The slow train puffed away into the unadventurous country; and the bees buzzing round the wine-dark dahlias along the platform were once again audible. The last farewell that Guy Hazlewood flung over his shoulder to a parting friend was more casual than it would have been had he not at the same moment been turning to ask the solitary porter how many cases of books awaited his disposition. They were very heavy, it seemed; and the porter, as he led the way towards the small and obscure purgatory through which every package for Shipcot must pass, declared he was surprised to hear these cases contained merely books. He would not go so far as to suggest that hitherto he had never faced the existence of books in such quantity, for the admission might have impugned official omniscience; yet there was in his attitude just as much incredulity mingled with disdain of useless learning as would preserve his dignity without jeopardizing the financial compliment his services were owed. "Ah, well," he decided, as if he were trying to smooth over Guy's embarrassment at the sight of these large packing-cases in the parcel-office. "You'll want something as'll keep you busy this winter—for you'll be the gentleman who've come to live down Wychford way?" Guy nodded. "And Wychford is mortal dead in winter. Time walks very lame there, as they say. And all these books, I suppose, were better to come along of the 'bus to-night?" Guy looked doubtful. It was seeming a pity to waste this afternoon without unpacking a single case. "The trap...." he began. But the porter interrupted him firmly; he did not think Mr. Godbold would relish the notion of one of these packing-cases in his new trap. "I could give you a hand...." Guy began again. The porter stiffened himself against the slight upon his strength. "It's not the heffort," he asserted. "Heffort is what I must look for every day of my life. It's Mr. Godbold's trap." The discussion was given another turn by the entrance of Mr. Godbold himself. He was not at all concerned for his trap, and indeed by an asseverated indifference to its welfare he conveyed the impression that, new though it were, it was so much firewood, if the gentleman wanted firewood. No, the trap did not matter, but what about Mr. Hazlewood's knees? "Ah, there you are," said the porter, and he and Mr. Godbold both stood dumb in the presence of the finally insuperable. "I suppose it must be the 'bus," said Guy. On such a sleepy afternoon he could argue no longer. The books must be unpacked to-morrow; and the word lulled like an opiate the faint irritation of his disappointment. The porter's reiterated altruism was rewarded with a fee so absurdly in excess of anything he had done, that he began to speak of a possibility if, after all, the smallest case might not be squeezed ... but Mr. Godbold flicked the pony, and the trap rattled up the station road at a pace quite out of accord with the warmth of the afternoon. Presently he turned to his fare: "Mrs. Godbold said to me only this morning, she said, 'You ought to have had a luggage-flap behind and that I shall always say,' And she was right. Women is often right, what's more," the husband postulated. Guy nodded absently; he was thinking about the books. "Very often right," Mr. Godbold murmured. Still Guy paid no attention. "Very often," he repeated, but as Guy would neither contradict nor agree with him, Mr. Godbold relapsed into meditation upon the justice of his observation. The pony had settled down to his wonted pace and jogged on through the golden haze of fine September weather. Soon the village of Shipcot was left behind, and before them lay the long road winding upward over the wold to Wychford. Guy thought of the friend who had left him that afternoon and wished that Michael Fane were still with him to enjoy this illimitable sweep of country. He had been the very person to share in the excitement of arranging a new house. Guy could not remember that he had ever made a suggestion for which he had not been asked; nor could he call to mind a single occasion when his appreciation had failed. And now to-night, when for the first time he was going to sleep in his own house, his friend was gone. There had been no hint of departure during the six weeks of preparation they had spent together at the Stag Inn, and it was really perverse of Michael to rush back to London now. Guy jumped down from the trap, which was climbing the hill very slowly, and stretched his long legs. He was rather bored by his loneliness, but as soon as he had stated so much to himself, he was shocked at the disloyalty to his ambition. After all, he reassured himself, he was not going back to a dull inn-parlor; to-night he was going to sleep in an hermitage for the right to enjoy the seclusion of which he had been compelled to fight very hard. It was weak to imagine he was lonely already, and to fortify himself against this mood he pulled out of his pocket Fox Hall, Galton, Hants, Dear Guy,—I agree with some of what you say, but I disagree with a good deal more, and I am entirely opposed to your method of procedure, which is to put it very mildly rather casual. Your degree was not so good as it ought to have been, but I did not reproach you, because in the Consular Service you had chosen a career which did not call specially for a first. At the same time you could, if you had worked, have got a first quite easily. Your six months with the Macedonian Relief people seems to have knocked all your consular ambitions on the head rather too easily, I confess, to make me feel very happy about your future. And now without consulting me you take a house in the country for the purpose of writing poetry! You imply in answer to my remonstrances that I am unable to appreciate the "necessity" for your step. That may be, but I cannot help asking where you would be now if I at your age, instead of helping my father with his school, had gone off to Oxfordshire to write poetry. Perhaps I had ambitions to make a name for myself with the pen. If I had, I quenched them in order to devote myself to what I considered my duty. I do not reproach you for refusing to carry on the school at Fox Hall. Your dear mother's last request was that I should not urge you to be a schoolmaster, unless you were drawn to the vocation. Her wishes I have respected, and I repeat that I am not hurt at your refusal. At the same time I cannot encourage what can only be described as this whim of yours to bury yourself in a remote village where, having saddled yourself with the responsibilities of a house, you announce your intention of living by poetry! I am the last person to underestimate the value of poetry, but as a livelihood it seems to me as little to be relied upon as the weather. However, you are of age. You have £150 a year of your own. You are with the exercise of the strictest economy independent. And this brings me to the point of your last letter in which you ask me to supplement your own income with an allowance of £150 a year from me. This inclination to depend upon your father is not what I conceive Your affectionate father, Guy stood still when he had finished the letter, and execrated mutely the damnable dependence that compelled him to accept gratefully and humbly this gift of £150. Yet with no money of his own coming in till December, with actually a housekeeper on her way from Cardiff and his house already furnished, he must accept the offer. In a year's time he would have proved the reasonableness of his request; and he began to compose a scene between them, in which his father would almost on bended knees beg him to accept an allowance of £300 a year in consideration of the magnificent proof he had afforded to the world of being in the direct line of English poets. "And I mustn't forget to send him a sonnet on his birthday," said Guy to himself. This notion restored his dignity, and he hurried on to overtake the trap which was waiting on the brow of the hill. "You were saying something about women being right," he reminded Mr. Godbold, as he sat down again beside him. "Has it ever struck you that fathers are nearly always wrong?" "That wouldn't do for me at all," said Mr. Godbold, shaking his head. "You see I'm the father of nine, and if I wasn't always right, sir, I shouldn't be no better than a bull in a china-shop where I live. I've got to be right, Mr. Hazlewood." "I suppose that's what the Pope felt," Guy murmured. "Now do you reckon this here Pope they speak of really exists in a manner of speaking?" Mr. Godbold asked, as the trap bowled along the level stretch of upland road. "You know there's some of these narrow-minded mortals at Wychford as will have it that Mr. Grey, our parson, is in with the Pope, and I said to one or two of them the other night while we were arguing in the post-office, I said, 'Have any of you wise men of Gotham ever seen this Pope as you're so knowing about?'" "And had they?" asked Guy, encouragingly. "Not one of them," said Mr. Godbold. "And I thought to myself as I was walking up home, I thought now what if there wasn't no such thing as a Pope any more than there's women with fish-tails and all this rubbish you read of in books. If you ask my opinion of books, Mr. Hazlewood, I tell you that I think books is as bad for some people as wireworms is for carnations. They seem to regular eat into them." Guy laughed. Misgivings about the wisdom of his choice vanished, and he was being conscious of a very intimate pleasure in thus driving back to Wychford from the station. The country tossed for miles to right and left in great stretches of pasturage, and when Mr. Godbold pulled up for a moment to look at a trace, the air, brilliantly dusted with autumnal gold, seemed to endow him with the richness of its silence; along the sparse hedgerow chicory flowers burned with the pale intense blue of the September sky above, and Guy felt like them, worshipful of the cloudless scene. The road ran along the upland for half a mile before it dipped suddenly down into the valley of the Greenrush, from which the spire of "Tasty little place," commented Mr. Godbold while the trap jolted cautiously down the last twist of the hilly road. "But I reckon old Burrows was glad to let it. You're young, though, and I dare say you won't mind being flooded out in winter. Two years ago Burrows's son's wife's nephew was floating paper boats in the front hall. But you're young, and I dare say you'll enjoy it." The pony swept round the corner and pulled up with a jerk at the wooden gateway in the gray wall overhung by lime-trees that concealed from the highroad the moist fields and garden of Plashers Mead. "I'm sleeping here to-night, you know, for the first time," said Guy. He had tried all the way back not to make this announcement, but the sight of his own gateway destroyed his reserve. "Well, you'll have a fine night, that's one good job," Mr. Godbold predicted. "And the moon only just past the full," said Guy. "That's right," Mr. Godbold agreed; and the tenant passed through the gateway into the garden, where every path had its own melody of running water. He examined with proprietary solicitude the espaliers of apple-trees, and admired for the twentieth time the pledge they offered by their fantastic forms of his garden's antiquity. He pinched several pippins that seemed ripe, but they were still hard; and he could find nothing over which to exert Guy sat upon the parapet of the well under the shade of a sycamore-tree and regarded with admiration and satisfaction the exterior of his house. He looked at the semicircular porch of stone over the front door and venerated the supporting cherubs who with puffed-out cheeks The big stone-paved hall was very cool, and the sound of the stream at the back came babbling through lattices open to the light of a green world. Guy could not make up his mind whether the inside of the house smelled very dry or very damp, for there clung about it that odor peculiar to rustic age, which may be found equally in dry old barns and in damp potting-sheds. He wished he could furnish the hall worthily. At present it contained only a high-back chair, an alleged contemporary of Cromwell, which was doddering beside the hooded fireplace; a warming-pan; and an oak chest which remained a chest only so long as nobody either sat upon it or lifted the lid. There was also a grandfather-clock which had suffered an abrupt resurrection of four minutes' duration when it was recently lifted out of the furniture-van, but had now relapsed into the silence of years. Leading out of the hall was a small, empty room which had been dedicated to the possession of his friend Michael Fane; together they had planned to paper it with gold and paint the ceiling black. Michael, however, had still another year at Oxford, and the room with an obelisk of lining-paper standing upright on the bare floor was now a little desolate. On the other side of the hall was the dining-room, which Guy, by taxing his resources, had managed to furnish very successfully. It was a square room painted emerald-green above the white wainscot. Two inset cupboards were filled with glass and china: there were four Chippendale chairs and an oval Sheraton table, curtains of Guy had left his own room to the last, partly because he regretted so much the delay in the arrival of those books and partly because, however inadequately equipped was the rest of the house, this room was always the final justification of his tenancy. It was a larger room than any of the others, for the corridor did not cut off its share of the back. It possessed, in addition to the usual window looking out over the western side of the valley, a very large bay which hung right over the stream, with a view of the orchard, of the church steeple, of the water-meadows beyond, and of the wold rolling across the horizon. This morning Michael and he had pushed the furniture into place, had set in order the great wicker chairs and nailed against the wall the frames of green canvas. The floor was covered with a sweet-smelling mat of Abingdon rushes; and the curtains of his old rooms in Balliol were hung in place, dim green curtains sown with golden fleurs-de-lys. The ivory image of an emaciated saint standing on the mantelshelf between candlesticks of old wrought iron was probably a Spanish Virgin, but Guy preferred to say she was Saint Rose of Lima because "O Rose of Lima" seemed a wonderful apostrophe to begin a poem. Nothing Guy dragged a chair into the bay window and, balancing his long legs on the sill, he made numerous calculations in which Miss Peasey's wages, the weekly bills for food, and the number of times he would have to go up to London were set against £150 a year. When he woke up, the lime-trees that bordered the highroad had flung their shadows half-way across the meadow, and the air was a fume of golden gnats against the dipping sun. Within ten minutes the sun vanished, and the mists began to rise. Guy, feeling rather chilly and ashamed of himself for falling asleep, rose hurriedly and went up into the town. He interviewed the driver of the omnibus and told him to look out for his books, and as an afterthought he mentioned the arrival of Miss Peasey. He wished now he had written and told his housekeeper to spend the night in Oxford; and he hoped she would not be prejudiced against Plashers Mead by a five-mile drive in a cold omnibus after her tiring journey from Cardiff. He dawdled about the steep village street for a while, gossiping with tradesmen at their doors and watching the warmth fade out of the gray houses in the falling dusk. Then he went to eat his last meal in the Stag Inn. After supper Guy returned to Plashers Mead, wandering round the house, dropping a great deal of candle-grease everywhere, and working himself up into a state of anxiety over Miss Peasey's advent. It would be terrible if she demanded her fare back to Wales the moment she arrived; and to propitiate her he put the best lamp in the kitchen, whence (as with such illumination it looked more than ever protuberant) he took another dish-cover up to Michael's bedroom. Since it was still but a few Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapors a shifting damascene; and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below. Soon the orchard was left behind and he was in the mist of a wide "By gad! if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared. The church clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he could do. "Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy, aloud. And since the clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of an argument. Guy walked on, and after a while could hear once more the purling of the stream. He thought there was something strangely human about this river in the way it wandered so careless of direction. When he had left these banks, they had been going away from him: now here they were coming back like himself towards the moon, so that presently he was able without changing his course to walk under their border of willows. The mist had drifted away from the stream, leaving the spires of loosestrife plainly visible, and more dimly on the other side the forms of huge cattle at pasture. There was, too, a smell of meadowsweet softening with a summer languor the sharp September night. The willows gave way to overhanging thickets of hawthorn, as the river suddenly swept round to make a noose that was completed but a few yards ahead of where he was standing. He could not see on account of the bushes the size of the peninsula so formed, and when suddenly he heard from the depths a sound of laughter, so full was his brain of moonshine that if he had come face to face with a legendary queen of fairies, he would hardly have been surprised. It was with the deliberate encouragement of a vision surpassing all the fantasies of moon and mist that Guy stopped; and, indeed, In the apogee of the river's noose two girls, clearly seen against the silver glooms beyond, were bending over a basket. Their heads were close together, and it was not until Guy was almost on top of them that he realized how impertinent his intrusion might seem. He drew back, blushing, just as one of the girls became aware of his presence and jumped up with an "oh" that floated away from her as lightly as a moth upon the moonshine. Her sister (Guy decided at once they were sisters) jumped up also and, luckily for him, since it offered the opportunity of a natural apology, overturned the basket. For a moment the three of them gazed at one another over the mushrooms that were tumbled upon the grass to be an elfin city of the East, so white and cold were their cupolas under the moon. "Can't I help to pick them up?" Guy asked, wondering to himself why on this night of nights that was the real beginning of Plashers Mead he should be blessed by this fortunate encounter. The two girls were wearing big white coats of some rough tweed or frieze on which the mist lay like gossamer; and, as neither of them had a hat, Guy could see that one was very dark and the other fair. "We wondered who you were," said the dark one. "I live at Plashers Mead," said Guy. "I know; I've seen you often," she answered. "And Father says every day, 'My dears, I really must call upon that young man.'" It was the fair one who spoke, and Guy recognized that it was her laughter he had first heard. "My other sister is somewhere close by," said the dark one. Guy was kneeling down to gather up the mushrooms, and he looked round to see another white figure coming towards them. "Oh, Margaret, do let's introduce him to Monica. It will be such fun," cried the fair sister. Guy saw that Margaret was shaking her head, but nevertheless when the third sister came near enough she did introduce him. Monica was more like Margaret, but much fairer than the first fair sister; and with her reserve and her pale-gold hair she seemed, as she greeted him, to be indeed a wraith of the moon. "Shall I carry the mushrooms back for you?" Guy offered. "Oh no, thanks," said Monica, quickly. "The Rectory is quite out of your way." He felt the implication of an eldest sister's disapproval, and not wishing to spoil the omens of romance, he left the three sisters by the banks of the Greenrush and was soon on his way home through the webs of mist. How extraordinary that he and Michael should have spent six weeks at Wychford without realizing that the Rector had three such daughters. Godbold had gossiped about him only this afternoon, reporting that he was held by some of his parishioners to be in with the Pope: they might more justly suspect him of being in with Titania. Monica, Margaret ... he had not heard the name of the third. Monica had seemed a little frigid, but Margaret and ... really when the omnibus arrived he must find out the name of the Rector's third daughter, of that one so obviously the youngest, with her light-brown hair and her laugh of which even now, as he paused, he fancied he could still hear the melodious echo. Monica, Margaret, and ... Rose, perhaps, for there had been something of a dewy eglantine about her. Surely that was indeed the echo of their voices; but, as upon distance the wayward The arrival of Miss Peasey, now that it was upon him, banished everything else; and instead of dreaming deliciously of that encounter in the water-meadows, he stood meditating on the failure of the kitchen. As he regarded the enormous dresser, the table trampling upon the fender, the seven dish-covers mocking his poor crockery, Guy had little hope that Miss Peasey would stay a week; and then suddenly, worse than any failure of equipment, "There's the 'bus," he cried. "Don't forget. At once. My new housekeeper. Long journey. And salad. Forgot she'd be hungry. Salt and mustard. I've got plates." The omnibus went rumbling past, and Guy followed at a jog-trot down the street, saw it cross the bridge, and, making a spurt, caught it up just as a woman alighted by the gate of Plashers Mead. "Ah, Miss Peasey," said Guy, breathlessly. "I went up the street to see if the 'bus was coming. Have you had a comfortable journey?" "Mr. Hazlewood?" asked the new housekeeper, blinking at him. The guard of the omnibus at this moment informed Guy that he had some cases for Plashers Mead. "Where is Mr. Hazlewood, then?" asked Miss Peasey, turning sharply. Over her shoulder Guy saw that the guard was apparently punching the side of his head, and he said, more loudly: "I'm Mr. Hazlewood." "I thought you were. I'm a little bit deaf after traveling, so you'll kindly speak slightly above the usual, Mr. Hazlewood." "I hope you've had a comfortable journey," Guy shouted. "Oh yes, I think I shall," she said with what Guy fancied was meant to be an encouraging smile. "I hope you haven't lost any of my parcels, young man," she continued, with a severe glance at the guard. "Four and a string-bag. Is that right, mum?" he bellowed. "She's as deaf as an adder, Mr. Hazlewood," he "This is the garden," Guy shouted, as they passed in through the gate. "Yes, I dare say," Miss Peasey replied, ambiguously. Guy wondered how she would ever be got up-stairs to her room. "This is the hall," he shouted. "Rather unfurnished I'm afraid." "Oh yes, I'm quite used to the country," said Miss Peasey. Guy was now in a state of nervous indecision. Just as he was going to shout to Miss Peasey that the kitchen was through the baize door the hostler from the Stag came up to know whether mutton would do instead of beef, and just as he said pork would be better than nothing the guard arrived with Miss Peasey's tin box and wanted to know where he should put it. The hall seemed to be thronged with people. "You'd like your boxes up-stairs, wouldn't you?" he shouted to the housekeeper. "Oh, do you want to come up-stairs?" she said, cheerfully. "No, your boxes. The kitchen's in here." He really hustled her into the kitchen and, having got her at last in a well-lighted room, he begged her to sit down and expect her supper. By this time two men who had been summoned by the driver of the omnibus to bring in Guy's books were staggering and sweating into the hall. However, the confusion relaxed in time; and before the clock struck ten Guy was alone with Miss Peasey and without an audience was managing to make her understand most of what he was saying. "I'll come down in about half an hour," he told her, "and show you your room." "It's a long way," said Miss Peasey, when the moment was arrived to conduct her up the winding staircase to her bower in the roof. Guy had calculated that she would miss all the beams, and so from a desire to make the best of the staircase he had not mentioned them. He sighed with relief when she passed into her bedroom, unbumped. "Oh, quite nice," she pronounced, looking round her. "In the morning we'll talk over everything," said Guy, and with a hurried good-night he rushed away. In the hall he attacked with a chisel the first packing-case. One by one familiar volumes winked at him with their gold lettering in the candle-light. He chose Keats to take up-stairs, and, having read "St. Agnes' Eve," stood by the window of his bedroom poring upon the moonlit valley. In bed his mind skipped the stress of Miss Peasey's arrival and fled back to the meadows where he had been walking. "Monica, Margaret...." he began, dreamily. It was a pity he had forgotten to find out the name of that sister who was so like a wild rose. Never mind; he would find out to-morrow. And for the second time that day the word lulled him like an opiate. |