had overcome her nervousness she managed them well enough to give
herself a great deal of pleasure. They nestled against her, held fast in
the crook of her arm, while her fingers probed among the soft feathers
and rigid quills of their breasts. She liked to feel their acquiescence,
their dependence upon her. She felt wise and potent. She remembered the
henwife in the fairy-tales, she understood now why kings and queens
resorted to the henwife in their difficulties. The henwife held their
destinies in the crook of her arm, and hatched the future in her apron.
She was sister to the spaewife, and close cousin to the witch, but she
practised her art under cover of henwifery; she was not, like her sister
and her cousin, a professional. She lived unassumingly at the bottom of
the king’s garden, wearing a large white apron and very possibly her
husband’s cloth cap; and when she saw the king and queen coming down
the gravel path she curtseyed reverentially, and pretended it was the
eggs they had come about. She was easier of approach than the spaewife,
who sat on a creepie and stared at the smouldering peats till her eyes
were red and unseeing; or the witch, who lived alone in the wood, her
cottage window all grown over with brambles. But though she kept up this
pretence of homeliness she was not inferior in skill to the
professionals. Even the pretence of homeliness was not quite so homely
as it might seem. Laura knew that the Russian witches live in small huts
mounted upon three giant hen’s legs, all yellow and scaly. The legs can
go; when the witch desires to move her dwelling the legs stalk through
the forest, clattering against the trees, and printing long scars upon
the snow.
Following Mr. Saunter up and down between the pens, Laura almost forgot
where and who she was, so completely had she merged her personality into
the henwife’s. She walked back along the rutted track and down the steep
lane as obliviously as though she were flitting home on a broomstick.
All through April she helped Mr. Saunter. They were both sorry when a
new boy applied for the job and her duties came to an end. She knew no
more of Mr. Saunter at the close of this association than she had known
at its beginning. It could scarcely be said even that she liked him any
better, for from their first meeting she had liked him extremely. Time
had assured the liking, and that was all. So well assured was it, that
she felt perfectly free to wander away and forget him once more, certain
of finding him as likeable and well liked as before whenever she might
choose to return.
During her first months at Great Mop the moods of the winter landscape
and the renewing of spring had taken such hold of her imagination that
she thought no season could be more various and lovely. She had even
written a slightly precious letter to Titus--for somehow correspondence
with Titus was always rather attentive--declaring her belief that the
cult of the summer months was a piece of cockney obtuseness, a taste for
sweet things, and a preference for dry grass to strew their egg-shells
upon. But with the first summer days and the first cowslips she learnt
better. She had known that there would be cowslips in May; from the day
she first thought of Great Mop she had promised them to herself. She had
meant to find them early and watch the yellow blossoms unfolding upon
the milky green stems. But they were beforehand with her, or she had
watched the wrong fields. When she walked into the meadow it was bloomed
over with cowslips, powdering the grass in variable plenty, here
scattered, there clustered, innumerable as the stars in the Milky Way.
She knelt down among them and laid her face close to their fragrance.
The weight of all her unhappy years seemed for a moment to weigh her
bosom down to the earth; she trembled, understanding for the first time
how miserable she had been; and in another moment she was released. It
was all gone, it could never be again, and never had been. Tears of
thankfulness ran down her face. With every breath she drew, the scent of
the cowslips flowed in and absolved her.
She was changed, and knew it. She was humbler, and more simple. She
ceased to triumph mentally over her tyrants, and rallied herself no
longer with the consciousness that she had outraged them by coming to
live at Great Mop. The amusement she had drawn from their disapproval
was a slavish remnant, a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio.
There was no question of forgiving them. She had not, in any case, a
forgiving nature; and the injury they had done her was not done by them.
If she were to start forgiving she must needs forgive Society, the Law,
the Church, the History of Europe, the Old Testament, great-great-aunt
Salome and her prayer-book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the
Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen other useful props of
civilisation. All she could do was to go on forgetting them. But now she
was able to forget them without flouting them by her forgetfulness.
Throughout May and June and the first fortnight of July she lived in
perfect idleness and contentment, growing every day more freckled and
more rooted in peace. On July 17th she was disturbed by a breath from
the world. Titus came down to see her. It was odd to be called Aunt
Lolly again. Titus did not use the term often; he addressed his friends
of both sexes and his relations of all ages as My Dear; but Aunt Lolly
slipped out now and again.
There was no need to show Titus the inside of the church. There was no
need even to take him up to the windmill and show him the view. He did
all that for himself, and got it over before breakfast--for Titus
breakfasted for three mornings at Great Mop. He had come for the day
only, but he was too pleased to go back. He was his own master now, he
had rooms in Bloomsbury and did not need even to send off a telegram.
Mrs. Garland who let lodgings in the summer was able to oblige him with
a bedroom, full of pincushions and earwigs and marine photographs; and
Mrs. Trumpet gave him all the benefit of all the experience he invoked
in the choice of a tooth-brush. For three days he sat about with Laura,
and talked of his intention to begin brewing immediately. He had refused
to visit Italy with his mother--he had rejected several flattering
invitations from editors--because brewing appealed to him more than
anything else in the world. This, he said, was the last night out before
the wedding. On his return to Bloomsbury he intended to let his rooms to
an amiable Mahometan, and to apprentice himself to his family brewery
until he had learnt the family trade.
Laura gave him many messages to Lady Place. It was clear before her in
an early morning light. She could exactly recall the smell of the
shrubbery, her mother flowing across the croquet lawn, her father’s
voice as he called up the dogs. She could see herself, too: her old
self, for her present self had no part in the place. She did not suppose
she would ever return there, although she was glad that Titus was
faithful.
Titus departed. He wrote her a letter from Bloomsbury, saying that he
had struck a good bargain with the Mahometan, and was off to Somerset.
Ten days later she heard from Sibyl that he was coming to live at Great
Mop. She had scarcely time to assemble her feelings about this before he
was arrived.
_Part 3_
It was the third week in August. The weather was sultry; day after day
Laura heard the village people telling each other that there was thunder
in the air. Every evening they stood in the village street, looking
upwards, and the cattle stood waiting in the fields. But the storm
delayed. It hid behind the hills, biding its time.
Laura had spent the afternoon in a field, a field of unusual form, for
it was triangular. On two sides it was enclosed by woodland, and because
of this it was already darkening into a premature twilight, as though it
were a room. She had been there for hours. Though it was sultry, she
could not sit still. She walked up and down, turning savagely when she
came to the edge of the field. Her limbs were tired, and she stumbled
over the flints and matted couch grass. Throughout the long afternoon a
stock dove had cooed in the wood. ‘Cool, cool, cool,’ it said,
delighting in its green bower. Now it had ceased, and there was no life
in the woods. The sky was covered with a thick uniform haze. No ray of
the declining sun broke through it, but the whole heavens were
beginning to take on a dull, brassy pallor. The long afternoon was
ebbing away, stealthily, impassively, as though it were dying under an
anaesthetic.
Laura had not listened to the stock dove; she had not seen the haze
thickening overhead. She walked up and down in despair and rebellion.
She walked slowly, for she felt the weight of her chains. Once more they
had been fastened upon her. She had worn them for many years,
acquiescently, scarcely feeling their weight. Now she felt it. And, with
their weight, she felt their familiarity, and the familiarity was worst
of all. Titus had seen her starting out. He had cried; ‘Where are you
off to, Aunt Lolly? Wait a minute, and I’ll come too.’ She had feigned
not to hear him and had walked on. She had not turned her head until she
was out of the village, she expected at every moment to hear him come
bounding up behind her. Had he done so, she thought she would have
turned round and snarled at him. For she wanted, oh! how much she
wanted, to be left alone for once. Even when she felt pretty sure that
she had escaped she could not profit by her solitude, for Titus’s voice
still jangled on her nerves. ‘Where are you off to, Aunt Lolly? Wait a
minute, and I’ll come too.’ She heard his very tones, and heard
intensely her own silence that had answered him. Too flustered to notice
where she was going, she had followed a chance track until she found
herself in this field where she had never been before. Here the track
ended, and here she stayed.
The woods rose up before her like barriers. On the third side of the
field was a straggling hedge; along it sprawled a thick bank of
burdocks, growing with malignant profusion. It was an unpleasant spot.
Bitterly she said to herself: ‘Well, perhaps he’ll leave me alone here,’
and was glad of its unpleasantness. Titus could have all the rest: the
green meadows, the hill-tops, the beech-woods dark and resonant as the
inside of a sea-shell. He could walk in the greenest meadow and have
dominion over it like a bull. He could loll his great body over the
hill-tops, or rout silence out of the woods. They were hers, they were
all hers, but she would give them all up to him and keep only this
dismal field, and these coarse weeds growing out of an uncleansed soil.
Any terms to be rid of him. But even on these terms she could not be rid
of him, for all the afternoon he had been present in her thoughts, and
his voice rang in her ears as distinctly as ever: ‘Wait a minute, and
I’ll come with you.’ She had not waited; but, nevertheless, he had come.
Actually, she knew--and the knowledge smote her--Titus, seeing her walk
by unheeding, had picked up his book again and read on, reading slowly,
and slowly drawing at his pipe, careless, intent, and satisfied. Perhaps
he still sat by the open window. Perhaps he had wandered out, taking his
book with him, and now was lying in the shade, still reading, or
sleeping with his nose pressed into the grass, or with idle patience
inveigling an ant to climb up a dry stalk. For this was Titus, Titus who
had always been her friend. She had believed that she loved him; even
when she heard that he was coming to live at Great Mop she had half
thought that it might be rather nice to have him there. ‘Dearest Lolly,’
Sibyl had written from Italy, ‘I feel quite reconciled to this wild
scheme of Tito’s, since you will be there to keep an eye on him. Men are
so helpless. Tito is so impracticable. A regular artist,’ etc.
The helpless artist had arrived, and immediately upon his arrival walked
out to buy beer and raspberries. Sibyl might feel perfectly reconciled.
No cat could jump into the most comfortable armchair more unerringly
than Titus. ‘Such a nice young gentleman,’ said Mrs. Garland, smoothing
his pyjamas with a voluptuous hand. ‘Such a nice young gentleman,’ said
Miss Carloe, rubbing her finger over the milling of the new florin she
received for the raspberries. ‘Such a nice young gentleman,’ said Mrs.
Trumpet at the shop, and Mrs. Ward at the Lamb and Flag. All the
white-aproned laps opened to dandle him. The infant Bacchus walked down
the village street with his beer and his raspberries, bowing graciously
to all Laura’s acquaintances. That evening he supped with her and talked
about Fuseli. Fuseli--pronounced Foozley--was a neglected figure of the
utmost importance. The pictures, of course, didn’t matter: Titus
supposed there were some at the Tate. It was Fuseli the man, Fuseli the
sign of his times, etc., that Titus was going to write about. It had
been the ambition of his life to write a book about Fuseli, and his
first visit to Great Mop convinced him that this was the perfect place
to write it in. The secret, Titus said, of writing a good book was to be
cut off from access to the reading room of the British Museum. Laura
said a little pettishly that if that were all Titus might have stayed
in Bloomsbury, and written his book on Good Fridays. Titus demurred.
Suppose he ran out of ink? No! Great Mop was the place. ‘To-morrow,’ he
added, ‘you must take me round and show me all your footpaths.’
He left his pipe and tobacco pouch on the mantelpiece. They lay there
like the orb and sceptre of an usurping monarch. Laura dreamed that
night that Fuseli had arrived at Mr. Saunter’s poultry-farm, killed the
hens, and laid out the field as a golf course.
She heard a great deal about Fuseli during the next few days, while she
was obediently showing Titus all her footpaths. It was hot, so they
walked in the woods. The paths were narrow, there was seldom room for
two to walk abreast, so Titus generally went in front, projecting his
voice into the silence. She disliked these walks; she felt ashamed of
his company; she thought the woods saw her with him and drew back
scornfully to let them pass by together.
Titus was more tolerable in the village street. Indeed, at first she was
rather proud of her nephew’s success. After a week he knew everybody,
and knew them far better than she did. He passed from the bar-parlour of
the Lamb and Flag to the rustic woodwork of the rector’s lawn. He
subscribed to the bowling-green fund, he joined the cricket club, he
engaged himself to give readings at the Institute during the winter
evenings. He was invited to become a bell-ringer, and to read the
lessons. He burgeoned with projects for Co-operative Blue Beverens,
morris-dancing, performing Coriolanus with the Ancient Foresters,
getting Henry Wappenshaw to come down and paint a village sign, inviting
Pandora Williams and her rebeck for the Barleighs Flower Show. He
congratulated Laura upon having discovered so unspoilt an example of the
village community.
After the first fortnight he was less exuberant in the growth of his
vast fronds. He was growing downwards instead, rooting into the soil. He
began his book, and promised to stand godfather to the roadman’s next
child. When they went for walks together he would sometimes fall silent,
turning his head from side to side to browse the warm scent of a clover
field. Once, as they stood on the ridge that guarded the valley from the
south-east, he said: ‘I should like to stroke it’--and he waved his hand
towards the pattern of rounded hills embossed with rounded beech-woods.
She felt a cold shiver at his words, and turned away her eyes from the
landscape that she loved so jealously. Titus could never have spoken so
if he had not loved it too. Love it as he might, with all the deep
Willowes love for country sights and smells, love he never so intimately
and soberly, his love must be a horror to her. It was different in kind
from hers. It was comfortable, it was portable, it was a reasonable
appreciative appetite, a possessive and masculine love. It almost
estranged her from Great Mop that he should be able to love it so well,
and express his love so easily. He loved the countryside as though it
were a body.
She had not loved it so. For days at a time she had been unconscious of
its outward aspect, for long before she saw it she had loved it and
blessed it. With no earnest but a name, a few lines and letters on a
map, and a spray of beech-leaves, she had trusted the place and staked
everything on her trust. She had struggled to come, but there had been
no such struggle for Titus. It was as easy for him to quit Bloomsbury
for the Chilterns as for a cat to jump from a hard chair to a soft. Now
after a little scrabbling and exploration he was curled up in the green
lap and purring over the landscape. The green lap was comfortable. He
meant to stay in it, for he knew where he was well off. It was so
comfortable that he could afford to wax loving, praise its kindly
slopes, stretch out a discriminating paw and pat it. But Great Mop was
no more to him than any other likeable country lap. He liked it because
he was in possession. His comfort apart, it was a place like any other
place.
Laura hated him for daring to love it so. She hated him for daring to
love it at all. Most of all she hated him for imposing his kind of love
on her. Since he had come to Great Mop she had not been allowed to love
in her own way. Commenting, pointing out, appreciating, Titus tweaked
her senses one after another as if they were so many bell-ropes. He was
a good judge of country things; little escaped him, he understood the
points of a landscape as James his father had understood the points of a
horse. This was not her way. She was ashamed at paying the countryside
these horse-coping compliments. Day by day the spirit of the place
withdrew itself further from her. The woods judged her by her company,
and hushed their talk as she passed by with Titus. Silence heard them
coming, and fled out of the fields, the hills locked up their thoughts,
and became so many grassy mounds to be walked up and walked down. She
was being boycotted, and she knew it. Presently she would not know it
any more. For her too Great Mop would be a place like any other place, a
pastoral landscape where an aunt walked out with her nephew.
Nothing was left her but this sour field. Even this was not truly hers,
for here also Titus walked beside her and called her Aunt Lolly. She was
powerless against him. He had no idea how he had havocked her peace of
mind, he was making her miserable in the best of faith. If he could
guess, or if she could tell him, what ruin he carried with him, he would
have gone away. She admitted that, even in her frenzy of annoyance.
Titus had a kind heart, he meant her nothing but good. Besides, he could
easily find another village, other laps were as smooth and as green. But
that would never happen. He would never guess. It would never occur to
him to look for resentment in her face, or to speculate upon the mood of
any one he knew so well. And she would never be able to tell him. When
she was with him she came to heel and resumed her old employment of
being Aunt Lolly. There was no way out.
In vain she had tried to escape, transient and delusive had been her
ecstasies of relief. She had thrown away twenty years of her life like a
handful of old rags, but the wind had blown them back again, and dressed
her in the old uniform. The wind blew steadily from the old quarter, it
was the same east wind that chivied bits of waste paper down Apsley
Terrace. And she was the same old Aunt Lolly, so useful and obliging and
negligible.
The field was full of complacent witnesses. Titus had let them in. Henry
and Caroline and Sibyl, Fancy and Marion and Mr. Wolf-Saunders stood
round about her; they recognised her and cried out: ‘Why, Aunt Lolly,
what are you doing here?’ And Dunlop came stealthily up behind her and
said: ‘Excuse me, Miss Lolly, I thought you might like to know that the
warning gong has gone!’ She stood at bay, trembling before them, shaken
and sick with the grinding anger of the slave. They were come out to
recapture her, they had tracked her down and closed her in. They had let
her run a little way--that was all--for they knew they could get her
back when they chose. Her delusion of freedom had amused them. They had
stood grinning behind the bushes when she wept in the cowslip field.
It had been quite entertaining to watch her, for she had taken herself
and her freedom so seriously, happy and intent as a child keeping house
under the table. They had watched awhile in their condescending grown-up
way, and now they approached her to end the game. Henry was ready to
overlook her rebellion, his lips glistened with magnanimity; Caroline
and Sibyl came smiling up to twine their arms round her waist; the
innocent children of Fancy and Marion stretched out their hands to her
and called her Aunt Lolly. And Titus, who had let them in, stood a
little apart like a showman, and said, ‘You see, it’s all right. She’s
just the same.’
They were all leagued against her. They were come out to seize on her
soul. They were invulnerably sure of their prey.
‘No!’ she cried out, wildly clapping her hands together. ‘No! You shan’t
get me. I won’t go back. I won’t.... Oh! Is there _no_ help?’
The sound of her voice frightened her. She heard its desperate echo
rouse the impassive wood. She raised her eyes and looked round her. The
field was empty. She trembled, and felt cold. The sultry afternoon was
over. Dusk and a clammy chill seemed to creep out from among the
darkening trees that waited there so stilly. It was as though autumn had
come in the place of twilight, and the colourless dark hue of the field
dazzled before her eyes. She stood in the middle of the field, waiting
for an answer to her cry. There was no answer. And yet the silence that
had followed it had been so intent, so deliberate, that it was like a
pledge. If any listening power inhabited this place; if any grimly
favourable power had been evoked by her cry; then surely a compact had
been made, and the pledge irrevocably given.
She walked slowly towards the wood. She was incredibly fatigued; she
could scarcely drag one foot after the other. Her mind was almost a
blank. She had forgotten Titus; she had forgotten the long afternoon of
frenzy and bewilderment. Everything was unreal except the silence that
followed after her outcry. As she came to the edge of the wood she heard
the mutter of heavy foliage. ‘No!’ the woods seemed to say, ‘No! We will
not let you go.’
She walked home unheedingly, almost as though she were walking in her
sleep. The chance contact with a briar or a tall weed sent drowsy
tinglings through her flesh. It was with surprise that she looked down
from a hillside and saw the crouched roofs of the village before her.
The cottage was dark, Laura remembered that Mrs. Leak had said that she
was going out to a lecture at the Congregational Hall that evening. As
she unlocked the door she smiled at the thought of having the house all
to herself. The passage was cool and smelt of linoleum. She heard the
kitchen clock ticking pompously as if it, too, were pleased to have the
house to itself. When Mrs. Leak went out and left the house empty, she
was careful to lock the door of Laura’s parlour and to put the key under
the case with the stuffed owl. Laura slid her fingers into the dark slit
between the bottom of the case and the bracket. The key was cold and
sleek; she liked the feel of it, and the obliging way it turned in the
lock.