sociable woman. The Misses Larpent, the dead doctor, Mr. Jones, Mr.
Gurdon, and Miss Carloe--she called them up and caused them to pass
before Laura, but in a dispassionate way, rather like the Witch of Endor
calling up old Samuel. Nor was Great Mop a sociable village, at any rate
compared with the villages which Laura had known as a girl. Never had
she seen so little dropping in, leaning over fences, dawdling at the
shop or in the churchyard. Little laughter came from the taproom of the
Lamb and Flag. Once or twice she glanced in at the window as she passed
by and saw the men within sitting silent and abstracted with their mugs
before them. Even the bell-ringers when they had finished their practice
broke up with scant adieus, and went silently on their way. She had
never met country people like these before. Nor had she ever known a
village that kept such late hours. Lights were burning in the cottages
till one and two in the morning, and she had been awakened at later
hours than those by the sound of passing voices. She could hear quite
distinctly, for her window was open and faced upon the village street.
She heard Miss Carloe say complainingly: ‘It’s all very well for you
young ones. But my old bones ache so, it’s a wonder how I get home!’
Then she heard the voice of red-haired Emily say: ‘No bones so nimble as
old bones, Miss Carloe, when it comes to--’ and then a voice unknown to
Laura said ‘Hush’; and she heard no more, for a cock crew. Another
night, some time after this, she heard some one playing a mouth-organ.
The music came from far off, it sounded almost as if it were being
played out of doors. She lit a candle and looked at her watch--it was
half-past three. She got out of bed and listened at the window; it was a
dark night, and the hills rose up like a screen. The noise of the
mouth-organ came wavering and veering on the wind. A drunk man, perhaps?
Yet what drunk man would play on so steadily? She lay awake for an hour
or more, half puzzled, half lulled by the strange music, that never
stopped, that never varied, that seemed to have become part of the air.
Next day she asked Mrs. Leak what this strange music could be. Mrs. Leak
said that young Billy Thomas was distracted with toothache. He could not
sleep, and played for hours nightly upon his mouth-organ to divert
himself from the pain. On Wednesday the tooth-drawer would come to
Barleighs, and young Billy Thomas would be put out of his agony. Laura
was sorry for the sufferer, but she admired the circumstances. The
highest flights of her imagination had not risen to more than a
benighted drunk. Young Billy Thomas had a finer invention than she.
After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She
admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom,
but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She
had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let
her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so
warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret,
if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She
wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again
disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves
round her like the fingers of a hand.
About this time she did an odd thing. In her wanderings she had found a
disused well. It was sunk at the side of a green lane, and grass and
bushes had grown up around its low rim, almost to conceal it; the
wooden frame was broken and mouldered, ropes and pulleys had long ago
been taken away, and the water was sunk far down, only distinguishable
as an uncertain reflection of the sky. Here, one evening, she brought
her guide-book and her map. Pushing aside the bushes she sat down upon
the low rim of the well. It was a still, mild evening towards the end of
February, the birds were singing, there was a smell of growth in the
air, the light lingered in the fields as though it were glad to linger.
Looking into the well she watched the reflected sky grow dimmer; and
when she raised her eyes the gathering darkness of the landscape
surprised her. The time had come. She took the guide-book and the map
and threw them in.
She heard the disturbed water sidling against the walls of the well. She
scarcely knew what she had done, but she knew that she had done rightly,
whether it was that she had sacrificed to the place, or had cast herself
upon its mercies--content henceforth to know no more of it than did its
own children.
As she reached the village she saw a group of women standing by the
milestone. They were silent and abstracted as usual. When she greeted
them they returned her greeting, but they said nothing among themselves.
After she had gone by they turned as of one accord and began to walk up
the field path towards the wood. They were going to gather fuel, she
supposed. To-night their demeanour did not strike her as odd. She felt
at one with them, an inhabitant like themselves, and she would gladly
have gone with them up towards the wood. If they were different from
other people, why shouldn’t they be? They saw little of the world. Great
Mop stood by itself at the head of the valley, five miles from the main
road, and cut off by the hills from the other villages. It had a name
for being different from other places. The man who had driven Laura home
from The Reason Why had said: ‘It’s not often that a wagonette is seen
at Great Mop. It’s an out-of-the-way place, if ever there was one.
There’s not such another village in Buckinghamshire for
out-of-the-way-ness. Well may it be called Great Mop, for there’s never
a Little Mop that I’ve heard of.’
People so secluded as the inhabitants of Great Mop would naturally be
rather silent, and keep themselves close. So Laura thought, and Mr.
Saunter was of the same opinion.
Mr. Saunter’s words had weight, for he spoke seldom. He was a serious,
brown young man, who after the war had refused to go back to his bank in
Birmingham. He lived in a wooden hut which he had put up with his own
hands, and kept a poultry-farm.
Laura first met Mr. Saunter when she was out walking, early one darkish,
wet, January morning. The lane was muddy; she picked her way, her eyes
to the ground. She did not notice Mr. Saunter until she was quite close
to him. He was standing bareheaded in the rain. His look was sad and
gentle, it reflected the mood of the weather, and several dead white
hens dangled from his hands. Laura exclaimed, softly, apologetically.
This young man was so perfectly of a piece with his surroundings that
she felt herself to be an intruder. She was about to turn back when his
glance moved slowly towards her. ‘Badger,’ he said; and smiled in an
explanatory fashion. Laura knew at once that he had been careless and
had left the henhouse door unfastened. She took pains that no shade of
blame should mix itself with her condolences. She did not even blame the
badger. She knew that this was a moment for nothing but kind words, and
not too many of them.
Mr. Saunter was grateful. He invited her to come and see his birds. Side
by side they turned in silence through a field gate and walked into Mr.
Saunter’s field. Bright birds were on the sodden grass. As he went by
they hurried into their pens, expecting to be fed. ‘If you would care to
come in,’ said Mr. Saunter, ‘I should like to make you a cup of tea.’
Mr. Saunter’s living-room was very untidy and homelike. A basket of
stockings lay on the table. Laura wondered if she might offer to help
Mr. Saunter with his mending. But after he had made the tea, he took up
a stocking and began to darn it. He darned much better than she did.
As she went home again she fell to wondering what animal Mr. Saunter
resembled. But in the end she decided that he resembled no animal except
man. Till now, Laura had rejected the saying that man is the noblest
work of nature. Half an hour with Mr. Saunter showed her that the saying
was true. So had Adam been the noblest work of nature, when he walked
out among the beasts, sole overseer of the garden, intact, with all his
ribs about him, his equilibrium as yet untroubled by Eve. She had
misunderstood the saying merely because she had not happened to meet a
man before. Perhaps, like other noble works, man is rare. Perhaps there
is only one of him at a time: first Adam; now Mr. Saunter. If that were
the case, she was lucky to have met him. This also was the result of
coming to Great Mop.
So much did Mr. Saunter remind Laura of Adam that he made her feel like
Eve--for she was petitioned by an unladylike curiosity. She asked Mrs.
Leak about him. Mrs. Leak could tell her nothing that was not already
known to her, except that young Billy Thomas went up there every day on
his bicycle to lend Mr. Saunter a hand. Laura would not stoop to
question young Billy Thomas. She fought against her curiosity, and the
spring came to her aid.
This new year was changing her whole conception of spring. She had
thought of it as a denial of winter, a green spear that thrust through a
tyrant’s rusty armour. Now she saw it as something filial, gently
unlacing the helm of the old warrior and comforting his rough cheek. In
February came a spell of fine weather. She spent whole days sitting in
the woods, where the wood-pigeons moaned for pleasure on the boughs.
Sometimes two cock birds would tumble together in mid air, shrieking,
and buffeting with their wings, and then would fly back to the
quivering boughs and nurse the air into peace again. All round her the
sap was rising up. She laid her cheek against a tree and shut her eyes
to listen. She expected to hear the tree drumming like a telegraph pole.
It was so warm in the woods that she forgot that she sat there for
shelter. But though the wind blew lightly, it blew from the east. In
March the wind went round to the south-west. It brought rain. The
bright, cold fields were dimmed and warm to walk in now. Like embers the
wet beech-leaves smouldered in the woods.
All one day the wind had risen, and late in the evening it called her
out. She went up to the top of Cubbey Ridge, past the ruined windmill
that clattered with its torn sails. When she had come to the top of the
Ridge she stopped, with difficulty holding herself upright. She felt the
wind swoop down close to the earth. The moon was out hunting overhead,
her pack of black and white hounds ranged over the sky. Moon and wind
and clouds hunted an invisible quarry. The wind routed through the
woods. Laura from the hill-top heard the various surrounding woods cry
out with different voices. The spent gusts left the beech-hangers
throbbing like sea caverns through which the wave had passed, the fir
plantation seemed to chant some never-ending rune.
Listening to these voices, another voice came to her ear--the far-off
pulsation of a goods train labouring up a steep cutting. It was scarcely
audible, more perceptible as feeling than as sound, but by its
regularity it dominated all the other voices. It seemed to come nearer
and nearer, to inform her like the drumming of blood in her ears. She
began to feel defenceless, exposed to the possibility of an overwhelming
terror. She listened intently, trying not to think. Though the noise
came from an ordinary goods train, no amount of reasoning could stave
off this terror. She must yield herself, yield up all her attention, if
she would escape. It was a wicked sound. It expressed something
eternally outcast and reprobated by man, stealthily trafficking by
night, unseen in the dark clefts of the hills. Loud, separate, and
abrupt, each pant of the engine trampled down her wits. The wind and the
moon and the ranging cloud pack were not the only hunters abroad that
night: something else was hunting among the hills, hunting slowly,
deliberately, sure of its quarry.
Suddenly she remembered the goods yard at Paddington, and all her
thoughts slid together again like a pack of hounds that have picked up
the scent. They streamed faster and faster; she clenched her hands and
prayed as when a child she had prayed in the hunting-field.
In the goods yard at Paddington she had almost pounced on the clue, the
clue to the secret country of her mind. The country was desolate and
half-lit, and she walked there alone, mistress of it, and mistress, too,
of the terror that roamed over the blank fields and haunted round her.
Here was country just so desolate and half-lit. She was alone, just as
in her dreams, and the terror had come to keep her company, and crouched
by her side, half in fawning, half in readiness to pounce. All this
because of a goods train that laboured up a cutting. What was this cabal
of darkness, suborning her own imagination to plot against her? What
were these iron hunters doing near mournful, ever-weeping Paddington?
‘Now! Now!’ said the moon, and plunged towards her through the clouds.
Baffled, she stared back at the moon and shook her head. For a moment it
had seemed as though the clue were found, but it had slid through her
hands again. The train had reached the top of the cutting, with a
shriek of delight it began to pour itself downhill. She smiled. It
amused her to suppose it loaded with cabbages. Arrived at Paddington,
the cabbages would be diverted to Covent Garden. But inevitably, and
with all the augustness of due course, they would reach their bourne at
Apsley Terrace. They would shed all their midnight devilry in the pot,
and be served up to Henry and Caroline very pure and vegetable.
‘Lovely! lovely!’ she said, and began to descend the hill, for the night
was cold. Though her secret had eluded her again, she did not mind. She
knew that this time she had come nearer to catching it than ever before.
If it were attainable she would run it to earth here, sooner or later.
Great Mop was the likeliest place to find it.
The village was in darkness; it had gone to bed early, as good villages
should. Only Miss Carloe’s window was alight. Kind Miss Carloe, she
would sit up till all hours tempting her hedgehog with bread-and-milk.
Hedgehogs are nocturnal animals; they go out for walks at night,
grunting, and shoving out their black snouts. ‘Thrice the brindled cat
hath mewed; Thrice, and once the hedgepig whined. Harper cries, “’Tis
time, ’tis time.”’ She found the key under the half-brick, and let
herself in very quietly. Only sleep sat up for her, waiting in the
hushed house. Sleep took her by the hand, and convoyed her up the narrow
stairs. She fell asleep almost as her head touched the pillow.
By the next day all this seemed very ordinary. She had gone out on a
windy night and heard a goods train. There was nothing remarkable in
that. It would have been a considerable adventure in London, but it was
nothing in the Chilterns. Yet she retained an odd feeling of respect for
what had happened, as though it had laid some command upon her that
waited to be interpreted and obeyed. She thought it over, and tried to
make sense of it. If it pointed to anything, it pointed to Paddington.
She did what she could; she wrote and invited Caroline to spend a day at
Great Mop. She did not suppose that this was the right interpretation,
but she could think of no other.
All the birds were singing as Laura went down the lane to meet
Caroline’s car. It was almost like summer, nothing could be more
fortunate. Caroline was dressed in sensible tweeds. ‘It was raining when
I left London,’ she said, and glanced severely at Laura’s cotton gown.
‘Was it?’ said Laura. ‘It hasn’t rained here.’ She stopped. She looked
carefully at the blue sky. There was not a cloud to be seen. ‘Perhaps it
will rain later on,’ she added. Caroline also looked at the sky, and
said: ‘Probably.’
Conversation was a little difficult, for Laura did not know how much she
was still in disgrace. She asked after everybody in a rather guilty
voice, and heard how emphatically they all throve, and what a pleasant,
cheerful winter they had all spent. After that came the distance from
Wickendon and the hour of departure. In planning the conduct of the day,
Laura had decided to keep the church for after lunch. Before lunch she
would show Caroline the view. She had vaguely allotted an hour and a
half to the view, but it took scarcely twenty minutes. At least, that
was the time it took walking up to the windmill and down again. The view
had taken no time at all. It was a very clear day, and everything that
could be seen was perceptible at the first glance.
Caroline was so stoutly equipped for country walking that Laura had not
the heart to drag her up another hill. They visited the church instead.
The church was more successful. Caroline sank on her knees and prayed.
This gave Laura an opportunity to look round, for she had not been
inside the church before. It was extremely narrow, and had windows upon
the south side only, so that it looked like a holy corridor. Caroline
prayed for some time, and Laura made the most of it. Presently she was
able to lead Caroline down the corridor, murmuring: ‘That window was
presented in 1901. There is rather a nice brass in this corner. That bit
of carving is old, it is the Wise and the Foolish Virgins. Take care of
the step.’
One foolish Virgin pleased Laura as being particularly lifelike. She
stood a little apart from the group, holding a flask close to her ear,
and shaking it. During lunch Laura felt that her stock of oil, too, was
running very low. But it was providentially renewed, for soon after
lunch a perfect stranger fell off a bicycle just outside Mrs. Leak’s
door and sprained her ankle. Laura and Caroline leapt up to succour her,
and then there was a great deal of cold compress and hot tea and
animation. The perfect stranger was a Secretary to a Guild. She asked
Caroline if she did not think Great Mop a delightful nook, and Caroline
cordially agreed. They went on discovering Committees in common till
tea-time, and soon after went off together in Caroline’s car. Just as
Caroline stepped into the car she asked Laura if she had met any nice
people in the neighbourhood.
‘No. There aren’t any nice people,’ said Laura. Wondering if the bicycle
would stay like that, twined so casually round the driver’s neck, she
had released her attention one minute too soon.
As far as she knew this was her only slip throughout the day. It was a
pity. But Caroline would soon forget it; she might not even have heard
it, for the Secretary was talking loudly about Homes of Rest at the same
moment. Still, it was a pity. She might have remembered Mr. Saunter,
though perhaps she could not have explained him satisfactorily in the
time.
She turned and walked slowly through the fields towards the
poultry-farm. She could not settle down to complete solitude so soon
after Caroline’s departure. She would decline gradually, using Mr.
Saunter as an intermediate step. He was feeding his poultry, going from
pen to pen with a zinc wheelbarrow and a large wooden spoon. The birds
flew round him; he had continually to stop and fend them off like a
swarm of large midges. Sometimes he would grasp a specially bothering
bird and throw it back into the pen as though it were a ball. She leant
on the gate and watched him. This young man who had been a bank-clerk
and a soldier walked with the easy, slow strides of a born countryman;
he seemed to possess the earth with each step. No doubt but he was like
Adam. And she, watching him from above--for the field sloped down from
the gate to the pens--was like God. Did God, after casting out the rebel
angels and before settling down to the peace of a heaven unpeopled of
contradiction, use Adam as an intermediate step?
On his way back to the hut Mr. Saunter noticed Laura. He came up and
leant on his side of the gate. Though the sun had gone down, the air was
still warm, and a disembodied daylight seemed to weigh upon the
landscape like a weight of sleep. The birds which had sung all day now
sang louder then ever.
‘Hasn’t it been a glorious day?’ said Mr. Saunter.
‘I have had my sister-in-law down,’ Laura answered. ‘She lives in
London.’
‘My people,’ said Mr. Saunter, ‘all live in the Midlands.’
‘Or in Australia,’ he added after a pause.
Mr. Saunter, seen from above, walking among his flocks and herds--for
even hens seemed ennobled into something Biblical by their relation to
him--was an impressive figure. Mr. Saunter leaning on the gate was a
pleasant, unaffected young man enough, but no more. Quitting him, Laura
soon forgot him as completely as she had forgotten Caroline. Caroline
was a tedious bluebottle; Mr. Saunter a gentle, furry brown moth; but
she could brush off one as easily as the other.
Laura even forgot that she had invited the moth to settle again; to come
to tea. It was only by chance that she had stayed indoors that
afternoon, making currant scones. To amuse herself she had cut the dough
into likenesses of the village people. Curious developments took place
in the baking. Miss Carloe’s hedgehog had swelled until it was almost as
large as its mistress. The dough had run into it, leaving a great hole
in Miss Carloe’s side. Mr. Jones had a lump on his back, as though he
were carrying the Black Dog in a bag; and a fancy portrait of Miss
Larpent in her elegant youth and a tight-fitting sweeping amazon had
warped and twisted until it was more like a gnarled thorn tree than a
woman.
Laura felt slightly ashamed of her freak. It was unkind to play these
tricks with her neighbours’ bodies. But Mr. Saunter ate the strange
shapes without comment, quietly splitting open the villagers and
buttering them. He told her that he would soon lose the services of
young Billy Thomas, who was going to Lazzard Court as a footman.
‘I shouldn’t think young Billy Thomas would make much of a footman,’
said Laura.
‘I don’t know,’ he answered consideringly. ‘He’s very good at standing
still.’
Laura had brought her sensitive conscience into the country with her,
just as she had brought her umbrella, though so far she had not
remembered to use either. Now the conscience gave signs of life. Mr.
Saunter was so nice, and had eaten up those derisive scones, innocently
under the impression that they had been prepared for him; he had come
with his gift of eggs, all kindness and forethought while she had
forgotten his existence; and now he was getting up to go, thanking her
and afraid that he had stayed too long. She had acted unworthily by
this young man, so dignified and unassuming; she must do something to
repair the slight she had put upon him in her own mind. She offered
herself as a substitute for young Billy Thomas until Mr. Saunter could
find some one else.
‘I don’t know anything about hens,’ she admitted. ‘But I am fond of
animals, and I am very obedient.’
It was agreed that she might go on the following day to help him with
the trap-nesting, and see how she liked it.
At first Mr. Saunter would not allow her to do more than walk round with
him upon planks specially put down to save her from the muddy places,
pencil the eggs, and drink tea afterwards. But she came so punctually
and showed such eagerness that as time went on she persuaded him into
allowing her a considerable share in the work.
There was much to do, for it was a busy time of year. The incubators had
fulfilled their time; Laura learnt how to lift out the newly-hatched
chicks, damp, almost lifeless from their birth-throes, and pack them
into baskets. A few hours after the chicks were plump and fluffy. They
looked like bunches of primroses in the moss-lined baskets.
Besides mothering his chicks Mr. Saunter was busy with a great
re-housing of the older birds. This was carried out after sundown, for
the birds were sleepy then, and easier to deal with. If moved by day
they soon revolted, and went back to their old pens. Even as it was
there were always a few sticklers, roosting uncomfortably among the
newcomers, or standing disconsolately before their old homes, closed
against them.
Laura liked this evening round best of all. The April twilights were
marvellously young and still. A slender moon soared in the green sky;
the thick spring grass was heavy with dew, and the earth darkened about
her feet while overhead it still seemed quite light. Mr. Saunter would
disappear into the henhouse, a protesting squawking and scuffling would
be heard; then he would emerge with hens under either arm. He showed
Laura how to carry them, two at a time, their breasts in her hands,
their wings held fast between her arm and her side. She would tickle the
warm breasts, warm and surprisingly bony with quills under the soft
plumage, and make soothing noises.
At first she felt nervous with the strange burden, so meek and inanimate
one moment, so shrewish the next, struggling and beating with strong
freed wings. However many birds Mr. Saunter might be carrying, he was
always able to relieve her of hers. Immediately the termagant would
subside, tamed by the large sure grasp, meek as a dove, with rigid
dangling legs, and head turning sadly from side to side.