'But, dear Amelia, I thought it was your friends Ridley and Latimer who
lighted a candle in England which should never be put out. If I were
asked to celebrate at a church where they had lights what do you think I
ought to do?'
And Amelia answered, 'I should hope you'd blow 'em out.' Then daddy
said,--
'What a pearl you are, Amelia!' and laughed and kissed the stern old
Calvinist. Somehow daddy could live with an Anabaptist or the Pope, and
both would say, 'He's one of the right sort,' even though they'd
disagreed with every single thing he'd said. Darling daddy!
*CHAPTER IV*
Well, I have got in the 'background' now, and the dramatis personae too,
but do they 'tone' with one another and how can I make them when they
are all different? Is my Aunt Amelia in the least like Devonshire?
Does her fydo remind one of its sweet scents? How can I reconcile my
prehistoric uncle with the twentieth century?
I went to the Manor House to-day to consult him as to the 'atmosphere'
of the century. Perhaps I can at any rate get that right. He wasn't
particularly illuminating. I don't think clever people ever are. The
more they know the less they can impart. There was a woman at school
who tried to teach me German. She had heaps of letters after her name
like Uncle Jasper has. She said the verb must go at the end, but she
never could make me understand which part of the verb. I got so
desperate at last that I used to say, 'gehabt gehaben geworden sein' at
the end of _every_ sentence and let her take her choice. That's partly
why I left school when I did. The head mistress seemed to think
parental control was what I needed.
So I said to Uncle Jasper, 'What would you say was the atmosphere of
this century?'
'You have raised a point of particular perspicacity, Meg,' he replied.
'The atmosphere of this century is becoming increasingly materialistic,
as is manifested in its deplorable lack of spirituality and intellectual
originality. The universal diminution of intelligent ratiocination, the
vacuous verbosity of a vacillating press; the decadent and open
opportunism of our public men, the upward movement of the proletariat,
inspired by the renegade and socialistic vampires that suck the national
blood--all these are symptomatic of the recrudescence of materialism.'
He stopped to breathe here, and I felt I must say gehabt gehaben
geworden sein. He doesn't always talk like that. Sometimes I think he
does it to aggravate me, but I know anything modern upsets him. I
offered to go with him to look at the Saxon work in the church, as it
usually has a calming influence on him, but he said he was better and he
hoped he had made himself clear!
When I got home I asked Nannie.
'The atmosphere of this century, dearie,' she said. 'Oh, the same as
it's always been, I should think--three white frosts and a wet day, or
three fine days and a thunderstorm.'
I observed that she had made a remark of particular perspicacity, and
she asked me if I felt feverish. It is trying when I am trying to
increase my vocabulary. Still, on the whole she was helpful, for she
said why didn't I do what I said I was going to and write of the things
I know about. 'Tell about the Hickley woods and how you fell in the
water, dearie.'
'But will the general public like that, Nannie?'
'I should think they'd prefer it to the stuff your uncle writes.'
I feel that she's right. I must take a firm stand with my relatives. I
cannot be blown about by every breath of their doctrine. Besides, my
family's views differ. Uncle Jasper says,--
'The general public is at its best in Oxford and Canterbury.'
'At Epsom or Ascot,' my brother asserts.
'Hunting,' says daddy.
'At early celebration on Easter Day,' says Aunt Constance, with eyes
like a Murillo Madonna.
But _I_ like the general public, always, everywhere. It sort of twinkles
at one, so I shall tell about the Hickley woods and hope that it will
like them just as much as I do.
Oh, if only I could get the splendour of the woods down on my paper--the
flaming beeches in the autumn, the fairyland of hoar frost later on, the
gradual waking of the trees and birds and flowers in the spring, the
scent of clover, and the sheets of daffodills, the mist of bluebells and
the clouds of lilies. I know where the earliest primroses blow and the
hedge where the birds build first. I could show you where to find the
biggest blackberries and the bit of bog covered with the kingcups and
milkmaids. There are ant hills, too, and a wasps' nest in a hollow
tree. The little paths and lanes are carpeted with moss and the
undergrowth is sweet with honeysuckle. The woods are always lovely, but
in the evening they grow 'tulgy,' and the trees take fantastic shapes
and the mossy lanes seem hushed and filled with mystery. When I was
little I used to be glad then that the boys were with me, though I
wouldn't have admitted a creepy feeling down my spine to any one but
father. The beautiful Hickley woods!
They have a strange effect upon me. They seem to 'wash' my mind. I
never found it easy to be obedient, my bit of Irish blood always making
me 'agin the government.' I've got claws inside me, and feathers
underneath my skin that get ruffled when I'm crossed. So when I was
little and rebellious I always ran out of the house and across the
garden into the woods. And sometimes Ross would come flying after me
with comfort and advice.
'Why do you always run out in the woods Meg, when you're naughty?'
''Cos they wash me.'
'Oh, you are funny, darling,' and then with a little air of protection
that is always associated in my mind with Ross and sticks of chocolate,
he would give me one and say,--
'But you _were_ raver naughty, you know; I think you'd better come in
now and be sorry.'
So when the woods had 'washed' me sufficiently I would go in and say I
was dutiful now if father pleased. But once when I was five and some
reproof of daddy's had cut me to the heart, I added,--
'But my quick still hurts me. It's all bluggy.'
I seem to have lived the best part of my life out in the woods. In them
we played our games and had our endless picnics. In them I had the
great adventure which caused me to become a doormat and let my brother
trample on me all his life.
When Ross and I were twelve we went out very early to spend a long day
in the woods with Sam and all the dogs. We made for the lake. It was
always the first item on our programme to dump the lunch and tea in a
special hidyhole. While the boys were busy I decided that the one and
only thing I wanted to do was to climb out and sit on the branch of a
tree that overhung the water. I got halfway across it when Ross shouted
to me angrily to come back, and Sam said the branch was rotten.
'I'm going to the end,' I said, 'it isn't rotten.'
'_Will_ you come back, Meg?'
'No, I won't,' I cried, my Irish grandmother at once 'agin the
government.' I just loved that crawl across that tree, because the boys
were simply furious and could do nothing. It was no use coming after me
if the branch were rotten, it would only have made things worse. When I
got to the end I said elegantly, 'Yah, I told you it wasn't,' and as I
said it the beastly thing snapped and I went into the lake with a
splash. I could swim all right but hadn't had any practice with my
clothes on. Sam and Ross were in after me like a flash and got me back
to land, and we stood three dripping objects, two in a perfect fury with
the third. Then, as my luck was dead out, we heard the horses, and
there were mother and daddy, Uncle Jasper and Aunt Constance out for a
morning ride. Uncle Jasper was suddenly jerked back out of the Middle
Ages: Aunt Constance tumbled out of heaven, mother looked frightfully
worried, and daddy lost his temper, and said it was simply abominable
that two big boys of their age couldn't look after a little girl of
mine. But how he reconciled that remark with his Christian conscience I
don't know, seeing there was only six months difference between the
eldest and the youngest--but those boys would always grow so.
Daddy ordered them to go home at once, and when they had got into dry
things to wait in his dressing-room till he had leisure to give them the
biggest thrashing they'd ever had yet.
Then mother wrung out my clothes, and Uncle Jasper remarked that the
children who lived before the Reformation never behaved so badly; Aunt
Constance had got to that bit of the General Thanksgiving where you
bless Him for preservation, especially of nieces and nephews and boys
who live at lodges; Ross and Sam were just turning to go home when
I--honestly it was the first minute I could speak, I had swallowed such
a lot of water--exclaimed,--
'Father, how dare you be so wickedly unjust?'
Every one looked at me as I hurled that bombshell. People didn't usually
speak so to father--least of all his children, but daddy never gets
angry at the things you'd think he would, and all he said was,--
'What do you mean, little 'un?'
'Why, father, they told me not to go.'
'It was my fault, sir; I ought to have seen she didn't,' Ross
interrupted.
'I don't suppose she heard me say the branch was rotten, sir,' said Sam.