Chapter THREE: The Village Villas

I.--THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY

THURSWELL IS UNDOUBTEDLY AN IDeal English village situated in the midst of an agricultural county, and far away from the unhealthy and demoralising influences of trade. It prides itself on being “select”--so does every other English village, even when it lies deep embowered among the striking scenery of a coal-mining district. But Thurswell is really “select.” A strange family may come to one of the best houses--one of the four or five that have entrance gates with lodges and carriage drives--and yet remain absolutely ignored by the older residents. Of course the shopkeepers pay the newcomers some little attention, and the ladies who collect for the various charities and the various churches are quite polite in making early calls; but the question of calling formally and leaving cards simply because the people are newcomers, requires to be thoroughly threshed out before it is followed by any active movement on the part of the senior residents. It has been called unsocial on this account; but everybody in the world--at least, everybody in Thurswell--knows that to be called unsocial is only another way of being called select The Rector must pronounce an opinion on the strangers, and--more important still--the Rector's wife. The example of the Barnaby-Granges, who have lived for centuries at the Moated Manor House, must be observed for what it is worth. It is understood that people like the Barnaby-Granges may call upon strangers out of a sense of duty; but every one knows how far astray from the path trod by the “select” a sense of duty may lead one, so that the fact of the Manor House people having called upon the newcomer is not invariably regarded as conferring upon the latter the privilege of a passport to the most representative Society at Thurswell. The strangers must wait until Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer have decided whether they are to be called on or ignored. Mrs. Lingard is the widow of a captain of Sappers, and Miss Mercer is the middle-aged daughter of a previous rector, and for years these ladies have assumed the right of veto in respect of the question of calling upon newcomers. Within the past year, however, this question, it should be mentioned, has developed certain complications, owing to the strained relations existing between the two ladies. Previously they formed a sort of vigilance committee to determine what should be done, but since the breaking off of diplomatic relations between them the poor people who had previously looked to them jointly for guidance are now compelled to consult them severally as to the course they mean to pursue, and all this takes time, and the loss of time in the etiquette of first calls may be construed into actual rudeness by sensitive people.

That is how we stand at present; and although many well-meaning persons--not invariably belonging to clerical circles--have endeavoured to bring about a _rapprochement_ for the good of the whole community between Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer, hitherto every effort of the kind has failed.

When the particulars of the incident that brought about the friction between the two ladies are known, it will easily be understood that a restoration of the _status quo ante_ is not to be accomplished in a moment.

It was all due to the exceptionally dry summer. People who retain only the pleasantest recollections of that season of sunlight and balmy breezes will probably find reason to modify their views respecting it when they hear how it led to the shattering of an old friendship and, incidentally, to the complication of the most important social question that can come before such a community as is represented by Thurs-well.

II.--THE SHATTERING OF THE PILLARS

The facts of the matter are simple enough in their way. Each of the ladies occupies a small house of her own, fully, and not semi-detached, with a small patch of green in front and a small garden at the back; but the combined needs of front and back are not considered sufficiently great to take up all the time of a gardener working six days in the week during the summer. There is enough work, however, to take up three days of the six, with window-cleaning thrown in, in slack seasons. As the conditions of labour are identical in the case of the gardens of both ladies--only Miss Mercer throws in the washing of her pug to balance Mrs. Lingard's window-cleaning--John Bingham, the jobbing gardener of Thurswell, suggested several years ago that he should divide his time between the two gardens, and this plan, to all appearances, worked very satisfactorily in regard to every one concerned.

Only John Bingham was aware of the trouble involved in keeping both gardens on precisely the same level of “getting on”--only John Bingham was aware of the difficulty of preventing either of the ladies from seeing that anything in the garden of the other was “getting on” better than the same thing in her own patch. It might have been fancied that as they were in complete agreement respecting the necessity for a strict censorship upon the visiting lists of the neighbourhood as regards strangers, there could not possibly exist any rivalry between them on so insignificant a matter as the growth of a petunia or the campanile of a campanula; but John Bingham knew better. It had been his task year by year to minimise to the one lady his success with the garden of the other--to say a word of disparagement on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of all that he had been praising on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. But sometimes Nature is stronger even than her greatest enemy, a jobbing gardener, and so it was that when Mrs. Lingard chanced to pay a visit to Miss Mercer on a Thursday, she found the garden of the latter, just recovering from the hand of John Bingham's attention on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, obviously superior in some respects to her own, and John found his diplomatic resources quite unable to meet with the demand for an explanation when she got home. It was in vain that he tried to make her understand, what she certainly should have known already from her experience of the ministrations of John--namely, that not he, but the superior soil and aspect of Miss Mercer's herbaceous border, should be regarded accountable for the marvellous growths which had attracted her attention in the garden of her rival. His Thursday, Friday, and Saturday patron declared herself far from satisfied with such an explanation. Soil! Had she ever shown herself to be close-fisted in the matter of soil? she inquired. And as for aspect--had he not chosen the aspect of the herbaceous border at which he was now working? No, she knew very well, she affirmed, that what made a garden beautiful was loving care. She professed herself unable to understand why John should lavish all his affection upon Miss Mercer's border rather than upon her own; all that she could do was to judge by results, and, viewed from this basis, it could not but be apparent to every unprejudiced observer that he had been giving Miss Mercer's borders such loving touches as he had never bestowed upon her own: the flowers spoke for themselves.

John had heard of the Language of Flowers, but he had never mastered the elements of their speech. As a matter of fact, he took no interest in flowers or their habits. He had “dratted” them times without number for their failure to do all that the illustrated catalogues declared they would do, and now he found reason to drat those of Miss Mercer for having done much more than he had meant them to do. It was with a view to restore the balance of mediocrity between the gardens, which had been through no fault of his, disturbed by a sudden outbreak of “Blushing Brides” in Miss Mercer's parterre, that he gave some extra waterings to Mrs. Lingard's verbinas, trusting to convince her that he was a thoroughly disinterested operator in both the gardens--which was certainly a fact. But in that arid summer the response of the verbinas was but too rapid, and Miss Mercer, calling upon her friend (and rival), was shown the bed with the same pride that she had displayed when exhibiting her petunias.

She said nothing--the day was Saturday--but she perceived, with that unerring intuition which in some persons almost takes the place of genius, that petunias had been supplanted (literally) by verbinas in the affections of John Bingham.

She spent the Sunday rehearsing an interview which she had arranged in her mind to have with John Bingham when he should arrive the next day.

But Monday came, and John Bingham failed to arrive. She waited at the back entrance to the garden until ten o'clock, but still he did not appear. Then she sent a messenger to his cottage to inquire the cause of his absence. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were her days for his services, and never once had he failed her. She could not guess what was the matter. She had always regarded him as a sober man and one for whom Monday morning had no terrors. The mystery of his first failure was rendered all the more unfathomable when the tweeny maid returned saying that Mrs. Bingham had told her positive that John had gone out to work as usual that same morning, and that Mrs. Bingham had taken it for granted that he was in Miss Mercer's garden.

For a quarter of an hour Miss Mercer pondered over the whole incident, and then she suddenly put on another hat, discarding the garden specimen with which she had begun the day, and went down the road and round by the Moated Manor House to where Mrs. Lingard's villa was situated, just beyond the knoll of elms. The hall door was wide open to the morning air, and through the glass door at the farther end of the hall she distinctly saw Mrs. Lingard standing on the edge of one of the beds of the garden with John Bingham kneeling at her feet.

And this on a Monday morning!

John Bingham had actually attended morning ser-vice in the church the day before--Miss Mercer had seen him there--and yet on Monday he had broken faith with her, and now, at ten-thirty, he was engaged in planting out the contents of the capacious basket which Mrs. Lingard was doling out to him.

And Mrs. Lingard was wearing her garden hat just as if the day was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, when she was entitled to his services.

And Mrs. Lingard had also been at church the previous day and had repeated the responses in her ordinary tone of voice, and without faltering, though beyond a doubt her heart had been full of this scheme of suborning a faithful, if somewhat weak, servant from his allegiance to the mistress who had an undisputed claim to his services the next day!

Without a moment's hesitation Miss Mercer passed into the hall, opened the glass door beyond, and stood beside the guilty pair before either of them was aware of her presence. She saw that the man was planting asters--the finest aster cuttings she had ever seen.

“John Bingham, are you aware that this is Monday morning?” she said in an accusing voice, and so suddenly that a cry of surprise--it may have been with guilt--came from Mrs. Lingard, and John Bingham let drop his trowel and wiped his forehead.

“Good gracious, Lucy! Where did you drop from without warning?” cried the lady in the garden hat.

“I am addressing John Bingham, madam,” said Miss Mercer in icy tones. “And once again I ask John Bingham what he means by being here when his place should be in my garden.”

“I can easily explain, my good woman,” said Mrs. Lingard, lapsing, under the “madam” of the other, into the tone of voice she had found effective with the native servants in the West Indian island of St. Lucia when her husband had been stationed there.

“I am not addressing you, madam,” said Miss Mercer hotly: her glacial period had passed and had given place to the volcanic--the suppressed volcanic. “I wish to be informed why this man--this traitor--this--this----”

“Don't be a greater fool than you are by nature, my good creature,” said Mrs. Lingard. “But I might have known that you could be disagreeable over even such a trifle as my sending to John Bingham to assist me for an hour in planting out the asters which were only delivered this morning when they should have been here on Saturday. If I had not begged him to come to my help for a couple of hours the lot would have been spoiled. In justice to him I will say that he was very unwilling to come.”

“And what does that mean, pray?” asked Miss Mercer sneeringly.

“It means that he knew you better than I did,” responded Mrs. Lingard. “He has had more experience of your narrow-mindedness than I have had. Now, go on with your work, John. Don't mind her.”

But John did not go on with his work. He touched his forehead with the drooping aster that he held rather limply, saying, in the direction of Miss Mercer--“I can easy make up the extra however, ma'am--mortal easy, in the evenin', and so I thought or I wouldn't be here now.”

“There, let that satisfy you, make your mind easy; you'll not be defrauded of the shilling for his two hours,” said Mrs. Lingard.

“You will be good enough to dictate to your inferiors, if such exist, madam; you need not dictate to me. You may keep your John Bingham now that you have him; I have made other arrangements for the future of my garden.”

She turned with a mock courtesy. Mrs. Lingard also turned.

“Lucy Mercer, go back to your--your--your hen-run,” she cried, pointing dramatically to the place of exit. “Go on with your work, John Bingham. Mrs. Hopewell will only be too glad to take on your Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. _She_ has a garden--_a garden_.”

That is the true and circumstantial account of how Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer ceased to be on speaking terms, and that is how it is that many people are becoming more hopeful of the future of Thurswell as the centre of a social neighbourhood. Each lady still arrogates to herself the right of veto in respect of the claims of any strange family to be visited on taking up their residence within reasonable visiting distance of Thurswell; but the people who formerly had been ready to accept the dictum of the two in such social matters are now beginning not only to assert their own independence of action, but even to dictate to others on all points on which they themselves had been dictated to--in no mild way--by Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer. But a mistake that was recently made by one of these immature dictators has done much to chasten their longing to take up the responsibilities attached to such a position. She had spoken with that definiteness which marks the amateur on the subject of the visiting of a certain Mrs. Judson Hyphen Marks who had taken Higham Lodge for a year, and accordingly quite a number of people left cards upon her. But suddenly the name of Judson Hyphen Marks appeared rather prominently in the columns devoted to the Law Court proceedings in the daily papers, and some curious information respecting the _ménage_ of the Judson Hyphen Marks was brought under the notice of the people of Thurswell and, indeed, of England generally; and those who had left cards upon them consulted together as to whether it was possible or not for them to ask for their cards to be returned to them.

The general opinion that prevailed after several long discussions on this question was that no social machinery existed by which so desirable an object might be effected, and no move was made in that direction; but ever afterward the dictation of the feeble amateur who thought to take the social reins out of the hands of Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer when it was found that they were pulling them in opposite directions, threatening to upset the social apple-cart, was received for what it was worth, not for what it claimed to be worth.

III.--FLOWERS AND FRIENDSHIPS

The instance just recorded of horticulture playing a prominent part in the breaking up of friendships is by no means unique. When one comes to think of it, one cannot be surprised that as the earliest serious quarrel recorded in the history of the world was over a purely horticultural question--namely, whether or not the qualities of beneficent nutrition attributed to a certain fruit had been accurately analysed--there should be many differences of opinion among the best of friends on the same subject.

It was my old gardener--not-the oldest of all, but the second oldest--who told me how it was that the annual prize given by the Moated Manor House people for the best floral display of the cottage order was very nearly withdrawn for ever, owing to the bad blood that was made by the award, no matter in what direction it was made. It seemed that the prize-winner invariably found himself compelled to accept the challenge to fight of all the disappointed aspirants to the prize, and before nightfall there was a general distribution of black eyes and front teeth; in some cases both got inextricably mixed up, and this was no pleasure to anybody, my informant assured me, and the wives of the men who were keen to compete for the prize discouraged them from it, with the warning that if they continued to spend their time over the cultivation of the blooms they might some day actually find themselves awarded the prize. That warning, founded as it was upon sound sense and reason, was beginning to produce its effects upon the better class of flower growers; but there were still a number of young fellows who went into training at the punch ball at the Church Institute club-room the day they sowed their flower seeds, and so were at the top of their form when the award was made in the early autumn, so that if one of them got the prize he thought if a pity that his training and practice at the punch ball should be wasted, and thus he was ready to prove to all disputants that the prize had gone to the best man; while it was only to be expected that those who had only had the cold consolation of honorary mention were only too ready to dispute his ability to maintain such an attitude for any length of time.

The result of this joint cultivation of bulbs and biceps was not just what the givers of the prize intended to achieve, and twice, when there had been arrests and summonses to petty sessions, a formal warning was issued to all whom it might concern that if the connection between the two cultures were not severed, the prize, which was only meant for success in the one, would be withdrawn.

Happily, however, it was not found necessary to enforce this ultimatum, and a _modus vivendi,_ founded upon one which had been understood to work very satisfactorily in the case of the Chrysanthemum Society of Mallingham, was adopted, and up to the present this had made for peace. The annual Battle of Flowers at Thurswell has become a thing of the past, and “Midge” Purcell, the ex-lightweight champion of the county, who rents the Lion and Lamb Inn, and to whom the candidates for the prize applied for advice on the biceps side of the joint contest, affirms with regret that Englishmen are becoming degenerate.

It was a peace-loving florist at Mallingham, the honorary secretary to the Chrysanthemum Society, who explained the system upon which his committee had agreed to make their awards, and urged its adoption by the Thurswell people. Its operation was not intricate. Its fundamental principle may best be defined on the analogy of the rotation of crops as the rotation of awards. Like the award of the Garter, merit had nothing to do with its scheme. The prizes were awarded strictly in turn to the professional competitors--the others did not matter. Mr. Johnson got the chrysanthemum cup one year, Mr. Thompson the medal for the best twelve cut lilies, Mr. Cardwell the Malmaison salver, and Mr. Prior the vase for the best display of greenhouse ferns. The next year it was arranged that the vase should go to Mr. Johnson, the salver to Mr. Thompson, and so forth. By the adoption of this admirable plan the judges were saved a large amount of trouble, and there never was any friction between the competitors, for it was understood that if it was Prior's year for the lily medal, but he had a liking for any other prize, he could nearly always negotiate an exchange with the man whose turn had come for the award that he fancied. This principle of give and take, live and let live, had made the Mallingham Society one of the most popular floricultural organisations in the country, and its adoption by the Thurswell Committee of the Manor House prize brought about, as has been said, an entire cessation of that ill-feeling which led to the use of language that was certainly not the language of flowers, and to many-discreditable scenes even when there were no arrests made. The cause of peace has triumphed, though some people say that floriculture languishes through the lack of heal thy rivalry; for when every man is certain of the prize when his turn comes for it, he does not trouble about the flowers. There may be something in this suggestion.

Taking one consideration with another, it really does seem a pity that the rotation system is not more widely accepted by those societies which have been established for the encouragement of sundry excellent objects, such as the breeding of bull-dogs (for symbolic purposes), of pugs (of no use to any one when they are bred), of pigs (of which the prize-winner is invariably the most uneatable), and of pets (in various forms). In our neighbourhood such organisations are to be numbered by the dozen, and after every prize distribution the air is murmurous with the complaints of disappointed competitors. It was a shrewd farmer who suggested to me the principle on which the awards are made at our local dog show. “The reason why there's so much grumbling, sir, is because the judges look at the wrong end of the leash,” he said, and I understood what he meant.

I know that the impression is very general that the pedigree of the exhibitor rather than that of the exhibit influences the local judges.

But I must confess that I could not bring myself to sympathise with one of our new residents who, after living in London all his life, bought Harley Croft House, a 40 h.p. motor-car and six pairs of gaiters, and set up as a country gentleman. It must be acknowledged that at times he looked a colourable imitation of one. He hoped that his starting of the breeding of cattle and fowl would consolidate his position. But his researches in the literature of both subjects at the same time resulted in some confusion. Of course his pointing out some drab-tinted cows to the steward of the Manor and alluding to them definitely as Buff Orpingtons was a slip that any one might make; but to hope to win sympathy for a wrong done to him by the judges at the poultry show by affirming that his bantam cock was really twice the size of the one to which the prize had been awarded was, I think, a strategical mistake of a flagrant character.

Much more in the spirit of the country gentleman was the remark made to me by a neighbour who hunts five days a week in winter and talks about hunting seven days a week in the summer, on a purely literary subject. He had been at the Military Tournament in London the year that _The Merchant of Venice_ was being played at Her Majesty's Theatre, and he confided in me that he thought on the whole it was very fine indeed, though for his part he enjoyed _The Runaway Girl_ at the Gaiety more fully. He could not quite understand the point of some of the jokes in _The Merchant of Venice_, he said. For instance, he should like to know what there was to laugh at in the chap's saying to the Jew that some one had shown him a turquoise which he had bought from the Jew's daughter for a monkey. Any one who knew anything about precious stones knew that to pay a monkey for a single turquoise, even though set in an 18-carat ring, was to pay a fair price. Of course you couldn't get much of a diamond ring for twenty-five pounds; but you could get a first-rate turquoise for half the money. But there were some people, he knew, who would laugh at any joke if they were only told it was in a play of Shakespeare's. I agreed with him, and laughed.

That was not the sort of man who would make a fool of himself over Buff Orpingtons or cherish his bantams in proportion to their size and weight.