Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

I have laid my battered brain on pillows in some of the largest hotels in the world; but I have never known in any of them the peaceful rest that is to be found in the cottage bedroom, despite its sloping roof. I’m not saying that there is nothing whatever to disturb one there—all too often Mr. and Mrs. Starling (several of them) persist in building under the tiles just above my head, and the various families demand breakfast at 3.30. Yet I even get to sleep through this.

There is one thing, however, that always wakes me and calls me in a most peremptory manner to get up, and that is the return of the swallows one morning in April or May, when the sites are being chosen for the new nests under the eaves. It is such a sweet little chatter, such a bubbling over of comment and advice and reminiscence, as they get their first beakful of mud, and start to lay the foundation-stone of the nest.

What do they say? I often wonder. They seem to talk the whole time, and explain to each other the excellent residential qualities of their various positions. One thing I am sure they say—and they twitter it over and over again—I know they mean it, though I don’t understand their language; for the homing instinct is strong in them, as it is in all of Nature’s children; and as I listen to them in the early morning, I can almost hear their words, “Isn’t it good to be here again?”

III

At the Sign of the Rosemary Bush

WHEN the cottage was originally built—about one hundred and thirty years ago—it was probably just two rooms upstairs, one going out of the other, and a kitchen and scullery downstairs. In the intervening years, however, one owner has added on a couple of rooms on one side, and another has put on two more and a pantry round the corner, and so on, till it is difficult to say exactly what type of dwelling it really is.

There is a proper front door somewhere about the place, only no one ever seems to find it; the path leading to it from the main gate unobtrusively hides itself among the fir-trees, wandering round at the rear of the house, and under some low apple-trees—of course, no one who wasn’t familiar with the geography of the estate would think of exploring such an out-of-the-way, narrow, grass-grown trail. No, they would naturally follow along the irregularly-flagged broad path that is kept by the handy man fairly free from weeds (except some little ferns that will peep up at the edge, no matter what he does to them, and a saucy white violet that has planted itself right in the very middle of the walk and blooms vigorously).

Along this path most people go, whether they carry their best sunshade, a bead bag and a silver card-case, or are merely delivering two half-pounds of butter done up in dock leaves, and a cream-coloured duck wrapped up in a coarse white tea-cloth with his liver tucked under his wing, a big bunch of fresh sage stuck in his mouth—“and, please, mother’s put in a couple o’ onions in case you didn’t happen to have none.”

This broad path leads to a corner in the architectural conglomeration where there are two doors at right angles—one moderately respectable and one smaller and shabbier. If you carry a silver card-case, you knock at the respectable-looking door—which promptly admits you into the scullery: if you are merely someone anxious to dispose of a few eggs or wanting to borrow a little flour, you knock more humbly at the shabby door—to find you are battering at the coal-house.

Abigail deals with callers according to their status: the silver card-cases are invited, in dulcet tones, to retrace their steps along the broad path and take the narrow one to the front door. Sometimes they do exactly as they are told; but more often, alas! they espy yet another door, which they promptly make for, and this one precipitates them right into the living-room and on top of me, no matter what I may be doing.

Inside the cottage it is a similar jumble. You think you have found the living-room all right, when you come in from the garden, only to pull up in a large pantry, like a small room, with shelves full of delicious mysteries in glass jars and jampots and pickle bottles.

You open a door in the living-room, thinking it is the one leading out into the back hall, to find yourself confronted with a very steep and narrow stone staircase, which is one way of getting upstairs! Of course you get used to it all in a few days, and eventually cease to tumble down over the odd step that is obligingly placed here and there in dark spots, wherever the floor level changes in the halls or landings. But to those who are not native-born it is a wee bit confusing at first.

* * * * *

The living-room was originally the kitchen. It has a large fireplace with an oven, and wide hobs whereon you can stand a kettle or anything else you want to keep hot. It has a crane, too—only we daren’t cook our dinner in a pot suspended from it, because I don’t want Abigail to give notice. We have therefore to content ourselves with giving the crane an occasional swing.

The mantelpiece—of oak that is black with age—has two shelves, the upper one projecting beyond the lower, which has a frill of chintz beneath. Higher up still there is an ancient rack for holding a couple of guns, and there are cupboards on each side, also of black oak, that must have been put there when the house was built.

But I think the thing that delights my heart above everything else in this room is the huge dresser.

When you start with a room like this—I forgot to mention that there are oak rafters, with hooks for home-fed hams—it is easy to make it cosy. The big wooden settle keeps off draughts, some chairs that belonged to my great-grandparents are far more comfortable than anything I could buy nowadays, with the wood worn to that smooth polish that can only be attained by generations of handling.

The oak dower chest is heavily carved, though its iron hinges and locks suggest a prison door for solidity and size; still it is a handy receptacle for the miscellaneous collection of MSS. and papers that haunts me wherever I go!

I do not expect everybody to admire this style of room. There was one caller (who came out of sheer curiosity) who, after gazing around the living-room, with manifest disapproval, at last said, “You really could make this into quite a nice little drawing-room if you had those old rafters and beams done away with, and a proper ceiling put. Then you could easily have a nice tiled modern stove in place of that dreadfully old-fashioned fireplace, with those great hobs. And if you moved the dresser into the kitchen, and——” So she went on, winding up with the encouraging assurance, “And you would hardly know the place when you had got it all done.”

With one voice we said we could quite believe it.

People so often fail to realise that both a country cottage decked out in imitation of a town villa, and a town villa decked out in imitation of a country cottage, are equally unsatisfying. In each case the fake and insincerity of the schemes jar.

* * * * *

If it isn’t bothering you too much, I should like you to look at the ornaments—these, as much as anything else, give the room its “unlikeness” to anything you see in the city. Here is a lovely fat fish in a glass case among reeds and grasses. On the walls are antlers of the fallow deer. Then there is a framed sampler, and likewise some wonderful needlework of a bygone age when needlework was an art.

On the mantelpiece shelves are china cottages and castles, an old china mill with a wonderful mill stream, on which are china ducks, each the size of the mill-wheel! Then Red Riding Hood, in a little sprigged pinafore, carrying a dear little basket, and patting affectionately a most engaging, friendly-looking wolf, is always admired. Timothy’s grandmother (a dignified-looking matron), teaching little Timothy out of the Bible, is a relic from the days when Scriptural subjects were among the ornaments found in most households. “Going to Market” and “Returning from Market” are a choice pair of china subjects, showing the lady riding behind her husband on a prancing steed that would do credit to Rotten Row.

Mary and her little Lamb is one of the prettiest in the collection, only she lost one of her arms over fifty years ago! There are various cows and sheep (some with blue ribbons round the neck), and other quaint china oddities.

Then there is a beautiful hen sitting on a most symmetrically woven (china) straw nest packed full of eggs (each one, in proportion to the hen, is the size of an ostrich egg). The hen (eggs and all) can be lifted up, using her head, poor thing, as the handle, and then you find she is the cover to an oval dish. I always intend—should any members of our Royal Family get stranded on these hills, and drop in unexpectedly to tea—to serve them with a poached egg in this identical dish.

And you must not overlook the shining brass candlesticks, some tall and stately, some squat, with square trays and extinguishers, that have been winking and glinting in the light for a century now—and are still shining; nor the brass and horn lantern hanging from a beam. A lantern is an absolute necessity on these rugged hills when there is no moon.

How friendly the old brass things are! Just look at the warming-pan with its bright sun-face. I have no doubt modern radiators and hot-water pipes are a boon to those who do not mind headaches and dried-up air—but do they _look_ as warm and comforting as the gleaming warming-pan?

That reminds me of the first time Abigail came down from London. She looked at the warming-pan with interest, as she had never seen one before. The weather was cold, and hot-water bottles were the order of the night in town.

When I returned from an evening stroll with some guests, she met me with an anxious face. “If you please, miss, will you kindly show me how you keep the water inside that warming-pan? I can’t get it to stay inside nohow when I start to lift it!”

* * * * *

I wonder if you have ever seen a dresser like this one? The oak shelves forming the upper part are built into a deep recess in the wall, one above the other, up to the rafters, and all set back in the thickness of the wall—and you can see how thick these walls are from the window-ledge, which is fifteen inches deep. But they need to be solid, for the winter storms that thrash across these hills show scant consideration for present-day building methods; and a modern “bijou bungalow” would probably be found scattered about the next parish, if it ever lived long enough to get its roof on!

The dresser is closely hung with jugs and mugs and cups, willow-pattern plates and dishes make a good deal of white and blue against the walls, which are a full buttercup yellow, while a collection of ancient china teapots, with some square willow-pattern vegetable dishes and a tall Stilton cheese dish with two big sunflowers on it, occupy the wider ledge at the bottom.

Here are some uncommon specimens of lustre jugs. This is a rare lustre mug, brown with green bars outside, and a purple band inside. A lustre pepper-box stands on one of the dresser ledges, and salt-cellars of glass, so heavy as to suggest paper-weights.

Do you know the fascination of old English mugs? On this dresser they range from a tiny mug in Rockingham ware, only an inch and a half high, to noble things that suggest long draughts of home-made herb beer! There are mugs with bunches of flowers on them, others with conventional bands or designs, some with landscapes, some with butterflies, some with words of wisdom to be imbibed by the youthful along with the milk.

Jugs, again, are most alluring, once you get a mania for them! One of my jugs is of brown earthenware, smothered with a raised design showing a trailing grape-vine, with big bunches of grapes here and there. Two other jugs that belonged to a bygone ancestress are apparently made of a white stone wall, with the most natural-looking ivy creeping up it and displaying bunches of berries. Jug-makers of the past gave so much interest to their goods by reason of this raised work, instead of being content to transfer a flat design as they do now. One white jug has off-standing deer around it, grazing among trees. Another has a hunt in full progress, horses and riders, dogs and all—though it always hurts me to see the running hare.

A real, proper dresser is a useful bit of furniture, provided it has plenty of hooks. It holds such a quantity of things. I have all sorts of odd cups and saucers on mine, relics of past treasures that have somehow survived the hand of the hired washer-up; little bits that remind me of all sorts of pleasant things, such as tea-services my mother had when I was little, some that have belonged to other relatives.

In passing, I may say that a dresser of this sort is a great incentive to good works. Many a relation, on looking at it, has said, “_I_ have an old jug that belonged to your great, no, your great-great-aunt; I shall give it to you, as you like things of that sort.”

Or another time it will be: “_What_ a collection of odd cups! Good gracious, if a little thing like _that_ amuses you, I’ll turn out a lot I have stored away somewhere, glad to get rid of them; it only annoys me to look at them, as it reminds me how all the rest of the set got smashed. You can have them and welcome.”

There has been a good deal of this sort of “give and take” about the furnishing of this cottage. And it is so much more interesting to me as the owner to know the history of the various items, than if I had merely bought antiques by the houseful, as I have known some people do. In the latter case, a room is so apt to look like nothing but an old curiosity shop; as it is, the things all seem to “belong,” just as much as we do.

* * * * *

But I mustn’t weary you with a catalogue of household furnishings, though I know, if you could actually _see_ the china and the little bedrooms, with white, washable handwork everywhere, and wonderful old patchwork and knitted quilts, you would love it all. The Bird room is the general favourite, with its unique crochet; there are swallows flying across the curtain-tops, swans sailing among bulrushes on the washstand splash, wild geese flying above the tree-tops at another window, ducks swimming sedately along towel-ends, more swallows (in cross-stitch this time) on a table-cover, parrots (in darned filet) on the dressing-table cloth, while seagulls float along a frieze, a glass case of rare birds is over the mantelpiece, and a large wool-work pheasant, balancing itself ingeniously on the top of a small basket of grapes, and endeavouring to look as though it were quite its natural habitat, is framed, and hangs on the wall. I don’t think the far-back relative who worked it had much of an eye for proportion, however!

On the mantelpiece stands a sedate row of china fowls, a marble fountain basin in the centre, with white pigeons basking around the edge.

* * * * *

Just one other room you must look into—the sitting-room, because I want you to see my dolls’ things. Yes, I know it sounds imbecile, but I never had a dolls’ house. When I was young, the rest of us were brothers, and it wasn’t considered economical, therefore, to present a toy that would only be serviceable to one out of the bunch. Besides which, in those days children didn’t immediately get what they stamped for. So I had to go without the thing I yearned for above all others. But you may be sure I took care of what dolls’ things did chance to come my way.

Dolls themselves were very scarce, but I had several sets of dolls’ tea-things, given by discerning aunts, and here they are, in a funny old glass cupboard in the corner of the sitting-room. One is a very small set, with teeny pink rosebuds on it; another is a larger set, that my small friends drank tea out of (and occasionally smashed a cup for me). There are two dinner services, one in plain white—a round soup tureen, a gravy boat, a square vegetable dish, with some remaining plates and dishes; the other a gorgeous affair, with Dickens scenes on each plate—one dozen meat and six soup plates, with dishes and tureens galore, and oh! such lovely china soup and sauce ladles, all _en suite_.

These dolls’ things seem to affect people in different ways. Some look at them with eyes that go back to their own childhood, and memories that recall similar treasures that they wanted when they, too, were little, and did—or did not—get. Such people know exactly why I value these things. They handle them lovingly, but don’t say much.

But there are others who gaze at the dolls’ china (and the little wooden animals, and the glass slipper I was certain Cinderella wore, and the china grand piano, and the dolls’ brass fender, and all the other oddments), and then look at me in blank astonishment. It is evidently incomprehensible to them that any sane woman, in these days of strenuous intellectuality, can hoard such childish rubbish. And I am powerless to explain my reasons.

Occasionally, however, light breaks across one of these amazed countenances, and a woman will suddenly exclaim: “_I_ have part of a dolls’ dinner service somewhere in the attic at home, I believe. I shall get it out, and put it in _my_ china cabinet. It looks quite smart, doesn’t it?”

To which I reply: “Yes; and I hear they are going to be _much_ worn this season.”

* * * * *

All the decorations in the house are on the most homely lines, one room has each deep window-ledge filled with seashells and coral. If you want silver boxes and cut-glass scent-bottles in the bedroom, you must bring them yourself. _We_ think the wooden dressing-table looks all that can be desired, clothed in a blue-glazed lining petticoat, with white dotted muslin on top. And who could want a silver-backed hand-glass, when they have the chance of using one that has its back encrusted with small seashells!

There are plenty of pictures all over the house, many of them without frames. Haulage is an expensive matter on these hills, and we always take this into consideration. Several of the rooms have friezes made of brown paper, to which have been affixed a series of coloured plates. The charm of this arrangement is that you can take down the old frieze and put up a new one—or stick a fresh picture over some old one—as often as you please.

All pictures, however, show beautiful views of outdoor scenery: heather-clad hills, flowering gardens, snow-covered peaks, and rolling waves. Whether they are original paintings that famous artists have given me, or plates from art magazines, they are all views of large spaces, and induce big, restful thoughts.

Some cards that hang on the bedroom walls have been singled out again and again by my friends for special commendation. I happened to see them one day when I was going round the Book Saloon of the R.T.S. in St. Paul’s Churchyard. One special favourite has these lines on it (possibly you know them?):—

GOOD NIGHT.

Sleep sweet within this quiet room,
Oh thou! whoe’er thou art,
And let no mournful yesterday
Disturb thy peaceful heart;
Nor let to-morrow scare thy rest
With dreams of coming ill;
Thy Maker is thy changeless friend,
His love surrounds thee still.
Forget thyself and all the world,
Put out each feverish light;
The stars are watching overhead,
Sleep sweet, Good Night, Good Night.

Another, bought the same day, is entitled:—

A QUIET RESTING PLACE.

And so I find it well to come
For deeper rest to this still room;
For here the habit of the soul
Feels less the outer world’s control,
And from the silence multiplied
By these still forms on every side,
The world that time and sense has known
Falls off and leaves us God alone.

For the Flower room, Canon Langbridge’s delightful book, _Restful Thoughts for Dusty Ways_, supplied me with a verse:—

HEAVEN COVERS ALL.

When the world’s weight is on thy mind,
And all its black-winged fears affright,
Think how the daisy draws her blind,
And sleeps without a light.

And for the Bird room, I have on the wall W. C. Bryant’s beautiful poem, “Lines to a Waterfowl.” You will remember these verses:—

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air—
Lone wandering, but not lost.

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone
Will lead my steps aright.

On more than one occasion visitors have thanked me for having left them these goodnight thoughts.

Of course, being a cottage in the midst of a flower-patch, we never run short of flowers, and you find plenty indoors. When they are in bloom, however, I always like to put a bunch of white moss rose-buds (one of my favourite flowers) in a blue mug on a visitor’s dressing-table.

But whatever the flowers, it is our custom to welcome all guests with rosemary, for I have discovered that the scent of it (even the sight of it) is a certain cure for the divers maladies caused by overdoses of unsatisfactory dressmakers, cooks who give notice every month, much boredom in crowded unventilated drawing-rooms, and all the many varieties of restlessness that have been invented to help women to kill time. It has also been known to prove efficacious in cases of people prone to overwork.

At any rate, if you come to visit me you will find a vase with sprigs of rosemary on the deep window-ledge in your room; and few of my friends go away without taking a slip from the gnarled bush by the door to plant in less congenial surroundings.

I believe Shakespeare said that rosemary typifies remembrance; Virginia unblushingly improves on Shakespeare by insisting that it means the remembrance of peace.

IV

Miss Quirker—Incidentally

EVERY visit to the cottage seems prefaced with a scramble. Either the work at the office suddenly does itself up in a tangle, or the domestic arrangements show signs of incipient paralysis, which it takes all my available energy to avert, or else it is people who inflict themselves upon me when I’m at my final gasp without a moment, or a single company smile, to spare for anybody. And of all the three forms of irritation, the uninvited people are the worst; for they always seem to absorb the last bit of vitality left me, which I had hoped would just carry me over the journey.

There is Miss Quirker, for instance. You don’t know Miss Quirker? How I envy you!

I can best describe her as a lady well over forty (or more), who apparently hasn’t anything at all to do, and who does it thoroughly well. She has a couple of very decided and conspicuous gifts—one is the ability to waste the time and dissipate the amiable qualities of every individual whose path she crosses; and the other is a positive genius for saying the wrong thing.

I was near the window writing for all I was worth, when she knocked at the door and inquired for me, adding, “I see she is busy writing, but if you tell her who it is, I know she’ll see _me_.” Of course I had to see her.

She entered the room with a kittenish little rush and scuffle, that is by no means the happiest form of affectation for a tall, largely-built woman, well over forty (or more).

“Ah! I’ve found you in at last” (with a roguish wag of a stiff finger in a size too small glove). “I was determined to see you, dear, though Abigail always looks so forbidding at the door. I met Miss Virginia shopping just now, and I asked if you were at home. She said you were _frightfully_ busy, nearly off your head with work, as you were leaving town the first thing in the morning. So I said at once: Then of course I must go round and call on her this very afternoon.

“She said she wasn’t sure that you’d be in if I did, but I said I should chance it—it’s such an age since we’ve met—why, not since your engagement was announced! Now, just give me an account of yourself, and tell me all about everything.

“I would have asked Miss Virginia, but I never think she is at all cordial, or perhaps I should say—sympathetic. Indeed, I don’t think she really knew me at first. I was right in her path, yet she seemed to look through me! But I took a seat next to her at the lace counter, and spoke to her. By the way, is she deaf? It was so strange that she didn’t seem to hear a quarter of the questions I asked her about you, so I really got next to _no_ information from her. It was so funny sometimes that I almost laughed—I’ve _such_ a sense of humour, you know. For instance, when I asked her what she thought of your _fiancé_ (you know you’ve never introduced me to him yet!) and was it her idea of a suitable match, and was he tall or short, she replied: ‘I think it wonderful value considering, and it should wear well; the size is five yards round, so I had better have six yards to allow for corners.’ And, do you know, I was some minutes before I realised that she wasn’t talking about his waist measure, but an afternoon tea-cloth for which she was buying the lace. She evidently hadn’t heard a word I had said. And so I raised my voice and asked her what part he had come from, as I knew he didn’t go to _our_ church. She just looked at me and replied: ‘Cluny; I always think Cluny lace washes so well, don’t you?’

“You see, I got absolutely _nothing_ out of her. In fact, I wondered, dear, whether—of course, I know you don’t mind me speaking quite frankly—whether there had been any little rift—er—you understand; of course I know you’ve a wonderful fund of patience, only those two girls always seem to be with you, and though I’m sure you wouldn’t tell them so, yet anyone with the very _slightest_ tact might see that they aren’t wanted. And of course....

“Oh, well, I’m glad to hear you _do_ think as much of them as ever. I shouldn’t have thought it; but you needn’t mind telling _me_ if there _had_ been a little coolness. I’m fairly sharp at seeing through a stone wall. And I always have said that—personally, mind you—I never knew two girls less....

“Of course, we won’t discuss them if you’d rather not. As you know, I am the very last one to want to introduce a disagreeable topic. We’ll talk about you. Turn round to the light, and let me see how you are looking. My _dear_! but you do look ill!! I don’t know _when_ I’ve seen you look so utterly washed out and anæmic....

“You never felt better in your life? Well, I’m glad to hear it, I’m sure. Oh, I see what it is, it’s that blue dress you are wearing that gives you that aged and sallow look—a very trying colour, isn’t it? I don’t think anyone ought to wear that colour, but those with very clear young-looking complexions, and then it looks charming. It always suited me. By the way, did Madame Delphine make that dress?... I thought so, I knew it the minute I saw you. It’s a queer thing, but I have never yet seen anyone look even passable in a dress that she has made. You can’t exactly say that it doesn’t fit, can you? It’s a something—I don’t know how to express it—about her gowns that always strikes me as—well, you know what I mean, don’t you? And that dress you’ve got on looks just like that! I know you won’t mind _me_ speaking quite plainly; you see, I’ve known you for so long, and I’m not one to flatter, I never was. What we need in this world is absolute sincerity; don’t you agree with me? And I always think it’s the kindest thing when you see a friend in anything that makes her look plainer than ever, to tell her so at once, then she knows just exactly what she looks like. And, after all, other people are the best judges as to what suits us. We can’t see ourselves. Mrs. Ridley was saying at the Guild ‘At Home’ at the Archdeacon’s the other day, she thought you were so wise to stick to that way you do your hair; she said she thought it suited you, considering that....”

Here I did manage to interpolate a sarcastic regret that they couldn’t find a more interesting topic of conversation!

“Oh, yes, we _had_ other more interesting things to talk about, dear, but Mrs. Archdeacon had your photo on the table, and the Archdeacon said something about you, I forget what—nothing of any importance—and that was the only reason we mentioned you. I said I thought perhaps you did it that way because it was a little thin just there.... Oh, I know you used to have a lot of hair, dear; but some people’s hair _does_ come out, and a pad doesn’t look so well anywhere else....

“It’s all your own hair? You don’t wear—— Well, I _am_ surprised! I should _never_ have thought it!! I don’t mean that it looks much in any case, but I always concluded that you wore——

“Oh, how delightful! I’ll confess I was longing for a cup of tea.... Yes, three lumps and plenty of milk. I always say it makes up for any deficiencies in the tea, if one has lots of milk.... China tea, is it? I thought so. I dare say it’s all right for those who like it. And, of course, if you tell people what it is, they understand why it _looks_ so poor....

“On _no_ account; don’t _think_ of having some Indian tea made specially for me. I can quite well make this do, because I’m going straight home after I leave you, and tea will be waiting for me, and I shall have a _good_ cup first thing....

“Yes, I think I will have another sandwich, even though it is the third time of asking. These make me think of the Guild ‘At Home’ last week. You ought to have been there. The Archdeacon makes such a delightful host _and_ the sandwiches!—well, I can’t _tell_ you what they were like; literally hundreds and hundreds of them, and such delicious filling; all cut in their own kitchen, too. You really should get Mrs. Archdeacon to tell you what her cook put in them; you’d never touch one of these ordinary ones again, once you had tasted hers.

“But what I _would_ like to know is, what does she do with all the crusts? Mrs. Ridley thought that perhaps they made them up into savoury puddings; only, as I said to her: How about those with fish in them? She said that perhaps they kept them separate when cutting; but I know the shuffling ways of cooks better than that! I never kept one, and I never will....

“I must certainly try the cake if you made it yourself. I seldom get time to do any cooking myself, though I’m a very good hand at cakes. But you’ve secretaries to take everything off your hands; you must have lots of spare time.”

(A moment’s pause while she tries the cake.)

“Have you ever used the Busy Bee Flour Sifter? No? Then I should strongly advise you to get one. I should think _that_ might help you to make a lighter cake; or do you think you put in enough baking powder? But there, some people have a light hand with cakes, and some haven’t. I don’t think anything makes any difference if you haven’t. It’s just like plants, isn’t it—they always grow well for those who love them. _Your_ ferns aren’t looking very bright, are they?...

“Oh, don’t you like the ends of the fronds rubbed?... I see, they were given you by your _fiancé_, and naturally they are the apple of your eye. That reminds me, you haven’t shown me his portrait yet. I’m longing to see it....

“Is _that_ the gentleman! Well! he’s the very last man in the world I should have chosen for you! Not a bit like what I pictured....

“No, I don’t mean that there’s anything _wrong_ with him, only—er—he doesn’t look a scrap like the man _you_ would become engaged to....

“Well, I don’t know that I can exactly describe the type of man I expected. I thought he would be tall and——

“He is? Over six feet? Well, he doesn’t look it from his photo, does he?...

“That’s true; a vignetted head doesn’t show the full height. But apart from that, I expected an artistic sort of man....

“He is? Really! And then I should have pictured him rather—er—well, Napoleonic, and with that far-away poetic fire in his eyes that carries you off your feet to untold heights....

“No, of course I don’t mean an aviator! I mean a—but it isn’t easy to put it into words; only you can’t think how disap—how surprised I am to see a little man....

“Of course, I remember you did say he was tall and well made. But there, handsome is as handsome does; and, after all, I’ve heard that it is often the plainest and most uninteresting-looking men that turn out the best in the end. I can only hope that it will be so in your——

“Why, I declare! Here’s Miss Virginia! How d’y’do? We’ve been talking about you all the afternoon. Well, I really _must_ be going, and I simply won’t listen to any of your persuasions to stay longer. I’ve brightened her up nicely, Miss Virginia; she was looking ever so gloomy when I called. Good-bye, dear. _Good_-bye, Miss Virginia.”

_Exit Miss Quirker._

What we said after she had gone had better not be recorded! My own remarks may not have been _quite_ cordial; but I know that Virginia’s were even worse—if that were possible.

* * * * *

But though visitations such as these, when bestowed upon me at the eleventh hour, always reduce me mentally to a sort of bran-mash (and Virginia says she can’t see why anybody need bother a government to _import_ pulp nowadays, considering the state of her brain, to say nothing of those of other people who shall be nameless), the sight of the garden makes me human once more, and by sunset the silence of the hills has so restored my soul, that the sun seldom, if ever, goes down upon my wrath.

After tea, there will probably be two hours of daylight for watering the garden. Even though the sun has dropped behind the opposite hills, it is light up here on the hill-top long after the valley has gone to sleep; and when the sun has really set, there is a long and lovely twilight.

Indoors and out there is absolute peace. The grandfather’s clock ticks with that slow deliberation that is so soothing; even the preliminary rumble it gives before striking is never irritating—you feel it is a concession due to advanced age.

Through the open window float in the scents of thousands of flowers that are feeling unspeakably grateful for the liberal watering the girls have been giving them; you cannot distinguish any one in particular; one moment you think it is the sweet briar, then you are sure it is the white lilies, then the breeze brings the breath of the honeysuckles that are climbing trees and hedges, till the whole air is laden with perfume.

Up the garden white dresses are seen among the borders.

“There, I believe we’ve done everything but that upper bed of hollyhocks, and they won’t hurt for to-night.” Virginia sounds as though she had been working hard.

“Now the tent,” calls out Ursula. And we all make a stampede to the bottom of the lower orchard, and with a few dexterous turns the tent is down and folded up; for though the trees may be motionless now, the wind springs up at any moment on these hills, and once you hear it soughing in the tops of the big fir-trees in the garden you will realise the advantage of having the tent indoors!

As you saunter up the garden, back to the house, crushing the sweet-odoured black peppermint in the grass underfoot, the stars seem very near. The cottage looks like a toy, with the light shining from each little window. And as you cross the threshold into the living-room, the log fire flashes and gleams (a fire is acceptable up here after sundown, even in the summer), and everything smiles with such a cosy welcome, till brass candlesticks and cups and jugs and the homely willow patterns on the dresser, all seem to say, “We are so glad you’ve come.”

V

The Geography of the Flower-Patch

THE first night at this cottage you may lie awake, if you are a stranger to these hills, almost awed by the silence. Gradually you realise that the silence is not actual absence of sound. In May and early June the nightingales trill in the trees around; or you will hear the owls calling to one another in the woods—a trifle weird if you do not know what it is. At another time it is the corn-crake; or the wind brings you the bleating of lambs down in the valley. As you listen longer, you hear the tinkle, tinkle of the little spring that tumbles out of a small spout into a ferny well outside the garden gate.

You take a final look out of the window to where, miles away in the distance, a lighthouse flashes at fixed intervals. It seems strangely companionable, even though it is so far off. And then you close your eyes—unconscious that you have fallen asleep—only to open them again in a minute, as you think. Someone is speaking.

You detect Ursula’s voice in a stage whisper through the keyhole.

“I say—aren’t you ever going to get up?”

You rub your eyes. It certainly is morning! And you such a poor sleeper, possibly one of those who “never had a wink of sleep all night, and such horrid dreams.” The plaintive voice continues at the keyhole:

“I planted out nine hundred and thirty-seven wallflower seedlings yesterday, and I want to cover them up with fern before the sun gets too strong. If you’ll get up you can gather the bracken, while I creep around on all fours covering them up. See? Virginia is busy thinning out the turnips. And SHE is never any good at getting up early, you know!”

I regret to say this last scornful reference is to me!

* * * * *

And now when you look out of the little bedroom window again, to the accompaniment of an early cup of tea, what a change has taken place since yesterday! Last night the ranges of opposite hills, with the sun setting behind them, looked vague and mysterious with shadows. This morning the sun is full on them, but now there is another mystery—or so it seems to those who see it for the first time.

Instead of looking down into the green tree-clad valley to where the river winds along at the base of the steep hills, you now look down on to a bank of solid white—the mist that rises up at night and fills the lower part of the valley, reminding one of the mist that went up from the earth in the first Garden, “and watered the whole face of the ground.”

With the sun on it, the mist gives back a dazzling light. And then slowly, slowly, the whole white bank in the valley lifts silently and wonderfully; up and up it goes in a solid mass, and as the higher parts of the hills, which were previously in sunshine, are temporarily hidden by the uprising mass, so the lower part of the valley gradually becomes visible, first only a strip at the very bottom, then more and more as the white curtain is raised. Finally the white mass disappears and joins its fellows in the sky above, a fragment of cloud lingering sometimes a little below the summit of the highest hill. If the day is going to be fine, this last trail of silvery cloud disappears, and then the sun lights up the woods and the upland meadows, showing you distant cottages and far-off farmhouses where you saw nothing but tremulous shadows the night before.

However often one looks upon this sight, the marvel never lessens, and the “simple scientific explanation,” which every learned person who visits this cottage pours over the breakfast-table, is quite unnecessary. Scientific explanations are admirable for cities, but when we set foot on these hills, it is just sufficient for us that Nature “is.”

* * * * *

One drawback about this cottage is the fact that one’s poetic thoughts and soulful dreams are constantly being interrupted by things material, more especially those appertaining to food! And even as you are gazing out of the window at the glorious scenery all around you, there arises the odour of frizzling ham (that originally ran about, uncooked, in a field lower down), fried potatoes (the good old-fashioned sort done in the frying-pan), coffee, and other hungry things; and you find to your surprise that a substantial breakfast is on the table by eight o’clock, though (and this is where guests bless their hostess) no one need get up to breakfast, if they prefer to have it in bed, for very tired people come here sometimes.

But it does not matter what nervous wrecks Virginia and Ursula may have landed at the door overnight, the first morning sees them up with the lark and out gardening; and one of the earliest sounds you hear is the clink of the brown pitcher on the stones, as Virginia sets it down after filling it at the little spring outside the garden gate. This is a thirsty garden; it is everywhere on the slope, remember, and is composed of the lightest soil imaginable with rock everywhere beneath. As fast as you put water on it, it runs away downhill; hence, a moment’s leisure, morning or evening, always means some pitchers of water for the garden.

All the cottages on the hillside seem to have been built in the same way. Someone evidently hunted about for a few feet of land where it was slightly less sloping than the rest, and within reach of a spring of water, and this plot he levelled a bit by excavating the big boulders and smaller stones which make up our substratum, and often the top-stratum too. Then if the piece of land wasn’t quite large enough, he cut away part of the hill behind, banking it up with some of the biggest of the boulders, to keep it from tumbling down on to the piece he had cleared.

Next he excavated more rocky pieces from the up-and-down land around his clearing; this gave him a bit of clean ground for a garden, and also provided him with enough stone to build his habitation. Any stone he might have over he made into a wall around his plot, by the simple process of piling one piece on top of another. That, apparently, is all man does to the place. Then Nature sets to work; and, oh, what festoons of loveliness she flings over all!

As several different owners have had a hand at my particular cottage, the garden has been extended in various directions, but always requiring stone walls to prop it up. Hence you get a moderately level patch, with a drop of four or six feet over the edge of the garden-bed.

A few rough stone steps take you down to the next level, where there is another bit of garden, the steps themselves sprouting in every chink, with wild strawberry, primroses, ferns, columbines, and a stray Canterbury bell. In this way the cottage is surrounded with steps going up or going down, with a flower-bed running along here, and some more a few feet lower down; another terrace of flowers and some more steps (nearly smothered with big periwinkle, these are) take you down to an absurd lawn, that some enterprising person levelled up so delightfully on the tilt that neither chair nor table will remain where you place it! If they roll far enough, they go over the edge of the lawn, a drop of about twenty feet, into the lower orchard! Nevertheless, this lawn is popular, because it is edged at one side with white and pink moss rose-trees.

Thus perhaps you can picture it—big beds and little beds, some running one way, some spreading out in another direction; sometimes large patches where flowers grow by the quarter-acre; sometimes little scraps and corners no bigger than a hearth-rug, where we managed to dig out some more stones, and make a further bit of clearing. But everywhere you go there are the big plateaux or little terraces supported by massive grey stone walls, which vary from two to twenty feet in height, according to the amount of hillside they are required to prop up.

And how these walls bloom! Ivy and moss and ferns seem to love them, for all the local walls sprout ferns without any apparent provocation, and the walls about this garden are no exception.

But, in addition, white arabis hangs over in cascades, in the spring, and you see then why the country people call it “Snow-on-the-Mountains”; and mingling with the white is the exquisite mauve variety; wallflowers of lovely colouring, rose pink, deep purple, pale primrose, bright orange, as well as the richly-streaked brown-and-yellow flowers, bloom gaily on the rocky ledges; snapdragons flower later, with nasturtiums, and even some blue-eyed forget-me-nots have sown themselves up there, and bloom with the rest. Honesty plants have established themselves in the crevices; masses of wild Herb Robert have been allowed to remain; and carpeting everything are all manner of sedums, and Alpine and ice plants, some with grey-green foliage and ruby-coloured stems, some with white flowers, some with crimson; and in the hottest places there are clumps of houseleeks looking sturdy and homely.

Certain weeks in the year the tops of some of the walls are a golden mass when the yellow stonecrop is in bloom; but whatever the season, there is always something to look at—something holding up a brave head and preaching as loudly as ever a plant can preach of the advantages of making the best of your surroundings.

Does the wall face a sunless north? Very well; out come the ferns and up creeps the ivy; the Rock Stonecrop, with its blue-green stems and leaves (looking almost like a huge moss) fills every shady spot it can find, seemingly appearing from nowhere.

Is the wall sunny? All right; the wallflowers laugh at you, pinks climb over the top edge, just to see what is going on down below; one baking spot supports a mass of sage about a yard and a half in diameter, a smother of blue flowers in the summer; no one planted it, it just came! A red ribis has hooked itself in at one spot; what it lives on I don’t know; while white, mauve and purple Honesty seeds itself everywhere, making a brave show of colour in the spring. In fact, white and mauve are the prevailing colours on the walls in April.

Later on you may expect—and will find—anything; for annuals and bi-annuals seed themselves, continually dropping the seed to a lower level; hence there is always a self-planted garden bed at the base of each wall, reminiscent of what was growing above the season before.

On the shady side of one wall, we have made a moss garden—it was Virginia’s idea, and she takes a very special pride in it, adding new sorts whenever she finds them. Hence you will sometimes find her coming home from a ramble, carrying a huge stone with her, or lugging along a veritable boulder. In this way she brings the moss home, local habitation and all, annexing any stone she sees (a wild stone, of course, not a tame one from someone’s garden wall) that bears a promising crop of some new variety.

As a result, she fairly bulges with pride whenever she exhibits the moss garden, and explains how much of it is her own particular handiwork.

We have not yet settled whether she ought to pay me rent for my wall that she uses for her moss garden, or I ought to pay her wages for moss-gardening my wall.

One characteristic of this garden is an ever-changing show of colour. It varies according to the season, but whatever the time of year there are usually gorgeous splashes of colour that make you stand and wonder.

Do not forget that this is only a cottage garden, even though it is a roomy one. I hope you are not picturing to yourself an orthodox country-house garden, with expanses of well-kept lawns, with proper-looking beds of geraniums, and lordly pampas grass at intervals, and well-groomed rose-bushes in tidy beds, and correct herbaceous borders, and beds of begonias and heliotropes planted out from the greenhouses, and all the other nice-mannered, polite flowers that every well-paid, certificated gardener conscientiously insists on planting in exactly the same way all the country over.

This garden grows a little of everything, and a great deal of some things, and when you look at it you might easily imagine that everything had planted itself just where it pleased. The garden is not tidy, for the things are constantly growing over each other, and then out across the paths. Moreover, it lacks someone there all the time to keep it tidy; the ministrations of the handy man are decidedly erratic. But at least it is bright, always bright, and you can pick as many flowers as you please—handfuls, armfuls, apronfuls—with no fear of an autocratic gardener glaring at you; and the flowers will never be missed.

In the spring wallflowers predominate, every colour that the modern varieties produce. Ursula’s remark that she had planted over nine hundred seedlings was well within the mark. A thousand or two of wallflower seedlings do not go very far in this garden, because at one time of the year the place appears to be a waving mass of wallflowers from end to end.

And have you any idea what the scent is like when you have thousands of wallflowers smiling on a sunny spring morning?

But there are all sorts of oddments, some things you do not expect and some things you do. The cowslip bed is very pretty. Here are yellow, orange, copper-coloured and mahogany brown cowslips; pale-coloured oxlips, and polyanthuses in as many shades as the wallflowers, from rosy red to dark purple-brown with every petal edged with bright yellow as though they had been buttonholed round.

There is no need to cultivate primroses in the garden beds, for the two orchards are thick with them; where there are also large patches of wild snowdrops with crowds of wild daffodils, and dancing wind-flowers—or wood anemones; while tall spikes of the pale mauve spotted orchises grow in the grass around the edge near the walls.

Before the wallflowers have finished flowering the tulips are out, the old-fashioned “cottage tulips,” many of them, tall and with large cup-like flowers—pink and crimson, brown and yellow, showy “parrots,” and delicate mauve feathered with white, purple-black, deep maroon; such a brilliant army those tulips make, with hundreds of them in bloom at once.