Chase didn’t go back to Wolverhampton. He knew that it was his duty to
go, but he stayed on at Blackboys. Not only that, but he sent no letter
or telegram in explanation of his continued absence. He simply stayed
where he was, callous, and supremely happy. By no logic could he have
justified his behaviour; by no effort of the imagination could he, a
fortnight earlier, have conceived such behaviour as proceeding from his
well-ordered creeds. He stayed on, through the early summer days that
throughout all their hours preserved the clarity of dawn. Like a child
strayed into the realms of delight, he was stupefied by the enchantment
of sun and shadow. He remained for hours gazing in a silly beatitude at
the large patches of sunlight that lay on the grass, at the depths of
the shadows that melted into the profundity of the woods. In the
mornings he woke early, and leaning at the open window gave himself over
to the dews, to the young glinting sunshine, and to the birds. What a
babble of birds! He couldn’t distinguish their notes—only to the cuckoo,
the wood-pigeon, and the distant crow of a cock could he put a name. The
fluffy tits, blue and yellow, hopping among the apple-branches, were to
him as nameless as they were lovely. He knew, theoretically, that the
birds did sing when day was breaking; the marvellous thing was, not that
they should be singing, but that he, Chase, should be awake and in the
country to hear them sing. No one knew that he was awake, and he had all
a shy man’s pleasure in seclusion. No one knew what he was doing; no one
was spying on him; he was quite free and unobserved in this
clean-washed, untenanted, waking world. Down in the woods only the small
animals and the birds were stirring. There was the rustle of a mouse
under dead leaves. It was too early for even the farm-people to be
about. Chase and the natural citizens between them had it all their own
way. (Nutley wore a black coat and carried a black shiny bag, but Nutley
knew nothing of the dawn.) Then he clothed himself, and, passing out of
the house unperceived with Thane, since there was no one to perceive
them, wandered in the sparkling fields. There was by now no angle from
which he was not familiar with the house, whether he considered the
dreamy roofs from the crest of the hill or the huddle of the
murrey-coloured buildings from across the distance of the surrounding
pastures. No thread of smoke rose slim and wavering from a chimney but
he could trace it down to its hearthstone. No window glittered but he
could name the room it lit. Nor was there any tenderness of light whose
change he had not observed, whether of the morning, cool and fluty; or
of the richer evening, profound and venerable, that sank upon the ruby
brick-work, the glaucous moat, and the breasts of the peacocks in the
garden; or of the ethereal moonlight, a secret that he kept, inviolate
almost from himself, in the shyest recesses of his soul.
For at the centre of all was always the house, that mothered the farms
and accepted the homage of the garden. The house was at the heart of all
things; the cycle of husbandry might revolve—tillage to growth, and
growth to harvest—more necessary, more permanent, perhaps, more urgent;
but like a woman gracious, humorous, and dominant, the house remained
quiet at the centre. To part the house and the lands, or to consider
them as separate, would be no less than parting the soul and the body.
The house was the soul; did contain and guard the soul as in a casket;
the lands were England, Saxon as they could be, and if the house were at
the heart of the land, then the soul of the house must indeed be at the
heart and root of England, and, once arrived at the soul of the house,
you might fairly claim to have pierced to the soul of England. Grave,
gentle, encrusted with tradition, embossed with legend, simple and
proud, ample and maternal. Not sensational. Not arresting. There was
nothing about the house or the country to startle; it was, rather, a
charm that enticed, insidious as a track through a wood, or a path lying
across fields and curving away from sight over the skyline, leading the
unwary wanderer deeper and deeper into the bosom of the country.
He knew the sharp smell of cut grass, and the wash of the dew round his
ankles. He knew the honing of a scythe, the clang of a forge and the
roaring of its bellows, the rasp of a saw cutting through wood and the
resinous scent of the sawdust. He knew the tap of a woodpecker on a
tree-trunk, and the midday murmur, most amorous, most sleepy, of the
pigeons among the beeches. He knew the contented buzz of a bee as it
closed down upon a flower, and the bitter shrill of the grasshopper
along the hedgerows. He knew the squirt of milk jetting into the pails,
and the drowsy stir in the byres. He knew the marvellous brilliance of a
petal in the sun, its fibrous transparency, like the cornelian-coloured
transparency of a woman’s fingers held over a strong light. He
associated these sights, and the infinitesimal small sounds composing
the recurrent melody, with the meals prepared for him, the salads and
cold chicken, the draughts of cider, and abundance of fresh humble
fruit, until it seemed to him that all senses were gratified severally
and harmoniously, as well out in the open as in the cool dusk within the
house.
He liked to rap with his stick upon the door of a farm-house, and to be
admitted with a “Why! Mr. Chase!” by a smiling woman into the passage,
smelling of recent soap and water on the tiles; to be ushered into the
sitting-room, hideous, pretentious, and strangely meaningless, furnished
always with the cottage-piano, the Turkey carpet, and the plant in a
bright gilt basket-pot. The light in these rooms always struck Chase as
being particularly unmerciful. But he learnt that he must sit patient,
while the farmer was summoned, and the rest of the household too, and
sherry in a decanter and a couple of glasses were produced from a
sideboard, at whatever hour Chase’s visit might chance to fall, be it
even at eight in the morning, which it very often was. That lusty
hospitality permitted no refusal of the sherry, though Chase might have
preferred, instead of the burning stuff, a glass of fresh milk after his
walk across the dews. He must sit and sip the sherry, responding to the
social efforts of the farmer’s wife and daughters (the latter always
coy, always would be up to date), while the farmer was content to leave
this indoor portion of the entertainment to his womenfolk, contributing
nothing himself but “Another glass, Mr. Chase?” or the offer of a cigar,
and the creak of his leather gaiters as he trod across the room. But
presently, Chase knew, when the conversation became really impossibly
stilted, he might without incivility suggest that he mustn’t keep the
farmer any longer from his daily business, and, after shaking hands all
round with the ladies, might take his cap and follow his host out into
the yard, where men pitchforked the sodden litter out into the midden in
the centre of the yard, and the slow cattle lurched one behind the other
from the sheds, turning themselves unprompted in the familiar direction.
Here, Chase might be certain he would not be embarrassed by having undue
notice taken of him. The farmer here was a greater man than he. Chase
liked to follow round meekly, and the more he was neglected the better
he was pleased. Then he and the farmer together would tramp across the
acres, silent for the most part, but inwardly contented, although when
the farmer broke the silence it was only to grunt out some phrase of
complaint, either at the poverty of that year’s yield, or the dearth or
abundance of rabbits, or to remark, kicking at a clod of loam, “Soggy!
soggy! the land’s not yet forgotten the rains we had in February,” thus
endowing the land with a personality actual and rancorous, more definite
to Chase than the personalities of the yeomen, whom he could distinguish
apart by their appearance perhaps, but certainly not by their opinions,
their preoccupations, or their gestures. They were natural features
rather than men—trees or boles, endowed with speech and movement indeed,
but preserving the same unity, the same hodden unwieldiness, that was
integral with the landscape. There was one old hedger in particular who,
maundering over his business of lop and top, or grubbing among the
ditches, had grown as gnarled and horny as an ancient root, and was
scarcely distinguishable till you came right upon him, when his little
brown dog flew out from the hedge and barked; and there was another
chubby old man, a dealer in fruit, who drove about the country, a long
ladder swaying out of the back of his cart. This old man was intimate
with every orchard of the country-side, whether apple, cherry, damson,
or plum, and could tell you the harvest gathered in bushel measures for
any year within his memory; but although all fruits came within his
province, the apples had his especial affection, and he never referred
to them save by the personal pronouns, “Ah, Winter Queening,” he would
say, “she’s a grand bearer,” or “King of the Pippins, he’s a fine
fellow,” and for Chase, whom he had taken under his protection, he would
always produce some choice specimen from his pocket with a confidential
air, although, as he never failed to observe, “May wasn’t the time for
apples.” Let Mr. Chase only wait till the autumn—he would show him what
a Ribston or a Blenheim ought to be; “But I shan’t be here in the
autumn, Caleb,” Chase would say, and the old man would jerk his head
sagely and reply as he whipped up the pony, “Trees with old roots isn’t
so easily thrown over,” and in the parable that he only half understood
Chase found an obscure comfort.
These were his lane-made friendships. He knew the man who cut withes by
the brook; he knew the gang and the six great shining horses that
dragged away the chained and fallen trees upon an enormous wain; he knew
the boys who went after moorhen’s eggs; he knew the kingfisher that was
always ambushed somewhere near the bridge; he knew the cheery woman who
had an idiot child, and a husband accursed of bees. “Bees? no, my
husband couldn’t never go near bees. He squashed up too many of them
when he was a lad, and bees never forget. Squashed ’em up, _so_, in his
hand. Just temper. Now if three bees stung him together he’d die. Oh,
surely, Mr. Chase, sir. We went down into Sussex once, on a holiday, and
the bees there knew him at once and were after him. Wonderful thing it
is, the sense beasts have got. And memory! Beasts never forget, beasts
don’t.”
And always there was the reference to the sale, and the regrets, that
were never impertinent and never ruffled so much as the fringes of
Chase’s pride. The women were readier with these regrets than the men;
they started off with unthinking sympathy, while the men shuffled and
coughed, and traced with their toe the pattern of the carpet, but
presently, when alone with Chase, took advantage of the women’s
prerogative in breaking the ice, to revive the subject; and always
Chase, to get himself out of a conversation which he felt to be fraught
with awkwardness—the awkwardness of reserved men trespassing upon the
grounds of secret and personal feeling—would parry with his piteous jest
of being himself under notice to quit.