earth and air.

Yet there would be something very pathetic about the felling of the trees, as you walk over ground that has been cut, were it not for the magical display of beauty nature puts forth in such circumstances, multitudes of flowers springing into being that otherwise would not have come to birth.

At first you see but the prostrate trunks of the trees, with ivy still clinging to the bark; there they lie, with branches lopped, each surrounded by piles of small timber cut into regulation lengths for various commercial purposes; with “cords” of faggots for firing, and stacks of stuff for pea sticks and similar purposes.

Yet you are not long wandering over the newly-cleared slopes before you see things that were not evident before.

In winter you discover a red-gold carpet—too golden to be brown, too brown to be red—where lie the leaves of the beeches that you never noticed when the trees were standing.

Then, as spring breathes life into the sleeping earth, the dead leaves stir, silently, mysteriously, no human ear can detect the rustle, no human eye can see the movement, yet the leaves lift and move apart, disclosing the yellow and green, and silvery-pink of the primrose buds.

Still further the dead leaves lift, and the violets look out, and then run all over the place. The wind-flowers push up next, and before you realize what has happened, the place is literally dancing with them. Where did they all come from?

Last spring you went through this very wood and saw only a few scattered about at wide distances, where there chanced to be a filter of light through the dense branches overhead. Now the place is an open air ball-room of curtesying sprites.

Such are the wonderful ways of the woods!

In sheltered spots where the cold winds cannot reach, cushions of wood-sorrel unfurl their pale-green leaves, and then send up, cautiously and shyly, the fragile bells that look as though a breath would blow them away. The woodruff also sets to work, for there must be beauty of odour as well as beauty of colour and form, and something will be needed to take the place of the violets when they go.

By this time the bluebells are ready to come out; but there is no shyness about these, sturdy in their growth, no obstacle seems to hinder them; up come the green spears, making their own way through dead leaves and twigs and moss and acorn cup, through thickets of low-lying bramble, through carpets of close-growing ivy; if a dead branch or a tree trunk lies in their way, they peep out at one side, “Is there a trifle of daylight here?” And up they come, carpeting with blue the open spaces between the huge masses of rock that lie pell-mell about the surface; while the humble little ground-ivy lays cool green fingers, and a little later its violet-blue flowers, over the cream and silver of the birches, the soft grey of the beeches, and the rough bark of the oaks, where the felled trunks lie among the up-springing grass, sensing for the last time the coming of spring and summer on the hillside.

Then it is, when the bluebells have turned to papery seed-pods, and the primroses have paled away into space, that the foxgloves begin to shake out their flowers and the hillside glows and palpitates with colour. They flourish with a joyous abandon that is positively infectious, and makes one feel there is still much left to live for. The way they suddenly appear when the trees are down—whole battalions of them—where only a season before there were regiments of larches, or thick woods of mixed timber, is really marvellous. Undoubtedly the ground must be packed with seed; more than this, there must always be young seedlings coming up among the undergrowth or in sheltered crevices where the larch needles do not penetrate; for no sooner are the trees cut than foxgloves start to spread their leaves to the light, and by the following summer, often before half the timber has been carried, you find them by the thousand—and that is a very low estimate—dotted all over the rough land, and, with a host of ferns, trying to cover up all that is maimed, and bare, and jagged, to hide the scars where the mighty have fallen, to give beauty for ashes in a very literal sense.

Moreover, there seems an almost uncanny intelligence in the way they adapt themselves to their environment. You would think they knew that the winds from the far-off Channel blow strong at times, across these high open spaces; for you find that they invariably place themselves in the shelter of a big boulder, or settle down in a little hollow with a protecting flank of rockery, evidently conscious that their tall stems would be lashed down flat if exposed to the full force of the wind. Or you find them growing, it may be, at the foot of a crumbling gate post, or against an ivy-covered rock, or rows of them nestling close up to a lichen-covered stone wall; and in this way their beauty is enhanced by the background.

And when they find themselves in an uncongenial setting—springing up in the very centre of a woodland path perhaps, or out in the open where the woodmen have been lopping the branches from a felled tree, and there is much devastation to be covered over and atoned for—there the foxglove lays its leaves as flat as possible against the earth, so as to offer the least inducement to the passer-by to injure it. And though it still sends up its flowers as bravely as it knows how, they are only a foot high, not the five and six feet of the foxglove in the shelter. Yet if it be possible, in the least bit possible, it leans against the pile of faggots, or gently touches the desolate trunk of what was once a majestic old tree—and who dare say that the silent companionship counts for nothing?

* * * * *

As I write this, in a year of the Awful War, there are some who would tell me that foxgloves will not find the people in food; while others see no value in the larches apart from their service as mine-props.

Yet, while I would not under-estimate the utilitarian worth of crops and timber, the age-old truth is still insistent: Man cannot live by bread alone.

You may clear from the surface of the land every plant that is not edible; you may fell every tree that does not serve for telegraph pole or pit wood; you may tabulate the food-productive qualities of the whole earth, and serve it out in a blue-book as literature for the people; you may manufacture electricity till there is no longer any night, and the mysteries of the twilight and the moonlight and the starlight are lost to us for ever; you may destroy the birds till there isn’t one Glad-song left in the caterpillar-riddled orchards and gardens; you may harness the rivers and streams for mechanical purposes, and drown the voices of the weir in the whirr of wheels, till there isn’t an ounce of energy flowing to waste throughout the length and breadth of the country; you may turn all Nature into a huge commercial enterprise that is the last word in economics and efficient organization—and what will be the result?

Machines in place of souls!

Germany strove to subserve everything to her own materialistic ends, and the price of her hideous and colossal crime is a world’s agony.

Though this may seem but a parable, to some the reading will be clear: Where there is no vision, the people perish.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 112, “contribubution” changed to “contribution” (own literary contribution)

Page 167, “away” changed to “way” (my way round)

Page 178, “seach” changed to “search” (in search of you)

Page 200, “aromati” changed to “aromatic” (its aromatic leaves)

Page 244, “bric” changed to “brac” of “bric-à-brac”