Читать книгу Between the Larch-woods and the Weir - Flora Klickmann - Страница 6

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Eileen didn’t say much on the journey, save an occasional burst of ecstasy when she saw a rabbit sitting up and washing its face. It was interesting to watch the Devonshire ancestry looking out through eyes that hitherto had seen little but the sordid grey-brown grime of London, but were now drinking in everything on that loveliest of English lines—and where can you equal the G.W.R. for beautiful scenery, combined with such good carriage springs, such courteous officials, and such always-attentive guards?

Owing to the accommodating character of the Time Table, as re-arranged by our paternal government, there was no Wye Valley connection, and we had some time to wait at Chepstow. We went into the hotel and I ordered a meal, Eileen choosing fried ham and eggs as the greatest flight of luxury to which her mind could soar. I admit it was reckless extravagance for war-time, but Virginia and I, to say nothing of Eileen, were cold and hungry, and really one can’t be held accountable for one’s actions under such circumstances. It was a noble dish when it came, enough for five people.

When Eileen had cleared her first helping, she merely gazed at me with a seraphic smile, still clutching her knife and fork. I asked if she would like any more?

“No, thank you, ma’am,” she replied, in the most polite company style. But seeing her eyes still on the dish, I pressed her to have another slice; I knew she would have several hours of keen fresh air before we could get our next meal.

She leant a little towards me, her knife and fork held upright on the table the while. “Well, it’s like this,” she said, in a loud stage whisper, that sent a ripple over the few people who were in the coffee room. “Does you have to pay for it whether you eats it or not?”

I nodded.

“Then I will have some more, thank you,” and she heaved a sigh of deep contentment.

Perhaps it was as well Abigail didn’t come!

The drive from the station to my cottage seemed to be through one long vista of sweet odours.

Up to Monmouth the Wye is a tidal river, and the water was rushing up, backed by a strong wind, bringing with it, faint but unmistakable, the salt tang of the sea, that seems all the more delicious when it has swept over woods and meadows and ploughed fields.

As we left the river bank and started the long uphill climb, the scent of the newly-turned earth became more and more insistent as one passed stray farms and cottages, where the most was being made of the little bright sunshine.

Although it was only the end of February, the brave bit of sunshine had stirred in the larches thoughts of coming spring, and already there was a suspicion of the resinous odour that is one of their many delightful characteristics.

But it would be impossible to name even a fraction of the perfumes that were floating about that day: everything in Nature had responded to the welcome sun-warmth; and incense was rising from myriads of leaf-buds, closely sheathed as yet; from uncountable armies of grass blades; from flowering moss, and uncurling ferns, and bursting acorns; from the hundreds of thousands of catkins swinging on the hazels; from primroses pushing up pink stems and yellow blossoms in sheltered corners, where they had been protected by drifts of dead leaves. And probably the leaves of the wild hyacinths, now an inch or so above ground, had brought up some of the sweet earth-scents from below; likewise the blue-green leaves of the daffodils just poking through the soil, and the snowdrop spears, whose white flowers were nodding in big patches in orchards and front gardens. And it is certain that some early violets were hiding under their leaves.

It is noticeable that while the scents of autumn are often strong and bitter, the scents of spring are usually delicate and sweet.

It seems to me that in time we town-dwellers will lose our sense of smell! The odours that pervade our cities are so surpassingly abominable, that in sheer self-defence we have to “turn off our nose,” if you know what I mean by that; we are getting to smell as little as possible, just as we are getting to breathe as little as possible, owing to the vitiated air of the great crowded centres; with the result that we seem to be losing our power to smell sensitively and keenly, as well as our power to breathe deeply.

In town, the winds and the seasons seem only distinguishable by the grade of one’s underwear. Outer garments are no guide, for in December and January one meets bare chests in the public thoroughfares and transparent gowns indoors; while in August, with equal suitability, we trim a chiffon blouse with fur! (and, by the way, it is instructive to recall the fact that it was a German Court dressmaker who first set going the inappropriate, vulgar, inartistic fashion of trimming frail transparent dress materials with fur).

If you live in clean fresh air, however, you know the seasons by their odours, and it is possible to distinguish with absolute certainty the four winds of heaven by their scent, just as at sea you can smell land, or an iceberg, before it is anywhere within sight.

The scent of the east wind is entirely different from the scent of the north wind, though both are cold and penetrating. In the same way, the scent of growing bracken—for instance—is entirely different from the scent of moss. But it takes time for the town-dweller to be able to distinguish between the more subtle of the thousand fragrances that Nature flings broadcast about the countryside, so blunted is the sense of smell by the coarse reek of dirt, and petrol, and chemicals, and smoke, and over-breathed poisoned atmosphere that does duty for “air” in the modern centres of civilisation.

Virginia was vowing that she could actually smell the salmon in the river, when we entered the village; at the same time, the fish cart that makes a weekly tour of these hills was standing outside the “New Inn” (dated 1724). I omitted to draw her attention to the coincidence, because at that moment the lady of the post-office stepped out into the road and waved a telegram at our approaching steed.

It was from the Head of Affairs, briefly stating that he had returned home, safe and sound, that he would soon have the little mess cleared up, and that I need not worry.

Naturally, my inclination was to turn round there and then, get back home as soon as possible, and fall on his overcoat; but Virginia reminded me that there was no train returning that day, and if there were, we should probably only cross one another on the road—in accordance with my usual method of meeting people.

So I went on, a huge load having been lifted from my brain. I am sufficiently out-of-date and weak-minded to be profoundly thankful when the Head of Affairs steps in and re-adjusts my always-very-much-in-a-tangle affairs, and sets them on a business-like basis again: and knowing his capability to deal both with mind and matter, I didn’t worry another moment, though I was sceptical about any speedy clearing up of the mess!

And because my heart was lighter, I seemed to see so many things I had not noticed before. In every sheltered corner shoots were showing, and green things starting from the earth—and every shoot set one’s mind running on ahead to the things that were yet to be. I have heard people deplore the fact that human nature is so prone to anticipate events; I have been told that the reason animals live such a placid, contented life, is because they only concentrate on the present. It may be so; but personally, I wouldn’t be without my anticipations, even though it may mean a loss of placidity.

The commandment is to take no anxious thought for the morrow; there is nothing said against looking ahead for happiness.

And a wander among our hills and along our lanes on a mild February day, means that in addition to the loveliness of early spring, you sense the beauty of summer—and much more besides.

Every soft, grey-green shoot on the tangled honeysuckle stems sets you thinking of the yellow, rosy-tinged blossoms that will fill the long summer evenings with fragrance; every crimson thorn and bursting leaf on the wild rose, tells of far-flung branches that will arch the hedges and flush them with pale-pink flowers later on; the rosettes of foxglove leaves on the roadside banks remind you of the bells that will be ringing all along the lanes when summer sets in.

And although the fresh green of all the courageous little things that have braved the winds and peeped forth, is exquisite enough in itself to satisfy that eternal craving of the human heart for something fresh from the Hand of God, yet the promise that each proclaims carries one into further realms of loveliness, and conjures up visions that can never be put down in black and white.

One dimly understands how impossible was the task St. John set himself when he tried to describe the glimpse that was permitted him of the City not made with hands. He wrote of gold, and pearls, and crystal, and inexhaustible gems—yet these are but cold, lifeless things, and the list of them leaves us unmoved. With all the words at his command, with all the similes he could muster, nothing brings us so near a conception of that vision as his indication of the Divine understanding of poor human needs, and the promise of a fuller, richer life, freed from earthly disadvantages and with nothing to sever us from God.

At a time like the present, when souls innumerable are bearing silent sorrows, and the whole earth is scarred with the iron hoof of the Prussian beast, how much more to us than all the radiance of topaz, jacinth, sapphire and amethyst is the assurance—“There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain . . . and there shall be no more curse: but the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His Face.”

At this season of new-bursting life we, too, catch a glimpse of the Beyond, and underlying all our delight in the material beauty of spring, is there not the still deeper joy arising from the promise it brings of greater beauty yet unfulfilled—beauty that transcends all earthly imaginings? The heart, whether conscious of it or not, assuredly finds comfort in the reminder of the Resurrection that Nature whispers wheresoever we may turn.

It is no mere haphazard chance that Easter falls about the time of the blossoming of the bare blackthorn bough.

One very satisfying feature of the landscape, about this part of the river side, is the sight of the cottages, yellow-washed or white, that seem literally to nestle in the hollows on the hillside. While crowded streets hold no charm for me, and modern mansions leave me unmoved, there is something very appealing about a little homestead standing in its own bit of garden, with its couple of beehives beside a towering sunflower, its few gnarled apple trees, its cow and hayrick maybe, if there is a bit of pasture land about the cottage that has been redeemed by the hardest of labour from the rocky hillside, its fowls clucking about on the fringe of the small holding, its wood pile, its cabbages and marrows and rhubarb and black currants, all according to the season, its hedge draped with washing—too white ever to have come into touch with that modern improvement the steam laundry. In looking at all this, you are looking for the most part at the total worldly wealth of the cottager, wealth, too, that has often been acquired by the genuine sweat of his (and her) brow. It may not seem much to you when you run your eye over it; but it speaks of home in a way that no city dwelling has ever yet attained to. Here is not merely shelter, or just a place wherein to spend the night; it is the very centre of life to the inmates; the major portion of their food is either growing in, or running about, the garden. The side of bacon on the rack in the kitchen came from their own pigsty; the potatoes, the onions, the swedes in the outhouse grew from their own planting; the big yellow vegetable marrows hanging up in the kitchen, and the pots of black currant and plum jam in the cupboard, originated in their garden. The little plot is endeared to them because it provides them with the necessities of life, and the dwellers in the cottages live very close to the fundamental things that really matter, even though they may lack some of the items that over-civilization has ticketed the refinements of life.

And after a winter in town spent in a stern wrestle for coal, potatoes, butter and milk and bacon and many of the other necessities of life, it is bliss indeed to land in this haven of sufficiency, where queues are unknown, and where the cow and the hen do their duty in life each according to her station, and the garden and the forests do much of the rest!

Even then, one has not gone to the root of the matter. Many of these cottages are the ancestral homes of the people who live in them, homes that were literally wrested from the hillside by the forefathers of those who are now living in them. And in such cases the roots go far deeper than the surface soil. An ancestral home, no matter how small, can mean more to the inmates than the most gorgeous pile that the newly-rich millionaire can raise.

And to my mind, by no means the least of the many hideous sins for which the Germans will ultimately be called to account at the world’s Bar of Justice, will be the violation of the homes, the landmarks, and the ancient birthrights of unoffending peoples, while they themselves sat smug and sanctimonious under their own vines and fig trees, self-complacent in the knowledge that they were protected from deserved retribution by their devil-driven guns.

When at last we reached the little white gate, leading into the cottage garden, we stood for a moment, as we always do, and looked at the peak beyond peak, and the deep lying valleys.

Sloping away from our very feet were our own orchards and coppices, the bright lichen on the twisted old apple trees showing almost a blue-green against the purple of the bare birch tree branches still lower down.

The sun was dropping behind the larches that ridged the opposite hills. Birds everywhere were explaining to each other that they must—they really must—set about house-hunting the very first thing in the morning.

Out in the lane, the mountain spring was over-full and singing a riotous song of jubilation as it tumbled out of the little wooden trough into the pool below, and tore away down into the valley.

“It’s a marvellous world,” said Virginia as we gazed at the vast panorama that stretched before us; and then she added, “Do you know, I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer a spring of water outside the gate to all the stop-cocks and water-mains in the world.”

Next morning a letter from the Head of Affairs skipped airily over the episode of his meeting with the builder, concentrating on the point that I was to stay where I was, as he would join me in a few days. But Ursula supplied the missing details.

“After I saw you off at Paddington,” she wrote, “I hurried back as fast as I could; I felt that I should at least like to see if the four outside walls remained of what was once your happy home. Because, though we didn’t let you know, the builder confided to me, as you were leaving, that he had discovered the whole front of the house was in a most shocking condition, necessitating prompt ‘shoring-up’ (whatever that may mean), and requiring to be underpinned immediately. But by the time I reached the place where your gates ought to have been—but weren’t—I found the Head of Affairs (he’d sent a wire as soon as he landed in England, but it evidently never reached you) bestowing as much gratuitous eloquence on the builder and the Water Company as would have run an election. What did he say? Why, everything that is in the English language, and in a hundred different keys! Sometimes he singled out some separate ‘official,’ and gave it him, personally, in considerable detail.

“His analysis of the private character of the builder was nothing short of an epic; and as for the turncock!—what he said about turncocks was a revelation to an unsuspecting ratepayer like myself—No, it might be as well not to repeat it; but I feel sure that turncock won’t call, with a long double knock, for a Christmas-box next December. Indeed, his remarks on the mental capacity of every single person employed by the Water Company lead me to think that your family won’t be really popular with the Metropolitan Water Board for some time to come!

“And then, when he had said everything that could possibly be said about each man standing there, and about water and pipes and stop-cocks and gravel and pavement and suchlike things, he announced his intention of going on the roof to inspect where the builder proposed to put the pile of new slates.

“Now it’s a funny thing, but that builder was not nearly so pressing that he should go up and see for himself, as he was when talking to you. But he insisted, and once up, he started all over again, and made such forceful comments on the subject of slates—and more especially the men who put on the slates—that I was afraid they would come through the roof.

“Well, I don’t think I ever saw a more wilted-looking blossom than that builder when he was finally had inside and given his marching orders. Even before the two had descended from the roof, the embroidered men were hurriedly toppling the earth back into the trenches. I believe they’ve had twenty-four hours allowed them to get things put to rights again. And I think they will hurry, for they don’t seem anxious for more of the master’s society than is absolutely necessary. At any rate, he seemed quite able to manage matters without any assistance from me, and so I left it in his hands, and I’m coming down by the next train.”