March 6th.--Fine March weather: boisterous, blustering, much wind and
squalls of rain; and yet the sky, where the clouds are swept away,
deliciously blue, with snatches of sunshine, bright, and clear, and
healthful, and the roads, in spite of the slight glittering showers,
crisply dry. Altogether the day is tempting, very tempting. It will not
do for the dear common, that windmill of a walk; but the close sheltered
lanes at the bottom of the hill, which keep out just enough of the
stormy air, and let in all the sun, will be delightful. Past our old
house, and round by the winding lanes, and the workhouse, and across the
lea, and so into the turnpike-road again,--that is our route for to-day.
Forth we set, Mayflower and I, rejoicing in the sunshine, and still
more in the wind, which gives such an intense feeling of existence,
and, co-operating with brisk motion, sets our blood and our spirits in a
glow. For mere physical pleasure, there is nothing perhaps equal to the
enjoyment of being drawn, in a light carriage, against such a wind as
this, by a blood-horse at his height of speed. Walking comes next to it;
but walking is not quite so luxurious or so spiritual, not quite so
much what one fancies of flying, or being carried above the clouds in a
balloon.
Nevertheless, a walk is a good thing; especially under this southern
hedgerow, where nature is just beginning to live again; the periwinkles,
with their starry blue flowers, and their shining myrtle-like leaves,
garlanding the bushes; woodbines and elder-trees pushing out their small
swelling buds; and grasses and mosses springing forth in every variety
of brown and green. Here we are at the corner where four lanes meet, or
rather where a passable road of stones and gravel crosses an impassable
one of beautiful but treacherous turf, and where the small white
farmhouse, scarcely larger than a cottage, and the well-stocked
rick-yard behind, tell of comfort and order, but leave all unguessed the
great riches of the master. How he became so rich is almost a puzzle;
for, though the farm be his own, it is not large; and though prudent and
frugal on ordinary occasions, Farmer Barnard is no miser. His horses,
dogs, and pigs are the best kept in the parish,--May herself, although
her beauty be injured by her fatness, half envies the plight of his
bitch Fly: his wife's gowns and shawls cost as much again as any shawls
or gowns in the village; his dinner parties (to be sure they are not
frequent) display twice the ordinary quantity of good things--two
couples of ducks, two dishes of green peas, two turkey poults, two
gammons of bacon, two plum-puddings; moreover, he keeps a single-horse
chaise, and has built and endowed a Methodist chapel. Yet is he the
richest man in these parts. Everything prospers with him. Money drifts
about him like snow. He looks like a rich man. There is a sturdy
squareness of face and figure; a good-humoured obstinacy; a civil
importance. He never boasts of his wealth, or gives himself undue
airs; but nobody can meet him at market or vestry without finding out
immediately that he is the richest man there. They have no child to all
this money; but there is an adopted nephew, a fine spirited lad, who
may, perhaps, some day or other, play the part of a fountain to the
reservoir.
Now turn up the wide road till we come to the open common, with its
park-like trees, its beautiful stream, wandering and twisting along, and
its rural bridge. Here we turn again, past that other white farmhouse,
half hidden by the magnificent elms which stand before it. Ah! riches
dwell not there, but there is found the next best thing--an industrious
and light-hearted poverty. Twenty years ago Rachel Hilton was the
prettiest and merriest lass in the country. Her father, an old
gamekeeper, had retired to a village alehouse, where his good beer, his
social humour, and his black-eyed daughter, brought much custom. She had
lovers by the score; but Joseph White, the dashing and lively son of an
opulent farmer, carried off the fair Rachel. They married and settled
here, and here they live still, as merrily as ever, with fourteen
children of all ages and sizes, from nineteen years to nineteen months,
working harder than any people in the parish, and enjoying themselves
more. I would match them for labour and laughter against any family in
England. She is a blithe, jolly dame, whose beauty has amplified into
comeliness; he is tall, and thin, and bony, with sinews like whipcord, a
strong lively voice, a sharp weather-beaten face, and eyes and lips that
smile and brighten when he speaks into a most contagious hilarity. They
are very poor, and I often wish them richer; but I don't know--perhaps
it might put them out.
Quite close to Farmer White's is a little ruinous cottage, white-washed
once, and now in a sad state of betweenity, where dangling stockings and
shirts, swelled by the wind, drying in a neglected garden, give signal
of a washerwoman. There dwells, at present in single blessedness, Betty
Adams, the wife of our sometimes gardener. I never saw any one who so
much reminded me in person of that lady whom everybody knows,
Mistress Meg Merrilies;--as tall, as grizzled, as stately, as dark, as
gipsy-looking, bonneted and gowned like her prototype, and almost as
oracular. Here the resemblance ceases. Mrs. Adams is a perfectly honest,
industrious, painstaking person, who earns a good deal of money by
washing and charing, and spends it in other luxuries than tidiness,--in
green tea, and gin, and snuff. Her husband lives in a great family, ten
miles off. He is a capital gardener--or rather he would be so, if he
were not too ambitious. He undertakes all things, and finishes none. But
a smooth tongue, a knowing look, and a great capacity of labour, carry
him through. Let him but like his ale and his master and he will do work
enough for four. Give him his own way, and his full quantum, and nothing
comes amiss to him.
Ah, May is bounding forward! Her silly heart leaps at the sight of
the old place--and so in good truth does mine. What a pretty place it
was--or rather, how pretty I thought it! I suppose I should have thought
any place so where I had spent eighteen happy years. But it was really
pretty. A large, heavy, white house, in the simplest style, surrounded
by fine oaks and elms, and tall massy plantations shaded down into
a beautiful lawn by wild overgrown shrubs, bowery acacias, ragged
sweet-briers, promontories of dogwood, and Portugal laurel, and bays,
over-hung by laburnum and bird-cherry; a long piece of water letting
light into the picture, and looking just like a natural stream, the
banks as rude and wild as the shrubbery, interspersed with broom, and
furze, and bramble, and pollard oaks covered with ivy and honeysuckle;
the whole enclosed by an old mossy park paling, and terminating in a
series of rich meadows, richly planted. This is an exact description of
the home which, three years ago, it nearly broke my heart to leave.
What a tearing up by the root it was! I have pitied cabbage-plants and
celery, and all transplantable things, ever since; though, in
common with them, and with other vegetables, the first agony of the
transportation being over, I have taken such firm and tenacious hold of
my new soil, that I would not for the world be pulled up again, even
to be restored to the old beloved ground;--not even if its beauty were
undiminished, which is by no means the case; for in those three years it
has thrice changed masters, and every successive possessor has brought
the curse of improvement upon the place; so that between filling up the
water to cure dampness, cutting down trees to let in prospects, planting
to keep them out, shutting up windows to darken the inside of the house
(by which means one end looks precisely as an eight of spades would do
that should have the misfortune to lose one of his corner pips), and
building colonnades to lighten the out, added to a general clearance of
pollards, and brambles, and ivy, and honeysuckles, and park palings, and
irregular shrubs, the poor place is so transmogrified, that if it had
its old looking-glass, the water, back again, it would not know its
own face. And yet I love to haunt round about it: so does May. Her
particular attraction is a certain broken bank full of rabbit burrows,
into which she insinuates her long pliant head and neck, and tears her
pretty feet by vain scratchings: mine is a warm sunny hedgerow, in
the same remote field, famous for early flowers. Never was a spot more
variously flowery: primroses yellow, lilac white, violets of either hue,
cowslips, oxslips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies,
strawberries, heart's-ease, formed a small part of the Flora of that
wild hedgerow. How profusely they covered the sunny open slope under the
weeping birch, 'the lady of the woods'--and how often have I started to
see the early innocent brown snake, who loved the spot as well as I did,
winding along the young blossoms, or rustling amongst the fallen leaves!
There are primrose leaves already, and short green buds, but no flowers;
not even in that furze cradle so full of roots, where they used to blow
as in a basket. No, my May, no rabbits! no primroses! We may as well
get over the gate into the woody winding lane, which will bring us home
again.
Here we are making the best of our way between the old elms that arch so
solemnly over head, dark and sheltered even now. They say that a spirit
haunts this deep pool--a white lady without a head. I cannot say that I
have seen her, often as I have paced this lane at deep midnight, to hear
the nightingales, and look at the glow-worms;--but there, better
and rarer than a thousand ghosts, dearer even than nightingales or
glow-worms, there is a primrose, the first of the year; a tuft of
primroses, springing in yonder sheltered nook, from the mossy roots
of an old willow, and living again in the clear bright pool. Oh, how
beautiful they are--three fully blown, and two bursting buds! How glad I
am I came this way! They are not to be reached. Even Jack Rapley's love
of the difficult and the unattainable would fail him here: May herself
could not stand on that steep bank. So much the better. Who would wish
to disturb them? There they live in their innocent and fragrant beauty,
sheltered from the storms, and rejoicing in the sunshine, and looking as
if they could feel their happiness. Who would disturb them? Oh, how glad
I am I came this way home!