Mrs. Bennett's cottage on the edge of Mersham Wood seemed to Robin when
she first saw it to be only a part of a fairy tale. It is true that only
in certain bits of England and in pictures in books of fairy tales did
one see cottages of its kind, and in them always lived with their
grandmothers--in the fairy stories as Robin remembered--girls who would
in good time be discovered by wandering youngest sons of fairy story
kings. The wood of great oaks and beeches spread behind and at each side
of it and seemed to have no end in any land on earth. It nestled against
its primæval looking background in a nook of its own. Under the broad
branches of the oaks and beeches tall ferns grew so thick that they
formed a forest of their own--a lower, lighter, lacy forest where
foxglove spires pierced here and there, and rabbits burrowed and sniffed
and nibbled, and pheasants hid nests and sometimes sprang up rocketting
startlingly. Birds were thick in the wood and trilled love songs, or
twittered and sang low in the hour before their bedtime, filling the
twilight with clear adorable sounds. The fairy-tale cottage was
whitewashed and its broad eaved roof was thatched. Hollyhocks stood in
haughty splendour against its walls and on either side its path. The
latticed windows were diamond-paned and their inside ledges filled with
flourishing fuchsias and trailing white campanula, and mignonette. The
same flowers grew thick in the crowded blooming garden. And there were
nests in the hawthorn hedge. And there was a small wicket gate.
When Robin caught sight of it she wondered--for a moment--if she were
going to cry. Only because it was part of the dream and could be nothing
else--unless one wakened.
On the tiny porch covered with honeysuckle in bloom, a little, old fairy
woman was sitting knitting a khaki sock very fast. She wore a clean
print gown and a white apron and a white cap with a frilled border. She
had a stick and a nutcracker face and a pair of large iron bowed
spectacles. She was so busy that she did not seem to hear Robin as she
walked up the path between the borders of pinks and snapdragons, but
when she was quite close to her she glanced up.
Robin thought she looked almost frightened when she saw her. She got up
and made an apologetic curtsey.
"Eh!" she ejaculated, "to think of me not hearing you. I do beg your
pardon, Miss, I do that. I was really waiting here to be ready for you."
"Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Bennett," Robin answered in a sweet hurry to
reassure her. "I hope you are very well." And she held out her hand.
Mrs. Bennett had only been shocked at her own apparent inattention to
duty. She was not really frightened and her nutcracker face illuminated
itself with delighted smiles.
"I don't hear very well at the best of times," she said. "And I've got a
bit of a cold. Just worry, Miss, just worry it is--along of this 'ere
war and my grandsons going marching off every few days seems like. Dick,
that's the youngest as was always my pet, he's the last and he'll be off
any minute--and these is his socks."
Robin actually picked up a sock and patted it softly--with a childish
quiver of her chin. It seemed alive.
"Yes, yes!" she said. "Oh! dear! Oh! dear!"
Mrs. Bennett winked tears out of her eyes hastily.
"Me being hard of hearing is no excuse for me talking about myself first
thing. Dick, he's an Englishman--and they're all Englishmen--and it's
Englishmen that's got to stand up and do their duty--same as they did at
Waterloo." She swallowed valiantly the lump in her throat. "Her grace
wrote to me about you, Miss, with her own kind hand. She said the
cottage was so quiet and pretty you wouldn't mind it being little--and
me being a bit deaf."
"I shall mind nothing," said Robin. She raised her voice and tried to
speak very distinctly so as to make sure that the old fairy woman would
hear her. "It is the most beautiful cottage I ever saw in my life. It is
like a cottage in a fairy story."
"That's what the vicar says, Miss, my dear," was Mrs. Bennett's cheerful
reply. "He says it ought to be hid some way because if the cheap
trippers found it out they'd wear the life out of me with pestering me
to give 'em six-penny teas. They'd get none from me!" quite fiercely.
"Her grace give it to me her own self and it's on Mersham land and not a
lawyer on earth could put me out."
She became quite active and bustling--picking a spray of honeysuckle and
a few sprigs of mignonette from near the doorway and handing them to
Robin.
"Your room's full of 'em," she said, "them and musk and roses. You'll
sleep and wake in the midst of flowers and birds singing and bees
humming. And I can give you rich milk and home-baked bread, God bless
you! You _are_ welcome. Come in, my pretty dear--Miss."
The girl came down from London to the cottage on the wood's edge several
times during the weeks that followed. It was easy to reach and too
beautiful and lone and strange to stay away from. The War ceased where
the wood began. Mrs. Bennett delighted in her and, regarding the Duchess
as a sort of adored deity, would have served her lodger on bended knee
if custom had permitted. Robin could always make her hear, and she sat
and listened so tenderly to her stories of her grandsons that there grew
up between them an absolute affection.
"And yet we don't see each other often," the old fairy woman had said.
"You flit in like, and flit away again as if you was a butterfly, I
think sometimes when I'm sitting here alone. When you come to stay
you're mostly flitting about the wood and I only see you bit by bit. But
I couldn't tell you, Miss, my dear, what it's like to me. You do love
the wood, don't you? It's a fairy place too--same as this is."
"It's all fairy, Mrs. Bennett," Robin said. "Perhaps I am a fairy too
when I am here. Nothing seems quite earthly."
She bent forward suddenly and took the old face in her hands and kissed
it.
"Eh! I shouldn't wonder," the old fairy woman chuckled sweetly. "I used
to hear tales of fairies in Devonshire in my young days. And you do look
like something witched--but you've been witched for happiness. Babies
look that way for a bit sometimes--as if they brought something with
them when they come to earth."
"Yes," answered Robin. "Yes."
It was true that she only flitted in and out, and that she spent hours
in the depths of the wood, and always came back as if from fairy land.
Once she had a holiday of nearly a week. She came down from town one
afternoon in a pretty white frock and hat and white shoes and with an
air of such delicate radiance about her that Mrs. Bennett would have
clutched her to her breast, but for long-ago gained knowledge of the
respect due to those connected with great duchesses.
"Like a new young bride you look, my pretty dear--Miss," she cried out
when she first saw her as she came up the path between the hollyhocks in
the garden. "God's surely been good to you this day. There's something
like heaven in your face." Robin stood still a moment looking like the
light at dawn and breathing with soft quickness as if she had come in
haste.
"God has been good to me for a long time," she said.
* * * * *
In the deep wood she walked with Donal night after night when the
stillness was like heaven itself. Now and then a faint rustle among the
ferns or the half awakened movement and sleepy note of a bird in the
leaves slightly stirred the silence, but that was all. Lances of
moonlight pierced through the branches and their slow feet made no sound
upon the thick moss. Here and there pale foxglove spires held up their
late blossoms like flower spirits in the dim light.
Donal thought--the first night she came to him softly through the
ferns--that her coming was like that of some fair thing not of earth--a
vision out of some old legend or ancient poem of faëry. But he marched
towards her, soldierly--like a young Lohengrin whose silver mail had
changed to khaki. There was no longer war in the world--there never had
been.
"I brought it with me," he said and took her close in his arms. For a
few minutes the wood seemed more still than before.
"Do you hear my heart beat?" he said at last.
"I feel it. Do you hear mine?" she whispered.
"We love each other so!" he breathed. "We love each other so!"
"Yes," she answered. "Yes."
Did every one who saw him know how beautiful he was? Oh his smile that
loved her so and made her feel there was no fear or loneliness left on
earth! He was so tall and straight and strong--a young soldier statue!
When he laughed her heart always gave a strange little leap. It was such
a lovely sound. His very hands were beautiful--with long, strong smooth
fingers and smooth firm palms. Oh! Donal! Donal! And while she smiled as
a little angel might smile, small sobs of joy filled her throat.
They sat together among the ferns, close side by side. He showed her the
thing he had brought with him. It was a very slender chain of gold with
a plain gold ring hung on it. He put the chain around her neck but
slipped the ring on her finger and kissed it again and again.
"Wear it when we are together," he whispered. "I want to see it. It
makes you mine as much as if I had put it on in a church with a huge
organ playing."
"I should be yours without it," answered Robin. "I _am_ yours."
"Yes," he whispered again. "You are mine. And I am yours. It always was
so--since the morning stars sang together."