bought those shares at eight and something, and that they are now four.
So if you sell out now you will get rather less than half what you gave
for them.’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. Surely if Lolly were business woman enough to grasp
that so clearly, she would in time see reason on other matters.
‘Very well. You will sell them immediately----’
‘Lolly!’
‘--and reinvest the money in something quite unspeculative and unsound,
like War Loan, that will pay a proper dividend. I shall still have
enough to manage on. I shan’t be as comfortable as I thought I should
be. I shan’t be able to afford the little house that I hoped for, nor
the donkey. But I shan’t mind much. It will matter very little to me
when I’m there.’
She stopped. She had forgotten Henry, and the unpleasant things she
meant to say to him. She had come to the edge of the wood, and felt its
cool breath in her face. It did not matter about the donkey, nor the
house, nor the darkening orchard even. If she were not to pick fruit
from her own trees, there were common herbs and berries in plenty for
her, growing wherever she chose to wander. It is best as one grows
older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a
tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.
As she left the room she turned and looked at Henry. Such was her mood,
she could have blessed him solemnly, as before an eternal departure. But
he was sitting with his back to her, and did not look round. When she
had gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
Ten days later Laura arrived at Great Mop. After the interview with
Henry she encountered no more opposition. Caroline knew better than to
persist against an obstinacy which had worsted her husband, and the
other members of the family, their surprise being evaporated, were
indifferent. Titus was a little taken aback when he found that his
aunt’s romantic proposals were seriously intended. He for his part was
going to Corsica. ‘A banal mountainous spot,’ he said politely,
‘compared with Buckinghamshire.’
The day of Laura’s arrival was wet and blusterous. She drove in a car
from Wickendon. The car lurched and rattled, and the wind slapped the
rain against the windows; Laura could scarcely see the rising
undulations of the landscape. When the car drew up before her new home,
she stood for a moment looking up the village street, but the prospect
was intercepted by the umbrella under which Mrs. Leak hastened to
conduct her to the porch. So had it rained, and so had the wind blown,
on the day when she had come on her visit of inspection and had taken
rooms in Mrs. Leak’s cottage. So, Henry and Caroline and their friends
had assured her, did it rain and blow all through the winter in the
Chilterns. No words of theirs, they said, could describe how dismal and
bleak it would be among those unsheltered hills. To Laura, sitting by
the fire in her parlour, the sound of wind and rain was pleasant.
‘Weather like this,’ she thought, ‘would never be allowed in London.’
The unchastened gusts that banged against the side of the house and
drove the smoke down the chimney, and the riotous gurgling of the rain
in the gutters were congenial to her spirit. ‘Hoo! You daredevil,’ said
the wind. ‘Have you come out to join us?’ Yet sitting there with no
companionship except those exciting voices she was quiet and happy.
Mrs. Leak’s tea was strong Indian tea. The bread-and-butter was cut in
thick slices, and underneath it was a crocheted mat; there was plum jam
in a heart-shaped glass dish, and a plate of rather heavy jam-puffs. It
was not quite so good as the farmhouse teas she remembered in Somerset,
but a great deal better than teas at Apsley Terrace.
Tea being done with, Laura took stock of her new domain. The parlour was
furnished with a large mahogany table, four horsehair chairs and a
horsehair sofa, an armchair, and a sideboard, rather gimcrack compared
to the rest of the furniture. On the walls, which were painted green,
hung a print of the Empress Josephine and two rather scowling classical
landscapes with ruined temples, and volcanoes. On either side of the
hearth were cupboards, and the fireplace was of a cottage pattern with
hobs, and a small oven on one side. This fireplace had caught Laura’s
fancy when she first looked at the rooms. She had stipulated with Mrs.
Leak that, should she so wish, she might cook on it. There are some
things--mushrooms, for instance, or toasted cheese--which can only be
satisfactorily cooked by the eater. Mrs. Leak had made no difficulties.
She was an oldish woman, sparing of her words and moderate in her
demands. Her husband worked at the sawmill. They were childless. She
had never let lodgings before, but till last year an aunt with means of
her own had occupied the parlour and bedroom which were now Laura’s.
It did not take Laura very long to arrange her belongings, for she had
brought little. Soon after supper, which consisted of rabbit, bread and
cheese, and table beer, she went upstairs to bed. Moving about her small
cold bedroom she suddenly noticed that the wind had fallen, and that it
was no longer raining. She pushed aside a corner of the blind and opened
the window. The night air was cold and sweet, and the full moon shone
high overhead. The sky was cloudless, lovely, and serene; a few stars
glistened there like drops of water about to fall. For the first time
she was looking at the intricate landscape of rounded hills and scooped
valleys which she had chosen for learning by heart.
Dark and compact, the beech-woods lay upon the hills. Alighting as
noiselessly as an owl, a white cat sprang up on to the garden fence. It
glanced from side to side, ran for a yard or two along the top of the
fence and jumped off again, going secretly on its way. Laura sighed for
happiness. She had no thoughts; her mind was swept as clean and empty as
the heavens. For a long time she continued to lean out of the window,
forgetting where she was and how she had come there, so unearthly was
her contentment.
Nevertheless her first days at Great Mop gave her little real pleasure.
She wrecked them by her excitement. Every morning immediately after
breakfast she set out to explore the country. She believed that by
eating a large breakfast she could do without lunch. The days were
short, and she wanted to make the most of them, and making the most of
the days and going back for lunch did not seem to her to be compatible.
Unfortunately, she was not used to making large breakfasts, so her
enthusiasm was qualified by indigestion until about four P.M., when both
enthusiasm and indigestion yielded to a faintish feeling. Then she
turned back, generally by road, since it was growing too dark to find
out footpaths, and arrived home with a limp between six and seven. She
knew in her heart that she was not really enjoying this sort of thing,
but the habit of useless activity was too strong to be snapped by change
of scene. And in the evening, as she looked at the map and marked where
she had been with little bleeding footsteps of red ink, she was
enchanted afresh by the names and the bridle-paths, and, forgetting the
blistered heel and the dissatisfaction of that day’s walk, planned a new
walk for the morrow.
Nearly a week had gone by before she righted herself. She had made an
appointment with the sunset that she should see it from the top of a
certain hill. The hill was steep, and the road turned and twisted about
its sides. It was clear that the sunset would be at their meeting-place
before she was, nor would it be likely to kick its heels and wait about
for her. She looked at the sky and walked faster. The road took a new
and unsuspected turn, concealed behind the clump of trees by which she
had been measuring her progress up the hill. She was growing more and
more flustered, and at this prick she lost her temper entirely. She was
tired, she was miles from Great Mop, and she had made a fool of herself.
An abrupt beam of light shot up from behind the hedge as though the sun
in vanishing below the horizon had winked at her. ‘This sort of thing,’
she said aloud, ‘has got to be put a stop to.’ She sat down in the
extremely comfortable ditch to think.
The shades that had dogged her steps up the hill closed in upon her as
she sat in the ditch, but when she took out her map there was enough
light to enable her to see where the nearest inn lay. It was close at
hand; when she got there she could just read its name on the sign. Its
name was The Reason Why. Entering The Reason Why, she ordered tea and a
conveyance to drive her back to Great Mop. When she left the inn it was
a brilliant night of stars. Outside stood a wagonette drawn by a large
white horse. Piled on the seat of the wagonette were a number of
waterproof rugs with finger-rings on them, and these she wrapped round
her with elaborate care.
The drive back to Great Mop was more filled with glory than anything she
had ever experienced. The wagonette creaked over bare hill-tops and
plunged downwards into the chequered darknesses of unknown winter woods.
All the stars shook their glittering spears overhead. Turning this way
and that to look at them, the frost pinched her cheeks.
That evening she asked Mrs. Leak if she would lend her some books. From
Mrs. Leak’s library she chose _Mehalah_, by the Rev. Sabine
Baring-Gould, and an anonymous work of information called _Enquire
Within Upon Everything_. The next morning was fine and sunny. She spent
it by the parlour fire, reading. When she read bits of _Mehalah_ she
thought how romantic it would be to live in the Essex Marshes. From
_Enquire Within Upon Everything_ she learned how gentlemen’s hats if
plunged in a bath of logwood will come out with a dash of
respectability, and that ruins are best constructed of cork. During the
afternoon she learned other valuable facts like these, and fell asleep.
On the following morning she fell asleep again, in a beech-wood, curled
up in a heap of dead leaves. After that she had no more trouble. Life
becomes simple if one does nothing about it. Laura did nothing about
anything for days and days till Mrs. Leak said: ‘We shall soon be having
Christmas, miss.’
Christmas! So it had caught them all again. By now the provident
Caroline herself was suffering the eleventh hour in Oxford Street. But
here even Christmas was made easy.
Laura spent a happy afternoon choosing presents at the village shop. For
Henry she bought a bottle of ginger wine, a pair of leather gaiters, and
some highly recommended tincture of sassafras for his winter cough. For
Caroline she bought an extensive parcel--all the shop had, in fact--of
variously coloured rug-wools, and a pound’s worth of assorted stamps.
For Sibyl she bought some tinned fruits, some sugar-biscuits, and a pink
knitted bed-jacket. For Fancy and Marion respectively she bought a
Swanee flute and a box with Ely Cathedral on the lid, containing string,
which Mrs. Trumpet was very glad to see the last of, as it had been
forced upon her by a traveller, and had not hit the taste of the
village. To her great-nephew and great-nieces she sent postal orders for
one guinea, and pink gauze stockings filled with tin toys. These she
knew would please, for she had always wanted one herself. For Dunlop she
bought a useful button-hook. Acquaintances and minor relations were
greeted with picture postcards, either photographs of the local War
Memorial Hall and Institute, or a coloured view of some sweet-peas with
the motto: ‘Kind Thoughts from Great Mop.’ A postcard of the latter kind
was also enclosed with each of the presents.
Titus was rather more difficult to suit. But by good luck she noticed
two heavy glass jars such as old-fashioned druggists use. These were not
amongst Mrs. Trumpet’s wares--she kept linen buttons in the one and horn
buttons in the other; but she was anxious to oblige such a magnificent
customer and quite ready to sell her anything that she wanted. She was
about to empty out the buttons when Laura stopped her. ‘You must keep
some for your customers, Mrs. Trumpet. They may want to put them in
their Christmas puddings.’ Laura was losing her head a little with the
excitement. ‘But I should like to send about three dozen of each sort,
if you can spare them. Buttons are always useful.’
‘Yes, miss. Shall I put in some linen thread too?’
Mrs. Trumpet was a stout, obliging woman. She promised to do up all the
parcels in thick brown paper and send them off three days before
Christmas. As Laura stepped out of the shop in triumph, she exclaimed:
‘Well, that’s done it!’
For the life of her she could not have said in what sense the words were
intended. She was divided between admiration for her useful and
well-chosen gifts and delight in affronting a kind of good taste which
she believed to be merely self-esteem.
Although she had chosen presents with such care for her relations, Laura
was surprised when counter presents arrived from them. She had not
thought of them as remembering her. Their presents were all of a warm
nature; they insisted upon that bleakness and draughtiness which their
senders had foretold. When Caroline wrote to thank Laura, she said:
‘I have started to make you a nice warm coverlet out of those pretty
wools you sent. I think it will look very cheerful and variegated. I
often feel quite worried to think of you upon those wind-swept hills.
And from all I hear you have a great many woods round you, and I’m
afraid all the decaying leaves must make the place damp.’
Heaping coals of fire was a religious occupation. Laura rather admired
Caroline for the neat turn of the wrist with which she heaped these.
In spite of the general determination of her family that she should feel
the cold Laura lived at Great Mop very comfortably. Mrs. Leak was an
excellent cook; she attended to her lodger civilly and kindly enough,
made no comments, and showed no curiosity. At times Laura felt as though
she had exchanged one Caroline for another. Mrs. Leak was not,
apparently, a religious woman. There were no texts on her walls, and
when Laura asked for the loan of a Bible Mrs. Leak took a little time to
produce it, and blew on the cover before she handed it over. But like
Caroline, she gave the impression that her kingdom was not of this
world. Laura liked her, and would have been glad to be upon less distant
terms with her, but she did not find it easy to break through Mrs.
Leak’s reserve. She tried this subject and that, but Mrs. Leak did not
begin to thaw until Laura said something about black-currant tea. It
seemed that Mrs. Leak shared Laura’s liking for distillations. That
evening she remarked that the table-beer was of her own brewing, and
lingered a while with the folded cloth in her hand to explain the
recipe. After that Laura was given every evening a glass of home-made
wine: dandelion, cowslip, elderberry, ashkey, or mangold. By her
appreciation and her inquiries she entrapped Mrs. Leak into pausing
longer and longer before she carried away the supper-tray. Before
January was out it had become an established thing that after placing
the bedroom candlestick on the cleared table Mrs. Leak would sit down
and talk for half an hour or so.
There was an indoor pleasantness about these times. Through the wall
came the sound of Mr. Leak snoring in the kitchen. The two women sat by
the fire, tilting their glasses and drinking in small peaceful sips. The
lamplight shone upon the tidy room and the polished table, lighting
topaz in the dandelion wine, spilling pools of crimson through the
flanks of the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the contented drinkers,
and threw their large, close-at-hand shadows upon the wall. When Mrs.
Leak smoothed her apron the shadow solemnified the gesture as though she
were moulding an universe. Laura’s nose and chin were defined as sharply
as the peaks on a holly leaf.
Mrs. Leak did most of the talking. She talked well. She knew a great
deal about everybody, and she was not content to quit a character until
she had brought it to life for her listener.
Mrs. Leak’s favourite subject was the Misses Larpent, Miss Minnie and
Miss Jane. Miss Minnie was seventy-three, Miss Jane four years younger.
Neither of them had known a day’s illness, nor any bodily infirmity, nor
any relenting of their faculties. They would live for many years yet, if
only to thwart their debauched middle-aged nephew, the heir to the
estate. Perhaps Miss Willowes had seen Lazzard Court on one of her
walks? Yes, Laura had seen it, looking down from a hill-top--the park
where sheep were penned among the grouped chestnut trees, the long white
house with its expressionless façade--and had heard the stable-clock
striking a deserted noon.
The drive of Lazzard Court was five miles long from end to end. The
house had fourteen principal bedrooms and a suite for Royalty. Mrs. Leak
had been in service at Lazzard Court before her marriage; she knew the
house inside and out, and described it to Laura till Laura felt that
there was not one of the fourteen principal bedrooms which she did not
know. The blue room, the yellow room, the Chinese room, the buff room,
the balcony room, the needle-work room--she had slept in them all. Nay,
she had awakened in the Royal bed, and pulling aside the red damask
curtains had looked to the window to see the sun shining upon the tulip
tree.
No visitors slept in the stately bedrooms now, Lazzard Court was very
quiet. People in the villages, said Mrs. Leak coldly, called Miss Minnie
and Miss Jane two old screws. Mrs. Leak knew better. The old ladies
spent lordily upon their pleasures, and economised elsewhere that they
might be able to do so. When they invited the Bishop to lunch and gave
him stewed rabbit, blackberry pudding, and the best peaches and Madeira
that his Lordship was likely to taste in his life, he fared no worse and
no better than they fared themselves. Lazzard Court was famous for its
racing-stable. To the upkeep of this all meaner luxuries were
sacrificed--suitable bonnets, suitable subscriptions, bedroom fires,
salmon and cucumber. But the stable-yard was like the forecourt of a
temple. Every morning after breakfast Miss Jane would go round the
stables and feel the horses’ legs, her gnarled old hand with its diamond
rings slipping over the satin coat.
Nothing escaped the sisters. The dairy, the laundry, the glass-houses,
the poultry-yard, all were scrutinised. If any servant were found
lacking he or she was called before Miss Minnie in the Justice Room.
Mrs. Leak had never suffered such an interview, but she had seen others
come away, white-faced, or weeping with apron thrown over head. Even the
coffins were made on the estate. Each sister had chosen her elm and had
watched it felled, with sharp words for the woodman when he aimed
amiss.
When Mrs. Leak had given the last touches to Miss Minnie and Miss Jane,
she made Laura’s flesh creep with the story of the doctor who took the
new house up on the hill. He had been a famous doctor in London, but
when he came to Great Mop no one would have anything to do with him. It
was said he came as an interloper, watching for old Dr. Halley to die
that he might step into his shoes. He grew more and more morose in his
lonely house, soon the villagers said he drank; at last came the morning
when he and his wife were found dead. He had shot her and then himself,
so it appeared, and the verdict at the inquest was of Insanity. The
chief witnesses were another London doctor, a great man for the brain,
who had advised his friend to lead a peaceful country life; and the
maidservant, who had heard ranting talk and cries late one evening, and
ran out of the house in terror, banging the door behind her, to spend
the night with her mother in the village.
After the doctor, Mrs. Leak called up Mr. Jones the clergyman. Laura had
seen his white beard browsing among the tombs. He looked like a blessed
goat tethered on hallowed grass. He lived alone with his books of Latin
and Hebrew and his tame owl which he tried to persuade to sleep in his
bedroom. He had dismissed red-haired Emily, the sexton’s niece, for
pouring hot water on a mouse. Emily had heated the water with the
kindest intentions, but she was dismissed nevertheless. Mrs. Leak made
much of this incident, for it was Mr. Jones’s only act of authority. In
all other administrations he was guided by Mr. Gurdon, the clerk.
Mr. Gurdon’s beard was red and curly (Laura knew him by sight also).
Fiery down covered his cheeks, his eyes were small and truculent, and he
lived in a small surprised cottage near the church. Every morning he
walked forth to the Rectory to issue his orders for the day--this old
woman was to be visited with soup, that young one with wrath; and more
manure should be ordered for the Rectory cabbages. For Mr. Gurdon was
Mr. Jones’s gardener, as well as his clerk.
Mr. Gurdon had even usurped the clergyman’s perquisite of quarrelling
with the organist. Henry Perry was the organist. He had lost one leg and
three fingers in a bus accident, so there was scarcely any other
profession he could have taken up. And he had always been fond of
playing tunes, for his mother, who was a superior widow, had a piano at
Rose Cottage.
Mr. Gurdon said that Henry Perry encouraged the choir boys to laugh at
him. After church he used to hide behind a yew tree to pounce out upon
any choir boys who desecrated the graves by leaping over them. When he
caught them he pinched them. Pinches are silent: they can be made use of
in sacred places where smacking would be irreverent. One summer Mr.
Gurdon told Mr. Jones to forbid the choir treat. Three days later some
of the boys were playing with a tricycle. They allowed it to get out of
control, and it began to run downhill. At the bottom of the hill was a
sharp turn in the road, and Mr. Gurdon’s cottage. The tricycle came
faster and faster and crashed through the fence into Mr. Gurdon, who was
attending to his lettuces and had his back turned. The boys giggled and
ran away. Their mothers did not take the affair so lightly. That evening
Mr. Gurdon received a large seed-cake, two dozen fresh eggs, a packet of
cigarettes, and other appeasing gifts. Next Sunday Mr. Jones in his kind
tenor voice announced that a member of the congregation wished to return
thanks for mercies lately received. Mr. Gurdon turned round in his place
and glared at the choir boys.
Much as he disliked Henry Perry, Mr. Gurdon had disliked the doctor
from London even more. The doctor had come upon him frightening an old
woman in a field, and had called him a damned bully and a hypocrite. Mr.
Gurdon had cursed him back, and swore to be even with him. The old woman
bore her defender no better will. She talked in a surly way about her
aunt, who was a gipsy and able to afflict people with lice by just
looking at them.
Laura did not hear this story from Mrs. Leak. It was told her some time
after by Mrs. Trumpet. Mrs. Trumpet hated Mr. Gurdon, though she was
very civil to him when he came into the shop. Few people in the village
liked Mr. Gurdon, but he commanded a great deal of politeness. Red and
burly and to be feared, the clerk reminded Laura of a red bull belonging
to the farmer. In one respect he was unlike the bull: Mr. Gurdon was a
very respectable man.
Mrs. Leak also told Laura about Mr. and Mrs. Ward, who kept the Lamb and
Flag; about Miss Carloe the dressmaker, who fed a pet hedgehog on
bread-and-milk; and about fat Mrs. Garland, who let lodgings in the
summer and was always so down at heel and jolly.