Within the space of an all too short minute or two there appeared two little girls through the wicket-gate, coming home to the farmhouse from a walk, or from Sunday school, evidently excited by the sight of that machine, and by the very obvious deduction that the owner of it must be somewhere near. “And very pretty it was,” as Pepys might have put it, to see them questing about everywhere except in the right place, and not finding him, sitting there in the grateful shade quite close to them, and really easily to be seen, you know. And after all, it was the intruder himself who revealed his own presence, with the remark, “I suppose you are looking for the owner of that bicycle?” Whereupon they ran away and there presently entered upon the scene an angry woman, with inflamed visage and furious words; with offensive epithets about “trippers,” and the like. Outrageous!
Now, to beat a leisurely and dignified retreat under such circumstances is difficult. You owe it to yourself not to be ignominiously routed in disorder, but to draw off your forces from the stricken field calmly and collectedly, inflicting losses upon the enemy, if possible. And then, you know, to be styled a “tripper,” and by a fat farmer-woman! Does that not demand retribution?
Therefore, “Do you presume, woman, to call me a tripper?” seemed the best retort: effective and injurious, and at the same time restrained and dignified.
“Woman!” What a deadly offence, what a god-addressing-a-blackbeetle effect this has! It produces rage of the foaming, abusive, incoherent order, in midst of which, with a cold-drawn, blighting smile, you retire, with the consciousness that the thing will rankle for days. But the incident renders a comparison of old times with new in Somerset unfavourable to the present age. In the olden days, before every historic spot or architectural rarity had become a show-place, resorted to by a constant stream of visitors, the farmer whose farm happened to be on the site of some ruined abbey would, as a rule, make the visitor courteously welcome at all times, in his homely fashion, and would indeed be pleased to see the rare strangers who came his way; but in these times, now that excursionists are everywhere, and in great numbers, ruins have acquired a certain commercial value, and must be hedged about with restrictions.
THE REFECTORY, CLEEVE ABBEY.
But here we are in the twentieth century, and it were hopeless and foolish to wish ourselves back in the early years of the nineteenth; for not the most perfect examples of that old-time courtesy could recompense for other incidental discomforts.
Here, then, facing the road, across the little Gothic bridge spanning the Roodwater, stands the Gatehouse. Let us enter—it being weekday—beneath the ample arch of that mingled Decorated and Late Perpendicular building. The upper storey, the work of William Dovell, the last Abbot, bears the hospitable Latin welcome:
Porta patens esto
Nulli claudaris honesto,