'Oh, certainly, Miss Fotheringham, as you make such a point of it,' for
Ross and I are twins, and we have lived all our life in this little
Devonshire village that is tucked into a hollow in the hills. Daddy is
the parson here and Uncle Jasper the lord of the manor. But this place
is not 'clear cut,' as Uncle Jasper says my 'background' ought to be.
It is just a soft jumble of ferns and flowers, of misty mornings and
high hedges, of sunshine, of shadows and sweet scents, of hills and
dales, of all the countless things that go to make the village so lovely
and so baffling.
I think Devonshire is like a beautiful but elusive woman. You think you
know her very well, you walk about her lanes and woods, but when you
think to capture her soul she ripples away from you in one of her little
rushing torrents, just as a woman escapes from the lover who thought he
had almost caught and kissed her!
This old-world Vicarage stands in a large and fragrant garden opposite
the entrance to the park. If you walk through the great gates and up the
long avenue you come to the Elizabethan manor house where my aunt and
uncle live with their son, Eustace, and all the family retainers.
Oh! and they are a priceless couple. He isn't interested in anything
'later' than the Middle Ages, she in nothing 'earlier' than Heaven. But
their lives are most harmonious, and together they 'wallow in old
churches,' he absorbed in aumbries and piscinas, she in the prayer and
praise part. Then, perhaps, he'll call her,--
'Constance, look at this floating cusp!'
She admires his treasure, her eyes limpid and sweet with saints and
angels, and thinks, 'Why, if I stopped praising the very stones here
would cry out,' and so they both take a deep interest in the moulding
for quite different reasons.
It's the same with meals. He's always late--she's always patient. She
doesn't try to be, she _is_. He'll come in half an hour after the time
for luncheon. 'Constance, I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I'm late, I hope you
haven't waited. I found such a fascinating bit of Norman work in that
church.' She knows he doesn't mean to be discourteous, but that he's
got simply no idea of time, while she is always thinking of eternity, so
she says gently, 'It doesn't matter, Jasper, if you hurry now, dear. I
always prefer to wait.'
She is such a stately beauty, such a very great lady. She makes all the
other women feel their gloves are shabby. Her white hair shines so that
I always think it's 'glistering,' and her nose is quite straight, the
kind you see in a cathedral on a stone archbishop, and her clothes are
'scrummy,' so _really_ beautiful that you hardly realise them. They are
part of her, and she harmonises with the background. Her tweeds are
just the heather she walks about in, and at night it's only her lovely
old lace that shows you where her neck leaves off and her shimmering
cream satin gown begins.
Uncle Jasper worships the ground she walks on, while for her, 'Jasper'
comes just after God.
But although my uncle thinks her so adorable, he can't keep even his
compliments quite free of his ruling passion.
'Constance,' he said one day, 'you _are_ beautiful, why, you've got
mediaeval ears!'
And 'Constance' blushed at that because, coming from him, it was a most
tremendous compliment, and she was secretly rather glad, I expect, that
when ears were doled round she got a pair with the lobes left out.
Funny old Uncle Jasper!