I did not go to Woadley as I had planned. My position was too uncertain at present for me to venture where further explanations would be required. My father had made me aware of that. I was unwilling to cover the same ground of argument with Grandmother Cardover, so I had my lawyers visit me in London.
Until something had been definitely settled, I did not care to return to Oxford or to seek out any of my friends; I should at once be called upon to account for my erratic departure and prolonged absence. So I made myself inconspicuous in the crowds of London, waiting for some final word from Sheba. It was quite likely that none would ever come—and that would be an answer in itself. Yet, now that I had done what had seemed to me right and had thrust her from me, I hoped against hope that, somehow, she might come back. I felt that though I might have to wait for years, I would resolutely wait for her. No other woman could ever take her place. And none of this could I tell her. She might think that I had counted the cost and considered it too expensive. She might put the worst construction on the words she had overheard on that last night; yet unless she approached me first, I was irrevocably pledged to silence.
Too late for my peace of mind I recognized my weakness: if I had wanted her, I should have taken her strongly in the early days and faced the consequences; now, through making truces with my conscience and conventions, I had lived so long in thoughts of her that I should always desire her.
I would like to have gone to Ruthita, but that was forbidden. Lord Halloway riding the high horse of morality was exceedingly comic, but I knew exactly how men of his stamp argued: to introduce a questionable relation into the family was anathema. I wondered continually what secret causes lay behind Ruthita’s marriage. I felt sure that she had consented on the impulse, and that love had had nothing to do with it. The suspicion that I was somehow responsible left me worried.
Spring had reached the point of perfection where it merges into summer. The tides of life flowed strongly through the dazzling streets of London; I was too young not to respond to their energy. Everywhere the persistent hope of spring planted banners of green and set them waving. Ragged shrubs in decrepit squares bubbled into blossom. Window-boxes lent a touch of braveness. Water-carts passed up and down parched streets, settling the dust. In the kind of suburb that walks always with a hole in its stocking, slatternly maids pressed their bosoms against area-railings chaffing with butcher-boy or policeman—their idea of love. Where a street-organ struck up, little children gathered, dancing in the gutter. Even the sullen Thames, the gray hair of London, was dyed to gold between the bridges by the splendid sun. The spirit of youth had invaded the city; flower-girls, shouting raucously above the traffic, shaking their posies in the face of every comer, seemed heralds of a new cheerfulness, shaming Despair of his defiance.
This severing of oneself from friendship was dull. Leisurely crowds laughing along sunlit pavements, made me ache for companionship. I was in this frame of mind when I chanced to think of Uncle Obad’s letter. It had met me at Plymouth on my arrival, and bore the characteristically flamboyant address of Dream Haven, Dorking.
He must have chosen Dorking as a place of residence because it had given its name to a famous breed of fowls. Perhaps he thought such a neighborhood would be propitious to his own experiments. His letter was brief and to the point: if I could spare the time, he and Aunt Lavinia would feel honored to entertain me.
Uncle Obad was stilted in his written use of language; he felt honored when he meant to say jolly well glad. There was always an obedient servant ring about the way in which he signed himself. The training he had undergone as secretary to charitable societies had spoilt him for familiar letter-writing.
Since the Rapson incident, things had never been quite the same. My good fortune made him uneasy; it placed a gap between us and, I suppose, served to emphasize his non-success. Of his new mode of life since the Christian Boarding House had been abandoned, I had only heard. The thought of him had lain a dusty memory at the back of my mind—which made it all the kinder that he should now remember me. Perhaps he had heard before writing of how Pope Lane had planned to receive me.
As I steamed into the station I hung my head out of the window to catch first sight of him. Yes, there he was. He had grown stouter; his purple whiskers which still bristled like shaving-brushes, had faded to a milky white. He was wearing a long fawn dust-coat which flapped about the calves of his legs. He carried the old exaggerated air of blustering importance, but was a trifle more careless in his dress. His carelessness, however, was now the prosperous untidiness of one who could afford it. In his lapel he wore a scarlet geranium.
As I stepped out, he came fussily towards me. “Very good of you to come, I’m sure—kind and very thoughtful.”
It was his pretense manner—the one he adopted with grown-ups. I wanted to remind him that with me he could take off his armor.
“Still go in for breeding hens?” I asked him.
His face brightened. “I should say so. Our little place is quite a menagerie. We’ve cats, and dogs, and rabbits, and a parrot. And hens! Well, I should say so.”
“And hens,” I laughed. “Remember the old white hen you gave me? It laid one egg and then ate it; after that it died.”
“Should have given it gravel or oyster-shells.” Poultryraising was a subject he never treated lightly. He fussed along beside me, explaining with his old enthusiasm the mysterious ways of fowls.
Outside the station a dog-cart was standing, with a fat little piebald pony between the shafts. We stuffed the baggage under the back-seat, and squeezed into the front together. The pony started off at a smart trot.
“D’you know what this reminds me of?—That first day we spent together. You remember—when you drove me away from Pope Lane behind Dollie?”
He pulled out his handkerchief and trumpeted. His eyes became dreamy beneath his bushy brows. “A long time ago! They were good days, but not as good as these, old chap.”
We fell to remembering. The pony slowed down to a walk. How everything came back as we talked! And how ripping the old Spuffler had always been, and how ripping it was to be near him now! He had put aside his armor of pretense and was talking naturally. We talked together of that first day when we had met the gipsies in the Surrey woodland, and we talked of the Red House, and of all the times that we had been happy. A warm wind fluttered about us. I caught Uncle Obad looking at me fixedly, dropping his eyes and then looking up again, as though he were trying to satisfy himself.
“That Sir don’t seem to have spoiled you.”
The red walls of Dorking were left behind. A white chalky road stretched before us, climbing upward to the skyey downs; over to the left rose a wooded ridge, somnolent with pines; to the right lay a village-common across which geese waddled in solemn procession.
Uncle Obad roused himself and shook the reins. “This won’t buy a pair of shoes for the baby. Aunt Lavinia’s waiting for us; she’s just as keen as I was to see whether: you’ve altered.” Then to the pony, “Gee-up, Toby.”
We turned off into the pine-wood by a narrow roadway. The fragrance of balsam made me long to close my eyes. At the edge of the road, on either side, ran a ditch through which water tinkled over gravel. On its banks grew fern and foxglove. The silent aisles of the wood were carpeted with the tan of fallen needles. Sunlight, drifting between branches, slashed golden rags in the olive-tinted shadows. My mind became a blank through pure enjoyment as I listened to the monologue of gay chatter that was going on beside me. He was doing for me now just what he had done for me so often as a child, throwing down the walls of conventional tyrannies and showing me the road of escape to nature.
Suddenly out of the basking stillness rose a farmyard clamor—cocks crowing, ducks quacking, and the boastful clucking of hens. We had reached the top of the ridge and were bowling along the level. Toby pricked up his ears and quickened his trotting. Round a bend we swung into sight of a low-thatched house, standing in a clearing. Its windows were leaded and opened outwards. In front grew a garden, sun-saturated, riotous with flowers, and partly hidden by a high hawthorn hedge. In the hedge was a white swing-gate, from which a red-brick path ran up to the threshold. Across the gate one had a glimpse of beehives standing a-row; the air was heavy with mingled scents of pine, wild thyme, and honey. The impression that fastened on my imagination was one of exquisite cleanliness: the sky, the gleaming chalk road, the white-painted woodwork of the cottage, everything was dazzlingly spotless.
Our wheels had hardly halted before the gate, when I saw Aunt Lavinia in the doorway unfastening her apron. Neat and methodical as ever, she folded it carefully, and laid it on a chair before coming out to us.
“Lavinia, Lavinia! We’re here,” shouted Uncle Obad.
She came down the path, prim and unhurried, determined not to let herself go. “Repose is refinement” she used to tell me. Nothing in her manner was ruffled. She still carried herself with a certain grave air of sweet authority. The rustle of her starched print-dress gave her an atmosphere of nurse-like austerity. She had not changed, save that the look of worry had gone from her face, and her eyes were untired.
“It’s glad I am to see you.” She spoke quietly and, when she kissed me, was careful not to crumple her dress.
“Dignified and graceful—that’s her,” said Uncle Obad.
We had plenty to talk about while we were getting over our first strangeness. I had to see the house and all its arrangements. My room was at the back, looking out from the ridge over smoking tree-tops far away across undulating downs.
Windows and doors were always open, so the passages were blowy with the dreamy, drowsy smell of green things growing. Creepers tumbled across sills; leaves tapped whenever the breeze stirred them; pigeons flew into the dining-room at meal-times and perched on Uncle Obad’s shoulder. Usually everything within a house is man-made. At Dream Haven Nature was encouraged to tiptoe across the threshold; so bees entered humming, and blackbirds came for grain to the windows, and all day long the wild things were sending their ambassadors. Beating wings of birds and cooing of doves filled one’s ears with the peace and adventure of contentment.
These were the recreations of Dream Haven, but its stern business, as one might suppose, was the raising of fowls. At the back of the cottage on a southern slope were arranged coops, and pens, and houses, gleaming white against the golden gravel like a miniature military encampment. Each pen had its trumpeter, who strode forth at intervals to raise his challenge; whereupon every male in camp tried to outdo him, from the youngest stripling, whose shrill falsetto broke like a boy’s voice in the middle, to the deep, rich tones of the oldest campaigner. Falsetto, tenor, bass, baritone shook the stillness like an army on the march, with rattle of accoutrements, and brass-bands playing, cock-a-doodle-doo, cock-a-doodle-doo.
In the hush that followed from far away, as from scattered detachments replying, came the counter-sign. Below the ridge in the village on the downs every rooster felt his reputation endangered. In farmhouses out of sight the challenge was caught up and the boast flung back. To one listening intently, the clamor could be heard spreading across the countryside till it spent itself at last in the hazy distance. Then the ladies of the camp commenced their flatteries, tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck, our men did best, our men did best.
Uncle Obad took childish delight in the comedy; he knew the voice of each male bird in his yard and the sequence of precedence in which they should aspire. If they got out of order, he would recognize at once which cockerel was trying to oust his senior. If the ambitious fellow was one of his experiments in crossing strains, he was vastly tickled. To him they all had their personalities; he used to say that a poultry-yard could teach you a whole lot about humans.
“Why don’t you men go out for a walk?” said Aunt Lavinia; “I’m sure Dante would like to look about.”
She knew that we had always had our secrets. It was seven o’clock; there were still some hours of daylight. We set off through the poultry-runs down the hillside till we came to the edge of the clearing; Uncle Obad looked round furtively to make sure that we were unobserved, then he beckoned and slipped behind a shed. There he sat down with his back against the warm wooden wall and we lit our pipes. “Sh............