I WAS reminded of the funeral when I arrived at the valley station one
spring morning, by the fact that it was “the remains” who opened the
carriage door for me and helped us out with our things.
He was home for a few days’ leave, looking very smart and upright in
his uniform; and he saluted (even though he permitted himself to smile)
when I gave him a half-crown, telling him to buy himself a wreath.
* * * * *
The white-painted garden gate had been placed wide open by way of
welcome. We had left behind us, in town, weather that called itself the
end of March, but in reality ought to have been January; we arrived at
the little cottage to find that the calendar had taken a leap forward,
for here it was like the end of April. On the grey stone walls beside
the gate clumps of wallflowers were in bloom—masses of pale primrose
flowers mixed with those of a rich rose-purple variety; only these two
sorts had been planted in the chinks of this particular wall. I am sure
the dear things nodded at us as we entered.
All over the garden were more wallflowers bursting by the thousand
into bloom. Some beds were a mixture of clear bright yellow flowers,
combined with the sort that are a deep mahogany, looking as though they
were made of velvet; other beds had a pretty rose-pink variety; while
on the top of more walls, and in corners and patches about the garden,
were the old-fashioned “streaky” kinds, all aglow with brown and yellow.
The long bed in front of the porch, given over to cowslips, oxlips,
polyanthus, auriculas, and suchlike homely flowers, was very gay. The
polyanthus were a delightful medley of claret colour, pink, brown,
crimson, orange, yellow, most of them looking as though the edges of
the petals had been buttonholed around with silk of a contrasting
colour. It seemed as though the flowers in this bed fairly tip-toed as
we came along the path, and stretched their necks as high as ever they
could, from out of their crinkled leaves, to show how remarkably fine
they were.
In the narrow beds under the cottage windows double daffodils made
plenty of colour, and at the edge were clumps of primroses—various
shades of pink and crimson. These had seeded over into the path, with
the result that baby primrose-plants were coming up cheerily between
the rough flagstones. The ordinary yellow primrose was starring the
grass all about the orchard, where wild daffodils were swaying by the
hundred. The white flowers of the blackthorn were like snowdrifts on
the hedges.
It was so wonderful, after the bleak, cheerless aspect of town, to come
upon this world of smiling growing things. The soft air, sweeping over
the hills, brought the scent of ploughed fields and newly-turned earth,
of bursting buds and opening blossoms, with the ozone of the sea, and
the salt of the weed that lies on the rocks around the lighthouse in
the far-away distance.
There seemed to be an all-pervading peace that laid hold of one’s very
soul; and yet you could not say it was really quiet, for birds were
giving rival concerts in every tree, and quite a number were devoting
their energies to saying insulting things to the newcomers and the
small dog who had taken the liberty of encroaching on their ancient
heritage. They are not sufficiently grateful for the fact that I leave
my woods uncut, and undisturbed, as bird sanctuaries.
Lambs were bleating in the valley meadows; the spring gurgled
cheerfully outside the gate as it tumbled out of the spout into the
pool below.
We stood in the garden for a moment to take a good breath, and drink
in as much of the beauty as we could, when Virginia just touched my
arm and looked towards a long belt of trees—mostly oak and fir—that
runs down one side of the garden and orchards, linking the larch woods
up above us with the birch and hazel coppice down below—the coppice
where the nightingales sing, and the tiny wrens and the tomtits build,
and where the little dormouse lives, who comes out from among the
undergrowth, with no apparent fear, when I stand in the wood-path and
softly whistle.
This barricade of trees was originally left standing when the rest of
the ground was cleared, to screen the house from the winter gales. But
we have named it the Squirrels’ Highway.
Sure enough, as we stood there silent and motionless, down came one
little bushy tail from the upper woods, followed by another, probably
his wife. They leapt from branch to branch, and from tree to tree,
nibbling a young oak shoot here, sniffing delicately at a few leaves
somewhere else.
Little bright eyes looked down and saw the strangers; but they had
seen them before, and no harm ever resulted—only lovely feasts of
nuts laid out on the tops of walls—so they just ran on down their own
highway, seeming as light as feathers, and leaping and springing with
indescribable grace.
At last they got to the high wall that divides the lower orchard from
the birch and hazel coppice, and they played along that wall, bright
spots of reddy-brown against the dark green of the ivy and the purple
tone of the swelling birch buds. All seemed gaiety and happiness, till
a third little bushy tail popped up over the wall from the coppice—and
then there were fireworks indeed! I expect they were relations who were
not on cordial terms! We left them having a whole-hearted hand-to-hand
fight—which, I must say, seems a much more satisfactory way of settling
a difference than either Zepp or submarine methods.
* * * * *
Indoors the table had been laid for tea, preparatory to our arrival, by
Mrs. Widow, who, as already mentioned, is the custodian of the house
in my absence. She gives an old-world curtsy that is very disarming,
and says, “I’m main glad to see you back again, miss, and I hope you’ll
find everything to your liking.”
That, however, is as it may be.
Nevertheless, there is something about the way that table is always
laid that rejoices my heart, even though I might not wish to have
my meals set in that pattern every day. The large white cloth may
not present the glass-like surface of the town-laundered tablecloth,
but at least it is white, and—like the cottage sheets and towels
and pillow-cases—it holds the scents of the hillside garden where
it was hung out to dry; and though the creases are somewhat ridgy
and insistent, and the cloth has been ironed a trifle askew, I know
several people who would rather have tea off this tablecloth than the
most elaborate dinner and the finest napery that London hotels can
produce.
Knives and forks are placed with great precision around the table at
intervals, a cup and saucer and plate beside each, the crockery never
by any chance matching! In the mathematical centre a loaf of farmhouse
bread stands on a kitchen plate, flanked on one side—to the East, as
it were—by a large white jug holding a quart of milk, and to the West,
by the sugar basin. The big brown teapot stands at the South Pole;
and a pudding-basin of new-laid eggs, laid by the widow’s own fowls,
are waiting, at the North Pole, to be cooked. A small plate bearing a
dinner knife and half a pound of butter (which is never put into the
proper butter dish) is placed at the South-West; this is balanced at
the South-East by a pot of home-made jam and a tablespoon. Watercress
and lettuce may grace the table, though this will be according to the
season; but summer or winter, one feature is never omitted, and that is
a large kitchen jug full of flowers, gathered by Mrs. Widow from her
own garden.
On the day I am writing about, the jug had a brave handful of
daffodils, a few sprays of red ribis, dark-brown wallflowers, some
small ivy, with some short-stemmed polyanthus suffocating in the
centre of the big bunch. And it is wonderful how much you can get
crammed into one jug when you try!
* * * * *
Abigail, having none of my weak-minded leanings towards “the
primitive,” scornfully whisked the whole lot off the table, as soon as
Mrs. Widow had gone back to her own cottage, and re-laid it on modern
lines.
We did not hurry over the meal. Virginia got on a lengthy dissertation
as to the crying need for fish forks with magnetised prongs that would
just draw the bones out of the fish, without any preliminary search
and scrutiny. I suggested a radium tip to the prongs—I could think of
nothing that seemed more suitable—but she said _that_ might demolish
fish and all, in which case one would get no more personal satisfaction
out of the creature than one does when having to eat it with its full
complement of bones intact.
I then ventured a suggestion that forks made like an ordinary magnet
would do, if the fish were given steel drops in regular doses for a
few weeks before being caught, so as to get its bones susceptible to
the magnet. But Virginia was very lofty, as she always is, about my
scientific explanations. I never heard her solution of the problem,
because the telegram boy arrived at the moment, with a wire for
Abigail, saying that her mother had broken her arm (a genuine case
this time!).
So she left by the next train, bewailing the fact that her mother
could not get compensation from anyone, as she had given up a post
of housekeeper but three months before; if she had only been in the
situation still she could have claimed £300 a year for life, Abigail
thought—provided the arm could only be induced to remain broken.
Some people, especially her relatives, were always unfortunate, she
said, while others were just the reverse. There was a cousin of a
friend of hers; he had been out of work for a year or so before he got
a job, and then the very first day he met with an accident at the works
and had to have his leg amputated; and there he is now, a gentleman for
life, comfortably settled on his compensation. Her people never had
luck like that. It did seem hard!
* * * * *
“Are you awake?” Virginia’s voice lilted up the stairs next morning.
Awake! why, sleep had been impossible in that cottage for hours past!
For sheer undiluted racket, commend me to two earnest-souled girls,
who get up early, and go about with a stealthy tread that creaks every
old board in the place, and commune with each other in stage whispers
that penetrate through every crack in the floor, all on the pretext of
making the fire!
We had decided that we could manage very well ourselves, without
sending for anyone to take Abigail’s place; and in order to forestall
me, the others had got up about cockcrow, and then began such a
whirligig below, that I just lay still and endeavoured to allocate
every fresh noise.
They raked and shovelled at the grate, and appeared to be scattering
cinders all over the place. They broke up applewood twigs with
resounding snaps, and argued as to the amount required to set the fire
going. Ursula said you ought to put in handfuls till you got a good
crackling blaze; Virginia said that was a childish, brainless way of
doing it, to say nothing of the chance of waste; by rights the quantity
of twigs employed ought to be strictly in inverse ratio to the quantity
of inflammable gas contained in the coal. I dare say I should have
heard a good deal more as to the way to assess the ignitable quality of
coal, but fortunately the fire burnt up quickly, and they gave their
attention to other domestic details.
They dashed about the brass fender; they whacked the blacklead brush
against the oven-door at every turn; they set down the zinc pail with a
ringing thud, and then scoured the hearth with zeal enough to take off
half an inch of stone surface; they polished the brass fire-irons with
some concoction of bath-brick and salt which they invented on the spot,
as they couldn’t find any metal polish; they banged the hearthrug out
of doors till the surrounding hills reverberated with the echoes; they
rinked the carpet-sweeper up and down till it made me dizzy to listen;
and as this was not thorough enough for Ursula, she also got a short
stiff brush and apparently pommelled out any dust that might be under
the settle and in other obscure corners; they dusted with equal energy,
and then went off into the kitchen to consult about the breakfast menu,
while the kettle chose the opportunity to boil all over the fire,
thereby raising clouds of white ash that settled on everything, and
they said, “Oh, dear! Just _look_ at it.”
Finally, I heard the white cloth being flapped over the table; cups and
saucers and plates were chinked and rattled off the dresser; knives and
forks and spoons jingled on to the table, and I knew that breakfast was
well under way. It was just then that Virginia put her head through the
staircase-door to ask—in moderated tones calculated not to disturb me
should I still be slumbering!—was I awake?
Hastily hopping out on to the rug, I replied that I was “nearly
dressed, and would be down in a minute.”
“No hurry,” she replied artlessly, “we’ve only just come down
ourselves, and are going to see to breakfast. But what I want to know
is: Where do you keep your frying-pan?”
“Hanging on its proper nail in the kitchen,” I replied.
“Well, it isn’t there.... No, it isn’t on the saucepan shelf,
either—we’ve hunted _everywhere_.... But Abigail didn’t use it
yesterday—don’t you remember? We had boiled eggs, and some of that cold
ham we brought with us.... All right, we can just as well have eggs
again.... That’s true, we shan’t want bacon, with that pork coming for
dinner; but be quick, as the kettle’s boiling now.... Oh, it’s not a
bit of trouble.”
* * * * *
Whether it was due to the sunshine, or to the tonic of the air, or to
the virtuous feeling that always overtakes those who get up early in
the morning and disturb everyone else, I cannot say; but at any rate
Ursula announced that she intended to start right in, immediately after
breakfast, and give the whole cottage a thorough spring cleaning.
The domesticities of the morning seemed to have whetted her appetite
for such matters, and she said she felt she must give the place a
“Dutch” turn-out, and have every shelf and stool and all the pots and
pans scrubbed and scoured and tilted out of doors to dry, as they do
in Holland.
Virginia said that she, too, felt a strong force—it might be her
sub-conscious self, or she might have a dual personality, she couldn’t
say which—within her, impelling her to turn the house inside out.
So I told them to go ahead; I’m the last one to discourage anyone from
doing my work for me. I suggested, however, that for the first day they
should confine their attentions to the living-rooms downstairs.
Of course, the reader of average intellect will wonder what necessity
there could be for any such upheaval, seeing that the place would
obviously have been overhauled before we arrived; but this brings me
back to Mrs. Widow. “A worthy body and an honest soul,” the Rector
said, when he originally recommended her to me, all of which was quite
true; but, alas, thoroughness in regard to house-cleaning is not her
strong point.
When I first sought her out and broached the subject of the caretaker
I was requiring, she listened in a non-committal way. I stated how
much a year I was willing to pay—naming an exceptionally good sum—and
explained that for this money the house must be looked after in my
absence, and be got quite ready for me whenever I should come down,
while anything she might do while I was “in residence” would be paid
for as an extra.
She showed no indecorous haste to secure the appointment. She merely
said she would talk it over with her married daughter, and if she
thought any more of it she would let me know. A few hours later she
came to me, and said casually that on second thoughts she didn’t mind
obliging me. (No one ever “works” for you in our village, they merely
“oblige.”) In the interval, however, the whole village had gone into
committee on the subject, and everyone’s advice had been sought, and
very freely given.
Once more I went through the terms of the agreement, and she said she
quite understood. Nevertheless, subsequent events led me to believe
that she regarded the annual wage in the light of a retaining fee only,
since most of the work is always left to be done after I arrive, when
it will have to be paid for as a separate transaction if it is more
than Abigail can wrestle with.
At the same time I can truly endorse the Rector’s tribute to her
honesty. If I were to strew the floor with sovereigns or diamond rings,
I know I should find them on the mantelpiece when next I returned, and
she never annexes anything permanently.
But the fact that one has a village-wide reputation for honesty need
not detract from one’s worldly prosperity—so long as one can borrow
with light-hearted frequency, and borrow for indefinite periods, too!
Mrs. Widow has reduced borrowing to a fine art, but her honesty is
demonstrated by the fact that I have never known her decline to return
any of my possessions; indeed, so scrupulous is she that she will bring
back the tin of metal polish, when it is empty, explaining that she was
quite sure I wanted it to be used rather than wasted!
Abigail invariably spends the first couple of days at the cottage in
skirmishing and reclaiming missing articles. Knowing all this, I was
not surprised when I heard the frying-pan was minus; I also knew that
time would reveal other vacancies.
Had it been July or August, the preserving-pan—a family treasure—would
have been gone, too. Mrs. Widow is always very solicitous for its
welfare about fruit-gathering time; she says damp would easily hurt a
really good preserving-pan, so she takes it home with her to keep it
dry. Yet the poor thing will be left to face the winter in my kitchen
with never a thought bestowed on its delicate constitution.
And it is just at jam-making time, too, that my kitchen scales and
weights require the ameliorated atmosphere of Mrs. Widow’s cottage; my
own kitchen, with the midsummer sun upon it all day, being obviously
far too cold and damp for such highly-strung _bric-à-brac_ as one
pound and half-pound weights.
A town acquaintance once said to Virginia: “I suppose Miss Klickmann
goes down to her cottage for poetic and literary inspiration?”
“Oh, dear, no!” was the reply. “She simply goes down, as a mere matter
of feminine curiosity, to see what is left.”
* * * * *
“Where do you keep your tea-towels?” Ursula began, as she prepared to
wash up the breakfast things.
“There ought to be a pile in one of the drawers of the kitchen table,”
I said. “They are not there? Oh, well, they’ll come back presently!”
While we were speaking, a small girl appeared at the side door, holding
in one hand a basket containing a nice chunk of pork (wrapped in one of
my tea-towels), and in the other hand my mincing-machine. This was Mrs.
Widow’s grandchild.
“If you please, ma’am, father’s killed the pig, and mother thought you
might like just a little piece of griskin, and mother’s been taking
care of the mincer so’s it shan’t get rusty.”
An exchange of courtesies having been effected by means of a bottle of
pear-drops, the small maid departed with her empty basket; the mincer
was restored to its proper niche in the pantry, and we were at least
one tea-towel to the good.
I might mention that Mrs. Widow’s married daughter had recently
acquired considerable local fame by making “faggots,” which were in
great demand. You know the dish?—a combination of liver, pork, sage
and onions, etc., baked in squares. Other people in the district made
faggots, too, but none could rival hers, and orders came to her from
many of the big houses.
“No one ever manages to get them chopped so beautifully fine as she
does,” said Miss Bretherton when recommending them to my notice. “I
advise you to try them.”
Still, whatever obligation there may have been was offset, surely, by
the piece of pork. The griskin is the lean portion of some part of the
quadruped’s anatomy after the fat has been cut off for curing. This
joint—which we never see in London—is always popular with us in the
country; so popular, that I had ordered a piece only the day before
from the butcher. It was just the season when people were killing their
pigs, and the butcher had suggested griskin. Still, it was easy to
put the extra piece in salt, and the flavour would only be improved
thereby; my one regret was that the butcher had sent a very large
joint, when I had particularly mentioned that I only wanted a little
piece.
I had originally intended to devote the day to gardening, not to
house-cleaning.
“Of course you keep a permanent gardener?” people inquire of me. “I
see; a general handy man; it comes to the same thing; he will save you
all trouble.”
Those of my acquaintances who have never had a place out of town to
look after, always conclude that country districts fairly bristle with
capable, willing men, and poor-but-honest, hard-working women, all of
them anxious to do my work—and at a merely nominal wage too; whereas
one has the utmost trouble to get either man or woman to do a day’s
work at any price. I pay the handy man the same wage per day as I pay
my thoroughly experienced London gardener; and he can only manage to
spare me a small amount of his time at that price.
He knows very little about flowers, but he weeds in an enlightened
manner, and he understands the elementary principles underlying
vegetable growing on a small scale. For the most part the villagers
bother very little about their gardens, only cultivating just
sufficient ground for their immediate needs.
The unenlightened local method of dealing with weeds is
this. He-who-is-paid-to-garden leaves them to grow to a fair
height—especially if no one is likely to be there for some weeks to see
them. Then, when they have absorbed a generous amount of nourishment
from the ground, and generally suffocated everything small within their
reach, he merely turns the soil over, with the weeds on the underneath
side, draws a rake over the surface, and presto! you have a nice tidy
bed.
This method is known as “digging in.”
Of course, in twenty-four hours the good-natured things start to poke
cheerful noses through the soil again. But that doesn’t matter. Life is
long, and the gardener is paid to clear them away again.
There is an optional method, referred to as “cleaning up the beds.” In
that case, he leaves the weeds to grow higher, more especially in beds
that are full of promising seedlings; in fact, he doesn’t worry about
them at all until there is sudden and urgent reason why the garden
should present a kempt, well-cared-for appearance.
Then, the weeds being so healthy and luxuriant that they would raise
the face of creation a couple of inches if he attempted to dig them in,
he simplifies matters by removing the surface of the earth, weeds and
seedlings and all; this he wheels away in a barrow, perchance to lay it
down on some rough and rubbly bit of lane that the road-menders have
ignored.
When she-who-pays arrives, all expectation, and inquires for the
missing seedlings, the tiller of the soil shakes his head lugubriously,
and refers to the recent plague of slugs (or thunderstorms, or
frost, or east winds, or whatever other natural phenomena seem most
convincing), and says he had a hard job to save what is left in the
garden—this last in a martyr-like tone of voice, indicating that though
all his self-sacrificing labour is passed over unrecognised, he himself
has the virtuous consciousness of having at least done his simple duty,
and what man can do more!
Now I come to think of it, there are many different ways of gardening;
that must be why it is always interesting to go round the garden with
the gardener. When I say different ways, I don’t mean such trifling
divergencies of method as landscape gardens versus intensive culture,
or tomatoes under glass versus gloxinias. These primarily concern the
pocket; the differences that interest me are temperamental.
There is Miss Bretherton, for instance, a most diligent and vigilant
gardener. And yet she never seems to me to get much genuine, unalloyed
pleasure out of her garden; she never basks in its beauty—though for
the matter of that Miss Bretherton never basks anywhere! A middle-aged
woman who does her duty by a scattered parish, conscientiously
and thoroughly and unremittingly, never has time for that sort of
dissipation! Miss Bretherton deals with her garden much as she deals
with the parish. At best it is a case of striving to lead reluctant
feet in the paths of virtue, while by far the greater part of her
efforts is an unflagging wrestle with original sin.
A walk round the rectory garden is usually like this. Miss Bretherton
always picks up a pair of gardening scissors and a basket mechanically
as she steps out.
“What a wonderful glow of colour!” I exclaim, as I bury my nose in a
magnificent Gloire de Dijon.
“But it is such a wretched thing for sending up suckers,” Miss
Bretherton replies. “I’m always digging them up. Why, I declare there
is one a foot high,” giving it a drastic prod with the scissors. “I
thought I’d cut them all away yesterday”; more prods till the sucker is
finally unearthed.
“And aren’t those hollyhocks tall!”
“Not nearly so fine as they would have been if that red-spotty blight
hadn’t attacked them. Just look at these leaves!”
Snip, snip, snip! Off came a dozen or so.
I stop to admire the fairy flowers in the Virginia stock, rosy carmine,
lemon and mauve, just opening in the sun.
“I don’t think there is anything sweeter for a border,” I remark.
“The trouble with Virginia stock is that it so soon looks untidy,” Miss
Bretherton says dispiritedly. “Do what I will, I can’t keep the edges
tidy once that goes off bloom. I pull it all out at last, and then that
leaves a bare rough-dried looking space with nothing in it.”