And sometimes a merry train
Comes upon us from the lane
All through April, May, or June,
Every gleaming afternoon;
All through April, May, and June,
Boys and maidens, birds and bees,
Airy whisperings from all trees.
Petition of the Flowers--Keble.
The headache had been carried off by a good night’s rest; a droll,
scrambling breakfast had been eaten, German fashion, with its
headquarters on the kitchen table; and everybody running about
communicating their discoveries. Bobus and Jock had set off to school,
and poor little Armine, who firmly believed that his rejection was in
consequence of his confusion between os, ossis, and os, oris, and was
very sore about it, had gone with Allen and Barbara to see them on their
way, and Mother Carey and Janet had agreed to get some real work done
and were actually getting through business, when in rushed, rosy and
eager, Allen, Armine, and Babie, with arms stretched and in breathless
haste.
“Mother Carey! Oh, mother! mammie, dear! come and see!”
“Come--where?”
“To fairy-land. Get her bonnet, Babie.”
“Out of doors, you boy? just look there!”
“Oh! bother all that! It can wait.”
“Do pray come, mother,” entreated Armine; “you never saw anything like
it!”
“What is it? Will it take long?” said she, beginning to yield, as Babie
danced about with her bonnet, Armine tugged at her, and Allen look
half-commanding, half-coaxing.
“She is not to know till she sees! No, don’t tell her,” said Armine.
“Bandage her eyes, Allen. Here’s my silk handkerchief.”
“And Janet. She mustn’t see,” cried Babie, in ecstasy.
“I’m not coming,” said Janet, rather crossly. “I’m much too busy, and it
is only some nonsense of yours.”
“Thank you,” said Allen, laughing; “mother shall judge of that.”
“It does seem a shame to desert you, my dear,” said Carey, “but you
see--”
What Janet was to see was stifled in the flap of the handkerchief
with which Allen was binding her eyes, while Armine and Babie sang
rapturously--
“Come along, Mother Carey,
Come along to land of fairy;”
an invocation to which, sooth to say, she had become so much accustomed
that it prevented her from expecting a fairy-land where it was not
necessary to “make believe very much.”
Janet so entirely disapproved of the puerile interruption that she
never looked to see how Allen and Babie managed the bonnet. She only
indignantly picked up the cap which had fallen from the sofa to the
floor, and disposed of it for security’s sake on the bronze head of
Apollo, which was waiting till his bracket could be put up.
Guided most carefully by her eldest son, and with the two little ones
dancing and singing round her, and alternately stopping each other’s
mouths when any premature disclosure was apprehended, pausing in wonder
when the cuckoo note, never heard before, came on them, making them
laugh with glee.
Thus she was conducted much further than she expected. She heard the
swing of the garden gate and felt her feet on the road and remonstrated,
but she was coaxed on and through another gate, and a path where Allen
had to walk in front of her, and the little ones fell behind.
Then came an eager “Now.”
Her eyes were unbound, and she beheld what they might well call
enchanted ground.
She was in the midst of a curved bank where the copsewood had no doubt
been recently cut away, and which was a perfect marvel of primroses,
their profuse bunches standing out of their wrinkled leaves at every
hazel root or hollow among the exquisite moss, varied by the pearly
stars of the wind-flower, purple orchis spikes springing from
black-spotted leaves, and deep-grey crested dog-violets. On one side
was a perfect grove of the broad-leaved, waxen-belled Solomon’s seal,
sloping down to moister ground where was a golden river of king-cups,
and above was a long glade between young birch-trees, their trunks
gleaming silvery white, the boughs over head breaking out into foliage
that looked yellow rather than green against the blue sky, and the
ground below one sheet of that unspeakably intense purple blue which is
only produced by masses of the wild hyacinth.
“There!” said Allen.
“There!” re-echoed the children. “Oh mammy, mammy dear! Is it not
delicious?”
Carey held up her hand in silence, for a nightingale was pouring out
his song close by; she listened breathlessly, and as it ceased she burst
into tears.
“O mother!” cried Allen, “it is too much for you.”
“No, dear boy, it is--it is--only too beautiful. It is what papa always
talked of and would have so enjoyed.”
“Do you think he has better flowers up there?” asked Babie. “I don’t
think they can be much better.”
And without waiting for more she plunged down among the primroses and
spread her little self out with a scream of ecstasy.
And verily the strange sense of rapture and enchantment was no less
in the mother herself. There is no charm perhaps equal to that of a
primrose bank on a sunny day in spring, sight, sound, scent all alike
exquisite. It comes with a new and fresh delight even to those to whom
this is an annual experience, and to those who never saw the like before
it gives, like the first sight of the sea or of a snowy mountain, a
sensation never to be forgotten. Fret, fatigue, anxiety, sorrow all
passed away like dreams in that sweet atmosphere. Carey, like one of her
children, absolutely forgot everything in the charm and wonder of the
scene, in the pure, delicate unimaginable odour of the primroses, in
debating with Allen whether (cockneys that they were) it could be a
nightingale “singing by day when every goose is cackling,” in listening
to the marvellous note, only pausing to be answered from further depths,
in the beauty of the whole, and in the individual charm of every flower,
each heavily-laden arch of dark blue-bells with their curling tips, so
infinitely more graceful than their pampered sister, the hyacinth of
the window-glass, of each pure delicate anemone she gathered, with its
winged stem, of the smiling primrose of that inimitable tint it only
wears in its own woodland nest; and when Allen lighted on a bed of
wood-sorrel, with its scarlet stems, lovely trefoil leaves, and purple
striped blossoms like insect’s wings, she absolutely held her breath in
an enthusiasm of reverent admiration. No one can tell the happiness of
those four, only slightly diminished by Armine’s getting bogged on his
way to the golden river of king-cups, and his mother in going after him,
till Allen from an adjacent stump pulled them out, their feet deeply
laden with mud.
They had only just emerged when the strokes of a great bell came pealing
up from the town below; Allen and his mother looked at each other in
amused dismay, then at their watches. It was twelve o’clock! Two hours
had passed like as many minutes, and the boys would be coming home to
dinner.
“Ah! well, we must go,” said Carey, as they gathered up their armloads
of flowers. “You naughty children to make me forget everything.”
“You are not sorry you came though, mother. It has done you good,” said
Allen solicitously. He was the most affectionate of them all.
“Sorry! I feel as if I cared for nothing while I have a place like that
to drink up delight in.”
With which they tried to make their way back to the path again, but it
was not immediately to be found; and their progress was further impeded
by a wood-pigeon dwelling impressively on the notes “Take two cows,
Taffy; Taffy take TWO!” and then dashing out, flapping and grey, in
their faces, rather to Barbara’s alarm, and then by Armine’s stumbling
on his first bird’s nest, a wren’s in the moss of an old stump, where
the tiny bird unadvisedly flew out of her leafy hole full before their
eyes. That was a marvel of marvels, a delight equal to that felt by
any explorer the world has seen. Armine and Barbara, who lived in one
perpetual fairy tale, were saying to one another that
“One needn’t make believe here, it was every bit real.”
“And more;” added the other little happy voice. Barbara did however
begin to think of the numerous children in the wood, and to take comfort
that it was unprecedented that their mother and big brother should be
with them, but they found the park palings at last, and then a little
wicket gate, where they were very near home.
“Mother, where _have_ you been?” exclaimed Janet, somewhat suddenly
emerging from the door.
“In Tom Tiddler’s ground, picking up gold and silver,” said Carey,
pointing to the armsful of king-cups, cuckoo-flowers, and anemones,
besides blue-bells, orchises, primroses, &c. “My poor child, it was a
great shame to leave you, but they got me into the enchanted land and I
forgot all about everything.”
“I think so,” said a gravely kind voice, and Caroline was aware of
Ellen’s eye looking at her as the Court Queen might have looked at
Ophelia if she had developed her taste for “long purples” as Hamlet’s
widow. At least so it struck Mother Carey, who immediately became
conscious that her bonnet was awry, having been half pulled off by a
bramble, that her ankles were marked by the bog, and that bits of green
were sticking all over her.
“Have you been helping Janet? Oh, how kind!” she said, refreshed by her
delightsome morning into putting a bright face on it.
“We have done all we could in your absence,” said her sister-in-law, in
a reproachful voice.
“Thank you; I’m sure it is very good of you. Janet--Janet, where’s the
great Dutch bowl--and the little Salviati? Nothing else is worthy of
this dear little fairy thing.”
“What is it? Just common wood-sorrel,” said the other lady, in utter
amaze.
“Ah, Ellen, you think me demented. You little know what it is to see
spring for the first time. Ah! that’s right, Janet. Now, Babie, we’ll
make a little bit of fairy-land--”
“Don’t put all those littering flowers on that nice clean chintz,
children,” exclaimed the aunt, as though all her work were about to be
undone.
And then a trampling of boy’s boots being heard and shouts of “Mother,”
Carey darted out into the hall to hear fragments of school intelligence
as to work and play, tumbling over one another, from Bobus and Jock both
at once, in the midst of which Mrs. Robert Brownlow came out with her
hat on, and stood, with her air of patient serenity, waiting for an
interval.
Caroline looked up, and said, “I beg your pardon, Ellen--what is it?”
“If you can attend a moment,” said she, gravely; “I must be going to
my boys’ dinner. But Robert wishes to know whether he shall order this
paper for the drawing-room. It cannot be put up yet, of course; but
Smith has only a certain quantity of it, and it is so stylish that he
said the Colonel had better secure it at once.”
She spread the roll of paper on the hall table. It was a white paper,
slightly tinted, and seemed intended to represent coral branches, with
starry-looking things at the ends.
“The aquarium at the Zoo,” muttered Bobus; and Caroline herself, meeting
Allen’s eye, could not refrain from adding,
“The worms they crawled in,
And the worms they crawled out.”
“Mother!” cried Jock, “I thought you were going to paint it all over
with jolly things.”
“Frescoes,” said Allen; “sha’n’t you, mother?”
“If your uncle does not object,” said his mother, choking down a giggle.
“Those plaster panels are so tempting for frescoes, Ellen.”
“Frescoes! Why, those are those horrid improper-looking gods and
goddesses in clouds and chariots on the ceilings at Belforest,” observed
that lady, in a half-puzzled, half-offended tone of voice, that most
perilously tickled the fancy of Mother Carey and her brood! and she
could hardly command her voice to make answer, “Never fear, Ellen; we
are not going to attempt allegorical monstrosities, only to make a bower
of green leaves and flowers such as we see round us; though after what
we have seen to-day that seems presumptuous enough. Fancy, Janet! golden
green trees and porcelain blue ground, all in one bath of sunshine. Such
things must be seen to be believed in.”
Poor Mrs. Robert Brownlow! She went home and sighed, as she said to her
husband, “Well, what is to become of those poor things I do not know.
One would sometimes think poor Caroline was just a little touched in the
head.”
“I hope not,” said the Colonel, rather alarmed.
“It may be only affectation,” said his lady, in a consolatory tone. “I
am afraid poor Joe did live with a very odd set of people--artists, and
all that kind of thing. I am sure I don’t blame her, poor thing! But she
is worse to manage than any child, because you can’t bid her mind what
she is about, and not talk nonsense. When she leaves her house in such a
state, and no one but that poor girl to see to anything, and comes home
all over mud, raving about fairyland, and gold trees and blue ground;
when she has just got into a bog in Belforest coppice--littering the
whole place, too, with common wild flowers. If it had been Essie and
Ellie, I should just have put them in the corner for making such a
mess!”
The Colonel laughed a little to himself, and said, consolingly, “Well,
well, you know all these country things are new to her. You must be
patient with her.”
Patient! That had to be the burthen of the song on both sides. Carey was
pushing back her hair with a fierce, wild sense of impatience with that
calm assumption that fretted her beyond all bearing, and made her feel
desolate beyond all else. She would have, she thought, done well enough
alone with her children, and scrambled into her new home; but the
directions, however needful, seemed to be continually insulting her
understanding. When she was advised as to the best butcher and baker,
there was a ring in her ears as if Ellen meant that these were safe men
for a senseless creature like her, and she could not encounter them with
her orders without wondering whether they had been told to treat her
well.
Indeed, one of the chief drawbacks to Carey’s comfort was her difficulty
in attending to what her brother and sister-in-law said to her.
Something in the measured tones of the Colonel always made her thoughts
wander as from a dull sermon; and this was more unlucky in his case than
in his wife’s--for Ellen used such reiterations that there was a fair
chance of catching her drift the second or third time, if not the first,
whereas all he said was well weighed and arranged, and was only too
heavy and sententious.
Kencroft, the home of the Colonel and his family, Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s
inheritance, was certainly “a picture of a place.” It had probably
been an appendage of the old minster, though the house was only of the
seventeenth century; but that was substantial and venerable of its kind,
and exceedingly comfortable and roomy, with everything kept in perfect
order. Caroline could not quite think the furniture worthy of it, but
that was not for want of the desire to do everything handsomely and
fashionably. Moreover, in spite of the schoolroom and nurseryful of
children, marvels of needlework and knitting adorned every table, chair,
and sofa, while even in the midst of the town Kencroft had its own
charming garden; a lawn, once devoted to bowls and now to croquet, an
old-fashioned walled kitchen garden, sloping up the hill, and a paddock
sufficient to make cows and pigs part of the establishment.
The Colonel had devoted himself to gardening and poultry with the
mingled ardour and precision of a man who needed something to supply the
place of his soldierly duties; and though his fervour had relaxed under
the influence of ease, gout, and substantial flesh, enough remained to
keep up apple-pie order without-doors, and render Kencroft almost a show
place. The meadow lay behind the house, and a gravel walk leading along
its shaded border opened into the lane about ten yards from the gate of
the Pagoda, as Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow and the post office laboured to
call it; the Folly, as came so much more naturally to everyone’s lips.
It had been the work of the one eccentric man in Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s
family, and was thus her property. It had hung long on hand, being
difficult to let, and after making sufficient additions, it had been
decided that, at a nominal rent, it would house the family thrown upon
the hands of the good Colonel.