Everybody else did something. Aurelius earned a living, though his hands proclaimed him one who was born neither to toil nor spin. Higgs, too, did no one knew what, but something that kept him in tobacco and bowler hats, in the times when he was not fishing in the Wilderness or looking after his pigeons in the yard. For it so happened—and caused nobody surprise—that all the pigeons at Abercorran House were his. Mr Morgan looked with puzzled disapproval from Higgs to Roland and Jack, and back again to Higgs. Higgs had arrived and stayed under their shadow. It was a little mysterious, but so it was, and Mr Morgan could not help seeing and wondering why the two should afflict themselves with patronising one like fat Higgs. Once when Roland struck him, half in play, he bellowed distractedly, not for pain but for pure rabid terror. He went about whistling; for he had a little, hard mouth made on purpose. I thought him cruel, because one day when he saw that, owing to some misapprehension, I was expecting two young pigeons for the price of one, he put the head of one into his mouth and closed his teeth.... Whilst I was still silly with disgust and horror he gave me the other bird. But he understood dogs. I have seen Roland listen seriously while Higgs was giving an opinion on some matter concerning Ladas, Bully, Spot, or Granfer; yet Roland was reputed to know all about dogs, and almost all about bitches.
That did not console Mr Morgan. Wherever he looked he saw someone who was perfectly content with Roland and everything else, just as they were, at Abercorran House. Mr Stodham, for example, was all admiration, with a little surprise. Aurelius, again, said that if such a family, house, and backyard, had not existed, they would have to be invented, as other things less pleasant and necessary had been. When rumours were afloat that perhaps Mr Morgan would be compelled to give up the house Aurelius exclaimed: “It is impossible, it is disgraceful. Let the National Gallery go, let the British Museum go, but preserve the Morgans and Abercorran House.” Mr Torrance, of course, agreed with Aurelius. He wrote a poem about the house, but, said Aurelius, “It was written with tears for ink, which is barbarous. He has not enough gall to translate tears into good ink.” Higgs naturally favoured things as they were, since the yard at Abercorran House was the best possible place for his birds. As for me, I was too young, but Abercorran House made London tolerable and often faultless.
Ann’s opinion was expressed in one word: “Wales.” She thought that the family ought to go back to Wales, that all would be well there. In fact, she regarded Abercorran House as only a halt, though she admitted that there were unfriendly circumstances. The return to Wales was for her the foundation or the coping stone always. She would not have been greatly put out if there had been a public subscription or grant from the Civil list to make Abercorran House and Mr Morgan, Jessie, Ann herself, Jack, Roland, Philip, Harry, Lewis, Ladas, Bully, Spot, Granfer, the pigeons, the yard, the Wilderness and the jackdaws, the pond and the water-lilies, as far as possible immortal, and a possession for ever, without interference from Board of Works, School Board inspectors, Rate Collectors, surveyors of taxes, bailiffs and recoverers of debts, moreover without any right on the part of the public to touch this possession except by invitation, with explicit approval by Roland and the rest. It should have been done. A branch of the British Museum might have been especially created to protect this stronghold, as doubtless it would have been protected had it included a dolmen, tumulus, or British camp, or other relic of familiar type. As it was not done, a bailiff did once share the kitchen with Ann, a short man completely enveloped in what had been, at about the time of Albert the Good, a fur-lined overcoat, and a silk hat suitable for a red Indian. Most of his face was nose, and his eyes and nose both together looked everlastingly over the edge of the turned-up coat-collar at the ground. His hands must have been in his coat-pockets. I speak of his appearance when he took the air; for I did not see him at Abercorran House. There he may have produced his hands and removed his hat from his head and lifted up his eyes from the ground—a thing impossible to his nose. He may even have spoken—in a voice of ashes. But at least on the day after his visit all was well at Abercorran House with man and bird and beast. The jackdaws riding a south-west wind in the sun said “Jack” over and over again, both singly and in volley. Only Higgs was disturbed. He, it seems, knew the visitor, and from that day dated his belief in the perishableness of mortal things, and a moderated opinion of everything about the Morgans except the pigeon-house and Roland. Mr Morgan perhaps did not, but everybody else soon forgot the bailiff. On the day after his visit, nevertheless, Philip was still indignant. He was telling me about the battle of Hastings. All I knew and had cared to know was summed up in the four figures—1066. But Philip, armed with a long-handled mallet, had constituted himself the English host on the hill brow, battering the Normans downhill with yells of “Out, out,” and “God Almighty,” and also “Out Jew.” For his enemy was William of Normandy and the Jew bailiff in one. With growls of “Out, out” through foaming set lips, he swung the mallet repeatedly, broke a Windsor chair all to pieces, and made the past live again.
CHAPTER XIX
THE INTERLUDE OF HIGH BOWER
Ann must have had the bailiff’s visit in mind when she said, not long after:
“Philip, what would you give to be back, all of you, at Abercorran?”
“Silly,” he answered, “I haven’t got anything good enough to give, you know.... But I would give up going to Our Country for a whole year. I would do anything.... But this isn’t bad, is it, Arthur?”
Depth of feeling was (to me) so well conveyed by those two mean words that for the life of me I could only corroborate them with a fervent repetition:
“Not bad.”