THE MYSTERIOUS PETTICOAT
The sad thoughts with which this incident naturally left me were at
length and suddenly dispersed, as sad thoughts not infrequently are, by
a petticoat. When I say petticoat, I use the word in its literal
sense, not colloquially as a metaphor for its usual wearer, meaning
thereby a dainty feminine undergarment seen only by men on rainy days,
and one might add washing-days. It was indeed to the fortunate accident
of its being washing-day at the pretty cottage near which in the course
of my morning wanderings I had set me down to rest, that I owed the
sight of the petticoat in question.
But first allow me to describe a little more fully my surroundings at
the moment. Not indeed that I can hope to put into words the charm of
those embowered cottages, like nests in the armpits of great trees,
tucked snugly in the hollows of those narrow, winding, almost
subterranean lanes which burrow their way beneath the warm-hearted
Surrey woodlands.
Nothing can be straighter and smoother than a Surrey road--when it is
on the king's business; then it is a high-road and behaves accordingly:
but a Surrey bye-road is the most whimsical companion in the world. It
is like a sheep-dog, always running backwards and forwards, poking into
the most out-of-the-way corners, now climbing at a run some steep
hummock of the down, and now leisurely going miles about to escape an
ant-hill; and all the time (here, by the way, ends the sheep-dog) it is
stopping to gossip with rillets vagabond as itself, or loitering to
bedeck itself with flowers. It seems as innocent of a destination as a
boy on an errand; but, after taking at least six times as long as any
other road in the kingdom for its amount of work, you usually find it
dip down of a sudden into some lovely natural cul-de-sac, a
meadow-bottom surrounded by trees, with a stream spreading itself in
fantastic silver shallows through its midst, and a cottage half hidden
at the end. Had the lane been going to some great house, it would have
made more haste, we may be sure.
The lane I had been following had finally dropped me down at something
of a run upon just such a scene. The cottage, built substantially of
grey stone, stood upon the side of the slope, and a broad strip of
garden, half cultivated and half wild, began near the house with
cabbages, and ended in a jungle of giant bulrushes as it touched the
stream. Golden patches of ragwort blazed here and there among a tangled
mass of no doubt worthier herbage,--such even in nature is the power of
gold,--and there were the usual birds.
However, my business is with the week's washing, which in various
shades of white, with occasional patches of scarlet, fluttered
fantastically across a space of the garden, thereby giving unmistakable
witness to human inhabitants, male and female.
As I lounged upon the green bank, I lazily watched these parodies of
humanity as they were tossed hither and thither with humourous
indignity by the breeze, remarking to myself on the quaint
shamelessness with which we thus expose to the public view garments
which at other times we are at such bashful pains to conceal. And thus
philosophising, like a much greater philosopher, upon clothes, I found
myself involuntarily deducing the cottage family from the family
washing. I soon decided that there must be at least one woman say of
the age of fifty, one young woman, one little child, sex doubtful, and
one man probably young. Further than this it was impossible to
conjecture. Thus I made the rough guess that a young man and his wife,
a child, and a mother-in-law were among the inhabitants of this idyllic
cottage.
But the clothes-line presented charming evidence of still another
occupant; and here, though so far easy to read, came in something of a
puzzle. Who in this humble out-of-the-way cottage could afford to wear
that exquisite cambric petticoat edged with a fine and very expensive
lace? And surely it was on no country legs that those delicately
clocked and open-worked silk stockings walked invisible through the
world.
Nor was the lace any ordinary expensive English lace, such as any good
shop can supply. Indeed, I recognised it as being of a Parisian design
as yet little known in England; while on the tops of the stockings I
laughingly suspected a border designed by a certain eccentric artist,
who devotes his strange gifts to decorating with fascinating miniatures
the under-world of woman. I have seen corsets thus made beautiful by
him valued at five hundred pounds, and he never paints a pair of
garters for less than a hundred. His name is not yet a famous one, as,
for obvious reasons, his works are not exhibited at public galleries,
though they are occasionally to be seen at private views.
I am far from despising an honest red-flannel country petticoat. There
is no warmer kinder-looking garment in the world. It suggests country
laps and country breasts, with sturdy country babes greedy for the warm
white milk, and it seems dyed in country blushes. Yet, for all that,
one could not be insensible to the exotic race and distinction of that
frivolous town petticoat, daintily disporting itself there among its
country cousins, like a queen among milkmaids.
What numberless suggestions of romance it awoke! What strange perfumes
seemed to waft across from it, perfumes laden with associations of a
world so different from the green world where it now was, a charming
world of gay intrigue and wanton pleasure. No wonder the wind chose it
so often for its partner as it danced through the garden, scorning to
notice the heavy homespun things about it. It was not every day that
that washing-day wind met so fine a lady, and it was charming to see
how gently he played about her stockings. "Ah, wind," I said,
"evidently you are a gallant born; but tell us the name of the lady.
It is somewhere on that pretty petticoat, I'll be bound."
Is she some little danseuse with the whim to be romantically rustic for
a week? or is she somebody else's pretty wife run away with somebody
else's man? or is she some naughty little grisette with an extravagant
lover? or is she just the usual lady landscape artist, with a more than
usual taste in lingerie?
At all events, it was fairly obvious that, for one reason or another,
the wearer of the petticoat and stockings which have now occupied us
for perhaps a sufficient number of pages, was a visitor at the cottage.
The next thing was to get a look at her. So, remembering how fond I was
of milk from the cow, I pushed open the gate and advanced to the
cottage door.