THE old wood-house stands on the lee-side of a belt of trees, part of
the Squirrels’ Highway, as we call it, that runs down one side of the
Flower-patch, sheltering it from the bleak north winds.
Picture to yourself a building rather smaller than a very small church,
built of great blocks of grey stone, with walls nearly two feet thick
in places, a red-tiled pointed roof, a door at one end; and in case the
walls should prove too flimsy to stand the winter gales, huge stone
buttresses prop it up on the “off” side (i.e. the side where the ground
goes on running downhill), lest the structure should take it into its
head to run down-hill too!
In place of a spire, above the door, a weathercock swings its arrow
to the winds—at least, it would swing it on any well-conducted apex,
but being merely mine it permanently points south. Not that it is
particular where it points; all it asks is to be left in peace to close
its eyes in meditative contemplation of the landscape. We occasionally
get a ladder and then a long stick, and move it round, trying to
urge it to deeds of derring-do, but it falls asleep the moment our
ministrations cease.
The last time, it was a neighbouring farmer who climbed the ladder to
reason with it, after I had assured him there was no penalty under
the Defence of the Realm Act for regulating weathercocks. He was a
bit reluctant to touch it at first; as he said, what with clocks not
being allowed to tick as they pleased, and the time being jiggered
with anyhow, you didn’t know where you was with nothing. But once I
had taken full responsibility for the affair, he went up with right
goodwill, and—forgetting that it was the arrow alone that needed
to move—he gave a sturdy tug to the north, south, east, and west
arrangement, and sent the arms of that in all directions.
Then when we wanted to fix it up again, the question arose, which was
the north? A local light supposed to know everything, who chanced to be
passing, was summoned for consultation. After carefully surveying the
various corners of heaven, as though looking for enemy air-craft, he
said he didn’t know as he could say ezackly which wur the north, unless
he had summat to tell him (we all felt like that, too!); but if we
would a-float a needle on the top of a basin of water, then either the
point of the needle—or—le’s see? maybe ’twas the heye, he wasn’t quite
certain which—would point to the north, for sure.
Well, all hands rushed for basins and needles, as you may suppose;
because, whether it was the point or the eye didn’t matter much, since
we knew the direction in which the north lay; all we wanted was the
precise angle. But alas, every needle promptly sank to the bottom of
the basin, without so much as a kick!
Eventually we refixed the north pole approximately, pending such time
as the Head of Affairs should arrive, when I knew we could rely on the
small compass at the end of his watch chain. But Virginia, who uses
the weathercock more than most of us, as she sees it from her bedroom
window, and says it is so useful to dress by, was lugubriously certain
his watch would be stolen on the next journey down, and begged me
to place the arrow—still asleep—pointing south; even an approximate
south, she said, might at least help to keep her spirits up, when a
northeaster was blowing.
And south it remaineth unto this day, despite all our blandishments,
and probably will do so till the end of the War, when the retirement of
the Food Controller—who, presumably, supervises weathercocks—may permit
of our using a modicum of grease.
* * * * *
The old wood-house (which, by the way, was originally used for coals,
though no trace of this is left upon its clean, lime-washed interior)
is the first building you run across as you enter by the top gate,
which is the widest entrance we possess. Here you step from the lane
right into a tiny larch plantation, and the path to the cottage is
arched over with the boughs of the trees, while the brown cones crunch
under your boots, or roll away down the steep incline of the path
when your foot touches them. It was among these trees that a small
clearing was made in the distant past to accommodate this particular
out-building; though why the coal-house was considered the most
artistic bit of bric-à-brac to greet you as you enter the main gate is
not clear.
The actual outline of the building is not remarkable, being merely four
walls and a pointed roof, with a door and a window; but at least it
looks simple, dignified, and solid, and what it lacks in architectural
decoration has been supplied by Nature herself. When we first saw it,
we called it the private chapel; but later on I found Abigail & Co.
calling it the picture palace.
At any rate, there it stands, shadowed by great oaks seemingly
immovable, with their gnarled wide-stretching arms spread as in
blessing over the lowlier woodland things; a big Spanish chestnut,
though tardy in coming into leaf, scatters worthless burrs around later
on, with generous goodwill; a walnut-tree invites the passer-by to rub
its aromatic leaves, and is there any treasure-trove quite like the
walnuts that one finds in the long wet grass on a windy autumn morning?
Larches and firs make shady colonnades, with their straight uprising
shafts, and dark drooping branches; silver birches, always graceful,
no matter how they may have had to twist their trunks to accommodate
themselves to their environment, give lightness and vivacity to the
whole.
Incense there is in abundance. The warm resinous odour of the larches
is always abroad; mountain-ash-trees load the air with scent in the
late spring, and are ablaze with crimson in August. Two or three
lichen-covered, twisted old apple-trees hang out bunches of pale-green
mistletoe, for all to see during the winter months, and then surprise
one with a bride-like flush of white and pink in the spring. Where the
sun is brightest, a big hawthorn carpets the ground with white petals
in May.
Then there are the lovely limes—and the lime-tree is much more of a
stately lady than is realized by those who only know the sad, maimed
and distorted stumps that disfigure suburban gardens in London. But
see this lime-tree that forms a link in the Squirrels’ Highway! Its
trunk measures about ten feet round. Under the shadow of its drooping
far-sweeping branches you could give a small Sunday-school treat.
Though the lowest branches spring from the trunk at least nine feet
from the ground, their far ends touch the grass, forming a complete
tent of translucent green and gold as you look upwards, through a
multitude of layers of leaves, to a sun you cannot see, but which seems
to have turned the whole tree into a rippling mass of molten colour.
And when it shakes out its bunches of scented yellow blossoms, and
trails them by the thousand down each branch and stem, then indeed the
lime-tree is a lovely lady, and the bees and the butterflies come from
far and near to pay her homage.
And each tree has a special and distinct winter-beauty of its own in
the outline of branches and stems and twigs—a beauty that is lost to
us once the leaves appear, but which suggests an exquisite etching in
winter when the dark lines are silhouetted against the sky. The most
graceful is the birch, with its light tracery of fine filaments, often
with tassel-like catkins dangling at the end. The oak and beech give
the impression of enormous strength in the ease with which they fling
outright their massive arms with seldom any tendency to droop.
And each tree has its special and distinct melody when the wind signals
the forest orchestra; there is the sea-surge of the beeches, the swish
of the heavily plumed firs, the rain-sound of the twinkling aspen, the
soft whisper of the birches, the æolian hum of the pines, and the
sibilant rustle of the dead leaves still clinging to the winter oak.
* * * * *
Outside the wood-house door there is a little clearing adjoining the
grove of trees, where a perfect thicket of wild flowers smiles at
you for the greater part of the year. First come the early violets
clustering about the roots of the trees, and in the shelter of the
grey rock fragments; while primroses dot the grass with their crinkly
leaves, and then send up pink stems covered with silver sheen, and
delicately scented flowers each as big as a penny. Oxlips grow on the
bank that borders one side of the clearing.
Later, it is an expanse of moon-daisies—thousands of them swaying the
whole day long to the motion of the wind like the ever-restless surface
of the sea. And with the moon-daisies are buttercups, crimson clover,
rosy-purple knapweed, spikes of pink orchis delicately pencilled with
mauve—all trying to grow to the height of the big yellow-eyed daisies;
while here and there ruddy spears of sorrel out-top them all.
Tall grasses of every kind are here, some like a fine translucent veil
of purple, others grey, or a pinky-green; some shaking out yellow or
heliotrope stamens; some ever trembling like the quaking-grass—but all
mingling with the tall flowers, softening the surface of the mass of
white blossoms that seem in the sunshine almost too dazzling to look
upon, were it not for the mist of the grasses that envelops them.
Underneath the tall flowers there is a wonderful carpet of
lesser-growing things—masses of trefoil, the yellow blossoms often
touched with fiery orange; patches of heath bed-straw, with its myriads
of tiny gleaming white flowers, cling to any spot where the grasses
leave it room to breathe, its first cousin, the woodruff, preferring
a shadier part of the bank at the side—the bank where the wild
strawberries grow to a luscious size, and whortleberry bushes add a
touch of wildness to the spot.
The smaller clovers, both yellow and white, seem to thrive under the
bigger flowers, where most else would suffocate. Pink-tipped daisies
bloom wherever they can find room to hold up a little face. Rosy-pink
vetches wander about at pleasure, and pretend they are going to do
great things when they start to climb the stems of the moon-daisies.
Where the big fir trees throw a shadow, and the sun only touches the
grass when it is getting round to the west, foxgloves send up shafts of
colour and the pale-blue spiked veronica carpets the ground.
Still further back, where the sunshine never penetrates, even here
something strives to give beauty to barrenness and soften austerity,
for the small-leaved ivy starts to climb the hard tree trunks,
undoubtedly one of the most beautiful of the many living things that
are neighbour to the old wood-house.
And always in the grass there lie the snapped-off twigs and branches
of the larches, with their brown picots up stems that are studded with
exquisite cones. We strive hard to better Nature, to make new designs,
to evolve fresh beauty; but with all our skill and experiments we have
yet to improve on the cone as a design, with its rhythmic re-iteration
of the one small motif and the perfection of its proportions. In my
mind it ranks with the smoked-silver seed ball of the dandelion, both
of them examples of absolute beauty derived from the simplest of
outlines.
* * * * *
The walls of the wood-house have their share of green; on the north
side an ivy, with a gnarled main stem the size of a fair sized tree
trunk, sends evergreen branches over roof as well as walls. Outside the
door, which opens to the south, stone-crop has planted itself in masses
among the stones, a perfect carpet of it, that in June is a bright
yellow. In the “good old times,” before my day, the stone-crop served
as a convenient spot on which to dump the coal sacks!
On the western side where the ground drops down—a warm, snug and
sheltered bank—in the long grass white violets bloom by the thousand
in the early spring, their sweet little blossoms streaked with mauve,
nestling up to the old grey walls with the trustfulness of little
children. Add to this long-fronded ferns growing out from among the
wall stones, and you have an idea of the geography of the place.
On a hot day the cool shade on the north side is an ideal resting
place; on a chilly day the south side gives you a shield from the wind.
A pile of tree trunks and old logs lying outside fairly ask you to sit
for a moment and take in some of the loveliness of the scene—you can
never exhaust the whole of it—and if you sit for a minute you will
probably sit there for hours.
Here is absolute quiet of spirit, but never silence. The trees are
seldom still; all day and all night the wind upon these hills sways
the tall, lithe tops of the larches to and fro, to and fro; the leaves
and the catkins of the birches are for ever fluttering; the vibrant
branches of the pines hum and sing in the breezes, summer or winter;
the music of it all never ceases though it varies in volume according
to the season. On the hottest summer days the grasses still sigh; the
bees hum all day long in the clover; the blue-tits tweet and twitter
as they swing about the birches, and their cousins the coal-tits keep
up an endless run of comment in the larches. In May the nightingale
comes into the grove to sing; in June rival chaffinches perch on the
top spikes of certain spruce trees—always the same bird on the same
spike—and defy each other and the world in general. The stock-dove
croons over its nest in the tallest firs, and the reddy-brown squirrel
scolds you severely if you are coming too near his own particular
chosen tree.
* * * * *
Inside the wood-house you may find many things; some you are prepared
for, some you are not. In theory, it is sacred to the use of the Head
of Affairs, a sort of play-house and workshop combined, wherein no
handy man is supposed to set foot, and no prying eyes are supposed to
discover that the owner is working in a jersey, with no qualms over the
absence of waistcoat and stiff collar.
But I often go in when I am anxious to be alone and wanting many
things that one cannot put down in words. And knowing this, the Head
of Affairs doesn’t keep his best saws there!—not the splendid big
“Farmer’s Saw,” with its doubly notched teeth, that run through big fir
trunks with amazing ease; nor the finer tools that deal with the short
snappy branches. No, the saw that is left for such emergencies is a
nondescript article that has now a wavy—very wavy—edge, and a few of
its teeth doubled over; a saw that seems as though you can never get
it well into the wood, and once you have got it in, it can’t be got
out again, much less be made to move with soft purring motion.
You see, I have individuality where sawing is concerned, but it is
useless to talk about it, for I’ve come to the conclusion that whatever
other moral improvements a woman may manage to effect in the man she
marries, it is a lifework to get him to a proper appreciation of her
method of goffering a saw!
But I must beg you not to picture the wood-house as the home of the
miscellaneous collection of nondescript oddments so indescribably
dear to every masculine heart. There is an outhouse elsewhere that
accommodates short lengths of chain, pieces of wire netting, old locks,
bits of copper wire, staples and hooks, broken hinges (that _might_
be made do duty again, if any one ever has a gate that prefers its
hinges to be broken), oil cans, a piece of lead pipe, various lengths
of iron rods, broom handles, stale putty, old keys, a couple of
invalided padlocks, and—well, you know the type of things that every
self-respecting man likes to gather around him, and keep handy, in case
he might need them at any moment.
Unfortunately one of the many blighting influences of town-life, for
ever hindering the full flowering of one’s better nature, is the lack
of the necessary space to stock such useful items. But in the country
one is not so hampered, and one’s private marine store grows apace, and
differs only according to the temperament of the collector. Indeed,
I have come to the conclusion that country air develops in man and
woman alike that tendency to hoard, which is so noticeable in early
childhood, when the small girl collects buttons and clippings from her
mother’s sewing-room, and the small boy bulges the blouse of his sailor
suit with string and “conquers” and coloured chalks, and old penknives
and young frogs.
In town a woman’s only outlet, as a rule, is the bargain counter
or annual sale or remnant day. These dissipations are denied us in
the country, but we make up for it in many other directions. My own
particular weakness is jam-jars, and the way I pounce on any round
pot, be it glass or earthenware, that looks as though it might be made
to hold jelly or jam, is quite a study in efficiency. And, like all
expert collectors, my collection has sub-divisions, or perhaps you
would call them ramifications; cups that have lost their handles, jugs
ditto, glasses that once held a rolled tongue, or fish paste, are all
included; and friends, as they bring round a portmanteau full of empty
jars at Christmas or on my birthday, say, “It is so nice in your case
that one knows what you actually want; so much better to give anyone
what they really like, and will use, rather than some useless bit of
jewellery.” And I quite agree.
There was one moment when I feared my jars would have to go in the
general rending asunder of domestic life caused by the War, even though
I had determined to stick to them as long as I could. But when that
“one clear call” came for jam-pots, naturally I couldn’t be a traitor
to my country, and I decided the jars at least must go, even though I
might perhaps retain the handleless cups and jugs. So I told Abigail to
let me know when the grocer called.
I interviewed the young lady wearing high white kid boots and an
amethyst pendant on her bare chest, who brought my next large
consignment of groceries, that had to be bought in order to secure a
little sugar. But when she heard that there were jam-jars to go back,
she looked at me coldly from the doorstep, and hurriedly pushing her
basket further up her arm (lest I should attempt to force them into it,
I presume), the Abyssinian gold bracelets clanking the while, haughtily
informed me that her motor was for delivery only, not for the cartage
of empties, and suggested that I should write the manager and see if he
would consent to receive them.
I’m only human after all, and naturally any woman’s temperature would
rise in the face of such spurning of her free-will offerings. I didn’t
write, and I’m using the jam-jars still. The nation doesn’t seem any
the worse off—though Virginia points out to me that the War _might_
have ended sooner had I insisted on handing them over; she says every
little helps, as is proved by the fact that the very week she put her
first 15_s._ 6_d._ into Exchequer Bonds the Government got the first
“tank.”
At any rate, as I never eat preserves myself, I can still, even with
a restricted sugar allowance, enjoy the peculiar pleasure that arises
within a woman’s soul when she is occasionally able to say, quite
casually as it were, to a friend: “Would you care to have a pot of my
new gooseberry and cinnamon jam? They say it’s rather good, though of
course—etc.” And the friend replies: “Oh, I should _love_ it, dear;
_such_ a treat; that jar of ginger marmalade I took home last time was
positively _delicious_. Everyone said—etc.”
One favourite item for collection among the cottagers is old bottles,
and the stock you will see in some of their outhouses is often most
extensive and varied. On one occasion an old man who was doing some odd
days’ work for me about the garden, in the absence of the handyman, was
deploring the way the rabbits devastated the cabbages.
“I’ll get rid on ’em for ’ee if you’ll leave ’em to me!” he assured me.
I said I only wished he would, as they are a real plague at times.
Imagine my horror a few days later when I took some friends along to
see the vegetables, to discover a legion of empty whisky bottles,
labels intact, neck downwards in the soil, and dotted about the
vegetable garden in all directions. The old man explained that they
were put there to skeer they rabbits, as they was dreadful frit of
bottles! But my friends refused to believe that so honest-looking an
old Amos could have brought them with him!
* * * * *
The inside of the wood-house is as aloof as are the hills from our
machinery-driven, smoke-begrimed, petrol-flavoured twentieth century.
Even when work is in progress, here is no hustle; there are no short
cuts to the other side of a larch log; the saw must go steadily,
patiently, almost slowly, if it hopes to get through the tree at one
standing.
To step from the hot noonday glare, on a summer day, into the cool
seclusion of these thick stone walls, is to enter a haven of peace and
quiet that would seem to belong to the forest primeval rather than to
this noise-stricken age.
The window opening to the north excludes the fierce sun, but the
yellow-washed walls give light and cheeriness. And the ivy, that
ubiquitous plant that scorns all disadvantages, and overcomes every
obstacle, has crept in under the red tiles and hangs in festoons from
the dark rafters; while in other places its pale green shoots have
found for themselves a way clean through the thickness of the wall,
pushing along crevices and around the stones, till at last they have
come to light on the inner side, where they immediately proceed to
drape lopped trunks and big branches standing in the corner.
It is no mere accumulation of timber and sticks that is housed within
these rough old walls. The very spirit of the forest seems to permeate
the place; everything is part and parcel of the big outside—the stones
that pave the floor; the heap of cones in one corner, waiting to
brighten up smouldering winter fires and set them all aglow; the solid
sections of some sturdy oak, cut to just the right height for seats;
the bark stripped from a birch-tree, silver white even now, with grey
and pinkish paper-like peelings and black breathing marks; and the
great brown branches of larch, a tracery of studded twigs and stems
and cones, that have been placed across the end of the wood-house, and
sweep the rafters at the top, looking, as you enter the door, like some
wonderful rood-screen, dark brown with age, shutting off an ancient,
yellow-washed chancel—though such a screen no mortal hand could ever
carve!
The larch is always in evidence, and gives a resinous odour to the
place, as does the sawdust by the bench, a rich brown pile, for
very little of our hillside wood is white; most of it ranges from
reddish-brown to mahogany colour. Though here is a small creamy-white
gate in course of construction—merely a little wicket to keep the
calves out of the orchard—that is made of straight, round branches,
slit down the centre, so that one side of each is flat and the other
semicircular. The design is simplicity itself, some uprights with a
few cross-pieces to hold them together and suggest a trellis; yet the
rich cream colour and the satiny surface of the wood make it a thing of
distinct beauty. This is only a branch of the lime-tree, with the bark
peeled off.
In an ordinary way we seldom have a chance to notice the intrinsic
beauty of wood itself. Of course we see it in its polished perfection
when it comes to us in some choice piece of furniture, or panelling;
but this is not exactly the beauty to which I refer. Each branch, each
tree trunk, has, in its unpolished state, definite characteristics
of its own, quite distinct from those we see in the finished
product civilization regards as the one end to be aimed for. These
characteristics may be rough, and are frequently rugged; but their
appeal is often all the stronger for this fact.
Look at the wonderful ribbing on the rind of this Spanish chestnut;
what is it that wakes up in you when you study its lines and formation?
You cannot say, yet you respond to it in an indefinable manner. These
branches of apple-wood, only gnarled old things, twisted and crooked
and all out of shape some people would say; yet you know that they
would not have been nearly so lovely had they been straight as a dart.
The larches with their strong bark showing grey and red and green, and
furrowed like the sea sand—isn’t there something in this that calls to
you from back recesses of your being, and reminds you of the time when
you—no, not you, but your ancestors, centuries ago, lived not so much
in cities and houses made with hands, as out of doors, finding mystery
in the green-roofed aisles and the cathedral dimness of forests long
since felled?
To those of us who spend much time among these hills, each tree within
the wood-house comes as a friend, with a definite personality and
distinct association, and we regret its individual “going out,” even
though we know it to be inevitable.
This giant, that leans against the outside wall, with no possibility
of ever getting inside the door until it has been sawn in half, is a
big fir (where a squirrel nested) that heeled right over in a blizzard.
Here is the tall cherry-tree that died of a hollow heart, so beloved
of the birds that they left us never a one if we got up later than
half-past four the morning the cherries were ripe. This is the bough
from the big plum-tree that broke down last August under its weight
of fruit. These branches of old apple-trees are some of the winter
wreckage that was strewn about the orchards; see the lichen that covers
them, could anything be more satisfying to look upon? And these are
some of the birches that seemed so frail as they bent to the wind on
the slopes, with purple twigs and green leaves always moving; until
you have actually handled them you scarcely realize the strength and
toughness of the delicate-looking bark, and you henceforth take a much
more personal interest in Hiawatha and his canoe, even though his tree
was another member of the family. And that convenient stump you are
sitting upon is part of a hoary pear, that used annually to clothe
itself in white—and then contribute more gallons of perry than it does
to think of in these more sober days!
But no mere catalogue of contents can describe the charm of this little
wind-swept place. To realise it you must first of all stand in need of
quiet and retreat. When the craving comes upon you that impels us all,
at one time or another, to get away from “things” and be alone with
ourselves and Nature that we may re-discover our souls, take a book if
you will (it matters not what, for you won’t read it, but to some it
is essential that a book be in the hand if they are to sit still for a
moment!) and climb the hill to that wood-house.
Take a seat on the beech log by the door, and let yourself absorb some
of the spirit of your environment. Keep quite still when the squirrel
trails his bushy tail down the path, he won’t inquire after your
National Registration card; neither will the pheasant, even though
he raises his head with a suspicious jerk as he is feeding among the
grass. Little rabbits will dart in and out of their burrows among the
bracken; the woodpecker will mock at you from a tree that waves above
the roof; a robin will streak down from nowhere, like a flash, and
stand as erect as a drill-sergeant on the corner of the work-bench
while he inquires—but, there is an interruption; he excuses himself for
a moment while he goes off to thrash his wife who ventured to peep in
at the window. Let them all have their way, they are as much a part of
the general atmosphere of the place as the sweet scent of the evening
dew upon the grass, and the ceaseless soughing of the wind in the
branches; moreover, this is home to them.
The little folk of the forests are so companionable when you know
them; even the same butterflies will come again and again. I recently
spent two hours a day for a fortnight in this spot, and all the time
apparently the same butterfly hovered about the door, resting every few
minutes on the warm rock among the stone-crop and fiercely chasing off
any other butterfly that came within its evidently marked-out domain.
And the little folk never bore you with their boastings, nor weary you
with platitudes. They are content to let you think your own thoughts,
to take you as you are, if you will but recollect that theirs are
ancient privileges that have descended to them as a world-old heritage.
It is you who, helpless in the grip of civilisation, sold your forest
“hearth-rights” long since, and are now but a stranger, or at best a
passing guest, in this out-door world that was man’s first home.
* * * * *
Gradually quiet possesses you, and you hear the trees talking of
things that have far outstripped the clash and turmoil of modernity.
What is it they say, those swaying boughs and branches that throb with
every wind, and these that stand around you, silently, waiting their
last service to man, each with some final sacrificial offering—the
apple-wood giving in incense, the oak giving in strength, and the
laurel giving in flame?
Theirs is a blessing rather than a message; a lifting of a load from
the over-burdened heart rather than the teaching of stern lessons. And
as you shake off some of the dust of earth that has clogged your soul,
you find yourself sending out thoughts in directions long forgotten;
the things of earth take on new proportions, the first being often
last, and the last becoming first.
* * * * *
The ministry of the forest trees can never be entirely explained; but
one remembers with reverence that our Lord Himself worked in some such
little wood-house, where He touched the trees and fashioned the timber
with His sacred Hands.
Haply He left His Benediction when He passed that way.