The slow train puffed away into the unadventurous country; and the bees
buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again
audible. The last farewell that Guy Hazlewood flung over his shoulder to
a parting friend was more casual than it would have been had he not at
the same moment been turning to ask the solitary porter how many cases
of books awaited his disposition. They were very heavy, it seemed; and
the porter, as he led the way towards the small and obscure purgatory
through which every package for Shipcot must pass, declared he was
surprised to hear these cases contained merely books. He would not go so
far as to suggest that hitherto he had never faced the existence of
books in such quantity, for the admission might have impugned official
omniscience; yet there was in his attitude just as much incredulity
mingled with disdain of useless learning as would preserve his dignity
without jeopardizing the financial compliment his services were owed.
"Ah, well," he decided, as if he were trying to smooth over Guy's
embarrassment at the sight of these large packing-cases in the
parcel-office. "You'll want something as'll keep you busy this
winter--for you'll be the gentleman who've come to live down Wychford
way?"
Guy nodded.
"And Wychford is mortal dead in winter. Time walks very lame there, as
they say. And all these books, I suppose, were better to come along of
the 'bus to-night?"
Guy looked doubtful. It was seeming a pity to waste this afternoon
without unpacking a single case. "The trap...." he began.
But the porter interrupted him firmly; he did not think Mr. Godbold
would relish the notion of one of these packing-cases in his new trap.
"I could give you a hand...." Guy began again.
The porter stiffened himself against the slight upon his strength.
"It's not the heffort," he asserted. "Heffort is what I must look for
every day of my life. It's Mr. Godbold's trap."
The discussion was given another turn by the entrance of Mr. Godbold
himself. He was not at all concerned for his trap, and indeed by an
asseverated indifference to its welfare he conveyed the impression that,
new though it were, it was so much firewood, if the gentleman wanted
firewood. No, the trap did not matter, but what about Mr. Hazlewood's
knees?
"Ah, there you are," said the porter, and he and Mr. Godbold both stood
dumb in the presence of the finally insuperable.
"I suppose it must be the 'bus," said Guy. On such a sleepy afternoon he
could argue no longer. The books must be unpacked to-morrow; and the
word lulled like an opiate the faint irritation of his disappointment.
The porter's reiterated altruism was rewarded with a fee so absurdly in
excess of anything he had done, that he began to speak of a possibility
if, after all, the smallest case might not be squeezed ... but Mr.
Godbold flicked the pony, and the trap rattled up the station road at a
pace quite out of accord with the warmth of the afternoon. Presently he
turned to his fare:
"Mrs. Godbold said to me only this morning, she said, 'You ought to have
had a luggage-flap behind and that I shall always say,' And she was
right. Women is often right, what's more," the husband postulated.
Guy nodded absently; he was thinking about the books.
"Very often right," Mr. Godbold murmured.
Still Guy paid no attention.
"Very often," he repeated, but as Guy would neither contradict nor agree
with him, Mr. Godbold relapsed into meditation upon the justice of his
observation. The pony had settled down to his wonted pace and jogged on
through the golden haze of fine September weather. Soon the village of
Shipcot was left behind, and before them lay the long road winding
upward over the wold to Wychford. Guy thought of the friend who had left
him that afternoon and wished that Michael Fane were still with him to
enjoy this illimitable sweep of country. He had been the very person to
share in the excitement of arranging a new house. Guy could not remember
that he had ever made a suggestion for which he had not been asked; nor
could he call to mind a single occasion when his appreciation had
failed. And now to-night, when for the first time he was going to sleep
in his own house, his friend was gone. There had been no hint of
departure during the six weeks of preparation they had spent together at
the Stag Inn, and it was really perverse of Michael to rush back to
London now. Guy jumped down from the trap, which was climbing the hill
very slowly, and stretched his long legs. He was rather bored by his
loneliness, but as soon as he had stated so much to himself, he was
shocked at the disloyalty to his ambition. After all, he reassured
himself, he was not going back to a dull inn-parlor; to-night he was
going to sleep in an hermitage for the right to enjoy the seclusion of
which he had been compelled to fight very hard. It was weak to imagine
he was lonely already, and to fortify himself against this mood he
pulled out of his pocket his father's last letter and read it again
while he walked up the hill behind the trap.
FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS,
_September 10th_.
DEAR GUY,--I agree with some of what you say, but I disagree with
a good deal more, and I am entirely opposed to your method of
procedure, which is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your
degree was not so good as it ought to have been, but I did not
reproach you, because in the Consular Service you had chosen a
career which did not call specially for a first. At the same time
you could, if you had worked, have got a first quite easily. Your
six months with the Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked
all your consular ambitions on the head rather too easily, I
confess, to make me feel very happy about your future. And now
without consulting me you take a house in the country for the
purpose of writing poetry! You imply in answer to my remonstrances
that I am unable to appreciate the "necessity" for your step. That
may be, but I cannot help asking where you would be now if I at
your age, instead of helping my father with his school, had gone
off to Oxfordshire to write poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to
make a name for myself with the pen. If I had, I quenched them in
order to devote myself to what I considered my duty. I do not
reproach you for refusing to carry on the school at Fox Hall. Your
dear mother's last request was that I should not urge you to be a
schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to the vocation. Her wishes I
have respected, and I repeat that I am not hurt at your refusal.
At the same time I cannot encourage what can only be described as
this whim of yours to bury yourself in a remote village where,
having saddled yourself with the responsibilities of a house, you
announce your intention of living by poetry! I am the last person
to underestimate the value of poetry, but as a livelihood it seems
to me as little to be relied upon as the weather. However, you are
of age. You have L150 a year of your own. You are with the
exercise of the strictest economy independent. And this brings me
to the point of your last letter in which you ask me to supplement
your own income with an allowance of L150 a year from me. This
inclination to depend upon your father is not what I conceive to
be the artist's spirit of independence. This overdrawing upon your
achievement fills me with dismay for the future. However, since I
do not wish you to begin hampered by debt and as you assure me
that you have spent all your own money on this idiotic house, I
will give you L150, to be paid in quarterly instalments of L37
10_s_, as from the 21st of this month for one year. Furthermore,
at the end of next year if you find that poetry is less profitable
than even you expect, I will offer you a place at Fox Hall,
thereby securing for you the certainty of a life moderately free
from financial worries. After all, even a schoolmaster has some
spare time, and I dare say our greatest poets did much of their
best work in their spare time. The idea of writing poetry all day
and every day appeals to me as enervating and ostentatious.
Your affectionate father,
JOHN HAZLEWOOD.
Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely
the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and
humbly this gift of L150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till
December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his
house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he
would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to
compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended
knees beg him to accept an allowance of L300 a year in consideration of
the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the
direct line of English poets.
"And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to
himself.
This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap
which was waiting on the brow of the hill.
"You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr.
Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that
fathers are nearly always wrong?"
"That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head.
"You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I
shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've
_got_ to be right, Mr. Hazlewood."
"I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured.
"Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a
manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the
level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these
narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our
parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other
night while we were arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you
wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're so knowing about?'"
"And had they?" asked Guy, encouragingly.
"Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was
walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a
Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish
you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I
tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is
for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them."
Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he
was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to
Wychford from the station. The country tossed for miles to right and
left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for
a moment to look at a trace, the air, brilliantly dusted with autumnal
gold, seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence; along the
sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the
September sky above, and Guy felt like them, worshipful of the cloudless
scene. The road ran along the upland for half a mile before it dipped
suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush, from which the spire of
Wychford church came delicately up into the air, like a coil of smoke
ascending from the opalescent corona that hung over the small town
clustered against the farther hillside. Down in that valley close to the
church was Plashers Mead, and Guy watched eagerly for the first sight of
his long, low house. Already the sparkle of the more distant curves of
the Greenrush was visible; but Plashers Mead was still hidden by the
slope of the bank. Presently this broke away to a ragged hedge, and the
house displayed itself as much an integral part of the landscape as an
outcrop of stone.
"Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold while the trap jolted
cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old
Burrows was glad to let it. You're young, though, and I dare say you
won't mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's
wife's nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're
young, and I dare say you'll enjoy it."
The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden
gateway in the gray wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the
highroad the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead.
"I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He
had tried all the way back not to make this announcement, but the sight
of his own gateway destroyed his reserve.
"Well, you'll have a fine night, that's one good job," Mr. Godbold
predicted.
"And the moon only just past the full," said Guy.
"That's right," Mr. Godbold agreed; and the tenant passed through the
gateway into the garden, where every path had its own melody of running
water. He examined with proprietary solicitude the espaliers of
apple-trees, and admired for the twentieth time the pledge they offered
by their fantastic forms of his garden's antiquity. He pinched several
pippins that seemed ripe, but they were still hard; and he could find
nothing over which to exert his lordship until he saw by the edge of
the path a piece of groundsel. Having solemnly exterminated the weed,
Guy felt that the garden must henceforth recognize him as master, and he
walked on through a mass of dropsical cabbages and early kale until he
came face to face with the house, the sudden view of which like this
never failed to give him a peculiar pleasure. The tangled garden, long
and narrow, was bounded on the right, as one entered, by the Greenrush,
over which hung a thicket of yews that completely shut out the first
straggling houses of Wychford. On the left the massed espaliers ended
abruptly in a large water-meadow reaching to the foot of the hill along
which the highroad climbed in a slow diagonal. By the corner of the
house the garden had narrowed to the apex of a thin triangle, so that
the windows looked out over the water-meadow and, beyond, up the wide
valley of the Greenrush to where the mighty western sky rested on
rounded hills. At this apex the Greenrush flung a tributary stream to
wash the back of the house and one side of the orchard, whence it wound
in extravagant curves towards the easterly valley. The main branch,
damned up to form a deep and sluggish mill-stream, flowed straight on,
dividing Guy's domain from the churchyard. At the end of the orchard on
this side was a lock-gate through which a certain amount of water
continuously escaped from the mill-stream, enough, indeed, to make the
orchard an island, as it trickled in diamonded shallows to reinforce the
idle tributary. Somewhere in the farther depths of the eastern valley
all vagrant waters were united, and somewhere still more remote they
came to a confluence with their father the Thames.
Guy sat upon the parapet of the well under the shade of a sycamore-tree
and regarded with admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house.
He looked at the semicircular porch of stone over the front door and
venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks had blown
defiance at wind and rain since the days of Elizabeth. He counted the
nine windows, five above and four below, populating with the shapes of
many friends the rooms they lightened. He looked at the steep roof of
gray-stone tiles rich with the warm golden green of mossy patterns. He
looked at the four pear-trees against the walls of the house barren now
for many years. He looked at himself in silhouette against the silver
sky of the well-water; and then he went indoors.
The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at
the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green
world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house
smelled very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odor
peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and
in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At
present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of
Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a
warming-pan; and an oak chest which remained a chest only so long as
nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a
grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four
minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van,
but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall
was a small, empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of
his friend Michael Fane; together they had planned to paper it with gold
and paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at
Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on
the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall
was the dining-room, which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to
furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green
above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and
china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table,
curtains of purple silk, some old English water-colors, and two
candlesticks of Sheffield plate. Beyond the dining-room was the kitchen,
the corridor to which was endowed with a swinging baize door considered
by the landlord to be the finest feature of the house. The problem of
equipping the kitchen had seemed insoluble until Guy heard of a sale in
the neighborhood. He had bicycled over to this and bought the contents
of the large kitchen at auction. The result was that the dresser
encroached upon the table, that the table had one leg in the fender, and
that a row of graduated dish-covers, the largest of which would have
sheltered two turkeys, occupied whatever space was left. All that
remained of Guy's own money had been invested in his kitchen, and he
accounted for the large size of everything by the fact of the auction's
having been held in the open air, where everything had looked so much
smaller. Now, as he contemplated dubiously the result, he wondered what
Miss Peasey would say to it. She and the books would arrive together at
half past nine to-night. He hoped his unknown housekeeper would not be
irritated by these dish-covers, and as a precautionary measure he
unhooked the largest, carried it up-stairs, and deposited it on the
floor of an unfurnished bedroom. The staircase ran steep and straight up
from the hall into a long corridor with more casements opening on the
orchard behind. The bedroom at one end was dedicated to the hope of
Michael Fane's occupation and was always referred to in letters as his:
"_By the way I put the largest dish-cover in your bedroom._" The next
two bedrooms were also empty and belonged in spirit to the friends with
whom Guy had lived during his last year at Oxford. The fourth was his
own, very simply and sparsely furnished in comparison with the bedroom
up in the roof which was intended for Miss Peasey. The preparation of
that for an elderly unmarried woman had involved a certain
voluptuousness of rep and fumed oak and heavily decorated china, the
fruit of the second-best bedroom in the house of the dish-covers. As
Guy went up the crooked stairs and knocked his head on three successive
beams, he hoped Miss Peasey would not be as disproportionately large as
the kitchen dresser. Her handwriting had been spidery enough, and he
pictured her hopefully as small and wizened. Miss Peasey's bower with
the big dormer window surveying the tree-tops of the orchard was
certainly a success, and Guy saw that Michael had with happy intuition
of female aspiration hung on the wall opposite her bed a large
steel-engraving of Dore's Martyrs, which had been included with two
hammocks and a fishing-rod in one of the odd lots lightly bid for at the
auction. There did not seem anything else she could want; so, having
killed a bluebottle with a tartan pincushion, he came down-stairs.
Guy had left his own room to the last, partly because he regretted so
much the delay in the arrival of those books and partly because, however
inadequately equipped was the rest of the house, this room was always
the final justification of his tenancy. It was a larger room than any of
the others, for the corridor did not cut off its share of the back. It
possessed, in addition to the usual window looking out over the western
side of the valley, a very large bay which hung right over the stream,
with a view of the orchard, of the church steeple, of the water-meadows
beyond, and of the wold rolling across the horizon. This morning Michael
and he had pushed the furniture into place, had set in order the great
wicker chairs and nailed against the wall the frames of green canvas.
The floor was covered with a sweet-smelling mat of Abingdon rushes; and
the curtains of his old rooms in Balliol were hung in place, dim green
curtains sown with golden fleurs-de-lys. The ivory image of an emaciated
saint standing on the mantelshelf between candlesticks of old wrought
iron was probably a Spanish Virgin, but Guy preferred to say she was
Saint Rose of Lima because "_O Rose of Lima_" seemed a wonderful
apostrophe to begin a poem. Nothing indeed remained for the room's
perfection but to fill the new bookshelves on either side of the
fireplace. Why had he not hired a cart in Shipcot? They would have been
here by now, and he would actually have been able to begin work
to-night, setting thus a noble period to these last six weeks of
preparation.
Guy dragged a chair into the bay window and, balancing his long legs on
the sill, he made numerous calculations in which Miss Peasey's wages,
the weekly bills for food, and the number of times he would have to go
up to London were set against L150 a year. When he woke up, the
lime-trees that bordered the highroad had flung their shadows half-way
across the meadow, and the air was a fume of golden gnats against the
dipping sun. Within ten minutes the sun vanished, and the mists began to
rise. Guy, feeling rather chilly and ashamed of himself for falling
asleep, rose hurriedly and went up into the town. He interviewed the
driver of the omnibus and told him to look out for his books, and as an
afterthought he mentioned the arrival of Miss Peasey. He wished now he
had written and told his housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and
he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a
five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff.
He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with
tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the gray
houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the
Stag Inn.
After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house,
dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere, and working himself
up into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be
terrible if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived;
and to propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as
with such illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took
another dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a
few minutes after eight and the omnibus would not come for another hour
and a half, he lit all the wax candles in his own room and wondered what
to do. The tall shadows wavering in the draught were seeming cold and
uncomfortable without a fire, so he restlessly threw back the curtains
of the bay window to watch the rising of the moon. At that instant her
rim appeared above the black hills, and presently a great moon of
dislustered gold swam along the edge of the earth. Although she appeared
to shed no light, the valley responded to her presence, and Guy was
lured from his room to walk for a while in the dews.
Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet
overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow
burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer
country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be
floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was
audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the
saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapors a shifting damascene;
and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in
his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play
upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows
munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream
itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the
bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a
scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an
otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was
hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the
lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily
dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an
arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below.
Soon the orchard was left behind and he was in the mist of a wide
meadow, where all was silent again except for the faint sobbing of the
grass to his footsteps. He walked straight into the moon's face,
stumbling from time to time over molehills with an eery fragrance of
fresh-turned soil, and wishing he could ever say in verse a little of
the magic this autumnal night was shedding upon his fancy.
"By gad! if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared.
The church clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father
had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he
could do.
"Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy, aloud. And since the
clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of
an argument.
Guy walked on, and after a while could hear once more the purling of the
stream. He thought there was something strangely human about this river
in the way it wandered so careless of direction. When he had left these
banks, they had been going away from him: now here they were coming back
like himself towards the moon, so that presently he was able without
changing his course to walk under their border of willows. The mist had
drifted away from the stream, leaving the spires of loosestrife plainly
visible, and more dimly on the other side the forms of huge cattle at
pasture. There was, too, a smell of meadowsweet softening with a summer
languor the sharp September night. The willows gave way to overhanging
thickets of hawthorn, as the river suddenly swept round to make a noose
that was completed but a few yards ahead of where he was standing. He
could not see on account of the bushes the size of the peninsula so
formed, and when suddenly he heard from the depths a sound of laughter,
so full was his brain of moonshine that if he had come face to face with
a legendary queen of fairies, he would hardly have been surprised. It
was with the deliberate encouragement of a vision surpassing all the
fantasies of moon and mist that Guy stopped; and, indeed, on a sensuous
impulse to pamper his imagination with an unsolved mystery he had almost
turned round to go back. Curiosity, however, was too strong; for, as he
paused irresolute, the fairy mirth tinkling again from the recesses of
that bewitched inclosure died away upon the murmur of a conversation,
and he could not leave any longer inviolate that screen of hawthorns.
In the apogee of the river's noose two girls, clearly seen against the
silver glooms beyond, were bending over a basket. Their heads were close
together, and it was not until Guy was almost on top of them that he
realized how impertinent his intrusion might seem. He drew back,
blushing, just as one of the girls became aware of his presence and
jumped up with an "oh" that floated away from her as lightly as a moth
upon the moonshine. Her sister (Guy decided at once they were sisters)
jumped up also and, luckily for him, since it offered the opportunity of
a natural apology, overturned the basket. For a moment the three of them
gazed at one another over the mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass
to be an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas
under the moon.
"Can't I help to pick them up?" Guy asked, wondering to himself why on
this night of nights that was the real beginning of Plashers Mead he
should be blessed by this fortunate encounter. The two girls were
wearing big white coats of some rough tweed or frieze on which the mist
lay like gossamer; and, as neither of them had a hat, Guy could see that
one was very dark and the other fair.
"We wondered who you were," said the dark one.
"I live at Plashers Mead," said Guy.
"I know; I've seen you often," she answered.
"And Father says every day, 'My dears, I really must call upon that
young man.'"
It was the fair one who spoke, and Guy recognized that it was her
laughter he had first heard.
"My other sister is somewhere close by," said the dark one.
Guy was kneeling down to gather up the mushrooms, and he looked round to
see another white figure coming towards them.
"Oh, Margaret, do let's introduce him to Monica. It will be such fun,"
cried the fair sister.
Guy saw that Margaret was shaking her head, but nevertheless when the
third sister came near enough she did introduce him. Monica was more
like Margaret, but much fairer than the first fair sister; and with her
reserve and her pale-gold hair she seemed, as she greeted him, to be
indeed a wraith of the moon.
"Shall I carry the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered.
"Oh no, thanks," said Monica, quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your
way."
He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not
wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the
banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of
mist.
How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at
Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters.
Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he
was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might
more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ...
he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little
frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must
find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so
obviously the youngest, with her light-brown hair and her laugh of which
even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious
echo. Monica, Margaret, and ... Rose, perhaps, for there had been
something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo
of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward sound eluded him,
the belfry clock with whir and buzz and groan made preparation to strike
the hour. Nine strokes boomed, leaving behind them a stillness absolute.
The poet thought of time before him, of the three sisters by the river,
of fame to come, and of his own fortune in finding Plashers Mead. Four
months ago he had been in Macedonia, full of pro-consular romance, and
now he was in England with a much keener sense of every moment's
potentiality than he had ever known in the dreams of Oriental dominion.
This sublunary adventure indicated how great a richness of pastoral life
lay behind the slumber of a forgotten town; and it was seeming more than
ever a pity Michael had not waited until to-night, so that he also might
have met Monica and Margaret and that smallest innominate sister with
the light-brown hair. Guy could not help arranging with himself for his
friend to fall in love with one of them; and since he at once allotted
Monica to Michael, he knew that he himself preferred one of the others.
But which? Oh, it was ridiculous to ask such questions after seeing
three girls for three minutes of moonlight. Perhaps it really had been
sorcery, and in the morning, when he met them in Wychford High Street,
they would appear dull and ordinary. They could not be so beautiful as
he thought they were, he decided, since if they were he must have heard
of their beauty. Nevertheless, it was in a mood of almost elated
self-congratulation that Guy found himself hurrying through the orchard
towards the candle-light of his room.
The arrival of Miss Peasey, now that it was upon him, banished
everything else; and instead of dreaming deliciously of that encounter
in the water-meadows, he stood meditating on the failure of the kitchen.
As he regarded the enormous dresser, the table trampling upon the
fender, the seven dish-covers mocking his poor crockery, Guy had little
hope that Miss Peasey would stay a week; and then suddenly, worse than
any failure of equipment, he remembered that she might be hungry. He
looked at his watch. A quarter past nine. Of course she would be hungry.
She probably had eaten nothing but a banana since breakfast in Cardiff.
Guy rushed out and surprised the landlord of the Stag by begging him to
send the hostler down at once with cold beef and stout and cheese.
"There's the 'bus," he cried. "Don't forget. At once. My new
housekeeper. Long journey. And salad. Forgot she'd be hungry. Salt and
mustard. I've got plates."
The omnibus went rumbling past, and Guy followed at a jog-trot down the
street, saw it cross the bridge, and, making a spurt, caught it up just
as a woman alighted by the gate of Plashers Mead.
"Ah, Miss Peasey," said Guy, breathlessly. "I went up the street to see
if the 'bus was coming. Have you had a comfortable journey?"
"Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the new housekeeper, blinking at him.
The guard of the omnibus at this moment informed Guy that he had some
cases for Plashers Mead.
"Where is Mr. Hazlewood, then?" asked Miss Peasey, turning sharply.
Over her shoulder Guy saw that the guard was apparently punching the
side of his head, and he said, more loudly:
"I'm Mr. Hazlewood."
"I thought you were. I'm a little bit deaf after traveling, so you'll
kindly speak slightly above the usual, Mr. Hazlewood."
"I hope you've had a comfortable journey," Guy shouted.
"Oh yes, I think I shall," she said with what Guy fancied was meant to
be an encouraging smile. "I hope you haven't lost any of my parcels,
young man," she continued, with a severe glance at the guard.
"Four and a string-bag. Is that right, mum?" he bellowed. "She's as deaf
as an adder, Mr. Hazlewood," he explained, confidentially. "We had a
regular time getting of her into the 'bus before we found out she
couldn't hear what was being said to her. Oh, very obstinate she was."
"This is the garden," Guy shouted, as they passed in through the gate.
"Yes, I dare say," Miss Peasey replied, ambiguously.
Guy wondered how she would ever be got up-stairs to her room.
"This is the hall," he shouted. "Rather unfurnished I'm afraid."
"Oh yes, I'm quite used to the country," said Miss Peasey.
Guy was now in a state of nervous indecision. Just as he was going to
shout to Miss Peasey that the kitchen was through the baize door the
hostler from the Stag came up to know whether mutton would do instead of
beef, and just as he said pork would be better than nothing the guard
arrived with Miss Peasey's tin box and wanted to know where he should
put it. The hall seemed to be thronged with people.
"You'd like your boxes up-stairs, wouldn't you?" he shouted to the
housekeeper.
"Oh, do you want to come up-stairs?" she said, cheerfully.
"No, your boxes. The kitchen's in here."
He really hustled her into the kitchen and, having got her at last in a
well-lighted room, he begged her to sit down and expect her supper. By
this time two men who had been summoned by the driver of the omnibus to
bring in Guy's books were staggering and sweating into the hall.
However, the confusion relaxed in time; and before the clock struck ten
Guy was alone with Miss Peasey and without an audience was managing to
make her understand most of what he was saying.
"I'll come down in about half an hour," he told her, "and show you your
room."
"It's a long way," said Miss Peasey, when the moment was arrived to
conduct her up the winding staircase to her bower in the roof. Guy had
calculated that she would miss all the beams, and so from a desire to
make the best of the staircase he had not mentioned them. He sighed with
relief when she passed into her bedroom, unbumped.
"Oh, quite nice," she pronounced, looking round her.
"In the morning we'll talk over everything," said Guy, and with a
hurried good-night he rushed away.
In the hall he attacked with a chisel the first packing-case. One by one
familiar volumes winked at him with their gold lettering in the
candle-light. He chose Keats to take up-stairs, and, having read "St.
Agnes' Eve," stood by the window of his bedroom poring upon the moonlit
valley.
In bed his mind skipped the stress of Miss Peasey's arrival and fled
back to the meadows where he had been walking.
"Monica, Margaret...." he began, dreamily. It was a pity he had
forgotten to find out the name of that sister who was so like a wild
rose. Never mind; he would find out to-morrow. And for the second time
that day the word lulled him like an opiate.