Abington Abbey: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

A very soft look came over Caroline's face as she watched him. She felt maternal. Men were so like babies, with their toys. And this was such a nice toy for the dear boy, and so different from the expensive grown-up toys he had played with before. He looked so young too, with his active straight-backed figure. At a back-view, with his hat hiding his hair, he might have been taken for quite a young man. And in mind he was one, especially when he was at home at Abington. There was none of all the young men with whom Caroline had made friends whom she liked better to be with, not only because she loved him, but because with none of them could she talk so freely or receive so much in return. There was nothing in her life about which she could not or did not talk to him. Francis Parry's proposal—she had not been at ease until she had told him about it and of all that was in her mind with regard to it. Surely they were nearer together than most fathers and daughters, and always would be so.

She thought she would go down and help him with his plantings and potterings. She loved him so much that she wanted to see that look of pleasure on his face that she knew would come at the agreeable surprise she would bring him. Perhaps she would be able to steal up behind him without his seeing her, and then she would get this plain sign of his love for her and his pleasure in her unexpected appearance brought out of him suddenly. She had something more to tell him too.

She dressed and went down. She collected her garden gloves, a trowel and a trug, and then went into the empty echoing back regions where the cases of plants had been unpacked, and took out some more of the little pots. They were mostly thymes, in every creeping variety. She knew what he was going to do, then—furnish the rocky staircase, which he and two of the gardeners had built themselves, after the main part of the rock-garden had been finished and planted with professional assistance. It was rather late to be planting anything, but garden novices take little heed of seasons when they are once bitten with the planting and moving mania, and if some of the plants should be lost they could replace them before the next flowering season.

The clock in the church tower struck six as she let herself out into the dewy freshness of the garden. She had to go across the little cloistered court and all round the house, and she stood for a moment in front of it to look over the gentle undulations of the park, where the deer were feeding on the dew-drenched grass, and the bracken grew tall on the slopes sentinelled by the great beeches. She had never been able to make up her mind whether or not she liked the church and the churchyard being so near the house. At first they had seemed to detract from its privacy, and from the front windows they certainly interfered with the view of the park hollows and glades, which were so beautiful in the varied lights in which they were seen. But as the weeks had gone by she had come to take in an added sense of the community of country life from their proximity. The villagers, all of whom she now knew by sight, and some of them intimately, came here every Sunday, and seemed to come more as friends, with the church almost a part of her own home. And some of them would come up sometimes to visit their quiet graves, to put flowers on them, or just to walk about among the friends whom they had known, now resting here. The names on many of the stones were alike, and families of simple stay-at-home cottagers could be traced back for generations. The churchyard was their book of honour; some personality lingered about the most far-away name that was commemorated in it. Caroline wished that her own mother could have been buried here. It would have been sweet to have tended her grave, and to have cherished the idea that she was not cut off from the warmth of their daily life. That was how the villagers must feel about those who were buried here. She felt it herself about an old man and a little child who had died since she had come to live at Abington. They were still a part of the great family.

She went on through the formal garden and across the grass to the disused quarry which was the scene of her father's labours. It formed an ideal opportunity for rock-gardening, and was big enough to provide amusement for some time to come in gradual extension. He was half-way up the rocky stair he had made, very busy with his trowel and his watering-pot. As she came in sight of him he stood up to straighten his back, and then stepped back to consider the effect he had already made. This is one of the great pleasures of gardening, and working gardeners should not be considered slack if they occasionally indulge in it.

He turned and saw her as she crossed the grass towards him. She was not disappointed in the lightening of his face or the pleasure that her coming gave him. "Why, my darling!" he said. "I thought you'd be slumbering peacefully for another couple of hours. This is jolly!"

He gave her a warm kiss of greeting. She rubbed her soft cheek. "It's the first time I've ever known you to dress without shaving first," she said.

"Oh, I'm going to have a bath and a shave later on," he said. "This is the best time to garden. You don't mind how grubby you get, and you've got the whole world to yourself. Besides, I was dying to get these things in. How do you think it looks? Gives you an idea of what you're aiming at, doesn't it?"

He stood at the foot of the stair and surveyed his handiwork critically, with his head on one side. She had again that impulse of half-maternal love towards him, and put her arm on his shoulder to give him another kiss. "I think it's beautiful, darling," she said. "You're getting awfully clever at it. I don't think you've given the poor things enough water though. You really ought not to go planting without me."

"Well, it is rather a grind to keep on fetching water," he confessed. "I think we must get it laid on here. I'll tell you what we'll do this morning, Cara; we'll get hold of Worthing and see if we can't find a spring or a stream or something in the park that we can divert into this hollow. I've been planning it out. We might get a little waterfall, and cut out hollows in the rock for pools—have all sorts of luxuries. What do you think about it? I shouldn't do it till we'd worked it all out together."