IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Garden Cottage was occupied on the eleventh of March, 1871. For several
days before that, the great discharging lorries lent by Mr. Deventer had
toiled up the hill, the four stout horses leaning hard on the collar and
their drivers ready to insert the wheel-rest at every turning.
Ever since this time began, Rhoda Polly had almost lived at our house,
and she it was who had done the ordering of all the strange Oriental
furnishings, partly from her own taste and partly from questioning me as
to the arrangement of the different rooms I had seen at Autun.
Mrs. Deventer came across the bridge every day in her little blue
Victoria--taking a peep in at us in the morning and hurrying back to
tend her flocks, but in the afternoon, stopping over tea till she could
drive a rather soiled Rhoda Polly home, as it were a much ruffled chick
under a motherly wing. For indeed Rhoda Polly spared neither man nor
beast, least of all did she spare herself. A tack-hammering, painting
and varnishing, cellar-to-garret Rhoda Polly pervaded the house,
swooping upon all and sundry and compelling strict attention to business
among the much-promising, little-performing tradesmen of Aramon.
My father had already done his part, for he was a man who could not
endure the chill mistral of the Rhone valley. Every room which had a
chimney was equipped above with a wind shield, and beneath with steel
andirons, beside which the cut faggots lay ready piled. The chambers
without chimneys had been fitted with porcelain German stoves, the pipes
of which bristled like lightning-rods along the roof ridges, and in the
hall a great open fire-place shone with brass and copper, the spoil of
an ancient Spanish monastery condemned in 1835 by Mendizabal, prime
minister and Jew share-broker. What wonder if Rhoda Polly went home
dishevelled and not over clean, but full of excitement and ready to
battle for her new fad with the family at Chateau Schneider. Once there
her mother plumped her into a hot bath, and after a smart douche to
close the pores, Rhoda Polly came down literally as fresh as paint, to
do battle for her new enthusiasms.
Hannah and Liz Deventer came once or twice to see what it was all about,
but as they would not help, but only went round accumulating brickbats
to pelt Rhoda Polly with later in the day, on the second occasion that
capable young woman turned them both out _vi et armis_, though she must
have weighed a good third less than Hannah.
The girls went good-humouredly enough, and having found my father talked
with him in the Gobelet garden, by the old sundial which bore the arms
of a former Marquis de Gallifet, and a date which commemorated the visit
of Mesdames de Grignan and de Sevigne during the governorship of the
former's husband.
Gordon Cawdor, my father, pleased all women, and I must admit most
men--though up till now I had not been able to allow him the full
measure of my sympathy or admiration. To do him justice he did not seem
in the least conscious of the need of these, so long as I behaved
decently and did my duty at school and college.
He was a man wonderfully stoical about the modern lack of filial
recognition, no doubt saying to himself, as I came to do later, that the
bringing up of sons was a poor business if one looked for direct returns
on the capital and labour expended. But he never complained, and must, I
think, have been finally and lastingly astonished when the long-barren
fields of my filial piety ripened of themselves.
At any rate I began to know him better during these days. I marked his
gentle ways, his enormous reading and erudition, never flaunted, never
refused, never at fault. He had already finished his part of the work at
the Garden Cottage, so he sat either in his study with the tall French
window on the hasp ready to a visitor's hand--or, if the sun shone and
the mistral was stilled, out on the broad wooden bench by the fish pond,
a volume in his hand to read or annotate when alone--but quite ready to
drop it into the pocket of his velvet jacket, and turn the gaze of his
gentle scholarly eyes upon whomsoever had come forth in need of society
or soul refreshment.
I learned a lesson in those days--to know how other people estimated my
father. Of course, I had seen Dennis Deventer drinking in the knowledge
he felt the lack of, as from a fountain. I knew what Professor Renard
and the Bey thought of him. Yet, after all, these were men of Gordon
Cawdor's own age and stamp.
But when I saw the fine sweet house-motherliness of Mrs. Deventer
sitting at my father's feet and talking confidentially yet with respect,
the thing seemed to me strange. I have seen her finish the review and
arrangement of a series of china and napery closets, the laying down of
fresh papers in chests of drawers, or the ordering of knick-knacks
gathered in the Bey's campaigns. Then she would throw a fold of black
Spanish lace over her pretty grey hair, always shining and neat--and so,
without explanation or apology, hie herself out to find my father.
"A talk with him is my refreshment!" she said once when she came back
and laid the folded lace scarf down beside the work she was next to
attack. More than once I had passed them speaking low and earnestly, and
I am sure she was consulting him about some intimate affairs of which
she had spoken to no one else.
Or it was the turn of Rhoda Polly and her procedure was different. She
would remove the provision of tin-tacks, French nails, or whatnot from
her mouth, her habitual ready receptacle, throw a wisp or two of
rebellious ripe-corn hair back from her brow, and demand to be told if
there were any very bad smuts on her face! When she presented her
handkerchief or the hem of her apron to me I knew from long experience
what was expected of me. I was to remove the offending smuts from Rhoda
Polly's face with the oldest and most natural of cleansers, exactly as
we had done to one another when the dinner bell or the voice of
authority called us from some extra grubby tree-climbing or mud-pie
making experiment in the days when the world was young.
"Spell ho!" Rhoda Polly would cry; "had enough this one time. I am off
to talk to your father. He does me good."
And now when the other Deventer girls, the stately swan-necked Hannah
and the Dresden shepherdess of a dainty Liz, being expelled for
"shameless slacking" and "getting in everybody's way," took their road
with happy expectant faces to the bench by the sundial, I knew in my
heart for the first time that I would never so add to the happiness of
humanity as that gentle refined scholarly man who was my father.
To my shame I took a cast about the garden, and from the top of a ladder
looked down upon the trio in an unworthy and wholly ungentlemanly way. I
did not mean to overhear--of course not--but I overheard. My only excuse
is that I was in a quandary. I knew that I had somehow been all wrong
about my father, and I wanted to find out how I could put matters right.
Hannah was seated on the bench beside him, listening and looking down,
making diagrams meanwhile in the gravel with the point of her
_en-tout-cas_, a sort of long-handled parasol sent from Paris.
Liz had characteristically pulled one of the little stools called
"banquettes" from under the sundial, and had seated herself between my
father's knees. She had taken her hat off and now leaned her elbow on
his knee looking up into his face.
He was telling them about maidens of old times, how the Lesbia of
Catullus looked and dressed, how he and she idled the day by the length
a-dream in a boat in the bays about Sirmio. He quoted Tennyson's
delicious verses to them, and they promised to look them up that night.
"If it were not that Rhoda Polly knows so much, I should begin Latin
this very day," said Liz; "but she is such a swell that she can always
come down on a fellow. She thinks we know nothing!"
"I know I don't," said Hannah, "except how to walk and dance and behave
at table."
"No, that last you don't," retorted Liz Deventer; "you were far the
noisiest (mother said so) in our last big family fight!"
"Well, I mean I can do these things when I like, Silly!" said Hannah,
unmoved.
The hand of my father descended slowly. It had been raised to mark the
rhythm of _Olive-silvery-Sirmio_! It now rested on the curly brown locks
of Liz Deventer. He ceased to speak, and then suddenly with a sigh he
said, "I envy Dennis. I have a good son--yes, a good son," he repeated
with emphasis, "but I should have liked a daughter also. There is a side
of me she would have understood."
Instantly the girls had their arms about his neck, and I hastily
descended my shameful ladder, leaving behind me a chorus of "We will be
your daughters--Rhoda Polly too--mother too--she thinks----"
But I got out of earshot as fast as might be, quite chopfallen and
ashamed. I had not been a good son, whatever Gordon Cawdor might say--I
knew it. I had held him lightly and withheld what others found their
greatest joy in giving him--my confidence. It was no use saying that he
never invited it. No more had he invited that of Mrs. Deventer, or of
the girls--or, what touched me more nearly, that of Rhoda Polly herself.
At last the great day came, and by the same train which had brought the
Bey on his errand of inspection the three new tenants of the Cottage
arrived. The Bey looked military and imposing as he stood over the
baggage counter. Linn, tall and gaunt in unbroken black, accepted my
father's arm smilingly almost at the first sound of his voice. He showed
her through the narrow shed-like waiting-rooms to the carriage in
readiness outside. Mrs. Deventer had received Alida into her arms as she
descended from the carriage, and was now cooing over her, watched
hungrily by Rhoda Polly, who wearied for her turn to come.
It struck me that Alida was not looking quite so well as usual. It had
cost her more than I thought to disobey her father--more afterwards
perhaps than at the time. For among those of her blood, the servitude of
woman goes with heredity, and the culture of Europe, though it may
render obedience impossible, does not kill the idea of parental
authority. "Though he slay me, yet shall I trust in him!"
But when Alida greeted me, I knew in a moment that though the battle had
been sore, the victory was won. There would be no looking back.
"What, Angoos, _mon ami_, have I all those friends already? I owe them
all to you!"
I took Rhoda Polly's hand, and put it into the gloved fingers of the
little Princess.
"Not to me, dear Alida," I said, "but to this girl; she has, as you
shall find, a heart of gold."
Alida kept the strong roughened fingers in hers, and looked deep into
the eyes of Rhoda Polly as if to read her inmost soul.
"I shall remember that, Angoos," she said; "that is a beautiful thing
when it is said in the language of my own country. It sings itself--it
makes poetry. Listen!
"'Rhoda Polly of the Golden Heart--Heart of Gold, how true is my
maiden!' Wait, I will sing it for you in Arabic----"
But suddenly, no one knew why, the female heart being many stringed and
unaccountable, even to me, Rhoda Polly was crying--yes, Rhoda Polly the
dry-eyed, and who but Alida was comforting her under the stupid gaze of
hangers-on about the station of Aramon!