IN WHICH THE HEROINE PRESENTS HER LETTER OF INTRODUCTION
Philomène’s first day at the Cushats happened to be a Sunday, and after
breakfast on the lawn Isolde took her goddaughter to the weekly
children’s service. These services were short and simple, and the vicar
of Wyndham-on-Ferry was acknowledged by everybody to be at his best when
addressing children. He was a tall, spare man, with a somewhat stern
expression of face, “and what his servant is about is more than I can
tell,” Nurse had once remarked, “for he has the look of a person who
lives on nothing but mince and hot water.”
In the side-chapel of the village church hung a copy of an Italian
picture, S. Mary Magdalene, black-haired and crimson-robed, and to
Philomène the pale sad face, framed in its shadowy tresses, seemed like
the face of some sorrowful mermaid. Neither her father nor her godmother
had ever insisted upon her attending drearily long services which could
have held no meaning for her, and the result was that she was very fond
of going to church. She loved the sweet-voiced bells and the vibrating
tones of the organ, the rich colouring of the stained-glass and the
stately rhythm of the prayers.
“It just makes me feel like a king’s daughter,” she had once confided to
Isolde, “and do you know, Godmother, I really think I like it better
than the theatre, because there is no tiresome clapping to interrupt in
the middle, and disturb one, and make one feel every-dayish again all of
a sudden.”
“What would you like to do, little cushat?” asked Isolde, as the two
strolled home together across the fields. “I have some letters that I
must write, and I am afraid they will take me till lunch-time.”
“I will look at your Granny’s big picture Bible first,” said Philomène,
“and then write to Daddy and play with the pussies, and after that I
will go and have a look at the dove-cot.”
“There aren’t any doves, you know,” said Isolde, “I don’t particularly
want to keep any. There are quite enough in the woods all round.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter a bit,” said Philomène, “one can always
pretend.”
So Godmother settled herself to write on the verandah, and Philomène
brought out the Bible. It was a very bulky book, for it contained not
only the Old and New Testaments, but the Old and New Testament
Apocryphas as well. Judging from the dog’s-eared pages thereabouts, it
would appear that Godmother’s Granny had looked oftenest at the picture
of Jacob blessing his twelve sons from a four-poster bed, and at another
of the Last Judgment, the grouping of which suggested nothing so much as
a prize-giving. But Philomène preferred Martha, cumbered with a
pepper-pot and a soup-tureen, because she reminded her of Lilian
Augusta, and Pharaoh’s daughter with the rosettes on her shoes, and best
of all she liked S. Anne by the laurel-bush, complaining to the sparrow
in its nest that she had no child. Again and again had Philomène peeped
over the edge of that nest to count the eggs, but the mother bird spread
wide its brooding wings, and baffled her curiosity.
As soon as Philomène had had a look at her favourite pictures, she put
away the book and wrote two whole sheets to her father. After that she
began to play with Don Whiskerandos, Isolde’s black Persian, who sat
blinking in the sun at his mistress’s feet. Occasionally he roused
himself sufficiently to wash his front paws, which were like velvet
tassels for softness, but for the rest he was sleepy and
undemonstrative. Philomène had christened him Dives, because he fared
sumptuously every day and took no notice of his neighbours, and she soon
gave up trying to play with him, and went in search of Lazarus, the
gingery stable cat. Lazarus was certainly as plain and as under-bred as
it is possible for a cat to be, but as Philomène always loved anything
which other people did not consider it worth their while to love, his
very gingerliness and the bullet shape of his head cried out to her for
affection.
By the time Lazarus had had his full share of attention, the bell rang
for luncheon on the verandah, and when lunch was over, Isolde gave
herself up to her godchild. She swung her untiringly in the swing
between the two horse-chestnut trees, she tucked her up in the hammock
and read to her, they played battledore and shuttlecock together on the
lawn, and at tea-time retreated to the shadow of a giant haystack in a
field close by, to eat home-made scones and strawberries and cream.
It was here that the vicar found them. He was no stranger to Philomène,
for he often dropped in at the Cushats on a Sunday afternoon, and she
was not shy with him, but as soon as he and her godmother began talking
politics, she thought it was about time for the dove-cot. As she left
the field and came back into the garden, it occurred to her that it
might be as well to take with her Sweet William’s letter of
introduction. The tall silver savings-box stood on the dressing-table in
her room, and inside were the latchkey and the anemone. With the flower
in her hand she hurried towards the disused dove-cot, and upon reaching
it was very much surprised by a slight flutter of wings from inside it.
She put her hand into one of the pigeon-holes, and something brushed
past it and flew out into the open. Could it be a dove after all? she
wondered. But then she saw that the anemone was full blown, and in
another minute she became aware of a little creature perched upon the
dove-cot. It was a fairy; who but a fairy could have had such glistering
wings, and worn a dress of tussore-coloured silk from a caterpillar’s
cocoon? The elf rather reminded Philomène of Master Mustardseed, for she
had small, bright eyes like those of a bird, and her little head was
cocked on one side as she sat and looked at the intruder.
“I am very sorry to have disturbed you,” began Philomène, “but I had no
idea that this was your house. I think I have a letter for you,” and so
saying she handed the Japanese anemone to the fairy, who buried her face
in its petals. When she looked up from the letter, she was smiling
kindly.
“Did you have any green ribbons——”
“Yes,” interrupted Philomène eagerly, “I did; on my christening robe.”
“Ah, that accounts for it,” said the elf, still smiling, “and I shall be
very glad to do anything I can to amuse you while you are here. I only
wish I were not quite so busy, but the grounds are large, very large for
the size of the house, and my time is not my own. However, I will do
what I can, during the hours when you and your godmother are not
together. I do not know Sweet William at all, not even by name, but he
has written of you in the most flattering terms. I was asleep just now
when you put your hand into my bedroom, and I am sure I ought to feel
very grateful to you for waking me up out of my shockingly long noon-day
nap, for I have any amount of work before me, so that I am afraid I
cannot be of much service to you this afternoon.”
“What is it that you are going to see to?” asked Philomène with
interest.
“I am in great difficulties about housing a mole,” replied the little
agent in a troubled voice, “I let part of the front lawn to him, but the
gardener interfered. He is a most tiresome old man.”
“Godmother says he doesn’t know much about gardening,” remarked
Philomène, “and I know that whenever I ask him the name of a flower he
just goes on muttering, ‘What’s this we call it now? What’s this we call
it?’ till either I remember it myself, or someone else comes up and
tells me. But Godmother keeps him on because he has been here a long
time, and I expect the other man and the boy really do all the work.
Besides, I once heard her say to my Daddy that the one thing he did
understand was grass, and that he makes her lawns as good as any in the
county. She seemed quite pleased about it.”
The elf nodded her head sagely. “That is just the trouble,” she replied,
“I mean from the point of view of a land- and house-agent. He is so
careful of the lawns that he won’t allow any mole to rent them. However,
I must see what I can do for my tenant in some out of the way corner.
And now I must really say good afternoon, and ask you to put off our
next meeting till to-morrow. Oh, by the way though, before I go you had
better tell me your name—Sweet William has forgotten to mention it.”
“My name is Philomène, Philomène Isolde,” said the little girl, “and
please, what is yours?”
“Speedwell,” answered the other, and she spread her wings, nodded a
friendly good-bye, and flew away. Philomène stood watching her flight
till the glittering wings disappeared behind the rosemary hedge, after
which she made her way to the wilderness of currant and gooseberry
bushes behind the house. Here stood a tub, and a see-saw, and a shed,
but before she had made up her mind whether to go to sea in the tub, or
turn the shed into a Red Indian wigwam, her attention was distracted by
what sounded like the twittering of two birds at once in a currant bush
near by.
“And yet it doesn’t sound quite like an ordinary bird either,” thought
Philomène, and she went close up to the bush. One bird there certainly
was, perched on a leafy twig and twittering shrilly, but it was
Speedwell who was sitting upon another branch, and arguing with the
bird. As Philomène came up both stopped talking, seemingly quite out of
breath.
“What have you done with the letter?” asked Philomène smiling, “did you
throw it away when you started house-hunting for the mole?”
The elf cocked her head on one side, and looked up with small bright
eyes; her shimmering wings were folded, and her little green shoes
peeped from beneath her dress of tussore-coloured silk. “I do not
understand you,” said she, “I don’t even know who you are. Oh, yes, I do
though, you must be the little girl who was to arrive yesterday; the
stable cat told me you were expected. But we have not met till this
moment.”
“But I was speaking to you only a few minutes ago at the dove-cot, and I
gave you Sweet William’s letter of introduction!” exclaimed Philomène in
amazement.
The elf laughed. “It must have been my twin sister whom you saw just
now,” said she, “I am Spirea. However, I don’t wonder at your mistake,
for when we were babies and cradled in the same pod, our own mother did
not know us apart. We will settle about your lease some other time,” she
added, turning to the bird, who had been preening his feathers to
conceal his annoyance at the interruption, “and you had better not
mention it to the people at the Rookery till you hear something more
definite from me. Now I am at your disposal,” she continued to
Philomène, “where shall we go? To the swing? You might sit in it, and I
could talk to you from a mossy settee between the roots of one of the
horse-chestnuts.”
The place was soon reached, and the two remained chatting there very
pleasantly, till Philomène thought it must be getting late, and that she
ought to find out if her godmother intended to go to evensong; so she
said good-night to Spirea, who promised to see her again the following
day.
Isolde was still sitting in the hayfield, and the vicar stood before
her, abusing modern operas. “What dreadfully dull things they do talk
about,” thought Philomène, “when they might have been making friends
with twin fairies all this time! But perhaps they couldn’t, even if they
wanted to, not without the green ribbons.”
“You’re fond of music, aren’t you?” asked the vicar, sitting down and
drawing Philomène towards him into the lengthening shade of the hayrick.
Philomène nodded.
“Yes,” she replied, “some music. I don’t like Lilian Augusta’s hymns
much, but I do like it when Godmother sits by herself at the spinet and
sings:
‘I would I were on yonder hill,
’Tis there I’d sit and cry my fill,
Till every tear should turn a mill.’”
Isolde blushed. “It is only a little Irish song,” she explained in some
confusion, “a very plaintive little love-song; I believe Hændel is
supposed to have said that he would rather have written that one air
than the whole of the ‘Messiah.’”
“Are you going to church, Godmother?” asked Philomène, as she lay full
length on the hot grass, looking up at the clouds that were drifting
white, fleecy, and unshepherded, across their native pastures, and
asking herself whether in the long run she would prefer blue fields to
green.
“I think so,” said Isolde, and she got up as she spoke.
“Then I will too,” said Philomène, “and of course you will come anyhow,
because you have to,” she added in her serious, understanding way to the
vicar. He laughed good-humouredly, and walked by her side, swinging his
cane, and repeating half aloud as he went:
“The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.”
“Capital,” murmured the tall, gaunt vicar, “the very words for it, the
only words for it! ‘His first sweet evening yellow’—what wouldn’t I give
to have written that myself?”