THROUGH ENGLISH LANES
The early summer in England, especially in Surrey, is very beautiful,
and as the work was light we had many opportunities to walk through
the lovely country roads. But even prettier than the highways were
the lanes that led off from them and went winding, with their hedges,
through copse and field, and quaint little red-brick villages, each
with its century-old, ivy-covered church that had come down from the
good old Catholic days. In some of them a statue of some saint still
stood, and in many were ancient holy-water stoops and baptismal fonts.
Often gigantic chestnut or oak trees, grouped near a quaint old
gate, told us of the entrance to some baronial estate or castle;
but nearly always our only view of the estate was a piece of road
with very carefully trimmed box-hedge or a great blazing hedge-row
of rhododendrons, and a small white board, attached to a gate-post
or tree, which informed the passing wayfarer that there was “No
Thoroughfare.”
It was very pleasant to steal away from the camp and the sounds of
shouted orders, and practicing military bands and bugle notes, to the
quiet country where the birds sang blithely and the strange notes of
the cuckoo’s solitary call from some distant tarn or wood came sweetly
to the ears; one forgot, for the moment, the thought of war and all
associated with it.
I remember one afternoon I had taken a walk with Father Hingston and
Father Crochetiere down a shady lane that wound, for the most part,
through a high woodland, when we came suddenly to a small village of
seven or eight houses. To our right was a long box-hedged foot-path,
winding through a field or two till it was swallowed up in a grove of
tall, full-leafed beech and oak trees that stood presumably before a
rich country seat. But we did not take the foot-path to the right.
Instead, the priests,--both had been here before,--turned to the left
and presently we had passed through a little gate into a very small but
lovely rose garden. A tiny path, with a tiny boxwood hedge not more
than a foot high, led from the gate to the door of an old-fashioned
white house. Just before the door was built a latticed portico, over
which climbing roses grew. We were admitted by an elderly housekeeper
and were asked to go upstairs.
There we found a priest whose age might have been forty-five and whose
hair was just beginning to turn grey about the temples. He was about
medium height, rather slight, with an ascetic face. He was sitting
in a low room which was very bare save for a table on which were
some morning papers. Across the hall was a room in which was a great
old-fashioned fire-place with an ingle-nook. The priest’s name was
Father McCarty, but he spoke with a decidedly English accent. He was a
member of a religious community known as the Salesian Fathers. Knowing
that he had such a very small parish, I asked him if he found the time
heavy on his hands. He replied that he did not; and that although he
had only three or four families in all, including the rich household
of Capt. Rusbrook, whose large estate we had passed on entering the
village, he was quite busy, as he was writing the life of the founder
of his order, Don Bosco; he also from time to time helped the chaplains
at Witley Camp.